Joseph Addison, the second of the six children of Dr. Launcelot Addison and Jane Gulstone, was born May 1, 1672, at Milston in Wiltshire. The feebleness of his infancy seems to have impaired his spirit as a boy; for, in the General Dictionary, Dr. Birch relates, that when at school in the country, he was so afraid of punishment as to have absconded, lodging in a hollow tree in the fields, till a hue and cry restored him to his parents. At the Charter-House was formed that friendship between him and Sir Richard Steele, which led to their close alliance in a new kind of literary undertaking. Addison could not but feel his own superiority; and Spence intimates, that the one was too fond of displaying, and the other too servile in acknowledging it. Steele occasionally availed himself not only of his friend’s pen, but of his purse. Johnson has given currency to the story, that Addison enforced the repayment of 100l. by an execution, and the fact is said to have been related by Steele himself, with tears in his eyes. Hooke, the Roman historian, professed to have received it from Pope. The biographer sarcastically remarks, that the borrower probably had not much purpose of repayment; but the lender, who “seems to have had other notions of 100l., grew impatient of delay.” Now no date is assigned to this anecdote; and Addison’s finances were so low during the greater part of his life, that he might have suffered greatly by the disappointment; nor does it detract from the character of a man in narrow circumstances, that he entertains serious notions of 100l.

In 1687 Addison was entered at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he took the degree of M.A., February 14, 1693. One of his early poetical attempts was ‘An Account of the greatest English Poets, inscribed to H. S.;’ initials which have been currently assigned to Dr. Henry Sacheverell, who is indebted, for no enviable place in history, to his trial and its consequences. But a college friend of Addison has left it on record, that the initials were the property of a gentleman bearing the same name, who died young, after having shown some promise in writing a history of the Isle of Man, and who bequeathed his papers to Addison, containing, among other things, the plan of a tragedy 011 the death of Socrates, which the legatee had some thoughts of working up himself. In this poem the writer tells his friend that Spenser can no longer charm an understanding age. Now the judgment of the present age disclaims this confident decision; nor would it be worth recording, but for Spence’s assertion, that the critic had never read the ‘Faery Queene,’ when he drew its character. In after life he spoke of his own poem as a “poor thing;” but his general level as a versifier was not high. The ‘Campaign’ is his masterpiece in rhyme.

He was indebted to Congreve for his introduction to Montague, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson says, that “he was then learning the trade of a courtier, and subjoined Montague as a poetical name to those of Cowley and of Dryden.” In 1695 he wrote a poem to King William, with an introduction addressed to Lord Somers, who is said by Tickell to have sent a message to the author to desire his acquaintance.

In 1699, he obtained an annual pension of 300l. to enable him to travel. He passed the first year in preparation at Blois, and then departed for Italy. That he was duly qualified to appreciate the attractions of “classic ground,”—his own phrase, sneered at for affectation by contemporary critics, but since sanctioned by general adoption,—appears by his ‘Travels,’ and by the letter from Italy to Lord Halifax. His ‘Dialogues on Medals’ were composed at this time. On the death of King William, in March, 1702, he became distressed for money by the stoppage of his pension. This compelled him to become tutor to a travelling squire. The engagement seems to have been for one year only, for he was at Rotterdam in June, 1703. In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for November, 1835, may be found three very curious, because characteristic, letters, from the Duke of Somerset, surnamed by his contemporaries the Proud, to old Jacob Tonson, forwarding a proposal to Addison to undertake the office of tutor to his son, then going abroad. We transcribe a passage from the second letter, as a sample of the proud Duke’s liberality. “I desire he may be more on the account of a companion in my son’s travels, than as a governor, and as such shall account him; my meaning is that neither lodging, travelling, nor diet, shall cost him sixpence, and over and above that, my son shall present him at the year’s end with a hundred guineas, as long as he is pleased to continue in that service to my son, by taking great care of him, by his personal attendance and advice, in what he finds necessary during his time of travelling.” It appears from the Duke’s quotation of the answer, in the third letter to Tonson, that Addison had “other notions” of this offer than the proposer entertained. “I will set down his own words, which are these:—‘As for the recompense that is proposed to me, I must confess I can by no means see my account in it,’ &c.” A hundred guineas and maintenance was, even in those days, a mean appointment from a Duke to a gentleman.

