he performed with such force of genius, humor, wit, and learning, that I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid; I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him." Thus does Steele speak in closing the Tatler,

How the two writers apportioned their work cannot now be known. No system or plan of dividing the responsibility is perceptible. Probably there was none. The truth would seem to be that Steele was known as the responsible editor, on whom devolved the ultimate care of providing copy, while the position of Addison was that of a generous contributor, whose aid was so abundant that the editorial func.. tion, though by no means a sinecure or a secondary affair, was always relieved from anxiety. We can hardly conceive Steele as rejecting or correcting anything from Addison. Almost as little likely is it that Addison ever complained of Steele. If the men worked in unbroken harmony, this happy union will have to be ascribed chiefly to the large heart and good nature of Steele, and in an inferior degree to the courtesy and high breeding of Addison. Both were lovable men; but Steele was the more capable of forbearance, the readier to pardon, the less liable to give offence.

The methods employed by Addison and Steele to render their essays an effective agency for the moral improvement of society should be carefully noted. It was plainly an absolute necessity, if the essays were to be widely read, that they should be interesting. The public of that day had its own peculiar tastes, largely inherited from the time of the Restoration. These tastes were vicious, and were in fact precisely the thing that was to be corrected. To sermons and pamphlets the public was quite too thoroughly used.

These instrumentalities had exhausted their efficacy as means of reaching the polite, pleasure-loving classes. Something very unlike a sermon, very unlike a partisan pamphlet, was evidently called for by the situation. Here were possible readers in plenty, ready to laugh with a humorist or a wit, prepared to relish satire directed against even their own foibles and extravagances, provided only the satire was amusing. The writer who purposed to get a hearing in this class must obviously meet it half way. He must not seem too serious, too lofty in his professions. Only in dealing directly with religion and religious institutions could he be pardoned for assuming the solemn tone. He must be perpetually in good humor, always urbane, never above the level of his readers. Hence he must avoid squeamishness in language, speak in the usual manner of his time, and use the freedom and breadth of illustration that everybody expected. In short, he must make his essays light, joyous, provoking; and while the moral was always present, and plainly deducible, its reception must be provided for by bringing readers into a pleased and receptive mood.

Earnest whigs as Addison and Steele notably were, they saw that their paper would utterly miss its aim if it became known as a partisan enterprise. Its attitude towards politics is the attitude of a censor, not of any political doctrine, but of all political bitterness of feeling. Even the most splenetic tories loved Addison, and welcomed the Spectator without misgiving.

Then the writers of the Spectator understood perfectly that their paper could not dispense with the favor of women. They meant it should go into homes, there be read aloud and laughed over, assured that what was talked about at the tea-table would make an impression on minds and win regard.

Thus it comes to pass that the Spectator is a collection of essays prevailingly light and merry, but often becoming nobly serious and directly didactic. Their chief literary characteristic is their humor, which still gives them distinction, and makes them eminently readable. This humor is fine and subtle; rarely, at least in the hands of Addison, broad or too obvious. Young readers are apt to miss, now and then, the point of Addison's humor.

The style, both of Addison and Steele, is wonderfully free and rapid, suggesting ease of composition, as was indeed befitting in a paper published every day. In reading the English of the Spectator, you are borne on through a simple and lucid syntax that asks no more mental effort than does the conversation of cultivated men and women. Their themes being generally commonplace, these essayists do not task the attention or the understanding. Above all things, they desired to be read by a great multitude of cultivated persons; and to be read rather as the occupation of leisure than as material for criticism. Caring not to attain, either in their grammar or in their rhetoric, a correctness which their contemporaries would not have appreciated, they proceeded directly, and without artifices of speech, to the happiest possible expression of whatever they had to communicate.

The essays which are concerned with Sir Roger de Coverley as their main theme, are barely twenty in number. The greater part of these were written during that memorable July, the fifth month of the Spectator's existence, which the mysterious personage whom we call Mr. Spectator, and who figures as the author of all the papers, is represented as having passed at Sir Roger's country-seat in Worcestershire. For the purposes of the rest Sir Roger

is brought to town. But besides the papers devoted to Sir Roger de Coverley as their main theme, many others make allusions to him and his humors in one way or another, and furnish more or less occasion for inclusion in a Sir Roger series. It is not easy to draw the line. This collection presents thirty-seven papers, in all of which the Knight is at least mentioned; but many more might have been found having equal claim with these for admission under the de Coverley title. But these thirty-seven papers seemed tc be enough for the purposes of the book, and it was necessary to stop somewhere at last, however appropriate and abundant the matter that might have been added.

In accordance with the taste of their time, the authors of the Spectator introduced each paper with a motto quoted from a Greek or Latin writer. These mottoes they did not translate. The use of them was merely conventional, indicating, on the part of the essayists, a profession of culture, or, as they called it in those days, of learning; just as certain articles of apparel have always, in English society, been deemed the peculiar and necessary note of the gentleman. The Spectator's mottoes seldom add any real piquancy to the essays. In the editions published since the earliest ones it has become customary to append translations to the Latin and Greek quotations. In this volume such translations will be found in the notes.

Of the thirty-seven papers in this selection twenty-five are by Addison, nine by Steele, and three by Budgell. The last named writer gets his entire distinction in English literature from the fact that, under the patronage, and perhaps with the help, of Addison, he was allowed to contribute to the Spectator about one-seventeenth of all the numbers. His papers bear a general resemblance in style

to those of Addison.