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ADDISON:

FIRST OF THE HUMORISTS

T

HE English essay as represented by Bacon and Swift was based on purely classic models, as far as its literary style is concerned, and if it had not been for the advent of Steele and Addison there might never have been such a thing as the distinctive English essay. Though it is hardly safe to call anything original, we may be permitted, perhaps, to consider the style of writing represented in the "Spectator as a peculiarly English development. Of course there was Montaigne; but Addison would have been what he is even if Montaigne had never existed.

It seems hard for Richard Steele that while he is the acknowledged inventor of the gossipy paper about town humors, his friend Addison has gotten all the glory. The fact is, in itself the style of Steele is more fascinating than Addison's even to us to-day, and if essays were to be selected for their style alone, some of Steele's would have to be included. But you may search the "Tatler," the "Spectator," and the "Guardian" from end to end, and every paper whose subject seems to

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make it worth preserving as part of a permanent literature turns out to be Addison's. Steele was a good journalist, and as a retailer of current gossip he was excellent; but it was Addison who raised his gossip to the plane of universal interest. We have already pointed out the fact that the Spectator" was in reality a sort of printed letter, received every morning by the people of the town and read with their other letters. Its subject was naturally the little things of life, the humors of life, and its charm lay in its humor. It is characteristically English, and no other style has had such a widespread influence on English writers. Johnson and Goldsmith adopted it; Johnson not quite successfully, Goldsmith with surpassing success in his novel "The Vicar of Wakefield." Charles Lamb was a lineal literary descendant of Addison, and as far as his style is concerned, so was Thackeray. Without question Lamb and Thackeray both surpassed their original.

Because of the debt that so many great writers owe to Addison, he has been extravagantly praised by them, and the echo of their mighty words is still reverberating. In his "Primer of English Literature," so eminent a critic as Stopford Brooke, after justly describing Addison's "fine and tender" humor, declares of his style that"in its varied cadence and subtle ease it has never been surpassed." "This," says Matthew Arnold, "seems to me to be going a little too

far. One could not say more of Plato's. Whatever his services to his time, Addison is for us now a writer whose range and force of thought are not considerable enough to make him interesting; and his style cannot equal in varied cadence and subtle ease the style of a man like Plato, because without range and force of thought all resources of style, whether in cadence or in subtlety, are not and cannot be brought out." Arnold might also have pointed to the two English writers who have surpassed Addison on his own ground. The hero of the "Spectator" is of interest to us because he is the first of the humorists, and because his essays, lacking the subtlety of later writers, are simpler models for our study. Franklin found in them excellent exercises for the beginner in composition, and to this day none better have been found.

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY IN THE

COUNTRY

SIR ROGER AT HOME

HAVING often received an invitation from my

friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour,

lets me rise and go to bed when I please; dine at his own table, or in my chamber, as I think fit; sit still, and say nothing, without bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of the country come to see him, he only shows me at a distance. As I have been walking in his fields, I have observed them stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have heard the knight desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be stared at.

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, because it consists of sober and staid persons; for as the knight is the best master in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet de chambre for his brother; his butler is gray-headed; his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen; and his coachman has the looks of a privy-councillor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog; and in a gray pad, that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years.

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure, the joy that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master; every one of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good old knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with

several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good-nature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.

My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend.

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods or the fields, is a very venerable man, who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years. This gentleman is a person of good sense, and some learning, of a very regular life, and obliging conversation: he heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows that he is very much in the old knight's esteem; so that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependant.

I have observed in several of my papers, that my friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is something of an humourist; and that his virtues, as well as imperfections, are, as it were, tinged by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his, and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their

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