[In the essay that follows, Berry examines how satire was used and developed in the Spectator, primarily by Joseph Addison. The critic asserts that Addison felt that legitimate satire must be good-natured, based in morality, and used “for the Benefit of Mankind.”]

A satiric portrait by Pope or Swift is like a thunderclap; the Addisonian method is more like the slow operations of ordinary nature, loosening stones, blunding outlines, modifying a whole landscape with “silent overgrowings” so that the change can never quite be reversed again. Whatever his intentions, his reasonableness and amiability (both cheerful “habits” of the mind) are stronger in the end than the Tory spleen. To rail is the sad privilege of the loser.

C. S. Lewis¹

Although he relied too much upon the traditional opposition of Tory gloom and Addisonian non-partisan cheerfulness, C. S. Lewis cleverly perceived both Addison's practical method in the Spectator and also the resulting difficulty which the critic ultimately faces in turning backwards from the evidence of particular statements towards the general theory which produced it. Thus, to reconstruct (with widely scattered building blocks from the Spectator) a theory of satire—a theory which in all likelihood existed in no steady state in the man's mind—is a frustrating and artificial endeavour. The Spectator's purpose was certainly not to build consistently logical theories but rather to illuminate, to entertain and to reform. Nevertheless, if a coherent theory of satire is not available in the Spectator, it is possible to see that Addison (for Addison seems to have been responsible for most of the numbers whose concern is satire) had given thought to the types, the range, the effects and dangers, and the origins of the satiric mode. Of course, what an author says about his work and what he does in it often differ remarkably, but, while there is not sufficient space to provide in Addison's satiric practice the counterpoise to his theory, a detailed examination would probably reveal a general accord between the two. “The Proof,” as Addison was to say in his parody of the vowelless innuendoes of “Party-Writers,” “of the P—dd—ng is in the eating.”²

So frequently does the Spectator pause to lash the figure of satire, that, in the first place, one wonders whether Mr. Spectator would allow it to exist at all. “The World,” he says, “is so full of Ill-nature, that I have Lampoons sent me by People who cannot spell, and Satyrs compos'd by those who scarce know how to write.”³

There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous Spirit, than the giving of secret Stabs to a Man's Reputation. Lampoons and Satyrs, that are written with Wit and Spirit, are like poison'd Darts, which not only inflict a Wound, but make it incurable … [and] it is impossible to enumerate the Evils which arise from these Arrows that fly in the dark. … It must be indeed confess'd, that a Lampoon or a Satyr do not carry in them Robbery or Murder; but at the same time, how many are there that would not rather lose a considerable Sum of Mony, or even Life it self, than be set up as a Mark of Infamy and Derision?⁴

The difficulty here at first sight appears to be one of nomenclature, for Addison very often links the word “satire” with such related forms as “lampoon,” “libel,”⁵ and “raillery.”⁶ But an investigation of the context reveals that this is not so much a failure to distinguish between types of satire but more a rankling preoccupation with the effects of satire, which was often at that time devastatingly personal in force.

That Mr. Spectator does, however, approve of satire in general we know from a remark that he makes during a melancholy and thoughtful tour of tombstones in Westminster Abbey: “I could not but look upon these Registers of Existence, whether of Brass or Marble, as a kind of Satyr upon the departed Persons; who had left no other Memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died.”⁷ From this we might infer that he considers satire to have more of the function of irony, and to require from an author the recognition of an absurd or incongruous situation rather than the creation of it. A more important acceptance of satire occurs in Addison's dream-vision-allegory in Spectator 63 where he “took a full Survey of the Persons of WIT and TRUTH, for indeed it was impossible to look upon the first, without seeing the other at the same time. There was behind them a strong and compact Body of Figures.” Included amongst them, “Satyr had Smiles in her look, and a Dagger under her Garment.”⁸ It is interesting that even though Satire has the sanction of being a follower of “WIT and TRUTH,” the figure portrayed is dual; it is both inviting and treacherously untrustworthy. If the presence of Satire in the company of Wit and Truth is insufficient to allow the legitimacy of the form, then Mr. Spectator's warmest approval of satire, when he is able to recommend the Writers of Antiquity as instructive, is sufficient:

