1 May: Boreham on Joseph Addison

A May Day Memory
If ever a man wore the white flower of a blameless life, it was Joseph Addison, whose name stands immemorially associated with May Day. No man made a greater impression on his own age, and a smaller impression on subsequent ages than did he. How is this to be explained? Everything conspired to make Addison an outstanding figure at the beginning of the 18th century. His very birth was tinged with romance. The merry month of May had broken upon England with blue skies and sparkling sunshine. In the tiny hamlet of Milston the May Day revels were at their height when it was whispered among the happy villagers that a baby had just been born in the thatched old parsonage nearby. The young men and maidens who danced around the maypole on that Wiltshire green never guessed that the child just born in the dreamy old rectory among the elms was destined to effect a transformation in English life and literature.

Less than fifty years later, the baby who was born amidst the laughter of those May Day frolics was buried at dead of night amidst a nation's lamentations. By the ghostly light of torches and tapers he was borne to his resting place in the stately Abbey:

How silent do his old companions tread
By midnight lamps the mansions of the
dead
Through breathing statues, then unheeded things,
Through rows of
warriors and through walks of kings.

Thus, in 1719, Addison bade farewell to a world that was every way the better for his passage through it.

The Man Made To The Mould Of The Moment
A quiet, thoughtful boy, as reflective as Milton and as timid as Cowper, Addison had the genius to perceive that there was a great work waiting to be done in the world, and he had the practical sagacity and intellectual energy to brace himself for the enterprise. At the dawn of the 18th century English standards and English manners were at their lowest ebb. Politics had degenerated into an undignified squabble; society, like Parliament, was as corrupt as it could very well be; music, art, and literature were all degraded; the sports and pastimes of the people were universally squalid and usually obscene; religion itself had become formal, sanctimonious, and largely hypocritical. Addison saw clearly that the moment was made for him, and, like the architect of a new era, he carefully drafted his plans. Since our little race began, many men have embarked upon an attempt to straighten a perverse and crooked world; but very few have had the satisfaction of reviewing their enterprise with any marked degree of satisfaction. Addison's ideal was, however, realised in its entirety.

Twelve years before his birth, the Restoration had swept Puritanism into oblivion, and Milton, in "Paradise Lost," had chanted its requiem. Addison determined to recapture some, at least, of the priceless treasure that had been abandoned in the general overthrow; he resolved to rescue and re-establish something of the golden tradition that had been blurred in the devastating reaction. He did it. By all that he wrote, by all that he did, and especially by the knightly character that he developed, he attained his goal. He lived a life of stainless integrity; by his courtesy, his chivalry, and his modesty he endeared himself to the most eminent leaders of his time; he held, through evil report and through good, to his early resolves and aspirations; and he won for himself a name which all men
delighted unfeignedly to honour.

Combination Of Bravery And Bashfulness
Addison achieved his triumph in defiance of the heaviest possible handicap. His agonising nervousness paralysed him. Although a member of Parliament and a Cabinet Minister, he could not muster courage to address the House. If he could have talked at Westminster as he talked at Button's coffee house, he would have bequeathed to posterity a reputation for oratory that would have eclipsed the shining records of Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Burke. But it was impossible. Just once he rose; stammered out one or two broken, confused and incoherent sentences; blushed, coughed, apologised; sat down and never ventured a second attempt. He owed his amazing authority to two causes. His literary gift was so outstanding that Dr. Johnson urged all young writers to model their style on that of Addison. In days in which parliamentary speeches were not reported, and in which the orator could hope to influence none but those who actually heard his voice, a Prime Minister was glad to have in his Cabinet a man in whose unimpeachable integrity everybody trusted and who could lay the case for the Government before the people in pamphlets so cogent and persuasive as to make their perusal a delight.

A man of transparent sincerity and crystalline simplicity, Addison cherished a faith that matched the quality of his manhood. None of his literary productions is better known today than his familiar paraphrase of the Twenty-third Psalm: "The Lord my pasture shall prepare, and feed me with a shepherd's care." The psalm was his solace and his stay all through his pure, courageous life, and it poured its deathless music into his ear at the last. As he lay dying, his generous heart and sensitive conscience led him to crave the forgiveness of his friends for wrongs which they had never noticed or had long since forgotten. And then, at peace with all the world, he abandoned himself to the enjoyment of those boons and benedictions which his favourite psalm had so melodiously promised him. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," he murmured, "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." He taught us, says Tickell, in his "Elegy":

He taught us how to live and (oh, too high
The price of knowledge) taught us
how to die.

Macaulay thought Addison incomparable. When he himself was borne to the Abbey for burial, he was interred at the foot of the Addison statue. He would have coveted no resting place more honourable.

F W Boreham

Image: Joseph Addison