Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Dialogues Upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals

1726

"Their proper country, says Philander, is the breast of a good man: for I think they are most of them the figures of Virtues."

SOME of the finest treatises of the most polite Latin and Greek writers are in Dialogue, as many very valued pieces of French, Italian, and English appear in the same dress. I have sometimes however been very much distasted at this way of writing, by reason of the long Prefaces and exordiums into which it often betrays an author. There is so much time taken up in ceremony, that before they enter on their subject the Dialogue is half ended. To avoid the fault I have found in others, I shall not trouble my self nor my Reader with the first salutes of our three friends, nor with any part of their discourse over the Tea-table. We will suppose the China dishes taken off, and a Drawer of Medals supplying their room. Philander, who is to be the Heroe in my Dialogue, takes it in his hand, and addressing himself to Cynthio and Eugenius, I will first of all, says he, show you an assembly of the most virtuous Ladies that you have ever perhaps conversed with. I do not know, says Cynthio, regarding them, what their virtue may be, but methinks they are a little fantastical in their dress. You will find, says Philander, there is good sense in it. They have not a single ornament that they cannot give a reason for. I was going to ask you, says Eugenius, in what country you find these Ladies. But I see they are some of those imaginary persons you told us of last night that inhabit old Coins, and appear no where else but on the reverse of a Medal. Their proper country, says Philander, is the breast of a good man: for I think they are most of them the figures of Virtues. It is a great compliment methinks to the sex, says Cynthio, that your Virtues are generally shown in petticoats. I can give no other reason for it, says Philander, but because they chanced to be of the feminine gender in the learned languages.* You find however something bold and masculine in the air and posture of the first figure, which is that of Virtue her self, and agrees very well with the description we find of her in Silius Italicus.
(pp. 35-6)

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Reading Alvarez, David. "'Poetical Cash': Joseph Addison, Antiquarianism, and Aesthetic Value." Eighteenth-Century Studies 38.3 (2005): p. 519.

At least 9 entries in ESTC (1726, 1736, 1746, 1751, 1753, 1754).

See Dialogues Upon the Usefulness of Ancient Medals: Especially in Relation to the Latin and Greek Poets. ([London?]: Printed in the Year, 1726. <Link to ECCO-TCP>

See also Miscellaneous Works, in Verse and Prose, of the Late Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq; in Three Volumes. Consisting of Such As Were Never Before Printed in Twelves. With Some Account of the Life and Writings of the Author, by Mr. Tickell. (London: Printed for Jacob Tonson in the Strand, 1726). <Link to ESTC>

Reading in vol. II of The Works of Joseph Addison, ed. George Washington Greene. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1888), 1-130.

05/26/2005