No More Learning

Unnion and Valentine, no. 5.
1


## p. 35 (#59) ##############################################


Character of Isaac Bickerstaff 35
questions and talks on current topics of city life such as changes
in slanga and the abuse of the title esquires.
These and similar performances were half-hearted, because
Steele was finding his true level in the alleged lucubrations of
Isaac Bickerstaff. He had borrowed this pseudonym from Swift's
famous pamphlet, as being the best known type of intellectual
detective and watchman. Soon, coffeehouses began to make
their influence felt, and, as he gradually marked out as his
province the intimate world of conduct and courtesy, he tended
more and more to invest his figurehead with a new personality.
The literature of coffeehouses must be as light and informal as
their discussions*; so, he puts his moral counsels into the mouth of
Bickerstaff, in order to preserve a conversational style and an air
of persuasive authority quite acceptable to men who looked up to a
self-constituted oracle in all their debates. As his readers were
interested in eccentricity, Bickerstaff becomes an aged recluse
living a lonely and mysterious life, surrounded, as Swift had sug-
gested, by the old-fashioned paraphernalia of astrology and
attended by his familiar Pacolet®, like the now discredited ma-
gicians of the previous century. And yet this atmosphere of
unreality gives effectiveness to Bickerstaff's character. His isola-
tion enables him to study his fellow creatures dispassionately, and
Pacolet, like the diable boiteux of Lesage, reveals to him the
inaccessible secrets of other people. As the numbers of The Tatler
increased, he developed into the first, and rather roughdrawn,
portrait of eighteenth century civilization. He has the reason-
ableness and insight of coffeehouses, a sympathy with common
things, out of which the domestic novel was to come, and a spirit of
independent thought, coupled with respect for order and religion,
such as the seventeenth century never knew.
In this thin disguise, Steele touched on all those questions of
breeding, good taste, courtesy and chivalry where the middle class
had discarded old aristocratic ideals, without having yet learnt to
trust entirely to their own. No wonder The Tatler became im-
mensely popular when its readers found their half-formed notions
· Nos. 6, 17, 43.
No. 12.
8 No. 19.
See no. 62, on the propriety of words and thoughts, in which it is maintained
that conversation 'is not to savour in the least of study' and that literary style . is to
adrit of something like the freedom of discourse. '
See The Character of a Coffee-house, 1673, The Spectator, no. 24.
• The name appears to have been taken from a character in the romance of Valentine
and Orson, whose horse was enchanted. Sir Philip Sidney alludes to the horse in An
Apologie for Poetrie (1581).
3-2


## p. 36 (#60) ##############################################

36
Steele and Addison
confirmed and proclaimed. One of their perplexities centred
round the ideal of what they called a gentleman. In aristocratic
circles, men still emulated the type set forth by Jacobean
essayists? and affected 'warmth of imagination, quick relish of
?
pleasure and the manner of becoming it? ' Such lubricity and
self-assertion would be intolerable where friendly intercourse was
the foundation of culture, and Steele points out that the first
quality of a gentleman is not brilliance but forbearance and the
art of accommodating another's susceptibilities without sacrificing
one's own. Many recognise this ideal, but have not the tact to
combine compliance with self-respect, and become 'pretty fellows3'
or even 'very pretty fellows*,' or, again, affect an unwarrantable
familiarity and merely succeed in becoming 'whisperers without
business and laughers without occasion. ' Society being now
mosaic of different units, all of them seeking some common ground
of intellectual fellowship, men of one interest, such as are many
scholars and soldiersº, are shown to be as superficial as those who
think that boisterous good humour will make up for a lack of
ideas? . But, again and again, Steele insists that a man's first duty
is to please his hearers, showing how often the 'wag' and the
wit’ of the old school still abuse the privileges of acquaintanceship
merely to gain a reputation for smartness and satire 8.
The puritan desire to see the seriousness of life in every word
and deed was now being humanised into a standard of good taste,
and, if Londoners refused to admire cleverness devoid of charity,
they were even more ready to be warned against coarser methods
of self-advertisement. Affectation in dress and manner, such as
the manipulation of the snuff-box or the wearing a cane on the
fifth button, is mercilessly ridiculedº; the man who uses ex-
pletives to make his conversation forcible is declared to be merely
empty-headed 10; the whole fraternity of fops is characterised as
'the order of the insipids 11'; but the severest strictures are passed
on the pretence of viciousness which was part of the dandies'
pose 12. Thus, the two nations pass before us. On the one hand,
the degenerate imitators of Jacobean cavaliers and restoration
a
a
6
(
i Ante, vol. IV, chap. XVI. · The Tatler, no. 21.
3 No. 21.
4 No. 24.
6 No. 38.
6 No. 61, nicknamed by Steele 'men of fire. '
7 No. 63.
8 Nos. 184, 219, 225, 244, 264.
• Nos. 27, 35, 96.
10 No. 137.
11 No. 166.
12 Nos. 77, 191 and 213 in which Tom Springly pretends to be preparing for an
assignation with a married woman at Rosamond's Pond, when he is really going to
evening prayers.


