Captain Sentry, “a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible modesty”; Will Honeycomb, “an honest, worthy man where women are not concerned”; the clergyman, who has ceased to have “interests in this world, as one who is hastening to the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and infirmities.”  “These are my ordinary companions,” says the Spectator, whom we soon learn to know very well too.

Addison’s knowledge of human nature, and his skill in delineating it in single touches, place him in the front rank of writers of fiction, notwithstanding the limit of his contributions to this department of literature.  In a few words we are made to see and know the Quaker who reproves the insolent captain on the stage-coach:  “Thy mirth, friend, savoureth of folly; thou art a person of a light mind; thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty.”  There is nothing wanting to the reader’s perfect acquaintance with Will Wimble, the poor relation.  All who know Worcestershire, says the Spectator, “are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger.”  His fame has spread from Worcestershire throughout the English-speaking world, where he has been loved and admired for more than a hundred and fifty years.  Sir Roger de Coverley is not to be described by any pen but that of Addison.  He exhibits, joined to a perfect simplicity, the qualities of a just, honest, useful man, and delightful companion.  Our acquaintance with him is a personal one.  We know how he appears at his country-house, surrounded by admiring tenants and servants, and how he occupies himself in London, and whom he meets there.  We know his ancestry, the extent and management of his estate, his long standing love affair with the beautiful widow, all his thoughts, opinions, and surroundings.  All who read about Sir Roger remember him with affection.  Addison dwelt with tenderness on every detail regarding him, and finally described Sir Roger’s death to prevent any less reverential pen from trifling with his hero.

Previous to the publication of the papers of the Spectator relating to Sir Roger de Coverley, there had been no attempt at what is a necessary constituent of the modern novel—­the study of character.  There had been the romance and the allegory.  There had been the short love story.  But with Addison, nature becomes the subject of fiction, and the novel is begun.

In a review of the remarkable life of Daniel Defoe, he appears to us under the varied aspects of a tradesman, a pamphleteer, a politician, a novelist, and, through it all, a reformer.  It is in his character as a novelist that he is now known, and that he is to be considered here.  But there are few among the millions to whom “Robinson Crusoe” has brought pleasure, who know that the composition of that work was only one event in a long life of ceaseless labor, political and literary, and that its author’s fame among his contemporaries was assured independently of it.  Defoe’s career was so full that both his chief biographers[155] have found three large volumes to be necessary to do it justice.  And yet it was not until near the end of that busy life, when the author was fifty-eight years old, feeling the approach of age and infirmity, and looking about for means to provide for a large family, that he added the writing of novels to his multifarious occupations.