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more weight with him, as by good luck not above two of that venerable body were fallen a-sleep.

This discourse held us till we came to the Tower; for our first visit was to the Lions. My friend, who had a great deal of talk with their keeper, enquired very much after their health, and whether none of them had fallen sick upon the taking of Perth, and the flight of the Pretender? and hearing they were never better in their lives, I found he was extreamly startled : for he had learned from his cradle, that the Lions in the tower were the best judges of the title of our British Kings, and always sympathized with our soveraigns.

After having here satiated our curiosity, we repaired to the Monument, where my fellow-traveller, being a well-breathed man, mounted the ascent with much speed and activity. I was forced to halt so often in this perpendicular march, that, upon my joining him on the top of the pillar, I found he had counted all the steeples and towers which were discernable from this advantageous situation, and was endeavouring to compute the number of acres they stood upon. We were both of us very 20 well pleased with this part of the prospect; but I found he cast

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an evil eye upon several ware-houses, and other buildings, that looked like barns, and seemed capable of receiving great multitudes of people. His heart misgave him that these were so many meeting-houses, but, upon communicating his suspicions to me, I soon made him easy in this particular.

We then turned our eyes upon the river, which gave me an occasion to inspire him with some favourable thoughts of trade and merchandise, that had filled the Thames with such crowds of ships, and covered the shore with such swarms of people.

We descended very leisurely, my friend being careful to count the steps, which he registred in a blank leaf of his new almanack. Upon our coming to the bottom, observing an English inscription upon the basis, he read it over several times, and told me he could scarce believe his own eyes, for

that he had often heard from an old Attorney, who lived near him in the country, that it was the Presbyterians who burned down the city; whereas, says he, this pillar positively affirms in so many words, that the burning of this ancient city was begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction, in order to the carrying on their horrid plot for extirpating the Protestant religion, and old English liberty, and introducing popery and slavery. This account, which he looked upon to be more authentick, than if it had been in print, I found, made a very great impression upon him.

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We now took coach again, and made the best of our way for the Royal Exchange, though I found he did not much care to venture himself into the throng of that place; for he told me he had heard they were, generally speaking, Republicans, and was afraid of having his pocket picked amongst them. But he soon conceived a better opinion of them, when he spied the statue of King Charles II. standing up in the middle of the crowd, and most of the Kings in Baker's chronicle ranged in order over their heads; from whence he very justly concluded, that an antimonarchical assembly could never chuse 20 such a place to meet in once a day.

To continue this good disposition in my friend, after a short stay at Stocks Market, we drove away directly for the Meuse, where he was not a little edified with the sight of those fine sets of horses which have been brought over from Hanover, and with the care that is taken of them. He made many good remarks upon this occasion, and was so pleased with his company, that I had much ado to get him out of the stable.

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In our progress to St. James's Park (for that was the end of our journey) he took notice, with great satisfaction, that, 30 contrary to his intelligence in the country, the shops were all open and full of business; that the soldiers walked civilly in the streets; that Clergymen, instead of being affronted, had generally the wall given them; and that he had heard the

bells ring to prayers from morning to night, in some part of the town or another.

As he was full of these honest reflections, it happened very luckily for us that one of the King's coaches passed by with 5 the three young Princesses in it, whom by an accidental stop we had an opportunity of surveying for some time: my friend was ravished with the beauty, innocence, and sweetness, that appeared in all their faces. He declared several times that they were the finest children he had ever seen in all his life; and assured me that, before this sight, if any one had told him it had been possible for three such pretty children to have been born out of England, he should never have believed them.

ΙΟ

We were now walking together in the park, and as it is usual 15 for men who are naturally warm and heady, to be transported with the greatest flush of good-nature when they are once sweetned; he owned to me very frankly, he had been much imposed upon by those false accounts of things he had heard in the country; and that he would make it his business, upon his return thither, to set his neighbours right, and give them a more just notion of the present state of affairs.

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What confirm'd my friend in this excellent temper of mind, and gave him an inexpressible satisfaction, was a message he received, as we were walking together, from the prisoner, for 25 whom he had given his testimony in his late tryal. This person having been condemned for his part in the late rebellion, sent him word that his Majesty had been graciously pleased to reprieve him, with several of his friends, in order, as it was thought, to give them their lives; and that he hoped before he went out of town they should have a cheerful meeting, and drink health and prosperity to King George.