## p. 37 (#61) ##############################################


The Tatler on Women
37
courtiers, with the underworld of sharpers and gamesters; on the
other, the middle class coffeehouses, where citizens learnt to
become urbane without ceasing to be pious. Steele belonged
to both classes and traces the conflict between them. In many
of his papers, after gibbeting the false ideal, he presents the
true model, and it is not surprising that his own moral struggle,
which gave him this insight, is sometimes recorded. In one paper,
he pleads for the rake, claiming that he sins, repents and sins
again only because his natural passions are too strong for him? .
Later, in a fit of self-humiliation, he confesses that goodnature is
often laziness, and, towards the end of The Tatlers, he denounces
his own besetting sin, declaring that the drunkard cannot be either
a friend, a gentleman, a master, or a subject, and is especially
,
dastardly when he has a virtuous wife.
If, however, the middle classes had much to reform in the
manners of men, they had far more to criticise in the social position
of women. When Madame de Rambouillet brought together
in her salon the most cultured men and the most beautiful
women in France, she created a new standard of social refinement
for Europe. The management of intimate relations between the
two sexes became a proof of good breeding, and the civilisation of
any court could almost be measured by the influence which ladies
enjoyed in it. In the earlier Stewart times, the English aris-
tocracy readily adopted this cult, and all people of quality practised
the art of inspiring or suffering the passion of love. But, so soon
as this accomplishment became a fashion, it was perverted to most
ignoble uses. The coarser types of the restoration gained caste
by affecting the same delicacy of sentiment and purity of devotion,
while they really gratified their lusts. Immorality was invested
with a ritual of compliments, odes, assignations and addresses,
and, when the rising middle class came into touch with the beau
monde, many well-intentioned young people were too inexperienced
to detect the baseness which underlay this glitter and polish.
Steele had primarily designed The Tatler to be an organ of the
coffeehouses, and his first few papers on women are hardly any-
thing but what one might expect from the gossip of the smoking-
room". But, in the stage of social evolution thus reached, the follies
of men and women were so inextricable that Steele could not satirise
rakes and fops without penetrating into the lives of their victims
or deceivers. So far back as the protectorate, moralists had begun
1 No. 27.
* No. 241.
4 E. g. nos. 10, 20, 23.
2 No. 76.


## p. 38 (#62) ##############################################

38
Steele and Addison
to abandon the savage invective which Elizabethan and Jacobean
misogynists had affected, and filled pamphlets with more humane,
but none the less searching, ridicule of female frivolities! Steele
is continuing a puritan tradition as well as breaking new ground,
when he allows us to catch sight of the treachery and dishonour
hidden beneath these hypocritical observances; sometimes, dwelling
on the persecutions and outrages to which girls unwittingly exposed
themselves and, at other times, revealing the jealousies and intrigues
of more experienced matrons who looked on marriage, for all its
euphemisms, as a game of skill or a masque of vanity? Now and
then, he gives us glimpses of the amours of those who shrink
from matrimony or dwells upon the more horrible tedium and dis-
illusionment of marriages made without loveHad Steele lived in
an age of decadence, he would, like most satirists in such periods,
have confined himself to invective. But, if he helped to push one
social order into the grave, he also helped to bring another to the
light. As in his papers on men’s manners, so now, after exposing
vice, he holds up to admiration virtue, especially in his wellknown
portrait of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, whose passion is so high-
souled and graceful that 'to love her is a liberal education. '
Such portraits would have had but little effect if Steele had
not also pointed out the change which must inevitably befall
the moral training of youth. While showing that vice was often
concealed under a veil of refinement and liberality, he argued
that the young give way to its allurements from a false idea of
manliness or by way of revolt against parental tyranny. The old
puritan methods of education had to be softened and humanised.
He argued that children could be kept from extravagance and
sensuality only by a sense of self-respect and by awakening in
them tender memories of a father or mother whom they had
learnt to love. He then explains how the parent or guardian
must be their companion, and encourage their confidence if he is
to understand their characters, ending with the portrait of a
perfect father, Dr Lancelot Addison, the one man 'among all
my acquaintances, whom I have thought to live with his children
with equanimity and good graceº. '
1 Ante, vol. vni, chap. XVI, p. 387.
9 Nos. 33, 139, 198, 248 ; 22, 91, 98, 107, 200, 212, 245, 247, 248.
3 Nos. 49, 53, 149, 199.
* No. 49. Congreve had already described her under the name of Aspasia, no. 42.
Other models of conjugal virtue will be found in the translation of Pliny's letters to
bis wife, no. 149, and the story of Antiochus and Stratonice, no. 185.
• Nos. 9, 60, 61, 83, 185.
6 Nos. 30, 189, 207, 235.


