Sir Roger de Coverly Essays from The Spectator

Addison and Steele

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  • INTRODUCTION
  • EVOLUTION OF THE SPECTATOR
  • LIVES OF ADDISON AND STEELE
  •  
  • II. DESCRIPTION OF CLUB MEMBERS.
  • III. SIR ROGER'S OPINION OF TRUE WISDOM.
  • IV. SIR ROGER AT THE CLUB.
  • V. SIR ROGER AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE.[30]
  • VI. THE COVERLEY HOUSEHOLD.
  • VII. SIR ROGER AND WILL WIMBLE.
  • VIII. A SUNDAY AT SIR ROGER'S.
  • IX. SIR ROGER AND THE WIDOW.
  • X. BODILY EXERCISE.
  • XI. THE COVERLEY HUNT.[43]
  • XII. THE COVERLEY WITCH.[47]
  • XIII. SIR ROGER'S DISCOURSE ON LOVE.[47]
  • XIV. TOWN AND COUNTRY MANNERS.[48]
  • XV. SIR ROGER AT THE ASSIZES.
  • XVI. SIR ROGER AND PARTY SPIRIT.
  • XVII. SIR ROGER AND THE GYPSIES.
  • XVIII. WHY THE SPECTATOR LEAVES COVERLEY HALL.
  • XIX. THE SPECTATOR'S EXPERIENCE IN A STAGECOACH.
  • XX. STREET CRIES OF LONDON.
  • XXI. SIR ROGER IN TOWN.
  • XXII. SIR ROGER IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
  • XXIII. SIR ROGER AT THE THEATRE.
  • XXIV. WILL HONEYCOMB'S LOVE-MAKING.
  • XXV. SIR ROGER AT VAUXHALL GARDENS.
  • XXVI. DEATH OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.[91]
  • CONTRIBUTORS TO THE SPECTATOR
  • AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DE COVERLEY PAPERS
  • NOTES

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    INTRODUCTION

    In order to appreciate fully the merits of an author, it is necessary to throw a search-light upon the period in which he wrote. His writings should not be studied alone, isolated from their companions, but should be viewed in relation to their social, political, and historical conditions. This is particularly advisable in criticising the literature of a previous century whose customs, manners, tastes, and opinions differ so widely from those of our own. We must obliterate our prejudices and fixed ideas; must shut our eyes to the present, and transporting ourselves to the past, live in spirit with the people of that time, be participants in their work, their recreations, their joys, and their sorrows; must eat at their tables and take part in their conversations; must wear the clothes they wore, travel the roads they travelled, read the books they read, visit the people whom they visited, appreciate their hindrances and limitations, and survey the whole field, not with a satirical, fault-finding spirit, but with clear vision and sympathetic comradeship.

    With this purpose in mind, let us, like Gulliver at Lilliput, open our eyes on the new scene— the England of the Queen Anne period, from the latter part of the seventeenth century to the early middle of the eighteenth. The scene naturally divides itself into London, and that which is not London; and the latter, though so much greater in magnitude, may be quickly seen, as there was much sameness throughout in customs and mode of living. In the country, roads were poor and neglected, and the country people travelled but little— mainly on horseback. When it was necessary for a man to go to London,— and he who had been to London “had seen the world,” and was looked upon with a degree of awe and respect by his simple countrymen, — he could walk to the nearest main road, and at a given time, take the stage-coach which passed once a week on its way to the great metropolis. Public schools were being instituted, but they were few, and most people were uneducated— could neither read nor write. Society, in its accepted term, was confined to the comparatively few wealthy landowners who kept large numbers of horses and hounds, and when at home filled their mansions with guests who delighted in hunting, the chase, and the other amusements which the free-hearted host could originate. On portions of the estates were grouped the little homes of the tenants; and these, with an occasional small village where the farmers gathered and discussed the price of crops, or told to open-mouthed, eager listeners the latest scandal or gossip retailed by the servants of the gentry, gave life to the slow-going and lonely country.

    But the well-to-do people were spending less and less time in their country seats, and more and more in the growing towns, where congregated learning, business, wealth, and society. Many cities were growing; but the most prominent one was London, which was, and is, to England, what Paris is to France, or Athens was to Greece— the centre of all progress and culture. Almost any theologian of note in England was to be found “either in the episcopate or at the head of a London parish;” here came all authors and would-be authors; here was the active and turbid stream of manufacturing and commercial life; here was the court with its attendant vices and virtues, and Parliament with its frequent assemblings; and here was the gayest and most frivolous society of all England, with its vulgarity, licentiousness, and lawlessness.

    The question which is perplexing the anxious, overburdened man of the nineteenth century, “Is life worth living?” might, with some propriety, have been asked in the eighteenth of the social dawdler whose days were rounds of sensual pleasures. Thackeray says, “I have calculated the manner in which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time— and what with drinking and dining, and supping and cards, wonder how they got through with their business at all.” The fine gentleman rose late, and sauntered in the Mall— the fashionable promenade which we are told was always full of idlers, but especially so morning and evening when their Majesties often walked with the royal family. After his walk the society man, dressed elaborately and in his periwig, cocked hat, skirt-coat wired to make it stick out, ruffled linen, black silk hose, square-toed shoes, and buckles, gaily betook himself to the coffee-house or chocolate-house. Here he lounged, and over the steaming cup discussed the latest news from abroad, from Parliament, from society. As there were few conveniences in the homes for entertaining, it was the custom to dine with a friend or two at the tavern, where hilarity prevailed, and drunkenness was a trifling incident, attaching no shame or disgrace to the offender. Dinner over, the coffee-house again, or possibly the club, occupied the attention, and the theatre or gamingtable finished the day for this man of quality who perhaps had no uneasy consciousness of time wasted. And the life of the fine lady was equally purposeless. The social pulse may always be determined by the position of woman; and woman in this period neither commanded nor received respect. In the middle classes might be found many a practical mother who enjoyed her household duties, and was content in the four walls of her home. But throughout the higher classes the fine lady was not supposed to be a homekeeper; she was not supposed to be educated; she was not required to be more refined than was consistent with present pleasure. Nothing was done, and nothing was expected to be done, to bring into action those nobler qualities which we now recognize as essential to womanhood. Society existed for men; and woman was admitted, not because of her inherent right to be there to purify, to uplift, to inspire, but because she could amuse and charm away a weary hour while she idly flirted her fan, and gave inane responses to the insipid compliments of the vain, conceited beaux.

    One of these social ornaments tells us how she spent her time. She says, “I lie in bed till noon, dress all the afternoon, drive in the evening, and play at cards till midnight;” and adds that she goes to church twice a year or oftener, according as her husband gives her new clothes, and spends the remainder of Sabbath in gossiping of “new fashions and new plays.” A lady's diary in Spectator reads: "Shifted a patch for half an hour before I could determine it. Fixed it above my left eyebrow;” and again, “Called for my flowered handkerchief. Worked half a leaf on it. Eyes ached and head out of order. Threw by my work, and read over the remaining part of Aurengzebe.” When driven by ennui to books, she chose— if choice it could be called when there were so few other books available— “lewd plays and winning romances,” thus serving to heighten the superficial atmosphere in which she lived.

    But prominent in society was the young beau— of whom our dude of the nineteenth century is a feeble copy— who imitated the fine gentlemen in all their weaknesses and sins, intensifying them in his "airy conceit” and lofty flippancy. He, too, frequented the Mall, coffee-house, and theatre, hobnobbing with other beaux as aimless and brainless as himself, boasting the charms of his many friends, and his latest conquest. His dress, which was usually of bright colors, occupied much of his attention, and his cane and ever-present snuff-box much more. “He scorns to condescend so low as to speak of any person beneath the dignity of a nobleman; the Duke of such a place, and my Lord such a one, are his common cronies, from whom he knows all the secrets of the court, but does not impart 'em to his best friend because the Duke enjoined him to secrecy.” He was so happily unconscious of his own vacuity that he paraded his weakness, thinking it wisdom. Yet, insufferable as he seems to us, “he was an institution of the times,” and was petted and adored by the ladies.

    Society was permeated with corrupt ideas and morals, and the strange fact is that these were openly accepted and approved. No man had confidence in his neighbor because he knew of his own unworthiness, and could conceive of no reason why his companion should care to be better than he was himself. Robert Walpole's declaration, that every man has his price, was then painfully true, and nobody denied it or seemed ashamed of the fact. The unusual was not that men should be bad, but that they should be good. Men priding themselves on their honor, and engaging in a duel to prove this so-called honor as readily as they ordered their horses for hunting, yet slandered the ladies, flirted outrageously with other men's wives, cheated at cards, and contracted debts they knew they were unable to pay. Women pretending to be friends, lost no opportunity of back-biting and defaming one another. Social gatherings were based, not on merit of individuals, nor congeniality of taste, but on a feverish craving for excitement and admiration, or the laudable desire to kill time.

    Men might talk rationally and sensibly when with one another, but in the presence of women they uttered the most shallow commonplaces and vapid compliments, and were applauded as witty. Through all conversation there was an undercurrent of insincerity and sham deference. Addison notes this and makes his protest. “The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment that men's words are hardly any significance of their thoughts.” Accompanying this most extravagant flattery— often to mere strangers— was the greatest freedom in personal relations, and all reserve was classed as prudish and affected.

    Both men and women gambled openly and excessively, staking even their clothes when purses were empty. Ward, speaking of a group of this class, said: “They are gamesters waiting to pick up some young bubble or other as he comes from his chamber; they are men whose conditions are subject to more revolutions than a weathercock, or the uncertain mind of a fantastical woman. They are seldom two days in one and the same stations; they are one day very richly dressed, and perhaps out at elbows the next;” and of woman that “were she at church in the height of her devotions, should anybody but stand at the church door and hold up the knave of clubs, she would take it to be a challenge, and starting from her prayers, would follow as a deluded traveller his ignis fatuus.” Furious as they all were when they lost, and prone to laxity in money matters, they yet looked upon a gambling debt as one necessary to be paid. “Why, sir, among gentlemen, that debt is looked upon the most just of any; you may cheat widows, orphans, tradesmen, without a blush, but a debt of honor, sir, must be paid. I could name you some noblemen that pay nobody— yet a debt of honor, sir, is as sure as their ready money.”

    But there were many diversions besides those that have been mentioned. These vivacious, restless, superficial triflers must have variety, and have it they did. Periodical suburban fairs were held— somewhat similar to our modern circus— where at different booths one might enjoy seeing sword dancing, dancing on the rope, acrobatic agility, puppet shows, monstrosities from all parts of the world, and various exhibitions more or less refined. In process of time the fairs became so debasing in their influence that Her Majesty ordered them closed. Cock-fighting and bull-baiting— the latter being a fight between a dog and a bull tied at the horns with a rope several yards long— were also greatly enjoyed.

    Next to the club and gaming table, the theatre was probably the most attractive place to while away time. The English drama which during the reign of Elizabeth reached the greatest height, and began to descend, had been denounced and suppressed by the Puritans. When it was revived under the dissolute court of Charles II, the new kind of drama was like the people, “light, witty, and immoral.” The theatre was a gathering place for all classes, high and low, rich and poor, refined and coarse, pure and impure, and the greatest levity and license prevailed. Misson says that during the performance the audience "chatter, toy, play, hear and not hear.” This state of things continued during Anne's reign. The object was not to interpret life or teach right living. As Steele asserts: “The understanding is dismissed from our entertainments. Our mirth is the laughter of fools, and our admiration is the wonder of idiots.” Plays were written by men, for men, and were usually acted by men— no woman having appeared on the stage till 1660. Even in Queen Anne's reign, so few actresses were known that when a play “acted by all women” was advertised, it greatly attracted by its novelty, the pleasure-seeking crowd. That a woman might be pure and womanly, and still appear on the stage, was beyond the knowledge or comprehension of society. It has remained for the nineteenth century to make it possible. Queen Anne did not attend the theatre, and she strove to abolish its evils, but was far from successful.

    In observing the influences which were slowly bringing about a change in London society, too much importance cannot be placed upon the coffee-house, “the centre of news, the lounge of the idler, the rendezvous for appointments, the mart for business men.” We have nothing corresponding to it in these days, because our newspapers, our telephones, our electric conveyances, place all items of interest before the city at once, and such resorts are unnecessary. But in those times the coffee-house was the magnetic needle and drew all London by its powers. Clergymen, highwaymen, noblemen, beggars, authors, beaux, courtiers, business men, collected here where coffee was good and cheap, service prompt and willing, conversation interesting and witty, and where a free and easy atmosphere made all feel at home. Here men with opinions found eager listeners before whom they might pose as oracles. Here un-ideaed men came to gain opinions which they might carry away and impart to their admirers as original. And here came men of intellect to enjoy the conversation of their equals, and sharpen their own wits in the contact. The influence of the coffee-house radiated to all parts of the city, and touched business, society, church, literature.

    While the coffee-houses were democratic,— “a neutral meeting ground for all men,”— the numerous clubs were naturally more exclusive. New ones were continually being formed by a knot of men having the same intellectual tastes, common business pursuits, oneness in epicurean appetites, or even similar endowments in pounds of flesh. From the Fat Men's Club, which excluded all who could get through an ordinary door, to the October Club, where “Tory squires, Parliament men, nourished patriotism with October ale,” and the Kit-Cat Club, frequented by the great writers of the day— Addison, Congreve, Arbuthnot— as well as by the great Whig partisans,— from the lowest to the highest,— there was usually some club at which “the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon,” might find their counterparts and congenial spirits. Many men of the eighteenth century received their greatest intellectual impulse in these clubs and coffee-houses, and were as dependent upon them for their happiness as those of the nineteenth are upon their newspapers.

    In this social world of London, but scarcely a part of it, were many authors, though they had not yet secured a foothold which enabled them to live merely by the pen. The garrets in Grub Street were full of these toilers who earned their scanty bread and butter by taking any work which promised support, often “grinding out ideas on subjects dictated by a taskmaster and foreign to their taste.” There was no hope of emerging from their obscurity unless some happy accident secured the notice of the government and resulted in a pension; or some flattering article from their pen induced a nobleman to reach out a helping hand and condescend to be a patron in return for the writer's influence in political affairs. Collier says, “It was Addison and Steele, Pope and Swift, and a few others who got all the fame and the guineas, who drank their wine, and spent their afternoons in the saloons of the great, while the great majority of authors starved and shivered in garrets, or pawned their clothes for the food their pens could not win,”

    But it is not alone the number of noted authors nor the thought they contributed to the world that makes the age an important one from a literary point of view. They showed to the world, what it had never known before, the great value of literary form. The greatest period of literary activity previous to this— that of Elizabeth— was far superior in creative power; and as “there were giants in those days,” their genius made writing natural and easy as well as brilliant. But English authors had never consciously added carefulness in diction, in sentence structure, in rhythm, to their power of expression, until their eyes were opened after the return of Charles II from France. From that time the “French taste for finish, elegance, and correctness” had pervaded the literature of England, and now reached the height of perfection in Pope. All literature since owes a debt of gratitude to these painstaking strugglers. They stopped short of the beauty which broadens, the love of nature which inspires; but by their sharp criticisms, and the practice of their own theories, they made it impossible for future authors to write in a careless, slipshod manner.

    Notwithstanding the fact that numerous writers existed, and that the public was beginning to appreciate their worth, it was not a reading age. And it was quite improbable that it should be so, as the people were a sensual people, and the writings were precise, intellectual, and did not appeal to the great mass of ought-to-be-readers. Even if books had been more to their liking, there were still grave hindrances. Many could not read intelligently, books were expensive and owned by the few, and there was lacking a literary taste, which should make any reading desirable or necessary to their happiness. Talking was much easier, and satisfied them completely; so conversation, fostered by club and coffee-house, became naturally the medium of communication and information. What this conversation degenerated into without the feeding power of books has been already shown; and it may easily be seen that this great need of mental stimulus was second only to the crying want of purer morals.

    And still there was a restless, though perhaps an unconscious, craving for nobler living, higher perceptions. The Puritan period, with all its distasteful severities and rigorous demands, revealed a nobility of purpose and a grandeur of character whose influence could not be eradicated. Its growth was checked in the reactionary, lawless rule of Charles, yet the root was not dead, and was slowly but surely pushing its fibres more and more into responsive ground. Where the age of Charles was aggressive, Anne's was passive; where the former gave unbridled license in defiance of previous restraint, the latter was immoral because living on a low plane had become habitual, and there was little opposition. And this in itself makes vice lifeless because there is no wind to fan the flame. People were becoming discontented with a surfeit of immorality, and only waited for a Moses to lead them out of their slavery.

    And he came in the person of Addison, who with his shrewd, penetrating common sense discerned just what was needed to give an uplift to the eighteenth century. Swift had shown his disapproval, but his bitter sarcasms stung and did not effect a cure. Defoe also had made an effort to reform society, but he lacked the personality necessary to touch the heart. But no man ever saw more clearly, aimed more wisely, or hit the mark more surely than did Addison in the pages of the Spectator. What Ben Jonson tried in the Elizabethan age, Addison accomplished in Anne's. Both felt painfully the corruption of their times, and both strove to better society. Both knew society thoroughly and pictured accurately the men and women around them, their looks, their actions, their conversations. Both did this in an attractive, satirical manner; but Jonson was not in sympathy with his creations nor does he inspire us with this feeling. His characters are compounds of vices and weaknesses with little heart, and we have a good-natured contempt for them; Addison shows vices and weaknesses, but pictures the latter in so kindly a manner that we condemn tenderly as we take the delinquent by the hand, and are perhaps inclined to ask ourselves if we do not possess the same frailties. Is it strange then that Addison, having this underlying sympathy which attracts and corrects, should give a far more helpful impulse to society than Jonson, who, though seeing just as truly, and exposing as faithfully, yet repelled by his aloofness?

    Addison did not write for the heart, though we have a very warm feeling for the kindly old Roger, and the simple Will Honeycomb; he did not write for the head, to inform or invigorate the reasoning powers; his purpose was to quicken moral life; to make men and women less idle, less vain, less frivolous; to give loftier aims, to make more helpful, more pure. The essays were not aimed at the world in general, a possible or imaginary society; they were written expressly for the people whom he saw daily around him, to meet the actual need of the men and women of that age living such thoughtless, butterfly lives. He assumes that they were not consciously frittering away their energies; but “weak in their high emotions,” like the rudderless boat on the wave, containing no power in itself to resist the forces which impel it now forward, now backward, perhaps dashing it against the rock, and perhaps carrying it out to sea. And his own individuality enables him to comprehend the surest method of appealing to them successfully. He comes to them simply, kindly, humorously, with an air of contempt for the fault, but no ill will to the criminal.

    At the present time he does not touch us deeply, because we have attained, somewhat, to a higher plane of morality, and do not need the suggestions. Why, then, you will ask, should we make a study of his writings? They are valuable as literature; and by studying these essays, with their smooth, easy flow of words, and natural, conversational sentences, the student may gain juster conceptions of the value of purity and simplicity of style, and may be led to avoid the dangerous tendency to unnatural, stilted compositions. They are also invaluable as history; and show, as no purely historical work can do, the status of social life. Nowhere else can the student obtain such accurate, such vivid panoramic views of the society of the Queen Anne period, and such interesting pictures of its typical men and women. He who comes to Addison for excitement, for thrilling scenes and incidents will go away disappointed; for he does not hold his readers as the Ancient Mariner did the wedding guest— by weird and mysterious tales, and blood-curdling fiction; but he who comes with appetite not cloyed with sensational literature, who comes as we go into the sunshine— for restful, healthful growth of mind and body— finds a tonic which strengthens without giving undue exhilaration, or leaving the restless cravings of an over-stimulated mind.

    EVOLUTION OF THE SPECTATOR

    The Spectator, which first appeared before the public March 9, 1711, was a folio sheet 12 1/4 inches high and 8 inches wide. If we may judge by the letters which Addison— who was joint contributor with Steele— received, the paper then as now was conceded to be the best of the numerous papers published, and possessed a great number of delighted readers. George Trusty writes :—

    “I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning pipe... and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff; each paragraph is freighted either with some useful or delightful notion, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved.... You charm the fancy, soothe the passions, and insensibly lead the reader to that sweetness of temper that you so well describe: you rouse generosity with that spirit, and inculcate humanity with that ease, that he must be miserably stupid that is not affected by you.”

    And from a Mrs. Perry comes the following:—

    “Mr. Spectator,—

    “Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humor so well, that calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour) she answered, the Spectator was not yet come in; but that the teakettle boiled, and she expected it every moment.”

    But the Spectator— like other newspapers— did not appear suddenly before the public. It was an evolution; and “Like all masterpieces in art and literature, marks the final stage of a long and painful journey; and the merit of their inventors consists largely in the judgment with which they profited by the experiences of many predecessors.” The written letters which in Rome, before the time of Christ, were sent by commanders to their generals may perhaps be considered the germ of the modern newspaper; for in addition to necessary information on military matters there were often added events transpiring in the city, and these messages were not intended for one individual alone, but were for the benefit of the whole army. We are told that Caesar had them hung where all might read them. Centuries afterward in Venice, news from foreign countries was read aloud at stated times to the people. Spasmodic as such communications were, prohibited by one ruler and favored by another, they yet impressed the public with their value; and in process of time the news-letter or newspaper appeared in many parts of Europe, reaching England in the early part of the seventeenth century.

