two great chiefs of parties. Pulteney, when leader of the opposition, and possessed of £30,000 a year, edited the "Craftsman.” Walpole, though not a man of literary habits, was the author of at least ten pamphlets; and retouched and corrected many more. These facts sufficiently show of how great importance literary assistance then was to the contending parties. St. John was, certainly, in

was probably the best whig speaker. But it may well be doubted whether St. John did so much for the tories as Swift, and whether Cow. per did so much for the whigs as Addison. When these things are duly considered, it will not be thought strange that Addison should have climbed higher in the state than any other Englishman has ever, by means merely of literary talents, been able to climb. Swift would, in all probability, have climbed as high, if he had not been encumbered by his cassock and his pudding-sleeves. As far as the homage of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if he had been lord-treasurer.

To the influence which Addison derived from his literary talents, was added all the influence which arises from character. The world, always ready to think the worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to make one exception. Restlessness, violence, audacity, laxity of principle, are the vices_ordinarily attributed to that class of men. But faction itself could not deny that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been strictly faithful to his early opinions, and to his early friends; that his integrity was without stain; that his whole deportment indicated a fine sense of the becoming; that, in the utmost heat of contro

him. The bashfulness of his nature made his | thoughts, letters, answers, remarks, than these wit and eloquence useless in debate. He once rose, but could not overcome his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody can think it strange that a great writer should fail as a speaker. But many, probably, will think it strange that Addison's failure as a speaker should have had no unfavourable effect on his success as a politician. In our time, a man of high rank and great fortune might, though speaking very little and very ill, hold a consi-Anne's reign, the best tory speaker; Cowper derable post. But it is inconceivable that a mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office, must live by his pen, should in a few years become successively under-secretary of state, chief secretary for Ireland, and secretary of state, without some oratorical talent. Addison, without high birth, and with little property, rose to a post which dukes, the heads of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck, have thought it an honour to fill. Without opening his lips in debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chatham or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he had been nine years in Parliament. We must look for the explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar circumstances in which that generation was placed. During the interval which elapsed between the time when the censorship of the press ceased and the time when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely reported, literary talents were, to a public man, of much more importance, oratorical talents of much less importance, than in our time. At present, the best way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a statement or an argument, is to introduce that statement or argument into a speech made in Parliament. If a political tract were to appear superior to the conduct of the Allies, or to the best numbers of the Freeholder, the circu-versy, his zeal was tempered by a regard for lation of such a tract would be languid indeed when compared with the circulation of every remarkable word uttered in the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made in the House of Commons at four in the morning, is on thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on the Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of the short-hand writer, has to a great extent superseded the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of Anne. The best speech could then produce no effect except on those who heard it. It was only by means of the press that the opinion of the public without doors could be influenced; and the opinion of the public without doors could not but be of the highest importance in a country governed by parliaments; and indeed at that time governed by triennial parliaments. The pen was, therefore, a more formidable political engine than the tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox contended only in Parliament. But Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and Fox of an earlier period, had not done half of what was necessary, when they sat down amidst the acclamations of the House of Commons. They had still to plead their cause before the country, and this they could do only by means of the press. Their works are now forgotten. But it is certain that there were in Grub street few more assiduous scribblers of

truth, humanity, and social decorum; that no outrage could ever provoke him to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman; and that his only faults were a too sensitive deli cacy, and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness.

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men of his time; and much of his popularity he owed, we believe, to that very timidity which his friends lamented. That timidity often prevented him from exhibiting his talents to the best advantage. But it propitiated Nemesis. It averted that envy which would otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid, and by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favourite with the public, as he who is at once an object of admiration, of respect, and of pity; and such were the feelings which Addison inspired. Those who enjoyed the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation, declared with one voice that it was superior even to his writings. The brilliant Mary Montagu said that she had known all the wits, and that Ad dison was the best company in the world. The malignant Pope was forced to own, that there was a charm in Addison's talk which could be found nowhere else. Swift, when burning with animosity against the whigs, could not but confess to Stella, that, after all, he had never known any associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an excellent judge of lively

