temper, and the improvement of domestic society, is touched upon in these papers with the happiest combination of seriousness and ridicule. In some of them Addison takes the higher tone of a religious monitor, and gives lessons from the press, which perhaps would not have been attended to from the pulpit. The improvement of our language was another point which he successfully laboured; and the abolition of ungraceful contractions, proverbial vulgarisms, and cant phraseology of all kinds, which at that period greatly infested our writing and speech, is greatly owing to his precept and example. His papers in the Spectator are all marked by some one of the letters composing CLIO; but in general they contain internal evidence of their author sufficient to assure a practised reader. It was a great merit in this work, that, at a time when party disputes ran so high as to interfere in almost every concern of life, the topics of the Spectator were so chosen and managed as to keep clear of this source of discord, and to afford one point, at least, in which all lovers of letters and morality might unite. Accordingly, its popularity rose to such a height, that, in a much less reading age than the present, 20,000 of the papers were sometimes sold in a day.

This publication concluded in September, 1712, and was succeeded in 1713 and 1714 by "The Guardian," a similar work, in which Addison likewise bore a considerable share, though perhaps with somewhat less exertion. A few numbers of the "Whig Examiner," a paper printed in 1710, and intended as an attack upon the famous "Tory Examiner," are attributed to Addison; who thus gave vent to party rancour, without mingling it with better subjects. A short humourous piece of a similar nature, meant to expose the French commerce bill, proceeded from his pen in 1713, under the title of "The late Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff."

His fame in the year 1713 received an accession from a new effort of his genius, which for a time almost eclipsed that which he had acquired as a periodical writer in prose. This was his celebrated tragedy of "Cato;" a production equally remarkable for a correctness of plan, and sustained elevation of style, then unusual on the English stage, and for the glow of its sentiments in favour of political liberty. Addison, as we have seen, set out a decided friend of freedom. His patrons had been of the party most attached to free principles in government, and the present

juncture was thought particularly to require an effort to render them popular. He is said to have written the greater part of Cato when on his travels; but he now retouched and augmented it; and it was brought on the stage, enforced with a sublime prologue by Pope, and an humorous epilogue by Garth. Its success was astonishing; for the general expressions in favour of liberty with which it was filled could not, in a mixed constitution like the English, be decently objected to by either party. Therefore, while the whigs loudly applauded it as peculiarly their own, the tories re-echoed the applause, as adopting its sentiment; and Bolingbroke, their leader, from his box, presented Booth, the dramatic Cato, with a purse of fifty guineas, "for so well defending the cause of liberty against a perpetual dictator." The play ran thirty five nights without interruption, and was afterwards acted at Oxford, and in other provincial towns. It was likewise received abroad with more approbation than any English Tragedy had yet obtained, and was translated into various foreign languages. The honour of criticism also was not sparingly bestowed upon it; and the furious Dennis, though a staunch whig, made a prolix attack upon its poetical merit. At this cool dis

tance of time, public opinion has become pretty uniform respecting its character. The dignity of Roman manners, and the portraiture of the hero, in particular, whose soul was elevated by philosophy and the love of liberty, are allowed to be sustained with great force of sentiment and beauty of language; and many of the fine passages of the play indelibly impress themselves upon the reader. Many of the descriptions, likewise, are animated and poetical, and afford much pleasure in a closet-perusal. But the piece fails in point of interest; and the love-scenes, which in compliance with custom are interwoven in it, are remarkably insipid.

After the death of Queen Anne, Addison was again plunged in public life. He was appointed secretary to the lords justices; and afterwards again visited Ireland as secretary to the lord lieutenant, the Earl of Sunderland. On the earl's removal, soon after, he was made a lord of trade. At the breaking out of the rebellion in 1715, he published the most considerable of his political works, "The Freeholder:" a set of periodical papers that unite his characteristical humour with the topics of party controversy which then prevailed. This union rendered them very successful; and the services he performed to the

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cause he espoused was probably as considerable as could be expected from such weapons. His delineation of the tory fox-hunter is well worthy the hand that had drawn sir Roger de Coverley. About this time, too, he published some short pieces of poetry; among which was his epistle to sir Godfrey Kneller on painting the king's picture, distinguished by its very happy and ingenious adaptation of the heathen mythology to the series of English sovereigns.

In 1716, Addison married the countess dowager of Warwick, with whom his acquaintance is said to have commenced at the time he was tutor to her son; but of this situation there is no particular account in any memoirs of his life. The courtship was long, and conducted on his part with the diffidence of one conscious of inequality of condition; nor does it appear that the marriage-state produced that union of dispositions and interests which is essential to its felicity. Yet his elevation the ensuing year to the office of one of the principal secretaries of state put him on even an external footing of equality— and what woman, who was capable of appreciating Addison's mind, could think herself his superior there? The manner in which he filled