and the Spectator. Beljame's essay, in his book mentioned above, is especially valuable. The sketch in Thackeray's English Humorists, although exaggerated, is good reading. Short articles on Addison and Steele may be found in the Dictionary of National Biography and other books of reference.

George A. Aitken's Life of Richard Steele (1889) is a careful and interesting biography, in two volumes. Austin Dobson, in his Richard Steele,- English Worthies Series (1886), gives a short but sympathetic account of the writer. John Forster writes of Steele in his Biographical Essays (1860). Thackeray's article is mentioned in the Introduction in the present volume. The Selections from Steele, edited by G. R. Carpenter (Athenæum Press Series), is interesting and valuable; it contains a chronological list of Steele's writings. Steele's letters to his wife and daughters were first published, with literary and historical anecdotes, by John Nichols, in 1789; the title being: The Epistolary Correspondence of Sir Richard Steele, etc.

ESSAYS BY ADDISON AND BY STEELE.1

There are two recent editions of the Spectator, both excellent: one edited by G. Gregory Smith, with an Introductory Essay by Austin Dobson (8 vols. 1897-8); the other edited by George A. Aitken (8 vols. 1898). Henry Morley's edition may be had in three volumes (1883) or in one (1888). An edition of the Tatler in four volumes, edited by George A. Aitken, is soon to be published. The Tatler may be found in Chalmers's British Essayists (1856-66); an edition of the Taller and Guardian was published by Nimmo, in 1876; and a volume of Selected Essays from the Tatler, edited by A. C. Ewald, came out in 1888. The following books may easily be obtained: Selections from Addison's Essays, edited by John Richard Green (1880); Addison: Selected Essays, edited by C. T. Winchester; Selections from Steele's Contributions to the Tatler, etc., edited by Austin Dobson (1897); Eighteenth Century Essays, edited by Austin Dobson (1882), of special value, because it enables the reader to compare Addison and Steele with other essayists; Selections from Steele, edited by G. R. Carpenter, - Athenæum Press Series (1897). Addison, edited by Barrett Wendell (Athenæum Press Series) is announced. There is no complete edition of Steele's works; a new edition of Addison's works edited by Greene, was published in 1891.

1 The Harvard College Library possesses a copy of the original issue of the Spectator, nearly complete.

I HAVE observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till 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 5 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, digest- 10 ing, 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 15 that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that my mother dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: 20

whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my 5 future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream; for, as she had often told me, I threw away my rattle before I Io was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.

As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that, during my nonage, I had the reputation of a very sullen 15 youth, but was always a favorite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts were solid and would wear well. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the 20 college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. Whilst I was in this learned body, I applied myself with so much diligence to my studies that there are very few celebrated books, 25 either in the learned or the modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with.

Upon the death of my father, I was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the university with the character of an odd, unaccountable fellow, that 30 had a great deal of learning, if I would but show it.

An insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of Europe in which there was anything new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that having read the controversies of some

great men concerning the antiquities of Egypt, I made a voyage to Grand Cairo on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid; and as soon as I had set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction.

5

I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen. in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein I 10 do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to 15 nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's Coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well 20 known at the Grecian, the Cocoa Tree, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stockjobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see 25 a cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, 30 and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of an husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others better than those who