The Works of Joseph Addison (Volume 4); Including the Whole Contents of BP. Hurd's Edition, with Letters and Other Pieces Not Found in Any Previous Collection and Macaulay's Essay on His Life and Works (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: she was exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and discovered many symptoms of health or sickness. Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were piled upon one another so high, that they touched the ceiling. The floor, on her right hand and on her left, was covered with vast sums of gold that rose up in pyramids on cither side of her: but this I did not so much wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed of; and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that precious metal. After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the doors flew open, and there entered a half a dozen of the most hideous phantoms that I had ever seen (even in a dream) before that time. They came in two by two, though matched in the most dissociable manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be tedious to describe their habits and persons, for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that the first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and Atheism; the third, the genius of a commonwealth and a young man of about twenty-two years of age,1 whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of Settlement; and a citizen who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he saw a spunge in his left hand.2 The dance of so many jarring natures put me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the Rehearsal,3 that danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another. The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, 1 James Stuart; born June 10, 1688, brother of Queen Anne and claimant ...