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and whither they were to go, Savage would not conjecture, and was not willing to inquire; but immediately seated himself with Sir Richard; the coachman was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde Park Corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private room. Sir Richard then informed him that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprised at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesitation, ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard ordered to be brought. They then finished their dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the afternoon.

"Mr. Savage then imagined his task over, and expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning, and return home; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told him that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for, and Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production to sale for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning."

The purpose of Steele's contributions to the Spectator was manifestly to entertain, and he brought to his work a delicacy of humour of which Defoe was never capable. Addison's share very often had for its motive the purpose of the older essayists-to moralise and instruct. He was at no time so far in advance of his age as were Defoe and Steele. Yet out of this blending of the old with the new he contrived a fresh form of story-essay which, however,

save in the case of Swift who utilised it on a larger scale, was rarely followed up-the fable-essay, the finest and unsurpassed example of which is The Vision of Mirza. Charles Lamb has wisely pointed out the affinity between Temple and Addison as writers of "genteel" English; and genteel is the adjective which best describes him. His gentility on separate occasions was accountable for both his perfection and shortcoming; it caused him to be high-minded and stainless, but it also caused him to be unduly reticent, so that he fears to discover his emotions. Where Lamb uses his scholarship and classics to enhance the merriment or pathos, Addison repeatedly uses them as instruments of restraint. Perhaps this reticence helps to make his work more truly national, since reticence is a dominant characteristic of his nation; certainly it serves to keep his humour pure, and that in a day when grossness passed currency as wit. Whatever may be the just estimate, and it has yet to be arrived at, of the permanent value of the work done by Steele and Addison in the Spectator, its final worth to English literature must forever remain unshaken. It is to be judged by the fact that it succeeded in establishing a standard of humour which was taintless, in a day when humour was too much dependent on licentiousness for its zest, and that, though the Spectator essays were issued through the daily press, they proved themselves superior to their means of conveyance and, in so doing, rescued the essay from the sole possession of the journalist. When the Spectator commenced its career, the essay was bidding fair to deteriorate into a merely fugitive form of writing; but before the last copy was published, at the end of the twenty-first month, the collaboration of these two men had lifted the essay-form beyond reach of the threatened oblivion, and had restored it to a permanent place in literature. What Thackeray has said of the Tatler may be

said with equal truth of the Spectator, that when its publication began, "our great-great-grandfathers must have seized upon that new and delightful paper with much such eagerness as lovers of light literature in a later day exhibited when the Waverley novels appeared, upon which the public rushed, forsaking that feeble entertainment of which the Miss Porters, the Anne of Swanseas, and worthy Mrs. Radcliffe herself, with her dreary castles and exploded old ghosts, had had pretty much the monopoly." Scott rescued the novel from profane and palsied hands by contriving a new development and so establishing a new tradition, and this was the service which Steele and Addison wrought for the essay in an earlier day. Their new development, which they first borrowed from Defoe and then established, was the short-story essay. Defoe had not the reputation to achieve this for himself, for, as we have seen, he was everywhere regarded as only a Grub Street hack.

Swift, by reason of his originality in choice of subject and carelessness of public opinion in method of handling it, may almost be classed with George Borrow as one of the daring amateurs. No literary professional, however august, could have written as he did; the education of his atmosphere would have restrained him, as it did Addison, and have made him too timid for such temerarious assaults upon convention. Even Swift ruined his clerical career by his writing. The chief end which he proposed to himself in all his labours, so he wrote to Pope, was to vex the world, and no man will deny that he amply fulfilled his purpose. He vexes the world very frequently by accusing it through the medium of fable. He accuses it as a satirist of everything that emanates from man, not as Milton did politically and in the guise of a prophet, but as a monstrous jester, with Gargantuan volleys of ribaldry and the cruelty of thundrous laughter.

Goldsmith also accuses the world, but he does so with a humour gentle as that of Steele or Addison. He does not desire to make men angry, but rather to make them friends his friends if possible. He moulds his short-story essay in the form of a letter, and so attains the intimacy of the first person. He outrides Defoe and Steele in his charity, for while they were only interested in all men of whatsoever class of their own nation, he is entirely lacking in national prejudice and takes for his theme all men-the world.

Charles Lamb is the last of the short-story essayists. As such, he fittingly gathers up into himself many of the merits which had gradually accumulated throughout the past age. He adopts the archaic phraseology of the seventeenth-century writers of the classic essay, but he does so only to be quaint and stately. He uses his scholarship lavishly and, as we have seen, not to restrain, as did Addison, but to spur on his fancy. He possesses all the quiet humour of Steele, and some of the uproar of Swift-without his bitterness. Like Goldsmith, his aim is to be companionable and friendly: he uses the first person, and the larger portion of his writing is scarcely veiled autobiography. In Rejoicings Upon the New Year's Coming of Age, which is here included as his specimen, he attempts the fable-essay, adapting it to humour simply and omitting the grave moral of Addison's Vision of Mirza. He is the ultimate of his race, and, in many ways, the most perfect.

With the growth of technique, the path of the short story diverged from that of the essay, and the short story became a separate department in literature-perhaps, a novel in miniature. But the influence of the short-story essay remained, and was directed from the channels of fiction and absorbed into those of truthful narration, out of which sprung the most unique contribution of the

nineteenth century to the essay-form-the biographic essay.

HEALTH AND LONG LIFE

Sir William Temple

For the honour of our climate, it has been observed by ancient authors, that the Britons were longer-lived than any other nation to them known. And in modern times there have been more and greater examples of this kind than in any other countries of Europe. The story of old Parr is too late to be forgotten by many now alive, who was brought out of Derbyshire to the court in King Charles the First's time, and lived to a hundred and fifty-three years old; and might have, as was thought, gone further, if the change of country air and diet for that of the town, had not carried him off untimely at that very age. The late Robert Earl of Leicester, who was a person of great learning and observation, as well as of truth, told me several stories very extraordinary upon this subject; one of a Countess Desmond, married out of England in Edward the Fourth's time, and who lived far in King James's reign, and was counted to have died some years above a hundred and forty; at which age she came from Bristol to London to beg some relief at court, having long been very poor by the ruin of that Irish family into which she was married.

Another he told me was of a beggar at a bookseller's shop, where he was some weeks after the death of Prince Henry; and, observing those that passed by, he was saying to his company, that never such a mourning had been seen in England; this beggar, said, "No, never since the death of Prince Arthur." My Lord Leicester, surprised, asked what she meant, and whether she remembered it; she said, "Very well"; and upon his more curious inquiry, told him

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