Among the Writers of Antiquity, there are none who instruct us more openly in the Manners of their respective Times in which they lived, than those who have employed themselves in Satyr, under what Dress soever it may appear; as there are no other Authors, whose Province it is to enter so directly into the ways of Men, and set their Miscarriages in so strong a Light.⁹

Whereas the Writers of Antiquity may have been instructive in their satire, and where they meant to penetrate and illuminate, satire is now considered debased because its single aim seems to be debasement. Satire must be admitted as a proper mode of literary discourse (as Addison does), but satire is not at present being properly applied. One of the difficulties which prevents its proper application is a rift which is felt not only in the satire of the Spectator but is visible and audible in much of the literature and history of the period. It is the “furious Party Spirit.” Addison explains that “as Men formerly became eminent in learned Societies by their Parts and Acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the Warmth and Violence with which they espouse their respective Parties. Books are valued upon the like Considerations: An Abusive, Scurrilous Style passes for Satyr, and a dull Scheme of Party Notions is called fine Writing.”¹⁰ In a later essay, Addison continues that “there is nothing so scandalous to a Government, and detestable in the Eyes of all good Men, as Defamatory Papers and Pamphlets; but at the same time there is nothing so difficult to tame, as a Satyrical Author. An angry Writer, who cannot appear in Print, naturally vents his Spleen in Libels and Lampoons.”¹¹

The problem, then, was not whether satire should be allowed to exist, but how it should exist. But Satire could exist in many forms; some of them were “Marks of an evil Mind,” some were admirable because they were instructive. Restrictions on the use of satire, if they were to be effective, could not be applied to works of satire. Instead, as Addison recognized, they must in some way govern the conduct of the author, if satire was to serve any worthwhile purpose (and thereby justify its existence). “But this is far from being our Case. Our Satyr is nothing but Ribaldry, and Billingsgate,”¹² and a Satire which is “Billingsgate,” as any visitor to the London fish market would attest, is remarkable not for its fish, but its foulness.

That “satire's traditional purpose is reform” is a statement which is disputed by W. O. S. Sutherland¹³ because it selects only a characteristic of satire, rather than a trait which makes it distinct from other genres. Sutherland allows that, although it may provide fruitful insights, a traditional definition of satire based on genre is “obviously inadequate.” But we must (with Addison and the Spectator) persevere with satire's traditional purpose of reform, not because it is correct or incorrect, but because Addison saw its purpose as reform. Addison was not, after all, attempting to define or “anatomize” satire, as Sutherland is; rather, he was concerned with promoting its proper employment. “A Satyr should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and make a due Discrimination between those who are, and those who are not, the proper Objects of it,” Addison concludes at the end of Spectator 209¹⁴ as he considers Boileau's Satire VIII, “which is called The Satyr upon Man. What Vice or Frailty can a Discourse correct, which censures the whole Species alike, and endeavours to show by some Superficial Strokes of Wit, that Brutes are the more excellent Creatures of the two?” Addison is clearly using the verb “correct” as a synonym for “reform” and is undoubtedly relying upon satire's traditional purpose¹⁵ to make his statement.

The language of reform in the Spectator was not, however, applied only to satire, and Addison's definition of satire should be seen not only in light of its tradition, but also within the context of the Spectator as a whole. In the first of the Spectator papers, Addison clearly intones his intentions:

I shall publish a Sheet-full of Thoughts every Morning, for the Benefit of my Contemporaries; and if I can any way contribute to the Diversion or Improvement of the Country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret Satisfaction of thinking that I have not Lived in vain.¹⁶

In the same number, he concludes by noting that the Club has appointed a Committee to oversee the publication of “all such Papers as may contribute to the Advancement of the Publick Weal.”¹⁷ In Spectator 16, Addison begins by announcing that “I have receiv'd a Letter, desiring me to be very satyrical upon the little Muff that is now in Fashion” and upon several other “ornament[s] of either Sex,” but he refuses the request.

