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 unsullied
statesman, the accomplished 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 which 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 personality of Homer and Shakespeare? 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 reputation rest on _Rosamond_ or _Cato_ or _The Campaign_, his name
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 consisted 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:
"Thou 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 honourable application to the task he performed of reconciling 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, groaning 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 conflict 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
Roundheads. This harsh antagonism of sentiment is humorously illustrated
by the excellent Sir Roger, who is made to moralise on the stupidity of
party violence by recalling an incident of his own boyhood:
"The worthy knight, being but 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 question, 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. 'Upon 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 they called
the name of that lane.'"[69]
It was Addison's aim to prove to the contending parties 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,[70] on Prayer,[71] on
Faith,[72] on Temporal and Eternal Happiness.[73] 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 appearances of mirth and
pleasantry, which were looked upon as the marks of a carnal mind. The
saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally eaten up with spleen
and melancholy."[74]
It was doubtless for the benefit of this class that he wrote his three
Essays on Cheerfulness,[75] in which the gloom of the Puritan creed is
corrected by arguments founded on Natural Religion.
"The cheerfulness of heart," he observes in a charming passage, "which
springs up in us 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;
But sure a banisht Court with 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 Restoration was for the moment
the sole school of manners; 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
unacceptable at Court. The idea of virtue in a married woman 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 Fondlewife, 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
institutions, 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.[76] 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."[77]
As usual, Addison improves the opportunity which Steele affords him, 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 quorum, come up to town for no other purpose. I have
seen poor 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 cuckold, as the ancient
comic writers were upon an eating parasite or a vainglorious 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 ingenious 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."[78]
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 fashionable world. Dorimant and Sir Fopling Flutter
felt 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 town. 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 Doctors' 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
commence heads of families by the first favourable 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."[79]
So, too, in politics, it was not to be expected that Addison'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 seductions of interest. He was, in fact, a Whig in
the sense in which all the best political writers in our 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, who desired above all things to maintain the
constitution of his country. He attached himself to the Whigs of his
period because he saw in them, as the associated defenders of the
liberties of the Parliament, 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 Revolution; and for that stupid and ferocious spirit, generated
by party, which would deny to opponents even the appearance of virtue and
intelligence, no man had a more wholesome contempt. Page after page of the
_Spectator_ shows that Addison perceived as clearly as Swift the
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 monstrous and absurd principles 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."[80]
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 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."[81]
Sir Roger 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 division 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."[82]
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 Restoration into a habit of
insipid gallantry or of brutal license. Men of fashion found no mean for
their affections 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 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 _Spectator_ 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 with 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 cannot 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
inconsiderable 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."[83]
In contrast with the character of the writer of this letter--a type which
is always recurring in the _Spectator_--modest and unaffected, 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 belong 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:
"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
afterwards taught to ride the great horse, to shoot, dart, or sling,
and listed themselves into several companies in order to perfect
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 would 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."[84]
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 _Lady's Dressing-Room_ with the
following, which evidently gave Pope a hint for one of the happiest
passages in _The Rape 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."[85]
To turn to Addison's artistic genius, the crowning evidence of his powers
is the design and the execution of the _Spectator_. Many writers, and
among them Macaulay, 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 will also show the admirable artfulness of
the means by which Addison executed his intention. The purpose of the
_Spectator_ is described in the tenth number, which is by Addison:
"I shall endeavour," said he, "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 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, who 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 myself 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 diversion of others better than those who are engaged in
them, as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who
are in the game. I never espoused any party with 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 _Spectator_ 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 delineated 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 Roger de
Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar."
