DR. ADDISON HIS FATHER.

5

chiefly in visits at the houses of Sussex gentry attached to the royal cause, occupied in inculcating on the younger members of their families a steadfast adherence to the principles and ritual of the then proscribed Church of England.

On the Restoration, these manifestations of his zeal in times of peril, being represented at court, procured him the appointment of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk, which small preferment he accepted, contrary, it is said, to the wishes of the bishop of Chichester, who would have provided for him; and on his return to England in 1662, in consequence of the cession of Dunkirk to France, he embraced the still less inviting offer, as it appears, of a similar situation at Tangier. Eight years he remained on the coast of Africa, in what might well be termed a state of banishment, alleviated to him, however, by the occupation of collecting that local information which he afterwards made the basis of two interesting publications. At the end of this period, he thought it allowable to indulge himself with a visit to England, purposing, after a time, to resume his station; but the appointment being hastily transferred to another, he found himself without employment or resource, till relieved by the kindness of a private friend who presented him to the living of Milston, near Ambrosebury Wilts, worth 1207. per annum. On this pittance he

sat down as a married man, having united himself to Jane daughter of Nat'. Gulstone D.D. and sister to the bishop of Bristol. At Milston his children were born, and in part brought up, and it was from this place that he sent into the world his earlier works. After a time his merits made their way, and he began to mount, though slowly, the ladder of preferment. He was a prebendary of Salisbury cathedral and one of the king's chaplains in ordinary when he took, in 1675, the degree of D.D. soon after he was made archdeacon of Salisbury, and at length, in 1683, the ecclesiastical commissioners conferred upon him the deanery of Lichfield, in reward of his services at Tangier, and as remuneration for his losses by a fire at Milston.

Meantime he was employing his pen diligently and acceptably on professional topics; his character for consistency and for private worth stood always unimpeached, and so high was his general reputation, that he is said to have been destined to the mitre, but lost it by the display which he made in the convocation of 1689, of principles inconsistent with attachment to the cause of the Revolution. The dean died in 1703.

Of the works of Dr. Addison, all of them esteemed in their day, several deserve particular notice in this place, partly for the light which they reflect on the character of the author, but chiefly on account of the

DR. ADDISON'S ACCOUNT OF WEST BARBARY. 7

influence which they may be presumed to have exercised over the tastes and sentiments of his son.

His earliest publication, which appeared in 1671, in a small octavo volume, with a dedication to Joseph Williamson Esq. bore the title of, "West Barbary, or a Short Narrative of the Revolutions of the Kingdoms of Fez and Morocco, with an Account of the present Customs, Sacred, Civil and Domestic." This relation commences with the year 1508, at which period the fall of the reigning family in these kingdoms was prepared by the machinations of a Moorish priest, who, says the author, "began to grow into reputation with the people by reason of his high pretensions to piety and fervent zeal for their law, illustrated by a stubborn rigidity of conversation and outward sanctity of life." Having craftily added to these recommendations the claim of a descent from Mahomet, he became, we are told, "of no vulgar esteem with a generation who from time to time have been fooled with such mountebanks in religion." The narrative proceeds to mention, that the Zeriffe, as he had styled himself, finding the time not yet ripe for an attempt on the throne, in order to facilitate the design sent his three sons to make the pilgrimage of Mecca in the mean time. "Much was

the reverence and reputation of holiness which they thereby acquired among the superstitious people, who could hardly be kept from kissing their garments

and adoring them as saints, while they failed not in their parts, but acted as much devotion as high contemplative looks, deep sighs, tragical gestures, and other passionate interjections of holiness could express; Allah, Allah, was their doleful note, their sustenance the people's alms." Two of these young men, it is added, being afterwards sent by their father to court, and kindly received by the "too credulous king," desired his permission to display a banner against the Christians, (the Portuguese) which was granted contrary to the opinion of the king's brother, who "warned him not to arm this name of sanctity, which being once victorious might grow insolent and forgetful of duty." He "likewise told him that war makes men awless, and through popularity many become ambitious and studious of innovation." Wonderful successes attended the arms of these adventurers, till the King of Fez, seeing that they had poisoned the King of Morocco and placed their brother on his throne, "mistrusted his own safety, and began, but too late, to repent his approving of an armed hypocrisy." "Puffed up with their successes they forgot their obedience, and these saints denied the king the fifth part of their spoils.... By which it appeared that they took up arms, not out of love for their country and zeal for their religion, but out of desire of rule."

These and other satirical strokes against rebels in

WEST BARBARY.

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the disguise of saints, will be seen to have a designed application to events and parties at home; notwithstanding which, there is no ground for looking upon this narrative as any thing different from what it professes to be,-a true history of the revolutions of West Barbary. Its style is blemished by some foreign idioms, and some native vulgarisms, but the piece is on the whole composed with an ease, a spirit, and a vivacity, which gives a very agreeable idea of the author, and throws a charm even over so uninviting a theme as the domestic treasons, murders, and civil wars of fierce and ignorant barbarians.

The description of the country, with its agriculture, products, and wild animals, and of the inhabitants, with their modes of living, manners, customs, and religious observances, abounds in curious and amusing particulars, derived from diligent inquiry and personal observation, and no doubt full of novelty for the English public at the time of their appearance. What is still higher praise, the work is written in a truly catholic and candid spirit, and willing justice is every where done to the Mussulmans with respect to their piety and attachment to their own faith and law, as well as to the moral virtues found among them.

A later publication, entitled "The First State of Mahometism," reprinted as "The Life and Death