tressed by indigence, and compelled to become | to be exceeded only by Joshua Barnes's dedicathe tutor of a travelling squire, because his pen- tion of a Greek Anacreon to the Duke. sion was not remitted.

His reputation had been somewhat advanced by "The Tender Husband," a comedy which Steele dedicated to him, with a confession that he owed to him several of the most successful scenes. To this play Addison supplied a prologue.

When the Marquis of Wharton was appoint

At his return he published his Travels, with a dedication to Lord Somers. As his stay in foreign countries was short, his observations are such as might be supplied by a hasty view, and consist chiefly in comparisons of the present face of the country with the descriptions left us by the Roman poets, from whom he made pre-ed lord lieutenant of Ireland, Addison attended paratory collections, though he might have him as his secretary, and was made keeper of spared the trouble, had he known that such the records in Birmingham's Tower, with a sacollections had been made twice before by Italian lary of three hundred pounds a-year. The office was little more than nominal, and the salary was augmented for his accommodation.

authors.

The most amusing passage of his book is his account of the minute republic of San Marino; of many parts it is not a very severe censure to say, that they might have been written at home. His elegance of language, and variegation of prose and verse, however, gains upon the reader; and the book, though awhile neglected, became in time so much the favourite of the public, that before it was reprinted, it rose to five times its price.

When he returned to England (in 1702) with a meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind and a mind so cultivated gives reason to believe that little time was lost.

Interest and faction allow little to the operation of particular dispositions or private opinions. Two men of personal characters more opposite than those of Wharton and Addison could not easily be brought together. Wharton was impious, profligate, and shameless, without regard, or appearance of regard, to right and wrong:* whatever is contrary to this may be said of Addison: but as agents of a party they were connected, and how they adjusted their other sentiments we cannot know.

Addison must however not be too hastily condemned. It is not necessary to refuse benefits from a bad man, when the acceptance implies no approbation of his crimes; nor has the subordinate officer any obligation to examine the opinions or conduct of those under whom he acts, except that he may not be made the instrument of wickedness. It is reasonable to suppose that Addison counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant and blasting influence of the Lieutenant; and that at least by his intervention some good was done and some mis chief prevented.

When he was in office, he made a law to him self, as Swift has recorded, never to remit his regular fees in civility to his friends: "for," said he, "I may have a hundred friends; and if my fee be two guineas, I shall, by relinquishing my right, lose two hundred guineas, and no friend gain more than two: there is, therefore, no proportion between the good imparted and the evil suffered."

But he remained not long neglected or useless. The victory at Blenheim (1704) spread triumph and confidence over the nation; and Lord Godolphin, lamenting to Lord Halifax, that it had not been celebrated in a manner equal to the subject, desired him to propose it to some better poet. Halifax told him, that there was no encouragement for genius; that worthless men were unprofitably enriched with public money, without any care to find or employ those whose appearance might do honour to their country. To this Godolphin replied, that such abuses should in time be rectified; and that, if a man could be found capable of the task then proposed, he should not want an ample recompense, Halifax then named Addison, but required that the treasurer should apply to him in his own per- He was in Ireland when Steele, without any son. Godolphin sent the message by Mr. Boyle, communication of his design, began the publi afterwards Lord Carlton; and Addison, having cation of the "Tatler;" but he was not long undertaken the work, communicated it to the concealed; by inserting a remark on Virgil, treasurer, while it was yet advanced no farther which Addison had given him, he discovered than the simile of the angel, and was imme-himself. It is indeed not easy for any man to diately rewarded by succeeding Mr. Locke in the place of commissioner of appeals.

In the following year he was at Hanover with Lord Halifax; and the year after he was made under secretary of state, first to Sir Charles Hedges, and in a few months more to the Earl of Sunderland.

write upon literature or common life, so as not to make himself known to those with whom he familiarly converses, and who are acquainted with his track of study, his favourite topic, his peculiar notions, and his habitual phrases.

If Steele desired to write in secret, he was not lucky; a single month detected him. His About this time the prevalent taste for Italian first Tatler was published April 22, (1709,) and operas inclined him to try what would be the Addison's contribution appeared May 26. Tickeffect of a musical drama in our own language. ell observes, that the "Tatler" began and was He therefore wrote the opera of "Rosamond," concluded without his concurrence. This is which, when exhibited on the stage, was either doubtless literally true; but the work did not hissed or neglected; but, trusting that the read-suffer much by his unconsciousness of its comers would do him more justice, he published it,mencement or his absence at its cessation; for with an inscription to the Dutchess of Marlbo- he continued his assistance to December 23, rough; a woman without skill, or pretensions to skill, in poetry or literature. His dedication

Dr. Johnson appears to have blended the character

was therefore an instance of servile absurdity, of the Marquis with that of his son the Duke.-N

134

daily conversation, and free it from thorns and
prickles, which tease the passer, though they do
not wound him.

