Where in earlier papers has he displayed love of England?

3. On what two occasions was Sir Roger insulted? Is he able to take care of himself or does he need the aid of Mr. Spectator?

4. Some critics have said that Sir Roger's most engaging trait is his simplicity. Where does he show it here in act or speech? What notable instances of it occur in earlier papers? The Death of Sir Roger. 1. Why do you think the butler's letter was chosen to communicate the news of the death to Mr. Spectator? Do you find his English as bad as Mr. Spectator implies?

2. Is Sir Roger's death consistent with his life? Cite passages to support your opinion.

3. Would you expect all members of the Club to be affected by the death? Who would be the least affected? Who most? Why?

PART IV-REVIEW

1. This part gives vivid accounts of modes of travel in country and city in 1711, of different

types of recreation in London, and other glimpses of life then. Which is to you the most vivid? Try to write a similar account of life in your part of the country. You may wish to introduce Sir Roger. The class may wish to decide on the best account as in Part III.

2. Do you think Sir Roger more lifelike in this part or in Part III? Pick out particular essays in each to substantiate your opinion.

3. A famous critic said, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addision." You have now read a good deal of Addison. Can you illustrate what is meant by "familiar but not coarse," and "elegant but not ostentatious"? Select two or three passages that illustrate each of the two qualities the critic had in mind. Do you think a writer today should try to imitate Addison's manner of writing? Cite particular passages in which the choice of words, the turn of the sentences, or the expression of humor or satire, will bear out your opinion.

I. LITERARY

Addison and Steele: The Spectator. Besides the numerous references in the notes to interesting numbers, the student should dip in here and there to see how gracefully almost any subject is dealt with by these famous authors. Moreover, this is the best way to see how people acted and thought in that day. Lee, Albert: A Baronet in Corduroy. This story begins in Button's Coffee-house as the Sacheverell mob was surging past. It brings in highwaymen and other characters of the day. Thackeray, William Makepeace: Henry Esmond. Probably no finer historical novel has been written. To read it is to live again in those far-off days.

Woods, Margaret L.: Esther Vanhomrigh. This tells more of Swift than of Addison and Steele, but it introduces you to many prominent figures of the age.

II. HISTORICAL

Ashton, John: Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne. For those who want all the facts about Addison's day, this book is a mine. Separate reports on each of the following chapters would be interesting. I. Childhood and education (boys). II. Childhood and education (girls). vi. Servants (connect with Coverley Hall). VII. Daily Life (men).

VIII. Daily Life (women). x. Superstition (connect with Sir Roger's beliefs in gypsies and witches.) XVIII. Coffee Houses and Taverns. XXIII. Horse Racing, Hunting, Shooting. XXIX. Literature and the Press. xxxv. The Streets. XXXVI. Carriages. Macaulay, T. B.: Addison. This biographical essay, a very interesting and flattering account of Addison, will give you more in shorter space than any other book.

History of England, Chapter III. This describes the state of England in 1685 in Macaulay's vivid style. All that he says is substantially true of the time of Addison and Steele.

Sydney, William Connor: England and the

English in the Eighteenth Century. Though this deals in general with a later part of the eighteenth century, several chapters give a pretty good picture of the age of Addison. Read Chapter II for a picture of the town then; Chapter IV deals with Dress and Costume; Chapter vi with Coffee-houses; Chapter VIII with superstitions; Chapter XI with traveling; Chapter XVII with Life in the Provinces.

Traill, H. D.: Social England, Volume IV.

Reign of Queen Anne, pages 511-17; Social Life, pages 592-608. If you are at all curious these two sections will satisfy you on most points.

Laughing at life about you, at people or events in your experience, is almost universal. Everybody laughs, or should laugh, for laughter arises from sound common sense, from a feeling of proportion, from a balanced way of looking at life. A perfectly selfish person, one whose thought and actions are all centered on himself, may not see much to laugh at. A fanatic, one who is terribly in earnest about getting some change brought about or some project pushed through to completion, may not take time to laugh. But with most people a sense of humor is one of the most valuable possessions. It tends to grow richer year by year. Those who in youth come to enjoy humor in literature are likely to have a keener appreciation of it in life. Let us see how some writers have found amusement in the oddities of everyday life.

Oliver Goldsmith, the author of the first play in this section, had a very delightful sense of humor. He liked to tell a story of his own schooldays. He went to a school only fifteen miles away from his home in Ireland, but he boarded there because the roads were difficult. As most traveling was done in the saddle, he rode back home on his vacations. After his last vacation he set out in high spirits, for a friend had given him a guinea and he felt as rich as Croesus. He was on a borrowed horse, and he rode so slowly that he was only half way to the school when night overtook him. Here was an opportunity to put up at an inn. He asked for the "best house" in the place. He inquired with so much swagger and importance that the gentleman to whom he applied, and who enjoyed playing practical jokes, directed him to the mansion of the squire. The youth consequently rode up briskly, shouted for someone to take his horse, and went into the supposed inn. The squire knew the boy's father, who was rector of the English Church in the next

village, and allowed him to order his supper, accepted his invitation to share a bottle of wine, and even took his directions for a hot cake for his breakfast. It was not until leaving the next morning that Oliver Goldsmith learned that he had assumed these lordly airs in a private house.

The picture of the awkward youth condescending to the squire lingered in Goldsmith's mind so vividly that he made it the basis of his famous and still popular play, She Stoops to Conquer. The two young men in the play are misled by a practical joker in much the same way. One of them, who is usually very modest, but who is kept in the dark about the mistake, mistreats the good old gentleman, the master of the house, in a very superior fashion. Much of the fun comes from the innumerable mistakes, both in act and speech, into which the practical joke leads this modest young man.

