For such writing as this it would be difficult to imagine two men better fitted than Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. Each supplied the deficiencies of the other. Steele was an impulsive, warm-hearted man of the world. Few men knew the society of that day in all its phases better than he did, and certainly no man liked it better. No English writer before him feels so keenly the charm of the passing hour, or takes such brisk and cheery interest in all the thousand events of daily experience. His sympathies, too, were warm as well as broad. His heart was tender, and he always carried it on his sleeve. This amiable and ingenuous temper made his writing very attractive, and still goes far to atone for all its imperfections. Addison, on the other hand, was a rather cool, self-contained, observant man, who loved to sit in his club with a little circle of admirers about him, and promote the good-nature of the world in a somewhat superior and distant fashion. His temper, less buoyant than Steele's, was more thoughtful and reflective; his humour, more delicate and subtle. And if his observation was not so broad as that of Steele, it was nicer and more penetrating. Steele, seeing life at more points, struck out more new incidents and characters; Addison had more skill to elaborate them. In point of style the work of Addison is manifestly superior to that of Steele. Steele's writing has, indeed, the great merit of spontaneity. It is full of himself. To read his easy, lively page is like hearing him talk at your elbow; and, now and then, when his emotions are warmed, he can snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. But he was too impulsive and eager to stay for that painstaking correction without which literary finish is impossible. His rhetoric and even his grammar are sometimes sadly to seek. The faults of his extempore writing were matter of caustic comment by the critics of his own day; and ever since it has been customary to award the literary honours of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_ not to Steele but to Addison. Nor is this unjust. For Addison was the first of our writers to perceive clearly that simple and popular prose was capable of finished, artistic treatment. That minute care, that trained skill which hitherto had been reserved for poetry, he bestowed upon his prose. He had naturally a nice taste, an especially quick sense of movement and melody in prose, and he took infinite pains. He would stop the press to change a phrase, or set right a conjunction. And this effort issued in a style in which all sense of effort is lost in graceful ease. His thought is never profound, and seldom vigorous; his range is not wide; on serious subjects he is sometimes a little dull, and on lighter subjects sometimes a little trivial; but his manner is always suave, refined, urbane. He was the first Englishman who succeeded in writing prose at once familiar, idiomatic to the very verge of colloquialism, and at the same time highly finished.