Spectator
he meets the prejudices of an 'understanding age,' and partly satisfies his own, by finding reason for his admiration of
Chevy Chase
and the
Babes in the Wood
, in their great similarity to works of Virgil. We see it also in some of the criticisms which accompany his admirable working out of the resolve to justify his true natural admiration of the poetry of Milton, by showing that
Paradise Lost
was planned after the manner of the ancients, and supreme even in its obedience to the laws of Aristotle. In his
Spectator
papers on Imagination he but half escapes from the conventions of his time, which detested the wildness of a mountain pass, thought Salisbury Plain one of the finest prospects in England, planned parks with circles and straight lines of trees, despised our old cathedrals for their 'Gothic' art, and saw perfection in the Roman architecture, and the round dome of St. Paul's. Yet in these and all such papers of his we find that Addison had broken through the weaker prejudices of the day, opposing them with sound natural thought of his own. Among cultivated readers, lesser moulders of opinion, there can be no doubt that his genius was only the more serviceable in amendment of the tastes of his own time, for friendly understanding and a partial sharing of ideas for which it gave itself no little credit.