The heavy marginal figures stand for page, and the lighter ones for line

I. The Spectator

That is, a well-planned work of art will not begin with a flash and end in smoke; but, beginning modestly, will grow more lucid and brilliant as it proceeds. Horace, in the lines immediately preceding these, quotes in translation the opening words of the Odyssey as an example of a good introduction.

The mottoes of the Spectator papers—nearly all chosen from the Latin poets—are usually, as in this case, very apt. They give a certain air of dignity and easy scholarship to the treatment of familiar themes. In a later paper (No. 221, written by Addison) the Spectator defends himself with charming humour against any charge of pedantry in the use of them.

45: 12. My own history. In this paper Addison of course is not giving us his own history; but he is giving us a truthful picture of his own temperament. His love of reading and of travel, his dignified composure, his taciturnity, his habit of quiet observation—they are all faithfully set down.

47: 20. The measure of a pyramid. Addison perhaps had in mind the works on this subject by John Greaves (1602-1652), a mathematician and antiquary; a posthumous pamphlet by him had recently (1706) been published. Addison's own travels never extended farther than Italy.

47: 28. Place of general resort. The coffee-houses played a very important part in the London life of Queen Anne's time. They were frequented by all classes,—wits and scholars, divines, politicians, men of business, and men of fashion. Each of the more famous houses had its own class of patrons, and thus served as a kind of club. Men frequently had their letters left there—as Swift used to do, instead of at his lodgings—and could count on meeting congenial acquaintances there at any time. An observant French traveler, Henri Misson, whose book was translated in 1719, gives a pleasant glimpse of the coffee-house interior: "You have all Manner of Newes there: You have a good Fire, which you may sit by as long as you please; You have a Dish of Coffee; You meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business; and all for a Penny, if you don't Care to spend more." In the better houses, cards or dicing were not allowed, and swearing and quarrelling were punished by fines.

The coffee-houses mentioned in the text were, in 1710, those most widely known. Will's, at the corner of Bow and Great Russell streets, near the Drury Lane Theatre, was the famous house where, during the last decade of the seventeenth century, the great Dryden had held his chair as literary dictator, and it was still a favourite resort both for men of letters and men of affairs; it was from Will's that Steele dated all those papers in The Tatler which were concerned with poetry. Child's, in St. Paul's church-yard, was frequented by the clergy and by men of learning; the Grecian, in Devereaux Court, just off the Strand, was also the resort of scholars and of barristers from the Temple—Steele dated from there all "accounts of learning" in his Tatler. The St James, near the foot of St. James Street, was a thoroughly Whig house, as the Cocoa Tree on the opposite side of the street was a Tory. Jonathan's, in Exchange Alley, near the heart of the city, was the headquarters of stockjobbers. All these were coffee-houses, except the Cocoa Tree, which called itself a chocolate-house. The chocolate-houses were few in number, higher in prices, and less popular than the coffee-houses.

Steele gives a pleasant account of coffee-house customs in Spectator, No. 49. See also two papers by Addison on coffee-house talk, Spectator, Nos. 403, 568.

For a fuller account of London Coffee-houses in Addison's time, see Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xviii, and Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century, Chap. xii.

48: 5. The Postman. One of the little newspapers of the Queen Anne time, issued thrice a week and edited by a French Protestant named Fontive.

48: 11. Drury Lane and the Haymarket. These two famous theaters were, in 1710, the only ones open in London.

48: 16. Never open my lips but in my own club. "Addison was perfect good company with intimates; and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence." Pope, quoted in Spence's Anecdotes, p. 38. It will be noticed that while this taciturnity and reserve were characteristics of Addison, they were utterly foreign to the disposition of Steele. Steele often talked too soon and too fast, and he threw himself most heartily into the game of life.

48: 27. Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories. The Spectator kept this resolve, though the restriction was difficult for Steele.

50: 19. Mr. Buckley's in Little Britain. Samuel Buckley was a printer who, in 1702, had started the first English daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, a little sheet 14 by 8 inches in size. He undertook to print The Spectator for Steele and Addison. Little Britain is the name of a short street in London, near Smithfield.

50: 24. C. All Addison's papers in The Spectator are signed with some one of the four letters forming the word Clio, the name of the muse of history. Steele's are signed R or T. In Spectator, No. 221, Addison gives a droll comment upon these "Capital Letters placed at the End of the papers."

II. The Club

Motto. "But other six and more call out with one voice."—Juvenal, Satires, vii, 167.

51: 2. Sir Roger de Coverley. "The still popular dance-tune from which Addison borrowed the name of Sir Roger de Coverley in The Spectator, is contained in Playford's Division Violin, 1685; in The Dancing Master of 1696, and all subsequent editions."—Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time.

Steele says it was Swift who made the happy suggestion of calling the old knight by the name of the popular dance.

51: 4. Country-dance. This seems to be the original form of which contre-dance and contra-dance are perversions, naturally arising from the fact that in such dances the men and women stand in lines facing each other.

51: 14. Soho Square. Since the time of Charles II this had been a fashionable quarter of London, but fell into comparative disfavour as a place of residence before the close of the eighteenth century.

We do not hear again of this town residence of Sir Roger; he is considered as a country gentleman, who only makes short visits to London, and then lodges in Norfolk buildings off the Strand.

52: 1. My Lord Rochester and Sir George Etherege. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), and Sir George Etherege (1634-1694) enjoyed some little reputation as poets and more notoriety as rakes during the reign of Charles II. Etherege had considerable dramatic ability; but both men covered with a veneer of fine manners essentially vulgar lives, and both died drunkards.

53: 2. Bully Dawson. "A swaggering sharper of Whitefriars."—Morley.

53: 2. Inner Temple. The Inns of Court are legal societies in London which have the exclusive right of admitting candidates to the bar, and provide instruction and examinations for that purpose. There are four of these Inns of Court,—Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Middle Temple, and the Inner Temple. The last two derive their names from the fact that they occupy buildings and gardens on the site formerly belonging to the military order of Knights Templar, which was dissolved in the fourteenth century. The famous Temple Church is the only one of the buildings of the great Knights Templar establishment that now remains. We hear but little of the Templar in the following papers; Steele did not find the character as interesting as it might have been expected he would.

53: 8. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the greatest of Greek philosophers in his influence upon later thought, was also perhaps the greatest, as he was the first, of literary critics. The Templar probably cared quite as much for Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics as for his philosophical works.

53: 9. Longinus (210-273) was the author of a treatise On the Sublime, more admired two centuries ago than it is to-day.

53: 9. Littleton. Sir Thomas Littleton (1402-1481), a noted English jurist, author of a famous work in French on Tenures.

53: 10. Coke. The Institutes of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), a reprint and translation of Littleton's book, with copious comment,—hence popularly known as Coke on Littleton,—are a great authority upon the law of real property.

53: 17. Tully. Marcus Tullius Cicero.

53: 29. Exactly at five. In the Queen Anne days the play began at six, or often as early as five. The Templar is going to the Drury Lane Theatre. He passes New Inn, which was one of the buildings of the Middle Temple, crosses the Strand, and through Russell Court reaches Will's Coffee-house, where he looks in for coffee and the news, and he has his shoes rubbed and his wig powdered at the barber's by the Rose Tavern, which stood just beside the theatre.

54: 6. Sir Andrew Freeport. Steele's Whig sympathies may be seen in this picture of the intelligent and enterprising merchant. The trading classes of England belonged then almost entirely to the Whig party; the landed aristocracy, on the other hand, country squire and country parson, were almost always Tories. See note on p. 242.

54: 22. A penny got. This would seem to be the source of Franklin's Poor Richard's maxim, "A penny saved is a penny earned."

57: 6. Hoods. The hood was an important article of woman's attire at this time. See Addison's delightful paper, Spectator, No. 265.

