

Credit




Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.





ESSAYS AND TALES


BY
JOSEPH ADDISON.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1888.

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 <DW19>s.

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 <DW19>s 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