The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IX. From Steele and Addison to Pope and Swift.

II. Steele and Addison.

§ 11. Collaboration of Addison.


This collaborator was Addision. 71  In reality, his achievement was the fruit of a mental readjustment more laborious and fundamental than Steele’s, though of a different character. Like the creator of The Tatler, Addison had to put new wine into old bottles. He was a man of scholarly habits and unusual ability, but taciturn and lacking in initiative. When Steele plunged into London life, Addison was studying at Magdalen, where he peacefully won academic distinction and stored his mind with the wit and wisdom of antiquity.   22

Note 71. “That paper was advanced indeed! for it was raised to a greater thing than I intended it! For the elegance, purity and correctness which appeared in his writings were not so much my purpose, as (in any intelligible manner as I could) to rally all those singularities of human life through the different professions and characters in it, which obstruct anything that was truly good and great.” Steele, in preface to The Drummer (1721). [ back ]