friend, who had thus far commanded himself, gave a deep groan, and fell into a swoon by her bedside."

:

We have evidence that Steele himself was overpowered by the painfulness of his own creations. It is said that after writing the above deathbed scene he was so affected as to be unable to proceed the commonplace consolations that follow in the original are said to have been appended by Addison. Sometimes he seeks relief from his painful recollections or imaginations by violent expedients. In one paper a most touching soliloquy is interrupted by a knock at the door, and the arrival of a hamper of wine; whereupon he sends for three of his friends, and restores himself to cheerfulness by the generous warmth of two bottles. In another he works upon his reader's feelings till they reach the point of agony, and then suddenly transfers the horrible scene to dreamland:

"I was once myself in agonies of grief that are unutterable, and in so great a distraction of mind, that I thought myself even out of the possibility of receiving comfort. The occasion was as follows. When I was a youth in a part of the army which was then quartered at Dover, I fell in love with an agreeable young woman of a good family in those parts, and had the satisfaction of seeing my addresses kindly received, which occasioned the perplexity I am going to relate.

We were in a calm evening diverting ourselves upon the top of the cliff with the prospect of the sea, and trifling away the time in such little fondnesses as are most ridiculous to persons in business, and most agreeable to those in love.

"In the midst of these our innocent endearments, she snatched a paper of verses out of my hand, and ran away with them. I was following her; when on a sudden the ground, though at a considerable distance from the verge of the precipice, sank under her, and threw her down from so prodigious a height, upon such a range of rocks, as would have dashed her into ten thousand pieces, had her body been made of adamant. It is much easier for my reader to imagine my state of mind upon such an occasion than for me to express it. I said to myself, It is not in the power of Heaven to relieve me when I awaked, equally transported and astonished, to see myself drawn out of an affliction which, the very moment before, appeared to me altogether inextricable.'

The Ludicrous.-Steele's humour is distinguished from Addison's chiefly by two circumstances-unaffected geniality and heartiness, and less delicate elaboration.

Steele was a kindly observer of human frailties. Against what he considered to be heartlessness and vice he was openly indignant: his natural tendency was to use the lash freely in hot blood-not to introduce galling points of satire with a smiling countenance. Minor faults, affectation, presumption, a dictatorial manner, and suchlike, he ridiculed with good-humour, with a certain fellowfeeling for the objects of his ridicule.

At the same time, he had not enough patient skill to work out

a ludicrous conception into the exquisite details that give such a charm to the papers of Addison. By comparison with his coadjutor, he is sketchy and declamatory.

It is not difficult to find illustrations of both of these points. In several cases Addison has taken up Steele's conception, and worked it out with more elaborate skill, at the same time turning it into a more slyly malicious, or at least a colder, vein.

For example, we have quoted (p. 390) Addison's exquisite paper on the use of the Fan. Let us look now at the original conception in the Tatler.' The "beauteous Delamira" being about to be married, the "matchless Virgulta" beseeches her to tell the secret of her manner of charming :

"Delamira heard her with great attention, and with that dexterity which is natural to her, told her that all she had above the rest of her sex and contemporary beauties was wholly owing to a fan (that was left her by her mother, and had been long in the family), which, whoever had in possession, and used with skill, should command the hearts of all beholders; and since,' said she, smiling, ‘I have no more to do with extending my conquests or triumphs, I will make you a present of this inestimable rarity.' Virgulta made her expressions of the highest gratitude for so uncommon a confidence in her, and begged she would show her what was peculiar in the management of that utensil, which rendered it of such general force while she was mistress of it.' Delamira replied, 'You see, madam, Cupid is the principal figure painted on it; and the skill in playing this fan is, in your several motions of it, to let him appear as little as possible; for honourable lovers fly all endeavours to ensnare them; and your Cupid must hide his bow and arrow, or he will never be sure of his game. You may observe,' continued she, that in all public assemblies, the sexes seem to separate themselves, and draw up to attack each other with eye-shot: that is the time when the fan, which is all the armour of a woman, is of most use in our defence; for our minds are construed by the waving of that little instrument, and our thoughts appear in composure or agitation, according to the motion of it. Cymon, who is the dullest of mortals, and though a wonderful great scholar, does not only pause, but seems to take a nap with his eyes open between every other sentence in his discourse: him have I made a leader in assemblies; and one blow on the shoulder as I passed by him has raised him to a downright impertinent in all conversations. The airy Will Sampler is become as lethargic by this my wand, as Cymon is sprightly. Take it, good girl, and use it without mercy.'

