“29.—I dined with Mr. Addison,” &c.—Journal to Stella.
Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels “To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.”—Scott. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.
“Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things.”—Letters.
“I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself.”—Swift to Addison (1717), Scott's Swift, vol. xix, p. 274.
Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time renewed them; and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected.
“As to poetical affairs,” says Pope, in 1713, “I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion:—
“Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost;
And factions strive who shall applaud him most.
“The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hands than the head.... I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgement (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator”—Pope's “Letter to Sir W. Trumbull”.
Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.
It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual quotations, e.g.:—