## p. 39 (#63) ##############################################

6
The Short Story. ' Jenny Distaff 39
·
In his charming papers on childhood, as well as in his moral
essays on men and women, Steele writes like a man at one
with his audience. He does not feel the need to argue or con-
vince; it is enough to appeal to the sense of right and wrong.
As he said himself, when exposing the tyranny of husbands-,
touching upon the malady tenderly is half way to the cure; and
there are some faults which need only to be observed, to be
amended. ' His business was not so much to create sentiments as
to awaken them by a vivid description, and teach his readers to
recognise their own principles in some poignant situation. As
civilization became complex and peaceful, the affairs of daily life
assumed greater importance; men concerned themselves with
little things, and Steele found himself enabled to play on the
deeper springs of thought and emotion, by describing an everyday
episode. In this way, he discovered the modern short story,' that
is to say, a tale which suggests fundamental ideas or convictions?
Among the problems of social life which he thus illumined with
imagination or even with emotion, none lay nearer Steele's own
heart than questions of family life. To heighten and illustrate such
reflections, he invented a lady editor, Jenny Distaff, Bickerstaff's
half-sister, a typical middle class girl, who, from time to time,
gives her views on women's affairs? . But, as he returned again
and again to this congenial theme, Jenny's personality grew upon
him till she became the heroine of his domestic sketches. When
reminding his female readers that matrimony is not a flight of
romance, but a resolve to stake one's happiness on union with
a partial stranger, he makes Jenny's marriage with Tranquillus the
occasion for counsels based on this view, and gives a lively descrip-
tion of the wedding festivities. From time to time, the young couple
reappear to illustrate the experiences of married life. We have the
first inevitable passing cloud which is happily smoothed over and
forgotten'. Like sensible bourgeois, they learn to understand one
* No. 149.
* Compare, in this connection, the best tales of earlier times, from the story of
Rhampsinitus's Treasure Chamber (Herodotus, bk 11, chap. 121) to Jean de Bove's Des
Trois Larrons or no. 16 of A C. Mery Talys, with such productions as Balzac's Chef
deuvre inconnu, or Turgenev's The Jew. Even when old stories are retold with all
the art of a modern raconteur (e. g. Li Amitiez de Ami et Amile and Aucasrin et Nicolette,
by Pater, W. , in Renaissance Studies (last ed. ) 1910 and La Légende de St Julien
Hospitalier, by Flaubert, G. , in Trois Contes (last ed. ) 1908), the difference is still
apparent. The story of Philippus (Horace, Epist. 1, 7) resembles the modern type,
because the Romans of the empire had learned to see a whole background of philosophy
and sentiment behind the affairs of daily life.
3 Nos. 10, 83, 36, 37.
4 No. 79.
o No. 85.
8


