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ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS 
 
 EDITED BY VISCOUNT MORLEY 
 pOCftCt JEOUlon 
 
 ADDISON 
 
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON . BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
I 
 
 ENGLISH ^lEN OF LETrE%S 
 
 ADDISON 
 
 BY 
 
 W, J. COURTHOPE 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1919 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 First Edition 1884 
 
 Reprinted 1889, 1898, 1903 
 
 Pocket Edition 1909 
 
 ReJ>yinted 1916, 1919 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Thk State of English Society and Letters after the 
 
 Restoration 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Addison's Family and Education 22 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Addison on His Travels 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 His Employment in Affairs of State .... 55 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 The " Tatler " and " Spectator " .... 81 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 "Cato" 115 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Addiso>''s Quaekel with PorE 131 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Last Years of His Life 146 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Genius of Addison , 161 
 
 INDEX 193 
 
ADDISON 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE STATE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY AND LETTERS 
 AFTER THE RESTORATION. 
 
 Of the four English men of letters whose writings most 
 fully embody the spirit of the eighteenth century the one 
 who provides the biographer with the scantiest materials 
 is Addison. In his Journal to Stella, his social verses, 
 and his letters to his friends, we have a vivid picture of 
 those relations with women and that protracted suffering 
 which invest with such tragic interest the history of 
 S^A-ift. Pope, by the publication of his own correspond- 
 ence, has enabled us, in a way that he never intended, 
 to understand the strange moral twist which distorted a 
 nature by no means devoid of noble instincts. Johnson 
 was fortunate in the companionship of i>erhaps the best 
 biographer who ever lived. But of the real life and 
 character of Addison scarcely any contemporary record 
 remains. The formal narrative prefixed to his works by 
 Tickell is, by that writer's own admission, little more than 
 a bibliography. Steele, who might have told us more 
 than any man about his boyhood and his manner of life 
 in London, had become estranged from his old friend 
 (& B 
 
2 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 l:>efore, his death. No writer has taken the trouble to 
 preserve any account of the wit and wisdom that 
 enlivened the " little senate " at Button's. His own 
 letters are, as a rule, compositions as finished as his papers 
 in the Sjyedator. Those features in his character which 
 excite the greatest interest have been delineated by the 
 hand of an enemy — an enemy who possessed an unrivalled 
 power of satirical portrait-painting, and was restrained 
 by no regard for truth from creating in the public mind 
 such impressions about others as might serve to heighten 
 the favourable opinion of himself. 
 
 This absence of dramatic incident in Addison's life 
 would lead us naturally to conclude that he was deficient 
 in the energy and passion which cause a powerful nature 
 to leave a mark upon its age. Yet such a judgment 
 would certainly be erroneous. Shy and reserved as he 
 was, the unanimous verdict of his most illustrious con- 
 temporaries is decisive as to the respect and admiration 
 which he excited among them. The man who could 
 exert so potent an influence over the mercurial Steele ; 
 who could fascinate the haughty and cynical intellect of 
 Swift; whose conversation, by the admission of his 
 satirist Pope, had in it something more charming than 
 that of any other man; of whom it was said that he 
 might have been chosen king if he wished it ; such a 
 man, though to the coarse perception of Mandeville he 
 might have seemed no more than " a parson in a tye- 
 wig," can hardly have been deficient in force of character. 
 
 Nor would it have been possible for a writer distin- 
 guished by mere elegance and refinement to leave a 
 lasting impress on the literature and society of his 
 country. In one generation after another men, repre- 
 
I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 3 
 
 seuting opposing elements of rank, class, interest, and 
 taste, have agreed in acknowledging Addison's extra- 
 ordinary merits. "Whoever wishes," says Johnson — 
 at the end of a biography strongly coloured with the 
 prepossessions of a semi- Jacobite Tory — " whoever wishes 
 to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and 
 elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and 
 nights to the volumes of Addison." "Such a mark of 
 national respect," says Macaulay, the best representative 
 of middle-class opinion in the present century, speaking 
 of the statue erected to Addison in Westminster Abbey, 
 " was due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished 
 scholar, to the master of pure English eloquence, to the 
 consummate painter of life and manners. It was due, 
 above all, to the great satirist who alone knew how to 
 use ridicule without abusing it ; who, without inflicting 
 a wound, effected a great social reform, and who recon- 
 ciled wit and virtue, after a long and disastrous separa- 
 tion, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy 
 and ^'irtue by fanaticism." 
 
 This verdict of a great critic is accepted by an age to 
 which the grounds of it are perhaps not very apparent. 
 The author of any ideal creation — a poem, a drama, or 
 a novel — has an imprescriptible property in the fame of 
 his work. But to harmonise conflicting social elements, *■ 
 to bring order out of chaos in the sphere of criticism, 
 to form right ways of thinking about questions of 
 morals, taste, and breeding, are operations of which the 
 credit, though it is certainly to be ascribed to particular 
 individuals, is generally absorbed by society itself. 
 Macaulay's eulogy is as just as it is eloquent, but the 
 pages of the Spectator alone will hardly show the reader 
 
4 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 why Addison should be so highly praised for having 
 reconciled wit with virtue. Nor, looking at him as a 
 critic, will it appear a great achievement to have pointed 
 out to English society the beauties of Paradise Lost, 
 unless it be remembered that the taste of the preceding 
 generation still influenced Addison's contemporaries, and 
 that in that generation Cowley was accounted a greater 
 poet than Milton. 
 
 To estimate Addison at his real value we must regard 
 him as the chief architect of Public Opinion in the 
 eighteenth century. But here again we are met by an 
 initial difficulty, because it has become almost a com- 
 monplace of contemporary criticism to represent the 
 eighteenth century as a period of sheer destruction. It 
 is tacitly assumed by a school of distinguished philo- 
 sophical writers that we have arrived at a stage in the 
 world's history in which it is possible to take a positive 
 and scientific view of human affairs. As it is of course 
 necessary that from such a system all belief in the super- 
 natural shall be jealously excluded, it has not seemed 
 impossible to write the history of Thought itself in the 
 eighteenth century. And in tracing the course of this 
 supposed continuous stream it is natural that all the great 
 English writers of the period should be described as in 
 one way or another helping to pull do^vn, or vainly to 
 strengthen, the theological barriers erected by centuries 
 of bigotry against the irresistible tide of enlightened 
 progress. 
 
 It would be of course entirely out of place to discuss 
 here the merits of this new school of history. Those 
 who consider that, whatever glimpses we may obtain of 
 the law and order of the universe, man is, as he always 
 
r.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 6 
 
 has been and always will be, a mystery to himself, will 
 hardly allow that the operations of the human spirit can 
 be traced in the dissecting-room. But it is, in any case, 
 obvious that to treat the great imaginative writers of 
 any age as if they were only mechanical agents in an 
 evolution of thought is to do them grave injustice. 
 Such writers are above all things creative. Their first 
 aim is to " show the very age and body of the time his 
 form and pressure." No work of the eighteenth century, 
 composed in a consciously destructive spirit, has taken 
 its place among the acknowledged classics of the lan- 
 guage. Even the Tale of a Tub is to be regarded as a 
 satire upon the aberrations of theologians from right 
 reason, not upon the principles of Christianity itself. 
 The Essay on Man has, no doubt, logically a tendency 
 towards Deism, but nobody ever read the poem for the 
 sake of its philosophy ; and it is well known that Pope 
 was much alarmed when it was pointed out to him that 
 his conclusions might be represented as incompatible 
 ^Wth the doctrines of revealed religion. 
 
 The truth indeed seems to be the exact converse of 
 what is alleged by the scientific historians. So far from- 
 the eighteenth century in England being an age of des- 
 tructive analysis, its energies were chiefly devoted to 
 political, social, and literary reconstruction. ^^Tiatever 
 revolution in faith and manners the English nation had 
 undergone had been the work of the two preceding cen- 
 turies, and, though the historic foundations of society 
 remained untouched, the whole form of the superstructure 
 had been profoundly modified. 
 
 " So tenacious are we," said Burke towards the close of 
 the last century, " of our old ecclesiastical modes and fashions 
 
6 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 of institution that very little change has been made in them 
 since the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, adhering in this 
 particular as in all else to our old settled maxim never 
 entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity, "We found 
 these institutions on the whole favourable to morality and 
 discipline, and we thought they were susceptible of amend- 
 ment without altering the ground. "We thought they were 
 capable of receiving and meliorating and, above all, of pre- 
 serving the accessories of science and literature as the order 
 of Providence should successively produce them. And after 
 all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is 
 the groundwork), we may put in our claim to as ample and 
 early a share in all the improvements in science, in arts, 
 and in literature which have illuminated the modern world 
 as auy other nation in Europe. We think one main cause 
 of this improvement was our not despising the patrimony of 
 knowledge which was left us by our forefathers." 
 
 All this is, in substance, true of our political as well as 
 our ecclesiastical institutions. And yet, when Burke 
 WTOte, the great feudal and mediaeval structure of England 
 had been so transformed by the Wars of the Roses, the 
 Reformation, the Rebellion, and the Revolution, that its 
 ancient outlines w^ere barely visible. In so far, therefore, 
 as his words seem to imply that the social evolution he 
 describes was produced by an imperceptible and almost 
 mechanical process of national instinct, the impression 
 they tend to create is entirely erroneous. 
 
 If we have been hitherto saved from such corruption 
 as undermined the republics of Italy, from the religious 
 wars that so long enfeebled and divided Germany, and 
 from the Revolution that has severed modern France 
 from her ancient history, thanks for this are due partly no 
 doubt to favouring conditions of nature and society, but 
 quite as much to the genius of great individuals who pre- 
 pared the mind of the nation for the gradual assimila- 
 
i 
 
 I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 7 
 
 tion of new ideas. Thus Langlaiid and Wycliffe and 
 their numerous followers, long before the Reformation, 
 had so familiarised the minds of the people with their 
 ideas of the Christian religion that the Sovereign was 
 able to assume the Headship of the Church without the 
 shock of a social convulsion. Fresh feelings and instincts 
 grew up in the hearts of whole classes of the nation 
 without at first producing any change in outward 
 habits of life, and even without arousing a sense of their 
 logical incongruity. These mixed ideas were constantly 
 brought before the imagination in the works of the poets. 
 Shakespeare abounds with passages in which, side by 
 side with the old feudal, monarchical, catholic, and 
 patriotic instincts of Englishmen, we find the sentiments 
 of the Italian Renaissance. Spenser conveys Puritan 
 doctrines sometimes by the mouth of shepherds, whose 
 originals he had found in Theocritus and Virgil ; some- 
 times under allegorical forms derived from books of 
 chivalry and the ceremonial of the Catholic Church. 
 Milton, the most rigidly Calvinistic of all the English 
 poets in his opinions, is also the most severely classical 
 in his style. 
 
 It was the task of Addison to carry on the reconcil- 
 ing traditions of our literature. It is his praise to 
 have accomplished his task under conditions far more 
 difficult than any that his predecessors had experienced. 
 "What they had done was to give instinctive and character- 
 istic expression to the floating ideas of the society about 
 them ; what Addison and his contemporaries did was to 
 foimd a public opinion by a conscious effort of reason 
 and persuasion. Before the Civil Wars there had been 
 at least no visible breach in the principle of Authority 
 
8 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 in Church and State. At the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century constituted authority had been recently over- 
 thrown ; one king had been beheaded, another had been 
 expelled ; the Episcopalian form of Church Government 
 had been violently displaced in favour of the Presby- 
 terian, and had been \^dth almost equal violence restored. 
 Whole classes of the population had been drawn into 
 opposing camps during the Civil War, and still stood 
 confronting each other with all the harsh antagonism of 
 sentiment inherited from that conflict. Such a bare 
 summary alone is sufficient to indicate the nature of the 
 difficulties Addison had to encounter in his efforts to 
 harmonise public opinion ; but a more detailed examina- 
 tion of the state of society after the Eestoration is 
 required to place in its full light the extraordinary 
 merits of the success that he achieved. 
 
 There was, to begin Avith, a vehement opposition 
 between town and country. In the country the old 
 ideas of Feudalism, modified by circumstances, but 
 vigorous and deep-rooted, still prevailed. True, the 
 military system of land-tenure had disappeared ^Wth the 
 Restoration, but it was not so with the relations of life 
 and the habits of thought and feeling w^hich the system 
 had created. The featui-es of surviving Feudalism have 
 been inimitably preserved for us in the character of Sir 
 Roger de Coverley. Living in the patriarchal fashion, 
 in the midst of tenants and retainers, who looked up to 
 him as their chief, and for whose welfare and protection 
 he considered himself responsible, the country gentleman 
 valued above all things the principle of Loyalty. To 
 the monied classes in the towns he was instinctively 
 opposed ; he regarded their interests, both social and 
 
I.J LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 9 
 
 commercial, as contrary to liis own; he looked with 
 dislike and suspicion on the economical principles of 
 government and conduct on which these classes natur- 
 ally rely. Even the younger sons of county families had 
 in Addison's day abandoned the custom, common enough 
 in the feudal times, of seeking their fortune in trade. 
 Many a Will "Wimble now spent his whole life in the 
 country, training dogs for his neighbours, fishing their 
 streams, making whips for their young heirs, and even 
 garters for their wives and daughters.^ 
 
 The country gentlemen were confirmed in these 
 ideas by the difficulties of communication. During his 
 visit to Sir Eoger de Coverley the Spectator observed the 
 extreme slowness with which fashions penetrated into 
 the country ; and he noticed, too, that party spirit was 
 much more violent there than in the towns. The learn- 
 ing of the clergy, many of whom resided with the 
 country squires as chaplains, was of course enlisted on 
 the Tory side, and supplied it with arguments which 
 the body of the party might perhaps have found it diffi- 
 cult to discover, or at least to express, for themselves. 
 For Tory tastes undoubtedly lay generally rather in the 
 direction of sport than of books. Sir Eoger seems to be 
 as much above the average level of his class as Squire 
 \Yestern is certainly below it : perhaps the Tory fox- 
 hunter of the Freeholder^ though somewhat satirically 
 painted, is a fair representative of the society which 
 had its headquarters at the October Club, and whose 
 favourite poet was Tom D'Urfey. 
 
 The commercial and professional classes, from whom 
 the Whigs derived their chief support, of course 
 1 Spectator, No. 108. 
 
10 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 predominated in the towns, and their larger opportuni- 
 ties of association gave them an influence in affairs 
 which compensated for their inferiority in numbers. 
 They lacked, however, what the country party possessed, 
 a generous ideal of life. Though many of them were 
 connected with the Presbyterian system, their common 
 sense made them revolt from its rigidity, while at the 
 same time their economical principles failed to supply 
 them with any standard that could satisfy the imagina- 
 tion. Sir Andrew Freeport excites in us less interest 
 than any member of the Spectator's Club. There was 
 not yet constituted among the upper middle classes that 
 mixed conception of good feeling, good breeding, and 
 good taste which we now attach to the name of "gentle- 
 man." 
 
 Two main currents of opinion divided the country, to 
 one of which a man was obliged to surrender himself if he 
 wished to enjoy the pleasures of organised society. One 
 of these was Puritanism, but this was undoubtedly the 
 less popular, or at least the less fashionable. A pro- 
 tracted experience of Eoundhead tyranny under the 
 Long Parliament had inclined the nation to believe that 
 almost any form of Government was preferable to that 
 of the Saints. The Puritan, no longer the mere sectarian, 
 as in the days of Elizabeth and James I., somewhat 
 ridiculous in the extravagance of his opinions, but 
 respectable from the constancy with which he maintained 
 them, had ruled ever them as a taskmaster, and had 
 forced them, as far as he could by military violence, to 
 practise the asceticism to which monks and nuns had 
 voluntarily submitted themselves. The most innocent 
 as well as the most brutal diversions of the people were 
 
I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 11 
 
 sacrificed to his spiritual pride. As Macaulay well says, 
 he hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the 
 bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The 
 tendency of his creed was, in fact, anti-social. Beauty in 
 his eyes was a snare, and pleasure a sin ; the only mode 
 of social intercourse which he approved was a seimon. 
 
 On the other hand, the habits of the Court, which 
 gave the tone to all polite society, were almost equally 
 distasteful to the instincts of the people. It was 
 inevitable that the inclinations of Charles II. should be 
 violently opposed to every sentiment of the Puritans. 
 "While he was in the power of the Scots he had been 
 forced into feigned compliance with Presbyterian rites ; 
 the Puritans had put his father to death, and had con- 
 demned himself to many years of exile and hardship in 
 Catholic countries. He had returned to his own land 
 half French in his political and rehgious sympathies, and 
 entirely so in his literary tastes. To convert and to 
 corrupt those of his subjects w^ho immediately surrounded 
 him was an easy matter. " All by the king's example 
 lived and loved." Poets, painters, and actors were 
 forw^ard to promote principles viewed with favour by 
 their sovereign and not at all disagreeable to themselves. 
 An ingenious philosopher elevated Absolutism into an 
 intellectual and moral system, the consequence of which 
 was to encourage the powerful in the indulgence of 
 every selfish instinct. As the Puritans had oppressed 
 the country with a system of inhuman religion and 
 transcendental morality, so now, in order to get as far 
 from Puritanism as possible, it seemed necessary for 
 every one aspiring to be thought a gentleman to avow 
 himself an atheist or a debauchee. 
 
\ 
 
 12 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 The ideas of the man in the mode after the Restora- 
 tion are excellently hit off in one of the fictitious letters 
 in the Spedatm' : — 
 
 " I am now between fifty and sixty, and had the honoiu- 
 to be well with the first men of taste and gallantry in the 
 joyous reign of Charles the Second. As for yourself, Mr. 
 Spectator, you seem with the utmost arrogance to undermine 
 the very fundamentals upon which we conducted ourselves. 
 It is monstrous to set up for a man of wit and yet deny that 
 honour in a woman is anything but peevishness, that inclina- 
 tion is not the best rule of life, or virtue and vice anything 
 else but health and disease. We had no more to flo but to 
 put a lady in a good humour, and all we could wish followed 
 of course. Then, again, your Tully and your discourses of 
 another life are the very bane of mirth and good humour. 
 Pry'thee don't value thyself on thy reason at that exorbitant 
 rate and the dignity of human nature ; take my word for it, 
 a setting dog has as good reason as any man in England." ^ 
 
 "While opinions, which from different sides struck at 
 the very roots of society, prevailed both in the fashion- 
 able and religious portions of the community, it was 
 inevitable that Taste should be hopelessly corrupt. All 
 the artistic and literary forms which the Court favoured 
 were of the romantic order, but it was romance from 
 which beauty and vitality had utterly disappeared. Of 
 the two great principles of ancient chivalry. Love and 
 Honour, the last notes of which are heard in the lyrics 
 of Lovelace and Montrose, one was now held to be non- 
 existent, and the other was utterly perverted. The 
 feudal spirit had surrounded woman w^ith an atmosphere 
 of mystical devotion, but in the reign of Charles II. the 
 passion of love was subjected to the torturing treatment 
 then known as "wit." Cowley and Waller seem to 
 
 ^ Spectator, No. 158. 
 
1.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 13 
 
 think that when a man is in love the energy of his feel- 
 ings is best shown by discovering resemblances between 
 his mistress and those objects in nature to which she 
 is apparently most unlike. 
 
 The ideal of Woman, as she is represented in the 
 Spectator, adding grace, charity, and refinement to do- 
 mestic hfe, had still to be created. The king himself, 
 the presumed mirror of good taste, was notoriously 
 under the control of his numerous mistresses ; and the 
 highest notion of love which he could conceive was 
 gallantry. French romances were therefore generally 
 in vogue. All the casuistry of love which had been 
 elaborated by Mademoiselle de Scudery was reproduced 
 with improvements by Mrs. Aphra Behn. At the same 
 time, as usually happens in diseased societies, there was 
 a general longing to cultivate the simpHcity of the 
 Golden Age, and the consequence was that no person, 
 even in the lower grades of society, who pretended to 
 any reading, ever thought of making love in his own 
 pei'son. The proper tone of feeling was not acquired 
 till he had invested himself with the pastoral attributes 
 of Damon and Celadon, and had addressed his future 
 wife as Amaranth a or Phyllis. - . 
 
 The tragedies of the period illustrate this general 
 inclination to spurious romance. If ever there was aT; 
 time when the ideal of monarchy was degraded and the 
 instincts of chivalrous action discouraged, it was in the 
 reign of Charles II. Absorbed as he was in the pursuit 
 of pleasure, the king scarcely attempted to conceal his 
 weariness when obliged to attend to affairs of State. 
 He allowed the Dutch fleet to approach his capital and 
 to burn his o"\vn ships of war on the Thames ; he sold 
 
14 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 Dunkirk to the French ; hardly any action in his Hfe 
 evinces any sense of patriotism or honour. And yet we 
 have only to glance at Johnson's Life of Dryden to see 
 how all the tragedies of the time turn on the great charac- 
 ters, the great actions, the great sufferings of princes. The 
 Elizabethan drama had exhibited man in every degree of 
 life and with every variety of character ; the playwright 
 of the Restoration seldom descended below such themes 
 as the conquest of Mexico or Granada, the fortunes of 
 the Great Mogul, and the fate of Hannibal. This mono- 
 tony of subject was doubtless in part the result of 
 policy, for, in pitying the fortunes of Montezuma, the 
 imagination of the spectator insensibly recalled those of 
 Charles the Second. 
 
 Everything in these tragedies is unreal, strained, and 
 affected. In order to remove them as far as possible 
 from the language of ordinary life they are written in 
 rhyme, while the astonishment of the audience is raised 
 with big swelling words, which vainly seek to hide the 
 absence of genuine feeling. The heroes tear their 
 passion to tatters because they think it heroic to do so ; 
 their flights into the sublime generally drop into the 
 ridiculous ; instead of holding up the mirror to nature, 
 their object is to depart as far as possible from common 
 sense. Nothing exhibits more characteristically the 
 utterly artificial feeling, both of the dramatists and the 
 spectators, than the habit which then prevailed of dis- 
 missing the audience after a tragic play with a witty 
 epilogue. On one occasion, Nell Gwynne, in the charac- 
 ter of St, Catherine, was, at the end of the play, left for 
 dead upon the stage. Her body having to be removed, 
 the actress suddenly started to her feet, exclaiming, 
 
I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 15 
 
 " Hold ! are yoii mad ? you damned confounded dog, 
 I am to rise and speak the epilogue ! " ^ 
 
 By way of compensation, however, the writers of the 
 period poured forth their real feelings without reserve 
 in their comedies. So great, indeed, is the gulf that 
 separates our own manners from theirs, that some critics 
 have endeavoured to defend the comic dramatists of the 
 Restoration against the moralists on the ground that 
 their representations of Nature are entirely devoid of 
 reality. Charles Lamb, who loved all curiosities, and 
 the Caroline comedians among the number, says of 
 them : — 
 
 " They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy- 
 land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with few 
 exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and 
 my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate 
 wretch as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire, because 
 in a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. 
 The standard of 'police is the measure of ijolitical justice. The 
 atmosphere will blight it ; it cannot live here. It has got 
 into a moral world, where it has no business, from which it 
 must needs fall headlong ; as dizzy and incapable of making 
 a stand as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered un- 
 awares into his sphere of Good Men or Angels. But in its 
 own world do we feel the creature is so very bad ? The 
 Fainalls and Mirabels, the Dorimants and Lady Touchwoods, 
 in their own sphere do not offend my moral sense ; in fact, 
 they do not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their 
 proper element. They break through no laws or conscientious 
 restraints. They know of none. They have got out of 
 Christendom into the land of — what shall I call it ? — of 
 cuckoldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty 
 and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a specu- 
 lative scene of things, which has no reference whatever to the 
 world that is." 
 
 1 Spectator No. 341. 
 
16 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 This is a very happy description of the manner in 
 which the plays of Etherege, Shadwell, Wycherley, 
 and Congreve affect us to-day ; and it is no doubt 
 superfluous to expend much moral indignation on works 
 which have long since lost their power to charm ; come- 
 dies in which the reader finds neither the horseplay of 
 Aristophanes, nor the nature of Terence, nor the poetry 
 of Shakespeare ; in which there is not a single character 
 that arouses interest, or a situation that spontaneously 
 provokes laughter; in which the complications of plot 
 are produced by the devices of fine gentlemen for making 
 cuckolds of citizens, and the artifices of wives to dupe their 
 husbands; in which the profuse wit of the dialogue 
 might excite admiration, if it were possible to feel the 
 smallest interest in the occasion that produced it. But 
 to argue that these plays never represented any state of 
 existing society is a paradox which chooses to leave out 
 of account the contemporary attack on the stage made 
 by Jeremy Collier, the admissions of Dryden, and all 
 those valuable glimpses into the manners of our ances- 
 tors which are afforded by the prologues of the period. 
 
 It is sufficient to quote against Lamb the witty and 
 severe criticism of Steele in the Spectator upon Etherege's 
 Man of the Mode : — 
 
 " It cannot be denied but that the negligence of every- 
 thing which engages the attention of the sober and valuable 
 part of mankind appears very well drawn in this piec€. But 
 it is denied that it is necessary to the character of a fine 
 gentleman that he should in that manner trample upon all 
 order and decency. As for the character of Dorimant, it is 
 more of a coxcomb than that of Fopling. He says of one of 
 his companions that a good correspondence between tliem is 
 their mutual interest. Speaking of that friend,, he declares 
 
I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 17 
 
 their being iniuli together ' makes the women tliink the 
 better of lii.s understanding, and judge more favourably of 
 my rei)Utation. It makes him pass upon some for a man of 
 very good sense, and me upon others for a very civil person.' 
 Tliis wliole celebrated piece is a perfect contradiction to good 
 manners, good sense, and common honesty ; and as there is 
 nothing in it but what is built upon the ruin of virtue and 
 innocence, according to the notion of virtue in this comedy, 
 I take the slioemaker to be in reality the fine gentleman of 
 the play : for it seems he is an atheist, if we may depend 
 upon his character as given by the orange-woman, who is 
 herself far from being the lowest in the play. She says of a 
 fine man who is Dorimant's companion, ' there is not such 
 another heathen in the town except the shoemaker.' His 
 pretension to be the hero of the drama appears still more in 
 his o\\Ti descri]»tion of his way of living with his lady. 
 ' There is,' says he, ' never a man in the town lives more 
 like a gentleman with his wife than I do. I never mind her 
 motions ; she never inquires into mine. We speak to one 
 another civilly; hate one another heartily; and, because it 
 is vulgar to lie and soak together, we have each of us our 
 several settle-beds.' 
 
 " That of ' soaking together ' is as good as if Dorimant 
 had spoken it himself ; and I think, since he puts human 
 nature in as ugly a form as the circumstances will bear and 
 is a staunch unbeliever, he is very much wronged in having 
 no part of the good fortune bestowed in the last act. To 
 speak plain of this whole work, I think nothing but being 
 lost to a sense of innocence and virtue can make any one see 
 this comedy without observing more frequent occasion to 
 move sorrow and indignation than mirth and laughter. At 
 the same time I allow it to be nature, but it is nature in its 
 utmost corruption and degeneracy." ^ 
 
 The truth is that the stage after the Restoration re- 
 flects only too faithfully the manners and the sentiments 
 of the only society which at that period could boast of 
 anything like organisation. The press, which now enables 
 
 ^ Spectator, No. 65. 
 C 
 
18 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 public opinion to exercise so powerful a control over the 
 manners of the times, had then scarcely an existence. 
 No standard of female honour restrained the license of 
 wit and debauchery. If the clergy were shocked at the 
 propagation of ideas so contrary to the whole spirit of 
 Christianity, their natural impulse to reprove them was 
 checked by the fear that an apparent condemnation of 
 the practices of the Court might end in the triumph 
 of their old enemies, the Puritans. All the elements of 
 an old and decaying form of society that tended to 
 atheism, cynicism, and dissolute living, exhibited them- 
 selves therefore in naked shamelessness on the stage. 
 The audiences in the theatres were equally devoid of 
 good manners and good taste : they did not hesitate to 
 interrupt the actors in the midst of a serious play, while 
 they loudly applauded their obscene allusions. So gross 
 was the character of comic dialogue that women could not 
 venture to appear at a comedy without masks, and under 
 these circumstances the theatre became the natural centre 
 for assignations. In such an atmosphere women readily 
 cast off all modesty and reserve ; indeed, the choicest inde- 
 cencies of the times are to be found in the epilogues to the 
 plays which were always assigned to the female actors. 
 
 It at first sight seems remarkable that a society 
 inveterately corrupt should have contained in itself such 
 powers of purification and vitality as to discard the 
 literary garbage of the Restoration period in favour of 
 the refined sobriety which characterises the wi'iters of 
 Queen Anne's reign. But, in fact, the spread of the in- 
 fection was confined within certain well-marked limits. 
 \ The Court moved in a sphere apart, and was altogether 
 I too light and frivolous to exert a decided moral influ- 
 
I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 19 
 
 ence on the great bod}' of tlie nation. Tlie country 
 gentlemen, busied on their estates, came seldom to town ; 
 the citizens, the lawyers, and the members of the other 
 professions steadily avoided the theatre, and regarded with 
 equal contempt the moral and literary excesses of the 
 courtiers. Among this class, unrepresented at present 
 in the world of letters, except perhaps by antiquarians like 
 Selden, the foundations of sound taste were being silently 
 laid. The readers of the nation had hitherto been almost 
 limited to the nobility. Books w^ere generally published 
 by subscription, and Avere dependent for their success on 
 the favour with which they were received by the 
 courtiers. But, after the subsidence of the Civil War, the 
 nation began to make rapid strides in wealth and refine- 
 ment, and the monied classes sought for intellectual 
 amusement in their leisure hours. Authors by degrees 
 found that they might look for readers beyond the 
 select circle of their aristocratic patrons ; and the book- 
 seller, who had hitherto calculated his profits merely by 
 the commission he might obtain on the sale of books, 
 soon perceived that they were becoming valuable as 
 property. The reign of Charles II. is remarkable not 
 only for the great increase in the number of the licensed 
 printers in London, but for the appearance of the first of 
 the race of modern publishers, Jacob Tonson. 
 
 The portion of society whose tastes the publishers 
 undertook to satisfy was chiefly interested in history, 
 poetry, and criticism. It w^as this for w^hich Dryden 
 composed his Miscellany, this to which he addressed the 
 admirable critical essays which precede his Translations 
 from the Latin Poets and his Versifications of Chaucer, and 
 this which afterwards gave the main support to the Tatler 
 
20 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 and the Spectator. Ignorant of the writings of the great 
 classical authors, as well as of the usages of polite 
 society, these men were nevertheless robust and manly 
 in their ideas, and were eager to form for themselves a 
 correct standard of taste by reference to the best authori- 
 ties. Though they turned with repugnance from the 
 playhouse and from the morals of the Court, they could 
 not avoid being insensibly affected by the tone of grace 
 and elegance which prevailed in Court circles. And in this 
 respect, if in no other, our gratitude is due to the Caro- 
 line dramatists, who may justly claim to be the founders 
 of the social prose style in English literature. Before 
 them English prose had been employed, no doubt, with 
 music and majesty by many writers ; but the style of these 
 is scarcely representative ; they had used the language for 
 their own elevated purposes, without, how^ever, attempt- 
 ing to give it that balanced fineness and subtlety which 
 makes it a fitting instrument for conveying the complex 
 ideas of an advanced stage of society. Dryden, Wycher- 
 ley, and their followers, impelled by the taste of the 
 Court to study the French language, brought to English 
 composition a nicer standard of logic and a more choice 
 selection of language, while the necessity of pleasing 
 their audiences with brilliant dialogue made them careful 
 to give their sentences that well-poised structure which 
 Addison afterwards carried to perfection in the Spectator. 
 By this brief sketch the reader may be enabled to 
 judge of the distracted state of society, both in politics 
 and taste, in the reign of Charles II. On the one side, 
 the Monarchical element in the Constitution was repre- 
 sented by the Court Party, flushed with the recent 
 restoration ; retaining the old ideas and principles uf 
 
I.] LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION. 21 
 
 absolutism -which had prevailed under James I., without 
 being able to perceive their inapplicability to the exist- 
 ing nature of things ; feeding its imagination alternately 
 on sentiments derived from the decayed spirit of 
 chivalry, and on artistic representations of fashionable 
 debauchery in its most open form — a party which, while 
 it fortunately preserved the traditions of wit, elegance, 
 and gaiety of style, seemed unaware that these 
 qualities could be put to any other use than the mitiga- 
 tion of an intolerable enmd. On the other side, the 
 rising power of Democracy found its representatives in 
 austere Republicans opposed to all institutions in Church 
 and State that seemed to obstruct their own abstract 
 principles of government; gloomy fanatics, who, with 
 an intense intellectual appreciation of eternal principles 
 of religion and morality, sought to sacrifice to their 
 system the most permanent and even innocent instincts 
 of human nature. Between the two extreme parties was 
 the unorganised body of the nation, grouped round old 
 customs and institutions, rapidly growing in wealth and 
 numbers, conscious of the rise in their midst of new 
 social principles, but perplexed how to reconcile these 
 with time-honoured methods of religious, political, and 
 literary thought. To lay the foundations of sound 
 opinion among the people at large ; to prove that recon- 
 ciliation w^as possible between principles hitherto exhi- 
 bited only in mutual antagonism ; to show that under 
 the English Constitution monarchy, aristocracy, and 
 democracy might all be harmonised, that humanity was 
 not absolutely incompatible with religion or morality with 
 art, was the task of the statesmen, and still more of the 
 men of letters, of the early part ot the eighteenth century. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Addison's family and education. 
 
 Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May 1672. 
 He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison, at the time 
 of his birth rector of Milston, near Amesbury, in Wilt- 
 shire, and afterwards Dean of Lichfield. His father was 
 a man of character and accomplishments. Educated at 
 Oxford, while that University was under the control of 
 the famous Puritan Visitation, he made no secret of his 
 contempt for principles to which he was forced to sub- 
 mit, or of his preferences for Monarchy and Episcopacy. 
 His boldness was not agreeable to the University authori- 
 ties, and, being forced to leave Oxford, he maintained 
 himself for a time near Petworth, in Sussex, by acting as 
 chaplain or tutor in families attached to the Royalist 
 cause. After the Restoration he obtained the appoint- 
 ment of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk, and when 
 that town was ceded to France in 1662, he was removed 
 in a similar capacity to Tangier. Here he remained 
 eight years, but, venturing on a visit to England, his post 
 was bestowed upon another, and he would have been 
 left without resources, had not one of his friends pre- 
 sented him with the living of Milston, valued at £120 a 
 year. With the courage of his order he thereupon took 
 
CHAP. II.] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 23 
 
 a wife, Jane, daughter of Dr. Nathaniel Gulston, and 
 sister of William Gulston, Bishop of Bristol, by whom 
 he had six children, three sons and three daughters, all 
 bom at Milston. In 1G75 he was made a prebendary of 
 Salisbury Cathedral and Chaplain -in -Ordinary to the 
 King; and in 1683 he was promoted to the Deanery of 
 Lichfield, as a reward for his services at Tangier, and 
 out of consideration of losses which he had sustained by 
 a fire at Milston. His literary reputation stood high, 
 and it is said that he would have been made a bishop, if 
 his old zeal for legitimacy had not prompted him to 
 manifest in the Convocation of 1689 his hostility to the 
 Revolution. He died in 1703. 
 
 Lancelot was a writer at once voluminous and lively. 
 In the latter part of his life he produced several treatises 
 on theological subjects, the most popular of which was 
 called An Introduction to the Sacrament. This book 
 passed through many editions. The doctrine it contains 
 leans rather to the Low Church side. But much the 
 most characteristic of his writings were his works on 
 Mahommedanism and Judaism, the results of his studies 
 during his residence in Barbary. These show not only 
 considerable industry and research and powers of shrewd 
 observation, but that genuine literary faculty which 
 enables a writer to leave upon a subject of a general 
 nature the impression of his own character. While 
 there is nothing forced or exaggerated in his historical 
 style, a vein of allegory runs through the narrative of 
 the Revolutions of the Kingdoms of Fez and Morocco^ ^vhich 
 must have had a piquant flavour for the orthodox Eng- 
 lish reader of that day. Recollections of the Protectorate 
 would have taken nothing of its vividness from the por- 
 
24 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 trait of the Moorish priest who " began to grow into 
 reputation with the people by reason of his high preten- 
 sions to piety and fervent zeal for their law, illustrated 
 by a stubborn rigidity of conversation and outward 
 sanctity of life." When the Zeriffe, with ambitious 
 designs on the throne, sent his sons on a pilgrimage to 
 Mecca, the religious buffooneries practised by the young 
 men must have recalled to the reader circumstances more 
 recent and personal than those which the author was 
 apparently describing. "Much was the reverence and 
 reputation of holiness which they thereby acquired 
 among the superstitious people, who could hardly be 
 kept from kissing their garments and adoring them as 
 saints, while they failed not in their parts, but acted as 
 much devotion as high contemplative looks, deep sighs, 
 tragical gestures, and other passionate interjections of 
 holiness could express. ' Allah, allah ! ' was their doleful 
 note, their sustenance the people's alms." And when 
 these impostors had inveigled the King of Fez into a 
 religious war, the description of those who " mistrusted 
 their own safety and began, but too late, to repent their 
 approving of an armed hypocrisy " was not more appli- 
 cable to the rulers of Barbary than to the people of 
 England. " Puffed up with their successes, they forgot 
 their obedience, and these saints denied the king the 
 fifth part of their spoils ... By which it appeared that 
 they took up arms, not out of love for their country and 
 zeal for their religion, but out of desire of rule." There 
 is, indeed, nothing in these utterances which need have 
 prevented the WTiter from consistently promoting the 
 Revolution of 1688; yet his principles seem to have 
 carried him far in the opposite direction ; and it is inter- 
 
II.] FAMILY AXD EDUCATION. 25 
 
 esting to remember that the assertor in Convocation of 
 the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right was the 
 father of the autlior of the TFhig Examiner and the Frci- 
 holder. However decidedly Joseph may have dissented 
 from his father's political creed, we know that lie enter- 
 tained admiration and respect for his memory, and that 
 death alone prevented him from completing the monu- 
 ment afterwards erected in Lancelot's honour in Lichfield 
 Cathedral. 
 