57: 12. The Duke of Monmouth. The natural son of Charles II, who, during the reign of James II, in 1685, invaded England and attempted to seize the crown; but was defeated in the battle of Sedgemoor,—the last battle fought on English soil,—taken prisoner, and executed on Tower Hill. He was a young man of little ability; but his personal beauty and engaging manners won him many friends. See the portrait of him as Absalom in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, 29, 30:

58: 23. R. One of Steele's signatures. See note, p. 219.

III. Sir Roger's Criticisms on Polite Society

Motto. "They used to think it a great crime, even deserving of death, if a young man did not rise up in the presence of an elder."—Juvenal, Satires, xiii. 54.

59: 6. Wit and sense. These were reckoned in the Queen Anne time the cardinal virtues not only of literature, but of society. Keenness and quickness of intellect, grace of form in letters, urbanity and good breeding, brilliancy of converse in society—these were the qualities the age most admired. This paper is one of many written by Steele to protest against the divorce of these qualities from morality and religion.

59: 9. Abandoned writings of men of wit. Steele probably has especially in mind the drama of his time. English comedy was never so witty and never so abandoned as in the fifty years following the Restoration.

60: 8. Lincoln's Inn Fields. A large square just west of Lincoln's Inn, at this time much frequented by beggars and sharpers.

61: 24. Sir Richard Blackmore (1650-1729), a dull, long-winded poet of the time, whose verse has little beside its virtue to recommend it. In the Preface to his long philosophical poem, The Creation, published a few months after this paper was written, he inveighs at great length against the licentiousness and atheism of men of wit and letters; but the sentences in the text seem to be quoted, though inaccurately, from the Preface to his earlier epic, Prince Arthur (1695).

IV. The Club and the Spectator

Motto. "A wild beast spares his own kind."—Juvenal, Satires, xv. 159.

65: 13. The opera and the puppet-show. The absurd unrealities of the Italian opera, then recently introduced into England, were a subject of frequent sarcastic comment in The Spectator. "Audiences," says Addison, "have often been reproached by writers for the coarseness of their taste; but our present grievance does not seem to be the want of a good taste, but of common sense." For strictures on the opera, see Nos. 1, 13, 18, 22, 29, 31.

65: 15. Dress and equipage of persons of quality. Perhaps he refers to No. 16, in which the Spectator had ventured some criticism upon muffs and garters and fringed gloves and other "foppish ornaments."

65: 19. The city. Technically "the city" is that part of London north of the Thames from Temple Bar on the west to the Tower on the east, and extending as far as Finsbury on the north, which constituted the original walled city of London. It is the part of London under the immediate control of the lord mayor and aldermen, and its residents are "citizens." The trade and business of London was in Addison's time almost entirely—and still is very largely—included in this area.

Sir Andrew Freeport, as a merchant, of course stands up for the city.

66: 4. The wits of King Charles's time. The comedies of the writers of the time of Charles II—Farquhar, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh—usually turn upon intrigue of which the wives and daughters of citizens are the victims.

66: 6. Horace (65-8 B.C.) and Juvenal (circa 60-140 A.D.), the masters of Latin satire; Boileau (1636-1711), a French satirist and critic.

66: 12. Persons of the Inns of Court. See Spectator, No. 21.

66: 25. Fox hunters. Whatever Mr. Spectator may have said in private, it does not seem that he had thus far written any paper disparaging fox hunters. A later essay, No. 474,—not written by Addison,—is rather severe upon them. Addison's famous picture of the Tory fox hunter is found in The Freeholder, No. 22.

67: 23. Vices ... too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit. This is an admirable indication of the range and purpose of the Spectator's satire.

68: 16. The Roman triumvirate. Octavius, Antony, Lepidus. For the account of their "debate," see Plutarch's Life of Mark Antony or Shakespeare's version of it in Julius CÆsar, iv. 1.

68: 27. Punch. One Robert Powell, a hunchbacked dwarf, kept a puppet show, or "Punch's theatre," in Covent Garden. The speech of Punch was often very broad. See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, p. 215.

V. A Lady's Library

Motto. "She had not accustomed her woman's hands to the distaff or the skeins of Minerva."—Virgil, Æneid, vii. 305.

69: 13. Leonora. A letter from a Leonora, perhaps the lady of this paper, is to be found in Spectator, No. 91.

70: 4. Great jars of china. The craze for collecting china was then at its height. It is satirized by Steele in Tatler, No. 23, and by Addison in No. 10 of The Lover.

70: 17. Scaramouches. The Scaramouch is a typical buffoon in Italian farces; the name is derived from Scaramuccia, a famous Italian clown of the last half of the seventeenth century.

70: 20. Snuff box. This indicates that the habit of snuff taking had been adopted by fine ladies. It would seem, however, to have been a new fashion, at all events with ladies. See Steele's criticism upon the habit in Spectator, No. 344. For curious facts with reference to the use of tobacco in the Queen Anne time, see Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xvii.

71: 3. Looking into the books, etc. The humour consists largely, of course, in the odd miscellany of books suited "to the lady and the scholar."

71: 9. Ogilby's Virgil, the first complete translation of Virgil, 1649.

71: 10. Dryden's Juvenal, 1693.

71: 11, 12, 13. Cassandra, Cleopatra, and Astraea were translations of long-winded, sentimental French romances, the first two by La CalprenÈde, the third by HonorÉ D'UrfÉ.

71: 15. The Grand Cyrus and Clelia were even more famous romances, by Mademoiselle de ScudÉry, each in ten volumes. For delightful satire upon the taste for this sort of reading, see Steele's comedy, The Tender Husband; the heroine, Miss Biddy Tipkin, has been nourished upon this delicate literature.

71: 17. Pembroke's Arcadia. Written in 1580-1581, by Sir Philip Sidney, but published, after his death, by his sister, the Countess of Pembroke. It is the best of the Elizabethan prose romances.

71: 18. Locke. John Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, an epoch-making work in philosophy, published in 1690. Locke was one of the authors Leonora had "heard praised," and may have "seen"; but she evidently found better use for his book than to read it. The "patches" were bits of black silk or paper, cut in a variety of forms, which ladies stuck upon their faces, presumably to set off their complexions. See Spectator, No. 81. Notice the pun in this use of Locke.

71: 22. Sherlock. William Sherlock (1641-1707), dean of St. Paul's.

71: 23. The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony, a translation of a French book of the fifteenth century, Quinze Joies de Mariage.

71: 24. Sir William Temple's Essays, published 1692.

71: 25. Malebranche's Search after Truth had been translated from the French not long before.

72: 1. The Ladies' Calling, a popular religious book, anonymous, but ascribed to the unknown author of the most widely circulated religious book of the seventeenth century, The Whole Duty of Man.

72: 2. Mr. D'Urfey. Thomas D'Urfey (1650-1720), a playwright and humorous verse writer. His poetical writings were collected, 1720, under the title, Pills to purge Melancholy. In 1704 he published Tales, Tragical and Comical, which is probably the book here referred to.

72: 6. Clelia. See note on 71: 15.

72: 8. Baker's Chronicle. Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle of the kings of England, 1634. Sir Roger was very familiar with this dull book. See Spectator, No. 329, XXVIII of this volume.

72: 9. Advice to a Daughter. By George Saville, Marquis of Halifax.

72: 10. The New Atalantis. By Mrs. Manley, who had an unsavoury reputation in London journalism during the reign of Anne. This was a scandalous romance, attacking prominent persons, especially of the Whig party, under feigned names.

72: 11. Mr. Steele's Christian Hero. See Introduction.

72: 14. Dr. Sacheverell's Speech. A Tory high-church preacher who was impeached before the House of Lords for two violent sermons assailing the Whig party. His trial caused great excitement, and was one of the events immediately preceding the downfall of the Whigs in 1710. The "speech" here mentioned is that delivered in his own defence. It is said to have been written for him by Samuel Wesley, father of John Wesley.