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 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
Roger 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 _type_ 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
Roger 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 Roger 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 himself so much of his friend's indignation that
he was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing Sir Roger for
the time to come.... It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up
his original delineation. He describes his knight as having his
imagination somewhat warped; but of this perversion he has made very
little use. The irregularities in Sir Roger'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 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 _Spectator_ 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 wrong." Addison regarded
the knight from a different point of view. "My friend Sir Roger," he says,
"amidst all his 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 evidently been
predetermined by the designers of the _Spectator_ that the Club should
consist of certain recognised and familiar types; the different writers,
in turns, worked on these types, each for his own purpose and according to
the bent of his own genius. Steele gave the first sketch of Sir Roger in a
few rough but vigorous 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. 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." Steele'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--recording 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 moneyed 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 inclination 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 animation
in the various papers describing the patriarchal relations existing
between Sir Roger 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, which is indeed discarded by Steele himself when
co-operating with 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, showing 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 inconsistent 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 undervalued. 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 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 contributions 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 Bouhours, and he would have justified the disparagement
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 Shakespeare 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 rightly on matters of taste and imagination; and, with the
exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 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 systematically; 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 standards 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.[86] He was the first to endeavour to define the limits
of art and taste in his essays on the _Pleasures of the Imagination_;[87]
and though his theory on the subject is obviously superficial, it
sufficiently proves that his method of reasoning on questions of taste was
much more than "tentative and experimental." "I could wish," he says,
"there were authors who, beside the mechanical rules which a man of very
little taste may discourse upon, would enter into the very spirit and soul
of fine writing, 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 Elizabethan school
of tragedy, yet many stray remarks in the _Spectator_ show 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 poem one of the most popular classics in the language,
and he was more than half a century before his age in his appreciation 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 observations
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 of his readers made proper. That general knowledge which
now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be 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 by gentle and
unsuspected conveyance into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy; he
therefore 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
enlarged."[88]
The essence of Addison's humour is irony. "One slight 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 acquiescence
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 themselves from starving by taking into their
care the properties of all their fellow-subjects."[89]
On other occasions he ridicules some fashion of taste by a perfectly grave
and simple description of its object. Perhaps 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
with 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-german of
the tiger who made his appearance in King William's days, and that the
stage would be supplied with lions at the public expense during the
whole session. Many, likewise, 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-snuffer, 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 he been brought upon the stage another time, he
would certainly 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 by 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 Hydaspes, 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 pleasure 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 happy mixture of the mild and the choleric that
he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater
audiences than have been known 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 upon 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 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."[90]
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 we are to make allowance for the
mirth and humour of the author, who has doubtless strained many
representations of things beyond the truth. For, if we must interpret
his words in their literal meaning, we must suppose that women of the
first quality used to pass away whole mornings at a puppet show; that
they attested their principles by their patches; 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 introduced 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 improbabilities 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."[91]
His power of ridiculing keenly without malignity is of course best shown
in his character of Sir Roger 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 extraordinary conversion of a dissenter by the Act
against Occasional Conformity.
"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."[92]
The mixture of fashionable contempt for book-learning, 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 seeming one." One of Will's
happiest flights is on the subject of ancient looking-glasses. "Nay," says
he, "I remember 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 advantage 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 Roger de Coverley. Addison was evidently
pleased with it, and in his own 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 Addison'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 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."[93]
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 antiquated 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
sufficiently adorned their lower parts, they now begin to turn their
thoughts upon the other extremity, as well remembering the old kitchen
proverb, 'that if you light your fire at both ends, the middle will
shift for itself.'"[94]
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 been written in many different manners before his time. Bacon,
Cowley, and Temple had composed essays; Hooker, Sir Thomas Browne, Hobbes,
and Locke philosophical treatises; Milton controversial pamphlets; Dryden
critical prefaces; Raleigh 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 Montaigne, and their style is therefore
stamped, so to speak, with the character of soliloquy; the preachers, who
perhaps did more than any writers to guide the genius of the language,
naturally addressed their hearers with 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 with a raciness and
rhythm probably unequalled in our literature, nevertheless exhibits in his
prefaces an air of deference towards the various patrons he addresses.
Moreover, many of the earlier prose writers had aimed at standards of
diction which 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 construct their sentences on a Latin model, which,
though it often gives a certain dignity of manner, prevents anything like
ease, simplicity, 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 his new capacity of journalist. He had
accepted the public as his judges; and he writes 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 conjunction; 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.[95] A sentence in one of the papers on the _Pleasures of the
Imagination_ 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, 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{e} best advantage."
This is rather bald, and the MS. is accordingly corrected as follows:
"For this reason we find all Fancifull men, and y{e} poets in
particular, still in love with a Country Life; where Nature is left to
herself, and furnishes out all y{e} variety of Scenes y{t} are most
delightful to y{e} 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."[96]
This is certainly the best, both in point of sense and sound. Addison
perceived that there was a certain contradiction 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
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 literature, 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 antithesis 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
conversation. 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
outside. 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 public opinion. To Lamb, looking
back on the primitive stages of society from a safe distance, 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 sentimentalist; it dwells on odd nooks and
corners, and describes quaint survivals in men and things. For our own
age, when all that is picturesque in society is being levelled by 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 probably 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 Spectator of men. A grateful posterity, remembering what it owes to
him, will continue to assign him the reputation 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."
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Spectator_, No. 108.
[2] _Spectator_, No. 158.
[3] _Spectator_, No. 341.
[4] _Spectator_, No. 65.
