as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in
ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff’ in a satirical pamphlet
against Partridge, the maker of almanacks. Partridge had been fool
enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second
pamphlet still more diverting than the first. All the wits had combined
to keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions of laughter.
Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made
popular; and, in 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire,
Astrologer, was about, to publish a paper called the Tatler.
Addison had not been consulted about this scheme: but as soon as he
heard of it he determined to give his assistance. The effect of that
assistance cannot be better described than in Steele’s own words. “I
fared,” he said, “like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful
neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once
called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.”
“The paper,” He says elsewhere, “was advanced indeed. It was raised to
a greater thing than I intended it.” {375}It is probable that Addison,
when he sent across St. George’s Channel his first contributions to the
Tatler, had no notion of the extent and variety of his own powers. He
was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with a hundred ores. But he had
been acquainted only with the least precious part of his treasures,
and had hitherto contented himself with producing sometimes copper and
sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. All at once, and by
mere accident, He had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of the finest
gold.
The mere choice and arrangement of his words would have sufficed to make
his essays classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple,
had the English language been written with such sweetness, grace, and
facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison’s praise. Had he
clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Walpole, or in
the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of the
present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner.
As a moral satirist he stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and
Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to
guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of Menander.
In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to Cowley or
Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are
crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; and we would undertake to
collect from the Spectators as great a number of ingenious illustrations
as can be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of invention
Addison possessed in still larger measure. The numerous fictions,
generally original, often wild and grotesque, but always singularly
graceful and happy, which are {376}found in his essays, fully
entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a rank to which his metrical
compositions give him no claim. As an observer of life, of manner, of
all the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. And
what he observed he had the art of communicating in two widely different
ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as
Clarendon. But he could do something better. He could call human beings
into existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find
any thing more vivid than Addison’s best portraits, we must go either to
Shakspeare or Cervantes.
But what shall we say of Addison’s humour, of his sense of the
ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, and of
drawing mirth from incidents which occur every day, and from little
peculiarities of temper and manner, such as may be found in every man?
We feel the charm: we give ourselves up to it: but we strive in vain to
analyse it.
Perhaps the best wav of describing Addison’s peculiar pleasantry is to
compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirists. The
three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule during the eighteenth
century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the
three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned. But
each of them, within his own domain, was supreme.
Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without disguise
or restraint. He gambols; he grins; he shakes the sides; he points the
finger; he turns up the nose: he shoots out the tongue. The manner of
Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins
in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared in society. All the
company are convulsed {377}with merriment, while the Dean, the author
of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of
aspect, and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies,
with the air of a man reading the commination service.
The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as from that of
Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish
wit, throws a double portion of severity into his countenance while
laughing inwardly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of
demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost
imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the
lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It
is that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is
constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding.
We own that the humour of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more
delicious flavour than the humour of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus
much, at least, is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been
successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic
Addison. The letter of the Abbé Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over,
and imposed, during a long time, on the Academicians of Paris. There
are passages in Arbuthnot’s satirical works which we, at least, cannot
distinguish from Swift’s best writing. But of the many eminent men
who have made Addison their model, though several have copied his mere
diction with happy effect, none have been able to catch the tone of
his pleasantry. In the World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the
Lounger, there are numerous papers written in obvious imitation of his
Tatlers and Spectators. Most of these papers have some merit; {378}many
are very lively and amusing; but there is not a single one which could
be passed oft as Addison’s on a critic of the smallest perspicacity.
But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire,
from almost all the other great masters of ridicule, is the grace,
the nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment.
Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy,
characterizes the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed,
not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of
art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First
Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see any thing but
subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more
monkeylike was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the
mirth of Mephistophiles; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If,
as Soame Jenyns oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of Seraphim
and just men made perfect he derived from an exquisite perception of
the ludicrous, their mirth must surely he none other than the mirth
of Addison; a mirth consistent with tender compassion for all that is
frail, and with profound reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing
great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or
revealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison with any
degrading idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literary history.
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without
abusing it. No kind of power is more formidable than the power of making
men ridiculous; and that power Addison possessed in boundless measure.
How grossly that power was abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well
known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed {379}that he has
blackened no man’s character, nay, that it would be difficult, if not
impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a single
taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors,
whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as
that which men, not superior to him in senilis, wreaked on Bettesworth
and on Franc de Poinpignan. He was a politician; he was the best writer
of his party; he lived in times of fierce excitement, in times when
persons of high character and station stooped to scurrility such as is
now practised only by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no
example could induce him to return railing for railing.
