149: 27. Like a novel. The word novel was introduced into English in the sixteenth century as a name for the Italian novelle, or short tales, translations of which were then very numerous in England. In Addison's time it was still used to designate a short story as distinguished from the longer romances like those in the Ladies Library (V of this volume). The modern novel, an extended narrative of real life, with careful plot usually having for its central motion the passion of love, was not yet written in English. It is usually said to begin with the work of Richardson and Fielding, 1740-1750.
[150]: 14. Gazette. The official journal of the government. Steele, it will be remembered, had been gazetteer from May, 1707, to October, 1710, when the Whigs went out of power.
150: 23. According to Mr. Cowley. "You would advise me not to precipitate that resolution [of retiring from public life] but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person whom you and I love very much and would believe as soon as another man) 'cum dignitate otium.' That were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there is no fooling with life when it is once turned beyond forty. The seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game."—Cowley's Essay, The Danger of Procrastination. Also see note, p. 234.
150: 29. Of three hundred a year, i.e. yielding an income of three hundred pounds a year.
[152]: 19. Inns of Court. See note, p. 221.
XXI. Whigs and Tories
Motto. "This thirst of kindred blood, my sons, detest,
Nor turn your force against your country's breast."
—Virgil, Æneid, vi. 832. Dryden's tr.
[155]: 1. The malice of parties. Party feeling had perhaps never been more bitter in England than just at this time; and it was probably all the more bitter and personal because there were no very clear questions at issue between the two parties. Swift, writing in the Tory Examiner a few months before the date of this paper (November 16, 1710), says, "Let any one examine a reasonable honest man, of either side, upon those opinions in religion and government, which both parties daily buffet each other about, he shall hardly find one material point in difference between them." The principal questions upon which Whig and Tory had once actively differed, and still continued to differ in theory, were two. The first was the nature of the monarchy and its relation to the other parts of the government. The extreme Tories held that the king had a divine right to his throne, by hereditary succession; that this was indefeasible, and implied the duty of unconditional obedience from the subject. The extreme Whigs held that the king was the creation of the people, and held his office purely by act of Parliament. But it would have been difficult to find many such extreme Tories or extreme Whigs. The doctrine of the divine right of kings had been practically refuted by the Revolution of 1688; if there were any such right, then the crown belonged, not to Anne, but to the Pretender, son of James II. On the other hand, few Whigs would have denied that the monarchy was an essential part of the English system of government, and not the mere creature of parliament.