Restoration & Augustan
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) was an English essayist, poet and politician, educated at Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford. With Richard Steele he wrote The Tatler and The Spectator, the periodical essays that made his prose a model of the polite style.
His verse includes The Campaign (1704), written in praise of Marlborough's victory at Blenheim, A Letter from Italy, An Account of the Greatest English Poets and a handful of hymns and odes first printed in The Spectator, among them 'The spacious firmament on high'. His translations of Ovid and Virgil, and his drama Cato, are not included here.
Poems (22)
- To Mr Dryden
- A Poem to His Majesty, Presented to the Lord Keeper
- A Song for St Cecilia's Day, at Oxford
- An Ode for St Cecilia's Day
- An Account of the Greatest English Poets
- A Letter from Italy
- The Campaign
- Prologue to the Tender Husband
- Epilogue to the British Enchanters
- Prologue to Smith's Phaedra and Hippolitus
- To Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales
- To Sir Godfrey Kneller on His Picture of the King
- The Play-House
- On the Lady Manchester
- An Ode (The spacious firmament on high)
- An Hymn (When all thy mercies, O my God)
- An Ode (How are thy servants blest, O Lord)
- An Hymn (When rising from the bed of death)
- Paraphrase on Psalm XXIII
- To an Ill-Favored Lady
- To a Capricious Friend
- To a Rogue