public opinion to exercise so powerful a control over the manners of the times, had then scarcely an existence. No standard of female honour restrained the license of wit and debauchery. If the clergy were shocked at the propagation of ideas so contrary to the whole spirit of Christianity, their natural impulse to reprove them was checked by the fear that an apparent condemnation of the practices of the Court might end in the triumph of their old enemies, the Puritans. All the elements of an old and decaying form of society that tended to atheism, cynicism, and dissolute living, exhibited themselves therefore in naked shamelessness on the stage. The audiences in the theatres were equally devoid of good manners and good taste: they did not hesitate to interrupt the actors in the midst of a serious play, while they loudly applauded their obscene allusions. So gross was the character of comic dialogue that women could not venture to appear at a comedy without masks, and under these circumstances the theatre became the natural centre for assignations. In such an atmosphere women readily cast off all modesty and reserve; indeed, the choicest indecencies of the times are to be found in the epilogues to the plays which were always assigned to the female actors.

It at first sight seems remarkable that a society inveterately corrupt should have contained in itself such` powers of purification and vitality as to discard the literary garbage of the Restoration period in favour of the refined sobriety which characterises the writers of Queen Anne's reign. But, in fact, the spread of the infection was confined within certain well-marked limits. The Court moved in a sphere apart, and was altogether too light and frivolous to exert a decided moral influ

The country

ence on the great body of the nation. gentlemen, busied on their estates, came seldom to town; the citizens, the lawyers, and the members of the other professions steadily avoided the theatre, and regarded with equal contempt the moral and literary excesses of the courtiers. Among this class, unrepresented at present in the world of letters, except perhaps by antiquarians like Selden, the foundations of sound taste were being silently laid. The readers of the nation had hitherto been almost limited to the nobility. Books were generally published by subscription, and were dependent for their success on the favour with which they were received by the courtiers. But, after the subsidence of the Civil War, the nation began to make rapid strides in wealth and refinement, and the monied classes sought for intellectual amusement in their leisure hours. Authors by degrees found that they might look for readers beyond the select circle of their aristocratic patrons; and the bookseller, who had hitherto calculated his profits merely by the commission he might obtain on the sale of books, soon perceived that they were becoming valuable as property. The reign of Charles II. is remarkable not only for the great increase in the number of the licensed printers in London, but for the appearance of the first of the race of modern publishers, Jacob Tonson.

The portion of society whose tastes the publishers undertook to satisfy was chiefly interested in history, poetry, and criticism. It was this for which Dryden composed his Miscellany, this to which he addressed the admirable critical essays which precede his Translations from the Latin Poets and his Versifications of Chaucer, and this which afterwards gave the main support to the Tatler

and the Spectator. Ignorant of the writings of the great classical authors, as well as of the usages of polite society, these men were nevertheless robust and manly in their ideas, and were eager to form for themselves a correct standard of taste by reference to the best authorities. Though they turned with repugnance from the playhouse and from the morals of the Court, they could not avoid being insensibly affected by the tone of grace and elegance which prevailed in Court circles. And in this respect, if in no other, our gratitude is due to the Caroline dramatists, who may justly claim to be the founders of the social prose style in English literature. Before them English prose had been employed, no doubt, with music and majesty by many writers; but the style of these is scarcely representative; they had used the language for their own elevated purposes, without, however, attempting to give it that balanced fineness and subtlety which makes it a fitting instrument for conveying the complex ideas of an advanced stage of society. Dryden, Wycherley, and their followers, impelled by the taste of the Court to study the French language, brought to English composition a nicer standard of logic and a more choice selection of language, while the necessity of pleasing their audiences with brilliant dialogue made them careful to give their sentences that well-poised structure which Addison afterwards carried to perfection in the Spectator.

By this brief sketch the reader may be enabled to judge of the distracted state of society, both in politics and taste, in the reign of Charles II. On the one side, the Monarchical element in the Constitution was represented by the Court Party, flushed with the recent restoration; retaining the old ideas and principles of

absolutism which had prevailed under James I., without being able to perceive their inapplicability to the existing nature of things; feeding its imagination alternately on sentiments derived from the decayed spirit of chivalry, and on artistic representations of fashionable debauchery in its most open form--a party which, while it fortunately preserved the traditions of wit, elegance, and gaiety of style, seemed unaware that these qualities could be put to any other use than the mitigation of an intolerable ennui. On the other side, the rising power of Democracy found its representatives in austere Republicans opposed to all institutions in Church. and State that seemed to obstruct their own abstract principles of government; gloomy fanatics, who, with an intense intellectual appreciation of eternal principles of religion and morality, sought to sacrifice to their system the most permanent and even innocent instincts. of human nature. Between the two extreme parties was the unorganised body of the nation, grouped round old customs and institutions, rapidly growing in wealth and numbers, conscious of the rise in their midst of new social principles, but perplexed how to reconcile these with time-honoured methods of religious, political, and literary thought. To lay the foundations of sound opinion among the people at large; to prove that reconciliation was possible between principles hitherto exhibited only in mutual antagonism; to show that under the English Constitution monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy might all be harmonised, that humanity was not absolutely incompatible with religion or morality with art, was the task of the statesmen, and still more of the men of letters, of the early part of the eighteenth century.

CHAPTER II.

ADDISON'S FAMILY AND EDUCATION.

JOSEPH ADDISON was born on the 1st of May 1672. He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison, at the time of his birth rector of Milston, near Amesbury, in Wiltshire, and afterwards Dean of Lichfield. His father was a man of character and accomplishments. Educated at Oxford, while that University was under the control of the famous Puritan Visitation, he made no secret of his contempt for principles to which he was forced to submit, or of his preferences for Monarchy and Episcopacy. His boldness was not agreeable to the University authorities, and, being forced to leave Oxford, he maintained himself for a time near Petworth, in Sussex, by acting as chaplain or tutor in families attached to the Royalist cause. After the Restoration he obtained the appointment of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk, and when that town was ceded to France in 1662, he was removed in a similar capacity to Tangier. Here he remained eight years, but, venturing on a visit to England, his post was bestowed upon another, and he would have been left without resources, had not one of his friends presented him with the living of Milston, valued at £120 a year. With the courage of his order he thereupon took