 Of Addison's mother nothing of importance is 
 recorded. His second brother, Gulston, became Gover- 
 nor of Fort St. George, in the East Indies: and the 
 third, Lancelot, followed in Joseph's footsteps so far as 
 to obtain a Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. 
 His sisters, Jane and Anna, died young ; but Dorothy was 
 tAvice married, and Swift records in her honour that she 
 was "a kind of wit, and very like her brother." We 
 may readily believe that a writer so lively as Lancelot 
 would have had clever children, but Steele was perhaps 
 carried away by the zeal of friendship or the love of 
 epigram when he said in his dedication to the Drumnw : 
 " Mr. Dean Addison left behind him four children, 
 each of whom, for excellent talents and singular perfec- 
 tions, was as much above the ordinary world as their 
 brother Joseph was above them." But that Steele had a 
 sincere admiration for the whole family is sufficiently 
 shown by his using them as an example in one of his 
 early Tatlers : — 
 
 " I remember among all my acquaintance but one man 
 whom I have thought to live with his children with equan- 
 imity and a good grace. He had three sons and one daughter, 
 whom he bred with all the care imaginable in a liberal and 
 
26 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 ingenuous way. I have often heard him say he had the 
 weakness to love one much better than the other, but that 
 he took as much pains to correct that as any other criminal 
 passion that could arise in his mind. His method was to 
 make it the only pretension in his children to his favour to 
 be kind to each other, and he would tell tliem that he who 
 was the best brother he would reckon the best son. This 
 turned their thoughts into an emulation for the superiority 
 in kind and tender affection towards each other. The boys 
 behaved themselves very early ^vith a manly friendship ; and 
 their sister, instead of the gross familiarities and impertinent 
 freedoms in behaviour usual in other houses, was always 
 treated by them with as much complaisance as any other 
 young lady of their acquaintance. It was an unspeakable 
 pleasure to visit or sit at a meal in that fcimily. I have often 
 seen the old man's heart flow at his eyes with joy upon occa- 
 sions which would appear indifferent to such as were strangers 
 to the turn of his mind ; but a very slight accident, wherein 
 he saw his children's good-will to one another, created in him 
 the god-like pleasure of loving them because they loved each 
 other. This great command of himself in hiding his first 
 impulse to partiality at last improved to a steady justice 
 towards them, and that which at first was but an expedient 
 to correct his weakness was afterwards the measure of his 
 virtue." ^ 
 
 This, no doubt, is the set description of a moralist, 
 and to an age in which the liberty of manners has 
 grown into something like license it may savour of 
 formalism and priggishness; but when we remember 
 that the writer was one of the most warm-hearted of 
 men, and that the subject of his panegyric was himself 
 full of vivacity and impulse, it must be admitted that 
 the picture which it gives us of the Addison family in 
 the rectory of Milston is a particularly amiable one. 
 
 Though the eighteenth century had little of that feel- 
 
 1 Tatler, No. 25. 
 
ir.] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 27 
 
 ing for natural beauty which distinguishes onr own, a 
 man of Addison's imagination could hardly fail to be 
 impressed by the character of the scenery in which his 
 childhood was passed. No one who has travelled on a 
 summer's day across Salisbury Plain, with its vast canopy 
 of sky and its open tracts of undulating downland, 
 relieved by no shadows except such as are thrown by 
 the passing cloud, the grazing sheep, and the great circle 
 of Stonehenge, ^nll forget the delightful sense of refresh- 
 ment and repose produced by the descent into the valley 
 of the Avon. The sounds of human life rising from the 
 villages after the long solitude of the plain, the shade 
 of the deep woods, the coolness of the river, like all 
 streams rising in the chalk, clear and peaceful, are 
 equally delicious to the sense and the imagination. It 
 was, doubtless, the recollection of these scenes that 
 inspired Addison in his paraphrase of the twenty -third 
 Psalm : — 
 
 " The Lord my pasture shall prepare, 
 And feed me with a shepherd's care. 
 
 When in the sultry glebe I faint, 
 Or on the thirsty mountain pant, 
 To fertile vales and dewy meads 
 My weary wandering steps he leads, 
 Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow. 
 Amid the verdant landscape flow." 
 
 At Amesbury he was first sent to school, his master 
 being one Nash ; and here, too, he probably met with the 
 first recorded adventure of his life. It is said that, having 
 committed some fault and being fearful of the conse- 
 quences, he ran away from school, and, taking up his 
 abode in a hollow tree, maintained himself as he could, 
 
28 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 till he was discovered and brought back to his parents. 
 He was removed from Amesbury to Salisbury, and 
 thence to the Grammar School at Lichfield, where he 
 is said to have been the leader in a "barring out." 
 From Lichfield he passed to the Charter House, then 
 under the charge of Dr. Ellis, a man of taste and scholar- 
 ship. The Charter House at that period was, after 
 Westminster, the l)est- known school in England, and 
 here was laid the foundation of that sound classical 
 taste which perfected the style of the essays in the 
 Spectator. 
 
 Macaulay labours with much force and ingenuity to 
 prove that Addison's classical acquirements were only 
 superficial, and, in his usual epigrammatic manner, hazards 
 the opinion that " his knowledge of Greek, though 
 doubtless such as was, in his time, thought respectable 
 at Oxford, was evidently less than that which many lads 
 now carry away every year from Eton anii Eugby." 
 That Addison was not a scholar of the class of Bentley 
 or Porson may be readily admitted. But many scattered 
 allusions in his works prove that his acquaintance with 
 the Greek poets of every period, if cursory, was wide 
 and intelligent; he was sufficiently master of the lan- 
 guage thoroughly to understand the spirit of what he 
 read ; he undertook while at Oxford a translation of 
 Herodotus, and one of the papers in the Spectator is a 
 direct imitation of a jeu cV esprit of Lucian's. The Eton 
 or Rugby boy who, in these days, with a normal appe- 
 tite for ericket and football, acquired an equal knowledge 
 of Greek literature, would certainly be somewhat of a 
 prodigy. 
 
 No doubt, however, Addison's knowledge of the Latin 
 
n.] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 29 
 
 poets was, as Macaulay infers, fur more extensive and 
 profound. It would have been strange had it been other- 
 wise. The influence of the classical side of the Italian 
 Renaissance was now at its height, and wherever those 
 ideas became paramount Latin composition was held in 
 at least as much esteem as poetry in the vernacular. 
 Especially was this the case in England, where certain 
 affinities of character and temperament made it easy for 
 writers to adopt Roman habits of thought. I^atin ver?-'e 
 composition soon took fiim root in the public schools 
 and universities, so that clever boys of the period were 
 tolerably familiar with most of the minor Roman poets. 
 Pope, in the fourth book of the Dunciad, vehemently 
 attacked the tradition as confining the mind to the study 
 of words rather than of things ; but he had himself had 
 no experience of a public school, and only those who 
 fail to appreciate the influence of Latin verse composi- 
 tion on the style of our own greatest orators, and of poets 
 like jMilton and Gray, will be inclined to under^^alue it 
 as an instrument of social and literary training. 
 
 Proficiency in this art may at least be said to have 
 laid the foundation of Addison's fortunes. Leaving the 
 Charter House in 1687, at the early age of fifteen, he 
 was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, and remained a 
 member of that society for two years, when a copy of 
 his Latin verses fell into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, 
 then Fellow and afterwards Provost of the College. 
 Struck with their excellence, Lancaster used his influence 
 to obtain for him a demyship at Magdalen. The sub- 
 ject of this fortunate set of verses was " Inauguratio 
 Regis Gulielmi," from which fact we may reasonably 
 infer that even in his ])oyhood his mind had acquired a 
 
30 ADDISON. [cHAr. 
 
 Whig bias. Whatever inclination he may have had in 
 this direction would have been confirmed by the associa- 
 tions of his new college. The fluctuations of opinion 
 in Magdalen had been frequent and extraordinary. 
 Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign it was notorious 
 for its Calvinism, but under the Chancellorship of Laud 
 it appears to have adopted, with equal ardour, the cause 
 of Arminianism, for it was among the colleges that 
 offered the stoutest opposition to the Puritan visitors in 
 1647-48. The despotic tendencies of James II., how- 
 ever, again cooled its loyalty, and its spirited resistance 
 to the king's order for the election of a Roman Catholic 
 President had given a mortal blow to the Stuart dynasty. 
 Hough was now President, but in consequence of the 
 dispute with the king there had been no election of 
 demies in 1688, so that twice the usual number was 
 chosen in the following year, and the occasion was dis- 
 tinguished by the name of the "golden election." From 
 Magdalen Addison proceeded to his master's degree in 
 1693; the College elected him probationary Fellow in 
 1697, and actual Fellow the year after. He retained his 
 Fellowship till 1711. 
 
 Of his tastes, habits, and friendships at Oxford there 
 are few records. Among his acquaintance were Boulter, 
 afterwards Archbishop of Dublin — whose memory is un- 
 enviably perpetuated in company with Ambrose Phillips 
 in Pope's Epistle to Arbuthnot, 
 
 " Does not one table Bavius Btill admit, 
 Still to one Bishop Phillips seem a wit ? " — 
 
 and possibly the famous Sacheverell.^ He is said to have 
 
 ^ A note in tlie edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, published 
 in 1801, states, on the authority of a "Lady in AViltshire," who 
 
II,] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 31 
 
 shown in the society of Magdalen some of tlie shyness 
 that afterwards distinguished him ; he kept kite hours, 
 and read chietiy after dinner. The walk under the well- 
 known elms by the Cherwell is still connected with his 
 name. Though he probably acted as tutor in the college, 
 the greater part of his quiet life at the University was 
 doubtless occupied in study. A proof of his early ma- 
 turity is seen in the fact that, in his nineteenth year, a 
 young man of birth and fortune, ^Ir. Eushout, who was 
 being educated at Magdalen, was placed under his charge. 
 His reputation as a scholar and a man of taste soon 
 extended itself to the world of letters in London. In 
 1693, being then in his twenty-second year, he wrote his 
 Account of the Greatest English Poets ; and about the same 
 time he addressed a short copy of verses to Dryden, 
 complimenting him on the enduring vigour of his poetical 
 faculty as shown in his translations of Virgil and other 
 Latin poets, some of which had recently appeared in 
 Tonson's Miscellany. The old poet appears to have been 
 highly gratified, and to have welcomed the advances 
 thus made to him, for he returned Addison's compliment 
 by bestowing high and not unmerited praise on the 
 translation of the Fourth Book of the Gem'gics, which the 
 latter soon after undertook, and by printing, as a preface 
 to his own translation, a discourse written by Addison 
 on the Georgics, as well as arguments to most of the 
 books of the yEneicl 
 
 derived her information from a Mr. Stephens, a Fellow of jMag- 
 dalen and a contemporary of Addison's, that the Henry Sachevei-ell 
 to whom Addison dedicated his Account of the Greatest English 
 Poets was not the well-known divine, but a personal friend of 
 Addison's, who died young, having written a Jlistory of the Isle of 
 }fan. 
 
82 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 Through Dryden, no doubt, he became acquainted 
 with Jacob Tonson. The father of English pubHshing 
 had for some time been a well-known figure in the 
 literary world. He had purchased the copyright of 
 Paradise Lost : he had associated himself with Dryden 
 in publishing before the Eevolution two volumes of 
 Miscellanies; encouraged by the success which these 
 obtained, he put the poet in 1693 on some translations 
 of Juvenal and Persius, and two new volumes of Miscel- 
 lanies ; while in 1697 he urged him to undertake a 
 translation of the whole of the works of Virgil. Observ- 
 ing how strongly the public taste set towards the great 
 classical -writers, he was anxious to employ men of 
 ability in the work of turning them into English; 
 and it appears from existing correspondence that he 
 engaged Addison, while the latter was at Oxford, to 
 superintend a translation of Herodotus. He also sug- 
 gested a translation of Ovid. Addison undertook to 
 procure coadjutors for the work of translating the Greek 
 historian. He himself actually translated the books 
 called Polymnia and Urania^ but for some unexplained 
 reason the work was never published. For Ovid he 
 seems, on the whole, to have had less inclination. At 
 Tonson's instance he translated the second book of the 
 MetaTnorp] loses, which was first printed in the volume 
 uf Miscellanies that appeared in 1697; but he wrote to 
 the publisher that " Ovid had so many silly stories with 
 iiis good ones that he was more tedious to translate than 
 u better poet would be." His study of Ovid, however, 
 was of the greatest use in developing his critical faculty ; 
 the excesses and want of judgment in that poet forced 
 him to reflect, and his observations on the style of his 
 
II.] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 33 
 
 author anticipate his excellent remarks on the difference 
 ])etween True and False Wit in the sixty-second number 
 of the Spectator. 
 
 AVhoever, indeed, compares these notes with the Essay 
 on the Georgks, and -with the opinions expressed in the 
 Accmint of the English Poets, will be convinced that the 
 foundations of his critical method were laid at this period 
 (1697). In the Essay on the Georgics he seems to be timid 
 in the presence of Virgil's superiority; his Account of the 
 English Poets, besides being impregnated with the prin- 
 ciples of taste prevalent after the Restoration, shows 
 deficient powers of perception and appreciation. The 
 name of Shakespeare is not mentioned in it, Dryden and 
 Congreve alone being selected to represent the drama. 
 Chaucer is described as "a merry bard," whose humour 
 has become obsolete through time and change; while the 
 rich pictorial fancy of the Faery Queen is thus described : 
 
 ''Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, 
 In ancient tales amused a barbarous age — 
 An age that yet uncultivate and rude, 
 Where'er the poet's fancy led pursued. 
 Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods, 
 To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. 
 But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, 
 Can charm an understanding age no more; 
 The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, 
 "While the dull moral lies too plain below." 
 
 According to Pope — always a suspicious witness 
 where Addison is concerned — he had not read Spenser 
 when he wrote this criticism on him.^ 
 
 Milton, as a legitimate successor of the classics, is 
 of course appreciated, but not at all after the elaborate 
 
 ^ Spences Anecdotes, p. 50. 
 D 
 
34 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 fashion of the Spectator; to Dryclen, the most distin- 
 guished poet of the day, deserved compliments are paid, 
 but their value is lessened by the exaggerated opinion 
 which the writer entertains of Cowley, who is described as 
 a "mighty genius," and is praised for the inexhaustible 
 riches of his imagination. Throughout the poem, in 
 fact, we observe a remarkable confusion of various veins 
 of thought; an unjust depreciation of the Gothic grandeur 
 of the older English poets ; a just admiration for the 
 Greek and Roman authors ; a sense of the necessity of 
 good sense and regularity in writings composed for an 
 "understanding age ;" and at the same time a lingering 
 taste for the forced invention and far-fetched conceits 
 that mark the decay of the spirit of mediaeval chivalry. 
 
 With the judgments expressed in this performance 
 it is instructive to compare such criticisms on Shakes- 
 peare as we find in No. 42 of the Spectator; the papers 
 on " Chevy Chase" (73, 74) ; and particularly the follow- 
 ing passage : — 
 
 "As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and 
 false wit in the resemblance of words, according to the fore- 
 going instances, there is another kind of wit, which consists 
 partly in the resemblance of ideas and partly in the resem- 
 blance of words, which, for distinction's sake, I shall call 
 mixed wit. This kind of wit is that which abounds in 
 Cowley more than in any author that ever wrote. Mr. "Waller 
 has likewise a great deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing 
 in it. Milton has a genius much above it. Spenser is in 
 the same class vntli Milton. The Italians even in their epic 
 poetry are full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself 
 upon the ancient poets, has everywhere rejected it with scorn. 
 If we look after mixed wit among the Greeks we shall find 
 it nowhere but in the epigrammatists. There are indeed 
 some strokes of it in the little poem ascribed to Musseus, 
 which by that, as well as many other marks, betrays itself to 
 
II.] FAIMILY AND EDUCATION. 85 
 
 be a modern composition. If we look into the Latin writers 
 we find none of this mixed wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or 
 Catullus ; very little in Horace, but a great deal of it in 
 Ovid, and scarce anything else in Martial." 
 
 The stepping-stone from the immaturity of the early 
 criticisms in the Account of the Greatest English Poets to 
 the finished ease of the Spectator is to be found in the 
 notes to the translation of Ovid.^ 
 
 The time came when he was obliged to form a decision 
 affecting the entire course of his life. Tonson, who 
 had a wide acquaintance, no doubt introduced him to 
 Congreve and the leading men of letters in London, and 
 through them he was presented to Somers and Montague. 
 Those ministers perhaps persuaded him, as a point of 
 etiquette, to write in 1695, his Address to King William, 
 a poem composed in a vein of orthodox hyperbole, all of 
 which must have been completely thrown away on that 
 most unpoetical of monarchs. Yet in spite of those 
 seductions Addison lingered at Oxford. To retain his 
 Fellowship it was necessary for him to take orders. Had 
 he done so, there can be no doubt that his literary skill 
 and his value as a political partizan would have opened 
 for him a road to the highest preferment. At that 'time 
 the clergy were far from thinking it unbecoming-to tKeir 
 cloth to fight in the political arena or to take part in 
 journalism. Swift would have been advanced to a 
 bishopric as a reward for his political services if it had 
 not been for the prejudice entertained towards him by 
 Queen Anne ; Boulter, rector of St. Saviour's, South- 
 wark, having made himself conspicuous by editing a 
 
 ^ Compare the Notes 07i the Metamorphoses, Fab. v. (Tickell's 
 edition, vol. vi. p. 183), where the substance of the above passage 
 is found in embryo. 
 
36 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 paper called the Freethinker, was raised to the Primacy 
 of Ireland ; Hoadley, the notorious Bishop of Bangor, 
 edited the London Journal; the honours that were 
 awarded to two men of such second-rate intellectual 
 capacity would hardly have been denied to Addison. 
 He was inclined in this direction by the example and 
 advice of his father, who was now Dean of Lichfield, 
 and who was urgent on his son to rid himself of the 
 pecuniary embarrassments in which he was involved, by 
 embracing the Church as a profession. A few years 
 before he had himself seemed to look upon the Church 
 as his future sphere. In his Account of the Greatest 
 English Poets, he says : — 
 
 " I leave the arts of poetry and verse 
 To them that practise them with more success. 
 Of greater truths I'll now propose to tell. 
 And so at once, dear friend and muse, farewell." 
 
 Had he followed up his intention we might have 
 known the name of Addison as that of an artful contro- 
 versialist, and perhaps as a famous writer of sermons ; 
 but we should, in all probability, have never heard of the 
 Spectator. 
 
 Fortunately for English letters other influences pre- 
 vailed to give a different direction to his fortunes. It is 
 true that Tickell, Addison's earliest biographer, states 
 that his determination not to take orders was the result 
 of his own habitual self-distrust, and of a fear of the 
 responsibilities which the clerical office would involve. 
 But Steele, who was better acquainted with his friend's 
 private history, on reading Tickell's Memoir, addressed a 
 letter to Congreve on the subject, in which he says : — 
 
 " These, you know very well, were not the reasons which 
 
II.] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 37 
 
 made Mr. Addison turn his thoughts to the civil world ; and, 
 as you were the instrument of his becoming acquainted with 
 Lord Halifax, I doubt not but you remember the warm 
 instances that noble lord made to the head of the College not 
 to insist upon Mr. Addison's going into orders. His argu- 
 ments were founded upon the general pravity and corrup- 
 tion of men of business, who wanted liberal education. And 
 I remember, as if I had read the letter yesterday, that my 
 lord ended with a compliment, that, however he might be 
 represented as a friend to the Church, he never would do it 
 any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it." 
 
 No doubt the real motive of the interest in Addison 
 shown by Lord Halifax, at that time known as 
 Charles Montague, was an anxiety which he shared 
 with all the leading statesmen of the period, and 
 of which more will be said presently, to secure for 
 his party the services of the ablest writers. Finding his 
 p'oUg6 as yet hardly qualified to transact affairs of State, 
 he joined with Lord Somers, who had also fixed his 
 eyes on Addison, in soliciting for him from the Crown 
 in 1699 a pension of £300 a year, which might enable 
 him to supplement his literary accomplishments with 
 the practical experience of travel. Addison naturally 
 embraced the offer. He looked forward to studying 
 the political institutions of foreign countries, to seeing 
 the spots of which he had read in his favourite classical 
 authors, and to meeting the most famous men of letters 
 on the Continent. 
 
 It is characteristic both of his own tastes and of 
 his age that he seems to have thought his best pass- 
 port to intellectual society abroad Avould be his Latin 
 poems. His verses on the Peace of Byswick, written 
 in 1697 and dedicated to Montague, had already pro- 
 cured him great reputation, and had been praised by 
 
88 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 Edmund Smith — a high authority — as " the best Latin 
 poem since the yEneicV This gave him the opportunity 
 of collecting his various compositions of the same kind, 
 and in 1699 he published from the Sheldonian Press a 
 second volume of the 3fusce Anglicance — the first having 
 appeared in 1691 — containing poems by various Oxford 
 scholars. Among the contributors were Hannes, one of 
 the many scholarly physicians of the period ; J. Philips, 
 the author of the Splendid Shilling; and Alsop, a pro- 
 minent antagonist of Bentley, whose Horatian humour 
 is celebrated by Pope in the Dunciad} 
 
 But the most interesting of the names in the volume is 
 that of the once celebrated Edmond, commonly called 
 " Eag," Smith, author of the Ode on the Death of Dr. Fococky 
 who seems to have been among Addison's intimate 
 acquaintance, and deserves to be recollected in connec- 
 tion with him on account of a certain similarity in their 
 genius and the extraordinary difference in their fortunes. 
 " Eag " was a man of fine accomplishments and graceful 
 humour, but, like other scholars of the same class, 
 indolent and licentious. In spite of great indulgence 
 extended to him by the authorities of Christ Church, he 
 was expelled from the University in consequence of his 
 irregularities. His friends stood by him, and, through 
 the interest of Addison, a proposal was made to him to 
 undertake a history of the Eevolution, which, however, 
 from political scruples he felt himself obliged to decline. 
 Like Addison, he wrote a tragedy modelled on classical 
 lines; but, as it had no political significance, it only pleased 
 the critics, without, like '' Cato," interesting the public. 
 Like Addison, too, he had an opportunity of profiting 
 
 ^ Dunciad, Book iv. 224. 
 
 / 
 
II.] FAMILY AND EDUCATION. 39 
 
 by the patronage of Halifax, but laziness or whim 
 prevented him from keeping an appointment which 
 the latter had made with him, and caused him to miss 
 a place worth £300 a year. Addison, by his own 
 exertions, rose to posts of honour and profit, and towards 
 the close of his life became Secretary of State. Smith 
 envied his advancement, and, ignoring the fact that his 
 own failure was entirely due to himself, murmured at 
 fortune for leaving him in poverty. Yet he estimated 
 his wants at £600 a year, and died of indulgence when 
 he can scarcely have been more than forty years of age. 
 
 Addison's compositions in the Musce Anglicance are 
 eight in number. All of them are distinguished by the 
 ease and flow of the versification, but they are generally 
 wanting in originality. The best of them is the Pygmceo- 
 Gerano-MacMa, which is also interesting as showing traces 
 of that rich vein of humour which Addison worked out 
 in the Tatler and Spectat(n\ The mock-heroic style in 
 prose and verse was sedulously cultivated in England 
 throughout the eighteenth century. Swift, Pope, 
 Arbuthnot, and Fielding, developed it in various 
 forms ; but Addison's Latin poem is perhaps the first 
 composition in which the fine fancy and invention, after- 
 wards shown in the Rajpe of the Lock and Gulliver's 
 Travels^ conspicuously displayed itself. 
 
 A literary success of this kind at that epoch gave a 
 writer a wider reputation than he could gain by com- 
 positions in his own language. Armed, therefore, with 
 copies of the Musce Anglicance for presentation to scholars, 
 and with Halifax's recommendatory letters to men of 
 political distinction, Addison started for the Continent. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ADDISON ON HIS TRAVELS. 
 
 Travelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 involved an amount of thought and precaution which 
 would have seemed inconvenient to the tourist accus- 
 tomed to abandon himself to the authority of guide-books, 
 couriers, and railway companies. By ardent spirits like 
 Roderick Random it was regarded as the sphere of 
 enterprise and fortune, and not without reason, in days 
 when adventures were to be met with on almost every 
 road in the country, and in the streets and inns of the 
 towns. The graver portion of society, on the other hand, 
 considered it as part of the regular course of education 
 through which every young man of position ought to 
 pass before entering into active life. French was the 
 universally recognised language of diplomacy. French 
 manners and conversation were considered to be the best 
 school for politeness, while Italy was held in the highest 
 respect by the northern nations as the source of revived 
 art and letters. Some of the most distinguished English- 
 men of the time looked, it is true, with little favour on 
 this fashionable training. " Lord Cowper," says Spence, 
 on the information of Dr. Conybeare, " on his death-bed 
 ordered that his son should never travel (it is by the 
 
CHAP. III.] HIS TRAVELS. 41 
 
 absolute desire of the Queen that he does). He ordered 
 this from a good deal of observation on its effects ; he 
 had found that there was little to be hoped, and much to 
 be feared, from travelling. Atwell, who is the young 
 lord's tutor abroad, gives but a very discouraging account 
 of it too in his letters; and seems to think that people 
 are sent out too young, and are too hasty to find any 
 great good from it." 
 
 On some of the stronger and more enthusiastic minds 
 the chief effect of the grand tour was to produce a violent 
 hatred of all foreign manners. Dennis, the critic, for 
 instance, who, after leaving Cambridge, spent some time 
 on the Continent, returned with a confirmed dislike to 
 the French, and ostentatiously displayed in his writings 
 how much he held " dragoons and wooden shoes in 
 scorn," and it is amusing to find Addison at a later date 
 making his Tory fox-hunter declare this anti-Gallican 
 temper to be the main fruits of foreign travel. 
 
 But, in general, what was intended to be a school for 
 manners and political instruction proved rather a source 
 of unsettlement and dissipation ; and the vigorous and 
 glowing lines in which Pope makes the tutor describe to 
 Dulness the doings of the " young -^neas " abroad, may 
 be taken as a faithful picture of the travelled pupil of the 
 period. 
 
 " Intrepid then o'er seas and land he flew ; 
 Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. 
 There all thy gifts and graces we display. 
 Thou, only thou, directing all our way ! 
 To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs. 
 Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons ; 
 Or Tvber, now no longer Roman, rolls. 
 Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls : 
 
42 ADDISON. — - [chap. 
 
 To happy convents bosomed deep in vines, 
 Where slumber abbots purple as their wines : 
 To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales, 
 Diffusing languor in the panting gales : 
 To lands of singing or of dancing slaves, 
 Love-whispering woods, and lute-resounding waves. 
 But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps. 
 And Cupids ride the lion of the deeps ; 
 Where, eased of fleets, the Adriatic main 
 Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamoured swain. 
 Led by my hand, he sauntered Europe round. 
 And gathered every vice on Christian ground ; 
 Saw every court, heard every king declare 
 His royal sense of operas or the fair ; 
 The stews and palace equally exf)lored, 
 Intrigued with glory, and with spirit whored ; 
 Tried all hors-cVosuvres, all liqueurs defined, 
 Judicious drank, and greatly daring dined ; 
 Dropped the dull lumber of the Latin store, 
 Spoiled his own language, and acquired no more ; 
 All classic learning lost on classic ground ; 
 And last tui'ned air, the echo of a sound." 
 
 It is needless to say that Addison's experiences of 
 travel were of a very different kind. He left England 
 in his twenty-eighth year, with a mind well equipped 
 from a study of the best authors, and with the intention 
 of qualifying himself for political emplojonent at home, 
 after familiarising himself with the languages and 
 manners of foreign countries. His sojourn abroad 
 extended over four years, and his experience was more 
 than usually varied and comj^rehensive. Crossing from 
 Dover to Calais some time in the summer of 1699, he 
 spent nearly eighteen months in France making himself 
 master of the language. In December 1700 he embarked 
 at Marseilles for a tour in Italy, and visited in succession 
 the following places : — Monaco, Genoa, Pavia, Milan, 
 
III.] HIS TRAVELS. 43 
 
 Brescia, Verona, Padua, Venice, Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, 
 S. Marino, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona, Loreto, 
 Rome (where, as it was his intention to return, he only 
 visited St. Peter's and the Pantheon), Naples, Capri, 
 whence he came back to Rome by sea, the various towns 
 in the neighbourhood of Rome, Siena, Leghorn, Pisa, 
 Lucca, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Turin. 
 Thus, in the course of this journey, which lasted exactly 
 a twelvemonth, he twice crossed the Apennines, and 
 made acquaintance with all the more important cities in 
 the northern part of the Peninsula. In December 1701 
 he passed over Mont Cenis to Geneva, proceeding then 
 by Fribourg, Berne, Soleure, Zurich, St. Gall, Linden, 
 Insbruck, Hall, to Vienna, where he arrived in the 
 autumn of 1702. After making a brief stay in the 
 Austrian capital he turned his face homewards, and hav- 
 ing visited the Protestant cities of Germany, and made a 
 rather longer stay in Hamburg than in any other, he 
 reached Holland in the spring of 1703, and remained in 
 that country till his return to England some time in the 
 autumn of the same year. 
 
 During his journey he made notes for his Remarks on 
 Italy, which he published immediately on his return home, 
 and he amused himself while crossing Mont Cenis, with 
 composing his Letter to Lord Halifax, which contains, 
 perhaps, the best verses he ever wrote. Though the 
 ground over which he passed was well trodden, and though 
 he possessed none of the special knowledge which gives 
 value to the observations of travellers like Arthur Young, 
 yet his remarks on the people and places he saw are the 
 product of an original mind, and his illustrations of his 
 route from the Latin poets are remarkably happy and 
 
44 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 graceful. It is interesting also to observe how many of 
 the thoughts and suggestions which occurred to him on 
 the road are afterwards Avorked up into papers for the 
 Spectator. 
 
 AVhen Addison landed in France in 1699, the power of 
 Louis Xi\.^ so long the determined enemy of the Eng- 
 lish Revolution of 1688, had passed its climax. The 
 Peace of Ryswick, by which the hopes of the Jacobites 
 were finally demolished, was two years old. The king, 
 disappointed in his dreams of boundless military glory, 
 had fallen into a fit of devotion, and Addison, arriving 
 from England, with a very imperfect knowledge of the 
 language, was astonished to find the whole of French 
 literature saturated -sWth the royal taste. "As for the 
 state of learning," says he in a letter to Montague, dated 
 August 1699, *' there is no book comes out at present 
 that has not something in it of an air of devotion. 
 Dacier has bin forced to prove his Plato a very good 
 Christian before he ventures upon his translation, and 
 has so far comply'd with y® tast of the age, that his 
 whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and y® 
 notion of prse-existence, supposed to be stolen from two 
 verses of y® prophets. Nay, y^ humour is grown so uni- 
 versal that it is got among y*^ poets, who are every day 
 publishing Lives of Saints and Legends in Ehime." 
 
 Finding, perhaps, that the conversation at the capital 
 was not very congenial to his taste, he seems to have 
 hurried on to Blois, a town then noted for the purity 
 with which its inhabitants spoke the French language, 
 and where he had determined to make his temporary 
 abode. His only record of his first impressions of Paris 
 is a casual criticism of " y^ King's Statue that is lately 
 
III.] HIS TRAVELS. 45 
 
 set up in the Place Yendome." He visited, however, 
 both Versailles and Fontainebleau, and the preference 
 which he gives to the latter (in a letter to Congreve) is 
 interesting, as anticipating that taste for natural, as 
 opposed to artificial beauty, which he afterwards ex- 
 pressed in the Spectator. 
 
 " I don't believe, as good a poet as you are, that you can 
 make finer Lanskips than those about the King's houses, or 
 with all yo^' descriptions build a more magnificent palace than 
 Versailles. I am, however, so singular as to prefer Fontaine- 
 bleau to the rest. It is situated among rocks and woods that 
 give you a fine variety of Savage prospects. The King has 
 Humoured the Genius of the place, and only made of so much 
 art as is necessary to Help and regulate Nature, without reform- 
 ing her too much. The Cascades seem to break through the 
 Clefts and cracks of Rocks that are covered over with Moss, 
 and look as if they were piled upon one another by Acci- 
 dent. There is an artificial wildness in the Meadows, Walks, 
 and Canals, and y*^ Garden, instead of a Wall, is Fenced on the 
 Lower End by a Natural Mound of Rock-work that strikes the 
 eye very agreeably. For my part, I think there is something 
 more charming in these rude heaps of Stone than in so many 
 Statues, and wou'd as soon see a River winding through Woods 
 and Meadows as when it is tossed up in such a variety of 
 figures at Versailles." ^ 
 
 Here and there, too, his correspondence exhibits traces 
 of that delicate vein of ridicule in which he is without 
 a rival, as in the following inimitable description of Le 
 Brun's paintings at Versailles : — 
 
 " The painter has represented his most Xtian Majesty 
 
 1 Compare Spectator 414. "I do not know whether I am singular 
 in my opinion, but for my part I woukl rather look upon a tree in 
 all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, rather 
 than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure ; 
 and cannot but fancy that an orchard in flower looks infinitely more 
 delightful than all the little labyrinths of the finished parterre." 
 
46 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 under y*' figure of Jupiter throwing thunderbolts all about 
 the ceiling, and striking terror into y*' Danube and Rhine, 
 that lie astonished and blasted a little above the Cornice." 
 
 Of his life at Blois a very slight sketch has been preserved 
 by the Abbe Philippeaux, one of the many gossiping 
 informants from whom Spence collected his anecdotes : — 
 
 " Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would 
 rise as early as between two and three in summer, and lie 
 abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. 
 He was untalkative while here, and often thoughtful ; some- 
 times so lost in thought that I have come into his room and 
 have stayed five minutes there before he has known anything 
 of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him, 
 kept very little company beside, and had no amour whilst 
 here that I know of, and I think I should have known it if 
 he had had any." 
 
 The following characteristic letter to a gentleman of 
 Blois, with whom he seems to have had an altercation, 
 is interesting as showing the mixture of coolness and 
 dignity, the " blood and judgment well commingled " 
 which Hamlet praised in Horatio, and which are con- 
 spicuous in all Addison's actions as well as in his 
 writings : — 
 
 " Sir, — I am always as slow in making an Enemy as a 
 Friend, and am therefore very ready to come to an Accom- 
 modation with you ; but as for any satisfaction, I don't think 
 it is due on either side when y^ Affront is mutual. You 
 know very well that according to y^ opinion of y® world a 
 man would as soon be called a Knave as a fool, and I believe 
 most people w^ be rather thought to want Legs than Brains. 
 But I suppose whatever we said in y^ heat of discourse is not 
 y® real opinion we have of each other, since otherwise you 
 would have scorned to subscribe yourself as I do at present, 
 S*-, y'^ very, etc. 
 
 A. Mons"" L'Espagnol, 
 Blois, 10^^ 1699." 
 
III.] HIS TRAVELS. 47 
 
 The length of Addison's sojourn at Blois seems to 
 have been partly caused by the difficulty he experienced, 
 owing to the defectiveness of his memory, in mastering 
 the language. Finding himself at last able to converse 
 easily, he returned to Paris some time in the autumn of 
 1 700, in order to see a little of polite society there before 
 starting on his travels in Italy. He found the best 
 company in the capital among the men of letters, and he 
 makes especial mention of Malebranche, whom he de- 
 scribes as solicitous about the adequate rendering of his 
 works into English; and of Boileau, who, having now 
 survived almost all his literary friends, seems, in his 
 conversation with Addison, to have been even more than 
 usually splenetic in his judgments on his contemporaries. 
 The old poet and critic was, however, propitiated with 
 the present of the Mnsce Anglicance ; and, according 
 to Tickell, said "that he did not question there were 
 excellent compositions in the native language of a country 
 that possessed the Eoman genius in so eminent a degree." 
 
 In general, Addison's remarks on the French character 
 are not complimentary. He found the vanity of the 
 people so elated by the elevation of the Duke of Anjou 
 to the throne of Spain that they were insupportable, 
 and he felt no reluctance to quit France for Italy. His 
 observations on the national manners, as seen at Blois, 
 are characteristic : — 
 
 " Truly by what I have yet seen, they are the Happiest 
 nation in the world. 'Tis not in the pow'r of "Want or 
 Slavery to make 'em miserable. There is nothing to be met 
 with in the Country but Mirth and Poverty. Ev'ry one 
 sings, laughs, and starves. Their Conversation is generally 
 Agreeable ; for if they have any Wit or Sense they are sure 
 to show it. They never mend upon a Second meeting, but 
 
48 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 use all tlie freedom and familiarity at first Sight that a long 
 Intimacy or Abundance of wine can scarce draw from an 
 Englishman. Their Women are perfect Mistresses in this 
 Art of showing themselves to the best Advantage. They are 
 always gay and s^Drightly, and set off y^ worst faces in Europe 
 with y^ best airs. Ev'ry one knows how to give herself as 
 charming a look and posture as S^' Godfrev Kneller c^ draw 
 her in." 1 
 
 He embarked from Marseilles for Genoa in December 
 1700, having as his companion Edward Wortley Mon- 
 tague, whom Pope satirises under the various names of 
 Shylock, Worldly, and Avidien. It is unnecessary to 
 follow him step by step in his travels, but the reader of 
 his Letter to Lord Halifax may still enjoy the delight and 
 enthusiasm to which he gives utterance on finding him- 
 self among the scenes described in his favourite authors : — 
 
 " Poetic fields encompass me around. 
 And still I seem to tread on classic ground ; 
 For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung, 
 That not a mountain rears its head unsung ; 
 Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows, 
 And every stream in heavenly numbers flows." ^ 
 
 The phrase "classic ground," which has become pro- 
 verbial, is first used in these verses, and, as will have 
 been observed. Pope repeats it with evident reference to 
 the above passage in his satire on the travels of the 
 "young ^neas." Addison seems to have carried the 
 Latin poets with him, and his quotations from them are 
 abundant and apposite. When he is driven into the 
 harbour at Monaco, he remembers Lucan's description of 
 its safety and shelter ; as he passes under Monte Circeo, 
 
 ^ Letter to the Right Honourable Charles Montague, Esq.. 
 Blois, lObr 1699, 
 
 - Letter from Italy to Lord Hahfax. 
 
in.] HIS TRAVELS. 49 
 
 he feels that Virgil's description of Eneas' voyage by 
 the same spot can never be sufficiently admired ; he 
 recalls, as he crosses the Apennines, the fine lines of 
 Claudian recording the march of Honorius from Eavenna 
 to Rome ; and he delights to think that at the falls of 
 the Velino he can still see the " angry goddess " of the 
 j^neid (Alecto) " thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, 
 and plunging herself into Hell " amidst such a scene of 
 horror and confusion. 
 
 His enthusiastic appreciation of the classics, which 
 caused him in judging any work of art to look in 
 the first place for regularity of design and simplicity of 
 effect, shows itself characteristically in his remarks on 
 the Lombard and German styles of architecture in Italy. 
 Of Milan Cathedral he speaks without much admiration, 
 but he was impressed with the wonders of the Certosa 
 near Pavia. "I saw," says he, "between Pavia and 
 Milan the convent of the Carthusians, which is very 
 spacious and beautiful. Their church is very fine and 
 curiously adorned, but of a Gothic structure." His most 
 interesting criticism, however, is that on the Duomo at 
 Siena : — 
 
 " Wlien a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that 
 our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one 
 cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they 
 would have left us had they only been instructed in the right 
 way, for when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than 
 that of the present, and the riches of the people much more at 
 the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed 
 on these Gothic cathedrals as would have finivshed a greater 
 variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before 
 or since that tiuie. One would wonder to see the vast labour 
 that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts 
 are loaden with ornaments, the windows are formed like so 
 
 S 
 
50 ADDISON. [cuAr. 
 
 many scenes of perspective, with a multitude of little pillars 
 retiring behind one another, the great columns are finely en- 
 graven with fruits and foliage, that run twisting about them 
 from the very top to the bottom ; the whole body of the church 
 is chequered with different lays of black and white marble, the 
 pavement curiously cut out in designs and Scripture stories, 
 and the front covered with such a variety of figures, and 
 overrun with so many mazes and little labyrinths of sculpture, 
 that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those 
 who prefer false beauties and affected ornaments to a noble 
 and majestic simplicity." ^ 
 
 Addison had not reached that large liberality in 
 criticism afterwards attained by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 who, while insisting that in all art there was but erne 
 true style, nevertheless allowed very high merit to what 
 he called the characteristic styles. Sir Joshua -svould 
 never have fallen into the error of imputing affectation 
 to such simple and honest workmen as the early archi- 
 tects of Northern Italy. The effects of Addison's classical 
 training are also very visible in his descriptions of natural 
 scenery. There is in these nothing of that craving melan- 
 choly produced by a sense of the infinity of nature which 
 came into vogue after the French Revolution ; no pro- 
 jection of the feelings of the spectator into the external 
 scene on which he gazes; nor, on the other hand, is 
 there any attempt to rival the art of the painter by pre- 
 senting a landscape in words instead of in colours. He 
 looks on nature with the same clear sight as the Greek 
 and Roman writers, and in describing a scene he selects 
 those particulars in it which he thinks best adapted to 
 arouse pleasurable images in the mind of the reader. 
 Take, for instance, the following excellent description of 
 his passage over the Apennines : — 
 
 ^ Addison's Works (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 301. 
 