## p. 40 (#64) ##############################################

40
Steele and Addison
another, and Steele gives a picture of the lady's character maturing
in wedlock. She and her husband dine with her half-brother, and
she enters the room with a decent and matronlike behaviour'
The household thrives, and the perils of prosperity are dwelt on.
Jenny calls on the astrologer, and, this time, he notices ‘in her
manner and air, something . . . a little below that of the women
of first breeding and quality but at the same time above the
simplicity and familiarity of her usual deportment? ' Bickerstaff
then discovers that his sister had fallen a victim to the love of
display and writes to warn her husband of the folly of aiming
above their station in life. Thus, besides discovering the short
story, Steele might well have invented the serial domestic novel,
if only the conditions of his work had permitted more continuity
of application. For, in his writing, we find, for the first time, the
temperament which is drawn to the pathos, and even the tragedy,
of family life. He gave up one paper to a picture of perfect
domestic happiness, describing it as 'a complication of all the
pleasures of life and a retreat from its inquietudes'; and, five
weeks later, he introduces us to the same family plunged in the
deepest woe as they gather round the death-bed of their mother.
In these and other fugitive papers of like nature, we may notice the
rise of that sentimentality which dominated the taste of the mid-
eighteenth century and survives so late as Thackeray's novels.
Steele, thanks to his double character, was one of the first to find
that he could combat his own wayward, bohemian nature by culti-
vating a tenderness for home affections. The next generation either
followed his example or discovered the same secret, fleeing from
the crudity of their own civilization by exaggerating the softer
side of life, till lachrymose sensibility became the mark of refine-
ment. He tells us himself how he was often driven to seek a
steadying force in solemn and melancholy thoughts, and admits
that he reserved certain times to revive the old places of grief
in our memory and ponder step by step on past life. ' Thus, out
of distant memories, Steele recalled many intimate and pathetic
scenes which a less effusive writer would have shielded from
public gaze. Had it occurred to him to weave such incidents as
the oft-quoted description of his father's death and of his
mother's passionate grief into the history of Jenny Distaff, the
domestic novel would, in a rudimentary form, have been invented.
1 No. 104.
4 No. 114.
2 No. 143.
5 No. 181.
3 No. 95.
6 Ibid.


## p. 41 (#65) ##############################################

Variety of Topics in The Tatler
41
As it was, he ended the story with a sequel in which an unex-
pected hamper of wine vanishes among boon companions.
Steele touched on many more topics. As was to be expected
from the mouthpiece of the coffeehouses and from the self-
appointed 'Censor of Great Britain,' he is full of contempt for
feudal prejudices and the arrogance of the rich'. He sided with
Hoadly, bishop of Winchester, against Blackall, bishop of Exeter,
on the doctrine of passive obedience? He worked up Roger
Grant's supposed healing of a blind boy into an enthusiastic
description not unlike a broadside. He criticised the lack of
pulpit eloquence". He composed, or published, some charming
letters on the pleasures of country life. Just as John Dunton
had constituted himself an oracle for all questioners in The
Athenian Mercury, so Steele, sometimes, filled whole numbers
with the correspondence he received or pretended to receive. In
his constant endeavour to 'extirpate. . . all such as are either pre-
judicial or insignificant to society”, his characterisation is often
onesided and becomes caricature. But, now and then, he pierced
beneath the superficiality almost inseparable from satire, and
hinted at the profound complexity of the civilized mind, showing,
in several papers, how the ordinary human character is inex-
tricably interwoven with the social fabric to which it belongs and
becomes as particoloured as the woof itself.
While society grows
more heterogeneous, conflicting principles exist side by side, and,
as men are bound, in some measure, to think according to their
environment, they misunderstand each other on the commonest
topics, fluctuate between opposite ideals and often end by dis-
trusting their own instincts and mistaking their own emotions.
These more complex and impressionable personalities are distin-
guished from simpler types: first, society nonentities, subordinate
characters of men such as Tim Dapper, who are like pegs in a
building, they make no figure in it but hold the structure
together, and, then, the vast workaday world, which stedfastly
Nos. 66, 144, 180, 181, 196. In the same spirit, he gave some striking sketches of
character in low life--the ungraciously humorous account of Guardeloop the French
tailor's wedding (no. 7), with its picture of 'low gallantry' being succeeded by
sergeant Hall's letter to sergeant Cabe (no. 87), full of cheerful and unaffected heroism,
and the escapades of the imperturbable Will Rosin (no. 105), 'a man of tranquillity
without reading Seneca. '
• Nos. 44, 50.
3 No. 55.
4 Nos. 66, 72.
5 Nos. 112, 169, 203.
$ See preceding chap. of this volume.
7 No. 186.
Nos. 25 (influenced by Molière's Le Mariage forcé), 57, 83, 138, 186, 206, 227.
* No. 85. It is worth noting that Addison used the same simile in Spec. no. 495.


