Mall' to mingle in that great club of the world — sitting alone in it somehow: having good-will and

1 "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 a 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 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. . . . There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of 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, and all the time that I sucked, 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 the 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, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. . . .

"I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that know me. . . . 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,' and listening with great attention to the

kindness for every single man and woman in ithaving need of some habit and custom binding him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damn him with faint praise); and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humors of all of us laughs the kindest laugh-points our neighbor's foible or eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and then, turning over his shoulder, whispers our foibles to our neighbor. What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming little braincracks ?1 If the good knight did not call out to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. times I smoke a pipe at 'Child's,' and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the 'Postman,' overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffeehouse;' and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the 'Grecian,' the 'Cocoa-tree,' and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stockjobbers at 'Jonathan's.' In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

Some

"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 in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions 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. 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."-Spectator, No. 1.

1 "So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool."- MACAULAY.