III.] HIS TRAVELS. 51 
 
 " The fatigue of oiir crossing the Apennines, and of our 
 whole journey from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably 
 relieved by the variety of scenes we passed through. For, 
 not to mention the rude prospect of rocks rising one above 
 another, of the deep gutters worn in the sides of them by 
 torrents of rain and snow-water, or the long channels of sand 
 winding about their bottoms, that are sometimes filled with 
 so many rivers : we saw in six days' travelling the several 
 seasons of the year in their beauty and perfection. We were 
 sometimes shivering on the top of a bleak mountain, and a 
 little while afterwards basking in a warm valley, covered 
 with violets and almond trees in blossom, the bees already 
 swarming over them, though but in the month of February. 
 Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by 
 gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among 
 the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural 
 greenhouses ; as being always shaded with a great variety of 
 trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure." ^ 
 
 Though his thoughts during his travels were largely 
 occupied with objects chiefly interesting to his taste and 
 imagination, and though he busied himself with such 
 compositions as the Epistle from Italy, the Dialogue on 
 Medals, and the first four acts of Cato, he did not forget 
 that his experience was intended to qualify him for taking 
 part in the affairs of State. And when he reached Geneva, 
 in December 1701, the door to a political career seemed 
 to be on the point of opening. He there learned, as 
 Tickell informs us, that he had been selected to attend 
 the army under Prince Eugene as secretary from the 
 King. He accordingly waited in the city for official con- 
 firmation of this intelligence ; but his hopes were doomed 
 to disappointment. William HI. died in March 1702; 
 Halifax, on whom Addison's prospects chiefly depended, 
 was struck oft' the Privy Council by Queen Anne ; and 
 ^ Addison's Works (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 213. 
 
52 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 the travelling pension ceased with the life of the sovereign 
 who had granted it. Henceforth he had to trust to his 
 own resources, and though the loss of his pension does 
 not seem to have compelled him at once to turn home- 
 wards, as he continued on his route to Vienna, yet an 
 incident that occurred towards the close of his travels 
 shows that he was prepared to eke out his income by 
 undertaking work that would have been naturally irk- 
 some to him. 
 
 At Rotterdam, on his return towards England, he 
 met mth Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, for whom, as 
 has been said, he had already done some work as a 
 translator. Tonson was one of the founders of the 
 Kit-Kat Club, and in that capacity was brought into 
 frequent and intimate connection with the Whig 
 magnates of the day. Among these was the Duke of 
 Somerset, who, through his wife, then high in Queen 
 Anne's favour, exercised considerable influence on the 
 course of affairs. The Duke required a tutor for his son. 
 Lord Hertford, and Tonson recommended Addison. On 
 the Duke's approval of the recommendation, the book- 
 seller seems to have communicated with Addison, who 
 expressed himself in general terms as mlling to under- 
 take the charge of Lord Hertford, but desired to know 
 more particulars about his engagement. These were 
 furnished by the Duke in a letter to Tonson, and they 
 are certainly a very curious illustration of the manners 
 of the period. " I ought," says his Grace, " to enter into 
 that affair more freely and more plainly, and tell you 
 what I propose, and what I hope he will comply with — 
 viz. I desire he may be more on the account of a com- 
 panion in my son's travels than as a governor, and that 
 
III.] HIS TRAVELS. 53 
 
 as such I shall account him : my meaning is that neither 
 lodging, travelling, nor diet shall cost him sixpence, and 
 over and above that, my son shall present him at the 
 year's end with a hundred guineas, as long as he is pleased 
 to continue in that service to my son, by his personal 
 attendance and advice, in what he finds necessary during 
 his time of travelling." 
 
 To this not very tempting proposal Addison replied : 
 *' I have lately received one or two advantageous offers 
 of y® same nature, but as I should be very ambitious of 
 executing any of your Grace's commands, so I can't think 
 of taking y^ like employ from any other hands. As for 
 y^ recompense that is proposed to me, I must take the 
 liberty to assure your Grace that I should not see my 
 account in it, but in y® hope that I have to recommend 
 myself to your Grace's favour and approbation." This 
 reply proved highly offensive to the Duke, who seems 
 to have considered his own offer a magnificent one. 
 "Your letter of the 16th," he writes to Tonson on June 
 22, 1703, "with one from Mr. Addison, came safe to me. 
 You say he will give me an account of his readiness of 
 complying with my proposal. I will set down his own 
 words, which are thus : ' As for the recompense that is 
 proposed to me, I must confess I can by no means see 
 my account in it,' etc. All the other parts of his letter 
 are compliments to me, which he thought he was bound 
 in good breeding to write, and as such I have taken them, 
 and no otherwise ; and now I leave you to judge how 
 ready he is to comply with my proposal. Therefore I 
 have wrote by this first post to prevent his coming to 
 England on my account, and have told him plainly that I 
 must look for another, which I cannot be long a-finding." 
 
54 ADDISON. [chap. hi. 
 
 Addison's principal biographer, Miss Aikin, expresses 
 great contempt for the niggardHness of the Duke, and 
 says that " Addison must often have congratulated him- 
 self in the sequel on that exertion of proper spirit by 
 which he had escaped from wasting in an attendance 
 little better than servile three precious years, which he 
 found means of employing so much more to his o'vvn 
 honour and satisfaction, and to the advantage of the 
 public." Mean as the Duke's offer was, it is nevertheless 
 plain that Addison really intended to accept it, and, this 
 being so, he can scarcely be congratulated on having on 
 this occasion displayed his usual tact and felicity. Two 
 courses appear to have been open to him. He might 
 either have simply declined the offer " as not finding his 
 account in it," or he might have accepted it in view of 
 the future advantages which he hoped to derive from the 
 Duke's " favour and approbation," in which case he should 
 have said nothing about finding the " recompense " pro- 
 posed insufficient. By the course that he took he con- 
 trived to miss an appointment which he seems to have 
 made up his mind to accept, and he off'ended an influential 
 statesman whose favour he was anxious to secure. 
 
 To his pecuniary embarrassments was soon added 
 domestic loss. At Amsterdam he received news of his 
 father's death, and it may be supposed that the private 
 business in Avhich he must have been involved in conse- 
 quence of this event brought him to England, where he 
 arrived some time in the autumn of 1703. 
 
CHAPTER IT. 
 
 HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 
 
 Addison's fortunes were now at their lowest ebb. The 
 party from which he had looked for preferment was out 
 of office ; his chief political patron was in particular dis- 
 credit at Court ; his means were so reduced that he was 
 forced to adopt a style of living not much more splendid 
 than that of the poorest inhabitants of Grub Street. Yet 
 within three years of his return to England he was pro- 
 moted to be an Under-Secretary of State, a post from 
 which he mounted to one position of honour after another 
 till his final retirement from political life. That he was 
 able to take advantage of the opportunity that offered 
 itself was omng to his own genius and capacity; the 
 opportunity was the fruit of circumstances which had 
 produced an entire revolution in the position of English 
 men of letters. 
 
 Through the greater part of Charles II. 's reign the 
 profession of literature was miserably degraded. It is 
 zme that the King himself, a man of wit and taste, was 
 not slow in his appreciation of art; but he was by his 
 character insensible to what was serious or elevated, and 
 the poetry of gallantry, which he preferred, was quite 
 within reach of the courtiers by whom he was surrounded. 
 
56 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 Rochester, Buckingham, Sedley, and Dorset are among 
 the principal poetical names of the period; all of them 
 being well qualified to shine in verse, the chief require- 
 ments of which were a certain grace of manner, an air 
 of fashionable breeding, and a complete disregard of the 
 laws of decency. Besides these "songs by persons of 
 quality," the principal entertainment was provided by 
 the drama. But the stage, seldom a lucrative profession, 
 was then crowded with writers whose fertile, if not very 
 lofty, invention kept down the price of plays. Otway, the 
 most successful dramatist of his time, died in a state of 
 indigence, and as some say almost of starvation, while 
 playwrights of less ability, if the house was ill-attended 
 on the third night, when the poet received all the profits 
 of the performance, were forced, as Oldham says, "to 
 starve or live in tatters all the year." ^ 
 
 Periodical literature, in the shape of journals and 
 magazines, had as yet no existence ; nor could the satiri- 
 cal poet or the pamphleteer find his remuneration in 
 controversial writing, the strong reaction against Puri- 
 tanism having raised the monarchy to a position in which 
 it was practically secure against the assaults of all its 
 enemies. The author of the most brilliant satire of the 
 period, who had used all the powers of a rich imagination 
 to discredit the Puritan and Eepublican cause, was paid 
 with nothing more solid than admiration, and died 
 neglected and in want. 
 
 " The wretch, at summing up his misspent days, 
 Found nothing left but poverty and praise ! 
 Of all his gains by verse he could not save 
 Enough to purchase flannel and a grave ! 
 
 1 Oklham's Satii'e Dissuading from Poetry. 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 57 
 
 Keduced to want he in due time fell sick, 
 Was fain to die, and be interred on tick ; 
 And well might bless the fever that was sent 
 To rid him hence, and his worse fate prevent." ^ 
 
 In the latter part of this reign, however, a new com- 
 bination of circumstances produced a great change in the 
 character of English literature and in the position of 
 its professors. The struggle of Parties recommenced. 
 Wearied with the intolerable rule of the Saints, the nation 
 had been at first glad to leave its newly-restored King to 
 his pleasures, but, as the memories of the Commonwealth 
 became fainter, the people watched with a growing feel- 
 ing of disgust the selfishness and extravagance of the 
 Court, while the scandalous sale of Dunkirk and the 
 sight of the Dutch fleet on the Thames made them think 
 of the patriotic energies which Cromwell had succeeded 
 in arousing. At the same time the thinly -disguised 
 inclination of the King to Popery, and the avowed 
 opinions of his brother, raised a general feeling of alarm 
 for the Protestant liberties of the nation. On the other 
 hand, the Puritans, taught moderation by adversity, ex- 
 hibited the really religious side of their character, and 
 attracted towards themselves a considerable portion of 
 the aristocracy, as well as of the commercial and profes- 
 sional classes in the metropolis — a combination of interests 
 which helped to form the nucleus of the Whig party. 
 The clergy and the landed proprietors, who had been the 
 chief sufferers from Parliamentary rule, naturally adhered 
 to the Court, and were nicknamed by their opponents 
 Tories. Violent party conflicts ensued, marked by such 
 incidents as the Test Act, the Exclusion Bill, the intrigues 
 
 ^ Oldham's Satire Dissuading from Poetry. 
 
58 ADDISON. [chai'. 
 
 of Monmouth, the Popish Plot, and the trial and acquittal 
 of Shaftesbury on the charge of high treason. 
 
 Finding his position no longer so easy as at his restora- 
 tion, Charles naturally bethought him of calling litera- 
 ture to his assistance. The stage, being completely 
 under his control, seemed the readiest instrument for his 
 purpose ; the order went forth ; and an astonishing dis- 
 play of monarchical fervour in all the chief dramatists 
 of the time — Otway, Dry den, Lee, and Crowne — was the 
 result. Shadwell, who was himself inclined to the Whig 
 interest, laments the change: 
 
 ' ' The stage, like old Rump pulpits, is become 
 The scene of News, a furious Party's drum." 
 
 But the political influence of the drama and the audience 
 to which it appealed being necessarily limited, the King 
 sought for more powerful literary artillery, and he found 
 it in the serviceable genius of Dryden, whose satirical and 
 controversial poems date from this period. The wide 
 popularity of Absalom and Achifophel, written against 
 Monmouth and Shaftesbury ; of The Medal^ satirising the 
 acquittal of Shaftesbury; of The Hind and Panther, com- 
 posed to advance the Romanising projects of James II. ; 
 points to the vast influence exercised by literature in the 
 party struggle. Nevertheless, in spite of all that Dryden 
 had done for the Royal cause, in spite of the fact that he 
 himself had more than once appealed to the poet for 
 assistance, the ingratitude or levity of Charles was so 
 inveterate that he let the poet's services go almost un- 
 requited. Dryden, it is true, held the posts of Laureate 
 and Royal Historiographer, but his salary was always in 
 arrears, and the letter which he addressed to Rochester, 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 59 
 
 First Lord of the Treasury, asking for six months' 
 payment of what was due to him tells its own story. 
 
 James II. cared nothing for literature, and was prob- 
 ably too dull of apprehension to understand the incal- 
 culable service that Dryden had rendered to his cause. 
 He showed his appreciation of the Poet-Laureate's genius 
 by deducting £100 from the salary which his brother 
 had promised him, and by cutting off from the emolu- 
 ments of the office the time-honoured butt of canary ! 
 
 Under William III. the complexion of affairs again 
 altered. The Court, in the old sense of the word, ceased 
 to be a paramount influence in literature. William HI. 
 derived his authority from Parliament; he knew that 
 he must support it mainly by his sword and his states- 
 manship. A stranger to England, its manners and its 
 language, he showed little disposition to encourage 
 letters. Pope, indeed, maliciously suggests that he had 
 the bad taste to admire the poetry of Blackmore, whom 
 he knighted ; but, as a matter of fact, the honour was 
 conferred on the worthy Sir Eichard in consequence of 
 his distinction in medicine, and he himself bears witness 
 to William's contempt for poetry. 
 
 " Reverse of Louis he, example rare, 
 Loved to deserve the praise he could not bear. 
 He shunned the acclamations of the throng. 
 And always coldly heard the poet's song. 
 Hence the great King the Muses did neglect, 
 And the mere poet met with small respect." ^ 
 
 Such political verse as we find in this reign generally 
 consists, like Halifax's Epistle to Lmxl Dmset, or Addi- 
 son's own Address to King William^ of hyperbolical 
 
 1 Blackmore, TU Kit-Kats. 
 
60 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 flattery. Opposition was extinct, for both parties had 
 for the moment united to promote the Revolution, and 
 the only discordant notes amid the chorus of adulation 
 proceeded from Jacobite writers concealed in the garrets 
 and cellars of Grub Street. Such an atmosphere was 
 not favourable to the production of literature of an 
 elevated or even of a characteristic order. 
 
 Addison's return to England coincided most happily 
 with another remarkable turn of the tide. Leaning 
 decidedly to the Tory party, who were now strongly 
 leavened with the Jacobite element, Anne had not long 
 succeeded to the throne before she seized an opportunity 
 for dismissing the Whig Ministry whom she found in 
 possession of office. The Whigs, equally alarmed at the 
 influence acquired by their rivals, and at the danger 
 which threatened the Protestant succession, neglected 
 no effort to counterbalance the loss of their sovereign's 
 favour by strengthening their credit with the people. 
 Having been trained in a school which had at least 
 qualified them to appreciate the influence of style, the 
 aristocratic leaders of the party were well aware of the 
 advantages they would derive by attracting to them- 
 selves the services of the ablest writers of the day. 
 Hence they made it their policy to mingle with men of 
 letters on an equal footing, and to hold out to them an 
 expectation of a share in the advantages to be reaped 
 from the overthrow of their rivals. 
 
 The result of this union of forces was a great increase 
 in the number of literary-political clubs. In its half- 
 aristocratic, half-democratic constitution, the club was the 
 natural product of enlarged political freedom, and helped 
 to extend the organisation of polite opinion beyond the 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 61 
 
 narrow orbit of Court society. Addison himself, in his 
 simple style, points out the nature of the fundamental 
 principle of Association which he observed in operation 
 all around him. " When a set of men find themselves 
 agree in any particular, though never so trivial, they 
 establish themselves into a kind of fraternity, and meet 
 once or twice a week upon the account of such a 
 fantastic resemblance."^ Among these societies, in the 
 first years of the eighteenth century, the most celebrated 
 was perhaps the Kit-Kat Club. It consisted of thirty- 
 nine of the leading men of the Whig party; and, though 
 many of these were of the highest rank, it is a character- 
 istic fact that the founder of the club should have been 
 the bookseller Jacob Tonson. It was probably through 
 his influence, joined to that of Halifax, that Addison 
 was elected a member of the society soon after his 
 return to England. Among its prominent members 
 was the Duke of Somerset, the first meeting between 
 whom and Addison, after the correspondence that had 
 passed between them, must have been somewhat embar- 
 rassing. The club assembled at one Christopher Catt's, 
 a pastry-cook, who gave his name both to the society 
 and the mutton -pies which were its ordinary entertain- 
 ment. Each member was compelled to select a lady as 
 his toast, and the verses which he composed in her 
 honour were engraved on the wine-glasses belonging to 
 the club. Addison chose the Countess of Manchester, 
 whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and compli- 
 mented her in the following lines : — 
 
 " While haughty Gallia's dames, that spread 
 O'er their pale cheeks an artful red, 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 9. 
 
62 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 Beheld this beauteous stranger there, 
 111 native charms divinely fair, 
 Confusion in their looks they showed, 
 And with unborrowed blushes glowed." 
 
 Circumstances seemed now to be conspiring in favour 
 of the Whigs. The Tories, whose strength lay mainly 
 in the Jacobite element, were jealous of Marlborough's 
 ascendency over the Queen; on the other hand, the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, who was rapidly acquiring the 
 chief place in Anne's affections, intrigued in favour of 
 the opposite faction. In spite, too, of her Tory predilec- 
 tions, the Queen, finding her throne menaced by the 
 ambition of Louis XIV., was compelled in self-defence 
 to look for support to the party which had most vigor- 
 ously identified itself with the principles of the Eevolu- 
 tion. She bestowed her unreserved confidence on 
 Marlborough, and he, in order to counterbalance the 
 influence of the Jacobites, threw himself into the arms 
 of the Whigs. Being named Captain-General in 1704, 
 he undertook the campaign which he brought to so 
 glorious a conclusion on the 2d of August in that year 
 at the battle of Blenheim. 
 
 Godolphin, who in the absence of Marlborough 
 occupied the chief j^lace in the Ministry, moved perhaps 
 by patriotic feeling, and no doubt also by a sense of the 
 advantage which his party would derive from this great 
 victory, was anxious that it should be commemorated 
 in adequate verse. He accordingly applied to Halifax 
 as the person to whom the sacer vates required for the 
 occasion would probably be kno-wn. Halifax has had 
 the misfortune to have his character transmitted to 
 posterity by two poets who hated him either on public or 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 63 
 
 private grounds. S^svift describes him as the would-be 
 "Maecenas of the nation," but insinuates that he 
 neglected the wants of the poets whom he patronised : 
 
 " Himself as rich as fifty Jews, 
 Was easy though they wanted shoes." 
 
 Pope also satirises the vanity and meanness of his 
 disposition in the well-known character of Bufo. Such 
 portraits, though they are justified to some extent by- 
 evidence coming from other quarters, are not to be too 
 strictly examined as if they bore the stamp of historic 
 truth. It is, at any rate, certain that Halifax always 
 proved himself a warm, and zealous friend to Addison, 
 and when Godolphin applied to him for a poet to cele- 
 brate Blenheim, he answered that, though acquainted 
 with a person who possessed every qualification for the 
 task, he could not ask him to undertake it. Being 
 pressed for his reasons, he replied "that while too 
 many fools and blockheads were maintained in their 
 pride and luxury at the public expense, such men as 
 were really an honour to their age and country were 
 shamefully suflfered to languish in obscurity;, that, for 
 his own share, he would never desire any gentleman of 
 parts and learning to employ his time in celebrating a 
 Ministry who had neither the justice nor the generosity 
 to make it worth his while." In answer to this the 
 Lord Treasurer assured Halifax that any person whom 
 he might name as equal to the required task, should have 
 no cause to repent of having rendered his assistance; 
 whereupon Halifax mentioned Addison, but stipulated 
 that all advances to the latter must come from Godol- 
 phin himself. Accordingly Boyle, Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, afterwards Lord Carleton, was despatched 
 
64 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 on the embassy, and, if Pope is to be trusted, found 
 Addison lodged up three pair of stairs over a small 
 shop. He opened to him the subject, and informed him 
 that, in return for the service that was expected of him, 
 he was instructed to offer him a Commissionership of 
 Appeal in the Excise, as a pledge of more considerable 
 advancement in the future. The fruits of this negotia- 
 tion were The Campaign. 
 
 Warton disposes of the merits of The Campaign with 
 the cavalier criticism, so often since repeated, that it is 
 merely "a gazette in rhyme." In one sense the judg- 
 ment is no doubt just. As a poem. The Campaign shows 
 neither loftiness of invention nor enthusiasm of personal 
 feeling, and it cannot therefore be ranked with such an 
 ode as Horace's Qualem ministrum, or with Pope's very 
 fine Epistle to the Earl of Oxford after his disgrace. Its 
 methodical narrative style is scarcely misrepresented by 
 Warton's sarcastic description of it; but it should be 
 remembered that this style was adopted by Addison 
 with deliberate intention. " Thus," says he, in the con- 
 clusion of the poem, 
 
 " Thus would I fain Britannia's wars rehearse 
 In the smooth records of a faithful verse ; 
 That, if such numbers can o'er time prevail, 
 May tell posterity the wondrous tale. 
 When actions unadorned are faint and weak 
 Cities and countries must be taught to speak •, 
 Gods may descend in factions from the skies, 
 And rivers from their oozy beds arise ; 
 Fiction may deck the truth with spurious rays, 
 And round the hero cast a borrowed hlaze. 
 Marlbro's exploits appear divinely bright, 
 And proudly shine in their own native light ; 
 Raised in themselves their genuine charms they boast, 
 And those that paint them truest praise them most." 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 65 
 
 The design here avowed is certainly not poetical, but 
 it is eminently business-like and extremely Avell adapted 
 to the end in view. What Godolphin wanted was a set 
 of complimentary verses on Marlborough. Addison, 
 with infinite tact, declares that the highest compliment 
 that can be paid to the hero is to recite his actions in 
 their unadorned grandeur. This happy turn of flattery 
 shows how far he had advanced in literary skill since he 
 wrote his address To the King. He had then excused 
 himself for the inadequate celebration of William's 
 deeds on the plea that, great though these might be, 
 they were too near the poet's own time to be seen in 
 proper focus. A thousand years hence, he suggests, 
 some Homer may be inspired by the theme "and Boyne 
 be sung when it has ceased to flow." This could not 
 have been very consolatory to a mortal craving for con- 
 temporary applause, and the apology off'ered in The 
 Camimign for the prosaic treatment of the subject is far 
 more dexterous. Bearing in mind the fact that it was 
 written to order, and that the poet deliberately declined 
 to avail himself of the aid of fiction, we must allow 
 that the construction of the poem exhibits both art and 
 dignity. The allusion to the vast slaughter at Blenheim 
 in the opening paragraph — 
 
 ' ' Rivers of blood I see and hills of slain. 
 An Iliad rising out of one campaign " — 
 
 is not very fortunate ; but the lines describing the am- 
 bition of Louis XIY. are weighty and dignified, and 
 the couplet indicating through the single image of the 
 Danube the vast extent of the French encroachments 
 shows how thoroughly Addison was imbued with the 
 spirit of classical poetry : 
 
66 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 " The rising Danube its long race began, 
 And half its course through the new conquests ran." 
 
 With equal felicity he describes the position and inter- 
 vention of England, seizing at the same time the oppor- 
 tunity for a panegyric on her free institutions : 
 
 " Thrice happy Britain from the kingdoms rent 
 To sit the guardian of the Continent ! 
 That sees her bravest sons advanced so high 
 And flourishing so near her prince's eye ; 
 Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's sport, 
 Or from the crimes and follies of a court : 
 On the firm basis of desert they rise, 
 From long-tried faith and friendship's holy ties, 
 Their sovereign's well-distinguished smiles they share, 
 Her ornaments in peace, her strength in war ; 
 The nation thanks them with a public voice. 
 By showers of blessings Heaven approves their choice ; 
 Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, 
 Ajid factions strive who shall applaud them most." 
 
 He proceeds in a stream of calm and equal verse, en- 
 livened by dexterous allusions and occasional happy 
 turns of expression to describe the scenery of the 
 Moselle ; the march between the Maese and the Dan- 
 ube ; the heat 'to which the army was exposed ; the 
 arrival on the Neckar ; and the track of devastation left 
 by the French armies. The meeting between Marl- 
 borough and Eugene inspires him again to raise his 
 style : 
 
 " Great souls by instinct to each other turn, 
 Demand alliance, and in friendship burn, 
 A sudden friendship, while with outstretched rays 
 They meet each other mingling blaze with blaze. 
 Polished in courts, and hardened in the field, 
 Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled, 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 67 
 
 Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood 
 Of mounting spirits and fermenting blood ; 
 Lodged in the soul, with virtue overruled, 
 Inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled, 
 In hours of peace content to be unknowTi 
 And only in the field of battle shown ; 
 To souls like these in mutual friendship joined 
 Heaven dares entrust the cause of human kind." 
 
 The celebrated passage describing Marlborough's con- 
 duct at Blenheim is certainly the finest in the poem : 
 
 " 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved 
 That in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, 
 Amidst confusion, horror, and despair 
 Examined all the dreadful scenes of war ; 
 In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed 
 To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, 
 Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, 
 And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. 
 So when an angel by divine command 
 With rising tempests shakes a guilty land. 
 Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past. 
 Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; 
 And pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform, 
 Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 
 
 Johnson makes some characteristic criticisms on this 
 simile, which indeed, he maintains, is not a simile, but 
 " an exemplification." He says : " Marlborough is so 
 like the angel in the poem that the action of both is 
 almost the same, and performed by both in the same 
 manner. Marlborough 'teaches the battle to rage;' the 
 angel ' directs the storm ; ' Marlborough is ' unmoved in 
 peaceful thought;' the angel is 'calm and serene;' Marl- 
 borough stands 'unmoved amid the shock of hosts;' the 
 angel rides 'calm in the whirlwind.' The lines on Marl- 
 
68 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 borough are just and noble ; but the simile gives almost 
 the same images a second time." 
 
 This judgment would be unimpeachable if the force 
 of the simile lay solely in the hkeness between Marl- 
 borough and the angel, but it is evident that equal stress 
 is to be laid on the resemblance between the battle and 
 the storm. It was Addison's intention to raise in the 
 mind of the reader the noblest possible idea of com- 
 posure and design in the midst of confusion : to do this 
 he selected an angel as the minister of the divine pur- 
 pose, and a storm as the symbol of fury and devastation; 
 and, in order to heighten his effect, he recalls with true 
 art the violence of the particular tempest which had 
 recently ravaged the country. Johnson has noticed the 
 close similarity between the persons of Marlborough and 
 the angel ; but he has exaggerated the resemblance 
 between the actions in which they are severally en- 
 gaged. 
 
 The Campaign completely fulfilled the purpose for 
 which it was written. It strengthened the position of 
 the Whig Ministry, and secured for its author the ad- 
 vancement that had been promised him. Early in 1706 
 Addison, on the recommendation of Lord Godolphin, 
 was promoted from the Commissionership of Appeals in 
 Excise to be Under-Secretary of State to Sir Charles 
 Hedges. The latter was one of the few Tories who had 
 retained their position in the Ministry since the restora- 
 tion of the Whigs to the favour of their sovereign, and 
 he, too, shortly vanished from the stage like his more 
 distinguished friends, making way for the Earl of Sun- 
 derland, a staunch Whig, and son-in-law to the Duke of 
 Marlborough. 
 
u:] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 69 
 
 Addison's duties as Under-Secretary were probably 
 not particularly arduous. In 1705 he was permitted to 
 attend Lord Halifax to the Court of Hanover, whither 
 the latter was sent to carry the Act for the Naturalisa- 
 tion of the Electress Sophia. The mission also included 
 Vanbrugh, who, as Clarencieux King -at -Arms, was 
 charged to invest the Elector with the Order of the 
 Garter ; the party thus constituted affording a remark- 
 able illustration of the influence exercised by literature 
 over the politics of the period. Addison must have 
 obtained during this journey considerable insight into 
 the nature of England's foreign policy, as, besides estab- 
 lishing the closest relations with Hanover, Halifax was 
 also instructed to form an alliance with the United Pro- 
 vinces for securing the succession of the House of Bruns- 
 Avick to the English throne. 
 
 In the meantime his imagination was not idle. 
 After helping Steele in the composition of his Tender 
 Husband, which was acted in 1705, he found time for 
 engaging in a fresh literary enterprise of his own. The 
 principles of operatic music, which had long been de- 
 veloped in Italy, had been slow in making their way 
 to this country. Their introduction had been delayed 
 partly by the French prejudices of Charles II., but 
 more perhaps by the strong insular tastes of the 
 people and by the vigorous forms of the native drama. 
 What the untutored English audience liked best to 
 hear was a well-marked tune sung in a fine natural 
 way : the kind of music which was in vogue on the 
 stage till the end of the seventeenth century was 
 simply the regular drama interspersed with airs ; recita- 
 tive was unknown ; and there was no attempt to culti- 
 
70 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 vate the voice according to the methods practised in 
 the Italian schools. But mth the increase of wealth 
 and travel more exacting tastes began to prevail : Italian 
 singers appeared on the stage and exhibited to the audi- 
 ence capacities of voice of which they had hitherto had 
 no experience. In 1705 was acted at the Haymarket " i i 
 Arsinoe, the first opera constiiicted in England on 
 avowedly Italian principles. The words were still in 
 English, but the dialogue was throughout in recitative. 
 The composer was Thomas Clayton, who, though a man 
 entirely devoid of genius, had travelled in Italy, and was 
 eager to turn to account the experience which he had 
 acquii'ed. In spite of its badness Arsinoe greatly im- 
 pressed the public taste ; and it was soon followed by 
 Camilla, a version of an opera by Bononcini, portions of 
 which were sung in Italian and portions in English, an 
 absurdity on which Addison justly comments in a 
 number of the Spectator. His remarks on the conse- 
 quences of translating the Italian operas are equally 
 humorous and just. 
 
 "As there was no great danger," says he, " of hurting the 
 sense of these extraordinary pieces, our authors would often 
 make words of their ovm which were entirely foreign to the 
 meaning of the passages they preteuded to translate ; their 
 chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse 
 answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go 
 to the same tune. Thus the famous song in Camilla : 
 
 * Barbara si t'intendo, ' etc. 
 
 'Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning.' 
 
 which expresses the resentment of an angry lover, was tran- 
 slated into that English lamentation — 
 
 ' Frail are a lover's hopes,' etc. 
 
 And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 71 
 
 of the British nation dying away and languishing to notes 
 that M'ere filled Avith the spirit of rage and indignation. It 
 happened also very frequently where the sense was rightly 
 translated, the necessary transposition of words, which were 
 drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, 
 made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was 
 very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse 
 that ran thus, word for word : 
 
 ' And turned my rage into pity, 
 which the English for rhyme's sake translated, 
 
 ' And into pity turned my rage. ' 
 
 By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in 
 the Italian fell upon the word ' rage ' in the English ; and 
 the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original 
 were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes 
 happened likewise that the finest notes in the air fell upon 
 the most insignificant word in the sentence. I have known 
 the word 'and' pursued through the whole gamut; have 
 been entertained with many a melodious ' the ; ' and have 
 heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions be- 
 stowed upon ' then,' ' for,' and ' from,' to the eternal honour 
 of our English particles." ^ 
 
 Perceiving these radical defects, Addison seems to 
 have been ambitious of showing by example how they 
 might be remedied. "The great success this opera 
 (Arsinoe) met with produced," says he, "some attempts 
 of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give 
 a more natural and reasonable entertainment than what 
 can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation 
 This alanned the poetasters and fiddlers of the town, 
 who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware; 
 and therefore laid down an established rule, which is 
 received as such to this day, ' That nothing is capable 
 of being well set to music that is not nonsense.' "^ The 
 1 Spectator, No. 18. ' Ibid. 
 
72 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 allusion to the failure of the writer's own opera of 
 Bosamond is unmistakable. The piece was performed on 
 the 2d of April 1706, but was coldly received, and after 
 two or three representations was withdrawn. 
 
 The reasons which the Spectator assigns for the catas- 
 trophe betray rather the self-love of the author than the 
 clear perception of the critic. Rosamond failed because, 
 in the first place, it was very bad as a musical composi- 
 tion. Misled by the favour with which Arsinoe w^as 
 received, Addison seems to have regarded Clayton as a 
 great musician, and he put his poem into the hands of the 
 latter, thinking that his score would be as superior to 
 that of Arisinoe as his own poetry was to the words 
 of that opera. Clayton, however, had no genius, and 
 only succeeded in producing what Sir John Hawkins, 
 quoting with approbation the words of another critic, 
 calls " a confused chaos of music, the only merit of which 
 is its shortness."^ 
 
 But it may be doubted whether in any case the most 
 skilful composer could have produced music of a high 
 order adapted to the poetry of Bosamond. The play is 
 neither a tragedy, a comedy, nor a melodrama. It seems 
 that Eleanor did not really poison Fair Rosamond, but 
 only administered to her a sleeping potion, and, as she 
 takes care to explain to the King, 
 
 " The bowl with drowsy juices filled, 
 From cold Egyptian drugs distilled. 
 In borrowed death has closed her eyes." 
 
 This information proves highly satisfactory to the King, 
 not only because he is gratified to find that Rosamond is 
 
 1 Sir John Hawkins' History of Music, vol. v. p. 137. 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 73 
 
 not dead, but also because, even before discovering her 
 supposed dead body, he had resolved, in consequence of 
 a dream sent to him hy his guardian angel, to terminate 
 the relations existing between them. The Queen and 
 he accordingly arrange in a business-like manner that 
 Rosamond shall be quietly removed in her trance to a 
 nunnery; a reconciliation is then effected between the 
 husband and wife, who, as we are led to suppose, live 
 happily ever after. 
 
 The main motive of the opera in Addison's mind 
 appears to have been the desire of complimenting the 
 Marlborough family. It is dedicated to the Duchess; 
 the warlike character of Henry naturally recalls the 
 prowess of the great modern captain ; and the King is 
 consoled by his guardian angel for the loss of Fair Rosa- 
 mond -vnth a vision of the future glories of Blenheim : 
 
 " To calm thy grief and lull thy cares 
 
 Look up and see 
 What, after long revolving years, 
 
 Thy bower shall be ! 
 When time its beauties shall deface, 
 And only with its ruins grace 
 The future prospect of the place ! 
 Behold the glorious pile ascending. 
 Columns swelling, arches bending. 
 Domes in awful pomp arising. 
 Art in curious strokes surprising, 
 Foes in figured fights contending. 
 Behold the glorious pile ascending." 
 
 This is graceful enough, but it scarcely offers material 
 for music of a serious kind. Nor can the Court have 
 been greatly impressed by the compliment paid to its 
 morality as contrasted with that of Charles II., conveyed 
 
74 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 as it was by the mouth of Grideline, one of the comic 
 characters in the piece — 
 
 " Since conjugal passion 
 
 Is come into fashion, 
 And marriage so blest on the throne is, 
 
 Like a Venus I'll shine, 
 
 Be fond and be fine, 
 And Sir Trusty shall be my Adonis." 
 
 The ill success of JRosamond confirmed Addison's 
 dislike to the Italian opera, which he displayed both in 
 his grave and humorous papers on the subject in the 
 Spectator. The disquisition upon the various actors of 
 the lion in Hydaspes is one of his happiest inspirations ; 
 but his serious criticisms are, as a ride, only just in so 
 far as they are directed against the dramatic absurdities 
 of the Italian opera. As to his technical qualifications 
 as a critic of music, it Avill be sufficient to cite the opinion 
 of Dr. Burney : — "To judges of music nothing more 
 need be said of Mr. Addison's abilities to decide con- 
 cerning the comparative degrees of national excellence 
 in the art, and the merit of particular masters, than his 
 predilection for the productions of Clayton and in- 
 sensibility to the force and originality of Handel's 
 compositions in Binaldo"^ 
 
 In December 1708 the Earl of Sunderland was displaced 
 to make room for the Tory Lord Dartmouth, and Addison, 
 as Under-Secretary, f oUo-wdng the fortunes of his superior, 
 found himself again without employment. Fortunately 
 for him the Earl of Wharton was almost immediately 
 afterwards made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and offered 
 him the lucrative post of Secretary. The Earl, who was 
 
 ^ Burney's History of Music, vol. iv. p. 208. 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 75 
 
 subsequently created a Marquis, was the father of the 
 famous Duke satirised in Pope's first Moral Essay ; he 
 was in every respect the opposite of Addison — a vehement 
 Eepublican, a sceptic, unprincipled in his morals, venal 
 in his methods of Government. He was nevertheless a 
 man of the finest talents, and seems to have possessed 
 the power of gaining personal ascendency over his com- 
 panions by a profound knowledge of character. An 
 acquaintance with Addison, doubtless commencing at the 
 Kit-Kat Club, of which both were members, had convinced 
 him that the latter had eminent qualifications for the 
 task, which the Secretary's post would involve, of dealing 
 with men of very various conditions. Of the feelings 
 with which Addison on his side regarded the Earl we have 
 no record. " It is reasonable to suppose," says Johnson, 
 "that he counteracted, as far as he was able, the 
 malignant and blasting influence of the Lieutenant; 
 and that, at least, by his intervention some good was 
 done and some mischief prevented." Not a shadow of 
 an imputation, at any rate, rests upon his own conduct 
 as Secretary. He appears to have acted strictly on that 
 conception of public duty which he defines in one of his 
 papers in the Spedatm'. Speaking of the marks of a 
 corrupt official, "Such an one," he declares, "is the man 
 who upon any pretence whatsoever, receives more than 
 what is the stated and unquestioned fee of his office. 
 Gratifications, tokens of thankfulness, despatch money, 
 and the like specious terms, are the pretences under 
 which corruption very frequently shelters itself. An 
 honest man will, however, look on all these methods as 
 unjustifiable, and will enjoy himself better in a moderate 
 fortune that is gained with honour and reputation, than 
 
76 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 in an overgrown estate that is cankered with the ac- 
 quisitions of rapine and exaction. Were all our offices 
 discharged with such an inflexible integrity, we should 
 not see men in all ages, who grow up to exorbitant 
 wealth, with the abilities which are to be met with in an 
 ordinary mechanic." ^ His friends perhaps considered 
 that his impartiality was somewhat overstrained, since he 
 always declined to remit the customary fees in their 
 favour. "For," said he, "I may have forty friends, 
 whose fees may be two guineas a -piece; then I lose 
 eighty guineas, and my friends gain but two a-piece." 
 
