writings of the Germans, and by the tremendous passion which the Russian writers are bringing into literature. These are faint and crude generalizations, to be sure, like our notions of a German with a round face, blue eyes, and light hair; or a sallow Frenchman; or a red-cheeked Englishman-but we are surprised, and justly surprised, when we make a mistake in a foreigner's nationality. When we come to speak of Defoe we shall make further investigations into the paternity of the English novel; here we must confine ourselves to the discussion of Addison's contribution to this wonderful result, which we have before us in the Spectator. And this includes, besides the practical work we see in the sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley and his friends, the attention he has given to the life he saw about him. One of the most important things, indeed, for a writer to do is to speak of what he knows, and he is pretty sure to know best what he has himself Addison aided this movement in every way in his power. He wrote about life as he saw it, and his Spectator is a classic work. He succeeded, too, without very definitely knowing what he was doing. He was not trying to be a realist; he aimed at improving the minds and tastes of his contemporaries, and to get a hearing he made himself simple; he showed them what they were, how they acted in society, what their foibles were, and put his little word of advice in here and there, where its influence would be felt before the reader knew that he was swallowing moral medicine.

seen.

That the influence of the Spectator was great we learn from a number of contemporary sources. Tickell said of it (preface to his edition of Addison): "The world became insensibly reconciled to wisdom and goodness, when they saw them recommended by him with at least as much spirit and elegance, as they had been ridiculed for half a

century." Sir Richard Blackmore said: "It was with great Pleasure and Satisfaction that Men, who wished well to their Country and Religion, saw the People delighted with Papers which lately came abroad as daily Entertainments; in which rich Genius and polite Talents were employ'd in their proper Province, that is, to recommend Virtue and regular Life, and discourage and discountenance the Follies, Faults, and Vices of the Age; ... Nor was it without good Effect, for the People in some measure recover'd their true Relish, and discern'd the Benefit and moral Advantages as well as the Beauties of these daily Pieces, and began to have profane and immodest Writings in Contempt."*

...

Dr. Thomas Rundle said of Addison: "To him we owe that swearing is unfashionable, and that a regard to religion is become a part of good-breeding. He had an art to make people hate their follies, without hating themselves for having them; and he showed gentlemen the way of becoming virtuous with a good grace." This was the credit which belongs to the moral reforms of the Spectator; as some one has said, it brought the laughers on the side of virtue, and it did more, in that it taught wise moderation. It checked licentiousness and it withheld bigotry, the two opposing forces. It civilized England more, perhaps, than any one book.

As to that form of success which interests publishers first of all, we know that this was very satisfactory. At the beginning, 3000 copies were published; this number rapidly grew to 20,000, and sometimes to 30,000—equal, doubtless, to 200,000 now—and the bound volumes, in octavo, at two guineas, and then a pocket-edition, were sold in enormous quantities. Each edition consisted of 10,000

"Essays," ii. 268 (ed. 1717).

copies, and more than 9000 copies of the first four volumes had been sold before the Spectator ceased to appear. It was sold at one penny until August, 1712, when a tax was imposed on papers, and its price was doubled. Its fame spread to the Continent; in France, Marivaux wrote French Spectators (1722); in Germany, there were a number of imitations;* Italy, too, followed in the same path. All of these were inspired, in the first place, by

*The first to appear in German was the Discurse der Maler (Zürich, 1721). This was written by a society of which Bodmer and Breitinger were at the head (vide Biedermann, "Geschichte des XVIIIten Jahrhunderts," II. i. 429). He says that Gervinus mentions two earlier ones, the Vernünftler (1713) and the Lustige Fama (1718), but that he has not been able to find anything about them. Der Patriot (Hamburg, 1724) speedily followed, and Gottsched's Vernünftige Tadlerinnen (Leipsic, 1725).

The history of these publications in Germany closely resembles that of the English originals and imitations. Five thousand copies of the Patriot were sold, besides bound volumes. There were three editions of Gottsched's periodical. The subjects treated and the ends desired were very much the same. There was the same zeal, for, according to Biedermann, there were 182 publications started before 1760. In literary merit no comparison can be made.

Even in Russia the influence of the Spectator was felt. "Again, the first satirical review to appear in Russia, which she [Catherine II.] secretly patronized, followed in the footsteps of Addison's Spectator" (Academy, March 25, 1882, p. 210, in a translation of a letter to Le Livre, making mention of Veselowski's book on the influence of Western civilization on Russian literature).

Alexander Romald, "Tableau de la Littérature Russe" (St. Petersburg, 1872), p. 67, mentions "une foule de publications périodiques qui parurent de 1769 à 1774. . . . Le meilleur de tous était le Peintre, dans lequel des articles de critique et de polémique alternaient avec d'autres ayant un fond plus sérieux."

And vide Courrière, "Histoire de la Littérature Contemporaine en Russie" (Paris, 1875), p. 37.

+ Gozzi's Osservatore (1761-62).

the translations of the Spectator itself into those different tongues. Indeed, nothing like its popularity had been known before in English literature, and the only thing which can be compared with it is the wonderful success of the "Waverley Novels." What it did in England in establishing a form of literature which is barely extinct yet, we shall soon see. Dec. 6, 1712, it ceased to appear, although it was resumed June 18, 1714, appearing thrice a week till Dec. 20 of the same year, when it finally closed. It was speedily followed by the Guardian, which appeared, in fact, before the eighth volume of the Spectator, under the direction of Steele, who determined "to have nothing to manage with any person or party ;" but Steele was a philosopher by fits and starts, and political feeling ran so high that he soon gave up that paper and took up the Englishman, in which his fervor had full swing in attacking Swift's Examiner. The first volume of the Guardian contains many good essays by Berkeley, Pope, and Tickell, and the second many by Addison.

In England, the number of successors of the Spectator was very great, although now the very names of most are forgotten. The Censor, the Hermit, the Surprize, the Silent Monitor, the Inquisitor, the Pilgrim, the Restorer, the Instructor, the Grumbler, the Freethinker, the Anti-theatre, the Weaver, etc. Even the names of those for which Addison and Steele wrote are known only to scholars, and very properly, for these are but the fringes of scholarship; the main thing is to understand what the Essay was, and what part it has played in English literature. Therefore we shall not take up the essays at any length until we come to Dr. Johnson's Rambler; that does stand out above the general crowd. And since numbers are sometimes of use in conveying information, I will add that between 1709 and 1809 there were two hundred and fourteen pub

lications of the sort we have been discussing; one hundred · and six between the Tatler and the Rambler, forty-one years; and between the Rambler and 1809 just the same number; in the fifty-nine years since then they have ceased. Yet the fame and the influence of the Spectator survive. These light papers, which Addison wrote with doubtless but little understanding of their value, now belong to the English classics, while what he regarded as his most important contribution to literature, his "Cato," lives only in a few quotations, and is mentioned now principally as one of the few specimens in English literature of a play written according to the rules. To be sure, these rules had but little direct influence on English literature, but no one can understand the character of the drama of that nation without knowing what it was not, and in what ways it differed from that of other countries.