Steele had issued the first number of the Taller on 12 April 1709. It appeared three times a week and was first issued as a news paper, with different classes of news — politi cal, social, literary, etc., purporting to come from different quarters of London. The paper, however, was not long in losing these distinc tions and soon became chiefly moral. For this change Addison, who entered at the 18th num ber and wrote 42 out of the total 271 numbers, may have been largely responsible. Coming to an end on 2 Jan. 1711, the Taller was followed, on 1 March of the same year, by the Spectator, which, while modelled on the Tatter, was an improvement on it in all ways. It appeared daily, it was more essay-like in form, it was more varied in subject, more satirical in tone, and it addressed a wider range of readers, particularly women, in the belief that improve ment in manners must begin with them. Since its place, as a form of literature, had been carefully prepared by the rise of the daily press, and, as an organ of education, by the growing reaction against the dissoluteness of Restoration manners and literature, it had marked success. Its circulation is estimated to have been 10,000 copies toward the close of its career, 6 Dec. 1712 (a continuation, issued thrice a week, came to an end in 1714), and the sale of completed volumes was equally great. Addison contributed 274 papers to 236 by Steele; Addison's are nearly all signed by one of the letters C. L. L 0.
On 13 April 1713, 'Cato> was acted. Though wholly different from the prevailing and the traditional English play in that it was built on severely classical and unromantic prin ciples, and though succeeding generations have pronounced it to be a poem of noble sentiments rather than a dramatic play, it had great suc cess and ran for 35 nights, an unprecedented period. This was largely due to the political situation,— the eve of the fall of Tory power and of Whig success,— and Addison was a man of such political eminence that his play was naturally to be regarded as of uncommon im portance. Abroad, the play was well received. It was twice translated into Italian, twice into French and once into Latin, besides being often adapted. Voltaire praised it highly as a "regu lar tragedy,* and regarded it as much superior to preceding English plays. Two years later Addison wrote The which was coldly received at Drury Lane.
In 1714, on the ascendency of the Whig party, Addison was made chief secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Shrewsbury, an office which he held till August 1715. From 23 December of that year till 9 June 1716, he wrote The Freeholder, a semi weekly of 55 numbers altogether, designed to prove to the freemen of England the justice of the Whig cause and the need of the Protest ant succession. In 1716, he was made a com missioner for trade and the colonies. This same year he married Charlotte, Countess Dowager of Warwick, to whom he is said to have been long attached. The marriage has been called unhappy and there is a fairly estab lished tradition to that effect; in Pope's innuen do he "married discord with a noble wife.° For the tradition there is, however, no good evidence. By her he had one daughter, Char lotte, who died unmarried, in 1797. His mar riage was coincident with the height of his political career; in 1717 he was made secretary of state, an office which he resigned in March of the following year. His health was failing and he had never been a good public speaker.
The last half decade of his life was some what embittered by two famous literary quar rels. The first, with Pope, in 1715, was due, generally, to the fact that the two were essen tially incompatible, and, in particular, to the fact that Pope felt aggrieved because Addison had praised warmly a rival translation of the 'Iliad> by Tickell, and even went so far as to suspect Addison of being the real author. Addison's acquaintance with Pope began with a favorable comment in the Spectator on the 'Essay on Criticism,' but thereafter he never spoke of Pope so highly as of the members of this little senate.° Addison may have advised
Pope against adding to 'The Rape of the Lock) the brilliant and charming machinery of the fairies, and Pope is said to have tried to dis suade Addison from presenting 'Cato' on the stage, neither pieces of counsel likely to in crease the mutual respect of the two authors. The result was that long after Addison's death Pope published, in his 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' his famous satire on Addison, already written during the latter's life and then defended his course by the publication of a somewhat doc tored correspondence.
In 1719, Addison and Steele found them selves on opposite sides of a bill for definitively limiting the number of peers. Steele, though a Whig, opposed the party measure in a pam phlet called the Plebeian (14 March), and was answered by Addison five days later in the Old Whig. The contest ended in some personalities on Steele's part. Before a reconciliation could take place between the two life-long friends, Addison died of dropsy. He lies buried in Westminster Abbey.
By Addison's contemporaries and biog raphers he is almost always spoken of as a man of fine intellect, lofty character, consider ate and distinguished manners and great per sonal charm. He has been called the chief architect of public opinion in the 18th century. His posthumous fame, of course, rests almost exclusively on his contributions to the Tatter and the Spectator, which contain nearly all that he had to say of permanent value. Their in fluence was directed, socially, to the bettering of contemporary life and manners and the in culcation of virtue, and, intellectually, to the improvement of the taste of his generation; of the former his mild satires on the affecta tions of his time are perhaps the best example, and, of the latter, there may be taken his some what formal but enlightening examination and criticism of 'Paradise Lost.' In literary his tory he is commonly said to have contributed to the art of novel-writing an unprecedented skill in drawing individual character or per sonality and of thus preparing the way for Richardson (q.v.) and Fielding (q.v.); and the proof of this remark lies in his lively sketches of the members of the Spectator Club, particularly Sir Roger de Coverly. As a stylist he has, in his own field of inoffensive social satire and gentle humor, no superior, and the famous phrase of Dr. Johnson that writes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison," remains largely true. Addison brought English prose to a degree of finish and accessibility that had been wanting before. Even his great predecessor, Dryden (q.v.), one of the most flexible and easy of prose-writers, has not quite that sense of the audience which Addison possessed to so great a degree, and which is the basis of his secret of writing easy, readable prose. Technically, this is Addison's contribution to the art of expression.
Editions of Addison's works are numerous. Bohn's 'British Classics) contains his complete works. 'The Spectator' was edited by Morley (1868) and by G. Smith (8 vols., 1898). The famous essays on Addison are Johnson's, in the 'Lives of the Poets,' Macaulay's 'The Life and Writings of Addi son,' and Thackeray's in the 'English Humor ists,' the two last being brilliant rather than sound. The life by W. J. Courthope in the 'English Men of Letters Series' (1884) is ex cellent, and is more convenient than the older and longer life by Lucy Aiken (1846). For Addison's place in literature consult Perry, T. S., 'English Literature in the 18th Century' (1883), and Beljame, A., 'Le public et les hommes de lettres en angleterre au XVIII siècle (1881; 2d ed., Paris 1897) ; they are more satisfactory than the criticism in Taine's 'History of English Literature' (1863), or Professor Gosse's 'A History of 18th Century Literature, 1660-1780' (1889).