    Here as elsewhere they were in pamphlet form, on small, coarse paper; were written, not printed, till as late as 1622. What they lacked in size and material, they made up in the length and sounding of title. The Morning Mercury, or a Farce of Fools (1700); The British Apollo, or Curious Amusements for the Ingenious; to which are added the Most Material Occurrences, Foreign and Domestic, Performed by a Society of Gentlemen (1708), are the titles of two of these small editions. At first they were published at irregular intervals— when there was something especial to say; then regularly, increasing as time passed on until the editors ventured on two and three a week; and at last, beginning in 1702, a daily paper, the Daily Courant, was maintained.

    Either because editors were lacking in business ability and knowledge of suitable material, or because the public did not recognize the need of such information, many papers were born, breathed for a day, and expired leaving small trace of their existence. But the death of one was certain to be followed by the birth of another, and the number steadily increased. In 1647, a tax was levied which caused many a publisher to vanish with his little sheet. However, the opposition to the taxation grew and in time triumphed, and the tax was removed. When later it was again imposed, such a foothold had been gained that publishers could afford to pay the few cents extra. Another set-back was given when the government attempted to control all publications; and it was a long time before Parliament could be induced to see “that it was wiser to leave falsehood and scurrility to be gradually corrected by public opinion, as speaking through an unfettered press, than to attack them by a law which they had proved themselves able to defy.” After all the many discouragements, many failures, many trials, the newspaper remained as a proof of its necessity.

    The subject-matter was somewhat similar to that of more modern papers except that there was no attempt to influence, to form, public opinion. News from abroad was given, but before the eighteenth century no Parliamentary proceedings were allowed to be published. All startling adventures were seized upon and embellished to suit the taste of a shallow public. Petty personalities then as now glared from the pages, and advertisements of medicine, “healing by royal touch,” match-making, and prize-fighting occupied much space. But it was not until Steele issued the Tatler, in 1709, that the new element was introduced, which began “to hold a mirror” up to society and reflect the social life, with its customs and morals, and its gossip of club and coffee-house. Steele carried out his purpose, “to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behavior"; and herein lies the great difference between his material and that of other papers.

    Nearly two years afterward, Steele saw fit to discontinue the Tatler and to commence another paper, the Spectator. Addison, who had written many articles for the former, now contributed equally with Steele, and his connection with the paper caused it to become extremely popular. Rapidly it gained resemblance to our modern magazine in material, the critical and ethical essay predominating, while news items were left to ordinary newspapers. The Spectator was issued daily— the Friday edition confining itself to literary matter, the Saturday to moral and religious; and it aimed to accomplish even a greater work than its predecessor had done. More and more attention was given to forming and raising the standard of public opinion in “manners, morals, art, and literature.” The editors hoped to meet the needs of all people, but especially the needs of women. Addison realized that through them must come the betterment of society and there the reform must begin. He says:—

    “But there are none to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are women, than as they are reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjusting of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy shop, so great a fatigue unfits them for anything else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparation of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation, that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as love, into their male beholders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper which I shall always endeavor to make an innocent, if not an improving entertainment, and by that means at least divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles.”

    It is a well-recognized failing with a would-be-reformer to aim above the comprehension of the class he wishes to help; and instead of moving on their plane of thought, to expect them to come up to his. Addison made no such mistake. He knew instinctively the people, descended to their level, and in a light, story-telling form, gave them what their minds were able to grasp. As they were not a reading people, as they were not interested in homilies on right living, nor capable of deep, logical thinking, they must be reached by simple discussions on what occupied most of their attention— the little everyday affairs of life. They had to be led as one leads a child— by arousing the curiosity which eagerly asks, “What did they do next?” To most intellectual men, and certainly to illiterate ones, nothing appeals so strongly as the loves and hates, the joys and sorrows, the successes and failures, and the thoughts of their fellow mortals. The child wants its story of Cinderella with her triumph, and the wonderful adventures of Jack and his beanstalk; the man is just as absorbed in Orlando's love for Rosalind, and Antonio's anxiety for his commercial ventures. And Addison and Steele based their plan of the Spectator on this knowledge of human longing. They present an imaginary club, the members of which are typical people, and with a thread of narrative skilfully binding them together, suggest the lessons they wish to impart, through the experiences of Ned Softly, Tom Folio, Sir Andrew Freeport, Sir Roger de Coverley, or through the Spectator himself— under which name we find Addison; and the English public read and profited. It is safe to say that no publication with equal circulation, ever benefited more people than did the Spectator.


    Having seen the eighteenth-century England, the value of Addison's work, and the growth of the newspaper until the evolution of the Spectator, we are prepared to study certain of the essays called The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Not all in which Sir Roger is mentioned are in this book; but the selected ones aim to give a complete portrait of Sir Roger— a typical landed gentleman— with his quaint humors and charitable disposition. In studying his peculiarities it is well to note in how far Addison has painted his own picture. But it is not advisable to attempt to fit the numerous characters in these essays to actual people, although in many instances it might be done; however, the student must bear in mind that society contained many Sir Rogers, Will Wimbles, Will Honeycombs; that “Moll Whites” existed in abundance; that superstition was prevalent, and that the relations between parsons and squires was just what Addison has portrayed.

    The text is founded on Mr. Henry Morley's edition of the Spectator, published in 1891; but an occasional sentence has been dropped, and unnecessary capitals omitted in order to make the reading more attractive. Criticisms of the style are not attempted, because they deprive the student of making unbiased estimates; and only such notes are affixed as might be difficult to obtain in an ordinary schoolroom.

    LIVES OF ADDISON AND STEELE

    Nothing is of more importance to a man than his birth; yet apparently there is nothing which the public cares less to remember than the date of his appearance. Nevertheless, it seems well to commence these biographical sketches by stating that Joseph Addison was born May 1, 1672, in Wiltshire, England. He received a college education; and at the age of twenty-seven had shown so much intellectual ability that influential Whig leaders, desiring his influence, obtained for him a pension from the Government, and sent him to the Continent. Here, studying and writing, he enjoyed two years; then the downfall of the Whig party causing the loss of his pension, he returned to England. Soon after this, his poem, “The Campaign,” gained for him the position of Under Secretary of State. Later, as secretary of Lord Wharton he went to Ireland, where he formed the friendship of Swift. He was now a popular man; and his popularity was greatly increased by his contributions to the Tatler, and later by his connection with the Spectator. In 1716 he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick. She was proud and haughty, and his last years were not happy ones, though he was made Secretary of State, and was looked upon as the greatest literary man of his time. He died in 1719.

    Richard Steele, who says “I am an Englishman born in the city of Dublin,” also opened his eyes on the world in 1672; but he came in the cold, dreary March— not in the sunny, joyful May as did his friend Addison. Neither has left many records of his boyhood, and so we conclude that with each it was uneventful, and the boys “not very good and not very bad.” Steele, though a poor boy, must have had some schooling, for he was able to enter Oxford university in 1690. But he was of too restless a nature to confine himself to student life, and in a short time left college to join the army. He enlisted as private, but was afterward made captain; and tells us that he “first became an author while Ensign of the Guards.” His first prose work, The Christian Hero, which showed the ideal man, was criticised much because Steele himself practised so little the virtues of his hero. When thirty-five he received from the Government the appointment of Gazetteer, and about this time married for his second wife (very little is known of the first) Miss Mary Scurlock, to whom he was passionately devoted. His need of money brought about the publication of the Tatler, in which connection his name is best known. Following this periodical came the Spectator, the Guardian, and numerous other papers having the same general purpose. Steele became member of Parliament and in 1715 was knighted by George I. He died at Carmarthen, September 1, 1729.

    The lives of these two men, so nearly the same age, and so closely connected, varied much in experiences. From letters of Steele, it is evident that he was thrown on his own resources when a mere boy, his father, a lawyer, dying when Richard was but five years old, and the mother surviving but a short time. Addison's father, a prominent dean in good circumstances, had a comfortable and somewhat luxurious home, and the boy knew nothing of privation and struggle with poverty. In their college days Thackeray marks the difference. “Addison wrote his (Steele's) exercises. Addison did his best themes. He ran on Addison's messages; fagged for him and blacked his shoes.” In middle life both gained friends and lucrative positions by their writings; yet Steele was continually in trouble financially and socially, while Addison moved serenely along and experienced little difficulty in getting what he wanted. Steele's home was probably a happier one than Addison's— if there can be a comparison between a home where the whole gamut of chords and discords is sounded at various times, and one where it is invariably at low pitch. There was undoubtedly much love and much fault-finding from Mrs. Steele, much coldness and much haughtiness from Mrs. Addison. Addison had one child, Charlotte, who lived to old age but never married. Only one of Steele's children, Elizabeth, reached maturity, and she became the wife of Lord Trevor.

    Thackeray says in deciding of a great man we must ask ourselves if we should like to live with him. Judging from this standpoint, of these men so widely different in character, the lovers of one would scarcely be lovers of the other, and so would not consider the two equally worthy. Of Addison, Macaulay says: “The just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the human virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men.” And Thackeray declares: “He must have been one of the finest gentlemen the world ever saw; at all moments of life serene and courteous, cheerful and calm.” Swift tells us that “Steele hath committed more absurdities in economy, friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing than ever fell to one man's share,” and this is probably true; but a man who in an age of almost unbridled license in thought and speech of woman, possessed nothing but chivalrous tenderness and loving reverence for her purity and beauty, surely deserves that women and all lovers of women should dwell on his virtues and forget his weaknesses. Addison, polite and gentlemanly always, desirous of helping, yet lacked entirely the enthusiastic, respectful admiration for woman which animated Steele. Addison wished to raise her so that she might be respected; Steele found something to respect before she was raised. Does this mean anything to us, or is it a quality to ignore? Is there not something of greatness, some element of the highest type of manhood in this ability to detect under all the flimsy, affected showiness of the times, the undeveloped, inherent nobility of womanhood? Steele had his faults. Swift was right; but the faults of this “same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele” were the faults of an impetuous child who repents and sins again only to shed other tears of repentance. Addison was a man in boyhood; Steele, a boy even in manhood; and who shall say that Steele with his “sweet and compassionate nature,” though rashly living for the moment, is less lovable than the polished, dignified Addison whom all the world honors?

    When they met as boys at the Charter House school, their very dissimilarity tended to cement a friendship as strong as that of David and Jonathan, Damon and Pythias. The persuasive cordiality of Steele penetrated the bashfulness and natural reserve of Addison, while "Addison's stronger, more stable, more serious character affected very favorably his (Steele's) own wayward, volatile nature.” The love was mutual and the dependence mutual and actual. Later in life they quarrelled— as most friends do, sometimes. A Bill to limit the number of peers was before Parliament. Addison favored it, Steele opposed it, and bitter articles were written by each. Unfortunately Addison's death, following soon, prevented the reconciliation which would, undoubtedly, have occurred. Afterward Steele is reported to have written that “they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual welfare.” And Morley tells us “The friendship— equal friendship— between Steele and Addison was as unbroken as the love between Steele and his wife.”

    And out of this friendship came the Spectator; for it is safe to say that without the cooperation of the two, the paper would never have reached such perfection. Addison was in Ireland when he recognized in the new periodical, the Tatler, the hand of his friend Steele. Seeing at once his own fitness for such work he offered to contribute, and in his first essay showed those bright touches of humor which later so enchanted the public in the Spectator. That the two friends should unite in publishing the latter paper was the natural outcome; for neither was at his best without the other. What Steele originated, Addison perfected. Morley says “It was the firm hand of his friend Steele that helped Addison up to the place in literature which became him. It was Steele who caused the nice, critical taste which Addison might have spent only in accordance with the fleeting fashions of his time, to be inspired with all Addison's religious earnestness, and to be enlivened with the free play of that sportive humor, delicately whimsical and gaily wise, which made his conversation the delight of the few men with whom he sat at ease;” and again, “the Spectator is the abiding monument commemorating the friendship of these two.” Whether the originator or perfecter is greater will always be an open question; but critics must concede that both are great; that the Spectator is not the work of Addison alone, not the work of Steele alone, but is the united genius of Addison and Steele and truly their “monument.”

     

    SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS

    I. THE SPECTATOR'S ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF.

    Spectator No. 1. Addison.

    I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure 'till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.

    I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that, before I was born, my mother dreamt that she was to bring forth a judge; whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the world seemed to favor my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.

    As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that, during my nonage, I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say, that my parts were solid, and would wear well. I had not been long at the University, before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for, during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. Whilst I was in this learned body, I applied myself with so much diligence to my studies, that there are very few celebrated books, either in the learned[1] or modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with.

    Upon the death of my father, I was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the University with the character of an odd, unaccountable fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if I would but show it. An insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of Europe in which there was anything new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that having read the controversies[2] of some great men concerning the antiquities of Egypt, I made a voyage to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid; and, as soon as I had set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction.

    I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me: of whom nay next paper shall give a more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's,[3] and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, [4] and while I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman,[5] overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's coffee-house,[6] and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian,[7] the Cocoa-Tree,[8] and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Hay-Market. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. [9] In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

    Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of an husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them: as standers-by discover blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper.

    I have given the reader just so much of my history and character, as to let him see I am not altogether unqualified for the business I have undertaken. As for other particulars in my life and adventures, I shall insert them in following papers, as I shall see occasion. In the mean time, when I consider how much I have seen, read, and heard, I begin to blame my own taciturnity; and since I have neither time nor inclination to communicate the fulness of my heart in speech, I am resolved to do it in writing, and to print [10] myself out, if possible, before I die. I have been often told by my friends, that it is pity so many useful discoveries which I have made should be in the possession of a silent man. For this reason, therefore, I shall publish a sheet full of thoughts every morning, for the benefit of my contemporaries; and if I can any way contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.

    There are three very material points which I have not spoken to in this paper, and which, for several important reasons, I must keep to myself, at least for some time: I mean, an account of my name, my age, and my lodgings. I must confess I would gratify my reader in anything that is reasonable; but as for these three particulars, though I am sensible they might tend very much to the embellishment of my paper, I cannot yet come to a resolution of communicating them to the public. They would indeed draw me out of that obscurity which I have enjoyed for many years, and expose me in public places to several salutes and civilities, which have been always very disagreeable to me; for the greatest pain I can suffer is the being talked to and being stared at. It is for this reason likewise that I keep my complexion and dress as very great secrets; though it is not impossible but I may make discoveries of both in the progress of the work I have undertaken.

    After having been thus particular upon myself, I shall in to-morrow's paper give an account of those gentlemen who are concerned with me in this work; for, as I have before intimated, a plan of it is laid and concerted (as all other matters of importance are) in a club. However, as my friends have engaged me to stand in the front, those who have a mind to correspond with me may direct their letters to the Spectator at Mr. Buckley's, in Little Britain. [11] For I must further acquaint the reader, that though our club meets only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have appointed a committee to sit every night, for the inspection of all such papers as may contribute to the advancement of the public weal.

    II. DESCRIPTION OF CLUB MEMBERS.

    Spectator No. 2. Steele.

    The first of our society is a gentleman of Worcestershire, of ancient descent, a baronet, his name Sir Roger de Coverley. His great-grandfather was inventor of that famous country-dance[12] which is called after him. All who know that shire are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very singular in his behavior, but his singularities proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. However, this humor creates him no enemies, for he does nothing with sourness or obstinacy; and his being unconfined to modes and forms makes him but the readier and more capable to please and oblige all who know him. When he is in town, he lives in Soho Square. [13] It is said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse beautiful widow of the next county to him. Before this disappointment, Sir Roger was what you call a fine [14] gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester[15] and Sir George Etherege,[15] fought a duel upon his first coming to town, and kicked Bully Dawson[16] in a public coffee-house for calling him “youngster.” But being ill used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry humors, he tells us, has been in and out twelve times since he first wore it. |He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty; keeps a good house in both town and country; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behavior, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men are glad of his company: when he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way up stairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and, three months ago, gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game-Act.[17]

    The gentleman next in esteem and authority among us is another bachelor, who is a member of the Inner Temple; [18] a man of great probity, wit, and understanding; but he has chosen his place of residence rather to obey the direction of an old humorsome father, than in pursuit of his own inclinations. He was placed there to study the laws of the land, and is the most learned of any of the house in those of the stage. Aristotle [19] and Longinus are much better understood by him than Littleton [19] or Coke. The father sends up every post questions relating to marriage-articles, leases, and tenures, in the neighborhood; all which questions he agrees with an attorney to answer and take care of in the lump. He is studying the passions themselves, when he should be inquiring into the debates among men which arise from them. He knows the argument of each of the orations of Demosthenes and Tully, but not one case in the reports of our own courts. No one ever took him for a fool, but none, except his intimate friends, know he has a great deal of wit.[20] This turn makes him at once both disinterested and agreeable: as few of his thoughts are drawn from business, they are most of them fit for conversation. His taste of books is a little too just for the age he lives in; he has read all, but approves of very few. His familiarity with the customs, manners, actions, and writings of the ancients makes him a very delicate observer of what occurs to him in the present world. He is an excellent critic, and the time of the play is his hour of business; exactly at five[21] he passes through New Inn, crosses through Russell Court, and takes a turn at Will's till the play begins; he has his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered at the barber's as you go into the Rose.[22] It is for the good of the audience when he is at a play, for the actors have an ambition to please him.

    The person of next consideration is Sir Andrew Freeport, a merchant of great eminence in the city of London, a person of indefatigable industry, strong reason, and great experience. His notions of trade are noble and generous, and (as every rich man has usually some sly way of jesting, which would make no great figure were he not a rich man) he calls the sea the British Common. He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts, and will tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by arms; for true power is to be got by arts and industry. He will often argue that if this part of our trade were well cultivated, we should gain from one nation; and if another, from another. I have heard him prove that diligence makes more lasting acquisitions than valor, and that sloth has ruined more nations than the sword. He abounds in several frugal maxims, amongst which the greatest favorite is, “A penny saved is a penny got.” A general trader of good sense is pleasanter company than a general scholar; and Sir Andrew having a natural, unaffected eloquence, the perspicuity of his discourse gives the same pleasure that wit would in another man. He has made his fortunes himself, and says that England may be richer than other kingdoms by as plain methods as he himself is richer than other men; though at the same time I can say this of him, that there is not a point in the compass but blows home a ship in which he is an owner.

    Next to Sir Andrew in the club-room sits Captain Sentry, [23] a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible modesty. He is one of those that deserve very well, but are very awkward at putting their talents within the observation of such as should take notice of them. He was some years a captain, and behaved himself with great gallantry in several engagements and at several sieges; but having a small estate of his own, and being next heir to Sir Roger, he has quitted a way of life in which no man can rise suitably to his merit who is not something of a courtier as well as a soldier. I have heard him often lament that in a profession where merit is placed in so conspicuous a view, impudence should get the better of modesty. When he has talked to this purpose, I never heard him make a sour expression, but frankly confess that he left the world because he was not fit for it. A strict honesty and an even regular behavior are in themselves obstacles to him that must press through crowds, who endeavor at the same end with himself,— the favor of a commander. He will, however, in this way of talk, excuse generals for not disposing according to men's desert, or inquiring into it; “for,” says he, “that great man who has a mind to help me, has as many to break through to come at me, as I have to come at him;” therefore he will conclude, that the man who would make a figure, especially in a military way, must get over all false modesty, and assist his patron against the importunity of other pretenders by a proper assurance in his own vindication. He says it is a civil cowardice to be backward in asserting what you ought to expect, as it is a military fear to be slow in attacking when it is your duty. With this candor does the gentleman speak of himself and others. The same frankness runs through all his conversation. The military part of his life has furnished him with many adventures, in the relation of which he is very agreeable to the company; for he is never overbearing, though accustomed to command men in the utmost degree below him; nor ever too obsequious from a habit of obeying men highly above him.

    But that our society may not appear a set of humorists unacquainted with the gallantries and pleasures of the age, we have among us the gallant Will Honeycomb, a gentleman who, according to his years, should be in the decline of his life, but having ever been very careful of his person, and always had a very easy fortune, time has made but very little impression either by wrinkles on his forehead, or traces in his brain. His person is well turned, and of a good height. He is very ready at that sort of discourse with which men usually entertain women. He has all his life dressed very well, and remembers habits as others do men. He can smile when one speaks to him, and laughs easily. He knows the history of every mode, and can inform you from which of the French king's wenches our wives and daughters had this manner of curling their hair, that way of placing their hoods; whose frailty was covered by such a sort of petticoat, and whose vanity to show her foot made that part of the dress so short in such a year; in a word, all his conversation and knowledge has been in the female world. As other men of his age will take notice to you what such a minister said upon such and such an occasion, he will tell you when the Duke of Monmouth danced at court such a woman was then smitten, another was taken with him at the head of his troop in the Park. In all these important relations, he has ever about the same time received a kind glance or a blow of a fan from some celebrated beauty, mother of the present Lord Such-a-one. This way of talking of his very much enlivens the conversation among us of a more sedate turn; and I find there is not one of the company, but myself, who rarely speak at all, but speaks of him as of that sort of man who is usually called a well-bred fine gentleman. To conclude his character, where women are not concerned, he is an honest, worthy man.

    I cannot tell whether I am to account him whom I am next to speak of as one of our company, for he visits us but seldom; but when he does, it adds to every man else a new enjoyment of himself. He is a clergyman, a very philosophic man, of general learning, great sanctity of life, and the most exact good breeding. He has the misfortune to be of a very weak constitution, and consequently cannot accept of such cares and business as preferments in his function would oblige him to; he is therefore among divines what a chamber-counsellor [24] is among lawyers. The probity of his mind, and the integrity of his life, create him followers, as being eloquent or loud advances others. He seldom introduces the subject he speaks upon; but we are so far gone in years, that he observes, when he is among us, an earnestness to have him fall on some divine topic, which he always treats with much authority, as one who has no interests in this world, as one who is hastening to the object of all his wishes, and conceives hope from his decays and infirmities. These are my ordinary companions.