## p. 42 (#66) ##############################################

42
Steele and Addison
performs the tasks of its rulers, and cannot find out that they are
doing nothing?
These reflections are accidental and were probably shared by
many another coffeehouse critic of men and manners. Steele had
neither the talent nor the opportunity to work them up into a
philosophy. The same lack of system impairs his interpretation of
literature. At a time when the most enlightened critics admired a
poet for his rhetoric, Steele discovered in Shakespeare and Milton
the sublime moralists of middle class life, quoting from their pages
to show where the everyday virtues of fidelity, pity and conjugal
love have found their purest and noblest expression? He does not,
however, seek to impress this view on his public. Beyond retelling
the Bible story of Joseph and his brethren? , to illustrate how, in
moments of despondency, he 'turns his thoughts to the adversities
of persons of higher consideration in virtue and merit to regain
tranquillity,' he never taught his readers how to look for moral and
spiritual guidance in literature. They are left to glean what
they can from chance utterances. Had it been otherwise, these
papers would have been the most remarkable critical production
of Steele's generation.
The Tatler continued to appear three times a week until
2 January 1711 and then ceased abruptly. The loss of his
gazetteership, though it deprived Steele of access to first-hand
news, can hardly have influenced him, since foreign intelligence in
The Tatler had long dwindled into an occasional and perfunctory
paragraph. Possibly, he was allowed to retain his commissioner-
ship of stamps under the new government only on the understanding
that a paper connected with the whig party should be discontinued.
He may really have feared that the secret of authorship was now
widely divulged, and that the association of his not unblemished name
with moral counsels might revive the ridicule which had greeted The
Christian Hero. But, besides this, he was suffering the discourage-
ment of a man who wades beyond his depth. The self-imposed
task of censor had led him deeper and deeper into the complex
questions of his day, while his journalistic methods allowed of only
fleeting and superficial glimpses at truth. Had he been fully
conscious of his inability, he would probably, with characteristic
candour, have freely confessed it. As it was, he sank under a
temporary attack of weariness, all the more irresistible because
i No. 203. ? Nos. 40, 47, 53, 68, 102, 104, 188, 237. 3 No. 234.
• See no. 271. Swift (Journal to Stella) says he grew cruel dull and dry. To my
knowledge, he had several good hints to go upon; but he was so lazy and weary of
the work, that he would not improve them. '


## p. 43 (#67) ##############################################


Addison's Early Training
43
another writer, who had been intermittently associated with him
in the paper, seemed to have acquired without effort that art of
expression which Steele himself lacked.
This collaborator was Addison? In reality, his achievement
was the fruit of a mental readjustment more laborious and funda-
mental than Steele's, though of a different character. Like the
creator of The Tatler, Addison had to put new wine into old
bottles. He was a man of scholarly habits and unusual ability,
but taciturn and lacking in initiative. When Steele plunged into
London life, Addison was studying at Magdalen, where he peace-
fully won academic distinction and stored his mind with the wit
and wisdom of antiquity. At this time, the universities were far
removed from the outer world, and, if Oxford made him a distin-
guished Latinist, it also made him a recluse more competent to
imitate Vergilian hexameters than to lead the thought of his
generation. He left the university in 1699; but four years' travel
among the chief centres of European culture did not draw his mind
out of the academic mould into which it had been cast. There
were still patrons to reward the man of scholarly attainments;
and Addison, who had to make his own fortunes, seems to
have been content to revive his university reputation among the
few, by some work of graceful and recondite learning. A boyish
interest in the writing on London signposts had been developed
by his academic training into a taste for numismatics, and, of all
the resources of Europe, nothing seems to have left so deep an
impression on his mind as collections of coins. As a result, one
of the first fruits of his travels, printed posthumously, was Dialogues
upon the usefulness of Ancient Medals, a treatise which shows an
intimate familiarity with Latin poets and singular ingenuity in
elucidating obscure passages by the light of legends and devices,
1. That paper was advanced indeed I for it was raised to a greater thing than I
intended it! For the elegance, parity and correctness which appeared in his writings
were not so much my purpose, as (in any intelligible manner as I could) to rally all
those singularities of human life through the different professions and characters in it,
which obstruct anything that was truly good and great. ' Steele, in preface to
The Drummer (1721).
A glance at Addison's early successes will show how enduringly academio were
the influences which shaped his mind. He was elected demy of Magdalen 1689 and
pablished vol. 7 of Musae Anglicanae in 1691; composed Dissertatio de Romanorum
poetis in 1692; delivered Oratio de nova philosophia in 1693; engaged in translating
Herodotus in 1696; was elected to a fellowship 1698; published vol. II of Musae
Anglicanae (containing his own Latin poems) in 1699.
3 The Tatler, no. 18.


