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1721 Four Volume First Edition of the Works of Joseph Addison

Author of George Washington's Favorite Play "Cato" and collaborator with Richard Steele on the famous and influential "Spectator" and "Tatler"

This is the first collected edition of Addison's works. A great monument to English literature, published just two years after Addison"s death. Samuel Johnson, who greatly admired his writing, declared "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar, but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison. "For Jacob Tonson, London, published 1721. Hardcover 559, 583, 624, 594 pp. About  9"-11 1/2" tall. Original gilt tooled full leather bindings with five raised bands. Complete in four volumes. Illustrated with frontispiece (shown below) and four plates of medals to volume I and, decorative head and tail pieces and illuminated initials throughout the volumes. The bindings are tight and firm.

This work found its way into my library because of its relationship to the American founding through Addison's play Cato. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the relationship:

In 1712, Addison wrote his most famous work of fiction, a play entitled Cato, a Tragedy. Based on the last days of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, it deals with, inter alia, such themes as individual liberty vs. government tyranny, Republicanism vs. Monarchism, logic vs. emotion and Cato's personal struggle to cleave to his beliefs in the face of death.

The play was a success throughout England and her possessions in the New World, as well as Ireland. It continued to grow in popularity, especially in the American colonies, for several generations. Indeed, it was almost certainly a literary inspiration for the American Revolution, being well known to many of the Founding Fathers. In fact, George Washington had it performed for the Continental Army while they were encamped at Valley Forge.

Some scholars believe that the source of several famous quotations from the American Revolution came from, or were inspired by, Cato. These include:

  • Patrick Henry's famous ultimatum: "Give me Liberty or give me death!"
(Supposed reference to Act II, Scene 4: "It is not now time to talk of aught/But chains or conquest, liberty or death.").
  • Nathan Hale's valediction: "I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
(Supposed reference to Act IV, Scene 4: "What a pity it is/That we can die but once to serve our country.").
  • Washington's praise for Benedict Arnold in a letter to him: "It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more — you have deserved it."
(Clear reference to Act I, Scene 2: "'Tis not in mortals to command success; but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.").

Not long after the American Revolution, Edmund Burke quotes the play as well in his Letter to Charles-Jean-Francois Depont (1789) in Further Reflections on the Revolution in France: "The French may be yet to go through more transmigrations. They may pass, as one of our poets says, 'through many varieties of untried being,' before their state obtains its final form." The poet in reference is of course Addison and the passage Burke quoted is from Cato (V.i. II): "Through what variety of untried being,/Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!"

  

Price: $550

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