    III. SIR ROGER'S OPINION OF TRUE WISDOM.

    Spectator No. 6. Steele.

    I know no evil under the sun so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common. It has diffused itself through both sexes and all qualities of mankind; and there is hardly that person to be found, who is not more concerned for the reputation of wit and sense, than honesty and virtue. But this unhappy affectation of being wise rather than honest, witty than good-natured, is the source of most of the ill habits of life. Such false impressions are owing to the abandoned writings of men of wit, and the awkward imitation of the rest of mankind.

    For this reason Sir Roger was saying last night, that he was of opinion that none but men of fine parts deserve to be hanged. The reflections of such men are so delicate upon all occurrences which they are concerned in, that they should be exposed to more than ordinary infamy and punishment, for offending against such quick admonitions as their own souls give them, and blunting the fine edge of their minds in such a manner, that they are no more shocked at vice and folly than men of slower capacities. There is no greater monster in being than a very ill man of great parts. He lives like a man in a palsy, with one side of him dead. While perhaps he enjoys the satisfaction of luxury, of wealth, of ambition, he has lost the taste of good-will, of friendship, of innocence. Scarecrow, the beggar, in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, [25] who disabled himself in his right leg, and asks alms all day to get himself a warm supper and a trull at night, is not half so despicable a wretch, as such a man of sense. The beggar has no relish above sensations; he finds rest more agreeable than motion; and while he has a warm fire and his doxy, never reflects that he deserves to be whipped. Every man who terminates his satisfaction and enjoyments within the supply of his own necessities and passions, is, says Sir Roger, in my eye, as poor a rogue as Scarecrow. “But,” continued he, “for the loss of public and private virtue, we are beholden to your men of parts forsooth; it is with them no matter what is done, so it is done with an air. But to me, who am so whimsical in a corrupt age as to act according to nature and reason, a selfish man, in the most shining circumstance and equipage, appears in the same condition with the fellow above-mentioned, but more contemptible in proportion to what more he robs the public of, and enjoys above him. I lay it down therefore for a rule, that the whole man is to move together; that every action of any importance is to have a prospect of public good; and that the general tendency of our indifferent actions ought to be agreeable to the dictates of reason, of religion, of good-breeding; without this, a man, as I have before hinted, is hopping instead of walking; he is not in his entire and proper motion.”

    While the honest knight was thus bewildering himself in good starts, I looked intentively upon him, which made him, I thought, collect his mind a little. “What I aim at,” says he, “is to represent that I am of opinion, to polish our understandings, and neglect our manners, is of all things the most inexcusable. Reason should govern passion, but instead of that, you see, it is often subservient to it; and, as unaccountable as one would think it, a wise man is not always a good man.” This degeneracy is not only the guilt of particular persons, but also, at some times, of a whole people; and perhaps it may appear upon examination, that the most polite ages are the least virtuous. This may be attributed to the folly of admitting wit and learning as merit in themselves, without considering the application of them. By this means it becomes a rule, not so much to regard what we do, as how we do it. But this false beauty will not pass upon men of honest minds and true taste. Sir Richard Blackmore[26] says, with as much good sense as virtue, “It is a mighty dishonor and shame to employ excellent faculties and abundance of wit, to humor and please men in their vices and follies. The great enemy of mankind, notwithstanding his wit and angelic faculties, is the most odious being in the whole creation.” He goes on soon after to say, very generously, that he undertook the writing of his poem “to rescue the Muses out of the hands of ravishers, to restore them to their sweet and chaste mansions, and to engage them in an employment suitable to their dignity.” This certainly ought to be the purpose of every man who appears in public, and whoever does not proceed upon that foundation injures his country as fast as he succeeds in his studies. When modesty ceases to be the chief ornament of one sex, and integrity of the other, society is upon a wrong basis, and we shall be ever after without rules to guide our judgment in what is really becoming and ornamental. Nature and reason direct one thing, passion and humor another. To follow the dictates of the two latter is going into a road that is both endless and intricate; when we pursue the other, our passage is delightful, and what we aim at easily attainable.

    I do not doubt but England is at present as polite a nation as any in the world; but any man who thinks can easily see that the affectation of being gay and in fashion has very near eaten up our good sense and our religion. Is there anything so just as that mode and gallantry should be built upon exerting ourselves in what is proper and agreeable to the institutions of justice and piety among us? And yet is there anything more common than that we run in perfect contradiction to them? All which is supported by no other pretension than that it is done with what we call a good grace.

    Nothing ought to be held laudable or becoming, but what nature itself should prompt us to think so. Respect to all kinds of superiors is founded, methinks, upon instinct; and yet what is so ridiculous as age? I make this abrupt transition to the mention of this vice, more than any other, in order to introduce a little story, which I think a pretty instance that the most polite age is in danger of being the most vicious.

    “It happened at Athens, during a public representation of some play exhibited in honor of the commonwealth, that an old gentleman came too late for a place suitable to his age and quality. Many of the young gentlemen, who observed the difficulty and confusion he was in, made signs to him that they would accommodate him if he came where they sat. The good man bustled through the crowd accordingly; but when he came to the seats to which he was invited, the jest was to sit close and expose him, as he stood, out of countenance, to the whole audience. The frolic went round all the Athenian benches. But on those occasions there were also particular places assigned for foreigners. When the good man skulked towards the boxes appointed for the Lacedaemonians, that honest people, more virtuous than polite, rose up all to a man, and with the greatest respect received him among them. The Athenians, being suddenly touched with a sense of the Spartan virtue and their own degeneracy, gave a thunder of applause; and the old man cried out, 'The Athenians understand what is good, but the Lacedaemonians practise it.'”

    IV. SIR ROGER AT THE CLUB.

    Spectator No. 34. Addison.

    The club of which I am a member, is very luckily composed of such persons as are engaged in different ways of life, and deputed as it were out of the most conspicuous classes of mankind: by this means I am furnished with the greatest variety of hints and materials, and know everything that passes in the different quarters and divisions, not only of this great city, but of the whole kingdom. My readers, too, have the satisfaction to find, that there is no rank or degree among them who have not their representative in this club, and that there is always somebody present who will take care of their respective interests, that nothing may be written or published to the prejudice or infringement of their just rights and privileges.

    I last night sat very late in company with this select body of friends, who entertained me with several remarks which they and others had made upon these my speculations, as also with the various success which they had met with among their several ranks and degrees of readers. Will Honeycomb told me, in the softest manner he could, that there were some ladies (but for your comfort, says Will, they are not those of the most wit) that were offended at the liberties I had taken with the opera and the puppet-show; that some of them were likewise very much surprised, that I should think such serious points as the dress and equipage of persons of quality proper subjects for raillery.

    He was going on, when Sir Andrew Freeport took him up short, and told him, that the papers he hinted at had done great good in the city, and that all their wives and daughters were the better for them; and further added, that the whole city thought themselves very much obliged to me for declaring my generous intentions to scourge vice and folly as they appear in a multitude, without condescending to be a publisher of particular intrigues. In short, says Sir Andrew, if you avoid that foolish beaten road of falling upon aldermen and citizens, and employ your pen upon the vanity and luxury of courts, your papers must needs be of general use.

    Upon this my friend the Templar told Sir Andrew, that he wondered to hear a man of his sense talk after that manner; that the city had always been the province[27] for satire; and that the wits of king Charles's time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign. He then showed, by the examples of Horace,[28] Juvenal, Boileau, and the best writers of every age, that the follies of the stage and court had never been accounted too sacred for ridicule, how great soever the persons might be that patronized them. But after all, says he, I think your raillery has made too great an excursion, in attacking several persons of the Inns of Court; and I do not believe you can show me any precedent for your behavior in that particular.

    My good friend Sir Roger de Coverley, who had said nothing all this while, began his speech with a pish! and told us, that he wondered to see so many men of sense so very serious upon fooleries. “Let our good friend,” says he, “attack every one that deserves it; I would only advise you, Mr. Spectator,” applying himself to me, “to take care how you meddle with country squires: they are the ornaments of the English nation; men of good heads and sound bodies! and let me tell you, some of them take it ill of you, that you mention fox-hunters with so little respect.”

    Captain Sentry spoke very sparingly on this occasion. What he said was only to commend my prudence in not touching upon the army, and advised me to continue to act discreetly in that point.

    By this time I found every subject of my speculations was taken away from me, by one or other of the club; and began to think myself in the condition of the good man that had one wife who took a dislike to his gray hairs, and another to his black, till by their picking out what each of them had an aversion to, they left his head altogether bald and naked.

    While I was thus musing with myself, my worthy friend the clergyman, who, very luckily for me, was at the club that night, undertook my cause. He told us, that he wondered any order of persons should think themselves too considerable to be advised; that it was not quality, but innocence, which exempted men from reproof; that vice and folly ought to be attacked wherever they could be met with, and especially when they were placed in high and conspicuous stations of life. He further added, that my paper would only serve to aggravate the pains of poverty, if it chiefly exposed those who are already depressed, and in some measure turned into ridicule, by the meanness of their conditions and circumstances. He afterwards proceeded to take notice of the great use this paper might be to the public, by reprehending those vices which are too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit. He then advised me to prosecute my undertaking with cheerfulness, and assured me, that whoever might be displeased with me, I should be approved by all those whose praises do honor to the persons on whom they are bestowed.

    The whole club pay a particular deference to the discourse of this gentleman, and are drawn into what he says, as much by the candid and ingenuous manner with which he delivers himself, as by the strength of argument and force of reason which he makes use of. Will Honeycomb immediately agreed that what he had said was right; and that for his part, he would not insist upon the quarter which he had demanded for the ladies. Sir Andrew gave up the city with the same frankness. The Templar would not stand out, and was followed by Sir Roger and the Captain, who all agreed that I should be at liberty to carry the war into what quarter I pleased, provided I continued to combat with criminals in a body, and to assault the vice without hurting the person.

    This debate, which was held for the good of mankind, put me in mind of that which the Roman triumvirate were formerly engaged in, for their destruction. Every man at first stood hard for his friend, till they found that by this means they should spoil their proscription: and at length, making a sacrifice of all their acquaintance and relations, furnished out a very decent execution.

    Having thus taken my resolution to march on boldly in the cause of virtue and good sense, and to annoy their adversaries in whatever degree or rank of men they may be found, I shall be deaf for the future to all the remonstrances that shall be made to me on this account. If Punch[29] grow extravagant, I shall reprimand him very freely; if the stage becomes a nursery of folly and impertinence, I shall not be afraid to animadvert upon it. In short, if I meet with anything in city, court, or country, that shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use my utmost endeavors to make an example of it. I must, however, intreat every particular person, who does me the honor to be a reader of this paper, never to think himself, or any one of his friends or enemies, aimed at in what is said; for I promise him, never to draw a faulty character which does not fit at least a thousand people, or to publish a single paper that is not written in the spirit of benevolence, and with a love to mankind.

    V. SIR ROGER AT HIS COUNTRY HOUSE. [30]

    Spectator No. 106. Addison.

    Having often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger de Coverley to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humor, lets me rise and “go to bed when I please, dine at his own table or in my chamber as I think fit, sit still and say nothing without bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of the country come to see him, he only shows me at a distance: as I have been walking in his fields I have observed them stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have heard the Knight desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be stared at.

    I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, because it consists of sober and staid persons; for, as the Knight is the best master in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is gray-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy counsellor. You see the goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years.

    I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure, the joy that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master; every one of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good old Knight, with the mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good-nature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humor, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with: on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.

    My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have often heard their master talk of me as his particular friend.

    My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods or the fields, is a very venerable man who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years. This gentleman is a person of good sense and some learning, of a very regular life and obliging conversation: he heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows that he is very much in the old Knight's esteem, so that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependent.

    I have observed in several of my papers that my friend Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is something of an humorist; and that his virtues as well as imperfections are, as it were, tinged by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his, and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary colors. As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned, and without staying for my answer told me that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table, for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the University to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. My friend, says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show it: I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and, because I know his value, have settled upon him a good annuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks he is. He has now been with me thirty years, and, though he does not know I have taken notice of it, has never in all that time asked anything of me for himself, though he is every day soliciting me for something in behalf of one or other of my tenants, his parishioners. There has not been a lawsuit in the parish since he has lived among them; if any dispute arises they apply themselves to him for the decision; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment, which I think never happened above once or twice at most, they appeal to me. At his first settling with me I made him a present of all the good sermons[31] which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.

    As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of came up to us; and upon the Knight's asking him who preached to-morrow (for it was Saturday night) told us the Bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with several living authors who have published discourses of practical divinity. I no sooner saw this venerable man in the pulpit, but I very much approved of my friend's insisting upon the qualifications of a good aspect and a clear voice; for I was so charmed with the gracefulness of his figure and delivery, as well as with the discourses he pronounced, that I think I never passed any time more to my satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner is like the composition of a poet in the mouth of a graceful actor.

    I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy would follow this example; and, instead of wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of their own, would endeavor after a handsome elocution, and all those other talents that are proper to enforce what has been penned by greater masters. This would not only be more easy to themselves, but more edifying to the people.

    VI. THE COVERLEY HOUSEHOLD.

    Spectator No. 107. Steele.

    The reception, manner of attendance, undisturbed freedom, and quiet, which I meet with here in the country, has confirmed me in the opinion I always had, that the general corruption of manners in servants is owing to the conduct of masters. The aspect of every one in the family carries so much satisfaction that it appears he knows the happy lot which has befallen him in being a member of it. There is one particular which I have seldom seen but at Sir Roger's; it is usual in all other places, that servants fly from the parts of the house through which their master is passing: on the contrary, here they industriously place themselves in his way; and it is on both sides, as it were, understood as a visit, when the servants appear without calling. This proceeds from the humane and equal temper of the man of the house, who also perfectly well knows how to enjoy a great estate with such economy as ever to be much beforehand. This makes his own mind untroubled, and consequently unapt to vent peevish expressions, or give passionate or inconsistent orders to those about him. Thus respect and love go together, and a certain cheerfulness in performance of their duty is the particular distinction of the lower part of this family. When a servant is called before his master, he does not come with an expectation to hear himself rated for some trivial fault, threatened to be stripped, or used with any other unbecoming language, which mean masters often give to worthy servants; but it is often to know what road he took that he came so readily back according to order; whether he passed by such a ground; if the old man who rents it is in good health; or whether he gave Sir Roger's love to him, or the like.

    A man who preserves a respect founded on his benevolence to his dependents lives rather like a prince than a master in his family; his orders are received as favors, rather than duties; and the distinction of approaching him is part of the reward for executing what is commanded by him.

    There is another circumstance in which my friend excels in his management, which is the manner of rewarding his servants: he has ever been of opinion that giving his cast clothes to be worn by valets has a very ill effect upon little minds, and creates a silly sense of equality between the parties, in persons affected only with outward things. I have heard him often pleasant on this occasion, and describe a young gentleman abusing his man in that coat which a month or two before was the most pleasing distinction he was conscious of in himself. He would turn his discourse still more pleasantly upon the ladies' bounties of this kind; and I have heard him say he knew a fine woman, who distributed rewards and punishments in giving becoming or unbecoming dresses to her maids.

    But my good friend is above these little instances of good-will, in bestowing only trifles on his servants; a good servant to him is sure of having it in his choice very soon of being no servant at all. As I before observed, he is so good an husband, [32] and knows so thoroughly that the skill of the purse is the cardinal virtue of this life,— I say, he knows so well that frugality is the support of generosity, that he can often spare a large fine when a tenement falls, and give that settlement to a good servant who has a mind to go into the world, or make a stranger pay the fine to that servant, for his more comfortable maintenance, if he stays in his service.

    A man of honor and generosity considers it would be miserable to himself to have no will but that of another, though it were of the best person breathing, and for that reason goes on, as fast as he is able, to put his servants into independent livelihoods. The greatest part of Sir Roger's estate is tenanted by persons who have served himself or his ancestors. It was to me extremely pleasant to observe the visitants from several parts to welcome his arrival into the country; and all the difference that I could take notice of between the late servants who came to see him, and those who stayed in the family, was that these latter were looked upon as finer gentlemen and better courtiers.

    This manumission and placing them in a way of livelihood, I look upon as only what is due to a good servant, which encouragement will make his successor be as diligent, as humble, and as ready as he was. There is something wonderful in the narrowness of those minds which can be pleased, and be barren of bounty to those who please them.

    One might, on this occasion, recount the sense that great persons in all ages have had of the merit of their dependents, and the heroic services which men have done their masters in the extremity of their fortunes; and shown to their undone patrons that fortune was all the difference between them; but as I design this my speculation only as a gentle admonition to thankless masters, I shall not go out of the occurrences of common life, but assert it as a general observation, that I never saw, but in Sir Roger's family, and one or two more, good servants treated as they ought to be. Sir Roger's kindness extends to their children's children, and this very morning he sent his coachman's grandson to prentice. I shall conclude this paper with an account of a picture in his gallery, where there are many which will deserve my future observation.

    At the very upper end of this handsome structure I saw the portraiture of two young men standing in a river, the one naked, the other in a livery. The person supported seemed half dead, but still so much alive as to show in his face exquisite joy and love towards the other. I thought the fainting figure resembled my friend Sir Roger; and looking at the butler, who stood by me, for an account of it, he informed me that the person in the livery was a servant of Sir Roger's, who stood on the shore while his master was swimming, and observing him taken with some sudden illness, and sink under water, jumped in and saved him. He told me Sir Roger took off the dress [33] he was in as soon as he came home, and by a great bounty at that time, followed by his favor ever since, had made him master of that pretty seat which we saw at a distance as we came to this house. I remembered, indeed, Sir Roger said there lived a very worthy gentleman, to whom he was highly obliged, without mentioning anything further. Upon my looking a little dissatisfied at some part of the picture, my attendant informed me that it was against Sir Roger's will, and at the earnest request of the gentleman himself, that he was drawn in the habit in which he had saved his master.

    VII. SIR ROGER AND WILL WIMBLE.

    Spectator No. 108. Addison.

    As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir Roger before his house, a country fellow brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr. William Wimble had caught that very morning; and that he presented it, with his service to him, and intended to come and dine with him. At the same time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to me as soon as the messenger left him.

    “Sir Roger,—

    “I desire you to accept of a jack, which is the best I have caught this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, and see how the perch bite in the Black River. I observed with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last week, which I hope will serve you all the time you are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle for six days last past, having been at Eton with Sir John's eldest son. He takes to his learning hugely.

    “I am, sir, your humble servant,

    “Will Wimble.”

    This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied it, made me very curious to know the character and quality of the gentleman who sent them, which I found to be as follows. Will Wimble is younger brother[34] to a baronet, and descended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now between forty and fifty; but being bred to no business and born to no estate, he generally lives with his elder brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the country, and is very famous for finding out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man: he makes a may-fly [35] to a miracle, and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured, officious fellow, and very much esteemed upon account of his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a good correspondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip-root[36] in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a particular favorite of all the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or a setting-dog that he has made himself. He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or sisters; and raises a great deal of mirth among them, by inquiring as often as he meets them how they wear. These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humors make Will the darling of the country.

    Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, when we saw him make up to us with two or three hazel-twigs in his hand, that he had cut in Sir Roger's woods, as he came through them in his way to the house. I was very much pleased to observe on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with which Sir Roger received him, and, on the other, the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of the good old Knight. After the first salutes were over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his servants to carry a set of shuttlecocks he had with him in a little box, to a lady that lived about a mile off, to whom it seems he had promised such a present for above this half year. Sir Roger's back was no sooner turned but honest Will began to tell me of a large cock-pheasant that he had sprung in one of the neighboring woods, with two or three other adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncommon characters are the game that I look for and most delight in; for which reason I was as much pleased with the novelty of the person that talked to me, as he could be for his life with the springing of a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more than ordinary attention.

    In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to dinner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of had the pleasure of seeing the huge jack he had caught served up for the first dish in a most sumptuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it he gave us a long account how he had hooked it, played with it, foiled it, and at length drew it out upon the bank, with several other particulars that lasted all the first course. A dish of wild-fowl that came afterwards furnished conversation for the rest of the dinner, which concluded with a late invention of Will's for improving the quail-pipe.[37]

    Upon withdrawing into my room after dinner, I was secretly touched with compassion towards the honest gentleman that had dined with us, and could not but consider, with a great deal of concern, how so good an heart and such busy hands were wholly employed in trifles; that so much humanity should be so little beneficial to others, and so much industry so little advantageous to himself. The same temper of mind and application to affairs might have recommended him to the public esteem, and have raised his fortune in another station of life. What good to his country or himself might not a trader or merchant have done with such useful though ordinary qualifications?

    Will Wimble's is the case of many a younger brother of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath their quality. This humor fills several parts of Europe with pride and beggary. It is the happiness of a trading nation, like ours, that the younger sons, though uncapable of any liberal art or profession, may be placed in such a way of life as may perhaps enable them to vie with the best of their family. Accordingly, we find several citizens that were launched into the world with narrow fortunes, rising by an honest industry to greater estates than those of their elder brothers. It is not improbable but Will was formerly tried at divinity, law, or physic; and that finding his genius did not lie that way, his parents gave him up at length to his own inventions. But certainly, however improper he might have been for studies of a higher nature, he was perfectly well turned for the occupations of trade and commerce. As I think this is a point which cannot be too much inculcated, I shall desire my reader to compare what I have here written with what I have said in my twenty-first speculation.

