It is in these periodicals that we first find the familiar essay. Its only predecessors are such serious essays as those of Bacon, Cowley, and Temple, the turgid paragraphs of Shaftesbury, the vigorous but crude and rough papers of Collier, and the 'characters' of Overbury and Earle. These 'characters' had always been entirely typical; they were treated rather from the abstract than from the human point of view, and had no names or other individualization than that of their character and calling. In some of the numbers of the Spectator we still find these 'characters' occurring, such as the character of Will Wimble, [Footnote: Spectator 108.] of the honest yeoman, [Footnote: Spectator 122.] and of Tom Touchy; [Footnote: Spectator 122.] but they are surrounded by circumstances peculiar to themselves, and so are much more highly individualized. The Tatler and the Spectator very greatly extended the range of essay-writing, and with it the flexibility of prose style; it is this extension that gives to them their modern quality. Nothing came amiss: fable, description, vision, gossip, literary criticism or moral essays, discussion of large questions such as marriage and education, or of the smaller social amenities—any subject which would be of interest to a sufficiently large number of readers would furnish a paper; as Steele wrote at the beginning of the Tatler, 'Quicquid agunt homines nostri libelli farrago.' Different interests were voiced by the various members of the club, and the light humorous treatment and an easy style attracted a larger public than had ever been reached by a single publication. [Footnote: v. Appendix IV.] The elasticity of the structure enabled Addison to produce the maximum effect, and to bring into play the full weight of his character.
The nature of the work was determined throughout by its strongly human interest. It is significant as standing between the lifeless 'characters' of the seventeenth century and the great development of the novel. Thackeray calls Addison 'the most delightful talker in the world', and his essays have precisely the charm of the conversation of a well-informed and thoughtful man of the world. They are entirely discursive; he starts with a certain subject, and follows any line of thought that occurs to him. If he thinks of an anecdote in connexion with his subject, that goes down; if it suggests to him abstract speculations or moral reflections he gives us those instead. It is the capricious chat of a man who likes to talk, not the product of an imperative need of artistic expression. It is significant that so much of his work consists of gossip about people. This growing interest in the individual was leading up to the great eighteenth century novel. It seems to arise out of a growing sense of identity, a stronger interest in oneself; there is a common motive at the root of our observation of other people, of the interest attaching to ordinary actions presented on the stage, and of the fascination of a reflection or a portrait of ourselves; by these means we are enabled to some extent to become detached, and to take an external and impersonal view of ourselves. The stage had already turned to the representation of contemporary life and manners; portraiture was increasing in popularity; and the novel was on its way.
In the Coverley Papers all the characteristic species of the Spectator are represented except the allegory and the essays in literary criticism. Steele, who was always full of projects and swift and spontaneous in invention, wrote the initial description of the club members, and the characters were sustained by the two friends with wonderful consistency. Apparently each was mainly responsible for a certain number of the characters, and Sir Roger was really the property of Addison, but no one person was strictly monopolized by either. The papers were written independently, but it is easy to see that the two authors had an identical conception of their characters. It is true that the singularity of Sir Roger's behaviour described by Steele in the first draft of his character is very lightly touched in subsequent papers, and that, judging by the simplicity of his conduct in town, he has forgotten very completely the 'fine gentleman' [Footnote: Spectator 2.] period of his life, when, like Master Shallow, he 'heard the chimes at midnight', but these are insignificant details.
Since Sir Roger belongs to Addison, it follows naturally that in the present selection Addison's share compared with Steele's is larger in proportion than in the complete Spectator, but it would be a mistake to lose sight of the importance of Steele's part of the work. Addison was the greater artist, and the balance and shapeliness of his style enhances the effect of his thought and judgment, but we should be no less sorry to relinquish Steele's headlong directness and warmth of feeling. The humorous character sketches of Sir Roger's ancestors [Footnote: Spectator 109.] are his, and his the passage at arms between the Quaker and the soldier in the coach—the delightful soldier of whose remark the Spectator tells us: 'This was followed by a vain laugh of his own, and a deep silence of all the rest of the company. I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep, which I did with all speed.' [Footnote: Spectator 132.] His, too, is the charming little idyll of the huntsman and his Betty, who fears that her love will drown himself in a stream he can jump across, [Footnote: Spectator 118.] and the whole fragrant story of Sir Roger's thirty years' attachment to the widow. [Footnote: Spectator 113, 118.] But above all, we must not overlook the fact that without Steele, as he himself says in his dedication to The Drummer, Addison would never have brought himself to give to the world these familiar, informal essays. Addison was naturally both cautious and shy; the mask which Steele invented lent him just the security which he needed, and the Spectator endures as the monument of a great friendship, a memorial such as Steele had always desired. [Footnote: Spectator 555.]
