The Coverley Papers | Page 6

man shining through it all'.
The influence of the Spectator was incalculable. Addison succeeded in his principal object. 'I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses,' and that I have produced 'such writings as tend to the wearing out of ignorance, passion, and prejudice'. [Footnote: Spectator 10.] A glance at the social and literary history of the next thirty or forty years will reveal how fully this wish was accomplished. It is true that folly and vice have not yet been wiped off the face of the earth, but the Spectator turned the tide of public opinion against them. The fashionable ideal was reversed; virtue became admirable, and though vice could not be destroyed, it was no longer suffered to plume itself in the eyes of the world. The Spectator had delivered virtue from its position of contempt, and 'set up the immoral man as the object of derision'. [Footnote: Spectator 445.]
The Spectator has also acquired an incidental value from the passage of time. Addison hints at this in his citations from an imaginary history of Queen Anne's reign, supposed to be written three hundred years later. In 'those little diurnal essays which are still extant'--two-thirds of the time has elapsed, and at present the Spectator is certainly extant--we are enabled 'to see the diversions and characters of the English nation in his time.' [Footnote: Spectator 101.] It is in the literature of a nation that we find the history of its life and the motives of its deeds.
Finally, the Spectator has a permanent value as a human document. 'Odd and uncommon characters are the game that I look for and most delight in,' [Footnote: Spectator 103. ] he tells us, but, with the exception of the sketch of Tom Touchy [Footnote: Spectator 122.], none of his persons are lifeless embodiments of a single trait, like the 'humours' of the early part of the preceding century. Sir Roger, who 'calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit', [Footnote: Spectator 2.] who is too delicate to mention that the 'very worthy gentleman to whom he was highly obliged' was once his footman, [Footnote: Spectator 107.] who dwells upon the beauty of his lady's hand [Footnote: Spectator 113.] and can be jealous of Sir David Dundrum [Footnote: Spectator 359.] after thirty odd years of courtship, who hardly likes to contemplate being of service to his lady, because of 'giving her the pain of being obliged', [Footnote: Spectator 118.] who addresses the court and remarks on the weather to the judge in order to impress the Spectator and the country, [Footnote: Spectator 122.] who will not own to a mere citizen among his ancestors, [Footnote: Spectator 109.] and 'very frequently' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] repeats his old stories--Sir Andrew, with his joke about the sea and the British common, [Footnote: Spectator 2.] and his tenderness for his old friend and opponent [Footnote: Spectator 517.]--the volatile Will Honeycomb, whose gallantry and care of his person [Footnote: Spectator 2, 359.] remind us of his successor, Major Pendennis--these are all in their degree intimate friends or acquaintances, as living in our imagination and in the actual world now as they were two hundred years ago, and immortal as everything must be which has once been inspired with the authentic breath of life.

[Illustration: Reduced facsimile of the original single-page issue.]

ADDISON: COVERLEY PAPERS

No. 1. THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1710-11.
_Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat._ HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 143.
One with a flash begins, and ends in smoke; The other out of smoke brings glorious light, And (without raising expectation high) Surprises us with dazzling miracles. ROSCOMMON.
I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, until 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 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.
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