Commissioner for 1716. Commissioner of Forfeited
Trade and Colonies. Mar-

1716. Made

(April).

Estates for Scotland.

1718. Resigned his office (March) 1718. Death of Lady Steele.

on a pension of £1,500 a

a Cavalier.

SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.

I.

THE SPECTATOR.

[Spectator No. 1. Thursday, March 1, 1711.' Addison.]

Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.2

HORACE.

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 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

1 The date of this first paper was March 1, 1711. The year is sometimes written 1710-1711, because until 1752 England considered the legal new year to begin on March 25; so in dates previous to 1752 occurring between January 1 and March 24 inclusive, two years are often given the first being old style, the second new style. But Addison dated this simply 1711, as the customary year in England and Ireland, and both the customary and legal year in Scotland, dated from January 1. In Scotland the new style had been legal since 1600. The first number of the Spectator was called by Addison a prefatory discourse-a term which he extended to the second number also-and forms a fitting introduction to the de Coverley papers.

See Appendix.

this work.1 As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, 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 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: 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 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 seemed to favor my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.

5

3

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

6

The editing of the daily sheet which the Spectator Club is about to issue. See the concluding paragraph of this number.

2 Of course this "history" is a fictitious one; but as you read it, note whether there are any resemblances to what you know of Addison's history and personality. See the Introduction (Biography), Macaulay's Essay on Addison, and Thackeray's English Humorists. Also consult the encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries.

3 Like many other writers, as, for instance, Hawthorne and Irving, while denying his own belief in some theory, the author contrives to convince the reader that the theory may be true, after all.

4

See some large dictionary, like Webster's International, the Standard, the Century, or Murray's.

5 What does this imply as to the first two months? See note 3. See the dictionary.

'I. e., of being; or, the reputation which a sullen youth would gain.