Addison returned to England at the latter end of 1703. In 1704, at the request of Lord Godolphin, to whom he was introduced by the Earl of Halifax, he undertook to celebrate the victory of Blenheim, and composed the first portion of his poem called the ‘Campaign.’ This proved his introduction into office. After filling some inferior appointments, he became, in 1706, Under-Secretary of State. About the same time, he wrote the comic opera of ‘Rosamond,’ which was neglected by the public, has been overpraised by Johnson, and is now deservedly forgotten.

Thomas Earl of Wharton was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, December 4, 1708, and proceeded to his destination April 10, 1709, accompanied by Addison as his Secretary. Addison therefore left London two days before the commencement of the ‘Tatler,’ the first number of which came out April 12; and his own first contribution appeared May 26. His last was No. 267, and the work ended with No. 271, January 2, 1710–11. In No. 93 is an article on a ‘Letter from Switzerland, with Remarks on Travelling,’ and a sly hint that ‘Fools ought not to be exported,’ in Addison’s happiest style of playful satire. The praise of original design clearly belongs to the projector of the ‘Tatler.’ Tickell however was justified in saying, that Addison’s aid “did not a little contribute to advance its reputation;” and Steele candidly allows, that his coadjutor not only assisted but improved his original scheme. In his dedication of the comedy of the ‘Drummer,’ he says, “It was advanced indeed, for it was raised to a greater thing than I intended it; for the elegance, purity, and correctness, which appeared in his writings, were not so much to my purpose, as in any intelligible manner I could, to rally all those singularities of human life, through the different professions and characters in it, which obstruct any thing that was truly good and great.”

The first No. of the ‘Spectator’ appeared March 1, 1710–11, and the paper was discontinued December 6, 1712; No. 555 concluded the seventh volume, as first collected by the publishers. The work was resumed June 18, 1714, with No. 556, and the eighth volume closed with No. 635. Of the first forty-five papers of the revived ‘Spectator,’ Addison wrote twenty-three; more than half: he did not contribute to the last thirty-five. Notwithstanding the avowed purpose of exclusively treating general topics, Steele’s Whiggism once burst its bounds, by reprinting in the ‘Spectator’ a preface of Dr. Fleetwood to some sermons, for the purpose of attracting the Queen’s notice to it. Had the Number been published at the usual hour, the household might have devised means for its suppression, with some plausible excuse for its absence from the royal breakfast table; but the non-issue until twelve o’clock, the time fixed for that meal, left no opening for cabal, and her Majesty’s subjects were, for her sake, deprived of their morning’s speculation till that hour. In No. 10 Addison states the daily sale at three thousand: Johnson makes it sixteen hundred and eighty; apparently far below the real number. The latter number is given on calculation from the product of the tax; the assertion of the publisher was Addison’s authority; and he might, in the commencement of the work, have indulged in the puff oblique. No. 14, composed of Letters from the Lion—from an Under-Sexton—on the Masquerade—and Puppet Show, is selected by the annotators, as “meriting the attention of such as pretend to distinguish with wonderful facility between Addison’s and Steele’s papers.” It is wholly Steele’s. The ‘Guardian’ was published in the interval, between the ‘Spectator’s’ being laid down and taken up again. The first Number came out March 12, 1713; the last, October 1, 1713. Inattention to marks has sometimes subjected Addison to undeserved censure. Dr. Blair vindicates Tasso’s description of Sylvia against the ‘Guardian;’ but by a double inadvertence, he quotes No. 38 for a passage contained in 28, and ascribes to Addison what was written by Steele. The ‘Whig Examiner,’ and the ‘Freeholder,’ both exclusively Addison’s, have been enabled by their wit to survive the usual fate of party-writings. The former is so much more pungent than usual with the author, and excited so much alarm and jealousy in Swift, that he triumphantly remarks, “it is now down among the dead men;” part of the burthen of a popular Tory song. The humour of the latter, Steele thought too gentle for such blustering times; and is reported to have said, that the ministry made use of a lute, when they should have called for a trumpet.

On the demise of the other papers, Hughes formed a project of a society of learned men of various characters, who were to meet and carry on a conversation on all subjects, empowering their secretary to draw up any of their discourses, or publish any of their writings, under the title of Register. Addison, in answer, applauds the specimen, and approves the title; but adds, “To tell you truly, I have been so taken up with thoughts of that nature, for these two or three years last past, that I must now take some time pour me dÉlasser, and lay in fuel for a future work. I am in a thousand troubles for poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself; but he has sent me word, that he is determined to go on, and that any advice I can give him, in this particular, will have no weight with him.”

