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Entertainment Never Goes Out of Style
The audience for both The Tattler and The Spectator was vastly different from the one just a generation or two ago. This difference reflects a multitude of changes in society, government, science, and the daily harsh grind of contemporary life.This harshness is a not widely known offshoot of the rationalism that marked the age.When life is harsh, so is one's attitude toward it. Child mortality was high.Tuberculosis was rampant.The typical lifespan was under forty.Life, therefore, was lived with compensatory rawness and exuberance. Gambling and alcoholism were rampant at all strata of society but one and that one was the middle class, which watched disgustedly as those above and below wallowed in a brief life of seaminess, squalidness, and sordidness.The middle class maintained a pious austerity, partly due to its stern Puritan background and partly from its relentless struggle to survive, knowing that no help would be forthcoming from any quarter.

Except for this growing middle class, nearly all commoners were conveniently ignored both in the literature and by Parliament.The nation was ruled mostly by an unspoken alliance among the propertied class, the merchant princes, and the landed gentry.The term "gentleman" was limited to the small leisure class who had the time, money, or patronage and could concentrate upon politics, leisure, and the arts.Religious fanatics were a rarity.The Sturm und Drang that afflicted Germany was largely avoided in England since the ruling landed gentry had the good sense to remain moderate, flexible, responsible, and committed to choosing reasonably competent rulers.Such were the majority of the readers of The Tattler and The Spectator.

It is reasonable to assume that most people like to read about others much like themselves.Therefore, Addison and Steele made sure to fill the pages of both journals with characters with whom their readers could relate.In The Spectator #2, Steele wrote of a selected group of five men who not only represented a cross section of this newly-minted upwardly mobile middle class, but in their order of representation, Steele could subliminally strengthen the social order of the day.As Chaucer was to do in his Canterbury Tales, Steele would introduce each gentleman by rank.He began with Sir Roger de Coverly, the country squire who was the bedrock of landed gentry.Second was the Templar, a man who knew the law as well as he did the classics and the theater.Third, was Sir Andrew Freeport, who in his business acumen combined the best virtues of English mercantilism.Fourth, was the retired soldier, Captain Sentry, whose very name suggested his diligence as a steadfast officer.And last, was Will Honeycomb, the gallant and fop.

As Steele wrote of these exemplars of English society, he did so in a way that guaranteed that his readers would continue to buy the next issue.Each one was not merely an abstract symbol of their social station, but Steele portrayed them as having fully fleshed qualities that any normal man might have and could appreciate in others.Sir Roger, for example, was often mentioned as having an unhappy and unfulfilling romance with a "Perverse beautiful Widow."Sir Andrew Freeport was described in a way that Charles Dickens would later use--tagging his characters with representative quirks or sayings.Freeport was fond of maxims that tended to make Englishmen proud of their industriousness."Sloth has ruined more Nations than the Sword" was a typical example.And Will Honeycomb knew in detail all the latest gossip of which Royal Lady was sleeping with whomever.Salacious gossip, it seems, was as relevant then as The National Enquirer proves now.

Thus, the readers of The Tattler and The Spectator differed from readers of today only in superficial ways.The tags that we moderns like to assess to the Augustans--courtliness, restraint, elegance, urbanity, and wit--are as likely to be prized in any age.And if Steele and Addison managed to appeal to his readers using these traits, then it is not difficult to know why even now readers still get pleasure in reading of the foibles and gossip of an age long past.
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Why he refers to such a wish, his next words show. The seven volumes of the 'Spectator', then complete, were to his mind The Monument, and of the Friendship it commemorates he wrote,
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Very Interesting!
This book gives a great insight into 18th century British newsprints.I found it to be very nice reading. ... Read more

