the Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the 'Guardian.' The 'Tatler' was commenced on April 12, 1709, by Sir Richard Steele, under the assumed name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Addison, who was then in Ireland, detected the author by a passage in the sixth number, and sent his first ascertained contribution to No. 20, May 26. The paper appeared three times a-week. Addison did not become a regular contributor till his return from Ireland in September. The last number of the Tatler' appeared on January 2, 1711. On the demise of the Tatler,' Steele projected the 'Spectator,' to be issued daily: it continued from March 1, 1711, to December 6, 1712, and during all that time Addison was a frequent contributor, writing more than half of the numbers. The 'Guardian,' also a daily paper, extended from March 12 to October 1, 1713; Addison's contributions were chiefly to the later numbers. In 1714 came out what is known as the Eighth Volume of the 'Spectator;' of this nearly all the first half was written by Addison.

The Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the Guardian' formerly excluded politics; their professed purpose was to discuss the fashions and manners of society, the pulpit, the theatre, the opera, and general literature; in short, they were open to all the subjects now discussed in the 'Saturday Review,' the 'Spectator,' or the 'Examiner,' except politics. In this respect they differed from the 'Review' of Defoe, the real prototype of modern periodicals. But while they excluded politics in form, Addison, as we shall see, in many of his papers was in no small degree influenced by political prejudices.

Besides these universally-known performances, Addison wrote some strictly political papers: in 1707, a pamphlet on the 'Present State of the War;' the 'Whig Examiner,' a weekly tract, not carried beyond the fifth number; the Trial of Count Tariff,' a satire on the commercial treaty of Utrecht, 1713; and 'The Freeholder,' a bi-weekly, carried through 55 numbers, 1715-16.

Addison's personal appearance has not been very vividly recorded. Thackeray speaks of "his chiselled features, pure and cold." We know also that he was a fair man, of a full habit of body, soft and flabby from wine-bibbing and want of exercise. He was so weakly a child that he was christened on the day of his birth, not being expected to live.

The most general characteristic of his intellect is happily expressed by Johnson-"He thinks justly, but he thinks faintly." He is a great contrast to the prolific and vigorous Defoe. Not only had he little spontaneous activity of intellect, little impulsiveness this might be said of the cautious and sober Temple. More than this, he had not sufficient constitutional energy to be equal to the mere effort requisite for forming a clear and profound judg

ment on any question of difficulty. With his languid vitality, he was content to be superficial. He had naturally a fine memory for words, and was, in his quiet way, an accurate observer of what passed before him. His chief intellectual exercise was the study of "putting things "-whether things that he had seen and heard, reflections that he had made upon them, or thoughts that he had met with in the course of his reading. He had neither scholarship nor original thought "a fine gentleman living upon town, not professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature," and employing his leisure in writing elegant periodical articles.1

Like Cowley, he had no depth of sentiment for imagination to work upon. Not only so, but he was deficient in constitutional power of enjoyment; he was by nature shy, irritable, and captious, sitting in company reserved and taciturn, until his cups had raised him to the point of geniality. Even his panegyrist Thackeray admits "I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the vanity of grieving.' "This great man was also one of the lonely ones of the world." The chief emotion that he cultivated may be described in the words of Johnson as "gay malevolence and satirical humour:" the malevolence being due to his constitutional incapacity for enjoyment to ill-nature, in the strict sense of the words; while the gaiety or humour arises chiefly from the delicate elegance of his language, and the writer's pleasure in the exercise of his gift. His essays on Milton and on the Pleasures of the Imagination would seem to show that, though he had not energy to write with sublimity himself, he enjoyed sublime writing when it was presented to him; he could at least utter the formula of indolent admiration "There is a pleasure in what is great, in what is beautiful, and in what is new."

Although engaged in politics, he had no natural gifts for active.

"With reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinction. It is already pretty well known that Addison had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature of his own country. It is known, also, that he did not think such an acquaintance any ways essential to the character of an elegant scholar and littérateur. Quite enough he found it, and more than enough for the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the foremost Latin poets, and a very slender one indeed with the Grecian. How slender, we can see in his Travels."-De Quincey, xv. 8.

2"Though Addison generally hated the impassioned, and shrank from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it combined with forms of life and fleshly realities (as in dramatic works), but not when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence he did not read, and did not like, Shakspeare -the music was here too rapid and lifelike; but he sympathised profoundly with the solemn cathedral-chanting of Milton. An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a more stationary key of solemnity he could."-De Quincey, vii. 56. This is explained by his want of constitutional energy, and consequent incapability of supporting excitement.

life. He could not have made his own position; the accident of the times rendered literary service valuable, and he was virtually nothing more than the literary retainer and protégé of the leaders of a party. His easy indolent habits, with some other features of his character, appear in the following sketch by Johnson:

"Of the course of Addison's familiar day, before his marriage, Pope has given a detail. He had in the house with him Budgell, and perhaps Philips. His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips [Ambrose], Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterwards to Button's. Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of the time used to assemble. It is said, when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company from Button's house. From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too much wine. In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours."

