But it is not for his reputation as the great author of "Cato" and the Campaign," or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless a literary Jeffreys-in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried: only peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libcrtinism in tuckers and hoops;

*

or

Whose music is sweeter than thine.”

* One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, "The Spectator" tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER:

"MR. SPECTATOR,

a nuisance in the abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerously from the side-box: or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head: or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought before him is amusing, and he dismisses each with the pleasantest penalties and the most charming words of admonition.

Addison wrote his papers as gayly as if he was going out for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler first began

the same time that they shorten the superstructure.

"The women give out, in defence of airy and very proper for the season; but these wide bottoms, that they are very this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them?

"I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at à distance. It is most certain that a woman's honor cannot be better intrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

"You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, "Among these various conjectures, and rise every day more and more; in there are men of superstitious tempers short, sir, since our women knew them- who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a selves to be out of the eye of the SPECTA- kind of prodigy. Some will have it that TOR, they will be kept within no compass. it portends the downfall of the French You praised them a little too soon, for king, and observe, that the farthingale the modesty of their head-dresses; for as appeared in England a little before the the humor of a sick person is often driven | ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others out of one limb into another, their super-are of opinion that it foretells battle and fluity of ornaments, instead of being en-bloodshed, and believe it of the same tirely banished, seems only fallen from prognostication as the tail of a blazing their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at

star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world_rather than going out of it," &c., &c. - Spectator, No. 127.

the toy-shop higgling for gloves and
lace; or at the auction, battling to-
gether over a blue porcelain dragon,
or a darling monster in Japan; or at
church, eying the width of their
rival's hoops, or the breadth of their
laces, as they sweep down the aisles.
Or he looks out of his window at the
"Garter" in St. James's Street, at
Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the
drawing-room with her coronet and
six footmen; and remembering that
her father was a Turkey merchant in
the city, calculates how many sponges
went to purchase her ear-ring, and
how many drums of figs to build her
coach-box; or he demurely watches
behind a tree in Spring Garden as
Saccharissa (whom he knows under
her mask) trips out of her chair to
the alley where Sir Fopling is wait-
ing. He sees only the public life of
women. Addison was one of the
most resolute club-men of his day.
He passed many hours daily in those
haunts. Besides drinking — which
alas! is past praying for - you
must know it, he owned, too, ladies,
that he indulged in that odious prac-
tice of smoking. Poor fellow!
was a man's man, remember. The
only woman he did know, he didn't
write about. I take it there would
not have been much humor in that
story.

his prattle Addison, then in Ireland, | most charming archness. He sees caught at his friend's notion, poured them in public, in the theatre, or the in paper after paper, and contributed assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed an almost endless fecundity. He was six and thirty years old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain, manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as yet; a few Latin poems - graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great classical exercise; and the" Campaign," a large prize poem that won an enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of "The Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking that he couldn't go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life; whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their pretty humors, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them with the

*

*"Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own." - POPE'S Letter s.

He

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the "Grecian," or the "Devil to pace 'Change and the Mall * to mingle in that great club

*"I have observed that a reader sel

dom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings: and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling

of the world-sitting alone in itness for every single man and woman somehow: having good-will and kind-in it—having need of some habit and

•

digesting, and correcting, will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history. There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two nonths old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the

bella from it.

custom binding him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damu him with faint praise); and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humors of all of us - laughs the kindliest laugh points our neighbor's foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers our foibles to our neighbor. What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming little braincracks? * If the good knight did not call out to the people sleeping in church, and say "Amen" with such a delightful pomposity: if he did not make a speech in the assize-court àpropos de bottes, and merely to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator: † if he did

at 'Jonathan's.' In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

"As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts were solid and would wear well. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words: and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in mydling in any practical part in life. I am whole life.

"I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that know me. . . . There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's,' and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's,' and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but 'The Postman,' overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffeehouse; and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian,' the Cocoa-tree,' and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers

'Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator' of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever med

very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them-as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game. In short, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper." Spectator,

No. 1.

* "So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since bis time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool.”— MACAULAY.

† "The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but, notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old knight at the head of them; who for his reputation in the country took occasion to whisper in the judge's car that he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit. I was listening

:

"Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
And all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though, in solemn silence, all
Move round this dark terrestrial ball;
What though no real voice nor sound
Among their radiant orbs be found;
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
Forever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us is divine.”

not mistake Madam Doll Tearsheet | ing with a purer love and adoration for a lady of quality in Temple Gar- than Joseph Addison's. Listen to den if he were wiser than he is: if him: from your childhood you have he had not his humor to salt his life, known the verses: but who can hear and were but a mere English gentle- their sacred music without love and man and game preserver- of what awe? worth were he to us? We love him for his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in him; we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that honest manhood and simplicity- we get a result of happiness, goodness, tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to inspire. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen in black coats? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and out of those two vestments can nobody preach it? Commend me to this preacher without orders this parson in the tye-wig. When this man looks from the world, whose weaknesses he describes so benevolently, up to the Heaven which shines over us all, I can hardly fancy a human face lighted up with a more serene rapture a human intellect thrill

to the proceedings of the Court with much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observed, to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity.

"Upon his first rising, the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the country."- Spectator,

No. 122.

|

It seems to me those verses shine

like the stars.

They shine out of a great deep calm. When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind: and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayer. His sense of religion stirs through his whole being. In the fields, in the town looking at the birds in the trees: at the children in the streets: in the morning or in the moonlight: over his books in his own room: in a happy party at a country merry-making or a town assembly, good-will and peace to God's creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and shine from his kind face. If Swift's life was the most wretched, I think Addison's was one of the most enviable.

A life prosperous and beautiful a calm death- an immense fame and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.*

* "Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his deathbed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true." — Dr. YOUNG. Spence's Anecdotes.

"I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depression of

STEELE.