ler_ gave political news, but each number of
the _Spectator_ consisted of a single essay. The object of these
periodicals was to reflect the passing humors of the time, and to
satirize the follies and minor immoralities of the town. "I shall
endeavor," wrote Addison, in the tenth paper of the _Spectator_, "to
enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality....It was
said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven to inhabit
among men; and I shall be ambitious 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."
Addison's satire was never personal. He was a moderate man, and did what
he could to restrain Steele's intemperate party zeal. His character was
dignified and pure, and his strongest emotion seems to have been his
religious feeling. One of his contemporaries called him "a parson in a
tie wig," and he wrote several excellent hymns. His mission was that of
censor of the public taste. Sometimes he lectured and sometimes he
preached, and in his Saturday papers he brought his wide reading and
nice scholarship into service for the instruction of his readers. Such
was the series of essays in which he gave an elaborate review of
_Paradise Lost_. Such also was his famous paper, the _Vision of Mirza_,
an oriental allegory of human life. The adoption of this slightly
pedagogic tone was justified by the prevalent ignorance and frivolity of
the age. But the lighter portions of the _Spectator_ are those which
have worn the best. Their style is at once correct and easy, and it is
as a humorist, a sly observer of manners, and, above all, a delightful
talker, that Addison is best known to posterity. In the personal
sketches of the members of the Spectator Club, of Will Honeycomb,
Captain Sentry, Sir Andrew Freeport, and, above all, Sir Roger de
Coverley, the quaint and honest country gentleman, may be found the
nucleus of the modern prose fiction of character. Addison's humor is
always a trifle grave. There is no whimsy, no frolic in it, as in Sterne
or Lamb. "He thinks justly," said Dr. Johnson, "but he thinks faintly."
The _Spectator_ had a host of followers, from the somewhat heavy
_Rambler_ and _Idler_ of Johnson, down to the _Salmagundi_ papers of our
own Irving, who was, perhaps, Addison's latest and best literary
descendant. In his own age Addison made some figure as a poet and
d