 He took with him as his own Secretary, Eustace Bud- 
 gell, who was related to him, and for whom he seems to 
 have felt a warm affection. Budgell was a man of consider- 
 able literary ability, and was the writer of the various 
 papers in the Spectator signed "X.," some of which 
 succeed happily in imitating Addison's style. While he 
 was under his friend's guidance his career was fairly 
 successful, but his temper was violent, and when, at a 
 later period of his life, he served in Ireland under a new 
 Lieutenant and another Secretary, he became involved 
 in disputes which led to his dismissal. A furious pam- 
 phlet against the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Bolton, 
 published by him in spite of Addison's remonstrances, 
 only complicated his position, and from this period his 
 fortunes steadily declined. He lost largely in the South 
 Sea Scheme ; spent considerable sums in a vain endeavour 
 to obtain a seat in Parliament; and at last came under 
 the influence of his kinsman, Tindal, the well-known 
 deist, whose will he is accused of ha^^ng falsified. With 
 his usual infelicity he happened to rouse the resentment 
 1 Spectator, No. 469. 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 77 
 
 of Pope, and was treated in consequence to one of the 
 deadly couplets with which that great poet was in the 
 habit of repaying real or supposed injuries : 
 
 "Let Bndgell charge low Grub Street on his quill, 
 And write whate'er he pleased, — except his will." 
 
 The lines were memorable, and were doubtless often 
 quoted, and the wretched man finding his life insupport- 
 able, ended it by drowning himself in the Thames. 
 
 During his residence in Ireland Addison firmly 
 cemented his friendship with Swift, whose acquaintance 
 he had probably made after The Campaign had given him 
 a leading position in the Whig party, on the side of 
 which the sympathies of both were then enlisted. Swift's 
 admiration for Addison was warm and generous. When 
 the latter was on the point of embarking on his new 
 duties. Swift wrote to a common friend. Colonel Hunter : — 
 " Mr. Addison is hurrying away for Ireland, and I pray 
 too much business may not spoil le plus Jionnete homme du 
 monde" To Archbishop King he wrote : — " Mr. Addison, 
 who goes over our first secretary, is a most excellent 
 person, and being my intimate friend I shall use all my 
 credit to set him right in his notions of persons and 
 things." Addison's duties took him occasionally to 
 England, and daring one of his visits Swift writes to 
 him from Ireland : — " I am convinced that whatever 
 Government come over you mil find all marks of kind- 
 ness from any parliament here with respect to your 
 employment; the Tories contending with the Whigs 
 which should speak best of you. In short, if you 
 will come over again when you are at leisure we will 
 raise an army and make you King of Ireland. Can you 
 
78 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 think so meanly of a kingdom as not to be pleased that 
 every creature in it, who hath one grain of worth, has a 
 veneration for you ? " In his Journal to Stella he says, 
 under date of October 12, 1710: "Mr. Addison's elec- 
 tion has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if 
 he had a mind to be chosen king he would hardly be 
 refused." On his side Addison's feelings were equally 
 warm. He presented Swift with a copy of his Remarks 
 on Several Parts of Italy, inscribing it — "To the most 
 agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest 
 genius of his age." 
 
 This friendship, founded on mutual respect, was des- 
 tined to be impaired by pohtical differences. In 1710 
 the credit of the Whig Ministry had been greatly under- 
 mined by the combined craft of Harley and i\Irs. Masham, 
 and Swift, who was anxious as to his position, on coming 
 over to England to press his claims on Somers and 
 Halifax, found that they were unable to help him. He 
 appears to have considered that their want of power 
 proceeded from want of will; at any rate, he made 
 advances to Harley, which were of course gladly received. 
 The Ministry were at this time being hard pressed by 
 the Emminer, under the conduct of Prior, and at their 
 instance Addison started the JFhig Examiner in their 
 defence. Though this paper was written effectively and 
 with admirable temper, party polemics were little to the 
 taste of its author, and, after five numbers, it ceased to 
 exist on the 8th of October. Swift, now eager for the 
 triumph of the Tories, expresses his delight to Stella 
 by informing her, in the words of a Tory song, that " it 
 was down among the dead men." He himself wi'ote the 
 first of his Examiners on the 2d of the following Novem- 
 
IV.] HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE. 7» , 
 
 ber, and the crushing blows with which he followed it ^ 
 up did much to hasten the downfall of the Ministry. ^'^ 
 As was natural, Addison was somewhat displeased at 
 his friend's defection. In December Swift writes to 
 Stella: — "Mr. Addison and I are as different as black 
 and white, and I believe our friendship will go off by 
 
 this d business of party. He cannot bear seeing 
 
 me fall in so with the Ministry; but I love him still as 
 much as ever, though we seldom meet." In January 
 1710-11, he says: "I called at the coffee-house, where 
 I had not been in a week, and talked coldly awhile with 
 Mr. Addison ; all our friendship and dearness are off ; 
 we are civil acquaintance, talk words of course, of when 
 we shall meet, and that's all. Is it not odd f Many 
 similar entries follow; but on Jjnte 26, 1711, the V 
 record is : — " Mr. Addison and I talked as usual, and as 
 if we had seen one another yesterday." And on 
 September 14, he observes: — "This evening I met 
 Addison and pastoral Philips in the Park, and supped 
 with them in Addison's lodgings. We were very good 
 company, and I yet know no man half so agreeable to me 
 as he is. I sat with them till twelve." 
 
 It was perhaps through the influence of Swift, who 
 spoke warmly with the Tory Ministry on behalf of 
 Addison, that the latter, on the downfall of the Whigs 
 in the autumn of 1710, was for some time suffered to 
 retain the Keepership of the Eecords in Bermingham's 
 Tower, an Irish place which had been bestowed upon him 
 by the Queen as a special mark of the esteem with which 
 she regarded him, and which appears to have been worth 
 £400 a year.^ In other respects his fortunes were greatly 
 1 Fourth Drapier's Letter. 
 
80 ADDISON. [chap. iv. 
 
 altered by the change of Ministry. "I have within 
 this twelvemonth," he writes to Wortley on the 21st of 
 July 1711, "lost a place of .£2000 per ann., an estate 
 in the Indies worth £14,000, and, what is worse than all 
 the rest, my mistress.^ Hear this and wonder at my 
 philosophy ! I find they are going to take away my 
 Irish place from me too ; to which I must add that I 
 have just resigned my fellowship, and that stocks sink 
 every day." In spite of these losses his circumstances 
 were materially different from those in which he found 
 himself after the fall of the previous Wliig Ministry in 
 1702. Before the close of the year 1711 he was able 
 to buy the estate of Bilton, near Eugby, for £10,000. 
 Part of the purchase money was probably provided from 
 what he had saved while he was Irish Secretary and 
 had invested in the funds ; and part was, no doubt, made 
 up from the profits of the Tatler and the Spectator. Miss 
 Aikin says that a portion was advanced by his brother 
 Gulston ; but this seems to be an error. Two j^ears 
 before, the Governor of Fort St. George, had died, 
 leaving him his executor and residuary legatee. This 
 is no doubt "the estate in the Indies" to Avhich he 
 refers in his letter to Wortley, but he had as yet derived 
 no benefit from it. His brother had left his affairs in 
 great confusion ; the trustees were careless or dishonest ; 
 and though about £600 was remitted to liim in the 
 shape of diamonds in 1713, the liquidation was not 
 complete till 1716, when only a small moiety of the 
 sum bequeathed to him came into his hands.^ 
 
 ^ Who the "mistress" was cannot be certainly ascertained. 
 See, however, p. 154. 
 
 - Egerton MSS., Britisli Museum (1972}. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 
 
 The career of Addison, as described in the preceding 
 chapters, has exemplified the great change effected in 
 the position of men of letters in England by the Restora- 
 tion and the Revolution; it is now time to exhibit him in 
 his most characteristic light, and to show the remarkable 
 service the eighteenth century essayists performed for 
 English society in creating an organised public opinion. 
 It is difficult for ourselves, who look on the action of 
 the periodical press as part of the regular machinery of 
 life, to appreciate the magnitude of the task accom- 
 plished by Addison and Steele in the pages of the Tatter 
 and Spectator. Every day, Aveek, month, and quarter, 
 now sees the issue of a vast number of journals and 
 magazines intended to form the opinion of every order 
 and section of society. But in the reign of Queen 
 Anne the only centres of society that existed were the 
 Court, with the aristocracy that revolved about it, and 
 the clubs and coffee-houses, in which the commercial 
 and professional classes met to discuss matters of 
 general interest. The Tatler and Sj^edator were the 
 first organs in which an attempt was made to give form 
 and consistency to the opinion arising out of this social 
 
 G 
 
82 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 contact. But we should form a very erroneous idea of 
 the character of these publications if we regarded them 
 as the sudden productions of individual genius, written in 
 satisfaction of a mere temporary taste. Like all master- 
 pieces in art and literature, they mark the final stage of a 
 long and painful journey, and the merit of their inventors 
 consists largely in the judgment with which they profited 
 by the experience of many predecessors. 
 
 The first newspaper published in Europe was the 
 Gazzetta of Venice, which was written in manuscript, 
 and read aloud at certain places in the city to supply 
 information to the people during the war with the Turks 
 in 1536. In England it was not till the reign of 
 Elizabeth that the increased facilities of communication 
 and the growth of wealth caused the purveyance of 
 news to become a profitable employment. Towards the 
 end of the sixteenth century newsmongers began to 
 issue little pamphlets reporting extraordinary intelli- 
 gence, but not issued at regular periods. The titles of 
 these publications, which are all of them that survive, 
 show that the arts with which the framers of the 
 placards of our own newspapers endeavour to attract 
 attention are of venerable antiquity : " Wonderful and 
 Strange newes out of Suff'olke and Essex, where it 
 rained wheat the space of six or seven miles," 1583 ; 
 " Lamentable newes out of Monmouthshire, containinge 
 the wonderfull and fearfuU accounts of the great over- 
 flowing of the waters in the said countrye," 1607.^ 
 
 In 1622 one Nathaniel Butter began to pubHsh a 
 newspaper bearing a fixed title and appearing at stated 
 intervals. It was called the Weekly Newes from Italy and 
 ' Andrews' History of British Journalism. 
 
v.] THE T A TIER AND SPECTATOR. 83 
 
 Germcmie, etc.; and was said to be printed for Mercurius 
 Britannicus. This novelty provided much food for 
 merriment to the poets, and Ben Jonson in his Staj^le of 
 Neivs satirises Butter, under the name of Nathaniel, in a 
 passage which the curious reader will do well to consult, 
 as it shows the low estimation in which newspapers were 
 then held.i 
 
 Though it might appear from Jonson's dialogue that 
 the newspapers of that day contained many items of 
 domestic intelligence, such was scarcely the case. Butter 
 and his contemporaries, as was natural to men who 
 confined themselves to the publication of news without 
 attempting to form opinion, obtained their materials 
 almost entirely from abroad, whereby they at once 
 aroused more vividly the imagination of their readers, 
 and doubtless gave more scope to their own invention. 
 Besides they were not at liberty to retail home news of 
 that political kind which would have been of the greatest 
 interest to the public. For a long time the evanescent 
 character of the newspaper allowed it to escape the atten- 
 tion of the licenser, but the growing demand for this sort 
 of reading at last brought it under supervision, and so 
 strict was the control exercised over even the reports 
 of foreign intelligence that its weekly appearance was 
 frequently interrupted. 
 
 In 1641, however, the Star-chamber was abolished, 
 and the heated political atmosphere of the times gene- 
 rated a new species of journal, in which we find the first 
 attempt to influence opinion through the periodical 
 press. This was the newspaper known under the 
 generic title of Mercury. Many weekly publications of 
 ^ StaijU of News, Act I. Scene 2. 
 
84 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 this name appeared during the Civil Wars on the side of 
 both King and Parliament, Mercurius Anlicus being the 
 representative organ of the Royalist cause, and Mercurius 
 Pragmatims and Mercurius Foliticus of the Republicans. 
 Party animosities were thus kept alive, and proved so 
 inconvenient to the Government that the Parliament 
 interfered to curtail the liberty of the press. In 1647 
 an ordinance passed the House of Lords prohibiting any 
 person from " making, writing, printing, selling, publish- 
 ing, or uttering, or causing to be made, any book, sheet, 
 or sheets of news whatsoever, except the same be 
 licensed by both or either House of Parliament, with the 
 name of the author, printer, and licenser affixed." In 
 spite of this prohibition, which was renewed by Act of 
 Parliament in 1662, many unlicensed periodicals con- 
 tinued to appear, till in 1663 the Government, finding 
 their repressive measures insufficient, resolved to grapple 
 with the difficulty by monopolising the right to publish 
 news. 
 
 The author of this new project was the well-known 
 Roger L'Estrange, who in 1663 obtained a patent 
 assigning to him "all the sole privilege of writing, 
 printing, and publishing all Narratives, Advertise- 
 ments, Mercuries, Intelligencers, Diurnals, and other 
 books of public intelligence." L'Estrange's journal was 
 called the Public Intelligencer ; it was published once a 
 week, and in its form was a rude anticipation of the 
 modern newspaper, containing as it did an obituarj^, 
 reports of the proceedings in ParUament and in the 
 Court of Claims, a list of the circuits of the judges, of 
 sherifi"s, Lent preachers, etc. After being continued for 
 two years it gave place first, in 1665, to the Oxford 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 85 
 
 Gazette, published at Oxford, wdiither the Court had 
 retired during the plague; and in 16G6 to the London 
 Gazette, which was under the immediate control of an 
 Under-Secretary of State. The office of Gazetteer 
 became henceforth a regular ministerial appointment, 
 and was viewed with different eyes according as men 
 were affected towards the Government. Steele, who 
 held it, says of it: "My next appearance as a writer 
 was in the quality of the lowest Minister of State — 
 to wit, in the office of Gazetteer; where I worked 
 faithfully according to order, without ever erring against 
 the rule observed by all Ministers, to keep that paper 
 very innocent and very insipid." Pope, on the other 
 hand, who regarded it as an organ published to influence 
 opinion in favour of the Government, is constant in his 
 attacks upon it, and has immortalised it in the memorable 
 lines in the Dunciad beginning : " Next plunged a feeble 
 but a desperate pack," etc. 
 
 In 1679 the Licensing Act passed in 1662 expired, 
 and the Parliament declined to renew it. The Court 
 was thus left without protection against the expression 
 of public opinion, which was daily becoming more bold 
 and outspoken. In his extremity the King fell back 
 on the servility of the judges, and, having procured 
 from them an opinion that the publishing of any printed 
 matter without license was contrary to the common law, 
 he issued his famous Proclamation in 1680 "to pro- 
 hibit and forbid all persons whatsoever to print or 
 publish any news, book, or pamphlets of news, not 
 licensed by his Majesty's authority." 
 
 Disregard of the proclamation was treated as a breach 
 of the peace, and many persons were punished accord- 
 
86 ADDISOI^. [CHAP, 
 
 ingly. This severity produced the effect intended. The 
 voice of the periodical press was stifled, and the London 
 Gazette was left almost in exclusive possession of the 
 field of news. When Monmouth landed in 1685 the 
 King managed to obtain from ParHament a renewal of 
 the Licensing Act for seven years, and even after the 
 Revolution of 1688 several attempts were made by the 
 Ministerial Whigs to prolong or to renew the operation 
 of the Act. In spite, however, of the violence of the 
 organs of " Grub Street," which had grown up under 
 it, these attempts were unsuccessful ; it was justly felt 
 that it was wiser to leave falsehood and scurrility to 
 be gi'adually corrected by public opinion as speaking 
 through an unfettered press, than to attack them by a law 
 which they had proved themselves able to defy. From 
 1682 the freedom of the press may therefore be said to 
 date, and the lapse of the Licensing Act was the signal 
 for a remarkable outburst of journalistic enterprise and 
 invention. Not only did the newspapers devoted to 
 the report of foreign intelligence reappear in greatly 
 increased numbers, but, whereas the old Mercuries had 
 never been published more than once in the same week, 
 the new comers made their appearance twice and some- 
 times even three times. In 1702 was printed the first 
 daily newspaper, The Daily Coiirant It could only at 
 starting provide material to cover one side of a half 
 sheet of paper ; but the other side was very soon covered 
 with printed matter, in which form its existence was 
 prolonged till 1735. 
 
 The development of party government of course 
 encouraged the controversial capacities of the journalist, 
 and many notorious, and some famous names are now 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 87 
 
 found among the combatants in the political arena. 
 On the side of the Whigs the most redoubtable cham- 
 pions were Daniel Defoe, of the Review, who was twice 
 imprisoned and once set in the pillory for his political 
 writings ; John Tutchin, of the Observator; and Ridpath, 
 of the Flying Post — all of whom have obtained places in 
 the Dunciad. The old Tories appear to have been 
 satisfied during the early part of Queen Anne's reign 
 with prosecuting the newspapers that attacked them; 
 but Harley, who understood the power of the press, 
 engaged Prior to harass the Whigs in the Examiner, and 
 was afterwards dexterous enough to secure the invaluable 
 assistance of Swift for the same paper. In opposition to 
 the Examiner in its early days the Whigs, as has been 
 said, started the Whig Examiiier, under the auspices of 
 Addison, so that the two great historical parties had 
 their cases stated by the two greatest prose-writers of 
 the first half of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Beside the Quidnunc and the party politician, another 
 class of reader now appeared demanding aliment in the 
 press. Men of active and curious minds, with a little 
 leisure and a large love of discussion, loungers at Will's 
 or at the Grecian Coffee-Houses, were anxious to have 
 their doubts on all subjects resolved by a printed oracle. 
 Their tastes were gratified by the ingenuity of John 
 Dun ton, whose strange account of his Life and Errors 
 throws a strong light on the literary history of this 
 period. In 1690 Dunton published his Athenian Gazette, 
 the name of which he afterwards altered to the Athenian 
 Mercury. The object of this paper was to answer 
 questions put to the editor by the public. These were 
 of all kinds on religion, casuistry, love, literature, and 
 
88 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 manners, no question being too subtle or absurd to 
 extract a reply from the conductor of the paper. The 
 Athenian Mercury seems to have been read by as many 
 distinguished men of the period as Notes and Queries in 
 our own time, and there can be no doubt that the quaint 
 humours it originated gave the first hint to the inventors 
 of the Tatler and the Spectator. 
 
 Advertisements were inserted in the newspapers at 
 a comparatively early period of their existence. The 
 editor acted as middleman between the advertiser and 
 the public, and made his announcements in a style of 
 easy frankness which will appear to the modern reader 
 extremely refreshing. Thus in the "Collection for the 
 Improvement of Husbandry and Trade" (1682) there are 
 the following : — 
 
 " If I can meet with a sober man that has a counter- 
 tenor voice, I can help him to a place worth thirty pound 
 the year or more. 
 
 " If any noble or other gentleman wants a porter that is 
 very lusty, comely, and six foot high and two inches, I can 
 help. 
 
 " I want a complete young man that will wear a livery, 
 to wait on a very valuable gentleman ; but he must know 
 how to play on a violin or flute. 
 
 " I want a genteel footman that can play on the violin, 
 to wait on a person of honour." ^ 
 
 Everything was now prepared for the production of 
 a class of newspaper designed to form and direct public 
 opinion on rational principles. The press w^as emanci- 
 pated from State control ; a reading public had consti- 
 tuted itself out of the habitu4s of the coffee-houses and 
 clubs ; nothing was wanted but an inventive genius to 
 adapt the materials at his disposal to the circumstances 
 ^ Andrews' Elstory of British Journalism. 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 89 
 
 of the time. The required hero was not long in making 
 his appearance. 
 
 Richard Steele, the son of an official under the Irish 
 Government, was, above all things, " a creature of 
 ebullient heart." Impulse and sentiment were with 
 him always far stronger motives of action than reason, 
 principle, or even interest. He left Oxford, without 
 taking a degree, from an ardent desire to serve in the 
 army, thereby sacrificing his prospect of succeeding to 
 a family estate ; his extravagance and dissipation while 
 serving in the cavalry were notorious ; yet this did not 
 dull the clearness of his moral perceptions, for it was 
 while his excesses were at their height that he dedicated 
 to his commanding officer, Lord Cutts, his Christian Hero. 
 Vehement in his political, as in all other feelings, he did 
 not hesitate to resign the office he held under the Tory 
 Government in 1711 in order to attack it for what he 
 considered its treachery to the country; but he was 
 equally outspoken, and with equal disadvantage to him- 
 self, when he found himself at a later period in dis- 
 agreement with the Whigs. He had great fertility of 
 invention, strong natural humour, true though unculti- 
 vated taste, and inexhaustible human sympathy. 
 
 His varied experience had made him well acquainted 
 with life and character, and in his office of Gazetteer he 
 had had an opportunity of watching the eccentricities of 
 the public taste, which, now emancipated from restraint, ,. 
 began vaguely to feel after new ideals. That, under such ' ; 
 circumstances, he should have formed the design of 
 treating current events from a humorous point of view 
 was only natural, but he was indebted for the form of his 
 newspaper to the most original genius of the age. Swift 
 
90 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 had early in the eighteenth century exercised his ironical 
 vein by treating the everyday occurrences of life in a 
 mock-heroic style. Among his pieces of this kind 
 that were most successful in catching the public taste 
 were the humorous predictions of the death of Partridge, 
 the astrologer, signed with the name of Isaac Bicker- 
 staff. Steele, seizing on the name and character of 
 Partridge's fictitious rival, turned him with much 
 pleasantry into the editor of a new journal, the de- 
 sign of which he makes Isaac describe as follows : — 
 
 " The state of conversation and business in this town 
 having long been perplexed with Pretenders in both kinds, in 
 order to open men's minds against such abuses, it appeared 
 no unprofitable undertaking to publish a Paper, which should 
 observe upon the manners of the pleasurable, as well as the 
 busy part of mankind. To make this generally read, it 
 seemed the most proper method to form it by way of a Letter 
 of Intelligence, consisting of such parts as might gratify the 
 curiosity of persons of all conditions and of each sex. . . . 
 The general purposes of this Paper is to expose the false 
 arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and 
 affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our 
 dress, our discourse, and our behaviour." ^ 
 
 The name of the Tatler^ Isaac informs us, was "invented 
 in honour of the fair sex," for whose entertainment the 
 new paper was largely designed. It appeared three times 
 a week, and its price was a penny, though it seems that 
 the first number, published April 12, 1709, was distributed 
 gratis as an advertisement. In order to make the con- 
 tents of the paper varied it was divided into five portions, 
 of which the editor gives the following account : — 
 
 '' All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment, 
 shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-House ; Poetry 
 
 1 Tatler, Ko. 1. 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 91 
 
 under that of Will's Coffee-House ; Learning under tlie title 
 of Grecian ; Foreign and Domestic NeM's you will have from 
 Saint James' Coffee-House ; and what else I have to offer on 
 any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment." ^ 
 
 In this division we see the importance of the coffee- 
 houses as the natural centres of intelligence and opinion. 
 Of the four houses mentioned, St. James's and White's, 
 both of them in St. James's Street, were the chief haunts 
 of statesmen and men of fashion, and the latter had 
 acquired an infamous notoriety for the ruinous gambling 
 of its halihies. Will's in Eussell Street, Covent Garden, 
 kept up the reputation which it had procured in Dryden's 
 time as the favourite meeting-place of men of letters ; 
 while the Grecian in Devereux Court in the Strand, which 
 was the oldest coffee-house in London, afforded a con- 
 venient rendezvous for the learned Templars. At starting 
 the design announced in the first number was adhered 
 to with tolerable fidelity. The paper dated from St. 
 James' Coffee-House was ahvays devoted to the recital 
 of foreign news ; that from Will's either criticised the 
 current dramas, or contained a copy of verses from some 
 author of repute, or a piece of general literary criticism; 
 the latest gossip at White's was reproduced in a fictitious 
 form and with added colour. Advertisements were also 
 inserted ; and half a sheet of the paper was left blank, 
 in order that at the last moment the most recent intelli- 
 gence might be added in manuscript after the manner of 
 the contemporary news-letters. In all these respects 
 the character of the newspaper was preserved ; but in 
 the method of treating news adopted by the editor there 
 was a constant tendency to subordinate matter of fact 
 to the elements of humour, fiction, and sentiment. In 
 1 TatUr, No. 1. 
 
92 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 his survey of the manners of the time Isaac, as an 
 astrologer, was assisted by a familiar spirit, named 
 Pacolet, who revealed to him the motives and secrets 
 of men ; his sister, Mrs. Jenny Distaff, was occasionally 
 deputed to produce the paper from the wizard's "own 
 apartment;" and Kidney, the waiter at St. James' 
 CofFee-House, was humorously represented as the chief 
 authority in all matters of foreign intelligence. 
 
 The mottoes assumed by the Tatler at different periods 
 of its existence mark the stages of its development. On 
 its first appearance, when Steele seems to have intended 
 it to be little more than a lively record of news, the 
 motto placed at the head of each paper was — 
 " Quidquid agunt homines, 
 
 nostri est farrago libelli." 
 
 It soon became evident, however, that its true function 
 was not merely to report the actions of men, but to 
 discuss the propriety of their actions ; and by the time 
 that sufficient material had accumulated to constitute a 
 volume, the essayists felt themselves justified in appro- 
 priating the words used by Pliny in the preface to his 
 Natural History : — 
 
 " Nemo apud nos qui idem tentaverit : equidem sentio 
 peculiarem in studiis causam eorum esse, qui difiScultatibus 
 victis, utilitatem juvandi, protuleruut gratiae placendi. Res 
 ardua vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis 
 nitorem, fastidits gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero 
 iiaturam, et naturae suae omnia. Itaque non assecutis 
 voluisse, abunde pulchrum atque magnificum est." 
 
 The disguise of the mock astrologer proved very use- 
 ful to Steele in his character of moralist. It enabled 
 him to give free utterance to his better feehngs with- 
 out the risk of incurring the charge of inconsistency or 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 93 
 
 hypocrisy, and nothing can be more honourable to him 
 than the open manner in which he acknowledges his own 
 unfitness for the position of a moralist : " I shall not carry 
 my humility so far," says lie, "as to call myself a vicious 
 man, but at the same time must confess my life is at best 
 but pardonable. \Yith no greater character than this, a 
 man would make but an indifferent progress in attacking 
 prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff 
 has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost 
 both its beauty and efficacy had it been pretended to by 
 Mr. Steele." ^ 
 
 As Steele cannot claim the sole merit of having in- 
 vented the form of the Tatler so too it must be 
 remembered that he could never have addressed 
 society in the high moral tone assumed by Bickerstaff 
 if the road had not been prepared for him by others. 
 One name among his predecessors stands out with a 
 special title to honourable record. Since the Restora- 
 tion the chief school of manners had been the stage, 
 and the flagrant example of immorality set by the 
 Court had been bettered by the invention of the 
 comic dramatists of the period. Indecency was the 
 fashion; religion and sobriety were identified by the 
 polite world with Puritanism and hypocrisy. Even the 
 Church had not yet ventured to say a word in behalf of 
 virtue against the prevailing taste, and when at last a 
 clergyman raised his voice on behalf of the principles 
 which he professed, the blow which he dealt to his anta- 
 gonists was the more damaging because it was entirelj^ 
 unexpected. Jeremy Collier was not only a Tory but a 
 Jacobite, not only a High Churchman but a Nonjuror, 
 1 Tatler, No. 271. 
 
94 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 who had been outlawed for his fidelity to the principles 
 of Legitimism ; and that such a man should have pub- 
 lished the Short Vmv of the Immorality and Profaneness of 
 the English Stage, reflecting, as the book did, in the 
 strongest manner on the manners of the fallen dynasty, 
 was as astounding as thunder from a clear sky. Collier, 
 however, was a man of sincere piety, whose mind was 
 for the moment occupied only by the overwhelming 
 danger of the evil which he proposed to attack. It is 
 true that his method of attack was cumbrous, and that 
 his conclusions were far too sweeping and often unjust ; 
 nevertheless the general truth of his criticisms was felt 
 to be irresistible. Congreve and Vanbrugh each attempted 
 an apology for their profession ; both, however, showed 
 their perception of the weakness of their position by 
 correcting or recasting scenes in their comedies to which 
 Collier had objected. Dryden accepted the reproof in a 
 nobler spirit. Even while he had pandered to the taste 
 of the times he had been conscious of his treachery to 
 the cause of true art, and had broken out in a fine 
 passage in his Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigreiv : — 
 
 " gracious God ! how far have we 
 Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy ! 
 Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, 
 Debased to each obscene and impious use ! 
 
 " wretched we ! why were we hurried doMTi 
 This lubrique and adulterous age 
 (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own) 
 
 To increase the streaming ordure of the stage ? " 
 
 When Collier attacked him he bent his head in sub- 
 mission. " In many things," says he, " he has taxed me 
 justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thought and ex- 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 95 
 
 pressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, 
 profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be 
 my enemy, let him triumph ; if he be my friend, as I 
 have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he 
 will be glad of my repentance." ^ 
 
 The first blow against fashionable immorality having 
 been boldly struck, was followed up systematically. In 
 1690 was founded " The Society for the Reformation of 
 Manners," which published every year an account of the 
 progress made in suppressing profaneness and debauchery 
 by its means. It continued its operations till 1738, and 
 during its existence prosecuted, according to its own 
 calculations, 101,683 persons. William III. showed 
 himself prompt to encourage the movement which his 
 subjects had begun. The London Gazette of 27th Feb- 
 ruary 1698-9 contains a report of the following remark- 
 able order : — 
 
 " His Majesty being informed. That, notwithstanding an 
 order made the 4th of June 1697 by the Earl of Sunderland, 
 then Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household, to prevent 
 the Prophaneness and Immorality of the Stage ; several Plays 
 have been lately acted containing expressions contrary to 
 Religion and Good Manners : and whereas the Master of the 
 Revels has represented, That, in contempt of the said order, 
 the actors do often neglect to leave out such Prophane and 
 Indecent expressions as he has thought proper to be omitted. 
 These are therefore to signifie his Majesty's pleasure, that you 
 do not hereafter presume to act anything in any play con- 
 trary to Religion and Good Manners as you shall answer it 
 at your utmost peril. Given under my Hand this 18th of 
 February 1698. In the eleventh year of his Majesty's reign." 
 
 It is difficult to realise in reading the terms of this 
 order that only thirteen years had elapsed since the 
 1 Preface to the Fables. 
 
96 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 death of Charles II., and undoubtedly a very large share 
 of the credit due for such a revolution in the public 
 taste is to be assigned to Collier. Collier, however, 
 did nothing in a literary or artistic sense to improve the 
 character of English literature. His severity, uncom- 
 promising as that of the Puritans, inspired Vice with 
 terror, but could not plead with persuasion on behalf of 
 Virtue ; his sweeping conclusions struck at the roots of 
 Art as well as of Immorality. He sought to destroy the 
 drama and kindred pleasures of the Imagination, not to 
 reform them. What the age needed was a writer to 
 satisfy its natural desires for healthy and rational 
 amusement, and Steele with his strongly-developed two- 
 fold character was the man of all others to bridge over 
 the chasm between irreligious licentiousness and Puri- 
 tanical rigidity. Driven headlong on one side of his 
 nature towards all the tastes and pleasures which 
 absorbed the Court of Charles II., his heart in the midst 
 of his dissipation never ceased to approve of whatever 
 was great, noble, and generous. He has described him- 
 seK Avith much feeling in his disquisition on the Rake, a 
 character which he says many men are desirous of 
 assuming without any natural qualifications for support- 
 ing it :— 
 
 "A Rake," says he, ''is a man always to be pitied ; and 
 if he lives one day is certainly reclaimed ; for his faults pro- 
 ceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions 
 and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the ciu'b of 
 reason, good sense, good manners, and good nature ; all 
 which he must have by nature and education before he can 
 be allowed to be or to have been of this order. . . . His 
 desires run away with him through the strength and force 
 of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful 
 pleasures before reason has power to come in to his rescue." 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 97 
 
 That impulsiveness of feeling which is here described, 
 and which was the cause of so many of Steele's failings 
 in real life, made him the most powerful and persuasive 
 advocate of Virtue in fiction. Of all the imaginative 
 English essayists he is the most truly natural. His 
 large heart seems to rush out in sympathy with any tale 
 of sorrow or exhibition of magnanimity; and, even in 
 criticism, his true natural instinct, joined to his consti- 
 tutional enthusiasm often raises his judgments to a level 
 with those of Addison himself, as in his excellent essay 
 in the Spectator on Eaphael's cartoons. Examples of 
 these characteristics in his style are to be found in the 
 Story of U7inion and Valentine,^ and in the fine paper 
 describing two tragedies of real life ; ^ in the series of 
 papers on duelling, occasioned by a duel into which he 
 was himself forced against his own inclination ; ^ and in 
 the sound advice which Isaac gives to his half-sister 
 Jenny on the morrow of her marriage.* Perhaps, how- 
 ever, the chivalry and generosity of feeling which make 
 Steele's writings so attractive are most apparent in the 
 delightful paper containing the letter of Serjeant Hall 
 from the camp before Mons. After pointing out to his 
 readers the admirable features in the Serjeant's simple 
 letter, Steele concludes as follows : — 
 
 " If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all 
 prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and 
 such great things executed by them, it is hard to account for 
 the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet 
 at the battle of Coldstream in Scotland when Monk charged 
 at the head of the regiment now called Coldstream, from the 
 victory of that day — I remember it as well as if it were yes- 
 
 1 Taller, No. 5. 
 
 2 Ih., No. 82. 
 
 3 Ih., Nos. 25, 26, 28, 29, 38, 39. 
 
 ^ 76., No. 85. 
 
 H 
 
 
98 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 terday, I stood on the left of old West, who I believe is now 
 at Chelsea — I say to me, who know very well this part of 
 mankind, I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed 
 from the same, if not from a nobler, impulse than that of 
 gentlemen and officers. They have the same taste of being 
 acceptable to their friends, and go through the difficulties of 
 that profession by the same irresistible charm of fellowship 
 and the communication of joys and sorrows which quickens 
 the relish of pleasure and abates the anguish of pain. Add 
 to this that they have the same regard to fame, though they 
 do not expect so great a share as men above them hope for ; 
 but I will engage Serjeant Hall would die ten thousand 
 deaths rather than that a word should be spoken at the Red 
 Lettice, or any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice to his 
 courage or honesty. If you will have my opinion, then, of 
 the Serjeant's letter, I pronounce the style to be mixed, but 
 truly epistolary ; the sentiment relating to his own wound 
 in the sublime ; the postscript of Pegg Hartwell in the gay ; 
 and the whole the picture of the bravest sort of men, that is 
 to say, a man of great courage and small hopes." ^ 
 
 With such excellences of style and sentiment it is no 
 Avonder that the Tatler rapidly established itself in public 
 favour. It Avas a novel experience for the general reader 
 to be pro"\aded three times a week with entertainment 
 that pleased his imagination without ofifending his sense 
 of decency or his religious instincts. But a new hand 
 shortly appeared in the Tatler, which was destined to 
 carry the art of periodical essay-writing to a perfection 
 beside which even the humour of Steele appears rude and 
 unpolished. Addison and Steele had been friends since 
 boyhood. They had been contemporaries at the Charter 
 House, and, as we have seen, Steele had sometimes spent 
 his holidays in the parsonage of Addison's father. He 
 was a postmaster at Merton about the same time that his 
 
 1 Tatler, No. 87. 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 99 
 
 friend was a Fellow of Magdalen. The admiration which 
 he conceived for the hero of his boyhood lasted, as so 
 often happens, through life ; he exhibited his veneration 
 for him in all places, and even when Addison indulged 
 his humour at his expense he showed no resentment. 
 Addison, on his side, seems to have treated Steele with a 
 kind of gracious condescension. The latter was one of 
 the few intimate friends to whom he unbent in conver- 
 sation ; and while he was Under-Secretary of State he 
 aided him in the production of The Tender Husband^ 
 which was dedicated to him by the author. Of this play 
 Steele afterwards declared with characteristic impulse 
 that many of the most admired passages were the work 
 of his friend, and that he " thought very meanly of him- 
 self that he had never publicly avowed it." 
 
 The authorship of the Tatler was at first kept secret 
 to all the world. It is said that the hand of Steele dis- 
 covered itself to Addison on reading in the :^i<K" number 
 a remark which he remembered to have himself made to 
 Steele on the judgment of Virgil as sho^vn in the appel- 
 lation of "Dux Trojanus," which the Latin poet assigns 
 to ^neas, when describing his adventure with Dido in 
 the cave, in the place of the usual epithet of " pius " or 
 "pater." Thereupon he offered his services as a con- 
 tributor, and these were of course gladly accepted. 
 The first paper sent by Addison to the Tatler was No. 
 18, wherein is displayed that inimitable art which 
 makes a man appear infinitely ridiculous by the ironical 
 commendation of his offences against right reason 
 and good taste. The subject is the approaching peace 
 ■\vith France, and it is noticeable that the article of 
 foreign news, which had been treated in previous 
 
100 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 Tatlers with complete seriousDess, is here for the first 
 time invested with an air of pleasantry. The distress of 
 the news-writers at the prospect of peace is thus de- 
 scribed : — 
 
 " There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am mnch 
 more concerned for, and that is the ingenions fraternity of 
 which I have the honour to be an unworthy member ; I 
 mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or 
 Post-boys, or by what other name or title soever dignified 
 or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, 
 more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they 
 have taken more towns and fought more battles. They have 
 been upon parties and skirmishes when our armies have lain 
 still, and given the general assault to many a place when the 
 besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us 
 masters of several strong towns many weeks before our gene- 
 rals could do it, and completed victories when our greatest 
 captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. 
 Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands Boyer has slain 
 his ten thousands. This gentleman can indeed be never 
 enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during 
 this whole war : he has laid about him with an inexpressible 
 fury, and, like offended Marius of ancient Rome, made such 
 havoc among his countrymen as must be the work of tw^o or 
 three ages to repair. ... It is impossible for this ingenious 
 sort of men to subsist after a peace : every one remembers 
 the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King Charles 
 the Second, when they could not furnish out a single paper 
 of news wdthout lighting up a comet in Germany or a fire in 
 Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph 
 on an earthquake. Prodigies were growm so familiar that 
 they had lost their name, as a great poet of that age has it. 
 I remember Mr. Dyer, "who is justly looked upon by all the 
 foxhunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country 
 has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales, 
 in so much that in five months' time (for I had the curiosity 
 to examine his letters on that occasion) he brought three into 
 the mouth of the river Thames, besides two porpusses and a 
 sturgeon." 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 101 
 
 The appearance of Addison as a regular contribuoor 
 to the Tatler gradually brought about a revolution in the 
 character of the paper. For some time longer, indeed, 
 articles continued to be dated from the different cofiee- 
 houses, but only slight efforts were made to distinguish 
 the materials furnished from White's, Will's, or Isaac's 
 own apartment. When the hundredth number was 
 reached a fresh address is given at Shere Lane, where 
 the astrologer lived, and henceforward the papers from 
 White's and Will's grow extremely rare ; those from the 
 Grecian may be said to disappear; and the foreign 
 intelligence, dated from St. James', whenever it is 
 inserted, which is seldom, is as often as not made the 
 text of a literary disquisition. Allegories become fre^\! 
 quent, and the letters sent, or supposed to be sent, to 
 Isaac at his home address furnish the material for many 
 numbers. The Essay, in fact, or that part of the news- 
 paper which goes to form public opinion, preponderates 
 greatly over that portion Avhich is devoted to the report 
 of news. Spence quotes from a Mr. Chute : " I have 
 heard Sir Richard Steele say that, though he had a 
 greater share in the Tatlers than in the Spectators, he 
 thought the news article in the first of these was what 
 contributed much to their success."^ Chute, however, 
 seems to speak with a certain grudge against Addison, 
 and the statement ascribed by him to Steele is in- 
 trinsically improbable. It is not very likely that, as the 
 proprietor of the Tatler, he would have dispensed with 
 any element in it that contributed to its popularity, yet 
 after No. 100 the news articles are seldom found. The 
 truth is that Steele recognised the superiority of Addi- 
 ^ Spence's Anecdotes, p. 325. 
 
