who eagerly welcomed their daily sheet, in which Mr. Spectator retailed the reflections and actions of his club, did not pause to think how much of its unique charm depended on the fortunate interaction of two minds, each lucid, pure, and brilliant, yet each, in many essential qualities, widely distinguished from the other. "To enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality," was indeed a charming design when practised by two moralists, each of whom was witty in a different direction from the other.

The presentation of the first number of the Tatler to the town marked nothing less than the creation of modern journalism. Here, as in so much else, France had been ahead of us, for since 1672 the Mercure and its successors had satisfied the curiosity of Parisians as to things in general. Quicquid agunt homines, said the motto, and it was Steele who made the discovery for Englishmen that the daily diversion of the newspaper was one which might be made so fascinating and so necessary that the race might presently be unable to dispense with it. The earliest English newspaper is usually said to be that leaf issued in 1622, under the pseudonym. of The Weekly News, by Nathaniel Butter; but the sheets of this kind, generically known as Mercuries, had little of the aspect of a modern journal. The Intelligencer (1663) of Roger L'Estrange had more of the true newspaper character, and began the epoch of the gazettes, "pamphlets of news," as they were called. The Daily Courant (1702) was the earliest daily journal. In all these precursors of the Tatler there had been scarcely a touch of literature. In his opening number Steele offered an unprecedented olio, combining social gossip, poetry, learning, the news of the day, and miscellaneous entertainment; and he appealed at once to a whole world of new readers.

The result was something of so startling and delightful a novelty that the town was revolutionised. At first the anonymity was well preserved; but in the sixth Tatler Addison recognised a remark he had made to Steele, and in the eighteenth he was dragged into the concern. As the periodical continued, and the taste of the public became gauged, the portion given to news was reduced, and the essay took a more and more prominent place. It was generally conjectured that this was due to Addison's influence, whose part in the whole transaction was the academic one of pruning and training the rough shoots that sprang from Steele's vigorous wilding. If Steele continued, however, to be predominant on the Tatler, Addison so completely imprinted his own image upon the later journal that to this day Mr. Spectator is an equivalent of Addison's name. The famous circle of typical figures, the Club, was broadly sketched by Steele, but it was Addison who worked the figures up to that minute perfection which we now admire in Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. So complete was the co-operation, however, that it would be rash to decide too sharply what in the conception of the immortal essays belongs to one friend and what to the other.

In examining the light literature of a hundred years earlier, we were confronted by the imitation of Theophrastus, and now, in the Spectator, we meet with it again. The best of the modern Theophrastians was La Bruyère, and it were idle to deny that the characters of Addison were

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originally modelled on French lines. It would be a serious error indeed to think of Addison as a mere imitator of the Caractères, as Marivaux was later of the Spectator, but English criticism has hardly been content to admit the closeness of the earlier resemblance. Addison and Steele did not consider it their duty to satirise particular persons, and they possessed a gift in the dramatic creation, as distinguished from the observation, of types such as La Bruyère did not possess, or, at all events, did not exercise; but the invention. of combining a moral essay with a portrait in a general, desultory piece of occasional literature was not theirs, but la Bruyère's. His field, however, was limited to the streets of cities, and he did nothing to expand the general interests of his contemporaries; he was a delightful satirist and most malicious urban gossip. But Addison and Steele had their eye on England as well as on London; their aim, though a genial, was an ethical and elevated one; they developed, studied, gently ridiculed the country gentleman. In their shrewdly civil way they started a new kind of national sentiment, polite, easy, modern, in which

VOLUME the FIRST.

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Title-page of the Collected Edition of the "Spectator"

woman took her civilising place; they ruled the fashions in letters, in manners, even in costume. They were the first to exercise the generous emancipating influence of the free press, and an epoch in the history of journalism was marked when, the preface to Dr. Fleetwood's Sermons being suppressed by order

of the House of Commons, fourteen thousand copies of it were next morning circulated in the columns of the Spectator.