I must therefore, once for all inform my Readers, that it is not my Intention to sink the Dignity of this my Paper with Reflections upon Red-heels or Top-knots, but rather to enter into the Passions of Mankind, and to correct those depraved Sentiments that give Birth to all those little Extravagancies which appear in their outward Dress and Behaviour.¹⁸

In Spectator 10, as Addison considers the size and nature of his audience, there are important words:

Since I have raised to my self so great an Audience, I shall spare no Pains to make their Instruction agreeable, and their Diversion useful. For which Reason I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways find their Account in the Speculation of the Day. And to the End that their Virtue and Discretion may not be short transient intermitting Starts of Thought, I have resolved to refresh their Memories from Day to Day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate State of Vice and Folly into which the Age is fallen.¹⁹

The implication in these three examples should be unavoidably clear: Addison's view of satire depends not only on the traditional concept of purpose but also on the purposes of the larger context within which the view is presented. For Addison, satire shares a common moral purpose with the essays of the Spectator—to reform, to correct, and to benefit Mankind. Like Dryden, Addison did not forget that satire, like poetry in general, had two ends—“the two heads of profit and delight”—so that the Spectator and its satire were not only to be utile but dulce as well—useful and entertaining in an agreeable way.²⁰

Just as he disallows the traditional purpose of satire, W. O. S. Sutherland likewise adopts a similar stance towards its traditional subject matter, vice and folly.²¹ But again it must be said that the traditional view of satire's subject matter, whether it could be justified by modern critical theory or not, was the one which the writer of the eighteenth century commonly held. Tatler 242, Richard Steele's consideration of “what true Raillery and Satyr were in themselves,” make a typical statement of the subjects of satire and of the man who is best qualified to be a satirist:

The ordinary Subjects for Satyr are such as incite the greatest Indignation in the best Tempers, and consequently Men of such a Make are the best qualified for speaking of the Offences in Humane Life. These Men can behold Vice and Folly when they injure Persons to whom they are wholly unacquainted, with the same severity as others resent the Ills they do themselves.²²

As we might expect, this is a subject matter which is similar to the one which Mr. Spectator proposes to aid men in avoiding:

If there be any use in these my Papers, it is this, that without representing Vice under any false alluring Notions, they give my Reader an Insight into the Ways of Men, and represent Human Nature in all its changeable Colours. That Man who has not been engaged in any of the Follies of the World … may here find a Picture of its Follies and Extravagances.²³

As for satire in particular, Addison considers it in an essay on Laughter and Ridicule: “If the Talent of Ridicule were employed to laugh Men out of Vice and Folly, it might be of some use to the World; but instead of this, we find that it is generally made use of to laugh Men out of Virtue and good Sense, by attacking everything that is Solemn and Serious, Decent and Praise-worthy in Human life.”²⁴ This is oblique but understandable. Addison is clearly representing the concept of proper satire by one of its constituent elements, Ridicule. Their proper mutual subject matter is, once again, vice and folly, but Ridicule here, and satire, as we have seen before, are not being used for that proper purpose. Mr. Spectator, however, has already decided that the responsibility for attacking Vice and Folly lies in his essays. His worthy friend the Clergy-man has advised him that “Vice and Folly ought to be attacked wherever they could be met with, and especially when they were placed in high and conspicuous Stations of life”;²⁵ furthermore, all the members of the Club agreed “that I should be at Liberty to carry the War into what Quarter I pleased; provided I continued to combat with Criminals in a Body, and to assault Vice without hurting the Person.”²⁶ These examples provide once more the implication that more than the simple tradition of the subject matter of satire needs to be taken into account. The subject matter of satire depends on the context, the entire Spectator undertaking, whose subject is also vice and folly. It should be remembered, if we have interpreted Addison correctly, that satire necessarily is dependent on and answerable to the larger context of the Spectator. Satire, after all, is only one of the weapons of Reform.

