Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/79

72 Great gaps the Russian cannon tore Through our retreating ranks, As slowly, grimly, Ney drew back Unto the river banks.

Shot in the knee I saw Maubourg, Borne by his sons—slow—slow; They staggered o’er the muddy ruts, And through the clogging snow. “Fly, leave me, children! Dear to France Young lives are,” then he said. They both refused—a round shot came, And struck the eldest—dead.

The boy knelt weeping by his side, Trying in vain to lift The old man’s body, which but sank The deeper in the drift. “Leave me, my child!” he cried again. “Think of your mother—go. We meet in Heaven. I will stay, Death is no more my foe.”

The boy fell weeping on his breast, And there had gladly died, But I released his clutching hands, And tore him from his side. One kiss—no more—and then he went, Beating his drum for us; I did not dare to turn and see The old man perish thus.

Again there came a rush of spears, But we drove on the guns. We—bronze and iron with the heat Of the Egyptian suns. The eagles led—our bayonets pressed Over the Dnieper bridge; Ney was the last to turn and pass Down the long gory ridge.

The boy became a marshal, sirs; I saw him yesterday Talking to Soult, who loves right well To chat of siege and fray. He often finds our barracks out And comes to see us all, We who escaped from Moscow’s fire, From Russian sword and ball.

Mr. Addison laying to heart Horatian counsel when he retained his tragedy in his writing-desk for nine years? Not that he denied it an airing now and then. It was in 1703 that Captain Richard Steele, at a tavern, read privately to Mr. Cibber, afterwards manager of Drury Lane theatre, a manuscript, unfinished, being four acts of a play upon the death of Cato, which Mr. Addison had planned and commenced during his travels. Of course there was a bottle upon the table, and of course the Captain sipped his wine pretty freely during the pauses of the play, resting his voice, which had been rolling and swelling and storming enough in the sounding speeches and pompous music of his friend’s work, and commenting upon its glories and merits and marvels. Perhaps now and then Mr. Cibber took up the wondrous tale, and rendered a scene or two with more elegant elocution, and with more of a player’s propriety of action, if without the excessive passion and exuberant enthusiasm of his comrade the author’s friend. Doubtless the drawer was rather astonished at the stir the two gentlemen in the private room were making, if indeed he was not accustomed to boisterous eccentricity on the part of the captain, who was always noisy over his bottle or his glass of strong waters, laughing, crying, speech-making, clamorous and troublesome, and rather a bore it may be, with his ceaseless trumpeting of Joe Addison and his doings and his genius. However, about that time he had cause to be loud in his friend’s praise. Many applauded strokes in his second comedy, “The Tender Husband,” as Sir Richard afterwards confessed, had been supplied by Addison’s kindly hand. The play had been acted with great success, and is indeed full of humorous writing. In his next essay Sir Richard, running alone, was very sober and dull, perhaps a little too moral for his audience, and the “Lying Lover” was damned straightway.

Captain Steele was delighted at the warm approval the incomplete “Cato” received at the hands of Mr. Colley. Perhaps they both then grew rather melancholy over their cups, as the merriest topers will sometimes grow. The player was greatly disappointed to learn from Captain Steele that “whatever spirit Mr. Addison had shown in his writing it, he doubted he would never have courage enough to let his ‘Cato’ stand the censure of an English audience: that it had only been the amusement of his leisure hours in Italy, and was never intended for the stage.” Men who write plays persist that they never intended them to be played, just as men who write poems will have it that they never purposed to print until “obliged by hunger and request of friends.” Sir Richard spoke with much concern of his friend’s unfortunate diffidence, and in the transport of his imagination could not help saying, “Good God! what a part would Betterton make of Cato!” But on the 28th of April, 1710, poor Mr. Betterton died: and he had been three years in his grave in Westminster Abbey when Cato came upon the stage.

It could have been no secret, however, that Mr. Addison had written a play. Captain Steele knew of it, and talked about it frankly and noisily after his wont. Pope, too, had seen and read it. Still the author shrank from completing his work; would have it that it was unfit for, and that he had never contemplated its production on, the stage. He was always shy and bashful, keenly sensitive like all men with delicately acute powers of observation—he held back with a child’s timidity from the idea of failure—and perhaps the coarse, stormy applause of a theatrical success seemed almost as repellent to him as the dreadful violence of failure. The rude cheers and vulgar clapping of hands had little attraction for him; but how much more terrible the hisses and catcalls and groans! He wore his nerves very much on the surface, and he started at thoughts: his quick fancy gave such vivid vitality even to his dreams. “Still,” as Dr. Johnson writes, “the time was now come when those who affected to think liberty in danger, affected likewise to think that a stage-play might preserve it: and Addison was importuned in the names of the tutelary deities of