Of the service which his Essays rendered to morality it is difficult to
speak too highly. It is true, that, when the Tatler appeared, that
age of outrageous profaneness and licentiousness which followed the
Restoration had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres into
something which, compared with the excesses of Etherege and Wycherley,
might be called decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind
a pernicious notion that there was some connection between genius and
profligacy, between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the
Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He
taught the nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillot-son
might be found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of
Congreve, and with humour richer than the humour of Vanbrugh. So
effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had
recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open
violation of decency has always been considered among us as the mark of
a fool. And this revolution, the {380}greatest and most salutary ever
effected by any satirist, be accomplished, be it remembered, without
writing one personal lampoon.
In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler his peculiar powers
were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all his
coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to
any thing that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire join
Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. The proceedings of the
Court of Honour, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words,
the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious
and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There
is one still better paper of the same class. But though that paper, a
hundred and thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edifying
as one of Smalridge’s sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish
readers of the nineteenth century.
During the session of Parliament which commenced in November 1709, and
which the impeachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears
to have resided in London. The Tatler was now more popular than any
periodical paper had ever been; and his connection with it was generally
known. It was not known, however, that almost every thing good in the
Tatler was his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty numbers which we
owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best that any
five of them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which
he had no share.
He required, at this time, all the solace which he could derive from
literary success. The Queen had always disliked the Whigs. She had
during some {381}years disliked the Marlborough family. But, reigning by
a disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a
majority of both Houses of Parliament; and, engaged as she was in a war
on the event of which her own Crown was staked, she could not venture
to disgrace a great and successful general. But at length, in the year
1710, the causes which had restrained her from showing her aversion
to the Low Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sacheverell
produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely less violent than the
outbreaks which we can ourselves remember in 1820, and in 1831. The
country gentlemen, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, were
all for once, on the same side. It was clear that, if a general election
took place before the excitement abated, the Tories would have a
majority. The services of Marlborough had been so splendid that they
were no longer necessary. The Queen’s throne was secure from all attack
on the part of Lewis. Indeed, it seemed much more likely that the
English and German armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and
Marli than that a Marshal of France would bring back the Pretender to
St. James’s. The Queen, acting by the advice of Harley, determined to
dismiss her servants. In June the change commenced. Sunderland was
the first who fell. The Tories exulted over his fall. The Whigs tried,
during a few weeks, to persuade themselves that her Majesty had acted
only from personal dislike to the Secretary, and that she meditated no
further alteration. But, early in August, Godolphin was surprised by
a letter from Anne, which directed him to break his white staff. Even
after this event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Harley kept up
the hopes of the Whigs during another month; {382}and then the ruin
became rapid and violent. The Parliament was dissolved. The Ministers
were turned out. The Tories were called to office. The tide of
popularity ran violently in favour of the High Church party. That party,
feeble in the late House of Commons, was now irresistible. The power
which the Tories had thus suddenly acquired, they used with blind and
stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole pack set up for prey and for
blood appalled even him who had roused and unchained them. When, at
this distance of time, we calmly review the conduct of the discarded
ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of indignation at the injustice
with which they were treated. No body of men had ever administered the
government with more energy, ability, and moderation; and their success
had been proportioned to their wisdom. They had saved Holland and
Germany. They had humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn
Spain from the House of Bourbon. They had made England the first power
in Europe. At home they had united England and Scotland. They had
respected the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. They
retired, leaving their country at the height of prosperity and glory.
And yet they were pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy
as was never raised against the government which threw away thirteen
colonies, or against the government which sent a gallant army to perish
in the ditches of Walcheren.
None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck than Addison. He
had just sustained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which
we are imperfectly informed, when his Secretaryship was taken from him.
He had reason to believe that he {383}should also be deprived of the
small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his
Fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured to raise
his eyes to a great lady, and that, while his political friends were
in power, and while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the
phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, permitted to
hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addison the chief
Secretary, were, in her ladyship’s opinion, two very different persons.
All these calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene
cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich in its own
wealth. He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought
to admire his philosophy, that he had lost at once his fortune, his
place, his fellowship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning
tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good as ever.
He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his friends had
incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem with which he was
regarded that, while the most violent measures were taken for the
purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was returned to
Parliament without even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who
had already determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these
remarkable words: “The Tories carry it among the new members six to one.