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"A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity in bondage." -- Joseph Addison, Cato 1713. Joseph Addison was born in 1672 in Milston, Wiltshire, England. He was educated in the classics at Oxford and became widely known as an essayist, playwright, poet, and statesman. First produced in 1713, Cato, A Tragedy inspired generations toward a pursuit of liberty. Liberty Fund's new edition of Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays brings together Addison's dramatic masterpiece along with a selection of his essays that develop key themes in the play. Cato, A Tragedy is the account of the final hours of Marcus Porcius Cato (95-46BC), a Stoic whose deeds, rhetoric, and resistance to the tyranny of Caesar made him an icon of republicanism, virtue, and liberty. By all accounts, Cato was an uncompromisingly principled man, deeply committed to liberty. He opposed Caesar's tyrannical assertion of power and took arms against him. As Caesar's forces closed in on Cato, he chose to take his life, preferring death by his own hand to a life of submission to Caesar.Addison's theatrical depiction of Cato enlivened the glorious image of a citizen ready to sacrifice everything in the cause of freedom, and it influenced friends of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic. Captain Nathan Hale's last words before being hanged were, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country," a close paraphrase of Addison's "What pity is it that we can die but once to serve our country!" George Washington found Cato such a powerful statement of liberty, honor, virtue, and patriotism that he had it performed for his men at Valley Forge. And Forrest McDonald says in his Foreword that "Patrick Henry adapted his famous 'Give me liberty or give me death' speech directly from lines in Cato." Despite Cato's enormous success, Addison was perhaps best-known as an essayist. In periodicals like the Spectator, Guardian, Tatler, and Freeholder, he sought to educate England's developing middle class in the habits, morals, and manners he believed necessary for the preservation of a free society. Addison's work in these periodicals helped to define the modern English essay form.Samuel Johnson said of his writing, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." ... Read more

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Defeated by Julius Caesar and Yet Is Honored Long Afterwards for Political Virtue
The Roman senator, Cato the Younger (95 BC - 46 BC) stubbornly resisted Julius Caesar's rise to power, but was ultimately defeated by Caesar in north Africa. Addison's play focuses on the last days of Cato's life, as Caesar's forces advanced. Although others urged Cato to come to terms with Julius Caesar, Cato resists to the end, finally committing suicide rather than surrendering. This tragedy has strong political overtones, addressing the conflict between individual liberty and government tyranny and republicanism versus monarchism.

Writing a political play during a period of intense political rivalry in England, Joseph Addison avoided charges of partisanship by having the prologue written by a Tory poet, Alexander Poe, and the epilogue by a Whig poet, Samuel Garth. Although this tragedy was held in high esteem throughout the eighteenth century, today's audience may find Addison's effusive praise of Cato's political virtue tends to be rather one-dimensional, and thus not entirely convincing.

Cato remained popular for decades in England and even longer in the American colonies, becominga literary inspiration for the American Revolution. George Washington had it performed for the Continental Army at Valley Forge. The famous quotes by Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale were apparently derived from Addison's play.

Addison's characterization of Cato lacks the psychological depth and complexity that is found in Shakespeare's tragedies, or even what we have come to expect in modern biographical films like A Man for All Seasons, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, and Gandhi. To be fair to Addison, Cato was described by his contemporaries, including his political enemies, as having high moral standards and incorruptible virtue. In contrast, Addison portrays Cato's sons Portius and Marcus, his close friend Lucius, and his protégé Juba, the prince of Numidia, in more realistic fashion, all decidedly loyal to Cato, but subject to private doubts and other emotions.

Cato is considered by many as the best tragedy written in eighteenth century England. I give it four stars, in part for its historical significance.

Note: Individual editions of Cato may not be easy to find, but it is often included in collections of eighteen century English plays. The Everyman edition, titled The Beggar's Opera and Other Eighteenth Century plays (edited by David Lindsay), is a good source.

A seminal and welcome addition to the growing library of literature promoting conservative values
Collaboratively and expertly co-edited by academicians Christine Dunn Henderson and Mark E. Yellin (both of whom are Fellows at Liberty Fund), Cato: A Tragedy, And Selected Essays is a compilation of the writings of Joseph Addison, beginning with his "Cato: A Tragedy" which is an account of the final hours of Marcus Porcius Cato (95-46 B.C.), a Stoic whose deeds, rhetoric, and resistance to the tyranny of Julius Caesar made him an icon of republicanism, virtue, and liberty to this very day. Although popular in its day (1713), the play had fallen into neglect and this is the first scholarly addition to be made available to the general reading public. The play is then added to in this volume to provide readers with examples of Addison's attempts to educate England's 18th century developing middle class of merchants and tradespeople in the habits, morals, and manners he felt necessary to the preservation of limited government and a free, commercial society. Also available in a hardcover edition (086597442X, $24.00), Cato: A Tragedy, And Selected Essays is a seminal and welcome addition to the growing library of literature promoting conservative values such as liberty, self-government, an opposition to tyranny, the advancement of justice, and the advocacy of honor, patriotism, and integrity.

