Tory leaders of the time a certain liberality of taste, and a care
for those things which give public life dignity and elegance, which were
entirely absent from Robert Walpole and the leaders of the two
succeeding reigns, when literature and politics were completely
divorced, and the government knew little and cared less for the welfare
of the arts. Addison came on the stage at the very moment when the
government was not only ready but eager to foster such talents as his.
He was a Whig of pronounced although modern type, and the Whigs were
in power.

Lord Somers and Charles Montagu, better known later as Lord Halifax,
were the heads of the ministry, and his personal friends as well. They
were men of culture, lovers of Letters, and not unappreciative of the
personal distinction which already stamped the studious and dignified
Magdalen scholar. A Latin poem on the Peace of Ryswick, dedicated to
Montagu, happily combined Virgilian elegance and felicity with Whig
sentiment and achievement. It confirmed the judgment already formed of
Addison's ability; and, setting aside with friendly insistence the plan
of putting that ability into the service of the Church, Montagu secured
a pension of L300 for the purpose of enabling Addison to fit himself for
public employment abroad by thorough study of the French language, and
of manners, methods, and institutions on the Continent. With eight Latin
poems, published in the second volume of the 'Musae Anglicanae,' as an
introduction to foreign scholars, and armed with letters of introduction
from Montagu to many distinguished personages, Addison left Oxford in
the summer of 1699, and, after a prolonged stay at Blois for purposes of
study, visited many cities and interesting localities in France, Italy,
Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Holland. The shy, reticent, but
observing young traveler was everywhere received with the courtesy which
early in the century had made so deep an impression on the young Milton.
He studied hard, saw much, and meditated more. He was not only fitting
himself for public service, but for that delicate portraiture of manners
which was later to become his distinctive work. Clarendon had already
drawn a series of lifelike portraits of men of action in the stormy
period of the Revolution: Addison was to sketch the society of his time
with a touch at once delicate and firm; to exhibit its life in those
aspects which emphasize individual humor and personal quality,