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VOLUME THE SIXTH.

TO THE EARL OF SUNDERLAND.

1712-13.

tates powerful or inconsiderable in Europe, as they are friends or enemies to Great Britain. The importance of those great events which happened during that administration in which your lordship bore so

My Lord, VERY many favours and civilities (received from you in a private capacity) which I have no other way to acknowledge, will, I hope, excuse this presumption; but the justice I, as a Spectator, owe your cha-important a charge, will be acknowledged racter, places me above the want of an as long as time shall endure. I shall not excuse. Candour and openness of heart, therefore attempt to rehearse those illuswhich shine in all your words and actions, trious passages, but give this application a exact the highest esteem from all who have more private and particular turn, in desirthe honour to know you; and a winninging your lordship would continue your facondescension to all subordinate to you, made business a pleasure to those who executed it under you, at the same time that it heightened her majesty's favour to all those who had the happiness of having it conveyed through your hands. A secretary of state, in the interest of mankind, joined with that of his fellow-subjects, accomplished with a great facility and elegance in all the modern as well as ancient languages, was a happy and proper member of a ministry, by whose services your sovereign is in so high and flourishing a condition, as makes all other princes and poten

vour and patronage to me, as you are a gentleman of the most polite literature, and perfectly accomplished in the knowledge of books* and men, which makes it necessary to beseech your indulgence to the following leaves, and the author of them, who is, with the greatest truth and respect,

MY LORD,

Your Lordship's obliged, obedient,
and humble servant,

THE SPECTATOR.

* His lordship was the founder of the splendid and truly valuable library at Althorp.

VOLUME THE SEVENTH.

TO MR. METHUEN.*

stand the interest of either nation.

Sir, The great part you had, as British amIT is with great pleasure I take an oppor-bassador, in procuring and cultivating the tunity of publishing the gratitude I owe you advantageous commerce between the courts for the place you allow me in your friend- of England and Portugal, has purchased ship and familiarity. I will not acknow-you the lasting esteem of all who underledge to you that I have often had you in my thoughts, when I have endeavoured to Those personal excellencies which are draw, in some parts of these discourses, the overrated by the ordinary world, and too character of a good-natured, honest, and much neglected by wise men, you have apaccomplished gentleman. But such repre- plied with the justest skill and judgment. sentations give my reader an idea of a per- The most graceful address in horsemanson blameless only, or only laudable for ship, in the use of the sword, and in dancsuch perfections as extend no farther than ing, has been employed by you as lower to his own private advantage and reputa-arts; and as they have occasionally served to cover or introduce the talents of a skil

tion.

But when I speak of you, I celebrate one ful minister. who has had the happiness of possessing also But your abilities have not appeared only those qualities which make a man useful to in one nation. When it was your province to society, and of having had opportunities | act as her majesty's minister at the court of of exerting them in the most conspicuous Savoy, at that time encamped, you accom

manner.

*Of Bishops-Canings, in the county of Wilts; after wards Sir Paul Methuen, K. B. He was several years

ambassador at the court of Lisbon, where he conducted himself with great ability.

panied that gallant prince through all the vicissitudes of his fortune, and shared by his side the dangers of that glorious day in which he recovered his capital. As far as it regards personal qualities, you attained,

in that one hour, the highest military re- | have at your table, your easy condescension putation. The behaviour of our minister in the action, and the good offices done the vanquished in the name of the Queen of England, gave both the conqueror and the captive the most lively examples of the courage and generosity of the nation he represented.

Your friends and companions in your absence frequently talk these things of you; and you cannot hide from us (by the most discreet silence in any thing which regards yourself) that the frank entertainment we

in little incidents of mirth and diversion, and general complacency of manners, are far from being the greatest obligations we have to you. I do assure you, there is not one of your friends has a greater sense of your merit in general, and of the favours you every day do us, than,

SIR,

Your most obedient,

and most humble servant, RICHARD STEELE.

VOLUME THE EIGHTH.

TO WILLIAM HONEYCOMB, ESQ.*

THE seven former volumes of the Spectator having been dedicated to some of the most celebrated persons of the age, I take leave to inscribe this eighth and last to you, as to a gentleman who hath ever been ambitious of appearing in the best company.

You are now wholly retired from the busy part of mankind, and at leisure to reflect upon your past achievements; for which reason I look upon you as a person very well qualified for a dedication.

their lives. But I need not tell you that the free and disengaged behaviour of a fine gentleman makes as many awkward beaux, as the easiness of your favourite hath made insipid poets.