Tickell says respecting Cato, “He took up a design of writing a play upon this subject, when he was very young at the university, and even attempted something in it there, though not a line as it now stands. The work was performed by him in his travels, and retouched in England, without any formal design of bringing it on the stage, till his friends of the first quality and distinction prevailed with him to put the last finishing to it, at a time when they thought the doctrine of liberty very seasonable.” Cibber says, that in 1704 he had the pleasure of reading the first four acts privately with Steele, who told him they were written in Italy. Oldmixon in his ‘Art of Criticism,’ 1728, talks about Addison’s reluctance to resume the work, and his request to Hughes to write the fifth act. According to Pope, the first packed audience was made to support the ‘Distressed Mother;’ the scheme was tried again for Cato with triumphant effect. The love-scenes are the weakest in the play, and are by some supposed to have been foisted on the original plan, to humour the false taste of the modern stage. When the tragedy was shown to Pope, he advised the author to print it, without committing it to the theatre, as thinking it better suited to the closet than representation.

When Lord Sunderland was sent as lord lieutenant to Ireland in 1714, Addison was appointed his secretary. This, as well as another step in his promotion, has been omitted by Johnson. In 1715 he was made a lord of trade. In 1716 he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, to whom he had long paid his addresses. Johnson pleasantly suggests, that his behaviour might be not very unlike that of Sir Roger to his disdainful widow, and supposes that the lady might amuse herself by playing with his passion. Spence dates his first acquaintance with her from his appointment as tutor to the young earl; but as neither the time of that appointment is known, nor the footing on which he stood with the family, the first steps in this affair are left in obscurity. The result is better known. Mr. Tyers, in an unpublished essay on ‘Addison’s Life and Writings,’ says, “Holland House is a large mansion, but could not contain Mr. Addison, the Countess of Warwick, and one guest, peace.” He became possessed of this house by his marriage, and died in it. His last and great promotion was to the dignity of Secretary of State in 1717; but he was unfit for it, and gained no new laurels by it. He carried so much of the author into the office of the statesman, that he could not issue an order of mere routine without losing his time in hunting after unnecessary niceties of language. During his last illness he sent for Gay, and with a confession of having injured him, promised him a recompense if he recovered. He did not specify the nature of the injury; nor could Gay, either then or subsequently, guess at his meaning. Dr. Young furnished the received account of his interview with Lord Warwick on his death-bed; but there appears to be no ground for Johnson’s imputation on the young man’s morals or principles, or for supposing that it was a last effort on Addison’s part to reclaim him. Young mentions his lordship as a youth finely accomplished, without a hint of looseness either in opinions or conduct. Addison died June 17, 1719: his only child, a daughter, died at Bilton, in Warwickshire, at an advanced age, in 1797. Not many days before his death he commissioned Mr. Tickell to collect his writings; a gentleman of whom Swift said that Addison was a whig, but Tickell, whigissimus.

To ascertain the claim of short periodical papers to originality of design, we must look to the state of newspapers at an earlier date. As vehicles of information they are often mentioned in plays in the time of James and Charles the First. Carew, in his ‘Survey of Cornwall,’ first published in 1602, quotes ‘Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus.’ Till the beginning of the eighteenth century, the periodical press had been exclusively political; no class of writers but divines and theoretical reasoners had administered to the moral wants of society: certain gentlemen, therefore, of liberal education, and men of the world, combined to furnish practical instruction in an amusing form, by fictions running parallel with the political newspaper. Addison announces the design “to bring philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.” In the character of his fictitious friend the clergyman, he speaks of “the great use this paper might be of to the public, by reprehending those vices which are too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit.” Another object was to allay party-violence by promoting literary taste; in Steele’s figurative language, to substitute the lute for the trumpet. On this subject Addison says, “I am amazed that the press should be only made use of in this way by news-writers, and the zealots of parties; as if it were not more advantageous to mankind to be instructed in wisdom and virtue than in politics, and to be made good fathers, husbands, and sons, than counsellors and statesmen.”

Dr. Beattie, who published an edition of Addison’s works in 1790, with a Life prefixed, says that he was once informed, but had forgotten on what authority, that Addison had collected three manuscript volumes of materials. He might have found this in Tickell’s Life. “It would have been impossible for Mr. Addison, who made little or no use of letters sent in by the numerous correspondents of the Spectator, to have executed his large share of this task in so exquisite a manner, if he had not ingrafted into it many pieces that had lain by him in little hints and minutes, which he from time to time collected, and ranged in order, and moulded into the form in which they now appear. Such are the essays upon wit, the pleasures of the imagination, the critique upon Milton, and some others.”

