And so, in the consideration of any social folly of his time and ours, we are in a moment impelled to ask--What does Mr. Spectator say to this; or gentle Master Tatler? Even in the present inquiry there can be no reasonable doubt of their competency to give us testimony. Addison may have heard as many and as furious oaths as any man of his time. His ways were beset by inveterate and uncontrollable swearers. His friend Steele had a tongue that was foolish enough, heaven knows; and when he was wont to meet with Swift in St. James' Coffee House, may he not too often have been assailed with language needlessly expressive? What cronies he must have had! what lads he must have known! He had seen all the tearing fellows of the day--the three-bottle men at the October Club, the young blood of the shires who rode into the gap at Blenheim. He could have remembered the roughest livers of King Charles' time, Sedley and Rochester, Bully Dawson and Fighting Fitzgerald. He was surrounded with bravado and devilry, with all the disbanded sins of the Flanders regiments. For these were the days of Ramilies and Malplaquet, when the nation was intoxicated with her meed of victory; when his Grace of Marlborough won the country's battles, and his Lord of Peterborough scattered sovereigns from his chariot to show the people he was _not_ the Duke of Marlborough. It was a time of great profusion and great excess, in curses as in everything else. And so, Joseph Addison, though living in the flighty times you did, there can be no doubt of the quiet evenness of your ways, or how jovial were the companions who shook you by the fist. But how you drilled and moulded them, how you held and swayed them by the force of your bright intelligence, how shall we who never heard your voice be able to determine? Happily in the pages of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' there is stored up for us the best and rarest of that quiet wisdom. No matter whether the night were studious or riotous, there arrives the punctual morning sheet with its offering of sober satire and sprightly sense. He goes about his task of persuading and humanising as gaily as a man might set out to laugh at a comedy. He mounts his best ruffles and his finest tunic as he sits down to write his homily.