Esse aliquam in terris gentem quæ suâ impensâ, suo labore ac periculo bella gerat pro libertate aliorum. Nec hoc finitimis, aut propinquæ vincinitatis hominibus, aut terri: continenti junctis præstet. Maria trajiciat: ne quod toto orbe terrarum injustum imperium sit, et ubique jus, fas, lex, potentissima sint. LIV. HIST. lib. 33.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

[THE best authorities very nearly agree in the following account of the origin of this poem:-"The victory at Blenheim" (1704), says Johnson, "spread triumph and confidence over the nation; and Lord Godolphin lamenting te Lord Halifax, that it had not been celebrated in a manner equal to the subject, desired him to propose it to some better poet. Halifax told him that there was no encouragement for genius; that worthless men were unprofitably enriched with public money, without any care to find or employ those whose appearance might do honor to their country. To this Godolphin replied, that such abuses should in time be rectified: and that if a man could be found, capable of the task then proposed, he should not want an ample recompense. Halifax then named Addison, but required that the treasurer should apply to him in his own person. Godolphin sent the message by Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carleton; and Addison having undertaken the work, communicated it to the treasurer, while it was yet advanced no farther than the simile of the angel, and was immediately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the place of Commissioner of Appeals."

Of the work itself, Johnson remarks:-"The next composition is the far-famed Campaign, which Dr. Warton has termed a 'Gazette in rhyme,' with harshness not often used by the good nature of his criticism. Before a censure so severe is admitted, let us consider that war is a frequent subject of poetry, and then inquire who has described it with more greatness and force. Many of our own writers tried their powers upon this year of victory; yet Addison's is confessedly the best performance: his poem is the work of a man not blinded by the dust of learning; his images are not borrowed merely from books. The superiority which he confers upor his hero is not personal prowess and mighty bone,' but deliberate intrepidity, a calm command of his passions, and the power of consulting his own mind in the midst of danger. The rejection and contempt of fiction is rational and manly."

Macaulay's remarks are an amplification and illustration of the last sentence of Johnson's. "The Campaign' came forth and was as much admired by the public as by the minister. It pleases us less on the whole than the 'Epistle to Halifax.' Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems during the interval between the death of Dryden and the dawn of Pope's genius. The chief merit of the 'Campaign,' we think, is that which was noticed by Johnson-the manly and rational rejection of fiction." And after a lively passage upon the ridiculous imitation of the Homeric style of combat in descriptions of battles fought on entirely different military principles, he adds:-" Addison, with excellent taste and judgment, departed from this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise for the qualities which made Marlborough truly great: energy, sagacity, military science. But above all, the poet extolled the firmness of that mind, which, in the midst of confusion, uproar and slaughter, examined and disposed every thing with the serene wisdom of a higher intelligence." The "Campaign" of this poem is the campaign of 1704. When this

poem was written all the incidents of the campaign of 1704 were as famil iar as Quatre Bras and Waterloo. For the modern reader they require an explanation, and I translate the following admirable sketch from a French historian:

"The Elector of Bavaria and Marshal Villars had quarrelled openly, and the operations were suffering from it. Villars asked to be recalled, and the king, to preserve an ally so important as the elector, sent Marshal Marsin to replace him. Germany was still paralyzed by the victory of Hochstadt (gained by Villars, Sept. 20, 1703). The elector took advantage of it to seize Augsburgh, and march upon Passau, which he took on the 9th Jan., 1704. Vienna was struck with terror; the Hungarian insurgents pushed their bands up to the suburbs; the emperor prepared to flee inte Moravia. Eugene, Marlborough and Heinsius resolved to save Austria by the boldest of plans. As the French line of operations extended from trasburgh to Passau, it seemed easy to cut it in the middle and crush the

elector, whom the coalition had sworn to ruin entirely. The three great generals of the allies united to put this plan in execution. Louis of Baden resumed the offensive in Franconia. Eugene collected the remnants of the defeat of Spire, and undertook the defence of the lines of Stolhofen. Marlborough, who had Villeroy and Boufflers before him, left in a camp near Maestricht twenty-five thousand Dutch troops, to hold them in check, and marched, with twenty thousand men, towards the Danube. First he moved as if he were going to march upon the Moselle, then turning rapidly towards the Rhine, crossed it at Cologne, formed a junction before Mayence with the contingents of the Palatinate and Brandenburgh, and passed the Neckar at Heilbronn. (Herc he met Eugene.) At the news of this march, Villeroy set out with thirty thousand men in pursuit of the English general. Tallard advanced upon the Moselle, then fell back upon the Lauten, joined Villeroy, and prepared to attack Stolhofen, in order to relieve the elector. But the elector, instead of turning upon Louis of Baden, and crushing him, directed his march towards the left bank of the Danube, and fortified Donauwerth on the Schellenberg, where he awaited the arrival of Tallard. Marlborough and Louis of Baden were thus left free to form a junction at Ulm (July 2), then marched directly to the Schellenberg, carried the position of Donauwerth, and drove back the Bavarians to the right bank of the Danube. This bloody combat, in which the Bavarians lost eight thousand men, and the allies six thousand, freed the passage of the Lech, and laid open Bavaria, which was ravaged as fearfully as the Palatinate had been a few years before. The vanquished army fortified themselves at Augsburgh, where they waited the arrival of Tallard, in order to resume the offensive. Tallard, by order of the court, advanced rapidly with thirty-five thousand men, from the lines of Lautenburgh, leaving Villeroy to hold Eugene in check at Stolhofen, passed the Rhine at Huningen, crossed the defiles of the Black Forest, and reached Augsburgh the 3d of August, forming with the troops of the elector an army of fifty-six thousand men. Eugene quitted the line of Stolhofen with equal rapidity; but being threatened by Villeroy, was unable to stop Tallard on his march, and reached Hochstadt the same day that his adversary reached Augsburgh. This was a fine opportunity for the French to march upon the corps of Eugene, only twenty thousand men strong, and crush it; but they lost time. Marlborough advanced rapidly to his colleague's support, and the two armies uniting at Hochstadt formed a force of fifty-two thousand men. strategic field of this portion of the basin of the Danube being the right bank of the river, where the communications are easy and the country abundant, while the left bank is wild, without roads, and shut in by mountains which surround the basin, the French ought to have kept on the right bank, refused battle, and waited for the enemy to retreat; and as the allies could not have penetrated into Bavaria without leaving too far behind their magazines of Nordlingen and Nuremberg, they would have