We may be justified, then, in assuming a purpose and a subject matter for the Addisonian view of satire, but we may go farther towards the centre of the matter. It has become common to apply the image of a spectrum to satire, in order to show that a variety of forms from gentle to extremely violent satire co-exist under the one name, and that the distinction between the forms, while it does exist, cannot be defined exactly. The spectrum image was not one used by Addison (or by his contemporaries for that matter) but he would have understood the implication of degree which the image contains, for he strongly opposed the most vicious kinds of satire, the Lampoon and the Libel. This, as we have seen, created a problem of nomenclature as the term “satire” was found several times in tandem with the terms for the more violent forms, but it is certainly the invective quality of satire, rather than satire itself, which he attacks. “There is indeed something very babarous and inhuman in the ordinary Scriblers of Lampoons,” he says in Spectator 23.²⁷ The vicious satirist is furthermore a danger to society:

If, besides the accomplishments of being Witty and Ill-natured, a Man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mischievous Creatures that can enter into a Civil Society. His Satyr will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from it. Virtue, Merit, and every thing that is Praise-worthy, will be made the Subject of Ridicule and Buffoonry.²⁸

Even when Mr. Spectator is asked to be satirical himself in the sixteenth issue by publishing the letters of correspondents containing “private Scandal, and black Accounts of particular Persons and Families … Lampoons … and Satyrs,” he refuses in the strictest terms:

I must therefore inform these my Correspondents, that it is not my Design to be a Publisher of Intreagues and Cuckoldoms, or to bring little infamous Stories out of their present lurking Holes into broad Day light. If I attack the Vicious, I shall only set upon them in a Body; and will not be provoked by the worst Usage I can receive from others, to make an Example of any particular Criminal.²⁹

The vicious satirist, as Addison ultimately declares in a reasoned attack on partisan papers and pamphlets whose only purpose is defamation, is nothing less than a criminal. The crime is murder:

I have spoken of them [the libellous satirists] in former Papers, and have not stuck to rank them with the Murderer and Assassin. Every honest Man sets as high a Value upon a good Name, as upon Life it self; and I cannot but think that those who privily assault the one, would destroy the other, might they do it with the same Secrecy and Impunity.

But the vicious satirist is not alone in his crime, Addison continues to point out. “As for Persons who take Pleasure in the reading and dispersing of such detestable Libels,” he declares, “I am afraid they fall very little short of the Guilt of the first Composers.”³⁰ In fact, the guilt goes beyond even the race of satirists and readers of satires, for “this wicked and ungenerous Practice … is so much in use among us at present, that it is become a kind of National Crime, and distinguishes us from all the Governments that lie about us. I cannot but look upon the finest Strokes of Satyr which are aimed at particular Persons, and which are supported even with the Appearances of Truth, to be the Marks of an Evil Mind, and highly Criminal in themselves.”³¹ Surely society ought to be compensated in some way for such crimes as murder, but how does one punish the vicious and libellous satirist and his reader? With the nicely threatening implication that he has found a suitable punishment, Mr. Spectator recalls that in the time of Cicero very few crimes were capital ones, but that “a Libel or Lampoon which took away the good Name of another was to be punished by Death,” and the reader of such a satire (in the time of Valentinian) was to suffer the same fate.

Naturally Addison could not seriously propose death as a punishment for such kinds of satire—that would have been a punishment which had equalled the crime in viciousness—but his motive and method in refusing to countenance these “Scriblers” does show us what he considered proper satire not to be (i.e. invective) and gives out directions for what he assumed it ought to be. The fact that he uses on more than one occasion the word “Libel” in his discussions of invective satire is significant. Addison seems to assume that libel consists of two distinctive features: first, that its usual meaning is “defamatory statement,” and second, that such a statement was an example of untruth. When he insists that he “cannot but look upon the finest Strokes of Satyr which are aimed at particular Persons, and which are supported even with the Appearances of Truth, to be the Marks of an evil Mind,” the reader must necessarily see that Libellous satire is not only a defamatory statement, but also that “even with the Appearances of Truth,” it lacks, nevertheless, the substance of Truth. Any satire which denies or distorts what is true is not, therefore, permissible.

Distortion or exaggeration of values, characteristics, or appearances is a traditional satiric technique and was widely recognized as such, as the writer of one letter to the Spectator complains:

Satyrists describe nothing but Deformity. From all these Hands we have such Draughts of Mankind as are represented in those burlesque Pictures, which the Italians call Caracatura's; where the Art consists of preserving, amidst distorted Proportions and aggravated Features, some distinguishing Likeness of the Person, but in such a Manner as to transform the most agreeable Beauty into the most odious Monster.³²

The problem, as Addison saw it, was that Humour, which takes as its family the kinds of writing whose purpose is to cause laughter, is the kind of writing itself most vulnerable to the abuse of distortion. Spectator 35, therefore, is devoted to a description of Humour, in order to distinguish between True and False Humour. The following genealogy is constructed to show the difference:

Two aspects of the table should be noticed. First, true humour can only be founded in truth; second, that true and false humour can be further distinguished by the nature and occasion of their product—laughter.

