Joseph Addison

1672-1719. English essayist. Graduate of Oxford, he had a distinguished political career (being a member of Parliament for the last eleven years of his life), but is usually remembered as one of the founders of the Spectator, which set out to restore good sense and high standards to a society that had not yet recovered from the imbalance of the Restoration. Although no friend of Puritanism, he rated Milton above Homer and Virgil. To the Christian Church he bequeathed the magnificent hymns “When all thy mercies, O my God” and “The spacious firmament on high.”