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THE COVERLEY PAPERS
THE COVERLEY PAPERS VARIOUS FROM THE 'SPECTATOR'
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY O. M. MYERS
PREFACE
The following selection comprises all numbers of the _Spectator_
which are concerned with the history or character of Sir Roger de
Coverley and all those which arise out of the Spectator's visit to his
country house. Sir Roger's name occurs in some seventeen other papers
but in these he either receives only passing mention or is introduced
as a speaker in conversations where the real interest is the subject
under discussion. In these his character is well maintained as for
example at the meeting of the club described in _Spectator_ 34
where he warns the Spectator not to meddle with country squires but
they add no traits to the portrait we already have of him. No. 129 is
included because it arises naturally out of No. 127 and illustrates the
relation between the town and country. No. 410 has been omitted because
it was condemned by Addison as inconsistent with the character of Sir
Roger together with No. 544 which is an unconvincing attempt to
reconcile it with the whole scheme. Some of the papers have been
slightly abridged where they would not be acceptable to the taste of a
later age.
The papers are not all signed but the authorship is never in doubt.
Where signatures are attached C L I and O are the mark of Addison's
work; R and T of Steele's and X of Budgell's. [Footnote: _Spectator_
555.]
I have availed myself freely of the references and allusions collected
by former editors and I have gratefully to acknowledge the help of Miss
G. E. Hadow in reading my introductory essay.
O. M. M.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
COVERLEY PAPERS.
_Spectator_ 1 Addison (C)
" 2 Steele (R)
" 106 Addison (L)
" 107 Steele (R)
" 108 Addison (L)
" 109 Steele (R)
" 110 Addison (L)
" 112 " (L)
" 113 Steele (R)
" 114 " (T)
" 115 Addison (L)
" 116 Budgell (X)
" 117 Addison (L)
" 118 Steele (T)
" 119 Addison (L)
" 120 " (L)
" 121 " (L)
" 122 " (L)
" 123 " (L)
" 125 " (C)
" 126 " (C)
" 127 " (C)
" 128 " (C)
" 129 " (C)
" 130 " (C)
" 131 " (C)
" 132 Steele (T)
" 269 Addison (L)
" 329 " (L)
" 335 Addison (L)
" 359 Budgell (X)
" 383 Addison (I)
" 517 " (O)
NOTES
APPENDIX I. On Coffee-Houses
APPENDIX II. On the Spectator's Acquaintance
APPENDIX III. On the Death of Sir Roger
APPENDIX IV. On the Spectator's Popularity
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
It is necessary to study the work of Joseph Addison in close relation
to the time in which he lived for he was a true child of his century
and even in his most distinguishing qualities he was not so much in
opposition to its ideas as in advance of them. The early part of the
eighteenth century was a very middle-aged period: the dreamers of the
seventeenth century had grown into practical men; the enthusiasts of the
century before had sobered down into reasonable beings. We no longer
have the wealth of detail the love of stories the delight in the
concrete for its own sake of the Chaucerian and Elizabethan children;
these men seek for what is typical instead of enjoying what is detailed
argue and illustrate instead of telling stories observe instead of
romancing. Captain Sentry 'behaved himself with great gallantry in
several sieges' [Footnote: _Spectator_ 2.] but the Spectator does
not care for them as Chaucer cares for the battlefields of his Knight.
'One might ... recount' many tales touching on many points in our
speculations and no child and no Elizabethan would refrain from doing
so but the Spectator will not 'go out of the occurrences of common
life but assert it as a general observation.' [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 107] He is in perfect harmony with his age too in the
intensely rational view which he takes of ghosts [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 110] and witches [Footnote: _Spectator_ 117] for
it was a period in which men cared very little for things which 'the eye
hath not seen'. In his use of mottoes again which are deliberately
sought illustrations for his papers [Footnote: _Spectator_ 221]
and not the sparks which have fired his train of thought he is typical
of the period of middle-age in which men amuse themselves with such
academic pastimes. Addison is the very antipodes of the kind of man who
'Loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind
Even till his sail-yards tremble his masts crack'--
_he_ remarks soberly that 'it is very unhappy for a man to be born
in such a stormy and tempestuous season.' [Footnote: _Spectator_
125.] He may not have been a great poet but he was an exquisite critic
of life; he shared his contemporaries' lack of enthusiasm but he
possessed a fine discrimination and those less practical more
irresponsible qualities would have been merely an incumbrance to the
apostle of good sense and moderation. For when men are young they are
much occupied with the framing of ideals and the search after absolute
truth; as they grow older they generally become more practical; they
accept more or less the idea of compromise and make the best of
things as they are or as they may be made. The age being vicious
Addison did not betake himself to a monastery or urge others to do so;
he tried to mend its morals. This was a difficult task. The Puritans
during their supremacy had imposed their own severity on others; and
now the Court party was revenging itself by indulging in extreme
licentiousness. Its amusements were cruel and vicious and the Puritans
did nothing to improve them but denounced them altogether and held
themselves aloof. It was Addison's task to refine the taste of his
contemporaries and to widen their outlook so that the Puritan and the
man of the world might find a common ground on which to meet and to
learn each from the other; it was his endeavour 'to enliven morality
with wit and to temper wit with morality ... till I have recovered them
out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is
fallen. [Footnote: _Spectator_ 10.] It was a happy thing for that
and for all succeeding ages that a man of Addison's character and genius
was ready to undertake the work. He was well versed in the pleasures of
society and letters but his delicate taste could not be gratified by
the ordinary amusements of the town. He treated life as an art capable
of affording the artist abundant pleasure but he recognized goodness as
a necessary condition of this pleasure. He was the most popular man of
his day; even Swift said that if Addison had wished to be king people
could hardly have refused him; [Footnote: _Journal to Stella_
October 12 1710.] and the qualities which endeared him to his friends
were exactly of the kind to enable him to hold the mean between the
bigots and the butterflies and to dictate without giving offence for
they were humanity and humour moderation of character judgment and a
most sensitive tact. His qualities and his limitations alike appear in
the _Spectator_. For example he tells us that he wishes that
country clergymen would borrow the sermons of great divines and devote
all their own efforts to acquiring a good elocution: [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 106.] here we detect the practical moralist and the man
who likes a thing good of its kind but not the enthusiast. He upholds
the observance of Sunday on account of its social influences rather than
for its religious meaning; [Footnote: _Spectator_ 112.] Swift's
famous Argument against the Abolition of Christianity is only a
satirical exaggeration of this position. The virtues commended in the
_Spectator_ are those which make for the well-being of society--
good sense and dignity moderation and a sense of fitness kindness and
generosity. They are to be practised with an eye to their consequences;
even virtues must not be allowed to run wild. Modesty is in itself a
commendable quality but in Captain Sentry it becomes a fault because
it interferes with his advancement. [Footnote: _Spectator_ 2.] The
great function of goodness is to promote happiness; when it ceases to do
this it ceases to be goodness.
But the greatest hindrance that an enthusiastic temperament would have
presented to Addison's work is that it would have spoilt his method. His
aim he declared roundly to be 'the advancement of the public weal'
[Footnote: _Spectator_ 1.] but he did not prosecute it in the usual
way. 'A man' he says 'may be learned without talking sentences.'
[Footnote: _Spectator_ 4.] He saw much evil and he laughed at it.
He has tried he tells us to 'make nothing ridiculous that is not in
some measure criminal'; [Footnote: _Spectator_ 445.] an enthusiast
could never have met crime with laughter unless with the corrosive
laughter of a Swift. Addison's humour is perfectly frank and humane;
himself a Whig he has given us a picture of the Tory Sir Roger which
has been compared to the portrait of our friend Mr. Pickwick. Sir Roger
put to silence and confusion by the perversity of the widow and her
confidant [Footnote: _Spectator_ 113.] congratulating himself on
having been called 'the tamest and most humane of all the brutes in the
country' [Footnote: _Spectator_ 113.] seeking to be reassured that
no trace of his likeness showed through the whiskers of the Saracen's
head [Footnote: _Spectator_ 122.] puzzled by his doubts concerning
the witch [Footnote: _Spectator_ 117.] and pleased by the artful
gipsies [Footnote: _Spectator_ 130.] inviting the guide to the
Abbey to visit him at his lodgings in order to continue their
conversation [Footnote: _Spectator_ 329.] and shocked by the
discourtesy of the young men on the Thames [Footnote: _Spectator_
383.]--these are pictures drawn by one who laughed at what he loved.
Addison's humour has a 'grave composure' [Footnote: Elwin.] and a
characteristic appearance of simplicity which never cease to delight us.
This was the man; and he found the instrument ready to his hand. There
was now a large educated class in circumstances sufficiently prosperous
to leave them some leisure for society and its enjoyments. The peers and
the country squires were reinforced by the professional men merchants
and traders. The political revolution of 1688 had added greatly to the
freedom of the citizens; the cessation of the Civil War the increased
importance of the colonies the development of native industries and
the impulse given to cloth-making and silk-weaving by the settlement of
Flemish and Huguenot workmen in the seventeenth century had encouraged
trade; and the establishment of the Bank of England had been favourable
to mercantile enterprise. We find the _Spectator_ speaking of 'a
trading nation like ours.' [Footnote: _Spectator_ 108.] Addison
realized that it is the way in which men employ their leisure which
really stamps their character; so he provided 'wit with morality' for
their reading and attempted through their reading to refine their
taste and conversation at the theatre the club and the coffee-house.
Dunton Steele and Defoe had modified the periodical literature of the
day by adding to the newspapers essays on various subjects. The aim of
the _Tatler_ was the same as that of the _Spectator_ but it
had certain disadvantages. The press censorship had been abolished in
1695 but newspapers were excepted from the general freedom of the
Press. A more important disadvantage lay in the character of Steele who
did not possess the balance and moderation required to edit such an
organ. Unlike Addison he was not a true son of his century. He was
enthusiastic and impulsive fertile in invention and sensitive to
emotion. His tenderness and pathos reach heights and depths that Addison
never touches but he has not Addison's fine perception of events and
motives on the ordinary level of emotion. He could not repress his keen
interest sufficiently to treat of politics in his paper and yet remain
the impartial censor. So the _Tatler_ was dropped and the
_Spectator_ took its place. This differed from its predecessors in
appearing every day instead of three times a week and in excluding all
articles of news.
The machinery of the club had been anticipated in 1690 by John Dunton's
Athenian Society which replied to all questions submitted by readers in
his paper the _Athenian Mercury._ This was succeeded by the
Scandal Club of Defoe's _Review_ and the well-known club of the
_Tatler_ which met at the Trumpet; [Footnote: _Tatler_ 132]
but the plan of arranging the whole work round the doings of the club is
a new departure in the _Spectator_.
It is in these periodicals that we first find the familiar essay. Its
only predecessors are such serious essays as those of Bacon Cowley and
Temple the turgid paragraphs of Shaftesbury the vigorous but crude and
rough papers of Collier and the 'characters' of Overbury and Earle.
These 'characters' had always been entirely typical; they were treated
rather from the abstract than from the human point of view and had no
names or other individualization than that of their character and
calling. In some of the numbers of the Spectator we still find these
'characters' occurring such as the character of Will Wimble [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 108.] of the honest yeoman [Footnote: _Spectator_
122.] and of Tom Touchy; [Footnote: _Spectator_ 122.] but they are
surrounded by circumstances peculiar to themselves and so are much more
highly individualized. The _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_ very
greatly extended the range of essay-writing and with it the flexibility
of prose style; it is this extension that gives to them their modern
quality. Nothing came amiss: fable description vision gossip
literary criticism or moral essays discussion of large questions such
as marriage and education or of the smaller social amenities--any
subject which would be of interest to a sufficiently large number of
readers would furnish a paper; as Steele wrote at the beginning of the
_Tatler_ 'Quicquid agunt homines nostri libelli farrago.'
Different interests were voiced by the various members of the club and
the light humorous treatment and an easy style attracted a larger public
than had ever been reached by a single publication. [Footnote: v.
Appendix IV.] The elasticity of the structure enabled Addison to produce
the maximum effect and to bring into play the full weight of his
character.
The nature of the work was determined throughout by its strongly human
interest. It is significant as standing between the lifeless
'characters' of the seventeenth century and the great development of the
novel. Thackeray calls Addison 'the most delightful talker in the
world' and his essays have precisely the charm of the conversation of a
well-informed and thoughtful man of the world. They are entirely
discursive; he starts with a certain subject and follows any line of
thought that occurs to him. If he thinks of an anecdote in connexion
with his subject that goes down; if it suggests to him abstract
speculations or moral reflections he gives us those instead. It is the
capricious chat of a man who likes to talk not the product of an
imperative need of artistic expression. It is significant that so much
of his work consists of gossip about people. This growing interest in
the individual was leading up to the great eighteenth century novel. It
seems to arise out of a growing sense of identity a stronger interest
in oneself; there is a common motive at the root of our observation of
other people of the interest attaching to ordinary actions presented on
the stage and of the fascination of a reflection or a portrait of
ourselves; by these means we are enabled to some extent to become
detached and to take an external and impersonal view of ourselves. The
stage had already turned to the representation of contemporary life and
manners; portraiture was increasing in popularity; and the novel was on
its way.
In the Coverley Papers all the characteristic species of the
_Spectator_ are represented except the allegory and the essays in
literary criticism. Steele who was always full of projects and swift
and spontaneous in invention wrote the initial description of the club
members and the characters were sustained by the two friends with
wonderful consistency. Apparently each was mainly responsible for a
certain number of the characters and Sir Roger was really the property
of Addison but no one person was strictly monopolized by either. The
papers were written independently but it is easy to see that the two
authors had an identical conception of their characters. It is true that
the singularity of Sir Roger's behaviour described by Steele in the
first draft of his character is very lightly touched in subsequent
papers and that judging by the simplicity of his conduct in town he
has forgotten very completely the 'fine gentleman' [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 2.] period of his life when like Master Shallow he
'heard the chimes at midnight' but these are insignificant details.
Since Sir Roger belongs to Addison it follows naturally that in the
present selection Addison's share compared with Steele's is larger in
proportion than in the complete _Spectator_ but it would be a
mistake to lose sight of the importance of Steele's part of the work.
Addison was the greater artist and the balance and shapeliness of his
style enhances the effect of his thought and judgment but we should be
no less sorry to relinquish Steele's headlong directness and warmth of
feeling. The humorous character sketches of Sir Roger's ancestors
[Footnote: _Spectator_ 109.] are his and his the passage at arms
between the Quaker and the soldier in the coach--the delightful soldier
of whose remark the _Spectator_ tells us: 'This was followed by a
vain laugh of his own and a deep silence of all the rest of the
company. I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep which I did
with all speed.' [Footnote: _Spectator_ 132.] His too is the
charming little idyll of the huntsman and his Betty who fears that her
love will drown himself in a stream he can jump across [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 118.] and the whole fragrant story of Sir Roger's
thirty years' attachment to the widow. [Footnote: _Spectator_ 113
118.] But above all we must not overlook the fact that without Steele
as he himself says in his dedication to _The Drummer_ Addison
would never have brought himself to give to the world these familiar
informal essays. Addison was naturally both cautious and shy; the mask
which Steele invented lent him just the security which he needed and
the _Spectator_ endures as the monument of a great friendship a
memorial such as Steele had always desired. [Footnote: _Spectator_
555.]
Steele himself explained the other advantages of the disguise: 'It is
much more difficult to converse with the world in a real than in a
personated character' he says both because the moral theory of a man
whose identity is known is exposed to the commentary of his life and
because 'the fictitious person ... might assume a mock authority without
being looked upon as vain and conceited'. [Footnote: _Spectator_
555.] It is to the influence of this mask that much of the self-
complacent superiority which has been attributed to Addison may be
referred; one 'having nothing to do with men's passions and interests'
[Footnote: _Spectator_ 4.] one 'set to watch the manners and
behaviour of my countrymen and contemporaries' [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 435.] and to extirpate anything 'that shocks modesty
and good manners' [Footnote: _Spectator_ 34.] such a censor was
bound to place himself on a pinnacle above the passions and foibles
which he was to rebuke. Yet occasionally Addison does appear a trifle
self-satisfied. Pope's indictment of his character in the person of
Atticus cannot be entirely set aside. His creed as implied in
_Spectator_ 115 esteems the welfare of man as the prime end of a
fostering Providence and such an opinion as this held steadily without
doubt or struggle would tend to give a man a strong sense of his own
importance. The superiority of his attitude to women which however
does not appear in the Coverley Papers is attributable partly to his
office of censor and partly to their position at the time. This sort of
condescension appears most distinctly in his treatment of animals. He is
far more humane in his feeling for them than are the majority of his
contemporaries but although he likes to moralize over Sir Roger's
poultry [Footnote: _Spectator_ 120 121.] he really looks down on
them from the elevation which a reasonable being must possess over the
creatures of instinct. Yet how does he know so certainly that instinct
is actually inferior to reason?
Addison is essentially a townsman and his treatment of nature is always
cold. The one passage in these papers which evinces a genuine love of
the country is Steele's description of his enjoyment when he is
strolling in the widow's grove. He is 'ravished with the murmur of
waters the whisper of breezes the singing of birds; and whether I
looked up to the heavens down on the earth or turned to the prospects
around me still struck with new sense of pleasure'. [Footnote:
_Spectator_ 118.] The style of the two writers reflects the
qualities of their minds. Addison's writing is fluent easy and lucid.
He wrote and corrected with great care and his words very closely
express his thought. Landor speaks of his prose as a 'cool current of
delight' and Dr. Johnson in an often quoted passage calls it 'the
model of the middle style ... always equable and always easy without
glowing words or pointed sentences.... His page is always luminous but
never blazes in unexpected splendour. He is never feeble and he did not
wish to be energetic.... Whoever wishes to attain an English style
familiar but not coarse and elegant but not ostentatious must give his
days and nights to the volumes of Addison.'
Steele was a far more rapid writer and even grammatical faults are not
infrequent in his papers. He explicitly declares that 'Elegance purity
and correctness were not so much my purpose as in any intelligible
manner as I could to rally all those singularities of human life ...
which obstruct anything that was really good and great'. [Footnote:
Dedication to _The Drummer_.] His style varies with his mood and
with the degree of his interest. Occasionally it reaches the simple
rhythmic prose of the passage quoted above but generally it is somewhat
abrupt and a little toneless. But now and again we find the 'unexpected
splendour' in which Addison is wanting in phrases like 'a covered
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