Servant or patron? Jacob Tonson and the language of deference and respect

Servant or patron? Jacob Tonson and thelanguage of deference and respect

Susan Fitzmaurice

Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

Abstract

The Kit Cat Club founded in 1700 by Jacob Tonson brought together young men of thenew professions, including poets, architects and journalists, with some of the most important

and influential men of the day. The latter were Whig politicians, many of them of noble birthand considerable fortunes. Jacob Tonson, club secretary and bookseller, advised his writerclients about whom to choose as dedicatees that might take more than a passing interest intheir careers beyond the life of the pen. As such, he was a key broker of patronage between

the ambitious young Whigs and patrons like Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax. The differencein rank and fortune between the Whig grandees and Tonson might be expected to be reflectedin the language of those writers in search of patronage. This essay demonstrates that despite

the fact that forms of address very clearly distinguished between the ranks of the patrons andthe broker, poets like Addison, Stepney and Congreve nevertheless accorded to Tonson thesame linguistic terms of politeness (in their modal language) that they employed to address

their patrons. Pragmatic analysis of their modal language reveals their linguistic acknowl-edgment of the very real position of power occupied by Tonson.# 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.All rights reserved.

Keywords: Early Modern English; English modals; Epistemic and deontic modality; Politeness; Discourse

analysis; Pragmatics

1. Introduction

‘Our club is dissolv’d. Will you revive it again which we are impatient off.’ Som-erset thus ended a letter to Jacob Tonson in June 1703.1 He was referring to the clubof politicians (not least among them the aforementioned Charles Seymour, sixthduke of Somerset) and the poets who wooed them in order to gain patrons, and

Language Sciences 24 (2002) 247–260

www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci

0388-0001/01/$ - see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

PI I : S0388-0001(01 )00032 -8

E-mail address: [email protected] Postscript of autograph letter [Folger MS C.c. 1 (42)], from Charles Seymour, Sixth Duke of Som-

erset to Jacob Tonson. 22 June 1703.

through their patronage, government sinecures. The Kit Cat Cub was clearly notsolely a society that accommodated extramural literary interests of professional andpolitical men; it was powerfully ideological, to the extent that it has been called ‘theWhig Party in its social aspect’.2 As founder and secretary, Tonson was a ‘key figurenot simply in his role as leading bookseller, but as the holder of important govern-ment printing contracts’ (Griffin, 1996, p. 47). As such, he was in a good position toidentify talent both for his own use and for that of the Whig ministers, and to matchWhig patrons and suitable clients. Thus Jacob Tonson was instrumental in bringingtogether some of the most influential, powerful Whig politicians of the time withsome of the most promising, talented writers in London, thereby acting as a brokerof patronage.Patronage is a system defined by its own regime of practices; the tyranny of

patronage is the client’s reliance upon the would-be patron’s inclination to favour theclient and to dispense preferment in consequence. It is not a system in which clientsand patrons can expect to share the same rights, expectations and obligations. How-ever, as Griffin (1996) has pointed out at length, literary patronage is a complexexchange of benefit to both client and patron. Clients stand to win employment andmaterial advancement in the form of houses, money and subscriptions to books, butalso less tangible goods, such as the authority conferred upon a poet’s voice by thesanction and appreciation of a man qualified by birth to be a judge of literary merit.The benefits that patrons accrue may be less obviously substantial, but still impor-tant. Acting as a patron of clients anxious for approval, encouragement, and rewardconfirms the power and status that is at first attributed to the would-be patron bythe would-be client. So being recognized as a literary patron establishes the subjectas a man of sufficient taste and intelligence to be able to recognise poetic talent, butthis same recognition places upon the patron particular responsibilities and obliga-tions toward the client. In this system, the bookseller was the link between thepatron who might canvass his peers for subscriptions to an attractive work and thepoet anxious to have his work received as favourably and as widely as possible.Often, he would introduce poets to possible patrons, thus effectively acting as agatekeeper in the delicate and risky business of gaining and losing favour.In this essay, I examine some of the ways in which Tonson’s pivotal position was

viewed by the clients. The first section therefore offers a sociohistorical profile of thecoalition that was the Kit Cat club. This profile affords an analysis of the reasonsand motivations of politicians for cooperating with Tonson, and of the personalagendas that prompted young poets to seek membership of the club, and how thismembership benefited them. The second section compares the ways in which thewriters in search of patronage treat the patronage-broker with the ways in whichthey address the politicians and noblemen whose patronage they seek. I place thisanalysis in the context of formal and formulaic markers of politeness, distance anddeference that are encapsulated by forms of address.3 By the end of the seventeenth

2 William Sachse, Lord Somers, p. 190.3 For a fascinating case study of the use of formulae in the expression of epistolary friendship, see

Tieken-Boon van Ostade (1999).

