and retired to a country-place in Wales, broken in health. Since he had left Oxford some thirty years before, he had lived in the thick of the contest, playing his part in that world of the capital, in which the activities of the whole nation were focused. He had been soldier, dramatist, government-official, editor, politician, and theatrical manager; he had been intimate with the greatest Englishmen of his time; he had known success and disappointment, praise and abuse, and he had fought a brave fight. He had not always been wise or prudent, but he had held true, on the whole, to high ideals; and in some wonderful way he had kept his hopeful spirit and kind heart through it all. He died in 1729. Character. In Steele's writings, and especially in his letters, we see the man as he was. He wrote frankly and carelessly, and he was transparently honest and direct. His unaffected goodness, his large-hearted human sympathy, shine out through his works. We see in them a man of a sincerely religious nature, who loved his fellows, who was tender towards suffering, devoted to his wife and children, loyal to his friends. His was perhaps the largest, most generous, and most human spirit of his time. In an age of literary bickerings, jealousies, and personal abuse, Steele maintained a wholesome tolerance and sweetness in his relations with the world.

Steele's Work. - Steele's writings are unequal, and every one agrees that they lack the peculiar charm and finish of Addison's; but their purpose is as high, their pathos at times warmer and deeper. It was Steele, moreover, who led the way in which Addison followed, who originated what Addison brought to perfection. We may then respect Steele, knowing what he did and what he was. "As for my labours," he writes, "if

they wear but one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning's cheerfulness to an honest mind; in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better or in any degree less vicious, or receive from them the smallest addition to their innocent diversions; I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain."

JOSEPH ADDISON

(1672-1719)

"He has restored virtue to its dignity, and taught innocence not to be ashamed. This is an elevation of literary character, above all Greek, above all Roman fame. . . . 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." -DR. JOHNSON.

"... One whose fires

True genius kindles, and fair Fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease

Joseph Addison, one of the most charming of English prose-writers, and one of the wisest and most kindly of social reformers, was born at his father's rectory at Milston, Wiltshire, in 1672. His father, who became Dean of Lichfield Cathedral, was a kindly scholar of some literary ability, and Addison's earliest impressions of life were gained in a refined and happy home. He went to the Charterhouse School, where he formed his memorable friendship with "Dick" Steele, and thence to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he led a quiet, studious life. He had a liking for Latin literature, and was fond of walking on the shaded path now known as Addison's Walk along the banks of the river Cher

well. The Church seemed the natural career for a young man of Addison's position and character, but an unforeseen opportunity turned the course of his life in another direction.

His scholarship and his literary gifts had attracted the notice of two leaders of the Whig

party, who, anxious no doubt to secure for the Whigs the services of a promising young writer, obtained a pension for Addison which he was to use in foreign travel in preparation for a public career. Accordingly, in 1699, he left for the Continent, visiting France, Italy, and Switzerland, writing a little and observing much. But the political changes which followed King Wil

liam's death in 1702, lost Addison his pension; he returned home in the following year with no certain prospects, and, as Dr. Johnson quaintly says, "at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind." But it was not long before Addison's opportunity came. In 1704, Marlborough, the most brilliant soldier of the age, won the great battle of Blenheim against the French; and Addison was chosen by the government to write a poem that should fittingly celebrate the great victory. Addison at this time was miserably poor; he lived, we are told, up three flights of stairs over a small shop in the Haymarket; his friends were out of power, and he was almost unknown. But his poem, The Campaign, which he composed on this occasion, not only brought him fame, but relieved his poverty. As a reward for his services to the party, he was made one of the Commissioners of the Excise, that is of the domestic taxes, in 1704. Two years later he became Under Secretary of State.

The Periodical Essays. Shortly after this, as we have seen, Addison became a contributor to Steele's new enterprise, the Tatler, finding through his friend a fresh and congenial field for his talents, and entering on what was to prove his most brilliant and useful sphere of work. In the succeeding periodical, the Spectator (1711), his fine qualities are seen at their best.

The wonderful essays in these periodicals, and in a few others of their kind, performed for the English of the eighteenth century the same service that the players, as Hamlet said, did for the sixteenth; they were the "abstract and brief chronicles of the time." The world read them, and saw itself reflected in the mirror of art. Others had held up mirrors to life, Chaucer, the poet, to his world of the fourteenth century; Shakespeare, the dramatist, to his world of the sixteenth; and