English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking WorldLong, William J. (William Joseph)
History
English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World
Long, William J. (William Joseph)
English literature -- History and criticism
The rest of Addison's life was divided between political duties and
literature. His essays for the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_, which we still
cherish, were written between 1709 and 1714; but he won more literary fame
by his classic tragedy _Cato_, which we have almost forgotten. In 1716 he
married a widow, the Countess of Warwick, and went to live at her home, the
famous Holland House. His married life lasted only three years, and was
probably not a happy one. Certainly he never wrote of women except with
gentle satire, and he became more and more a clubman, spending most of his
time in the clubs and coffeehouses of London. Up to this time his life had
been singularly peaceful; but his last years were shadowed by quarrels,
first with Pope, then with Swift, and finally with his lifelong friend
Steele. The first quarrel was on literary grounds, and was largely the
result of Pope's jealousy. The latter's venomous caricature of Addison as
Atticus shows how he took his petty revenge on a great and good man who had
been his friend. The other quarrels with Swift, and especially with his old
friend Steele, were the unfortunate result of political differences, and
show how impossible it is to mingle literary ideals with party politics. He
died serenely in 1719. A brief description from Thackeray's _English
Humorists_ is his best epitaph:
A life prosperous and beautiful, a calm death; an immense fame and
affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.
WORKS OF ADDISON. The most enduring of Addison's works are his famous
_Essays_, collected from the _Tatler_ and _Spectator._ We have spoken of
him as a master of the art of gentle living, and these essays are a
perpetual inducement to others to know and to practice the same fine art.
To an age of fundamental coarseness and artificiality he came with a
wholesome message of refinement and simplicity, much as Ruskin and Arnold
spoke to a later age of materialism; only Addison's success was greater
than theirs because of his greater knowledge of life and his greater faith
in men. He attacks all the little vanities and all the big vices of his
time, not in Swift's terrible way, which makes us feel hopeless of
humanity, but with a kindly ridicule and gentle humor which takes speedy
improvement for granted. To read Swift's brutal "Letters to a Young Lady,"
and then to read Addison's "Dissection of a Beau's Head" and his
"Dissection of a Coquette's Heart," is to know at once the secret of the
latter's more enduring influence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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