The Coverley Papers | Page 3

a fault, because
it interferes with his advancement. [Footnote: Spectator 2.] The great
function of goodness is to promote happiness; when it ceases to do this
it ceases to be goodness.
But the greatest hindrance that an enthusiastic temperament would have
presented to Addison's work is that it would have spoilt his method. His
aim he declared roundly to be 'the advancement of the public weal',
[Footnote: Spectator 1.] 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