At present you are content to aim all your charms, at your own spouse, without farther thought of mischief to any others of the sex. I know you had formerly a very great contempt for that pedantic race of mortals who call themselves philoI may possibly disappoint my readers, sophers; and yet, to your honour be it and yourself too, if I do not endeavour on spoken, there is not a sage of them all could this occasion to make the world acquainted have better acted up to their precepts in with your virtues. And here, sir, I shall one of the most important points of life: I not compliment you upon your birth, per-mean, in that generous disregard of popuson, or fortune; nor on any other the like perfections which you possess, whether you will or no; but shall only touch upon those which are of your own acquiring, and in which every one must allow you have a real merit.

lar opinion which you showed some years ago, when you chose for your wife an obscure young woman, who doth not indeed pretend to an ancient family, but has certainly as many forefathers as any lady in the land, if she could but reckon up their

Your janty air and easy motion, the vo-names. lubility of your discourse, the suddenness of your laugh, the management of your snuff-box, with the whiteness of your hands and teeth (which have justly gained you the envy of the most polite part of the male world, and the love of the greatest beauties in the female) are entirely to be ascribed to your own personal genius and application.

You are formed for these accomplishments by a happy turn of nature, and have finished yourself in them by the utmost improvements of art. A man that is defective in either of these qualifications (whatever may be the secret ambition of his heart) must never hope to make the figure you have done, among the fashionable part of his species. It is therefore no wonder we see such multitudes of aspiring young men fall short of you in all these beauties of your character, notwithstanding the study and practice of them is the whole business of

* Generally supposed to be Col. Cleland.

I must own I conceived very extraordinary hopes of you from the moment that you confessed your age, and from eightand-forty (where you had stuck so many years) very ingeniously stepped into your grand climacteric. Your deportment has since been very venerable and becoming. If I am rightly informed, you make a regular appearance every quarter-sessions among your brothers of the quorum; and if things go on as they do, stand fair for being a colonel of the militia. I am told that your time passes away as agreeably in the amusements of a country life, as it ever did in the gallantries of the town; and that you now take as much pleasure in the planting of young trees, as you did formerly in the cutting down of your old ones. In short, we hear from all hands that you are thoroughly reconciled to your dirty acres, and have not too much wit to look into your own estate.

After having spoken thus much of my patron, I must take the privilege of an au

thor in saying something of myself. I shall though you know how often many protherefore beg leave to add, that I have pur- found critics in style and sentiments have posely omitted setting those marks to the very judiciously erred in this particular, end of every paper, which appeared in my before they were let into the secret. Í former volumes, that you may have an op-am, portunity of showing Mrs. Honeycomb the shrewdness of your conjectures, by ascribing every speculation to its proper author:

SIR,

Your most faithful humble servant,
THE SPECTATOR.

THE BOOKSELLER TO THE READER.

IN the six hundred and thirty-second Spectator the reader will find an account of the rise of this eighth and last volume.

I have not been able to prevail upon the several gentlemen who were concerned in this work to let me acquaint the world with their names.

Perhaps it will be unnecessary to inform the reader, that no other papers which have appeared under the title of the Spectator, since the closing of this eighth volume, were written by any of those gentlemen who had a hand in this or the former volumes.

THE SPECTATOR.

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it over in silence. I find, that during my nonage, I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favourite with my schoolmaster, who used to say, 'that my parts were solid, and would wear well.' I had not been long at the university, before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. Whilst I was in this learned body, I applied myself with so much diligence to my studies, that there are very few celebrated books, either in the learned or the modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with.

I HAVE observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next, as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some ac- Upon the death of my father, I was recount in them of the several persons that are solved to travel into foreign countries, and engaged in this work. As the chief trouble therefore left the university, with the chaof compiling, digesting and correcting will racter of an odd, unaccountable fellow, that fall to my share, I must do myself the jus- had a great deal of learning, if I would but tice to open the work with my own history. show it. An insatiable thirst after knowI was born to a small hereditary estate, ledge carried me into all the countries of which according to the tradition of the vil-Europe, in which there was any thing new lage where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son, whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream: for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral until they had taken away the bells from it.

As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass

or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that having read the controversies of some great men concerning the antiquities of Egypt, I made a voyage to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the measure of a pyramid: and as soon as I had set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction.*

I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, † and whilst I

astronomical professor at Oxford, who in 1646 publish*This is, probably, an allusion to Mr. John Greaves, ed a work entitled Pyramidographia.'