For this purpose nothing is so proper as the

and the paper stopped on January 2. He did not distinguish his pieces by any signature, and I know not whether his name was not kept secret till the papers were collected into volumes. To the "Tatler," in about two months, suc-frequent publication of short papers, which we ceeded the "Spectator;" a series of essays of read not as study but amusement. If the subthe same kind, but written with less levity, upon ject be slight, the treatise is short. The busy a more regular plan, and published daily. Such may find time, and the idle may find patience. This mode of conveying cheap and easy an undertaking showed the writers not to distrust their own copiousness of materials, or knowledge, began among us in the civil war,t facility of composition; and their performance when it was much the interest of either party to justified their confidence. They found, how-raise and fix the prejudices of the people. At ever, in their progress, many auxiliaries. To attempt a single paper was no terrifying labour; many pieces were offered, and many were received.

Addison had enough of the zeal of party, but Steele had at that time almost nothing else. The "Spectator," in one of the first papers, showed the political tenets of its authors; but a resolution was soon taken, of courting general approbation by general topics and subjects on which faction had produced no diversity of sentiments, such as literature, morality, and familiar life. To this practice they adhered with few deviations. The ardour of Steele once broke out in praise of Marlborough; and when Dr. Fleetwood prefixed to some sermons a preface overflowing with whiggish opinions, that it might be read by the Queen,* it was reprinted in the "Spectator."

To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione in his "Courtier;" two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their precepts Their usefulness to now are no longer wanted. the age in which they were written is sufficiently attested by the translations which almost all the nations of Europe were in haste to obtain.

This species of instruction was continued, and perhaps advanced, by the French; among whom La Bruyere's "Manners of the Age," though, as Boileau remarked, it is written without connexion, certainly deserves praise for liveliness of description and justness of observation.

that time appeared "Mercurius Aulicus," "Mercurius Rusticus," and "Mercurius Civicus." It is said that when any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist, who by this stratagem conveyed his notions to those who would not have received him had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of those unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure to treasure up occasional compositions; and so much were they neglected, that a complete collection is no where to be found.

These Mercuries were succeeded by L'Estrange's "Observator;" and that by Lesley's "Rehearsal," and perhaps by others; but hitherto nothing had been conveyed to the people in this commodious manner but controversy relating to the church or state; of which they taught many to talk, whom they could not teach to judge.

It has been suggested, that the Royal Society was instituted soon after the Restoration, to divert the attention of the people from public discontent. The "Tatler" and "Spectator" had the same tendency; they were published at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each with plausible declarations, and each perhaps without any distinct termination of its views, were agitating the nation: to minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the frolick some and the gay to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are initiated in the elegancies of knowledge.

The "Tatler" and "Spectator" adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like La Bruyere, exhibited the Characters and ManBefore the "Tatler" and "Spectator," if the ners of the Age. The personages introduced in writers for the theatre are excepted, England these papers were not merely ideal; they were had no masters of common life. No writers had then known, and conspicuous in various stayet undertaken to reform either the savageness tions. Of the "Tatler" this is told by Steele in of neglect or the impertinence of civility; to his last paper; and of the "Spectator" by Budshow when to speak or to be silent; how to re-gell in the preface to "Theophrastus," a book fuse or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politics; but an Arbiter Elegantiarum, a judge of propriety, was yet wanting, who should survey the track of

This particular number of the "Spectator," it is said, was not published till twelve o'clock, that it might come out precisely at the hour of her Majesty's breakfast, and that no time might be left for deliberating about serving it up with that meal, as usual. See the edition of the "Tatler," with notes, vol. vi. No. 271, note p. 452, &c.-N.

which Addison has recommended, and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did not write it. Of those portraits, which may be sup posed to be sometimes embellished and some

+ Newspapers appear to have had an earlier date than here assigned. Cleiveland, in his character of a London diurnal, says, "The original sinner of this kind was Dutch; Gallo-Belgicus, the Protoplas, and the modern Mercuries but Hans en Kelders." Some intelligence given by Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus is mentioned in Carew's

Survey of Cornwall," p. 126, originally published in 1602. These vehicles of information are often mentioned in the plays of James and Charles the First.-R.

times aggravated, the originals are now partly known and partly forgotten.

