ADDISON, JOSEPH , English essayist, poet and man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison, later Dean of Lichfield, was born at his father's rectory of Milston in Wilt shire, on May 1, 1672. After having attended several schools, the last Charterhouse, he was entered a commoner of Queen's Col lege, Oxford, at the age of 15; but after two years was elected to a demyship of Magdalen College for his skill in Latin versifica tion. He took his master's degree in 1693, and subsequently ob tained a fellowship which he held until 1711. Much of his early Latin verse is preserved in the Musae Anglicanae (1691-99). A poem in the third volume of Dryden's Miscellanies followed in the next series by a translation of the fourth Georgic, brought about his introduction to Tonson the bookseller, and (probably through Tonson) to Lord Somers and Charles Montagu. To both of these persons he commended himself by An Account of the Greatest English Poets (1694), An Address to King William (1695), after Namur, and a Latin poem entitled Pax Gulielmi (1697), on the Peace of Ryswick, with the result that in 1699 he obtained a pen sion of £300 a year to enable him (as he afterwards said in a memorial addressed to the Crown) "to travel and qualify him self to serve his Majesty." In the sum mer of 1699 he crossed into France, where chiefly for the purpose of learning the language, he remained till the end of 1700; and after that he spent a year in Italy. In Switzerland, on his way home, he was stopped by receiving notice that he was to attend the army under Prince Eugene, then engaged in the war in Italy, as secretary from the King. But in March 1702 the death of King William at once drove his Whig friends from power and Addison's pension ceased. He was able, however, to visit a great part of Germany, and did not reach Holland till the spring of 1703. In the autumn of the same year Addison returned to England.
During his residence abroad he wrote the rhymed Letter from Italy to Charles Montagu, the Dialogues on the Usefulness of Medals, not published until after his death, and the Remarks on several parts of Italy, printed in 1705. After his return to Eng land he was asked by Lord Halifax to write a poem celebrat ing Marlborough's victory at Blenheim. This, The Campaign (1704), won for its author a post in the excise, which was prac tically a sinecure. The next ten years of his life were spent in government service as an under-secretary of State, secretary to Lord Halifax on a mission to the Elector of Hanover (1708), and secretary to Lord Wharton, the lord lieutenant of Ireland (1708-10). His commissionership in the excise he retained all his life, and he sat in Parliament, a silent member, from 1708 onwards, first for Lostwithiel and then for Malmesbury. During this period he wrote an anonymous pamphlet in defence of the Government entitled The Present State of the War (1707), and an opera libretto, Rosamond, complimenting the Duke of Marl borough, which was a failure at the time, but was afterwards set to music by Dr. Arne with great success. In 1711 he purchased for L 10,00o the estate of Bilton near Rugby.
Soon after the fall of the ministry, he started the Whig Ex aminer in opposition to the Tory Examiner, then conducted by Prior, and afterwards the vehicle of Swift's most vehement in vectives against the party to which he had once belonged. These are certainly the most ill-natured of Addison's writings; but they are neither lively nor vigorous, and the paper died after five numbers (Sept. 14 to Oct. 12 1710). There is more spirit in his allegorical pamphlet, The Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff. But meanwhile Addison found his real vocation as one of the greatest of English essayists. Richard Steele, who had been Addi son's schoolfellow at the Charterhouse, remained on intimate terms with him and belonged to the same political party. Addi son was in Dublin when, in April 1709, Steele published the first number of the "Tatler." He is said to have detected his friend's authorship only by recognizing in the sixth number a critical remark on Virgil, which he remembered having himself commu nicated to Steele. He began to furnish hints and suggestions, assisted occasionally and finally wrote regularly. According to Aitken (Life of Steele, i. 248), he contributed 42 out of the total of 271 numbers, and was part-author of 36 more. With the advent of Addison as a contributor the character of the "Tatler" changed. The essay began to preponderate, and the news ele ment almost disappeared. The paper was discontinued from Jan. 2, 1711, perhaps because its semi-political character made Steele's position difficult under the Tory administration. But after a very short time it had a successor in the "Spectator," in which Addison played the leading part. The paper was to be non political, and was to "bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies; at tea-tables and in coffee-houses" (Spectator No. 1o).
