civil power, in the late and prefent reign, has been indebted to your counsels and wisdom. But to enumerate the great advantages which the public has received from your adminiftration, would be a more proper work for an history than for an addrefs of this nature. Your Lordship appears as great in your private life, as in the most important offices which You have borne. I would therefore rather choose to speak of the pleasure You afford all who are admitted into your converfation, of your elegant taste in all the polite parts of learning, of your great humanity and complacency of manners, and of the surprising influence which is peculiar to You in making every one who converfes with your Lordship prefer You to himself, without thinking the lefs meanly of his own talents. But if I should take notice of all that might be observed in your Lordship, I should have nothing new to say upon any other character of diftinction. I am, THE Spectator's prefatory discourse, and account of N° Spectator's farther account of himself and his defign On the abufe of the understanding On clubs, with the rules of the two-penny club The Spectator recommends the perufal of his papers Arietta's character; the ftory of Inkle and Yarico Against telling ftories of spirits and apparitions On the profeffions of divinity, law and phyfic Letters on the reigning tafle of plays and operas Wit, dangerous in an ill-natur'd or vicious man On impertinence; with letters from T. Kimbow, &c. On the monuments in Westminster-abbey On ambition, and the anxiety occafioned by it On the abfurdity of feveral figns in London On the Italian recitativo and French opera On the ancient and modern tragedy On the ufe of paint by the fair fex Letters to the ugly club; from Hecatiffa, &c. On coffee-boufes; with the character of Eubulus Obfervations on the English, by four Indian kings Letter from the prefident of the Ugly Club from Anna Bella: king Latinus, &c. On the folly of a general mourning A criticifm on the play of Sir Fopling Flutter The advantages of trade and commerce A criticism on the old fong of Chevy Chafe THE SPECTATOR. N° 1. Thursday, March 1, 1710-11. Non fumum ex fulgore, fed ex fumo dare lucem Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 143. One with a flash begins, and ends in smoke; ROSCOMMON. I HAVE HAVE obferved, that a reader feldom perufes a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the wiiter of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric difpofition, 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 curiofity, which is fo natural to a reader, I defign this paper and my next as prefatory difcourfes to my following writings, and fhall give fome account in them of the several perfons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digefting, |