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 compassion. ate 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 pene trated 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 coöperation 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.

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 c 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.

5

I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, 15 was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and