There was a
danger that, in literary taste as in morality, the inexperienced, for
sheer lack of proper models, might accept as their standard of
poetry the precious and artificial style of versifying with which
fashionable society still amused itself.
danger that, in literary taste as in morality, the inexperienced, for
sheer lack of proper models, might accept as their standard of
poetry the precious and artificial style of versifying with which
fashionable society still amused itself.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v09
Cf.
ante, vol.
iv, chap.
XVI.
* See The Spectator, no. 174.
442
## p. 52 (#76) ##############################################
52
Steele and Addison
coming to understand their own importance through mutual dis-
cussion, and Steele had already, in The Tatler, given glimpses of
their prudence or dignity and claimed that they had as much right
to the title of gentlemen as courtiers and scholars had! . Still, it
was something new in literature to show how a man trained in a
counting-house could be the intellectual equal of the Spectator
and his friends. Sir Andrew is not a wit; his conversation
abounds in homely phrases ; his mind is not stored with the
wisdom of books; yet he has made himself an original thinker,
with ideas not fettered by tradition, but derived from experience
in trade and expressed with the lucidity of conviction.
When Steele sat down to sketch this group, he probably intended
each to be little more than a figurehead, enlivened with a few
touches of individuality. Yet, so introspective was the age in
.
which he wrote, that, as if unconsciously, he has made them, in
this his first description, hardly less than studies of social environ-
ment and character. After this brilliant beginning, it is dis-
appointing to find that, though the characters frequently reappear,
they are afterwards employed only to maintain an argument or
give information about the world which each represents or,
again, in imitation of dramatic technique, merely as confidants
of Mr Spectator and foils to throw into relief his views and
peculiarities. They are interwoven with lines of thought which
run through the periodical only by way of embroidery; at the
most, they are used as living examples of some habit or quality
which defies ordinary description. We are not vouchsafed any
glimpse of their progress through the world or of the development
of their minds. Even the Coverly papers are not really an excep-
tion to this. Steele first showed what was the knight's true function
when he depicted Sir Roger as protesting against the over-civiliza-
tion of city life and declaring himself to be 'so whimsical in a
corrupt age as to act according to nature and reason? ' Henceforth,
the country baronet became the type of Arcadian simplicity. From
the days of Tudor jestbooks, the city man had laughed at the
backwardness of the provincial, and the sense of urban superiority
is not missing in the Coverly papers. It is most significant that
Addison, with an idealist's instinct, endowed Sir Roger with all the
guilelessness and piety which London society lacked, and lovingly
1. That tradesman who deals with me in a commodity which I do not understand
with uprightness, has much more right to that character (i. e. of a gentleman), than
the courtier who gives me false hopes, or the scholar who laughs at my ignorance. '
The Tatler, no. 207.
? The Spectator, no. 6.
3 Cf, ante, vol. III, chap. v.
>
## p. 53 (#77) ##############################################
The Coverly Group
53
a
returned again and again to the theme, as if he found in it a
refuge from the artificiality of his own life. In his enthusiasm for
the golden age, which he pictured among the villages and manors
of old England, Addison created a whole society round Sir Roger-
including Will Wimble, the cadet of an ancient family, too brainless
for a liberal profession, too proud to enter business, really of the
same class as the odious Mr Thomas Gules", but portrayed as gentle
and lovable, like all the other inhabitants of the smiling land.
And yet the Coverly papers are only a series of sketches. The
Spectator spends a month in the country, and Sir Roger makes
a few visits to town. Nothing else is recorded until the knight's
unexpected death, except smalltalk. It is true that his most
trifling utterance has an irresistible charm, because it contributes
towards the picture of ideal simplicity, godliness and nobleness
of heart Even his little weaknesses and touches of vanity,
recorded with exquisite bumour, are the defects of his qualities.
In truth, these essays are the first masterpiece of humanised
puritanism ; though, as regards the history of the novel, they do
not mark an advance on the story of Jenny Distaff,
In any case, Steele and Addison could hardly have created the
novel, after creating Mr Spectator as their ideal of editorship.
That taciturn and contemplative investigator has intellectual
curiosity, but little sympathy. He ranges over a field so incredibly
wide that he is forced to see life from a distance. Steele and
Addison do not always stand aloof. They had shown, in occasional
papers, that they understood the human heart and the pathos of
unrecorded destiny; but they never, for long, escape from their
own conception of sporadic and dispassionate observation. It was
no small effort of creativeness to unify in one clear-cut character
vague tendencies towards critical contemplation, though the
spectacle of a half-formed and half-humanised democracy was too
engrossing in its outlines to leave room for the intensive study of
a novelist. So, the personalities of the Spectator's club tend to
fade out of importance, and the journal confined its development
to the lines which Addison had already marked out. It covered
practically the same ground as The Tatler, ridiculing or inveighing
against old-fashioned ideals of gallantry and self-indulgences, urgi
that kindness is better than cleverness", that self-suppression is
the essence of good breeding5; penetrating the secrets of home life
i The Tatler, no. 256.
2 Cf. The Spectator, nos. 4, 270, 454.
: See, especially, ibid. nos. 158, 182, 261, 244, 318.
* Ibid. nog. 23, 151, 169, 172, 177, 348.
5 Ibid. nos. 24, 286, 422, 438.
4
## p. 54 (#78) ##############################################
54
Steele and Addison
and exposing the humiliations of citizens who affect aristocratic
immorality', the stupidity of husbands who tyrannise over their
wives? or fathers over their children, the folly of women who
marry for money' or think that the pleasures of society are
preferable to the duties of the household. As Steele took the
responsibility of seeing that 'copy' was forthcoming day by day,
a few of his papers are still written with that hurried diffuseneng
which has lost The Tatler many readers. In his best work, he
conforms to the studied simplicity and artistic concentration which
Addison had developed in The Tatler and was continuing to
cultivate with great success.
But, if The Spectator surpassed its predecessor in style, it
achieved an even greater advance in thought. The moralists of
the seventeenth century bad drawn their wisdom from books,
Bickerstaff had drawn his from experience; while Addison showed
how to draw from both sources. It is surprising how much quaint
and curious lore is introduced into the pages of The Spectator
merely to give point or freshness to an uninspiring theme', as
where the buyers of lottery tickets suggest the legend of Mahomet's
coffin suspended in mid-air by the force of two magnets', or the
curiosity of the town concerning the letter with which each essay
was signed is mocked by means of a dissertation on cabalism? It
is, however, when these writers continue Bickerstaff's more serious
duties of censorship that the full influence of literature becomes
most marked. The Tatler had criticised the follies and foibles of
society by the light of common sense ; The Spectator never fails
in its higher criterion—the mellow and dignified experience of
antiquity. Sometimes, the petulant efforts of modern writers are
compared with the noble simplicity of ancient literature. Some-
times, the pettiness or malice of the writers themselves is reproved
on the authority of Simonides? , Cicero 10, Epictetus", or by a de-
scription of the Augustan circle 12 In these respects, Addison
differed only in method and thoroughness from Jacobean essayists,
who quoted Roman or Italian authors whenever their reading
rendered them discontented with the worn-out traditions of their
own society. But Mr Spectator went far deeper than this. Not
only did he quote the judgments and counsels of the ancients on
1 The Spectator, nos. 33, 91, 41, 45, 89, 260, 288, 298, 299, 342.
2 No. 236.
8 No. 431.
* Nos. 149, 268, 311, 320,
6 No. 191,
7 No. 221.
6 Nos. 94, 191, 211, 221, 343, 439.
9 No. 209.
8 Nos. 223, 229, 249, 446.
10 No. 243.
il No. 355.
12 No. 253.
## p. 55 (#79) ##############################################
The Spectator and The Tatler compared 55
questions common to all moralists of all ages; but, when straying
from the beaten track, and counselling his contemporaries on their
peculiarities and eccentricities, he was still guided by a Roman
sense of self-respect and reasonableness. His exquisite portrait of
the valetudinarian who took his meals in a weighing chair is really
inspired by Martial's contempt for those who are more anxious to
live than to live rightly? . The sense of solemnity which comes
over Mr Spectator in Westminster abbey descends on him from
Lucretius, and Seneca would have approved of the diary of an
idle man and of that of a woman of fashion s.