248 S. Fitzmaurice / Language Sciences 24 (2002) 247–260

century, forms of address had routinized and simplified such that ‘Sir’ had become apreferred choice of address among the ranks of gentry and petty nobility (Raumolin-Brunberg, 1996). As Burke (2000, p. 33) comments, address forms belong to aregime of civility, a ‘repertoire of practices, consisting of gestures and words (spokenand written), including . . . formulaic phrases such as ‘‘please’’ or ‘‘yours sincerely’’,unspoken rules such as ‘‘don’t interrupt’’ and so on’. The address forms commonlyselected among this society of peers and writers therefore provide an index of a lar-ger cultural, historical setting of established social convention in terms of which toexamine matters of more subtle linguistic practices.My project therefore consists of the pragmatic analysis of politeness in the use of

modal auxiliaries in letters by the poet clients in the Kit Cat Club to Tonson on theone hand, and to the patrons on the other, in an effort to ascertain how they expresstheir sense of Tonson’s status within the group. By the end of the seventeenth century,the English modal verbs were still in the process of gathering increasingly general epis-temic and deontic subjective pragmatic force even though they had largely completedtheir grammatical categorization as modal auxiliaries (Traugott, 1972, 1989, 1990;Rissanen, 1999, p. 231–238). As I have recently demonstrated elsewhere, the modalsin this period provided a linguistic resource for the rhetorical expression of negativeand positive politeness, encapsulating a writer’s acknowledgment of social distanceas well as difference in status or rank from his or her addressee (Fitzmaurice, 2000b).Specifically, by the mid-seventeenth century as evidenced in the language of Mar-garet Cavendish (1664), modal auxiliaries like shall/should, will/would and may/mightcould be used to express deontic meanings of obligation and permission, andspeaker-centred epistemic meanings signaling the inference of necessity and possibi-lity as well as grammatical reference to future time. In addition, particular modalslike will/would, can and may/might in this period appear to assist in the pragmaticwork of enacting negative, face-regarding politeness on the one hand, and positivepoliteness on the other (Fitzmaurice, 2000b, p. 20). In this essay, I examine theextent to which this pragmatic work is conducted in the use of modals in the delicatebusiness of appealing to a patron and that of negotiating with one’s publisher. ThusI borrow Brown and Levinson’s (1987) terminology for the description of linguisticpoliteness as I offer a pragmatic analysis of how social distance and rank interact toinfluence peoples’ linguistic choices as they enter the system of literary and politicalpatronage. This part of my analysis examines the ways in which clients like JosephAddison use modal language in the face-work involved in appealing to grandpatrons like Halifax compared with the manner of his interaction with Tonson.

2. Tonson and the Kit Cat coalition

The Kit Cat Club was a complex network of strategic ties forged between poetsand poets, between Whig politicians both at the center and on the periphery of thegovernment power machine, and between poets and politicians. Far from being aclub to which all-comers were admitted for the free and easy exchange of conversationand information, the club was a carefully configured group of men who gathered

S. Fitzmaurice / Language Sciences 24 (2002) 247–260 249

together in order to advance their own interests, both personal and political. Icharacterize it as a coalition rather than a network of ties because they were con-tracted in the short term (the period 1700–1710) for specific purposes designed tohave benefits for their participants in the longer term. These ties were thereforesecured and nurtured strategically rather than by happenstance (Fitzmaurice,2000a). Jacob Tonson was the means by which young promising writers were intro-duced into the society of men who would otherwise be inaccessible by virtue of theirsuperior status and rank. Jacob Tonson was also the means by which powerful men,like Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, were able to recruit talented, intelligentyoung men as secretaries and tutors, and perhaps later as political factotums. Ofcourse, Tonson’s role as broker was not motivated by a selfless interest in the goodof the poets and politicians; by ensuring a reliable and enduring partnership betweenpowerful political and noble interests and talented, eager men, he also ensured thathe would be able to collect, regularly, the profits won by such a sponsorship. Byselecting possible clients for key patrons, he stood to gain by winning choice gov-ernment printing contracts; by acting as champion of the coming talent, he ensuredthat he was always in the best position to select those clients for new patrons. Con-sequently, Tonson was at the very center of the highly strategic networking thatmade up the Kit Cat Club.Let us begin with the patrons of the Kit Cat Club. As a group they were the top

