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PEOPLE ALMOST MENTIONED IN WALDEN:

JOSEPH ADDISON

Can you help me out here, please? The conventional wisdom ofconventional influence commentary has it that Henry Thoreau wasfamiliar with Addison’s play “Cato. A Tragedy,” and thatThoreau’s line in WALDEN “does any divinity stir within him?” isa reworking of the line in this republican play “’Tis thedivinity that stirs within us.” It is pointed out that the playwas reprinted in volume number 9 of the 21-volume compendium ofBritish poetry put out by Alexander Chalmers and that,connecting the dots, Thoreau indeed did study British poetry outof this maddeningly compendious compendium (until he was rescuedfrom the tedium by some local excitement that included theConcord volunteer fire department). I find however, very muchto the contrary, that although Thoreau did dip deep into theinitial four volumes, plus the final volume, of this compendium,he did not consult any volume from 5 through 20. –Therefore I amnot entirely persuaded that we have as yet “nailed this one tothe wall.”My suggestion would be that it is rather more likely that ourguy derived this material from Volume III of THE LONDON THEATRE.A COLLECTION OF THE MOST CELEBRATED DRAMATIC PIECES. CORRECTLY GIVEN, FROMCOPIES USE IN THE THEATRES, BY THOMAS DIDBIN, OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURYLANE. / CATO. A TRAGEDY. BY JOSEPH ADDISON, ESQ. CORRECTLY GIVEN, FROMCOPIES USED IN THE THEATRES, BY THOMAS DIDBIN, AUTHOR OF SEVERAL DRAMATICPIECES: AND PROMPTER OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE (London: Printedat the Chiswick Press, by C. Whittingham; for Whittingham andArliss, Paternoster Row, 1815).

2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith

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May 1, Wednesday (Old Style): Joseph Addison was born in Milston, Wiltshire, England as the firstborn son of Lancelot Addison. Soon after this his father became Dean of Lichfield and the family moved into the Cathedral Close. He would be educated at Lambertown University and Charterhouse School, and then at Queen’s College, Oxford.

Joseph Addison addressed a poem to John Dryden, former Poet Laureate.

Joseph Addison’s 1st major work, a book about the lives of English poets, and a translation of Virgil’s GEORGICS.

So that he might travel widely on the continent of Europe and obtain skills in diplomacy, Joseph Addison was granted an annual pension of £300.

1672

1693

1694

1699

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Joseph Addison was in Switzerland when he got the news that King William III had died (which was to mean the loss of his £300/year pension).

November 26, Friday, night: Some 10,000 people died when an extremely powerful cyclone came onto the coast of England during hours of darkness. In his poem “The Campaign” Joseph Addison would refer to the destruction of ships and homes — and the killing of a bishop in his sleep.

(Toward the end of this year, Addison would return to England.)

Joseph Addison received a commission to write in commemoration of the Battle of Blenheim. His poem “The Campaign” would win so much favor that the poet would be appointed a Commissioner of Appeals in the government of Lord Halifax.

The Whigs having obtained the ascendency in England, Joseph Addison became Under-Secretary of State. In that capacity he would accompany Lord Halifax on a mission to Hanover.

Joseph Addison became MP for the “rotten borough” of Lostwithiel. Soon he would be appointed secretary to the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Wharton, and become the Keeper of the Records of Ireland.

1702

1703

1704

1705

1708

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Joseph Addison became MP for Cavan Borough. He would serve in the Parliament in that capacity until 1713. When Sir Richard Steele began the Tatler, he began almost immediately to offer manuscripts.

Joseph Addison became MP for Malmesbury in his home county of Wiltshire (in addition to continuing as MP for Cavan Borough). Addison would occupy this seat in the Parliament until his death.

March 1, Thursday (1710, Old Style): The initial issue of The Spectator, begun by Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison.

January 8, Tuesday (1711, Old Style): Joseph Addison related in The Spectator (#269) that the fine old Tory Sir Roger De Coverly had kept open-house the previous Christmas season, killing 8 fat hogs and sharing this liberally with his neighbors, and sending a string of hogs-puddings with a pack of cards to every poor family in the parish. In addition invited the whole village to his great Hall, with a double quantity of malt in his small beer, for everyone who wanted it.1 Said Sir Roger: “…it happens very well the Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter. It is the most dead, uncomfortable time of the Year, when the poor People would suffer very much from their Poverty and Cold, if they had not good Cheer, warm Fires, and Christmas Gambols to support them.”

