"
Notes.
Addison's object in writing this paper is largely serious:
he wishes to criticise and correct manners and morals. He is satirical,
but so good-humored in his satire that no one could be offended.
He also contrives to give the impression that he refers to "the other
fellow," not to you. This delicacy and tact are as important
in the writer as in the diplomat, for the writer quite as much as the
diplomat lives by favor.
Addison is not a very strict writer, and his works have given examples
for the critics by the score. One of these is seen in "begged her not
to go on, _for-that_ she had been privately married:" "begged" and "for
that" do not go well together. To a modern reader such a phrasing as
"If we look into . . . . . . I look upon it to be" etc., seems a
little awkward, if not crude; but we may excuse these seeming
discrepancies as "antique usage," along with such phrases as "advise her
to in a case of such difficulty" and "to hear the lady _propose_ her
doubts, and to see the pains she is _at_ to get over them."
"Fortune whom" is evidently a personification. The use of _party_ in
"to the party herself" is now reckoned an Americanism (!)
"Engaged _in_ this subject" is evidently antiquated.
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