72: 15. Fielding's Trial. One Robert Fielding, tried for bigamy early in the century.

72: 16. Seneca's Morals. The Moral Essays of Seneca (4 B.C.-65 A.D.). The translation of Roger L'Estrange was popular at this time.

72: 17. Taylor's Holy Living and Dying. Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), the most eloquent of English divines.

74: 22. To give me their thoughts upon it. Some of "their thoughts" may be found in Nos. 92 and 340.

VI. Coverley Hall

Motto. "Hence shall flow to the full for thee, from kindly horn, a wealth of rural honours."—Horace, Odes, I. xvii. 14-17.

77: 7. The nature of a chaplain. The religious influence of the clergy, especially of the country clergy, was doubtless very small in the Queen Anne time. For their condition and work, see Macaulay's famous Chapter iii. in his History of England; Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Chap. ii; Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xxxii; Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century, chapter on Church and Chapel. Abundant confirmation of this low estimate of the character and influence of the clergy may be found in contemporary literature. For example, see Swift's Project for the Advancement of Religion, his satirical Argument against the Abolishing of Christianity, and Letter to a Young Clergyman.

Yet it must be remembered that the Whig prejudices of Addison inclined him, in his kindly satire, to belittle the attainments and the influence of the country clergy, who were, almost to a man, Tories.

79: 3. Bishop of St. Asaph may have been either William Beveridge (1637-1708) or his successor, William Fleetwood (1656-1723); both had, before this time, published volumes of sermons.

79: 4. Dr. South. Robert South (1633-1716), a very high churchman and a very eloquent preacher.

79: 6. Tillotson. John Tillotson (1630-1694), made Archbishop of Canterbury three years before his death.

79: 7. Saunderson. Robert Saunderson (1587-1663), Bishop of Lincoln.

79: 7. Barrow. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) was eminent both as a theologian and a mathematician.

79: 7. Calamy. Edmund Calamy (1600-1666) is the only one in the chaplain's list of preachers who was not a Churchman; Calamy was a Presbyterian, though a liberal one, who served a little time as chaplain of Charles II.

VII. The Coverley Household

Motto. "The Athenians raised a colossal statue to Æsop, though a slave, and placed it on a lasting foundation, to show that the path of Honor is open to all."—Phaedrus, Epilogue, 2.

80: 4. Corruption of manners in servants. For interesting details, see Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. vi, Servants. Steele had already written a paper on the subject, Spectator, No. 88.

83: 4. Put his servants into independent livelihoods. Note the inconsistency of the statement with those of the previous paper. The two papers were written at the same time,—they were printed on two consecutive days,—and Steele and Addison, it is evident, did not very carefully avoid slight inconsistencies.

VIII. Will Wimble

Motto. "Out of breath for naught; doing many things, yet accomplishing nothing."—Phaedrus, Fables, II. v. 3.

85: 6. Wimble. A wimble is a gimlet—the two words are probably from the same root. Possibly, as some of his editors have suggested, Addison meant to indicate that Will Wimble was a small bore. Quite as possibly he meant that the fellow was always turning about, yet making a very small hole.

86: 1. Eton. The most famous of English schools; in sight of Windsor Castle.

86: 8. Younger brother. By English law the eldest son succeeds to the family estate and titles.

86: 21. A tulip-root. About the middle of the seventeenth century there was a craze for tulips in England. The bulbs were grown in Holland, and were sold for fabulous prices. Dealing in them became a kind of speculation, and tulip bulbs were bought and sold on the exchange, as stocks are now, without changing hands at all. As much as a thousand pounds has been paid, it is said, for a single bulb. The Dutch government finally passed a law that no more than two hundred francs should be charged for one bulb. By the time this paper was written the mania had mostly passed, yet tulips were still highly prized. In The Tatler, Addison has a pleasant paper (No. 218) telling of a cook maid who mistook a "handful of tulip-roots for a heap of onions and by that means made a dish of pottage that cost above a thousand pounds sterling." Forty years later, young Oliver Goldsmith, when a medical student in Leyden, almost beggared himself by the purchase of a parcel of tulip-roots to send to his good uncle Contarine in Ireland.

89: 1. Trading nation, like ours. In such passages as this Addison betrays his Whig sympathies. The trading and moneyed classes, it will be remembered, were all in the Whig party; the landed aristocracy, in the Tory party. In Spectator, No. 21,—referred to in the closing lines of this paper,—he dwells at length on the opportunities and advantages of the business life as compared with the overcrowded professions.

IX. The Coverley Ancestry

Motto. "Wise, but not by rule."—Horace. Satires, II. ii. 3.

90: 19. Harry the Seventh. Henry VII, king of England, 1485-1509.

90: 19. Yeomen of the guard. The bodyguard of the sovereign, numbering one hundred, who attend him at banquets and other state occasions. They are popularly called "beefeaters," and still wear the uniform here described. The wardens of the Tower of London wear a uniform differing but slightly from that of the yeomen of the guard.

90: 28. The Tilt-yard occupied not only a part of the "common street," now called Whitehall, but the greater part of the "parade ground" in St. James's Park, just behind the Horse Guards building.

91: 14. The coffee-house. Jenny Man's coffee-house, one of the best known in London, stood on the spot now occupied by the paymaster general's office.

91: 24. New-fashioned petticoat. The hooped petticoat has made its appearance, in various forms, at various times, throughout the history of British female attire. Sir Roger's grandmother apparently wore what was called the "wheel farthingale," a drum-shaped petticoat worn in the late sixteenth century. The form in vogue in Addison's time—it came in about 1707—was bell shaped, and of most liberal dimensions. For some admirable fooling upon it, see Spectator, No. 127, and Tatler, No. 116, both by Addison.

92: 4. White-pot. Made of cream, rice, sugar, and cinnamon, etc. It was a favourite Devonshire dish, as the famous "clotted cream" of Devon is now.

93: 9. Sir Andrew Freeport has said. Sir Andrew characteristically stands up for the citizens and the moneyed interest. Later on he reminds Sir Roger of the obligation of his family to trade. See Spectator, No. 174, XXVII of this volume.

93: 15. Turned my face. Note the delicate courtesy of the Spectator.

94: 20. The battle of Worcester, September 3, 1651, in which Cromwell defeated the Scots, supporters of Charles II.

X. The Coverley Ghost

95: 9. Psalms, cxlvii. 9.

96: 20. Mr. Locke, in his chapter. Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. ii, Chap. xxxiii.

98: 12. The relations of particular persons who are now living. Addison's opinion as to the reality of ghosts and apparitions was shared by most people of his time, the thoughtful and educated as well as the ignorant.

98: 17. Lucretius. A Roman poet of the century before Christ, whose one work, De Rerum Natura, is a philosophic poem, showing much subtlety of thought. The "notion" referred to in the text is found in the early part of the Fourth Book of the De Rerum Natura.

99: 4. Josephus (37-95 A.D.). The Jewish historian. The passage is found in his Antiquities of the Jews, Bk. xvii, Chap. xiii.

XI. Sunday with Sir Roger

Motto. "First honour the immortal gods, as it is commanded by law."—Pythagoras, Fragments.

101: 20. Instruct them rightly in the tunes of the Psalms. The service in the parish churches throughout England at this time was slovenly and spiritless. Samuel Wesley, father of John, who was then rector of the parish of Epworth, complains that his people prefer the "sorry Sternhold Psalms," have "a strange genius at understanding nonsense," and sing decently only "after it has cost a pretty deal to teach them."

103: 10. The clerk's place. In the English parishes the clerk is the layman who leads in reading the responses of the church service.

103: 23. Tithe stealers. Tithes are a tax, estimated as a tenth (tithe) of the annual profits from land and stock, appropriated for the support of the clergy. The tithes in England are now commuted to rent charges.

