Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges Part 68

"The woman who deliberates is lost,"

And the eternal:-

"Plato, thou reasonest well,"

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

89 "The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused-to whom the Sultan is reported to p.r.o.nounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal....

Rowe's ballad of _The Despairing Shepherd_ is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair."-DR. JOHNSON.

"I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both."-LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU to POPE. _Works_, Lord Wharncliffe's ed., vol. ii, p. 111.

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect.

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courts.h.i.+p, for his Collection contains "Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr.

Addison's going to Ireland", in which her ladys.h.i.+p is called "Chloe", and Joseph Addison, "Lycidas"; besides the ballad mentioned by the doctor, and which is ent.i.tled "Colin's Complaint". But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen:-

What though I have skill to complain- Though the Muses my temples have crowned; What though, when they hear my sweet strain, The Muses sit weeping around.

Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain; Thy pipe and thy laurel resign; Thy false one inclines to a swain Whose music is sweeter than thine.

90 One of the most humourous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the _Spectator_ tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER:

"MR. SPECTATOR-

"You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair s.e.x are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compa.s.s. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts.

What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure.

"The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-const.i.tutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them?

"I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our s.e.x has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circ.u.mvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

"Among these various conjectures, there are men of superst.i.tious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the _French_ king, and observe, that the farthingale appeared in _England_ a little before the ruin of the _Spanish_ monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the toil of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that mult.i.tudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c. &c.-_Spectator_, No. 127.

91 "Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own."-POPE'S _Letters_.

92 "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings; and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.... There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.

"As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pa.s.s it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favourite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that _my parts were solid and would wear well_. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the s.p.a.ce of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quant.i.ty of an hundred words; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life....

"I have pa.s.sed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that know me.... There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the _Postman_, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffee-house; and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the 'Cocoa-Tree', and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pa.s.s for a Jew in the a.s.sembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see a cl.u.s.ter of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

"Thus I live in the world rather as a '_Spectator_' of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them-as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game.... In short, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper."-_Spectator_, No. 1.

93 "So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool."-MACAULAY.

94 "The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but, notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old knight at the head of them; who for his reputation in the country took occasion to whisper in the judge's ear that _he was glad his lords.h.i.+p had met with so much good weather in his circuit_.

I was listening to the proceedings of the Court with much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observed to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity.

"Upon his first rising; the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger _was up_. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the country."-_Spectator_, No. 122.

95 "Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his death-bed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true."-DR.

YOUNG (_Spence's Anecdotes_).

"I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depression of melancholy: on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents it from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."-ADDISON, _Spectator_, p. 381.

96 The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father of the young earl, who was brought to his stepfather's bed to see "how a Christian could die". He was amongst the wildest of the n.o.bility of that day; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. He was popular in London, as such daring spirits have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison for his second homicide, when he went on Lord Macclesfield's emba.s.sy to the Elector of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent the garter to H. E. Highness. The chronicler of the expedition speaks of his lords.h.i.+p as an amiable young man, who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable baron's name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened him.

97 "Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used to play a little upon them; but he always took it well."-POPE (_Spence's Anecdotes_).

"Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world: even in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be pleased."-DR. YOUNG (_Spence's Anecdotes_).

98 The gaiety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene between two brilliant sisters, from his comedy, _The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode_. d.i.c.k wrote this, he said, from "a necessity of enlivening his character", which, it seemed, the _Christian Hero_ had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the eyes of readers of that pious piece.

[_Scene draws, and discovers_ LADY CHARLOTTE, _reading at a table,_-LADY HARRIET, _playing at a gla.s.s, to and fro, and viewing herself._]

_L. Ha._-Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [_looking at herself as she speaks_] as you sit staring at a book which I know you can't attend.-Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he pleases, but there's no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do but look on me, now, and deny it if you can.

_L. Ch._-You are the maddest girl [_smiling_].

_L. Ha._-Look ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing [_looking over Charlotte_].-Oh! I see his name as plain as you do-F-r-a-n Fran,-c-i-s, cis, Francis, 'tis in every line of the book.

_L. Ch._ [_rising_]-It's in vain, I see, to mind anything in such impertinent company-but granting 'twere as you say, as to my Lord Hardy-'tis more excusable to admire another than oneself.

_L. Ha._-No, I think not,-yes, I grant you, than really to be vain of one's person, but I don't admire myself-Pis.h.!.+ I don't believe my eyes to have that softness. [_Looking in the gla.s.s._] They an't so piercing: no, 'tis only stuff, the men will be talking.-Some people are such admirers of teeth-Lord, what signifies teeth! [_Showing her teeth._] A very black-a-moor has as white a set of teeth as I.-No, sister, I don't admire myself, but I've a spirit of contradiction in me: I don't know I'm in love with myself, only to rival the men.

_L. Ch._-Aye, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev'n of that rival of his, your dear self.

_L. Ha._-Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that insolent intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both s.e.xes,

The public envy and the public care,

I shan't be so easily catched-I thank him-I want but to be sure, I should heartily torment him by banis.h.i.+ng him, and then consider whether he should depart this life or not.

_L. Ch._-Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your humour does not at all become you.

_L. Ha_.-Vanity! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere than you wise folks; all your life's an art.-Speak you real.-Look you there.-[_Hauling her to the gla.s.s._] Are you not struck with a secret pleasure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony in your shape, that prompt.i.tude in your mien?

_L. Ch._-Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it.

_L. Ha._-Pshaw! Pshaw! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale, 'tis tiresome for me to think at that rate.

_L. Ch._-They that think it too soon to understand themselves will very soon find it too late.-But tell me honestly, don't you like Campley?

_L. Ha._-The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did not think of getting me so easily.-Oh, I hate a heart I can't break when I please.-What makes the value of dear china, but that 'tis so brittle?-were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in your closet.'-_The Funeral_, Oct. 2nd.

"We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele's]; there being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom his _Tatlers_ had not made better by his recommendation of them."-CIBBER.