ABSTRACT
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) was educated at Charterhouse, where he met Steele, and then at Queen's College, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He became a Fellow of the latter, but his reputation quickly spread to London, where he came to dominate literary society. An Account is little more than a summary of current opinion: Addison had not read Spenser when he wrote it (see Spenser's Observations, Anecdotes. . ., ed. J. M. Osborn [Oxford, 1966], I. 74). Addison's interest in Spenser's allegory is attested also in the Guardian No. 152.