## p. 44 (#68) ##############################################

44
Steele and Addison
but touches no other human interest except curiosity in
Roman dress. About the same time, he prepared for publication
a diary of travel, recording faithfully his impressions of the
customs, character and polity of the people, on the model of
Bacon's Essays! . Even these notes, which appeared in 1705 as
Remarks on Italy, show little enthusiasm, except where his
wanderings lead him directly on the track of ancient literature.
The year before, he made a name for himself throughout
London, and thus assured his future, by producing The Campaign.
The origin of this celebrated piece was political. The whigs had
just vindicated their policy by the victory of Blenheim, and
Godolphin was looking for a party poet who should give voice to
the wave of triumph and patriotism which was passing over the
nation. Halifax suggested the distinguished writer of Latin verse
who had already produced a few scholarly verse translations and
some complimentary addresses to patrons in the courtly style. To
most writers, a theme such as the battle of Blenheim would
naturally have suggested an elegy or a pindaric ode. But Addison,
with characteristic judgment, cast his effusion into the form of an
epic; for, in this poetic form, a store of poetic imagery and poetic
exaggeration presented itself ready-made, and the author of The
Campaign found that his task was to select and apply expressions
such as would shed heroic grandeur on the achievements of the
British arms.
In fact, he treated his subject as if it were an
academic exercise in rhetoric; and, although the versification is
often prosaic and the vigorous passages are balanced by lapses
into platitude, he acquitted himself with remarkable ingenuity
and tact. While paying extravagant tributes to ‘Anna's royal
cares' and to 'Marlborough's mighty soul,' he succeeded in
addressing the nation at large. He flattered their most cherished
boasts—their pride in British freedom, their hero-worship, their
love of fighting-in phrases consecrated by Homer, Vergil, Lucan,
Statius, Silius Italicus, while the exigencies of the heroic couplet
almost necessarily involved 'turns' and 'points' such as the polite
age admired. The pamphlet in verses took the town by storm, and
the author, who had been given a commissionership of appeals
as a retaining fee, was now rewarded with an undersecretaryship
of state.
From this time forth, Addison was one of the elect. In 1706,
-
6
1
1 Essay on Travel. ? E. g. the celebrated simile in 11. 272–92.
3 It was followed, in 1707, by an anonymous pamphlet in prose, The Present State
of the War.


## p. 45 (#69) ##############################################


Addison as a Contributor to The Tatler 45
he became undersecretary of state to Lord Sunderland ; in 1707,
he accompanied Lord Halifax to Hanover; in 1709, he became chief
secretary to the marquis of Wharton, lord lieutenant of Ireland,
and, besides these experiences in administration, he held a seat in
parliament from 1708 till his death. So, he was never again in
want, and at no time passed through the stormy and varied experi-
ences which bring sympathy with human nature and insight into
character. Even during the lean years, he had been too reticent and
polite to become a bohemian, and, in the years of plenty, it seemed
inevitable that he should settle down to the leisurely discharge of
his public functions and keep up his literary studies merely as a
polite and elegant pastime. And yet, it was during this period of
his life that Addison immeasurably enlarged his intellectual out-
look. He made the acquaintance of Pope and Swift, renewed his
school and college friendship with Steele and, like other men of
culture, frequented the coffeehouses. Gradually, he came under
the full influence of the great social movement, and, as his thoughts
centred round questions of morals and manners, he achieved the
feat of bringing his vast classical learning to shed light on these
modern problems. Instead of using ancient literature to illustrate
medals, he discovered how to make it illustrate the weaknesses and
peculiarities of his contemporaries. He learned to refer the per-
plexities and doubts of his own day to the wisdom and experience
of antiquity. His scholarly instincts, instead of drawing him into
the library, sharpened his natural gift of silent observation and
provided unlimited material for his sense of humour.
The Tatler gave him just the opportunity which he needed.
After discovering, by a remark on Vergill, that Steele was the
author of the paper, Addison became an occasional contributor,
and, despite the distractions of his official life, began to adapt his
talents to the new literary art. Like Steele, he had to feel his
way, and seems to have gradually realized what was in his mind,
by the process of writing. His first papera bids good-bye to
pedantry by declaring that
men of wit do so much employ their thoughts upon fine speculations, that
things useful to mankind are wholly neglected: and they are busy in making
emendations upon some enclitics in a Greek author, while obvious things,
that every man may have use for are wholly overlooked ;
i See The Tatler, no. 6, on Vergil's choice of words, in which it is pointed out that,
whereas Aeneas, at other times, is called Pius or Bonus, he is termed Dux Trojanus
when about to seduce Dido. Addison had suggested this idea to Steele at Charter-
house.
? The Tatler, no. 18.


