Addison, Joseph
- Dictionary and Archive of Travellers
- Title
- Addison, Joseph
- Full Text of Entry
-
(1672 - 1719), essayist, playwright and politician, e. s. of Lancelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield; educ. Charterhouse and Queen's and Magd. Oxf. 1689, fell. 1697 - 1711; MP 1708 - 19; m. 1716 Charlotte Middleton.
1700 - 1 [dep. Oxford Aug. - Sep. 1699] Genoa (Dec. 1700), Pavia, Milan, Padua (9 Jan. 1701), Venice (Jan.), Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, San Marino, Loreto, Rome, Naples, Rome (Jun. - Oct.), Siena, Pisa, Lucca, Florence (6 - 12 Nov.), Bologna, Modena, Parma, Turin [Geneva by 9 Dec. 1701]
Addison travelled with the aim of preparing himself for government service. He received a grant of £;200 from the government and acted as bearleader to George Dashwood ('un bon gros et gras bourgeois') and Edward Wortley Montagu (1678 - 1761), though it is not clear how frequently they were with him. Before entering Italy Addison refreshed his memory 'among the Classic Authors', so that he might 'compare the Natural Face of the Country with the Landskips that the Poets have given us of it'.
On 12 December 1700 he sailed from Marseilles for Genoa.1 From Genoa he travelled via Pavia to Milan, where he visited the Duomo, the Ambrosiana and the Villa Simonetta. On 9 January 1701 he was in Padua with Dashwood and Montagu,2 admiring the church of S.Giustina (which he attributed to Palladio) as 'the most handsome, luminous, disencumbered building in the Inside that I have ever seen'. He was in Venice for the Carnival, but he bitterly attacked the decadence of the Venetian Republic. He proceeded down the Adriatic coast through Ferrara to Ravenna (where he noticed what is now known as the mausoleum of Theodoric), Rimini and the Republic of San Marino - 'a Savage mountain cover'd with People', which he contrasted with the almost deserted Campagna of Rome. At Loreto he visited the Holy House, and was amazed to see such riches amid 'so much Poverty and Misery'. He paused at Rome only to visit St Peter's and the Pantheon, leaving the rest until his return from Naples, where he passed Holy Week. The desolation he saw there he attributed to 'the very genius of the Roman Catholic religion'; he twice witnessed the 'pretended miracle' of the blood of St Januarius which he thought to be the continuation of a heathen practice. He saw the tomb of Sannazaro at Posillipo, and he visited Capri before following Aeneas's route by sea back to Rome.
'I am in the pleasantest City I have yet seen', he wrote from Rome on 2 July 1701; 'There are more statues in it than there are men in several others'. His cicerone was Ficoroni, from whom he also received lessons in numismatology; Ficoroni later told Spence that Addison 'did not go any depth in the study of medals' and received 'not more than twenty lessons' - yet Addison subsequently felt confident enough to publish his Dialogues upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals.3 Dashwood was with him in Rome some of the time and Montagu rejoined him briefly, but had left by 7 August when Addison was writing to him that 'I am forc'd for want of better company to converse mostly with pictures, statues and Medals'. Antiquity was always his interest, and modern art he found 'far from being in a flourishing condition'. He left Rome in October and made his way via Siena, Pisa and Lucca to Florence. He thought that Siena cathedral, however barbarous, was a building which 'a Man may view with Pleasure after he has seen St Peter's'. At Florence, Addison, Dashwood and Sir Thomas Dereham met the Duke of Shrewsbury, and the small group, sometimes also including [Richard?] Shuttleworth, visited several sites together, including the Riccardi palace and the Library of Manuscripts.4 Addison continued his journey northwards through Bologna, where he admired Raphael's S.Cecilia, and Parma, where he particularly noticed Aleotti's Teatro Farnese. After passing through Modena and Turin (hastily, because of the Spanish wars), he crossed Mont Cenis and was in Geneva on 9 December 1701. There he heard of the death of William III, which brought the power of his political friends to an end. He remained abroad in Switzerland, Germany and Holland until 1704.
'There is certainly no Place in the World where a Man may Travel with greater Pleasure and Advantage than in Italy,' he wrote in the preface to his Remarks on several parts of Italy &c. in the years 1701, 1702, 1703 [1705]. His book was very widely used and read, even though Henry Fielding classed Addison 'as a commentator on the classics, rather than as a writer of travels',5 and Horace Walpole remarked that Addison had 'travelled through the poets, and not through Italy; for all his ideas are borrowed from the descriptions, and not from reality'.6
1. See Addison's Remarks (where in error he gave this date as 1699). P. Smithers, Life of Addison, 44ff. Addison Letters, 27 - 30. 2. Brown 1124. 3. Spence Letters, 13, 130, 131n6. 4. Shrewsbury Jnl. (6 - 12 Nov. 1701). 5. Wal.Corr., 16:52n5. 6. Wal.Corr., 13:231.