The monument of the poet in Westminster Abbey is familiar to the public, placed there by Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, bearing only a single word, the illustrious name of--DRYDEN. JOSEPH ADDISON. [Illustration] Addison was a fortunate man; the houses in which he lived testify it. His fame as a poet, though considerable in his own time, has now dwindled to a point which would not warrant us to include him in this work, were not his reputation altogether of that kind which inseparably binds him up with the poetical history of his country. He was not only a popular poet in his own day, but he was the friend and advocate of true poetry wherever it could be found. It was he who, in the Spectator, first sounded boldly and zealously abroad the glory of John Milton. In our time the revival of true poetry, the return to nature and to truth, have been greatly indebted to the old ballad poetry of the nation. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Scott, and others, attribute the formation of their taste in the highest degree to the reading of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. But it was Addison who long before had pointed out these sources and these effects. It was he who brought forward again the brave old ballad of Chevy Chace; who reminded us that Sir Philip Sidney had said that it always stirred his heart like the sound of a trumpet. It was he who showed us the inimitable touches of nature and of true pathos in it. He showed us how alive was the old bard who composed it to all the influences of nature and of circumstances. How the stanza, "The hounds ran swiftly through the woods, The nimble deer to take, That with their cries the hills and dales An echo shrill did make," carried you at once to the scene. With what life, and spirit, and graphic power he introduced his heroes, and by their gallant bearing won at once your interest for them. "Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come, His men in armor bright; Full twenty hundred Scottish spears All marching in our sight. "All men of pleasant Tivy-dale, Fast by the River Tweed; 'O cease your sport,' Earl Percy said, 'And take your bows with speed; "'And now with me, my countrymen, Your courage forth advance, For there was never champion yet, In Scotland or in France, "'That ever did on horseback come, But if my hap it were, I durst encounter, man for man, With him to break a spear.' "Earl Douglas on his milk-white steed, Most like a baron bold, Rode foremost of the company, Whose armor shone like gold. "'Show me,' said he, 'whose men you be, That hunt so boldly here, That, without my consent, do chase And kill my fallow deer.' "The first man that did answer make Was noble Percy, he; Who said, 'We list not to declare, Nor show whose men we be.'"