certain, the cautious Joseph Addison began contributing to the paper. The purpose of Steele, who was much the more vigorous writer of these two, upon questions of the day, was to restore to society the sound and wholesome tone which it had had before the Restoration. This periodical was intended for women as well as for men, and Steele did a great deal to break down the weak vanity of the women of the time and to raise the tone of the speech by men concerning women.

After about two years the Tatler was succeeded by the Spectator, March 1, 1711. Of the 555 papers published in this lastnamed periodical, Addison wrote 274 and Steele wrote 236. Pope contributed one paper. Other contributors were John Hughes and Eustace Budgell, the latter furnishing many ideas to his cousin, Joseph Addison. The Spectator gave to literature the "Club" of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers; but it must never be forgotten that Steele was responsible for Addison's becoming a journalist. The Spectator was succeeded by the Guardian, the Englishman, the Reader, the Plebeian, the Theatre, and the Spinster (concerning the woolen trade), all edited by "Dick"Steele. Steele had the quick and impulsive temperament of the fearless later essayists, Burke and Ruskin and Carlyle, while Addison, the younger man, had the more severely classic temperament of Bacon, Dryden, and Pope, though in originality he was inferior to each of these.

Joseph Addison. The Sir Roger de Coverley papers have been much read in the schools. Englishmen love them deeply. They describe the club life which the average Englishman hugely enjoys, and the characters of Sir Roger and of Will Honeycomb are typical of men he sees daily. Many "gentle readers " outside of England are enthusiastic over them, but the matter in the papers is so slight and the language so evidently weighed and polished beyond all need for such light matter that popular

enthusiasm for them anywhere but in England is difficult to arouse. However, these papers ought to be known and studied by those who are anxious for correctness of form in English writing. Here is better English prose than in either Dryden or Sir Thomas Browne; and it is doubtful if any English prose has equaled the best prose of the century of Addison. But much more important in the history of literature than the Sir Roger de Coverley papers are Addison's essays upon the Imagination, also published in the Spectator.

The Spectator and its contemporaries are significant in the history of the short-story. Many of the articles in these periodicals were intended to give point to some moral question, and the writers considered the most pointed way to handle these questions was to relate some brief story, with its meaning clearly indicated. Take these stories out of their didactic framework, and a passably good modern short-story is the result.

The greatest writers, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Cervantes, Hugo, have never founded "schools." But the secondrate men, like Addison, and even Pope, with their altogether too "Augustan," too "polite," too formal and mechanically brilliant style, did not fail to draw about them a number of imitators, in whose weaker minds, because they had not the power of thought of their masters, thought degenerated into something cold and vapid, and style degenerated into mannerism.

Jonathan Swift. A greater mind than that of Defoe or of Steele or of Addison was that of Jonathan Swift, a man of English parentage, but Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral at Dublin, Ireland. Thackeray could find no other man so great in that epoch as Swift.

Addison did not attain his own faultless style until after he had become closely acquainted with the writings of Swift; and Steele was so much influenced by the acidulous Dean

that the Tatler printed much of Steele's work as by one of Swift's characters, Isaac Bickerstaff. Many men were talented in the Great Britain of the time of Swift, but he alone was the great genius, the most powerfully original man of his time. Unfortunately, Swift chose always to be a satirist, and hence much that he wrote is not acceptable to the average reader. The greatest of his essays was The Tale of a Tub, a biting satire upon criticism, describing in vitriolic phrases the Goddess of Criticism drawn in a chariot by geese. The Battle of the Books is almost as famous. It is a mock-heroic account of a desperate battle between ancient and modern books. These two essays were published in 1704, though written a few years earlier.

Oliver Goldsmith. - An author with a clear and simple style was Oliver Goldsmith, who, after contributing to a number of periodical journals, started one of his own, known as The Bee. In this he published many Essays which were later collected in book form. One of the periodicals produced his Chinese Letters, afterwards published in 1762 as The Citizen of the World. These papers represented what an Oriental saw and thought while visiting England. Goldsmith was an excellent sketcher of character, as well as a mild critic of society. He was not able to make the characters he created act very vigorously; nor did he see in society the corruption which Swift so clearly saw and poured burning maledictions upon, and which Cowper was later so deeply to bemoan. But "Where is now a man who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as Goldsmith?" asked Dr. Johnson.

Samuel Johnson. The Essays of Montaigne had been. translated from the French into English by John Florio as early as 1693, and had been used by both Shakespeare and Bacon. Montaigne's essays had been the reflections of a personal view of himself and of human society, while those of Bacon