NOTES TO VOL. I ADDISON dedicated his Poem to his Majesty (1695) and his Remarks Dedica on Several Parts of Italy (1705) to Lord Somers. He wrote a fuller tion, appreciation in No. 39 of the Freeholder, published on the day of Somers's funeral. Steele, in No. 438 of the Spectator, speaks of him as "one of the greatest Souls now in the World." Cf. Swift's 'Bookseller's Dedication' prefixed to the Tale of the Tub, and Pope's panegyrical footnote to 1. 77 of the Epilogue to the Satires. PAGE 3. Motto. Horace, Ars Poet. 143. Below the motto of No. 1 of the original issue is printed, 'To No. L be Continued every Day.' PAGE 4. The 'taciturnity' of Mr. Spectator, which would appear to be a good-natured transcript of Addison's personal manner, is humorously sustained throughout the subsequent papers. The 'dumb man' is the counterpart of the 'old astrologer' of the Tatler. "She gave out, with good success, that I was an old astrologer; after that a dumb man; and last of all she made me pass for a lion." (Guardian, No. 141.) -Addison alludes, in the third paragraph, to the Oriental savant, John Greaves (1602-1652), Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London, and afterwards Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, who published Pyramidographia, or a Discourse of the Pyramids of Egypt (1646) and several other works, chiefly on Weights and Measures (collected and edited by Birch, 1737). His argument, an anticipation of that of Mr. Piazzi Smyth, is explained in the title of a pamphlet printed in 1706, The Origine and Antiquity of our English Weights & Measures discovered by their near agreement with such Standards that are now found in one of the Egyptian Pryamids. Addison returns, in Nos. 8, 17, 69, 101, 159, etc., to his joke about the voyage to Grand Cairo. PAGE 5. Cf. the descriptive paragraph in Steele's first paper in The Tatler. "All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house; Learning, under the title of the Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James's Coffee-house." Will's Coffee-house, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, had been the chief rendezvous of the Wits since Dryden's association with it, but by 1711 its literary reputation was on the decline. Swift, in his rhapsody On Poetry, pictures its "tribe of circling Wits," and, in the Tale of a Tub, refers satirically to the low tone of conversation at this house at this time. So, too, in Pope's correspondence of this period there are several references to the house and to its ruling spirit Tidcombe, whose No. 1. "beastly laughable life" was "at once nasty and diverting" (Elwin and Courthope, vi. 84). Addison, who had been a habitué, withdrew in 1712 to Button's, a new house on the other side of the street. Child's, in St Paul's Churchyard, had, from its proximity to Doctors' Commons, the Royal Society (then at Gresham College), and the College of Physicians, a large clientèle among the clergy and professional classes, mostly of the Tory party (cf. Nos. 556 and 609). St James's was a fashionable Whig house at the south-west corner of St James's Street; and the Cocoa-Tree, in the same street, attracted the Tories. The Grecian, in Devereux Street in the Strand (originally carried on by a Greek who had come to England with an English merchant in 1652), was chiefly a lawyers' resort, but was frequented by the learned for the discussion of questions of philosophy and scholarship (cf. Nos. 49 and 403). Pope addresses his paper To the learned Inquisitor Martinus Scriblerus: the Society of Free Thinkers Greeting' from the Grecian, and satirizes the pedantic symposia of the College Sophs and 'pert' Templars in the second book of the Dunciad (11. 379. etc.). There is a companion sketch in the humorous advertisement in the 78th Tatler, which describes the 'seat of learning' in the Smyrna Coffee-house in Pall Mall. Jonathan's, in Change Alley, was the favourite coffee-house of the merchant and stock-jobbing class ('that General Mart of Stock-jobbers,' Tatler, No. 38), just as Garraway's, in the same street, well-known for its wine sales, was the recognized rendezvous of their more fashionable customers. -The Post-Man newspaper-which, according to the 'Upholsterer,' wrote "like an angel" (Tatler, No. 232), and was "the best for everything," according to John Dunton (Life and Errors, 1705) was carried on by a M. Fonvive, described in the General Postscript (1709, No. 12), as "M. Hugonotius, Politicus GalloAnglus, a spiteful Commentator." It had some reputation for its foreign news and correspondence (cf. Tatler, No. 178). Steele imputed the loss of the Upholsterer's' intellect to its 'Way of going on in the Words, and making no Progress in the Sense (Tatler, No. 178); and Defoe criticized it in his Review of the Affairs of France. See Swift's Journal to Stella, 7th letter: also Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iv. 61 etc., 84. PAGE 6. The letters of correspondents became a feature of the Spectator. Addison states his editorial position in Nos. 16, 46, 428, and 442 (with 450); in No. 271 he pleasantly refers to the critical readers who, like Nick Doubt of the Tatler (No. 91), suspected the genuineness of these contributions. Steele was, as Johnson tells us, much beholden to outside 'copy' (Lives, ed. 1790, ii. 343, 365). Two volumes of Original and Genuine Letters sent to the Tatler and Spectator were published in 1725 by Lillie, the perfumer, with Steele's name on the title-page. No. 2, PAGE 7. Motto. Juvenal, Sat. vii. 167. -Johnson's statement (based on a paragraph by Budgell, which Addison is said to have revised) that the personages of the Spectator were not "merely ideal," but "known and conspicuous in various stations" (Lives, ii. 348), is probably responsible for the almost |