And throughout the ‘Spectator’ we may find a Christian under-tone in Addison’s intolerance of infidelity, which is entirely wanting when the moralist is Eustace Budgell.  Two or three persons in the comedy of the ‘Drummer’ give opportunity for good character-painting in the actor, and on a healthy stage, before an audience able to discriminate light touches of humour and to enjoy unstrained although well-marked expression of varieties of character, the ‘Drummer’ would not fail to be a welcome entertainment.

But our sketch now stands at the year 1705, when Steele had ceased for a time to write comedies.  Addison’s ‘Campaign’ had brought him fame, and perhaps helped him to pay, as he now did, his College debts, with interest.  His ‘Remarks on Italy’, now published, were, as Tickell says, ‘at first but indifferently relished by the bulk of readers;’ and his ‘Drummer’ probably was written and locked in his desk.  There were now such days of intercourse as Steele looked back to when with undying friendship he wrote in the preface to that edition of the ‘Drummer’ produced by him after Addison’s death: 

’He was above all men in that talent we call humour, and enjoyed it in such perfection, that I have often reflected, after a night spent with him apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite and delightful than any other man ever possessed.’  And again in the same Preface, Steele dwelt upon ’that smiling mirth, that delicate satire and genteel raillery, which appeared in Mr. Addison when he was free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and muffles merit; and his abilities were covered only by modesty, which doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to all that are concealed.’

Addison had the self-consciousness of a sensitive and speculative mind.  This, with a shy manner among those with whom he was not intimate, passed for cold self-assertion.  The ‘little senate’ of his intimate friends was drawn to him by its knowledge of the real warmth of his nature.  And his friendships, like his religion, influenced his judgment.  His geniality that wore a philosophic cloak before the world, caused him to abandon himself in the ‘Spectator’, even more unreservedly than Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, ’little subject, little wit,’ gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby.  Addison’s quietness with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as much to him as his could be to Steele.  In very truth it ’doubled all his store.’  Steele’s heart was open to enjoyment of all kindly intercourse with men.  In after years, as expression of thought in the literature