/02 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 son'-s style, and, with his usual quickness, accommodated 
 the form of his journal to the genius of the new con- 
 tributor. 
 
 " I have onlj^ one gentleman," says he in the preface to 
 the Tatler, " who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent 
 assistance to me, which indeed it would have been barbarous 
 in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in 
 intimacy from childhood, consideiwg the great ease with 
 which he is able to despatch the most entertaining pieces of 
 this nature. This good office he performed with such force 
 of genius, humour, wit, and learning, that I fared like a dis- 
 tressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid ; 
 I was undone by my o^vn auxiliary ; when I had once called 
 him in I could not subsist without dependence on him." 
 
 With his usual enthusiastic generosity Steele in this 
 passage unduly depreciates his own merits to exalt the 
 genius of his friend. A comparison of the amount of 
 material furnished to the Tatler by Addison and Steele 
 respectively shows that out of 271 numbers the latter 
 contributed 188 and the former only 42. Nor is the 
 disparity in quantity entirely balanced by the superior 
 quality of Addison's papers. Though it was, doubtless, 
 his fine workmanship and admirable method which 
 carried to perfection the style of writing initiated in the 
 Tatler, yet there is scarcely a department of essay- 
 writing developed in the Spectator which does not trace 
 its origin to Steele. It is Steele who first ventures to 
 raise his voice against the prevailing dramatic taste of 
 the age on behalf of the superior morality and art of 
 Shakespeare's plays, 
 
 " Of all men living," says he in the eighth Tatler, " I pity 
 players (who must be men of good understanding to be 
 capable of being such) that they are obliged to repeat and 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 103 
 
 assume proper gestures for representing things of which their 
 reason must be ashamed, and which they must disdain their 
 audience for approving. The amendment of these low grati- 
 fications is only to be made by people of condition, l:»y en- 
 couraging the noble representation of the noble characters 
 drawn by Shakespeare and others, from whence it is impos- 
 sible to return without strong impressions of honour and 
 humanity. On these occasions distress is laid before iis with 
 all its causes and consequences, and our resentment placed 
 according to the merit o^ the person afflicted. Were dramas 
 of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men 
 who have genius would bend their studies to excel in them." 
 
 Steele, too, it was who attacked with all the vigour of 
 which he was capable the fashionable vice of gambling. 
 So severe were his comments on this subject in the 
 Tatter that he raised against himself the fierce resent- 
 ment of the whole community of sharpers, though he 
 was fortunate enough at the same time to enlist the 
 sympathies of the better part of society. " Lord Forbes," 
 says Mr. Nichols, the antiquary, in his notes to the Tatte)', 
 "happened to be in company with the two military 
 gentlemen just mentioned" (Major-General Davenport 
 and Brigadier Bisset) " in St. James' Coffee-House when 
 two or three well-dressed men, all unknown to his lord- 
 ship or his company, came into the room, and in a public 
 outrageous manner abused Captain Steele as the author 
 of the Tatter. One of them, with great audacity and 
 vehemence, swore that he would cut Steele's throat 
 or teach him better manners. 'In this country,' said 
 Lord Forbes, * you will find it easier to cut a purse than 
 to cut a throat.' His brother officers instantly joined 
 vdih his lordship, and turned the cut-throats out of the 
 coff'ee-house with every mark of disgrace." ^ 
 
 1 Tcdler, vol. iv. p. 545 (jSTichol's edition). 
 
104 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 The practice of duelling also, which had hitherto 
 passed unreproved, was censured by Steele in a series of 
 papers in the Tatler, which seemed to have been written 
 on an occasion when, having been forced to fight much 
 against his will, he had the misfortune dangerously 
 to wound his antagonist.^ The sketches of character 
 studied from life, and the letters from fictitious corres- 
 pondents, both of which form so noticeable a feature in 
 the Spectator, appear roughly, but yet distinctly, drafted 
 in the Tatler. Even the papers of literary criticism, after- 
 wards so fully elaborated by Addison, are anticipated by 
 his friend, w^ho may fairly claim the honour to have been 
 the first to speak with adequate respect of the genius of 
 Milton. 2 In a word, whatever was perfected by Addison 
 was begun by Steele ; if the one has for ever associated 
 his name with the Spectator, the other may justly appro- 
 priate the credit of the Tatler, a work which bears to its 
 successor the same kind of relation that the frescoes of 
 Masaccio bear, in point of dramatic feeling and style, to 
 those of Raphael ; the later productions deserving 
 honour for finish of execution, the earlier for priority of 
 invention. 
 
 The Tatler was published till the 2d of January 
 1710-11, and w^as discontinued, according to Steele's own 
 account, because the public had penetrated his disguise, 
 and he was therefore no longer able to preach with effect 
 in the person of Bickerstaff. It may be doubted whether 
 this was his real motive for abandoning the paper. He 
 had been long known as its conductor, and that his 
 readers had shown no disinclination to listen to him is 
 proved not only by the large circulation of each number 
 ' See p. 97, note 3. « Tatler, No. 6. 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 105 
 
 of the Tatlei', but by the extensive sale of the successive 
 volumes of the collected papers at the high price of a 
 guinea apiece. He was, in all probability, led to drop the 
 publication by finding that the political element that 
 the paper contained was a source of embarrassment 
 to him. His sympathies were vehemently Whig ; the 
 Tatler from the beginning had celebrated the virtues of 
 Marlborough and his friends, both directly and under 
 cover of fiction ; and he had been rewarded for his ser- 
 vices with a commissionership of the Stamp-office. When 
 the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, Harley, setting a just 
 value on the abilities of Steele, left him in the enjoy- 
 ment of his office and expressed his desire to serve him 
 in any other way. Under these circumstances, Steele no 
 doubt felt it incumbent on him to discontinue a paper 
 which, both from its design and its traditions, would have 
 tempted him into the expression of his political partialities. 
 For two months therefore "the censorship of Great 
 Britain," as he himself expressed it, "remained in com- 
 mission," until Addison and he once more returned to 
 discharge the duties of the office in the Spectator^ the 
 first number of which was published on the 1st of March 
 1710-11. The Tatler had only been issued three times a 
 week, but the conductors of the new paper were now so 
 confident in their own resources and in the favour of the 
 public that they undertook to bring out one number 
 daily. The new paper at once exhibited the impress of 
 Addison's genius, which had gradually transformed the 
 character of the Tatler itself. The latter was originally, 
 in every sense of the word, a newspaper, but the Spectator 
 from the first indulged his humour at the expense of the 
 clubs of Quidnuncs. 
 
106 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 ''There is," says he, ''another set of men that I must 
 likewise lay a claim to as being altogether unfurnished with 
 ideas till the business and conversation of the day has sup- 
 plied them. I have often considered these poor souls with 
 an eye of great commiseration when I have heard them ask- 
 ing the first man they have met with whether there was any 
 news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials 
 for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to 
 talk of till about twelve o'clock in the morning ; for by that 
 time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know 
 which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch mail be 
 come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they 
 meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, accord- 
 ing to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, 
 I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their cham- 
 bers till they have read this paper ; and do promise them 
 that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome 
 sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation 
 for the ensuing twelve hours." ^ 
 
 For these, and other men of leisure, a kind of paper 
 differing from the Tatler, which proposed only to retail 
 the various species of gossip in the coffee-houses, was 
 required, and the new entertainment was pro^aded by 
 the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of 
 several ideal types of character grouped round the central 
 figure of the Spectator, They represent considerable 
 classes or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, 
 men of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, 
 which furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the 
 Spectator himself, who delivers the judgments of reason 
 and common -sense. Sir Eoger de Coverley, with his 
 simplicity, his high sense of honour, and his old-world 
 reminiscences, reflects the country gentleman of the best 
 kind; Sir Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of 
 ^ Spectator I "No. 10. 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 107 
 
 the enterprising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted 
 monied interest ; Captain Sentry speaks for the army -, 
 the Templar for the world of taste and learning ; the 
 clergyman for theology and philosophy ; while Will 
 Honeycomb, the elderly man of fashion, gives the 
 Spectator many opportunities for criticising the traditions 
 of morality and breeding surviving from the days of the 
 Eestoration. Thus, instead of the division of places 
 which determined the arrangement of the Tatler, the 
 different subjects treated in the Spectator are distributed 
 among a variety of persons : the Templar is substituted 
 for the Grecian Coffee-House and Will's ; Will Honey- 
 comb takes the place of White's ; and Captain Sentry, 
 whose appearances are rare, stands for the more volumi- 
 nous article on foreign intelligence published in the old 
 periodical under the head of St. James's. The Spectator 
 himself finds a natural prototype in Isaac Bickerstaff, 
 but his character is drawn with a far greater finish and 
 delicacy, and is much more essential to the design of the 
 paper which he conducts, than was that of the old 
 astrologer. 
 
 The aim of the Spectator was to establish a rational 
 standard of conduct in morals, manners, art, and liter- 
 ature. 
 
 " Since," says he in one of his early numbers, " I have 
 raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains 
 to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. 
 For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with 
 wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, 
 if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of 
 the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion 
 may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I 
 have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till 
 
108 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and 
 folly into which the age has fallen. The mind that lies 
 fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only 
 to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was 
 said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from 
 heaven to inhabit among men ; and I shall be ambitious to 
 have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of 
 closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs 
 and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses." ^ 
 
 Johnson, in his Life of Addison, says that the task 
 undertaken in the Spectator was " first attempted by 
 Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione in his 
 Courtier ; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity 
 and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are 
 neglected only because they have effected that reforma- 
 tion which their authors intended and their precepts 
 now are no longer wanted." He afterwards praises the 
 Taller and Spectator by saying that they " adjusted, like 
 Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by pro- 
 priety and politeness; and, like La Bruyere, exhibited 
 the characters and manners of the age." This com- 
 mendation scarcely does justice to the w^ork of Addi- 
 son and Steele. Casa, a man equally distinguished 
 for profligacy and politeness, merely codified in his 
 Galateo the laws of good manners which prevailed in his 
 age. He is the Lord Chesterfield of Italy. Castiglione 
 gives instructions to the young courtier how to behave 
 in such a manner as to make himself agreeable to his 
 prince. La Bruyere's characters are no doubt the 
 literary models of those which appear in the Spectator. 
 But La Bruyere merely described w^hat he saw, with 
 admirable wit, urbanity, and scholarship, but without 
 ^ Spectator, No. 10. 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 109 
 
 any of the earnestness of a moral reformer. He could 
 never have conceived the character of Sir Roger de 
 Coverley ; and, though he was ready enough to satirise 
 the follies of society as an observer from the outside, to 
 bring " philosophy out of closets and libraries, to dwell 
 in clubs and assemblies," was far from being his ambition. 
 He would probably have thought the publication of a 
 newspaper scarcely consistent with his position as a 
 gentleman. 
 
 A very large portion of the Spectator is devoted to 
 reflections on the manners of women. Addison saw 
 clearly how important a part the female sex was destined 
 to play in the formation of English taste and manners. 
 Removed from the pedestal of enthusiastic devotion on 
 which they had been placed during the feudal ages, 
 women were treated under the Restoration as mere play- 
 thin2:s and luxuries. As manners became more decent 
 they found themselves secured in their emancipated 
 position, but destitute of serious and rational employment. 
 It was Addison's object, therefore, to enlist the aid of 
 female genius in softening, refining, and moderating the 
 gross and conflicting tastes of a half-ciWlised society. 
 
 '•' There are none," he says, " to whom this paper will be 
 more useful than to the female world. I have often thought 
 there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper 
 employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amuse- 
 ments seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, 
 than as they are reasonable creatures ; and are more adapted 
 to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene 
 of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the prin- 
 cipal employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of 
 ribands is reckoned a very good morniug's work ; and if they 
 make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy shop, so great a 
 fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. 
 
110 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, 
 and their greatest drudgery tire preparations of jellies and 
 sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women ; 
 though I know there are multitudes of those of a more 
 elevated life and conversation, that move in an exalted sphere 
 of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the 
 mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe 
 and respect, as well as of love, into their male beholders. I 
 hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily 
 paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, 
 if not an improving entertainment, and by that means, at 
 least, divert the minds of my female readers from greater 
 trifles."! 
 
 To some of the vigorous spirits of the age the mild 
 and social character of the Sriectator's satire did not com- 
 mend itself. Swift, who had contributed several papers 
 to the Tatler while it was in its infancy, found it too 
 feminine for his taste. "I will not meddle with the 
 Spectator j" says he in his Journal to Stella, ''let him fair 
 sex it to the world's end." Personal pique, however, 
 may have done as much as a differing taste to depre- 
 ciate the Spectator in the eyes of the author of the Tale 
 of a Tub, for he elsewhere acknowledges its merits. " The 
 Spectator,'' he writes to Stella, "is written by Steele, vnih. 
 Addison's help; it is often very pretty . . . but I never 
 see him (Steele) or Addison." That part of the public 
 to whom the paper was specially addressed read it wath 
 keen relish. In the ninety -second number a corres- 
 pondent signing herself "Leonora"^ writes: — 
 
 " Mr. Spectator, — Your paper is part of my tea-equipage ; 
 and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for 
 my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she 
 answered, the Spectator was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle 
 boiled, and she expected it every moment." 
 
 ^ Spectator, No. 10. - The writer was a Miss Shepherd. 
 
v.] THE TATLEE AND SPECTATOR. Ill 
 
 In a subsequent number "Thomas Trusty" writes : — 
 
 " I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning's 
 pipe (though I can't forbear reading the motto before I fill 
 and light), and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff ; 
 each paragraph is fraught either with useful or delightful 
 notions, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved. 
 The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of 
 pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that 
 by pulling some pieces of isinglass over it was changed into a 
 grave senator or a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, 
 a beau or a blackamoor, a prude or a coquette, a country 
 squire or a conjuror, with many other different representations 
 very entertaining (as you are), though still the same at the 
 bottom." 1 
 
 The Spectator was read in all parts of the country. 
 
 " I must confess," says Addison as his task was drawing 
 to an end, " that I am not a little gratified and obliged by 
 that concern which appears in this great city upon my present 
 design of laying down this paper. It is likewise with much 
 satisfaction that I find some of the most outlying parts of the 
 kingdom alarmed upon this occasion, having received letters 
 to expostulate with me about it from several of my readers of 
 the remotest boroughs of Great Britain." 2 
 
 With how keen an interest the public entered into 
 the humour of the paper is shown by the following letter, 
 signed " Philo-Spec " : — 
 
 " I was this morning in a company of your well-wishers, 
 when we read over, with great satisfaction, Tully's observa- 
 tions on action adapted to the British theatre, though, by the 
 way, we were very sorry to find that you have disposed of 
 another member of your club. Poor Sir Roger is dead, and 
 the worthy clergyman dying ; Captain Sentry has taken pos- 
 session of a fair estate ; "Will Honeycomb has married a 
 farmer's daughter ; and the Templar withdraws himself into 
 the business of his own profession." ^ 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 134. - Ibid., No. 553. 3 Jbid,^ No. 542. 
 
112 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 It is no wonder that readers anticipated with regret 
 the dissolution of a society that had provided them with 
 so much delicate entertainment. Admirably as the club 
 was designed for maintaining that variety of treatment 
 on which Mr. Trusty comments in the letter quoted 
 above, the execution of the design is deserving of even 
 greater admiration. The skill with which the grave 
 speculations of the Spectator are contrasted with the 
 lively observations of Will Honeycomb on the fashions 
 of the age, and these again are diversified with papers 
 descriptive of character or adorned with fiction, while 
 the letters from the public outside form a running com- 
 mentary on the conduct of the paper, cannot be justly 
 appreciated without a certain effort of thought. But it 
 may safely be said that, to have provided society day 
 after day for more than two years ^vith a species of 
 entertainment which, nearly two centuries later, retains 
 all its old power to interest and delight, is an achieve- 
 ment unique in the history of literature. Even apart 
 from the exquisite art displayed in their grouping, the 
 matter of many of the essays in the Spectator is still 
 valuable. The vivid descriptions of contemporary 
 manners; the inimitable series of sketches of Sir Roger 
 de Coverley; the criticisms in the papers on True and 
 False Wit and Milton's Paradise Lost ; have scarcely less 
 significance for ourselves than for the society for which 
 they were immediately written. 
 
 Addison's own papers were 274 in number, as against 
 236 contributed by Steele. They were, as a rule, signed 
 with one of the four letters C. L. I. 0., either because, as 
 Tickell seems to hint in his Elegy, they composed the name 
 of one of the Muses, or, as later scholars have conjectured, 
 
v.] THE TATLER AND SPECTATOR. 113 
 
 because they were respectively written from four differeut 
 localities, viz. Chelsea, London, Islington, and the Office. 
 
 The sale of the Spectator was doubtless very large 
 relatively to the number of readers in Queen Anne's 
 reign. Johnson, indeed, computes the number sold daily 
 to have been only sixteen hundred and eighty, but he 
 seems to have overlooked what Addison himself says on 
 the subject very shortly after the paper had been started : 
 "My publisher tells me that there are already three 
 thousand of them distributed every day." ^ This num- 
 ber must have gone on increasing with the growing 
 reputation of the Sjtedator. When the Preface of the 
 Four Sei'mons of Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of LlandafF, was 
 suppressed by order of the House of Commons, the Si)ec- 
 tator printed it in its 384:th number, thus conveying, as 
 the Bishop said in a letter to Burnet, Bishop of Salisbur}-. 
 " fourteen thousand copies of the condemned preface into 
 people's hands that would otherwise have never seen or 
 heard of it." Making allowance for the extraordinary 
 character of the number, it is not unreasonable to con- 
 clude that the usual daily issue of the Spedatm' to readers 
 in all parts of the kingdom would, towards the close of 
 its career, have reached ten thousand copies. The 
 separate papers were afterwards collected into octavo 
 volumes, which were sold, like the volumes of the Tatter, 
 for a guinea a-piece. Steele tells us that more than nine 
 thousand copies of each volume were sold off.^ 
 
 Nothing could have been better timed than the 
 appearance of the Spectator; it may indeed be doubted 
 whether it could have been produced with success at 
 any other period. Had it been projected earlier, while 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 10. - Ibid., No. 555. 
 
 I 
 
114 ADDISON. [chap. v. 
 
 Addison was still in office, his thoughts would have been 
 diverted to other subjects, and he would have been 
 unlikely to survey the world vnth quite impartial eyes ; 
 had the publication been delayed it would have come 
 before the public when the balance of all minds was dis- 
 turbed by the dangers of the political situation. The 
 difficulty of preserving neutrality under such circum- 
 stances was soon shown by the fate of the Guardian. 
 Shortly after the Spectator was discontinued this new 
 paper was designed by the fertile invention of Steele, 
 with every intention of keeping it, like its predecessor, 
 free from the entanglements of party. But it had not 
 proceeded beyond the forty-first number when the vehe- 
 ment partizanship of Steele was excited by the Tory 
 Examiner; in the 128th number appeared a letter, signed 
 "An Enghsh Tory," calling for the demolition of Dun- 
 kirk, while soon afterwards, finding that his political 
 feelings were hampered by the design on which the 
 Guardian was conducted, he dropped it and replaced it 
 with a paper called the Englishman. Addison himself, 
 who had been a frequent contributor to the Guardian^ 
 did not aid in the Englishman, of the violent party tone 
 of which he strongly disapproved. A few years after- 
 wards the old friends and coadjutors in the Tatler and 
 Spectator found themselves maintaining an angry con- 
 troversy in the opposing pages of the Old Whig and the 
 Plebeian. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 GATO. 
 
 It is a peculiarity in Addison's life that Fortune, as if 
 conspiring with the happiness of his genius, constantly 
 furnished him with favourable opportunities for the 
 exercise of his powers. The pension granted him by 
 Halifax enabled him, while he was yet a young man, to 
 add to his knowledge of classical literature an intimate 
 acquaintance with the languages and governments of the 
 chief European states. When his fortunes were at the 
 lowest ebb on his return from his travels his introduction 
 to Godolphin by Halifax, the consequence of which was 
 The CamiKiifjn, procured him at once celebrity and 
 advancement. The appearance of the Tatter^ though due 
 entirely to the invention of Steele, prepared the way for 
 development of the genius that prevailed in the Spectator. 
 But the climax of Addison's good fortune was certainly 
 the successful production of Cato, a play which, on its own 
 merits, might have been read with interest by the scholars 
 of the time, but which could scarcely have succeeded on 
 the stage if it had not been appropriated and made part 
 of our national life by the violence of political passion. 
 
 Addison had not the genius of a dramatist. The 
 grace, the irony, the fastidious refinement which give 
 
116 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 him such an unrivalled capacity in describing and criti- 
 cising the humours of men as a spectator did not qualify 
 him for imaginative sympathy with their actions and 
 passions. But, like most men of ability in that period, 
 his thoughts were drawn towards the stage, and even in 
 Dryden's lifetime he had sent him a play in manuscript 
 asking him to use his interest to obtain its performance. 
 The old poet returned it, we are told, " with many com- 
 mendations, but with an expression of his opinion that on 
 ^ the stage it would not meet with its deserved success. " 
 Addison nevertheless persevered in his attempts, and 
 during his travels he wrote four acts of the tragedy of Cato, 
 the design of which, according to Tickell, he had formed 
 while he was at Oxford, though he certainly borrowed 
 many incidents in the play from a tragedy on the same 
 subject which he saw performed at Venice.^ It is char- 
 acteristic, however, of the undramatic mood in which he 
 executed his task that the last act was not written till 
 shortly before the performance of the play, many years 
 later. As early as 1703 the drama was shown to Gibber 
 by Steele, who said that " whatever spirit Mr. Addison 
 had shown in his writing it, he doubted that he would 
 never have courage enough to let his Cato stand the 
 censure of an English audience ; that it had only been 
 the amusement of his leisure hours in Italy, and was 
 never intended for the stage." He seems to have 
 remained of the same opinion on the very eve of the 
 performance of the play. "When Mr. Addison," says 
 Pope, as reported by Spence, "had finished his Cato he 
 brought it to me, desired to have my sincere opinion of 
 it, and left it with me for three or four days. I gave 
 1 See Addison's Works (Tickell's edition), vol. v., p. 187. 
 
VI.] CATO. 117 
 
 him my opinion of it sincerely, which was * that I 
 thought he had better not act it, and that he would 
 get reputation enough by only printing it.' This I said 
 as thinking the lines well written, but the piece not 
 theatrical enough. Sometime after Mr. Addison said 
 'that his own opinion was the same with mine, but 
 that some particular friends of his whom he could not 
 disoblige insisted on its being acted.' " ^ ' 
 
 Undoubtedly Pope was right in principle, and anybody 
 who reads the thirty -ninth paper in the Spectator may see, 
 not only that Addison was out of sympathy with the 
 traditions of the English stage, but that his whole turn 
 of thought disqualified him from comprehending the 
 motives of dramatic composition. " The modern drama," 
 says he, " excels that of Greece and Eome in the intricacy 
 and disposition of the fable ; but, what a Christian writer 
 would be ashamed to own, falls infinitely short of it in 
 the moral part of the performance." And the entire 
 drift of the criticism that follows relates to the thought, 
 the sentiment, and the expression of the modern drama, 
 rather than to the really essential question, the nature 
 of the action. It is false criticism to say that the greatest 
 dramas of Shakespeare fail in morality as compared with 
 those of the Greek tragedians. That the manner in 
 which the moral is conveyed is different in each case 
 is of course true, since the subjects of Greek tragedy 
 were selected from Greek mythology, and were treated 
 by ^schylus and Sophocles, at all events, in a religious 
 spirit, whereas the plays of Shakespeare are only indirectly 
 Christian, and produce their effect by an appeal to the 
 individual conscience. None the less is it the case that 
 ^ Spence's Anecdotes, p. 196. 
 
118 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear have for modern audiences a 
 far deeper moral meaning than the Agamemnon or the 
 (Edipus Tyrannus. The tragic motive in Greek tragedy- 
 is the impotence of man in the face of moral law or 
 necessity ; in Shakespeare's tragedies it is the corruption 
 of the will, some sin of the individual against the law of 
 God, which brings its own punishment. There was 
 nothing in this principle of which a Christian dramatist 
 need have been ashamed ; and, as regards Shakespeare at 
 any rate, it is evident that Addison's criticism is unjust. 
 It is, however, by no means undeserved in its applica- 
 tion to the class of plays which grew up after the 
 Restoration. Under that regime the moral spirit of the 
 Shakespearian drama entirely disappears. The king, whose 
 temper was averse to tragedy and whose taste had been 
 formed on French models, desired to see every play end 
 happily. "I am going to end a piece," writes Eoger, 
 Earl of Orrery, to a friend, " in the French style, because 
 I have heard the King declare that he preferred their 
 manner to our own." The greatest tragedies of the 
 Elizabethan age were transformed to suit this new 
 fashion ; even King Lear obtained a happy deliver- 
 ance from his sufferings in satisfaction of the require- 
 ments of an effeminate Court. Addison very wittily 
 ridicules this false taste in the fortieth number of the 
 Spectator. He is not less felicitous in his remarks on the 
 sentiments and the style of the Caroline drama, though he 
 does not sufficiently discriminate his censure, which he 
 bestows equally on the dramatists of the Restoration and 
 on Shakespeare. Two main characteristics appear in all 
 the productions of the former epoch — the monarchical 
 spirit and the fashion of gallantry. The names of the 
 
VI.] CATO. 119 
 
 plays speak for themselves : on the one hand, The Indian 
 Emperor, Aurengzehe, The Indian Queen, The Conquest of 
 Granada, The Fate of Hannibal; on the other, Secret Love, 
 Tyrannic Love, Love and Vengeance, The Rival Queens, Theo- 
 dosius, or the Power of Lore, and numberless others of the 
 same kind. In the one set of dramas the poet sought to 
 arouse the passion of pity by exhibiting the downfall of 
 persons of high estate ; in the other he appealed to the 
 sentiment of romantic passion. iSuch were the fruits of 
 that taste for French romance which was encouraged by 
 Charles II., and which sought to disguise the absence of 
 genuine emotion by the turgid bombast of its sentiment 
 and the epigrammatic declamation of its rhymed verse. !* 
 ( At the same time the taste of the nation having been 
 once turned into French channels, a remedy for these 
 defects was naturally sought for from French sources ; 
 and just as the school of Eacine and Boileau set its face 
 against the extravagances of the romantic coteries, so 
 Addison and his English followers, adopting the prin- 
 ciples of the French classicists, applied them to the 
 reformation of the English theatre. Hence arose a great 
 re\dval of respect for the poetical doctrines of Aristotle, 
 regard for the unities of time and place, attention to the 
 proprieties of sentiment and diction — in a word, for all 
 those characteristics of style afterwards summed up in 
 the phrase " correctness." 
 
 This habit of thought, useful as an antidote to extra- 
 vagance, was not fertile as a motive of dramatic produc- 
 tion. ; Addison worked with strict and conscious attention 
 to his critical principles : the consequence is that his 
 Cato, though superficially " correct," is a passionless and 
 mechanical play. He had combated with reason the 
 
120 ADDISON. [OHAP. 
 
 "ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism, that writers of 
 tragedy are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards 
 and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical 
 justice." ^ But his reasoning led him on to deny that the 
 idea of justice is an essential element in tragedy. " We 
 find," says he, "that good and evil happen alike to all 
 men on this side the grave ; and, as the principle design 
 of tragedy is to raise commiseration and terror in the 
 minds of the audience, we shall defeat this great end if 
 we always make virtue and innocence happy and success- 
 ful. . . . The ancient -vmters of tragedy treated men in 
 their plays as they are dealt with in the world, by making 
 virtue sometimes happy and sometimes miserable, as they 
 found it in the fable which they made choice of, or as it 
 might affect their audience in the most agreeable man- 
 ner."^ But it is certain that the fable which the two 
 greatest of the Greek tragedians " made choice of " was 
 always of a religious nature, and that the idea of Justice 
 was never absent from it ; it is also certain that Retribu- 
 tion is a vital element in all the tragedies of Shakespeare. 
 The notion that the essence of tragedy consists in the spec- 
 tacle of a good man struggling with adversity is a concep- 
 tion derived through the French from the Roman Stoics ; 
 it is not found in the works of the greatest tragic poets. 
 This, however, was Addison's central motive, and this 
 is what Pope, in his famous Prologue, assigns to him as 
 his chief praise. 
 
 " Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move 
 The hero's glory or the virgin's love ; 
 In pitying love we but our weakness show, 
 And wild ambition well deserves its woe. 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 40. 2 jn^^ 
 
VI.] CATO. 121 
 
 Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause, 
 Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws : 
 He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise 
 And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes. 
 Virtue confessed in human shape he draws, 
 What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was : 
 No common object to your sight displays, 
 But what with pleasure heaVn itself surveys ; 
 A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, 
 And greatly falling with a falling state." 
 
 A falling state offers a tragic spectacle to the thought 
 and the reason, but not one that can be represented on 
 the stage so as to move the passions of the spectators. 
 The character of Cato, as exhibited by Addison, is an 
 abstraction, round which a number of other lay figures 
 are skilfully grouped for the delivery of lofty and appro- 
 priate sentiments. Juba, the virtuous young prince of 
 Numidia, the admirer of Cato's virtue. Fortius and 
 Marcus, Cato's virtuous sons, and Marcia, his virtuous 
 daughter, are all equally admirable and equally lifeless. 
 Johnson's criticism of the play leaves little to be said. 
 
 ** About things," he observes, "on which the public 
 thinks long it commonly attains to think right ; and of Cato 
 it has not been unjustly determined that it is rather a poem 
 in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just senti- 
 ments in elegant language than a representation of natural 
 affections, or of any state probable or j)ossible in human life. 
 Nothing here ' excites or assuages emotion ; ' here is * no 
 magical power of raising fantastic terror or wild anxiety.' 
 The events are expected without solicitude, and are remem- 
 bered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care ; 
 ■we consider not what they are doing or what they are suffer- 
 ing ; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is 
 a being above our solicitude ; a man of whom the gods take 
 care, and whom we leave to their care with heedless confi- 
 dence. To the rest neither gods nor men can have much 
 
122 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 attention, for there is not one among them that strongly 
 attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made tlie 
 vehicles of such sentiments and such expressions that there is 
 scarcely a scene in the play which the reader does not wish 
 to impress upon his memory." 
 
 To this it may be added that, from the essentially 
 undramatic bent of Addison's genius, whenever he con- 
 trives a train of incident he manages to make it a little 
 absurd. Dennis has pointed out with considerable humour 
 the consequences of his conscientious adherence to the 
 unity of place, whereby every species of action in the play, 
 love-making, conspiracy, debating, and fighting, is made 
 to take place in the ' large hall in the governor's palace 
 of Utica.' It is strange that Addison's keen sense of the 
 ridiculous, which inspired so happily his criticisms on the 
 allegorical paintings at Versailles,^ should not have shown 
 him the incongruities which Dennis discerned ; but, in 
 truth, they pervade the atmosphere of the whole play. 
 All the actors — the distracted lovers, the good young 
 man, Juba, and the blundering conspirator, Sempronius — 
 seem to be oppressed with an uneasy consciousness that 
 they have a character to sustain and are not confident of 
 coming up to what is expected of them. This is especially 
 the case with Fortius, a pragmatic young Roman, whose 
 praiseworthy but futile attempts to unite the qualities of 
 Stoical fortitude, romantic passion, and fraternal loyalty, 
 exhibit him in a position of almost comic embarrassment. 
 According to Pope, " the love part was flung in after, 
 to comply with the popular taste;" but the removal of 
 these scenes would make the play so remarkably barren 
 of incident that it is a little difficult to credit the state- 
 ment. 
 
 1 See p. 45. 
 
VI.] CATO. 123 
 
 The deficiencies of Cato as an acting play were, how- 
 ever, more than counterbalanced by the violence of party 
 spirit, which insisted on investing the compaiatively tame 
 sentiments assigned to the Koman champions of liberty 
 with a pointed modern application. In 1713 the rage of 
 the contending factions was at its highest point. The 
 Tories were suspected, not without reason, of designs 
 against the Act of Settlement ; the Whigs, on the other 
 hand, were still suffering in public opinion from the 
 charge of having for their oa\ti advantage protracted the 
 war with Louis XIY. Marlborough had been accused j 
 in 1711 of receiving bribes while commander-in-chief, 
 and had been dismissed from all his employments. Dis- 
 appointment, envy, revenge, and no doubt a genuine 
 apprehension for the public safety, inspired the attacks 
 of the Whigs upon their rivals ; and when it was known 
 that Addison had in his drawers an unfinished play on 
 so promising a subject as Cato^ great pressure was put 
 upon him by his friends "to complete it for the stage. 
 Somewhat unwillingly, apparently, he roused himself to 
 the task. So small, indeed, was his inclination for it, 
 that he is said in the first instance to have asked Hughes, 
 afterwards author of the /S'/^^go/Z)a??2«.sc?/s, to write a fifth 
 act for him. Hughes undertook to do so, but on return- 
 ing a few days afterwards with his own performance, he 
 found that Addison had himself finished the play. In 
 spite of the judgment of the critics, Cato was quickly 
 hurried off for rehearsal, doubtless with many fears on 
 the part of the author. His anxieties during this period 
 must have been great. "I was this morning," writes 
 Swift to Stella on the 6th of April, "at ten at the 
 rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called Cato^ which is to 
 
124 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 be acted on Friday. There was not half a score of us to 
 see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough 
 to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet 
 directing them, and the drab that acts Cato's daughter 
 (Mrs. Oldfield) out in the midst of a passionate part, and 
 then calling out ' What's next 1 ' " 
 
 Mrs. Oldfield not only occasionally forgot the poet's 
 text ; she also criticised it. She seems to have objected 
 to the original dra-ft of a speech of Fortius in the second 
 scene of the third act ; and Fope, whose advice Addison 
 appears to have frequently asked, suggested the present 
 reading : 
 
 " Fixt in astonishment, I gaze upon thee 
 Like one just blasted by a stroke from heaven 
 Who pants for breath, and stiffens, yet alive, 
 In dreadful looks : a monument of wrath." ^ 
 
 Fope also proposed the alteration of the last line in the 
 play from 
 
 " And oh, 'twas this that ended Cato's life," 
 to 
 
 "And robs the guilty world of Cato's life;" 
 
 and he was generally the cause of many modifications. 
 "I believe," said he to Spence, "Mr. Addison did not 
 leave a word unchanged that I objected to in his Cato."^ 
 On the 1 3th of April the play was ready for perform- 
 ance, and contemporary accounts give a vivid picture of 
 the eagerness of the public, the excitement of parties, 
 and the apprehensions of the author. " On our first 
 night of acting it," says Gibber in his Apology, speaking 
 of the subsequent representation at Oxford, " our house 
 was, in a manner, invested, and entrance demanded by 
 
 1 Spence's Anecdotes, p. 151. ^ Ibid., p. 151. 
 
VI.] CATO. 125 
 
 twelve o'clock at noon ; and before one it was not wide 
 enough for many who came too late for their places. The 
 same crowds continued for three days together — an un- 
 common curiosity in that place ; and the death of Cato 
 triumphed over the injuries of Caesar everywhere." The 
 prologue — a very fine one — was contributed by Pope ; 
 the epilogue — written, according to the execrable taste 
 fashionable after the Restoration, in a comic vein — by 
 Garth. As to the performance itself,- a very lively record 
 of the effect it produced remains in Pope's letter to 
 Trumbull of the 30th April 1713 :— 
 
 " Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, 
 as he is of Britain in ours ; and though all the foolish industry 
 possible had been used to make it thought a party play, yet 
 what the author said of another may the most properly be 
 appHed to him on this occasion : 
 
 ' Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, 
 And factions strive who shall applaud him most ! ' ^ 
 
 The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one 
 side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the 
 other ; while the author sweated behind the scenes with con- 
 cern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand 
 than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue- 
 writer, who was clapped into a staunch Whig at the end of 
 every two lines. I beUeve you have heard that, after all the 
 applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent 
 for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, between one of the 
 acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, 
 as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so well 
 against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be 
 distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same 
 Cato very speedily ; in the meantime they are getting ready 
 as good a sentence as the former on their side ; bo betwixt 
 
 ^ These lines are to be found in The Campaign, see p. QQ. 
 
126 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 them it is probable that Cato (as Dr. Garth expressed it) may- 
 have something to live upon after he dies." 
 
 The Queen herself partook, or feigned to partake, of 
 the general enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that the 
 play should be dedicated to her. This honour had, how- 
 ever, been already designed by the poet for the Duchess 
 of Marlborough, so that, finding himself unable under the 
 circumstances to fulfil his intentions, he decided to leave 
 the play without any dedication. Cato ran for the then 
 unprecedented period of thirty -five nights. Addison 
 appears to have behaved with great liberality to the actors, 
 and, at Oxford, to have handed over to them all the 
 profits of the first night's performance; while they in 
 U return. Gibber tells us, thought themselves " obliged to 
 spare no pains in the proper decorations " of the piece. 
 
 The fame of Cato spread from England to the Con- 
 tinent. It was twice translated into Italian, twice 
 into French, and once into Latin ; a French and a Ger- 
 man imitation of it were also published. Voltaire, to 
 whom Shakespeare appeared no better than an inspired 
 barbarian, praises it in the highest terms. " The first 
 English writer luho composed a regular tragedy and infused 
 a spirit of elegance through every part of it was," sa^^s 
 he, " the illustrious Mr. Addison. His Cato is a master- 
 piece, both with regard to the diction and the harmony 
 and beauty of the numbers. The character of Gato is, 
 in my opinion, greatly superior to that of Gornelia in the 
 Pompey of Corneille, for Cato is great without anything 
 of fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary 
 character, tends sometimes to bombast." Even he, how- 
 ever, could not put up with the love-scenes. 
 
VI. , CATO. 127 
 
 " Addison I'a d^j^ tent^ ; 
 
 C'etoit le poete des sages, 
 Mais il etoit trop concert^, 
 Et dans son Caton si vant^ 
 Les deux filles en v<^rit^, 
 Sont d'insipides personages. 
 Imitez dii grand Addison 
 Seulement ce qu'il a de bon." 
 
