Page:The common reader.djvu/152

 that day, fell to reading good books, and is now a bencher in the Middle-Temple.” There is a good deal of Addison in that story: his dislike of “dark and uncomfortable prospects”; his respect for “principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of all public societies, as well as private persons”; his solicitude for the butler; and his conviction that to read good books and become a bencher in the Middle Temple is the proper end for a very vivacious young gentleman. This Mr. Addison married a countess, “gave his little senate laws”, and, sending for young Lord Warwick, made that famous remark about seeing how a Christian can die which has fallen upon such evil days that our sympathies are with the foolish, and perhaps fuddled, young peer rather than with the frigid gentleman, not too far gone for a last spasm of self-complacency, upon the bed.

Let us rub off such incrustations, so far as they are due to the corrosion of Pope’s wit or the deposit of mid-Victorian lachrymosity, and see what, for us in our time, remains. In the first place, there remains the not despicable virtue, after two centuries of existence, of being readable. Addison can fairly lay claim to that; and then, slipped in on the tide of the smooth, well-turned prose, are little eddies, diminutive waterfalls, agreeably diversifying the polished surface. We begin to take note of whims, fancies, peculiarities on the part of the essayist which light up the prim, impeccable countenance of the moralist and convince us that, however tightly he may have pursed his lips, his eyes