MR. SPECTATOR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 763, 5 March 1954, Page 13

MR. SPECTATOR

THE LIFE OF JOSEPH ADDISON, by Peter Smithers; Oxford at the Clarendon Press, English price 35/-. EOPLE who believe that writers are unfitted for practical] affairs should be persuaded to read this biography. Joseph Addison was not only the greatest prose writer of his time; he was also a sound administrator, and came to be one of the most powerful statesmen in England. The man _ himself does not stand very clearly before the reader. He was reticent and self-critical, and so adept in concealing his antipathies and avoiding quarrels -no easy task when Grub Street was full of angry men who wrote pamphlets at the drop of a hatthat he could rarely be seen as a human being. He liked good company and wine, and although he warned readers of the Spectator against dreams of easy money, he once won £1000 in a lottery. He (continued on next page)

BOOKS (continued from previous page) was almost too successful. In his youth ‘he made himself a considerable reputation as a poet, so that after the victory of Blenheim it seemed quite natura] for the ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer to climb up to Addison’s third-floor garret and ask him to write a poem to celebrate the event, in payment for which he was given a sinecure, and the promise of better things to come. (Could anything like this happen today?) His tragedy Cato was written and talked about for two centuries; and his papers for the Spectator, written in collaboration with Steele, gave him an unrivalled place as an essayist, From modest beginnings, he lived to be a statesman. known throughout Europe, a wealthy man, and undisputed ruler of the literary scene. According to Peter Smithers, the influence of his oral writings was profound and farreaching. And C. S, Lewis is quoted as saying; "He appears to be (as far as any individual can be) the source of a quite astonishing number of mental habits which were stil] prevalent when men now living were born, Almost everything which my, own generation ignorantly called Victoriaf¥ seems to have been expressed by Addison." It is not easy to fee] affection for a Mora! Force, and perhaps it is significant that Mr,

Smithers, who always refers to Steele as "Dick," only rarely speaks of Addison by his Christian name. This book is very much the story of a successful man, but it also gives a full picture of London in the early 18th Century, and especially of the in-tellectuals-the patrons and the placemen, the arguing groups in the coffee houses, the quarrelling writers and booksellers. And although some readers may be a little repelled by Addison’s supremely tactful pr@gress in politics and letters, they should feel at the end that justice cannot be done until they turn to The Spectator, and taste again

the prose of a master.

H.