No literary enterprise before achieved exerted so direct an influence upon society, or induced the same degree of individual culture. Its singular adaptation to the English mind is evinced not more by its immediate influence, than by the permanent form of instruction and entertainment it initiated. It was the prolific source of the invaluable array of publications which reached their acme of excellence in the best days of the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine, and which continue now, in the shape of Household Words, and of the choicest monthly and quarterly journals, to represent every school of opinion and class of society, and to illustrate and modify the ways of thinking and the style of expression of two great nations. No works have ever gone so near the sympathies of unprofessional readers, or reflected more truly the life and thought of successive eras; none have enlisted such a variety of talent, or more genially tempered and enlightened the common mind.

When the Spectator flourished, the stern inelegance of the Puritan era, and the profligate tone which succeeded it, yet lingered around the written thought of England; while the French school represented by Congreve, the coarseness and spite of Swift, and the unsparing satire of Pope, frequently made literary talent the minister of unhallowed passions and depraved taste. To all this the pure and benign example of Addison was a delightful contrast. His censorship was tempered with good feeling, his expression untainted with vulgarity; he was familiar, without losing refinement of tone; he used language as a crystal medium to enshrine sense, and not as a grotesque costume to hide the want of it; he was above the conceits of false wit, and too much of a Christian to profane his gifts; in a word, he wrote like a gentleman and a scholar, and yet without the fine airs of the one or the pedantry of the other. He first exposed the lesser incongruities of human conduct, which no law or theology had assailed; he discussed neglected subjects of value and interest; and gave new zest to the common resources of daily life by placing them in an objective light. Then, too, by giving a colloquial tone to writing, he brought it within the range of universal sympathy, and made it a source of previously unimagined pleasure and instruction.

Addison's relation to Steele was one of mutual advantage; for, although the improvidence of "poor Dick" gave his virtuous friend constant anxiety, on the other hand, Sir Richard's easy' temper and frank companionship lowered his classic Mentor from stilts, and promoted his access to their common readers. It is obvious that the social tone of the Spectator is as much owing to Steele as its grace and humor are to Addison. Indeed, their friendship, like those of Gray and Walpole, Johnson and Goldsmith, and, as a more recent instance, Wilkie and Haydon, was founded on diversity of character. Steele's vivacious temperament and knowledge of the world supplied the author of Cato with the glow and aptitude he needed, while the latter's high principle and rigid taste felicitously modified his companion's recklessness. If the one was a fine scholar, the other was a most agreeable gentleman; if the one was correct, the other was genial; if the one had reliable taste, the other had noble impulses; - so that between them there was a beautiful representative humanity. Macaulay attributes the execution which Addison levied on Steele's house to resentment at his ungrateful extravagance; but the editor of the new edition, before noticed, justly modifies, in a note, the extreme language of the text. We think, with him, that Addison's severity, in this instance, was more apparent than real; for he declared that his object was to "awaken him [Steele] from a lethargy which must end in his inevitable ruin." That no alienation occurred is evident from the preface that Steele wrote for his edition of "The Drummer," which is eloquent with love and admiration for his departed friend.

In that delectable creation of Addison, Sir Roger de Coverley, we recognize, as it were, the first outline or cartoon of those studies of character which have since given their peculiar charm to English fictions and essays. In no other literature is discoverable the combination of humor and good sense, of rare virtue and harmless eccentricities, which stamp the best of these productions with an enduring interest. Before the advent of Sir Roger delicate shades of characterization had not been attempted, satire was comparatively gross, and the excitement of adventure was the chief charm of narrative. But Addison drew, with a benignant yet keen touch, the foibles and the goodness of heart of his ideal

country gentleman, and thus gave the precedent whereby the art of the moralist was refined and elevated. Compared, indeed, with subsequent heroes of romance, Sir Roger is a shadowy creature; but none the less lovable for the simple rôle assigned him, and the negative part he enacts. He is the legitimate precursor of Squire Western, Parson Adams, the Man of Feeling, and Pickwick. In the portrait gallery of popular English authors we gratefully hail Addison as the literary ancestor of Fielding, Sterne, Mackenzie, Lamb, Irving, and Dickens. The diversity of their style and the originality of their characters do not invalidate the succession, any more than Leonardo's clear outline and Raphael's inimitable expression repudiate the claims, as their artistic progenitors, of Giotto and Perugino. It is a curious experiment, however, to turn from the brilliant characters which now people the domain of the novelist, and revert to this primitive figure, as fresh and true as when first revealed at the breakfast-tables of London in the reign of Queen Anne. Addison thus rescued the lineaments of the original English country gentleman, and kept them bright and genuine for the delight of posterity, ere their individuality was lost in the uniform traits of a locomotive age. It is surprising that features so delicately pictured, incidents so undramatic, and sentiments so free from extravagance, should thus survive intact. It is the nicety of the execution and the harmony of the character that preserve it. Walpole compares Sir Roger to Falstaff, doubtless with reference to the rare humor which stamps and immortalizes both, however diverse in other respects.

