e events, so powerful and convincing is Swift's prose. Defoe
had the same power; but in writing _Robinson Crusoe_, for instance, his
task was comparatively easy, since his hero and his adventures were both
natural; while Swift gives reality to pygmies, giants, and the most
impossible situations, as easily as if he were writing of facts.
Notwithstanding these excellent qualities, the ordinary reader will do well
to confine himself to _Gulliver's Travels_ and a book of well-chosen
selections. For, it must be confessed, the bulk of Swift's work is not
wholesome reading. It is too terribly satiric and destructive; it
emphasizes the faults and failings of humanity; and so runs counter to the
general course of our literature, which from Cynewulf to Tennyson follows
the Ideal, as Merlin followed the Gleam,[191] and is not satisfied till the
hidden beauty of man's soul and the divine purpose of his struggle are
manifest.

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

In the pleasant art of living with one's fellows, Addison is easily a
master. It is due to his perfect expression of that art, of that new social
life which, as we have noted, was characteristic of the Age of Anne, that
Addison occupies such a large place in the history of literature. Of less
power and originality than Swift, he nevertheless wields, and deserves to
wield, a more lasting influence. Swift is the storm, roaring against the
ice and frost of the late spring of English life. Addison is the sunshine,
which melts the ice and dries the mud and makes the earth thrill with light
and hope. Like Swift, he despised shams, but unlike him, he never lost
faith in humanity; and in all his satires there is a gentle kindliness
which makes one think better of his fellow-men, even while he laughs at
their little vanities.

Two things Addison did for our literature which are of inestimable value.
First, he overcame a certain corrupt tendency bequeathed by Restoration
literature. It was the apparent aim of the low drama, and even of much of
the poetry of that age, to make virtue ridiculous and vice attractive.
Addison set himself squarely against this unworthy tendency. To strip off
the mask of vice, to show its ugliness and deformity, but to reveal virtue
in its own native loveliness,--that was Addison's purpose; and he succeeded
so well that never, since his day, has our English literature seriously
followed after false gods. As Macaulay says, "So effectually did he retort
on vice th