CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE LIVES OF

ADDISON, STEELE, AND BUDGELL.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

Born at Milston, near Amesbury, in Wiltshire, May 1, 1672.
Educated in schools at Amesbury, Salisbury, and Lichfield, to which
last place the family removed when his father, the Rev. Lancelot
Addison, became Dean of the Cathedral in 1683.

Thence he is sent to the Charterhouse School in London, where
Steele was a scholar at the same time, and enters Queen's College,
Oxford, in 1687.

Becomes Fellow of Magdalen College in 1698.

Receives a pension from the government, the Whig party being dominant, travels on the Continent to qualify himself for diplomatic service, and returns to England in 1703.

Publishes Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, 1705.

Appointed Under Secretary of State, 1706.

Elected Member of Parliament, 1708.

Contributes to Steele's paper, The Tatler, 1709.

Begins The Spectator, 1710-11.

Writes the tragedy of Cato, 1713.

Contributes to Steele's The Guardian, 1713.

Marries the Countess of Warwick, August 3, 1716.

Dies June 17, 1719.

RICHARD STEELE.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, son of an Irish attorney, March, 1671-72.

Is sent to the Charterhouse School, 1684.

Enters Christchurch, Oxford, March, 1690.

Leaves Oxford and enlists as a private soldier, 1694.

Becomes Captain Steele, 1700.

Writes and publishes The Christian Hero, 1701.

Produces on the stage The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode, 1701.

Marries Mrs. Margaret Stretch, a widow, spring of 1705.

Is made editor of the official Gazette, 1706.

Mrs. Steele dies, December, 1706.

Marries Mary Scurlock, September 9, 1707.

Publishes the first number of The Tatler, April 12, 1709.

Is made Commissioner of Stamps, January, 1710.

Writes for The Spectator, 1711-12.

Begins The Guardian, March 12, 1713.

Enters Parliament, 1713.

Becomes patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, 1715.

Is knighted by George I., 1715.

Produces his most successful comedy, The Conscious Lovers, 1722.
Dies at Carmarthen, September 1, 1729.

EUSTACE BUDGELL.

Born 1686, at St. Thomas, near Exeter, Eng.; a cousin of Addison.
Called to the bar, but through his connection with Addison takes up
literary work. Writes thirty-seven of the Spectator papers.
In 1733 starts "The Bee," which continues two years.

Through Addison's influence Budgell holds various public offices. Becomes involved in disgraceful financial difficulties which affect his mind.

Commits suicide in the Thames, 1736.

CRITICAL ESTIMATES.

Closing paragraphs from Dr. Samuel Johnson's Addison in "Lives of the English Poets."

66

As a describer of life and manners Addison must be allowed to stand perhaps the first of the first rank. His humor, which, as Steele observes, is peculiar to himself, is so happily diffused as to give the grace of novelty to domestic scenes and daily occurrences. He never outsteps the modesty of nature," nor raises merriment or wonder by the violation of truth. His figures neither divert by distortion nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with so much fidelity that he can hardly be 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.

As a teacher of wisdom he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious; he appears neither weakly credulous nor wantonly sceptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy and all the cogency of argument are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is shown sometimes as the phantom of a vision; sometimes appears half-veiled in an allegory; sometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy; and sometimes steps forth in the confidence of reason. She wears a thousand dresses, and in all is pleasing.

"Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet."

His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addisca never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendor.

It was apparently his principal endeavor to avoid all harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends too much to the language of conversation; yet if his language had been less idiomatical it might have lost somewhat of its genuine Anglicism. What he attempted he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic; he is never rapid and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude nor affected brevity; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

...

From Macaulay's Essay on Addison.

"He is entitled to be considered, not only as the greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the great English novelists. The great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who without inflicting a wound effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism."

From Thackeray's English Humorists.

Addison wrote his papers as gayly as if he were going out for a holiday. When Steele's "Tatler" first began his prattle, Addison, then in Ireland, caught at his friend's notion, poured in paper after paper, and contributed the stores of his mind, the sweet fruits of his reading, the delightful gleanings of his daily observation, with a wonderful profusion, and as it seemed, an almost endless fecundity. He was six and thirty years old; full and ripe. . . . He had not done much as yet.... But with his friend's discovery of the "Tatler," Addison's calling was found, and the most delightful talker in the world began to speak.