And so, pursued by judgments of court and branded with letters of infamy, it would seem to have been a very desperate time for these unfortunate swearers. The profession of the pen was likely enough to rankle under this load of aspersion, were it not that a more genial influence had arisen that was bent upon remedying rather than provoking offences. For while the leaders of opinion were playing their intensest game of political intrigue, while poets were occupied with the trade of admiration, and divines with the trade of subserviency, there arose in England a gentler and more captivating literature of reproval, that laid its generous laws upon men the most intolerant and the most prurient. We allude to that more benevolent code of morality inaugurated by Joseph Addison. CHAPTER VIII. "_Lackwit._ Now do I want some two or three good oaths to express my meaning withall. An they would but learn me to swear and take tobacco! 'tis all I desire."--'_A fine Companion_,' _by Shackerley Marmion_, 1633. This one voice of kindly censure was that of a man incapable of a literary mistake. Whatever his own personal blunders, it was impossible for Joseph Addison to err in a point of literary judgment. Although wedded to the society of men of taste and perception, it was no part of his purpose to remove himself from contact with the coarsest of human ware. The tolerance he exhibited in ordinary intercourse reflects itself in the labours of his pen. In his philanthropies, as in his severities or his rebukes, he assumes no tinge of sanctity, no moralist's sad-coloured robe. He is familiar, and in a manner identified, with the very follies he is so generously decrying. The society into which he went was disposed to be exceedingly lenient to fashionable excesses. And thus it was that in the fulness of his wisdom, it pleased him to be of good accord with priest and prelate as with the very movers and seconders of iniquity.