VI.

COVERLEY HALL.

[Spectator No. 106. Monday, July 2, 1711. Addison.]

-Hinc tibi copia

Manabit ad plenum, benigno

Ruris honorum opulenta cornu.

HORACE.

HAVING often received an invitation from my friend, Sir Roger de Coverley, to pass away a month with him in the country, I last week accompanied him thither, and am settled with him for some time at his country-house, where I intend to form several of my ensuing speculations. Sir Roger, who is very well acquainted with my humor, lets me rise and go to bed when I please, dine at his own table or in my chamber, as I think fit, sit still and say nothing without bidding me be merry. When the gentlemen of the country come to see him, he only shows me at a distance: as I have been walking in his fields I have observed them stealing a sight of me over an hedge, and have heard the knight desiring them not to let me see them, for that I hated to be stared at.

I am the more at ease in Sir Roger's family because it consists of sober and staid persons; for, as the knight is the best master in the world, he seldom changes his servants; and as he is beloved by all about him, his servants never care for leaving him; by this means his domestics are all in years, and grown old with their master. You would take his valet de chambre for his brother, his butler is gray-headed, his groom is one of the gravest men that I have ever seen, and his coachman has the looks of a privy counsellor. You see the goodness of the master even

in the old house-dog, and in a gray pad1 that is kept in the stable with great care and tenderness, out of regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years.

I could not but observe with a great deal of pleasure the joy that appeared in the countenances of these ancient domestics upon my friend's arrival at his country-seat. Some of them could not refrain from tears at the sight of their old master; every one of them pressed forward to do something for him, and seemed discouraged if they were not employed. At the same time the good old knight, with a mixture of the father and the master of the family, tempered the inquiries after his own affairs with several kind questions relating to themselves. This humanity and good-nature engages everybody to him, so that when he is pleasant upon any of them, all his family are in good humor, and none so much as the person whom he diverts himself with; on the contrary, if he coughs, or betrays any infirmity of old age, it is easy for a stander-by to observe a secret concern in the looks of all his servants.

My worthy friend has put me under the particular care of his butler, who is a very prudent man, and, as well as the rest of his fellow-servants, wonderfully desirous of pleasing me, because they have often heard their master talk of me as of his particular friend.

My chief companion, when Sir Roger is diverting himself in the woods or the fields, is a very venerable man who is ever with Sir Roger, and has lived at his house in the nature of a chaplain above thirty years. This gentleman is a person of good sense and some learning, of a very regular life and obliging conversation; he heartily loves Sir Roger, and knows that he is very much in the old knight's esteem,1 so

An easy-going horse. "An abbot on an ambling pad."-Lady of Shalott.

that he lives in the family rather as a relation than a dependant.

I have observed in several of my papers that my friend, Sir Roger, amidst all his good qualities, is something of an humorist,1 and that his virtues as well as imperfections are, as it were, tinged by a certain extravagance, which makes them particularly his, and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders 2 his conversation highly agreeable, and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary colors.

As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned, and without staying for my answer, told me that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table, for which reason he desired a particular friend of his, at the University, to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. My friend, says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a

1 Addison does not mean a wit; what other definition is demanded here? Cf. Filling from time to time his humorous stage," in Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality.

2 Recast the sentence for the sake of smoothness.

3 Why not?

"The literary acquirements of the squireantry of Sir Roger's era were few. At a time not long antecedentan esquire passed for a great scholar of Hudibras; and Baker's Chronicle, Tarleton's Jests, and the Seven Champions of Christendom lay in his hall window among angling and fishing lines.' But that Sir Roger may appear in this, as in other respects, above the average of his order, there is in Coverley Hall a library rich in ‘divinity and MS. household receipts.' Sir Roger, too, had drawn many observations together out of his reading in Baker's Chronicle and other authors who always lie in his hall window'; and, however limited his own classic lore, it is certain that both in love and friendship he displayed strong literary sympathies. The perverse widow, whose cruelty darkened his whole existence, was a reading lady,' a 'desperate scholar,' and in argument as learned as the best philosopher in Europe,' one who, when in the country, does not run into dairies, but reads upon the nature of

1

good scholar, though he does not show it; 1 I have given him the parsonage of the parish, and, because I know his value, have settled upon him a good annuity for life. If he outlives me, he shall find that he was higher in my esteem than perhaps he thinks he is. He has now been with me thirty years, and though he does not know I have taken notice of it, has never in all that time asked anything of me for himself, though he is every day soliciting me for something in behalf of one or other of my tenants, his parishioners. There has not been a lawsuit in the parish since he has lived among them; if any dispute arises they apply themselves to him for the decision; if they do not acquiesce in his judgment, which I think never happened above once, or twice at most, they appeal to me. At his first settling with me I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce 2 one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series that they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of came up to us; and upon the knight's asking him who preached to-morrow (for it was Saturday. night), told us the Bishop of St. Asaph in the morning and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with several living authors who have published discourses of practical divinity. I no sooner saw this venerable man in the pulpit but I very plants-has a glass hive and comes into the garden out of books to see them work.' In his friendship, again, Sir Roger was all for learning. Besides the Spectator-to whom he eventually bequeathed his books-he indulged a Platonic admiration for Leonora, a widow, formerly a celebrated beauty-and still a very lovely woman-'who turned all the passion of her sex into a love of books and retirement.'"--G. W. GREENE.

1 Unconscious humor on Sir Roger's part.

Deliver. Still the quaint old word is more suggestive.

much approved of my friend's insisting upon the qualifications of a good aspect and a clear voice; for I was so charmed with the gracefulness of his figure and delivery, as well as with the discourses he pronounced, that I think I never passed any time more to my satisfaction. A sermon repeated after this manner is like the composition of a poet in the mouth of a graceful actor.

I could heartily wish that more of our country clergy would follow this example; and, instead of wasting their spirits in laborious compositions of their own, would endeavor after a handsome elocution, and all those other talents that are proper to enforce what has been penned by greater masters. This would not only be more easy to themselves, but more edifying to the people.1 L.