## p. 46 (#70) ##############################################

46
Steele and Addison
and then, as if dissatisfied with the recondite studies of his
manhood, he reverts to his boyish interest in signposts and writes
an essay on the inconveniences arising from their misspellings.
But his own habits of thought had been formed by the great
teachers of antiquity, and, the more he watched Bickerstaff's
attempts at sugaring the didactic pill, the more their arts suggested
themselves to him. Steele did, indeed, carelessly try his hand at
allegory'; and Addison, acting on a hint from Swift, revived the
classical myth, taking Plato and Ovid for his chief models. These
visions and dreams point very commonplace morals, but they
astonish by their boldness of fancy and compel belief by their realism
of detail? Steele had drawn realistic pictures of Grobianism and
immorality; Addison, by nature, was averse to anything primitive,
but had learnt from Theophrastus, Terence and Horace to expect
proportion in the most trivial details of conduct. Accordingly, the
more he studied men, the more he cultivated an eye for the little
inconsistencies and perversions of his fellow creatures. This
acquired appreciation of the golden mean' blended with a
natural gift for genial caricature. Wherever his abnormally
keen sense for proportion had detected some eccentric or un-
reasonable penchant, he pictured a man completely under its
domination, gravely worked out the irrational tendency to its
logical conclusion and then left his reader to laugh at the result.
The wellworn theme of bucolic self-importance is developed into
the delightful portrait of Sir Harry Quickset3; the self-absorption
of the half-educated appears in the comical account of the dancing
master who made the house shake while he studied 'orcheso-
graphy''; women's passion for pets is illustrated by the admirable
story of the maidservant (really 'an arch baggage') sent to
consult the astrologer on the health of Cupid, her mistress's lap-
dog 5; pedants are defined as 'all men of deep learning without
common-sense,' and their absurdities are exposed in the vagaries
of Tom Folio and the entomologist's will? The Londoner's
passion for news is caricatured in the person, of the political
upholsterers.
Addison indulged in many other graceful flights of fancy, which
1 The Tatler, no. 48.
6
• Swift had suggested, in no. 67, that the most famous characters of all time might
be represented as seated at a banquet. Addison produced bis first allegorical master.
piece on this theme in collaboration with Steele in no. 81 and followed it up with
others, nos. 97, 100, 120, 123, 146, 147, 161.
3 No. 86.
* No. 88.
6 No. 121.
6 No. 158.
7 Nos. 216, 221. 8 Nos. 155, 160.
>