Whigs of the post-Revolution ministries and themselves the beneficiaries of a com-plex patronage system led by Charles Sackville, Lord Dorset, whose tenure as LordChamberlain gave him the ‘Power to recommend Men of Desert to the Royalfavour’.4 One of Dorset’s ‘boys’ was Charles Montagu, later Earl of Halifax. In 1697Montagu became First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of theExchequer, sealing his financier’s reputation and influence as a founder of the Bankof England, and the brains behind the development of credit and the rise of the stockexchange. By 1700 Montagu was at the pinnacle of his career and in the enviableposition of being able to sponsor young men just as the elderly Whig statesman hadsponsored him. Another of Dorset’s ‘boys’ was Halifax’s brother, Sir James Mon-tagu, a lawyer who became Attorney-General in Anne’s reign. Perhaps one of themost imposing among the statesmen members was Lord John Somers, a lawyer whohad steered the Whig government through the Revolution and on into William’sreign as Lord Keeper, who was made Lord Chancellor in 1697. Because he was atthe head of government, much of the patronage he dispensed was not personal butroyal bounty (Griffin, 1996, p. 47). So when Addison dedicated his ‘Poem to HisMajesty’ to Somers in 1695, Somers rewarded him in the form of a governmentgrant to support his European Grand Tour. Other luminaries included James Stanhopewho first became Secretary of State under Anne, and then First Lord of the Treasuryin George I’s reign, and Henry Boyle, Lord Carleton, who was Secretary of Stateunder Anne.

4 Quoted from Halifax’s Poetical Works, by Griffin, p. 47. Among Lord Dorset’s ‘boys’ were Sir James

Montagu and his more famous brother, Charles Montagu, later Lord Halifax (Eves, 1939, p. 34).


Men like Halifax and Somers became patrons not solely on the basis of their age,professional status and public achievements, but also by virtue of their birth,breeding and fortune. These attributes imposed as a (moral) duty the obligation todispense patronage to those men they identified as their possible successors as wellas those whom they admired for their intellectual and literary gifts. Those who werenot patrons were clients in search of patronage. An example of a member of thisgroup is Matthew Prior, who was a school friend of Sir James Montagu, and literarycollaborator with Halifax in writing a parody of Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther,titled The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Despite this impressive association,Prior himself was the son of a joiner from East Dorset who made his way to Londonin search of betterment. Queen Anne noticed his unusually modest background for adiplomat in her service as she commented to Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, ‘I haveno objection to Mr Prior then [sic] what I mentioned in my last, for I always thoughtit very wrong to send people abroad of meane extraction’.5 This sort of observationensured that Prior himself remained a client all his life; his retirement to Down Hallin Essex in 1720 was made possible by a gift of £4000 from Robert Harley for its pur-chase (Eves, 1939, p. 394). George Stepney is an example of a quite different brand ofclient. Also a friend of Charles Montagu since their school-days at Westminster, hisfamily were landowners in the petty aristocracy; originating in Pembrokeshire,though his father was groom of the chamber to Charles II, and his mother was eldestdaughter and heiress of an Essex knight. His diplomatic career was launched withthe help of Halifax, and he spent most of his professional life abroad, in Germany,Austria and Belgium, retiring to London very shortly before his death in 1707.The Montagu connection may have cemented Stepney’s and Prior’s positions in

