With the possible exception of historians of the sublime, scholars rarely compare the contemporaneous contributions of Shaftesbury and Addison to eighteenth-century criticism and aesthetics. Despite considerable overlap between the political and literary circles in which they worked and travelled, there appears to be no direct biographical connection. There are major differences of focus, tone, subject-matter, and intellectual temperament in their work. Shaftesbury, whose three-volume collection of essays, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, was published in 1711, seems to address himself to fellow gentlemen virtuosi; while Addison, whose writing appears largely in The Tatler and The Spectator, addresses the audience 'in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables, and in Coffee-Houses' Yet the critical enterprises of Shaftesbury and Addison and their efforts to define a role for the critic have much in common, especially in so far as each is concerned with ‘the public taste’.

Shaftesbury, perhaps most ostentatiously, played critic to himself in the Miscellaneous Reflections he published on his own treatises in the Characteristicks. He creates a commentator to act as ‘critic and interpreter to this new writer’ (II, p. 161); but, describing his goals in his essay, Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author, Shaftesbury writes of himself: ‘His pretence has been to advise authors and polish styles, but his aim has been to correct manners and regular lives. He has affected soliloquy, as pretending only to censure himself, but he has taken occasion to bring others into his company’ (II, p. 2, 72). This aim is consistent with Addison's critical and journalistic enterprise.