It

His conduct generally was marked by great prudence. He made few enemies. He was at great pains to conciliate Swift. "Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party has transmitted no charge of any crime." Yet his irritable temper was not under thorough control. On one occasion he put an execution in force against Steele for a hundred pounds that his improvident friend had borrowed, and he has never been cleared of the charge of jealous intriguing against Pope. De Quincey, in his 'Life of Pope,' says that "Addison's petty manoeuvring against Pope proceeded entirely from malignant jealousy. That Addison was more in the wrong even than has generally been supposed, and Pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more generous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of showing decisively."

He

Opinions. In practical politics he adhered steadfastly to the Whigs. In 1707 he elaborately justified the war with France, maintaining that France and Britain were natural enemies. strongly supported the Hanoverian succession, and turned his most malicious and unqualified ridicule against the "Pretender" and his foreign adherents. With equal animosity he satirised the Tory country gentlemen, or Tory fox-hunters, as he delighted to nickname them.

Party politics, as we have said, had no place in the 'Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the Guardian.' The professed object of our author in these periodicals was to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain," and "to bring philosophy out

of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffee-houses."

The minor immoralities that he attacked were such as affectation, presumption, foppery, fashionable extravagance, upstart vulgarity. As "vices" of the same class, he contrived to satirise the rustic manners of the objects of his constant aversion, the Tory squires, "who had never seen anything greater than themselves for twenty years."

In criticising polite literature, he gave his opinions on the Opera, on Tragedy, on True and False Wit, on Sappho, on Ovid, on Milton, and on the Pleasures of the Imagination. He "decided by taste rather than by principles ;" and the taste of such a man, while elegant in the highest degree, had a tendency to be captious and narrow. He sneered at the scenery and stage-machinery both of the opera and of the theatre, considering that the effect upon the audience should be produced mainly by the language of the play. He ridiculed the use of Italian in the opera; for which De Quincey makes some game of him. Under False Wit he reckoned Puns, Anagrams, Acrostics, Chronograms, Crambo, and other agreeable ingenuities. In the case of Milton, his application of Aristotle's rules for epic poetry, and his selection of fine passages, have the credit of first drawing general notice to 'Paradise Lost.'1 His papers on the Pleasures of the Imagination have no analytic value; he gets no farther than that there is a pleasure in beholding the great, the beautiful, and the new.

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary. Were we to judge from the papers on Milton, we should pronounce Addison's command of language rather under than above the average of eminent literary men. He is constantly repeating the same epithets-" inexpressibly beautiful," "wonderfully poetical," "wonderfully fine and pleasing." Upon lighter themes his vocabulary is more varied. Choiceness and not profusion is at all times his characteristic; yet we find him varying his expression with the greatest ease on simple themes. Thus, in his paper in the 'Lover' upon the female passion for china-ware, he describes it with considerable variety-"brittle ware," "frail furniture," "perishable commodity," "all china-ware is of a weak and transitory nature,' ," "the fragility of china is such as a reasonable being ought by no means to set its heart upon."

1 It is sometimes said that Addison was the first to discern Milton's excellence. This is saying too much. Defoe had praised Milton several years before; and Steele, in one of his early Tatlers,' had expressed his admiration.

2 Lord Lytton is of opinion that Addison's command of expression was not first-rate.

Sentences.-Among our classic prose writers, Addison is the standing example of a loose style. He is ostentatiously easy and flowing, making no effort to be periodic, but rather studiously avoiding the periodic structure. In his expository papers, when he is not expressly aiming at point, he takes the utmost freedom in adding clauses of explanation and amplification after he has made a full statement. Thus

"Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possest. We are indeed so often conversant with one set of objects, and tired out with so many repeated shows of the same things, that whatever is new or uncommon contributes a little to vary human life, and to divert our minds for a while, with the strangeness of its appearance: it serves us for a kind of refreshment, and takes off from that satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordinary entertainments."

Here the structure is very loose, and the easy way of adding clause to clause betrays the writer into not a little confusion, which we shall notice in the proper place. The following is another example of a loose tautologous sentence :

"They here began to breathe a delicious kind of ether, and saw all the fields about them covered with a kind of purple light, that made them reflect with satisfaction on their past toils, and diffused a secret joy through the whole assembly, which showed itself in every look and feature.'

The vice of this careless structure, which within proper limits is not without its advantages, is the misplacing of clauses. The two following examples are from Irving's Elements of Composition:

·

"This kind of wit was very much in vogue among our countrymen, about an age or two ago, who did not practise it for any oblique reason, but purely for the sake of being witty."

Here the clause "about an age or two ago comes very awkwardly between the relative and its antecedent, and would be much better disposed of at the beginning―" About an age or two ago, this kind of wit," &c.

"The Knight, seeing his habitation reduced to so small a compass, and himself in a manner shut out of his own house, upon the death of his mother, ordered all the apartments to be flung open, and exorcised by his chaplain."

Irving remarks that here the clause "upon the death of his mother" is so placed as to be ambiguous, and proposes to remedy this by another arrangement-namely, "seeing his habitation, &c., the Knight, upon the death of his mother, ordered all the apartments," &c. This gets rid of the ambiguity, but is rather a clumsy arrangement; it would be better to begin with the