But to say that they united the plans of two or three eminent writers is to give them but a small part of their due praise; they superadded literature and criticism, and sometimes towered far above their predecessors, and taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of language, the most important duties and sublime truths.

All these topics were happily varied with elegant fictions and refined allegories, and illuminated with different changes of style and felicities of invention.

whom a merchant has little acquaintance, and whom he commonly considers with little kindness.

Of essays thus elegant, thus instructive, and thus commodiously distributed, it is natural to suppose the approbation general, and the sale numerous. I once heard it observed, that the sale may be calculated by the product of the tax, related in the last number to produce more than twenty pounds a week, and therefore stated at one and twenty pounds, or three pounds ten shillings a day: this, at a halfpenny a paper, will give sixteen hundred and eightyt for the daily number.

It is recorded by Budgell, that, of the charac- This sale is not great; yet this, if Swift be ters feigned or exhibited in the "Spectator," the credited, was likely to grow less; for he defavourite of Addison was Sir Roger de Cover-clares that the "Spectator," whom he ridicules ley, of whom he had formed a very delicate and for his endless mention of the fair sex, had bediscriminate idea,* which he would not suffer to fore his recess wearied his readers. be violated; and, therefore, when Steele had shown him innocently picking up a girl in the Temple and taking her to a tavern, he drew upon himself so much of his friend's indignation, that he was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing Sir Roger for the time to

come.

The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, para mi sola nacio Don Quixote, y yo para el, made Addison declare, with undue vehemence of expression, that he would kill Sir Roger; being of opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand would do him wrong.

It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original delineation. He describes his Knight as having his imagination somewhat warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use. The irregularities in Sir Roger's conduct seem not so much the effects of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the perpetual pressure of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence which solitary grandeur naturally generates.

The next year (1713) in which "Cato" came upon the stage, was the grand climacteric of Addison's reputation. Upon the death of Cato, he had, as is said, planned a tragedy in the time of his travels, and had for several years the first four acts finished, which were shown to such as were likely to spread their admiration. They were seen by Pope, and by Cibber, who relates that Steele, when he took back the copy, told him, in the despicable cant of literary modesty, that, whatever spirit his friend had shown in the composition, he doubted whether he would have courage sufficient to expose it to the censure of a British audience.

The time however was now come, when those who affected to think liberty in danger, affected likewise to think that a stage play might preserve it; and Addison was importuned, in the name of the tutelary deities of Britain, to show his courage and his zeal by finishing his design.

To resume his work he seemed perversely and unaccountably unwilling; and by a request which perhaps he wished to be denied, desired Mr. Hughes to add a fifth act. Hughes sup The variable weather of the mind, the fiying posed him serious; and, undertaking the supvapours of incipient madness, which from time plement, brought in a few days some scenes for to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it re-his examination: but he had in the mean time quires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.

To Sir Roger, who, as a country gentleman, appears to be a tory, or, as it is gently expressed, an adherent to the landed interest, is opposed Sir Andrew Freeport, a new man, a wealthy merchant, zealous for the moneyed interest, and a whig. Of this contrariety of opinions, it is probable more consequences were at first intended than could be produced, when the resolution was taken to exclude party from the paper. Sir Andrew does but little, and that ttle seems not to have pleased Addison, who, when he dismissed him from the club, changed his opinions. Steele had made him, in the true spirit of unfeeling commerce, declare that he "would not build a hospital for idle people;" but at last he buys land, settles in the country, and builds, not a manufactory, but a hospital for twelve old husbandmen; for men, with

gone to work himself, and produced half an act, which he afterwards completed, but with brevity irregularly disproportionate to the foregoing parts; like a task, performed with reluctance, and hurried to its conclusion.

It may yet be doubted whether "Cato" was made public by any change of the Author's purpose; for Dennis charged him with raising prejudices in his own favour, by false positions of preparatory criticism, and with poisoning the town by contradicting in the "Spectator" the established rule of poetical justice, because his own hero, with all his virtues, was to fall before a tyrant. The fact is certain; the motives we must guess.

Addison was, I believe, sufficiently disposed to bar all avenues against all danger. When Pope brought him the prologue, which is properly accommodated to the play, there were these words: "Britons, arise! be worth like this approved," meaning nothing more than Britons, erect and exalt yourselves to the ap

The errors in this account are explained at considerable length in the preface to the "Spectator" prefixed to That this calculation is not exaggerated, that it is the edition in the British Essayists." The original de- even much below the real number, see the notes on the lineation of Sir Roger undoubtedly belongs to Steele.-C." Tatler," ed. 1786, vol. vi. p. 452.-N.

air of renown, but that with great eagerness he laid hold on his proportion of the profits.