Laughter, Addison advises in Spectator 249, is a “necessary Weakness in Mankind”—necessary because “often it breaks the Gloom which is apt to depress the Mind” and a weakness because it is easily turned to Ridicule. This is natural because the essence of laughter is (as Addison quotes Hobbes' celebrated definition in Spectator 47) “nothing else but sudden Glory arising from some sudden Conception of some Eminency in our selves, by Comparison with the Infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”³³ In “Eminency” is the seed of Ridicule, and when Ridicule grows, its Talent “is generally made use of to laugh Men out of Virtue and good Sense, by attacking every thing that is Solemn and Serious, Decent and Praise-worthy in Human Life,”³⁴ whereas the laughter which is necessary (because it is a product of True Humour) should “laugh Men out of Vice and Folly” and thereby provide some moral benefit. Likewise, then, satire which ridicules to the point of defamation is an aspect of false humour, and satire which is false in humour cannot be considered as true or proper satire (whose purpose should be to laugh men out of Vice and Folly). Satire, therefore, if we may paraphrase Addison, must be a distortionless art, one which is based in truth rather than in falsehood, and one which rather than harm Men must benefit Man.

Along with the encouragement to truth and to benefit, one hears in these passages on humour and satire an obvious and constant emphasis on the phrase “particular Person” or “private Person.” One illuminating example occurs in Spectator 262, and it provides what amounts to a statement of the paper's policy:

As, on the one Side, my Paper has not in it a single Word of News, a Reflection in Politicks, nor a Stroke of Party; so, on the other, there are no fashionable Touches of Infidelity, no obscene Ideas, no Satyrs upon Priesthood, Marriage, and the like popular Topicks of Ridicule; no private Scandal, nor anything that may tend to the Defamation of particular Persons, Families, or Societies.

I have shewn in a former Paper [179], with how much Care I have avoided all such Thoughts as are loose, obscene, or immoral; and I believe my Reader would still think the better of me, if he knew the Pains I am at in qualifying what I write after such a Manner, that nothing may be interpreted as aimed at private Persons.³⁵

Thus Addison was adamantly, and at the end of Spectator 35 almost violently, opposed to personal satire.

This had been the case as well for the Tatler where in the fourteenth number, Isaac Bickerstaff was urged “to go on in my Design of observing Things, and forbearing Persons.” That, of course, was the policy for the paper, but a similar policy for those who would be true satirists was announced in Steele's Tatler 242:

I concluded (however unaccountable the Assertion might appear at first Sight) that Good-Nature was an essential Quality in a Satyrist, and that all the Sentiments which are beautiful in this Way of Writing must proceed from that Quality in the Author. Good-Nature produces a Disdain of all Baseness, Vice, and Folly, which prompts them to express themselves with Smartness against the Errors of Men, without Bitterness to their Persons.³⁶

What was necessary then was not the particular bitterness and partiality of personal satire but a general satire which attacked Vice and Folly as qualities rather than in specific characters. Bickerstaff sees the distinction in a clever conclusion: “The Truth of it is,” he says, “Satyrists describe the Age, and Backbiters assign their Descriptions to private Men.”³⁷

If general satire was acceptable to the Spectator and the Tatler, it did not, however, come without its own particular set of problems. The greatest of these was the contention that general satire was not very effective in contrast to the personal variety. Pope's famous letter to Dr. Arbuthnot (July 1734) sums up the attitude of the age perfectly:

That disdain and indignation against Vice, is (I thank God) the only disdain and indignation I have: It is sincere, and it will be a lasting one. But sure it is as impossible to have a just abhorrence of Vice, without hating the Vicious, as to bear a true love for Virtue, without loving the Good. To reform and not to chastise, I am afraid is impossible, and that the best Precepts, as well as the best Laws, would prove of small use, if there were no Examples to inforce them. To attack Vices in the abstract, without touching Persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with Shadows.³⁸