Steele, as usual, followed his master's lead and introduced
copious quotations and allusions into his more serious papers.
But, at best, he was an indifferent scholar, and, except in the
Pbaramond papers", he never approached Addison's tact and
felicity. Much as he admired Mr Spectator's cultured and con-
templative mind, his own experience was leading him to work out
a philosophy of life on different lines. As, in The Tatler, he had
taken refuge in sentimentality, so now, in The Spectator, he still
fought against his own inborn unconventionality by advocating a
regularity of conduct which he could not practise. The puritans
had always disliked what was unusual or self-willed, and Steele
brought Cicero and the Stoics to their help, showing how the
recklessness of the spendthrift, the capriciousness of the man
who varies his greetings according to his mood, or even the
impertinence of fops who affect hurry or indolence, are really
offences against 'decency' and 'decorum ' Such observances,
which had formerly been the creed of the middle class, began to
have a universal binding force, now that they were backed by the
authority of culture. It is significant that some of his leading
ideas on education, on the evils of vanity in dress and on the
reading of romances? , had already been fully put forward by Ascham
in The Scholemaster. This strengthening of public opinion was
undoubtedly important in a half-formed society, but it was soon
to grow into the narrow British insistence on respectability, bitterly
satirised by Victorian writers. Even at this early stage, the ap-
pearance of a girl riding in man's clothes, after the French fashion,
suggests to Steele the reflection that eccentricity of dress is nothing
less than an offence against virtues. Sometimes, Steele breaks away
i No. 25.
2 No. 26.
3 Nos. 317, 323.
• Nos. 76, 84, 97, 480. Pharamond was borrowed from La Calprenedo's novel.
5 Nos. 222, 259, 284.
® Nos. 157, 168, 230.
7 See Steele's comedies.
8 No. 104.
## p. 56 (#80) ##############################################
56
Steele and Addison
from the social formulae which he helped to codify and gives free
play to his gift of seeing things in a natural, almost a primitive,
light. Returning to one of the favourite themes of The Tatler, he
has independence enough to show how there existed among traders
a whole world of romance and destiny undreamt of by the politer
classes? . His sympathies led him deeper into human nature. As
the amusements of polite society became more costly and artificial,
a new class of lackeys had grown up beneath the glittering surface,
very different from the servingmen of the Elizabethan drama.
Steele was one of the first to discover not only the humour but the
pathos of their lives. First, we have a glimpse of high life below
stairs, in which the frivolities of the rich are absurdly aped by
their servants; and, then, the tragedy of the attendant's life, who
earns his daily bread as the silent confederate of his master's
viciousness and the victim of his caprice? Steele, again, was one
of the first to champion women of the lower class. Since the
Middle Ages, female character had been one of the favourite
butts of popular satire, and, all through the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, savage invective against prostitution had been
common. To Steele, all women are distressed heroines. He
shows how shopgirls and barmaids, so far from being naturally
bad, are often, by the nature of their employment, forced to
submit to the loose talk and familiarity of men; and, when he
comes to describe the most abandoned, instead of inveighing
against harlotry, he reveals, for the first time, the 'white-slave
traffic' of his age, with all its fiendish stratagems for sapping the
virtue of its dupes and its secret patrons among high society:.
Many of these glimpses of life are given us in the form of letters,
and, as The Spectator always welcomed correspondence, and, on
two occasions, publicly asked for it", there is often danger of
taking genuine communications for a device of the editors. Steele,
in fact, posed as the 'courier of Love,' starting a kind of "agony
column,' in which lovers could communicate with each other, and
in at least one paper he printed some of his own love-letters. Some
of the epistles, however, are unmistakably inventions. It must be
remembered that, for more than a century, the epistle had become
a recognised literary type, and that The Spectator would naturally
i Nos. 174, 218, 248.
? Nos. 88, 96, 137.
3 Nos. 155, 182, 190, 266, 274, 437.
4 Nos. 428, 442.
5 C. Lillie (1725) published two vols, of letters which had been sent to The Tatler
and The Spectator but not printed.
6 No. 204.
? Ante, vol. vii, chap. XVI, pp. 390—1.
6
>
## p. 57 (#81) ##############################################
>
a
Letters in The Spectator 57
avail itself of the gentler art' to lend variety and grace to its papers.
But, while letter-writers, from Seneca to Loveday! , had used this
form of composition to convey ideas, Steele and his associates went
further. To them belongs the credit of discovering that the epistle
could become a picturesque type of character-sketch. Among
others, Thomas Hearne is said to have portrayed Arthur Charlett
as Abraham Froth, who describes the discussions of his futile club
with prolix self-satisfaction, and John Hughes composed the two
admirably characteristic letters on the education of a girl, one
from Célimène, who despairs of breaking in her charge to all the
artificialities of polite society and the other from a self-styled 'rough
man' who fears that 'the young girl is in a fair way to be spoilt. '
Steele is certainly the author of the footman's love-letter couched,
like The Yellowplush Papers of a later day, in language which
he can neither understand nor spell, with that inimitable touch of
nature, suggestive of The Conscious Lovers, 'Oh! dear Betty, must
the nightingales sing to those who marry for money and not to us
true lovers *? ' Besides revealing character, letters were admirably
adapted to disclose the secrets of private life. In the guise of a
correspondent, Steele found new scope for the gift of storytelling
which he had developed in The Tatler. Some of the communica-
tions contained glimpses into the comic side of domestic history-
such as the account of Anthony Freeman's device for escaping from
the over-affectionate attentions of his wife'; while others are
fragments torn from sordid reality, like the 'unhappy story in low
life' telling how the drunken weaver unwittingly sells a successful
lottery ticket which his wife had pinched herself to buy. In some
numbers, Steele goes further and narrates a sequence of events by
an interchange of letters. One of his noblest efforts in this style
is a correspondence by which a widow wins back her petulant and
wasteful son from the dissipations of London", and one of his wittiest
is the series of letters which release Cynthio from Flavia's in-
convenient affection
Thus, Steele was on the verge of inventing the epistolary novel;
but, as in The Tatler, so, now, he had neither the perseverance nor
the self-confidence necessary to create a literary type. He was
more inclined to follow his illustrious contemplative collaborator,
who, in the meantime, had created the serial treatise. Addison
1 Cf. , as to Robert Loveday, ante, vol. VII, p. 439.
? No. 43.
3 No. 66.
5 Nos. 212, 216.
6 No. 242.
8 No. 398.
4 No. 71.
7 No. 263.
## p. 58 (#82) ##############################################
58
Steele and Addison
began with a succession of rather fugitive but witty attacks on the
staging of the Italian opera', in which his own scholarly love of
simplicity, inspired by Terence and Horace, blended with the
inherited middle class dislike of all that was un-English. These
early papers are hardly more than outbursts of Addisonian irony,
such as he might have vented on any other of society's laughable
weaknesses. But material prosperity and the discussions of coffee-
houses had brought the middle class to a stage at which they felt
the need of culture and eagerly read anything on taste or style.
In this way, Addison found himself leading a reaction in literature,
just as Steele had led a reaction in manners. The drama was the
natural field for a critic nurtured at the university; so, Addison
began to discuss tragedy in a didactic spirit, not without sallies of
characteristic irony, insisting on what he calls the moral part
of the performance, showing how the technique of playwriting
contributes to dramatic effect, and how false art may be detected
by comparison with the great masters? As he warmed to his
work, he perceived that the coffeehouse public would never
take more than a passing interest in the stage.