Many of these papers were written with powers truly comic, with nice discrimination of characters, and accurate observation of natural or accidental deviation from propriety; but it was not supposed that he had tried a comedy on the stage, till Steele after his death declared him the author of the "Drummer." This however Steele did not know to be true by any direct testimony; for, when Addison put the play into his hands, he only told him, it was the work of a "Gentleman in the company;" and, when it was received, as is confessed, with cold disapprobation, he was probably less willing to claim it. Tickell omitted it in his collection; but the testimony of Steele, and the total silence of any other claimant, has determined the public to assign it to Addison, and it is now printed with his other poetry. Steele carried the "Drummer" to the play-house, and afterwards to the press, and sold the copy for fifty guineas.

To the opinion of Steele may be added the proof supplied by the play itself, of which the characters are such as Addison would have delineated, and the tendency such as Addison would have promoted. That it should have been ill received would raise wonder, did we not daily see the capricious distribution of theatrical praise.

part, and the other contributors are by no means unworthy of appearing as his associates. The time that had passed during the suspension of the "Spectator," though it had not lessened his power of humour, seems to have increased his disposition to seriousness: the proportion of his religious to his comic papers is greater than in the former series.

The "Spectator," from its recommencement, was published only three times a week; and no discriminative remarks were added to the pa pers. To Addison, Tickell has ascribed twenty three.f

The "Spectator," had many contributors; and Steele, whose negligence kept him always in a hurry, when it was his turn to furnish paper, called loudly for the letters, of which Addison, whose materials were more, made lit tle use; having recourse to sketches and hints, the product of his former studies, which he now reviewed and completed: among these are named by Tickell the Essays on Wit, those on the Pleasures of the Imagination, and the Criticism on Milton.

When the House of Hanover took possession of the throne, it was reasonable to expect that the zeal of Addison would be suitably rewarded. Before the arrival of King George, he was made secretary to the regency, and was required by his office to send notice to Hanover, that the He was not all this time an indifferent spec- Queen was dead, and that the throne was vatator of public affairs. He wrote, as different cant. To do this would not have been difficult exigencies required, (in 1707,) "The present to any man but Addison, who was so overState of the War, and the necessity of an Aug-whelmed with the greatness of the event, and mentation;" which, however judicious, being so distracted by choice of expression, that the written on temporary topics, and exhibiting no Lords, who could not wait for the niceties of peculiar powers, laid hold on no attention, and criticism, called Mr. Southwell, a clerk in the has naturally sunk by its own weight into ne- House, and ordered him to despatch the mesglect. This cannot be said of the few papers en- sage. Southwell readily told what was neces titled "The Whig Examiner," in which is sary in the common style of business, and va employed all the force of gay malevolence and lued himself upon having done what was too humorous satire. Of this paper, which just hard for Addison. appeared and expired, Swift remarks, with ex- He was better qualified for the "Freeholder," ultation, that "it is now down among the dead a paper which he published twice a week, from men.” He might well rejoice at the death of Dec. 23, 1715, to the middle of the next year. that which he could not have killed. Every This was undertaken in defence of the estareader of every party, since personal malice is blished government, sometimes with argument past and the papers which once inflamed the na-and sometimes with mirth. In argument he had tion are read only as effusions of wit, must wish for more of the Whig Examiners; for on no occasion was the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and on none did the superiority of his powers more evidently appear. His "Trial of Count Tariff," written to expose the treaty of commerce with France, lived no longer than the question that produced it.

Not long afterwards, an attempt was made to revive the "Spectator," at a time indeed by no means favourable to literature, when the succession of a new family to the throne filled the nation with anxiety, discord, and confusion: and either the turbulence of the times or the satiety of the readers put a stop to the publication, after an experiment of eighty numbers, which were afterwards collected into an eighth volume, perhaps more valuable than any of those that went before it. Addison produced more than a fourth

From a tory song in vogue at the time, the burden whereof is

And he that will this health deny,

Down among the dead men let him lie.-H.

many equals; but his humour was singular and matchless. Bigotry itself must be delighted with the tory fox-hunter.

There are however some strokes less elegant and less decent; such as the Pretender's Journal, in which one topic of ridicule is his poverty. This mode of abuse had been employed by Milton against King Charles II.