'Those Little Cracklings of Mirth and Folly'

Who is being described and who is doing the describing: “His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. [He] never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour.” A respectable guess as to the identity of the writer whose prose is being assessed might be Daniel Defoe. Perhaps John Bunyan. With a bit of a stretch, even Jonathan Swift or John Dryden. No, it’s the less well-remembered Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and the encomiast is Dr. Johnson in his “Life of Addison.” Addison is best remembered as a pioneering periodical essayist, a precursor to Johnson himself, but he was also a poet, a Member of Parliament and a playwright. Though painfully shy he…