Is now no longer what it was,

Pensive and sad, his drooping muse betrays
And you may e'en go sell the case.

The Roman genius in its last decays.
So, if unprejudiced you scan
The goings of this clock-work, man,

The youthful poet's praise of his great master is You find a hundred movements made

confined to his translations, works which a modern By fine devices in his head;

eulogist would scarcely select as the peculiar glory But 'tis the stomach's solid stroke

of Dryden. Addison also contributed an Essay on That tells his being what's o'clock.

Virgil's Georgics, prefixed to Dryden's translation. If you take off this rhetoric trigger,

His remarks are brief, but finely and clearly written. He talks no more in trope and figure ;

At the same time, he translated the fourth Georgic, Or clog his mathematic wheel,

and it was published in Dryden's Miscellany, issued His buildings fall, his ship stands still ;

in 1693, with a warm commendation from the aged Or, lastly, break his politic weight,

poet on the most ingenious Mr Addison of Oxford.' His voice no longer rules the state :

Next year he ventured on a bolder flight-An AcYet, if these finer whims are gone,

count of the Greatest English Poets, addressed to Your clock, though plain, will still go on : Mr H. S. (supposed to be the famous Dr Sacheverell), But, spoil the organ of digestion,

April 3, 1694. This Account is a poem of about 150 And you entirely change the question ;

lines, containing sketches of Chaucer, Spenser, Alma's affairs no power can mend;

Cowley, Milton, Waller, &c. We subjoin the lines The jest, alas! is at an end ;

on the author of the Faery Queen, though, if we are Soon ceases all the worldly bustle,

to believe Spence, Addison had not then read the And you consign the corpse to Russel.1

poet he ventured to criticise :

Old Spenser next, warm’d with poetic rage,
JOSEPH ADDISON.

In ancient tales amus'd a barbarous age;
The prose works of Addison constitute the chief An age, that yet uncultivate and rude,
source of his fame; but his muse proved the archi- Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
tect of his fortune, and led him first to distinc- Through pathless fields, and unfrequented floods,
tion. From his character, station, and talents, no To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
man of his day exercised a more extensive or bene. But now the mystic tale, that pleas'd of yore,
ficial influence on literature. Joseph Addison, the Can charm an understanding age no more ;

The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleased, at distance, all the sights
Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
This subdued and frigid character of Spenser shows
that Addison wanted both the fire and the fancy of
the poet. His next production is equally tame and
commonplace, but the theme was more congenial to
his style: it is A Poem to His Majesty, Presented to
the Lord Keeper. Lord Somers, then the keeper of
the great seal, was gratified by this compliment, and
became one of the steadiest patrons of Addison. In
1699, he procured for him a pension of £300 a-year,
to enable him to make a tour in Italy. The govern-
ment patronage was never better bestowed. The
poet entered upon his travels, and resided abroad

two years, writing from thence a poetical Letter from Italy to Charles Lord Halifar, 1701. This is the most elegant and animated of all his poetical productions. The classic ruins of Rome, the

heavenly figures' of Raphael, the river Tiber, and streams .immortalised in song,' and all the golden groves and flowery meadows of Italy, seem, as Pope has remarked, 'to have raised his fancy, and brightened his expressions. There was also, as Goldsmith observed, a strain of political thinking

in the Letter, that was then new to our poetry. son of an English dean, was born at Milston, Wilt- He returned to England in 1702. The death of shire, in 1672. He distinguished himself at Oxford King William deprived him of his pension, and apby his Latin poetry, and appeared first in English peared to crush his hopes and expectations; but verse by an address to Dryden, written in his being afterwards engaged to celebrate in verse the twenty-second year. It opens thus

battle of Blenheim, Addison so gratified the lord

treasurer, Godolphin, by his .gazette in rhyme,' that How long, great poet ! shall thy sacred lays

he was appointed a commissioner of appeals. He Provoke our wonder, and transcend our praise ! was next made under secretary of state, and went Can neither injuries of time or age

to Ireland as secretary to the Marquis of Wharton, Damp thy poetic heat, and quench thy rage ! lord-lieutenant. The queen also made him keeper Not so thy Ovid in his exile wrote;

of the records of Ireland. Previous to this (in 1707), Grief chilíd his breast, and check'd his rising thought; Addison had brought out his opera of Rosamond,

which was not successful on the stage. The story * Probably an undertaker. of fair Rosamond would seem well adapted for

I Addwar
I