While working at this selection from the papers of the Spectator, the class will have frequent occasion to consult the writers' complete works. A complete Addison and a complete Spectator and Tatler should lie on the table for easy reference during the time devoted to this period of literature. Two editions of Addison's works are accessible,

that of Bishop Hurd, enlarged by Henry G. Bohn, published in six volumes, in the Bohn Standard Library, by Macmillan & Co., and the edition, also in six volumes, of Professor George Washington Greene, published by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The Spectator can be had in numerous shapes. Chiefly to be recommended is the edition in eight volumes, edited by G. Gregory Smith, and now publishing by Charles Scribner's Sons. Good also is the edition of Professor Henry Morley in three volumes, published by Routledge & Sons. The Spectator, Tatler, and Guardian are included in the series of British Essayists, edited by A. Chalmers.

Books and articles, bearing directly on Addison and Steele and their writings, will be found in endless profusion. Macaulay's essay on Addison is perhaps to be named first. The Life of Addison by Miss Aikin, which Macaulay criticises, is republished in this country, and may easily be looked up in the libraries. Still more accessible is Mr. Courthope's Addison, in the English Men of Letters series. In 1889 appeared the Life of Richard Steele by George A. Aitken. This handsome book, in two octavo volumes, will be found valuable for reference. It contains interesting portraits. Much smaller is Austin Dobson's Steele in the English Worthies series. A book not yet quite superseded by all the literary researches of three generations is Nathan Drake's Essays, biographical, critical, and historical, illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, London, 1805.

The book entitled Addisoniana, published in two small volumes in 1803, will be found worth looking up. It contains a curious portrait of "Mr. Addison at Button's." With a little enterprise pupils will hunt up many portraits of Addison and Steele. A school girl succeeded in getting a portrait of the Countess of Warwick, the lady whom Addison married.

On the manners and customs of the eighteenth century, the student will find useful and interesting, either for casual consultation or for continuous reading, England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, by William Connor Sydney, Macmillan & Co., 1891. Still more interesting, by reason of its numerous illustrations, is Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, by John Ashton, Chatto & Windus, 1882.

On the general history of Addison's times the reader will naturally refer to Macaulay's History, so far as this extends, and should learn to refer to the index to the Essays even for eighteenth century matters not reached by the History. Charles Knight's Popular History of England is a book that every high school should possess. Its pictures and its frequent reference to social and literary matters make it a work of supreme interest to youth. A most excellent book, both for reading and for handy reference on all topics of English history, is Samuel Rawson Gardiner's Student's History of England. Every high school should have this work.

Of all thinkable books of reference, perhaps the most important to the student, either of history or of literature, is the Dictionary of National Biography, still publishing, and now (May, 1898) so far advanced in the alphabet as to include Steele. Fortunate the school that possesses this work. It presents the lives of writers on just the scale required by the general student. This scale is large enough

to make the book most interesting to read as well as to consult.

Merely verbal difficulties in texts no older than the Spectator are usually explained by the larger dictionaries. When all the common dictionaries fail, then the Century should be tried. When the Century fails, then you must go to the New English Dictionary of Dr. Murray, if this has advanced far enough to meet your case. At present the letters A-F are completed, and a good beginning is made on

G and H.

May, 1898.

S. T.

THE SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS

FROM THE SPECTATOR.

Spectator No. 1. Thursday, March 1, 1711: — introduces himself to the reader.

The Spectator

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

HOR. ARS POET. 143.

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 this work. 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