Part 2 (1/2)

When Addison landed in France, in 1699, the power of Louis XIV., so long the determined enemy of the English Revolution of 1688, had pa.s.sed its climax. The Peace of Ryswick, by which the hopes of the Jacobites were finally demolished, was two years old. The king, disappointed in his dreams of boundless military glory, had fallen into a fit of devotion, and Addison, arriving from England with a very imperfect knowledge of the language, was astonished to find the whole of French literature saturated with the royal taste. ”As for the state of learning,” says he, in a letter to Montague, dated August, 1699, ”there is no book comes out at present that has not something in it of an air of devotion. Dacier has bin forced to prove his Plato a very good Christian before he ventures upon his translation, and has so far comply'd with y{e} tast of the age that his whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and y{e} notion of prae-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of y{e} prophets.

Nay, y{e} humour is grown so universal that it is got among y{e} poets, who are every day publis.h.i.+ng Lives of Saints and Legends in Rhime.”

Finding, perhaps, that the conversation at the capital was not very congenial to his taste, he seems to have hurried on to Blois, a town then noted for the purity with which its inhabitants spoke the French language, and where he had determined to make his temporary abode. His only record of his first impressions of Paris is a casual criticism of ”y{e} King's Statue that is lately set up in the Place Vendome.” He visited, however, both Versailles and Fontainebleau, and the preference which he gives to the latter (in a letter to Congreve) is interesting, as antic.i.p.ating that taste for natural as opposed to artificial beauty which he afterwards expressed in the _Spectator_.

”I don't believe, as good a poet as you are, that you can make finer Lanskips than those about the King's houses, or with all yo{r} descriptions build a more magnificent palace than Versailles. I am, however, so singular as to prefer Fontainebleau to the rest. It is situated among rocks and woods that give you a fine variety of Savage prospects. The King has Humoured the Genius of the place, and only made of so much art as is necessary to Help and regulate Nature, without reforming her too much. The Cascades seem to break through the Clefts and Cracks of Rocks that are covered over with Moss, and look as if they were piled upon one another by Accident. There is an artificial wildness in the Meadows, Walks, and Ca.n.a.ls, and y{e} Garden, instead of a Wall, is Fenced on the Lower End by a Natural Mound of Rock-work that strikes the eye very agreeably. For my part, I think there is something more charming in these rude heaps of Stone than in so many Statues, and wou'd as soon see a River winding through Woods and Meadows as when it is tossed up in such a variety of figures at Versailles.”[10]

Here and there, too, his correspondence exhibits traces of that delicate vein of ridicule in which he is without a rival, as in the following inimitable description of Le Brun's paintings at Versailles:

”The painter has represented his most Xtian Majesty under y{e} figure of Jupiter throwing thunderbolts all about the ceiling, and striking terror into y{e} Danube and Rhine, that lie astonished and blasted a little above the Cornice.”

Of his life at Blois a very slight sketch has been preserved by the Abbe Philippeaux, one of the many gossipping informants from whom Spence collected his anecdotes:

”Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative while here, and often thoughtful; sometimes so lost in thought that I have come into his room and have stayed five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him, kept very little company beside, and had no amour whilst here that I know of, and I think I should have known it if he had had any.”

The following characteristic letter to a gentleman of Blois, with whom he seems to have had an altercation, is interesting as showing the mixture of coolness and dignity, the ”blood and judgment well commingled” which Hamlet praised in Horatio, and which are conspicuous in all Addison's actions as well as in his writings:

”Sir,--I am always as slow in making an Enemy as a Friend, and am therefore very ready to come to an Accommodation with you; but as for any satisfaction, I don't think it is due on either side when y{e} Affront is mutual. You know very well that according to y{e} opinion of y{e} world a man would as soon be called a Knave as a Fool, and I believe most people w{d} be rather thought to want Legs than Brains.

But I suppose whatever we said in y{e} heat of discourse is not y{e} real opinion we have of each other, since otherwise you would have scorned to subscribe yourself as I do at present, S{r}, y{r} very, etc.

A. Mons{r} L'Espagnol, Blois, 10{br} 1699.”

The length of Addison's sojourn at Blois seems to have been partly caused by the difficulty he experienced, owing to the defectiveness of his memory, in mastering the language. Finding himself at last able to converse easily, he returned to Paris some time in the autumn of 1700, in order to see a little of polite society there before starting on his travels in Italy. He found the best company in the capital among the men of letters, and he makes especial mention of Malebranche, whom he describes as solicitous about the adequate rendering of his works into English; and of Boileau, who, having now survived almost all his literary friends, seems, in his conversation with Addison, to have been even more than usually splenetic in his judgments on his contemporaries. The old poet and critic was, however, propitiated with the present of the _Musae Anglicanae_; and, according to Tickell, said ”that he did not question there were excellent compositions in the native language of a country that possessed the Roman genius in so eminent a degree.”

In general, Addison's remarks on the French character are not complimentary. He found the vanity of the people so elated by the elevation of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Spain that they were insupportable, and he felt no reluctance to quit France for Italy. His observations on the national manners, as seen at Blois, are characteristic:

”Truly, by what I have yet seen, they are the Happiest nation in the world. 'Tis not in the pow'r of Want or Slavery to make 'em miserable.

There is nothing to be met with in the Country but Mirth and Poverty.

Ev'ry one sings, laughs, and starves. Their Conversation is generally Agreeable; for if they have any Wit or Sense they are sure to show it.

