temperament and in many of the outward signs
of character; but these two little books will very distinctly show how
wholly they agreed as to essentials. For Addison, Literature had a charm
of its own; he delighted in distinguishing the finer graces of good
style, and he drew from the truths of life the principles of taste in
writing. For Steele, Literature was the life itself; he loved a true
book for the soul he found in it. So he agreed with Addison in judgment.
But the six papers on "Wit," the two papers on "Chevy Chase," contained
in this volume; the eleven papers on "Imagination," and the papers on
"Paradise Lost," which may be given in some future volume; were in a form
of study for which Addison was far more apt than Steele. Thus as fellow-
workers they gave a breadth to the character of _Tatler_ and _Spectator_
that could have been produced by neither of them, singly.

The reader of this volume will never suppose that the artist's pleasure
in good art and in analysis of its constituents removes him from direct
enjoyment of the life about him; that he misses a real contact with all
the world gives that is worth his touch. Good art is but nature, studied
with love trained to the most delicate perception; and the good criticism
in which the spirit of an artist speaks is, like Addison's, calm, simple,
and benign. Pope yearned to attack John Dennis, a rough critic of the
day, who had attacked his "Essay on Criticism." Addison had discouraged
a very small assault of words. When Dennis attacked Addison's "Cato,"
Pope thought himself free to strike; but Addison took occasion to
express, through Steele, a serious regret that he had done so. True
criticism may be affected, as Addison's was, by some bias in the canons
of taste prevalent in the writer's time, but, as Addison's did in the
Chevy-Chase papers, it will dissent from prevalent misapplications of
them, and it can never associate perception of the purest truth and
beauty with petty arrogance, nor will it so speak as to give pain. When
Wordsworth was remembering with love his mother's guidance of his
childhood, and wished to suggest that there were mothers less wise in
their ways, he was checked, he said, by the unwillingness to join thought
of her "with any thought that looks at others' blame." So Addison felt
towards his mother Nature, in literature and in life. He attacked
nobody. With a light, kindly humour, that was never personal and never
could gi