[5] _Tatler_, No. 25.
[6] A note in the edition of Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_, published in
1801, states, on the authority of a "Lady in Wiltshire," who derived her
information from a Mr. Stephens, a Fellow of Magdalen and a contemporary
of Addison's, that the Henry Sacheverell 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 _History
of the Isle of Man_.
[7] _Spence's Anecdotes_, p. 50.
[8] Compare the _Notes on the Metamorphoses_, Fab. v. (Tickell's edition,
vol. vi. p. 183), where the substance of the above passage is found in
embryo.
[9] _Dunciad_, Book iv. 224.
[10] Compare _Spectator_, 414. "I do not know whether I am singular in my
opinion, but for my part I would 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."
[11] Letter to the Right Honourable Charles Montague, Esq., Blois, 10{br}
1699.
[12] Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax.
[13] Addison's _Works_ (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 301.
[14] Addison's _Works_ (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 213.
[15] Oldham's Satire _Dissuading from Poetry_.
[16] Oldham's Satire _Dissuading from Poetry_.
[17] Blackmore, _The Kit-Kats_.
[18] _Spectator_, No. 9.
[19] _Spectator_, No. 18.
[20] _Spectator_, No. 18.
[21] Sir John Hawkins' _History of Music_, vol. v. p. 137.
[22] Burney's _History of Music_, vol. iv. p. 203.
[23] _Spectator_, No. 469.
[24] Fourth Drapier's Letter.
[25] Who the "mistress" was cannot be certainly ascertained. See, however,
p. 146.
[26] Egerton MSS., British Museum (1972).
[27] Andrews' _History of British Journalism_.
[28] _Staple of News_, Act I. Scene 2.
[29] Andrews' _History of British Journalism_.
[30] _Tatler_, No. 1.
[31] _Ibid._
[32] _Tatler_, No. 271.
[33] _Preface to the Fables._
[34] _Tatler_, No. 5.
[35] _Ib._, No. 82.
[36] _Ib._, Nos. 25, 26, 28, 29, 38, 39.
[37] _Ib._, No. 85.
[38] _Tatler_, No. 87.
[39] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 325.
[40] _Tatler_, vol. iv. p. 545 (Nichols' edition).
[41] See p. 93, note 3.
[42] _Tatler_, No. 6.
[43] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[44] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[45] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[46] The writer was a Miss Shepherd.
[47] _Spectator_, No. 134.
[48] _Spectator_, No. 553.
[49] _Ibid._, No. 542.
[50] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[51] _Spectator_, No. 555.
[52] See Addison's _Works_ (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 187.
[53] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 196.
[54] _Spectator_, No. 40.
[55] _Spectator_, No. 40.
[56] See p. 43.
[57] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 151.
[58] _Ibid._
[59] These lines are to be found in _The Campaign_, see p. 66.
[60] _Spectator_, No. 39.
[61] Spence's _Anecdotes_, pp. 148, 149.
[62] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 257.
[63] Pope's _Works_, Elwin and Courthope's edition, vol. vi. p. 408.
[64] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 146.
[65] Addison's Memorial to the King.
[66] _Freeholder_, No. 1.
[67] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 175.
[68] Tickell's _Elegy_. Compare Pope's _Eloisa to Abelard_, v. 107.
[69] _Spectator_, No. 125.
[70] _Ibid._, vol. iii., Nos. 201, 207.
[71] _Ibid._, No. 391.
[72] _Ibid._, No. 465.
[73] _Ibid._, No. 575.
[74] _Ibid._, No. 494.
[75] _Ibid_, Nos. 381, 387, 393.
[76] _Spectator_, No. 51.
[77] _Ibid._, No. 65.
[78] _Spectator_, No. 446.
[79] _Spectator_, No. 525 (by Hughes).
[80] _Spectator_, No. 399.
[81] _Ibid._, No. 507.
[82] _Spectator_, No. 125.
[83] _Spectator_, No. 158.
[84] _Ibid._, No. 434.
[85] _Spectator_, No. 69.
[86] _Spectator_, Nos. 58-63, inclusive.
[87] _Ibid._, Nos. 411-421, inclusive.
[88] _Life of Addison._
[89] _Spectator_, No. 556.
[90] _Spectator_, No. 13.
[91] _Spectator_, No. 101.
[92] _Ibid._, No. 269.
[93] _Spectator_, No. 530.
[94] _Ibid._, No. 265.
[95] I have to thank Mr. Campbell for his kindness and courtesy in sending
me the volume containing this collection.
[96] _Spectator_, No. 414.