and which would, if he had produced | He was a rake among scholars, and a nothing else, have now been almost scholar among rakes. His style was forgotten, on some excellent Latin easy and not incorrect; and, though verses, on some English verses which occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any extraordinary powers of mind. These works showed him to be a man of taste, sense, and learning. The time had come when he was to prove himself a man of genius, and to enrich our literature with compositions which will live as long as the English language.

In the spring of 1709 Steele formed a literary project, of which he was far indeed from foreseeing the consequences. Periodical papers had during many years been published in London. Most of these were political; but in some of them questions of morality, taste, and love casuistry had been discussed. The literary merit of these works was small indeed; and even their names are now known only to the curious.

his wit and humour were of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. His writings have been well compared to those light wines which, though deficient in body and flavour, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long, or carried too far.

Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was an imaginary person, almost as well known in that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift had assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, the maker of almanacks. Partridge had been fool enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still more diverting than the first. All the wits had combined to keep up the joke, and the town was long in convulsions of laughter. Steele determined to employ the name which this controversy had made popular; and, in 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to pub

about this scheme: but as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot be better described than in Steele's own words. "I fared," he said,

Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland, at the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than was in those times within the reach of an ordinary news-lish a paper called the Tatler. writer. This circumstance seems to Addison had not been consulted have suggested to him the scheme of publishing a periodical paper on a new plan. It was to appear on the days on which the post left London for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Satur-"like a distressed prince who calls in days. It was to contain the foreign a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was news, accounts of theatrical represen- undone by my auxiliary. When I had tations, and the literary gossip of Will's once called him in, I could not subsist and of the Grecian. It was also to con- without dependence on him." "The tain remarks on the fashionable topics paper," he says elsewhere, 66 was adof the day, compliments to beauties, vanced indeed. It was raised to a pasquinades on noted sharpers, and greater thing than I intended it." criticisms on popular preachers. The aim of Steele does not appear to have been at first higher than this. He was not ill qualified to conduct the work which he had planned. His public intelligence he drew from the best sources. He knew the town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had read much more than the dissipated men of that time were in the habit of reading.

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across St. George's Channel his first contributions to the Tatler, had no notion of the extent and variety of his own powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich with a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted only with the least precious part of his treasures, and had hitherto contented himself with producing sometimes copper and some

times lead, intermingled with a little | in others, and of drawing mirth from silver. All at once, and by mere acci- incidents which occur every day, and dent, he had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold.

The mere choice and arrangement of his words would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had the English language been written with such sweetness, grace, and facility. But this was the smallest part of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Walpole, or in the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner. As a moral satirist he stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tatlers and Spectators were equalled in their own kind, we should be inclined to guess that it must have been by the lost comedies of Menander.

from little peculiarities of temper and manner, such as may be found in every man? We feel the charm: we give ourselves up to it: but we strive in vain to analyse it.

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirists. The three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Which of the three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned. But each of them, within his own domain, was supreme.

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment is without disguise or restraint. He gambols; he grins; he shakes his sides; he points the finger; he turns up the nose; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared in society. All the company are convulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the author of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect, and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of a man

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley contains so many happy analogies as are crowded into the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; and we would undertake to collect from the Spectators as great a number of ingenious illustrations as can be found in Hudibras. The still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed in still larger measure. The numerous fictions, generally original, often wild and gro-reading the commination service. tesque, but always singularly graceful and happy, which are found in his essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet, a rank to which his metrical compositions give him no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all the shades of human character, he stands in the first class. And what he observed he had the art of communicating in two widely different ways. He could describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as Clarendon. But he could do something better. He could call human beings into existence, and make them exhibit themselves. If we wish to find anything more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go either to Shakspeare or to Cervantes.

But what shall we say of Addison's humour, of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws a double portion of severity into his countenance while laughing inwardly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding.

We own that the humour of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more delicious flavour than the humour of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at