XII. Sir Roger in Love

Motto. "(Her) features remain imprinted on (his) heart."—Virgil, Æneid, iv. 4.

105: 1. The perverse widow. Ingenious commentators have thought to identify the lady with a certain Mrs. Catherine Bovey, to whom Steele dedicated the second volume of his Ladies Library; but it seems altogether improbable that Steele and Addison would intend any of their characters as actual portraits.

108: 20. Such a desperate scholar that no country gentleman can approach her. It is probable that Sir Roger's estimate of the scholarship of country gentlemen in his time does them no great injustice. Macaulay says of the country squire at the end of the seventeenth century: "If he went to school and to college, he generally returned before he was twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and then, unless his mind was very happily constituted by nature, soon forgot his academical pursuits in rural business and pleasures. His chief serious employment was the care of his property.... His chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports and from unrefined sensuality. His language and pronunciation were such as we should now expect to hear only from the most ignorant clowns."—History of England, Chap. iii.

109: 20. Sphinx. The sphinx was sent by Juno to devastate the country of the Thebans, until some one could answer her riddle, "What animal goes on four feet in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?" [OE]dipus gave the right answer, "Man," and so saved his countrymen.

110: 3. Her tucker. The tucker was an edging of muslin or lace at the top of the dress, covering the neck and bosom.

110: 8. Some tansy. A kind of pudding flavored with tansy.

110: 24. Dum tacet hanc loquitur. Even when silent he is speaking of her.

110: 25. Epigram. Martial, Epigram, I. lxviii. The last two lines of the epigram are not quoted.

XIII. How to bear Poverty

Motto. "The shame of poverty and the fear of it."—Horace, Epistles, I. xviii. 24.

111: 16. The glass was taken ... pretty plentifully. The Queen Anne men were not very temperate. Says Mr. Lecky: "The amount of hard drinking among the upper classes was still very great, and it is remarkable how many of the most conspicuous characters were addicted to it. Addison, the foremost moralist of his time, was not free from it. Oxford, whose private character was in most respects singularly high, is said to have come, not infrequently, drunk into the very presence of the Queen."—England in the Eighteenth Century, Chap. iii.

Swift writes in his Journal to Stella, October 31, 1710: "I dined with Mr. Addison and Dick Stuart. They were both half fuddled; but not I."

113: 13, 19. Laertes ... Irus. Classical names were frequently taken for imaginary personages by the writers of this time. Laertes, in Homer's Odyssey, is the father of Ulysses, and Irus is a beggar.

113: 16. Four shillings in the pound. Laertes evidently has to pay three hundred pounds a year interest on his mortgage of six thousand pounds, which is one fifth of his whole income, or "four shillings in the pound."

113: 18. Easier in his own fortune. Because, of course, he has to pay taxes on his whole estate.

114: 25. Mr. Cowley. Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), one of the most popular poets of the second third of the seventeenth century. The vogue of his poetry, however, rapidly declined; but his prose essays are still very pleasant reading. The essay which Steele seems to refer to in the latter part of this paragraph is that on Greatness, which closes with a translation of Horace's Ode, Odi profanum, Bk. iii. 1.

114: 28. The elegant author who published his works. Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who issued a complete edition of Cowley's Poetical Works, prefaced with a Life, in 1680. Sprat's Life of Cowley is one of the most interesting pieces of biography of the seventeenth century.

115: 5. Great vulgar. The phrase is from the second line of Cowley's translation of the Odi profanum of Horace, above mentioned:

But Steele's sentence is certainly obscure.

116: 11. If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat, etc. These lines are Cowley's own, and are inserted in the essay on Greatness.

XIV. Labour and Exercise

Motto. "That there may be a sound mind in a sound body."—Juvenal, Satires, x. 356.

117: 21. Ferments the humours. It was an old medical notion that in the body there are four humours or fluids,—blood, phlegm, choler, and bile,—and that health depended upon the due proportion and mixture of these humours. This conception influenced popular language, after it was in great part discarded by more accurate medical knowledge. It will be noticed throughout this paper that Addison's hygiene is better than his physiology.

117: 28. Refining those spirits. The name animal spirits was given to a subtle fluid which, according to ancient medical notions, permeated the body and served in some way as the medium of sensation and volition. In its looser and more recent use the phrase means little more than nervous energy or sometimes physical vivacity.

118: 3. The spleen was supposed to be the seat of melancholy or fretfulness, hence was often used for the melancholy itself.

118: 5. Vapours. The blues, especially used of women.

120: 8. Dr. Sydenham. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), the most noted physician of his time, surnamed "the English Hippocrates."

120: 12. Medicina Gymnastica, or a Treatise concerning the Power of Exercise, by Francis Fuller, published in 1704.

120: 14. Exercise myself an hour every morning. It may be doubted whether Mr. Addison kept up this healthful practice. At all events, like most of the fat club goers of the age, he gave evidence in his later years of the need of more vigorous physical exercise, and he died at the early age of forty-seven.

120: 23. A Latin treatise of exercises. Artis Gymnasticae apud antiquos, by Hieronymus Mercurialis, Venice, 1569.

XV. Sir Roger goes A-Hunting

This paper and XXX of the present collection were written by Eustace Budgell. This sanguine, brilliant, but ill-starred young man was a cousin of Addison's, an Oxford graduate, and a writer of considerable promise. He was introduced to public life by Addison, whom he accompanied as clerk when Addison went to Ireland as secretary. For a time Budgell was a member of the Irish Parliament, and seemed to have a successful career in prospect both in politics and in letters; but he became involved in unfortunate financial speculations, especially in the notorious South Sea Bubble, was guilty of forgery in his efforts to extricate himself, and finally, in despair, drowned himself in the Thames.

Motto. "Cithaeron calls aloud and the dogs on Mount Taygetus."—Virgil, Georgics, iii. 43.

Cithaeron and Taygetus were mountains, the one in Boeotia and the other in Laconia.

121: 18. The Bastile (modern spelling, Bastille). The famous prison, for prisoners of state, in Paris; destroyed at the beginning of the French Revolution, July 14, 1789. The 14th of July is still a national holiday in France.

123: 19. Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. 1. 124.

126: 20. Threw down his pole. Such of the hunters as followed the chase on foot usually carried long vaulting poles, by the aid of which they could leap hedges, ditches, or miry places, and thus, by going cross country, often keep as close to the dogs as the mounted huntsmen. See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xxiii.

127: 7. Pascal. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French geometrician and philosopher, and one of the most acute thinkers of his century. His later years were passed in the celebrated community of Port Royal, where his metaphysical and religious works were written. After his death, a number of fragmentary papers intended for a work in defence of Christianity, which he did not live to finish, were collected and published under the title PensÉes de M. Pascal sur la Religion (Thoughts of Pascal upon Religion). It is from the seventh section (MisÈre de l'homme) of this work that the quotation in the text is taken.

127: 27. Too great an application to his studies in his youth. Pascal wrote a famous Latin treatise on Conic Sections at the age of sixteen, invented a calculating machine at the age of nineteen, and before he was twenty-one was accounted one of the first mathematicians of the world. But he says that from the age of eighteen he never passed a day without pain.

128: 10. Lines out of Mr. Dryden. John Dryden (1631-1700), the representative English poet of the last half of the seventeenth century. The lines quoted are from his Epistle XV, to his cousin of the same name as himself, John Dryden of Chesterton, a robust, fox-hunting bachelor. The epistle is a good example of Dryden's masculine common-sense.

XVI. The Coverley Witch

Motto. "They make their own visions."—Virgil, Eclogues, viii. 108.

