Thomas May, the historian; Davenant, the Royalist poet-laureate; Sir John Denham, a Royalist versifier, and John Phillips, a devoted imitator of Milton, are little more than names to us; but then we must remember that, with few exceptions, neither the poets nor the poetry of that period which ended with the death of William III. have lived on through our literature. With the accession of Anne there came a burst of new life, and the next great name we come to in the Abbey is that of Joseph Addison, the most charming of our prose writers. To find his grave, however, we must leave the Poets’ Corner and go to General Monk’s vault in Henry VII.’s Chapel. For here, close to his friend Charles Montagu, Lord Keeper, he of "piercing wit, gentle irony, and sparkling humour," the regular contributor to our two earliest newspapers, the _Tattler_ and the _Spectator_, was buried. His own words, from an article in the _Spectator_ when it was about twelve days old, best describe both the man and his aims: "It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city enquiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me that already three thousand of them are distributed every day, so that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, I may reckon about threescore thousand disciples in London and Westminster, who, I hope, will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and unattentive brethren. I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality.... I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them from that desperate state of folly and vice into which the age is fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men, and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses." Then, having given his general aim, he goes on to especially commend his paper to all well-regulated families; to those gentlemen of leisure who consider the world a theatre, and desire to form a right judgment of those who are the actors on it; and to those "poor souls called the blanks of society, who are altogether unfurnished with ideas, who ask the first men they meet if there is any news stirring, and who know not what to talk about till twelve o’clock in the morning, by which time they are pretty good judges of the weather, and know which way the wind sets;" while finally he appeals to the female world: "I have often thought," he says, "that