natural inspiration; he lingers in the middle regions, amid precepts, subject to taste and common sense. This is why Addison's criticism is so solid and so poor. They who seek ideas will do well not to read his Essays on Imagination,1 so much praised, so well written, but so scant of philosophy, and so commonplace, dragged down by the intervention of final causes. His celebrated commentary on Paradise Lost is little better than the dissertations of Batteux and Bossu. In one place he compares, almost in a line, Homer, Virgil, and Ovid. The fine arrangement of a poem is with him the best merit. The pure classics enjoy better arrangement and good order than artless truth and strong originality. They have always their poetic manual in their hands: if you agree with the pattern of to-day, you have genius; if not, not. Addison, in praise of Milton, establishes that, according to the rule of epic poetry, the action of Paradise Lost is one, complete and great; that its characters are varied and of universal interest, and its sentiments natural, appropriate, and elevated; the style clear, diversified, and sublime. Now you may admire Milton; he has a testimonial from Aristotle. Listen, for instance, to cold details of classical dissertation:

'Had I followed Monsieur Bossu's method in my first paper on Milton, I should have dated the action of Paradise Lost from the beginning of Raphael's speech in this book.'2

3

'But, notwithstanding the fineness of this allegory (Sin and Death) may atone for it (the defect in the subject of his poem) in some measure, I cannot think that persons of such a chimerical existence are proper actors in an epic poem.' Further on he defines poetical machines, the conditions of their structure, the advantage of their use. He seems to me a carpenter verifying the construction of a staircase. Do not suppose that artificiality shocks him; he rather admires it. He finds the violent declamations of the Miltonic divinity and the royal compliments, indulged in by the persons of the Trinity, sublime. The campaigns of the angels, their bearing in chapel and barrack, their scholastic disputes, their bitter puritanical or pious royalistic style, do not strike him as false or disagreeable. Adam's pedantry and household lectures appear to him suitable to the state of innocence. In fact, the classics of the last two centuries never looked upon the human mind, except in its cultivated state. The child, the artist, the barbarian, the inspired man, escaped them; so, of course, did all who were beyond humanity: their world was limited to the earth, and to the earth of the study and drawing-rooms; they rose neither to God nor nature, or if they did, it was to transform nature into a narrow garden, and God into a moral scrutator. They reduced genius to eloquence, poetry to discourse, the drama to a dialogue. They regarded beauty as if it were reason, a sort of middle faculty, not apt for invention, potent in rules, balancing imagination like conduct, and making taste the arbiter of

1 See Spectator, No. 411-No. 432. 2 Ibid. No. 327. 3 Ibid. No. 273.

letters, as it made morality the arbiter of actions. They dispensed with the play on words, the sensual grossness, the flights of imagination, the atrocities, and all the bad accompaniments of Shakspeare; but they only half imitated him in the deep intuitions by which he pierced the human heart, and discovered therein the God and the animal. They wanted to be moved, but not overwhelmed; they allowed themselves to be impressed, but demanded to be pleased. To please rationally was the object of their literature. Such is Addison's criticism, which resembles his art; born, like his art, of classical urbanity; fit, like his art, for the life of the world, having the same solidity and the same limits, because it had the same sources, to wit, rule and gratification.

VI.

But we must consider that we are in England, and that we find there many things not agreeable to a Frenchman. In France, the classical age attained perfection; so that, compared to it, other countries lack somewhat of finish. Addison, elegant at home, is not quite so in France. Compared with Tillotson, he is the most charming man possible; compared to Montesquieu, he is only half polished. His converse is hardly sparkling enough; the quick movement, the easy change of tone, the facile smile, readily dropt and readily resumed, are hardly visible. He drags on in long and too uniform phrases; his periods are too square; we might cull a load of useless words. He tells us what he is going to say he marks divisions and subdivisions; he quotes Latin, even Greek; he displays and protracts without end the serviceable and sticky plaster of his morality. He has no fear of being wearisome. That is not a point of fear amongst Englishmen. Men who love long demonstrative sermons of three hours are not difficult to amuse. Remember that here the women like to go to meeting, and are entertained by listening for half a day to discourses on drunkenness, or on the sliding scale for taxes: these patient creatures require nothing more than that conversation should be lively and piquant. Consequently they can put up with a less refined politeness and less disguised compliments. When Addison bows to them, which happens often, it is gravely, and his reverence is always accompanied by a warning. Take the following on the gaudy dresses:

'I looked with as much pleasure upon this little party-coloured assembly, as upon a bed of tulips, and did not know at first whether it might not be an embassy of Indian queens; but upon my going about into the pit, and taking them in front, I was immediately undeceived, and saw so much beauty in every face, that I found them all to be English. Such eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads, could be the growth of no other country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from observing any further the colour of their hoods, though I could easily perceive, by that unspeakable satisfaction which appeared in their looks, that their own thoughts were wholly taken up on those pretty ornaments they wore upon their heads.'"

