The De Coverley Papers

De Coverley Papers, by Joseph
Addison and Others

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Title: The De Coverley Papers From 'The Spectator'
Author: Joseph Addison and Others
Editor: Joseph H. Meek
Release Date: February 22, 2007 [EBook #20648]
Language: English
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COVERLEY PAPERS ***

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The KINGS TREASURIES OF LITERATURE

GENERAL EDITOR
SIR A. T. QUILLER COUCH
LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD

[Illustration: J. Addison.]

THE DE COVERLEY PAPERS FROM 'THE SPECTATOR'
EDITED BY JOSEPH MEEK M.A.

All rights reserved by J. M. DENT & SONS LTD Aldine
House · Bedford Street · London Made in Great Britain at The Aldine
Press · Letchworth · Herts First published in this edition 1920 Last
reprinted 1955

INTRODUCTION
No character in our literature, not even Mr. Pickwick, has more
endeared himself to successive generations of readers than Addison's
Sir Roger de Coverley: there are many figures in drama and fiction of
whom we feel that they are in a way personal friends of our own, that
once introduced to us they remain a permanent part of our little world.
It is the abiding glory of Dickens, it is one of Shakespeare's abiding
glories, to have created many such: but we look to find these characters
in the novel or the play: the essay by virtue of its limitations of space is
unsuited for character-studies, and even in the subject of our present
reading the difficulty of hunting the various Coverley Essays down in
the great number of Spectator Papers is some small drawback. But here
before the birth of the modern English novel we have a full-length
portrait of such a character as we have described, in addition to a
number of other more sketchy but still convincing delineations of

English types. We are brought into the society of a fine old-fashioned
country gentleman, simple, generous, and upright, with just those
touches of whimsicality and those lovable faults which go straight to
our hearts: and all so charmingly described that these Essays have
delighted all who have read them since they first began to appear on the
breakfast-tables of the polite world in Queen Anne's day.
"Addison's" Sir Roger we have called him, and be sure that honest Dick
Steele, even if he drew the first outlines of the figure, would not bear us
a grudge for so doing. Whoever first thought of Sir Roger, and however
many little touches may have been added by other hands, he remains
Addison's creation: and furthermore it does not matter a snap of the
fingers whether any actual person served as the model from which the
picture was taken. Of all the bootless quests that literary criticism can
undertake, this search for "the original" is the least valuable. The artist's
mind is a crucible which transmutes and re-creates: to vary the
metaphor, the marble springs to life under the workman's hands: we can
almost see it happening in these Essays: and we know how often
enough a writer finds his own creation kicking over the traces, as it
were, and becoming almost independent of his volition. There is no
original for Sir Roger or Falstaff or Mr. Micawber: they may not have
sprung Athena-like fully armed out of the author's head, and they may
have been suggested by some one he had in mind. But once created
they came into a full-blooded life with personalities entirely of their
own.
A vastly more useful quest, one in fact of absorbing interest, is the
attempt to follow the artist's method, to trace the devices which he
adopts to bring to our notice all those various traits by which we judge
of character. The prose writer has this much advantage over the
playwright, that he can represent his dramatis personæ in a greater
number of different situations, and furthermore can criticise them and
draw our special attention to what he wishes to have stressed: he can
even say that such and such thoughts and motives are in their minds.
Not so the dramatist: his space is limited and he is cribbed, cabined,
and confined by having to give a convincing imitation of real life,
where we cannot tell what is going on in the minds of even our most

intimate friends. Thus the audience is often left uncertain of the purport
of what it sees and hears: the