Essays and Tales

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk,
from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition.

ESSAYS AND TALES

by Joseph Addison

Contents:

Introduction
Public Credit
Household Superstitions
Opera Lions
Women and Wives
The Italian Opera
Lampoons
True and False Humour
Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow's Impressions of London
The Vision of Marraton
Six Papers on Wit
Friendship
Chevy-Chase (Two Papers)
A Dream of the Painters
Spare Time (Two Papers)
Censure
The English Language
The Vision of Mirza
Genius
Theodosius and Constantia
Good Nature
A Grinning Match
Trust in God

INTRODUCTION.

The sixty-fourth volume of this Library contains those papers from
the Tatler which were especially associated with the imagined
character of ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, who was the central figure in that
series; and in the twenty-ninth volume there is a similar collection
of papers relating to the Spectator Club and SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY,
who was the central figure in Steele and Addison's Spectator. Those
volumes contained, no doubt, some of the best Essays of Addison and
Steele. But in the Tatler and Spectator are full armouries of the
wit and wisdom of these two writers, who summoned into life the army
of the Essayists, and led it on to kindly war against the forces of
Ill-temper and Ignorance. Envy, Hatred, Malice, and all their first
cousins of the family of Uncharitableness, are captains under those
two commanders-in-chief, and we can little afford to dismiss from
the field two of the stoutest combatants against them. In this
volume it is only Addison who speaks; and in another volume,
presently to follow, there will be the voice of Steele.

The two friends differed in temperament and in many of the outward
signs of character; but these two little books will very distinctly
show how wholly they agreed as to essentials. For Addison,
Literature had a charm of its own; he delighted in distinguishing
the finer graces of good style, and he drew from the truths of life
the principles of taste in writing. For Steele, Literature was the
life itself; he loved a true book for the soul he found in it. So
he agreed with Addison in judgment. But the six papers on "Wit,"
the two papers on "Chevy Chase," contained in this volume; the
eleven papers on "Imagination," and the papers on "Paradise Lost,"
which may be given in some future volume; were in a form of study
for which Addison was far more apt than Steele. Thus as fellow-
workers they gave a breadth to the character of Tatler and Spectator
that could have been produced by neither of them, singly.

The reader of this volume will never suppose that the artist's
pleasure in good art and in analysis of its constituents removes him
from direct enjoyment of the life about him; that he misses a real
contact with all the world gives that is worth his touch. Good art
is but nature, studied with love trained to the most delicate
perception; and the good criticism in which the spirit of an artist
speaks is, like Addison's, calm, simple, and benign. Pope yearned
to attack John Dennis, a rough critic of the day, who had attacked
his "Essay on Criticism." Addison had discouraged a very small
assault of words. When Dennis attacked Addison's "Cato," Pope
thought himself free to strike; but Addison took occasion to
express, through Steele, a serious regret that he had done so. True
criticism may be affected, as Addison's was, by some bias in the
canons of taste prevalent in the writer's time, but, as Addison's
did in the Chevy-Chase papers, it will dissent from prevalent
misapplications of them, and it can never associate perception of
the purest truth and beauty with petty arrogance, nor will it so
speak as to give pain. When Wordsworth was remembering with love
his mother's guidance of his childhood, and wished to suggest that
there were mothers less wise in their ways, he was checked, he said,
by the unwillingness to join thought of her "with any thought that
looks at others' blame." So Addison felt towards his mother Nature,
in literature and in life. He attacked nobody. With a light,
kindly humour, that was never personal and never could give pain, he
sought to soften the harsh lines of life, abate its follies, and
inspire the temper that alone can overcome its wrongs.

Politics, in which few then knew how to think calmly and recognise
the worth of various opinion, Steele and Addison excluded from the
pages of the Spectator. But the first paper in this volume is upon
"Public Credit," and it did touch on the position of the country at
a time when the shock of change caused by the Revolution of 1688-89,
and also the strain of foreign war, were being severely felt.

H. M.

PUBLIC CREDIT.

- Quoi quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret
Aut quibus i rebus multum sumus ante morati
Atque in quo ratione fuit contenta magis mens,
In somnis cadem plerumque videmur obire.
LUCR., iv. 959.

- What studies please, what most delight,
And fill men's thoughts, they dream them o'er at night.

CREECH.

