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Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
Introductory Note
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) divided his energies between literature and
politics. He was educated at the Charterhouse and at Oxford with a view to
holy orders, but the Earl of Halifax saw in him valuable political material,
obtained for him a pension, and sent him abroad to prepare for a diplomatic
career. His travels in France and Italy confirmed his classical tastes, and
his critical writings show abundant traces of French influence.
On his return to England he published his "Campaign," which laid the
foundation of his career. He entered Parliament, and finally rose to be
Secretary of State. In spite of the bitterness of political feeling in his
time, Addison kept the esteem of men of all parties, and enjoyed a universal
popularity such as has been bestowed on few men of letters and fewer
politicians.
Addison`s fame to - day rests mainly on his writings in the "Tatler" and
the "Spectator." In the essays and articles published in these two
periodicals, he not only produced a succession of pieces unsurpassed in their
kind, but exerted an influence as wholesome as it was powerful upon the
manners and morals of society in the London of Queen Anne. His style remains
the great classic example of that combination of ease and elegance which is
the characteristic merit of the prose of the period; and the imaginative
moralizing which is exemplified in "The Vision of Mirza" and "Westminster
Abbey" reveals something of the gentle persuasiveness with which he sought to
lead his generation to higher levels of living and thinking.
Westminster Abbey
[Footnote 1: Published in "The Spectator," March 30, 1711 ]
Pallida mors aequo palsat pede pauperam tabernas
Regumque tures, O beati Sexti,
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam:
Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonia. - Hor.^2
[Footnote 2: "Pale death knocks with impartial foot at the huts of the poor
and at the towers of kings, O happy Sextus. The shortness of the span of life
forbids us to cherish remote hope; already night overtakes thee, and the
fabled shades, and the wretched house of Pluto."]
When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster
Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied,
with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in
it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather
thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon
in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the
tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the
dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was
born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being
comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I
could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or
marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other
memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in
mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have
sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed,
and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.
r`xaukov re medovra re Oepobixoxon re. Hom.
Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque. Virg.
The life of these men is finely described in Holy Writ by "the path of an
arrow," which is immediately closed up and lost.
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a
grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a
bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time
or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to
consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused
together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women,
friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were
crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass;
how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay
undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortality, as it were,
in the lump; I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on
several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient
fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs, that, if it
were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush
at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so
excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in
Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelve month.
In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and
monuments which had no poets. I observed indeed that the present war had
filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been
erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the
plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.
I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs,
which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought,
and therefore do honour to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner
is very apt to conceive an idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation,
from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be
submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius, before they are put in
execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel`s monument has very often given me great
offence: instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the
distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his
tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself
upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to
the monument; for instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had
performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner
of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour. The
Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely
greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this
nature, than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of
their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them
like themselves; and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with
beautiful festoons of seaweed, shells, and coral.
But to return to our subject. I have left the repository of our English
kings for the contemplation of another day, when I shall find my mind disposed
for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt
to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy imaginations;
but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to
be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn
scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this
means I can improve myself with those objects, which others consider with
terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in
me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes
out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts
with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the
vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings
lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by
side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes,
I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions
and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some
that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day
when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
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