This was not, however, a problem which Addison acknowledged in the Spectator, although he did object to the “levelling Satyr” of which Juvenal and Boileau were guilty when they set out “to expose the [female] Sex in general, without doing Justice to the valuable Part of it.”³⁹ Addison's problem with his own general satire in the Spectator was that his readers continued to try to interpret it as personal satire, as they had become accustomed to do:

At my leaving the Coffee-house, I could not forbear reflecting with my self upon that gross Tribe of Fools who may be termed the Over-wise, and upon the Difficulty of writing any thing in this censorious Age, which a weak Head may not construe into private Satyr and personal Reflection.⁴⁰

The root of the personal-general satire problem is not, for Addison, to be located in genre but in the nature of the satirist himself. As the Tatler contended, Good-nature was an essential quality for the satirist:

There is a certain Impartiality necessary to make what a Man says bear any Weight with those he speaks to. This Quality, with Respect to Men's Errors and Vices, is never seen but in Good-natured Men. They have ever such a Frankness of Mind, and Benevolence to all Men, that they cannot receive Impressions of Unkindness without mature Deliberation; and writing or speaking ill of a Man upon Personal Considerations, is so irreparable and mean an Injury, that no one possessed of this Quality is capable of doing it.⁴¹

The Satirist who is not impartial and who does attack the particular person cannot be Good-natured by these terms; he is instead an Ill-natured man. It is instructive therefore to examine the paragraph in Addison's Spectator 169 in which are listed the characteristic activities of the Ill-natured man. He performs exactly as the false or personal satirist works, laughing at Vices instead of attempting to correct them, and attacking the particular man whether he be friend or foe.

Another Reason why the Good-natured Man may sometimes bring his Wit in Question is, perhaps, because he is apt to be moved with Compassion for those Misfortunes of Infirmities, which another would turn into Ridicule, and by that means gain the Reputation of a Wit. The Ill-Natured Man, though but of equal Parts, gives himself a larger Field to expatiate in, he exposes those Failings in Human Nature which the other would cast a Veil over, laughs at Vices which the other either excuses or conceals, gives utterance to Reflections which the other stifles, falls indifferently upon Friends or Enemies, exposes the Person who has obliged him, and in short sticks at nothing that may establish his Character of a Wit.⁴²

As well, the personal satirist and the ill-natured man are further linked by Addison in such a way that their legitimacy on any terms is ruled out. It is remarkable and not, I think, fortuitous that the qualities of both these types are similar (and in one case identical) in sound and substance to the qualities which distinguish the “Whole Species of False Humourists”:

First of all, He is exceedingly given to little Apish Tricks and Buffooneries.

Secondly, he so much delights in Mimickry, that it is all one to him whether he exposes by it Vice and Folly, Luxury and Avarice; or, on the contrary, Virtue and Wisdom, Pain and Poverty.

Thirdly, He is wonderfully unlucky, insomuch that he will bite the Hand that feeds him, and endeavour to ridicule both Friends and Foes indifferently. …

Fourthly, Being intirely void of Reason, he pursues no Point either of Morality or Instruction, but is Ludicrous only for the sake of being so.

Fifthly, Being incapable of any thing but Mock-Representations, his Ridicule is always Personal, and aimed at the Vicious Man or the Writer; not at the Vice, or at the Writing.⁴³

There is certainly a consistency of theory here which goes beyond the obvious shared phrase “both Friends and Foes indifferently.” It is not necessarily a reasonably and logically constructed theory of satire, although satire is a part of it. The consistency lies, I think, in a steady moral basis which is uniform in all situations, and it is this uniform basis which should prevent an individual from being a personal satirist, a false humourist, and an ill-natured man.

