ADELUNG, JOHANN CHRISTOPH. 



ADONIS. 



and to Steele, there was something underhand and treacherous 

 something of the " willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike," which 

 the former had imputed to him. To Gay, again, he seems to have 

 behaved ill without having been either detected or suspected at the 

 time. A fortnight before his death he sent Lord Warwick for Gay, 

 who had not gone to see him for a great while; and when they met, 

 Addison told him " that he had desired this visit to beg his pardon ; 

 that he had injured him greatly; but that if he lived he should find 

 that he would make it up to him." (Spence, p. 150.) Here again we 

 see the conscientiousness of the man struggling with, and, in the end, 

 very nobly mastering, his more ignoble propensities ; for it would be a 

 great mistake to conclude from these instances of deceit and littleness, 

 that the regard he professed for virtue was not both real and deeply 

 felt. The pious composure in which he died, as evinced by the anec- 

 dote of his parting interview with the young nobleman, his stepson, 

 first told by Dr. Young in his ' Conjectures on Original Composition,' 

 published in 1759, though previously alluded to by Ticket! in his 

 Elegy on Addison is known to most readers. Dr. Young's words 

 are : " After a long and manly bat vain struggle with his distemper, 

 he dismissed his physicians, and with them all hopes of life. But with 

 his hopes of life he dismissed not his concern for the living, but sent 

 for a youth nearly related, and finely accomplished, but not above 

 being the better for good impressions from a dying friend. He came ; 

 but, life now glimmering in the socket, the dying friend was silent : 

 after a decent and proper pause, the youth said, ' Dear .Sir, you sent 

 for me ; I believe and hope that you have some commands : I shall 

 hold them most sacred.' May distant ages not only hear but feel the 

 reply. Forcibly grasping the youth's hand, he softly said, 'See in 

 what peace a Christian can die.' He spoke with difficulty, and soon 

 expired." Lord Warwick did not long survive his step-father. 



Addison's writings present something of the same struggle of opposite 

 principles or tendencies which we find in his character as a man, re- 

 sulting likewise in the same general effect, of the absence of everything 

 offensive combined with some qualities of high, but none perhaps of 

 the highest excellence. Notwithstanding all the hesitation and em- 

 barrassment he is said to have shown on some occasions in the 

 performance of his official duties, so that a common clerk would have 

 to be called in to draw up a dispatch which could not wait for his 

 more scrupulous selection of phraseology, he usually wrote easily and 

 rapidly. " When he had taken his resolution," Steele h.-n told us, 

 "or made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk 

 about a room and dictate it into language with as much freedom and 

 ease as any one could write it down, and attend to the coherence and 

 grammar of what he dictated." (Preface to ' The Drummer.') Pope 

 told Spence however that, though he wrote very fluently, " he was 

 sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting." " He would show 

 his verses," said Pope, " to several friends, and would alter almost 

 everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be 

 too diffident of himself, and too much concerned about hi* character as 

 a poet; or, as he worded it, ' too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, 

 Clod knows, is but a very little matter after nit' " ('Anecdotes,' p. 49.) 



The literary greatness of Addison in the estimation of his contempo- 

 raries probably stood upon somewhat different grounds from those 

 upon which it a now usually placed. In his own day he was looked 

 upon as a dramatist and a poet of a very high order ; and appears to 

 have been not so much admired for anything else an for being the 

 author of ' Cato.' That stately but frigid tragedy has long ceased to 

 give the same pleasure, by its sonorous declamation and well-expressed 

 common-places, which it seems to have afforded to our ancestors. The 

 taste which then prevailed in poetry was the most artificial which has 

 distinguished any age of English literature. The quality which chiefly 

 drew admiration was a cold and monotonous polish the warmth of 

 genuine nature was accounted rudeness and barbarism. The return 

 of the public mind to truer principles of judgment in such matters 

 has been fatal both to the dramatic and to the poetical fame generally 

 of Addison ; and although his verses are still read with pleasure as 

 the productions of an elegant and accomplished mind, they are not 

 felt to possess any high degree of that power which we now look for 

 in poetry. His glory is now that of one of our greatest writers in 

 prose. Here, with his delicate sense of propriety, his lively fancy, 

 and above all, his most original and exquisite humour, he was iu his 

 proper walk. He is the founder of a new school of popular writing ; 

 in which, like most other founders of schools, he is still unsurpassed 

 by any who iave attempted to imitate him. His ' Tatlers,' ' Specta- 

 tors,' and ' Guardians,' gave us the first examples of a style possessing 

 all the best qualities of a vehicle of general amusement and instruc- 

 tion ; easy and familiar without coarseness, animated without extra- 

 vagance, poliahed without unnatural labour, and from its flexibility 

 adapted to all the varieties of the gay and the serious. 



(liiographia Jiritanntca ; Life by Johnson; Spence's Anccdotet ; 

 Work, by Tickell.) 



ADELUNG, JOHANN CHKISTOPH, grammarian and universal 

 linguist, was born at Spantekon, a village near Auklam in Pomerania, 

 on the 8th of August, 1732. He received his first education at the 

 town school of Anklam, and at Kloster-Berge, near Magdeburg ; and 

 afterwards visited the university of Halle. In 1751) he was appointed 

 profejBor in the evangelical gymnasium at Erfurt : but he held this 

 situation only till 1701, when, in consequence of a dispute with the 



Catholic town-magistrates about a point of difference in religion, he 

 found himself under the necessity of leaving Erfurt. Adelung now 

 went to Leipzig, where he continued to reside till 1787. He supported 

 himself by literary labours, and chiefly by translations of valuable 

 works of foreign literature. The number of volumes which he thus 

 prepared for the press and many of which he enriched with extensive 

 additions of his own, is surprisingly great. The works by which ho 

 is best known iu this country, are ' Deutsche Sprachlehre fur Schulen," 

 Berlin, 1781, 8vo., and ' Umstiiudliches Lehrgebiiude der Deutscheu 

 Sprache,' Leipzig, 1782, 2 vols. Svo., &c. In 1787 Adeluug was called 

 to Dresden, and appointed principal librarian to the electoral library 

 there. Adelung died on the 10th of September, 1S06. 



ADOLPHUS, JOHN, was born in 1770 and died July 17, 1845. 

 Mr. Adolphus was a barrister of high standing in the criminal courts, 

 and at his decease was father of the Old Bailey bar. He was a keen 

 advocate, a fluent speaker, and a good lawyer. His practice, previously 

 very considerable, was highly increased by the manner in which he 

 distinguished himself as leading counsel for Thistlewood and the other 

 prisoners charged with a treasonable conspiracy in 1820, though he 

 was retained on their behalf only a few hours before the trial. As a 

 literary man Mr. Adolphus is best known as the author of the 

 ' History of England from the Accession of George III.,' originally 

 published in 3 volumes in 1805, but which he subsequently revised 

 and greatly extended. Of this enlarged edition the seventh volume 

 appeared just before his death, but it left the work unfinished, and 

 the conclusion has not been published. It is a work of considerable 

 research and very carefully executed, but it does not exhibit very high 

 historical powers. He was also the "author of 'Biographical Memoirs 

 of the French Kevolution;' ' Political State of the British Empire,' 

 4 vols., 1818 ; 'Memoirs of John Bannister' ; and some fugitive piecea 

 and pamphlets. 



ADONIS, the name of a personage of considerable importance iu 

 Pagan mythology, of whose story the following is a brief sketch : 

 Adonis, son of Myrrha, daughter of Cinyras, king of Cyprus, was 

 born in Arabia, whither his mother had fled iu consequence of cer- 

 tain transactions which it is not necessary to relate. Before the 

 birth of her sou she was transformed into a tree which produces 

 the fragrant gum called by her name ; this however did not hin- 

 der his being brought into the world in due season ; he grew up a 

 model of manly beauty, and was passionately beloved by Aphrodite 

 (Venus), who quitted Olympus to dwell with him. Hunting was his 

 favourite pursuit, until, haviug gone to the chase against the entreaties 

 of his mistress, he was mortally wounded iu the thigh by a wild boar. 

 After death he was said to stand as high in the favour of Persephone 

 (Proserpine) as before in that of Aphrodite ; but the latter being incon- 

 solable, her rival generously consented that Adouis should spend half 

 the year with his celestial, half with his infernal mistress. The fable 

 has been variously interpreted. One explanation makes the alternate 

 abode of Adonis above and under the earth, typical of the burial of 

 seed, which in due season rises above the ground for the propagation 

 of its species ; another, of the annual passage of the sun from the 

 northern to the southern hemisphere. In the time of Pausanias, in the 

 2nd century of our era, there existed an ancient temple of Adonis 

 and Aphrodite, at Amathus, iu Cyprus. 



The story of Adonis appears to have been introduced into Greece 

 from Syria. According to Pausanias, Sappho sung of Adonis ; and 

 his name, with allusion to his rites, occurs in a fragment of Alctous. 

 But it is by the Greek poets of later date, Theocritus and Bion, and 

 their Latin imitators, Ovid and others, that his story has been expanded, 

 and invested with the elegance which is the peculiar character of 

 Grecian mythology. The Adonia are mentioned by Aristophanes 

 among the Athenian festivals, and this is, we believe, the earliest 

 mention of them, except some notice in the poems attributed to 

 Orpheus (the epoch of which is however too doubtful to be received 

 as authority), and the songs attributed to Sappho and Alescus. The 

 rites began with mourning for the death of Adonis (thus Ezekiel, 

 viii. 13, " He brought me to the door of the Lord's house . . . and 

 behold, there sat women weeping for Thammuz") ; then changed into 

 rejoicing for his return to life and to Aphrodite ; and concluded with 

 a procession, in which the images of Adonis and Aphrodite were car- 

 ried, with rich offerings, in separate couches ; after which the former 

 appears to have been thrown into the sea. (See Theocritus, ' Idyll.' xv.) 

 In the time of Pausanias, the women of Argos, in the Peloponnesus, 

 lamented Adonis. 



In Syria we know the worship of Adonis (if, according to tho 

 received notion, he be the same personage as Thamrauz) to be probably 

 of much older date. We know, from the passage in Ezekiel already 

 quoted, that the adoration of the latter was one of the abominations 

 of Judah six centuries before Christ Whatever resemblance there 

 may have been between the early Syrian and Grecian rite,', the former 

 were far more deeply polluted by the atrocities of a brutish supersti- 

 tion, to which the natives of Syria were unusually prone. 



Adonit (Nahfrel-Ibrahiin) is also the ancient name of a river iu 

 Syria, which rises iu the mountains of Lebanon. Byblos, a town near 

 the river Adonis, was one of the chief seats of the worship above 

 mentioned, which was intimately connected with a peculiarity incident 

 to the river. Its waters, at a certain period of tho year, assume a 

 deep red, and were said to be discoloured by the blood of Adouis. 