Goldsmith introduces other practical jokes into the play, but he does not rely entirely on this kind of humor to amuse his audiences. To mistake one person for another, to say or do the wrong thing in any situation is usually a low form of wit. Goldsmith enriched his comedy by making fun of features of the everyday life of the time. Ridicule of the extravagant is a never-ending source of amusement. You will laugh heartily at Mrs. Hardcastle. She pets her boisterous grown-up son as if he were a weakly child. She is in her fifties, but she tries to dress in the latest fashion for women much younger. She has never been in London and is indeed very ignorant about it, but she pretends to be well acquainted with it. Silly mothers and vain, ignorant old women may be found today almost anywhere. Everywhere there will be enough sensible people to enjoy any satire of them.

Goldsmith satirized also matters which

were peculiar to his age. In fact, when the play was produced, it was considered a very bold one. Plays weren't written in that way then. The characters had to be "genteel." They had to be people of wealth and their servants. Goldsmith introduces as his chief character a young man little better than a country bumpkin. In one scene he introduces some very commonplace persons at a country inn. The satire comes when they all protest their "gentility." Even the bear dances to "genteel" tunes. In democratic America, we may have to read that scene twice to see the keenness of the satire. Even more difficult for us is Goldsmith's satire of "sentiment." With us the sentimental person is likely to idealize, to think of even the most hardened criminals as unfortunates, and to believe that they may be reclaimed by kindness. In Goldsmith's day comedy was called sentimental for a different reason. A sentimental play was one in which the characters spoke the most proper sentiments or opinions on very slight provocation. For example, some character may declare, "Those who generously labor for the happiness of others will sooner or later arrive at happiness themselves." When the characters are frequently saying truths like this, the play ceases to be very funny. The situations are likely to be serious or even sad. Goldsmith wanted hearty laughter. He made Marlow and Miss Hardcastle carry on a "sentimental

conversation," but he had his audience laugh at them while they did so. You should bear in mind Goldsmith's satire of "sentiment" in reading the play.

In his satire Goldsmith is never biting. In the ludicrous situations in which he places characters, he always deals with them gently. There is laughter, however, that arises not merely from satire or comical mistakes or unexpected turns of events. Sometimes you laugh, like the baby, just because you are happy. The scene simply sounds funny. Take the opening of the second act. Nothing unexpected happens. No one is satirized or held up to ridicule. Of course these faithful servants are absurdly ill fitted to act gracefully in the new roles that are assigned them. But it is something else that makes this scene a delightful piece of comedy. It is the hearty good will that reigns between master and servants. He calls them blockheads, but they know his kindly heart. He can't help laughing when Diggory refers to Old Grouse in the gun room. Much of the best humor, both in literature and in life, has back of it this kindly feeling. It is tender at the same time that it is merry.

The little play entitled The Beau of Bath is added as a sort of epilogue. It introduces once more that courtly and dignified society to which Addison and Goldsmith belonged and reminds us of Sir Roger and the Club. It is a picture of eighteenth century life as viewed by a recent writer.

or

you're very particular. Is there a creature in the whole country but ourselves that does not take a trip to town now and then, to rub off the rust a little? There's the two Miss Hoggs, and our neighbor Mrs. Grigsby, go to take a month's polishing every winter.

Hard. Aye, and bring back vanity and 10 affectation to last them the whole year. I wonder why London cannot keep its own fools at home. In my time the follies of the town crept slowly among us, but now they travel faster than a stagecoach. Its fopperies come down not only as inside passengers, but in the very basket.

Mrs. Hard. Aye, your times were fine times indeed; you have been telling us of them for many a long year. Here we live 20 in an old rumbling mansion, that looks for

Original cast, those who first acted in the play, some of them stage celebrites. 16. basket, a receptacle for baggage in the rear of old-fashioned coaches.

all the world like an inn, but that we never see company. Our best visitors are old Mrs. Oddfish, the curate's wife, and little Cripplegate, the lame dancing master; and all our entertainment your old stories of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough. I hate such old-fashioned trumpery.

Hard. And I love it. I love everything that's old-old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and, I be- 30 lieve, Dorothy (taking her hand), you'll own I've been pretty fond of an old wife.

Mrs. Hard. Lord, Mr. Hardcastle, you're forever at your Dorothys, and your old wives. You may be a Darby, but I'll be no Joan, I promise you. I'm not so old as you'd make me, by more than one good year. Add twenty to twenty, and make money of that.

Hard. Let me see; twenty added to 40 twenty-makes just fifty and seven.

Mrs. Hard. It's false, Mr. Hardcastle; I was but twenty when I was brought to bed of Tony, that I had by Mr. Lumpkin, my first husband; and he's not come to years of discretion yet.

Hard. Nor ever will, I dare answer for him. Aye, you have taught him finely.

Mrs. Hard. No matter. Tony Lumpkin has a good fortune. My son is not to live 50 by his learning. I don't think a boy wants much learning to spend fifteen hundred a year.

Hard. Learning, quotha! a mere composition of tricks and mischief.

Mrs. Hard. Humor, my dear; nothing but humor. Come, Mr. Hardcastle, you must allow the boy a little humor.

Hard. I'd sooner allow him a horsepond. If burning the footmen's shoes, 60 frightening the maids, and worrying the

26. Prince Eugene. See note on line 24, page 397. Duke of Marlborough, an English general who fought with Prince Eugene. 35, 36. Darby Joan, types of married bliss. 54. quotha, indeed!