SOURCE: "An Essay on Virgil's Georgics," in Eighteenth-Century Critical Essays, Vol. 1, edited by Scott Elledge, Cornell, 1961, pp. 1–8.

A prominent English statesman and man of letters, Addison, along with Richard Steele, is considered one of the most important essayists of the early eighteenth century. With Steele, he founded the influential daily the Spectator, which was launched with the avowed purpose of improving the morals and manners of the day. Addison's best essays, those in which he adopted the persona of the fictional country squire Sir Roger de Coverley, are tren-chant, pointed observations of life, literature, and society. Didactic and moralizing, yet witty and ironic, Addison's style epitomizes the ideals of neoclassical lucidity and moderation; Samuel Johnson remarked that Addison's work is characterized by "an English style familiar but not coarse, elegant but not ostentatious. " In the following essay, originally published in 1697, Addison discusses how the Georgics exemplify the georgic...