Essays and Tales   By: Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.

ESSAYS AND TALES

BY JOSEPH ADDISON.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: LONDON , PARIS , NEW YORK & MELBOURNE . 1888.

Contents:

Introduction Public Credit Household Superstitions Opera Lions Women and Wives The Italian Opera Lampoons True and False Humour Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow's Impressions of London The Vision of Marraton Six Papers on Wit Friendship Chevy Chase (Two Papers) A Dream of the Painters Spare Time (Two Papers) Censure The English Language The Vision of Mirza Genius Theodosius and Constantia Good Nature A Grinning Match Trust in God

INTRODUCTION.

The sixty fourth volume of this Library contains those papers from the Tatler which were especially associated with the imagined character of ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, who was the central figure in that series; and in the twenty ninth volume there is a similar collection of papers relating to the Spectator Club and SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY, who was the central figure in Steele and Addison's Spectator . Those volumes contained, no doubt, some of the best Essays of Addison and Steele. But in the Tatler and Spectator are full armouries of the wit and wisdom of these two writers, who summoned into life the army of the Essayists, and led it on to kindly war against the forces of Ill temper and Ignorance. Envy, Hatred, Malice, and all their first cousins of the family of Uncharitableness, are captains under those two commanders in chief, and we can little afford to dismiss from the field two of the stoutest combatants against them. In this volume it is only Addison who speaks; and in another volume, presently to follow, there will be the voice of Steele.

The two friends differed in temperament and in many of the outward signs of character; but these two little books will very distinctly show how wholly they agreed as to essentials. For Addison, Literature had a charm of its own; he delighted in distinguishing the finer graces of good style, and he drew from the truths of life the principles of taste in writing. For Steele, Literature was the life itself; he loved a true book for the soul he found in it. So he agreed with Addison in judgment. But the six papers on "Wit," the two papers on "Chevy Chase," contained in this volume; the eleven papers on "Imagination," and the papers on "Paradise Lost," which may be given in some future volume; were in a form of study for which Addison was far more apt than Steele. Thus as fellow workers they gave a breadth to the character of Tatler and Spectator that could have been produced by neither of them, singly.