GARTH'S INFIDELITY. GARTH has been censured for voluptuousness, and accused of infidelity. Being one day questioned by Addison upon his religious creed, he is said to have replied, "that he was of the religion of wise men," and being urged to explain himself added, "that wise men kept their own secrets.' He is said by Atterbury to have written an Epitaph on St. Evremond, intended for Westminster Abbey, in which he was commended for his indifference to all religion; and Reinmann, who wrote a History of Atheism, has gone so far as to include Garth in his catalogue. In Lady Hervey's Letters, (p. 330,) we find this passage reported of him; “I vow to God, Madam, I take this to be hell-purgatory at least we shall certainly be better off in any other world;" and Swift (Scott's ed. xviii. 302) records that Garth said he was glad when he was dying, for he was weary of having his shoes pulled off and on. In his last illness he did not use any remedies, but let his distemper take its course. Pope, on the other hand, says, that "if ever there was a good Christian, without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr. Garth," and afterwards declared himself convinced that Garth died in the communion of the church of Rome, having been privately reconciled. On which, Dr. Johnson, quoting the words of Bp. Lowth, observes, "that there is less distance than is thought between scepticism and Popery; and that a mind, wearied with perplexed doubt, willingly seeks repose in an infallible church." ADDISON AND GAY. ADDISON and his friends had exclaimed so much against Gay's Three Hours after Marriage' for obscenities, that it provoked Gay to write A letter from a Lady in the City to a Lady in the Country,' on that subject. In it he quoted the passages which had been most exclaimed against, and opposed other passages to them from Addison's and Steele's plays. These were aggravated in the same manner that they had served his, and appeared worse. Had it been published it would have made Addison appear ridiculous, which he could bear as little as any man. "I therefore prevailed upon Gay not to print it, and have the manuscript now by me."-Pope (in Spence). GAY. 66 A FORTNIGHT before Addison's death, Lord Warwick came to Gay, and pressed him in a very particular manner to go and see Mr. Addison; " which he had not done for a great while. Gay went, and found Addison in a very weak way. He received him in the kindest manner, and told him, "that he had desired this visit to beg his pardon: that he had injured him greatly; but that if he lived he should find that he would make it up to him." Gay, on his going to Hanover, had great reason to hope for some good preferment; ' but all his views came to nothing. It is not impossible but that Addison might have prevented them, from his thinking Gay too well with some of the great men of the former ministry. He did not at all explain himself in what he had injured him, and Gay could not guess at anything else in which he could have injured him so considerably. MONSIEUR ST. EVREMOND. IN 1664 M. St. Evremond published a work entitled judgment upon Seneca, Plutarch, and Petronius, in which he observes that Petronius's love for pleasures "did not render him an enemy to business; that he had the merit of a governor in his government of Bithynia, and the virtue of a consul in his consulship." He does not forget Petronius's death, which he considers as the most glorious of antiquity; and shows that it has something more great and noble in it than either that of Cato or Socrates. 66 Petronius," says he, "leaves us nothing at his death but an image of life: no action, no word, no circumstance, shows the perplexity of a dying man; it is with him properly that to die is to cease to live." Mr. Addison has made some animadversions upon this passage of M. St. Evremond, deserving our highest regard.2 Having observed that the end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well-written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate is which they undergo; he proceeds to say, "that there is scarce a great person in the Grecian or Roman history whose death has not been remarked upon by some writer or other, and cenThe present family had made strong promises to him.-MS. 2 In Spectator, No. 349. See our vol. iii. p. 339. VOL. V. 3 B sured or applauded according to the genius or principles of the person who has descanted on it." "Monsieur de St. Evremond," continues he, "is very particular in setting forth the constancy and courage of Petronius Arbiter during his last moments, and thinks he discovers in them a greater firmness of mind and resolution than in the death of Seneca, Cato, or Socrates. There is no question but this polite author's affectation of appearing singular in his remarks, and making discoveries which escaped the observation of others, threw him into this course of reflection. It was Petronius's merit that he died in the same gaiety of temper in which he lived; but as his life was altogether loose and dissolute, the indifference which he showed at the close of it is to be looked upon as a piece of natural carelessness and levity, rather than fortitude. The