Addison’s Modesty, or the Essayist as Spectator

Abstract

The disengaged position of Mr Spectator, who observes life without participating in it, is related to Addison’s interest in an inexpressive reticence or modesty in language and in manners. How can this valorization of reserve be reconciled with The Spectator’s saturation in the social scene, a scene which is everywhere held up as open to appraisal? Comparison with Adam Smith’s ‘impartial spectator’ in The Theory of Moral Sentiments reveals Addison’s greater emphasis on the function of the imagination, such that the spectatorial viewpoint is often felt as an imagined viewpoint, a place to visit rather than to reside. This chimes with Addison’s way of endorsing Locke as a thinker who emphasizes the role of the mind’s suppositions and projections in the construction of experience. Genial recognition of the provisionality of what is imagined is key to Addison’s celebrated humour (especially in the Roger de Coverley papers), while the sense of an elusive imaginative agency gives the apparent spontaneity of his ‘easy’ style its subtle irony and its power to delight.