There was a
danger that, in literary taste as in morality, the inexperienced, for
sheer lack of proper models, might accept as their standard of
poetry the precious and artificial style of versifying with which
fashionable society still amused itself. What the citizens of London
really needed was a literature as serious as themselves. Accord-
ingly, Addison gave up a whole week’s issues to the criticism of
conceits and mere verbal dexterity, condemning acrostics, lipograms,
rebuses, anagrams, chronograms, bouts rimés, puns and paragrams;
and, after dismissing all these kinds of false wit, he shows his
unacademic readers in what true wit consists. It is illustrative
of the middle class reaction in literature that he should base his
definition on the reasoning of so modern and independent a thinker
as Locke“, and should follow up Dryden's preface to The State of
Innocence by restricting the meaning of wit to the resemblance of
ideas . . . that give delight and surprise to the reader,' always sup-
posing the resemblance to be founded on truth and common sense.
Addison, indeed, was teaching his fellow citizens to expect far more
than wit or art from literature. His aim was to find the precepts
i Nos. 6, 13, 18, 29, 31.
» Nos. 39, 40, 42, 44, 51.
8 Nos. 58–61.
• Essay concerning the Human Understanding, ed. 1690, chap. XI, p. 68.
• No. 62. See also no, 63, which sums up his view of false wit in a delightful
allegory.
## p. 59 (#83) ##############################################
Addison on Paradise Lost
59
of morality' which should underlie every work of inspiration; and,
with this end in view, he endeavoured to explain the universal
charm of such artless compositions as Chevy Chace and The Chil-
dren in the Wood. Among the middle class, the love of medieval
ballads had survived the renascence and was probably not yet
dead; but Addison essayed a task beyond the learning of his age
when he attempted to subject folklore to the canons of criticism.
In his day, men could judge poetry only under the shadow of the
classics, and The Spectator is still pedantic enough to praise the
old minstrelsy because it finds therein a few parallels to Vergil
and Horacel.
Steele had loyally supplemented these more scholarly papers,
whenever Addison gave him an opening for a humorous contri-
bution and even succeeded in showing how Raphael's cartoons 3
are studies in the grandeur of human emotions. But his spontaneous
and erratic genius quite failed to keep pace with the dogmatism
of Addison's next and greatest critical effort. This was the series
of Saturday papers in which he criticises Paradise Lost by the
canons of Aristotle, Longinus and Le Bossu and, though finding
faults in Milton, judges him to be equal, if not superior, to Homer
or Vergil. From the eighteenth century point of view, he was right.
The middle classes who read books were not themselves subjected
to the great emotions of life, but were bent on methodically building
up their own culture. Hence, they could not appreciate the mystery,
the passion, the wildness or the pathos of ancient epic, and it is
significant that these qualities are not conspicuous in the great
translations of the period, which charmed by their rhetoric and
polish. The average eighteenth century reader had somewhat
the same point of view as the Italian critics of the renascence
and valued what had passed through the crucible of the intel-
lect and smelt of the lamp. When people at this stage of culture
consider a work of imagination, they are too prosaic to com-
prehend the romance of human activity. They want projected
shadows of life, which are vaster than reality and bolder in outline,
though less searching. Milton met these intellectual requirements
more fully than his forerunners, and Addison, in interpreting his
poet, seems to have followed Minturno's line of argument when he
championed the epic against the romanzi. Addison contended that
1 Nos. 70, 74, 85.
? Nos. 22, 36, 65.
3 No. 226. See no. 244 for an answer to this paper.
4 Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357,
363, 369.
## p. 60 (#84) ##############################################
60
Steele and Addison
1
1
6
>
Milton dealt with the destiny of the whole world, they but with that
of a single nation. His characters, though fewer in number, appear
more varied and less earth-bound than theirs. The conception of
sin and death contains 'a beautiful allegory'affecting all humanity.
Adam and Eve typify different beings before and after their fall.
Their conferences' are less mundane than the 'loves' of Dido and
Aeneas; Satan is more wily and more travelled than Ulysses? .
Besides, Paradise Lost was originally conceived as a tragedy, and,
though the dramatic atmosphere which pervades its final form is
rightly judged to be a blemish”, it is, for this reason, more easily
reducible to Aristotle's rules. After taking a bird's eye view of
the action, the actors, the sentiments and the languages, Addison
proceeds to consider each book separately. No greater service
could have been rendered to the unformed taste of his time than
to point out where Milton is to be admired, and Addison has the
wisdom to illustrate his criticisms so copiously that these papers
almost constitute a book of selected beauties. ' Much that he
praises is of permanent value, such as grandeur of style and
loftiness of conception; but, in much again, his literary judgment
is unconsciously biassed by a spirit of propaganda. In reality, The
Spectator was continuing, after nearly two generations, the same
reaction against restoration ideals which Milton had begun in his
old age. Thus, Paradise Lost had a hold on Addison's admiration
quite apart from its intrinsic merits. Milton's tumultuous and
over-burdened similes seemed perfect, in contrast with the artifices
of the little wits. Eve's purity and modesty exercised an
exaggerated charm in view of contemporary looseness', and it was
regarded as specially appropriate that her dream, inspired by Satan,
should be full of pride and conceits. Moreover, the age saw
6
that learning was its salvation and, in Paradise Lost, enjoyed the
quite artificial pleasures of research. Addison no longer holds
to Lionardi's, Fracastor's and Scaliger's? creed that all erudition
is an ornament to poetry; but he experiences a subtle delight in
tracing obscure parallels in inspiration comparing the sword of
Michael with the sword of Aeneas, or the golden compasses of the
Creator with Minerva's aegis, or the repentance of Adam and Eve
with the grief of Oedipus. And, finally, The Spectator was furthering
a
1 No. 297.
? L'Arte Poetica, 1564.
3 Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285.
4 No. 303.
5 Nos. 321, 345.
6 No. 327.
? See Lionardi, Dialogi della Inventione Poetica, 1554; Fracastor, Opera, 1555;
Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem, 5th ed. 1617. See Spingarn, J. E. , Literary Criticism
in the Renaissance, 1908.
## p. 61 (#85) ##############################################
Addison 'On the Pleasures of the Imagination' 61
6
a religious revival under the auspices of culture and, therefore,
found in Paradise Lost the same kind of superiority that Harington 1
had claimed for Orlando Furioso. Addison reconciles himself even
to the speeches of the Almighty, though they are not ‘so proper to
fill the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of
devotion? '; while the morning and evening hymns, and the use
of scriptural phraseology throughout the poem, seemed like a touch
of inspiration higher than any of which a pagan could boast.
These Milton papers met with an enthusiastic reception. They
exercised an influence throughout the eighteenth century and only
became obsolete when Sainte-Beuve had taught Europe that the
critic should be less of a judge than a reconstructor-almost an
artist who creates a picture of the author's mind and of the
atmosphere in which he wrote. In any case, Addison never
attempted to enlarge the bounds of thought. His aim was to
gather up the best ideas of his time and put them within reach of
op
the ordinary reader. The same is true of his successive papers on
aesthetics, or, as he calls them, 'On the Pleasures of the Imagina-
tion. He wanted to show how the emotions can be raised and
purified by what men see and read. So, he discussed the intellectual
pleasure to be found, first, in landscapes and gardens, then, in
statues, pictures and architecture, and, then, in the mirrored views
of life which a descriptive writer can call up before the mind's eye.
This difficult and intricate subject involved an enquiry into the
psychology of the imagination and a scientific discrimination of
the functions and limits of the different arts. Granted his limita-
tions, Addison is more than equal to the task. He draws on his
own travels and experiences, he applies the wisdom of the ancients
and the more recent discoveries of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley*;
yet his exposition is lucid and complete within the compass of
eleven short essays. But, though he popularises admirably the
ideas of his time, he cannot investigate for himself. The thoughts
of his contemporaries lead him to the very brink of Lessing's
discovery concerning the relation of poetry to sculpture", but
he does not take a step further when his guides leave him.
Nevertheless, these papers must have awakened in many a new
1 An Apologie of Poetrie, Pt 2.
2 No. 315.
s Nos. 411–421, originally written as a single essay years before. See Some portions
of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr Joseph Addison, Glasgow, 1864.
* New Theory of Vision, 1709.
