Days with Sir Roger de Coverley

DAYS WITH SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY
by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
(Originally published in THE SPECTATOR)

CONTENTS.
SIR ROGER'S FAMILY.
MR. WILL WIMBLE.
THE PICTURE GALLERY.
A COUNTRY SUNDAY.
THE WIDOW.
THE CHASE.
THE COUNTY ASSIZES.
THE SPECTATOR'S RETURN TO TOWN.

SIR ROGER'S FAMILY.
Having often received an invitation from my friend Sir Roger de
Coverley to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week
accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his
country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing
Speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humour,
lets me rise and go to bed when I please, dine at his own table or in my
chamber as I think fit, sit still and say nothing without bidding me be

merry. When the gentlemen of the country come to see him, he only
shews me at a distance. As I have been walking in his fields I have
observed them stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have heard the
Knight desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be
stared at. I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family, because it
consists of sober and staid persons; for as the Knight is the best master
in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by
all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his
domesticks are all in years, and grown old with their master. You
would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is
gray-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen,
and his coachman has the looks of a privy-counsellor. You see the
goodness of the master even in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad
that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness out of regard to
his past services, tho' he has been useless for several years.
I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy that
appeared in the countenance of these ancient domesticks upon my
friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain from
tears at the sight of their old master; every one of them press'd forward
to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not
employed. At the same time the good old Knight, with the mixture of
the father and the master of the family, tempered the enquiries after his
own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This
humanity and good- nature engages every body to him, so that when he
is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humour, and
none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with. On the
contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for
a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.
My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler,
who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his
fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they
have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend.
My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods
or the fields, is a very venerable man who is ever with Sir Roger, and

has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years.
This gentleman is a person of good sense and some learning, of a very
regular life and obliging conversation. He heartily loves Sir Roger, and
knows that he is very much in the old Knight's esteem, so that he lives
in the family rather as a relation than a dependent.
I have observed in several of my papers, that my friend Sir Roger,
amidst all his good qualities, is something of an humorist; and that his
virtues, as well as imperfections, are as it were tinged by a certain
extravagance, which makes them particularly HIS, and distinguishes
them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very
innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable, and
more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear
in their common and ordinary colours. As I was walking with him last
night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now
mentioned? and without staying for my answer told me, That he was
afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; for
which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the University to
find him out a