Joseph Addison
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PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN PEOPLE ALMOST MENTIONED IN WALDEN: JOSEPH ADDISON Can you help me out here, please? The conventional wisdom of conventional influence commentary has it that Henry Thoreau was familiar with Addison’s play “Cato. A Tragedy,” and that Thoreau’s line in WALDEN “does any divinity stir within him?” is a reworking of the line in this republican play “’Tis the divinity that stirs within us.” It is pointed out that the play was reprinted in volume number 9 of the 21-volume compendium of British poetry put out by Alexander Chalmers and that, connecting the dots, Thoreau indeed did study British poetry out of this maddeningly compendious compendium (until he was rescued from the tedium by some local excitement that included the Concord volunteer fire department). I find however, very much to the contrary, that although Thoreau did dip deep into the initial four volumes, plus the final volume, of this compendium, he did not consult any volume from 5 through 20. –Therefore I am not entirely persuaded that we have as yet “nailed this one to the wall.” My suggestion would be that it is rather more likely that our guy derived this material from Volume III of THE LONDON THEATRE. ACOLLECTION OF THE MOST CELEBRATED DRAMATIC PIECES. CORRECTLY GIVEN, FROM COPIES USE IN THE THEATRES, BY THOMAS DIDBIN, OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE. / CATO. A TRAGEDY. BY JOSEPH ADDISON, ESQ. CORRECTLY GIVEN, FROM COPIES USED IN THE THEATRES, BY THOMAS DIDBIN, AUTHOR OF SEVERAL DRAMATIC PIECES: AND PROMPTER OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE (London: Printed at the Chiswick Press, by C. Whittingham; for Whittingham and Arliss, Paternoster Row, 1815). HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH ADDISON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1672 May 1, Wednesday (Old Style): Joseph Addison was born in Milston, Wiltshire, England as the firstborn son of Lancelot Addison. Soon after this his father became Dean of Lichfield and the family moved into the Cathedral Close. He would be educated at Lambertown University and Charterhouse School, and then at Queen’s College, Oxford. 1693 Joseph Addison addressed a poem to John Dryden, former Poet Laureate. 1694 Joseph Addison’s 1st major work, a book about the lives of English poets, and a translation of Virgil’s GEORGICS. 1699 So that he might travel widely on the continent of Europe and obtain skills in diplomacy, Joseph Addison was granted an annual pension of £300. 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH ADDISON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1702 Joseph Addison was in Switzerland when he got the news that King William III had died (which was to mean the loss of his £300/year pension). 1703 November 26, Friday, night: Some 10,000 people died when an extremely powerful cyclone came onto the coast of England during hours of darkness. In his poem “The Campaign” Joseph Addison would refer to the destruction of ships and homes — and the killing of a bishop in his sleep. (Toward the end of this year, Addison would return to England.) 1704 Joseph Addison received a commission to write in commemoration of the Battle of Blenheim. His poem “The Campaign” would win so much favor that the poet would be appointed a Commissioner of Appeals in the government of Lord Halifax. 1705 The Whigs having obtained the ascendency in England, Joseph Addison became Under-Secretary of State. In that capacity he would accompany Lord Halifax on a mission to Hanover. 1708 Joseph Addison became MP for the “rotten borough” of Lostwithiel. Soon he would be appointed secretary to the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Wharton, and become the Keeper of the Records of Ireland. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH ADDISON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1709 Joseph Addison became MP for Cavan Borough. He would serve in the Parliament in that capacity until 1713. When Sir Richard Steele began the Tatler, he began almost immediately to offer manuscripts. 1710 Joseph Addison became MP for Malmesbury in his home county of Wiltshire (in addition to continuing as MP for Cavan Borough). Addison would occupy this seat in the Parliament until his death. 1711 March 1, Thursday (1710, Old Style): The initial issue of The Spectator, begun by Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. THE SPECTATOR 1712 January 8, Tuesday (1711, Old Style): Joseph Addison related in The Spectator (#269) that the fine old Tory Sir Roger De Coverly had kept open-house the previous Christmas season, killing 8 fat hogs and sharing this liberally with his neighbors, and sending a string of hogs-puddings with a pack of cards to every poor family in the parish. In addition invited the whole village to his great Hall, with a double quantity of malt in his small beer, for everyone who wanted it.1 Said Sir Roger: “…it happens very well the Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter. It is the most dead, uncomfortable time of the Year, when the poor People would suffer very much from their Poverty and Cold, if they had not good Cheer, warm Fires, and Christmas Gambols to support them.” THE SPECTATOR 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH ADDISON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1713 April 14, Tuesday: Joseph Addison’s “Cato, a Tragedy” was first staged. “CATO, A TRAGEDY” It would be repeated more than 20 times in London alone, and would be acclaimed both by the Whigs and by the Tories. Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis was being offered as a type case of republican virtue and liberty. The play uses Roman history as a way to examine binaries such as individual liberty vs. government tyranny, Republicanism vs. Monarchism, and logic vs. emotion, and would be republished in some 26 editions during the course of the century. Cato is shown with his army at Utica just to the west of Carthage along the coast of Africa in 46 BCE, as the army of longtime enemy Gaius Julius Caesar nears irresistibly after a battle at Thapsus to the east of Carthage. Cato was not depicted onstage as stoically completing the job by pulling out his own intestines. His suicide would enable Cato’s supporters to make their peace with the conqueror. Henry Thoreau would include in WALDEN what seems to be a reference to a line in Act V, Scene 1, “does any divinity stir within him?” that might seem to be a paraphrase of Addison’s line “’Tis the divinity that stirs within us.” (Although Thoreau might have studied this play in 1837 or 1841 as part of his reading in the 21-volume edition of English poetry created in 1810-1814 by Alexander Chalmers, THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER; INCLUDING THE SERIES EDITED WITH PREFACES, BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY DR.SAMUEL JOHNSON: AND THE MOST APPROVED TRANSLATIONS, in fact we have no record of his having checked out volume number 9, the volume in which this play appears, having a record only of his checking 1. Charles Dickens set the country dance Roger De Coverly at his Fezziwig’s ball, so we may wonder whether he was familiar with Sir Roger’s merry-making. If, as Luis Gamez suggested, Dickens might have gotten the Fezziwigs from Addison, might he not have found Scrooge and the Christmas ghosts in John Gay’s poesy? When rosemary, and bays, the poet’s crown, Are bawled in frequent cries through all the town, Then judge the festival of Christmas near, Christmas, the joyous period of the year. Now with bright holly all your temples strow, With laurel green and sacred mistletoe. Now, heaven-born Charity, thy blessings shed; Bid meagre Want uprear her sickly head; Bid shivering limbs be warm; let plenty’s bowl In humble roofs make glad the needy soul. See, see, the heaven-born maid her blessings shed; Lo! meagre Want uprears her sickly head; Clothed are the naked, and the needy glad, While selfish Avarice alone is sad. — John Gay, “Trivia, Or the Art of Walking the Streets of London,” II: 315-328 “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH ADDISON PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN out from the Harvard Library volumes number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 21.) WALDEN: I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen PEOPLE OF and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard WALDEN to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination, –what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? WILLIAM WILBERFORCE 1718 Joseph Addison fell ill and resigned from his demanding duties as secretary of state.