not care for them as Chaucer cares for the battlefields of his Knight.
'One might ... recount' many tales touching on many points in our
speculations, and no child and no Elizabethan would refrain from doing
so, but the Spectator will not 'go out of the occurrences of common
life, but assert it as a general observation.' [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 107] He is in perfect harmony with his age, too, in the
intensely rational view which he takes of ghosts [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 110] and witches, [Footnote: _Spectator_ 117] for
it was a period in which men cared very little for things which 'the eye
hath not seen'. In his use of mottoes, again, which are deliberately
sought illustrations for his papers, [Footnote: _Spectator_ 221]
and not the sparks which have fired his train of thought, he is typical
of the period of middle-age in which men amuse themselves with such
academic pastimes. Addison is the very antipodes of the kind of man who

'Loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack'--

_he_ remarks soberly that 'it is very unhappy for a man to be born
in such a stormy and tempestuous season.' [Footnote: _Spectator_
125.] He may not have been a great poet, but he was an exquisite critic
of life; he shared his contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm, but he
possessed a fine discrimination, and those less practical, more
irresponsible qualities would have been merely an incumbrance to the
apostle of good sense and moderation. For when men are young they are
much occupied with the framing of ideals and the search after absolute
truth; as they grow older they generally become more practical; they
accept, more or less, the idea of compromise, and make the best of
things as they are or as they may be made. The age being vicious,
Addison did not betake himself to a monastery, or urge others to do so;