 There were, of course, not wanting voices of detraction. 
 A graduate of Oxford attacked Cato in a pamphlet en- 
 titled Mr. Addison turned Tory, in which the party spirit 
 of the play was censured. Dr. Sewell, a well-known 
 physician of the day — afterwards satirised by Pope as 
 " Sanguine Sewell " — undertook Addison's defence, and 
 showed that he owed his success to the poetical, and not to 
 the political merits of his drama. A much more formid- 
 able critic appeared in John Dennis, a specimen of whose 
 criticism on Cato is preserved in Johnson's Life, and who, 
 it must be owned, went a great deal nearer the mark in 
 his judgment than did Voltaire. Dennis had many of 
 the qualities of a good critic. Though his judgment was 
 often overborne by his passion, he generally contrived to 
 fasten on the weak points of the works which he criti- 
 cised, and he at once detected the undramatic character 
 of Cato. His ridicule of the absurdities arising out of 
 Addison's rigid observance of the unity of place is ex- 
 tremely humorous and quite unanswerable. But, as 
 usual, he spoiled his case by the violence and want of dis- 
 crimination in his censure, which betrayed too plainly the 
 personal feelings of the writer. It is said that Dennis was 
 offended with Addison for not having adequately exhibited 
 his talents in the Spectator when mention was made of 
 his works, and he certainly did complain in a published 
 
128 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 letter that Addison had chosen to quote a couplet from 
 his translation of Boileau in preference to another from a 
 poem on the battle of Ramilies, which he himself thought 
 better of. But the fact seems to have been overlooked 
 that Dennis had other grounds for resentment. In the 
 40th number of the Spectator the writer speaks of " a 
 ridiculous doctrine of modern criticism, that they (tragic 
 writers) are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards 
 and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical 
 justice." This was a plain stroke at Dennis, who was a 
 well-known advocate of the doctrine ; and a considerable 
 portion of the critic's gall was therefore expended on 
 Addison's violation of the supposed rule in Cato. 
 
 Looking at Cato from Voltaire's point of view — M^iich 
 was Addison's own — and having regard to the spirit of 
 elegance infused through every part of it, there is much 
 to admire in the play. It is full of pointed sentences, 
 such as — 
 
 " 'Tis not in mortals to command success, 
 But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." 
 
 It has also many fine descriptive passages, the best of 
 which, perhaps, occurs in the dialogue between Syphax 
 and Juba respecting civilised and barbarian virtues : 
 
 " Believe me, prince, there's not an African 
 That traverses our vast Nuiiiidian deserts 
 In quest of prey, and lives upon his bow. 
 But better practises these boasted virtues. 
 Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase, 
 Amidst the running streams he slakes his thirst, 
 Toils all the day, and at th' approach of night 
 On the first friendly bank he throws him do^^'n, 
 Or rests his head upon a rock till morn : 
 
VI.] CATO. 129 
 
 Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game, 
 And if the following day he chance to find 
 A new repast, or an untasted spring, 
 Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury." 
 
 But in all those parts of the poem where action and not 
 ornament is demanded, we seem to perceive the work of 
 a poet who was constantly thinking of what his characters 
 ought to say in the situation, rather than of one who was 
 actually living with them in the situation itself. Take 
 Sempronius' speech to Syphax describing the horrors of 
 the conspirator's position : 
 
 " Remember, Syphax, we must work in haste : 
 
 think what anxious moments pass between 
 The birth of plots and their last fatal period. 
 Oh ! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, 
 
 Filled up with horror all, and big with death ! 
 Destruction hangs on every word we speak, 
 On every thought, till the concluding stroke 
 Determines all, and closes our design." 
 
 Compare with this the language of real tragedy, the 
 soliloquy of Brutus in Julius Ccesar, on which Addison 
 apparently meant to improve : 
 
 "Since Cassius first did whet me against Ccesar 
 
 1 have not slept. 
 
 Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : 
 The genius and the mortal instruments 
 Are then in council ; and the state of man, 
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
 The nature <jf an insurrection." 
 
 These two passages are good examples of the French 
 and English ideals of dramatic diction, though the lines 
 from Cato are more figurative than is usual in that play. 
 
 K 
 
130 ADDISON. [CHAP. vi. 
 
 Addison deliberately aimed at this French manner. " I 
 must observe," says he, " that when our thoughts are 
 great and just they are often obscured by the sounding 
 phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions in which 
 they are clothed. Shakespeare is often very faulty in this 
 particular."^ Certainly he is; but who does not see that, 
 in spite of his metaphoric style, the speech of Brutus just 
 quoted is far simpler and more natural than the elegant 
 " correctness " of Sempronius. 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 39. 
 
CHAPTER VIL 
 
 Addison's quarrel with pope. 
 
 It has been said that with Cato the good fortune of 
 Addison reached its cHmax. After his triumph in the 
 theatre, though he filled great offices in the State and 
 wedded '' a noble wife," his political success was marred 
 by disagreements with one of his oldest friends ; while 
 with the Countess of Warwick, if we are to believe Pope, 
 he "married discord." Added to which he was unlucky 
 enough to incur the enmity of the most poignant and 
 vindictive of satiric poets, and a certain shadow has been 
 for ever thrown over* his character by the famous vei-ses 
 on " Atticus." It will be convenient in this chapter to 
 investigate, as far as is possible, the truth as to the quarrel 
 between Pope and Addison. The latter has hitherto 
 been at a certain disadvantage with the public, since 
 the facts of the case were entirely furnished by Pope, 
 and, though his account was dissected with great acute- 
 ness by Blackstone in the Biographia Britannim, the 
 partizans of the poet were still able to plead that his un- 
 contradicted statements could not be disposed of by mere 
 considerations of probability. 
 
 Pope's account of his final rupture with Addison is 
 reported by Spence as follows : — " Philips seems to have 
 
132 ADDISON. [( rap. 
 
 been encouraged to abase me in coffee-houses and con- 
 versations : Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherlcy in 
 which he had abused both me and my relations very 
 grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day * that 
 it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. 
 Addison ; that his jealous temper would never admit of 
 a settled friendship between us ; abd, to convince me of 
 what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged 
 Gildon to pubhsh those scandals, and had given him ten 
 guineas after they were published.' The next day, while 
 I was heated "vvith what I had heard, I wrote a letter to 
 Mr. Addison to let him know ' that I was not un- 
 acquainted with this behaviour of his; that, if I was to 
 speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be 
 in such a dirty way ; that I would rather tell him himself 
 fairly of his faults and allow his good qualities; and that 
 it should be something in the follomng manner.' I then 
 subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my 
 satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after ; 
 and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that 
 time to his death, which was about three years after." ^ 
 
 Such was the story told by Pope in his own defence 
 against the charge that he had written and circulated the 
 lines on Addison after the latter's death. In confirma- 
 tion of his evidence, and in proof of his own good feeling 
 for, and open dealing with Addison, he inserted in the 
 so-called authorised edition of his correspondence in 1737 
 several letters written apparently to Addison, while in 
 what he pretended to be the surreptitious edition of 1735 
 appeared a letter to Craggs, written in July 1715, which, 
 as it contained many of the phrases and expressions used 
 1 Spence's Anecdotes, pp. 148-119. 
 
VTi.] QUARREL WITPI POPE. 133 
 
 in the character of Atticus, created an impression in the 
 mind of the public that both letter and verses were 
 written about the same time. No suspicion as to the 
 genuineness of this correspondence was raised till the dis- 
 covery of the Caryll letters, which first revealed the fact 
 that most of the pretended letters to Addison had been 
 really addressed to Caryll; that there had been, in fact, no 
 correspondence between Pope and Addison; and that 
 therefore, in all probability, the letter to Craggs was also a 
 fictitious composition, inserted in the so-called surrep- 
 titious volume of 1735 to establish the credit of Pope's 
 own story. 
 
 "We must accordingly put aside as undeserving of cre- 
 dence the poet's ingeniously constructed charge, at any rate 
 in the particular shape in which it is preferred, and must 
 endeavour to form for ourselves such a judgment as is 
 rendered probable by the acknowledged facts of the case. 
 What is indisputable is that in 1715 a rupture took 
 place between Addison and Pope in consequence of the 
 injury which the translator of the Iliad conceived him- 
 self to have suffered from the countenance given to 
 Tickell's rival performance; and that in 1723 we find 
 the first mention of the satire upon Addison in a letter 
 from Atterbury to Pope. The question is, what blame 
 attaches to Addison for his conduct in the matter of the 
 two translations ; and what is the amount of truth in Pope's 
 story respecting the composition of the verses on Atticus. 
 
 Pope made Addison's acquaintance in the year 1712. 
 On the 20th of December 1711 Addison had noticed 
 Pope's Art of Criticism in the 253d number of the Spectator^ 
 partly, no doubt, in consequence of his perception of the 
 merits of the poem, but probably at the particular instiga- 
 
134 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 tion of Steele, whose acquaintance with Pope may have 
 been due to the common friendship of both with Caryll. 
 The praise bestowed on the J^^ssai/ (as it was afterwards 
 called) was of the finest and most liberal kind, and was 
 the more Avelcome because it was preceded by a censure 
 conveyed with admirable delicacy on " the strokes of ill- 
 nature " which the poem contained. Pope was naturally 
 exceedingly pleased, and wrote to Steele a letter of thanks 
 under the impression that the latter was the writer of 
 the paper, a misapprehension which Steele at once 
 hastened to correct. *' The paper," says he, " was writ- 
 ten by one with whom I will make you acquainted, which 
 is the best return I can make to you for your favour." 
 
 These words were doubtless used by Steele in the 
 warmth of his affection for Addison, but they also ex- 
 press the general estimation in which the latter was then 
 held. He had recently established his man Button in a 
 coffee-house in Covent Garden, where, surrounded by his 
 little senate, Budgell, Tickell, Carey, and Philips, he 
 ruled supreme over the world of taste and letters. Some- 
 thing, no doubt, of the spirit of the coterie pervaded the 
 select assembly. Addison could always find a word of 
 condescending praise for his followers in the pages of the 
 Spectator; he corrected their plays and mended their 
 prologues ; and they on their side paid back their patron 
 with unbounded reverence, perhaps justifying the satirical 
 allusion of the poet to the " applause " so grateful to the 
 ear of Atticus : 
 
 " While wits and Templars every sentence raise. 
 And wonder with a foolish face of praise." 
 
 Pope, according to his own account, was admitted to the 
 society and left it, as he said, because he found it sit 
 
VII.] QUARREL WITH POPE. 135 
 
 too far into the night for his health. It may, however, 
 be suspected that the natures of the author of the 
 Duncidd and of the creator of Sir Roger de Coverley, 
 though touching each other at many points, were far 
 from naturally congenial ; that the essayist was well 
 aware that the man who could write the Essay on 
 Criticism had a higher capacity for poetry than either 
 himself or any of his followers ; and that the poet, on 
 his side, conscious of great if undeveloped powers, was 
 inchned to resent the air of patronage with which he 
 was treated by the King of Button's. Certain it is that 
 the praise of Pope by Addison in number 253 of the 
 Spectatai' is qualified (though by no means unjustly), and 
 that he is not spoken of with the same warmth as Tickell 
 and Ambrose Philips in number 523. "Addison," said 
 Pope to Spence, " seemed to value himself more upon his 
 poetry than upon his prose ; though he wrote the latter 
 with such particular ease, fluency, and happiness." ^ This 
 often happens; and perhaps the uneasy consciousness 
 that, in spite of the reputation which his Campaign had 
 secured for him, he was really inferior to such men as 
 John Philips and Tickell, made Addison touchy at the 
 idea of the entire circle being outshone by a new candi- 
 date for poetical fame. 
 
 AVhatever jealousy, however, existed between the 
 two was carefully suppressed during the first year of 
 their acquaintance. Pope showed Addison the first 
 draft of the Eape of the Lock, and, according to War- 
 burton (whose account must be received with suspicion), 
 imparted to him his design of adding the fairy machin- 
 ery. If Addison really endeavoured to dissuade the 
 ^ Spence' s Anecdotes, p. 257. 
 
136 ADDISOX. [chap, 
 
 poet from making this exquisite addition, the latter was 
 on his side anxious that Cato, which, as has been said, 
 was shown to him after its completion, should not be 
 presented on the stage ; and his advice, if tested by the 
 result, would have been quite as open as Addison's to 
 an unfavourable construction. He wrote, however, for 
 the play the famous Prologue, which Steele inserted 
 with many compliments in the Guardian. But not long 
 afterwards the effect of the compliments was spoiled 
 by the comparatively cold mention of Pope's Pastorals 
 in the same paper that contained a glowing panegyric 
 on the Pastorals of Ambrose Philips. In revenge Pope 
 wrote his paper commending Philips' performance and 
 depreciating his own, the irony of which, it is said, 
 escaping the notice of Steele, was inserted by him in the 
 Guardian^ much to the amusement of Addison and more 
 to the disgust of Phihps. 
 
 The occasion on which Pope's pique against Addison 
 began to develop into bitter resentment is sufficientl}' 
 indicated by the date which the poet assigns to the first 
 letter in the concocted correspondence — viz. July 20, 
 1713. This letter (which is taken, with a few slight 
 alterations of names, from one written to Caryll on 
 November 19, 1712) opens as follows : — 
 
 " I am more joyed at yonr return than I should be at 
 that of the sun, so much as I wish for him this melancholy 
 wet season ; but it has a fate too like yours to be displeasing 
 to owls and obscure animals, who cannot bear his lustre. 
 AVhat puts me in mind of these night-birds was John Dennis, 
 whom I think you are best revenged upon, as the sun was 
 in the fable upon those bats and beastly birds above men- 
 tioned, only by shining on. I am so far from esteeming it 
 any misfortune, that I congratulate you upon having your 
 
vir.] QUARREL WITH POPE. 137 
 
 share in that which all the great men and all the good men 
 that ever lived have had their part of — envy and calumny. 
 To be uncensured and to be obscure is the same thing. You 
 may conclude from what I here say that it was never in my 
 thoughts to have offered you my pen in any direct reply to 
 such a critic, but only in some little raillery, not in defence 
 of you, but in contempt of him." 
 
 The allusion is to the squib called Dr. Nmris' Nar- 
 rative of the Frenzy of John Dermis, which, it appears, was 
 shown to Addison by Pope before its appearance, and 
 after the publication of which Addison caused Steele to 
 write to Lintot in the following terms :— 
 
 " Mr. Lintot, — Mr. Addison desired me to tell you that 
 he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in 
 a little pamphlet by way of Mr. Norris' account. When he 
 thinks fit to take notice of Mr. Dennis' objections to his 
 writings, he will do it in a way Mr. Dennis shall have no 
 just reason to complain of. But when the papers above 
 mentioned were offered to be communicated to him he said 
 he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to 
 such a treatment, and was sorry to hear of it. — I am, sir, 
 your very humble servant." 
 
 Pope's motive in writing the pamphlet "was, as John- 
 son says, "to give his resentment full play without 
 appearing to revenge himself" for the attack which 
 Dennis had made on his ow^n poems. Addison doubtless 
 divined the truth ; but the wording of the letter which 
 he caused a third person to write to Lintot certainly 
 seems studiously offensive to Pope, who had, professedly 
 at any rate, placed his pen at his service, and who had 
 connected his ow-n name with Cato by the fine Prologue 
 he had written in its praise. Lintot would of course 
 have showTi Pope Steele's letter, and we may be sure 
 that the lofty tone taken by Addison in speaking of the 
 
138 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 pamphlet would have rankled bitterly in the poet's 
 mind. 
 
 At the same time Philips, who was naturally enraged 
 with Pope on account of the ridicule with which the 
 latter had covered his Pastorals, endeavoured to widen 
 the breach by spreading a report that Pope had entered 
 into a conspiracy to write against the Whigs and to 
 undermine the reputation of Addison. Addison seems 
 to have lent a ready ear to these accusations. At any 
 rate Pope thought so; for when the good-natured 
 painter Jervas sought to bring about a composition, he 
 wrote to him (27th August 1714) : 
 
 ' ' What you mentioned of the friendly office you en- 
 deavoured to do betwixt Mr. Addison and me deserves 
 acknowledgment on my part. You thoroughly know my 
 regard to his character, and my propensity to testify it by 
 all ways in my power. You as thoroughly know the 
 scandalous meanness of that proceeding, which was used by 
 Philips, to make a man I so highly value suspect my dis- 
 position towards him. But as, after all, Mr. Addison must 
 be the judge in what regards himself, and has seemed to be 
 no very just one to me, so I must own to you I expect 
 nothing but civility from him, how much soever I wish for 
 his friendship. As for any offices of real kindness or service 
 which it is in his power to do me, I should be ashamed to 
 receive them from any man who had no better opinion of 
 my morals than to think me a party man, nor of my temper 
 tlian to believe me capable of maligning or envying another's 
 reputation as a poet. So I leave it to time to convince him 
 as to both, to show him the shallow depths of those half- 
 witted creatures who misinformed him, and to prove that I 
 am incapable of endeavouring to lessen a person whom I 
 would be proud to imitate and therefore ashamed to flatter. 
 In a word, Mr. Addison is sure of my respect at all times, 
 and of my real friendship whenever he shall think fit to 
 know me for what I am." 
 
VII.] QUARREL WITH POPE. 139 
 
 It is evident from the tone of this letter that all the 
 materials for a violent quarrel were in existence. On 
 the one side was Addison with probably an instinctive 
 dislike of Pope's character, intensified by the injurious 
 reports circulated against Pope in the "little senate " at 
 Button's ; with a nature somewhat cold and reserved ; 
 and with something of literary jealousy partly arising 
 from a sense of what was due to his acknowledged 
 supremacy, and partly from a perception that there had 
 appeared a very formidable "brother near the throne." 
 On the side of Pope there was an eager sensitiveness, 
 ever craving for recognition and praise, with an ab- 
 normal irritability prone to watch for, and reluctant to 
 forgive, anything in the shape of a slight or an injury. 
 Slights and injuries he already deemed himself to have 
 received, and accordingly, when Tickell in 1715 published 
 his translation of the first book of the Eiad at the same 
 time with his own translation of the first four books, his 
 smothered resentment broke into a blaze at what he 
 imagined to be a conspiracy to damage his poetical 
 reputation. Many years afterwards, when the quarrel 
 between Addison and himself had become notorious, he 
 arranged his version of it for the public in a manner 
 which is indeed far from assisting us to a knowledge of 
 the truth, but which enables us to understand very 
 clearly what was passing in his own mind at the time. 
 
 The subscription for Pope's translation of the Ilkid 
 was set on foot in November 1713. On the 10th October 
 1714, having two books completed, he wished to submit 
 them — or at any rate he told the public so in 1735 — to 
 Addison's judgment. This was at a date when, as he 
 informed Spence, "there had been a coldness between 
 
140 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 Mr. Addison and me " for some time. According to the 
 letter which appears in his published correspondence, he 
 wrote to Addison on the subject as follows : — 
 
 " I have been acquainted by one of my friends, who 
 omits no opportunities of gratifying me, that you liave lately 
 been pleased to speak of me in a manner which nothing but 
 the real respect I have for you can deserve. I\Iay I hope 
 that some late malevolences have lost their effect ? . . . 
 As to what you have said of me I shall never believe that 
 the author of Cato can speak one thing and think another. 
 As a proof that I account you sincere, I beg a favour of you, 
 — it is that you would look over the two first books of my 
 translation of Homer, which are in the hands of Lord Hali- 
 fax. I am sensible how much the reputation of any poetical 
 work will depend upon the character you give it. It is 
 therefore some evidence of the trust I repose in your good 
 mil when I give you this opportunity of speaking ill of me 
 with justice, and yet expect you \W11 tell me your truest 
 thoughts at the same time you tell others jour most favour- 
 able ones.'" ^ 
 
 "Whether the facts reported in this letter were as 
 fictitious as we have a right to assume the letter itself 
 to be, it is impossible to say ; Pope at any rate told 
 Spence the following story, which is clearly meant to 
 fall in wath the evidence of the correspondence : — 
 
 "On his meeting me there" (Button's Coffee House) "he 
 took me aside and said he should be glad to dine with me at 
 such a tavern if I would stay till those people (Budgell and 
 Philips) were gone. AYe went accordingly, and after dinner 
 Mr. Addison said ' that he had wanted for some time to 
 talk with me : that his friend Tickcll had formerly, while at 
 Oxford, translated the first book of the Iliad. That he now 
 designed to print it ; and had desired him to look it over : 
 he must therefore beg that I would not desire him to look 
 over my first book, because, if he did, it would have the air 
 
 ^ Pope's JForks, Ehviu and Courthope's edition, vol. vi, p. 408. 
 
VII.] QUARREL WITH POPE. 141 
 
 of double dealing.' I assured liim that I did not take it ill 
 of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation ; 
 that he certainly had as much right to translate any author 
 as myself ; and that publishing both was entering on a fair 
 stage. I then added ' that I would not desire him to look 
 over my first book of the Iliad because he had looked over 
 Mr. Tickell's ; but could wish to have the benefit of his 
 observations on my second, which I had then finished, and 
 which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.' Accordingly I 
 sent him the second book the next morning ; and in a few 
 days he returned it with very high commendation. Soon 
 after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing 
 the first book of the Iliad I met Dr. Young in the street, 
 and upon our falling into that subject, the doctor expressed 
 a great deal of surprise at Tickell's ha\dng such a translation 
 by him so long. He said that it was inconceivable to him ; 
 and that there must be some mistake in the matter : that he 
 and Tickell w^ere so intimately accjuainted at Oxford that 
 each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they 
 wrote, even to the least things : that Tickell could not have 
 been busied in so long a work there without his knowing 
 something of the matter ; and that he had never heard a 
 single word of it till this occasion." i 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that, after the light 
 that has been thrown on Pope's character by the de- 
 tection of the frauds he practised in the publication of 
 his correspondence, it is impossible to give any credence 
 to the tales he poured into Spence's ear tending to 
 blacken Addison's character and to exalt his own. 
 Tickell's MS. of the translation is in existence, and all 
 the evidence tends to show that he was really the 
 author of it. But the above statement may be taken to 
 reflect accurately enough the rage, the resentment, and 
 the suspicion which disturbed Pope's own mind on the 
 appearance of the rival translation. AYe can scarcely 
 ^ Spence's Anecdotes, p. 146. 
 
142 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 doubt that it was this, and this alone, which roused him 
 to such glowing indignation, and inspired him to write 
 the character of Atticus. When the verses were made 
 public, after Addison's death, he probably perceived 
 that the public would not consider the evidence for 
 Addison's collusion with Tickell to be sufficiently strong 
 to afford a justification for the bitterness of the satire. 
 It was necessary to advance some stronger plea for such 
 retaliation, especially as rumour confidently asserted 
 that the lines had not been written till after Addison 
 was dead. Hence the story told by Pope to Spence, 
 proving first that the lines were not only written 
 during Addison's lifetime, but were actually sent to 
 Addison himself ; and secondly, that they were only 
 composed after the strongest evidence had been afforded 
 to the poet of his rival's malignant disposition towards 
 him. Hence, too, the publication in 1735 of the letter 
 to Craggs, which, containing as it did many of the 
 phrases and metaphors employed in the verses, seemed 
 to supply indirect evidence that both were written 
 about the same period. 
 
 With regard to Pope's story it is not too much to 
 say that it entirely breaks down on examination. He 
 professes to give it on the authority of Lord Warwick 
 himself, reckoning, of course, that the evidence of Addi- 
 son's own stepson would be conclusive with the public. 
 But Addison was not married to the Countess of War- 
 wick till August 1716 ; and in the previous May he 
 had bestowed the most liberal praise on Pope's trans- 
 lation in one of his papers in the Freeholder. For Lord 
 Warwick therefore to argue at that date that Addison's 
 ^^ jealous temper could never admit of a settled friend- 
 
TIL] QUARREL WITH POPE. 143 
 
 ship " between him and Pope was out of the question. 
 If, on the other hand, Lord Warwick told his story to 
 Pope before his mother's marriage, the difficulty is 
 equally great. The letter to Craggs, which, if it was 
 ever sent to the latter at all, must obviously have 
 been written in the same " heat " which prompted the 
 satire on Atticus, is dated July 15, 1715. This fits in 
 well enough with the date of the dispute about the rival 
 translations of the Iliad, but not with Lord Warwick's 
 story, for Wycherley, after whose death Gildon, we are 
 told, was hired by Addison to abuse Pope, did not die 
 till the December of that year. 
 
 Again, the internal evidence of the character itself 
 points to the fact that, when it was first composed, its 
 " heat " was not caused by any information the poet 
 had received of a transaction between Addison and 
 Gildon. The following is the first published version of 
 the satire : — 
 
 " If Dennis writes and rails in furious pet 
 I'll answer Dennis when I am in debt. 
 If meagre Gildon draw his meaner quill, 
 I wish the man a dinner and sit still. 
 But should there One whose better stars conspire 
 To form a bard, and raise a genius higher. 
 Blest with each talent and each art to please. 
 And born to live, converse, and write with ease ; 
 Should snch a one, resolved to reign alone. 
 Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. 
 View him with jealous yet with scornful eyes, 
 Hate him for arts that caused himself to rise, 
 Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
 And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. 
 Alike reserved to blame or to commend, 
 A timorous foe and a suspicious friend, 
 
144 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 Fearing e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, 
 And so obliging that he ne'er obliged ; 
 Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, 
 Just hit the fault, and hesitate dislike, 
 JVho when two loits on rival themes contest, 
 Ajjproves of both, hut likes the worst the best : 
 Like Cato, give his little senate laws 
 And sits attentive to liis own applause ; 
 While wits and templars every sentence praise 
 And wonder with a foolish face of praise : 
 Who would not laugh if such a man there be ? 
 Who would not weep if Addison were he ? " 
 
 There is sufficient corroborative evidence to allow us 
 to believe that these lines were actually w-ritten, as 
 Pope says, during Addison's lifetime ; and if they were, 
 the character of the satire would naturally suggest that 
 its motive was Addison's supposed conduct in the matter 
 of the two translations of the Iliad. There is nothing 
 in them to indicate any connection in the poet's mind 
 between Gildon and Addison ; on the other hand, 
 the allusion to the " two wits " shows the special griev- 
 ance that formed the basis, in his imagination, of the 
 whole character. Afterwards we find that "meaner 
 quill " is replaced by " venal quill ; " and the couplet 
 about the rival translations is suppressed. The infer- 
 ence is plain. When Pope "vvas charged W'ith having 
 written the character after Addison's death, he found 
 himself obliged, in self-defence, to furnish a moral 
 justification for the satire ; and, after his own unfor- 
 tunate manner, he proceeded to build up for himself a 
 position on a number of systematic falsehoods. His 
 story was probably so far true that the character was 
 really written w^hile Addison was alive ; on the other 
 hand, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the entire 
 
VII.] QUARREL WITH POPE. 145 
 
 statement about Gildon and Lord Warwick is falmlous ; 
 and, as the assertion that the lines were sent to Addison 
 immediately after their composition is associated with 
 these myths, this too may fairly be dismissed as equally 
 undeserving of belief. 
 
 As to the truth of the character of Atticus, however, 
 it by no means follows, because Pope's account of its 
 origin is false, that the portrait itself is altogether 
 untrue. The partizans of Addison endeavour to prove 
 that it is throughout malicious and unjust. But no one 
 can fail to perceive that the character itself is a very 
 extraordinary picture of human nature ; and there is no 
 reason to suppose that Addison was superior to the 
 weaknesses of his kind. On the contrary, there is 
 independent evidence to show that he was strongly 
 influenced by that literary jealousy which makes the 
 groundwork of the ideal character. This the piercing 
 intelligence of Pope no doubt plainly discerned; his 
 inflamed imagination built up on this foundation the 
 wonderful fabric that has ever since continued to 
 enchant the world. The reader who is acquainted with 
 his o^vn heart will probably not find much difiiculty in 
 determining what elements in the character are derived 
 from the substantial truth of nature, and what are to be 
 ascribed to the exaggerated perceptions of Genius. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFK 
 
 The representation of Cato on the stage was a turning 
 point in the political fortunes of the Whigs. In the 
 same month the Queen announced, on the meeting of 
 Parliament, the signature of the Treaty of Utrecht. 
 Whatever were the merits or demerits of the policy 
 embodied in this instrument, it offered many points of 
 attack to a compact and vigorous Opposition. The 
 most salient of these was perhaps the alleged sacrifice 
 of British commercial interests through the incompetence 
 or corruption of the negotiators, and on this question 
 the Whigs accordingly raised vehement and reiterated 
 debates. Addison aided his political friends with an 
 ingenious pamphlet on the subject called The late 
 Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff, containing a 
 narrative of the lawsuit between the Count and Good- 
 man Fact, which is written with much spirit and pleas- 
 antry. It is said that he also took the field in answer 
 to the Address to the Queen from the magistrates of 
 Dunkirk, wherein Her Majesty was requested to waive 
 the execution of the article in the Treaty providing for 
 the demolition of the harbour and fortifications of that 
 town ; but if he wrote on the subject the pamphlet has 
 
CHAP, vrii.] THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE. 147 
 
 not been preserved by TickelL His old friend Steele 
 was meanwhile involving himself in difficulties through 
 the heat and impetuosity of his party passions. After 
 the painful abstinence from partizanship imposed on him 
 by the scheme of the Tatler and Spedatm' he had founded 
 the Giuinl'uui on similar lines, and had carried it on in 
 a non-political spirit up to the 1 28th number, when his 
 Whig feelings could restrain themselves no longer, and 
 he inserted a letter signed by "An English Tory," de- 
 manding the immediate demolition of Dunkirk. Soon 
 afterwards he published a pamphlet called The Crisis 
 to excite the apprehensions of the nation with regard to 
 the Protestant succession, and, dropping the Gnardiav, 
 started the Englishmav, a political paper of extreme 
 AVhig views. He further irritated the Tory majority 
 in Parliament by supporting the proposal of Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer, as Speaker of the House of Commons, in a 
 speech violently reflecting on the rejected Bill for a 
 Treaty of Commerce with France. A complaint was 
 brought before the House against the Crisis and two 
 numbers of the Englishman, and SteeF was ordered to 
 attend and answer for his conduct. After the charge 
 had been preferred against him, he asked for time to 
 arrange his defence ; and this being granted him after 
 a warm debate, he reappeared in his place a few days 
 later, and made a long and able speech, which is said 
 to have been prepared for him by Addison, acting 
 under the instructions of the Kit-Kat Club. It did 
 not, however, save him from being expelled from the 
 House. 
 
 Addison himself stood aloof, as far as was possible, 
 from the heated atmosphere of party, occupying his 
 
148 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 time chiefly with the execution of literary designs. In 
 
 1713 he began a work on the Evidences of Christianity, 
 which he never finished, and in the last half of the year 
 
 1714 he completed the eighth volume of the Spectator. 
 So moderate was his political attitude that Bolingbroke 
 was not without hopes of bringing him over to the Tory 
 side ; an interview, however, convinced him that it was 
 useless to dream of converting Addison's steady consti- 
 tutional principle to his own ambitious schemes. 
 
 The condition of the Tory party was indeed rapidly 
 becoming desperate. Its leaders were at open variance 
 with each other. Oxford, a veteran intriguer, was de- 
 sirous of combining with the Whigs ; the more daring 
 and brilliant Bolingbroke aimed at the restoration of the 
 exiled Stuarts. His influence, joined to natural family 
 afifection, prevailed "with the Queen, who was persuaded to 
 deprive Oxford of the Treasurer's staff. But her health 
 was undermined, and a furious and indecent dispute be- 
 tween the two Tory leaders in her 0"vvn presence com- 
 pletely prostrated her. She was carried from the Council, 
 and sinking into a state of unconsciousness from which 
 she never recovered, died on the 1st of August 1714. 
 
 Meantime the Whigs were united and prepared. On 
 the meeting of the Council George I. was proclaimed 
 King without opposition : Lord-Justices were authorised 
 to administer affairs provisionally ; and Addison was 
 appointed their Secretary. It is said, though on no 
 good authority, that having, in discharge of his office, 
 to announce to George I. the death of the Queen, Addi- 
 son was embarrassed in his choice of phrases for the 
 occasion, and that the duty to wliich the best writer 
 in the Spectator proved unequal was performed by a 
 
VIII.] THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE. 149 
 
 common clerk. Had Addison been quite unfamiliar 
 with public life this story would have been more credible, 
 but his experience in Ireland must have made him 
 acquainted with the peculiarities of official English ; and 
 some surviving specimens of his public correspondence 
 prove him to have been a sufficient master in the art 
 of saying nothing in a magnificent way. 
 
 On the arrival of the King in England, the Earl of 
 Sunderland was appointed to succeed the Duke of 
 Shrewsbury as Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland, and he 
 once more offered Addison the post of Chief Secretary. 
 In that office the latter continued till the Earl's resig- 
 nation of the Lord -Lieutenancy in August 1715. It 
 would appear to have been less lucrative to him than 
 when he previously held it, and, indeed, than he him- 
 self had expected ; the cause of this deficiency being, 
 as he states, "his Lordship's absence from that king- 
 dom, and his not being qualified to give out military 
 commissions."^ He is said, nevertheless, to have shown 
 the strictest probity and honour in his official dealings, 
 and some of his extant correspondence (the authenticity 
 of which, however, is guaranteed only by the unsatis- 
 factory testimony of Curll) shows him to have declined, 
 in a very high-minded manner, a present of money, 
 evidently intended to secure his interest on behalf of 
 an applicant. He seems to have been in London almost 
 as much as in Dublin during his tenure of office, and he 
 found time in the midst of his public business to com- 
 pose another play for the stage. 
 
 For there appears to be no good reason for doubting 
 that The Drummer was the work of Addison. It is true 
 1 Addison's Memorial to the King. 
 
150 ADDISON. [CHAP. 
 
 that it was not included by Tickell in his edition of his 
 friend's "vvritings; and Steele, in the letter to Congreve 
 which lie prefixed to the second edition of the play, only 
 says that Addison sent for him when he was a patentee 
 of Drury Lane Theatre, and told him "that a gentle- 
 man then in the room had written a play which he was 
 sure I should like, but it was to be a secret ; and he 
 knew I would take as much pains, since he recommended 
 it, as I would for him." But Steele could, under such 
 circumstances, hardly have been deceived as to the 
 real authorship of the play, and if confirmatory evi- 
 dence is required, it is furnished by Theobald, who 
 tells us that Addison informed him that he had taken 
 the character of Vellum, the steward, from Fletcher's 
 Scornful Lady. Addison was probably not anxious him- 
 self to assert his right of paternity to the play. It was 
 acted at Drury Lane, and, the name of the author being 
 unknown, was coldly received ; a second performance of 
 it after Addison's death, when the authorship was pro- 
 claimed, was naturally more successful ; but, in fact, the 
 piece is, like Cafo, a standing proof of Addison's de- 
 ficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and 
 trivial, nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many 
 passages traces of its author's peculiar vein of humour, 
 make amends by its brilliancy for the tameness of the 
 dramatic situation. 
 
 He was soon, however, called upon to employ his pen 
 on a task better suited to his powers. Li September 
 1715 there was a rising in Scotland and in the North of 
 England on behalf of the Pretender. The rebellion was 
 put down with little difficulty; but the position of the 
 House of Brunswick was far more precarious than on 
 
VIII.] THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE. 151 
 
 the surface it seemed to be. It could count, no doubt, 
 on the loyalty of a House of Commons, elected when 
 the Tories were momentarily stunned by the death of 
 Queen Anne, on the faith of the army, and on the sup- 
 port of the monied interest. On the other hand, the 
 two most important classes in the kingdom — the landed 
 proprietors and the clergy — were generally hostile to the 
 new regime, and the influence exercised by the latter 
 was of course exceedingly great in days when the pulpit 
 was still the chief instrument in the formation of public 
 opinion. The weight of some powerful writer was 
 urgently needed on the Whig side, and Addison — w^ho 
 in the preceding August had been obliged to vacate his 
 office of Secretary in consequence of the resignation of 
 the Lord-Lieutenant — was by common consent indicated 
 as the man best qualified for the task. There were 
 indeed hot political partizans who questioned his capacity. 
 Steele said that " the Government had made choice of a 
 lute when they ought to have taken a trumpet." But if 
 by the "trumpet" he was modestly alluding to him- 
 self, it may very well be doubted if the objects of the 
 Government would have been attained by employing 
 the services of the author of the Englishman. What was 
 w^anted was not party invective, but the calm persuasive- 
 ness of reason; a pen that could ;prove to all Tory 
 country gentlemen and thorough - going High Church- 
 men that the Protestant succession was indispensable 
 to the safety of the principles which each respectively 
 considered to be of vital importance. This was the 
 task which lay before Addison, and which he accom- 
 plished with consummate skill in the Freeholder. 
 
 The name of the new paper was selected by him in 
 
152 ADDISOK. [chap. 
 
 order to suggest that property was the basis of liberty; 
 and his main argument, which he introduces under 
 constantly varying forms, is that there could be no 
 safety for property under a line of monarchs who 
 claimed the dispensing power, and no security for the 
 liberties of the Church under kings of an alien religion. 
 In order to secure variety of treatment, the exact social 
 position of the Freeholder is not defined. 
 
 ** At the same time that I declare I am a freeholder I do 
 not exclude myself from any other title. A freeholder may 
 be either a voter or a knight of the shire, a wit or a fox- 
 hunter, a scholar or a soldier, an alderman or a courtier, a 
 patriot or a stock-jobber. But I choose to be distinguished 
 by this denomination, as the freeholder is the basis of all 
 other titles. Dignities may be grafted upon it ; but this is 
 the substantial stock that conveys to them their life, taste, and 
 beauty, and without which they are blossoms that would fall 
 away with every shake of wind." ^ 
 
 By this means he was able to impart livehness to his 
 theme, which he diversifies by philosophical disquisition ; 
 by good-natured satire on the prejudices of the country 
 gentlemen ; by frequent papers on his favourite subject, 
 "the fair sex;" and by occasional glances at literature. 
 Though his avowed object was to prove the superiority 
 of the Whig over the Tory theory of the Constitution, 
 his "native moderation" never deserts him, and he 
 often lets his disgust at the stupidity of faction and his 
 preference for social over political writing appear in the 
 midst of his argument. The best papers in the series 
 are undoubtedy the " Memoirs of a Preston Rebel " and 
 the " Tory Fox-hunter," both of which are full of the 
 exquisite humour that distinguishes the sketches of Sir 
 
 ' Freeholder, No. 1. 
 
vrii.] THE LAST \T:aRS OF HIS LIFE. 153 
 
 Roger (le Coverley. The Freeholder was only continued 
 for six months (December 23, 1715 to Jane 9, 1716), 
 being published every Friday and Monday, and being 
 completed in fifty- five numbers. In the last number 
 the essayist described the nature of his work, and gave 
 his reasons for discontinuing it. 
 
