Addison

by William John Courthope

It has been said that with Cato the good fortune of Addison reached its climax. After his triumph in the theatre, though he filled great offices in the State and wedded “a noble wife,” his political success was marred by disagreements with one of his oldest friends; while with the Countess of Warwick, if we are to believe Pope, he “married discord.” Added to which he was unlucky enough to incur the enmity of the most poignant and vindictive of satiric poets, and a certain shadow has been for ever thrown over his character by the famous verses on “Atticus.” It will be convenient in this chapter to investigate, as far as is possible, the truth as to the quarrel between Pope and Addison. The latter has hitherto been at a certain disadvantage with the public, since the facts of the case were entirely furnished by Pope, and, though his account was dissected with great acuteness by Blackstone in the Biographia Britannica, the partizans of the poet were still able to plead that his uncontradicted statements could not be disposed of by mere considerations of probability.

Pope’s account of his final rupture with Addison is reported by Spence as follows: “Philips seems to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses and conversations. Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day ‘that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published.’ The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison to let him know ‘that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that, if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I would rather tell him himself fairly of his faults and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner.’ I then subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after.”[61]

Such was the story told by Pope in his own defence against the charge that he had written and circulated the lines on Addison after the latter’s death. In confirmation of his evidence, and in proof of his own good feeling for and open dealing with Addison, he inserted in the so-called authorised edition of his correspondence in 1737 several letters written apparently to Addison, while in what he pretended to be the surreptitious edition of 1735 appeared a letter to Craggs, written in July, 1715, which, as it contained many of the phrases and expressions used in the character of Atticus, created an impression in the mind of the public that both letter and verses were written about the same time. No suspicion as to the genuineness of this correspondence was raised till the discovery of the Caryll letters, which first revealed the fact that most of the pretended letters to Addison had been really addressed to Caryll; that there had been, in fact, no correspondence between Pope and Addison; and that, therefore, in all probability, the letter to Craggs was also a fictitious composition, inserted in the so-called surreptitious volume of 1735 to establish the credit of Pope’s own story.

We must accordingly put aside, as undeserving of credence, the poet’s ingeniously constructed charge, at any rate in the particular shape in which it is preferred, and must endeavour to form for ourselves such a judgment as is rendered probable by the acknowledged facts of the case. What is indisputable is that in 1715 a rupture took place between Addison and Pope, in consequence of the injury which the translator of the Iliad conceived himself to have suffered from the countenance given to Tickell’s rival performance; and that in 1723 we find the first mention of the satire upon Addison in a letter from Atterbury to Pope. The question is, what blame attaches to Addison for his conduct in the matter of the two translations; and what is the amount of truth in Pope’s story respecting the composition of the verses on Atticus.

Pope made Addison’s acquaintance in the year 1712. On the 20th of December, 1711, Addison had noticed Pope’s Art of Criticism in the 253d number of the Spectator—partly, no doubt, in consequence of his perception of the merits of the poem, but probably at the particular instigation of Steele, whose acquaintance with Pope may have been due to the common friendship of both with Caryll. The praise bestowed on the Essay (as it was afterwards called) was of the finest and most liberal kind, and was the more welcome because it was preceded by a censure conveyed with admirable delicacy on “the strokes of ill-nature” which the poem contained. Pope was naturally exceedingly pleased, and wrote to Steele a letter of thanks under the impression that the latter was the writer of the paper, a misapprehension which Steele at once hastened to correct. “The paper,” says he, “was written by one with whom I will make you acquainted—which is the best return I can make to you for your favour.”

These words were doubtless used by Steele in the warmth of his affection for Addison, but they also express the general estimation in which the latter was then held. He had recently established his man Button in a coffee-house in Covent Garden, where, surrounded by his little senate, Budgell, Tickell, Carey, and Philips, he ruled supreme over the world of taste and letters. Something, no doubt, of the spirit of the coterie pervaded the select assembly. Addison could always find a word of condescending praise for his followers in the pages of the Spectator; he corrected their plays and mended their prologues; and they on their side paid back their patron with unbounded reverence, perhaps justifying the satirical allusion of the poet to the “applause” so grateful to the ear of Atticus:

“While wits and Templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.”

Pope, according to his own account, was admitted to the society, and left it, as he said, because he found it sit too far into the night for his health. It may, however, be suspected that the natures of the author of the Dunciad and of the creator of Sir Roger de Coverley, though touching each other at many points, were far from naturally congenial; that the essayist was well aware that the man who could write the Essay on Criticism had a higher capacity for poetry than either himself or any of his followers; and that the poet, on his side, conscious of great if undeveloped powers, was inclined to resent the air of patronage with which he was treated by the King of Button’s. Certain it is that the praise of Pope by Addison in number 253 of the Spectator is qualified (though by no means unjustly), and that he is not spoken of with the same warmth as Tickell and Ambrose Philips in number 523. “Addison,” said Pope to Spence, “seemed to value himself more upon his poetry than upon his prose, though he wrote the latter with such particular ease, fluency, and happiness.”[62] This often happens; and perhaps the uneasy consciousness that, in spite of the reputation which his Campaign had secured for him, he was really inferior to such men as John Philips and Tickell, made Addison touchy at the idea of the entire circle being outshone by a new candidate for poetical fame.

Whatever jealousy, however, existed between the two was carefully suppressed during the first year of their acquaintance. Pope showed Addison the first draft of the Rape of the Lock, and, according to Warburton (whose account must be received with suspicion), imparted to him his design of adding the fairy machinery. If Addison really endeavoured to dissuade the poet from making this exquisite addition, the latter was on his side anxious that Cato, which, as has been said, was shown to him after its completion, should not be presented on the stage; and his advice, if tested by the result, would have been quite as open as Addison’s to an unfavourable construction. He wrote, however, for the play the famous Prologue which Steele inserted, with many compliments, in the Guardian. But not long afterwards the effect of the compliments was spoiled by the comparatively cold mention of Pope’s Pastorals in the same paper that contained a glowing panegyric on the Pastorals of Ambrose Philips. In revenge, Pope wrote his paper commending Philips’ performance and depreciating his own, the irony of which, it is said, escaping the notice of Steele, was inserted by him in the Guardian, much to the amusement of Addison and more to the disgust of Philips.

The occasion on which Pope’s pique against Addison began to develop into bitter resentment is sufficiently indicated by the date which the poet assigns to the first letter in the concocted correspondence—viz., July 20, 1713. This letter (which is taken, with a few slight alterations of names, from one written to Caryll on November 19, 1712) opens as follows: