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Title: The Spectator, Volume 1

Author: Joseph Addison

Sir Richard Steele

Editor: Henry Morley

Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9334]
Most recently updated: March 25, 2014

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Jon Ingram, Clytie Sidall and PG Distributed Proofreaders

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPECTATOR, VOLUME 1 ***

The Spectator

in three volumes: volume 1

A New Edition

Reproducing the Original Text
Both as First Issued
and as Corrected by its Authors

with Introduction, Notes, and Index

edited by Henry Morley

1891

Table of Contents

List of Original Advertisements Included

original advertisement

Each In Three Vols., Price 10s. 6d.

Charles Knight's Shakspere.

Napier's History of the Peninsular War. with Maps and Plans.

Longfellow's Works — poems — prose — Dante.

Boswell's Life Of Johnson. with Illustrations.

Motley's Rise Of The Dutch Republic.

Byron's Poetical Works.

Preface

When Richard Steele, in number 555 of his

Spectator

, signed its last paper and named those who had most helped him 'to keep up the spirit of so long and approved a performance,' he gave chief honour to one who had on his page, as in his heart, no name but Friend. This was

'the gentleman of whose assistance I formerly boasted in the Preface and concluding Leaf of my Tatlers. I am indeed much more proud of his long-continued Friendship, than I should be of the fame of being thought the author of any writings which he himself is capable of producing. I remember when I finished the Tender Husband, I told him there was nothing I so ardently wished, as that we might some time or other publish a work, written by us both, which should bear the name of The Monument, in Memory of our Friendship.'

Why he refers to such a wish, his next words show. The seven volumes of the

Spectator

, then complete, were to his mind The Monument, and of the Friendship it commemorates he wrote,

'I heartily wish what I have done here were as honorary to that sacred name as learning, wit, and humanity render those pieces which I have taught the reader how to distinguish for his.'

So wrote Steele; and the

Spectator

will bear witness how religiously his friendship was returned. In number 453, when, paraphrasing David's

Hymn on Gratitude

, the 'rising soul' of Addison surveyed the mercies of his God, was it not Steele whom he felt near to him at the Mercy-seat as he wrote

Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss
Has made my cup run o'er,
And in a kind and faithful Friend
Has doubled all my store?

The

Spectator

, Steele-and-Addison's

Spectator

, is a monument befitting the most memorable friendship in our history. Steele was its projector, founder, editor, and he was writer of that part of it which took the widest grasp upon the hearts of men. His sympathies were with all England. Defoe and he, with eyes upon the future, were the truest leaders of their time. It was the firm hand of his friend Steele that helped Addison up to the place in literature which became him. It was Steele who caused the nice critical taste which Addison might have spent only in accordance with the fleeting fashions of his time, to be inspired with all Addison's religious earnestness, and to be enlivened with the free play of that sportive humour, delicately whimsical and gaily wise, which made his conversation the delight of the few men with whom he sat at ease. It was Steele who drew his friend towards the days to come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. Steele said in one of the later numbers of his

Spectator

, No. 532, to which he prefixed a motto that assigned to himself only the part of whetstone to the wit of others,

'I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any other means.'

There were those who argued that he was too careless of his own fame in unselfish labour for the exaltation of his friend, and, no doubt, his rare generosity of temper has been often misinterpreted. But for that Addison is not answerable. And why should Steele have defined his own merits? He knew his countrymen, and was in too genuine accord with the spirit of a time then distant but now come, to doubt that, when he was dead, his whole life's work would speak truth for him to posterity.

The friendship of which this work is the monument remained unbroken from boyhood until death. Addison and Steele were schoolboys together at the Charterhouse. Addison was a dean's son, and a private boarder; Steele, fatherless, and a boy on the foundation. They were of like age. The register of Steele's baptism, corroborated by the entry made on his admission to the Charterhouse (which also implies that he was baptized on the day of his birth) is March 12, 1671, Old Style; New Style, 1672. Addison was born on May-day, 1672. Thus there was a difference of only seven weeks.

Steele's father according to the register, also named Richard, was an attorney in Dublin. Steele seems to draw from experience — although he is not writing as of himself or bound to any truth of personal detail — when in No. 181 of the

Tatler

he speaks of his father as having died when he was not quite five years of age, and of his mother as 'a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit.' The first Duke of Ormond is referred to by Steele in his Dedication to the

Lying Lover

as the patron of his infancy; and it was by this nobleman that a place was found for him, when in his thirteenth year, among the foundation boys at the Charterhouse, where he first met with Joseph Addison. Addison, who was at school at Lichfield in 1683-4-5, went to the Charterhouse in 1686, and left in 1687, when he was entered of Queen's College, Oxford. Steele went to Oxford two years later, matriculating at Christ Church, March 13, 1689-90, the year in which Addison was elected a Demy of Magdalene. A letter of introduction from Steele, dated April 2, 1711, refers to the administration of the will of 'my uncle Gascoigne, to whose bounty I owe a liberal education.' This only representative of the family ties into which Steele was born, an 'uncle' whose surname is not that of Steele's mother before marriage, appears, therefore, to have died just before or at the time when the

Spectator

undertook to publish a sheetful of thoughts every morning, and — Addison here speaking for him — looked forward to

'leaving his country, when he was summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that he had not lived in vain.'

The Spectator, Volume 1 / Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays

About This Book

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Spectator, Volume 1

The Spectator

original advertisement

Preface