    VIII. A SUNDAY AT SIR ROGER'S.

    Spectator No. 112. Addison.

    I am always very well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human [38] institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the eye of the village. A country fellow distinguishes himself as much in the churchyard, as a citizen does upon the 'Change, [39] the whole parish politics being generally discussed in that place, either after sermon or before the bell rings.

    My friend Sir Roger, being a good churchman, has beautified the inside of his church with several texts of his own choosing; he has likewise given a handsome pulpit cloth, and railed in the communion-table at his own expense. He has often told me that, at his coming to his estate, he found his parishioners very irregular; and that in order to make them kneel and join in the responses, he gave every one of them a hassock and a Common Prayer Book: and at the same time employed an itinerant singing-master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the Psalms; upon which they now very much value themselves, and indeed outdo most of the country churches that I have ever heard.

    As Sir Roger is landlord to the whole congregation, he keeps them in very good order, and will suffer nobody to sleep in it besides himself; for if by chance he has been surprised into a short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of it he stands up and looks about him, and, if he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes them himself, or sends his servant to them. Several other of the old Knight's particularities break out upon these occasions: sometimes he will be lengthening out a verse in the singing Psalms half a minute after the rest of the congregation have done with it; sometimes, when he is pleased with the matter of his devotion, he pronounces “Amen” three or four times to the same prayer; and sometimes stands up when everybody else is upon their knees, to count the congregation, or see if any of his tenants are missing.

    I was yesterday very much surprised to hear my old friend, in the midst of the service, calling out to one John Matthews to mind what he was about, and not disturb the congregation. This John Matthews it seems is remarkable for being an idle fellow, and at that time was kicking his heels for his diversion. This authority of the Knight, though exerted in that odd manner which accompanies him in all circumstances of life, has a very good effect upon the parish, who are not polite enough to see anything ridiculous in his behavior; besides that the general good sense and worthiness of his character makes his friends observe these little singularities as foils that rather set off than blemish his good qualities.

    As soon as the sermon is finished, nobody presumes to stir till Sir Roger is gone out of the church. The Knight walks down from his seat in the chancel between a double row of his tenants, that stand bowing to him on each side, and every now and then inquires how such an one's wife, or mother, or son, or father do, whom he does not see at church,— which is understood as a secret reprimand to the person that is absent.

    The chaplain has often told me, that upon a catechising-day, when Sir Roger has been pleased with a boy that answers well, he has ordered a Bible to be given him next day for his encouragement, and sometimes accompanies it with a flitch of bacon to his mother. Sir Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to the clerk's place; and that he may encourage the young fellows to make themselves perfect in the church service, has promised, upon the death of the present incumbent, who is very old, to bestow it according to merit.

    The fair understanding between Sir Roger and his chaplain, and their mutual concurrence in doing good, is the more remarkable, because the very next village is famous for the differences and contentions that rise between the parson and the squire, who live in a perpetual state of war. The parson is always preaching at the squire, and the squire, to be revenged on the parson, never comes to church. The squire has made all his tenants atheists and tithe-stealers; while the parson instructs them every Sunday in the dignity of his order, and insinuates to them in almost every sermon that he is a better man than his patron. In short, matters are come to such an extremity, that the squire has not said his prayers either in public or private this half year; and that the parson threatens him, if he does not mend his manners, to pray for him in the face of the whole congregation.

    Feuds of this nature, though too frequent in the country, are very fatal to the ordinary people; who are so used to be dazzled with riches, that they pay as much deference to the understanding of a man of an estate as of a man of learning; and are very hardly brought to regard any truth, how important soever it may be, that is preached to them, when they know there are several men of five hundred a year who do not believe it.

    IX. SIR ROGER AND THE WIDOW.

    Spectator No. 113. Steele.

    In my first description of the company in which I pass most of my time, it may be remembered that I mentioned a great affliction which my friend Sir Roger had met with in his youth: which was no less than a disappointment in love. It happened this evening that we fell into a very pleasing walk at a distance from his house; as soon as we came into it, “It is,” quoth the good old man, looking round him with a smile, “very hard, that any part of my land should be settled upon one who has used me so ill as the perverse Widow did; and yet I am sure I could not see a sprig of any bough of this whole walk of trees, but I should reflect upon her and her severity. She has certainly the finest hand of any woman in the world. You are to know this was the place wherein I used to muse upon her; and by that custom I can never come into it, but the same tender sentiments revive in my mind as if I had actually walked with that beautiful creature under these shades. I have been fool enough to carve[40] her name on the bark of several of these trees; so unhappy is the condition of men in love to attempt the removing of their passion by the methods which serve only to imprint it deeper. She has certainly the finest hand of any woman in the world.”

    Here followed a profound silence; and I was not displeased to observe my friend falling so naturally into a discourse which I had ever before taken notice he industriously avoided. After a very long pause he entered upon an account of this great circumstance in his life, with an air which I thought raised my idea of him above what I had ever had before; and gave me the picture of that cheerful mind of his, before it received that stroke which has ever since affected his words and actions. But he went on as follows:—

    “I came to my estate in my twenty-second year, and resolved to follow the steps of the most worthy of my ancestors who have inhabited this spot of earth before me, in all the methods of hospitality and good neighborhood, for the sake of my fame, and in country sports and recreations, for the sake of my health. In my twenty-third year I was obliged to serve as sheriff of the county; and in my servants, officers, and whole equipage, indulged the pleasure of a young man (who did not think ill of his own person) in taking that public occasion of showing my figure and behavior to advantage. You may easily imagine to yourself what appearance I made, who am pretty tall, rid well, and was very well dressed, at the head of a whole county, with music before me, a feather in my hat, and my horse well bitted. I can assure you I was not a little pleased with the kind looks and glances I had from all the balconies and windows as I rode to the hall where the assizes were held. But when I came there, a beautiful creature in a widow's habit sat in court, to hear the event of a cause concerning her dower. This commanding creature (who was born for destruction of all who behold her) put on such a resignation in her countenance, and bore the whispers of all around the court with such a pretty uneasiness, I warrant you, and then recovered herself from one eye to another, till she was perfectly confused by meeting something so wistful in all she encountered, that at last, with a murrain to her, she cast her bewitching eye upon me. I no sooner met it but I bowed like a great surprised booby; and knowing her cause to be the first which came on, I cried, like a captivated calf as I was, 'Make way for the defendant's witnesses.' This sudden partiality made all the county immediately see the sheriff also was become a slave to the fine widow. During the time her cause was upon trial, she behaved herself, I warrant you, with such a deep attention to her business, took opportunities to have little billets handed to her counsel, then would be in such a pretty confusion, occasioned, you must know, by acting before so much company, that not only I but the whole court was prejudiced in her favor; and all that the next heir to her husband had to urge was thought so groundless and frivolous, that when it came to her counsel to reply, there was not half so much said as every one besides in the court thought he could have urged to her advantage. You must understand, sir, this perverse woman is one of those unaccountable creatures, that secretly rejoice in the admiration of men, but indulge themselves in no further consequences. Hence it is that she has ever had a train of admirers, and she removes from her slaves in town to those in the country, according to the seasons of the year. She is a reading lady, and far gone in the pleasures of friendship: she is always accompanied by a confidant, who is witness to her daily protestations against our sex, and consequently a bar to her first steps towards love, upon the strength of her own maxims and declarations.

    “However, I must needs say this accomplished mistress of mine has distinguished me above the rest, and has been known to declare Sir Roger de Coverley was the tamest and most human of all the brutes in the country. I was told she said so by one who thought he rallied me; but upon the strength of this slender encouragement of being thought least detestable, I made new liveries, new-paired my coach-horses, sent them all to town to be bitted, and taught to throw their legs well, and move all together, before I pretended to cross the country and wait upon her. As soon as I thought my retinue suitable to the character of my fortune and youth, I set out from hence to make my addresses. The particular skill of this lady has ever been to inflame your wishes, and yet command respect. To make her mistress of this art, she has a greater share of knowledge, wit, and good sense than is usual even among men of merit. Then she is beautiful beyond the race of women. If you won't let her go on with a certain artifice with her eyes, and the skill of beauty, she will arm herself with her real charms, and strike you with admiration. It is certain that if you were to behold the whole woman, there is that dignity in her aspect, that composure in her motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her form makes you hope, her merit makes you fear. But then again, she is such a desperate scholar, that no country gentleman can approach her without being a jest. As I was going to tell you, when I came to her house I was admitted to her presence with great civility; at the same time she placed herself to be first seen by me in such an attitude, as I think you call the posture of a picture, that she discovered new charms, and I at last came towards her with such an awe as made me speechless. This she no sooner observed but she made her advantage of it, and began a discourse to me concerning love and honor, as they both are followed by pretenders, and the real votaries to them. When she had discussed these points in a discourse, which I verily believe was as learned as the best philosopher in Europe could possibly make, she asked me whether she was so happy as to fall in with my sentiments on these important particulars. Her confidant sat by her, and upon my being in the last confusion and silence, this malicious aid of hers turning to her says, 'I am very glad to observe Sir Roger pauses upon this subject, and seems resolved to deliver all his sentiments upon the matter when he pleases to speak.' They both kept their countenances, and after I had sat half an hour meditating how to behave before such profound casuists, I rose up and took my leave. Chance has since that time thrown me very often in her way, and she as often has directed a discourse to me which I do not understand. This barbarity has kept me ever at a distance from the most beautiful object my eyes ever beheld. It is thus also she deals with all mankind, and you must make love to her, as you would conquer the sphinx, by posing her. But were she like other women, and that there were any talking to her, how constant must the pleasure of that man be, who could converse with a creature— But, after all, you may be sure her heart is fixed on some one or other; and yet I have been credibly informed— but who can believe half that is said? After she had done speaking to me, she put her hand to her bosom and adjusted her tucker. Then she cast her eyes a little down, upon my beholding her too earnestly. They say she sings excellently: her voice in her ordinary speech has something in it inexpressibly sweet. You must know I dined with her at a public table the day after I first saw her, and she helped me to some tansy in the eye of all the gentlemen in the country: she has certainly the finest hand of any woman in the world. I can assure you, sir, were you to behold her, you would be in the same condition; for as her speech is music, her form is angelic. But I find I grow irregular while I am talking of her; but indeed it would be stupidity to be unconcerned at such perfection. Oh the excellent creature! she is as inimitable to all women as she is inaccessible to all men.”

    I found my friend begin to rave, and insensibly led him towards the house, that we might be joined by some other company; and am convinced that the Widow is the secret cause of all that inconsistency which appears in some parts of my friend's discourse; though he has so much command of himself as not directly to mention her, yet according to that [passage] of Martial,[41] which one knows not how to render in English, Dum tacet hanc loquitur.[42] I shall end this paper with that whole epigram, which represents with much humor my honest friend's condition.

    Quicquid agit Rufus, nihil est, nisi Naevia Rufo,
      Si gaudet, si flet, si tacet, hanc loquitur:
    Coenat, propinat, poscit, negat, annuit, una est
      Naevia; si non sit Naevia, mutus erit.
    Scriberet hesternâ patri cûm luce salutem,
      Naevia lux, inquit, Naevia lumen, ave.


    Let Rufus weep, rejoice, stand, sit, or walk,
    Still he can nothing but of Naevia talk;
    Let him eat, drink, ask questions, or dispute,
    Still he must speak of Naevia, or be mute;
    He writ to his father, ending with this line,
    “I am, my lovely Naevia, ever thine.”

    X. BODILY EXERCISE.

    Spectator No. 115. Addison.

    Bodily labor is of two kinds, either that which a man submits to for his livelihood, or that which he undergoes for his pleasure. The latter of them generally changes the name of labor for that of exercise, but differs only from ordinary labor as it rises from another motive.

    A country life abounds in both these kinds of labor, and for that reason gives a man a greater stock of health, and consequently a more perfect enjoyment of himself, than any other way of life. I consider the body as a system of tubes and glands, or, to use a more rustic phrase, a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for the soul to work with. This description does not only comprehend the bowels, bones, tendons, veins, nerves, and arteries, but every muscle and every ligature, which is a composition of fibres, that are so many imperceptible tubes or pipes interwoven on all sides with invisible glands or strainers.

    This general idea of a human body, without considering it in its niceties of anatomy, lets us see how absolutely necessary labor is for the right preservation of it. There must be frequent motions and agitations, to mix, digest, and separate the juices contained in it, as well as to clear and cleanse that infinitude of pipes and strainers of which it is composed, and to give their solid parts a more firm and lasting tone. Labor or exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.

    I might here mention the effects which this has upon all the facilities of the mind, by keeping the understanding clear, the imagination untroubled, and refining those spirits that are necessary for the proper exertion of our intellectual faculties, during the present laws of union between soul and body. It is to a neglect in this particular that we must ascribe the spleen which is so frequent in men of studious and sedentary tempers, as well as the vapors to which those of the other sex are so often subject.

    Had not exercise been absolutely necessary for our well-being, nature would not have made the body so proper for it, by giving such an activity to the limbs, and such a pliancy to every part as necessarily produce those compressions, extensions, contortions, dilatations, and all other kinds of motions that are necessary for the preservation of such a system of tubes and glands as has been before mentioned. And that we might not want inducements to engage us in such an exercise of the body as is proper for its welfare, it is so ordered that nothing valuable can be procured without it. Not to mention riches and honor, even food and raiment are not to be come at without the toil of the hands and sweat of the brows. Providence furnishes materials, but expects that we should work them up ourselves. The earth must be labored before it gives its increase, and when it is forced into its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture naturally employ more than nineteen parts of the species in twenty: and as for those who are not obliged to labor, by the condition in which they are born, they are more miserable than the rest of mankind unless they indulge themselves in that voluntary labor which goes by the name of exercise. My friend Sir Roger has been an indefatigable man in business of this kind, and has hung several parts of his house with the trophies of his former labors. The walls of his great hall are covered with the horns of several kinds of deer that he has killed in the chase, which he thinks the most valuable furniture of his house, as they afford him frequent topics of discourse, and show that he has not been idle. At the lower end of the hall is a large otter's skin stuffed with hay, which his mother ordered to be hung up in that manner, and the Knight looks upon with great satisfaction, because it seems he was but nine years old when his dog killed him. A little room adjoining to the hall is a kind of arsenal filled with guns of several sizes and inventions, with which the Knight has made great havoc in the woods, and destroyed many thousands of pheasants, partridges, and woodcocks. His stable doors are patched with noses that belonged to foxes of the Knight's own hunting down. Sir Roger showed me one of them that for distinction's sake has a brass nail struck through it, which cost him about fifteen hours' riding, carried him through half a dozen counties, killed him a brace of geldings, and lost about half his dogs. This the Knight looks upon as one of the greatest exploits of his life. The perverse Widow, whom I have given some account of, was the death of several foxes; for Sir Roger has told me that in the course of his amours he patched the western door of his stable. Whenever the Widow was cruel, the foxes were sure to pay for it. In proportion as his passion for the Widow abated and old age came on, he left off fox-hunting; but a hare is not yet safe that sits within ten miles of his house.

    There is no kind of exercise which I would so recommend to my readers of both sexes as this of riding, as there is none which so much conduces to health, and is every way accommodated to the body, according to the idea which I have given of it. Doctor Sydenham is very lavish in its praises; and if the English reader will see the mechanical effects of it described at length, he may find them in a book published not many years since under the title of Medicina Gymnastica. For my own part, when I am in town, for want of these opportunities, I exercise myself an hour every morning upon a dumb-bell that is placed in a corner of my room, and pleases me the more because it does everything I require of it in the most profound silence. My landlady and her daughters are so well acquainted with my hours of exercise, that they never come into my room to disturb me whilst I am ringing.

    When I was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition; it is there called the “okiouaxia,” or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand, and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and gives a man all the pleasure of boxing, without the blows. I could wish that several learned men would lay out that time which they employ in controversies and disputes about nothing, in this method of fighting with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to evaporate the spleen, which makes them uneasy to the public as well as to themselves.

    To conclude: As I am a compound of soul and body, I consider myself as obliged to a double scheme of duties; and I think I have not fulfilled the business of the day when I do not thus employ the one in labor and exercise, as well as the other in study and contemplation.

    XI. THE COVERLEY HUNT. [43]

    Spectator No. 116. Budgell.

    Those who have searched into human nature observe, that nothing so much shows the nobleness of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. Every man has such an active principle in him, that he will find out something to employ himself upon, in whatever place or state of life he is posted. I have heard of a gentleman who was under close confinement in the Bastile[44] seven years; during which time he amused himself in scattering a few small pins about his chamber, gathering them up again, and placing them in different figures on the arm of a great chair. He often told his friends afterwards, that unless he had found out this piece of exercise, he verily believed he should have lost his senses.

    After what has been said, I need not inform my readers, that Sir Roger, with whose character I hope they are at present pretty well acquainted, has in his youth gone through the whole course of those rural diversions which the country abounds in; and which seem to be extremely well suited to that laborious industry a man may observe here in a far greater degree than in towns and cities. I have before hinted at some of my friend's exploits: he has in his youthful days taken forty coveys of partridges in a season; and tired many a salmon with a line consisting but of a single hair. The constant thanks and good wishes of the neighborhood always attended him on account of his remarkable enmity towards foxes; having destroyed more of those vermin in one year than it was thought the whole country could have produced. Indeed, the Knight does not scruple to own among his most intimate friends, that in order to establish his reputation this way, he has secretly sent for great numbers of them out of other counties, which he used to turn loose about the country by night, that he might the better signalize himself in their destruction the next day. His hunting horses were the finest and best managed in all these parts: his tenants are still full of the praises of a gray stone horse that unhappily staked himself several years since, and was buried with great solemnity in the orchard.

    Sir Roger, being at present too old for fox-hunting, to keep himself in action, has disposed of his beagles and got a pack of stop-hounds. What these want in speed he endeavors to make amends for by the deepness of their mouths and the variety of their notes, which are suited in such manner to each other that the whole cry makes up a complete concert. He is so nice in this particular, that a gentleman having made him a present of a very fine hound the other day, the Knight returned it by the servant with a great many expressions of civility; but desired him to tell his master that the dog he had sent was indeed a most excellent base, but that at present he only wanted a counter-tenor. Could I believe my friend had ever read Shakespeare I should certainly conclude he had taken the hint from Theseus in the Midsummer Night's Dream:—

    My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,
    So flew'd, so sanded; and their heads are hung
    With ears that sweep away the morning dew;
    Crook-knee'd and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls;
    Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells,
    Each under each: a cry more tuneable
    Was never holla'd to, nor cheer'd with horn.

    Sir Roger is so keen at this sport that he has been out almost every day since I came down; and upon the chaplain's offering to lend me his easy pad, I was prevailed on yesterday morning to make one of the company. I was extremely pleased, as we rid along, to observe the general benevolence of all the neighborhood towards my friend. The farmers' sons thought themselves happy if they could open a gate for the good old Knight as he passed by; which he generally requited with a nod or a smile, and a kind inquiry after their fathers and uncles.

    After we had rid about a mile from home, we came upon a large heath, and the sportsmen began to beat. They had done so for some time, when, as I was at a little distance from the rest of the company, I saw a hare pop out from a small furze-brake almost under my horse's feet. I marked the way she took, which I endeavored to make the company sensible of by extending my arm; but to no purpose, till Sir Roger, who knows that none of my extraordinary motions are insignificant, rode up to me, and asked me if puss was gone that way. Upon my answering “Yes,” he immediately called in the dogs and put them upon the scent. As they were going off, I heard one of the country-fellows muttering to his companion that 'twas a wonder they had not lost all their sport, for want of the silent gentleman's crying “Stole away!” This, with my aversion to leaping hedges, made me withdraw to a rising ground, from whence I could have the picture of the whole chase, without the fatigue of keeping in with the hounds. The hare immediately threw them above a mile behind her; but I was pleased to find that instead of running straight forwards, or in hunter's language, “flying the country,” as I was afraid she might have done, she wheeled about, and described a sort of circle round the hill where I had taken my station, in such manner as gave me a very distinct view of the sport. I could see her first pass by, and the dogs some time afterwards unravelling the whole track she had made, and following her through all her doubles. I was at the same time delighted in observing that deference which the rest of the pack paid to each particular hound, according to the character he had acquired amongst them: if they were at fault, and an old hound of reputation opened but once, he was immediately followed by the whole cry; while a raw dog, or one who was a noted liar, might have yelped his heart out, without being taken notice of.

    The hare now, after having squatted two or three times, and been put up again as often, came still nearer to the place where she was at first started. The dogs pursued her, and these were followed by the jolly Knight, who rode upon a white gelding, encompassed by his tenants and servants, and cheering his hounds with all the gaiety of five-and-twenty. One of the sportsmen rode up to me, and told me that he was sure the chase was almost at an end, because the old dogs, which had hitherto lain behind, now headed the pack. The fellow was in the right. Our hare took a large field just under us, followed by the full cry, “In view.” I must confess the brightness of the weather, the cheerfulness of everything around me, the chiding of the hounds, which was returned upon us in a double echo from two neighboring hills, with the holloaing of the sportsmen, and the sounding of the horn, lifted my spirits into a most lively pleasure, which I freely indulged because I was sure it was innocent. If I was under any concern, it was on the account of the poor hare, that was now quite spent, and almost within the reach of her enemies; when the huntsman, getting forward, threw down his pole before the dogs. They were now within eight yards of that game which they had been pursuing for almost as many hours; yet on the signal before-mentioned they all made a sudden stand, and though they continued opening as much as before, durst not once attempt to pass beyond the pole. At the same time Sir Roger rode forward, and alighting, took up the hare in his arms; which he soon delivered up to one of his servants with an order, if she could be kept alive, to let her go in his great orchard; where it seems he has several of these prisoners of war, who live together in a very comfortable captivity. I was highly pleased to see the discipline of the pack, and the good nature of the Knight, who could not find in his heart to murder a creature that had given him so much diversion.

