THE present edition of Addison's Works was announced to contain in four volumes of “Bohn's British Classics" the whole of what had been given in the six volumes edited by Bishop Hurd. And this would have been strictly performed,, but it was found, unexpectedly, after the first volume had been issued, that so large a number of Addison's letters remained unpublished, as would render it advisable to extend the present edition, for the purpose of including them. Bishop Hurd had not given any of Addison's letters, neither had his precursor, Tickell, upon whom the duty, as Addison's literary executor, originally devolved. Miss Aikin, in her Memoir, had so far remedied this deficiency, by printing whatever letters she could meet with, (many of them from draughts or copies in the possession of a descendant of Mr. Tickell,) that any further publication or research at first seemed supererogatory; a diligent inquiry however, induced by circumstances, soon led to a different conclusion. By the help of literary friends, and his own appliances, the publisher has succeeded in obtaining such an amount of unpublished letters, (including the originals of some of those hitherto printed from copies,) that he feels it incumbent on him to include the whole in an additional volume. The public will therefore, for the first time, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, have an edition of Addison's Works in accordance, as it should seem, with the author's own intentions. But notwithstanding what has been collected, it is more than probable that there are still many unpublished letters in the possession of collectors: for the loan or for transcripts of any of these, the publisher would be very thankful. York Street, Covent Garden, "Mr. Addison is generally allowed to be the most correct and elegant of all our writers; yet some inaccuracies of style have escaped him, which it is the chief design of the following notes to point out. A work of this sort, well executed, would be of use to foreigners who study our language; and even to such of our countrymen as wish to write it in perfect purity."-R. Worcester [Bp. Hurd]. "I set out many years ago with a warm admiration of this amiable writer [Addison]. I then took a surfeit of his natural, easy manner; and was taken, like my betters, with the raptures and high rights of Shakspeare. My maturer judgment, or lenient age, (call it which you will,) has now led me back to the favourite of my youth. And here, I think, I shall stick; for such useful sense, in so charming words, I find not elsewhere. His taste is so pure, and his Virgilian prose (as Dr. Young styles it) so exquisite, that I have but now found out, at the close of a critical life, the full value of his writings."-Ibid. "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."-Dr. Johnson. "It was not till three generations had laughed and wept over the pages of Addison that the omission [of a monument to his memory] was supplied by public veneration. At length, in our own time, his image, skilfully graven, appeared in Poets' Corner.-Such a mark of national respect was due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism."-Macaulay. |