The

rather the other way. Tickell, who afterwards edited Spectator. Addison's works with a strong bias in his deceased patron's favour, says, in apologising for including one of Steele's papers among Addison's, that "the Plan of the Spectator, as far as regards the feigned Person of the Author, and of the several characters that compose his Club, was projected in concert with SIR RICHARD STEELE," a statement which some later crítics have most unaccountably interpreted to mean that the honours belong exclusively to Addison. But almost in his next sentence Tickell goes on "As for the distinct Papers, they were never or seldom shewn to each other, by their respective Authors,"which is hardly in favour of any elaborate pro gramme or associated action. Indeed, apart from a certain rough agreement as to the first two numbers, or "Prefatory Discourses," there seems to have been no such elaborate programme, and any assertion to the contrary prompts the suspicion that the Spectator notwithstanding the famous "nocturna versate manu, versate diurna" of Johnson, is more talked about than read. In Number 1, which is undeniably by Addison, he sketched lightly and with his own inimitable touch, that taciturn "Looker on," whose " Sheet full of Thoughts" was to appear every morning, Sundays excepted. Following this, in Number 2, which is as unmistakably Steele's, was dashed off the little group of " select Friends," who were to make up the Spectator Club, headed by the kit-cat of Sir Roger de Coverley, The other five members were a Templar, a Clergy man, a Soldier (Captain Sentry), a Merchant (Sir Andrew

Andrew Freeport), and Will. Honeycomb, an elderly The fine gentleman and Man of Pleasure. A Committee Spectator, from this body was to sit nightly in order to inspect "all such Papers as may contribute to the Advance ment of the Publick Weal." Some of Addison's advocates have attempted to transfer the credit of this second number from Steele to Addison by suggesting that the characters were "touched" by the latter. But even if the style did not exhibit all the indications of that hasty genius which contrived the "Trumpet Club" in the Tatler, the paper is disfigured by a piece of careless bad taste which makes it more than probe able that Addison never saw it until it was published, The passage concerning beggars and gipsies in the description of Sir Roger, is one which Steele's rapid pen may conceivably have thrown off in a hurry, but it is also one to which Addison-supposing him at this stage to have had the slightest mental idea of the character whose last hours he was afterwards to describe with such effective simplicity-could hardly have given his imprimatur. It is an outrage far less excusable than the historical lapse committed by Tickell, when, in No. 410, he allowed the Knight for a moment to mistake a woman of the town for a "Woman of Honour," -a mistake, after all, no worse than that later, and more memorable misadventure, where an entire family circle were deceived in the identity of my Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina Wilelmina Amelia Skeggs,

The truth would appear to be, that the character Sir Roger

and the

of the Worcestershire baronet, so happily developed Club,

Sir Roger in the sequel under the pens of the two friends, was, and the Club, at the outset, rather an accident of invention than the first stage in a preconceived creation, and many numbers succeeded to Steele's description of the Club before Sir Roger de Coverley was again seriously

presented to the reader. He is indeed mentioned incidentally three or four times in subsequent Specta tors, but it is not until No. 106 that he really begins to assume the importance which has made him a personage in English Literature. In accordance with a hint casually dropped in No. 46, Addison in No. 106 gives an account of the Coverley household with its old-fashioned ways, which include an old chaplain who understands "a little of Back-Gammon,"* and reads the sermons of Tillotson and Barrow from his pulpit. Steele came after with another paper, on the Coverley servants; and Addison followed that by the master piece of Will. Wimble, the poor gentleman and younger brother, who is almost as well known in letters as the Knight himself. In the next of the series, Steele, with a hand scarcely less skilful than that of his colleague, describes the family picture gallery, and certainly nothing in Addison is happier than its closing touch about the ancestor who "narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil Wars" by being "sent out of the Field upon a private Message, the Day before the Battel of Worcester." Three papers

*

Swift apparently thought this accomplishment a sine qua non in a chaplain, "Can the parson of the parish play at backe gammon?"-he asks Lady Queensberry, when he is proposing to visit her at Amesbury.

farther on, Addison depicts a country Sunday; and Sir Roger Steele responds with an account of Sir Roger and the Club, "perverse beautiful Widow" of the introductory sketch. Then we have Sir Roger hare hunting, Sir Roger on his way to the County Assizes delivering the time honoured judgment that "much might be said on both Sides", and Sir Roger interviewing the Gipsies, After this, very little is heard of the Knight until he comes to London, and goes (by this time always with Addison) to Westminster Abbey, to Drury Lane Play house (to see Nance Oldfield as Andromache in the Distrest Mother of Mr Phillips), and to the Spring Garden at Vauxhall. The last record of him for we may neglect the ambiguous tavern-incident referred to in the previous paragraph-is the admirable letter, again by Addison, in which Mr Biscuit, the butler, describes his master's last illness and death. It has been sometimes asserted that Addison, after the fashion of Cervantes, killed his hero to prevent greater liberties being taken with him, but the interval between the Tickell escapade and the butler's despatch is too wide to establish any definite connection between the re spective occurrences, and, moreover, the Club itself was obviously being wound up, Of its remaining members the authors never made any material use. In the allotment of the characters, it is but reason able to suppose that Addison (in addition to Sir Roger) would have devoted himself to the Templar and Will, Honeycomb, while the Soldier, the Merchant, and the Clergyman would fall to the share of Steele. In practice, however, nothing so definite ever came to

and the Club,

Sir Roger pass. After Steele's first sketch in No. 2, the Clergy man only once re-appears, while the Templar is little but a name, Sir Andrew Freeport delivers himself occasionally upon matters of trade, and Captain Sentry occupies a couple of papers. As for

the gallant Will. Honeycomb, though he can scarcely

Other
Papers,

be styled a personnage muet, his chief contribution to the interest of the fable is the marriage to a country girl (in a grogram gown) with which he quits both the Town and the stage, Whether these portraits had actual originals is doubtful. Tickell, who should have been well informed, regarded the whole of the characters as "feigned"; and Steele, in No. 262, expressly disclaims the delineation of his contem poraries, The reader, he says, would think the better of him, if he knew the pains he was at in qualifying what he wrote after such a manner, that nothing might be interpreted as aimed at private persons, But his disclaimer has been as futile as the disclaimers of Hogarth and Fielding; and, as usual, Sir Roger and Will. Wimble, Captain Sentry and the Widow, have not been allowed to lack for models, Concerning these exercises in "thought-reading" sufficient information will be found in the notes to the present volume.

The Coverley sequence and the proceedings of the Club must not, however, be supposed to constitute the sole theme of the Spectator, or even to present its chief feature of interest. Something more than the fitful apparition of a few figures whose sayings and doings scarcely occupy fifty papers out of five hundred