约瑟夫·艾迪生/Joseph Addison
约瑟夫·艾迪生（1672—1719），英国著名作家，1672年生于英国一个乡村牧师家庭，后受教于牛津大学，并于1693年获得硕士学位。从1708年开始，艾迪生先后担任过议会议员，国务大臣助理，英国驻爱尔兰总督秘书等职。后曾为理查德，斯帝尔主编的《闲话报》撰写文章。1711年，他与斯帝尔合作创办报纸《旁观者》并担任主编。他的散文文风优美，文笔流畅，亲切通俗，主题明晰，对以后的散文作家有很大的影响。
I chanced to rise very early one particular morning this summer,and took a walk into the country to divert myself among the fields and mead ows,while the green was new,and the flowers in their bloom.As at this season of the year every lane is a beautiful walk,and every hedge full of nosegays,I lost myself,with a great deal of pleasure,among several thickets and bushes that were filled with a great variety of birds,and an agreeable confusion of notes,which formed the pleasantest scene in t he word to one who had passed a whole winter in noise and smoke.The fre shness of the dews that lay upon everything about me,with the cool brea th of the morning,which inspired the birds with so many delightful inst incts,created in me the same kind of animal pleasure,and made my heart overflow with such secret emotions of joy and satisfaction as are not to be described or accounted for.On this occasion I could not but reflect upon a beautiful simile in Milton:
As one who long in populous city pent;
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air;
Forth issuing on a summer's morn,to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoin'd,from each thing met conceived delight:
The smell of grain,or tended grass,or kine,
Or dairy,each rural sight,each rural sound.
Those who are conversant in the writings of polite authors receive a n additional entertainment from the country,as it revives in their memo ries those charming descriptions,with which such authors do frequently abound.