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STEELE

A. DOBSON

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STEELE

SELECTIONS FROM THE TATLER, SPECTATOR

AND GUARDIAN

EDITED

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

AUSTIN DOBSON

Oxford

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

M DCCC LXXXV

[ All rights reserved ]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

4GX 2544

PREFATORY NOTE.

AIMING chiefly at conciseness in the Introduction which follows, I have not always recapitulated those statements of my predecessors for which I have substituted what seem to Sufficient me to be more accurate versions of the facts. references to my authorities will, however, be found in the foot notes. Upon certain aspects of Steele's relations with Swift and Addison I have refrained from touching, because, in the first place, the discussion is not essential to the brief memoir here intended; and secondly, because I hope to enter upon it more fully hereafter. Meanwhile, by careful consultation of the newspapers of the day and other contemporary records, I have endeavoured to make the Chronology of Steele's Life' as rigorously exact as possible.

Although the field of choice is not restricted to the Spectator, but includes the Tatler and Guardian, it will doubtless be observed that the number of papers in this volume is smaller than the number of those which Mr. Arnold, in his excellent Selections from Addison, has borrowed from the Spectator alone. Notwithstanding the admitted inequality of Steele's work, it would be unjust to attribute this entirely to the inferiority of the material. The truth is, that the evidence for Addison's authorship is far better than that for Steele's, and many papers letters, which in all probability were written by the latter, cannot, in the absence of direct proof to that effect, be authoritatively assigned to him.

and

In the Notes I have freely made use of the labours of the earlier annotators, as well as of such modern memoirs and books of reference as bear upon the age of Anne.

But I

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