the Club but the latter were also poets and thus business associates and clients oftheir publisher, Jacob Tonson. Indeed, it is as bookseller and publisher that Tonsonfirst encountered most of the writers that he would subsequently introduce to theClub in his capacity as its secretary. Among the writers that Tonson cultivated firstas publisher and then as club secretary were Joseph Addison (the subject of Somer-set’s letter to Tonson), and the playwright William Congreve. However, it appearsthat Addison and Congreve did not apply to Tonson directly. Instead, their workcame to Tonson’s notice by way of established poets like John Dryden, whoseOxford connections and literary status ensured a steady stream of dedications andcompliments from young poets. For example, in 1693, Addison wrote an address tothe erstwhile Poet Laureate which complimented the old poet’s translations of Virgiland Juvenal (Smithers, 1968, p. 21). This effort was rewarded by publication in avolume edited by Dryden himself, and by recognition that he was an excellent likelycontributor to Dryden’s plan to publish a series of translations of Ovid. Thus by1694, Addison was corresponding with Tonson about the translations, and his partici-pation in the venture brought him into Tonson’s stable. Dryden was also instrumentalin ensuring that Congreve would succeed him as the new age’s foremost playwright.

5 Letter from Queen Anne to the Earl of Oxford, 11 November 1711. This letter alluded to Oxford’s

recommendation to send Prior to Paris as a negotiator in the Barrier Treaty. HMC, Calendar of the

Manuscripts of the Marquis of Bath. Vol 1. London 1904, p. 217.


In 1692 he read the manuscript of Congreve’s first play, The Old Batchelor, and‘sayd he never saw such a first play in his life, but the Author not being acquaintedwith the stage or the town, it would be pity to have it miscarry for want of a littleAssistance’ (Winn, 1987, p. 461). Dryden made some adjustments accordingly andthe comedy had its first successful run in the spring of 1693.6

Dryden’s own reputation and standing also benefited Jacob Tonson himself.Tonson’s own social rank and background hardly qualified him as a social equal ofthe grand patrons whom he approached for subscriptions for his books and whosenames he suggested to young writers as possible dedicatees. Dryden’s editorship ofthe first volume of Miscellany Poems in 1684 helped fix Tonson’s position as Lon-don’s foremost literary bookseller. The contributors to that volume included ‘OldWestminsters and Trinity men’, namely the Montagus, Stepney and Prior, and soDryden did Tonson a considerable service by providing a conduit to those he wouldlater cultivate in the Club (Winn, 1987, p. 388). In the last decade of the seventeenthcentury, the increasingly formidable partnership of Tonson and Dryden was instru-mental in providing ample publishing opportunities for men like Addison andStepney. In 1693, 1694, and again in 1703 and 1708, after Dryden’s death, Tonsonpublished further volumes of ‘Miscellany Poems’. The legacy of his partnership withDryden was underlined by the fact that this collection of volumes is referred tointerchangeably as Dryden’s or Tonson’s Miscellany. Dryden’s own status with respectto Tonson on the one hand and the Whig coalition of poets and political grandees wasequivocal. Unlike Halifax and Somers and his literary enemy Shadwell, Dryden was aJacobite who found himself on the wrong, losing, side in the Glorious Revolutionthat deposed James II in 1688. The consequence was that he was stripped of his postas Poet Laureate in 1688, with the material consequence that his patrons desertedhim and he had to rely suddenly and unexpectedly very much on his bookseller tohelp him make ends meet. The two men had depended upon one another for theirsuccess, but their relationship was complicated; Dryden rarely acknowledged hisfinancial dependence upon Tonson’s willingness to publish his work, and Tonsonrarely reminded him of this uncomfortable fact. 1700 marked a turning point: thiswas the year in which Dryden died and Tonson founded the Kit Cat Club.

3. Servant or patron? Tonson amidst the poets

The question is, despite Tonson’s key strategic position in the Kit Cat Club asbroker, did those seeking patronage afford him the same kind of respect and defer-ence that they showed to the men they sought as patrons? A quick examination ofthe manipulation of forms of address and closing formulae in their letters sheds littlelight on the matter. Without exception, Addison addresses Halifax and Somers as

6 Congreve’s dedication of Dryden’s posthumously published Dramatic Works to Thomas Pelham,

Duke of Newcastle, is ample testimony to the poet, by this ‘Darling and last comfort of his years’, ‘The

natural successor of his mind’, as Thomas Southerne characterized Congreve in a commendatory poem

published with The Old Batchelor (Winn, 1987, p. 461).


