scholastic brother grew weary of searching farther evasions, and solving everlasting contradictions. Resolved, therefore, at all hazards, to comply with the modes of the world, they concerted matters together, and agreed unanimously to lock up their father's will in a strong box, brought out of Greece or Italy, (I have forgot which,) and trouble themselves no farther to examine it, but only refer to its authority whenever they thought fit. In consequence whereof, a while after it grew a general mode to wear an infinite number of points, most of them tagged with silver: upon which, the scholar pronounced ex cathedra, that points were absolutely jure paterno, as they might very well remember. 'Tis true, indeed, the fashion prescribed somewhat more than were directly named in the will; however, that they, as heirs-general of their father, had power to make and add certain clauses for public emolument, though not deducible, totidem verbis, from the letter of the will, or else multa absurda sequerentur. This was understood for canonical, and therefore, on the following Sunday, they came to church all covered with points.

1 Many absurdities would follow.

III

ADDISON

1

ADDISON:

FIRST OF THE HUMORISTS

T

HE English essay as represented by
Bacon and Swift was based on purely

classic models, as far as its literary style is concerned, and if it had not been for the advent of Steele and Addison there might never have been such a thing as the distinctive English essay. Though it is hardly safe to call anything original, we may be permitted, perhaps, to consider the style of writing represented in the "Spectator" as a peculiarly English development. Of course there was Montaigne; but Addison would have been what he is even if Montaigne had never existed.

It seems hard for Richard Steele that while he is the acknowledged inventor of the gossipy paper about town humors, his friend Addison has gotten all the glory. The fact is, in itself the style of Steele is more fascinating than Addison's even to us to-day, and if essays were to be selected for their style alone, some of Steele's would have to be included. But you may search the "Tatler," the "Spectator," and the "Guardian" from end to end, and every paper whose subject seems to

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make it worth preserving as part of a permanent literature turns out to be Addison's. Steele was a good journalist, and as a retailer of current gossip he was excellent; but it was Addison who raised his gossip to the plane of universal interest. We have already pointed out the fact that the Spectator" was in reality a sort of printed letter, received every morning by the people of the town and read with their other letters. Its subject was naturally the little things of life, the humors of life, and its charm lay in its humor. It is characteristically English, and no other style has had such a widespread influence on English writers. Johnson and Goldsmith adopted it; Johnson not quite successfully, Goldsmith with surpassing success in his novel "The Vicar of Wakefield." Charles Lamb was a lineal literary descendant of Addison, and as far as his style is concerned, so was Thackeray. Without question Lamb and Thackeray both surpassed their original.

Because of the debt that so many great writers owe to Addison, he has been extravagantly praised by them, and the echo of their mighty words is still reverberating. In his "Primer of English Literature," so eminent a critic as Stopford Brooke, after justly describing Addison's "fine and tender" humor, declares of his style that "in its varied cadence and subtle ease it has never been surpassed." This," says Matthew Arnold, "seems to me to be going a little too