He began by composing poetry, not because his mind teemed with images but because his was a poetic age, and he had no quarrel with its conventions. From start to finish—from 1689 ("Tityrus et Mopsus") to 1716 ("To Sir Godfrey Kneller")—his poetry lacked an imaginative passion, a reflection perhaps of the peace he made with the uninterrupted containment of his own mind. He experimented with several genres of drama: opera, tragedy, and comedy. Unable to write a fifth act for
Cato when he had presumably plotted it in 1699 at Magdalen, he nonetheless finished it in little more than a week's time to satisfy the importunate pleadings of the Whigs about a decade later. Cato (1713) became the most controversial theatrical success of the first half of the eighteenth century.
A dull, hesitant speaker among strangers, Addison was purportedly mute among superiors. Yet in the course of a relatively few years, from 1710 to 1719, he devised a prose style that suggested uncluttered, good-humored talk. The fact that he presented little of his buried self gave a pleasurable dimension to his periodical writing, particularly to the essays of The Spectator (1711-1712,1714). Such an abeyance of ego forced no new complications or intimacy onto his audience.
This is a free page. This page contains 195 words. This
biography contains 12,358 words (approx. 41 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Joseph Addison Access Pass.
