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To-morrow I suppose I shall try to set down what I see; at least, some points of it. July 9th. Arriving at and acting under advice of the cabman, we drove to Addison's Alma Hotel, which we find to be in Prince's Street, having Scott's monument a few hundred yards below, and the Castle Hill about as much above.
We may perhaps add to Addison's definition, that the great secret of the best kind of popularity is always the noble or imaginative handling of Commonplace.
He is an essayist, with Addison's fine polish but with more sympathy for human life; he is a dramatist, one of the very few who have ever written a comedy that can keep its popularity unchanged while a century rolls over its head; but greater, perhaps, than the poet and essayist and dramatist is Goldsmith the novelist, who set himself to the important work of purifying the early novel of its brutal and indecent tendencies, and who has given us, in The Vicar of Wakefield, one of the most enduring characters in English fiction.
But it is clear from Addison's letters, some of which were long after published in the Guardian, that, while he appeared to be absorbed in his own meditations, he was really observing French society with that keen and sly, yet not ill- natured side glance, which was peculiarly his own.
Pope need not have been jealous of Addison's friend, for his own translation of Homer was a great success, and people soon forgot the other. He translated not only the Iliad, but with the help of two lesser poets the Odyssey also. Both poems were done in the fashionable heroic couplet, and Pope made so much money by them that he was able to live in comfort ever after.
We ought to add that this edition, though eminently beautiful, is in some important points defective; nor, indeed, do we yet possess a complete collection of Addison's writings. It is strange that neither his opulent and noble widow, nor any of his powerful and attached friends, should have thought of placing even a simple tablet, inscribed with his name, on the walls of the Abbey.
Let him speak out and say, why without his knowledge would not serve his purpose as well! If, as he says, he restrains himself to "Mr. ADDISON's character as a Writer;" while he attempts to lessen me, he exalts me! for he has declared to all the World what I never have so explicitly done, that I am, to all intents and purposes, the Author of the Tatler!
Burton describes him as 'the rich accomplished scholar and French courtier Elphinstone, munificently endowing a University after the model of the University of Paris. Boswell projected the following works: 1. An edition of Johnson's Poems. Ante, i. 16. 2. A work in which the merit of Addison's poetry shall be maintained, ib. p. 225. 3. A History of Sweden, ii. 156. 4.
Now, do you jist make yourself 'Archbishop of Canterbury. My death-bed scene will be an awful one, if I don't see you 'the Primate'; for my affections, my hopes, my heart, is fixed on it. I shall be willin' to die then, I shall depart in peace, and leave this world happy. And, Arthur, sais you, 'they talk and brag here till one is sick of the sound a'most about "Addison's death-bed."
But it is clear from Addison's letters, some of which were long after published in The Guardian, that, while he appeared to be absorbed in his own meditations, he was really observing French society with that keen and sly, yet not ill-natured side glance, which was peculiarly his own.
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