In this discreet raillery, modified by an almost official admiration, you perceive the English mode of treating women: man, by her side, is always a lay-preacher; they are for him charming children, or useful housewives, never queens of the drawing-room, or equals, as amongst the French. When Addison wishes to bring back the Jacobite ladies to the Protestant party, he treats them almost like little girls, to whom we promise, if they will be good, to restore their doll or their cake:

'They should first reflect on the great sufferings and persecutions to which they expose themselves by the obstinacy of their behaviour. They lose their elections in every club where they are set up for toasts. They are obliged by their principles to stick a patch on the most unbecoming side of their foreheads. They forego the advantage of birthday suits. . . . They receive no benefit from the army, and are never the better for all the young fellows that wear hats and feathers. They are forced to live in the country and feed their chickens; at the same time that they might show themselves at court, and appear in brocade, if they behaved themselves well. In short, what must go to the heart of every fine woman, they throw themselves quite out of the fashion. . . . A man is startled when he sees a pretty bosom heaving with such party-rage, as is disagreeable even in that sex which is of a more coarse and rugged make. And yet such is our misfortune, that we sometimes see a pair of stays ready to burst with sedition; and hear the most masculine passions expressed in the sweetest voices. . . . Where a great number of flowers grow, the ground at distance seems entirely covered with them, and we must walk into it, before we can distinguish the several weeds that spring up in such a beautiful mass of colours.'1

This gallantry is too deliberate; we are somewhat shocked to see a woman touched by such thoughtful hands. It is the urbanity of a moralist; albeit he is well bred, he is not quite amiable; and if a Frenchman can receive from him lessons of pedagogy and conduct, he must come over to France to find models of manners and conversation.

We are

If the first care of a Frenchman in society is to be amiable, that of an Englishman is to be dignified; their mood leads them to immobility, as ours to gestures; and their pleasantry is as grave as ours is gay. Laughter with them is inward; they shun giving themselves up to it; they are amused silently. Make up your mind to understand this kind of temper, it will end by pleasing you. When phlegm is united to gentleness, as in Addison, it is as agreeable as it is piquant. charmed to meet a lively man, who is yet master of himself. astonished to see these contrary qualities together. Each heightens and modifies the other. We are not repelled by venomous bitterness, as in Swift, or by continuous buffoonery, as in Voltaire. We rejoice altogether in the rare union, which for the first time combines serious bearing and good humour. Read this little satire against the bad taste of the stage and the public:

We are

There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement to the town than Signor Nicolini's combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which

Freeholder, No. 26.

has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. . . . The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who being a fellow of a testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done. The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish for his part; insomuch that, after a short modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him, and giving him an opportunity of shewing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed, that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured doublet; but this was only to make work for himself, in his private character of a tailor. . . . The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country gentleman, who does it for his diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says, very handsomely, in his own excuse, that he does not act for gain, that he indulges an innocent pleasure in it; and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking. . . . This gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man. . . . In the meantime, I have related this combat of the lion, to show what are at present the reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.'1 There is much originality in this grave gaiety. As a rule, singularity is in accordance with the taste of the nation; they like to be struck strongly by contrasts. Our literature seems to them threadbare; we again find them not delicate. A number of the Spectator which seemed pleasant to London ladies would have shocked people in Paris. Thus, Addison relates in the form of a dream the dissection of a beau's brain :

'The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower water, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye; insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties. We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput, that was filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery. . . . We did not find anything very remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or, as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn, and decayed with use; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.'2

These anatomical details, which would disgust us, amused a positive mind; crudity is for him only exactness; accustomed to precise images, he finds no objectionable odour in the medical style. Addison does not share our repugnance. To rail at a vice, he becomes a mathematician, an economist, a pedant, an apothecary. Special terms amuse him. He sets up a court to judge crinolines, and condemns petticoats in technical formulas. He teaches how to handle a fan as if he were teaching to prime and load muskets. He draws up a list of men dead or in

1

Spectator, No. 13.

2 Ibid. No. 275.

jured by love, and the ridiculous causes which have reduced them to such a condition:

‘Will Simple, smitten at the Opera by the glance of an eye that was aimed at one who stood by him.

'Sir Christopher Crazy, Bart., hurt by the brush of a whalebone petticoat. 'Ned Courtly, presenting Flavia with her glove (which she had dropped on purpose), she received it and took away his life with a curtsey.

'John Gosselin, having received a slight hurt from a pair of blue eyes, as he was making his escape, was dispatched by a smile.'1

Other statistics, with recapitulations and tables of numbers, relate the history of the Leucadian leap:

'Aridæus, a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife of Thespis, escaped without damage, saving only that two of his foreteeth were struck out, and his nose a little flatted.

'Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured of Bathyllus, leaped and died of his fall; upon which his wife married her gallant.''

You see this strange mode of painting human folly: in England it is called humour. It contains an incisive good sense, the habit of restraint, business habits, but above all a fundamental energy of invention. The race is less refined, but stronger; and the pleasures which content its mind and taste are like the liquors which suit its palate and its stomach.

This potent Germanic spirit breaks even in Addison through his classical and Latin exterior. Albeit he relishes art, he still loves nature. His education, which has loaded him with maxims, has not destroyed his virgin sentiment of truth. In his travels in France he preferred the wildness of Fontainebleau to the correctness of Versailles. He shakes off worldly refinements to praise the simplicity of the old national ballads. He explains to his public the sublime images, the vast passions, the deep religion of Paradise Lost. It is curious to see him, compass in. hand, kept back by Bossu, fettered in endless arguments and academical phrases, attaining with one spring, by strength of natural emotion, the high unexplored regions to which Milton rose by the inspiration of faith and genius. He would not say, with Voltaire, that the allegory of Sin and Death is enough to make people sick. He has a foundation of grand imagination, which makes him indifferent to the little refinements of social civilisation. He sojourns willingly amid the grandeur and marvels of the other world. He is penetrated by the presence of the Invisible, he must escape from the interests and hopes of the petty life in which we crawl. This source of faith gushes from him everywhere; in vain is it enclosed in the regular channel of official dogma; the tests and arguments with which it is covered do not hide its true origin. It springs from the grave and fertile imagination which can only be satisfied with a sight of what is beyond.

'Spectator, No. 377.

3 See the last thirty numbers of the Spectator.

2 Ibid. No. 233.