Faithfully and yet very pleasantly did Addison carry out his scheme. His humour was always kindly, his good sense was unvarying, his thoughts were always generous and true, and his easy unaffected language completed the charm. Instead of dropping to the level of his readers, he raised them to the much higher level on which he himself stood, and this without dull lecturing or violent denunciations. Religion, duty, love, honour, purity, truth, kindliness, and public-spiritedness were all real things to him, and he sought to make them everywhere realities too, gilding his little moral pills so cleverly, that until they were swallowed no one knew they were pills, and then they left nothing but a sweet taste behind.
"About an age ago," he writes, "it was the fashion in England for every one who would be thought religious to throw as much sanctity as possible into his face. The saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally was eaten up with melancholy. I do not presume to tax such characters with hypocrisy, as is done too frequently, that being a vice which, I think, none but He who knows the secrets of men's hearts should pretend to discover in another. But I think they would do well to consider whether such a behaviour does not deter men from religion.... In short, those who represent religion in so unamiable a light are like the spies sent out by Moses to make a discovery in the Land of Promise, when by their reports they discouraged the people from entering upon it. Those that show us the joys, the cheerfulness, the good-humour that naturally spring up in this happy state are like the spies bringing along with them clusters of grapes and delicious fruits that so invited their companions into the pleasant country which produced them."
Two of his articles have Westminster Abbey for their subject. On one occasion Addison, as the Spectator, goes there for a walk, and thus describes his feelings:--"I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the Cloisters and the Church ... And I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries were crumbled one against the other; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same heap of matter.... Some of the monuments were covered with such extravagant epitaphs that, if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends bestowed on him. There were others so excessively modest that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew so that they are not understood once in a twelvemonth. I found there were poets which had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets.... Sir Cloudesley Shovel's monument gave me great offence. Instead of the brave, rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste.... The monuments of their admirals which have been erected at the public expense represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of seaweed, shells, and coral. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those that we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."