6 Nos. 416, 418; Addison was probably aware of Varchi's comparison of poetry with
painting in Lerzioni, lette nell' Accademia Fiorentina, 1590; see Spingarn, ibid.
Lessing's Laokoon, oder Über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie, appeared in 1766.
## p. 62 (#86) ##############################################
62
Steele and Addison
sense of aesthetic enjoyment? Among other things, he protests
against the artificiality of rococo gardens, and shows what a
mine of wonder and reflection had been opened up by natural
philosophy
Although Addison varied these dissertations with humorous and
satirical essays, the tone of The Spectator became more and more
serious as the numbers continued to appear. At the outset, he
had declared, in two papers", that his practice was to put his
thoughts together without premeditation; but, towards the close,
he admitted the need of methodical discourses. He had other
things to teach besides the appreciation of literature and art. In
the latter half of the seventeenth century, England had exchanged
a civilization of war for a civilization of peace and needed a religion
a
to match. Martial patriotism, of course, still ran high ; but the
typical man of culture was a peaceful Londoner, busy with his
family and his profession, and the only battles which he fought
were those with himself. As has been shown, the votaries of the
old régime continued the tradition of atheism. But the middle
classes were still devout and only needed to bring into their wor-
ship that cult of urbanity at which they aimed in their daily lives.
No one could be more susceptible to this tendency than a man
of Addison's character, and, when he set himself to lead a social
reform, it was inevitable that he should write on religion. He is no
more original on this theme than on others. Humanised Christianity
is to be found, in all its sweetness, in Jeremy Taylor and had already
proved itself in John Webster's great book of sufficient power to
end the witch persecution. But, though Addison was not the first
to proclaim the gospel of peace and goodwill, he was the first who
could bring it into the hearts and homes of London citizens. Like
the earlier puritans, he held that religion should govern every
thought and action, but not to the exclusion of the world. His
creed was one of acquiescence and inward piety. Zeal was
often a cloak for pride, self-interest or ill-nature; enthusiasm led
to bigotry and superstition. A Christian's devotion should be
2
1 E. g. Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, 1764.
? Nos. 414, 420.
8 E. g. nos. 81 (party patches), 102 (the use of the fan), 205 (the woman of fashion in
church), 247 (women as talkers), 265 (the head dress), 275 (a beau's head), 281 (a
coquette's heart), 343 (the Pythagorean monkey), 361 (catcalls), 377 (bill of mortality
through love).
* Nos. 46, 124.
o No. 476.
6 The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, 1677. See ante, vol. VII, chap. xv,
pp. 396—7.
## p. 63 (#87) ##############################################
Addison on Religion. Cato
63
self-contained, with just enough fervour to prevent religion from
becoming a mere philosophy! Addison held, also, to the need of
self-examination, but not of despondency or self-contempt. To
him, everything was under the direction of a Supreme Being”, who,
as the Stoics and Juvenal had long before taught, knew better than
man what was good for him. The duty of human beings was to
be reconciled to their lot, to forget the differences and humiliations
of this life in the expectation of eternity, and to seek a sober
happiness in a sense of doing right*. These lay sermons are
accompanied by a few verse paraphrases of the Psalms, rendered
with polished simplicity, and are varied by allegories, among which
The First Vision of Mirza is justly celebrated for its tranquil,
lofty style.
The Spectator's last number appeared on 6 December 1712.
Both writers had cultivated to a surprising degree the art of
the Aâneur and knew how to turn innumerable and generally
unnoticed episodes of city life into charming sketches. Such
things as a sensation in a coffeehouse, a fencing-match, an argu-
ment in a bookshop, an old beggar, or a man who applauds with a
stick in a theatre gallery, are among their best studies of character'.
But, apparently, both editors had written themselves out. Addison,
at the instigation of his friends, set to work on Cato, the first four
acts of which had been written before the beginning of The Tatler,
perhaps as early as 1703. With many misgivings, he allowed the
tragedy to be produced at Drury lane on 14 April 1713. It was
a time of great political excitement; and, when so prominent a
public man as Addison produced a drama on Cato's last stand for
liberty, against the usurpation of Caesar, both parties turned the
situation against their opponents and applauded furiously. In any
event, the play was bound to have been a success. It pictures the
last of the Roman republicans, a statuesque outline magnanimous
and unmoved, surrounded by a treachery which is baffled by the
loyalty of his sons and Juba, accepting death rather than dishonour
and, in his last moments, taking thought for those around him.
The plot is twofold. Side by side with the study in public virtue
and high politics, a drama of the tender passion occupies the stage.
When Cato's son Marcius dies gallantly fighting against the traitor
Syphax, his brother wins the hand of Lucia, for which they had
a
i Nos. 185, 201, 483,
· Nos. 120, 121, 387, 489, 494, 495, 531, 543.
3 Nos. 207, 237, 391, 441.
- Nos. 186, 213, 219, 381, 483.
5 See respectively non. 403 and 481, 436, 438, 376, 235.
9
## p. 64 (#88) ##############################################
64
Steele and Addison
both been honourable rivals, and Juba, the once rejected suitor of
Marcia, Cato's daughter, romantically rescues her from the clutches
of Sempronius in disguise and finds that she has loved him all the
time. Thus, in the consecrated form of a Roman tragedy, the public
enjoyed that grandiose, if unsubstantial, projection of character
which they admired in Milton, together with the sentimental
chivalry of a French romance. To modern taste, the diction is
hopelessly declamatory, and the plot full of absurdities. But the
ordinary reader of the eighteenth century would almost regard
such artificiality as inevitable in a play which has strictly observed
the unities, contains a 'reversal of intention' and a 'recognition”
and abounds in crisp and quotable epigrams.
Meanwhile, Steele plunged into politics and, after much
pamphleteering, was expelled from the House of Commons for
uttering seditious libels. In 1714, he returned to literature and
started several periodicals, especially The Guardian, to which
Addison contributed fifty-one papers; and, in 1722, he produced
his last complete comedy, The Conscious Lovers. Though the plot
is largely borrowed from Terence's Andria and, where original,
abounds in more glaring improbabilities than his earlier work, the
play is remarkable because it resumes in brief all Steele's best
ideas on life and character. We have the sketch of servants whose
natural freshness is being gradually tainted by the corrupt and
contagious air of lackeydom? ; we have satire on marriages of
convenience, duelling and the chicanery of the law; a glance at
the opposition between the hereditary gentry and the rising
commercial class ; while, in Bevil junior, Steele portrays his ideal
of a gentleman, chivalrous and honourable to women, considerate
to men, respectful to his father and self-controlled amid the riotous
pleasures of the capital.
Steele and Addison produced other works separately. But,
when they ceased to collaborate in The Spectator, which was
subsequently continued by one of their circle, both became
authors of secondary importance. Their task was already done.
The peculiar circumstances of their lives gave them an unrivalled
opportunity of observing the movement of their time. Thanks
to a certain conventionality of intellect, coupled with amazing
1 The repetétela and ávarrópions of Aristotle; see Politics, ed. Butcher, 8. H. , 3rd
ed. 1902.
2 Besides the scenes in which Tom and Phillis appear, see the episode of the footboy
newly arrived in London, act v, sc. 2.
8 See bibliography.
## p. 65 (#89) ##############################################
Steele, Addison and the Essay
65
cleverness, they became the heart of this movement, and made it
literature. In this sense, they collaborated with their age. As a
comparison between the two writers is almost inevitable, it may
be said, in conclusion, that Steele was the more original and
Addison the more effective. Steele conceived the periodical essay,
but never perfected it; he accidentally discovered the short story
and verged upon the domestic novel, without substantially in-
fluencing the development of either genre. This ineffectiveness
was partly due to his volatile nature and somewhat unstable life,
but it was also largely due to the presence of Addison. That
successful and self-contained mentor seems to have unconsciously
restrained Steele's initiative. But, while he curbed his companion's
talents, he displayed the utmost efficiency in the use of his own
and, without any deep fund of ideas or sympathy, raised Steele’s
conception of an essay to a degree of perfection never since
surpassed. The Londoners of queen Anne's reign chiefly valued
The Spectator for Addison's humorous papers and religious dis-
sertations.
