The study of the style is also of the greatest value. Addison lived at a time when our modern English prose had recently found itself. We admire the splendour of the Miltonic style, and lose ourselves in the rich harmonies of Sir Thomas Browne’s work; but after all prose is needed for ordinary every-day jog-trot purposes and must be clear and straightforward. It can still remain a very attractive instrument of speech or writing, and in Addison’s hands it fulfilled to perfection the needs of the essay style. He avoids verbiage and excessive adornment, he is content to tell what he sees or knows or thinks as simply as possible (and even with a tendency towards the conversational), and he has an inimitable feeling for just the right word, just the most elegantly turned phrase and period. Do not imagine this sort of thing is the result of a mere gift for style: true, it could not happen without that, but neither can it happen without a great deal of careful thought, a scrupulous choice, and balancing of word against word, phrase against phrase. Because all this is done and because the result is so clear and runs so smoothly, it requires an effort on our part to realise the great amount of work involved: Ars est celare artem: and in such an essay as that describing the picture gallery in Sir Roger’s house we can see the pictures in front of our eyes precisely because the description is so clear-cut, so free from unnecessary decoration, and yet so picturesque and attractive.
A very short acquaintance will enable the reader to appreciate Addison’s charming humour and sane grasp of character. The high moral tone of his work, the common-sense and broad culture and literary insight which caused the Spectator to exert a profound influence over a dissolute age, these can only be seen by a more extended reading of the Essays, and those who are interested cannot do better than obtain some general selection such as that of Arnold.
Biographical and historical details are somewhat outside the scope of the present Essay. A short Chronological Table is appended, and the reader cannot be too strongly recommended to study Johnson’s Life of Addison, which is one of the best of the Lives of the Poets, and in which the literary criticism is in Johnson’s best vein. And Thackeray’s Esmond contains some delightful passages introducing Richard Steele and his entourage, with an interesting scene in Addison’s lodgings. It is perhaps as well to mention that the Spectator grew out of Addison’s collaboration with Steele in a similar periodical entitled the Tatler. There were several writers besides these two concerned in the Spectator, notably Budgell. (The letters at the end of most of the papers are signatures: C., L., I. and O. are the marks of Addison’s work, R. and T. of Steele’s, and X. of Budgell’s.) We have stories of Addison’s resentment of their tampering with his favourite character; it is even said that he killed the Knight off in his annoyance at one paper which represented him in an unfitting situation. We cannot judge of the truth of such stories. In any case it was Addison who controlled the whole tenor and policy of the paper, wisely steering as clear as possible of politics, and thereby broadening his appeal and reaching a wider public, and it was Addison’s kindly and mellow criticism of life that informed the whole work. His remaining literary productions, popular at the time, have receded into the background: but the Spectator will keep his name alive as long as English literature survives.
(In this selection only those essays have been chosen which bear directly on Sir Roger or the Spectator Club: several have been omitted which refer to him only en passant or as a peg on which to hang some disquisition, and also one other which is wholly out of keeping with Sir Roger’s character.)
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
| 1672. | Birth of Addison and Steele. |
| 1697. | Addison elected Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. |
| 1701, 3, 5, 22. | Steele’s Plays. |
| 1702. | Accession of Queen Anne. |
| 1704. | Addison’s Campaign (poem celebrating Blenheim). |
| 1706. | Addison’s Rosamond (opera). |
| 1709–11. | Steele’s Tatler. |
| 1711–12-14. | The Spectator. |
| 1713. | Addison’s Cato (play). |
| 1714. | Accession of George I. |
| 1717. | Addison appointed Secretary of State. |
| 1719. | Death of Addison. |
| 1729. | Death of Steele. |
THE DE COVERLEY PAPERS
No. 1. Thursday, March 1, 1710–11
Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dart lucem Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat. Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 143.
One with a flash begins, and ends in smoke;
The other out of smoke brings glorious light,
And (without raising expectation high)
Surprises us with dazzling miracles.
Roscommon.
I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, until he knows whether the writer of it be a black1 or a fair man, of a mild or choleric2 disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the 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 several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting3, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.
I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror’s time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that before my birth my mother dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending4 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 neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother’s dream: for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral until they had taken away the bells from it.
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