he tried to mend its morals. This was a difficult task. The Puritans,
during their supremacy, had imposed their own severity on others; and
now the Court party was revenging itself by indulging in extreme
licentiousness. Its amusements were cruel and vicious, and the Puritans
did nothing to improve them, but denounced them altogether and held
themselves aloof. It was Addison's task to refine the taste of his
contemporaries and to widen their outlook, so that the Puritan and the
man of the world might find a common ground on which to meet and to
learn each from the other; it was his endeavour 'to enliven morality
with wit, and to temper wit with morality ... till I have recovered them
out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is
fallen. [Footnote: _Spectator_ 10.] It was a happy thing for that
and for all succeeding ages that a man of Addison's character and genius
was ready to undertake the work. He was well versed in the pleasures of
society and letters, but his delicate taste could not be gratified by
the ordinary amusements of the town. He treated life as an art capable
of affording the artist abundant pleasure, but he recognized goodness as
a necessary condition of this pleasure. He was the most popular man of
his day; even Swift said that if Addison had wished to be king people
could hardly have refused him; [Footnote: _Journal to Stella_,
October 12, 1710.] and the qualities which endeared him to his friends
were exactly of the kind to enable him to hold the mean between the
bigots and the butterflies, and to dictate without giving offence, for
they were humanity and humour, moderation of character, judgment, and a
most sensitive tact. His qualities and his limitations alike appear in
the _Spectator_. For example, he tells us that he wishes that
country clergymen would borrow the sermons of great divines, and devote
all their own efforts to acquiring a good elocution: [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 106.] here we detect the practical moralist and the man
who likes a thing good of its kind, but not the enthusiast. He upholds