* See The Spectator, no. 174.
442
## p. 52 (#76) ##############################################
52
Steele and Addison
coming to understand their own importance through mutual dis-
cussion, and Steele had already, in The Tatler, given glimpses of
their prudence or dignity and claimed that they had as much right
to the title of gentlemen as courtiers and scholars had! . Still, it
was something new in literature to show how a man trained in a
counting-house could be the intellectual equal of the Spectator
and his friends. Sir Andrew is not a wit; his conversation
abounds in homely phrases ; his mind is not stored with the
wisdom of books; yet he has made himself an original thinker,
with ideas not fettered by tradition, but derived from experience
in trade and expressed with the lucidity of conviction.
When Steele sat down to sketch this group, he probably intended
each to be little more than a figurehead, enlivened with a few
touches of individuality. Yet, so introspective was the age in
.
which he wrote, that, as if unconsciously, he has made them, in
this his first description, hardly less than studies of social environ-
ment and character. After this brilliant beginning, it is dis-
appointing to find that, though the characters frequently reappear,
they are afterwards employed only to maintain an argument or
give information about the world which each represents or,
again, in imitation of dramatic technique, merely as confidants
of Mr Spectator and foils to throw into relief his views and
peculiarities. They are interwoven with lines of thought which
run through the periodical only by way of embroidery; at the
most, they are used as living examples of some habit or quality
which defies ordinary description. We are not vouchsafed any
glimpse of their progress through the world or of the development
of their minds. Even the Coverly papers are not really an excep-
tion to this. Steele first showed what was the knight's true function
when he depicted Sir Roger as protesting against the over-civiliza-
tion of city life and declaring himself to be 'so whimsical in a
corrupt age as to act according to nature and reason? ' Henceforth,
the country baronet became the type of Arcadian simplicity. From
the days of Tudor jestbooks, the city man had laughed at the
backwardness of the provincial, and the sense of urban superiority
is not missing in the Coverly papers. It is most significant that
Addison, with an idealist's instinct, endowed Sir Roger with all the
guilelessness and piety which London society lacked, and lovingly
1. That tradesman who deals with me in a commodity which I do not understand
with uprightness, has much more right to that character (i. e. of a gentleman), than
the courtier who gives me false hopes, or the scholar who laughs at my ignorance. '
The Tatler, no. 207.
? The Spectator, no. 6.
3 Cf, ante, vol. III, chap. v.
>
## p. 53 (#77) ##############################################
The Coverly Group
53
a
returned again and again to the theme, as if he found in it a
refuge from the artificiality of his own life. In his enthusiasm for
the golden age, which he pictured among the villages and manors
of old England, Addison created a whole society round Sir Roger-
including Will Wimble, the cadet of an ancient family, too brainless
for a liberal profession, too proud to enter business, really of the
same class as the odious Mr Thomas Gules", but portrayed as gentle
and lovable, like all the other inhabitants of the smiling land.
And yet the Coverly papers are only a series of sketches. The
Spectator spends a month in the country, and Sir Roger makes
a few visits to town. Nothing else is recorded until the knight's
unexpected death, except smalltalk. It is true that his most
trifling utterance has an irresistible charm, because it contributes
towards the picture of ideal simplicity, godliness and nobleness
of heart Even his little weaknesses and touches of vanity,
recorded with exquisite bumour, are the defects of his qualities.
In truth, these essays are the first masterpiece of humanised
puritanism ; though, as regards the history of the novel, they do
not mark an advance on the story of Jenny Distaff,
In any case, Steele and Addison could hardly have created the
novel, after creating Mr Spectator as their ideal of editorship.
That taciturn and contemplative investigator has intellectual
curiosity, but little sympathy. He ranges over a field so incredibly
wide that he is forced to see life from a distance. Steele and
Addison do not always stand aloof. They had shown, in occasional
papers, that they understood the human heart and the pathos of
unrecorded destiny; but they never, for long, escape from their
own conception of sporadic and dispassionate observation. It was
no small effort of creativeness to unify in one clear-cut character
vague tendencies towards critical contemplation, though the
spectacle of a half-formed and half-humanised democracy was too
engrossing in its outlines to leave room for the intensive study of
a novelist. So, the personalities of the Spectator's club tend to
fade out of importance, and the journal confined its development
to the lines which Addison had already marked out. It covered
practically the same ground as The Tatler, ridiculing or inveighing
against old-fashioned ideals of gallantry and self-indulgences, urgi
that kindness is better than cleverness", that self-suppression is
the essence of good breeding5; penetrating the secrets of home life
i The Tatler, no. 256.
2 Cf. The Spectator, nos. 4, 270, 454.
: See, especially, ibid. nos. 158, 182, 261, 244, 318.
* Ibid. nog. 23, 151, 169, 172, 177, 348.
5 Ibid. nos. 24, 286, 422, 438.
4
## p. 54 (#78) ##############################################
54
Steele and Addison
and exposing the humiliations of citizens who affect aristocratic
immorality', the stupidity of husbands who tyrannise over their
wives? or fathers over their children, the folly of women who
marry for money' or think that the pleasures of society are
preferable to the duties of the household. As Steele took the
responsibility of seeing that 'copy' was forthcoming day by day,
a few of his papers are still written with that hurried diffuseneng
which has lost The Tatler many readers. In his best work, he
conforms to the studied simplicity and artistic concentration which
Addison had developed in The Tatler and was continuing to
cultivate with great success.
But, if The Spectator surpassed its predecessor in style, it
achieved an even greater advance in thought. The moralists of
the seventeenth century bad drawn their wisdom from books,
Bickerstaff had drawn his from experience; while Addison showed
how to draw from both sources. It is surprising how much quaint
and curious lore is introduced into the pages of The Spectator
merely to give point or freshness to an uninspiring theme', as
where the buyers of lottery tickets suggest the legend of Mahomet's
coffin suspended in mid-air by the force of two magnets', or the
curiosity of the town concerning the letter with which each essay
was signed is mocked by means of a dissertation on cabalism? It
is, however, when these writers continue Bickerstaff's more serious
duties of censorship that the full influence of literature becomes
most marked. The Tatler had criticised the follies and foibles of
society by the light of common sense ; The Spectator never fails
in its higher criterion—the mellow and dignified experience of
antiquity. Sometimes, the petulant efforts of modern writers are
compared with the noble simplicity of ancient literature. Some-
times, the pettiness or malice of the writers themselves is reproved
on the authority of Simonides? , Cicero 10, Epictetus", or by a de-
scription of the Augustan circle 12 In these respects, Addison
differed only in method and thoroughness from Jacobean essayists,
who quoted Roman or Italian authors whenever their reading
rendered them discontented with the worn-out traditions of their
own society. But Mr Spectator went far deeper than this. Not
only did he quote the judgments and counsels of the ancients on
1 The Spectator, nos. 33, 91, 41, 45, 89, 260, 288, 298, 299, 342.
2 No. 236.
8 No. 431.
* Nos. 149, 268, 311, 320,
6 No. 191,
7 No. 221.
6 Nos. 94, 191, 211, 221, 343, 439.
9 No. 209.
8 Nos. 223, 229, 249, 446.
10 No. 243.
il No. 355.
12 No. 253.
## p. 55 (#79) ##############################################
The Spectator and The Tatler compared 55
questions common to all moralists of all ages; but, when straying
from the beaten track, and counselling his contemporaries on their
peculiarities and eccentricities, he was still guided by a Roman
sense of self-respect and reasonableness. His exquisite portrait of
the valetudinarian who took his meals in a weighing chair is really
inspired by Martial's contempt for those who are more anxious to
live than to live rightly? . The sense of solemnity which comes
over Mr Spectator in Westminster abbey descends on him from
Lucretius, and Seneca would have approved of the diary of an
idle man and of that of a woman of fashion s.