129: 9. The subject of witchcraft. The Spectator was less credulous, on this matter of witchcraft, than most of his contemporaries. The witchcraft craze in Salem, Massachusetts, occurred in 1692; only a few years before this paper was written, two women had been hanged in Northampton, England, for witchcraft; and as late as 1716 a certain Mrs. Hicks and her daughter were executed in Huntingdon for selling their souls to the devil, etc. The statute of James I, 1603, punishing witchcraft by death, was not repealed until 1736; and the belief in witchcraft continued to be common long after that, not only among the ignorant, but among the educated. John Wesley, on most matters a man of very sound practical judgement, writes in his Journal as late as 1770: "I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane. And at the present time I have not only as strong but stronger proofs of this from eye and ear witnesses than I have of murder; so that I cannot rationally doubt of one any more than the other." And Samuel Johnson, when questioned by Boswell on the matter, while he would "not affirm anything positively upon the subject," reminded Mr. Boswell that in support of witchcraft "You have not only the general report and belief, but many solemn, voluntary confessions." (Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, April 9, 1772.)

For an account of the kind of evidence used against alleged witches, see a case cited in Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. x.

130: 19. Otway. Thomas Otway (1651-1685), the best tragic dramatist of the Restoration period. The passage is from his tragedy, The Orphan, ii. 1.

131: 8. Carried her several hundreds of miles. In accordance with the superstition that a witch rode through the air at night on a broomstick. Other superstitions are referred to in the following lines.

131: 15. Take a pin of her. Because bewitched people were frequently said to be tormented with pins, or to be made to vomit pins. The pins that figured so conspicuously in the Salem witchcraft trials may still be seen in the Museum there.

132: 5. A tabby cat. A black cat was traditionally supposed to be a favourite form in which Satan embodied himself, and hence a constant figure in all witchcraft stories.

132: 15. Advising her, as a justice of peace. This sentence admirably indicates Sir Roger's half belief in the preternatural powers of the old woman, and his anxiety to avoid any trouble that would oblige him to come to a conclusion in the matter.

132: 24. Trying experiments with her. Because, if she floated, she was accounted a witch; if she sank, she was probably innocent, and they might pull her out.

XVII. Sir Roger talks of the Widow

Motto. "The city they call Rome, I had been foolish enough, MelibÆus, to suppose like this town of ours."—Virgil, Eclogues, i. 20.

140: 11. The fashionable world is grown free and easy. This tendency in manners began to be more marked after the Restoration, 1660. Some reaction toward a more formal and elaborate courtesy in the world of fashion could be seen about the middle of the eighteenth century, under the influence of such men as Lord Chesterfield.

For some account of manners in the Queen Anne time, see Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chaps. vii, viii; Trail's Social England, Chaps. xvi, xvii. For telling contemporary satire, see Swift's Polite Conversation.

143: 2. Red coats and laced hats were fashionable twenty years before Addison was writing. In 1711 the coat was likely to be of some more quiet color, though in great variety of shades. At just this time the skirts were "wired" to make them stand out—as may be seen by a reference in Spectator, No. 145. The laced hat had been replaced by a low-crowned, black felt hat, with very wide brim, which was looped up or "cocked." For the variety of shapes into which the dandy would cock his hat, and other information on the hat, see Spectator, No. 319.

143: 4. The height of their head-dresses. The head-dress had evidently been much lowered within a few years. Addison, in Spectator, No. 98, declares that "within my own memory I have known it rise and fall about thirty degrees." In the latter half of the century, about 1775, it again attained proportions even more startling than in Addison's day.

XIX. Sir Roger at the Assizes

Motto. "A jovial companion on the way is as good as a carriage."—Publius Syrus, Maxims.

144: 9. Assizes. The periodical sessions held by at least one of the superior judges in every county in England. For a brief but clear description of the English judicial system, see Woodrow Wilson's The State, sections 731-745.

144: 16. Just within the Game Act. This act, passed in the reign of James I, provided that no person who had not an income of forty pounds a year, or two hundred pounds' worth of goods and chattels, should be allowed to shoot game. The law continued in force until 1827.

144: 23. Petty jury. The twelve men selected to determine cases, civil or criminal, in court, according to the evidence presented to them; called petty (or petit) jury to distinguish them from the grand jury, whose principal function is to decide whether the evidence against a suspected person is sufficient to warrant holding him for trial by a petty jury.

144: 27. Quarter sessions. A criminal court held by the justices of the peace once a quarter in an English county.

145: 20. Much might be said on both sides. Sir Roger's decision has passed into a proverb.

146: 12. A look of much business and great intrepidity. One of Addison's best bits of description.

147: 19. The Saracen's Head. In early days, before city streets were numbered, not only inns but shops usually were designated by some sign painted or carved at the door. In the case of inns this practice still survives, and most English inns of the county towns bear the name of some object that once served as a sign, as the Angel (Lincoln), the Fountain (Canterbury), the Bull (Cambridge), the Three Swans (Salisbury). Ever since the time of the Crusades the head of a Saracen, or Turk, had been a favourite sign. Readers of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson will recall the Turk's Head Tavern in Gerrard Street, London, where the most famous of clubs used to meet.

XX. The Education of an Heir

Motto. "Learning improves native genius, and right training strengthens the character; but bad morals will bring to shame the best advantages of truth."—Horace, Odes, iv. 33.

149: 23. A story I have heard. Addison probably invented this story, and he certainly thought well of it himself. On the same day this paper was printed he sent to his friend Edward Wortley Montague a letter beginning thus: "Being very well pleased with this day's Spectator, I cannot forbear sending you one of them, and desiring your opinion of the story in it. When you have a son, I shall be glad to be his Leontine, as my circumstances will probably be like his." The tone of discouragement in the last clause is explained by Addison's statements, later in the letter, that he has recently lost large sums of money, "and what is worse than all the rest, my mistress." The Countess of Warwick was evidently not smiling upon him just then, and Addison saw himself in the future—if not like Leontine, a widower—a bachelor in humble circumstances.

149: 27. Like a novel. The word novel was introduced into English in the sixteenth century as a name for the Italian novelle, or short tales, translations of which were then very numerous in England. In Addison's time it was still used to designate a short story as distinguished from the longer romances like those in the Ladies Library (V of this volume). The modern novel, an extended narrative of real life, with careful plot usually having for its central motion the passion of love, was not yet written in English. It is usually said to begin with the work of Richardson and Fielding, 1740-1750.

150: 14. Gazette. The official journal of the government. Steele, it will be remembered, had been gazetteer from May, 1707, to October, 1710, when the Whigs went out of power.

150: 23. According to Mr. Cowley. "You would advise me not to precipitate that resolution [of retiring from public life] but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person whom you and I love very much and would believe as soon as another man) 'cum dignitate otium.' That were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there is no fooling with life when it is once turned beyond forty. The seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game."—Cowley's Essay, The Danger of Procrastination. Also see note, p. 234.

150: 29. Of three hundred a year, i.e. yielding an income of three hundred pounds a year.

152: 19. Inns of Court. See note, p. 221.

XXI. Whigs and Tories

155: 1. The malice of parties. Party feeling had perhaps never been more bitter in England than just at this time; and it was probably all the more bitter and personal because there were no very clear questions at issue between the two parties. Swift, writing in the Tory Examiner a few months before the date of this paper (November 16, 1710), says, "Let any one examine a reasonable honest man, of either side, upon those opinions in religion and government, which both parties daily buffet each other about, he shall hardly find one material point in difference between them." The principal questions upon which Whig and Tory had once actively differed, and still continued to differ in theory, were two. The first was the nature of the monarchy and its relation to the other parts of the government. The extreme Tories held that the king had a divine right to his throne, by hereditary succession; that this was indefeasible, and implied the duty of unconditional obedience from the subject. The extreme Whigs held that the king was the creation of the people, and held his office purely by act of Parliament. But it would have been difficult to find many such extreme Tories or extreme Whigs. The doctrine of the divine right of kings had been practically refuted by the Revolution of 1688; if there were any such right, then the crown belonged, not to Anne, but to the Pretender, son of James II. On the other hand, few Whigs would have denied that the monarchy was an essential part of the English system of government, and not the mere creature of parliament.

