poet." Unfortunately, however, for his judgment, it is notorious that he
slighted Shakspeare, Milton, and Corneille, and that, next to Homer and
Virgil, his great idols were Arnaud and Racine.

In December 1700, tired of French manners, which had lost even their
power of moving him to smiles, and it may be apprehensive of the war
connected with the Spanish succession, which was about to inflame all
Europe, Addison embarked from Marseilles for Italy. After a narrow escape
from one of those sudden Mediterranean storms, in which poor Shelley
perished, he landed at Savona, and proceeded, through wild mountain
paths, to Genoa. He afterwards commemorated his deliverance in the
pleasing lines published in the _Spectator_, beginning with--

"How are Thy servants blest, O Lord,"

one verse in which was wont to awaken the enthusiasm of the boy Burns,

"What though in dreadful whirls we hung,
High on the broken wave," &c.

The survivor of a shipwreck is, or should be, ever afterwards a sadder
and a wiser man. And Addison continued long to feel subdued and thankful,
and could hardly have been more so though he had outlived _that_
shipwreck which bears now the relation to all recent wrecks which
"_the_ storm" of November 1703, as we shall see, bore to all inferior
tempests--the loss of the _Royal Charter_,--the stately and gold-laden
bark, which, on Wednesday the 26th October 1859, when on the verge of the
haven which the passengers so much desired to see, was lifted up by
the blast as by the hand of God, and dashed into ten thousand
pieces,--hundreds of men, women, and, alas! alas! children, drowned,