Additional Notes
[Volume 1 link:
[to No. 123]
The following letter, dated July 21, 1711, was sent by Addison to his friend Mr. Wortley Montagu, with
of the
Spectator.
'Dear Sir,
'Being very well pleased with this day's Spectator I cannot forbear sending you one of them, and desiring your opinion of the story in it. When you have a son I shall be glad to be his Leontine, as my circumstances will probably be like his. I have within this twelvemonth lost a place of £200 per ann., an estate in the Indies of £14,000, and what is worse than all the rest, my mistress. Hear this, and wonder at my philosophy. I find they are going to take away my Irish place from me too: to which I must add, that I have just resigned my fellowship, and that stocks sink every day. If you have any hints or subjects, pray send me up a paper full. I long to talk an evening with you. I believe I shall not go for Ireland this summer, and perhaps would pass a month with you if I knew where. Lady Bellasis is very much your humble servant. Dick Steele and I often remember you.'
I am, Dear Sir, Yours eternally.
To Nos. [453], [461], and [465].
The
Retrospective Review
, vol. xi. for 1825, in a cordially appreciative review of the writings of Marvell, says,
'Captain Thompson was a very incorrect and injudicious editor of Marvell's works. A very contemptible charge of plagiarism is also preferred by the editor against Addison for the insertion of three hymns in the Spectator, Nos. [453], [461], and [465]; no proof whatever is vouchsafed that they belong to Marvell, and the hymn inserted in the Spectator, No. [461], "When Israel freed from Pharaoh's land," is now known to be the noble composition of Dr. Watts.'
Captain Edward Thompson's edition of Marvell in 3 volumes quarto was printed for the editor in 1776. Its great blunder was immediately disposed of in the
Gentleman's Magazine
for September, 1776, and February, 1777, where it was shown for example that Dr. Watts had claimed and transferred his version of the 114th Psalm (which Captain Thompson supposed to have been claimed by 'Tickle') to his volume of
Divine Psalms and Hymns
, published in 1719. In the preface to that volume Dr. Watts wrote,
'Where I have used three or four lines together of any author I have acknowledged it in the notes.'
He did make frequent acknowledgment of lines or thoughts taken from other poets in Psalms 6, 21, 63, 104, 139. But in a note to Ps. 114 he absolutely spoke of the work as his own. Now the ground upon which Thompson ascribed this piece to Marvell is precisely that on which he also ascribed to Marvell Addison's poems in Nos.
and
of the
Spectator.
He found them all in the latter part of a book of extracts of which he said that the first part was in Marvell's handwriting, 'and the rest copied by his order.' It is very doubtful whether even the first part of the MS. book, containing verse of Marvell's, was really in Marvell's handwriting, and that the part written later was copied by his order, is an unfounded assumption. Captain Thompson said of the MS. book that it was many years in the care of Mr. Nettleton, and communicated to the editor by Mr. Thomas Raikes.—Probably it was Mr. Nettleton who in his youth had added to the book copies of Addison's and Dr. Watts's verses from the
Spectator
, and Mallet's version of the old ballad of William and Margaret, all of which pieces Captain Edward Thompson therefore supposed to have been written by Marvell.