n. By
that profusion of graciousness and smiles, with which Goethe or Scott, for
instance, greeted almost every literary beginner, every small literary
adventurer who came to his court and went away charmed from the great
king's audience, and cuddling to his heart the compliment which his
literary majesty had paid him--each of the two good-natured potentates of
letters brought their star and ribbon into discredit. Everybody had his
majesty's orders. Everybody had his Majesty's cheap portrait, on a box
surrounded with diamonds worth twopence a-piece. A very great and just and
wise man ought not to praise indiscriminately, but give his idea of the
truth. Addison praises the ingenious Mr. Pinkethman: Addison praises the
ingenious Mr. Doggett the actor, whose benefit is coming off that night:
Addison praises Don Saltero: Addison praises Milton with all his heart,
bends his knee and frankly pays homage to that imperial genius.(76) But
between those degrees of his men his praise is very scanty. I don't think
the great Mr. Addison liked young Mr. Pope, the Papist, much; I don't
think he abused him. But when Mr. Addison's men abused Mr. Pope, I don't
think Addison took his pipe out of his mouth to contradict them.(77)

Addison's father was a clergyman of good repute in Wiltshire, and rose in
the Church.(78) His famous son never lost his clerical training and
scholastic gravity, and was called "a parson in a tye-wig"(79) in London
afterwards at a time when tye-wigs were only worn by the laity, and the
fathers of theology did not think it decent to appear except in a full
bottom. Having been at school at Salisbury, and the Charterhouse, in 1687,
when he was fifteen years old he went to Queen's College, Oxford, where he
speedily began to distinguish himself by the making of Latin verses. The
beautiful and fanciful poem of _The Pigmies and the Cranes_ is still read
by lovers of that sort of exercise; and verses are extant in honour of
King William, by which it appears that it was the loyal youth's custom to
toast that sovereign in bumpers of purple Lyaeus; and many more works are
in the collection, including one on the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, which
was so good that Montague got him a pension of 300_l._ a year, on which
Addison set out on his travels.

During his ten years at Oxford, Addison had deeply imbued himself with the
Latin poetical literature, and had these poets at his fingers' ends when
he travelled in Italy.(80) His p