    As we were returning home, I remembered that Monsieur Pascal, [45] in his most excellent discourse on the Misery of Man, tells us, that all our endeavors after greatness proceed from nothing but a desire of being surrounded by a multitude of persons and affairs that may hinder us from looking into ourselves, which is a view we cannot bear. He afterwards goes on to show that our love of sports comes from the same reason, and is particularly severe upon hunting. “What,” says he, “unless it be to drown thought, can make men throw away so much time and pains upon a silly animal, which they might buy cheaper in the market?” The foregoing reflection is certainly just, when a man suffers his whole mind to be drawn into his sports, and altogether loses himself in the woods; but does not affect those who propose a far more laudable end for this exercise, I mean the preservation of health, and keeping all the organs of the soul in a condition to execute her orders. Had that incomparable person, whom I last quoted, been a little more indulgent to himself in this point, the world might probably have enjoyed him much longer; whereas through too great an application to his studies in his youth, he contracted that ill habit of body, which, after a tedious sickness, carried him off in the fortieth year of his age; and the whole history we have of his life till that time is but one continued account of the behavior of a noble soul struggling under innumerable pains and distempers.

    For my own part I intend to hunt twice a week during my stay with Sir Roger; and shall prescribe the moderate use of this exercise to all my country friends, as the best kind of physic for mending a bad constitution, and preserving a good one.

    I cannot do this better, than in the following lines out of Mr. Dryden:—

    The first physicians by debauch were made;
    Excess began, and sloth sustained the trade.
    By chase our long-lived fathers earned their food;
    Toil strung the nerves, and purified the blood;
    But we their sons, a pamper'd race of men,
    Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten.
    Better to hunt in fields for health unbought
    Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.
    The wise for cure on exercise depend:
    God never made His work for man to mend. [46]

    XII. THE COVERLEY WITCH. [47]

    Spectator No. 117. Addison.

    There are some opinions in which a man should stand neuter, without engaging his assent to one side or the other. Such a hovering faith as this, which refuses to settle upon any determination, is absolutely necessary to a mind that is careful to avoid errors and prepossessions. When the arguments press equally on both sides in matters that are indifferent to us, the safest method is to give up ourselves to neither.

    It is with this temper of mind that I consider the subject of witchcraft. When I hear the relations that are made from all parts of the world, not only from Norway and Lapland, from the East and West Indies, but from every particular nation in Europe, I cannot forbear thinking that there is such an intercourse and commerce with evil spirits as that which we express by the name of witchcraft. But when I consider that the ignorant and credulous parts of the world abound most in these relations, and that the persons among us who are supposed to engage in such an infernal commerce are people of a weak understanding and a crazed imagination, and at the same time reflect upon the many impostures and delusions of this nature that have been detected in all ages, I endeavor to suspend my belief till I hear more certain accounts than any which have yet come to my knowledge. In short, when I consider the question, whether there are such persons in the world as those we call witches, my mind is divided between the two opposite opinions: or rather (to speak my thoughts freely) I believe in general that there is, and has been, such a thing as witchcraft; but at the same time can give no credit to any particular instance of it.

    I am engaged in this speculation by some occurrences that I met with yesterday, which I shall give my reader an account of at large. As I was walking with my friend Sir Roger by the side of one of his woods, an old woman applied herself to me for my charity. Her dress and figure put me in mind of the following description in Otway:—

    In a close lane as I pursued my journey,
    I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double,
    Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself.
    Her eyes with scalding rheum were gall'd and red;
    Cold palsy shook her head; her hands seem'd withered;
    And on her crooked shoulders had she wrapp'd
    The tatter'd remnants of an old striped hanging,
    Which served to keep her carcase from the cold:
    So there was nothing of a piece about her.
    Her lower weeds were all o'er coarsely patch'd
    With diff'rent color'd rags, black, red, white, yellow,
    And seem'd to speak variety of wretchedness.

    As I was musing on this description, and comparing it with the object before me, the Knight told me that this very old woman had the reputation of a witch all over the country, that her lips were observed to be always in motion, and that there was not a switch about her house which her neighbors did not believe had carried her several hundreds of miles. If she chanced to stumble, they always found sticks or straws that lay in the figure of a cross before her. If she made any mistake at church, and cried Amen in a wrong place, they never failed to conclude that she was saying her prayers backwards. There was not a maid in the parish that would take a pin of her, though she would offer a bag of money with it. She goes by the name of Moll White, and has made the country ring with several imaginary exploits which are palmed upon her. If the dairymaid does not make her butter come so soon as she should have it, Moll White is at the bottom of the churn. If a horse sweats in the stable, Moll White has been upon his back. If a hare makes an unexpected escape from the hounds, the huntsman curses Moll White. “Nay,” says Sir Roger, “I have known the master of the pack, upon such an occasion, send one of his servants to see if Moll White had been out that morning.”

    This account raised my curiosity so far, that I begged my friend Sir Roger to go with me into her hovel, which stood in a solitary corner under the side of the wood. Upon our first entering Sir Roger winked to me, and pointed at something that stood behind the door, which, upon looking that way, I found to be an old broomstaff. At the same time he whispered me in the ear to take notice of a tabby cat that sat in the chimney-corner, which, as the old Knight told me, lay under as bad a report as Moll White herself; for besides that Moll is said often to accompany her in the same shape, the cat is reported to have spoken twice or thrice in her life, and to have played several pranks above the capacity of an ordinary cat.

    I was secretly concerned to see human nature in so much wretchedness and disgrace, but at the same time could not forbear smiling to hear Sir Roger, who is a little puzzled about the old woman, advising her as a Justice of Peace to avoid all communication with the devil, and never to hurt any of her neighbors' cattle. We concluded our visit with a bounty, which was very acceptable.

    In our return home, Sir Roger told me that old Moll had been often brought before him for making children spit pins, and giving maids the nightmare; and that the country people would be tossing her into a pond and trying experiments with her every day, if it was, not for him and his chaplain.

    I have since found upon inquiry that Sir Roger was several times staggered with the reports that had been brought him concerning this old woman, and would frequently have bound her over to the county sessions had not his chaplain, with much ado, persuaded him to the contrary.

    I have been the more particular in this account, because I hear there is scarce a village in England that has not a Moll White in it. When an old woman begins to dote, and grow chargeable to a parish, she is generally turned into a witch, and fills the whole country with extravagant fancies, imaginary distempers, and terrifying dreams. In the meantime, the poor wretch that is the innocent occasion of so many evils begins to be frighted at herself, and sometimes confesses secret commerce and familiarities that her imagination forms in a delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest objects of compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards those poor decrepit parts of our species, in whom human nature is defaced by infirmity and dotage.

    XIII. SIR ROGER'S DISCOURSE ON LOVE. [47]

    Spectator No. 118. Steele.

    This agreeable seat is surrounded with so many pleasing walks which are struck out of a wood in the midst of which the house stands, that one can hardly ever be weary of rambling from one labyrinth of delight to another. To one used to live in a city the charms of the country are so exquisite, that the mind is lost in a certain transport which raises us above ordinary life, and is yet not strong enough to be inconsistent with tranquillity. This state of mind was I in, ravished with the murmur of waters, the whisper of breezes, the singing of birds; and whether I looked up to the heavens, down on the earth, or turned to the prospects around me, still struck with new sense of pleasure; when I found by the voice of my friend, who walked by me, that we had insensibly strolled into the grove sacred to the Widow. “This woman,” says he, “is of all others the most unintelligible; she either designs to marry, or she does not. What is the most perplexing of all is, that she doth not either say to her lovers she has any resolution against that condition of life in general, or that she banishes them; but conscious of her own merit, she permits their addresses without fear of any ill consequence, or want of respect, from their rage or despair. She has that in her aspect against which it is impossible to offend. A man whose thoughts are constantly bent upon so agreeable an object, must be excused if the ordinary occurrences in conversation are below his attention. I call her indeed perverse, but, alas! why do I call her so? Because her superior merit is such, that I cannot approach her without awe, that my heart is checked by too much esteem: I am angry that her charms are not more accessible, that I am more inclined to worship than salute her: how often have I wished her unhappy that I might have an opportunity of serving her? and how often troubled in that very imagination, at giving her the pain of being obliged? Well, I have led a miserable life in secret upon her account; but fancy she would have condescended to have some regard for me, if it had not been for that watchful animal her confidant.

    “Of all persons under the sun,” continued he, calling me by my name, “be sure to set a mark upon confidants; they are of all people the most impertinent. What is most pleasant to observe in them is that they assume to themselves the merit of the persons whom they have in their custody. Orestilla is a great fortune, and in wonderful danger of surprises, therefore full of suspicions of the least indifferent thing, particularly careful of new acquaintance, and of growing too familiar with the old. Themista, her favorite woman, is every whit as careful of, whom she speaks to, and what she says. Let the ward be a beauty, her confidant shall treat you with an air of distance; let her be a fortune, and she assumes the suspicious behavior of her friend and patroness. Thus it is that very many of our unmarried women of distinction are to all intents and purposes married, except the consideration of different sexes. They are directly under the conduct of their whisperer; and think they are in a state of freedom, while they can prate with one of these attendants of all men in general, and still avoid the man they most like. You do not see one heiress in an hundred whose fate does not turn upon this circumstance of choosing a confidant. Thus it is that the lady is addressed to, presented and flattered, only by proxy, in her woman. In my case, how is it possible that— ”

    Sir Roger was proceeding in his harangue, when we heard the voice of one speaking very importunately, and repeating these words, “What, not one smile?” We followed the sound till we came to a close thicket, on the other side of which we saw a young woman sitting as it were in a personated sullenness just over a transparent fountain. Opposite to her stood Mr. William, Sir Roger's master of the game. The Knight whispered me, “Hist, these are lovers.” The huntsman looking earnestly at the shadow of the young maiden in the stream, “O thou dear picture, if thou couldst remain there in the absence of that fair creature whom you represent in the water, how willingly could I stand here satisfied forever, without troubling my dear Betty herself with any mention of her unfortunate William, whom she is angry with: but alas! when she pleases to be gone, thou wilt also vanish— yet let me talk to thee while thou dost stay. Tell my dearest Betty thou dost not more depend upon her than does her William: her absence will make away with me as well as thee. If she offers to remove thee, I'll jump into these waves to lay hold on thee; herself, her own dear person, I must never embrace again.— Still do you hear me without one smile— it is too much to bear.” He had no sooner spoke these words but he made an offer of throwing himself into the water; at which his mistress started up, and at the next instant he jumped across the fountain and met her in an embrace. She, half recovering from her fright, said in the most charming voice imaginable and with a tone of complaint, “I thought how well you would drown yourself. No, no, you won't drown yourself till you have taken your leave of Susan Holliday.” The huntsman, with a tenderness that spoke the most passionate love, and with his cheek close to hers, whispered the softest vows of fidelity in her ear, and cried, “Don't, my dear, believe a word Kate Willow says; she is spiteful and makes stories, because she loves to hear me talk to herself for your sake.”

    “Look you there,” quoth Sir Roger, “do you see there, all mischief comes from confidants! But let us not interrupt them; the maid is honest, and the man dares not be otherwise, for he knows I loved her father; I will interpose in this matter, and hasten the wedding. Kate Willow is a witty, mischievous wench in the neighborhood, who was a beauty; and makes me hope I shall see the perverse Widow in her condition. She was so flippant with her answers to all the honest fellows that came near her, and so very vain of her beauty, that she has valued herself upon her charms till they are ceased. She therefore now makes it her business to prevent other young women from being more discreet than she was herself; however, the saucy thing said the other day well enough, 'Sir Roger and I must make a match, for we are both despised by those we loved.' The hussy has a great deal of power wherever she comes, and has her share of cunning.

    “However, when I reflect upon this woman, I do not know whether in the main I am the worse for having loved her; whenever she is recalled to my imagination my youth returns, and I feel a forgotten warmth in my veins. This affliction in my life has streaked all my conduct with a softness of which I should otherwise have been incapable. It is, perhaps, to this dear image in my heart owing, that I am apt to relent, that I easily forgive, and that many desirable things are grown into my temper, which I should not have arrived at by better motives than the thought of being one day hers. I am pretty well satisfied such a passion as I have had is never well cured; and between you and me, I am often apt to imagine it has had some whimsical effect upon my brain. For I frequently find, that in my most serious discourse I let fall some comical familiarity of speech or odd phrase that makes the company laugh; however, I cannot but allow she is a most excellent woman. When she is in the country, I warrant she does not run into dairies, but reads upon the nature of plants; but has a glass hive, and comes into the garden out of books to see them work, and observe the policies of their commonwealth. She understands everything. I'd give ten pounds to hear her argue with my friend Sir Andrew Freeport about trade. No, no, for all she looks so innocent as it were, take my word for it she is no fool.”

    XIV. TOWN AND COUNTRY MANNERS. [48]

    Spectator No. 119. Addison.

    The first and most obvious reflections which arise in a man who changes the city for the country, are upon the different manners of the people whom he meets with in those two different scenes of life. By manners I do not mean morals, but behavior and good-breeding as they show themselves in the town and in the country.

    And here, in the first place, I must observe a very great revolution that has happened in this article of good-breeding. Several obliging deferences, condescensions, and submissions, with many outward forms and ceremonies that accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer part of mankind, who lived in courts and cities, and distinguished themselves from the rustic part of the species (who on all occasions acted bluntly and naturally) by such a mutual complaisance and intercourse of civilities. These forms of conversation by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the modish world found too great a constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside. Conversation, like the Romish religion, was so encumbered with show and ceremony, that it stood in need of a reformation to retrench its superfluities, and restore it to its natural good sense and beauty. At present therefore an unconstrained carriage, and a certain openness of behavior, are the height of good-breeding. The fashionable world is grown free and easy; our manners sit more loose upon us. Nothing is so modish as an agreeable negligence. In a word, good-breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.

    If after this we look on the people of mode in the country, we find in them the manners of the last age. They have no sooner fetched themselves up to the fashion of the polite world, but the town has dropped them, and are nearer to the first state of nature than to those refinements which formerly reigned in the court, and still prevail in the country. One may now know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding. A polite country squire shall make you as many bows in half an hour as would serve a courtier for a week. There is infinitely more to do about place and precedency in a meeting of justices' wives than in an assembly of duchesses.

    This rural politeness is very troublesome to a man of my temper, who generally take the chair that is next me, and walk first or last, in the front or in the rear, as chance directs. I have known my friend Sir Roger's dinner almost cold before the company could adjust the ceremonial, and be prevailed upon to sit down; and have heartily pitied my old friend, when I have seen him forced to pick and cull his guests, as they sat at the several parts of his table, that he might drink their healths according to their respective ranks and qualities. Honest Will Wimble, who I should have thought had been altogether uninfected with ceremony, gives me abundance of trouble in this particular. Though he has been fishing all the morning, he will not help himself at dinner till I am served. When we are going out of the hall, he runs behind me; and last night, as we were walking in the fields, stopped short at a stile till I came up to it, and upon my making signs to him to get over, told me, with a serious smile, that sure I believed they had no manners in the country.

    There has happened another revolution in the point of good-breeding, which relates to the conversation among men of mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first distinctions of a well-bred man, to express everything that had the most remote appearance of being obscene, in modest terms and distant phrases; whilst the clown, who had no such delicacy of conception and expression, clothed his ideas in those plain, homely terms that are the most obvious and natural. This kind of good manners was perhaps carried to an excess, so as to make conversation too stiff, formal, and precise: for which reason (as hypocrisy in one age is generally succeeded by atheism in another) conversation is in a great measure relapsed into the first extreme; so that at present several of our men of the town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse, uncivilized words in our language, and utter themselves often in such a manner as a clown would blush to hear.

    This infamous piece of good-breeding, which reigns among the coxcombs of the town, has not yet made its way into the country; and as it is impossible for such an irrational way of conversation to last long among a people that make any profession of religion, or show of modesty, if the country gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the lurch. Their good-breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a parcel of lewd clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like men of wit and pleasure.

    As the two points of good-breeding, which I have hitherto insisted upon, regard behavior and conversation, there is a third which turns upon dress. In this, too, the country are very much behindhand. The rural beaus are not yet got out of the fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the country in red coats and laced hats, while the women in many parts are still trying to outvie one another in the height of their headdresses. [49]

    But a friend of mine, who is now upon the western circuit, having promised to give me an account of the several modes and fashions that prevail in the different parts of the nation through which he passes, I shall defer the enlarging upon this last topic till I have received a letter from him, which I expect every post.

    XV. SIR ROGER AT THE ASSIZES.

    Spectator No. 122. Addison.

    A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.

    My worthy friend Sir Roger is one of those who is not only at peace within himself, but beloved and esteemed by all about him. He receives a suitable tribute for his universal benevolence to mankind, in the returns of affection and good-will which are paid him by every one that lives within his neighborhood. I lately met with two or three odd instances of that general respect which is shown to the good old Knight. He would needs carry Will Wimble and myself with him to the county assizes. As we were upon the road, Will Wimble joined a couple of plain men who rid before us, and conversed with them for some time; during which my friend Sir Roger acquainted me with their characters.

    “The first of them,” says he, “that has a spaniel by his side, is a yeoman of about an hundred pounds a year, an honest man. He is just within the Game-Act, and qualified[50] to kill an hare or a pheasant. He knocks down a dinner with his gun twice or thrice a week; and by that means lives much cheaper than those who have not so good an estate as himself. He would be a good neighbor if he did not destroy so many partridges; in short, he is a very sensible man, shoots flying, and has been several times foreman of the petty jury.

    “The other that rides along with him is Tom Touchy, a fellow famous for taking the law of everybody. There is not one in the town where he lives that he has not sued at a quarter sessions. The rogue had once the impudence to go to law with the Widow. His head is full of costs, damages, and ejectments; he plagued a couple of honest gentlemen so long for a trespass in breaking one of his hedges, till he was forced to sell the ground it enclosed to defray the charges of the prosecution. His father left him fourscore pounds a year, but he has cast[51] and been cast so often, that he is not now worth thirty. I suppose he is going upon the old business of the willow-tree.”[52]

    As Sir Roger was giving me this account of Tom Touchy, Will Wimble and his two companions stopped short till we came up to them. After having paid their respects to Sir Roger, Will told him that Mr. Touchy and he must appeal to him upon a dispute that arose between them. Will, it seems, had been giving his fellow-traveller an account of his angling one day in such a hole; when Tom Touchy, instead of hearing out his story, told him that Mr. Such-an-one, if he pleased, might take the law of him for fishing in that part of the river. My friend Sir Roger heard them both, upon a round trot; and, after having paused some time, told them, with the air of a man who would not give his judgment rashly, that much might be said on both sides. They were neither of them dissatisfied with the Knight's determination, because neither of them found himself in the wrong by it. Upon which we made the best of our way to the assizes.

    The court was sat before Sir Roger came; but notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old Knight at the head of them; who, for his reputation in the country, took occasion to whisper in the judge's ear, that he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit. I was listening to the proceeding of the court with much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observed, to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity.

    Upon his first rising the court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it; and I believe was not so much designed by the Knight himself to inform the court, as to give him a figure in my eye, and keep up his credit in the country.

    I was highly delighted, when the court rose, to see the gentlemen of the country gathering about my old friend, and striving who should compliment him most; at the same time that the ordinary people gazed upon him at a distance, not a little admiring his courage, that was not afraid to speak to the judge.

    In our return home we met with a very odd accident, which I cannot forbear relating, because it shows how desirous all who know Sir Roger are of giving him marks of their esteem. When we were arrived upon the verge of his estate, we stopped at a little inn to rest ourselves and our horses. The man of the house had, it seems, been formerly a servant in the Knight's family; and, to do honor to his old master, had some time since, unknown to Sir Roger, put him up in a sign-post before the door; so that the Knight's Head had hung out upon the road about a week before he himself knew anything of the matter. As soon as Sir Roger was acquainted with it, finding that his servant's indiscretion proceeded wholly from affection and good-will, he only told him that he had made him too high a compliment; and when the fellow seemed to think that could hardly be, added, with a more decisive look, that it was too great an honor for any man under a duke; but told him at the same time that it might be altered with a very few touches, and that he himself would be at the charge of it. Accordingly they got a painter, by the Knight's directions, to add a pair of whiskers to the face, and by a little aggravation of the features to change it into the Saracen's Head.[53] I should not have known this story had not the inn-keeper, upon Sir Roger's alighting, told him in my hearing, that his honor's head was brought back last night with the alterations that he had ordered to be made in it. Upon this, my friend, with his usual cheerfulness, related the particulars above mentioned, and ordered the head to be brought into the room. I could not forbear discovering greater expressions of mirth than ordinary upon the appearance of this monstrous face, under which, notwithstanding it was made to frown and stare in a most extraordinary manner, I could still discover a distant resemblance of my old friend. Sir Roger, upon seeing me laugh, desired me to tell him truly if I thought it possible for people to know him in that disguise. I at first kept my usual silence; but upon the Knight's conjuring me to tell him whether it was not still more like himself than a Saracen, I composed my countenance in the best manner I could, and replied that much might be said on both sides.

