and thoroughly religious, generous in its instincts, and
strengthened in its nobler part by close communion with the mind of his
friend Steele.

May we not think of the two friends together in a College chamber,
Addison of slender frame, with features wanting neither in dignity nor
in refinement, Steele of robust make, with the radiant 'short face' of
the 'Spectator', by right of which he claimed for that worthy his
admission to the Ugly Club. Addison reads Dryden, in praise of whom he
wrote his earliest known verse; or reads endeavours of his own, which
his friend Steele warmly applauds. They dream together of the future;
Addison sage, but speculative, and Steele practical, if rash. Each is
disposed to find God in the ways of life, and both avoid that outward
show of irreligion, which, after the recent Civil Wars, remains yet
common in the country, as reaction from an ostentatious piety which laid
on burdens of restraint; a natural reaction which had been intensified
by the base influence of a profligate King. Addison, bred among the
preachers, has a little of the preacher's abstract tone, when talk
between the friends draws them at times into direct expression of the
sacred sense of life which made them one.

Apart also from the mere accidents of his childhood, a speculative turn
in Addison is naturally stronger than in Steele. He relishes analysis of
thought. Steele came as a boy from the rough world of shame and sorrow;
his great, kindly heart is most open to the realities of life, the state
and prospects of his country, direct personal sympathies; actual wrongs,
actual remedies. Addison is sensitive, and has among strangers the
reserve of speech and aspect which will pass often for coldness and
pride, but is, indeed, the shape taken by modesty in thoughtful men
whose instinct it is to speculate and analyze, and who become
self-conscious, not through conceit, but because they cannot help
turning their speculations also on themselves. Steele wholly comes out
of himself as his heart hastens to meet his friend. He lives in his
surroundings, and, in friendly intercourse, fixes his whole thought on
the worth of his companion. Never abating a jot of his ideal of a true
and perfect life, or ceasing to uphold the good because he cannot live
to the full height of his own argument, he is too frank to conceal the
least or greatest of his own shortcomings. Delight and strength of a
friendship like that between Steele and Addis