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the hand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from another.

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[Dryden goes on to detail how in his own translations he considered the genius and distinguishing character' of his authors.]

NOTES.

Every one... a good one . . . one thing. Note exactly the use of 'one' in each case. It is a blemish to have such a close recurrence of the same word in different applications.

To draw. Enumerate the objects, carefully.

We. The antecedents are alternated. Derive... fountains. The metaphor is sustained.

Oglebys, translators such as Ogleby (Ogilby, or Ogilvy); a very common figure. John Ogleby (160076), besides other works, translated into English verse Vergil (1649) and Homer (Iliad, 1660; Odyssey, 1665). Without the help &c. Cf. Ben Jonson's recipe: 'For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries to read the best authors,

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'The expression is good, but the order of the paragraph is marred by digressions and foreign matter' (Prof. Bain).

This criticism applies to most of Dryden's paragraphs, notwithstanding his censure of other authors for the same fault and his constantly repeated confessions of his own wandering from the point.

JOSEPH ADDISON.-1672–1719.

JOSEPH ADDISON, son of Dr Lancelot Addison, who latterly became Dean of Lichfield, was born in Wilts, and educated at the Charterhouse and at Magdalen College, Oxford (M.A. 1693). By the influence of Lord Chancellor Somers and Charles Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Earl of Halifax, he obtained a pension of £300 a year (1699), on which he was to travel on the Continent, and fit himself for diplomatic employment. Addison's pension lapsed on the death of William III. (1702); but a political change having soon

taken place, he was engaged to write a poem in celebration of the victory at Blenheim (1704), and this gave such satisfaction, that he at once received a Commissionership of Appeals with about £200 a year, and in 1706 was made Under-secretary of State. Passing through several other high offices, he at last became one of the chief Secretaries of State in 1717.

At Oxford, Addison had greatly distinguished himself by his Latin poems, and he had also written good verses in English. His first prose work, the Dialogues on Medals, was composed on the Continent; so too was his poetical epistle to Montague. The Campaign (1704) was closely followed by Remarks on Several Parts of Italy. The opera of Rosamond appeared in 1707. But his fame rests on his periodical papers, chiefly on those contributed to the Spectator (1711-2 and 1714), in a less degree on his contributions to the Tatler (1709–11) and the Guardian (1713). Besides political pamphlets, he wrote also some purely political papers in the Freeholder (1715-6). Cato, a tragedy, was 'the delight and admiration of the town' in 1713; and The Drummer, a comedy, was acted in 1715.

IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

(The Spectator, No. 26. Friday, March 30, 1711.)

Pallida Mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres. O beate Sexti,

Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam:
Jam te premet nox, fabulæque manes,

Et domus exilis Plutonia.

HOR., 1 Od. iv. 13-17.

With equal foot, rich friend, impartial fate
Knocks at the cottage and the palace gate :
Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares,
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years:
Night soon will seize, and you must quickly go
To storied ghosts, and Pluto's house below.

CREECH.1

When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the

1 Originally, the translation of the mottoes was deliberately withheld.

churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person but that he was born upon one day and died upon another; the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.

Γλαῦκόν τε, Μέδοντά τε, Θερσίλοχόν τε.

HOM.

Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.

VERG.1

The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by 'the path of an arrow,' which is immediately closed up and lost.

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw, in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were

1'And Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus.' Homer, Iliad, xvii. 216, and Vergil, Æneid, vi. 483.

crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.

After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortality as it were in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which1 are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs that, if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have 2 bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.

3

I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honour to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence: instead of the brave rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character

1'Which' (author's revised text); 'that' (earliest text). 2 Earliest text: 'had.' 3 Earliest text: 'that.'

of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument; for, instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, shew an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea-weed, shells, and coral.

But to return to our subject. I have left the repository of our English kings for the contemplation of another day, when I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with those objects which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we

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