In style these essays are remarkable as showing the growing perfection of the English language.  Johnson says, “Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”  And again he says, “Give nights and days, sir, to the study of Addison if you mean to be a good writer, or, what is more worth, an honest man.”  That was good criticism for its day, and even at the present time critics are agreed that Addison’s Essays are well worth reading once for their own sake, and many times for their influence in shaping a clear and graceful style of writing.

Addison’s poems, which were enormously popular in his day, are now seldom read.  His Cato, with its classic unities and lack of dramatic power, must be regarded as a failure, if we study it as tragedy; but it offers an excellent example of the rhetoric and fine sentiment which were then considered the essentials of good writing.  The best scene from this tragedy is in the fifth act, where Cato soliloquizes, with Plato’s Immortality of the Soul open in his hand, and a drawn sword on the table before him: 

    It must be so—­Plato, thou reason’st well!—­
    Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
    This longing after immortality? 
    Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
    Of falling into nought? why shrinks the soul
    Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 
    ’Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
    ’Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
    And intimates eternity to man.

Many readers make frequent use of one portion of Addison’s poetry without knowing to whom they are indebted.  His devout nature found expression in many hymns, a few of which are still used and loved in our churches.  Many a congregation thrills, as Thackeray did, to the splendid sweep of his “God in Nature,” beginning, “The spacious firmament on high.”  Almost as well known and loved are his “Traveler’s Hymn,” and his “Continued Help,” beginning, “When all thy mercies, O my God.”  The latter hymn—­written in a storm at sea off the Italian coast, when the captain and crew were demoralized by terror—­shows that poetry, especially a good hymn that one can sing in the same spirit as one would say his prayers, is sometimes the most practical and helpful thing in the world.

RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729).  Steele was in almost every respect the antithesis of his friend and fellow-worker,—­a rollicking, good-hearted, emotional, lovable Irishman.  At the Charterhouse School and at Oxford he shared everything with Addison, asking nothing but love in return.  Unlike Addison, he studied but little, and left the university to enter the Horse Guards.  He was in turn soldier, captain, poet, playwright, essayist, member of Parliament, manager of a theater, publisher of a newspaper, and twenty other things,—­all