The original delineation of Sir Roger de Coverley, for the management and keeping of which character Addison has been highly extolled, must unquestionably be ascribed to Steele. He drew the outlines; Addison principally worked up the portrait. Johnson not only takes a false view of the character, but in contradiction to every judgment but his own, represents the author as sinking under the weight of it. “The irregularities in Sir Roger’s conduct seem not so much the effects of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the pressure of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence which solitary grandeur naturally generates. The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.” This seems to be a mistake from beginning to end. Addison had no more design to impute incipient madness to Sir Roger, than to his contrast, Sir Andrew Freeport. Habitual rusticity is not the prevailing feature in a man who visited the metropolis every season: a main beauty of the picture is, that Sir Roger is always a gentleman, although an odd one. Hear Lord Orford on the subject. “Natural humour was the primary talent of Addison. His character of Sir Roger de Coverley, though inferior, is only inferior to Shakspeare’s Falstaff.” But however prejudiced or mistaken Johnson might be in this particular instance, when he deals in generalities, he traces the peculiar merits of Addison’s manner with the touch of a master. “He copies with so much fidelity, that he can be hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination.”

An attempt has been made to compare the humour of Addison with that of MoliÈre, of whom Lord Chesterfield said that no man ever had so much. But a parallel between an essayist and a dramatic writer will not run straight; the construction of the drama gives so much greater latitude to the display of humour, and allows of so much nearer an approach to extravagance, that there can be no drawn game between them, and the essayist will almost always be the loser.

As a critic, Addison’s merit is impartially and ably set forth in the notes to his Life in Dr. Kippis’s edition of the ‘Biographia Britannica.’ On that subject Johnson is just and liberal. “Addison is now despised by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects, but by the lights which he afforded them.” By some of these arrogant despisers he has been blamed for deciding by taste rather than by principles. To this Dr. Warton, who thought him superior to Dryden as a critic, briefly answers, taste must decide. Addison’s style has been universally admired and thought a model. Lord Orford says of Addison, Swift, Bolingbroke, and Dr. Middleton, “Such authors fix a standard by their writings.” Johnson says he did not wish to be energetic; Dr. Warton affirms that he is so, and that often. Steele describes his habits of composition. “This was particular in this writer, that, when he had taken his resolution, or made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk about a room, and dictate it into language with as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he dictated.” Pope says that he wrote with fluency; but if he had time to correct, did it slowly and cautiously; but that many of the ‘Spectators’ were written rapidly, and sent to the press in the instant; and he doubts whether much leisure for revisal would have led to improvement. “He would alter any thing to please his friends, before publication, but would not retouch his pieces afterwards; and I believe not one word in Cato, to which I made an objection, was suffered to stand.” The last line of Cato was Pope’s; a substitute for the original.

We have neither room nor willingness to enter on the jealousy between these two eminent persons. Bowles vindicates Addison’s conduct, and relates the following fact to the credit of his disposition:—“Though attacked by Dennis as a critic, he never mentioned his name with asperity, and refused to give the least countenance to a pamphlet which Pope had written upon the occasion of Dennis’s stricture on Cato.” The piece here alluded to is the ‘Narrative of the Madness of John Dennis.’ Pope strangely imputed Addison’s pious compositions to the selfish motive of an intention to take orders and obtain a bishopric on quitting administration. Johnson cites this as the only proof that Pope retained some malignity from their ancient rivalship: with this opinion we cannot quite agree.

Addison’s defect of animal spirits condemned him to silence in general company; but his conversation, when set afloat by wine and the presence of confidential friends, was brilliant and delightful. Steele represents him as “having all the wit and nature of Terence and Catullus, heightened with humour more exquisite than any other man ever possessed.” This high flight is borne out by Pope’s less suspicious testimony. “Addison’s conversation had something in it more charming than I have found in any other man.” Tonson and Spence represent him as demanding to be the first name in modern wit; and with Steele as his echo, depreciating Dryden, whom Pope and Congreve defended against them. We close our account with the following summary of his character from Hutchinson’s ‘History of Cumberland’:—“Addison was modest and mild, a scholar, a gentleman, a poet, and a Christian.”