The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Vol. 2 of 6: With the Exception of His Numbers of the Spectator (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

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Excerpt from The Works of the Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Vol. 2 of 6: With the Exception of His Numbers of the Spectator

Every nation is distinguished by productions that are peculiar to it. Great-britain is particularly fruit ful in religions, that shoot up and flourish in this cli mate more than in any other. We are so famous abroad for our great variety of sects and opinions, that an ingenious friend of mine, who is lately re turned from his travels, assures me, there is a show at this time carried up and down in Germany, which represents all the religions of great-britain in waxw work. Notwithstanding that the pliancy of the mat ter in which the images 'are wrought, makes it capa ble of being moulded into all shapes and figures, my friend tells me, that he did not think it possible for it to be twisted and tortured into so many screwed faces and wry features as appeared in several of the figures that composed the Show. I was, indeed, so pleased with the design of the German artist, that I begged my friend to give me an account of it in all its parti culars, which he did after the following manner.

I have often (says he) been present at a show of elephants, camels, dromedaries, and other strange creatures, but I never saw so great an assembly of spectators as were met together at the opening of this great piece of wax-work. We were all placed in a large hall, according to the price we had paid for our seats the curtain that hung before the show was made by a master of tapestry, who had wove it in the figure of a monstrous hydra, that had several heads, which brandished out their tongues, and seem ed to hiss at each other. Some of these heads were large and entire; and where any of them had been lopped away, there sprouted up several in the room of them; insomuch, that for one head cut off, a man might see ten, twenty, or an hundred of a smaller size, creeping through the wound. In short, the whole picture was nothing but confusion and blood shed. On a sudden (says my friend) I was startled with a flourish of many musical instruments that I had never heard before, which was followed by a short tune (if it might be so called) Wholly made up of jars and discords. Among the rest, there was an organ, a bagpipe, a groaning-board, a stentorophonic trum pet, with several wind-instruments of a most disa greeable Sound, which I do not so much as know the names of. After a short flourish, the curtain was drawn up, and we were presented with the most ex traordinary assemblage of figures that, ever entered into a man's imagination. The design of the work man was so well expressed in the dumb Show before us, that it was not hard for an Englishman to com prehend the meaning of it.

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