‘My Lord’, and Tonson (and Dryden for that matter) as ‘Sir’. Congreve and Stepneyfollow suit. The real answer to the question posed above lies in an examination of thelanguage of deference and respect deployed by individuals to Tonson on the one handand to the Whig grandees on the other. In this section I first provide an overview ofthe modal choices exercised by Addison, Congreve, and Stepney in letters to Tonson,and to Halifax. I then consider in illustrative detail the ways in which one of these wri-ters, namely Addison, use modal verbs to express attitudes of deference and respect.I examined an electronic corpus consisting of the correspondences of George

Stepney (19,590 words), Joseph Addison (50,791 words) and William Congreve(26,382 words) to gain a sense of their general use of modal auxiliary verbs in theirepistolary prose.7 Fig. 1 presents this picture as normed frequencies per 1000 words,and provides the background against which to study the poets’ use of modals inletters to Tonson on the one hand and to Halifax on the other. In general, the threepoets exhibit similar patterns and frequencies of use with respect to the modal aux-iliary verbs. Some points to observe are that Stepney appears to use may, shall andshould more frequently than Congreve and Addison, but that he uses would, couldand must less frequently than they do.Comparison of the poets’ approaches to Halifax and Tonson respectively (Figs. 2

and 3), demonstrates that they use fewer modals overall in their correspondence withHalifax than with Tonson. In particular, Addison and Stepney tend to use modalsmore frequently to address Tonson than Halifax but they appear to prefer some

Fig. 1. Overall epistolary use of modals.

7 I am grateful to Sinthya Solera, Jeanne Arete, and Chandrika Balasubramanian for their work in

preparing the corpus for analysis.


modals more than others for this purpose. For example, although both poets use willmore frequently, they differ with respect to the way in which they use this modal.Addison tends to use will in the first person most often, whereas Congreve andStepney tend to use will in the third person instead. Stepney uses may more fre-quently than either Congreve or Addison, and he tends to use it in second and thirdperson. Manipulating these data to illustrate the ways in which individual poetsaddress the bookseller and the patron provides a different perspective on their lin-guistic habits. Figs. 4, 5 and 6 illustrate the overall modal choice exhibited byAddison, Stepney and Congreve, respectively, compared with their use to Halifax

Fig. 3. Poets to Tonson.

Fig. 2. Poets to Halifax.


and Tonson. Addison’s modal treatment of the patron and the broker does notcontrast with his overall epistolary use of modals except for his preference of willand the more distancing would for addressing Tonson. Similarly, Stepney’s modaltreatment of the two addressees does not vary except with respect to his use of may,which he appears to prefer for his correspondence with Tonson. Congreve’s beha-viour to the two addressees does not vary markedly; despite the fact that he appearsto use should four times as frequently to Tonson as to Halifax, the actual rate of useis too low for this to amount to a real contrast.

Fig. 5. Stepney’s modal choice.

Fig. 4. Addison’s modal choice.


The problem with the picture offered by frequency counts is that it cannot conveya sense of how the modals are being used. If there is anything that might be inferredfrom the patterns exhibited in the normed frequency counts, it is that the poets donot appear to treat the patron and the bookseller very differently. However, in orderto examine properly what the poets’ modal choice might mean with respect to theways in which they approach Tonson on the one hand and Halifax on the other, Ioffer a pragmatic reading of selected letters. Space prohibits close pragmatic analysisof more than a few texts, so I end with two brief letters from Addison: one to Ton-son and one to Halifax (full texts appear in the Appendix).In May 1703 Addison and Tonson were in both in Holland, Addison still on his

tour of Europe, and Tonson on a business trip to buy paper and to secure engrav-ings for Clark’s Caesar, a project not complete until 1712. Addison’s letter openswithout much ceremony, but with evident purpose. He immediately offers a dutifulreport on his activities on Tonson’s behalf before turning to a plan to meet Tonsonin Amsterdam—the real purpose of his letter. He closes with further information:this additional report seems to suggest that he has been hard at work on Tonson’sbusiness interests and to intimate that Tonson is therefore in his debt. The structureof the letter then seems designed to convey to Tonson the degree to which Addisonis useful to him, and to persuade him to reward his efforts accordingly. And indeed,Addison’s biographer notes that at Addison’s meeting with Tonson, he is likely tohave shown the bookseller a draft of his Dialogues on Medals and to have discussedplans to publish his Travels in Italy (which actually came out in 1705; Smithers,1968, p. 82). What of Addison’s language? Despite its apparent directness and lackof elaborateness, it is shot through with markers of epistemic and deontic modalityand other stance markers that convey his concern to have Tonson pay seriousattention to him. Thus his excuse for not replying to Tonson sooner is framed in acounterfactual, not with would but with should: ‘I should have answerd your letter