In one of my rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into the
great hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to
see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other
members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their several
stations, according to the parts they act in that just and regular
economy. This revived in my memory the many discourses which I had
both read and heard concerning the decay of public credit, with the
methods of restoring it; and which, in my opinion, have always been
defective, because they have always been made with an eye to
separate interests and party principles.

The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night;
so that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which
disposed all my contemplations into a vision, or allegory, or what
else the reader shall please to call it.

Methoughts I returned to the great hall, where I had been the
morning before; but to my surprise, instead of the company that I
left there, I saw, towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful
virgin, seated on a throne of gold. Her name, as they told me, was
Public Credit. The walls, instead of being adorned with pictures
and maps, were hung with many Acts of Parliament written in golden
letters. At the upper end of the hall was the Magna Charta, with
the Act of Uniformity on the right hand, and the Act of Toleration
on the left. At the lower end of the hall was the Act of
Settlement, which was placed full in the eye of the virgin that sat
upon the throne. Both the sides of the hall were covered with such
Acts of Parliament as had been made for the establishment of public
funds. The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these
several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her
eye with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure as she looked
upon them; but, at the same time, showed a very particular
uneasiness if she saw anything approaching that might hurt them.
She appeared, indeed, infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: and
whether it was from the delicacy of her constitution, or that she
was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I
found was none of her well-wishers, she changed colour and startled
at everything she heard. She was likewise, as I afterwards found, a
greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met with, even in her own
sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions, that in the
twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid
complexion and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a
skeleton. Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays,
insomuch that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting
distemper, into a habit of the highest health and vigour.

I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and
changes in her constitution. There sat at her feet a couple of
secretaries, who received every hour letters from all parts of the
world, which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to
her; and according to the news she heard, to which she was
exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and discovered many
symptoms of health or sickness.

Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were
piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling. The
floor on her right hand and on her left was covered with vast sums
of gold that rose up in pyramids on either side of her. But this I
did not so much wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had
the same virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king
was formerly possessed of; and that she could convert whatever she
pleased into that precious metal.

After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man
often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the
doors flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous
phantoms that I had ever seen, even in a dream, before that time.
They came in two by two, though matched in the most dissociable
manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be
tedious to describe their habits and persons; for which reason I
shall only inform my reader, that the first couple were Tyranny and
Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and Atheism; the third, the Genius
of a commonwealth and a young man of about twenty-two years of age,
whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in his right hand,
which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of Settlement; and
a citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he saw a
sponge in his left hand. The dance of so many jarring natures put
me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the Rehearsal, that
danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another.

The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, that
the lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to
distraction, had she seen but any one of the spectres: what then
must have been her condition when she saw them all in a body? She
fainted, and died away at the sight.

Et neque jam color est misto candore rubori;
Nec vigor, et vires, et quae modo rise placebant;
Nec corpus remanet--.

OVID, Met. iii. 491.

- Her spirits faint,
Her blooming cheeks assume a pallid teint,
And scarce her form remains.

There was as great a change in the hill of money-bags and the heaps
of money, the former shrinking and falling into so many empty bags,
that I now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with
money.

The rest, that took up the same space and made the same figure as
the bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with
air, and called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer
tells us his hero received as a present from AEolus. The great
heaps of gold on either side the throne now appeared to be only
heaps of paper, or little piles of notched sticks, bound up together
in bundles, like Bath faggots.

Whilst I was lamenting this sudden desolation that had been made
before me, the whole scene vanished. In the room of the frightful
spectres, there now entered a second dance of apparitions, very
agreeably matched together, and made up of very amiable phantoms:
the first pair was Liberty with Monarchy at her right hand; the
second was Moderation leading in Religion; and the third, a person
whom I had never seen, with the Genius of Great Britain. At the
first entrance, the lady revived; the bags swelled to their former
bulk; the piles of faggots and heaps of paper changed into pyramids
of guineas: and, for my own part, I was so transported with joy
that I awaked, though I must confess I would fain have fallen asleep
again to have closed my vision, if I could have done it.

HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS.

Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?
HOR., Ep. ii. 2, 208.

Visions and magic spells, can you despise,
And laugh at witches, ghosts, and prodigies?

Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the
misfortune to find his whole family very much dejected. Upon asking
him the occasion of it, he told me that his wife had dreamt a very
strange dream the night before, which they were afraid portended
some misfortune to themselves or to their children. At her coming
into the room, I observed a settled melancholy in her countenance,
which I should have been troubled for, had I not heard from whence
it proceeded. We were no sooner sat down, but, after having looked
upon me a little while, "My dear," says she, turning to her husband,
"you may now see the stranger that was in the candle last night."
Soon after this, as they began to talk of family affairs, a little
boy at the lower end of the table told her that he was to go into
join-hand on Thursday. "Thursday!" says she. "No, child; if it
please God, you shall not begin upon Childermas-day; tell your
writing-master that Friday will be soon enough." I was reflecting
with myself on the oddness of her fancy, and wondering that anybody
would establish it as a rule, to lose a day in every week. In the
midst of these my musings, she desired me to reach her a little salt
upon the point of my knife, which I did in such a trepidation and
hurry of obedience that I let it drop by the way; at which she
immediately startled, and said it fell towards her. Upon this I
looked very blank; and observing the concern of the whole table,
began to consider myself, with some confusion, as a person that had
brought a disaster upon the family. The lady, however, recovering
herself after a little space, said to her husband with a sigh, "My
dear, misfortunes never come single." My friend, I found, acted but
an under part at his table; and, being a man of more good-nature
than understanding, thinks himself obliged to fall in with all the
passions and humours of his yoke-fellow. "Do not you remember,
child," says she, "that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon
that our careless wench spilt the salt upon the table?"--"Yes," says
he, "my dear; and the next post brought us an account of the battle
of Almanza." The reader may guess at the figure I made, after
having done all this mischief. I despatched my dinner as soon as I
could, with my usual taciturnity; when, to my utter confusion, the
lady seeing me quitting my knife and fork, and laying them across
one another upon my plate, desired me that I would humour her so far
as to take them out of that figure and place them side by side.
What the absurdity was which I had committed I did not know, but I
suppose there was some traditionary superstition in it; and
therefore, in obedience to the lady of the house, I disposed of my
knife and fork in two parallel lines, which is the figure I shall
always lay them in for the future, though I do not know any reason
for it.

It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has conceived an
aversion to him. For my own part, I quickly found, by the lady's
looks, that she regarded me as a very odd kind of fellow, with an
unfortunate aspect: for which reason I took my leave immediately
after dinner, and withdrew to my own lodgings. Upon my return home,
I fell into a profound contemplation on the evils that attend these
superstitious follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary
afflictions, and additional sorrows, that do not properly come
within our lot. As if the natural calamities of life were not
sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into
misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real
evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest;
and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon
the plucking of a merry-thought. A screech-owl at midnight has
alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a
cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There
is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an
imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics: a rusty nail
or a crooked pin shoot up into prodigies.

I remember I was once in a mixed assembly that was full of noise and
mirth, when on a sudden an old woman unluckily observed there were
thirteen of us in company. This remark struck a panic terror into
several who were present, insomuch that one or two of the ladies
were going to leave the room; but a friend of mine taking notice
that one of our female companions was big with child, affirmed there
were fourteen in the room, and that, instead of portending one of
the company should die, it plainly foretold one of them should be
born. Had not my friend found this expedient to break the omen, I
question not but half the women in the company would have fallen
sick that very night.

An old maid that is troubled with the vapours produces infinite
disturbances of this kind among her friends and neighbours. I know
a maiden aunt of a great family, who is one of these antiquated
Sibyls, that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the year to
the other. She is always seeing apparitions and hearing death-
watches; and was the other day almost frighted out of her wits by
the great house-dog that howled in the stable, at a time when she
lay ill of the toothache. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages
multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in
supernumerary duties of life, and arises from that fear and
ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror with
which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any future
evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a melancholy mind
with innumerable apprehensions and suspicions, and consequently
dispose it to the observation of such groundless prodigies and
predictions. For as it is the chief concern of wise men to retrench
the evils of life by the reasonings of philosophy, it is the
employment of fools to multiply them by the sentiments of
superstition.

For my own part, I should be very much troubled were I endowed with
this divining quality, though it should inform me truly of
everything that can befall me. I would not anticipate the relish of
any happiness, nor feel the weight of any misery, before it actually
arrives.