    These several adventures, with the Knight's behavior in them, gave me as pleasant a day as ever I met with in any of my travels.

    XVI. SIR ROGER AND PARTY SPIRIT.

    Spectator No. 125. Addison.

    My worthy friend Sir Roger, when we are talking of the malice of parties, very frequently tells us an accident that happened to him when he was a schoolboy, which was at a time when the feuds ran high between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. This worthy Knight, being then but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young Popish cur, and asked him who had made Anne a saint! The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met, which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. “Upon this,” says Sir Roger, “I did not think fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane of the neighborhood, asked what they called the name of that lane.” By which ingenious artifice he found out the place he inquired after, without giving offence to any party. Sir Roger generally closes this narrative with reflections on the mischief that parties do in the country; how they spoil good neighborhood, and make honest gentlemen hate one another; besides that they manifestly tend to the prejudice of the land-tax, and the destruction of the game.

    There cannot a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another, than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular[54] person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common sense.

    A furious party spirit, when it rages in its full violence, exerts itself in civil war and bloodshed; and when it is under its greatest restraints naturally breaks out in falsehood, detraction, calumny, and a partial administration of justice. In a word, it fills a nation with spleen and rancor, and extinguishes all the seeds of good-nature, compassion, and humanity.

    Plutarch[55] says, very finely, "that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because,” says he, “if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.” I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself, and not from its object) answers to that great rule [56] which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that, I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party-principles, and alienated from one another in such a manner, as seems to me altogether inconsistent with, the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.

    If this party spirit has so ill an effect on our morals, it has likewise a very great one upon our judgments. We often hear a poor insipid paper or pamphlet cried up, and sometimes a noble piece depreciated, by those who are of a different principle from the author. One who is actuated by this spirit is almost under an incapacity of discerning either real blemishes or beauties. A man of merit in a different principle is like an object seen in two different mediums, that appears crooked or broken, however straight and entire it may be in itself. For this reason there is scarce a person of any figure in England who does not go by two contrary characters, as opposite to one another as light and darkness. Knowledge and learning suffer in a particular manner from this strange prejudice, which at present prevails amongst all ranks and degrees in the British nation. As men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth, and violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like considerations. An abusive, scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party notions is called fine writing.

    There is one piece of sophistry practised by both sides, and that is the taking any scandalous story, that has been ever whispered or invented of a private man, for a known undoubted truth, and raising suitable speculations upon it. Calumnies that have been never proved, or have been often refuted, are the ordinary postulatums of these infamous scribblers, upon which they proceed as upon first principles granted by all men, though in their hearts they know they are false, or at best very doubtful. When they have laid these foundations of scurrility, it is no wonder that their superstructure is every way answerable to them. If this shameless practice of the present age endures much longer, praise and reproach will cease to be motives of action in good men.

    There are certain periods of time in all governments when this inhuman spirit prevails. Italy was long torn in pieces by the Guelphs and Ghibellines,[57] and France by those who were for and against the League: [58] but it is very unhappy for a man to be born in such a stormy and tempestuous season. It is the restless ambition of artful men that thus breaks a people into factions, and draws several well-meaning persons to their interest by a specious concern for their country. How many honest minds are filled with uncharitable and barbarous notions, out of their zeal for the public good? What cruelties and outrages would they not commit against men of an adverse party, whom they would honor and esteem, if, instead of considering them as they are represented, they knew them as they are? Thus are persons of the greatest probity seduced into shameful errors and prejudices, and made bad men even by that noblest of principles, the love of their country. I cannot here forbear mentioning the famous Spanish proverb, “If there were neither fools nor knaves in the world, all people would be of one mind.”

    For my own part I could heartily wish that all honest men would enter into an association, for the support of one another against the endeavors of those whom they ought to look upon as their common enemies, whatsoever side they may belong to. Were there such an honest body of neutral forces, we should never see the worst of men in great figures of life, because they are useful to a party; nor the best unregarded, because they are above practising those methods which would be grateful to their faction. We should then single every criminal out of the herd, and hunt him down, however formidable and overgrown he might appear; on the contrary, we should shelter distressed innocence, and defend virtue, however beset with contempt or ridicule, envy or defamation. In short, we should not any longer regard our fellow-subjects as Whigs or Tories, but should make the man of merit our friend, and the villain our enemy.

    XVII. SIR ROGER AND THE GYPSIES.

    Spectator No. 130. Addison.

    As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my friend Sir Roger, we saw at a little distance from us a troop of gypsies. Upon the first discovery of them, my friend was in some doubt whether he should not exert the Justice of the Peace upon such a band of lawless vagrants; but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary counsellor on these occasions, and fearing that his poultry might fare the worse for it, he let the thought drop: but at the same time gave me a particular account of the mischiefs they do in the country, in stealing people's goods and spoiling their servants. “If a stray piece of linen hangs upon an hedge,” says Sir Roger, “they are sure to have it; if the hog loses his way in the fields, it is ten to one but he becomes their prey; our geese cannot live in peace for them; if a man prosecutes them with severity, his hen-roost is sure to pay for it: they generally straggle into these parts about this time of the year; and set the heads of our servant-maids so agog for husbands, that we do not expect to have any business done as it should be whilst they are in the country. I have an honest dairy-maid who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your friend the butler has been fool enough to be seduced by them; and, though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon every time his fortune is told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old gypsy for above half an hour once in a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the things they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young jades among them: the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes.”

    Sir Roger, observing that I listened with great attention to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me that, if I would, they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the Knight's proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra[59] of the crew, after having examined my lines very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a corner; that I was a good woman's man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he had a widow in his line of life:[60] upon which the Knight cried, “Go, go, you are an idle baggage;” and at the same time smiled upon me. The gypsy, finding he was not displeased in his heart, told him after a farther inquiry into his hand, that his true love was constant, and that she should dream of him to-night: my old friend cried “Pish!” and bid her go on. The gypsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The Knight still repeated she was an idle baggage and bid her go on. “Ah, master,” said the gypsy, “that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache: you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing—.” The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the money with her that he had crossed her hand with, and got up again on his horse.

    As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me that he knew several sensible people who believed these gypsies now and then foretold very strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary. In the height of his good humor, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no conjurer, as he went to relieve him he found his pocket was picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are very dexterous.

    I might here entertain my reader with historical remarks on this idle, profligate people, who infest all the countries of Europe, and live in the midst of governments in a kind of commonwealth by themselves. But instead of entering into observations of this nature, I shall fill the remaining part of my paper with a story which is still fresh in Holland, and was printed in one of our monthly accounts about twenty years ago. “As the trekschuyt, or hackney-boat, which carries passengers from Leyden to Amsterdam, was putting off, a boy running along the side of the canal desired to be taken in: which the master of the boat refused, because the lad had not quite money enough to pay the usual fare. An eminent merchant being pleased with the looks of the boy, and secretly touched with compassion towards him, paid the money for him, and ordered him to be taken on board. Upon talking with him afterwards, he found that he could speak readily in three or four languages, and learned upon farther examination that he had been stolen away when he was a child by a gypsy, and had rambled ever since with a gang of those strollers up and down several parts of Europe. It happened that the merchant, whose heart seems to have inclined towards the boy by a secret kind of instinct, had himself lost a child some years before. The parents, after a long search for him, gave him for drowned in one of the canals with which that country abounds; and the mother was so afflicted at the loss of a fine boy, who was her only son, that she died for grief of it. Upon laying together all particulars, and examining the several moles and marks by which the mother used to describe the child when he was first missing, the boy proved to be the son of the merchant, whose heart had so unaccountably melted at the sight of him. The lad was very well pleased to find a father who was so rich, and likely to leave him a good estate: the father, on the other hand, was not a little delighted to see a son return to him, whom he had given for lost, with such a strength of constitution, sharpness of understanding, and skill in languages.” Here the printed story leaves off; but if I may give credit to reports, our linguist having received such extraordinary rudiments towards a good education, was afterwards trained up in everything that becomes a gentleman; wearing off by little and little all the vicious habits and practices that he had been used to in the course of his peregrinations. Nay, it is said that he has since been employed in foreign courts upon national business, with great reputation to himself and honor to those who sent him, and that he has visited several countries as a public minister, in which he formerly wandered as a gypsy.

    XVIII. WHY THE SPECTATOR LEAVES COVERLEY HALL.

    Spectator No. 131. Addison.

    It is usual for a man who loves country sports to preserve the game in his own grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his neighbor. My friend Sir Roger generally goes two or three miles from his house, and gets into the frontiers of his estate, before he beats about in search of a hare or partridge, on purpose to spare his own fields, where he is always sure of finding diversion when the worst comes to the worst. By this means the breed about his house has time to increase and multiply; besides that the sport is the more agreeable where the game is the harder to come at, and where it does not lie so thick as to produce any perplexity or confusion in the pursuit. For these reasons the country gentleman, like the fox, seldom preys near his own home.

    In the same manner I have made a month's excursion out of the town, which is the great field of game for sportsmen of my species, to try my fortune in the country, where I have started several subjects, and hunted them down, with some pleasure to myself, and I hope to others. I am here forced to use a great deal of diligence before I can spring anything to my mind; whereas in town, whilst I am following one character, it is ten to one but I am crossed in my way by another, and put up such a variety of odd creatures in both sexes, that they foil the scent of one another, and puzzle the chase. My greatest difficulty in the country is to find sport, and, in town, to choose it. In the mean time, as I have given a whole month's rest to the cities of London and Westminster, I promise myself abundance of new game upon my return thither.

    It is indeed high time for me to leave the country, since I find the whole neighborhood begin to grow very inquisitive after my name and character; my love of solitude, taciturnity, and particular way of life having raised a great curiosity in all these parts.

    The notions which have been framed of me are various: some look upon me as very proud, some as very modest, and some as very melancholy. Will Wimble, as my friend the butler tells me, observing me very much alone, and extremely silent when I am in company, is afraid I have killed a man. The country people seem to suspect me for a conjurer; and some of them, hearing of the visit which I made to Moll White, will needs have it that Sir Roger has brought down a cunning man with him, to cure the old woman, and free the country from her charms. So that the character which I go under in part of the neighborhood is what they here call a “White Witch.”[61]

    A Justice of Peace, who lives about five miles off, and is not of Sir Roger's party, has, it seems, said twice or thrice at his table, that he wishes Sir Roger does not harbor a Jesuit in his house, and that he thinks the gentlemen of the country would do very well to make me give some account of myself.

    On the other side, some of Sir Roger's friends are afraid the old Knight is imposed upon by a designing fellow, and as they have heard that he converses very promiscuously, when he is in town, do not know but he has brought down with him some discarded Whig, that is sullen and says nothing because he is out of place.

    Such is the variety of opinions which are here entertained of me, so that I pass among some for a disaffected person, and among others for a Popish priest; among some for a wizard, and among others for a murderer; and all this for no other reason, that I can imagine, but because I do not hoot and holloa and make a noise. It is true, my friend Sir Roger tells them, that it is my way, and that I am only a philosopher; but this will not satisfy them. They think there is more in me than he discovers, and that I do not hold my tongue for nothing.

    For these and other reasons I shall set out for London to-morrow, having found by experience that the country is not a place for a person of my temper, who does not love jollity, and what they call good neighborhood. A man that is out of humor when an unexpected guest breaks in upon him, and does not care for sacrificing an afternoon to every chance-comer, that will be the master of his own time, and the pursuer of his own inclinations, makes but a very unsociable figure in this kind of life. I shall therefore retire into the town, if I may make use of that phrase, and get into the crowd again as fast as I can, in order to be alone. I can there raise what speculations I please upon others, without being observed myself, and at the same time enjoy all the advantages of company with all the privileges of solitude. In the meanwhile, to finish the month, and conclude these my rural speculations, I shall here insert a letter from my friend Will Honeycomb, who has not lived a month for these forty years out of the smoke of London, and rallies me after his way upon my country life.

    “Dear Spec,—

    “I suppose this letter will find thee picking of daisies, or smelling to a lock of hay, or passing away thy time in some innocent country diversion of the like nature. I have, however, orders from the club to summon thee up to town, being all of us cursedly afraid thou wilt not be able to relish our company, after thy conversations with Moll White and Will Wimble. Pr'ythee don't send us up any more stories of a cock and a bull, nor frighten the town with spirits and witches. Thy speculations begin to smell confoundedly of woods and meadows. If thou dost not come up quickly, we shall conclude that thou art in love with one of Sir Roger's dairy-maids. Service to the Knight. Sir Andrew is grown the cock of the club since he left us, and if he does not return quickly will make every mother's son of us Commonwealth's men. [62]

    “Dear Spec,

    “Thine eternally,

    “Will Honeycomb.”

    XIX. THE SPECTATOR'S EXPERIENCE IN A STAGECOACH.

    Spectator No. 132. Steele.

    Having notified to my good friend Sir Roger that I should set out for London the next day, his horses were ready at the appointed hour in the evening; and attended by one of his grooms, I arrived at the county-town at twilight, in order to be ready for the stage-coach the day following. As soon as we arrived at the inn, the servant who waited upon me, inquired of the chamberlain, in my hearing, what company he had for the coach. The fellow answered, “Mrs. Betty Arable, the great fortune, and the widow her mother; a recruiting officer (who took a place because they were to go); young Squire Quickset, her cousin (that her mother wished her to be married to); Ephraim, the Quaker, her guardian; and a gentleman that had studied himself dumb from Sir Roger de Coverley's.” I observed by what he said of myself, that according to his office, he dealt much in intelligence; and doubted not but there was some foundation for his reports of the rest of the company, as well as for the whimsical account he gave of me.

    The next morning at day-break we were all called; and I, who know my own natural shyness, and endeavor to be as little liable to be disputed with as possible, dressed immediately that I might make no one wait. The first preparation for our setting out was, that the captain's half-pike was placed near the coachman, and a drum behind the coach. In the meantime the drummer, the captain's equipage, was very loud that none of the captain's things should be placed so as to be spoiled; upon which his cloak-bag was fixed in the seat of the coach; and the captain himself, according to a frequent, though invidious behavior of military men, ordered his man to look sharp, that none but one of the ladies should have the place he had taken fronting to the coach-box.

    We were in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat with that dislike which people not too good-natured usually conceive of each other at first sight. The coach jumbled us insensibly into some sort of familiarity: and we had not moved above two miles, when the widow asked the captain what success he had in his recruiting. The officer, with a frankness he believed very graceful, told her that indeed he had but very little luck, and had suffered much by desertion, therefore should be glad to end his warfare in the service of her or her fair daughter. "In a word,” continued he, “I am a soldier, and to be plain is my character: you see me, madam, young, sound, and impudent; take me yourself, widow, or give me to her, I will be wholly at your disposal. I am a soldier of fortune, ha!” This was followed by a vain laugh of his own, and a deep silence of all the rest of the company. I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep, which I did with all speed. “Come,” said he, “resolve upon it, we will make a wedding at the next town: we will wake this pleasant companion who has fallen asleep, to be the brideman, and” (giving the Quaker a clap on the knee) he concluded, “this sly saint, who, I'll warrant, understands what's what as well as you or I, widow, shall give the bride as father.”

    The Quaker, who happened to be a man of smartness, answered, "Friend, I take it in good part, that thou hast given me the authority of a father over this comely and virtuous child; and I must assure thee, that if I have the giving her, I shall not bestow her on thee. Thy mirth, friend, savoreth of folly: thou art a person of a light mind; thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty. Verily it is not from thy fulness, but thy emptiness, that thou hast spoken this day. Friend, friend, we have hired this coach in partnership with thee to carry us to the great city; we cannot go any other way. This worthy mother must hear thee if thou wilt needs utter thy follies; we cannot help it, friend, I say: if thou wilt, we must hear thee; but if thou wert a man of understanding, thou wouldst not take advantage of thy courageous countenance to abash us children of peace. Thou art, thou sayest, a soldier; give quarter to us, who cannot resist thee. Why didst thou fleer at our friend, who feigned himself asleep? He said nothing, but how dost thou know what he containeth? If thou speakest improper things in the hearing of this virtuous young virgin, consider it is an outrage against a distressed person that cannot get from thee: to speak indiscreetly what we are obliged to hear, by being hasped up with thee in this public vehicle, is in some degree assaulting on the high road.”

    Here Ephraim paused, and the captain with an happy and uncommon impudence (which can be convicted and support itself at the same time) cries, “Faith, friend, I thank thee; I should have been a little impertinent if thou hadst not reprimanded me. Come, thou art, I see, a smoky old fellow, and I'll be very orderly the ensuing part of the journey. I was going to give myself airs, but, ladies, I beg pardon.”

    The captain was so little out of humor, and our company was so far from being soured by this little ruffle, that Ephraim and he took a particular delight in being agreeable to each other for the future; and assumed their different provinces in the conduct of the company. Our reckonings, apartments, and accommodation fell under Ephraim; and the captain looked to all disputes on the road, as the good behavior of our coachman, and the right[63] we had of taking place as going to London of all vehicles coming from thence.

    The occurrences we met with were ordinary, and very little happened which could entertain by the relation of them : but when I considered the company we were in, I took it for no small good fortune that the whole journey was not spent in impertinences, which to one part of us might be an entertainment, to the other a suffering.

    What, therefore, Ephraim said when we were almost arrived at London, had to me an air not only of good understanding but good-breeding. Upon the young lady's expressing her satisfaction in the journey, and declaring how delightful it had been to her, Ephraim declared himself as follows: “There is no ordinary part of human life which expresseth so much a good mind, and a right inward man, as his behavior upon meeting with strangers, especially such as may seem the most unsuitable companions to him: such a man, when he falleth in the way with persons of simplicity and innocence, however knowing he may be in the ways of men, will not vaunt himself thereof; but will the rather hide his superiority to them, that he may not be painful unto them. My good friend” (continued he, turning to the officer), “thee and I are to part by and by, and peradventure we may never meet again: but be advised by a plain man; modes and apparel are but trifles to the real man, therefore do not think such a man as thyself terrible for thy garb, nor such a one as me contemptible for mine. When two such as thee and I meet, with affections as we ought to have towards each other, thou shouldst rejoice to see my peaceable demeanor, and I should be glad to see thy strength and ability to protect me in it.”

    XX. STREET CRIES OF LONDON.

    Spectator No. 251. Addison.

    There is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frights a country squire, than the Cries of London. My good friend Sir Roger often declares, that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, Will Honeycomb calls them the Ramage de la Ville, [64] and prefers them to the sounds of larks and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it.

    “Sir,—

    “I am a man of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burthening the subject, but I cannot get the Parliament to listen to me, who look upon me, forsooth, as a crack[65] and a projector; so that despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.

    “The post I would aim at is to be Comptroller-general of the London Cries, which are at present under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for this place, as being a man of very strong lungs, of great insight into all the branches of our British trades and manufactures, and of a competent skill in music.

    “The Cries[66] of London may be divided into vocal and instrumental. As for the latter, they are at present under a very great disorder. A freeman [67] of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street for an hour together, with the twanking of a brass kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman's thump at midnight startles us in our beds, as much as the breaking in of a thief. The sowgelder's horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the liberties. I would therefore propose, that no instrument of this nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the ears of Her Majesty's liege subjects.

    “Vocal cries are of a much larger extent, and, indeed, so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above ela, [68] and in sounds so exceeding shrill, that it often sets our teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is confined to no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest base, and sometimes in the sharpest treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest note of the gamut. The same observation might be made on the retailers of small coal, not to mention broken glasses or brick-dust. In these, therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant tradesmen, before they make their appearance in our streets, as also to accommodate their cries to their respective wares; and to take care in particular that those may not make the most noise who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the venders of card-matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old proverb of 'Much cry, but little wool.'

    “Some of these last-mentioned musicians are so very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures, that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaintance bargained with one of them never to come into the street where he lived: but what was the effect of this contract? why, the whole tribe of card-matchmakers which frequent that quarter, passed by his door the very next day, in hopes of being bought off after the same manner.

    “It is another great imperfection in our London Cries, that there is no just time nor measure observed in them. Our news should, indeed, be published in a very quick time, because it is a commodity that will not keep cold. It should not, however, be cried with the same precipitation as 'fire': yet this is generally the case. A bloody battle alarms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great a hurry, that one would think the enemy were at our gates. This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner, that there should be some distinction made between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish mail. Nor must I omit, under this head, those excessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics infest our streets in turnip season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are wares which are in no danger of cooling upon their hands.

    “There are others who affect a very slow time, and are, in my opinion, much more tunable than the former; the cooper, in particular, swells his last note in an hollow voice, that is not without its harmony: nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable melancholy, when I hear that sad and solemn air with which the public are very often asked, if they have any chairs to mend? Your own memory may suggest to you many other lamentable ditties of the same nature, in which the music is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

    “I am always pleased with that particular time of the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and cucumbers; but, alas, this cry, like the song of the nightingale, is not heard above two months. It would, therefore, be worth while to consider whether the same air might not in some cases be adapted to other words.

    “It might likewise deserve our most serious consideration, how far, in a well-regulated city, those humorists are to be tolerated, who, not contented with the traditional cries of their forefathers, have invented particular songs and tunes of their own: such as was, not many years since, the pastry-man, commonly known by the name of the colly-molly-puff; and such as is at this day the vender of powder and wash-balls, who, if I am rightly informed, goes under the name of Powder Watt.

