Whose boasted ancestry so high extends
That in the pagan Gods his lineage ends,
Comes from afar, in gratitude to own
The great supporter of his father's throne.
What tides of glory to his bosom ran
Clasped in th' embraces of the godlike man!
How were his eyes with pleasing wonder fixt,
To see such fire with so much sweetness mixt!
Such easy greatness, such a graceful port,
So learned and finished for the camp or court!"
How many fourth-form boys at Mr. Addison's school of Charter-house could write as well as that now? The "Campaign" has blunders, triumphant as it was; and weak points like all campaigns.[1]
In the year 1718 "Cato" came out. Swift has left a description of the first night of the performance. All the laurels of Europe were scarcely sufficient for the author of this prodigious poem.[2] Laudations of Whig
- ↑ "Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it), too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all!"—Pope (Spence's Anecdotes).
- ↑ "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on. . . . . . Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion:
"'Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost;
And factions strive who shall applaud him most.'"The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one
