to the manner in which Addison and Steele arranged the work between them except that of Tickell, who says that "the plan of the Spectator, as far as regards the feigned person of the author, and of the several characters that compose his Club, was projected in concert with Sir Richard Steele," and he accordingly printed No. 2, which was by Steele, in his edition of Addison's Works, in order to render subsequent papers more intelligible. "As for the distinct papers," he adds, "they were never or seldom shewn to each other by their respective authors; who fully answered the promise they had made, and far outwent the expectation they had raised, of pursuing their labour in the same spirit and strength with which it was begun."

There have been many foolish efforts to find originals in real life for the various members of the club. Thus Sir Roger de Coverley has been identified with a Sir John Packington, a Tory knight of Worcestershire, and Will Honeycomb with a Colonel Cleland. In a similar way Sir Andrew Freeport has been said to be taken from Mr. H. Martyn, and Captain Sentry from Colonel Magnus Kempenfelt. The perverse widow, too, has been identified with Mrs. Katherine Bovey, to whom Steele afterwards dedicated the second volume of his Ladies' Library. As to these surmises, it is enough to say that Tickell, Addison's intimate friend, looked upon the whole of the characters as feigned, and that the writers themselves said that everything had been rejected "that might create uneasiness in the minds. of particular persons." "When I place an imaginary name at the head of a character, I examine every syllable and letter of it, that it may not bear any resemblance to one that is real. I know very well the value which every man sets upon his reputation, and how painful it is to be exposed to the mirth and derision of the public, and should therefore scorn to divert my reader at the expense of any private man." 2

The Spectator has remained to this day, as Steele hoped, the most lasting monument of his friendship with Addison. In No. 555 Steele wrote, with his usual noble generosity, of "the though Steele, as editor, apologised for the passage in a later paper (No. 544). The original conception of Sir Roger's character was modified in several respects by Addison in subsequent papers.

1 Preface to Addison's Works, 1721.

2 No. 262.

gentleman of whose assistance I formerly boasted in the Preface and concluding leaf of my Tatlers. I am indeed much more proud of his long-continued friendship, than I should be of the fame of being thought the author of any writings which he himself is capable of producing. I remember when I finished the Tender Husband,' I told him there was nothing I so ardently wished, as that we might some time or other publish a work written by us both, which should bear the name of The Monument, in memory of our friendship." It was of this friendship that Addison wrote in a verse of his wellknown hymn, which was first printed in No. 453

"Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss

Has made my cup run o'er,

And in a kind and faithful friend

Has doubled all my store."

In No. 532 Steele said: "I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any other means; to have animated a few young gentlemen into worthy pursuits, who will be a glory to our age; and at all times, and by all possible means in my power, undermined the interests of ignorance, vice and folly, and attempted to substitute in their stead learning, piety and good sense."

Addison was certainly at his best in the Spectator. He wrote 274 out of the 555 numbers, while Steele contributed 236 leaving only 45 for Budgell, Hughes, Pope, and other occasional contributors. Addison had, indeed, been little more than an occasional contributor to the Tatler, and although some of his articles in that periodical take rank among his finest work, yet it was only in the Spectator that he found opportunity to show fully all his powers. Steele, on the other hand, was at his best in the Tatler, in which there is a certain sense of freedom and freshness which we can hardly expect to find always in its more stately successor. Yet, as Forster says in comparing Steele's work in the Spectator with that in the Tatler, "there was the same inexpressible charm in the matter, the same inexhaustible variety in the form; and upon all the keen exposure of vice or the pleasant laugh at folly, as prominent

in the life-like little story as in the criticism of an actor or a play, making attractive the gravest themes to the unthinking, and recommending the lightest fancies to the most grave, there was still the old and ineffaceable impress of good-nature and humanity—the soul of a sincere man shining out through it all." After what has been said of the Tatler, it is not necessary to examine here in detail the various numbers of the Spectator written by Steele; I will only mention a few, to most of which special reference has been made by other writers, as examples of Steele's powers. Such, for instance, are the accounts of the death of Estcourt (No. 468) and of Stephen Clay (No. 133); the stories of Inkle and Yarico, and of Brunetta and Phillis1 (Nos. II and 80); and the criticism of Etherege's "Sir Foppling Flutter," accounted a pattern of genteel comedy, but in reality "a perfect contradiction to good manners, good sense, and common honesty " (No. 65); and of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Scornful Lady" (No. 270): "It is so mean a thing to gratify a loose age with a scandalous representation of what is reputable among men, that is to say what is sacred, that no beauty, no excellence in an author ought to atone for it; nay, such excellence is an aggravation of his guilt, and an argument that he errs against the conviction of his own understanding and conscience." Or take No. 66, on female education: "The true art in this case is, to make the mind and body improve together; and if possible, to make gesture follow thought, and not let thought be employed upon gesture;" or

1 Mr. Darnell Davis has pointed out that the original of the story of Brunetta and Phillis is to be found in a letter from Captain Walduck, who resided in Barbados, to Mr. James Petiver, Apothecary to the Chartreuse, who no doubt told the story to Steele. Captain Walduck's letter is now in the British Museum, Sloane MS. 2302 (The Spectator's Essays Relating to the West Indies, Demerara, 1885, pp. 8-11). Leigh Hunt remarked of Steele's stories that they "are just such stories as a man might tell over his wine to a party of friends. . . . Steele, indeed, may be said to have always talked rather than written; and hence the beauties as well as defects of his style." And he goes on: "If there were no worse men in the world than Steele, what a planet we should have of it! Steele knew his own foibles as well as any man. He regretted, and made amends for them, and left posterity a name for which they have reason to thank and love him. Posterity thanks Addison too; but it can hardly be said to love him, even by the help of the good old knight, Sir Roger, whom Steele invented for him. Perhaps they would have loved him more, had he too confessed his faults" (A Book for a Corner, 1849, ii. 39-42).