[661] Hawkins (Life, p. 270) had said that 'the characteristics of Addison's style are feebleness and inanity.' He was thus happily ridiculed by Person:—'Soon after the publication of Sir John's book, a parcel of Eton boys, not having the fear of God before their eyes, etc., instead of playing truant, robbing orchards, annoying poultry, or performing any other part of their school exercise, fell foul in print (see the Microcosm, No. 36) upon his Worship's censure of Addison's middling style…. But what can you expect, as Lord Kames justly observes, from a school where boys are taught to rob on the highway?' Person, Tracts, p. 339.
[662] Works, vii. 473.
[663] When Johnson shewed me a proof-sheet of the character of Addison, in which he so highly extols his style, I could not help observing, that it had not been his own model, as no two styles could differ more from each other.—'Sir, Addison had his style, and I have mine.'—When I ventured to ask him, whether the difference did not consist in this, that Addison's style was full of idioms, colloquial phrases, and proverbs; and his own more strictly grammatical, and free from such phraseology and modes of speech as can never be literally translated or understood by foreigners; he allowed the discrimination to be just.—Let any one who doubts it, try to translate one of Addison's Spectators into Latin, French, or Italian; and though so easy, familiar, and elegant, to an Englishman, as to give the intellect no trouble; yet he would find the transfusion into another language extremely difficult, if not impossible. But a Rambler, Adventurer, or Idler, of Johnson, would fall into any classical or European language, as easily as if it had been originally conceived in it. BURNEY. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 125) recounts how Johnson recommended Addison's works as a model for imitation to Mr. Woodhouse, a poetical shoemaker. '"Give nights and days, Sir, (said he) to the study of Addison, if you mean either to be a good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man." When I saw something like the same expression in his criticism on that author, I put him in mind of his past injunctions to the young poet, to which he replied, "That he wished the shoemaker might have remembered them as well."' Yet he says in his Life of Pope ( Works, viii. 284), 'He that has once studiously formed a style rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.'
[664] I shall probably, in another work, maintain the merit of Addison's poetry, which has been very unjustly depreciated. BOSWELL. He proposed also to publish an edition of Johnson's poems (ante, p. 16), an account of his own travels (post, April 17, 1778), a collection, with notes, of old tenures and charters of Scotland (post, Oct. 27, 1779), and a History of James IV. of Scotland, 'the patron,' as he said, 'of my family' (Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 23, 1773).
[665] Lewis thus happily translates the lines in Martial,—
'Diligat ilia senèm quondam: sed et ipsa marito,
Tunc quoque cum fuerit, non videatur, anus.
'Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth
To their dim eyes recall the bloom of youth.'
Rambler, No. 167.
Some of Johnson's own translations are happy, as:—
'Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem
Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit auster,
Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!
'How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,
Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs.'
Ib. No. 117.