summer, arrived in October,--that
month, the beauty of which is the child of blasting, and its glory the
flush of decay. And it seems somehow fitting that Addison, the mild, the
quietly-joyous, the sanguine and serene, should come, with the daisy and
the sweet summer-tide, on the 1st of May, which Buchanan thus hails--

"Salve fugacis gloria saeculi,
Salve secunda digna dies nota,
Salve vetustae vitae imago,
Et specimen venientis aevi."

"Hail, glory of the fleeting year!
Hail, day, the fairest, happiest here!
Image of time for ever by,
Pledge of a bright eternity."

Dr Lancelot Addison, himself a man of no mean note, was the father of
our poet. He was born in 1632, at Maltesmeaburn, in the parish of _Corby
Ravensworth_, (what a name of ill-omen within ill-omen, or as Dr Johnson
would say, "inspissated gloom"!) in the county of Westmoreland. His
father was a minister of the gospel; but in such humble circumstances,
that Lancelot was received from the Grammar-school of Appleby into
Queen's College, Oxford, in the capacity of a "poor child." After passing
his curriculum there, being chiefly distinguished for his violent High
Church and Monarchical principles, for which he repeatedly smarted, he,
at the Restoration, was appointed chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk,
and soon after he accepted a similar situation in Tangier, which had been
ceded by Portugal to Britain. In this latter post he felt rather lonely
and miserable, and was driven, in self-defence, to betake himself to the
study of the manners and the literature of the Moors, Jews, and other
Oriental nations. This led him afterwards to publish some works on
Barbary, on Hebrew customs, and Mohammedanism, which shew a profound
acquaintance with these subjects, and which, not without reason, are
supposed to have coloured the imagination of his son Joseph, who is
seldom more felicitous than when reproducing the gorgeous superstitions
and phantasies of the East.

For eight years, old Addison lingered in loathed Tangier; nor, when
he returned to England on a visit, had he any purpose of permanently
residing in his own country. But his appointment was hastily bestowed on
another; and it was fortunate for him that a private friend stepped in
and presented him with the living of Milston, near Ambrosebury, Wilts,
worth L120 a-year. This, which Miss Aiken calls a "pittance," was
probably equivalent to L250 now. At all events, on the strength of it,
he ma