“I shall get credit with my landlady,” says he, with a smile, “when she sees two such fine gentlemen as you come up my stair.” And he politely made his visitors welcome to his apartment, which was indeed but a shabby [pg 253] one, though no grandee of the land could receive his guests with a more perfect and courtly grace than this gentleman. A frugal dinner, consisting of a slice of meat and a penny loaf, was awaiting the owner of the lodgings. “My wine is better than my meat,” says Mr. Addison; “my Lord Halifax sent me the burgundy.” And he set a bottle and glasses before his friends, and eat his simple dinner in a very few minutes, after which the three fell to, and began to drink. “You see,” says Mr. Addison, pointing to his writing-table, whereon was a map of the action at Hochstedt, and several other gazettes and pamphlets relating to the battle, “that I, too, am busy about your affairs, captain. I am engaged as a poetical gazetteer, to say truth, and am writing a poem on the campaign.”
So Esmond, at the request of his host, told him what he knew about the famous battle, drew the river on the table, aliquo mero, and with the aid of some bits of tobacco-pipe, showed the advance of the left wing, where he had been engaged.
A sheet or two of the verses lay already on the table beside our bottles and glasses, and Dick having plentifully refreshed himself from the latter, took up the pages of manuscript, writ out with scarce a blot or correction, in the author's slim, neat handwriting, and began to read therefrom with great emphasis and volubility. At pauses of the verse the enthusiastic reader stopped and fired off a great salvo of applause.
Esmond smiled at the enthusiasm of Addison's friend.
“You are like the German burghers,” says he, “and the princes on the Mozelle; when our army came to a halt, they always sent a deputation to compliment the chief, and fired a salute with all their artillery from their walls.”
“And drunk the great chief's health afterward, did not they?” says Captain Steele, gaily filling up a bumper;—he never was tardy at that sort of acknowledgement of a friend's merit.
“And the duke, since you will have me act his grace's part,” says Mr. Addison, with a smile and something of a blush, “pledged his friends in return. Most serene Elector of Covent Garden, I drink to your highness's health,” and he filled himself a glass. Joseph required scarce more pressing than Dick to that sort of amusement; but the wine never seemed at all to fluster Mr. Addison's [pg 254] brains; it only unloosed his tongue, whereas Captain Steele's head and speech were quite overcome by a single bottle.
No matter what the verses were, and, to say truth, Mr. Esmond found some of them more than indifferent, Dick's enthusiasm for his chief never faltered, and in every line from Addison's pen, Steele found a master-stroke. By the time Dick had come to that part of the poem, wherein the bard describes as blandly as though he were recording a dance at the Opera, or a harmless bout of bucolic cudgelling at a village fair, that bloody and ruthless part of our campaign, with the remembrance whereof every soldier who bore a part in it must sicken with shame—when we were ordered to ravage and lay waste the Elector's country; and with fire and murder, slaughter and crime, a great part of his dominions was overrun: when Dick came to the lines—
In vengeance roused the soldier fills his hand
With sword and fire, and ravages the land.