СНАР. THE AGE The character of the Spectator was drawn by Addison -certainly not without some reference to his own. The Spectator is described as a gentleman of middle age and studious habits, with a cultivated mind improved by foreign travel, but afflicted with an invincible shyness, so that although he makes many observations on men and manners he is almost always a mute in society, and at his ease only with a small club of familiar friends. In the members of this small Club, besides the Spectator himself, it was intended to delineate some of the principal classes and professions. There was Sir Roger de Coverley, the Tory baronet of Worcestershire, and Sir Andrew Freeport, the Whig merchant of London; there was Will Honeycomb, a gray-haired man of pleasure about town, conversant in all the fashionable follies of the time; there was Captain Sentry the soldier; there was also, though only in dim outline, the lawyer and the clergyman. The first sketch of this Club, as the first design of the Tatler, was due to Steele. But Addison took at once into his hands the characters of Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb, and moulded them with a degree of genius and skill to which Steele could make no claim. The portraiture of Sir Roger above all, and the several essays which unfold it, have taken rank among the classics of the language. So delicately is it poised that the goodnatured ridicule in many passages is never inconsistent with sincere respect, nor yet the respect with ridicule. While we smile at the stubborn prejudices of the good old Knight, we are touched by his overflowing kindliness and genial warmth of heart. There are many things that may be gleaned from those vivid pages in regard to the manners and feelings of the time, both when the Spectator goes to visit his friend in the country and when Sir Roger appears in At Coverley Hall the Spectator surveys the town. ancient mansion and the patriarchal household "the domestics all in years and grown old with their master. You trace his goodness even in the old house-dog and in the grey pad that is kept in the stable, with great care and tenderness, in regard to his past services, though he has been useless for several years." The Spectator is put under the special charge of the butler, "a very prudent man," and he consorts chiefly with the Chaplain, who has been in the house thirty years—no deep Divine perhaps in School Theology but unbounded in his kindness to the parish poor. "Wishing to put him under an obligation" said Sir Roger "I intend to leave them thirty marks in my Will." The Chaplain has moreover all the requisites that Sir Roger in selecting him desired, namely "plain sense, a good aspect, a clear voice, and a sociable temper, and if possible to know a little of backgammon." The Spectator attends the Sunday service at the Church, where Sir Roger has presented to each of the parishioners, all of them his tenants, a Prayer Book and a hassock-he observes the stable doors "patched with noses that belonged to foxes of the Knight's own hunting down"-he rides with his friend to the Assizes, and sees Sir Roger rise and make a speech of two or three sentences, “with a look of much business and great intrepidity"- all the gentlemen of Worcestershire afterwards gathering about him and striving who should compliment him most, and all the common people gazing with awe at the great man who was not afraid to speak to the Judge.— On the other hand we find the Knight come up to London for the purpose of seeing Prince Eugene, or as he always calls him Prince Eugenio, during the few weeks that great chief was in England. He walks among the monuments in Westminster Abbey and listens openmouthed to the recitals of the guide, "particularly to the account he gave us of the Lord who had cut off the King of Morocco's head." He is rowed upon the CHAP. XVI. THE AGE OF ANNE. XVI. THE AGE CHAP. Thames, which he declares to be the noblest river in Europe, but is moved to grief at observing so few steeples on this side Temple Bar. "A most heathenish sight!" he cries. "But the fifty new churches will very much mend the prospect." He has fears lest he should be assailed by the Mohocks, and does not wish to venture forth in the evenings, but he is comforted by Captain Sentry, who assures him that he, the Captain, has put on the same sword that he made use of at the battle of Steenkirk. Under such auspices, and flanked also by the old butler with an oaken cudgel, Sir Roger takes heart and consents to go out and see the new tragedy by Ambrose Philips at Drury Lane. It is much to be regretted that at this juncture Steele, without the consent of Addison, thrust in his coarser hand. The good old Knight was represented in another London scene wholly alien to the dignity and delicacy of his character. Addison, as was natural, took fire; and resolved at any sacrifice to guard from farther blemish the favourite