The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.
§ 14. Character of his contributions to The Tatler
The Tatler gave him just the opportunity which he needed. After discovering, by a remark on Vergil, that Steele was the author of the paper, Addison became an occasional contributor and, despite the distractions of his official life, began to adapt his talents to the new literary art. Like Steele, he had to feel his way, and seems to have gradually realised what was in his mind, by the process of writing. His first paper bids good-bye to pedantry by declaring that
Addison indulged in many other graceful flights of fancy, which gave his satire a charm of its own; but he showed little originality of thought. And yet, though he was content to follow Bickerstaff or, rather, the public opinion of coffee-houses, his few contributions are a turning point in the history of the essay. These familiar topics became full of a new vitality under his pen. His work, if anything, is less vigorous and less searching than Steele’s; but it has the other eloquence of form which turns human utterance into literature. Until now, the essay had not completely established itself as a literary type. In the hands of Bacon, it was little more than a string of meditations, while the inventiveness of popular writers had been lavished on character sketches, epigrams, satires and revivals of medieval thought. Cowley, and, after him, Temple, had, largely under the influence of Montaigne, given a new turn to the essay, which had thus come to exercise an important effect upon the transformation of English prose. Steele and Addison entered into an inheritance which increased and multiplied in their hands. With the first few numbers of The Tatler, pre-restoration humour had been abandoned after a few attempts, and Steele addressed himself to the intellect of the middle class in the unliterary guise of a news-sheet, though his ideas had long outgrown so restricted a compass. As has been shown, his material was unmistakably leading him towards the novel of domestic life. Addison probably retarded the transition, by giving to an irresponsible and inadequate medium a completeness and dignity which satisfied the intellectual and artistic needs of his generation. For Addison not only endowed the essay with the airs and graces of cultured writing—he discovered the prose style which suits the genre. Steele had rightly conceived that The Tatler must be written in a colloquial vein, and had dashed off his papers with the freedom and effusiveness of his own conversation. Addison was too reserved ever to be a voluble talker; he never became communicative except in a small circle of kindred spirits. Thus, the riches of his mind had found expression only in polished and confidential intercourse, and when, following the example of Steele, he began to talk on paper, his subtle and unaffected personality found free play with his pen as in conversation. And so, he created a perfect style for detached literature—lucid, colloquial, full of individuality and yet chastened by that careful choice of words which, like other scholars, he had already cultivated in writing Latin verse.