Steele, as usual, followed his master's lead and introduced
copious quotations and allusions into his more serious papers.
But, at best, he was an indifferent scholar, and, except in the
Pbaramond papers", he never approached Addison's tact and
felicity. Much as he admired Mr Spectator's cultured and con-
templative mind, his own experience was leading him to work out
a philosophy of life on different lines. As, in The Tatler, he had
taken refuge in sentimentality, so now, in The Spectator, he still
fought against his own inborn unconventionality by advocating a
regularity of conduct which he could not practise. The puritans
had always disliked what was unusual or self-willed, and Steele
brought Cicero and the Stoics to their help, showing how the
recklessness of the spendthrift, the capriciousness of the man
who varies his greetings according to his mood, or even the
impertinence of fops who affect hurry or indolence, are really
offences against 'decency' and 'decorum ' Such observances,
which had formerly been the creed of the middle class, began to
have a universal binding force, now that they were backed by the
authority of culture. It is significant that some of his leading
ideas on education, on the evils of vanity in dress and on the
reading of romances? , had already been fully put forward by Ascham
in The Scholemaster. This strengthening of public opinion was
undoubtedly important in a half-formed society, but it was soon
to grow into the narrow British insistence on respectability, bitterly
satirised by Victorian writers. Even at this early stage, the ap-
pearance of a girl riding in man's clothes, after the French fashion,
suggests to Steele the reflection that eccentricity of dress is nothing
less than an offence against virtues. Sometimes, Steele breaks away
i No. 25.
2 No. 26.
3 Nos. 317, 323.
• Nos. 76, 84, 97, 480. Pharamond was borrowed from La Calprenedo's novel.
5 Nos. 222, 259, 284.
® Nos. 157, 168, 230.
7 See Steele's comedies.
8 No. 104.
## p. 56 (#80) ##############################################
56
Steele and Addison
from the social formulae which he helped to codify and gives free
play to his gift of seeing things in a natural, almost a primitive,
light. Returning to one of the favourite themes of The Tatler, he
has independence enough to show how there existed among traders
a whole world of romance and destiny undreamt of by the politer
classes? . His sympathies led him deeper into human nature. As
the amusements of polite society became more costly and artificial,
a new class of lackeys had grown up beneath the glittering surface,
very different from the servingmen of the Elizabethan drama.
Steele was one of the first to discover not only the humour but the
pathos of their lives. First, we have a glimpse of high life below
stairs, in which the frivolities of the rich are absurdly aped by
their servants; and, then, the tragedy of the attendant's life, who
earns his daily bread as the silent confederate of his master's
viciousness and the victim of his caprice? Steele, again, was one
of the first to champion women of the lower class. Since the
Middle Ages, female character had been one of the favourite
butts of popular satire, and, all through the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, savage invective against prostitution had been
common. To Steele, all women are distressed heroines. He
shows how shopgirls and barmaids, so far from being naturally
bad, are often, by the nature of their employment, forced to
submit to the loose talk and familiarity of men; and, when he
comes to describe the most abandoned, instead of inveighing
against harlotry, he reveals, for the first time, the 'white-slave
traffic' of his age, with all its fiendish stratagems for sapping the
virtue of its dupes and its secret patrons among high society:.
Many of these glimpses of life are given us in the form of letters,
and, as The Spectator always welcomed correspondence, and, on
two occasions, publicly asked for it", there is often danger of
taking genuine communications for a device of the editors. Steele,
in fact, posed as the 'courier of Love,' starting a kind of "agony
column,' in which lovers could communicate with each other, and
in at least one paper he printed some of his own love-letters. Some
of the epistles, however, are unmistakably inventions. It must be
remembered that, for more than a century, the epistle had become
a recognised literary type, and that The Spectator would naturally
i Nos. 174, 218, 248.
? Nos. 88, 96, 137.
3 Nos. 155, 182, 190, 266, 274, 437.
4 Nos. 428, 442.
5 C. Lillie (1725) published two vols, of letters which had been sent to The Tatler
and The Spectator but not printed.
6 No. 204.
? Ante, vol. vii, chap. XVI, pp. 390—1.
6
>
## p. 57 (#81) ##############################################
>
a
Letters in The Spectator 57
avail itself of the gentler art' to lend variety and grace to its papers.
But, while letter-writers, from Seneca to Loveday! , had used this
form of composition to convey ideas, Steele and his associates went
further. To them belongs the credit of discovering that the epistle
could become a picturesque type of character-sketch. Among
others, Thomas Hearne is said to have portrayed Arthur Charlett
as Abraham Froth, who describes the discussions of his futile club
with prolix self-satisfaction, and John Hughes composed the two
admirably characteristic letters on the education of a girl, one
from Célimène, who despairs of breaking in her charge to all the
artificialities of polite society and the other from a self-styled 'rough
man' who fears that 'the young girl is in a fair way to be spoilt. '
Steele is certainly the author of the footman's love-letter couched,
like The Yellowplush Papers of a later day, in language which
he can neither understand nor spell, with that inimitable touch of
nature, suggestive of The Conscious Lovers, 'Oh! dear Betty, must
the nightingales sing to those who marry for money and not to us
true lovers *? ' Besides revealing character, letters were admirably
adapted to disclose the secrets of private life. In the guise of a
correspondent, Steele found new scope for the gift of storytelling
which he had developed in The Tatler. Some of the communica-
tions contained glimpses into the comic side of domestic history-
such as the account of Anthony Freeman's device for escaping from
the over-affectionate attentions of his wife'; while others are
fragments torn from sordid reality, like the 'unhappy story in low
life' telling how the drunken weaver unwittingly sells a successful
lottery ticket which his wife had pinched herself to buy. In some
numbers, Steele goes further and narrates a sequence of events by
an interchange of letters. One of his noblest efforts in this style
is a correspondence by which a widow wins back her petulant and
wasteful son from the dissipations of London", and one of his wittiest
is the series of letters which release Cynthio from Flavia's in-
convenient affection
Thus, Steele was on the verge of inventing the epistolary novel;
but, as in The Tatler, so, now, he had neither the perseverance nor
the self-confidence necessary to create a literary type. He was
more inclined to follow his illustrious contemplative collaborator,
who, in the meantime, had created the serial treatise. Addison
1 Cf. , as to Robert Loveday, ante, vol. VII, p. 439.
? No. 43.
3 No. 66.
5 Nos. 212, 216.
6 No. 242.
8 No. 398.
4 No. 71.
7 No. 263.
## p. 58 (#82) ##############################################
58
Steele and Addison
began with a succession of rather fugitive but witty attacks on the
staging of the Italian opera', in which his own scholarly love of
simplicity, inspired by Terence and Horace, blended with the
inherited middle class dislike of all that was un-English. These
early papers are hardly more than outbursts of Addisonian irony,
such as he might have vented on any other of society's laughable
weaknesses. But material prosperity and the discussions of coffee-
houses had brought the middle class to a stage at which they felt
the need of culture and eagerly read anything on taste or style.
In this way, Addison found himself leading a reaction in literature,
just as Steele had led a reaction in manners. The drama was the
natural field for a critic nurtured at the university; so, Addison
began to discuss tragedy in a didactic spirit, not without sallies of
characteristic irony, insisting on what he calls the moral part
of the performance, showing how the technique of playwriting
contributes to dramatic effect, and how false art may be detected
by comparison with the great masters? As he warmed to his
work, he perceived that the coffeehouse public would never
take more than a passing interest in the stage.
There was a
danger that, in literary taste as in morality, the inexperienced, for
sheer lack of proper models, might accept as their standard of
poetry the precious and artificial style of versifying with which
fashionable society still amused itself. What the citizens of London
really needed was a literature as serious as themselves. Accord-
ingly, Addison gave up a whole week’s issues to the criticism of
conceits and mere verbal dexterity, condemning acrostics, lipograms,
rebuses, anagrams, chronograms, bouts rimés, puns and paragrams;
and, after dismissing all these kinds of false wit, he shows his
unacademic readers in what true wit consists. It is illustrative
of the middle class reaction in literature that he should base his
definition on the reasoning of so modern and independent a thinker
as Locke“, and should follow up Dryden's preface to The State of
Innocence by restricting the meaning of wit to the resemblance of
ideas . . . that give delight and surprise to the reader,' always sup-
posing the resemblance to be founded on truth and common sense.