Mr. Addison’s election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if
he had a mind to be king he would hardly be refused.”
The good will with which the Tories regarded Addison is the more
honourable to him, because it had not been purchased by any concession
his part. During the general election he published a political
{384}Journal, entitled the Whig Examiner. Of that Journal it may
be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political
prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of Swift’s
writings on the other side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter
to Stella, expressed his exultation at the death of so formidable an
antagonist. “He might well rejoice,” says Johnson, “at the death of that
which he could not have killed.”
“On no occasion,” he adds, “was the genius of Addison more vigorously
exerted, and on none did the superiority of his powers more evidently
appear.”
The only use which Addison appears to have made of the favour with which
he was regarded by the Tories was to save some of his friends from the
general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation
which made it his duty to take a decided part in polities. But the case
of Steele and of Ambrose Phillipps was different. For Phillipps, Addison
even condescended to solicit, with what success we have not ascertained.
Steele held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he was also a Commissioner
of Stamps. The Gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain
his place in the Stamp Office, on an implied understanding that he
should not be active against the new government; and he was, during
more than two years, induced by Addison to observe this armistice with
tolerable fidelity.
Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon politics, and the
article of news which had once formed about one third of his paper,
altogether disappeared. The Tatler had completely changed its character.
It was now nothing but a series of essays on books, morals, and manners.
Steele therefore resolved to {385}bring it to a close, and to commence a
new work on an improved plan. It was announced that this new work would
be published daily. The undertaking was generally regarded as bold, or
rather rash; but the event amply justified the confidence with which
Steele relied on the fertility of Addison’s genius. On the second
of January 1711, appeared the last Tatler. At the beginning of March
following appeared the first of an incomparable series of papers,
containing observations on life and literature by an imaginary
Spectator.
The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn by Addison; and it is
not easy to doubt that the portrait was meant to be in some features a
likeness of the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after passing
a studious youth at the university, has travelled on classic ground, and
has bestowed much attention on curious points of antiquity. He has,
on his return, fixed his residence in London, and has observed all
the forms of life which are to be found in that great city, has daily
listened to the wits of Will’s, has smoked with the philosophers of
the Grecian, and has mingled with the parsons at Child’s, and with the
politicians at the St. James’s. In the morning, he often listens to the
hum of the Exchange; in the evening, his face is constantly to be seen
in the pit of Drury Lane theatre. But an insurmountable bashfulness
prevents him from opening his mouth, except in a small circle of
intimate friends.
These friends 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 back ground. 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 {386}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.
The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be both original and
eminently happy. Every valuable essay in the series may be read with
pleasure separately; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole,
and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It must be remembered,
too, that at that time no novel, giving a lively and powerful picture
of the common life and manners of England, had appeared. Richardson was
working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds’ nests. Smollett
was not yet born. The narrative, therefore, which connects together
the Spectator’s Essays, gave to our ancestors their first taste of an
exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was indeed constructed
with no art or labour. The events were such events as occur every day.
Sir Roger comes up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet always
calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Spectator on the water to Spring
Gardens, walks among the tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the
Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre
when the Distressed Mother is acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the
summer to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler,
and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, rides to the
assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy, At last a
letter from the honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger
is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club breaks
up; and the Spectator resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be
said to form a plot; yet they are {387}related with such truth, such
grace, such wit, such humour, such pathos, such knowledge of the human
heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm us on
the hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt that if Addison had
written a novel, on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to
any that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered not only
as the greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the
great English novelists.
We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is the Spectator. About three
sevenths of the work are his; and it is no exaggeration to say, that his
worst essay is as good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors.
His best essays approach near to absolute perfection; nor is their
excellence more wonderful than their variety. His invention never seems
to flag; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or
of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales us
after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was
only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first
sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of
nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively
and ingenious as Lucian’s Auction of Lives; on the Tuesday an Eastern
apologue, as richly coloured as the Tales of Scherezade; on the
Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyere; on the
Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters in the
Vicar of Wakefield; on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on
fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet shows; and on the
Saturday a religious meditation, which will bear a comparison with the
finest passages in Massillon.
It is dangerous to select where there is so much that {388}deserves the
highest praise. We will venture, however, to say, that any person who
wishes to form a notion of the extent and variety of Addison’s powers,
will do well to read at one sitting the following papers, the two Visits
to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, the Journal of the Retired
Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey, and
the Death of Sir Roger de Coverley. (1)