For Addison, the moral basis for satire, because it is also the basis of proper behaviour in a civil society, can only be found in the idea of good-nature. It remains then to explain what good-nature is. In the first place, “Good-nature is generally born with us; Health, Prosperity and kind Treatment from the World are great Cherishers of it where they can find it, but nothing is capable of forcing it up, where it does not grow of it self. It is one of the Blessings of a happy Constitution.”⁴⁴ More importantly, it is a Moral Virtue. As a Moral Virtue, it is uniform in conduct whether it acts “in Sickness and in Health, in Prosperity and Adversity”; it must “operate according to the Rules of Reason and Duty”; it is not selfish because we are “willing to risque any part of our Fortune, our Reputation, our Health or Ease, for the Benefit of Mankind.”⁴⁵

It seems to me that ultimately what Addison is approaching in Spectator 177 is an approximate definition of Good-nature as the Christian ideal of Charity. In fact, he does use the term “Charity” with the meaning “Philanthropy” and gives three examples of it. Spectator 169 also provides an illuminating discussion of the Good-nature of Xenophon's Imaginary Prince. Addison praises this account as “an Instance of such an overflowing of Humanity, such an exuberant love of Mankind, [which] could not have entered into the Imagination of a Writer, who had not a Soul filled with great Ideas, and a general Benevolence to Mankind.”⁴⁶ However, it is his own example of Charity (under the circumstances it can be called nothing else) which is most telling for our purposes. It lies in Addison's own response to a particularly personal kind of satire:

I have been very often tempted to write Invectives upon those who have detracted from my Works, or spoken in derogation of my Person; but I look upon it as a particular Happiness that I have always hinder'd my Resentments from proceeding to this Extremity. I once had gone through half a Satyr, but found so many Motions of Humanity rising in me towards the Persons whom I had severely treated, that I threw it into the Fire without ever finishing it.

If a Man has any Talent in Writing it shows a Good Mind to forbear answering Calumnies and Reproaches in the same Spirit of Bitterness with which they are offered: But when a Man has been at some pains in making suitable returns to an Enemy, and has the Instruments of Revenge in his Hands, to let drop his Wrath, and stifle his Resentments, seems to have something in it Great and Heroical. There is a particular Merit in such a way of forgiving an Enemy, and the more violent and unprovoked the Offence has been, the greater still is the Merit of him who thus forgives it.⁴⁷

Besides clearing up the difficulty of nomenclature, the strength of the statement rests in the example of a personal experience of writing satire. Addison's Mr. Spectator as the would-be satirist here is not only the spokesman for but the embodiment of the qualities of Good-nature, of Charity, and (as the devoted reader of the Spectator would know) of Wit.⁴⁸ Beyond the particularities of satire and invective, what we hear in these lines is, simply, the writer's “general Benevolence to Mankind.”

The interchangeable use of Addison and the Spectator has been intentional, and, perhaps confusing. The Spectator was the undertaking of both Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (not to mention the several others who contributed essays in the later stages), but Bond, in his edition, shows that Addison was responsible for most of the independent essays, while Steele was more accustomed to providing papers made up either of letters or other contributed matter.⁴⁹ Except for Steele's essay on Raillery (Spectator 422), the authorship of all the papers which concern aspects of satire is Addison's, and it is quite evident that, as far as the statements on satire are concerned, Addison's is the face behind the mask of Mr. Spectator. The persona of the anonymous looker-on who bore the name of the paper worked perfectly, not only as the purveyor of gentle satire but also as the prolocutor of statements of general satiric theory. The device, although not a new one,⁵⁰ was successful because within the larger context of the Spectator's purpose and moral basis it submerged Addison's specific concepts of satire. The result was something far less distasteful than mere doctrine, and, at the same time, something far more durable.

Ronald Paulson has said that “Addison, in his Spectator papers on the subject, does not explore true satire and, by his emphasis on the false, strongly suggests there is no other kind;”⁵¹ but given our exploration here of Addison's remarks on satire this is surely not the case. How then could Addison recommend to his readers as “instructive” the Writers of Antiquity who employed themselves in Satire, as he does in Spectator 209? How then could the figure of Satire appear in an Allegory of Wit and Truth, as it does in Spectator 63? Addison's concern was not doctrinal; his concern was not to build up a new theory, or to explore an old one, but rather, in the words of C. S. Lewis, “to modify the whole landscape.” His concept of true satire may never achieve a detailed exploration in a single related series of papers—the scatter of references here proves that—but it is nevertheless legitimate. For Addison, true satire can exist, so long as it avoids distortion and personal attack, and bases itself resolutely in the Good-nature and Charity of the author, and in Truth.