 "It would not be difficult to continue a paper of this 
 kind if one were disposed to resume the same subjects and 
 weary out the reader M-ith the same thoughts in a different 
 phrase, or to ramble through the cause of Whig and Tory 
 without any certain aim or method in every particular dis- 
 course. Such a practice, in political writers, is like that of 
 some preachers taken notice of by Dr. South, who, being 
 prepared only upon two or three points of doctrine, run the 
 same round with their audience from one end of the year to 
 the other, and are always forced to tell them, by way of 
 preface, ' Tliese are particulars of so great importance that 
 they cannot be sufficiently inculcated. ' To avoid this method 
 of tautology, I have endeavoured to make every paper a 
 distinct essay upon some particular subject, without deviating 
 into points foreign to the tenor of each discourse. They are 
 indeed most of them essays upon Government, but with a 
 view to the present situation of affairs in Great Britain, so 
 that, if they have the good fortune to live longer than works 
 of this nature generally do, future readers may see in them 
 the complexion of the times in which they were written. 
 However, as there is no employment so irksome as that of 
 transcribing out of one's self next to that of transcribing out 
 of others, I shall let drop the work, since there do not occur 
 to me any material points arising from our present situation 
 which I have not already touched upon." 
 
 It was probably in reward for his services in publish- 
 ing the Freeholder that he was made one of the Com- 
 missioners for Trade and Colonies. Soon after his 
 appointment to this office he married Charlotte, Countess 
 of Warwick, daughter of Sir Thomas Myddleton, of 
 
154 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 Chirk Castle, Denbighshire. His attachment to the 
 Countess is said to have begun years before ; and this 
 seems not unlikely, for, though the story of his having 
 been tutor to the young Earl is obviously groundless, 
 two charming letters of his to the latter are in existence 
 which show that as early as 1708 he took a strong 
 interest in the family. These letters, which are written 
 entirely on the subject of birds, may of course have 
 been inspired merely by an affection for the boy himself ; 
 but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the writer felt 
 a yet stronger interest in the mother, though her indif- 
 ference, or his natural diffidence, led him to disguise his 
 feelings; perhaps, indeed, the episode of Sir Eoger de 
 Coverley's love passage with the cruel widow may be 
 founded on personal experience. We have seen him in 
 1711 reporting to a friend that the loss of his place 
 had involved that of his mistress. Possibly the same 
 hard-hearted mistress condescended to relent when she 
 saw her former lover once more on the road to high 
 State preferment. 
 
 Eeport says that the marriage was not a happy one. 
 The tradition, however, like so many others about the 
 same person, seems to have been derived from Pope, who, 
 in his Epistle to Arbuthnot, congratulates himself — with an 
 evident glance at Addison — on "not marrying discord 
 Avith a noble wife." An innuendo of this kind, and 
 coming from such a quarter, ought not to be accepted 
 as evidence without some corroboration, and the only 
 corroboration which is forthcoming is a letter of Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montagu, who writes from Constanti- 
 nople in 1717 : — "I received the news of Mr. Addison's 
 being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise 
 
VIII.] THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE. 155 
 
 in that I know the post was offered to him before. At 
 that time he declined it ; and I really believe he would 
 have done well to decline it now. Such a post as that, 
 and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be in 
 prudence eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we 
 may see the day when he will be glad to resign them 
 both." Lady Mary, however, does not hint that Addison 
 was tlien living unhappily with his wife ; her expressions 
 seem to be inspired rather by her own sharp wit and a 
 personal dislike of the Countess than by any know- 
 ledge of discord in the household. On the other hand, 
 Addison speaks of his wife in a way which is scarcely 
 consistent with what Johnson calls " uncontradicted 
 report." On March 20th, 1718, he writes to Swift : — 
 "Whenever you see England your company will be the 
 most acceptable in the world at Holland House, where 
 you are highly esteemed by Lady Warwick and the 
 young Lord." A henpecked husband would hardly have 
 invited the Dean of St. Patrick's to be the witness of 
 his domestic discomfort. Nor do the terms of his will, 
 dated only a month before his death, indicate that he 
 regarded his wife with feelings other than those of affec- 
 tion and respect : " I do make and ordain my said dear 
 wife executrix of this my last will ; and I do appoint 
 her to be guardian of my dear child, Charlotte Addison, 
 until she shall attain her age of one-and-twenty, being 
 well assured that she will take due care of her education, 
 and provide for her in case she live to be married." On 
 the whole, it seems reasonable to put positive evidence 
 of this kind against those vague rumours of domestic 
 unhappiness, which, however unsubstantial, are so easily 
 propagated and so readily believed. 
 
156 ADDISOK [ciiAr. 
 
 In April 1717 the dissensions between the t^yo sections 
 of the Whig Cabinet, led respectively by Townshend and 
 Sunderland, reached a climax, and Townshend being 
 worsted, Sunderland became Prime Minister. He at 
 once appointed his old subordinate one of the Secretaries 
 of State, and Addison filled the office for eleven months. 
 "It is universally confessed," says Johnson, "that he 
 was unequal to the duties of his place." Here again the 
 " universal confession " dwindles on examination to 
 something very different. As far as his conduct in ad- 
 ministration required to be defended in Parliament, his 
 inaptitude for the place was no doubt conspicuous. He 
 had been elected member of Parliament for Lostwithiel 
 in 1708, and when that election was set aside he was 
 chosen for Malmesbury, a seat which he retained for the 
 rest of his life. He made, however, but one effort to 
 address the House, when, being confused with the cheers 
 which greeted him, he was unable to complete his sen- 
 tence, and, resuming his seat, never again opened his lips. 
 
 But in other respects the evidence of his official 
 incapacity seems to proceed solely from his enemies. 
 " Mr. Addison," said Pope to Spence, " could not give 
 out a common order in writing from his endeavouring 
 always to word it too finely. He had too beautiful an 
 imagination to make a man of business."^ Copies of 
 official letters and despatches written by Addison are, 
 however, in existence, and prove him to have been a 
 sufficient master of a business style, so that, though 
 his lack of ability as a speaker may well have im- 
 paired his efficiency as a member of the Government, 
 Johnson has little warrant for saying that ^^ finding by 
 ^ Spence's Anecdotes, p. 175. « ■ 
 
VIII.] THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE. 157 
 
 experience his oivn inability, he was forced to solicit his 
 dismission with a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a 
 year." As a matter of fact, Addison's own petition to 
 the King and his private correspondence prove with sufii- 
 cient clearness that his resignation was caused entirely 
 by his failing health ; while the congratulatory Latin 
 verses addressed to him by Vincent Bourne on his 
 recovery from one of his seizures of asthma show that 
 his illness was of the most serious nature. 
 
 He resigned his post, however, in March 1718 with 
 cheerful alacrity, and appears to have looked forward to 
 an active period of literary work, for we are told that he 
 meditated a tragedy on the death of Socrates, as well as 
 the completion of his book on the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity. But this was not to be ; the exigencies of the 
 Ministry in the following year demanded the services of 
 his pen. A Peerage Bill, introduced by Sunderland, the 
 effect of which was to cause the sovereign to divest him- 
 self of his prerogative of creating fresh peers, had been 
 vehemently attacked by Steele in a pamphlet called the 
 Plebeian, published March 14, 1719, which Addison 
 undertook to answer in the Old Whig (March 19). The 
 Plebeian returned to the attack with spirit and with 
 some acrimony in two numbers published March 29th 
 and 30th, and the Old Wliig made a somewhat contemp- 
 tuous reply on April 2d. " Every reader," says Johnson, 
 " surely must regret that these two illustrious friends, 
 after so many years passed in confidence and endear- 
 ment, in unity of interest, conformity of opinion, and 
 fellowship of study, should finally part in acrimonious 
 opposition. Such a controversy was ' Bellum plusquam 
 civile,^ as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find 
 
158 ADDISON. [cHAr. 
 
 other advocates 1 But among the uncertainties of the 
 human state, we are doomed to number the instability 
 of friendship." 
 
 The rupture seems the more painful when we find 
 Steele, in his third and last Plebeian, published April 6th, 
 taunting his opponent with his tardiness in taking the 
 field, at the very moment when his former friend and 
 schoolfellow — unknown to him of course — was dying. 
 Asthma, the old enemy that had driven Addison from 
 office, had returned; dropsy supervened, and he died, 17th 
 June 1719, at Holland House, at the early age of forty- 
 seven. We may imagine the grief, contrition, and remorse 
 that must have torn the affectionate heart of Steele when 
 he had found he had been vexing the last hours of one 
 whom, in spite of all their differences, he loved so well. 
 He had always regarded Addison with almost religious 
 reverence, which did not yield even to acts of severity 
 on his friend's part that would have estranged the feel- 
 ings of men of a disposition less simple and impulsive. 
 Addison had once lent him £1000 to build a house at 
 Hampton Court, instructing his lawyer to recover the 
 amount when due. On Steele's failure to repay the 
 money, his friend ordered the house and furniture to be 
 sold and the balance to be paid to Steele, writing to him 
 at the same time that he had taken the step to arouse 
 him from his lethargy. B. Victor, the actor, a friend of 
 Steele, who is the authority for the story, says that Steele 
 accepted the reproof with " philosophical composure," and 
 that the incident caused no diminution in their friend- 
 ship. Political difi'erences at last produced a coldness 
 between them, and in 1717 Steele Amtes to his wife, 
 "I ask no favour of Mr, Secretary Addison." Great 
 
vrii.J THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE. 159 
 
 must have been the revulsion of feeling in a man of his 
 nature when he learned that death had now rendered 
 impossible the renewal of the old associations. All the 
 love, admiration, and enthusiasm for Addison, which his 
 heart and memory still preserved, broke out in the letter 
 to Congreve which he prefixed to The Dnimmer. 
 
 Of the closing scene of Addison's life we know little 
 except on rumoiu-. A report was current in Johnson's 
 time, and reached the antiquary John Nichols at the 
 close of the last century, that his life was shortened by 
 over-drinking. But as usual the scandal, when traced 
 to its source, seems to originate with Pope, wlio told 
 Spence that he himself was once one of the circle at 
 Button's, and left it because he found that their pro- 
 longed sittings were injuring his health. It is highly 
 probable that Addison's phlegmatic temperament required 
 to be aroused by wine into conversational activity, and 
 that he was able to drink more than most of his com- 
 panions without being affected by it ; but to suppose that 
 he indulged a sensual appetite to excess is contrary alike 
 to all that we know of his character and to the direct 
 evidence of Bishop Berkeley, who, writing of the first 
 performance of Cato, says : — "I was present with Mr. 
 Addison and a few more friends in a side box, where we 
 had a table and two or three flasks of Burgundy and 
 champagne, with which the author (who is a very sober 
 man) thought it necessary to support his spirits." 
 
 Another story, told on the same questionable authority, 
 represents him as having sent on his death-bed for Gaj^, 
 and asked his forgiveness for some injury which he said 
 he had done him, but which he did not specify. From 
 the more trustworthy report of Young, we learn that he 
 
160 ADDISON. [CHAP. viii. 
 
 asked to see the Earl of AVarwick, and said to him, " See 
 in what peace a Christian can die ; " words which are 
 supposed to explain the allusion of the lines in Tickell's 
 elegy— 
 
 " He taught us how to live and (oh ! too high 
 The price of knowledge) taught us how to die." 
 
 His body, after lying in state in the Jerusalem 
 Chamber, was buried by night in Westminster Abbey. 
 The service was performed by Atterbury, and the scene 
 is described by Tickell in a fine passage, probably in- 
 spired by a still finer one written by his own rival and 
 his friend's satirist. 
 
 " Can I forget the dismal night that gave 
 My soul's best part for ever to the grave ? 
 How silent did his old companions tread, 
 By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead, 
 Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, 
 Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings ! 
 What awe did the slow solemn march inspire, 
 The pealing organ, and the pausing choir; 
 The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid. 
 And the last words that dust to dust conveyed ! 
 While speechless o'er the closing grave we l3end. 
 Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend I 
 Oh gone for ever; take this last adieu. 
 And sleep in peace next thy loved Montague." ^ 
 
 He left by the Countess of AYarwick one daughter, 
 who lived in his old house at Bilton, and died unmarried 
 in 1797. 
 
 ^ Tickell's Elegy — Compare Pope's Eloim to Ahelard, v. 107. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE GENIUS OF ADDISON. 
 
 Such is Addison's history, which, scanty as it is, goes 
 far towards justifying the glowing panegyric bestowed 
 by Macaulay on "the unsulHed statesman, the accom- 
 plished scholar, the consummate painter of life and 
 manners, the great satirist who alone knew how to use 
 ridicule without abusing it; who, without inflicting a 
 wound, effected a great social reform ; and who reconciled 
 wit and virtue after a long and painful separation, during 
 Avhich wit had been led astray by profligacy and virtue 
 by fanaticism." It is wanting, no doubt, in romantic 
 incident and personal interest, but the same may be said 
 of the life of Scott ; and what do we know of the per- 
 sonality of Homer and Shakespeare 1 The real life of 
 these writers is to be found in their work ; and there too, 
 though on a different level and in a different shape, are 
 we to look for the character of the creator of Sir Roger 
 de Coverley. But, while it seems possible to divine the 
 personal tastes and feelings of Shakespeare and Scott 
 under a hundred different ideal forms of their own 
 invention, it is not in these that the genius of Addison 
 most characteristically embodies itself. Did his reputa- 
 tion rest on Rosamond or Cato or The Campaign, his name 
 
 M 
 
162 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 would be little better known to us than any among that 
 crowd of mediocrities who have been immortalised in 
 Johnson's Lives of the Poets. The work of Addison con- 
 sisted in building up a public opinion which, in spite of its 
 durable solidity, seems, like the great Gothic cathedrals, 
 to absorb into itself the individuality of the architect, A 
 vigorous effort of thought is required to perceive how 
 strong this individuality must have been. We have to 
 reflect on the ease with which, even in these days when 
 the foundations of all authority are called in question, 
 we form judgments on questions of morals, breeding, and 
 taste, and then to dwell in imagination on the state of 
 conflict in all matters religious, moral, and artistic, which 
 prevailed in the period between the Restoration and the 
 succession of the House of Hanover, To whom do we 
 owe the comparative harmony we enjoy ? Undoubtedly 
 to the authors of the Spectator, and first among these by 
 universal consent to Addison. 
 
 Addison's own disposition seems to have been of that 
 rare and admirable sort which Hamlet praised in Horatio : 
 
 '' Tliou hast been 
 As one in suffering all that suffers nothing : 
 A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards 
 Has ta'en with equal thanks ; and blessed are those 
 "Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled 
 That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
 To sound what stop she please." 
 
 These lines fittingly describe the patient serenity and 
 dignified independence with which Addison worked his 
 way amid great hardships and difficulties to the highest 
 position in the State; but they have a yet more honour- 
 able application to the task he performed of reconciling 
 
rx.] HIS GENIUS. 163 
 
 the social dissensions of his countrymen. " The blood and 
 judgment well commingled " are visible in the standard of 
 conduct which he held up for Englishmen in his writings, 
 as well as in his use of the weapon of ridicule against all 
 aberrations from good breeding and common sense. Those 
 only will estimate him at his true worth who will give, 
 what Johnson says is his due, " their days and nights " to 
 the study of the Spectator. But from the general reader 
 less must be expected ; and as the first chapter of this 
 volume has been devoted to a brief view of the disorder 
 of society with which Addison had to deal, it may be 
 fitting in the last to indicate some of the main points in 
 which he is to be regarded as the reconciler of parties, 
 and the founder of public opinion. 
 
 I have shown how, after the final subversion by the 
 Civil War of the old-fashioned Catholic and Feudal 
 standards of social life, two opposing ideals of conduct 
 remained harshly confronting each other in the respective 
 moral codes of the Court and the Puritans. The victorious 
 Puritans, averse to all the pleasures of sense, and intolerant 
 of the most harmless of natural instincts, had oppressed 
 the nation with a religious despotism. The nation, groan- 
 ing under the yoke, brought back its banished monarch, 
 but was soon shocked to find sensual Pleasure exalted into 
 a worship and Impiety into a creed. Though civil war 
 had ceased, the two parties maintained a truceless con- 
 flict of opinion : the Puritan proscribing all amusement 
 because it was patronised by the godless malignants ; the 
 courtiers holding that no gentleman could be religious 
 or strict in his morals without becoming tainted with the 
 cant of the Eoundheads. This harsh antagonism of sen- 
 timent is humorously illustrated by the excellent Sir 
 
164 ADDISOK. [chap. 
 
 Eoger, who is made to moralise on the stupidity of party 
 \ioleiice by recalling an incident of his own boyhood : — 
 
 " The worthy knight, being Init a stripling, had occasion 
 to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which 
 the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his ques- 
 tion, called him a young Popish cur, and asked him who 
 made Anne a saint. The boy, being in some confusion, 
 inquired of the next he met which was the way to Anne's 
 Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and 
 instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been 
 a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was 
 hanged. ' L^pon this,' says Sir Roger, ' I did not think it 
 fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane of 
 the neighbourhood, asked what thev called the name of that 
 lane.' " i 
 
 It was Addison's aim to prove to the contending par- 
 ties what a large extent of ground they might occupy in 
 common. He showed the courtiers in a form of light 
 literature which pleased their imagination, and with a 
 grace and charm of manner that they were well qualified 
 to appreciate, that true religion was not opposed to good 
 breeding. To this class in particular he addressed his 
 papers on Devotion, ^ on Prayer,^ on Faith, "^ on Temporal 
 and Eternal Happiness.^ On the other hand, he brought 
 his raillery to bear on the super-solemnity of the trading 
 and professional classes, in whom the spirit of Puritanism 
 was most prevalent. "About an age ago," says he, "it 
 was the fashion in England for every one that would be 
 thought religious to throw as much sanctity as possible 
 into his face, and, in particular, to abstain from all appear- 
 ances of mirth and pleasantry, which were looked upon 
 as the marks of a carnal mind. The saint was of a sor- 
 
 ^ Spectator, No. 125. - Ibid., vol. iii., Nos. 201, 207. 
 
 3 Ihid., No. 391. * Ihid., No. 465. ^ Ibid., No. 575. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 165 
 
 rowful countenance, and generally eaten up with spleen 
 and melancholy." ^ 
 
 It was doubtless for the benefit of this class that he 
 wrote his three Essays on Cheerfulness,^ in which the 
 gloom of the Puritan creed is corrected by arguments 
 founded on Natural Eeligion. 
 
 " The cheerfulness of heart," lie observes in a charming; 
 passage, " which springs up in iis from the survey of Nature's 
 works is an admirable preparation for gratitude. The mind 
 has gone a great way towards praise and thanksgiving that is 
 filled with such secret gladness. A grateful reflection on the 
 Supreme Cause who produces it, sanctifies it in the soul, and 
 gives it its proper value. Such an habitual disposition of 
 mind consecrates every field and wood, turns an ordinary 
 walk into a morning or evening sacrifice, and will improve 
 those transient gleams of joy, which naturally brighten up 
 and refresh the soul on such occasions, into an inviolable 
 and perpetual state of bliss and happiness." 
 
 The same qualities appear in his dramatic criticisms. 
 The corruption of the stage was to the Puritan, or the 
 Puritanic moralist, not so much the effect as the cause 
 of the corruption of society. To Jeremy Collier and 
 his imitators the theatre in all its manifestations is 
 equally abominable ; they see no difference between 
 Shakespeare and Wycherley. Dryden, who bowed before 
 Collier's rebuke with a penitent dignity that does him 
 high honour, yet rallies him with humour on this point : 
 
 " Perhaps the Parson stretched a point too far 
 When with our Theatres he waged a war ; 
 He tells you that this very Moral Age 
 Received the first infection from the Stage ; 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 494. ' Hid., Nos. 381, 387, 393. 
 
166 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 But sure a banisht Court witli Lewdness fraught 
 The seeds of open Vice returning brought ; 
 Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives) 
 It first debauched the daughters and the wives," 
 
 Dryden was quite right. The Court after the Restora- 
 tion was for the moment the sole school of manners ; 
 I and the dramatists only reflected on the stage the inverted 
 ■ ideas which were accepted in society as the standard of 
 good breeding.' " All sentiments founded on reverence 
 ' for religion, or the family, or honourable industry, were 
 banished from the drama because they were unaccept- 
 able at Court. The idea of virtue in a married ^voman 
 would have seemed prodigious to Shadwell or Wycherley ; 
 Vanbrugh had no scruples in presenting to an audience 
 a drunken parson in Sir John Brute ; the merchant or 
 tradesman seemed, like Congreve's Alderman Fondle- 
 wife, to exist solely that their wives might be seduced 
 by men of fashion. Addison and his disciples saw^ that 
 these unnatural creations of the theatre were the product of 
 the corruption of society, and that it was men, not insti- 
 tutions, that needed reform. Steele, always the first to 
 feel a generous impulse, took the lead in raising the tone 
 of stage morality in a paper which, characteristically 
 enough, was suggested by some reflections on a passage 
 in one of his own plays. ^ He followed up his attack by 
 an admirable criticism, part of which has been already 
 quoted, on Etherege's Man in the Mode, the hero of which, 
 Sir Fopling Flutter, who had long been the model of 
 young men of wit and fashion, he shows to be "a direct 
 knave in his designs and a clown in his language." - 
 As usual, Addison improves the opportunity which 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 51. = Ibid, No. 65. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 167 
 
 Steele affords hiin, and with his grave irony exposes 
 the ridiculous principle of the fashionable comedy by 
 a simple statement of fact. 
 
 " Cuckoldom," says he, " is the basis of most of our modern 
 plays. If an alderman appears upon the stage you may be 
 sure it is in order to be cuckolded. An husband that is a 
 little grave or elderly generally meets with the same fate. 
 Knights and baronets, country squires, and justices of the 
 quormn, come up to town for no other purpose. I have seen 
 230or Dogget cuckolded in all these capacities. In short, our 
 English writers are as frequently severe upon this innocent 
 unhappy creature, commonly known by the name of a cuck- 
 old, as the ancient comic writers were upon an eating parasite 
 or a vain-glorious soldier. 
 
 ". . . I have sometimes thought of compiling a system of 
 ethics out of the writings of these corrupt poets under the 
 title of Stage Morality. But I have been diverted from this 
 thought by a project which has been executed by an ingeni- 
 ous gentleman of my acquaintance. He has composed, it 
 seems, the history of a young fellow who has taken all his 
 notions of the world from the stage, and who has directed 
 himself in every circumstance of his life and conversation by 
 the maxims and examples of the fine gentleman in English 
 comedies. If I can prevail upon him to give me a copy of 
 this new-fashioned novel, I will bestow on it a place in my 
 works, and question not but it may have as good an effect upon 
 the drama as Don Quixote had upon romance." ^ 
 
 Nothing could be more skilful than this. Collier's 
 invective no doubt produced a momentary flutter among 
 the dramatists, who, however, soon found they had little 
 to fear from arguments which appealed only to that 
 serious portion of society which did not frequent the 
 theatre. But Addison's penetrating wit, founded as it 
 was on truth and reason, was appreciated by the fashion- 
 able world. Dorimant and Sir Fopling Flutter felt 
 ^ Spectator, No. 446. 
 
168 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 ashamed of themselves. The cuckold disappeared from 
 the stage. In society itself marriage no longer appeared 
 ridiculous. 
 
 " It is my custom," says the Spectator in one of his late 
 papers, "to take frequent opportunities of inquiring from 
 time to time what success my speculations meet with in the 
 tOTVTi. I am glad to find, in particular, that my discourses on 
 marriage have been well received. A friend of mine gives 
 me to understand, from Doctor's Commons, that more licenses 
 have been taken out there of late than usual. I am likewise 
 informed of several pretty fellows who have resolved to com- 
 mence heads of families by the first favom^able opportunity. 
 One of them writes me word that he is ready to enter into 
 the bonds of matrimony provided I will give it him under 
 my hand (as I now do) that a man may show his face in good 
 company after he is married, and that he need not be ashamed 
 to treat a woman with kindness who puts herself into his 
 power for life." ^ 
 
 So, too, in politics, it was not to be expected that Ad- 
 dison's moderation should exercise a restraining influence 
 on the violence of Parliamentary parties. But in helping 
 to form a reasonable public opinion in the more reflective 
 part of the nation at large, his efforts could not have been 
 unavailing. He was a steady and consistent supporter of 
 the "Whig party, and Bolingbroke found that, in spite of his 
 mildness, his principles were proof against all the seduc- 
 tions of interest. He was, in fact, a "Whig in the sense 
 in which all the best political writers in om- literature, 
 to whichever party they may have nominally belonged 
 — Bolingbroke, Swift, and Canning as much as Somers 
 and Burke — would have avowed themselves "Whigs, as 
 one, that is to say, Avho desired above all things to main- 
 tain the constitution of his country. He attached him- 
 1 SpccUUor, No. 525 (By Hughes). 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 169 , 
 
 self to the \Miigs of his period because he saw in them, 
 as the associated defenders of the liberties of the Parlia- 
 ment, the best counterpoise to the still preponderant 
 power of the Crown. But he would have repudiated as 
 vigorously as Burke the democratic principles to which 
 Fox, under the stimulus of party spirit, committed the 
 Whig connection at the outbreak of the French Eevolu- 
 tion; and for that stupid and ferocious spirit, generated 
 by party, which would deny to opponents even the a}; 
 pearance of virtue and intelhgence, no man had a more 
 wholesome contempt. Page after page of the SjMctaior 
 shows that Addison perceived as clearly as Swift th- 
 theoretical absurdity of the party system, and tolerated 
 it only as an evil inseparable from the imperfection of 
 human nature and free institutions. He regarded it 'as 
 the parent of hypocrisy and self-deception. 
 
 " Intemperate zeal, bigotry, and persecution for any party 
 or opinion, how praiseworthy soever they may appear to weak 
 men of our own principles, produce infinite calamities among 
 mankind and are highly criminal in their own nature ; and 
 yet how many persons eminent for piety suffer such monstrou>s 
 and absurd princi^Dles of action to take root in their minds 
 under the colour of virtues ! For my own part I must own 
 I never yet knew any party so just and reasonable that a man 
 could follow it in its height and violence and at the same 
 time be innocent. " ^ 
 
 As to party-writing, he considered it identical with 
 lying. 
 
 " A man," says he, " is looked upon as bereft of common 
 sense that gives credit to the relations of party - writers ; 
 nay, his own friends shake their heads at him and consider 
 him in no other light than as an officious tool or a well- 
 meaning idiot. When it was formerly the fashion to husband 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 399. 
 
170 ADDISO^". [CHAP. 
 
 a lie and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency it 
 generally did execution, and was not a little useful to the 
 faction that made use of it ; but at present every man is 
 upon his guard : the artifice has been too often repeated to 
 take effect."! 
 
 Sir Eoger de Coverley "often closes his narrative 
 with reflections on the mischief that parties do in the 
 country." 
 
 " There cannot," says the Spectator himself, " a greater 
 judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of divi- 
 sion as rends a government into two distinct people and 
 makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another 
 than if they were actually two different nations. The effects 
 of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only 
 with regard to those advantages which they give the common 
 enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the 
 heart of almost every particular person. This influence is 
 very fatal both to men's morals and to their understandings ; 
 it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys 
 even common sense." - 
 
 Nothing in the work of Addison is more suggestive of 
 the just and well-balanced character of his genius than 
 his papers on Women. It has been already said that the 
 seventeenth century exhibits the decay of the Feudal 
 Ideal. The passionate adoration with which women were 
 regarded in the age of chivalry degenerated after the 
 Eestoration into a habit of insipid gallantry or of brutal 
 license. Men of fashion found no mean for their affec- 
 tions between a Sacharissa and a Duchess of Cleveland, 
 while the domestic standard of the time reduced the 
 remainder of the sex to the position of virtuous but 
 uninteresting household drudges. Of woman as the 
 companion and the helpmate of man, the source of all 
 the grace and refinements of social intercourse, no trace 
 1 Speetatov, No. 507. ^ jn^., No. 125. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 171 
 
 is to be found in the literature of the Restoration except 
 in the Eve of Milton's still unstudied poem; it is not too 
 much to say that she was the creation of the Spectator. 
 
 The feminine ideal, at which the essayists of the period 
 aimed, is very well described by Steele in a style which 
 he imitated from Addison : — 
 
 " The other day," he writes, in the character of a fictitious 
 female correspondent, " we were several of us at a tea-table, 
 and, according to custom and your own advice, had the Spec- 
 tator read among us. It was that paper wherein you are 
 pleased to treat with great freedom that character which you 
 call a woman's man. We gave up all the kinds you have 
 mentioned except those who, you say, are our constant 
 visitants. I was upon the occasion commissioned by the 
 company to write to you and tell you ' that we shall not part 
 ^^dth the men we have at present until the men of sense think 
 fit to relieve them and give us their company in their stead.' 
 You caimot imagine but we love to hear reason and good 
 sense better than the ribaldry we are at present entertained 
 with, but we must have company, and among us very incon- 
 siderable is better than none at all. We are made for the 
 cements of society, and come into the world to create relations 
 amongst mankind, and solitude is an unnatural being to us." ^ 
 
 In contrast with the character of the writer of this 
 letter — a type which is always recurring in the Spectator — 
 modest and unafi'ected, but at the same time shrewd, 
 witty, and refined, are introduced very eccentric specimens 
 of womanhood, all tending to illustrate the derangement of 
 the social order, the masculine woman, the learned woman, 
 the female politician, besides those that more properly be- 
 long to the nature of the sex, the prude and the coquette. 
 A very graceful example of Addison's peculiar humour is 
 found in his satire on that false ambition in women 
 which prompts them to imitate the manners of men : — 
 1 Spectator, No. 158. 
 
172 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 " The girls of quality," he writes, describing the customs 
 of the Republic of Women, " from six to twelve years old 
 were put to public schools, where they learned to box and 
 play at cudgels, with several other accomplishments of the 
 same nature, so that nothing was more usual than to see a 
 little miss returning home at night with a broken pate or two 
 or three teeth knocked out of her head. They were after- 
 wards taught to ride the great horse, to shoot, dart, or sling, 
 and listed themselves into several companies in order to per- 
 fect themselves in military exercises. No woman was to be 
 married till she had killed her man. The ladies of fashion 
 used to play with young lions instead of lap-dogs ; and when 
 they had made any parties of diversion, instead of entertaining 
 themselves at ombre and piquet, they wcaild wrestle and 
 pitch the bar for a whole afternoon together. There was 
 never any such thing as a blush seen or a sigh heard in the 
 whole commonwealth." ^ 
 
 The amazon was a type of womanhood peculiarly 
 distasteful to Addison, whose humour delighted itself with 
 all the curiosities and refinements of feminine caprice — 
 the fan, the powder-box, and the petticoat. Nothing 
 can more characteristically suggest the exquisiteness of 
 his fancy than a comparison of Swift's verses on a Laihfs 
 Dressing - Boom with the following, which evidently 
 gave Pope a hint for one of the happiest passages in The 
 Bape of the Lock: — 
 
 " The single dress of a woman of quality is often the 
 product of a hundred climates. The muff and the fan come 
 together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is 
 sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the 
 Pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, 
 and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan." - 
 
 To turn to Addison's artistic genius the cro^^^ling 
 evidence of his powers is the design and the execution 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 434. - Ibid., No. 69. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 173 
 
 of the Spectator. Many writers, and among them Mac- 
 aulay, have credited Steele with the invention of the 
 Spectator as well as of the Tatler ; but I think that a 
 close examination of the opening papers in the former 
 will not only prove, almost to demonstration, that on 
 this occasion Steele was acting as the lieutenant of his 
 friend, but aWII also show the admirable artfulness of 
 the means by which Addison executed his intention. 
 The purpose of the Spectator is described in the tentli 
 number, which is by Addison : — 
 
 "I shall endeavour," said he, "to enliven morality witli 
 wit, and to temper wit \Wth morality, that my readers may, 
 if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of 
 the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion 
 may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I 
 have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till 
 I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and 
 folly into which the age has fallen." 
 
 That is to say, his design was "to hold as 'twere 
 the mirror up to nature," so that the conscience of 
 society might recognise in a dramatic form the character 
 of its lapses from virtue and reason. The indispensable 
 instrument for the execution of this design was the 
 Spectator himself, the silent embodiment of right reason 
 and good taste, Avho is obviously the conception of 
 Addison. 
 
 " I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind 
 than as one of the species by which means I have made my- 
 self a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, 
 without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am 
 very well versed in the theory of a husband, or a father, and 
 can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diver- 
 sion of others better than those who are engaged in them ; 
 as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those 
 
174 ADDISON. [chaf. 
 
 who are in the game. I never espoused any party ^vith 
 violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality 
 between the Whigs and Tories unless I shall be forced to 
 declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I 
 have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is 
 the character I intend to preserve in this paper." 
 
 In order, however, to give this somewhat inanimate 
 figure life and action, he is represented as the principal 
 member of a club, his associates consisting of various 
 representatives of the chief "interests" of society. We 
 can scarcely doubt that the club was part of the original 
 and central conception of the work, and if this be so, a 
 new light is thrown on some of the features in the 
 characters of the Sjpedator which have hitherto rather 
 perplexed the critics. 
 
 " The Spectator's friends," says Macaulay, " were first 
 sketched by Steele. Four of the club — the templar, the 
 clergyman, the soldier, and the merchant — were uninteresting 
 figures, fit only for a background. But the other two — an 
 old country baronet and an old town rake — though not de- 
 lineated with a very delicate pencil, had some good strokes. 
 Addison took the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched 
 them, coloured them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir 
 Boger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with whom we 
 are all famiUar." 
 
 This is a very misleading account of the matter. It 
 implies that the characters in the Spectator were mere 
 casual conceptions of Steele's ; that Addison knew 
 nothing about them till he saw Steele's rough draft; 
 and that he, and he alone, is the creator of the finished 
 character of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, as a matter of 
 fact, the character of Sir Roger is full of contradictions 
 and inconsistencies ; and the want of unity which it 
 presents is easily explained by the fact that it is the 
 
rx.] HIS GENIUS. 175 
 
 work of four different hands. Sixteen papers on the 
 subject were contributed by Addison, seven by Steele, 
 three by Budgell, and one by Tickell. Had Sir Eoger 
 been, as Macaulay seems to suggest, merely the stray 
 phantom of Steele's imagination, it is very unlikely that 
 so many different painters should have busied themselves 
 with his portrait. But he was from the first intended 
 to be a tij^pe of a country gentleman, just as much as 
 Don Quixote was an imaginative representation of many 
 Spanish gentlemen whose brains had been turned by the 
 reading of romances. In both cases the type of character 
 was so common and so truly conceived as to lend itself 
 easily to the treatment of writers who approached it 
 with various conceptions and very unequal degrees of 
 skill. Any critic, therefore, who regards Sir Eoger de 
 Coverley as the abstract conception of a single mind is 
 certain to misconceive the character. This error lies at 
 the root of Johnson's description of the knight : — 
 
 " Of the characters," says he, " feigned or exhibited in the 
 Spectator, the favourite of Addison was Sir Eoger de Coverley, 
 of whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminated 
 idea, which he would not suffer to be violated ', and therefore 
 when Steele had shown him innocently picking up a girl in 
 the Temple and taking her to a tavern, he drew upon him- 
 self so much of his friend's indignation that he was forced 
 to appease him by a promise of forbearing Sir Eoger 
 for the time to come. ... It may be doubted whether 
 Addison ever fiUed up his original delineation. He de- 
 scribes his knight as having his imagination somewhat 
 warped ; but of this perversion he has made very little use. 
 The irregularities in Sir Eoger's conduct seem not so much 
 the effects of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life 
 by the perpetual pressure of some overwhelming idea, as of 
 habitual rusticity and that negligence which solitary grandeur 
 naturally generates. The variable weather of the mind, the 
 
176 ADDISON. [cH\r. 
 
 flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time 
 cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety 
 to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from 
 prosecuting his own design." 
 
 But Addison never had any design of the kind. 
 Steele indeed describes Sir Roger in the second number 
 of the Spedaior as " a gentleman that is very singular in 
 his behaviour," but he added that " his singularities 
 proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to 
 the manners of the world, only, as he thinks, the world 
 is in the "WTong." Addison regarded the knight from a 
 different point of view. "My friend Sir Roger," he 
 says, " amidst all liis good qualities is something of a 
 humourist; his virtues as well as imperfections are, as it 
 were, tinged by a certain extravagance which makes 
 them particularly his, and distinguishes them from those 
 of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very 
 innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly 
 agreeable and more delightful than the same degree of 
 sense and virtue would appear in their common and 
 ordinary colours." 
 
 The fact is, as I have already said, that it had evi- 
 dently been predetermined by the designers of the 
 S])ectator that the Club should consist of certain recog- 
 nised and familiar types ; the different -smters in turns 
 worked on these types, each for his owm purpose and 
 according to the bent of his own genius. Steele gave 
 the first sketch of Sir Roger in a few rough but \'igorou3 
 strokes, which were afterwards greatly refined and altered 
 by Addison. In Steele's hands the knight appears indeed 
 as a country squire, but he has also a town-house in 
 Soho Square, then the most fashionable part of London. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 177 
 
 He had apparently been originally "a fine gentleman," 
 and only acquired his old-fashioned rusticity of manners 
 in consequence of a disappointment in love. All his 
 oddities date from this adventure, though his heart has 
 outlived the effects of it. " There is," we are told, "such 
 a mirthful cast in his behaviour that he is rather beloved 
 than esteemed." kSteele's imagination had evidently 
 been chiefly caught by the humour of Sir Roger's love 
 affair, which is made to reflect the romantic cast of 
 poetry affected after the Restoration, and forms the 
 subject of two papers in the series ; in two others — re- 
 cording respectively the knight's kindness to his servants, 
 and his remarks on the portraits of his ancestors — the 
 writer takes up the idea of Addison ; while another gives 
 an account of a dispute between Sir Roger and Sir Andrew 
 Freeport on the merits of the monied interest. Addison, 
 on the other hand, had formed a far finer conception of 
 the character of the country gentleman, and one that 
 approaches the portrait of Don Quixote. As a humourist 
 he perceived the incongruous position in modern society 
 of one nourished in the beliefs, principles, and traditions 
 of the old feudal world ; and hence, whenever the knight 
 is brought into contact with modern ideas, he invests 
 his observations, as the Spectator says, with " a certain 
 extravagance " which constitutes their charm. Such are 
 the papers describing his behaviour at church, his in- 
 clination to believe in witchcraft, and his Tory principles : 
 such, in another vein, are his criticisms in the theatre ; 
 his opinions of Spring Gardens ; and his delightful 
 reflections on the tombs in Westminster Abbey. But 
 Addison was also fully alive to the beauty and nobility 
 of the feudal idea, which he brings out with great 
 
 N 
 
178 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 animation in the various papers describing the patriarchal 
 relations existing between Sir Eoger and his servants, 
 retainers, and tenants, closing the series with the truly 
 pathetic account of the knight's death. It is to be 
 observed that he drops altogether Steele's idea of Sir 
 Roger having once been a man of fashion, Avhich is 
 indeed discarded by Steele himself when co-operating 
 ■\vith his friend on the picture of country life. Addison 
 also quite disregards Steele's original hint about "the 
 humble desires " of his hero ; and he only once makes 
 incidental mention of the widow. 
 
 Budgell contributed three papers on the subject, two 
 in imitation of Addison; one describing a fox-hunt, and 
 the other giving Sir Roger's opinion on beards ; the third, 
 in imitation of Steele, sho^ving Sir Roger's state of mind 
 on hearing of the addresses of Sir David Dundrum to 
 the widow. The number of the Spectator which is said 
 to have so greatly displeased Addison was written, not, 
 as Johnson says, by Steele, but by Tickell. It goes far 
 to confirm my supposition that the characters of the 
 Club had been agreed upon beforehand. The trait 
 which Tickell describes would have been natural enough 
 in an ordinary country gentleman, though it was incon- 
 sistent with the fine development of Sir Roger's character 
 in the hands of Addison. 
 