They never mend upon a Second meeting, but use all the freedom and familiarity at first Sight that a long Intimacy or Abundance of wine can scarce draw from an Englishman. Their Women are perfect Mistresses in this Art of showing themselves to the best Advantage. They are always gay and sprightly, and set off y{e} worst faces in Europe with y{e} best airs. Ev'ry one knows how to give herself as charming a look and posture as S{r} G.o.dfrey Kneller c{d} draw her in.”[11]

He embarked from Ma.r.s.eilles for Genoa in December, 1700, having as his companion Edward Wortley Montague, whom Pope satirises under the various names of Shylock, Worldly, and Avidien. It is unnecessary to follow him step by step in his travels, but the reader of his _Letter to Lord Halifax_ may still enjoy the delight and enthusiasm to which he gives utterance on finding himself among the scenes described in his favourite authors:

”Poetic fields encompa.s.s me around, And still I seem to tread on cla.s.sic ground; For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung, That not a mountain rears its head unsung; Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows, And every stream in heavenly numbers flows.”[12]

The phrase ”cla.s.sic ground,” which has become proverbial, is first used in these verses, and, as will have been observed, Pope repeats it with evident reference to the above pa.s.sage in his satire on the travels of the ”young aeneas.” Addison seems to have carried the Latin poets with him, and his quotations from them are abundant and apposite. When he is driven into the harbour at Monaco, he remembers Lucan's description of its safety and shelter; as he pa.s.ses under Monte Circeo, he feels that Virgil's description of aeneas's voyage by the same spot can never be sufficiently admired; he recalls, as he crosses the Apennines, the fine lines of Claudian recording the march of Honorius from Ravenna to Rome; and he delights to think that at the falls of the Velino he can still see the ”angry G.o.ddess” of the _aeneid_ (Alecto) ”thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, and plunging herself into h.e.l.l” amidst such a scene of horror and confusion.

His enthusiastic appreciation of the cla.s.sics, which caused him in judging any work of art to look, in the first place, for regularity of design and simplicity of effect, shows it self characteristically in his remarks on the Lombard and German styles of architecture in Italy. Of Milan Cathedral he speaks without much admiration, but he was impressed with the wonders of the Certosa near Pavia. ”I saw,” says he, ”between Pavia and Milan the convent of the Carthusians, which is very s.p.a.cious and beautiful. Their church is very fine and curiously adorned, _but_ of a Gothic structure.”

His most interesting criticism, however, is that on the Duomo at Siena:

”When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us had they only been instructed in the right way; for, when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than that of the present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals as would have finished a greater variety of n.o.ble buildings than have been raised either before or since that time. One would wonder to see the vast labour that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden with ornaments, the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, with a mult.i.tude of little pillars retiring behind one another, the great columns are finely engraven with fruits and foliage, that run twisting about them from the very top to the bottom; the whole body of the church is chequered with different lays of black and white marble, the pavement curiously cut out in designs and Scripture stories, and the front covered with such a variety of figures, and overrun with so many mazes and little labyrinths of sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties and _affected ornaments_ to a n.o.ble and majestic simplicity.”[13]

Addison had not reached that large liberality in criticism afterwards attained by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, while insisting that in all art there was but _one_ true style, nevertheless allowed very high merit to what he called the _characteristic_ styles. Sir Joshua would never have fallen into the error of imputing affectation to such simple and honest workmen as the early architects of Northern Italy. The effects of Addison's cla.s.sical training are also very visible in his descriptions of natural scenery. There is in these nothing of that craving melancholy produced by a sense of the infinity of nature which came into vogue after the French Revolution; no projection of the feelings of the spectator into the external scene on which he gazes; nor, on the other hand, is there any attempt to rival the art of the painter by presenting a landscape in words instead of in colours. He looks on nature with the same clear sight as the Greek and Roman writers, and in describing a scene he selects those particulars in it which he thinks best adapted to arouse pleasurable images in the mind of the reader. Take, for instance, the following excellent description of his pa.s.sage over the Apennines:

”The fatigue of our crossing the Apennines, and of our whole journey from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety of scenes we pa.s.sed through. For, not to mention the rude prospect of rocks rising one above another, of the deep gutters worn in the sides of them by torrents of rain and snow-water, or the long channels of sand winding about their bottoms that are sometimes filled with so many rivers, we saw in six days' travelling the several seasons of the year in their beauty and perfection. We were sometimes s.h.i.+vering on the top of a bleak mountain, and a little while afterwards basking in a warm valley, covered with violets and almond-trees in blossom, the bees already swarming over them, though but in the month of February.

Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural greenhouses, as being always shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure.”[14]

Though his thoughts during his travels were largely occupied with objects chiefly interesting to his taste and imagination, and though he busied himself with such compositions as the _Epistle from Italy_, the _Dialogue on Medals_, and the first four acts of _Cato_, he did not forget that his experience was intended to qualify him for taking part in the affairs of State. And when he reached Geneva, in December, 1701, the door to a political career seemed to be on the point of opening. He there learned, as Tickell informs us, that he had been selected to attend the army under Prince Eugene as secretary from the King. He accordingly waited in the city for official confirmation of this intelligence; but his hopes were doomed to disappointment. William III. died in March, 1702; Halifax, on whom Addison's prospects chiefly depended, was struck off the Privy Council by Queen Anne; and the travelling pension ceased with the life of the sovereign who had granted it. Henceforth he had to trust to his own resources; and though the loss of his pension does not seem to have compelled him at once to turn homewards, as he continued on his route to Vienna, yet an incident that occurred towards the close of his travels shows that he was prepared to eke out his income by undertaking work that would have been naturally irksome to him.