Child's coffee-house was in St. Paul's church-yard,

and much frequented by the clergy; St. James's is in

its original situation; Jonathan's was in Changealley, and the Rose was on the west side of Temple-bar.

seem attentive to nothing but the Post- is reasonable; but as for these three partiman, overhear the conversation of every culars, though I am sensible they might table in the room. I appear on Sunday tend very much to the embellishment of nights at St. James's coffee-house, and my paper, I cannot yet come to a resolusometimes join the little committee of po- tion of communicating them to the public. litics in the inner-room, as one who comes They would indeed draw me out of that obthere to hear and improve. My face is scurity which I have enjoyed for many likewise very well known at the Grecian, years, and expose me in public places to the Cocoa-tree, and in the theatres both of several salutes and civilities, which have Drury-lane and the Hay-market. I have been always very disagreeable to me; for been taken for a merchant upon the Ex- the greatest pain I can suffer, is the being change for above these ten years, and talked to, and being stared at. It is for sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly this reason likewise, that I keep my comof stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, plexion and dress as very great secrets; wherever I see a cluster of people, I al-though it is not impossible but I may make ways mix with them, though I never open | discoveries of both in the progress of the my lips but in my own club. work I have undertaken.

Thus I live in the world rather as a After having been thus particular upon Spectator of mankind, than as one of the myself, I shall in to-morrow's paper give species, by which means I have made my- an account of those gentlemen who are conself a speculative statesman, soldier, mer-cerned with me in this work; for, as I have chant, and artisan, without ever meddling before intimated, a plan of it is laid and with any practical part in life. I am very concerted (as all other matters of importwell versed in the theory of a husband, or ance are) in a club. However, as my a father, and can discern the errors in the friends have engaged me to stand in the economy, business, and diversion of others, front, those who have a mind to correbetter than those who are engaged in them; spond with me, may direct their letters to as standers-by discover blots, which are the Spectator, at Mr. Buckley's, in Little apt to escape those who are in the game. Britain. For I must further acquaint the I never espoused any party with violence, reader, that though our club meet only on and am resolved to observe an exact neu- Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have aptrality between the Whigs and Tories, un-pointed a committee to sit every night for less I shall be forced to declare myself by the inspection of all such papers as may the hostilities of either side. In short, I contribute to the advancement of the pubhave acted in all the parts of my life as a lic weal. looker-on, which is the character I intend

to preserve in this paper.

I have given the reader just so much of

Ast alii sex

C.

Et plures, uno conclamant ore.-Juv. Sat. vii. 167.
Six more at least join their consenting voice.

my history and character, as to let him see No. 2.] Friday, March 2, 1710-11. I am not altogether unqualified for the business I have undertaken. As for other particulars in my life and adventures, I shall insert them in following papers, as I shall see occasion. In the mean time, when I THE first of our society is a gentleman of consider how much I have seen, read, and Worcestershire, of an ancient descent, a heard, I begin to blame my own tacitur- baronet, his name is sir Roger de Coverly. nity; and since I have neither time nor in- His great grandfather was inventor of that clination, to communicate the fulness of my famous country-dance which is called after heart in speech, I am resolved to do it in him. All who know that shire are very writing, and to print myself out, if possi-well acquainted with the parts and the ble, before I die. I have been often told merits of sir Roger. He is a gentleman by my friends, that it is a pity so many that is very singular in his behaviour, but useful discoveries which I have made his singularities proceed from his good should be in the possession of a silent man. For this reason, therefore, I shall publish a sheet full of thoughts every morning, for the benefit of my contemporaries; and if I can any way contribute to the diversion, or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.

There are three very material points which I have not spoken to in this paper; and which, for several important reasons, I must keep to myself, at least for some time: I mean an account of my name, my age, and my lodgings. I must confess, I would gratify my reader in any thing that

sense,

ners of the world, only as he thinks the
world is in the wrong. However, this hu-
mour creates him no enemies, for he does
nothing with sourness or obstinacy; and his
makes him but the readier and more capa-
being unconfined to modes and forms,
ble to please and oblige all who know him.
square.*
When he is in town, he lives in Soho-
It is said, he keeps himself a

and are contradictions to the man

*Soho-square was at that time the genteelest part of the town. The handsome house, built by the unfor tunate Duke of Monmouth, occupied, until the year 1773, the whole of the ground on which Bateman's buildings now stand.

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