The American Founding Fathers Favorite Play
Joseph Addison's (1672-1719) Play "Cato: A Tragedy", first staged in 1713, inspired many enlightened thinkers in the 18th century with its portrayal of the Roman senator Cato the Younger's (95-46 B.C.E.) willingness to commit suicide rather than to live under the tyrannical rule of Julius Caesar.The play takes place during Cato's final hours of resistance to Caesar.George Washington remarked it was his favorite play and had it performed for his men in Valley Forge during the revolution.Washington found in the play a powerful statement on patriotism, liberty, virtue and honor.He quoted from it extensively in his writings.The most famous use of the play was when he met with disgruntled officers in Newburgh, New York right after the war.They had met to contemplate taking over the government by force because the Continental Congress hadn't paid them.Washington got their attention by taking out a pair of glasses to read a letter he had recently sent to congress.As he donned the glasses he quoted a line from the play, "I fear I have grown old in the service of my country."After this remark it is reported that there wasn't a dry eye in the room and after he read the letter the officers dispersed.Nathan Hale echoed another line from the play, right before he was to be hanged by the British as a spy; "I regret, but that I have only one life to give to my country."

In addition, Addison has a great reputation as an essayist admired by none other than Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin.This edition includes 32 essays extolling the virtues of liberty, and government free of corruption.Tories and Whigs in the English Parliament admired him.Joseph Addison studied in Oxford in Latin and Greek Classics.He served as a member of parliament, and became widely known as an essayist, playwright, poet and statesman.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history of the founding era of the United States.
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Designed to be light in tone but heavy in influence, essays published in two 18th-century publications THE TATLER and THE SPECTATOR examined everything from conduct and morals to phiolosophy, politics, science, and literature. These selections from the two papers illuminate the lives and thoughts of the intelligentsia of 18th-century England and France. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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General Books publication date: 2009Original publication date: 1896Original Publisher: E. P. Dutton ... Read more

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1730. A neoclassical tragedy by Addison, English essayist, poet, and statesman, Cato had an immense success in its own time. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing. ... Read more

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The American Founding Fathers Favorite Play
Joseph Addison's (1672-1719) Play "Cato: A Tragedy", first staged in 1713, inspired many enlightened thinkers in the 18th century with its portrayal of the Roman senator Cato the Younger's (95-46 B.C.E.) willingness to commit suicide rather than to live under the tyrannical rule of Julius Caesar.The play takes place during Cato's final hours of resistance to Caesar.George Washington remarked it was his favorite play and had it performed for his men in Valley Forge during the revolution.Washington found in the play a powerful statement on patriotism, liberty, virtue and honor.He quoted from it extensively in his writings.The most famous use of the play was when he met with disgruntled officers in Newburgh, New York right after the war.They had met to contemplate taking over the government by force because the Continental Congress hadn't paid them.Washington got their attention by taking out a pair of glasses to read a letter he had recently sent to congress.As he donned the glasses he quoted a line from the play, "I fear I have grown old in the service of my country."After this remark it is reported that there wasn't a dry eye in the room and after he read the letter the officers dispersed.Nathan Hale echoed another line from the play, right before he was to be hanged by the British as a spy; "I regret, but that I have only one life to give to my country."

In addition, Addison has a great reputation as an essayist admired by none other than Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin. Tories and Whigs in the English Parliament admired him.Joseph Addison studied in Oxford in Latin and Greek Classics.He served as a member of parliament, and became widely known as an essayist, playwright, poet and statesman.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history of the founding era of the United States.
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An unabridged edition of Addison's classic tragedy in five acts, as performed at The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, to include opening remarks by Elizabeth Inchbald. ... Read more

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lincoln quoted it ...you should too
a bit of history to this so enjoy ...short and sweet but worth the order.

The American Founding Fathers Favorite Play
Joseph Addison's (1672-1719) Play "Cato: A Tragedy", first staged in 1713, inspired many enlightened thinkers in the 18th century with its portrayal of the Roman senator Cato the Younger's (95-46 B.C.E.) willingness to commit suicide rather than to live under the tyrannical rule of Julius Caesar.The play takes place during Cato's final hours of resistance to Caesar.George Washington remarked it was his favorite play and had it performed for his men in Valley Forge during the revolution.Washington found in the play a powerful statement on patriotism, liberty, virtue and honor.He quoted from it extensively in his writings.The most famous use of the play was when he met with disgruntled officers in Newburgh, New York right after the war.They had met to contemplate taking over the government by force because the Continental Congress hadn't paid them.Washington got their attention by taking out a pair of glasses to read a letter he had recently sent to congress.As he donned the glasses he quoted a line from the play, "I fear I have grown old in the service of my country."After this remark it is reported that there wasn't a dry eye in the room and after he read the letter the officers dispersed.Nathan Hale echoed another line from the play, right before he was to be hanged by the British as a spy; "I regret, but that I have only one life to give to my country."