Fig. 6. Congreve’s modal choice.


sooner’, and a subjunctive negative protasis, ‘had I not bin. . .’. The choice of thedeontic should accentuates the fact that he was prevented from carrying out thecourtesy of replying by circumstances beyond his control. However, the modal alonewould be insufficient to do the necessary work in attenuating the threat that hisexcuse poses to Tonson’s negative face; after all, the implication is that if Tonsonwere really important, Addison would have written to him regardless of the obstacles.In order to support his excuse, Addison offers recompense in the form of a promiseto travel to Tonson to meet him. The effort that the fulfillment of the promiserequires seems appropriate given the obligation that Addison implies he has towardsrepairing his relationship with Tonson. Thus the apparently tentative expression, ‘IfI can possibly’, is intended to convey to Tonson the extent to which Addison isprepared to work to effect such repair. To close, Addison provides further evidenceof his desire to serve Tonson.Addison’s letter to Halifax, written a year earlier in March of 1702 from Geneva,

is his first direct approach to Halifax. As such, it is intended as an extended com-pliment to a man whose support was sought by many young men.8 Addison under-takes this task with utmost formality and attention to the appropriateness of such anaddress to this older, more powerful man. The letter’s structure is balanced to allowits apparent ‘Impertinence’ to hover fleetingly before transforming it into a self-conscious gesture of ‘Respect’ and gratitude. The letter is different from that toTonson in that it conveys nothing beyond the writer’s desire to insinuate his pre-sence into the addressee’s mind. Addison argues that the fact that he has beeninformed that Halifax has inquired after him has placed him in debt to the would-bepatron, and that this perceived indebtedness now obliges him to inform his patron ofhis progress. The letter’s middle section is composed of two cola, each consisting ofa complex conditional sentence. Addison varies his syntactic organization of theconditional’s components. In the first sentence, Addison signals the concessive rela-tionship between the clauses with the initial positioning of the subordinator as.There is no overt signal of the apodosis (consequence clause), but the form (notfunction) of the subordinator is repeated in the relative as. To complete the circle,Addison uses the phrase ‘your Expectations’ to echo, both rhythmically and phoni-cally, ‘your Encouragement’:

As I first of all undertook my Travails by your Lordps Encouragement I haveendeavour’d to pursue ‘em in such a manner as might make me best answeryour Expectations: and tho I dare not boast of any great Improvements that Ihave made in ‘em I am sure there is nothing that I more desire than an oppor-tunity of showing my utmost Ability in your Lps service.

The conjunction and marks the start of the second—also concessive (‘tho’)—pairof clauses. By contrast with the focus on the addressee in the first pair, Addison nowdraws attention to his own (reflected) status. The self-deprecation (‘I dare notboast’) in the subordinate clause is juxtaposed with the writer’s emphatic and

8 For an extended analysis of Halifax’s relationship with Addison and Swift as patron, see Fitzmaurice (in

press).


somewhat obsequious assertion of desire to shine in his patron’s service (‘I am sur-e. . .my utmost Ability’). The final section rounds off the compliment. Here, Addisonplays self-consciously with the ambiguities in the kind of relationship he is busytrying to nurture to his own advantage: ‘Interest’ and ‘Inclination’. By stating theambiguity, the aspiring client removes himself from real culpability, and by declar-ing how well his travels are teaching him, any suspicion of the motive of mere (self)‘Interest’ disappears. The crown of the compliment is the delicate foregrounding ofthe ‘Extraordinary character’ of his patron:

I coud almost wish that it was less for my advantage than it is to be intirelydevoted to your Lordp that I might not seem to speak so much out of Interestas Inclination: for I must confess the more I see of Mankind the more I learn tovalue an Extraordinary character, wch makes me more ambitious than ever ofshowing myself,. . .

