Halleck's New English Literature · Chapter 58Joseph Addison, 1672-1719
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[Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON. From the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller, National Portrait Gallery.]
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF ADDISON.]
Life.—Joseph Addison was born in the paternal rectory at Milston, a small village in the eastern part of Wiltshire. He was educated at Oxford. He intended to become a clergyman, but, having attracted attention by his graceful Latin poetry, was dissuaded by influential court friends from entering the service of the church. They persuaded him to fit himself for the diplomatic service, and secured for him a yearly pension of £300. He then went to France, studied the language of that country, and traveled extensively, so as to gain a knowledge of foreign courts. The death of King William in 1702 stopped his pension, however, and Addison was forced to return to England to seek employment as a tutor.
The great battle of Blenheim was won by Marlborough in 1704. As Macaulay says, the ministry was mortified to see such a victory celebrated by so much bad poetry, and he instances these lines from one of the poems:
"Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, And each man mounted on his capering beast; Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals."
The Chancellor of the Exchequer went to Addison's humble lodgings and asked him to write a poem in honor of the battle. Addison took the town by storm with a simile in which the great general was likened to the calm angel of the whirlwind. When people reflected how calmly Marlborough had directed the whirlwind of war, they thought that no comparison could be more felicitous. From that time Addison's fortunes rose. Since his day no man relying on literary talents alone has risen so high in state affairs. He was made assistant Secretary of State, Secretary for Ireland, and finally chief Secretary of State.
Though Addison was a prominent figure in the political world, it is his literary life that most concerns us. In his prime he wrote for The Tatler and The Spectator, famous newspapers of Queen Anne's day, many inimitable essays on contemporary life and manners. Most newspaper work is soon forgotten, but these essays are read by the most cultivated people of to-day. In his own age his most meritorious production was thought to be the dull tragedy of Cato, a drama observing the classical unities. Some of his Hymns are much finer. Lines like these, written of the stars, linger in our memories:—
"Forever singing as they shine, The hand that made us is divine."
Addison had a singularly pleasing personality. Though he was a Whig, the Tories admired and applauded him. He was a good illustration of the truth that if one smiles in the mirror of the world, it will answer him with a smile. Swift said he believed the English would have made Addison king, if they had been requested to place him on the throne. Pope's jealous nature prompted him to quarrel with Addison, but the quarrel was chiefly on one side. Men like Macaulay and Thackeray have exerted their powers to do justice to the kindliness and integrity of Addison.
Addison died at the age of forty-seven, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
[Illustration: RICHARD STEELE.]
Collaborates with Steele.—Under the pen name of Isaac Bickerstaff, Richard Steele (1672-1729), a former schoolmate and friend of Addison, started in 1709 The Tatler, a periodical published three times a week. This discussed matters of interest in society and politics, and occasionally published an essay on morals and manners. Steele was a good-natured, careless individual, with a varied experience as soldier, playwright, moralist, keeper of the official gazette, and pensioner. He says that he always "preferred the state of his mind to that of his fortune"; but his mental state was often fickle, and too much dependent on bodily luxuries, though he was patriotic enough to sacrifice his personal fortune for what he considered his country's interest.
We find Addison a frequent contributor to The Tatler after its seventeenth number. Steele says: "I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbor 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 Tatler was discontinued in 1711, and Steele projected the more famous Spectator two months later. Addison wrote the first number, but the second issue, which came from Steele's pen, contains sketches of those characters which have become famous in the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Steele's first outline of Sir Roger is a creation of sweetness and light:—
"His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess to love him, and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit."
The influence of such a character must have been especially wholesome on the readers of the eighteenth century. Without the suggestive originality of Steele, we might never have had those essays of Addison, which we read most to-day; but while Steele should have full credit for the first bold sketches, the finished portraits in the De Coverley gallery are due to Addison. Steele says of his associate, "I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any other means."
It is well, however, to remember that Steele did much more work than is popularly supposed. Beginning with March 1, 1711, there were 555 issues of The Spectator published on succeeding week days. To these were added 80 more numbers at irregular intervals. Of these 635 numbers, Steele wrote 236 and Addison 274.
In many respects each seemed to be the complement of the other. Steele's writings have not the polish or delicate humor of Addison's, but they have more strength and pathos. Addison had the greater genius, and he was also more willing to spend time in polishing his prose and making it artistic. From the far greater interest now shown in Addison, the student should be impressed by the necessity of artistic finish as well as of excellence in subject matter.
Addison's Essays—The greatest of Addison's Essays appeared in The Spectator and charmed many readers in Queen Anne's age. The subject matter of these Essays is extremely varied. On one day there is a pleasant paper on witches; on another, a chat about the new woman; on another, a discourse on clubs. Addison is properly a moral satirist, and his pen did much more than the pulpit to civilize the age and make virtue the fashion. In The Spectator, he says: "If I meet with anything in city, court, or country, that shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use my utmost endeavors to make an example of it." He accomplished his purpose, not by heated denunciations of vice, but by holding it up to kindly ridicule. He remembered the fable of the different methods employed by the north wind and the sun to make a man lay aside an ugly cloak.
Addison stated also that one of his objects was to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and coffeehouses." His papers on Milton did much to diminish that great poet's unpopularity in an age that loved form rather than matter, art rather than natural strength.
The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.—The most famous of Addison's productions are his papers that appeared in The Spectator, describing a typical country gentleman, Sir Roger de Coverley, and his friends and servants. Taine says that Addison here invented the novel without suspecting it. This is an overstatement; but these papers certainly have the interest of a novel from the moment Sir Roger appears until his death, and the delineation of character is far in advance of that shown in the majority of modern novels. We find ourselves rereading the De Coverley Papers more than once, a statement that can be made of but few novels.
[Illustration: SIR ROGER IN CHURCH. From a drawing by B. Westmacott.]
General Characteristics.—Addison ranks among the greatest of English essayists. Some of his essays, like the series on Paradise Lost, deal with literary criticism; but most people to-day read little from his pen except the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, which give interesting pictures of eighteenth-century life and manners.
Before we have read many of Addison's essays, we shall discover that he is a humorist of high rank. His humor is of the kind that makes one smile, rather than laugh aloud. Our countenance relaxes when we discover that his rules for an eighteenth-century club prescribe a fine for absence except in case of sickness or imprisonment. We are quietly amused at such touches as this in the delineation of Sir Roger:—
"As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for, if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it, he stands up and looks about him, and, if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servants to them."
Addison is remarkable among a satiric group of writers because he intended his humor to be "remedial,"—not merely to inflict wounds, but to exert a moral influence, to induce human beings to forsake the wrong and to become more kindly. We may smile at Sir Roger; but we have more respect for his kindliness, after reading in Spectator No. 383, how he selected his boatmen to row him on the Thames:—
"We were no sooner come to the Temple Stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, 'You must know,' says Sir Roger, 'I never make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that had been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg.'"
Such humor, which finds its chief point in a desire to make the world kindlier, must have appealed to the eighteenth century, or The Spectator could not have reached a circulation of ten thousand copies a day. Addison would not now have his legion of warm admirers if his humor had been personal, like Pope's, or misanthropical, like Swift's.
Of his style, Dr. Samuel Johnson says, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." Benjamin Franklin, as we know from his Autobiography, followed this advice with admirable results. Addison's style seems as natural and easy as the manners of a well-bred person. When we have given some attention to dissecting his style, we may indeed discover that a prose model for to-day should have more variety and energy and occasionally more precision; but such a conclusion does not mean that any writer of this century would like the task of surpassing the De Coverley Papers.