## p. 47 (#71) ##############################################


Addison's Style as an Essay-Writer 47
gave his satire- a charm of its own; but he showed little originality
of thought. And yet, though he was content to follow Bickerstaff
or, rather, the public opinion of coffeehouses, his few contri-
butions? are a turning point in the history of the essay. These
familiar topics became full of a new vitality under his pen. His
work, if anything, is less vigorous and less searching than Steele's;
but it has the other eloquence of form which turns human utter-
ance into literature. Until now, the essay had not completely
established itself as a literary type. In the hands of Bacon, it was
little more than a string of meditations, while the inventiveness of
popular writers had been lavished on character sketches, epigrams,
satires and revivals of medieval thought. Cowley, and, after him,
Temple, had, largely under the influence of Montaigne, given a
new turn to the essay, which had thus come to exercise an im-
portant effect upon the transformation of English prose®. Steele
and Addison entered into an inheritance which increased and
multiplied in their hands. With the first few numbers of The
Tatler, pre-restoration humour had been abandoned after a few
attempts, and Steele addressed himself to the intellect of the
middle class in the unliterary guise of a news-sheet, though his
ideas had long outgrown so restricted a compass. As has been
shown, his material was unmistakably leading him towards the
novel of domestic life. Addison probably retarded the transition,
by giving to an irresponsible and inadequate medium a complete-
ness and dignity which satisfied the intellectual and artistic needs
of his generation. For Addison not only endowed the essay with
the airs and graces of cultured writing-he discovered the prose
style which suits the genre. Steele had rightly conceived that The
Tatler must be written in a colloquial vein, and had dashed off
his
papers
with the freedom and effusiveness of his own conversa-
tion. Addison was too reserved ever to be a voluble talker; he
never became communicative except in a small circle of kindred
spirits. Thus, the riches of his mind had found expression only in
1 E. g. & court ‘for examining the pretensions of several who had applied to me
for canes, perspective glasses, snuff-boxes, orange-flower waters and the like orna-
ments of life,'nos. 103, 110, 116; talkers differentiated 48 musical instruments,
no. 153; inconstancy of life symbolised by a coach journey in which the occupants
anaccountably lose their tempers, no. 192; the ecclesiastical thermometer which
should register excess, even in the virtues of churchmanship, no. 220; frozen words,
no. 254 ; the court of honour, & pioturesque way of discussing points of etiquette
and good manners, nos. 250, 253, 256, 259, 262, 265.
• Forty-one papers contributed by Addison independently; thirty-four in conjunction
with Steele.
* Cf. ante, vol. vi, chap. XVI.
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## p. 48 (#72) ##############################################

48
Steele and Addison
polished and confidential intercourse, and when, following the
example of Steele, he began to talk on paper, his subtle and
unaffected personality found free play with his pen as in conversa-
tion. And so, he created a perfect style for detached literature
lucid, colloquial, full of individuality and yet chastened by that
careful choice of words which, like other scholars, he had already
cultivated in writing Latin verse.
Addison had completely mastered the art of essay writing
when Steele discontinued The Tatler. The fall of the whig
ministry in the previous year, deprived both writers of lucrative
positions. But the reasons for resuming the interrupted work
were not merely financial. The production of The Tatler had
brought with it experiences such as no other contemporary
writer had been privileged to enjoy. While ransacking society,
clubland and literature for 'copy,' Steele and Addison had dis-
covered, partly in themselves and partly in others, a moral
and intellectual tone purer and more humane than the spirit
which they had breathed into their own paper. Greatly as
that periodical had developed, it could not altogether escape from
the desultory and superficial character which it had assumed at
its origin. Yet a new journal offered boundless possibilities, and
the artist's instinct, as well as the moralist's zeal, played a part
in founding The Spectator.
Thus, the new enterprise was not a mere sequel to The Tatler-
a pennyworth of diversion containing something to suit all tastes.
The old paper, in its primary conception, had been too much like
a medley in which social scandal, city gossip and foreign news
emulously claimed the reader's attention. Its successor was to
be a series of literary pamphlets, concerned only with morals and
manners, each number being confined to a single theme and bearing
a distinct message from the world of religion, thought or humour.
Though its appeals were narrowed in scope, they were to be more
often repeated. The paper appeared every day and, by sheer
frequency, grew into the life of its readers like an intimate
counsellor or a constant friend. Above all, the periodical was to
have the persuasiveness of personality. As the editors could not
write in their own names, they profited by the example of Isaac
Bickerstaff and published their reflections under a fictitious cha-
racter. While, however, the astrologer of The Tatler had been
merely an ingenious embellishment, a suggestive curiosity intro-
ducing its readers to truths which they could have appreciated
without him, Mr Spectator both gave his name to the paper and


## p. 49 (#73) ##############################################

The Spirit of The Spectator 49
typified the spirit in which it was written. The first number, on
1 March 1711, was given up to a sketch of his mind and this por-
trayal marks an epoch in the history of English culture. Addison,
who drew the picture and is, indeed, the inspiring genius of the
whole periodical, here really describes his own mental attitude since
he left . academic bowers,' taking with him all his classical learn-
ing, to join the observers of modern life.