I know but one way of fortifying my soul against these gloomy
presages and terrors of mind; and that is, by securing to myself the
friendship and protection of that Being who disposes of events and
governs futurity. He sees, at one view, the whole thread of my
existence, not only that part of it which I have already passed
through, but that which runs forward into all the depths of
eternity. When I lay me down to sleep, I recommend myself to His
care; when I awake, I give myself up to His direction. Amidst all
the evils that threaten me, I will look up to Him for help, and
question not but He will either avert them, or turn them to my
advantage. Though I know neither the time nor the manner of the
death I am to die, I am not at all solicitous about it; because I am
sure that he knows them both, and that He will not fail to comfort
and support me under them.

OPERA LIONS.

Dic mihi, si fias tu leo, qualis eris?
MART., xii. 93.

Were you a lion, how would you behave?

There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater
amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini's combat with a lion in
the Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general
satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of
Great Britain. Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it
was confidently affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both
galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every
opera night in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though
altogether groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions
of the playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those
parts of the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a
cousin-german of the tiger who made his appearance in King William's
days, and that the stage would be supplied with lions at the public
expense during the whole session. Many likewise were the
conjectures of the treatment which this lion was to meet with from
the hands of Signior Nicolini: some supposed that he was to subdue
him in recitativo, as Orpheus used to serve the wild beasts in his
time, and afterwards to knock him on the head; some fancied that the
lion would not pretend to lay his paws upon the hero, by reason of
the received opinion that a lion will not hurt a virgin: several
who pretended to have seen the opera in Italy, had informed their
friends that the lion was to act a part in High Dutch, and roar
twice or thrice to a thorough bass before he fell at the feet of
Hydaspes. To clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I
have made it my business to examine whether this pretended lion is
really the savage he appears to be, or only a counterfeit.

But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the reader
that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was
thinking on something else, I accidentally jostled against a
monstrous animal that extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer
survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant. The lion, seeing me
very much surprised, told me, in a gentle voice, that I might come
by him if I pleased; "for," says he, "I do not intend to hurt
anybody." I thanked him very kindly and passed by him, and in a
little time after saw him leap upon the stage and act his part with
very great applause. It has been observed by several that the lion
has changed his manner of acting twice or thrice since his first
appearance, which will not seem strange when I acquaint my reader
that the lion has been changed upon the audience three several
times. The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who, being a fellow of
a testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer
himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done: besides,
it was observed of him, that he grew more surly every time he came
out of the lion, and having dropped some words in ordinary
conversation, as if he had not fought his best, and that he suffered
himself to be thrown upon his back in the scuffle, and that he would
wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what he pleased, out of his lion's
skin, it was thought proper to discard him: and it is verily
believed to this day, that, had he been brought upon the stage
another time, he would certainly have done mischief. Besides, it
was objected against the first lion, that he reared himself so high
upon his hinder paws, and walked in so erect a posture, that he
looked more like an old man than a lion.

The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the
playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his
profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish
for his part; inasmuch that, after a short modest walk upon the
stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without
grappling with him, and giving him an opportunity of showing his
variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed, that he once gave him
a rip in his flesh-colour doublet: but this was only to make work
for himself in his private character of a tailor. I must not omit
that it was this second lion who treated me with so much humanity
behind the scenes.

The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country
gentleman, who does it for his diversion, but desires his name may
be concealed. He says very handsomely, in his own excuse, that he
does not act for gain; that he indulges an innocent pleasure in it,
and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in
gaming and drinking: but at the same time says, with a very
agreeable raillery upon himself, that if his name should be known,
the ill-natured world might call him "the ass in the lion's skin."
This gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the
mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and
has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the
memory of man.

I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a
groundless report that has been raised to a gentleman's
disadvantage, of whom I must declare myself an admirer; namely, that
Signior Nicolini and the lion have been seen sitting peaceably by
one another, and smoking a pipe together behind the scenes; by which
their common enemies would insinuate that it is but a sham combat
which they represent upon the stage: but upon inquiry I find, that
if any such correspondence has passed between them, it was not till
the combat was over, when the lion was to be looked upon as dead
according to the received rules of the drama. Besides, this is what
is practised every day in Westminster Hall, where nothing is more
usual than to see a couple of lawyers, who have been tearing each
other to pieces in the court, embracing one another as soon as they
are out of it.

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