Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele

Gulliver's Travels

In each of its four books the hero, Lemuel Gulliver, sets off on a voyage; but misfortune usually carries him to a strange land. Book I takes him to Lilliput, where he wakes up to find himself the giant prisoner of the six-inch-high Lilliputians. Man-Mountain, as Gulliver is called, wins over the pompous Lilliputians when he walks into the sea and captures an invading fleet from the neighbouring Blefescu. But he falls into disfavour when he puts out a fire in the empress' palace. On learning of a plot against him, he escapes from the island. Book II takes Gulliver to Brobdingnag, the land of giants. He is taken good care of by a nine- year-old girl, but his tiny size exposes him to dangers and humiliation, such as getting his head caught in a naughty baby's mouth. Also, the giants' small physical defects are highly visible and disturbing to him. Picked up by an eagle and dropped into the sea, he manages to return home. In Book III Gulliver visits the floating island of Laputa, whose absent-minded inhabitants are so lost in high thoughts that they are always likely to crash. He visits the Academy of Lagado (a caricature of England's Royal Society), where crazy gurus are involved in such unrealistic research as reducing human excrement to food again. In Luggnagg he meets the Struldbruggs, a race of immortals, whose eternal old age is brutally described. Book IV takes Gulliver to the Utopian land of the Houyhnhnms, serious, rational, and honest horses. There is also another race on the island, somehow tolerated and used for boring services by the Houyhnhnms. These are the brutal Yahoos. Although Gulliver pretends at first not to recognize them, he is forced at last to admit the Yahoos are human beings. He finds perfect happiness with the Houyhnhnms, but only as he is a more advanced Yahoo. A general assembly rejects Gulliver and he returns to England, where he finds it difficult to live again with his fellow human beings.

As early as in their school days Joseph Addison and Richard Steele began a long-lasting friendship, which grew into a fruitful professional collaboration. Addison was quiet and judicious, Steele was more unrestrained, thoughtless, and frequently in financial trouble.

They both studied at Oxford. The essayist, poet, and dramatist Joseph Addison (May 1, 1672, Milston, Wiltshire - June 17, 1719, London) graduated with a degree and a good reputation for Latin verse. The English essayist, dramatist, journalist, and politician Richard Steele (1672, Dublin, Ireland — Sept. 1, 1729, Carmarthen, Wales), nevertheless, left the university and went into the army. Except for the last years of Queen Anne's reign, they benefited from the patronage of great Whig magnates. Steele worked as an editor of the London Gazette, an official paper reporting news from home and abroad, listing government post appointments. He then became a manager of the Drury Lane Royal Theatre, served in Parliament and was titled Knight by George I. Addison held more notable posts: secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Undersecretary of State and at the end of his life, Secretary of State.

They both produced plays: in 1713, Addison's rigid and accurate tragedy Cato was very successful; Steele's plays, such as The Conscious Lovers (1722) started the fashion for sentimental comedy in the 18^th century. Their simultaneous misfortunes, Addison's loss of employment in 1710 and Steele's debts, helped to join their efforts in the journalistic sphere, the literary value of which cannot be underestimated: they developed the genre of the periodical essay. With his previous experience of editorship, Steele created the Tatler, which contained a mixture of news and personal observations. It became an instantaneous hit in coffeehouses and at home breakfasts. Steele was the leading contributor for the paper, but Addison was extremely helpful. The paper's successor, The Spectator, though a joint venture, was predominated by Addison. These papers were extremely popular and were followed and imitated for the rest of the century, e.g. by Johnson's Rambler and Idler. These periodicals helped promote moral reforms, and were instrumental in creating a new society that was searching for balance between the morality and dignity of the old, and the wit and enlightenment of the new.

The Aims of the Spectator

The Spectator, No. 10, Monday, March 12, 1711

It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city inquiring day by day after these my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day. So that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I may reckon about three-score thousand disciples in London and Westminster, who I hope will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant and unattentive brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful. For which reasons I shall endeavor 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. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffeehouses.

(2) 1 would therefore in a very particular manner recommend these my speculations to all well-regulated families that set apart an hour in every morning for tea and bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.

(3) Sir Francis Bacon observes that a well-written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses's serpent, that immediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as to think that where The Spectator appears the other public prints will vanish; but shall leave it to my reader's consideration whether is it not much better to be let into the knowledge of one's self, than to hear what passes in Muscovy or Poland; and to amuse ourselves with such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, and prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to inflame hatreds, and make enmities irreconcilable?

(4) In the next place, I would recommend this paper to the daily perusal of those gentlemen whom I cannot but consider as my good brothers and allies, I mean the fraternity of spectators who live in the world without having anything to do in it; and either by the affluence of their fortunes or laziness of their dispositions have no other business with the rest of mankind but to look upon them. Under this class of men are comprehended all contemplative tradesmen, titular physicians, fellows of the Royal Society, Templars that are not given to be contentious, and statesmen that are out of business; in short, everyone that considers the world as a theater, and desires to form a right judgment of those who are the actors on it. [...]

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