SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.

BY THE SPECTATOR.

missioner of Appeals, and, in 1706, UnderSecretary of State. His able pen was of great value to the ministry. In 1709, he accompanied the Marquis of Wharton to Ireland as Secretary.

To the Tatler, which was started by Steele in 1709, Addison soon became an important contributor. He also wrote five articles for The Whig Examiner, the first number of which appeared Sept. 14, 1710. The Tatler was discontinued Jan. 2, 1711, and on the first of the ensuing March the Spectator made its appearance. With this famous periodical, which is still read with delight, Addison's name is inseparably linked. His contributions are signed "C. L. I,” or “O,” the letters together forming the word "Clio." Addison also contributed freely to The Guardian, begun Mar. 12, 1713. His tragedy of Cato, which was acted for thirtyfive consecutive nights, appeared in 1713; and in the same year he published his political squib, "The Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff." His verses to Sir Godfrey Kneller, and some minor pieces, were printed in 1714. In 1716 Addison married the dowager Countess of Warwick, a union which by no means increased his happiness. He died June 17, 1719, aged 47 years. "Before he expired, he sent for his step-son, the Earl of Warwick, then in his 21st year, and while the young nobleman stood at his bedside to receive his commands, grasping his hand, he said he had called him that he might see with what peace a Christian could die. He left an only daughter by the Coun tess."

[JOSEPH ADDISON, the eldest son of Lancelot Addison, D.D., Dean of Lichfield, was born at Milston, near Ambros-Bury, Wiltshire, May 1, 1672. On finishing his preliminary studies at Amesbury and Salisbury, he became an inmate of the Charterhouse, where he made the acquaintance of Richard Steele, afterwards his associate in literary work and fame. At the age of fifteen he entered King's College, Oxford, where by his diligent study of the classics he is said to have "acquired an elegant Latin style before he arrived at that age in which lads usually begin to write good English." Some verses addressed by him at the age of twenty-two years, to Dryden, elicited the praise of the great poet himself. His growing reputation was advanced by a translation of a part of Virgil's Georgics; by a critical preface to Dryden's version of the Georgics; and by a versified criticism on some of the principal English poets, addressed to Sacheverell. In 1695 a poem addressed to King William, and dedicated to Lord Keeper Somers, secured for him a pension of £300 per annum. The publication about this time of his Latin poems, inscribed to Mr. Montague (afterwards Lord Halifax), Chancellor of the Exchequer, procured him another influential friend. The question of his life-career now pressed for a decision. His original intention had been to take holy orders, but, partly owing to the counsel of Lord Halifax, this purpose was abandoned. It is an undetermined question whether ambition, kindled by the brilliant political prospects opening before him, or a conscientious shrinking from a sacred office for whose proper exercise he felt disqualified, had most to do with this grave decision. In 1699, Addison visited Italy. The death of King William in 1702 brought a new set of statesmen into power, and the enthusiastic young traveller was obliged, by the loss of his pension, suddenly to return to Eng-ness." land and to consider how he might best Macaulay says: "As a moral satirist, he secure a livelihood. After the battle of [Addison] stands unrivalled. In wit, Bienheim, the Lord Treasurer Godolphin properly so called, Addison was not inferior inquired for a poet to celebrate the event. to Cowley or Butler. The still higher Lord Halifax named Addison, who being faculty of invention, Addison possessed in invited, accepted the task and discharged it still larger measure. But what shall so satisfactorily that he was appointed Com- we say of Addison's humor? We own

VOL. II.-W. H.

Dr. Johnson pays this lofty tribute to Addison: "He not only made the proper use of wit himself, but taught it to others, and from his time it has been generally subservient to the cause of reason and of truth. No greater felicity can genius attain than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught a succession of writers to bring elegance and gayety to the aid of goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having 'turned many to righteous.

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By common consent, the most delightful and original of all Addison's productions is that series of sketches in the Spectator, of which Sir Roger de Coverley is the central figure. "Sir Roger is an absolute creation; the gentle yet vivid imagination, the gay and cheerful spirit of humor, the keen, shrewd observation, and fine raillery of foibles which Addison has displayed in this felicitous characterization, render it a work of pure genius."

that it is in our opinion of a more delicious affairs of his day, being an ardent Whig. flavor than that of either Swift or Voltaire." He was a member of the House of Com Macaulay regards him, moreover, not only mons, but was expelled from that body on as the greatest of the English essayists, but account of his pamphlets, The Crisis and as the forerunner of the great English nov- The Englishman. When his party returned elists." "In refined and delicate humor," to power, after the death of Queen Anne, says Prof. C. D. Cleveland, "Addison has Steele obtained an appointment in the no superior, if he has any equal, in English king's household and was again elected to prose literature." Parliament. In 1717 he was named one of the Commissioners for the forfeited estates in Scotland. In 1722 his successful comedy of The Conscious Lovers was produced. His health began to decline about this time, and he spent the last three years of his life in retirement in Wales, where he died Sept. 21, 1729. Steele's literary fame rests chiefly on his essays. Of the contents of The Tatler, The Spectator and of The Guar dian, he contributed, respectively 188, 240, and 82 papers. It is Steele's misfortune to be almost invariably put in comparison with Addison ; and yet it has been truly remarked that if in taste and delicate humor he was Addison's inferior, he was fully his equal in invention and insight into human character and motives. Hazlitt says: "I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele, who was, I think, upon the whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The humorous descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches or fragments of a comedy; those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious paraphrases on the original text." "The great and appropriate praise of Steele," says Dr. Drake, "is to have been the first who, after the licentious age of Charles the Second, endeavored to introduce the Virtues on the stage." "Steele's Conscious Lovers," adds Hallam, "is the first comedy which can be called moral."

SIR RICHARD STEELE was born in Dublin in the year 1671. He was educated at the Charter-house school, and afterwards at Merton College, Oxford. Leaving college without taking a degree, he became an ensign in the horse guards. He rose to the rank of a captain, but his military life was gay and dissipated. In the midst of this profligate course he wrote The Christian Hero, a religious treatise composed partly with the view of checking his own irregularities, which it failed to do. His next literary productions were comedies: The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode, appeared in 1702; The Tender Husband, in 1703; and The Lying Lover, in 1704. About this time he married a rich West Indian lady who survived the union only a few months; and in 1706 he received the appointment of Gazetteer, with a salary of £300, and the post of gentleman usher to prince George, with a salary of £100. In 1707 he married a Welsh lady, Mary Scurlock, who had a fortune of £400 a year; but extravagant living soon involved the pair in financial difficulties which became chronic. In 1709 Steele began The Tatler, which was issued thrice a week, and in March, 1711 (two months after the discontinuance of The Tatler), he launched the Spectator, a daily journal, which had an extraordinary success, and whose brilliant contents now form a part of the English classics. In 1713 he started the Guardian. To each of these periodicals Addison was a leading contributor. The Lover, The Reader, and other similar periodical ventures were short-lived. Steele took an active part in the political

EUSTACE BUDGELL, a son of Gilbert Budgell, D. D., was born at St. Thomas, near Exeter, England, in 1685, and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. Although destined by his father for the bar, Budgell's taste for literature overruled that intention. On removing to London, he sought an intimacy with Addison, who was a first cousin of his mother, and Addison, being then Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, gave him a clerkship in his of fice. His talents made him other influential friends, but a captious and quarrelsome temper and an inordinate vanity marred alike the success and the happiness of his life. Budgell contributed several papers to The Tatler before he had attained his