creation of his brain. "I will kill Sir Roger" he said "that nobody else may murder him."5 There came forth accordingly a final essay from his pen. The old butler writes to the Spectator from the country, and announces in homely but pathetic terms of grief, the demise after a short illness of his honored master. "It was a most moving sight to see him take leave of his poor servants, commending us all for our fidelity, whilst we were not able to speak a word for weeping." But if even Steele had forborne his untoward interference it is probable that the Spectator would soon have been brought to a conclusion, since it was beginning to be felt that the rich mine of humor yielded by the members of the Club was nearly worked out. And 5 The Bee, p. 26, as cited in Mr. Wills's notes to the Coverley Papers. Addison may, in part at least, have derived this saying from the play of L'Avocat Patelin, where the shepherd Agnelet declares: "Quand mes moutons ont la clavelée, je les tue pour les empêcher de mourir!" CHAP XVI. OF ANNE. there was yet another reason. During the Session of 1712 there had been many complaints of the licentiousness of the press as tending to "false and scandalous THE AGE libels." It had been one topic both in a Message of the Queen to Parliament and in the Address of the House of Commons in reply. A victim was sought and was not long to find. In the course of April, Samuel Buckley of the Dolphin, Little Britain, printer of the first daily newspaper the "Daily Courant" and printer also as it chanced of the Spectator, was brought in custody to the bar of the House of Commons. He was charged with having inserted in his paper a Memorial of the States General severely reflecting on the conduct of the English Government in relation to the terms of peace. For this offence-no more in fact than reproducing a foreign state-paper as an article of news-the poor man was sent to prison. But the incensed majority in the House of Commons was intent on a more general measure that should serve for prevention as well as punishment. With this view, after passing some strong Resolutions against the licentiousness of the press, they proceeded to impose a halfpenny stamp Duty on all periodical papers. Under the weight of this Tax many of the journals succumbed-probably the very thing that the framers of the Tax desired. But the Spectator, though compelled to double its price, maintained its ground. By that time its daily distribution of copies had grown to almost four thousand, so that there was margin for the considerable falling off which ensued. It might however afford another motive to put a close to the paper in good time before its popularity had waned or its decline become apparent. Under such circumstances Number 555 appearing on the 6th of December, 1712, was the last in this series of Spectators. The essays hitherto single were collected and published together, making seven volumes, to which an eighth was subsequently added by Addison, its first XVI. CHAP. number appearing in June 1714. The sale of these collected essays was wholly without precedent in that age. It was said, probably with some exaggeration, that full ten thousand copies of each successive volume were disposed of in the first issue. THE AGE OF ANNE. Steele, ever fertile in schemes, was already planning a new paper, to be called "the Guardian" and to comprise a different set of characters; Nestor Ironside especially and the whole of the Lizard family. The first number was published on the 12th of March, 1713. Addison at the outset withheld his aid. It was not till the sixty-seventh number that there came any contribution from his pen. The main cause was no doubt, as Lord Macaulay states it, that he was at that time busy in bringing Cato on the stage; but it may be also that he had not quite forgiven Steele for poaching in the Coverley preserves. The Guardian had but scant success. Its characters were ill drawn and feebly supported, and the decline of the publication was decided ere Addison's help arrived." Only by party aid and by a larger infusion of party spirit did it carry into the autumn months its lingering existence. It was seen that the Spectator could not be rivalled—not even by the writers of the Spectator themselves. Still less was it rivalled in the ensuing age, even although the great genius of Dr. Johnson produced "the Rambler," and a whole cluster of wits combined to illustrate "the World." But the Spectator has yet another claim of merit. In the very short but light and graceful stories, or the vivid sketches of character which it comprises, lies perhaps the germ of the modern novel. There was scarce any work deserving of that name in its higher sense when Queen Anne commenced her reign. There was scarce "Did I tell you that Steele has begun a new daily paper called the Guardian ?-they say good for no thing. I have not seen it." Journal to Stella, April 1, 1713. |