The other and more important subject of difference between the two parties was the relation of the Church to the State and to Dissent. The Tories were Churchmen, and held that the interests of the Church and of religion demanded more constant and detailed attention from the State, and more stringent measures to repress dissent. They always called themselves the Church party; Queen Anne never called them anything else. The Whigs, on the other hand, though many of them were good Churchmen, apprehended less danger from dissent and were more liberal toward it. The Dissenters themselves, of course, were all Whigs.

There was, however, another difference between the two parties quite as important as any speculative question, and daily growing more important. As was stated in the Introduction, the most significant social fact in the England of the first half of the eighteenth century is the growth of a great middle, commercial class, who were gaining wealth rapidly and filling up the towns. At the bottom of much political controversy between 1700 and 1715 was the undefined jealousy between this class and the landed class. It was trade against land, new wealth against old aristocracy, town against country. For this commercial class almost to a man were Whigs; the landed gentry and their dependants, country squires and country parsons, almost to a man, were Tories.

This jealousy became extremely bitter about 1710. During all the reign of Anne, England had been engaged in the great war of the Spanish succession, the real object of which was to prevent the virtual union of the crowns of France and Spain. The war was heartily supported from the first by the Whigs, but opposed, or only languidly supported, by the Tories. A successful war is always popular, and strengthens the party that favours it most; accordingly, through the earlier years of the reign, when the English general Marlborough was winning his famous victories, the Whigs had everything their own way, and by 1708 the government was entirely in their hands. But as the war, however successful, seemed no nearer ending, and its burdens began to press more heavily, Tory opposition strengthened, and party feeling grew more and more intense. The financial load fell mostly on the Tory or landed class; for, as the Tories said, so soon as ever a trading Whig could get a thousand pounds, he put it into government securities, which he had to pay no tax upon, while the land had to pay him a handsome rate of interest. This opposition to the Whigs, strengthened by a feeling that the cause of the church and of religion was endangered by Whig supremacy, grew to such volume that in the memorable elections of 1710 the Whigs were defeated, and a Tory majority brought into the Commons. The Whig ministers were dismissed; Marlborough, the great general, a little later was recalled from the army; and finally the queen took the unprecedented step of creating twelve new Tory peers, and so making a Tory majority in the House of Lords also.

It was in these stormy years that The Spectator appeared. In the tumult of partisan controversy Addison succeeded in keeping his paper out of the strife. He was a pronounced Whig himself, and his preferences are plainly enough to be seen even in these papers; but he sincerely deprecated the rancorous tone of party writing, and he wisely refused to allow The Spectator to become the organ of a party. Steele had more difficulty in restraining his pen, and finally retired from The Spectator rather than remain quiet on public questions.

155: 4. Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Puritans, during the term of the Civil War, were nicknamed Roundheads because they wore their hair short (as everybody does now), instead of allowing it to fall over their shoulders as was the fashion with the Royalists or Cavaliers.

155: 6. St. Anne's Lane. Probably the lane of that name in Westminster, near the Abbey.

155: 12. Prick-eared cur. A dog with pointed ears. The epithet was applied to the Puritans, because they wore their hair short, and their ears were not covered by long locks.

156: 4. Tend to the prejudice of the land-tax. Sir Roger naturally finds the mischiefs of parties to come mostly from the Whigs, who support the war, and so raise the land tax.

156: 25. Plutarch. The Greek historian and moralist, born about 46 A.D. His Lives are perhaps the most interesting work of biography in the world. The quotation in the text is from his other principal work, the Morals.

157: 5. That great rule. Luke vi. 27-29.

157: 8. Many good men ... alienated from one another. It is probable Addison had especially in mind his own old friendship with Swift, which had grown very chill of late on account of their political differences. As early as December 14, 1710, when he began to be intimate with the new Tory ministry, Swift writes in the Journal to Stella, "Mr. Addison and I are as different as black and white, and I believe our friendship will go off by this damned business of party." A month later, January 14, 1711, he says, "At the coffee-house talked coldly awhile with Mr. Addison; all our friendship and dearness are off; we are civil acquaintances, talk words, of course, of when we shall meet, and that is all."

158: 26. Guelphs and Ghibellines. The two great political parties in Italy, fiercely opposed to each other from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century. The Guelphs or popular party, supported the pope; the Ghibellines, or aristocratic party, the emperor.

158: 27. The League. The Holy Catholic League, formed in France, 1546, to resist the claims of Henry IV to the throne, and check the advance of Protestantism.

XXII. Whigs and Tories—Continued

Motto. "Trojan or Rutulian, it shall be the same to me."—Virgil, Æneid, x. 108.

161: 24. Diodorus Siculus. A Greek historian of the first century, born—as the name implies—in Sicily. He wrote a Historical Library, of which only a part is preserved.

162: 19. The spirit of party reigns more in the country. Here speaks the Whig prejudice of Addison; Sir Roger himself might have thought differently.

162: 29. Tory fox hunters. See Addison's account of a typical Tory fox hunter in The Freeholder, No. 22.

164: 23. Fanatic. The term was frequently applied to the Puritans, and later to Dissenters.

XXIII. Sir Roger and the Gipsies

Motto. "They find their constant delight in gathering new spoils, and living upon plunder."—Virgil, Æneid, vii. 748.

166: 2. Set the heads of our servant-maids so agog, i.e. by telling their fortunes.

166: 6. Crosses their hands with a piece of silver. It was customary to make the sign of the cross upon the hand of the gipsy with the coin given him—probably with a view to avert any evil influence from such doubtful characters.

166: 23. A Cassandra of the crew. Cassandra, daughter of Priam, king of Troy, had been given by Apollo the gift of prophecy; but the god, afterward offended by her, rendered the gift futile by decreeing that she should never be believed.

XXIV. The Spectator decides to return to London

Motto. "Once more, ye woods, farewell."—Virgil, Eclogues, x. 63.

171: 2. Spring anything to my mind. The metaphors in this and the following lines are drawn from the chase. To "spring" is to rouse game from cover; to "put up" has much the same meaning.

171: 6. Foil the scent. When a variety of game is started, and their trails cross, the dogs become confused and cannot follow any one.

171: 14. My love of solitude, taciturnity. See paper I of this volume.

171: 28. White Witch. Called "white" because doing good; most witches were believed to practise a black art.

172: 10. Some discarded Whig. Discarded, or he would not have been staying in the country among Tories.

173: 19. Stories of a cock and a bull. Any idle or absurd story. The phrase in this form or in the other now more common, "a cock-and-bull story," has been common in English for nearly three hundred years; but its origin is not known.

173: 25. Make every mother's son of us Commonwealth's men. Sir Andrew Freeport, it will be remembered, was a pronounced Whig, and the Whigs were charged with having inherited the doctrines and traditions of the Commonwealth.

XXV. The Journey to London

Motto. "We call that man impertinent who does not see what the occasion demands, or talks too much, or makes a display of himself, or does not have regard for the company he is in."—Cicero, De Oratore, ii. 4.

174: 5. Ready for the stage-coach. By 1710 coaches ran regularly between London and most larger towns in England. The best were called "flying-coaches," were drawn by six horses, and sometimes made eighty miles a day. They did not run at night. The fare was about three pence the mile.

174: 7. The chamberlain was the chief servant of an inn.

174: 9. Mrs. Betty Arable. The title Mrs. was applied to unmarried ladies, the term Miss being reserved for young girls and for people who misbehaved themselves.

174: 13. Ephraim, the Quaker. The name was frequently applied to Quakers, because Ephraim "turned his back in battle." See Psalm lxxviii.

177: 26. The right we had of taking place. Roads were very narrow, and two coaches meeting often found it difficult to pass; hence disputes of the coachmen as to the right of way.

