five times a week for a month to constantly crowded
houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says,
'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at
noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late
for places.'[36]

_Cato_ had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and
gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French
model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first
English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that _Cato_ was
'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long
ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his
tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live,
while the Essays which he had already contributed to the _Tatler_ and
_Spectator_ would make his name familiar to future generations.

Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems
he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even
by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent
critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so
generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration.
Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed,
a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the
_Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His
English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest
poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness
of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student
will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like
Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many
allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's
_Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in
Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet
is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his
hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and
deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts
(1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at
that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of
literature