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Born into a family where economy was a necessity, yet Addison had every advantage that good breeding and thorough tutorship could give.

At Charterhouse School he won the affection of his teachers by his earnest wish to comply. The receptive spirit and the desire to please were his by inheritance. When fifteen he went to Queen’s College, Oxford, where, within a year, his beauty, good nature and intelligence made his presence felt.

In another year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his recommendation being his skill in Latin versification.

It was the hope and expectation of his parents that he should become a clergyman and follow in his father’s footsteps. This also seems to have been the bent of the young man’s mind. But the grace of his personality, his obliging disposition, with a sort of furtive ability to peer into a millstone as far as any, had attracted the attention of several statesmen. One of these, Charles Montague, afterward Lord Halifax, remarked, “I am a friend of the Church, but I propose to do it the injury of keeping Addison out of it.”

Montague discussed the matter with Lord Somers, and these two concluded that just a trifle more maturity of that gently ironical mind, a little more seasoning of the gracious personality, and the State would have in Joseph Addison a servant of untold value.

Thus we see that England’s policy of selecting and training men for the consular and diplomatic service is no new thing. It is a wonder that America has not ere this profited by the example. The tradition holds that we must at least have a scholar and a gentleman for the Court of Saint James, and several times we have been put to straits to find the man. The only way is to breed them and then bring them up in the way they should go.

But beyond the zealous desire of Montague and Lord Somers to educate good men for the diplomatic service, lurked the still more eager wish to secure able writers to plead and defend the party cause. With this phase of the question America is more familiar; the policy of rewarding able speakers and ready writers with offices ready made or made to order has come to us ably backed by precedent untold.

Addison set himself to literary tasks, but still regarded himself as a scholar. Leisure fitted his temperament–he was never in haste, even when he was in a hurry, and he carried with him the air of having all the time there was. Nothing is so ungraceful as haste. Addison always had time to listen; and we make friends, not by explaining things to other folks, but by allowing others to explain to us.

The habit of attentive, sympathetic listening came to Addison early in life. From his twenty-first to his twenty-seventh year he lived a studious life–idle, his father called it–writing essays, political pamphlets and Latin verse. His political friends took care that some of the output was purchased, so that he was assured a comfortable living; but his success was not sufficient to inflate his cosmos with an undue amount of ego.

One small book of criticism which he produced about this time was entitled, “Account of the English Poets.” A significant feature of the work is that Shakespeare is not mentioned, even once, while Dryden is placed as the standard of excellence, just as in “Modern Painters,” Ruskin takes Turner and lets him stand for one hundred, and all other artists grade down from this.

Addison merely reflected the taste of his time. Shakespeare was not thought any more of two hundred years ago than we think of him now, with this difference–that he is the author we now talk about and seldom read, but then they did not discuss him any more than we now go to see him played.