1709

1710

1711

1712

THE SPECTATOR

THE SPECTATOR

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April 14, Tuesday: Joseph Addison’s “Cato, a Tragedy” was first staged.

It would be repeated more than 20 times in London alone, and would be acclaimed both by the Whigs and by the Tories. Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis was being offered as a type case of republican virtue and liberty. The play uses Roman history as a way to examine binaries such as individual liberty vs. government tyranny, Republicanism vs. Monarchism, and logic vs. emotion, and would be republished in some 26 editions during the course of the century. Cato is shown with his army at Utica just to the west of Carthage along the coast of Africa in 46 BCE, as the army of longtime enemy Gaius Julius Caesar nears irresistibly after a battle at Thapsus to the east of Carthage. Cato was not depicted onstage as stoically completing the job by pulling out his own intestines. His suicide would enable Cato’s supporters to make their peace with the conqueror. Henry Thoreau would include in WALDEN what seems to be a reference to a line in Act V, Scene 1, “does any divinity stir within him?” that might seem to be a paraphrase of Addison’s line “’Tis the divinity that stirs within us.” (Although Thoreau might have studied this play in 1837 or 1841 as part of his reading in the 21-volume edition of English poetry created in 1810-1814 by Alexander Chalmers, THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER; INCLUDING THE SERIES EDITED WITH PREFACES, BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON: AND THE MOST APPROVED TRANSLATIONS, in fact we have no record of his having checked out volume number 9, the volume in which this play appears, having a record only of his checking

1. Charles Dickens set the country dance Roger De Coverly at his Fezziwig’s ball, so we may wonder whether he was familiar with Sir Roger’s merry-making. If, as Luis Gamez suggested, Dickens might have gotten the Fezziwigs from Addison, might he not have found Scrooge and the Christmas ghosts in John Gay’s poesy?

1713

When rosemary, and bays, the poet’s crown,Are bawled in frequent cries through all the town,Then judge the festival of Christmas near,Christmas, the joyous period of the year.Now with bright holly all your temples strow,With laurel green and sacred mistletoe.Now, heaven-born Charity, thy blessings shed;Bid meagre Want uprear her sickly head;Bid shivering limbs be warm; let plenty’s bowlIn humble roofs make glad the needy soul.See, see, the heaven-born maid her blessings shed;Lo! meagre Want uprears her sickly head;Clothed are the naked, and the needy glad,While selfish Avarice alone is sad.

— John Gay, “Trivia, Or the Art of Walking the Streets of London,” II: 315-328

“CATO, A TRAGEDY”

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out from the Harvard Library volumes number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 21.)

Joseph Addison fell ill and resigned from his demanding duties as secretary of state. He was able, however, to continue as a member of the Parliament.

June 17, Wednesday (Old Style): Joseph Addison died at Holland House at the age of 47. His remains would be interred in Westminster Abbey.

1718

1719

PEOPLE OFWALDEN

WALDEN: I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous,I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreignform of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keenand subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hardto have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one;but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talkof a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wendingto market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him?His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is hisdestiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not hedrive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he?See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears,not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of hisown opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Publicopinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, orrather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the WestIndian provinces of the fancy and imagination, –what Wilberforceis there to bring that about?

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE

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By this decade the idea of a politically informed citizenry had become an integral part of the Anglo-American discussion, and would even be turning up occasionally in such respected British periodicals as Joseph Addison and Steele’s The Spectator, and Bolingbroke’s Craftsman. In the American colonies, Tories believed that white male commoners should not receive more education than was consistent with due subordination, while Whigs believed that more education than this would be necessary for white males, never for the private good of the individual but merely to prevent the populace from being so readily swayed by demagogues. However, the heretical concept of an informed citizenry would still remain for the time being non-negotiable not only in Britain but also in the American colonies.

General George Washington’s Continental Army drove the British from the College of New-Jersey’s Nassau Hall. (That Army would however overwinter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania while government bigwigs occupied this fine edifice. Oneida, Tuscarora, and Delaware Indians helped Washington’s cold and starving troops during this winter encampment. Washington, who often quoted from Joseph Addison’s “Cato, a Tragedy,” had the play performed that winter in spite of Congressional hostility to stage performances. Contrary to popular impression, the winter of 1777/1778 would be a comparatively mild one, the really severe weather during the Revolutionary War being yet to arrive during the winter of 1779/1780 during which the revolutionary forces would be in winter camp at Morristown.)