Compare this with Addison's railing proposal to teach the use of the fan, and his elaborate exposure of all the arts. A gallant tenderness for the sex shines through "good-hearted Dick's" mockheroic humour. Addison politely holds the sex up to ridicule; Steele sympathises with their little artifices, and even insinuates a piece of genuine good advice as to the best means of success.

As another field for comparison, take their sketches of Clubs. None of Addison's Clubs have the rollicking humour of the Ugly Club, and none of Steele's have the mean and sordid insinuations contained in the rules of the Twopenny Club. On the other hand,

even the Ugly Club, which was a favourite conception,1 is far from having the minute finish of the Everlasting Club.

The difference between the humour of the two writers is nowhere more conspicuous than in the papers upon Sir Roger de Coverley. Steele's Sir Roger is quite a different person from Addison's Sir Roger. All that is amiable in the conception belongs to Steele. His first paper ('Spectator,' No. 2) represents Sir Roger as a jolly country gentleman, "keeping a good house both in town and country;" a lover of mankind, with such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is beloved rather than esteemed; unconfined to modes and forms, disregarding the manners of the world when he thinks them in the wrong; when he enters a house, calling the servants by their names, and talking all the way up-stairs to a visit. He had been a man of fashion in his youth, but being crossed in love by a beautiful widow, had grown careless of his person, and never dressed afterwards. Steele's subsequent papers, Nos. 6, 107, 109, 113, 118, 174, bear out this description-give examples of his common-sense, of his considerate treatment of his servants, of his gratitude to one of them for saving his life, and of his occasional singularities of behaviour. The knight is made to explain his own eccentricities as a result of his love disappointment-" Between you and me," he says, "I am often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my brain, for I frequently find that, in my most serious discourse, I let fall some comical familiarity of speech or odd phrase, that makes the company laugh." Such is Sir Roger according to Steele-an easy, good-natured gentleman, of good sense, purposely setting at nought the conventions of fashion, singular and eccentric, but aware of his eccentricities. In Addison's hands he becomes a very different character. He is transformed into a good-natured Tory fox-hunter. He retains the good-nature and the eccentricity; he drops, except in name, the good sense, and the familiar knowledge of town life. Addison makes him a thorough rustic; autocratic, self-important, ignorant, credulous. True, he is at great pains to repeat that Sir Roger was much esteemed for his universal benevolence-" at peace within himself,

1 The Ugly Club, and the difficulties met with in finding members, form one of the best specimens of Steele's rollicking humour. In giving an account of it, he makes the following humorous confession in the person of the Spectator: "For my own part, I am a little unhappy in the mould of my face, which is not quite so long as it is broad. Whether this might not partly arise from my opening my mouth much seldomer than other people, and by consequence not so much lengthening the fibres of my visage, I am not at leisure to determine. However it be, I have been often put out of countenance by the shortness of my face, and was formerly at great pains in concealing it by wearing a periwig with a high foretop, and letting my beard grow. But now I have thoroughly got over the delicacy, and could be contented were it much shorter, provided it might qualify me for a member of the Merry Club, which the following letter gives me an account of."