We seem to know Sir Roger as a personal acquaintance, and an habitué of some manorial dwelling familiar to our school-days; there is not a whim of his we can afford to lose, or a virtue we would ever cease to honor and love. His choice of a chaplain who would not insult him with Latin and Greek at his own table, and whose excellence as a preacher he secured by a present of "all the good sermons that had been printed;" his habit of prolonging the psalm-tune a minute after the congregation were hushed, of always engaging on the Thames a bargeman with a wooden leg, of talking pleasantly all the way up stairs to the servant who ushered him into a drawing-room, of "clearing his

pipes in good air" by a morning promenade in Gray's Inn Walks, of inquiring as to the strength of the axletree before trusting himself in a hackney-coach, of standing up before the play to survey complacently the throng of happy faces, these, and many other peculiarities, are to our consciousness like the endeared oddities of a friend, part of his identity, and associated with his memory. Gracefully into the web of Sir Roger's quaint manners did Addison weave a golden thread of sentiment. His relations to his household and tenants, his universal salutations in town, and his "thinking of the widow" in lapses of conversation, are natural touches in this delightful picture. We see him alight and take the spent hare in his arms at the close of a hunt,— shake the cicerone at the Abbey by the hand at parting, and invite him to his lodgings to "talk over these matters more at leisure,” — chide an importunate beggar, and then give him a sixpence, - order the coachman to stop at a tobacconist's and treat himself to a roll of the best Virginia, — look reverently at Dr. Busby's statue because the famous pedagogue had whipped his grandfather. These anecdotes give reality to the conception. It would not be thoroughly English, however, without a dash of philosophy; and we are almost reconciled to Sir Roger's ill-success in love with "one of those unaccountable creatures that secretly rejoice in the admiration of men, but indulge themselves in no further consequences," by its influence on his character. "This affliction in my life," says Sir Roger, "has streaked all my conduct with a softness of which I should otherwise have been incapable." We envy the Spectator the privilege of taking this "fine old English gentleman" to the play, and enjoying his "natural criticism; we honor Addison for his veto upon Steele's attempt to debauch this nobleman of nature, and deem it worthy of a poet to resolve upon his hero's final exit, rather than submit to so base an alternative; and we feel that it would have been quite impossible to listen, at the club, unmoved by the butler's epistle describing his tranquil departure, from the moment he ceased to be able "to touch a sirloin," until the slab of the Coverley vault closed over his remains.

The zest of this favorite creation of Addison is increased by the remembrance we have of a tendency to more spirited life in

youth, when Sir Roger went all the way to Grand Cairo to take the measure of a pyramid, fought a duel, and kicked "Bully Dawson." This lively episode brings into strong relief the long years of quiet respectability, when his chief pastime was a game of backgammon with the chaplain, and his architectural enthusiasm was confined to admiration of London Bridge, and a bequest to build a steeple for the village church. His habits are so well known to us, that, if we were to meet him in Soho Square, where he always lodged when in town, we should expect an invitation to take a glass of "Mrs. Trueby's water;" and, if the encounter occurred under those trees which shaded his favorite walk at Coverley Hall, we should not feel even a momentary surprise to hear him instantly begin to talk of the widow. If Steele gave the first hint, and Tickell and Budgell contributed part of the outline, the soul of this character is alone due to Addison; his delicate and true hand gave it color and expression, and therefore unity of effect; and it proved the model lay figure of subsequent didactic writers, upon which hang gracefully the mantles of charity and the robes of practical wisdom. Sir Roger in the country, at the club, the theatre, or at church, in love, and on the bench, was the herald of that swarm of heroes whose situations are made to illustrate the varied circles of society and aspects of life in modern fiction.

It was in the form and relations of literature, however, that Addison chiefly wrought great improvement; and there is reason for the comparative want of interest which his writings excite at the present day, when we pass from the amenities of style to the claims of humanity and of truth. A more profound element lurked in popular writing than the chaste essayist of Queen Anne's day imagined; and since the climax of social and political life realized by the French revolution, questions of greater moment than the speculations of a convivial club, a significance in human existence deeper than the amiable whims of a country gentleman, and phases of society infinitely higher than those involved in criticism on points of manners and taste, have become subjects of popular thought and discussion. Accordingly, there is more earnestness and a greater scope in periodical literature. Minds of a lofty order, sympathies of a deep and philosophic nature, have been