As the day lengthens the scene changes.  The gentleman with the strawberry sash and uncertain morals and his servile subjects disappear, giving place “to men who have business or good sense in their faces, and come to the coffee-house either to transact affairs or enjoy conversation.  The persons to whose behaviour and discourse I have most regard, are such as are between these two sorts of men; such as have not spirits too active to be happy and well pleased in a private condition, not complexions too warm to make them neglect the duties and relations of life.  Of this sort of men consist the worthier part of mankind; of these are all good fathers, generous brothers, sincere friends, and faithful subjects.  Their entertainments are derived rather from reason than imagination; which is the cause that there is no impatience or instability in their speech or action.  You see in their countenances they are at home, and in quiet possession of the present instant as it passes, without desiring to quicken it by gratifying any passion or prosecuting any new design.  These are the men formed for society, and those little communities which we express by the word neighbourhood.”

Thus moved the panorama of the coffee-house.  Perhaps nothing contributed more importantly to the gossip of the latter than did the mention of quiet Addison himself after the night in April, 1713, which witnessed the triumph of “Cato.”  The essayist had always possessed, like many other literary men, a secret longing to be the author of a prosperous tragedy, and in his earlier days made bold to submit a play to the inspection of Dryden.  The poet read it with polite interest, and, on returning the manuscript to the author, expressed therefor his profound esteem, with many apologetic et ceteras, and only regretted that, in his humble opinion, the piece, if placed upon the stage, “would not meet with its deserved success.”  In other words, Dryden saw that Addison was sadly wanting in dramatic instinct, but was too forbearing to say this in plain, set terms.  As for the young man, he must have felt much after the fashion of the aspiring writer who receives an article back from an unappreciative magazine with a printed slip warning him that “the rejection of manuscript does not imply lack of merit,” &c. &c., the whole thing being intended as a moral cushion to break the suddenly descending spirits of the sender.

Years later the great man was favoured with another cushion of this sort by no less a person than his friend Alexander Pope, whose august criticism he asked in behalf of “Cato.”  The major part of the play—­all of it, in fact, excepting the last act—­had been written when Addison first began to fall under the passionate influence of French tragedy, with its tiresome regularity of form and attempted imitation of the classic drama.[A] And a powerful influence it was in the days of good Queen Anne, so powerful, verily, that it almost emasculated the art of play-writing, and for a time well nigh bereft the stage of originality of thought or freedom of expression.  Form, form, that was the cry still ringing in the ears of the author when he put the finishing touches to a production which was to be famous for the nonce, and then go down in the dark waters of oblivion with the wreck of many like it.