ease as in pounds sterling. I am a great critic in rust, and can tell the age of it at first sight. I am only in some danger of losing my acquaintance with our English money; for at present I am much more used to the Roman. If you glean up any of our country news, be so kind as to forward it this way. Pray give Mr. Dashwood's and my very humble service to Sir Thomas Alston, and accept of the same yourself, from, dear sir, Your most affectionate, My Lord Bernard, &c. give their service. J. ADDISON. ADDISON TO MR. WORTLEY MONTAGU. DEAR SIR, [Geneva,] December 9th, 1701. I am just now arrived at Geneva by a very troublesome journey over the Alps, where I have been for some days together shivering among the eternal snows. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices, and you cannot imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain, that is as agreeable to me at present as a shore was about a year ago after our tempest at Genoa. During my passage over the mountains I made a rhyming epistle to my Lord Halifax, which perhaps I will trouble you with the sight of, if I do not find it to be nonsense upon a review. You will think it, I dare say, as extraordinary a thing to make a copy of verses in a voyage over the Alps as to write an heroic poem in a hackney coach,2 and I believe I am the first that ever thought of Parnassus on Mount Cenis. At Florence, I had the honour to have about three days' conversation with the Duke of Shrewsbury,3 which made me some amends for the See "A Letter from Italy, in the year 1701," vol. i. p. 29. 2 Alluding to Sir Richard Blackmore, see note, p. 319 and 345. The Duke of Shrewsbury, at first a Tory but afterwards a Whig, had the year previously retired from political life in disgust, and refused to accept a post in the administration after the accession of Queen Anne. Many overtures were made to him without avail. From Rome, June 17th, 1701, he writes to Lord Somers, "Had I a son I would sooner breed him a cobbler than a courtier, and a hangman than a statesman.' As Lord Halifax, Mr. Montagu, the Duke of Marlborough, and others of the Whig party, were anxious for the Duke's return to office, it is not improbable that Addison may have had this object in view in his "three days' conversation." missing Sir Th. Alston's company, who had taken another road for Rome. I find I am very much obliged to yourself and him, but will not be so troublesome in my acknowledgments as I might justly be; I shall only assure you that I think Mr. Montagu's acquaintance the luckiest adventure that I could possibly have met with in my travels. I suppose you are in England as full of politics as we are of religion at Geneva, which I hope you will give me a little touch of in your letters. The rake Wood' is grown a man of a very regular life and conversation, and often begins our good friends' health in England. I am, dear sir, Your most affectionate J. ADDISON. I have taken care to manage myself according to your kind intimations. ADDISON TO CHAMBERLAIN DASHWOOD, ESQ. Geneva, July, 1702. Analysis. Acknowledging the receipt of a very pretty snuff-box.—“You know Mr. Bays recommends snuff as a great provocation to wit, but you may produce this letter as a standing evidence against him. I have, since the beginning of it, taken above a dozen pinches, and still find myself much more inclined to sneeze than to jest. From whence I conclude that wit and tobacco are not inseparable, or to make a pun of it, though a man may be master of a snuff box, 'Non cuicunque datum est habere Nasum.'' SIR, verse, ADDISON TO MR. STEPNEY.2 [Vienna,] November, 1702. That I may be as troublesome to you in prose as in I take the liberty to send you the beginning of a work 1 Mr. Wood is again mentioned at page 344. 2 This letter is referred to in Mr. Tickell's preface as indicating when and where Addison's Dialogue on Medals was first cast into form. Mr. George Stepney, then British envoy at the court of Vienna, was at Trinity College, Cambridge, (1689,) at the same time as Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, his friend and patron, and was one of the contributors to Tonson's "Miscellany Poems," in 1695. He died in 1707, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a fine monument was erected to him, that I told you I had some design of publishing at my return into England. I have wrote it since my being at Vienna, in hopes that it might have the advantage of your correction. I cannot hope that one who is so well acquainted with the persons of our present modern princes, should find any pleasure in a discourse on the faces of such as made a figure in the world above a thousand years ago. You will see however that I have endeavoured to treat my subject, that is in itself very bare of ornaments, as divertingly as I could. I have proposed to myself such a way of instructing as that in the dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds. The very owning of this design will I believe look like a piece of vanity, though I know I am guilty of a much greater in offering what I have wrote to your perusal. I am, sir, &c. To Mr. Stepney, Envoy at the Court of Vienna. ADDISON TO MR. STEPNEY. [Dresden,] Jan. 3rd, 1702-3. Analysis. A complimentary letter acknowledging the pleasure derived from his correspondence.-" Since our leaving Prague we have seen nothing but a great variety of winter pieces, so that all the account I can give you of the country is that it abounds very much in snow scarce anything we meet with, except our sheets and napkins, that is not white." 