On Tuesday last a fellow at Sadler’s Wells, near Islington, after
he had dined heartily on a buttock of beef, for the lucre of five
guineas, eat a live cock, feathers, guts and all, with only a plate
of oil and vinegar to wash it down, and afterwards preferred to lay
five guineas more, that he could do the same again in two hours time.
The banality, the stupidity of it all startled him. It held him all
that day, and soon the idea filled Steele’s mind that a decent and
dignified journalism was possible. He was idealist enough to believe,
and optimist enough to hope that a decent paper might become a potent
agency of enlightenment and that intelligent citizens everywhere would
be only too glad to look to it for light and leading. It might contain
foreign news, dramatic reports and the literary gossip of Will’s and
the Grecian, the two coffee houses where the wits foregathered. So,
full of the idea, he wrote to Addison of his plan. No sooner did
Addison, then in Ireland, learn of it than he was all eagerness to
join in. His unexpected decision almost swept Steele off his feet. “I
fared,” he said, “like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful
neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once
called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” And in
another place he wrote: “This paper was advanced indeed. It was raised
to a greater thing than I intended it.”
Shortly after the paper was started, the circulation was a little short
of three thousand, but in a short time, nine or ten thousand copies
of each issue were sold, and, as Addison said each issue was read by
twenty people. Of the essays, in all, two hundred and seventy-four were
written by Addison and two hundred and thirty-six by Richard Steele.
The plan involved the creation of a fictitious character, one known
as the _Spectator_, a gentleman who had been a studious youth, and,
after some travel on classic ground, took up the study of men and
manners. He was a kind of sublime _Pickwick_. And, like that later
glorious creation of Dickens, he was a good listener. Fixing his
residence in London, he goes hither and yon, to coffee houses, to
theaters, to churches and to notable gatherings, and, in the pages of
the _Spectator_, records his impressions and his thoughts. As Dickens
gave _Samuel Pickwick_ his lesser lights, his _Tupper_, and _Winkle_
and _Snodgrass_, so the _Spectator_ has a few friends: a templar, a
clergyman, a soldier and a merchant, but the high lights are thrown
upon Sir Roger de Coverly, the old country baronet, and Will Honeycomb,
an old town rake, and through the eyes of these, as through a focussing
glass, was shown the life of the day. Soon, readers everywhere became
eager to know the doings of the famous club which Sir Roger visited,
the sessions of which were recorded by the _Spectator_.
The first outline of Sir Roger was made by Steele in No. 2, of the
_Spectator_, March 2, 1711, and thereafter Addison used the character,
indeed almost seems to have identified himself with it. “We were born
for one another,” he wrote.
“The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire of an
ancient descent, a baron, his name, Sir Roger de Coverly. His
grandfather was inventor of the famous dance which is called after
him. All who know that satire, are very well acquainted with the
parts and merits of Sir Roger. He was a gentleman that is very
singular in his behavior, but his singularities proceed from a good
sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as
he thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humor creates him
no enemies, for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy, and his
being unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and the
more capable to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in
town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself a bachelor
by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the
next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger was what you
call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and
Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel on his first coming to town, and
kicked Bully Dawson in the coffee house for calling him youngster;
but being ill-used by the said widow, he was very serious for a year
and a half; and, though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at
last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed
afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and a doublet of the same cut
that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry
humors he tells us twelve times since he first wore it. He is now
in his 56th year, cheerful, gay and hearty; keeps a good house both
in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a
skilful cast in his behavior, that he is rather beloved than esteemed.
“His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young
women profess to love him, and the young men are glad of his company.
When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and
talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger
is Justice to the Quorum, that he fills the chair at quarter sessions
with great ability, and three months ago gained universal applause by
explaining a passage in the Gane Act.”
* * * * *
Thus, and with that fictitious character as a nucleus, began the
greatest literary partnership in the history of literature. Thus,
also, Addison found himself. Until he wrote in the _Spectator_, he
had, or seems to have had, no knowledge of his powers. He did not know
himself. Perhaps Steele knew Addison though; knew of the vast hidden
mine of wealth and thus deliberately tapped the inexhaustible vein.
True, Addison had written before the advent of the _Spectator_, for
at college he had been distinguished in a small way, and, later, he
had written his poem, the _Campaign_ (1704). That in itself was an
excellent model of a becoming and classical style, easily and correctly
written, but, alone, it had not the excellence to ensure its author
immortality. As it turns out, as we see it from this distance, it was
the _Spectator_ that made him, as it gave him an audience to hearten
him. And through the character of Sir Roger, he set out to make
morality fashionable, and, later, by means of the essay made it his
task to reconcile virtue with elegance and to make pleasure subservient
to reason. As a by-product there came a mighty literary influence that
passed down the ages. For it was upon Addison that Benjamin Franklin
founded his style. That prince of living essayists, Michael Monahan,
has been strongly affected by the same hand. His influence has touched
such widely diverse characters as Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Lamb,
Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, W. H. Hudson, Ford Maddox
Hueffer, Cunningham Grahame, Hilaire Belloc, H. M. Tomlinson, William
Marion Reedy. More still. The very existence of these Haldeman-Julius
booklets is, in a measure, due to the ideals promulgated by Addison,
or, at any rate, at bottom the same notion that moved Steele’s friend
moved the editor of this series. In proof, I quote from _Spectator_ No.
10, March 12, 1710:
“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 coffee houses. I would, therefore, in a very particular manner,
recommend these, my speculations, to well regulated families, and
set apart an hour in every morning for tea, and bread and butter;
and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper
to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the
tea-equipage.”
If I were asked to choose from all that Addison had written in the
pages of the _Spectator_, to take a single essay which might be
adduced as evidence that posterity would assign to him the reputation
he coveted, I would at once name his Vision of Mirza. To my notion it
is the most intensely beautiful thing he wrote. I transcribe it, well
remembering the thrill with which I first read it when a mere boy. It
seemed to me then the most fantastically beautiful thing ever written.