    “I must not here omit one particular absurdity which runs through this whole vociferous generation, and which renders their cries very often not only incommodious, but altogether useless to the public; I mean that idle accomplishment which they all of them aim at, of crying so as not to be understood. Whether or no they have learned this from several of our affected singers, I will not take upon me to say; but most certain it is, that people know the wares they deal in rather by their tunes than by their words; insomuch, that I have sometimes seen a country boy run out to buy apples of a bellows-mender, and gingerbread from a grinder of knives and scissors. Nay, so strangely infatuated are some very eminent artists of this particular grace in a cry, that none but their acquaintance are able to guess at their profession; for who else can know that 'Work if I had it' should be the signification of a corn-cutter?

    “Forasmuch, therefore, as persons of this rank are seldom men of genius or capacity, I think it would be very proper, that some man of good sense, and sound judgment, should preside over these public Cries, who should permit none to lift up their voices in our streets, that have not tunable throats, and are not only able to overcome the noise of the crowd, and the rattling of coaches, but also to vend their respective merchandises in apt phrases, and in the most distinct and agreeable sounds. I do therefore humbly recommend myself as a person rightly qualified for this post: and if I meet with fitting encouragement, shall communicate some other projects which I have by me, that may no less conduce to the emolument of the public.

    “I am, Sir,

    “Ralph Crotchet.”

    XXI. SIR ROGER IN TOWN.

    Spectator No. 269. Addison.

    I was this morning surprised with a great knocking at the door, when my landlady's daughter came up to me, and told me that there was a man below desired to speak with me. Upon my asking her who it was, she told me it was a very grave elderly person, but that she did not know his name. I immediately went down to him, and found him to be the coachman of my worthy friend Sir Roger de Coverley. He told me that his master came to town last night, and would be glad to take a turn with me in Gray's-Inn Walks. As I was wondering in myself what had brought Sir Roger to town, not having lately received any letter from him, he told me that his master was come up to get a sight of Prince Eugene, and that he desired I would immediately meet him.

    I was not a little pleased with the curiosity of the old Knight, though I did not much wonder at it, having heard him say more than once in private discourse, that he looked upon Prince Eugenio [69] (for so the Knight always calls him), to be a greater man than Scanderbeg.[70]

    I was no sooner come into Gray's-Inn Walks, but I heard my friend upon the terrace hemming twice or thrice to himself with great vigor, for he loves to clear his pipes in good air (to make use of his own phrase), and is not a little pleased with any one who takes notice of the strength which he still exerts in his morning hems.

    I was touched with a secret joy at the sight of the good old man, who before he saw me was engaged in conversation with a beggar-man that had asked an alms of him. I could hear my friend chide him for not finding out some work; but at the same time saw him put his hand in his pocket and give him sixpence.

    Our salutations were very hearty on both sides, consisting of many kind shakes of the hand, and several affectionate looks which we cast upon one another. After which the Knight told me my good friend his chaplain was very well, and much at my service, and that the Sunday before he had made a most incomparable sermon out of Doctor Barrow. “I have left,” says he, “all my affairs in his hands, and being willing to lay an obligation upon him, have deposited with him thirty marks, to be distributed among his poor parishioners.”

    He then proceeded to acquaint me with the welfare of Will Wimble. Upon which he put his hand into his fob and presented me in his name with a tobacco-stopper, telling me that Will had been busy all the beginning of the winter, in turning great quantities of them; and that he made a present of one to every gentleman in the country who has good principles, and smokes. He added, that poor Will was at present under great tribulation, for that Tom Touchy had taken the law of him for cutting some hazel sticks out of one of his hedges.

    Among other pieces of news which the Knight brought from his country seat, he informed me that Moll White was dead; and that about a month after her death the wind was so very high, that it blew down the end of one of his barns. “But for my own part,” says Sir Roger, “I do not think that the old woman had any hand in it.”

    He afterwards fell into an account of the diversions which had passed in his house during the holidays; for Sir Roger, after the laudable custom of his ancestors, always keeps open house at Christmas. I learned from him that he had killed eight fat hogs for the season, that he had dealt about his chines very liberally amongst his neighbors, and that in particular he had sent a string of hogs-puddings with a pack of cards to every poor family in the parish. “I have often thought,” says Sir Roger, “it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of the winter. It is the most dead, uncomfortable time of the year, when the poor people would suffer very much from their poverty and cold, if they had not good cheer, warm fires, and Christmas gambols to support them. I love to rejoice their poor hearts at this season, and to see the whole village merry in my great hall. I allow a double quantity of malt to my small beer, and set it a running for twelve days to every one that calls for it. I have always a piece of cold beef and a mince-pie upon the table, and am wonderfully pleased to see my tenants pass away a whole evening in playing their innocent tricks, and smutting one another. Our friend Will Wimble is as merry as any of them, and shows a thousand roguish, tricks upon these occasions.”

    I was very much delighted with the reflection of my old friend, which carried so much goodness in it. He then launched out into the praise of the late Act of Parliament for securing the Church of England,[71] and told me, with great satisfaction, that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid Dissenter, who chanced to dine at his house on Christmas day, had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge.

    After having dispatched all our country matters, Sir Roger made several inquiries concerning the club, and particularly of his old antagonist Sir Andrew Freeport. He asked me with a kind of smile whether Sir Andrew had not taken advantage of his absence to vent among them some of his republican doctrines; but soon after, gathering up his countenance into a more than ordinary seriousness, “Tell me truly,” says he, “don't you think Sir Andrew had a hand in the Pope's Procession?"[72]— but without giving me time to answer him, “Well, well,” says he, “I know you are a wary man, and do not care to talk of public matters.”

    The Knight then asked me if I had seen Prince Eugenio, and made me promise to get him a stand in some convenient place where he might have a full sight of that extraordinary man, whose presence does so much honor to the British nation. He dwelt very long on the praises of this great general, and I found that, since I was with him in the country, he had drawn many observations together out of his reading in Baker's Chronicle, and other authors, who always lie in his hall window, which very much redound to the honor of this prince.

    Having passed away the greatest part of the morning in hearing the Knight's reflections, which were partly private, and partly political, he asked me if I would smoke a pipe with him over a dish of coffee at Squire's. As I love the old man, I take delight in complying with everything that is agreeable to him, and accordingly waited on him to the coffee-house, where his venerable figure drew upon us the eyes of the whole room. He had no sooner seated himself at the upper end of the high table, but he called for a clean pipe, a paper of tobacco, a dish of coffee, a wax candle, and the Supplement, [73] with such an air of cheerfulness and good-humor, that all the boys in the coffee-room (who seemed to take pleasure in serving him) were at once employed on his several errands, insomuch that nobody else could come at a dish of tea, till the Knight had got all his conveniences about him.

    XXII. SIR ROGER IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

    Spectator No. 329. Addison.

    My friend Sir Roger de Coverley told me t'other night that he had been reading my paper upon Westminster Abbey, in which, says he, there are a great many ingenious fancies. He told me, at the same time, that he observed I had promised another paper upon the tombs, [74] and that he should be glad to go and see them with me, not having visited them since he had read history. I could not at first imagine how this came into the Knight's head, till I recollected that he had been very busy all last summer upon Baker's Chronicle, which he has quoted several times in his disputes with Sir Andrew Freeport since his last coining to town. Accordingly, I promised to call upon him the next morning, that we might go together to the Abbey.

    I found the Knight under his butler's hands, who always shaves him. He was no sooner dressed than he called for a glass of the Widow Trueby's water, which he told me he always drank before he went abroad. He recommended me to a dram of it at the same time, with so much heartiness, that I could not forbear drinking it. As soon as I had got it down, I found it very unpalatable; upon which the Knight, observing that I had made several wry faces, told me that he knew I should not like it at first, but that it was the best thing in the world against the stone or gravel.

    I could have wished, indeed, that he had acquainted me with the virtues of it sooner; but it was too late to complain, and I knew what he had done was out of good-will. Sir Roger told me, further, that he looked upon it to be very good for a man whilst he stayed in town, to keep off infection; and that he got together a quantity of it upon the first news of the sickness[75] being at Dantzic. When of a sudden, turning short to one of his servants, who stood behind him, he bid him call a hackney-coach, and take care it was an elderly man that drove it.

    He then resumed his discourse upon Mrs. Trueby's water, telling me that the Widow Trueby was one who did more good than all the doctors and apothecaries in the county; that she distilled every poppy that grew within five miles of her; that she distributed her water gratis among all sorts of people: to which the Knight added, that she had a very great jointure, and that the whole country would fain have it a match between him and her; “And truly,” says Sir Roger, “if I had not been engaged, perhaps I could not have done better.”

    His discourse was broken off by his man's telling him he had called a coach. Upon our going to it, after having cast his eye upon the wheels, he asked the coachman if his axletree was good; upon the fellow's telling him he would warrant it, the Knight turned to me, told me he looked like an honest man, and went in without further ceremony.

    We had not gone far, when Sir Roger, popping out his head, called the coachman down from his box, and, upon his presenting himself at the window, asked him if he smoked: as I was considering what this would end in, he bid him stop by the way at any good tobacconist's, and take in a roll of their best Virginia. Nothing material happened in the remaining part of our journey till we were set down at the west end of the Abbey.

    As we went up the body of the church, the Knight pointed at the trophies upon one of the new monuments, and cried out, “A brave man, I warrant him!” Passing afterwards by Sir Cloudesley Shovel,[76] he flung his hand that way, and cried, “Sir Cloudesley Shovel! a very gallant man!” As we stood before Busby's tomb, the Knight uttered himself again after the same manner,— “Dr. Busby[77]— a great man! he whipped my grandfather— a very great man! I should have gone to him myself if I had not been a blockhead— a very great man!”

    We were immediately conducted into the little chapel on the right hand. Sir Roger, planting himself at our historian's elbow, was very attentive to everything he said, particularly to the account he gave us of the lord who had cut off the King of Morocco's head. Among several other figures, he was very well pleased to see the statesman Cecil [78] upon his knees; and, concluding them all to be great men, was conducted to the figure [79] which represents that martyr to good housewifery, who died by the prick of a needle. Upon our interpreter's telling us that she was a maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth, the Knight was very inquisitive into her name and family; and, after having, regarded her finger for some time, “I wonder,” says he, “that Sir Richard Baker has said nothing of her in his Chronicle.”

    We were then conveyed to the two coronation chairs, [80] where my old friend, after having heard that the stone underneath the most ancient of them, which was brought from Scotland, was called Jacob's Pillar, sat himself down in the chair; and, looking like the figure of an old Gothic king, asked our interpreter what authority they had to say that Jacob had ever been in Scotland. The fellow, instead of returning him an answer, told him that he hoped his honor would pay his forfeit. I could observe Sir Roger a little ruffled upon being thus trepanned; but, our guide not insisting upon his demand, the Knight soon recovered his good-humor, and whispered in my ear that if Will Wimble were with us, and saw those two chairs, it would go hard but he would get a tobacco-stopper out of one or t'other of them.

    Sir Roger, in the next place, laid his hand upon Edward the Third's sword, and, leaning upon the pommel of it, gave us the whole history of the Black Prince; concluding that, in Sir Richard Baker's opinion, Edward the Third was one of the greatest princes that ever sat upon the English throne.

    We were then shown Edward the Confessor's tomb, upon which Sir Roger acquainted us that he was the first who touched for the evil, [81] and afterwards Henry the Fourth's, upon which he shook his head, and told us there was fine reading in the casualties in that reign.

    Our conductor then pointed to that monument where there is the figure of one of our English kings without an head; and upon giving us to know that the head, which was of beaten silver, had been stolen away several years since, “Some Whig, I'll warrant you,” says Sir Roger: "you ought to lock up your kings better; they will carry off the body too if you don't take care.”

    The glorious names of Henry the Fifth and Queen Elizabeth gave the Knight great opportunities of shining and of doing justice to Sir Richard Baker,[82] who, as our Knight observed with some surprise, had a great many kings in him whose monuments he had not seen in the Abbey.

    For my own part, I could not but be pleased to see the Knight show such an honest passion for the glory of his country, and such a respectful gratitude to the memory of its princes.

    I must not omit that the benevolence of my good old friend, which flows out towards every one he converses with, made him very kind to our interpreter, whom he looked upon as an extraordinary man; for which reason he shook him by the hand at parting, telling him that he should be very glad to see him at his lodgings in Norfolk Buildings, and talk over these matters with him more at leisure.

    XXIII. SIR ROGER AT THE THEATRE.

    Spectator No. 335. Addison.

    My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the Club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy [83] with me, assuring me, at the same time, that he had not been at a play these twenty years. “The last I saw,” said Sir Roger, “was the 'Committee,'[84] which I should not have gone to neither, had not I been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy.” He then proceeded to inquire of me who this distressed mother was, and, upon hearing that she was Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a school-boy, he had read his life at the end of the dictionary. My friend asked me, in the next place, if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohocks[85] should be abroad, “I assure you,” says he, “I thought I had fallen into their hands last night, for I observed two or three lusty black men that followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me in proportion as I put on to get away from them. You must know,” continued the Knight with a smile, “I fancied they had a mind to hunt me, for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighborhood who was served such a trick in King Charles the Second's time; for which reason he has not ventured himself in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport had this been their design; for, as I am an old fox-hunter, I should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks they had never seen in their lives before.” Sir Roger added that if these gentlemen had any such intention they did not succeed very well in it; “for I threw them out,” says he, “at the end of Norfolk Street, where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings before they could imagine what was become of me. However,” says the Knight, “if Captain Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, and if you will both of you call upon me about four o'clock, that we may be at the house before it is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John tells me he has got the fore wheels mended.”

    The Captain, who did not fail to meet me there at the appointed hour, bid Sir Roger fear nothing, for that he had put on the same sword which he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Sir Roger's servants, and among the rest my old friend the butler, had, I found, provided themselves with good oaken plants to attend their master upon this occasion. When he had placed him in his coach, with myself at his left hand, the Captain before him, and his butler at the head of his footmen in the rear, we convoyed him in safety to the playhouse, where, after having marched up the entry in good order, the Captain and I went in with him, and seated him betwixt us in the pit. As soon as the house was full, and the candles lighted, my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself, at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself, as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit, that he made a very proper centre to a tragic audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus, the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France himself had a better strut. I was, indeed, very attentive to my old friend's remarks, because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism; and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end. One while he appeared much concerned for Andromache; and a little while after as much for Hermione; and was extremely puzzled to think what would become of Pyrrhus.

    When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the ear, that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added, with a more than ordinary vehemence, "You can't imagine, Sir, what 'tis to have to do with a widow.” Upon Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the Knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, “Ay, do if you can.” This part dwelt so much upon my friend's imagination, that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, “These widows, Sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray,” says he, “you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of.”

    The fourth act very luckily begun before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer: “Well,” says the Knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, “I suppose we are now to see Hector's ghost.” He then renewed his attention, and, from time to time, fell a praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom at his first entering he took for Astyanax; but he quickly set himself right in that particular, though, at the same time, he owned he should have been very glad to have seen the little boy, “who,” says he, “must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him.” Upon Hermione's going off with a menace to Pyrrhus, the audience gave a loud clap, to which Sir Roger added, “On my word, a notable young baggage!”

    As there was a very remarkable silence and stillness in the audience during the whole action, it was natural for them to take the opportunity of these intervals between the acts to express their opinion of the players and of their respective parts. Sir Roger hearing a cluster of them praise Orestes, struck in with them, and told them that he thought his friend Pylades was a very sensible man; as they were afterwards applauding Pyrrhus, Sir Roger put in a second time: "And let me tell you,” says he, “though he speaks but little, I like the old fellow in whiskers as well as any of them.” Captain Sentry seeing two or three wags, who sat near us, lean with an attentive ear towards Sir Roger, and fearing lest they should smoke the Knight, plucked him by the elbow, and whispered something in his ear, that lasted till the opening of the fifth act. The Knight was wonderfully attentive to the account which Orestes gives of Pyrrhus his death, and at the conclusion of it, told me it was such a bloody piece of work that he was glad it was not done upon the stage. Seeing afterwards Orestes in his raving fit, he grew more than ordinary serious, and took occasion to moralize (in his way) upon an evil conscience, adding, that Orestes, in his madness, looked as if he saw something.

    As we were the first that came into the house, so we were the last that went out of it; being resolved to have a clear passage for our old friend, whom we did not care to venture among the jostling of the crowd. Sir Roger went out fully satisfied with his entertainment, and we guarded him to his lodgings in the same manner that we brought him to the playhouse; being highly pleased, for my own part, not only with the performance of the excellent piece which had been presented, but with the satisfaction which it had given to the good old man.

    XXIV. WILL HONEYCOMB'S LOVE-MAKING.

    Spectator No. 359. Budgell.

    As we were at the Club last night, I observed that my friend Sir Roger, contrary to his usual custom, sat very silent, and instead of minding what was said by the company, was whistling to himself in a very thoughtful mood, and playing with a cork. I jogged Sir Andrew Freeport, who sat between us; and as we were both observing him, we saw the Knight shake his head, and heard him say to himself, “A foolish woman! I can't believe it.” Sir Andrew gave him a gentle pat upon the shoulder, and offered to lay him a bottle of wine that he was thinking of the Widow. My old friend started, and recovering out of his brown study, told Sir Andrew that once in his life he had been in the right. In short, after some little hesitation, Sir Roger told us in the fulness of his heart, that he had just received a letter from his steward, which acquainted him that his old rival and antagonist in the county, Sir David Dundrum, had been making a visit to the Widow. "However,” says Sir Roger, “I can never think that she'll have a man that's half a year older than I am, and a noted Republican into the bargain.”

    Will Honeycomb, who looks upon love as his particular province, interrupting our friend with a jaunty laugh; “I thought, Knight,” says he, “thou hadst lived long enough in the world not to pin thy happiness upon one that is a woman and a widow. I think that without vanity I may pretend to know as much of the female world as any man in Great Britain, though the chief of my knowledge consists in this, that they are not to be known.” Will immediately, with his usual fluency, rambled into an account of his own amours. “I am now,” says he, “upon the verge of fifty” (though, by the way, we all knew he was turned of threescore). “You may easily guess,” continued Will, “that I have not lived so long in the world without having had some thoughts of settling in it, as the phrase is. To tell you truly, I have several times tried my fortune that way, though I can't much boast of my success.

    “I made my first addresses to a young lady in the country; but when I thought things were pretty well drawing to a conclusion, her father happening to hear that I had formerly boarded with a surgeon, the old put[86] forbid me his house, and within a fortnight after married his daughter to a fox-hunter in the neighborhood.

    “I made my next applications to a widow, and attacked her so briskly, that I thought myself within a fortnight of her. As I waited upon her one morning, she told me that she intended to keep her ready money and jointure in her own hand, and desired me to call upon her attorney in Lyon's Inn, who would adjust with me what it was proper for me to add to it. I was so rebuffed by this overture, that I never inquired either for her or her attorney afterwards.

    “A few months after I addressed myself to a young lady who was an only daughter, and of a good family: I danced with her at several balls, squeezed her by the hand, said soft things to her, and, in short, made no doubt of her heart; and, though my fortune was not equal to hers, I was in hopes that her fond father would not deny her the man she had fixed her affections upon. But as I went one day to the house in order to break the matter to him, I found the whole family in confusion, and heard, to my unspeakable surprise, that Miss Jenny was that very morning run away with the butler.

    “I then courted a second widow, and am at a loss to this day how I came to miss her, for she had often commended my person and behavior. Her maid, indeed, told me one day that her mistress had said she never saw a gentleman with such a spindle pair of legs as Mr. Honeycomb.

    “After this I laid siege to four heiresses successively, and being a handsome young dog in those days, quickly made a breach in their hearts; but I don't know how it came to pass, though I seldom failed of getting the daughters' consent, I could never in my life get the old people on my side.

    “I could give you an account of a thousand other unsuccessful attempts, particularly of one which I made some years since upon an old woman, whom I had certainly borne away with flying colors, if her relations had not come pouring in to her assistance from all parts of England; nay, I believe I should have got her at last, had she not been carried off by an hard frost.”

    As Will's transitions are extremely quick, he turned from Sir Roger, and, applying himself to me, told me there was a passage in the book[87] I had considered last Saturday, which deserved to be writ in letters of gold; and taking out a pocket Milton, read the following lines, [88] which are part of one of Adam's speeches to Eve after the fall:—

                            Oh! why did God,
    Creator wise, that peopled highest heav'n
    With spirits masculine, create at last
    This novelty on earth, this fair defect
    Of Nature, and not fill the world at once
    With men, as angels, without feminine,
    Or find some other way to generate
    Mankind? This mischief had not then befall'n,
    And more that shall befall; innumerable
    Disturbances on earth through female snares,
    And straight conjunction with this sex: for either
    He never shall find out fit mate, but such
    As some misfortune brings him, or mistake.
    Or, whom he wishes most shall seldom gain,
    Through her perverseness; but shall see her gain'd
    By a far worse; or if she love, withheld
    By parents; or his happiest choice too late
    Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock bound
    To a fell adversary, his hate or shame;
    Which infinite calamity shall cause
    To human life, and household peace confound.

    Sir Roger listened to this passage with great attention, and desiring Mr. Honeycomb to fold down a leaf at the place, and lend him his book, the Knight put it up in his pocket, and told us that he would read over those verses again before he went to bed.

    XXV. SIR ROGER AT VAUXHALL GARDENS.

    Spectator No. 383. Addison.