Steele himself explained the other advantages of the disguise: 'It is much more difficult to converse with the world in a real than in a personated character,' he says, both because the moral theory of a man whose identity is known is exposed to the commentary of his life, and because 'the fictitious person … might assume a mock authority without being looked upon as vain and conceited'. [Footnote: Spectator 555.] It is to the influence of this mask that much of the self- complacent superiority which has been attributed to Addison may be referred; one 'having nothing to do with men's passions and interests', [Footnote: Spectator 4.] one 'set to watch the manners and behaviour of my countrymen and contemporaries,' [Footnote: Spectator 435.] and to extirpate anything 'that shocks modesty and good manners', [Footnote: Spectator 34.] such a censor was bound to place himself on a pinnacle above the passions and foibles which he was to rebuke. Yet occasionally Addison does appear a trifle self-satisfied. Pope's indictment of his character in the person of Atticus cannot be entirely set aside. His creed, as implied in Spectator 115, esteems the welfare of man as the prime end of a fostering Providence, and such an opinion as this, held steadily without doubt or struggle, would tend to give a man a strong sense of his own importance. The superiority of his attitude to women, which, however, does not appear in the Coverley Papers, is attributable partly to his office of censor, and partly to their position at the time. This sort of condescension appears most distinctly in his treatment of animals. He is far more humane in his feeling for them than are the majority of his contemporaries, but although he likes to moralize over Sir Roger's poultry, [Footnote: Spectator 120, 121.] he really looks down on them from the elevation which a reasonable being must possess over the creatures of instinct. Yet how does he know so certainly that instinct is actually inferior to reason?
Addison is essentially a townsman, and his treatment of nature is always cold. The one passage in these papers which evinces a genuine love of the country is Steele's description of his enjoyment when he is strolling in the widow's grove. He is 'ravished with the murmur of waters, the whisper of breezes, the singing of birds; and whether I looked up to the heavens, down on the earth, or turned to the prospects around me, still struck with new sense of pleasure'. [Footnote: Spectator 118.] The style of the two writers reflects the qualities of their minds. Addison's writing is fluent, easy, and lucid. He wrote and corrected with great care, and his words very closely express his thought. Landor speaks of his prose as a 'cool current of delight', and Dr. Johnson, in an often quoted passage, calls it 'the model of the middle style … always equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences…. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour. He is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic…. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.'
Steele was a far more rapid writer, and even grammatical faults are not infrequent in his papers. He explicitly declares that 'Elegance, purity, and correctness were not so much my purpose, as in any intelligible manner as I could to rally all those singularities of human life … which obstruct anything that was really good and great'. [Footnote: Dedication to The Drummer.] His style varies with his mood, and with the degree of his interest. Occasionally it reaches the simple, rhythmic prose of the passage quoted above, but generally it is somewhat abrupt and a little toneless. But now and again we find the 'unexpected splendour' in which Addison is wanting, in phrases like 'a covered indigence, a magnificent poverty', [Footnote: Spectator 114.] or in the sparkling antitheses of Sir Roger's description of his ancestors. [Footnote: Spectator 109.] Yet Steele's claim on our admiration rests not on the quality of his style, but, as Mr. John Forster has said, on 'the soul of a sincere man shining through it all'.
The influence of the Spectator was incalculable. Addison succeeded in his principal object. '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,' and that I have produced 'such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, and prejudice'. [Footnote: Spectator 10.] A glance at the social and literary history of the next thirty or forty years will reveal how fully this wish was accomplished. It is true that folly and vice have not yet been wiped off the face of the earth, but the Spectator turned the tide of public opinion against them. The fashionable ideal was reversed; virtue became admirable, and though vice could not be destroyed, it was no longer suffered to plume itself in the eyes of the world. The Spectator had delivered virtue from its position of contempt, and 'set up the immoral man as the object of derision'. [Footnote: Spectator 445.]
The Spectator has also acquired an incidental value from the passage of time. Addison hints at this in his citations from an imaginary history of Queen Anne's reign, supposed to be written three hundred years later. In 'those little diurnal essays which are still extant'—two-thirds of the time has elapsed, and at present the Spectator is certainly extant—we are enabled 'to see the diversions and characters of the English nation in his time.' [Footnote: Spectator 101.] It is in the literature of a nation that we find the history of its life and the motives of its deeds.
Finally, the Spectator has a permanent value as a human document. 'Odd and uncommon characters are the game that I look for and most delight in,' [Footnote: Spectator 103. ] he tells us, but, with the exception of the sketch of Tom Touchy [Footnote: Spectator 122.], none of his persons are lifeless embodiments of a single trait, like the 'humours' of the early part of the preceding century. Sir Roger, who 'calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit', [Footnote: Spectator 2.] who is too delicate to mention that the 'very worthy gentleman to whom he was highly obliged' was once his footman, [Footnote: Spectator 107.] who dwells upon the beauty of his lady's hand [Footnote: Spectator 113.] and can be jealous of Sir David Dundrum [Footnote: Spectator 359.] after thirty odd years of courtship, who hardly likes to contemplate being of service to his lady, because of 'giving her the pain of being obliged', [Footnote: Spectator 118.] who addresses the court and remarks on the weather to the judge in order to impress the Spectator and the country, [Footnote: Spectator 122.] who will not own to a mere citizen among his ancestors, [Footnote: Spectator 109.] and 'very frequently' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] repeats his old stories—Sir Andrew, with his joke about the sea and the British common, [Footnote: Spectator 2.] and his tenderness for his old friend and opponent [Footnote: Spectator 517.]—the volatile Will Honeycomb, whose gallantry and care of his person [Footnote: Spectator 2, 359.] remind us of his successor, Major Pendennis—these are all in their degree intimate friends or acquaintances, as living in our imagination and in the actual world now as they were two hundred years ago, and immortal as everything must be which has once been inspired with the authentic breath of life.