In addition, Addison has a great reputation as an essayist admired by none other than Samuel Johnson and Benjamin Franklin. Tories and Whigs in the English Parliament admired him.Joseph Addison studied in Oxford in Latin and Greek Classics.He served as a member of parliament, and became widely known as an essayist, playwright, poet and statesman.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in political philosophy, and history of the founding era of the United States.

essential to understanding George Washington
I've long been of a mind that the most interesting question in regard to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is the one they never asked us in class : was it
right to kill him?As always in Shakespeare, it's possible to read the play in several ways, but the final verdict seems to be that the assassins were
not justified, not least because in replacing one tyranny they unleashed a worse.This message--the wisdom of erring on the side of
stability--would have been particularly resonant in Shakespeare's own day, when religious conflicts, foreign invasion, and wars of dynastic
succession were still recent memories and/or active concerns.Brutus, then, though in some ways a tragic hero, is ultimately too passive a character
to really command our loyalty and affection.And if Caesar and Marc Anthony don't fare much better, we are left to conclude that things would
have been better had the established order, even an imperfect order, been allowed to endure.

Spring ahead just a few decades from Shakespeare's time though, and the moral of the story becomes problematic.By the middle of the 17th
Century, we are entered upon the Age of Revolutions in the English-Speaking World, and intellectual justification must be found for the series of
events that would see Protestants and Parliaments and Colonists overthrow and even execute their kings.Little wonder then that Joseph Addison's
terrific, but largely forgotten, play Cato was such a favorite of the 18th Century and particularly of the Founding Fathers.

It too tells the story of a tragic hero's resistance to Caesar, but has none of the ambiguity of Shakespeare.Marcus Porcius Cato--variously styled
Cato of Utica or Cato the Younger--was a Stoic, renowned for his incorruptibility and his intractable devotion to republican principals, the very
principals that Caesar trampled upon when he set himself up as a dictator.Having long opposed Caesar's ambitions, and having alienated many by
his inflexibility, Cato was essentially exiled from Rome, along with Pompey.After Pompey's defeat at Pharsalus, Cato went to Africa where he
was allied with Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio.After Caesar defeated Scipio at Thapsus, Cato killed himself, rather than submit to the
man he abhorred.

Where Shakespeare gave us a Brutus who was too ambivalent about his own actions and too much affected by events for us to take him to heart as
a hero, Joseph Addison rendered his Cato as an achingly noble and uncompromising character, one who may not appeal to modern tastes (of
course, we're all moderate in all things now, and a fanaticism, even for freedom, is distasteful in polite society), but who was seized upon as a
paragon of unyielding republican virtue by men like George Washington.In fact, when we consider the nobility of Washington's own action (for
example during the Newburgh conspiracy) and the emphasis he placed on preserving his own honor, it seems fair to speculate that the republic we
have inherited was handed down to us in some measure by Cato and Addison.

The play is filled with quotable lines, like :

A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.

In one passage we hear the foreshadowing of Nathan Hale :

What a pity is it
That we can die but once to save our country!

When Cato determines to kill himself he says :

Justice gives way to force: the conquered world
Is Caesar's: Cato has no business in it.

And Lucius, a Senate colleague pronounces upon Cato's death :

From hence, let fierce contending nations know
What dire effects from civil discord flow.
'Tis this that shakes our country with alarms,
And gives up Rome a prey to Roman arms,
Produces fraud, and cruelty, and strife,
And robs the guilty world of Cato's life.

Sure, it's old-fashioned, both in sentiment and language; how many statesmen still believe in honor at all, let alone in dying to preserve their own.
But it's immensely enjoyable and worth knowing if for no other reason than to understand one of the cultural influences that shaped Washington.
If we wish to comprehend how he, unlike so many other men in similar position, was able to resist the temptations of power and to instead remain
the guarantor of the republic, perhaps it is necessary for us to know Cato.

GRADE : A+ ... Read more

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Essays and Tales is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Joseph Addison is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Joseph Addison then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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In Three Volumes. ... Read more

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This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process.We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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In Three Volumes. This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more