He

whom he was as a king or rather as a god.
All these men were far inferior to him in ası
lity, and some of them had very serious faults.
Nor did those faults escape his observation;
for, if ever there was an eye which saw through
and through men, it was the eye of Addison.
But with the keenest observation, and the finest
sense of the ridiculous, he had a large charity.
The feeling with which he looked on most of
his humble companions was one of benevo
lence, slightly tinctured with contempt.
was at perfect ease in their company; he was
grateful for their devoted attachment; and he
loaded them with benefits. Their veneration
for him appears to have exceeded that with
which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or
Warburton by Hurd. It was not in the power
of adulation to turn such a head, or deprave
such a heart as Addison's. But it must in
candour be admitted, that he contracted some
of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by
any person who is so unfortunate as to be the
oracle of a small literary coterie.

conversation, said, that the conversation of Addison was at once the most polite, and the most mirthful, that could be imagined;-that it was Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an exquisite something which was neither Terence nor Catullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge of serious conversation, said, that when Addison was at his ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought and language, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. Nor were his great colloquial powers more admirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which appeared in his conversation. At the same time, it would be too much to say that he was wholly devoid of the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know how to blame. If his first attempts to set a presuming dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, "assented with civil leer," and lured the flattered coxcomb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such was his practice we should, we think, have guessed from his works. The Tatler's criti-stace Budgell, a young templar of some literacisms on Mr. Softly's sonnet, and the Spectator's dialogue with the politician, who is so zealous for the honour of Lady Q-p-t-s, are excellent specimens of this innocent mis-reer would have been prosperous and honourchief.

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to strangers. As soon as he entered a large company, as soon as he saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed, and his manners became constrained. None who met him only in great assemblies, would have been able to believe that he was the same man who had often kept a few friends listening and laughing round a table, from the time when the play ended, till the clock of St. Paul's in Covent-Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table, he was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his conversation in the highest perfection, it was necessary to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own phrase, think aloud. "There is no such thing," he used to say, "as real conversation, but between two persons."

This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes; and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing. Of any other statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign, we should no more think of saying that he sometimes took too much wine, than that he wore a long wig and a sword.

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature, we must ascribe another fault which generally arises from a very different cause. He became a little too fond of seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of admirers, to

1

One member of this little society was Eu

ture, and a distant relation of Addison. There was at this time no stain on the character of Budgell, and it is not improbable that his ca

able, if the life of his cousin had been prolonged. But when the master was laid in the grave, the disciple broke loose from all restraint; descended rapidly from one degree of vice and misery to another; ruined his fortune by follies; attempted to repair it by crimes; and at length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self-murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, gambler, lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affection and veneration for Addison; and recorded those feelings in the last lines which he traced before he hid himself from infamy under London Bridge.

Another of Addison's favourite companions was Ambrose Phillipps, a good whig and a middling poet, who had the honour of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called after his name, Namby-Pamby But the most remarkable members of the little senate, as Pope long afterwards called it, were Richard Steele and Thomas Tickell.

Steele had known Addison from childhood They had been together at the Charter House and at Oxford; but circumstances had then, for a time, separated them widely. Steele had left college without taking a degree, had been disinherited by a rich relation, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had written a religious treatise and several comedies. He was one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting, in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honour; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good-natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Ox- In the spring of 1709, Steele formed a literary ford, who had introduced himself to public project, of which he was far indeed from forenotice by writing a most ingenious and grate-seeing the consequences. Periodical papers ful little poem in praise of the opera of "Rosa- had during many years been published in Lonmond." He deserved, and at length attained, the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell were on good terms. But they loved Addison too much to love each

even their names are now known only to the curious.

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 sometimes lead, intermingled with a little silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he had lighted on an inexchoice 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.

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-haustible vein of the finest gold. The mere writer. This circumstance seems to 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 Saturdays. It was to contain the foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, and 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. He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was easy and not incorrect; and though his wit and humour were of no higher 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 arried too far.

