ld afford it, had it served on the breakfast table with the tea and
toast. It was the general subject of conversation in all polite
circles, and did much to improve the taste and reform the morals of
the age. There was nothing which he so severely ridiculed as the show
of learning without the reality, coxcombry in conversation,
extravagance in dress, female flirts and butterflies, gay and
fashionable women, and all false modesty and affectation. But he
blamed without bitterness, and reformed without exhortation, while he
exalted what was simple, and painted in most beautiful colors the
virtues of contentment, simplicity, sincerity, and cheerfulness.

His latter days were imbittered by party animosity, and the malignant
stings of literary rivals. Nor was he happy in his domestic life,
having married a proud countess, who did not appreciate his genius. He
also became addicted to intemperate habits. Still he was ever honored
and respected, and, when he died, was buried in Westminster Abbey.

[Sidenote: Swift.]

Next to Addison in fame, and superior in genius, was Swift, born in
Ireland, in 1677, educated at Dublin, and patronized by Sir William
Temple. He was rewarded, finally, with the deanery of St. Patrick's.
He was very useful to his party by his political writings; but his
fame rests chiefly on his poetry, and his Gulliver's Travels, marked
and disgraced by his savage sarcasm on woman, and his vilification of
human nature. He was a great master of venomous satire. He spared
neither friends nor enemies. He was ambitious, misanthropic and
selfish. His treatment of woman was disgraceful and heartless in the
extreme. But he was witty, learned, and natural. He was never known to
laugh, while he convulsed the circles into which he was thrown. He was
rough to his servants, insolent to inferiors, and sycophantic to men
of rank. His distinguishing power was his unsparing and unscrupulous
sarcasm and his invective was as dreadful as the personal ridicule of
Voltaire. As a poet he was respectable, and as a writer he was
original. He was indifferent to literary fame, and never attempted any
higher style of composition than that in which he could excel. His
last days were miserable, and he lingered a long while in hopeless and
melancholy idiocy.

[Sidenote: Pope--Bolingbroke--Gay--Prior.]

Pope properly belongs to a succeeding age, though his first writings
attracted considerable attention during the life of Addison, who firs