ADDISON.
317
His next paper of verses contained a character of the principal English poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet, a writer of verses[1]: as is shewn by his version of a small part of Virgil's Georgicks published in the Miscellanies, and a Latin encomium on queen Mary in the Musæ Anglicanæ. These verses exhibit all the fondness of friendship; but on one side or the other, friendship was afterwards too weak for the malignity of faction.
In this poem is a very confident and discriminate character of Spenser, whose
- ↑ A letter which I found among Dr. Johnson's papers, dated in January 1784, from a lady in Wiltshire, contains a discovery of some importance in literary history, viz. that by the initials H. S. prefixed to the poem, we are not to understand the famous Dr. Henry Sacheverell, whose trial is the most remarkable incident in his life. The information thus communicated is, that the verses in question were not an address to the famous Dr. Sacheverell, but to a very ingenious gentleman of the same name, who died young, supposed to be a Manksman, for that he wrote the history of the Isle of Man.—That this person left his papers to Mr. Addison, and had formed a plan of a tragedy upon the death of Socrates.—The lady says, she had this information from a Mr. Stephens, who was a fellow of Merton College, a contemporary and intimate with Mr. Addison in Oxford, who died, near 50 years ago, a prebendary of Winchester.H.
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