en genius and
profligacy, between the domestic virtues and the sullen formality of the
Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He
taught the nation that the faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson
might be found in company with wit more sparkling than the wit of
Congreve, and with humor richer than the humor of Vanbrugh. So
effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had
recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open
violation of decency has always been considered among us as the mark of
a fool. And this revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever
effected by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, without
writing one personal lampoon.

In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler his peculiar powers
were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all his
coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to
anything that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, we most admire Tom
Folio, Ned Softly, and the Political Upholsterer. The proceedings of the
Court of Honor, the Thermometer of Zeal, the story of the Frozen Words,
the Memoirs of the Shilling, are excellent specimens of that ingenious
and lively species of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There
is one still better paper of the same class. But though that paper, a
hundred and thirty-three years ago, was probably thought as edifying as
one of Smallridge's sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish
readers of the nineteenth century.

During the session of Parliament which commenced in November, 1709, and
which the impeachment of Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears
to have resided in London. The Tatler was now more popular than any
periodical paper had ever been; and his connection with it was generally
known. It was not known, however, that almost everything good in the
Tatler was his. The truth is that the fifty or sixty numbers which we
owe to him were not merely the best, but so decidedly the best that any
five of them are more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in which
he had no share.

He required, at this time, all the solace which he could derive from
literary success. The Queen had always disliked the Whigs. She had
during some years disliked the Marlborough family. But, reigning by a
disputed title, she could not venture directly to oppose herself to a
majority of both Houses of Parliament; and, enga