In several ways, however, these marvellous journals were proved to be ahead of their age. When the Spectator ceased, at the close of 1712, there was a long obscuration of the light of the literary newspaper. Political heat disturbed the Guardian, and later ventures enjoyed even smaller success. To the regret of all true lovers of literature, Addison and Steele were presently at daggers drawn in opposed and quite inglorious news-sheets. But the experiment had been made, and the two famous journals may live all the more brilliantly in Our memory because their actual existence was not too lengthy to permit them to come to life again in the more durable form of books.

Joseph Addison

(1672-1719)

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was the son of Lancelot Addison, afterwards Joseph Dean of Lichfield, a theological and narrative writer of merit. Joseph was born Addison on the 1st of May 1672, at the rectory of Milston, in Wiltshire. He showed himself early to be the most gifted of a singularly accomplished family. He was sent to school at Amesbury, at Salisbury, at Lichfield, and finally at the Charter house, whence, in 1687, he proceeded to Queen's College, Oxford. Two years later, a copy of Latin verses, in praise of William III., attracted the attention of the authorities, but Addison was shy and studious at Oxford. In 1693 he made his entrance into the public world of letters by means of a poem addressed to Dryden, who was greatly pleased and returned the compliment; in 1694 Addison produced his Account of the Greatest English Poets. All this time he was at Oxford, being elected in 1697 a Fellow of Magdalen; and in 1699 he published

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eight Latin pieces in a University miscellany. He now, at last, at the age of twenty-seven, left Oxford at the suggestion of the future Lord Halifax. He visited all that was most noteworthy in northern and central Italy, and passed through Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, not returning to England until late in 1703, after an absence of four years. In 1705 he published Remarks on what he had seen; and during his journeys he had written a good deal of an original kind which he slowly gave to the world. Addison was in great straits on his return to England, the death of his father and his failure, by what seems an odd want of adroitness, to secure a small appointment as travelling tutor to the Duke of Somerset's son, having landed him in great embarrassment. For some time he "lodged up three pair of stairs over a small shop," in a state of abject poverty, from which the success of his poem, The Campaign, saved him. He immediately received place under the Whigs, and was appointed in 1706 to an Under-Secretaryship of State. Addison entered Parliament in 1708, but the election was quashed a year later. Meanwhile he kept his post, and on losing it, on the last day of 1709, was immediately appointed Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Keeper of the Records. Before he went to Ireland, Addison became intimate with Swift, who prayed that "too much business may not spoil le plus honnête homme du monde," but unfortunately this friendship was soon damped by the violence of political party. In 1711, after the fall of the Whig Ministry, Addison found himself deprived of most of his places, and "an estate in the Indies worth £14,000," whatever this last may have been. He was nevertheless now no longer poor, and he bought an estate in Warwickshire, Bilton, for £10,000. To the Tatler, as published by Steele in 1709, Addison had meanwhile become a contributor, and Steele described his friend as performing that office "with such force of genius, humour, wit, and learning, that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid-I was undone by my own auxiliary; when I had once called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him.” The Tatler ceased to appear on the 22nd of January 1711, and on the 1st of March of the same year Addison and he founded the Spectator, which was in every way a more composite and ambitious undertaking, and which enjoyed a prodigious success. It was dropped in December 1712. Addison had for many years past wished to produce a verse-tragedy perfect in classical form, and even while at Oxford he had selected the subject of Cato for it. As early as 1703 the play was finished enough to be shown by Steele to Cibber. One by one the friends of Addison saw the tragedy in manuscript, but all doubted its fitness for the stage. Pope expressed the general opinion when he said that the author "had better not act it, but would get reputation enough by only printing it." In 1713, however, the position of parties was such as to remind the group of friends of the familiar manuscript tragedy, and Addison was suddenly urged to seize the opportunity. He did so, and it was presently produced on the stage. It enjoyed an amazing success, and it may be held that the evening of the 30th of April 1713 was the climax of Addison's existence. The tragedy enjoyed a run of then unprecedented length, and, being printed, was hailed all over Europe as a masterpiece of regularity and elegance. In the midst of this delirium of eulogy, the old critic, John Dennis, raised, almost alone, the protesting voice of common sense. From this point in his life the lucky star of Addison seems to have been gradually clouded, through no fault of his. The quarrel with Pope, which dates from 1715, although he took