Addison, indeed, was teaching his fellow citizens to expect far more
than wit or art from literature. His aim was to find the precepts
i Nos. 6, 13, 18, 29, 31.
» Nos. 39, 40, 42, 44, 51.
8 Nos. 58–61.
• Essay concerning the Human Understanding, ed. 1690, chap. XI, p. 68.
• No. 62. See also no, 63, which sums up his view of false wit in a delightful
allegory.
## p. 59 (#83) ##############################################
Addison on Paradise Lost
59
of morality' which should underlie every work of inspiration; and,
with this end in view, he endeavoured to explain the universal
charm of such artless compositions as Chevy Chace and The Chil-
dren in the Wood. Among the middle class, the love of medieval
ballads had survived the renascence and was probably not yet
dead; but Addison essayed a task beyond the learning of his age
when he attempted to subject folklore to the canons of criticism.
In his day, men could judge poetry only under the shadow of the
classics, and The Spectator is still pedantic enough to praise the
old minstrelsy because it finds therein a few parallels to Vergil
and Horacel.
Steele had loyally supplemented these more scholarly papers,
whenever Addison gave him an opening for a humorous contri-
bution and even succeeded in showing how Raphael's cartoons 3
are studies in the grandeur of human emotions. But his spontaneous
and erratic genius quite failed to keep pace with the dogmatism
of Addison's next and greatest critical effort. This was the series
of Saturday papers in which he criticises Paradise Lost by the
canons of Aristotle, Longinus and Le Bossu and, though finding
faults in Milton, judges him to be equal, if not superior, to Homer
or Vergil. From the eighteenth century point of view, he was right.
The middle classes who read books were not themselves subjected
to the great emotions of life, but were bent on methodically building
up their own culture. Hence, they could not appreciate the mystery,
the passion, the wildness or the pathos of ancient epic, and it is
significant that these qualities are not conspicuous in the great
translations of the period, which charmed by their rhetoric and
polish. The average eighteenth century reader had somewhat
the same point of view as the Italian critics of the renascence
and valued what had passed through the crucible of the intel-
lect and smelt of the lamp. When people at this stage of culture
consider a work of imagination, they are too prosaic to com-
prehend the romance of human activity. They want projected
shadows of life, which are vaster than reality and bolder in outline,
though less searching. Milton met these intellectual requirements
more fully than his forerunners, and Addison, in interpreting his
poet, seems to have followed Minturno's line of argument when he
championed the epic against the romanzi. Addison contended that
1 Nos. 70, 74, 85.
? Nos. 22, 36, 65.
3 No. 226. See no. 244 for an answer to this paper.
4 Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357,
363, 369.
## p. 60 (#84) ##############################################
60
Steele and Addison
1
1
6
>
Milton dealt with the destiny of the whole world, they but with that
of a single nation. His characters, though fewer in number, appear
more varied and less earth-bound than theirs. The conception of
sin and death contains 'a beautiful allegory'affecting all humanity.
Adam and Eve typify different beings before and after their fall.
Their conferences' are less mundane than the 'loves' of Dido and
Aeneas; Satan is more wily and more travelled than Ulysses? .
Besides, Paradise Lost was originally conceived as a tragedy, and,
though the dramatic atmosphere which pervades its final form is
rightly judged to be a blemish”, it is, for this reason, more easily
reducible to Aristotle's rules. After taking a bird's eye view of
the action, the actors, the sentiments and the languages, Addison
proceeds to consider each book separately. No greater service
could have been rendered to the unformed taste of his time than
to point out where Milton is to be admired, and Addison has the
wisdom to illustrate his criticisms so copiously that these papers
almost constitute a book of selected beauties. ' Much that he
praises is of permanent value, such as grandeur of style and
loftiness of conception; but, in much again, his literary judgment
is unconsciously biassed by a spirit of propaganda. In reality, The
Spectator was continuing, after nearly two generations, the same
reaction against restoration ideals which Milton had begun in his
old age. Thus, Paradise Lost had a hold on Addison's admiration
quite apart from its intrinsic merits. Milton's tumultuous and
over-burdened similes seemed perfect, in contrast with the artifices
of the little wits. Eve's purity and modesty exercised an
exaggerated charm in view of contemporary looseness', and it was
regarded as specially appropriate that her dream, inspired by Satan,
should be full of pride and conceits. Moreover, the age saw
6
that learning was its salvation and, in Paradise Lost, enjoyed the
quite artificial pleasures of research. Addison no longer holds
to Lionardi's, Fracastor's and Scaliger's? creed that all erudition
is an ornament to poetry; but he experiences a subtle delight in
tracing obscure parallels in inspiration comparing the sword of
Michael with the sword of Aeneas, or the golden compasses of the
Creator with Minerva's aegis, or the repentance of Adam and Eve
with the grief of Oedipus. And, finally, The Spectator was furthering
a
1 No. 297.
? L'Arte Poetica, 1564.
3 Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285.
4 No. 303.
5 Nos. 321, 345.
6 No. 327.
? See Lionardi, Dialogi della Inventione Poetica, 1554; Fracastor, Opera, 1555;
Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem, 5th ed. 1617. See Spingarn, J. E. , Literary Criticism
in the Renaissance, 1908.
## p. 61 (#85) ##############################################
Addison 'On the Pleasures of the Imagination' 61
6
a religious revival under the auspices of culture and, therefore,
found in Paradise Lost the same kind of superiority that Harington 1
had claimed for Orlando Furioso. Addison reconciles himself even
to the speeches of the Almighty, though they are not ‘so proper to
fill the mind with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of
devotion? '; while the morning and evening hymns, and the use
of scriptural phraseology throughout the poem, seemed like a touch
of inspiration higher than any of which a pagan could boast.
These Milton papers met with an enthusiastic reception. They
exercised an influence throughout the eighteenth century and only
became obsolete when Sainte-Beuve had taught Europe that the
critic should be less of a judge than a reconstructor-almost an
artist who creates a picture of the author's mind and of the
atmosphere in which he wrote. In any case, Addison never
attempted to enlarge the bounds of thought. His aim was to
gather up the best ideas of his time and put them within reach of
op
the ordinary reader. The same is true of his successive papers on
aesthetics, or, as he calls them, 'On the Pleasures of the Imagina-
tion. He wanted to show how the emotions can be raised and
purified by what men see and read. So, he discussed the intellectual
pleasure to be found, first, in landscapes and gardens, then, in
statues, pictures and architecture, and, then, in the mirrored views
of life which a descriptive writer can call up before the mind's eye.
This difficult and intricate subject involved an enquiry into the
psychology of the imagination and a scientific discrimination of
the functions and limits of the different arts. Granted his limita-
tions, Addison is more than equal to the task. He draws on his
own travels and experiences, he applies the wisdom of the ancients
and the more recent discoveries of Descartes, Locke and Berkeley*;
yet his exposition is lucid and complete within the compass of
eleven short essays. But, though he popularises admirably the
ideas of his time, he cannot investigate for himself. The thoughts
of his contemporaries lead him to the very brink of Lessing's
discovery concerning the relation of poetry to sculpture", but
he does not take a step further when his guides leave him.
Nevertheless, these papers must have awakened in many a new
1 An Apologie of Poetrie, Pt 2.
2 No. 315.
s Nos. 411–421, originally written as a single essay years before. See Some portions
of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr Joseph Addison, Glasgow, 1864.
* New Theory of Vision, 1709.
6 Nos. 416, 418; Addison was probably aware of Varchi's comparison of poetry with
painting in Lerzioni, lette nell' Accademia Fiorentina, 1590; see Spingarn, ibid.