Notes

1. “Addison,” in Eighteenth-Century English Literature, ed. James L. Clifford, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 144.

2. Spectator 567. References to the Spectator will be made by a series number and by volume and page number. The edition used is that edited by Donald F. Bond, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

3. Spectator 16 (I. 71).

4. Spectator 23 (I. 97).

5. See Spectator 256 (II. 495). “A Satyr or Libel on one of the common Stamp, never meets with that Reception or Approbation among its Readers. …”

6. See Spectator 23 (I. 100). “I have indeed heard of heedless inconsiderate Writers, that without any Malice have sacrificed the Reputation of their Friends and Acquaintance to a certain Levity of Temper, and a silly Ambition of distinguishing themselves by a Spirit of Raillery and Satyr.”

7. Spectator 26 (I. 109). The Memorials in “Brass or Marble” probably recall Horace, Odes III. 30, 1-5.

8. (I. 274).

9. Spectator 209 (II. 318).

10. Spectator 125 (I. 511).

11. Spectator 451 (IV. 86).

12. Spectator 451 (IV. 88).

13. In The Art of the Satirist: Essays on the Satire of Augustan England (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), p. 9.

14. (II. 321).

15. Reform was the concern of Isaac Bickerstaff in the Spectator's predecessor, the Tatler. When Bickerstaff (Richard Steele) was admonished for the direction his satire was taking, he reasserted that “all the World may be safe from my Writing; for if I can find nothing to commend, I am silent, and will forbear the Subject: For, though I am a Reformer, I scorn to be an Inquisitor.” Tatler 14, from The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. 4 vols. (London, 1713), I. 100. Future Tatler references will be from this edition.

16. Spectator 1 (I. 5).

17. (I. 6).

18. (I. 70).

19. (I. 44).

20. See also Tatler 4: “It is my design to avoid saying any Thing of any Person, which ought justly to displease; but shall endeavour by the Variety of the Matter and Style, to give Entertainment for Men of Pleasure, without Offence to those of Business” (I. 22). Dryden's Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire, of course, provides a locus classicus for the profit-and-pleasure ideal of satire.

21. Sutherland, The Art of the Satirist, p. 16.

22. Tatler 242 (IV. 232).

23. Spectator 245 (II. 450).

24. Spectator 249 (II. 467).

25. Spectator 34 (I. 143).

26. Spectator 34 (I. 144).

27. (I. 99).

28. Spectator 23 (I. 97).

29. Spectator 16 (I. 71-2).

30. Spectator 451 (IV. 88-9).

31. Spectator 451 (IV. 87-8).

32. Spectator 537 (IV. 417).

33. (I. 200).

34. Spectator 249 (II. 467).

35. (II. 517).

36. Tatler 242 (IV. 231).

37. Tatler (242 (IV. 234).

38. The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), III, 419. But see also Pope's letter to Arbuthnot on 2 August 1734. Sherburn suspects that the earlier letter may be one of Pope's “forgeries,” but he nevertheless considers it invaluable as “Pope's best defence in prose of his satire.”

39. Spectator 209 (II. 320).

40. Spectator 568 (IV. 540).

41. Tatler 242 (IV. 233-4).

42. Spectator 169 (II. 167).

43. Spectator 35 (I. 148).

44. Spectator 169 (II. 165-6).

45. Spectator 177 (II. 197-8).

46. Spectator 169 (II. 166).

47. Spectator 355 (III. 323).

48. Addison vigorously denies the maxim “that Good-natured Men are not always Men of the most Wit” in Spectator 169 (II. 167). This maxim is taken incorrectly as truth because “ordinary Observers” do not understand the nature of true Wit, and because false Wit is often used for the purpose of Ridicule, whereas a Good-natured man who is also a man of Wit is not inclined this way. “The greatest Wits I have conversed with,” Addison asserts, “are Men eminent for their Humanity.”

49. For Bond's discussion of the authorship of the Spectator, see I. xliii-lix.

50. Defoe had used it previously in his Review. See Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 208.

51. Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 61.