resolution of Socrates proceeded from very different motives; the consciousness of a well-spent life, and the prospect of a happy eternity. If the ingenious author above mentioned was so pleased with gaiety of humour in a dying man, he might have found a much nobler instance of it in our countryman Sir Thomas More."1 PRACTICAL JOKE ON ADDISON. Ir was the Marquis of Wharton who first got Addison a seat in the House of Commons; and soon after carried him down with him to Winchelsea. Addison was charmed with his son, (afterwards Duke of Wharton,) not only as the son of his patron, but for the uncommon degree of genius that appeared in him. He used to converse and walk often with him. One day the little lord led him to see some of their fine running-horses; there were very high gates to the fields, and at the first of them his young friend fumbled in his pockets, and seemed vastly concerned that he could not find the key. Addison said 'twas no matter, he could easily climb over it. As he said this he began mounting the bars, and when he was on the very top of the gate, the little lord whips out his key and sets the gate a-swinging, and so for some time kept the great man in that ridiculous situation. Spence. 1 In 1736 was published "The Works of Petronius Arbiter, translated by Mr. ADDISON, with the Life of Petronius and a character of his writings by Mons. St. Evremond, 12mo." But there is no evidence that it was translated by Joseph Addison. WHIG PRINCIPLES. ADDISON, when he first came over to Dublin as Secre tary to the Earl of Wharton, (then Lord Lieutenant,) was extremely offended at the conduct and discourse of the chief managers here." He told me they were a sort of people who seemed to think that the principles of a Whig consisted in nothing else but damning the church, reviling the clergy, abetting the dissenters, and speaking contemptuously of revealed religion."-Swift's Letter to Pope, Jan. 10, 1721. PIPPIN-WOMAN. THE story referred to by Addison in his Spectator, No. 247, is of an apple-woman, who, when the Thames was frozen over, was said to have her head cut off by the ice; and is humorously told in Gay's Trivia The cracking crystal yields, she sinks, she dies; Book ii. ver. 375, &c. AN HONEST ENGLISHMAN. In the manuscript collections of Lord Egmont it is said that Addison told him that an honest Englishman is a Tory in church matters, and a Whig in politics. HUMOROUS VERSION OF A SPECTATOR-MOTTO. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.-Juv. Sat. ii. 33. No man e'er reached the heights at first.-TATE. Motto to Spectator, No. 154, Aug. 27, 1711. In the course of the publication of the Spectator, in folio, the paper, as it came, was commonly hung up within the bars of the coffee-houses at Oxford and Cambridge. A wag at the university, who stole in to read this number at a prohibited time, wrote the following translation under the motto: "It is a long while ere one becomes a senior fellow." LADIES' HEAD-DRESSES. "THERE is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress. Within my own memory I have known it rise and fall above thirty degrees. About ten years ago it shot up to a very great height, insomuch that the female part of our species were much taller than the men. The women were of such an enormous stature that we appeared as grasshoppers before them."-Spectator, No. 98, June 22, 1711. It need scarcely be told that Addison is the author of this paper. The high head-dress he here refers to is the commode, (called by the French fontange,) a kind of headdress worn by the ladies at the time mentioned, which by means of wire bore up the hair and fore-part of the cap, consisting of many folds of fine lace, to a prodigious height. The transition from this to the opposite extreme was very abrupt and sudden. [For a companion to these incommodious commodes, see the full-bottomed wig of the same period, described at our page 704.] OPEN SHOPS IN LONDON. "As for the article of building, I intend, hereafter, to enlarge upon it; having lately observed several warehouses, nay, private shops, that stand upon Corinthian pillars, and whole rows of tin pots showing themselves through a sash window."-Tatler, No. 162. The From the foregoing it is evident that "pillars and sash windows" were considered by the humorous writer as an unlicensed innovation, in the situations there alluded to. shops in London did not begin to be enclosed and glazed, as at present, until about the year 1710; and at this day in many parts of the continent the shops very generally remain entirely open. MISS AND MISTRESS. Ar the period of the publication of the Tatlers we find many unmarried females addressed by the title of Mistress. Miss, a contraction of Mistress, appears in Miege's French Dictionary, 1688; but in 1709 the appellation of Miss seems to have had an idea of levity and childishness annexed to it, and to have been given only to girls not yet in their teens, or to indiscreet and inconsiderate young women. In Tatler, No. 9, the giddy Pastorella is styled Miss, but in No. 10 it is Mrs. Jenny Distaff, and she was only turned of twenty. Tatler, No. 33, a young lady ridiculed for her unbecoming |