The Poetical Works of Addison | Page 8

Swift and Pope; and ultimately Tickell, who became his most confidential friend and the depositor of his literary remains. In mixed societies he was silent; but with a few select spirits around him, and especially after the "good wine did the good office" of banishing his bashfulness and taciturnity, he became the most delightful and fascinating of conversers. The staple of his conversation was quiet, sly humour; but there was fine sentiment, touches of pathos, and now and then imagination peeped over like an Alp above meaner hills. Swift alone, we suspect, was his match; but his power lay rather in severe and pungent sarcasm, in broad, coarse, though unsmiling wit, and at times in the fierce and terrible sallies of misanthropic rage and despair. Addison, on leaving England, had, by his modesty, geniality, and amiable manners, become the most popular man in the country, so much so, that, says Swift, "he might be king an' he had a mind."
In Ireland--although he sat as member for Cavan, and appears in Parliament to have got beyond his famous "I conceive--I conceive--I conceive"--(having, as the wag observed, "conceived three times and brought forth nothing"), and spoken sometimes, if not often--he did not feel himself at home. He must have loathed the licentious and corrupt Wharton, and felt besides a longing for the society of London, the _noctes coenoeque De?m_ he had left behind him. It was in Ireland, however, that his real literary career began. Steele, in the spring of 1709, had commenced the _Tatler_, a thrice-a-week miscellany of foreign news, town gossip, short sharp papers _de omnibus rebus et guibusdum aliis_, with a sprinkling of moral and literary criticism. When Addison heard of this scheme, he readily lent his aid to it, and then, as honest Richard admits, "I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid,--I was undone by my auxiliary." To the Tatler Addison contributed a number of papers, which, if slighter than his better ones in the _Spectator_, were nevertheless highly characteristic of his singular powers of observation, character-painting, humour, and invention.
In November 1709, he returned to England, and not long after he shared in the downfall of his party, and lost his secretaryship. This also is thought to have injured him in a tender point. He had already conceived an affection for the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, who had been disposed to encourage the addresses of the Secretary, but looked coldly on those of the mere man and scribbler Joseph Addison, who, to crown his misfortunes at this time, had resigned his Fellowship, suffered some severe pecuniary losses of a kind, and from a quarter which are both obscure, and was trembling lest he should be deprived of his small Irish office too. Yet, although reduced and well-nigh beggared, never did his mind approve itself more rich. Besides writing a great deal in the _Tatler_, he published a political journal, called the _Whig Examiner_, in which, although the wit, we think, is not so fine as in his _Freeholder_, there is a vigour and masculine energy which he has seldom equalled elsewhere. When it expired, Swift exulted over its death in terms which sufficiently proved that he was annoyed and oppressed by its life. "He might well," says Johnson, "rejoice at the death of that which he could not have killed."
On the 2d of January 1711, the last Tatler came forth; and on the 1st of the following March appeared the _Spectator_, which is now the main pillar of Addison's fame, and the fullest revelation of his exquisite genius. Without being as a whole a great, or in any part of it a profound work, there are few productions which, if lost, would be more missed in literature. One reclines on its pages as on pillows. The sweetness of the spirit,--the trembling beauty of the sentences, like that of a twilight wave just touched by the west wind's balmy breath,--the nice strokes of humour, so gentle, yet so overpowering,--the feminine delicacy and refinement of the allusions,--the art which so dexterously conceals itself,--the mild enthusiasm for the works of man and God which glows in all its serious effusions,--the good nature of its satire,--the geniality of its criticism,--the everlasting April of the style, so soft and vivid,--the purity and healthiness of the moral tone,--and the childlike religion which breathes in the Saturday papers--one or two of which, such as the "Vision of Mirza," are almost scriptural in spirit and beautiful simplicity,--combine to throw a charm around the Spectator which works of far loftier pretensions, if they need not, certainly do not possess. Macaulay (whom we love for his love of Addison and Bunyan more than for aught else about his works) truly observes, that few writers have discovered so much variety and inventiveness