Lessing's Laokoon, oder Über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie, appeared in 1766.
## p. 62 (#86) ##############################################
62
Steele and Addison
sense of aesthetic enjoyment? Among other things, he protests
against the artificiality of rococo gardens, and shows what a
mine of wonder and reflection had been opened up by natural
philosophy
Although Addison varied these dissertations with humorous and
satirical essays, the tone of The Spectator became more and more
serious as the numbers continued to appear. At the outset, he
had declared, in two papers", that his practice was to put his
thoughts together without premeditation; but, towards the close,
he admitted the need of methodical discourses. He had other
things to teach besides the appreciation of literature and art. In
the latter half of the seventeenth century, England had exchanged
a civilization of war for a civilization of peace and needed a religion
a
to match. Martial patriotism, of course, still ran high ; but the
typical man of culture was a peaceful Londoner, busy with his
family and his profession, and the only battles which he fought
were those with himself. As has been shown, the votaries of the
old régime continued the tradition of atheism. But the middle
classes were still devout and only needed to bring into their wor-
ship that cult of urbanity at which they aimed in their daily lives.
No one could be more susceptible to this tendency than a man
of Addison's character, and, when he set himself to lead a social
reform, it was inevitable that he should write on religion. He is no
more original on this theme than on others. Humanised Christianity
is to be found, in all its sweetness, in Jeremy Taylor and had already
proved itself in John Webster's great book of sufficient power to
end the witch persecution. But, though Addison was not the first
to proclaim the gospel of peace and goodwill, he was the first who
could bring it into the hearts and homes of London citizens. Like
the earlier puritans, he held that religion should govern every
thought and action, but not to the exclusion of the world. His
creed was one of acquiescence and inward piety. Zeal was
often a cloak for pride, self-interest or ill-nature; enthusiasm led
to bigotry and superstition. A Christian's devotion should be
2
1 E. g. Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination, 1764.
? Nos. 414, 420.
8 E. g. nos. 81 (party patches), 102 (the use of the fan), 205 (the woman of fashion in
church), 247 (women as talkers), 265 (the head dress), 275 (a beau's head), 281 (a
coquette's heart), 343 (the Pythagorean monkey), 361 (catcalls), 377 (bill of mortality
through love).
* Nos. 46, 124.
o No. 476.
6 The Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, 1677. See ante, vol. VII, chap. xv,
pp. 396—7.
## p. 63 (#87) ##############################################
Addison on Religion. Cato
63
self-contained, with just enough fervour to prevent religion from
becoming a mere philosophy! Addison held, also, to the need of
self-examination, but not of despondency or self-contempt. To
him, everything was under the direction of a Supreme Being”, who,
as the Stoics and Juvenal had long before taught, knew better than
man what was good for him. The duty of human beings was to
be reconciled to their lot, to forget the differences and humiliations
of this life in the expectation of eternity, and to seek a sober
happiness in a sense of doing right*. These lay sermons are
accompanied by a few verse paraphrases of the Psalms, rendered
with polished simplicity, and are varied by allegories, among which
The First Vision of Mirza is justly celebrated for its tranquil,
lofty style.
The Spectator's last number appeared on 6 December 1712.
Both writers had cultivated to a surprising degree the art of
the Aâneur and knew how to turn innumerable and generally
unnoticed episodes of city life into charming sketches. Such
things as a sensation in a coffeehouse, a fencing-match, an argu-
ment in a bookshop, an old beggar, or a man who applauds with a
stick in a theatre gallery, are among their best studies of character'.
But, apparently, both editors had written themselves out. Addison,
at the instigation of his friends, set to work on Cato, the first four
acts of which had been written before the beginning of The Tatler,
perhaps as early as 1703. With many misgivings, he allowed the
tragedy to be produced at Drury lane on 14 April 1713. It was
a time of great political excitement; and, when so prominent a
public man as Addison produced a drama on Cato's last stand for
liberty, against the usurpation of Caesar, both parties turned the
situation against their opponents and applauded furiously. In any
event, the play was bound to have been a success. It pictures the
last of the Roman republicans, a statuesque outline magnanimous
and unmoved, surrounded by a treachery which is baffled by the
loyalty of his sons and Juba, accepting death rather than dishonour
and, in his last moments, taking thought for those around him.
The plot is twofold. Side by side with the study in public virtue
and high politics, a drama of the tender passion occupies the stage.
When Cato's son Marcius dies gallantly fighting against the traitor
Syphax, his brother wins the hand of Lucia, for which they had
a
i Nos. 185, 201, 483,
· Nos. 120, 121, 387, 489, 494, 495, 531, 543.
3 Nos. 207, 237, 391, 441.
- Nos. 186, 213, 219, 381, 483.
5 See respectively non. 403 and 481, 436, 438, 376, 235.
9
## p. 64 (#88) ##############################################
64
Steele and Addison
both been honourable rivals, and Juba, the once rejected suitor of
Marcia, Cato's daughter, romantically rescues her from the clutches
of Sempronius in disguise and finds that she has loved him all the
time. Thus, in the consecrated form of a Roman tragedy, the public
enjoyed that grandiose, if unsubstantial, projection of character
which they admired in Milton, together with the sentimental
chivalry of a French romance. To modern taste, the diction is
hopelessly declamatory, and the plot full of absurdities. But the
ordinary reader of the eighteenth century would almost regard
such artificiality as inevitable in a play which has strictly observed
the unities, contains a 'reversal of intention' and a 'recognition”
and abounds in crisp and quotable epigrams.
Meanwhile, Steele plunged into politics and, after much
pamphleteering, was expelled from the House of Commons for
uttering seditious libels. In 1714, he returned to literature and
started several periodicals, especially The Guardian, to which
Addison contributed fifty-one papers; and, in 1722, he produced
his last complete comedy, The Conscious Lovers. Though the plot
is largely borrowed from Terence's Andria and, where original,
abounds in more glaring improbabilities than his earlier work, the
play is remarkable because it resumes in brief all Steele's best
ideas on life and character. We have the sketch of servants whose
natural freshness is being gradually tainted by the corrupt and
contagious air of lackeydom? ; we have satire on marriages of
convenience, duelling and the chicanery of the law; a glance at
the opposition between the hereditary gentry and the rising
commercial class ; while, in Bevil junior, Steele portrays his ideal
of a gentleman, chivalrous and honourable to women, considerate
to men, respectful to his father and self-controlled amid the riotous
pleasures of the capital.
Steele and Addison produced other works separately. But,
when they ceased to collaborate in The Spectator, which was
subsequently continued by one of their circle, both became
authors of secondary importance. Their task was already done.
The peculiar circumstances of their lives gave them an unrivalled
opportunity of observing the movement of their time. Thanks
to a certain conventionality of intellect, coupled with amazing
1 The repetétela and ávarrópions of Aristotle; see Politics, ed. Butcher, 8. H. , 3rd
ed. 1902.
2 Besides the scenes in which Tom and Phillis appear, see the episode of the footboy
newly arrived in London, act v, sc. 2.
8 See bibliography.
## p. 65 (#89) ##############################################
Steele, Addison and the Essay
65
cleverness, they became the heart of this movement, and made it
literature. In this sense, they collaborated with their age. As a
comparison between the two writers is almost inevitable, it may
be said, in conclusion, that Steele was the more original and
Addison the more effective. Steele conceived the periodical essay,
but never perfected it; he accidentally discovered the short story
and verged upon the domestic novel, without substantially in-
fluencing the development of either genre. This ineffectiveness
was partly due to his volatile nature and somewhat unstable life,
but it was also largely due to the presence of Addison. That
successful and self-contained mentor seems to have unconsciously
restrained Steele's initiative. But, while he curbed his companion's
talents, he displayed the utmost efficiency in the use of his own
and, without any deep fund of ideas or sympathy, raised Steele’s
conception of an essay to a degree of perfection never since
surpassed. The Londoners of queen Anne's reign chiefly valued
The Spectator for Addison's humorous papers and religious dis-
sertations.
