decent to appear except in a full bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687, when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The beautiful and fanciful poem of "The Pigmies and the Cranes" is still read by lovers of that sort of exercise, and verses are extant in honour of King William by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's custom to toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyæus; and many more works are in the Collection, including one on the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300l. a year, on which Addison set out on his travels.
During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when he travelled in Italy.[1] His patron went out of office, and his pension was unpaid: and hearing that this great scholar, now eminent and known to the literati of Europe (the great Boileau,[2] upon perusal of Mr. Addison's elegant hexameters, was first made aware that England was not altogether a barbarous nation)—hearing that the
- ↑ "His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus, down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound."—Macaulay.
- ↑ "Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of the Musæ Anglicanæ."—Tickell (Preface to Addison's Works).