1750

1777

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

“CATO, A TRAGEDY”

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Alexander Chalmers’s THE WORKS OF THE ENGLISH POETS, FROM CHAUCER TO COWPER; INCLUDING THE SERIES EDITED WITH PREFACES, BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL, BY DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON: AND THE MOST APPROVED TRANSLATIONS, a revised and expanded version of Dr. Johnson’s 1779-1781 LIVES OF THE POETS, began to come across the London presses of C. Wittingham. It would amount to 21 volumes and the printing would require until 1814 to be complete. According to the Preface, this massive thingie was “a work professing to be a Body of the Standard English Poets”2:

1810

2. When the massive collection would come finally to be reviewed in July 1814, the reviewer would, on the basis of Chalmers’s selection of poems and poets, broadly denounce this editor as incompetent.

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PERUSE VOLUME I

PERUSE VOLUME III

PERUSE VOLUME IV

PERUSE VOLUME V

PERUSE VOLUME VI

PERUSE VOLUME VII

PERUSE VOLUME VIII

PERUSE VOLUME IX

PERUSE VOLUME X

PERUSE VOLUME XI

PERUSE VOLUME XII

PERUSE VOLUME XIII

PERUSE VOLUME XIV

PERUSE VOLUME XV

PERUSE VOLUME XVI

PERUSE VOLUME XVII

PERUSE VOLUME XVIII

PERUSE VOLUME XIX

PERUSE VOLUME XX

PERUSE VOLUME XXI

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THE ENGLISH POETS:

PEOPLE OFWALDEN

WALDEN: Breed’s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, thoughit had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. Itwas set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I donot mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had justlost myself over Davenant’s Gondibert, that winter that I laboredwith a lethargy, –which, by the way, I never knew whether toregard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleepshaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellarSundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as theconsequence of my attempt to read Chalmers’ collection of Englishpoetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had justsunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot hastethe engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men andboys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook.We thought it was far south over the woods, –we who had run tofires before,– barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together.“It’s Baker’s barn,” cried one. “It is the Codman Place,” affirmedanother. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if theroof fell in, and we all shouted “Concord to the rescue!” Wagonsshot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing,perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company,who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine belltinkled behind, more slow and sure, and rearmost of all, as itwas afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave thealarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidenceof our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard crackling andactually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, andrealized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the firebut cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond onto it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and soworthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another,expressed our sentiments through speaking trumpets, or in lowertone referred to the great conflagrations which the world haswitness, including Bascom’s shop, and, between ourselves wethought that, were we there in season with our “tub”, and a fullfrog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universalone into another flood. We finally retreated without doing anymischief, –returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert,I would except that passage in the preface about wit being thesoul’s powder, –“but most of mankind are strangers to wit,as Indians are to powder.”

INSURANCE

FIRE

ALEXANDER CHALMERS

BASCOM & COLE

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Joseph Addison, Akenside; Armstrong; Beattie; Francis Beaumont;Sir J. Beaumont; Blacklock; Blackmore; Robert Blair; Boyse;Brome; Brooke; Broome; Sir Thomas Browne; Charles Butler;George Gordon, Lord Byron; Cambridge; Thomas Carew; Cartwright;Cawthorne; Chatterton; Geoffrey Chaucer; Churchill;William Collins; William Congreve; Cooper; Corbett;Charles Cotton; Dr. Cotton; Abraham Cowley; William Cowper;Crashaw; Cunningham; Daniel; William Davenant; Davies;Sir John Denham; Dodsley; John Donne; Dorset; Michael Drayton;Sir William Drummond; John Dryden; Duke; Dyer; Falconer; Fawkes;Fenton; Giles Fletcher; John Fletcher; Garth; Gascoigne; Gay;Glover; Goldsmith; Gower; Grainger; Thomas Gray; Green;William Habington; Halifax; William Hall; Hammond; Harte; Hughes;Jago; Jenyns; Dr. Samuel Johnson; Jones; Ben Jonson; King;Langhorne; Lansdowne; Lloyd; Logan; Lovibond; Lyttelton; Mallett;Mason; William Julias Mickle; John Milton; Thomas Moore; Otway;Parnell; A. Phillips; J. Phillips; Pitt; Pomfret; Alexander Pope;Prior; Rochester; Roscommon; Rowe; Savage; Sir Walter Scott;William Shakespeare; Sheffield; Shenstone; Sherburne; Skelton;Smart; Smith; Somerville; Edmund Spenser; Sprat; Stepney;Stirling; Suckling; Surrey; Jonathan Swift; James Thomson; W.Thomson; Tickell; Turberville; Waller; Walsh; Warner; J. Warton;T. Warton; Watts; West; P. Whitehead; W. Whitehead; Wilkie;Wyatt; Yalden; Arthur Young.

