Personally, I feel sure that Addison’s shyness was not feigned, for on the only occasion he ever attempted to speak ex-tempore in Parliament he muffed the subject, forgot his theme, and sat down in confusion.  With all his incisive thought and fine command of language, Addison could not think on his feet.  And as if aware of his limitations, in one of the “Spectator” essays he said, with more or less truth, “The fluent orator, ready to speak on any topic, is never profound, and when once his thought is cold it will seldom repay examination—­it was only a skyrocket.”

* * * * *

Without Addison’s literary reputation, resting upon his essays published in the “Tatler” and the “Spectator,” it is very possible that we would now know about as much concerning him as we do about Sir John Hawkins.  The “Tatler” and the “Spectator” allowed him to express his best, and in his own way.

With the name of Addison is inseparably coupled that of Richard Steele.  These men had a literary style which they held in partnership.  The nearest approach to it in our time is the “Easy Chair” of George William Curtis.  Curtis was once called by Lowell, with a goodly degree of justice, “our modern Addison.”

Steele and Addison had been schoolmates at the Charterhouse, and friends for a lifetime.  They were of the same age within a year.  Steele had been a soldier and an adventurer, and his disposition was decidedly convivial.  He was a clever writer, knowing the world of politics and society, but he lacked the spiritual and artistic qualities which Addison’s moderate and studious life had fostered.  But on simple themes, where the argument did not rise above the commonplace, Addison and Steele wrote exactly alike, just as all writers on the “Sun” used to write like Dana.  Steele had filled the lowest office in the Ministry, the office of “Gazeteer”:  the duties of the office being to issue a newspaper giving the official news of the day.  It was a licensed monopoly, and all infringers were severely punished.

Steele, however, did not like the office, because the Powers demanded that all writing in the “Gazette” be very innocent and very insipid.  “To publish a newspaper and say nothing is no easy task,” said Steele.  Had he lived in our day he could have seen the trick performed on every hand.

Finally the office of Gazetteer was abolished, and any man who wished might issue a “gazette,” provided he kept within proper bounds.  The result was a flight of small leaflet periodicals, quite like the Chapbook Renaissance of Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five and Eighteen Hundred Ninety-six, when over eleven hundred “brownie” and “chipmunk” magazines were started in America.  Every man with two or three ideas and ten dollars’ capital started a magazine.  Steele, teeming with thoughts demanding expression, at war with smug society, and possessing wit withal, started the “Tatler,” to be issued three times a week, price one penny.