For nearly two years the "Spectator" delighted the town. The "Spectator" stood for reason and moderation in an age of bitter party strife, for clean living in an age when the English upper classes had not yet recovered from the licence of the Restora tion, and in criticism for the best standards of its time. Addison and Steele were for a reconciliation of the harsh austerities of Puritanism with the careless profligacy of the Restoration. They were, in fact, great moralists. Samuel Johnson, whose political sympathies did not make him too friendly to Addison, paid his tribute to the lucidity and purity of his English style. "Who ever wishes to attain an English style," he said, "must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." And Macaulay speaks justly of Addison as the "consummate painter of life and manners," and of "the great satirist who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy and virtue by fanaticism." The "Spec tator" includes the famous Saturday papers on Milton in which Addison applied the principles of Aristotelian criticism to Mil ton's work. However excessive his praise of Milton may seem (he placed him above Homer and Virgil), these papers had a great influence on criticism for a long period, and were trans lated into French and German.
Of the 555 papers in the "Spectator" Addison's numbered against 236 written by Steele. W. J. Courthope estimated the circulation of the "Spectator" at 0,00o—a very large number for those days—and the bound annual volumes had a further sale of 9,000. After the "Spectator," Steele projected the "Guardian," which was also to be non-political, but did not maintain its aloofness. Addison also contributed a few papers.
It is astonishing to some readers that Addison's tragedy of Cato, produced on April 13, 1713, should have been counted one of his best achievements. But the artificiality and frigidity of the piece, and its glaring faults even after the emendations of Pope and others, counted for very little against the political in terest imported into the play. It was dedicated to the Duchess of Marlborough, and the liberal sentiments put into the mouths of Roman orators were taken as a glorification of Whig senti ments. It was interpreted as a defence of the Whigs and Marl borough against the Tories who were suspected of trying to undo the act of Settlement. Cato ran for 35 nights. It was translated into French and German, and Addison was praised by Voltaire as "the first Englishman who composed a regular trag edy and infused a spirit of elegance into every part of it." Voltaire's praise was partly due to Addison's strict adherence to the unity of place which his English contemporaries found unnatural and artificial.
From the cessation of the "Spectator" onwards, Addison's life, though outwardly increasingly prosperous, was clouded by various misunderstandings and quarrels. The rights and wrongs of Pope's quarrel with him (see POPE, ALEXANDER) are difficult to disentangle, and cannot be dealt with here. But Addison, who had established Button in a coffee-house in Covent Garden, held a little literary court there of which Budgell, Tickell, Carey and Phillips were members. Pope was not a member of the coterie, though it appears that he made a brief appearance there. In any case there was a complete breach. Pope wrote the famous lines on Atticus in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot in which Addison is mercilessly attacked as "willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike," who "like Cato, gives his little senate laws, and sits at tentive to his own applause." The Epistle was not published until after Addison's death, though he must have seen the lines.
On the accession of George I., Addison was appointed secre tary to the lords justices entrusted provisionally with the con duct of the Government until the new King's arrival. He then became once more chief secretary for Ireland. He defended the Hanoverian succession against the Jacobite partisans in a new paper called the "Freeholder" which appeared biweekly be tween Dec. 23, 1715 and June 9, 1716. Probably in return for this service he was made one of the commissioners for trade and the colonies. In Aug. 1716 he married Charlotte, Countess dow ager of Warwick, who brought her husband the occupancy of Holland House, Kensington. The common report that the mar riage was a very unhappy one is based mainly on the evidence of Addison's enemies. The allegations that he was incompetent in the public service are derived from similar sources; but as one of the secretaries of State in the Sunderland cabinet (i7I7) he seems to have been a failure. He resigned on the plea of failing health in March 1718. In the same month he found himself ranged as a pamphleteer against his old friend Dick Steele. The contest was still proceeding when Addison died of dropsy, June 17, 1719. Steele's real love for his friend was shown in the letter to Congreve prefixed to Addison's anonymous comedy The Drummer, acted in 1716.
Addison's life was written in 1843 by Lucy Aikin. This was re viewed by Macaulay in July of the same year. A more modern study is that in the "Men of Letters" series by W. J. Courthope (1884) . The Spectator (seven vols. 1712-13, the 8th being added in 1715) , was frequently reprinted. There is a good modern edition, in eight vols. (1897-98) by G. Gregory Smith. Of the Tatler there is an edition by G. A. Aitken in eight vols. (1898) . A complete edition of Addison's works (based upon Hurd) is included in Bohn's British Classics; Bonamy Dobree, Essays in Biography (1925).