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Reference
>
Cambridge History
>
From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift
>
Steele and Addison
>
The Spectators
Correspondence
The Spectator
and
The Tatler
compared
Its Literary Criticism: Addison on
Paradise Lost,
and
On the Pleasures of the Imagination
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(190721).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.
II.
Steele and Addison
.
§ 19.
The Spectators
Correspondence.
Many of these glimpses of life are given us in the form of letters, and, as
The Spectator
always welcomed correspondence, and, on two occasions, publicly asked for it,
131
there is often danger of taking genuine communications for a device of the editors.
132
Steele, in fact, posed as the courier of Love,
133
starting a kind of agony column, in which lovers could communicate with each other, and in at least one paper he printed some of his own love-letters. Some of the epistles, however, are unmistakably inventions. It must be remembered that, for more than a century,
134
the epistle had become a recognised literary type, and that
The Spectator
would naturally avail itself of the gentler art to lend variety and grace to its papers. But, while letter-writers, from Seneca to Loveday,
135
had used this form of composition to convey ideas, Steele and his associates went further. To them belongs the credit of discovering that the epistle could become a picturesque type of character-sketch. Among others, Thomas Hearne is said to have portrayed Arthur Charlett as Abraham Froth, who describes the discussions of his futile club with prolix self-satisfaction,
136
and John Hughes composed the two admirably characteristic letters on the education of a girl, one from Célimène, who despairs of breaking in her charge to all the artificialities of polite society, and the other from a self-styled rough man who fears that the young girl is in a fair way to be spoilt.
137
Steele is certainly the author of the footmans love-letter couched, like
The Yellowplush Papers
of a later day, in language which he can neither understand nor spell, with that inimitable touch of nature, suggestive of
The Conscious Lovers,
Oh! dear Betty, must the nightingales sing to those who marry for money and not to us true lovers?
138
Besides revealing character, letters were admirably adapted to disclose the secrets of private life. In the guise of a correspondent, Steele found new scope for the gift of storytelling which he had developed in
The Tatler.
Some of the communications contained glimpses into the comic side of domestic historysuch as the account of Anthony Freemans device for escaping from the over-affectionate attentions of his wife;
139
while others are fragments torn from sordid reality, like the unhappy story in low life telling how the drunken weaver unwittingly sells a successful lottery ticket which his wife had pinched herself to buy.
140
In some numbers, Steele goes further and narrates a sequence of events by an interchange of letters. One of his noblest efforts in this style is a correspondence by which a widow wins back her petulant and wasteful son from the dissipations of London,
141
and one of his wittiest is the series of letters which release Cynthio from Flavias inconvenient affection.
142
35
Thus, Steele was on the verge of inventing the epistolary novel; but, as in
The Tatler,
so, now, he had neither the perseverance nor the self-confidence necessary to create a literary type. He was more inclined to follow his illustrious contemplative collaborator, who, in the meantime, had created the serial treatise. Addison began with a succession of rather fugitive but witty attacks on the staging of the Italian opera,
143
in which his own scholarly love of simplicity, inspired by Terence and Horace, blended with the inherited middle-class dislike of all that was un-English. These early papers are hardly more than outbursts of Addisonian irony, such as he might have vented on any other of societys laughable weaknesses. But material prosperity and the discussions of coffee-houses had brought the middle class to a stage at which they felt the need of culture and eagerly read anything on taste or style. In this way, Addison found himself leading a reaction in literature, just as Steele had led a reaction in manners. The drama was the natural field for a critic nurtured at the university; so, Addison began to discuss tragedy in a didactic spirit, not without sallies of characteristic irony insisting on what he calls the moral part of the performance, showing how the
technique
of playwriting contributes to dramatic effect, and how false art may be detected by comparison with the great masters.
144
As he warmed to his work, he perceived that the coffee-house public would never take more than a passing interest in the stage. There was a danger that, in literary taste as in morality, the inexperienced, for sheer lack of proper models, might accept as their standard of poetry the precious and artificial style of versifying with which fashionable society still amused itself. What the citizens of London really needed was a literature as serious as themselves. Accordingly, Addison gave up a whole weeks issues to the criticism of conceits and mere verbal dexterity, condemning acrostics, lipograms, rebuses, anagrams, chronograms,
bouts rimés,
puns and paragrams; and, after dismissing all these kinds of false wit,
145
he shows his unacademic readers in what true wit consists. It is illustrative of the middle-class reaction in literature that he should base his definition on the reasoning of so modern and independent a thinker as Locke,
146
and should follow up Drydens preface to
The State of Innocence
by restricting the meaning of wit to the resemblance of ideas that give delight and surprise to the reader, always supposing the resemblance to be founded on truth and common-sense.
147
Addison, indeed, was teaching his fellow citizens to expect far more than wit or art from literature. His aim was to find the precepts of morality which should underlie every work of inspiration; and, with this end in view, he endeavoured to explain the universal charm of such artless compositions as
Chevy Chace
and
The Children in the Wood.
Among the middle class, the love of medieval ballads had survived the renascence and was probably not yet dead; but Addison essayed a task beyond the learning of his age when he attempted to subject folklore to the canons of criticism. In his day, men could judge poetry only under the shadow of the classics, and
The Spectator
is still pedantic enough to praise the old minstrelsy because it finds therein a few parallels to Vergil and Horace.
148
36
Note 131
. Nos. 428, 442.
[
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]
Note 132
. C. Lillie (1725) published two vols. of letters which had been sent to
The Tatler
and
The Spectator
but not printed.
[
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]
Note 133
. No. 204.
[
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]
Note 134
.
Ante,
Vol. VII, Chap,
XVI,
pp. 443444.
[
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]
Note 135
. Cf., as to Robert Loveday,
ante,
Vol. VII, p. 495.
[
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]
Note 136
. No. 43.
[
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]
Note 137
. No. 66.
[
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]
Note 138
. No. 71.
[
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]
Note 139
. Nos. 212, 216.
[
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]
Note 140
. No. 242.
[
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]
Note 141
. No. 263.
[
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]
Note 142
. No. 398.
[
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]
Note 143
. Nos. 5, 13, 18, 29, 31.
[
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]
Note 144
. Nos. 39, 40, 42, 44, 51.
[
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]
Note 145
. Nos. 5861.
[
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]
Note 146
.
Essay concerning the Human Understanding,
ed. 1690, chap.
XI,
p. 68.
[
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]
Note 147
. No. 62. See also no. 63, which sums up his view of false wit in a delightful allegory.
[
back
]
Note 148
. Nos. 70, 74, 85.
[
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]
CONTENTS
·
VOLUME CONTENTS
·
INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS
·
BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Spectator
and
The Tatler
compared
Its Literary Criticism: Addison on
Paradise Lost,
and
On the Pleasures of the Imagination
Shakespeare
·
Bible
·
Strunk
·
Anatomy
·
Nonfiction
·
Quotations
·
Reference
·
Fiction
·
Poetry
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