Biographical Essays | Page 3

unpolished style, and his antiquated phrase and wit. It is certain
that, for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly owing to the
immediate revolution and rebellion, and partly to the licentious taste
encouraged in Charles II's time, and perhaps partly to the incorrect state
of his works, he was ALMOST ENTIRELY NEGLECTED." This
critic then goes on to quote with approbation the opinion of
Malone,--"that if he had been read, admired, studied, and imitated, in
the same degree as he is now, the enthusiasm of some one or other of
his admirers in the last age would have induced him to make some
inquiries concerning the history of his theatrical career, and the
anecdotes of his private life." After which this enlightened writer
re-affirms and clenches the judgment he has quoted, by saying,--"His
admirers, however, if he had admirers in that age, possessed no portion
of such enthusiasm."
It may, perhaps, be an instructive lesson to young readers, if we now
show them, by a short sifting of these confident dogmatists, how easy it
is for a careless or a half-read man to circulate the most absolute
falsehoods under the semblance of truth; falsehoods which impose
upon himself as much as they do upon others. We believe that not one
word or illustration is uttered in the sentences cited from these three
critics, which is not virtually in the very teeth of the truth.
To begin with Mr. Nahum Tate. This poor grub of literature, if he did
really speak of Lear as "an obscure piece, recommended to his notice
by a friend," of which we must be allowed to doubt, was then uttering a
conscious falsehood. It happens that Lear was one of the few
Shakspearian dramas which had kept the stage unaltered. But it is easy
to see a mercenary motive in such an artifice as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is
not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they are "well known:"
they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason
he has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest
of travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his name to

everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather
than of Pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who
was always withering, about the era of the Revolution; and his Lear, we
believe, was arranged in the year 1682. But the family to which he
belongs is abundantly recorded in the Dunciad, and his own name will
be found amongst its catalogues of heroes.
With respect to the author of the Tatler, a very different explanation is
requisite. Steevens means the reader to understand Addison; but it does
not follow that the particular paper in question was from his pen.
Nothing, however, could be more natural than to quote from the
common form of the play as then in possession of the stage. It was
there, beyond a doubt, that a fine gentleman living upon town, and not
professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature, (a light in
which we are always to regard the writers of the Spectator, Guardian,
&c.,) would be likely to have learned anything he quoted from Macbeth.
This we say generally of the writers in those periodical papers; but,
with reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular
notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of
distinction. It is already pretty well known, that Addison had no very
intimate acquaintance with the literature of his own country. It is
known, also, that he did not think such an acquaintance any ways
essential to the character of an elegant scholar and litterateur. Quite
enough he found it, and more than enough for the time he had to spare,
if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the foremost Latin
poets, and a very slender one indeed with the Grecian. How slender, we
can see in his "Travels." Of modern authors, none as yet had been
published with notes, commentaries, or critical collations of the text;
and, accordingly, Addison looked upon all of them, except those few
who professed themselves followers in the retinue and equipage of the
ancients, as creatures of a lower race. Boileau, as a mere imitator and
propagator of Horace, he read, and probably little else amongst the
French classics. Hence it arose that he took upon himself to speak
sneeringly of Tasso. To this, which was a bold act for his timid mind,
he was emboldened by the countenance of Boileau. Of the elder Italian
authors, such as Ariosto, and, a fortiori, Dante, be knew absolutely
nothing. Passing to our own literature, it is certain that