The almost circular structure of this elaborate compliment to Halifax allowsAddison to present himself in the best possible light; because the patron is a greatman, his protege may be certain that he himself is of no little worth. This compli-ment is wrought by the careful combination of tentativeness via the collocation ofdeontic modals and epistemic verbs (‘I coud almost wish’) together with the self-conscious double acknowledgment of the distance in power and status between thecomplimenter and his object via the collocation of epistemic modal and verb (‘Imight not seem to speak’).By contrast with his letter to Tonson, this letter to Halifax is marked by elaborate,

possibly excessively polite circumlocution but it is arguably no more respectful ineffect thereby. Indeed, Addison had early on calculated the material nature of thebenefits that were likely to accrue from his relationship with Tonson, namely, pub-lication of occasional poems in important volumes associated with important lit-erary men (like Dryden), to which very important political men like Lord JohnSomers and Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax were also occasional contributors.Once established as a contributor who could be relied upon to provide copy forvarious projects, he was likely to (and in fact did) become one of Tonson’s authors.This status carried with it the ability to negotiate good rates of subscription for dif-ferent volumes, and the assurance that the bookseller would reward him financiallyfor contacts made both with younger poets (like Philip Ambrose) and with likelysubscribers through his contacts with his patrons. By contrast, when Addison wrotehis first letter to Halifax, he could have little clear idea of the specific nature of thefavours that Halifax’s patronage would bring. In fact, in the end Addison dependedless on Halifax than on patrons like Somers for his career as a top civil servant.

4. Concluding remarks

The analysis of the frequency with which the poets adopt modal verbs in theirepistolary approaches to Halifax on the one hand and to Jacob Tonson on the other


indicate no more than a tendency to use fewer modals to Halifax than to Tonson.This result might seem to invite the inference that the letters to Tonson are moremodal, with more markers of epistemic and deontic modality, and thus more clearlymarked in their stance than those to Halifax. In fact, the close analysis of Addison’sletters to Tonson and Halifax respectively reveals, not a difference in the respect shownto each, but a difference in the way in which this respect is encoded. Specifically,Addison is considerably more direct in his approach to Tonson, but he is no lessrespectful in expressing his indebtedness to the bookseller. In contrast, he deployselaborately circuitous language in his address to Halifax as he expresses his deferentialattitude to the would-be patron. Thus, far from treating Tonson as a an equal orindeed as an inferior, Addison acknowledges Tonson’s importance and material status.

Appendix

Addison to Jacob Tonson [Leiden, May 1703]Sir,I have shown your letter to Mr. Conningham. He will speak to the bookseller

about ye Tableaus des Muses, but can’t possibly meet at Leiden so soon as youmention, expecting a letter by evry post from England. I should have answerd yourletter sooner had I not bin two days at Rotterdam, whence I returnd yesterday wth

Colonel Stanhope, whom I found unexpectedly at Pennington’s. If I can possibly, Ilecome and see you to-morrow at Amsterdam for a day. As I dined with my Ld Cuttst’other day, I talk’t of your Caesar, and let him know yt two German generals hadsubscribed. He ask’t me who had ye taking of the subscriptions, and told me hebeliev’d he could assist you if they were not full,

I am, Sir,Yor very humble servant,J. Addison

Address: To Mr. Tonson, at Mr. Moor’s, the English House near the Fish-Mar-ket, Amsterdam.Source: Walter Graham, ed., Letters of Joseph Addison, pp. 39–40.Joseph Addison to Halifax [Geneva, March. 1701/1702]

My Lord,I have for a long time denyd my-self the Honour of writing to your Lordship as

knowing you have bin so taken up with matters of greater importance that anyInformation I could give you of forreign curiosities would have seemed Impertinent:but having lately heard that I am still kindly remembered by your Lordship I couldnot forbear troubling you with a Letter lest what I design for Respect shoud looktoo much like Ingratitude. As I first of all undertook my Travails by your LordshipsEncouragement I have endeavoured to pursue, em in such a manner as might makeme best answer your Expectations: and tho I dare not boast of any great Improve-ments that I have made in ‘em I am sure there is nothing that I more desire than an


opportunity of showing my utmost Ability in your Lordship’s service. I couldalmost wish that it was less for my advantage than it is to be entirely devoted to yourLordship that I might not seem to speak so much out of Interest as Inclination: for Imust confess the more I see of Mankind the more I learn to value an Extraordinarycharacter, which makes me more ambitious than ever of showing myself, my Ld

Yor Lps etc

Source: Graham, pp. 32–33.

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Documents

Servant or patron? Jacob Tonson and the language of deference and respect