first and think afterwards; he never adapted means to ends; he took his chances that everything would come. out right in the end. But when once his affection was aroused, he met the trials of life not only with sweetness of temper but with resoluteness of heart and dignity of bearing. Any one who would see with what af fection, gallantry, dignity, wit, and humor, a very human husband can address a very petulant wife should read the letters1 which this captain in the Coldstream Guards dashed off on the impulse of the moment to his wife. They are full of a kindly, half-humorous appeal 1 The following may serve as illustrations: June 5th, 1708. DEAR PRUE:-What you would have me do I know not. All that my fortune will compasse you shall always enjoy, and have no body near you that You do not like except. I am myself disapproved by You for being devotedly, Y'r Obedient Husband, I shan't come home till night. RICH'D STEELE. June 7th, 1708. DEAR PRUE:-I enclose you a Guiniea for y'r Pocket. I dine with Ld. Hallifax. I wish I knew how to Court you into Good-Humour, for Two or Three Quarrels more will dispatch Me quite. If you have any Love for Me believe I am always pursuing our Mutual Good. Pray consider that all my little fortune is to be settled this month and that I have inadvertently made myself Liable to Impatient People who take all advantages. If you have not patience I shall transact my business rashly and Lose a very great sum to Quicken the time of yr being ridd of all people you don't like. Yrs Ever, RICH'D STEELE. to her best self. "I am told," says his old friend Victor in his Original Letters, "that he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would often be carried out on a summer's evening, when the country lads and lasses were assembled at their several sports, and, with his pencil, give an order on his agent the mercer, for a new gown for the best dancer. 33. Dobson on Steele. "There have been wiser, stronger, greater men, says Austin Dobson. "But many a strong man would have been stronger for a touch of Steele's indulgent sympathy; many a great man has wanted his genuine largeness of heart, many a wise man might learn something from his deep and wide humanity." "If Addison," says the same critic, "delights us by his finish, he repels us by his restraint and absence of fervor; if Steele is careless, he is always frank and genial. Addison's papers are faultless in their art, and in this way achieve an excellence which is beyond the reach of Steele's quicker and more impulsive nature. But for words which the heart finds when the head is seeking; for phrases glowing with the white-heat of a generous emotion; for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous indignation, we must turn to the essays of Steele." Of Eustace Budgell, the third author 34. Budgell. represented in the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, little need be said. He was a scapegrace protégé of Addison's, quarreled with his superiors in office, gambled his property away in speculation, tried to recover his fortunes by forging a will, and finally, filling his pockets with stones, plunged into the Thames. His contributions to the Spectator were probably under Addison's direction, and subject to his revision. The sketches which compose the Sir Roger 35. A Picture of the Age. de Coverley Papers contain but a small fraction of the literary work of Addison and Steele. The reader who, when he has finished these papers, goes no further in his acquaintance with the Spectator loses many of its most picturesque essays. The Spectator has been read from generation to generation for its subtle humor; it has been read for its graceful style; but most of all, perhaps, it has been read for its graphic pictures of a bygone age. With the exception of Pepys's Diary, no English book exists today which tells with the same faithful detail how ancestors of ours have looked and acted. One who has familiarized himself with the Tatler and the Spectator can imagine himself at will among our barbarous and yet ceremonious ancestors of a hundred and ninety years ago.1 1 After reading this volume, let the reader turn for example to Nos. 12, 15, 16, 64, 69, 101, 150, 251, 324, 328, 452, 454, 474, and 481. The truest pictures of eighteenth century life he will find in numbers into which the idealized old knight, Sir Roger, does not enter. ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS I THE SPECTATOR [No. 1.-Addison. Thursday, March 1, 1710-11.] Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem -Horace. 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 5 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 sev10 eral2 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. 1He means to produce not smoke from flame but light from smoke, so that he may bring forth in succession wondrous beauties. 2 Note the force of the here. 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 5 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 my mother dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: Whether this 10 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 15 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 20 until 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 with my 25 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 30 uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed |