Dr. Addison had seen the world not in a very brilliant or luxurious way. He had been chaplain at Dunkirk, and afterward at Tangier among the Moors, upon which latter strange experience he wrote a book: and he rose afterward to be Dean of Lichfield, a dignified clergyman. One of the brothers went to India, and attained to some eminence; the other was eventually, like Joseph, a fellow of Magdalen. They dispersed themselves in the world as the children of a clergyman might very well do at the present day, and it is evident belonged distinctly to the caste of gentlemen. The sons, or at least the son with whom we have specially to do, after sundry local schoolings went to Charterhouse, which he left at fifteen for Oxford, perhaps because of his unusual advancement, more probably because the custom of the time sent boys earlier to the university, as is still the practice in Scotland. Addison was much distinguished in that elegant branch of learning, the writing of Latin verse, a kind of distinction which remains dear to the finest minds, in spite of all the remarks concerning its inutility and the time wasted in acquiring the art, which the rest of the world has so largely indulged in. A copy of verses upon the accession of King William, written while he was still a very youthful scholar at Queen’s College, no more than seventeen, got him his first promotion. The boy’s verses came--perhaps from some proud tutor at Queen’s, boasting what could be done under the cupola in the High street, finer than anything attempted in more distinguished seats of learning--into the hands of the Provost of Magdalen, to the amazement and envy of that more learned corporation. There had been no election of scholars in the previous year, during the melancholy time when the college was embroiled with King James, and the courtly Quaker Penn had all the disturbed and troubled fellows under his heel; but now that freedom had returned with the revolution and the heaven-sent William, there was room for a double number of distinguished poor demies. Dr. Lancaster of Magdalen decided at once that to leave such Latinity as that of the young author of these verses to a college never very great in such gifts would be a sin against his own: and young Addison was accordingly elected to all the privileges of a Magdalen demyship. It is with this beautiful college that his name is connected in Oxford. There could be no more fit association. The noble trees and velvet lawns of Magdalen speckled with deer, shy yet friendly creatures that embellish the retired and silent glades--the long-winding walk by the Cherwell round the meadows where the fritillaries grow, the time-worn dignity of the place with its graceful old-world architecture and associations, are all in the finest keeping with the shy and silent student who talked so little and thought so much, living among his books in his college rooms, keeping his lamp alight half through the night, or musing under the elms, where the little stream joins the greater. It is dreadful to think that in all probability Addison thought the imposing classicism of Queen’s, at which the cultivated scholar of to-day shudders, much finer than Magdalen: for he had no opinion of Gothic, and lamented the weakness, if not wickedness, of those mistaken ages which wasted ornament upon such antiquated forms; but at least he loved his retired promenade under the trees, with all its sweetness of primrose and thrush in spring, and the wonderful yellow sunsets over the floods in winter, and the pleasant illusions of the winding way. There the stranger may realize still in the quiet of the cloistered shades how the shy young student wandered in Addison’s Walk and pondered his verses, and formed the delicate wealth of speech which was to distinguish him from all his fellows. He spent about ten years in his college, first as a student and then as a fellow, in the position which, perhaps, is more ideal for a scholar than any other in Christendom. But the young man was not much more enlightened than the other young men of his age, notwithstanding his genius at Latin verses, and that still finer genius which had not as yet come to utterance. He wrote an “Account of the Greatest English Poets,” not much wiser than the school-boy essays of our own day which set Lord Tennyson and Mr. Browning down in their right places. Addison went further. He leaves out all mention of Shakspere, and speaks of Cowley as a “mighty genius.” He describes “the spacious times of great Elizabeth” as “a barbarous age,” amused by “Old Spenser” with “long-spun allegories” and “dull morals,” which have lost all power to charm an age of understanding. The youth, indeed, ran amuck among all the greatest names till we shiver at his temerity.