ailing taste of
dramatic art; against the vices of gambling and dueling; against
extravagance and affectation of dress and manner: and there was also
criticism of a new order.

The Tatler was discontinued in January, 1711, and the first number of
the Spectator appeared in March. The new journal was issued daily, but
it made no pretensions to newspaper timeliness or interest; it aimed to
set a new standard in manners, morals, and taste, without assuming the
airs of a teacher. "It was said of Socrates," wrote Addison, in a
memorable chapter in the new journal, "that he brought Philosophy down
from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be happy to have it said
of me that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries,
schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables
and in coffee-houses." For more than two years the Spectator discharged
with inimitable skill and success the difficult function of chiding,
reproving, and correcting, without irritating, wounding, or causing
strife. Swift found the paper too gentle, but its influence was due in
no small measure to its persuasiveness. Addison studied his method of
attack as carefully as Matthew Arnold, who undertook a similar
educational work in our own time, studied his means of approach to a
public indifferent or hostile to his ideas. The two hundred and
seventy-four papers furnished by Addison to the columns of the Spectator
may be said to mark the full development of English prose as a free,
flexible, clear, and elegant medium of expressing the most varied and
delicate shades of thought. They mark also the perfection of the essay
form in our literature; revealing clear perception of its limitations
and of its resources; easy mastery of its possibilities of serious
exposition and of pervading charm; ability to employ its full capacity
of conveying serious thought in a manner at once easy and authoritative.
They mark also the beginning of a deeper and more intelligent
criticism; for their exposition of Milton may be said to point the way
to a new quality of literary judgment and a new order of literary
comment. These papers mark, finally, the beginnings of the English
novel; for they contain a series of character-studies full of insight,
delicacy of drawing, true feeling, and sureness of touch. Addison was
not content to satirize the follies, attack the vices, and picture the
manners of his times: he created a group of figures which stand out a