TRANSLATIONS: Alexander Pope’s Iliad & Odyssey; John Dryden’s Virgil & Juvenal;Pitt’s Aeneid & Vida; Francis’ Horace; Rowe’s Lucan; Grainger’sAlbius Tibullus; Fawkes’ Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius,Coluthus, Anacreon, Sappho, Bion and Moschus, Museus; Garth’sOvid; Lewis’ Statius; Cooke’s Hesiod; Hoole’s Ariosto & Tasso;William Julias Mickle’s Lusiad.

COMMENTARY:William Julias Mickle’s “Inquiry into the Religion Tenets andPhilosophy of the Bramins,” which Thoreau encountered in 1841 inVolume 21 (pages 713-33).

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Sarah Fuller (Margaret Fuller), age 6, was reading the classics under the tutelage of her father Timothy Fuller.3

THE LONDON THEATRE. A COLLECTION OF THE MOST CELEBRATED DRAMATIC PIECES. CORRECTLY GIVEN, FROM COPIES USE IN THE THEATRES, BY THOMAS DIDBIN, OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE. / (VOLUME III: CATO. A TRAGEDY. BY JOSEPH ADDISON, ESQ. CORRECTLY GIVEN, FROM COPIES USED IN THE THEATRES, BY THOMAS DIDBIN, AUTHOR OF SEVERAL DRAMATIC PIECES: AND PROMPTER OF THE THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE) (London: Printed at the Chiswick Press, by C. Whittingham; for Whittingham and Arliss, Paternoster Row, 1815)

1815

3. The Honorable Timothy Fuller had been born on July 11, 1778 in Chilmark, Massachusetts, a son of the Reverend Timothy Fuller, the initial settled minister of Princeton, Massachusetts. He had received a classical education at Harvard College and graduated in 1801 with 2d honors. He had become a lawyer and during this period was serving in the Massachusetts State Senate as a Democratic-Republican. In 1809 he had gotten married with Margaret Crane. The Honorable Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane Fuller would produce 8 children before his suddenly, intestate, and insolvent death of cholera in Groton, Massachusetts on October 1, 1835: — The 1st daughter Sarah Margaret Fuller was born at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts on May 23, 1810; got married (or something) with Giovanni, Marchese Ossoli, and bore one child, Angelo Philip Ossoli, at Rieti, Italy on September 5, 1848; parents and child drowned on July 19, 1850; — Julia Adelaide Fuller, died in childhood — The 1st son Eugene Fuller was born at Cambridge on May 14, 1815, graduated from Harvard College (just barely) in 1834; got married with a widow of New Orleans Mrs. Anna Eliza Rotta, and drowned on June 21, 1859 — The 2d son William Henry Fuller never went to college but applied himself to mercantile pursuits in New Orleans and then in Cincinnati, and later resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, getting married with Frances Elizabeth Hastings on February 28, 1840 (her mother was a Hammond, a niece of Mrs. Craigie of Craigie House, Cambridge); resided at Cambridge and died in New-York during December 1878 (his wife survived him, dying on May 13, 1885) — Ellen Kilshaw Fuller was born on August 7, 1820, got married with Ellery Channing II on September 24, 1841, and died on September 22, 1856 — Reverend Arthur Buckminster Fuller, born August 10, 1822, graduated from Harvard College, 1843; got married with, 1st on September 18, 1850, Elizabeth Godfrey Davenport, of Mendon, Massachusetts, who died March 4,1856; got married with, 2d, on September 28, 1859, Emma Lucilla Reeves of Wayland, Massachusetts — Richard Frederick Fuller — James Lloyds Fuller, died unmarried on July 7, 1891 — Edward Brecks Fuller, died in childhood

CATO: A TRAGEDY

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Joseph Addison’s play “Cato, a Tragedy” was revived at Covent Garden with John Kemble as Cato the Younger.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: December 8, 2013

1816

“CATO, A TRAGEDY”CATO: A TRAGEDY

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.

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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.