single stabbing phrase, "I suppose we shall be mighty mannerly "1

Truly, a friendship on equal terms, necessarily involving some of the rougher edges of human relationship, was impossible to Addison. Intimacies of that kind are never quite safe; they may even be imprudent. "Take heed of thy friends", Addison quoted, just as Tupper, so dear to the Victorians, in his poem on friendship advised, "Be shy of too much openness with any ". With the timidity that lay at the root of his nature Addison needed to feel safe, indeed superior. He could not bear to be in any way froissé; a hurt to his dignity was intolerable. He had what a modern psychologist would call an 'inferiority complex', complex', which, combined with his ambition, made any exposure of weakness an appalling contingency. Order, formality, in fact the protective frame of social use and wont was what he chiefly craved; a realm where discretion was the better part of philosophy, and method rather than unaccountable man, the natural measure of things.

It is perhaps this which can most readily explain his dislike of women-less accountable even than men-for that marked aversion from the 'fair-sex' which yet engaged so much of his thought. For women will not, as the generality of men are apt to do, accept a man on his supposed merits: they often have a disconcerting realism in their make-up, a knack of seeing through male pretensions. And Addison, without attaching any opprobrium to the word, was pretentious; he deliberately tried to model his life on a formula, on a preconceived idea. However laudable this may be in the outer commerce of the world, it will not do where closer relationships are concerned; it easily becomes

dishonesty, a pose. In intimacy with a woman, it is not the moral value, but the emotional reality that counts, and here there must be equality. Addison knew that in conjugal life, though to the world the man may, to use the vulgar idiom, wear the breeches, there is a complete equality of the bedchamber, where breeches are not worn. Thus his intuition warned him against commerce with the fair sex, which, however, he never ceased to ridicule or try to improve. For although he knew their nature was antipathetic to his, it was not altogether foreign; some effeminacy in his own nature made them strangely fascinating to him; he could not leave them alone in his essays. When Steele invented Mrs. Distaff, he eagerly seized the pen and threw himself into feminine guise, in a glow one is tempted to think, of mental transvestitism, for as many papers as he thought his readers could bear. Indeed his absorption in the subject became a byword. "I will not meddle with the Spectator", Swift wrote of the journal he seldom read, "let him fair-sex it to the world's end."2 Addison, however, preferred to fair-sex it on foolscap rather than in drawing-rooms. Women might be "the most beautiful part of the creation, entirely amiable ",3 but their amiability was rather too theoretic for his taste, their 'blemishes' too many.

But telling most heavily against his forming any friendship on terms of parity was his need of self-reclusion. It was not only the fear of failure or retaliation that caused him to publish anonymously, it was also delight in the masquerade. If he preferred to write 'behind a curtain', as Gay said, he loved to live behind a veil; he sought cover with a profound, irrational instinct. It was as though he wished to keep in his soul something Stella, 8th Jan. 1712. 3 Spectator, 57.

1 Tatlers.

inviolable that even the dearest friend should not touch, a trait that comes out curiously time and again in his use of the adjective 'secret'. In a certain Spectator it occurs no less than three times in one paragraph,1 and his mania for the word went so far as sometimes to endanger the sense of a phrase. Why, for instance, should Public Credit in the allegory, 'smile with a secret pleasure' as she gazed at the Act of Settlement and the tablets that embodied beneficent funding measures? 2

It is really not always easy to discover exactly what Addison meant by the word: sometimes he used it in the common sense of hidden, or hidden away, as when he spoke of secret springs and motives ',3 secret shame', or the distributions perfomed by the organs of our body.5 So also did he use it to refer to the 'rest and the 'graces' in a man that are seen only by God." But it could not have meant this when Sir Roger, in asking after a tenant absent from church administered thereby a secret reprimand '.7 Further, the word is frequently used quite gratuitously, or at best as padding to eke out the failing balance of a sentence: it is hardly ever necessary, sometimes it is tautological, often it is entirely meaningless. meaningless. Why should Mr. Spectator be touched by a secret joy' at meeting Sir Roger, or be pleased to observe the secret joy' Will Wimble 'discovered' at the sight of the good old knight? Why should the prospect of immortality fill Mr. Spectator with 'secret joys',10 and that of the Royal Exchange with 'secret satisfaction'? "I

In short it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that for some reason there was an obsession. What is the

force of the word in such phrases as a secret kind of instinct', or a 'secret discontent' where the discontent was made apparent to every one? Or in 'secret virtue of an innuendo ',3 or 'secret murmurings of heart', or in the sentence where, discussing the structure of the state, we learn "I could never read a passage in Polybius, and another in Cicero, to this purpose, without a secret pleasure in applying it to the English constitution"? 5 Why all this--stealth?

It is bewildering until one notices that the adjective nearly always goes with expressions of gratification, though the ideas were definitely associated. Again and again we come across 'secret' satisfaction, joy, pleasure, or delight; and almost always the use is surprising. We begin to see that privacy for Addison was inseparable from blissful emotions, and that the word does not mean hidden so much as especial, peculiar to himself, occult. Just as our first parents experienced a 'secret intoxication of pleasure' when they ate the forbidden fruit, or Adam felt a secret pleasure' when, in Paradise Lost, he was granted a vision of universal death," so Addison found a 'secret delight' in sudden sunshine as in cheerfulness,8 a secret satisfaction and complacency' from the beauties of creation; 9 so from the secret effects' of God's mercy he derived 'secret comforts and refreshments '.10 And if he once felt a 'secret horror' at his smallness in face of the Universe," he felt a 'secret satisfaction and contentment' in his own good-nature,12 and a 'secret pride' that his speculations had met with a very kind reception.13

This stress upon the recondite nature of enjoyment is curious it is significant, it is even illuminating. The

use of the word betrays at once Addison's ambition and his timidity; it may even account for many of his actions. By it we see how he hedged himself about ; how, for fear of hurt, of loss, of disappointment, he learned to be sufficient to himself, to guard unspotted the image of his being he could not be sure of imposing upon society. It reveals how he was his own refuge from the buffets and assaults of a crude, indelicate world. And however much we may hesitate to draw further conclusions, this partly explains why he preferred to take his ease in a circle where he could rule, and rule alone, and where, by his very superiority, he could gain a 'secret satisfaction' nobody present could share with him, or roughly disturb.

For Addison did not care to pass his time in the houses of the great or the powerful-except to certain types of mind that is apt to be boring-but neither did he like to consort with his compeers in letters, nor seek yet more learning at the lips of still greater pundits than he. He preferred instead to linger at a coffee-house in Russell Street, Covent Garden, where he had helped to establish as proprietor an old family servant of the Warwicks' called Button. There he found relaxation and stimulus, amid a little senate' of young admirers, Tickell, Philips, Budgell (who at this time shared rooms with him), and, of course, his revering contemporary Steele, although the last was rather less his confidant than formerly.

And there were others: D'Avenant, the son of the great Sir William of theatrical fame, the only member of the circle older than Addison; Henry Carey, the baby of the group, a charming, witty youth and a lively companion, who had something of the genius of his natural father George Savile, Marquis of Halifax. There was Hughes, who aspired after dramatic fame, and who,