In the personal
sketches of the members of the Spectator Club, of Will Honeycomb,
Captain Sentry, Sir Andrew Freeport, and, above all, Sir Roger de
Coverley, the quaint and honest country gentleman, may be found the
nucleus of the modern prose fiction of character. Addison's humor is
always a trifle grave. There is no whimsy, no frolic in it, as in Sterne
or Lamb. "He thinks justly," said Dr. Johnson, "but he thinks faintly."
The _Spectator_ had a host of followers, from the somewhat heavy
_Rambler_ and _Idler_ of Johnson, down to the _Salmagundi_ papers of our
own Irving, who was, perhaps, Addison's latest and best literary
descendant. In his own age Addison made some figure as a poet and
dramatist. His _Campaign_, celebrating the victory of Blenheim, had one
much admired couplet, in which Marlborough was likened to the angel of
tempest, who,
Pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
His stately, classical tragedy, _Cato_, which was acted at Drury Lane
Theater in 1712, with immense applause, was pronounced by Dr. Johnson
"unquestionably the noblest production of Addison's genius." Is is,
notwithstanding, cold and tedious, as a whole, though it has some fine
declamatory passages--in particular the soliloquy of Cato in the fifth
act--
It must be so: Plato, thou reasonest well, etc.
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