 In his capacity of critic Addison has been variously 
 judged, and, it may be added, generally unden'alued. 
 We find that Johnson's contemporaries were reluctant to 
 allow him the name of critic. " His criticism," Johnson 
 explains, "is condemned as tentative or experimental 
 rather than scientific ; and he is considered as deciding 
 by taste rather than by principles." But if Aristotle is 
 
IX,] HIS GENIUS. 179 
 
 right in saying that the virtuous man is the standard of 
 virtue, the man of sound instincts and perceptions ought 
 certainly to be accepted as a standard in the more 
 debatable region of taste. There can, at any rate, be 
 no doubt that Addison's artistic judgments founded on 
 instinct were frequently much nearer the mark than 
 Johnson's, though these were based on principle. Again 
 Macaulay says : " The least valuable of Addison's con- 
 tributions to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our 
 age, his critical papers;" but he adds patronisingly : 
 " The very worst of them is creditable to him when the 
 character of the school in which he had been trained is 
 fairly considered. The best of them were much too good 
 for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our 
 generation as he was before his own." By *' the school 
 in which he had been trained," Macaulay doubtless 
 meant the critical traditions established by Boileau and 
 Bouhom^s, and he would have justified the disparage- 
 ment implied in his reference to them by pointing 
 to the pedantic intolerance and narrowness of view 
 which these traditions encouraged. But in all matters 
 of this kind there is loss and gain. If Addison's 
 generation was much more insensible than our own to a 
 large portion of imaginative truth, it had a far keener 
 perception of the laws and limits of expression; and, 
 granted that Voltaire was wrong in regarding Shake- 
 speare as an " inspired barbarian," he would never have 
 made the mistake which critics now make every day of 
 mistaking nonsense for poetry 
 
 But it may well be questioned if Addison's criticism 
 is only "tentative and experimental." The end of 
 criticism is surely to produce a habit of reasoning 
 
180 ADDISON. [cHAr. 
 
 rightly on matters of taste and imagination ; and, with 
 the exception of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, no English 
 critic has accomplished more in this direction than 
 Addison. Before his time Dryden had scattered over 
 a number of prefaces various critical remarks admirably 
 felicitous in thought and racy in expression. But he 
 had made no attempt to write upon the subject syste- 
 matically ; and in practice he gave himself up without 
 an effort to satisfy the tastes which a corrupt Court had 
 formed, partly on the " false wit " of Cowley's following, 
 partly on the extravagance and conceit of the French 
 school of Romance. Addison, on the other hand, set 
 himself to correct this depraved fashion by establishing 
 in England, on a larger and more liberal basis, the stan- 
 dards of good breeding and common sense which Boileau 
 had already popularised in France. Nothing can be 
 more just and discriminating than his papers on the 
 difference between true and false wit.^ He was the first 
 to endeavour to define the limits of art and taste in his 
 essays on the Pleasures of the Imagination; - and, though 
 his theory on the subject is obviously superficial, it suffi- 
 ciently proves that his method of reasoning on questions 
 of taste was much more than " tentative and experi- 
 mental." " I could w^ish," he says, " there were authors 
 who, beside the mechanical rides, which a man of very 
 little taste may discourse upon, would enter into the very 
 spirit and soul of fine wTiting, and show us the several 
 sources of that pleasure which rises in the mind on the 
 perusal of a noble work." His studies of the French 
 drama prevented him from appreciating the great Eliza- 
 
 ^ Spectator, Nos. 58-63, inclusive. 
 2 Ibid., Nos. 411-421. inclusive. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 181 
 
 bethan school of tragedy, yet many stray remarks in 
 the Spectator sliow how deeply he was impressed by the 
 greatness of Shakespeare's genius, while his criticisms on 
 Tragedy did much to banish the tumid extravagance of 
 the romantic style. His papers on Milton achieved the 
 triumph of making a practically unknown jDoem one of 
 the most popular classics in the language, and he was 
 more than half a century before his age in his appre- 
 ciation of the beauties of the English ballads. In fact, 
 finding English taste in hopeless confusion, he left it in 
 admirable order ; and to those who are inclined to 
 depreciate his powers as a critic the following observa- 
 tions of Johnson — not a very favourable judge — may be 
 commended : — 
 
 "It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by 
 the labour of others to add a little of their own, and overlook 
 their masters. Addison is now despised by some who perhaps 
 would never have seen his defects but by the light he afforded 
 them. That he always wrote as he would write now cannot 
 be affirmed ; his instructions were such as the characters ul' 
 his readers made proper. That general knowledge, which 
 now circulates in common talk, was in his time rarely to ])e 
 found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of 
 ignorance ; and in the female world any acquaintance with 
 books was distinguished only to be censured. His purpose 
 was to infuse literary curiosity 1iy gentle and unsuspecte<! 
 conveyance into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy : he there- 
 fore presented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty 
 and austere, but accessible and familiar. When he showed 
 them their defects, he showed them likewise that they might 
 be easily supplied. His attempt succeeded ; inquiry awakened 
 and comprehension expanded. An emulation of intellectual 
 elegance was excited, and from this time to our own life has 
 been gradually exalted, and conversation purified and en- 
 iarged."! 
 
 1 Life of Addison. 
 
182 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 The essence of Audison's humour Is iron5^ " One 
 sh'ght lineament of his character," says Johnson, " Swift 
 has preserved. It was his practice, when he found any 
 man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions by acqui- 
 escence, and sink him yet deeper to absurdity." The 
 same characteristic manifests itself in his writings under 
 a great variety of forms. Sometimes it appears in the 
 seemingly logical premises from which he draws an 
 obviously absurd conclusion, as for instance : — 
 
 "If in a multitude of counsellors there is safety, we ought 
 to think ourselves the securest nation in the world. Most 
 of our garrets are inhabited by statesmen, who watch over 
 the liberties of their country, and make a shift to keep them- 
 selves from starving by taking into their care the properties 
 of all their fellow-subjects." ^ 
 
 On other occasions he ridicules some fashion of taste by 
 a perfectly grave and simple description of its object. Per- 
 haps the most admirable specimen of this oblique manner 
 is his satire on the Italian opera in the number of the 
 Spectator describing the various lions who had fought on 
 the stage \Adth Nicolini. This highly-finished paper 
 deserves to be quoted in extenso : — 
 
 " There is nothing of late years has afforded matter of 
 greater amusement to the town than Signor Nicolini's combat 
 with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often 
 exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility 
 and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. /Upon the first 
 rumour of this intended combat it was confidently affirmed, 
 and is still believed by many in both galleries, that there 
 would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera in order 
 to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether 
 groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the 
 playhouse, that some of the refined politicians in those parts of 
 the audience gave it out in a whisper that the lion was a cousin- 
 
 ^ Spectator, No. 556. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 183 
 
 german of tlie tiger who made his appeai'ance in King "William's 
 days, and that the stage would be supplied with lions at the 
 public expense during the whole session./ Many like^\'ise were 
 the conjectures of the treatment which this lion was to meet 
 with at the hands of Signor Nicolini ; some supposed that he 
 was to subdue him in recitativo, as Orpheus used to serve 
 the wild beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on 
 the head ; some fancied that the lion would not pretend to 
 lay his paws upon the hero, by reason of the received opinion 
 that a lion will not hurt a virgin ; several, who pretended to 
 have seen the opera in Italy, had informed their friends that 
 the lion was to act a part in High Dutch, and roar twice or 
 thrice to a thorough-bass before he fell at the feet of Hydaspes. 
 To clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have 
 made it my business to examine whether this pretended lion 
 is really the savage he appears to be or only a counterfeit. 
 
 " But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint 
 the public that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, 
 as I was thinking upon something else, I accidentally jostled 
 against an enormous animal that extremely startled me, and, 
 upon my nearer survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant. 
 The lion, seeing me very much surprised, told me, in a gentle 
 voice, that I might come by him if I pleased ; ' for,' says he, 
 ' I do not intend to hurt anybody.' I thanked him very 
 kindly and passed by him, and in a little time after saw him 
 leap upon the stage and act his part with very great applause/ 
 It has been observed by several that the lion has changed his 
 manner of acting twice or thrice since his first appearance ; 
 which will not seem strange when I acquaint my reader that 
 the lion has been changed upon the audience three several 
 times. The first lion was a candle-snuff*er, who, being a fellow 
 of testy choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer 
 himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done ; 
 besides it was observed of him that he became more surly 
 every time he came out of the lion ; and having dropped some 
 words in ordinary conversation as if he had not fought his 
 best, and that he suffered himself to be thrown on his back 
 in the scuffle, and that he could wrestle with Mr. Nicolini 
 for what he pleased out of his lion's skin, it was thought proper 
 to discard him, and it is verily believed to this day that, had 
 
184 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 lie been brought upon tlie stage another time, he would cer- 
 tainly have done mischief. Besides it was objected against 
 the first lion that he reared himself so high upon his hinder 
 paws and walked in so erect a posture that he looked more 
 like an old man than a lion. 
 
 " The second lion was a tailor V)y trade who belonged to 
 the playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceable 
 man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this 
 was too sheepish for his part, insomuch that after a short 
 modest walk upon the stage he would fall at the first touch 
 of Hydasj)es, without grappling with him and giving him an 
 opportunity of showing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, 
 indeed, that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured 
 doublet ; but this was only to make work for himself in his 
 private character of a tailor. I must not omit that it was this 
 second lion who treated me with so much humanity behind 
 the scenes. 
 
 " The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country 
 gentleman, who does it for his diversion, but desires his name 
 may be concealed. He says, very handsomely in his own excuse, 
 that he does not act for gain ; that he indulges an innocent 
 2:)leasure in it ; and that it is better to pass away an evening 
 in this manner than in gaming and drinking : but he says 
 at the same time, with a very agreeable raillery upon himself, 
 that, if his name were known, the ill-natured world might 
 call him ' the ass in the lion's skin. ' This gentleman's temper is 
 made out of such a hapj)y mixture of the mild and the choleric, 
 that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn together 
 greater audiences than have been kno^^^l in the memory of man. 
 
 " I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice 
 of a groundless report that has been raised to a gentleman's 
 disadvantage, of whom I must declare myself an admirer ; 
 namely, that Signor Nicolini and the lion have been seen 
 sitting peaceably by one another and smoking a pipe together 
 behind the scenes ; by which their common enemies would 
 insinuate that it is but a sham combat which they represent 
 upon the stage : but ujiou inquiry I find that if any such 
 correspondence has passed between them, it was not till the 
 combat was over, when the lion was to be looked on as dead 
 according to the received rules of the drama. Besides, this is 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 185 
 
 what is practised every day in Westminster Hall, where nothing 
 is more usual than to see a couple of lawyers who have been 
 tearing each other to pieces in the court embracing one another 
 as soon as they are out of it. " ^ 
 
 In a somewhat different vein, the ridicule cast by the 
 
 Spectator on the fashions of his day, by anticipating the 
 
 judgment of posterity on himself, is equally happy : 
 
 "As for his speculations, notwithstanding the several 
 obsolete words and obscure phrases of the age in which he 
 lived, we still understand enough of them to see the diversions 
 and characters of the English nation in his time : not but 
 that w^e are to make allowance for the mirth and humour of 
 the author, who has doubtless strained many rejjresentations 
 of things beyond the truth. For, if we must interpret his 
 words in their literal meaning, we must suppose that w^omen 
 of the first quality used to pass away wholp mornings at a 
 puppet show : that they attested their principles by their 
 l^atches : that an audience would sit out an evening to hear 
 a dramatical performance written in a language which they 
 did not understand : that chairs and flowerpots were intro- 
 duced as actors upon the British stage : that a promiscuous 
 assembly of men and women were allowed to meet at midnight 
 in masks within the verge of the Court ; with many improb- 
 abilities of the like nature. We must therefore in these and 
 in the like cases suppose that these remote hints and allusions 
 aimed at some certain follies which were then in vogue, and 
 which at present we have not any notion of." ^ 
 
 His power of ridiculing keenly without malignity is 
 of course best shown in his character of Sir Eoger de 
 Coverley, whose delightful simplicity of mind is made 
 the medium of much good-natured satire on the manners 
 of the Tory country-gentlemen of the period. One of 
 the most exquisite touches is the description of the extra- 
 ordinary conversion of a dissenter by the Act against 
 Occasional Conformity. 
 
 ^ Spectator, No. 13. 2 jj^-^^ j^t^ iqi_ 
 
186 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 " He (Sir Roger) then launched out into praise of the 
 late Act of Parliament for securing the Church of England, 
 and told me with great satisfaction that he believed it 
 already began to take effect, for that a rigid dissenter who 
 chanced to dine in his house on Christmas day had been 
 observed to eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge." ^ 
 
 The mixture of fashionable contempt for book-learn- 
 ing, blended with shrewd mother-wit, is well represented 
 in the character of Will Honeycomb, who *' had the 
 discretion not to go out of his depth, and had often a 
 certain way of making his real ignorance appear a seem- 
 ing one." One of Will's happiest flights is on the subject 
 of ancient looking-glasses. " Nay," says he, *' I remem- 
 ber Mr. Dryden in his Ovid tells us of a swinging fellow 
 called Polypheme, that made use of the sea for his 
 looking-glass, and could never dress himself to advant- 
 age but in a calm." 
 
 Budgell, Steele, and Addison seem all to have worked 
 on the character of Will Honeycomb, which, however, 
 presents none of the inconsistencies that appear in the 
 portrait of Sir Eoger de Coverley. Addison was evi- 
 dently pleased with it, and in his o"vvn inimitable ironic 
 manner gave it its finishing touches by making Will, in 
 his character of a fashionable gallant, write two letters 
 scoffing at wedlock and then marry a farmer's daughter. 
 The conclusion of the letter in which he announces his 
 fate to the Spectator is an admirable specimen of Ad- 
 dison's humour : 
 
 " As for your fine women I need not tell thee that I know 
 them. I have had my share in their graces, but no more of 
 that. It shall be my business hereafter to live the life of an 
 honest man, and to act as becomes the master of a family. 
 I question not but I shall draw upon me the raillery of the 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 269. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 187 
 
 town, and be, treated to the tune of "The Marriage-hater 
 Matched ; " but I am prepared for it. I have been as witty 
 as others in my time. To tell thee truly I saw such a tribe 
 of fashionable young fluttering coxcombs shot up that I do 
 not think my post of an homme de ruelle any longer tenable. 
 I felt a certain stiffness in my limbs which entirely destroyed 
 the jauntiness of air I was once master of. Besides, for I 
 must now confess my age to thee, I have been eight-and-forty 
 above these twelve years. Since my retirement into the 
 country will make a vacancy in the Club, I could wish that 
 you would fill up my place with my friend Tom Dapperwit. 
 He has an infinite deal of fire, and knows the town. For 
 my own part, as I have said before, I shall endeavour to live 
 hereafter suitable to a man in my station, as a prudent head of 
 a family, a good husband, a careful father (when it shall so 
 happen), and as 
 
 " Your most sincere friend and humble servant, 
 
 " William Honeycomb." ^ 
 
 I have already alluded to the delight with which the 
 fancy of Addison played round the caprices of female 
 attire. The following — an extract from the paper on 
 the "fair sex" which specially roused the spleen of 
 Swift — is a good specimen of his style when in this 
 vein : — 
 
 " To return to our female heads. The ladies have been 
 for some time in a kind of moulting season with regard to 
 that part of their dress, having cast great quantities of ribbon, 
 lace, and cambric, and in some measure reduced that part of 
 the human figure to the beautiful globular form which is 
 natural to it. We have for a great while expected what kind 
 of ornament would be substituted in the place of those anti- 
 quated commodes. But our female projectors were all the 
 last summer so taken up with the improvement of their 
 petticoats that they had not time to attend to anything else ; 
 but having at length sufiiciently adorned their lower parts, 
 they now begin to turn their thoughts upon the other ex- 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 530. 
 
188 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 tremity, as well remenibeiing tlie old kitchen proverb, ' that 
 if you light A'our tire at both ends, the middle will shift for 
 itself.' " 1 
 
 Addison may be said to have almost created and 
 wholly perfected English prose as an instrument for the 
 expression of social thought. Prose had of course Ijeen 
 written in many different manners before his time. 
 Bacon, Cowley, and Temple had composed essays ; 
 Hooker, Sir Thomas Browne, Hobbes, and Locke philo- 
 sophical treatises ; Milton controversial pamphlets ; Dry- 
 den critical prefaces ; Ealeigh and Clarendon histories ; 
 Taylor, Barrow, South, and Tillotson sermons. But it 
 cannot be said that any of these had founded a prose 
 style which, besides being a reflection of the mind of 
 the writer, could be taken as representing the genius 
 and character of the nation. They write as if they 
 were thinking apart from their audience, or as if they 
 were speaking to it either from an inferior or superior 
 position. The essayists had taken as their model Mon- 
 taigne, and their style is therefore stamped, so to speak, 
 with the character of soliloquy ; the preachers, w^ho per- 
 haps did more than any writers to guide the genius of 
 the language, naturally addressed their hearers wath the 
 authority of their office ; Milton, even in controversy, 
 rises from the natural sublimity of his mind to heights 
 of eloquence to which the ordinary idioms of society 
 could not have borne him ; while Dryden, using the 
 language w^th a raciness and rhythm probably un- 
 equalled in our literature, nevertheless exhibits in his 
 prefaces an air of deference towards the various patrons 
 he addresses. Moreover, many of the earlier prose 
 ^ Spectator, No. 265. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 189 
 
 writers had aimed at standards of diction wliich were 
 inconsistent with the genius of the English tongue. 
 Bacon, for instance, disfigures his style with the witty 
 antitheses which found favour with the Elizabethan and 
 early Stuart writers ; Hooker, Milton, and Browne con 
 struct their sentences on a Latin model, which, though 
 it often gives a certain dignity of manner, prevents any- 
 thing like ease, simi^licity, and lucidity of expression. 
 Thus Hooker delights in inversions; both he and 
 Milton protract their periods by the insertion of many 
 subordinate clauses ; and Browne " projicit ampullas et 
 sesquipedalia verba " till the Saxon element seems almost 
 eliminated from his style. 
 
 Addison took features of his style from almost all his 
 predecessors : he assumes the characters of essayist, 
 moralist, philosopher, and critic, but he blends them all 
 together in liis new capacity of journalist. He had 
 accepted the public as his judges ; and he wi^ites as if 
 some critical representative of the public were at his 
 elbow putting to the test of reason every sentiment and 
 every expression. Warton tells us in his Essay on Pope 
 that Addison was so fastidious in composition that he 
 would often stop the press to alter a preposition or con- 
 junction. And this evidence is corroborated in a very 
 curious and interesting manner by the MS. of some of 
 Addison's essays, discovered by Mr. Dykes Campbell in 
 1858.^ A sentence in one of the papers on the Pleasures 
 of the Itiuig'mation shows, by the various stages through 
 which it passed before its form seemed satisfactory to 
 the writer, what nice attention he gave to the balance, 
 
 ' I have to thank Mr. Campbell for his kindness and courtesy 
 in sending me the volume containing this collection. 
 
190 ADDISON. [chap. 
 
 rhythm, and lucidity of his periods. In its original 
 shape the sentence was written thus : — 
 
 " For this reason we find the poets always crying up a 
 Country Life ; where Nature is left to herself, and appears 
 to y^ best advantage." 
 
 This is rather bald, and the MS. is accordingly cor- 
 rected as follows : — 
 
 " For this reason we find all Fancifull men, and y^ poets 
 in particular, still in love with a Country Life ; where Nature 
 is left to herself, and furnishes out all y*^ variety of Scenes 
 y* are most delightful to y® Imagination. 
 
 The text as it stands is this : — 
 
 " For this reason we always find the poet in love with a 
 country life, where nature appears in the greatest perfection, 
 and furnishes out all those scenes that are most apt to delight 
 the imagination." ^ 
 
 This is certainly the best both in point of sense and 
 sound. Addison perceived that there was a certain con- 
 tradiction in the idea of Nature being "left to herself," 
 and at the same time furnishing scenes for the pleasure 
 of the imagination : he therefore imparted the notion of 
 design by striking out the former phrase and substituting 
 ' seen in perfection ; " and he emphasised the idea by 
 afterwards changing " delightful " into the stronger 
 phrase "apt to delight." The improvement of the 
 rhythm of the sentence in its final form is obvious. 
 
 With so much elaboration of style it is natural that 
 there should be in Addison's essays a disappearance of 
 that egotism which is a characteristic — and a charming 
 one — of Montaigne; his moralising is natural, for the 
 age required it, but is free from the censoriousness of 
 ^ SjJedator, No. 414. 
 
IX.] HIS GENIUS. 191 
 
 the preacher; his critical and philosophical papers all 
 assume an intelligence in his reader equal to his own. 
 
 This perfection of breeding in writing is an art which 
 vanishes with the Tatler and Spectator. Other critics, 
 other humourists have made their mark in English litera- 
 ture, but no second Addison has appeared. Johnson 
 took him for his model so far as to convey lessons of 
 morality to the public by means of periodical essays. 
 But he confesses that he addressed his audience in tones 
 of " dictatorial instruction ; " and any one who compares 
 the ponderous sententiousness and the elaborate anti- 
 thesis of the Rambler with the light and rhythmical 
 periods of the Spectator will perceive that the spirit of 
 preaching is gaining ground on the genius of conversa- 
 tion. Charles Lamb, again, has passages which, for mere 
 delicacy of humour, are equal to anything in Addison's 
 writings. But the superiority of Addison consists in 
 this, that he expresses the humour of the life about him, 
 while Lamb is driven to look at its oddities from out- 
 side. He is not, like Addison, a moralist or a satirist ; the 
 latter indeed performed his task so thoroughly that the 
 turbulent license of Mohocks, Tityre Tus, and such like 
 brotherhoods, gradually disappeared before the advance 
 of a tame and orderly pubhc opinion. To Lamb, looking 
 back on the primitive stages of society from a safe dis- 
 tance, vice itself seemed pardonable because picturesque, 
 much in the same way as travellers began to admire the 
 loneliness and the grandeur of nature when they were 
 relieved from apprehensions for the safety of their 
 purses and their necks. His humour is that of a senti- 
 mentalist ; it dwells on odd nooks and corners, and 
 describes quaint survivals in men and things. For onr 
 
192 ADDISON: HIS GENIUS. [chap. ix. 
 
 own age, when all that is picturesque in society is being 
 levelled b}' a dull utilitarianism, this vein of eccentric 
 imagination has a special charm, but the taste is likely 
 to be a transient one. Mrs. Battle will amuse so long as 
 this generation remembers the ways of its grandmothers ; 
 two generations hence the point of its humour will prob- 
 ably be lost. But the figure of Sir Roger de Coverley, 
 though it belongs to a bygone stage of society, is as 
 durable as human nature itself, and while the language 
 lasts the exquisite beauty of the colours in which it is 
 preserved will excite the same kind of pleasure. Scarcely 
 below the portrait of the good knight will be ranked the 
 character of his friend and biographer, the silent Spec- 
 tator of men. A gi-ateful posterity, remembering what 
 it owes to him, will continue to assign him the reputa- 
 tion he coveted : " It was said of Socrates that he 
 brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among 
 men ; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me 
 that I have brought philosophy out of closets and 
 libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell at clubs and 
 assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.'' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel (Dry- 
 den's), 68 
 
 Absolutism, 11 
 
 Account of the Greatest English 
 Poets, 31 ; immaturity of, 
 35 
 
 Addison, Joseph, scant contempor- 
 ary records of, 1 ; Tickell's 
 bibliography of, 1 ; his shyness 
 and reserve, 2, 31 ; his charm 
 of conversation, 2 ; his satire, 3, 
 182 ; his statue, 3 ; his merits 
 universally acknowledged, 3 ; 
 his task and its difficulties, 7-8 ; 
 family history, 23 seq. ; his 
 father's literary abilities, 23-24 ; 
 Steele's description of the 
 Addison family, 26 ; Addison 
 runs away from school, 27 ; 
 goes to Charter House, 28 ; 
 attainments in Greek and Latin, 
 28-29, 48-49 ; at Queen's Col- 
 lege (Oxford), 29 ; made Fellow 
 of Magdalen, 31 ; his acquaint- 
 ances at Oxford, 30 ; begins to 
 write, 31 seq. ; is introduced to 
 literary men in London, 35 ; 
 abandons the idea of taking 
 Orders, 36-37 ; travels on the 
 Continent, 39 ; effects of classical 
 training, 50 ; pecuniary em- 
 barrassments, 54 ; death of his 
 father, 54 ; return to England, 
 54 ; entry into political life, 
 55 ; his change of circumstances, 
 
 55, 64 ; writes The Campaign^ 
 63-64; becomes Under-Secretary 
 of State, 68, 69 ; writes libretto 
 for an English opera, 72 ; is 
 made Secretary to the Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland, 74 ; his 
 remarks on corrupt officials, 75 ; 
 his losses, 80 ; he contributes 
 to the Tatler, 99 ; founds the 
 Spectator with Steele, 105 ; his 
 opportunities, 114 ; his genius 
 essentially undramatic, 122 ; 
 produces Cato^ 124 ; his quarrel 
 with Pope, 131 seq. ; his nervous- 
 ness, 148, 156; becomes Secretary 
 again to the Lord-Lieutenant of 
 Ireland, 149 ; his probity, 149 ; 
 marries the Countess of Warwick, 
 153 seq. ; is made a Secretary of 
 State, 156 ; retires from public 
 life, 157 ; dies at Holland House, 
 158; his reported intemperance, 
 159 ; burial in Westminster 
 Abbey, 160 ; his genius, 161 
 seq. ; his serenity and spirit of 
 independence, 162; as reconciler 
 of parties and founder of public 
 opinion, 163 ; his endeavours to 
 improve public morals, 167-168 ; 
 his reputation as a critic, 178 
 seq. ; his irony, 182 ; as jour- 
 nalist, 189 ; his fastidiousness 
 in composition, 189-190; pos- 
 terity's verdict, 192 
 Address to King William, 35 
 
194 
 
 ADDISON. 
 
 Aikin, IMiss, Addison's biographer, 
 
 54, 80 
 Anecdotes, 27, 103, 123, UO 
 Anne, Queen, 60, 148, 151 
 Apennines, description of the, 51 
 Architecture, 49-50 
 A7't of Criticism (Pope's), 133 
 "Atticus," 131 ; verses on, 113- 
 
 144 
 Authority, principle of, 7-8 
 
 Beauty, natural and artificial, 45 
 Berkeley, Bishop, 159 
 Blenheim, battle of, 62 
 Boileau, 34, 47 
 Buckingham, Duke of, 56 
 Budgell, Eustace, 76 ; Pope's lines 
 
 on, 77 
 Burial, lines on Addison's, 160 
 Burke on conservative institutions, 
 
 5-6 
 Burney, Dr., on Addison's musical 
 
 knowledge, 74 
 Button's Coffee House, 134, 140 
 
 Campaign, The, criticism of, 64 ; 
 Addison's treatment of the sub- 
 ject, 65 ; extracts from, 66-67 ; 
 finest passage in, 67 ; Johnson's 
 criticism of, 67 
 
 'Caj)tain Sentrj',' 107 
 
 Cato, 51, 115 seq. ; remarks on, 
 116, 117, 119, 122 ; its formal 
 "correctness," 119; Pope's 
 Prologue to, 120 ; Johnson's 
 criticism of, 121 ; its deficiencies 
 as an acted play, 122 ; rehearsal 
 of, 123-124 ; Pope's suggestions 
 and alterations in, 124 ; Epilogue 
 to, 124 ; production of, 124 ; 
 enthusiastic reception of, 124- 
 125 ; Pope's account of the 
 performance, 125 ; its unpre- 
 cedented run, 126 ; its fame 
 on the Continent, 126 ; extracts 
 from, 128-129 ; its imitation of 
 the French manner, 130 
 
 Charles IT., his tastes and sym- 
 pathies, 11-13 
 
 Chaucer, 33 
 
 Church and State, 8 
 
 Civil War, the, 8 
 
 "Classic ground," origin of phrase, 
 
 48 
 Clubs, Addison on, 61 
 Coff'ee Houses as literary centres, 
 
 91 
 Collier, Jeremy, 93-94, 96 
 Comedies, the Caroline, 15-16 
 Congreve, 33 
 Conservative institutions, Burke 
 
 on, 5-6 
 Court (Charles II.), corruption of, 
 
 11-12 
 Cowley, 4 ; his treatment of love, 
 
 12 ; Addison's praise of, 34 
 "Cuckoldom," 167 
 
 Defoe, Daniel, 87 
 
 Democracy, rising power of, 21 
 
 Dennis, John, 41, 137 ; on Cato, 
 122-127 
 
 Dialogue on Medals (Addison's), 
 51 
 
 Dissuading from Poetry (Old- 
 ham's), 56-57 
 
 Dorset, Earl of, 56 
 
 Drama, after the Restoration, 14 ; 
 Addison on the modern, 117 ; 
 ancient and modern compared, 
 117 ; the Elizabethan, 14 
 
 Drummer, The (Pope's), 149-150 
 
 Dryden, 16, 20, 33, 34 ; Poet 
 Laureate, 58, 59 
 
 Duelling, Steele's attack on, 104 
 
 Dunton, John. 87 
 
 D'Urfey, Tom, 9 
 
 Epilogues of plays, 14 ; indecencies 
 
 of, 18 
 Epistle from Italy (Addison's), 51 
 Essay on Man (Pope's), tendency 
 
 to Deism of, 5 
 Etherege, Sir George, 16 
 
 Faery Queen, The, criticism of, 33 
 
 Feudalism, 8 
 
 Foutaineblean, descrijjtion of, 45 
 
INDEX. 
 
 195 
 
 France, literature in, 44 
 FreeJwlder, 9, 151, 152, 153 
 Freuch people, Addison on, 47 
 
 Gambling, Steele's attack on, 103 
 O'eurgics, Addison's translation of, 
 
 31 ; essay on, 33 
 Gothic architecture, Addison on, 
 
 49-50 
 Grand tour, effects of the, 41 ; 
 
 Pope on, 41 - 42 ; Addison's 
 
 benefits from, 42 
 Greek tragedies compared with 
 
 Shakespeare's, 118 
 Guardian (Steele's), 114 
 
 Halifax, Lord, 63 
 
 Herodotus, 32 
 
 Hertford, Lord, 52-54 
 
 Eind and Panther, The (Dryden's), 
 
 58 
 Hydaspes, 74, 182 seq. 
 
 Iliad, Pope's translation, 1 33 ; 
 
 Tickell's translation, 133-139 
 Introduction to the Sacrament 
 
 (Lancelot Addison's), 23 
 'Isaac Bickerstaff,' 90, 92 
 Italian Opera, 70-71, 182 seq. ; 
 
 Addison's dislike of, 74 
 
 James II., 59 
 
 'Jeremy Distaff,' 92 
 
 Johnson, Samuel, on Addison's 
 style, 3 ; on the Tatler and 
 Spectator, 108 ; on Addison's 
 critical powers, 181 ; on Addi- 
 son's favourite character, 175 
 
 Journal to Stella (Swift's), 1, 110 
 
 •Kidney,' 92 
 Kit-Kat Club, 52, 61 , 
 
 147 
 
 La Bruyere, 108 
 
 Lamb, Charles, on the Caroline 
 comedians, 15 ; Lamb and Addi- 
 son compared, 191 
 
 Land-tenure, 8 
 
 Langland, 7 
 
 Latin verse composition, value of, 
 
 29 ; Addison's skill in. 29, 37- 
 39 ; Pope's low estimate of, 29 
 L'Estrange, Roger, 84 
 Letter to Lord Halifax (Addison's) 
 
 43 
 Letters, extracts from Addison's, 
 
 46, 47, 53 
 Life of Dryden (Johnson's), 14 
 i Literature, mock-heroic style, 39 ; 
 I under James II. and William 
 
 III., 59 
 j "Little senate," the, 2 
 j Lives of the Poets (Johnson's), 162 
 Louis XIV,, French literature 
 under, 44 
 I Lovelace, 12 
 Love-making, 13 
 
 Macaulay, eulogy of Addison by, 
 3 ; on Addison's classical know- 
 ledge, 28 seq. 
 Magdalen College (Oxford), its 
 
 changing political opinions, 30 
 Malebranche, 47 
 
 jManchester, Countess of, Addi- 
 son's verses on, 61 
 Mandeville, 2 
 Man of the Mode (Etherege's), 
 
 Steele on, 16, 166 
 Mr.rlborough, Duke of, 62 
 Mnrriage, Addison's, 153 seq. ; 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 
 I on, 154 
 
 ; Medal, The (Dryden's), 58 
 ! Mercury (generic title of first 
 I newspapers), 83-84 
 I Milan Cathedral, 49 
 I Milton, his Calvinistic opinions, 
 7 ; Addison's estimate of, 33- 
 34 ; Addison's papers on, 181 ; 
 his genius first appreciated by 
 Steele, 104 
 Miscellany (Dryden's), 19 
 'Mistress,' Addison's, 80, 154 
 Montaigne, his egotism, 190 
 Montrose, his lyrics, 12 
 Musce Anglicance, 38 ; con- 
 tributors to, 38-39 
 Music in England, 69-70 
 
196 
 
 ADDISON. 
 
 Xell Gwynne as St. Catherine, 
 
 U 
 Newspaper, the first daily, 82 ; 
 
 low estimation of, 83 ; publishecl 
 
 under licence, 83 
 
 October Club, 9 
 Oldham, John, 56 
 Opera, English, 70, 71 
 Otway, 56 
 Ovid, 32 
 
 ' Pacolet,' 92 
 
 Paradise Lost, its beauties pointed 
 
 out by Addison, 4, 112 
 Party system, evils of, 169-170 
 Pastorals (Pope's), 136-138 
 Peace of Ryswick (Addison's), 37 
 Philippeaux, Abbe, sketch of 
 
 Addison by, 46 
 Philips, Ambrose, 135, 136, 138 
 Pleasures of the Imagmation 
 
 (Addison's), 180 
 Pope, Alexander, his strange 
 moral twist, 1 ; his quarrel Avith 
 Addison, 131 seq. ; his letters 
 138, 140, 141 ; his sensitive- 
 ness and irritability, 139 
 Press, power of the, 18 ; freedom 
 
 of, 86 
 Printers and publishers, 19 
 Printing and publishing, proclama- 
 tion against, 85 
 Prose, Caroline, 20 ; Addison's, 
 
 188 
 Protestant Succession, the, 147, 
 
 151 
 Puritanism, 10, 21, 163 
 
 "Rake," Steele's disquisition on 
 
 the, 96 
 Rambler and Spectator compared, 
 
 191 
 Rape of the Lock (Pope's), 135 
 Reformation, the, 7 
 Remarks on Italy (Addison's), 43, 
 
 78 
 Renaissance, the Italian, 7 
 
 'Republic of Women,' 172 
 
 Restoration, the, 8 ; state of litera- 
 ture after, 1 seq. 
 
 Revohition of the Kingdoms of 
 Fez and Morocco (Lancelot 
 Addison's), 23-24 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, on character- 
 istic styles, 50 ; as critic, 180 
 
 Rochester, Earl of, 56 
 
 Rosamond (Addison's), 72-73 
 
 Roundhead tyranny, 10 
 
 St. James' Coffee House, 91 
 
 Salisbury Plain, description of, 
 27 
 
 Sanctity, Puritan notions of, 165 
 
 Sedley,' 56 
 
 Selden, 19 
 
 Shadwell, 16 
 
 Shakespeare, 33 ; tragedies, 118 ; 
 Voltaire on, 126 
 
 'Sir Andrew Freeport,' 10, 107 
 
 'Sir Roger de Coverley,' 8, 106, 
 175, 176, 177, 192 
 
 Smith, 'Rag,' 38-39 
 
 Spectator*, published daily, 105 ; 
 its aims, 107, 173 ; its mild 
 satire, 110 ; a " lair sex " paper, 
 110 ; its popularity, 110-111 ; 
 contributors to, 112; its large 
 sale, 113; its well-timed appear- 
 ance, 113-114; the work of 
 different hands, 174 
 
 Spencer, his Puritan doctrines, 7 
 
 ' Squire Western,' 9 
 
 Stage, the, after the Restoration, 
 17, 93, 95, 166 ; chief school of 
 manners, 93 ; Jeremy Collier's 
 attack on, 94-96 
 
 Steele, 1 ; Addison's influence 
 over, 2 ; first Gazetteer, 85 ; 
 originator of the Tatler, 89 ; 
 influence of Swift on, 89-90 ; 
 his naturalness and sympathy, 
 97 ; his plea for Shakespeare, 
 102 ; expelled from House of 
 Commons, 147 ; dispute with 
 Addison, 157-158 
 
 Swift, 1 ; fascinated by Addison, 
 
IXDEX. 
 
 197 
 
 2 ; his friendship with him, 77 
 79 ; his criticism of the 
 tor, 110 
 
 Tale of a Tub (Swift's), 5 
 
 Tatler, 81 seq. ; its aims aiitl 
 methods, 90, 91 ; origiu of tlie 
 name, 89 ; its contents, 90, 
 91 ; its mottoes, 92 ; its excel- 
 lences of style and sentiment, 
 
 98 ; its authorsliip discovered, 
 
 99 ; Addison's first contribution 
 to, 99 ; its news articles, 101 ; 
 its end, 104 
 
 Tender Husband (Steele's), 69 
 
 Theatres, 18, 19 
 
 Tickell, 1, 133, 135, 139, 14'") 
 
 seq. 
 Tonson, Jacob (publisher), 19, 32, 
 
 35, 52 
 Tragedies, artificial and aff'ected 
 
 style of Caroline, 14 ; Greek, 
 
 118 
 Translations from the Latin Poefi. 
 
 (Dr.vden's), 19 
 Travelling, Lord Cowper on, 40, 
 
 41 
 Trial and Conviction of Count 
 
 Tan/ (Addison's), 146 
 
 Versifications of Chaucer (Diy- 
 den's), 19 
 
 Viri^il, Addison's translation of, 
 33 
 
 Voltaire on Cato, 126 ; on Shake- 
 speare, 126 
 
 Waller, his treatment of love, 13 
 
 Wars of the Roses, effect of, 6 seq. 
 
 Warwick, Countess of (Addison's 
 wife), 131 
 
 Wliarton, the Earl of, 74-75 
 
 Wliigs and Tories, 9-10 ; Addison's 
 Whig bias, 30 
 
 White's Chocolate House, 90-91 
 
 'Will Honeycomb,' 107, 186-187 
 
 William III., 59 
 
 Will's Coffee House, 91 
 
 'Will Wimble,' 9 
 
 Wit, different kinds of, 34 
 
 Woman in feudal times. 12, 109 
 under the Restoration, 109 
 Addison's ideal of, 13, 109 
 his favourite subject, 152 ; his 
 abhorrence of the "masculine 
 woman, 172 ; his papers on 
 woman's dress, 172, 187 
 
 Wycherlev, 16-20 
 
 Wycliffe, 7 
 
 THE END 
 
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