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.

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 grotesque, 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 Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was life, of manners, of all the shades of human an imaginary person, almost as well known in character, he stands in the first class. And that age as Mr. Paul Pry or Mr. Pickwick in what he observed he had the art of communiSwift had assumed the name of Bicker-cating in two widely different ways. He could staff in a satirical pamphlet against Partridge, describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well the almanac-maker. Partridge had been fool as Clarendon. But he could do something enough to publish a furious reply. Bickerstaff better. He could call human beings into exhad rejoined in a second pamphet still more istence, and make them exhibit themselves. diverting than the first. All the wits had com- If we wish to find any thing more vivid than bined to keep up the joke, and the town was Addison's best portraits, we must go either to long in convulsions of laughter. Steele de- Shakspeare or to Cervantes. termined to employ the name which this controversy had made popular; and, in April, 1709, it was announced that Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to publish a paper called the "Tatler."

ours.

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme; but as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give it his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot be better described than in Steele's own words. "I fared," he said, "like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him." "The paper," he says elsewhere," was advanced indeed. It was raised to a greater thing than I intended it."

But what shall we say of Addison's humour, of his sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that sense in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents which occur every day, and 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 analyze it.

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's peculiar pleasantry, is to compare it with the pleasantry of some other great satirist. The three most eminent masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Voltaire. Whicn of the three had the greatest power of moving laughter may be questioned. But each of them, within his own domain, was supreme. Vol. It is probable that Addison, when he sent taire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment across St. George's Channel his first contribu-is without disguise or restraint. He gambols. tions 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 VOL. V.-77

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 verv

opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never | reverence for all that is sublime. Nothing

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 reading the commination-service.

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 inly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of demure serer ity, 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.

great, nothing amiable, no moral duty, no doc. trine of natural or revealed religion, has ever been associated by Addison with any degrading idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literary history. The highest proof of human virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it. No kind of power is more formi dable than the power of making men ridiculous; and that power Addison possessed in boundless measure. How grossly that power was abused by Swift and Voltaire is well known. But of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has blackened no man's character, nay, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes which he has left us a single taunt which can be called ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a revenge as that which men, not superior to him in genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pompignan. He was a politician; he was the best writer of his party; he lived in times of fierce excitementin times when persons of high character and station stooped to scurrility such as is now practised by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation and no example could induce him to return railing for railing.

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 Voltaire have been successfully mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. The letter of the Abbé Coyer to Pan- Of the service which his essays rendered to sophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, dur- morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It ing a long time, on the academicians of Paris. is true that, when the Tatler appeared, that There are passages in Arbuthnot's satirical age of outrageous profaneness and licentiousworks, which we, at least, cannot distinguishness which followed the Restoration had passed from Swift's best writing. But of the many away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the theatres eminent men who have made Addison their into something which, compared with the exmodel, though several have copied his mere cesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be diction with happy effect, none has been able called decency. Yet there still lingered in the to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the public mind a pernicious notion that there was World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in some connection between genius and profli the Lounger, there are numerous papers writ- gacy-between the domestic virtues and the ten in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and sullen formality of the Puritans. That error Spectators. Most of these papers have some it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He merit; many are very lively and amusing; but taught the nation that the faith and the moralithere is not a single one which could be passed ty of Hale and Tillotson might be found in off as Addison's on a critic of the smallest per- company with wit more sparkling than the wit spicacity. 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 directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered among us as the sure mark of a fool. And this revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without writing one personal lampoon.

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman; but he venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of art nor in the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, could he see any thing but subjects for drollery. The more solemn and august the theme, the more monkeylike was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistophiles; the mirth of Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jennings oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness 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 Addion;-a mirth consistent with tender compasn for all that is frail, and with profound

In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler, his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to any thing that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. The proceedings of the Court of Honour, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There is one still better paper, of the same class, but though that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years ago, was