The

been compelled either to fall back upon the Mein, or allow Villeroy to cut off their communications. But instead of this the two marshals and the elector passed the Danube at Huningen, to give battle. This was precisely what their adversaries wished, who, to anticipate them, took station near Hochstadt, with their left resting on the Danube. Tallard and Marsin interpreted this movement as a feint to mask a retreat upon Nuremberg, and drew up their army in such a way as to form two distinct armies, each with its infantry in the centre, and the cavalry on the wings; and moreover, believing their right flank menaced, they stripped the centre to crowd together on this flank, which was naturally covered by the Danube, twenty-seven battalions, and twelve squadrons, forming more than twelve thousand men, who were thus left isolated and useless in the village of Blenheim. Marlborough, after having exhorted his troops to fight for the "freedom of the nations," advanced against the centre, broke it, and cut the French Bavarian army in two; then turned to the right wing, drove it into the river, and made Tallard prisoner. Marsin and the elector, who were contending more successfully on the left with Eugene, instead of taking Marlborough in flank, and thus disengaging their right wing, recrossed the Danube, and retreated upon Ulm, without giving any orders to the twelve thousand men in Blenheim, who were surrounded and compelled to lay down their arms without fighting, (Aug. 13.) The loss of the two armies in killed and wounded was twelve thousand men each; but the French lost also twelve thousand prisoners, and the rest of their army was thrown into such utter confusion, that twelve thousand more got lost or deserted, and twenty thousand were all that the elector could collect in Ulm. The incapacity of the generals made the consequences of this defeat even more disastrous than the defeat itself. Marsin, finding himself pursued, threw himself into the Black Forest, where he formed, near Villingen, a junction with Villeroy; who, if he had followed Eugene, as Eugene had followed Tallard, might have prevented this disaster. By this junction the French army was once more equal to the allies, and Marsin and Villeroy might have defended the passes; but they, terrorstruck, hurried over the mountains, and it was not till they had put the Rhine between them and the enemy, that they felt themselves safe. The elector took refuge in France.

"It was long since France had met with such a disaster. By one stroke a hundred leagues of territory, the states of Bavaria, and an army of fifty thousand men were lost; Austria saved and France menaced with invasion. The allies full of joy at this unhoped for fortune, talked of nothing less than reducing Louis XIV. to the dominions which had been held by his father. They crossed the Rhine at Phippsburgh, but the Prince of Baden refusing to invade Lorraine, they confined their efforts to Landau, which they laid siege to and took, while different detachments freed the country between the Rhine and the Meuse, seized Treves, Traerbach, and

Saarbruck, and stripped the Elector of Cologne who, like his brother, took

refuge in France."-G.]

THE CAMPAIGN.a

WHILE crowds of princes your deserts proclaim,
Proud in their number to enroll your name;
While emperors to you commit their cause,
And ANNA's praises crown the vast applause;
Accept, great leader, what the muse recites,
That in ambitious verse attempts your fights,
Fir'd and transported with a theme so new.
Ten thousand wonders op'ning to my view
Shine forth at once; sieges and storms appear,
And wars and conquests fill th' important year,
Rivers of blood I see, and hills of slain,
An Iliad rising' out of one campaign.

The haughty Gaul beheld, with tow'ring pride,
His ancient bounds enlarg'd on ev'ry side,
Pirene's lofty barriers were subdu'd,

And in the midst of his wide empire stood;
Ausonia's states, the victor to restrain,

Opposed their Alps and Appenines in vain,

Nor found themselves, with strength of rocks immur'd,
Behind their everlasting hills secur'd;

The rising Danube its long race began,

And half its course through the new conquests ran;

1 An Iliad rising. The expression is not happy, for the Iliad which naturally occurs to the reader is not the ten years' siege of Ilium, but Homer's story of it, which really forms a shorter campaign than this.-G.

The execution of this poem is better than the plan. Indeed the subject was fit only for an ode, and might have furnished materials for a very fine one, if Mr. Addison had possessed the talents of a lyric poet. However, particular passages are wrought up into much life and Leauty.