You may meet the Lady Arabella again at Bath. BIBLIOGRAPHY. British Novelists (Lecture I.). David Masson, M.A. British Novelists, Vols. 32-33: Female Quixote (Mrs. Barbauld's edition). BOOK III. ADDISON AND GAY. CHAPTER VIII. Revolution. WE commonly regard the age of the Revolution as an age of military exploits and political changes, an age whose warlike glories loom dimly through the smoke of Blenheim or of Ramillies, and the greatness of whose political issues still impresses us, though we track them with difficulty through a chaos of treasons and cabals. But to the men who lived in it the age was Changes of the far more than this. To them the Revolution was more than a merely political revolution; it was the recognition not only of a change in the relations of the nation to its rulers, but of changes almost as great in English society and in English intelligence.If it was the age of the Bill of Rights, it was the age also of the Spectator. If Marlborough and Somers had their share in shaping the new England that came of 1688, so also had Addison and Steele. And to the bulk of people it may be doubted whether the change that passed over literature was not more startling and more interesting than the change that passed over politics. Few changes, indeed, have ever been so radical and complete. Literature suddenly doffed its stately garb of folio or octavo, and stepped abroad in the light and easy dress of pamphlet and essay. We hear sometimes that the last century is "repulsive"; but what is it that repels us in it? Is it the age itself, or the picture of itself which the age so fearlessly presents? There is no historic ground for thinking the eighteenth century a coarser or a more brutal age than the centuries that had gone before; rather there is ground for thinking it a less coarse and a less brutal age. The features which repel us in it are no features of its own production. What makes the Georgian age seem repulsive is simply that it is the in the Georgian first age which felt these evils to be evils, which dragged Improvement age. Steele in the them, in its effort to amend them, into the light of day. It is, in fact, the moral effort of the time which makes it seem so immoral. Steele has the merit of having been the first to feel the new intellectual cravings of his day and to furnish what proved to be the means of meeting them. His Tatler was a periodical of pamphlet form, in which news was to be varied by short essays of criticism and gossip. But his grasp of the new literature was a feeble grasp. His sense of the fitting form for it, of its fitting tone, of the range and choice of its subjects, were alike inadequate. He seized indeed by a happy instinct on letter-writing and conversation as the two molds to which the essay must adapt itself; he seized with the same happy instinct on humor as the pervading temper of his work and on "manners" as its destined sphere. But his notion of "manners was limited not only to the external aspects of life and society, but to those aspects as they present themselves in towns; while his humor remained pert and superficial. The Tatler, however, had hardly been started when it was taken in hand by a greater than Steele. "It was raised," as he frankly confessed, "to a greater thing than I intended," by the coöperation of Joseph Addison. The life of the Tatler lasted through the years 1709 and 1710; the two next years saw it surpassed by the Guardian, essays of the Spectator, and this was followed in 1713 by the Guardian, in 1714 by a fresh series of Spectators, in Spectator, 1715 by the Freeholder. In all these successive periodi- Freeholder. cals what was really vital and important was the work of Addison. Addison grasped the idea of popularizing knowledge as frankly as Steele. He addressed as directly the new world of the home. It was said of Socrates [he tells us] that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses. I would therefore [he ends with a smile] recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated assemblies that set apart one hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter, and would heartily advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as part of the tea-equipage. Addison's But in Addison's hands this popular writing became a part of literature. While it preserved the free move- Spectator in ment of the letter-writer, the gaiety and briskness of hand. chat, it obeyed the laws of literary art, and was shaped and guided by a sense of literary beauty. Its humor, too, became a subtler and more exquisite thing. Instead of the mere wit of the coffee-house, men found themselves smiling with a humorist who came nearer than any man before or since to the humor of Shakespeare. Joseph Addison was born in 1672, the son of Lancelot Addison, rector of Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford; he was dissuaded from the life of his design of entering the church by Charles Montagu, afterward Earl of Halifax, who procured him a pension from King William and sent him to travel in France and Italy. Returning to England (at the age of thirty-two) he gained some reputation by a poem commemorating Incidents in Addison. the victory of Blenheim, and was made in 1705 secretary of state, holding afterward various political offices, from which he drew a large income, while they left him leisure for writing. He died in 1719, leaving one daughter by the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had married three years before, and who added little to his comfort while he was alive. This daughter, by the way, inherited the picture of Mr. Wortley before mentioned, and through her half-sister it returned to the family of Lady Mary Wortley. Addison was a fair man, of indolent habits and a Personal traits. languid vitality. He had naturally a fine memory for words, and was in his quiet way an accurate observer of what passed before him. His chief intellectual exercise was the study of "putting things"-whether things that he had seen and heard, reflections that he had made upon them, or thoughts that he had met with in the course of his reading; "a fine gentleman living upon town, not professing any deep scholastic knowledge of literature," and employing his leisure in writing elegant periodical articles. Daily habits. Although engaged in politics, he had no natural gifts for active life. He could not have made his own position; the accident of the times rendered literary service valuable, and he was virtually the literary retainer of the leaders of the Whig party. Of the course of Addison's familiar day, before his marriage, Johnson says: He had in the house with him Budgell, and perhaps Phillips. With one or other of his chief companions he always breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterward to Button's, where he would remain five or six hours. Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about two |