66 ADDISON TO THE EARL OF WINCHELSEA.1 [Hamburgh,] March, 1702-3. Analysis. Describing Hamburgh as a place of commerce and drinking. "Their chief commodity, at least that with which I am best acquainted, is Rhenish wine. This of which the pompous inscription is recorded by Dr. Johnson. Macky (in his Memoirs of Secret Service, published 1733) speaks highly of Stepney's qualifications, calling him "one of the best poets now in England, perhaps equal to any that ever was,"—on which Dean Swift, in a MS. note, observes, "scarcely third-rate." 1 This nobleman (then the Hon. Charles Finch) was at All Souls, Oxford, in 1788, while Addison was at Queen's. Addison seems to have known what kind of letter would be most congenial to the tastes of Lord Winchelsea, if we may judge by the following character given of him in Macky's Memoirs. "He hath neither genius nor gusto for business, loves hunting and a bottle, was an opposer (to his power) of the measures of they have in such prodigious quantities that there is yet no sensible diminution of it, although Mr. Perrot and myself have been among them above a week.-The cellar is near the little English chapel, which your Lordship may well suppose is not altogether so much frequented by our countrymen as the other." ADDISON TO MR. WYCHE.1 [Holland,] May, 1703. Analysis. Complimentary and facetious in reference to Mr. Wyche's agreeable company and capital wine, which made Hamburgh the pleasantest State that he met with in his travels.-"My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so that the properest use I can put it to is to thank the honest gentleman that set it a shaking." “I hope the two pair of legs that we left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again," &c. ADDISON TO ALLEYN BATHURST,2 ESQ. AT THE HAGUE. [Leyden,] May, 1703. Analysis. Complimentary on his political successes, and alluding to the attractions of the Hague.-"I do not suppose you are willing to exchange your assemblies for Anatomy Schools, and to quit your beauties of the Hague for the skeletons of Leyden.3 When have a mind to walk among you King William's reign, and is zealous for the monarchy and church to the highest degree. He loves jests and puns, and that sort of low wit, is of short stature, well shaped, with a very handsome countenance, not thirty years old." To which Swift adds, in reference to his jests and puns, I never observed it ;" and then adds, "being very poor, he complied too much with the party he hated." 1 His Majesty's Resident at Hamburgh, which appointment he appears to have retained for many years. In a letter of Paul Methuen to the Commissioners of Trade, Dec. 14th, 1716-17, respecting the Herringfishery, his name is spelt Wich. He was probably of the family of Sir Cyril Wyche, Knt. who in 1693 was Lord Justice of Ireland. Mr. Thackeray, in his Lectures on the English Humourists, gives the above letter in extenso. 2 Created Baron Bathurst in 1711, when Queen Anne, to obtain a Tory majority in the Upper House, made twelve new peers in one day. He was nephew of the celebrated Dean Bathurst, and studied at Trinity College, Oxford. while his uncle was President there, in 1700 and after. 3 The Anatomical Museum at Leyden is perhaps the finest in Europe. Sandifort's great work, the Museum Anatomicum, 4 vols. large folia, represents but a portion of it. dead men's bones, honour me with a line, and I will not fail to meet you.' Thursday morning. SIR, ADDISON TO MR. TONSON.1 [Leyden,] Thursday morning, [May, 1703.] I have shown your letter to Mr. Conningham. He will speak to the bookseller about the Tableaux des Muses, but cannot possibly meet at Leyden so soon as you mention, expecting a letter by every post from England. I should have answered your letter sooner had I not been two days at Rotterdam, whence I returned yesterday with Colonel Stanhope, whom I found unexpectedly at Pennington's. If I can possibly, I will come and see you to-morrow at Amsterdam for a day. As I dined2 with my Lord Cutts the other day, I talked of your Cæsar, and let him know that two German generals had subscribed. He asked me who had the taking of the subscriptions, and told me he believed he could assist if they were not full. you I am, sir, J. ADDISON. To Mr. Tonson, at Mr. Moor's, the English house near the Fish-market, Amsterdam. THE DUKE OF SOMERSET3 TO MR. TONSON. [London,] Friday night, 10 o'clock, [April or May, 1703.] MR. MANWARING told me you had now received a letter from Mr. Addison, wherein he seems to embrace the proposal, but We assign May, 1703, as the date of this letter, because it appears, from the Kit-cat Memoir, that Tonson was then in Amsterdam. 2 Alluding to Clarke's Cæsar, then preparing, but not published till 1712, -one of the most splendid editions of a Latin classic ever printed Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud Duke of Somerset, of whom many amusing anecdotes are told. His two youngest daughters were alternately obliged to stand and watch him during his afternoon siesta. On one occasion, Lady Charlotte, being fatigued, sat down, when the Duke awaking unexpectedly, expressed his surprise at her disobedience, and declared he should remember her want of decorum in his will. He left this daughter £20,000 less than the other. Macky says he had good judgment," to which Swift adds, "not a grain, hardly common 66 sense. ✦ Meaning Arthur Maynwaring, Esq., author of "The Medley," dis |