are still remembered when the old ‘Spectator’ is mentioned, and which were the admiration of all the critics of the eighteenth century. Johnson only expresses the opinion expressed with various modifications by Kames, Blair, Hurd, Beattie, and other judges of the period, when he pronounces Addison's to be ‘the model of the middle style,’ and ends his Life by declaring that ‘whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.’ The style of Addison, says Landor (letter to Mrs. Shelley, communicated by Mr. Garnett), ‘is admired; it is very lax and incorrect. But in his manner there is the shyness of the Loves: there is the graceful shyness of a beautiful girl not quite grown up. People feel the cool current of delight, and never look for its source.’ Addison's greatest achievement is universally admitted to be the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. Sir Roger is the incarnation of Addison's kindly tenderness, showing through a veil of delicate persiflage. Sir Roger was briefly sketched by Steele in the second ‘Spectator.’ He is portrayed most fully in a series of fifteen ‘Spectators’ by Addison, in July 1711, which describe a visit to his country-house. Six essays by Steele are interspersed, but only two of them, in which Addison permitted Steele to tell Sir Roger's love story, are of any significance. Budgell described a hunting-party in one number. Sir Roger then disappears till he comes to London to see Prince Eugene in January 1712. Addison takes him to the Abbey in another paper, 18 March; to Philips's ‘Distressed Mother’ in a third, 25 March; and to Vauxhall in a fourth, 20 May. After this, Steele introduced him (to Addison's vexation, it is said) to a woman of the town (20 June). On 23 Oct. Addison describes his death. ‘I killed him,’ he told Budgell, ‘that nobody else might murder him’ (Budgell's Bee, i. 27). The other papers contributed by Addison may be classified as humorous, critical, and serious. To the humorous belong a great variety of papers touching upon the various social follies of the day, often with exquisite felicity of gentle ridicule; and of these some of the most popular appear to have been those in which Addison, with an air of condescension hardly so pleasant as Steele's generous gallantry, touched the various foibles and fashionable absurdities of women. The most important criticism is a series of seventeen papers on ‘Paradise Lost’ which appeared on Saturdays from 5 Jan. to 3 May 1712. Though the critical doctrines are obsolete and the judgments often worse than obselete, these papers may be said, not certainly to have originated, but to have set the stamp of the highest critical authority of the time upon, the lofty and what may be called the orthodox estimate of Milton's genius. Two papers on Chevy Chase on 21 and 25 May 1711, are noticeable as showing more decidedly a genuine poetical sensibility, and doing something to call general attention to a then despised branch of literature. Six papers upon ‘Wit’ in the same month, and a more ambitious series of eleven papers on the ‘Pleasures of the Imagination’ in June and July 1712, are the foundation of Addison's claim to be an æsthetic philosopher. The philosophy, indeed, is superficial; but the excellence of the style and the genuine taste gave them a high, though temporary, reputation. In 1864 Mr. Dykes Campbell printed (privately), at Glasgow, ‘Some portions of Essays contributed to the “Spectator” by Mr. Joseph Addison: Now first printed from his MS. note-book.’ The note-book was bought at a sale by Mr. Campbell in 1858. The internal evidence and the handwriting prove that it contains three essays—‘Of the Imagination,’ ‘Of Jealousy,’ and ‘Of Fame’—carefully written out in his own hand, and subsequently worked up into ‘Spectators’ on the same topics, viz. Nos. 170, 171 (on Jealousy), 233, 236, 237 (Love of Fame), 411–14, 416–18, 420, 421 (on the Pleasures of Imagination). The whole is a very interesting illustration of Addison's mode of composition. Of the graver papers the most remarkable are a series which appeared from Saturdays beginning Oct. 20, 1711. Some people guessed that they might have been originally intended for sermons, and they may illustrate the remark attributed to Mandeville (Hawkins, History of Music, v. 315, 316), that Addison was a ‘parson in a tyewig,’ or Tonson's saying that he ‘ever thought him a priest in his heart’ (Spence, p. 200). We may add that the ‘divine poems’ published in some of them during the autumn of 1712 (two of which have been erroneously attributed to Marvell) are not only excellent illustrations of the gentle piety which gives a charm to much of Addison's prose, but represent also his highest poetical achievements.
The ‘Spectator’ dropped in Dec. 1712. Addison, now at the height of his reputation, made a new experiment. Tonson (Spence, p. 46) and Cibber profess to have seen the first four acts of ‘Cato’ upon Addison's return from his travels in 1703. The play may have been suggested, as Macaulay observes, by the performance which he saw at Venice. Addison was now entreated to bring it upon the stage, and, after asking Hughes to write
