almost endless fecundity. He was six-and-thirty years
old: full and ripe. He had not worked crop after crop from his brain,
manuring hastily, subsoiling indifferently, cutting and sowing and cutting
again, like other luckless cultivators of letters. He had not done much as
yet; a few Latin poems--graceful prolusions; a polite book of travels; a
dissertation on medals, not very deep; four acts of a tragedy, a great
classical exercise; and the _Campaign_, a large prize poem that won an
enormous prize. But with his friend's discovery of the _Tatler_, Addison's
calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to
speak. He does not go very deep: let gentlemen of a profound genius,
critics accustomed to the plunge of the bathos, console themselves by
thinking that he _couldn't_ go very deep. There are no traces of suffering
in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully
selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt,
until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest
or his day's tranquillity about any woman in his life:(91) whereas poor
Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and
to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show
insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one
the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their
pretty humours, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries; and noting them
with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theatre,
or the assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy-shop higgling for
gloves and lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue
porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in japan; or at church, eyeing the
width of their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep
down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the "Garter" in St.
James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the Drawing-room with
her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey
merchant in the City, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her
ear-ring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he
demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he
knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir
Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one
of the most resolute club-men of his day