XXVI. Sir Roger and Sir Andrew in Argument

Motto. "I recall the argument, and remember that Thyrsis was vanquished."—Virgil, Eclogues, vii. 69.

179: 9. The old Roman fable. The fable of the Belly and the Members, told in Livy, Bk. ii, Chap. xxxii; retold by Shakespeare in Coriolanus, i. 1. 99.

179: 13. The landed and trading interest. See note, p. 242.

180: 3. Carthaginian faith. Punica fides, a phrase used by the Romans to characterize the treachery of the Carthaginians.

183: 21. Throws down no man's enclosure, and tramples upon no man's corn, as country gentlemen do when hunting over the grounds of their neighbours or their tenants.

184: 22. His family had never been sullied by a trade. It will be remembered that Sir Roger was sensitive on this point. See IX, p. 89.

XXVII. Sir Roger in London

185: 15. Gray's Inn Walks. The walks and gardens of Gray's Inn (see note, p. 221) were a favourite resort.

185: 18. Prince Eugene. Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), a famous Austrian general. He had fought side by side with Marlborough through several campaigns in the great War of the Spanish Succession that was now drawing to a close. At this time Marlborough had just been dismissed from his command in the army (see p. 244), and the English Tory ministry were making negotiations for a peace. Prince Eugene visited London to urge the continuance of the war and the restoration of Marlborough, but his mission was futile.

186: 5. Scanderbeg. Corrupt form of Iskander (Alexander) Bey; a noted Albanian chief, whose name was George Castriota, born 1404. He won many victories against the Turks.

186: 24. Out of Dr. Barrow. See VI, p. 79. Dr. Isaac Barrow (1630-1677) was one of the most eloquent divines of his age.

187: 1. Tobacco stopper. A small plug, made of wood or bone, to pack the tobacco in the bowl of a pipe.

188: 14. The late Act of Parliament, the Act to repress Occasional Conformity, passed 1710. By the Test Act of 1673 it was required of every person filling any civil office that he should take the sacrament, at certain times, according to the forms of the Church of England. The object, of course, was to exclude all Romanists and all Dissenters from office. But it was found that many Dissenters did not feel themselves forbidden by conscience to take the sacrament occasionally from the hands of a priest of the Church of England, if only so they could qualify for office. A bill to prevent this "Occasional Conformity" was warmly urged through all the earlier years of the reign of Anne; but so long as the Whigs were in power, it was impossible to pass it. When the Tories came in, in 1710, they naturally passed it at once.

188: 19. Plum-porridge. Extreme Dissenters looked with disfavour upon all Christmas festivities as savouring of Romish observance.

188: 28. The Pope's Procession. November 17, the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth, was long celebrated by parades and processions in which the pope and Catholic traditions were turned into ridicule. These parades were often the occasion of popular tumult; but, in 1711, some of the more violent Whigs planned an especially offensive demonstration, which had to be suppressed by the authorities. Swift writes on the evening of the day: "This is Queen Elizabeth's birth-day" [he was in error there; it was not her birth, but her accession, that was celebrated], "usually kept in this town by apprentices, etc.; but the Whigs designed a mighty procession by midnight, and had laid out a thousand pounds to dress up the pope, devil, cardinals, Sacheverel, etc., and carry them with torches about, and burn them.... But they were seized last night, by order of the secretary; you will have an account of it, for they bawl it about the streets already. They had some very foolish and mischievous designs; and it was thought they would have put the rabble upon assaulting my lord treasurer's house, and the secretary's; and other violences. The militia was raised to prevent it, and now, I suppose, all will be quiet."—Journal to Stella, November 17, 1711.

Addison naturally rather minimizes the disturbance by the absurd question of Sir Roger.

189: 10. Baker's Chronicle. See note, p. 226. The Chronicle was a favourite authority with Sir Roger; in the next paper we find him quoting it at length.

189: 16. Squire's. A coffee-house in Holborn, near Gray's Inn, specially frequented by the benchers of the inn.

189: 23. The Supplement. A newspaper of the time, issued on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

XXVIII. Sir Roger in Westminster Abbey.

Motto. "Yet we must go whither Numa and Ancus have gone before."—Horace, Epistles, I. vi. 27.

190: 2. Paper upon Westminster Abbey, Spectator, No. 26. That paper with this one perhaps show Addison, in two different moods, at his very best.

190: 17. The Widow Trueby's Water. The "strong waters" of that time, like many of the patent medicines of ours, owed their vogue largely to the fact that they were made of distilled spirits. See Addison's account of some of the quack medicines of the day in Tatler, No. 224.

191: 11. The sickness being at Dantzic. The great plague there in 1709.

191: 14. A hackney-coach. Hackney-coaches, or carriages for hire in the streets, were introduced into London during the latter half of the seventeenth century. By Addison's time they had become common; in 1710, by statute, the number to be licensed in London was fixed at eight hundred. The fare was a mile and a half for a shilling. The coachmen were an uncivil and pugnacious class, which accounts for Sir Roger's preference for an elderly one. Graphic pictures of the manners of coachmen may be found in Gay's Trivia, ii. 230-240, 311-315; iii. 35-50.

192: 10. A roll of their best Virginia. Tobacco for smoking was made into ropes or short rolls, and had to be cut up for the pipe.

192: 16. Sir Cloudesley Shovel. A famous English admiral, who took a prominent part in the great victory of the combined Dutch and English fleets over the French, off La Hogue, in May, 1692. He was afterward drowned at sea; but his body was recovered and buried in the Abbey. The monument to Sir Cloudesley Shovel Addison, in No. 26, criticizes as in bad taste, and with very good reason.

192: 18. Busby's tomb. Richard Busby (1606-1695), for fifty-five years headmaster of Westminster school. He used to say that "the rod was his sieve, and that whoever could not pass through that was no boy for him." He persistently kept his hat on when Charles II came to visit his school, saying it would never do for his boys to imagine there was anybody superior to himself.

192: 23. The little chapel on the right hand. St. Edmund's, in the south aisle of the choir.

192: 26. The lord who had cut off the King of Morocco's head. An inscription recording this feat—probably legendary—formerly hung over the tomb of Sir Bernard Brocas, who was beheaded on Tower Hill, 1400.

193: 1. Cecil upon his knees. William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth. He is represented "on his knees" at the magnificent tomb of his wife and daughter. This tomb, however, is not in the chapel of St. Edmund, but in the adjoining chapel of St. Nicholas.

193: 3. Who died by the prick of a needle. This story was formerly told of Lady Elizabeth Russell, whose richly decorated tomb is in St. Edmund's chapel.

193: 10. The two coronation chairs. In that chapel of Edward the Confessor which is the heart of the Abbey. One chair is said to have been that of Edward the Confessor; in it every sovereign of England from Edward I to Edward VII has been crowned. The other was made for Mary when she and her husband William were jointly crowned king and queen of England.

193: 11. The stone ... brought from Scotland. The "stone of Scone," traditionally reputed to be that on which Jacob rested his head when he had the vision of the ladder reaching up to heaven. It was brought from Ireland to Scone in Scotland, and all Scottish kings were crowned on it there till Edward I of England brought it to London in 1296, and ordered it enclosed "in a chair of wood," and placed in the Abbey.

193: 25. Edward the Third's sword. "The monumental sword that conquered France," as Dryden calls it, stands between the coronation chairs.

194: 2. The Black Prince. Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Edward III, who died in 1376 before his father. He is buried, not in the Abbey, but in the cathedral at Canterbury.

194: 8. Touched for the evil. Scrofula, called "king's evil," because it was supposed that it could be cured by the touch of a legitimate sovereign. King William III, as he was king only by act of Parliament, had not "touched"; but Queen Anne, unquestionably a legitimate monarch, resumed the practice. Samuel Johnson was touched by her in his infancy, but without effect. No sovereign after Anne pretended to this power. The act of "touching" was accompanied by an elaborate ceremony, the ritual for which continued to be included in the Book of Common Prayer until 1719. For an account of the procedure, see Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xxx, pp. 325-326.

