The Coverley Papers | Page 3

but he did not prosecute it in the usual way. 'A man,' he says, 'may be learned without talking sentences.' [Footnote: Spectator 4.] He saw much evil, and he laughed at it. He has tried, he tells us, to 'make nothing ridiculous that is not in some measure criminal'; [Footnote: Spectator 445.] an enthusiast could never have met crime with laughter, unless with the corrosive laughter of a Swift. Addison's humour is perfectly frank and humane; himself a Whig, he has given us a picture of the Tory Sir Roger which has been compared to the portrait of our friend Mr. Pickwick. Sir Roger put to silence and confusion by the perversity of the widow and her confidant, [Footnote: Spectator 113.] congratulating himself on having been called 'the tamest and most humane of all the brutes in the country', [Footnote: Spectator 113.] seeking to be reassured that no trace of his likeness showed through the whiskers of the Saracen's head, [Footnote: Spectator 122.] puzzled by his doubts concerning the witch, [Footnote: Spectator 117.] and pleased by the artful gipsies, [Footnote: Spectator 130.] inviting the guide to the Abbey to visit him at his lodgings in order to continue their conversation, [Footnote: Spectator 329.] and shocked by the discourtesy of the young men on the Thames [Footnote: Spectator 383.]--these are pictures drawn by one who laughed at what he loved. Addison's humour has a 'grave composure' [Footnote: Elwin.] and a characteristic appearance of simplicity which never cease to delight us.
This was the man; and he found the instrument ready to his hand. There was now a large educated class in circumstances sufficiently prosperous to leave them some leisure for society and its enjoyments. The peers and the country squires were reinforced by the professional men, merchants, and traders. The political revolution of 1688 had added greatly to the freedom of the citizens; the cessation of the Civil War, the increased importance of the colonies, the development of native industries, and the impulse given to cloth-making and silk-weaving by the settlement of Flemish and Huguenot workmen in the seventeenth century had encouraged trade; and the establishment of the Bank of England had been favourable to mercantile enterprise. We find the Spectator speaking of 'a trading nation like ours.' [Footnote: Spectator 108.] Addison realized that it is the way in which men employ their leisure which really stamps their character; so he provided 'wit with morality' for their reading, and attempted, through their reading, to refine their taste and conversation at the theatre, the club, and the coffee-house.
Dunton, Steele, and Defoe had modified the periodical literature of the day by adding to the newspapers essays on various subjects. The aim of the Tatler was the same as that of the Spectator, but it had certain disadvantages. The press censorship had been abolished in 1695, but newspapers were excepted from the general freedom of the Press. A more important disadvantage lay in the character of Steele, who did not possess the balance and moderation required to edit such an organ. Unlike Addison, he was not a true son of his century. He was enthusiastic and impulsive, fertile in invention and sensitive to emotion. His tenderness and pathos reach heights and depths that Addison never touches, but he has not Addison's fine perception of events and motives on the ordinary level of emotion. He could not repress his keen interest sufficiently to treat of politics in his paper and yet remain the impartial censor. So the Tatler was dropped, and the Spectator took its place. This differed from its predecessors in appearing every day instead of three times a week, and in excluding all articles of news.
The machinery of the club had been anticipated in 1690 by John Dunton's Athenian Society, which replied to all questions submitted by readers in his paper, the _Athenian Mercury._ This was succeeded by the Scandal Club of Defoe's Review, and the well-known club of the Tatler, which met at the Trumpet; [Footnote: Tatler 132] but the plan of arranging the whole work round the doings of the club is a new departure in the Spectator.
It is in these periodicals that we first find the familiar essay. Its only predecessors are such serious essays as those of Bacon, Cowley, and Temple, the turgid paragraphs of Shaftesbury, the vigorous but crude and rough papers of Collier, and the 'characters' of Overbury and Earle. These 'characters' had always been entirely typical; they were treated rather from the abstract than from the human point of view, and had no names or other individualization than that of their character and calling. In some of the numbers of the Spectator we still find these 'characters' occurring, such as the character of Will Wimble, [Footnote: Spectator 108.] of the honest yeoman, [Footnote: Spectator 122.] and of