    As I was sitting in my chamber and thinking on a subject for my next “Spectator,” I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady's door, and upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring whether the philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately recollected that it was my good friend Sir Roger's voice; and that I had promised to go with him on the water to Spring Garden, in case it proved a good evening. The Knight put me in mind of my promise from the bottom of the staircase, but told me that if I was speculating he would stay below till I had done. Upon my coming down, I found all the children of the family got about my old friend, and my landlady herself, who is a notable prating gossip, engaged in a conference with him, being mightily pleased with his stroking her little boy upon the head, and bidding him be a good child, and mind his book.

    We were no sooner come to the Temple Stairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, “You must know,” says Sir Roger, “I never make use of anybody to row me, that has not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has been wounded in the Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg.”

    My old friend, after having seated himself, and trimmed the boat with his coachman, who, being a very sober man, always serves for ballast on these occasions, we made the best of our way for Vauxhall. [89] Sir Roger obliged the waterman to give us the history of his right leg, and hearing that he had left it at La Hogue, with many particulars which passed in that glorious action, the Knight, in the triumph of his heart, made several reflections on the greatness of the British nation; as, that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of Popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that the Thames was the noblest river in Europe; that London Bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the seven wonders of the world: with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true Englishman.

    After some short pause, the old Knight turning about his head twice or thrice, to take a survey of this great Metropolis, bid me observe how thick the city was set with churches, and that there was scarce a single steeple on this side Temple Bar. “A most heathenish sight!” says Sir Roger; “there is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new churches[90] will very much mend the prospect; but church work is slow, church work is slow!”

    I do not remember I have anywhere mentioned, in Sir Roger's character, his custom of saluting everybody that passes by him with a good-morrow or a good-night. This the old man does out of the overflowings of his humanity, though at the same time it renders him so popular among all his country neighbors, that it is thought to have gone a good way in making him once or twice knight of the shire. He cannot forbear this exercise of benevolence even in town, when he meets with any one in his morning or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed by us upon the water; but to the Knight's great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us what queer old put we had in the boat, with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first, but at length, assuming a face of magistracy, told us that if he were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that Her Majesty's subjects were no more to be abused by water than by land.

    We were now arrived at Spring Garden, which is exquisitely pleasant at this time of year. When I considered the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sang upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country, which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales. “You must understand,” says the Knight, “there is nothing in the world that pleases a man in love so much as your nightingale. Ah, Mr. Spectator! the many moonlight nights that I have walked by myself, and thought on the Widow by the music of the nightingales!” He here fetched a deep sigh, and was falling into a fit of musing, when a mask, who came behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her. But the Knight being startled at so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his thoughts of the Widow, told her she was a wanton baggage, and bid her go about her business.

    We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung beef. When we had done eating, ourselves, the Knight called a waiter to him, and bid him carry the remainder to the waterman that had but one leg. I perceived the fellow stared upon him at the oddness of the message, and was going to be saucy; upon which I ratified the Knight's commands with a peremptory look.

    XXVI. DEATH OF SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.[91]

    Spectator No. 517. Addison.

    We last night received a piece of ill news at our Club, which very sensibly afflicted every one of us. I question not but my readers themselves will be troubled at the hearing of it. To keep them no longer in suspense, Sir Roger de Coverley is dead. He departed this life at his house in the country, after a few weeks' sickness. Sir Andrew Freeport has a letter from one of his correspondents in those parts, that informs him the old man caught a cold at the County-Sessions, as he was very warmly promoting an address of his own penning, in which he succeeded according to his wishes. But this particular comes from a Whig-Justice of Peace, who was always Sir Roger's enemy and antagonist. I have letters both from the chaplain and Captain Sentry which mention nothing of it, but are filled with many particulars to the honor of the good old man. I have likewise a letter from the butler, who took so much care of me last summer when I was at the Knight's house. As my friend the butler mentions, in the simplicity of his heart, several circumstances the others have passed over in silence, I shall give my reader a copy of his letter, without any alteration or diminution.

    ” Honoured Sir,

    “Knowing that you was my old Master's good Friend, I could not forbear sending you the melancholy News of his Death, which has afflicted the whole Country, as well as his poor Servants, who loved him, I may say, better than we did our Lives. I am afraid he caught his Death the last County Sessions, where he would go to see Justice done to a poor Widow Woman, and her Fatherless Children, that had been wronged by a neighbouring Gentleman; for you know, Sir, my good Master was always the poor Man's Friend. Upon his coming home, the first Complaint he made was, that he had lost his Roast-Beef Stomach, not being able to touch a Sirloin, which was served up according to Custom; and you know he used to take great Delight in it. From that time forward he grew worse and worse, but still kept a good Heart to the last. Indeed we were once in great Hope of his Recovery, upon a kind Message that was sent him from the Widow Lady whom he had made love to the Forty last Years of his Life; but this only proved a Light'ning before Death. He has bequeathed to this Lady, as a token of his Love, a great Pearl Necklace, and a Couple of Silver Bracelets set with Jewels, which belonged to my good old Lady his Mother : He has bequeathed the fine white Gelding, that he used to ride a hunting upon, to his Chaplain, because he thought he would be kind to him, and has left you all his Books. He has, moreover, bequeathed to the Chaplain a very pretty Tenement with good Lands about it. It being a very cold Day when he made his Will, he left for Mourning, to every Man in the Parish, a great Frize-Coat, and to every Woman a black Riding-hood. It was a most moving Sight to see him take leave of his poor Servants, commending us all for our Fidelity, whilst we were not able to speak a Word for weeping. As we most of us are grown Gray-headed in our Dear Master's Service, he has left us Pensions and Legacies, which we may live very comfortably upon, the remaining part of our Days. He has bequeath'd a great deal more in Charity, which is not yet come to my Knowledge, and it is peremptorily said in the Parish, that he has left Mony to build a Steeple to the Church; for he was heard to say some time ago, that if he lived two Years longer, Coverly Church should have a Steeple to it. The Chaplain tells every body that he made a very good End, and never speaks of him without Tears. He was buried, according to his own Directions, among the Family of the Coverly's, on the Left Hand of his father Sir Arthur. The Coffin was carried by Six of his Tenants, and the Pall held up by Six of the Quorum: The whole Parish follow'd the Corps with heavy Hearts, and in their Mourning Suits, the Men in Frize, and the Women in Riding-Hoods. Captain Sentry, my Master's Nephew, has taken Possession of the Hall-House, and the whole Estate. When my old Master saw him a little before his Death, he shook him by the Hand, and wished him Joy of the Estate which was falling to him, desiring him only to make good Use of it, and to pay the several Legacies, and the Gifts of Charity which he told him he had left as Quitrents upon the Estate. The Captain truly seems a courteous Man, though he says but little. He makes much of those whom my Master loved, and shows great Kindness to the old House-dog, that you know my poor Master was so fond of. It would have gone to your Heart to have heard the Moans the dumb Creature made on the Day of my Master's Death. He has ne'er joyed himself since; no more has any of us. 'Twas the melancholiest Day for the poor People that ever happened in Worcestershire. This being all from,

       “Honoured Sir,

    “Your most Sorrowful Servant,

    “Edward Biscuit.


    “P. S. My Master desired, some Weeks before he died, that a Book which comes up to you by the Carrier should be given to Sir Andrew Freeport, in his Name.”

    This letter, notwithstanding the poor butler's manner of writing it, gave us such an idea of our good old friend, that upon the reading of it there was not a dry eye in the Club. Sir Andrew opening the book, found it to be a collection of Acts of Parliament. There was in particular the Act of Uniformity, with some passages in it marked by Sir Roger's own hand. Sir Andrew found that they related to two or three points, which he had disputed with Sir Roger the last time he appeared at the Club. Sir Andrew, who would have been merry at such an incident on another occasion, at the sight of the old man's hand-writing burst into tears, and put the book into his pocket. Captain Sentry informs me, that the Knight has left rings and mourning for every one in the Club.

    CONTRIBUTORS TO THE SPECTATOR

    Many people besides Addison and Steele wrote at various times for the Spectator. A list of names, with number of essays contributed, is here given:—

    Addison——276

    Steele——249

    Budgell——35

    Hughes——10

    Byrom——5

    Grove——4

    Pearce——2

    Tickell——2

    Parnell——2

    Pope——2

    Henley——1

    Barr——1

    Francham——1

    Anonymous papers——46

    Total——636

    AIDS TO THE STUDY OF THE DE COVERLEY PAPERS

    FOR USE OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS

    Life of Richard Steele. Austin Dobson.

    Life of Joseph Addison. W. J. Courthope.

    Essay on Addison. T. B. Macaulay.

    Essays of Joseph Addison. Edited by J. R. Green.

    The Spectator. Edited by Henry Morley.

    Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne. John Ashton.

    Literary Landmarks of London. Laurence Button.

    English Lands, Letters, and Kings. Donald G. Mitchell.

    FOR USE OF TEACHERS

    Sir Richard Steele (Vol. II.). John Forster.

    Selections from Steele. Edited by Austin Dobson.

    Selections from Addison. Edited by T. Arnold.

    Lives of English Poets. Samuel Johnson.

    Introduction to English Literature. Henry S. Pancoast.

    History of Eighteenth Century Literature. Edmund Gosse.

    Manual of English Literature. Thomas Arnold.

    English Literature in the Eighteenth Century. Thos. S. Perry

    English Literature. Stopford A. Brooke.

    Reign of Queen Anne (Vol. I.). P. H. Stanhope.

    History of Henry Esmond. Wm. M. Thackeray.

    The English Humorists. Wm. M. Thackeray.

    Short History of English Literature. George Saintsbury.

    NOTES

    The aim of these notes is not to take the place of the teacher, nor to deprive the pupil of the benefits of thinking. The intention is to give only those explanations that may be difficult to obtain, and which the pupil should know before coming to class; therefore all matter is avoided which tends to lead away from the immediate subject under consideration. It is left to the teacher to use his own discretion in estimating the advisability of dwelling on grammatical errors and peculiar expressions in use during Addison's time.

    PAPER No. I.

    Although Addison is describing an imaginary character, yet the likeness to himself is apparent. The student should trace points of similarity.

    [1] learned tongues. Latin and Greek.

    [2] controversies of some great men. Allusion to a work, Pyramidographia, or a Discourse of the Pyramids of Egypt, by a Persian scholar named John Greaves. (See Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. XXIII., for life of Greaves.)

    [3] Will's. Coffee-house named from its proprietor, William Urwin. It included two buildings in Covent Garden, one facing Bow Street and the adjoining one Russell Street. Its popularity began when Dryden frequented it, and was declining in Spectator's time, although it was still the gathering place for literary men.

    [4] Child's. Coffee-house which stood in St. Paul's Churchyard, but the exact location is not known. It was frequented by physicians, philosophers, and clergy.

    [5] Postman. A penny paper which was very popular at that time. It was edited by a Frenchman, M. Fonvive.

    [6] St. James's coffee-house. On St. James Street overlooking Pall Mall. Here Whig politicians congregated, and here Swift “became a notable figure.” (See Henry Craik's Life of Swift, Chap. V.) This building was removed in 1806.

    [7] Grecian. This coffee-house— one of the oldest in London— was frequented by lawyers and scholars, and was the scene of many learned disputes. The site, in Devereux Court, Strand, is now marked by Eldon Chambers.

    [8] Cocoa-Tree. Chocolate-house as distinctively Tory as the St. James was Whig. It was located at No. 64, St. James Street, Piccadilly, and is still standing.

    [9] Jonathan's. Coffee-house in Change Alley, where the lower class of stock-jobbers were found.

    [10] print myself out. Put my thoughts and opinions on paper.

    [11] Little Britain. Small neighborhood in centre of London, just east of Christ's Hospital. It was called Little Britain because it was formerly the residence of the Dukes of Brittany. In the early part of the seventeenth century it was a favorite mart for booksellers. (For further information see “Little Britain,” Irving's Sketch Book. New York: Silver, Burdett Co., 1896.)

    PAPER No. II.

    These characters represent typical men of the times, and it is not worth while to inquire what particular persons Addison may have had in mind. It is mere conjecture, at most.

    [12] country-dance. In this dance partners, ranged in rows, face each other and in couples dance down the line and back to places. It is somewhat similar to the Virginia reel.

    [13] Soho Square. South side of Oxford Street, was then the centre of fashionable life. It now marks the eastern limit of the social world of London.

    [14] fine gentleman. Notice the qualities which entitled him to the term.

    [15] Lord Rochester and Sir George Etherege. Dissolute wits of the time. The latter was then well known as a dramatist, but to us his greatest merit consists in his being the originator of “the school of prose comedy, which reached its highest point in Congreve and ended with Sheridan.” (For further information see Introduction to Works of Sir George Etherege, by A. Wilson Verity. London: John C. Nimmo, 14 King William Street, Strand, 1888.)

    [16] Bully Dawson. A man of low morality who aped the higher classes and tried to get into their society.

    [17] Game-Act. Poaching was so common that it was necessary to pass laws for the preservation of game.

    [18] Inner Temple. One of the four Inns occupied by legal societies which have the exclusive right of calling candidates to the bar. It is called Inner Temple to distinguish it from the Middle and the Outer Temples. The fourth of these “Inns of Court” is called Gray's Inn. They are all situated in what is called “The City,” a tract between the “East End” and the “West End.” (Instead of Outer Temple, Lincoln's Inn now makes the third.)

    [19] Aristotle and Longinus were versed in art; Littleton and Coke in law.

    [20] wit. Intellectual ability.

    [21] Plays began at five or six o'clock in the afternoon.

    [22] Rose. A tavern in Russell Street, near Drury Lane Theatre, and consequently much visited by play-goers.

    [23] Captain Sentry. See Spectator, No. 617.

    [24] chamber-counsellor. A chamber-counsellor gives advice only in private.

    PAPER No. III.

    [25] Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. A square or garden on the south side of High Holborn Street, not far from the Inner and the Middle Temples. It was the scene of much lawlessness and rioting till 1735, when it was railed off and became more reputable. Now it is a fine park, with imposing buildings fronting it.

    [26] Sir Richard Blackmore says, etc. Addison quotes from Sir Richard Blackmore's poem, The Creation, which at that time was unpublished.

    PAPER No. IV.

    [27] province for satire. A theme which furnishes to the writer abundant material for the exercise of his wit.

    [28] Horace, Juvenal, Boileau. Three satirical poets. Horace (65 B.C.-8 A.D.) and Juvenal (60-140 A.D.) were Romans; Boileau (1636-1711) a Frenchman.

    [29] Punch. Any man who places himself before the public. Punch was the chief character in the puppet show Punch and Judy. (See use of “Punchinello” in Spectator, No. 14.)

    PAPER No. V.

    [30] See Macaulay's History of England, Vol. I., Chap. III., for account of country gentlemen and country clergy.

    [31] present of all the good sermons. It was a common practice of the clergy to read sermons written by other people.

    PAPER No. VI.

    [32] so good an husband. So economical.

    [33] the dress. Indication of service.

    PAPER No. VII.

    [34] younger brother to a baronet. The oldest son always inherited the estate of his father; and the younger sons of the nobility, not supposed to transact business, were dependent for a living upon the generosity of their relatives. (See Tatler, 256.

    [35] makes a may-fly. Artificial fly used in fishing.

    [36] carries a tulip-root. The mania for tulips, which was carried to so great an extent in the seventeenth century, still existed in a mild form.

    [37] quail-pipe. Pipe blown to call or attract quails.

    PAPER No. VIII.

    [38] human. Distinguished from divine.

    [39] 'Change. Exchange. Place where business is transacted.

    PAPER No. IX.

    [40] carve her name. (See As You Like It, Act III.)

    [41] Martial. A Latin poet, born 43 A.D.

    [42] Dum tacet hanc loquitur. While he is silent he is speaking of her.

    PAPER No. XI.

    [43] Johnson says that although this paper was written by Budgell, Addison corrected and rewrote it.

    [44] Bastile. A noted prison in Paris. During the French Revolution it was torn down by the infuriated mob. Some time afterward the huge key was presented by Lafayette to George Washington, and it may now be seen at Mt. Vernon. (For further information see Bingham's Bastille, London: Chapman Hall, 1888.)

    [45] Monsieur Pascal. A celebrated French writer of the seventeenth century.

    [46] In connection with this paper read Charles Dudley Warner's A-Hunting of the Deer,

    PAPER No. XII.

    [47] Witchcraft had lost its hold on the minds of educated people, but the belief still prevailed among ignorant ones. The last person tried, found guilty, and condemned to capital punishment was Jane Wenham, and she was finally pardoned. Her trial occurred in 1712.

    PAPER No. XIII.

    [48] Was there anything in Addison's own experience that would enable him to understand Sir Roger's feeling for the widow?

    PAPER No. XIV.

    [49] For description of head-dress see Spectator, No. 98.

    PAPER No. XV.

    [50] within the Game-Act. No person possessing less than forty pounds a year was allowed to shoot game.

    [51] has cast. Defeated in a lawsuit.

    [52] going upon the old business of the willow-tree. Tom Touchy was probably going to the county assizes to continue a long-standing lawsuit involving a willow tree.

    [53] Saracen's Head. The English took pleasure in picturing the Saracens with ugly faces.

    PAPER No. XVI.

    [54] particular. Individual.

    [55] Plutarch. A Greek writer living in first century A.D. His best known work is his Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans.

    [56] great rule. Luke vi. 27-32.

    [57] Guelphs and Ghibellines. The Guelphs claimed that the Popes, the spiritual heads, should also be at the head in temporal affairs; the Ghibellines demanded the supremacy of the emperors; and for three centuries during the Middle Ages the two factions involved Germany and Italy in a disastrous struggle. (See “House of Hohenstaufen” in any History of the Middle Ages.)

    [58] the League. The “Catholic League” (1576) formed “to uphold the Catholic Church; to suppress heresy; and to maintain the honor, the authority, and prerogatives of the most Christian king and his successors.” (See History for Ready Reference, Vol. II., p. 1206.)

    PAPER No. XVII.

    [59] Cassandra. A prophetess, daughter of Priam. Apollo, angry with her, commanded people not to believe her predictions.

    [60] line of life. Line in the hand called the life line.

    PAPER No. XVIII.

    [61] “White Witch.” Distinction was usually made between the white and the black witch. The white, or good witch, helped to prevent or cure diseases in men or beasts; the black, or bad one, caused them.

    [62] Commonwealth's men. Addison here means men who are tired of the rule of one person and wish for a government by the people.

    PAPER No. XIX.

    [63] right we had of taking place. Roads were often so bad that one team must stop before another could pass. The rule was that the one going to London should have right of way, and the one coming from the city must turn aside.

    PAPER No. XX.

    [64] Ramage de la Ville. Warblers of the town.

    [65] crack. Crank.

    [66] Cries of London. The streets were alive with the numerous cries of the venders of food, old clothes, household articles, ranging from “Delicate cowcumbers to pickle” to “Maids, buy a Mopp.” (See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. XXXV.)

    [67] freeman. One who has the right to sell his goods.

    [68] note above ela. Above A.

    PAPER No. XXI.

    [69] Prince Eugenio. A celebrated Austrian general, who distinguished himself during the war of the Spanish succession (1701-1714). (See Gardiner's Student's History of England, Chap. XLIV.)

    [70] Scanderbeg. An Albanian commander of the fifteenth century.

    [71] securing the Church of England. By requiring all holders of office under the crown to belong to the Church of England.

    [72] Procession. To show opposition to the Catholic religion the Pope's head in effigy was carried in the procession.

    [73] Supplement. Extra edition.

    PAPER No. XXII.

    [74] the tombs. (See Spectator, No. 26.)

    [75] sickness being at Dantzic. Great plague of 1709.

    [76] Sir Cloudesley Shovel. An English admiral.

    [77] Busby. Richard Busby, an English instructor of the seventeenth century.

    [78] Cecil. Lord Burleigh.

    [79] figure. Statue of Elizabeth Russell. Story referred to is not authentic.

    [80] coronation chairs. There are two. The old coronation chair was made for Edward I.; the new one was made in 1689 for Queen Mary. The English monarchs are all crowned in the old coronation chair.

    [81] evil. King's evil, or scrofula. “Anne was the last of a long line of sovereigns, from Edward the Confessor, who exercised the supposed royal gift of healing.” (See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne.)

    [82] Sir Richard Baker. An English writer of the seventeenth century, author of Chronicle of the Kings of England, (See Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. III.)

    PAPER No. XXIII.

    [83] new tragedy. The Distressed Mother, by Ambrose Philips.

    [84] Committee. Play by Sir Robert Howard.

    [85] Mohocks. A lawless gang who made it their business to be on the streets assaulting people and destroying movable property. Ashton says the name probably came from the North American Indians. (See essay No. 324 in Spectator.)

    PAPER No. XXIV.

    [86] old put. Foolish or clownish fellow.

    [87] book. Paradise Lost, which Addison had been criticising.

    [88] lines. Paradise Lost, Book X., 888-908.

    PAPER No. XXV.

    [89] Vauxhall. Vauxhall Gardens, sometimes called Spring Garden, was a pleasure resort on the Thames River. It is now built over.

    [90] fifty new churches. These were built by Act of Parliament.

    PAPER No. XXVI.

    [91] Eustace Budgell in the Bee (February, 1778) said of Sir Roger de Coverley, “Mr. Addison was so fond of this character that a little before he laid down the Spectator (foreseeing that some nimble gentleman would catch up his pen the moment he quitted it), he said to an intimate friend, with a certain warmth in his expression which he was not often guilty of, 'I'll kill Sir Roger, that nobody else may murder him.'”