194: 12. One of our English kings without an head. Henry V. The head of the effigy, which was of solid silver, was stolen in the reign of Henry VIII, at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries.

195: 4. His lodgings in Norfolk Buildings. In II Sir Roger is said, when in town, to "live in Soho Square," a more aristocratic quarter. That paper was written by Steele; this by Addison.

XXIX. Sir Roger at the Play

Motto. "I bid the skilful poet find his models in actual life; then his words will have life."—Horace, Ars Poetica, v. 327.

195: 11. The Committee. A play by Sir Robert Howard, brother-in-law of Dryden. It was a satire on the Puritans, which explains its reputation as "a good Church of England play."

195: 14. This distressed mother. The "new tragedy" Sir Roger went to see was an adaptation by Addison's friend, Ambrose Phillips, of Racine's Andromaque, and bore the title The Distressed Mother.

196: 1. The Mohocks. A company of young swaggerers who roamed the streets of London at night, committing various insults upon belated passers. They were specially bold at just this time. Swift has several entries in the Journal to Stella about them. March 12: "Here is the devil and all to do with these Mohocks.... My man tells me that one of the lodgers heard in a coffee-house, publicly, that one design of the Mohocks was upon me if they could catch me; and though I believe nothing of it, I forbear walking late." March 16. "Lord Winchelsea told me to-day at court that two of the Mohocks caught a maid of old Lady Winchelsea's, at the door of their house in the park, with a candle and had just lighted out somebody. They cut all her face and beat her without provocation." March 18. "There is a proclamation out against the Mohocks. One of those that was taken is a baronet." March 26. "Our Mohocks go on still, and cut people's faces every night, but they shan't cut mine. I like it better as it is." Further facts about them may be found in Spectators, Nos. 324, 332, 347. For a full account, see Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xxxvi.

196:23. That we may be at the house before it is full. The play usually began at five o'clock.

197:1. Battle of Steenkirk, August 3, 1692, in which the English were defeated by the French. The battle gave name to a kind of loose cravat or neckcloth for men, introduced from Paris, which was fashionable for years, called a "steenkirk" or "steinkirk," because its careless style suggested the eagerness with which the victorious French gentlemen rushed into battle half dressed.

197:18. Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles. In the play, Andromache, the "widow" of Hector, and "the distressed mother" of young Astyanax, after the fall of Troy is the captive of Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus wooes her, promising that if she become his wife, her son Astyanax shall be made king of Troy. She at last consents, secretly resolving to kill herself before the marriage can be consummated. But Hermione, betrothed to Pyrrhus, maddened with jealousy, incites the Greeks to rebellion against Pyrrhus, with the result that just as Astyanax has been proclaimed king, Pyrrhus is slain by Orestes, Hermione takes her own life, and Orestes goes mad.

198:4. "You can't imagine, sir, what 'tis to have to do with a widow!" But Addison, just about this time, did know how that was himself. See Introduction.

198: 13. Your dramatic rules. Perhaps the knight has in mind the dramatic "unities" of time, place, and subject; but his next sentence shows that he has no very definite rules in mind. He only knows that Mr. Spectator has been writing some learned papers of late on the drama and poetry; and he cannot see why a play so simple as this admits any laboured criticism.

198: 21. Are now to see Hector's ghost. Because at the beginning of the fourth act Andromache proposes to visit the tomb of Hector.

199: 15. The old fellow in whiskers. Perhaps Phenix, a friend of Pyrrhus.

XXX. Will Honeycomb's Experiences

202: 24. Miss Jenny. Notice the use of the epithet "Miss"; the day before Will Wimble would have said "Mistress Jenny." See note on p. 248.

203: 21. The book I had considered last Saturday, in Spectator, No. 357, April 19, 1712. It was one of the famous series of papers on Milton's Paradise Lost.

203: 23. The following lines. Paradise Lost, x. 888-908. They are not quoted quite accurately.

XXXI. Sir Roger at Vauxhall

205: 9. Spring Garden. A famous garden and pleasure resort (more commonly called Fox Hall or Vauxhall Gardens), on the south side of the Thames, near where the Vauxhall bridge now spans the river. There was a large garden covering about eleven acres, with arbours, walks shaded by day and lighted at night by lamps festooned from the trees, a miniature lake, booths for the sale of refreshments, and a large central "rotunda" for music. First opened in 1661, Vauxhall was a favourite place of resort all through the eighteenth century; all the lighter literature of that century contains frequent references to it. The Gardens were not finally closed until 1859. For fuller account, see Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century, Chap. iv.

205: 19. Temple Stairs. A boat-landing near the Temple gardens. The most pleasant way of getting from the east of London to the west, in Addison's time, was by boat on the river.

206: 16. La Hogue. See note on Sir Cloudesley Shovel, p. 251.

206: 29. How thick the city was set with churches. The "city" is that part of London originally enclosed by a wall, and extends from the Tower on the east to Temple Bar on the west. Temple Bar was the gateway over that great thoroughfare which is called Fleet Street on the east side of it, and the Strand on the west side. The Bar was demolished in 1878, and its site is marked by a rather ugly monument surmounted by the arms of the city of London.

207: 4. The fifty new churches. The Tories had been brought into power in 1710 very largely by the popular cry, "The Church is in danger." (See note, p. 249.) Accordingly, one of the first acts of the House of Commons, in 1711, was to vote the building of fifty new churches in London.

208: 4. Mahometan paradise, because the chief attraction of the Mahometan heaven is the houris, "the black-eyed," whose beauty never grows old.

208: 28. Member of the quorum. A justice of the peace.

XXXII. The Death of Sir Roger

The first number of The Bee, a weekly paper set up in 1733, by Addison's friend, Budgell, contains the following statement: "Mr. Addison was so fond of this character [Sir Roger de Coverley] that a little while 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, 'By G——, I'll kill Sir Roger, that nobody else may murder him.' Accordingly the whole Spectator, No. 517, consists of nothing else but an account of the old knight's death, and some moving circumstances which attended it."

It seems probable that about this time both Steele and Addison were thinking of bringing The Spectator to a close, and this was the first of a series of papers which should dismiss all the members of the Spectator Club. In No. 544—the last of this volume—Captain Sentry succeeds to Sir Roger's estate, and passes from notice; in No. 549 the old clergyman is reported dead, and Sir Andrew Freeport gives up his business and retires into the country to make ready for the end; in No. 555 the Spectator makes his parting bow, and the volume closes.

211: 16. The quorum. The justices of the peace for the county.

212: 9. The Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, provided that all ministers should declare their unfeigned assent to everything in the Book of Common Prayer, and should use it at morning and evening service. The Act threw more than two thousand ministers out of their livings, and united all Dissenters against the Church. Of course Tories, like Sir Roger, held it to be a wise and necessary measure, of utmost importance to the security and stability of the Church.

212: 17. Rings and mourning. It was customary to give by will mourning rings and mourning gloves and hat bands to a large number of friends. They would be worn, of course, by such of the friends as attended the funeral services; but not afterward. See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. iv.

XXXIII. Captain Sentry as Master of Coverley Hall

Motto. "No one ever had a scheme of life so well arranged but that circumstances, or age, or experience, would bring him something new, and teach him something more: so that you find yourself ignorant of the things you thought you knew, and on experience you are ready to give up what you supposed of the first importance."—Terence, Adelphi, v. 4.

216: 11. Colonel Camperfelt. Colonel Kemperfeldt, the father of the admiral who was lost in the Royal George, has often been supposed to be the model from which the character of Captain Sentry was drawn.

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FOOTNOTES