should be impressed by the necessity of
artistic finish as well as of excellence in subject matter.

Addison's Essays--The greatest of Addison's _Essays_ appeared in
_The Spectator_ and charmed many readers in Queen Anne's age. The
subject matter of these _Essays_ is extremely varied. On one day there
is a pleasant paper on witches; on another, a chat about the new
woman; on another, a discourse on clubs. Addison is properly a moral
satirist, and his pen did much more than the pulpit to civilize the
age and make virtue the fashion. In _The Spectator_, he says: "If I
meet with anything in city, court, or country, that shocks modesty or
good manners, I shall use my utmost endeavors to make an example of
it." He accomplished his purpose, not by heated denunciations of vice,
but by holding it up to kindly ridicule. He remembered the fable of
the different methods employed by the north wind and the sun to make a
man lay aside an ugly cloak.

Addison stated also that one of his objects was to bring "philosophy
out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs
and assemblies, at tea tables and coffeehouses." His papers on Milton
did much to diminish that great poet's unpopularity in an age that
loved form rather than matter, art rather than natural strength.

The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers.--The most famous of Addison's
productions are his papers that appeared in _The Spectator_,
describing a typical country gentleman, Sir Roger de Coverley, and his
friends and servants. Taine says that Addison here invented the novel
without suspecting it. This is an overstatement; but these papers
certainly have the interest of a novel from the moment Sir Roger
appears until his death, and the delineation of character is far in
advance of that shown in the majority of modern novels. We find
ourselves rereading the _De Coverley Papers_ more than once, a
statement that can be made of but few novels.

[Illustration: SIR ROGER IN CHURCH. _From a drawing by B.
Westmacott_.]

General Characteristics.--Addison ranks among the greatest of
English essayists. Some of his essays, like the series on _Paradise
Lost_, deal with literary criticism; but most people to-day read
little from his pen except the _Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_, which
give interesting pictures of eighteenth-century life and manners.

Before we have read many of Addison's essays, we shall discover that
he is a humorist of high rank. His humor is of the