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NOTES

A LETTER FROM ITALY

On December 9, 1701, Addison wrote to Wortley Montagu from Geneva: "I am just now arrived at Geneva by a very troublesome journey over the Alps, where I have been for some days together shivering among the eternal snows. My head is still giddy with mountains and precipices, and you cannot imagine how much I am pleased with the sight of a plain, that is as agreeable to me at present as a shore was about a year ago after our tempest at Genoa. During my passage over the mountains I made a rhyming epistle to my Lord Halifax, which perhaps I will trouble you with the sight of, if I do not find it to be nonsense upon a review. You will think it, I dare say, as extraordinary a thing to make a copy of verses in a voyage over the Alps as to write an heroic poem in a hackney coach, and believe I am the first that ever thought of Parnassus on Mont Cenis."

Charles Montagu (1661-1715), Earl of Halifax, entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1682. In 1687 he wrote with Prior The City and the Country Mouse, a parody on Dryden's The Hind and the Panther. His Epistle to the . Earl of Dorset (1690) celebrated King William's victory at the Boyne. In March, 1692, he was a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury and in 1694 Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the next year he began to interest himself in reëstablishing the currency, a service for which he received the thanks of the House of Commons in 1697. He was made First Lord of the Treasury in 1698; he resigned in June, 1700. The same year he was created Baron Halifax. In 1701 he was impeached for “high crime and misdemeanor." The charge of neglecting the auditorship of the exchequer, however, was not sustained. During the remainder of Queen Anne's reign, Halifax was out of office; in 1714 he became First Lord of the Treasury, and later Earl of Halifax. In March, 1715, he took his seat in the House of Lords. He died May 19, 1715. The principal authorities for his life are given in the Dict. Nat. Biog. His Works and Life appeared in 1715.

Pope's well-known lines (Epistle to Arbuthnot, 231-233):

Proud as Apollo on his forked hill,

Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by ev'ry quill;

Fed with soft Dedication all day long,

are supposed to refer to Halifax. On this point, however, one should consult Roscoe's edition of Pope, IV, 344-345. Halifax received the dedications of Addison's Letter from Italy; The Spectator, vol. II; The Tatler, vol. IV; Congreve's Birth of the Muse; Tickell's Homer; Stepney's An Epistle... on His Majesty's Voyage to Holland; Smith's Phædra and Hippolitus; Durfey's Third Part of Don Quixote; Congreve's Double Dealer. See also Addison's Account of the Greatest English Poets; Rowe's Macenas: Verses Occasion'd by the Honours Conferred on the Right Honourable, the Earl of Halifax; and Prior's verses To the Honourable Charles Montagu.

PAGE 1 Motto: Virg., Georg., ii, 173-175.

LINE 2 From Britannia's publick posts retire: very gracefully expressed: Halifax had been dismissed from office (see the preceding biographical account).

12 Classic ground: Miss Aikin (Life of Addison, I, 120) believes that this phrase "here makes its appearance, in all probability, for the first time." The Oxford Dictionary gives no earlier example.

19 Nar: the Nera. See Addison's Remarks on Italy (Bohn ed., I, 413-415). It may here be noted that in general those Remarks are the best commentary on this poem.

20 Clitumnus: see Remarks on Italy (Bohn ed., I, 409–410) and the passages in the Latin poets to whom Addison there refers.

"On our

21 Mincio. see the Remarks (Bohn, I, 376-377); cf. Milton, Lycidas, 1. 86: 'Smooth-sliding Mincius, crown'd with vocal reeds.” 23 Albula: In his Remarks (Bohn, I, 482) Addison says: way to Tivoli I saw the rivulet of Salforata, formerly called Albula, and smelt the stench that arises from its waters some time before I saw them. Martial mentions this offensive smell in an epigram of the

fourth book, as he does the rivulet itself in the first.

"Quod siccæ redolet lacus lacunæ,

Crudarum nebulæ quod Albularum. Lib. iv. Ep. 4.

"Itur ad Herculeæ gelidas qua Tiburis arces,

Canaque sulphureis Albula fumat aquis. Lib. i. Ep. 5.”

26 Eridanus:"fluviorum rex Eridanus," Virg., Georg., i, 482. The Eridanus is the modern Po.