least, is certain, that both Swift and has ever been associated by Addison Voltaire have been successfully mi- with any degrading idea. His humamicked, and that no man has yet been nity is without a parallel in literary able to mimic Addison. The letter of history. The highest proof of virtue the Abbé Coyer to Pansophe is Vol- is to possess boundless power without taire all over, and imposed, during a abusing it. No kind of power is more long time, on the Academicians of formidable than the power of making Paris. There are passages in Arbuth- men ridiculous; and that power Addinot's satirical works which we, at least, son possessed in boundless measure. cannot distinguish from Swift's best How grossly that power was abused writing. But of the many eminent by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. men who have made Addison their But of Addison it may be confidently model, though several have copied his affirmed that he has blackened no mere diction with happy effect, none man's character, nay, that it would be has been able to catch the tone of his difficult, if not impossible, to find in pleasantry. In the World, in the Con- all the volumes which he has left us a noisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lounger, single taunt which can be called unthere are numerous papers written in generous or unkind. Yet he had deobvious imitation of his Tatlers and tractors, whose malignity might have Spectators. Most of those papers have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge some merit; many are very lively and as that which men, not superior to him amusing; but there is not a single one in genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and which could be passed off as Addison's on Franc de Pompignan. He was a on a critic of the smallest perspicacity. politician; he was the best writer of But that which chiefly distinguishes his party; he lived in times of fierce Addison from Swift, from Voltaire, excitement, in times when persons of from almost all the other great masters high character and station stooped to of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, scurrility such as is now practised only the moral purity, which we find even by the basest of mankind. Yet no in his merriment. Severity, gradually provocation and no example could inhardening and darkening into misan- duce him to return railing for railing. thropy, characterizes the works of Of the service which his Essays renSwift. The nature of Voltaire was, dered to morality it is difficult to speak indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated too highly. It is true that, when the nothing. Neither in the masterpieces Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous of art nor in the purest examples of profaneness and licentiousness which virtue, neither in the Great First Cause followed the Restoration had passed nor in the awful enigma of the grave, away. Jeremy Collier had shamed could he see any thing but subjects for the theatres into something which, comdrollery. The more solemn and august pared with the excesses of Etherege the theme, the more monkey-like was and Wycherley, might be called dehis grimacing and chattering. The cency. Yet there still lingered in the mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephis- public mind a pernicious notion that tophiles; the mirth of Voltaire is the there was some connection between gemirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns nius and profligacy, between the dooddly imagined, a portion of the hap-mestic virtues and the sullen formality piness of Seraphim and just men made perfect be derived from an exquisite perception of the ludicrous, their mirth must surely be none other than the mirth of Addison; a mirth consistent with tender compassion for all that is frail, and with profound reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed religion,

of the Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He taught the nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and with humour richer than the humour of Vanbrugh. So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been di

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity which his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such was the esteem with which he was regarded that, while the most violent measures were taken for the purpose of forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, who was now in London, and who had already determined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these remarkable words: "The Tories carry it among the new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if he had a mind to be king he would hardly be refused."

them. When, at this distance of time, | again, and yet that his spirits were as we calmly review the conduct of the good as ever. discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a movement of indignation at the injustice with which they were treated. No body of men had ever administered the government with more energy, ability, and moderation; and their success had been proportioned to their wisdom. They had saved Holland and Germany. They had humbled France. They had, as it seemed, all but torn Spain from the House of Bourbon. They had made England the first power in Europe. At home they had united England and Scotland. They had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty of the subject. They retired, leaving their country at the height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as was never raised against the government which threw away thirteen colonies, or against the government which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of Walcheren.

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we are imperfectly informed, when his Secretaryship was taken from him. He had reason to believe that he should also be deprived of the small Irish office which he held by patent. He had just resigned his Fellowship. It seems probable that he had already ventured to raise his eyes to a great lady, and that, while his political friends were in power, and while his own fortunes were rising, he had been, in the phrase of the romances which were then fashionable, permitted to hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer, and Mr. Addison the chief Secretary, were, in her ladyship's opinion, two very different persons. All these calamities united, however, could not disturb the serene cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich in its own wealth. He told his friends, with smiling resignation, that they ought to admire his philosophy, that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his Fellowship, and his mistress, that he must think of turning tutor

The good will with which the Tories regarded Addison is the more honourable to him, because it had not been purchased by any concession on his part. During the general election he published a political Journal, entitled the Whig Examiner. Of that Journal it may be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of his strong political prejudices, pronounced it to be superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the other side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter to Stella, expressed his exultation at the death of so formidable an antagonist. "He might well rejoice," says Johnson, “at the death of that which he could not have killed." "On no occasion," he adds, genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the superiority of his powers more evidently appear."

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was the

The only use which Addison appears to have made of the favour with which he was regarded by the Tories was to save some of his friends from the general ruin of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation which made it his duty to take a decided part in politics. But the case of Steele and of Ambrose Phillipps was different. For Phillipps, Addison even condescended to solicit, with what success we have not ascertained. Steele held two places. He was Gazetteer, and he was also a Commissioner of Stamps. The Gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to retain his place in the