and esteemed by all about him." But this affectation of respect for the knight is a sly artifice to bring him into ridiculous situations. No. 106, the first of Addison's papers, is the most amiable part of the picture, and seems designed to let Steele's conception down softly. Yet even this paper shows Sir Roger in a ridiculous light, inconsistent with the following paper, No. 107, by Steele. Both knight and servants are pleasantly caricatured in No. 106— "You would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is grey-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy councillor." His chaplain was chosen for his "good aspect, clear voice, and sociable temper": "at his first settling with me," says Sir Roger, "I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit." Among these venerable domestics the good knight is treated like an infant. "When he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary, if he coughs or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants." After this opening sketch of Sir Roger's good-nature, we are presented with some exquisitely-wrought pictures of his ridiculous doings. He exorcises the shut-up rooms of his house, by making the chaplain sleep in them. In church "he suffers nobody to sleep besides himself; for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servant to them;" he lengthens out a verse half a minute after the rest of the congregation, says Amen three or four times, and calls out to John Matthews to mind what he is about, and not disturb the congregation. He had been a great fox-hunter in his youth. He would have given over Moll White, the witch, to the County Assizes, had he not been dissuaded by the chaplain. Perhaps the most exquisitely ludicrous of his adventures are his journey to the Assizes, and his speech there (No. 122); his visit to Westminster Abbey (329); his observations "The Distressed Mother," in the playhouse: in all these situations he is merely a good-natured, credulous, unsophisticated butt for the delicate ridicule of his companion the Spectator.

on

While there is such a difference between the conceptions of the two writers, there is a still greater difference in the execution.

In

1 Esteemed.-Steele had said that Sir Roger was rather beloved than esteemed. But this was estimating the knight by the standard of his town friends. Addison places him entirely in the country, and represents him as an object of great admiration and respect to the simple country-people, thereby getting a double gratification for his contempt of the country or Tory party.

point of literary skill, any one of Addison's papers is worth all Steele's put together. Steele is sketchy and rude, and mars the portraiture with patches of moralising. Addison fills in the minute touches with his most exquisite skill.1

men.

OTHER WRITERS.

THEOLOGY.

Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Church of England began to rest from her labours against Papacy, and to turn her forces against a new enemy. A new topic engaged all clergymen of a literary and controversial disposition, and the general tone of their sermons underwent a corresponding change. For such changes one cannot assign a definite year; it takes time to give a new direction to the energies of a large body of different We must be content to say that a religious revolution took place during the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth. If we dip into the writings of Churchmen twenty years before the end of the century, we find their polemic tracts burning with zeal against Papacy, and their sermons administering the consolations and warnings of Christianity, in full assurance of its divine origin. Twenty years after the end of the century we breathe a different atmosphere. The Church was then on the alert against a new antagonist-the all-absorbing topic was the controversy with the Deists. Tracts poured from the press; young aspirants to the bench were eager to break a lance with Toland or with Collins. Sermons were largely influenced by the prevailing controversy. Devotional ardour was replaced by polemical ardour, by a desire to "prove the reasonableness" of Christianity. Whatever was the preacher's text, his anxiety was to "prove" that it was eminently suited to the condition of men, eminently calculated to make them happy. Sublimity and pathos were banished from the pulpit, and argument reigned in their stead. The great majority of the sermons preached in the eighteenth century were tedious moral essays' "; their favourite exhortations

1 It is an example of the injustice done to Steele by the admirers of Addison, and also of the want of discrimination in their homage, that they give Addison credit for the amiability of the character as well as for the skill of the portraiture. There can be no doubt that, in this as in other cases, Addison profited greatly by his alliance with Steele; the original suggestiveness of discursive "Dick" gave many a hint for the elaborating skill of his friend. The laborious Dr Drake thinks it a subject for regret that Steele's first draughts do not combine better with Addison's full and accurate picture; condescends to say that Nos. 107 and 109 "carry on the costume and design of Addison with undeviating felicity"; and thinks it "an ingenious conjecture of Dr Aikin, that Addison intended, through the medium of Sir Roger's weakness, to convey an indirect satire on the confined notions and political prejudices of the country gentleman"!