In his twenty-second year he first showed his power of English
poetry by some verses addressed to Dryden; and soon after published
a translation of the greater part of the Fourth Georgic upon Bees;
after which, says Dryden, "my latter swarm is scarcely worth the
hiving." About the same time he composed the arguments prefixed to
the several books of Dryden's Virgil; and produced an Essay on the
Georgics, juvenile, superficial, and uninstructive, without much
either of the scholar's learning or the critic's penetration. His
next paper of verses contained a character of the principal English
poets, inscribed to Henry Sacheverell, who was then, if not a poet,
a writer of verses; as is shown by his version of a small part of
Virgil's Georgics, published in the Miscellanies; and a Latin
encomium on Queen Mary, in the "Musae Anglicanae." These verses
exhibit all the fondness of friendship; but, on one side or the
other, friendship was afterwards too weak for the malignity of
faction. In this poem is a very confident and discriminate
character of Spenser, whose work he had then never read; so little
sometimes is criticism the effect of judgment. It is necessary to
inform the reader that about this time he was introduced by Congreve
to Montague, then Chancellor of the Exchequer: Addison was then
learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Montague as a
poetical name to those of Cowley and of Dryden. By the influence of
Mr. Montague, concurring, according to Tickell, with his natural
modesty, he was diverted from his original design of entering into
holy orders. Montague alleged the corruption of men who engaged in
civil employments without liberal education; and declared that,
though he was represented as an enemy to the Church, he would never
do it any injury but by withholding Addison from it.