formed - but who can believe half that next four-and-twenty hours, till the many different objects I must needs meet with should tire my imagination, and give me an inclination to a repose more 5 profound than I was at that time capable of. I beg people's pardon for an odd humor I am guilty of, and was often that day, which is saluting any person whom I like, whether I know him or not. This is a particularity would be tolerated in me, if they considered that the greatest pleasure I know I receive at my eyes, and that I am obliged to an agreeable person for coming abroad into my view, talking of her; but indeed it would be 15 as another is for a visit of conversation stupidity to be unconcerned at such perfection. Oh, the excellent creature! she is as inimitable to all women, as she is inaccessible to all men.' at their own houses. The hours of the day and night are taken up in the cities of London and Westminster by people as different from different centuries. Men of six o'clock give way to those of nine, they of nine to the generation of twelve; and they of twelve disappear, and make room for the fashionable world, who have made two o'clock the noon of the day. I found my friend begin to rave, and 20 each other as those who are born in insensibly led him towards the house, that we might be joined by some other company; and am convinced that the widow is the secret cause of all that inconsistency which appears in some parts 25 of my friend's discourse; though he has so much command of himself as not directly to mention her, yet according to that of Martial, which one knows not how to render into English, dum tacet hanc 30 loquitur [even when silent he talks of her]. [No. 454.] Tuesday, July 10, 1711. A DAY IN LONDON It is an expressible pleasure to know a little of the world, and to be of no character or significancy in it. When we first put off from shore, we soon fell in with a fleet of gardeners, bound for the several market ports of London; and it was the most pleasing scene imaginable to see the cheerfulness with which those industrious people plied their way to a certain sale of their goods. The banks on each side are as well peo35 pled, and beautified with as agreeable plantations, as any spot on the earth; but the Thames itself, loaded with the product of each shore, added very much to the landscape. It was very easy to observe by their sailing and the countenances of the ruddy virgins who were supercargoes, the parts of the town to which they were bound. There was an air in the purveyors for Covent Garden, who frequently converse with morning rakes, very unlike the seeming sobriety of those bound for Stocks Market. 40 To be ever unconcerned, and ever looking on new objects with an endless curiosity, is a delight known only to those 45 who are turned for speculation: nay, they who enjoy it must value things only as they are the objects of speculation, without drawing any worldly advantage to themselves from them, but just as they 50 are what contribute to their amusement, or the improvement of the mind. I lay one night last week at Richmond; and being restless, not out of dissatisfaction, but a certain busy inclination one some- 55 arrived at Strand Bridge at six of the times has, I rose at four in the morning, and took boat for London, with a resolution to rove by boat and coach for the Nothing remarkable happened in our voyage; but I landed with ten sail of apricot-boats, at Strand Bridge, after having put in at Nine Elms, and taken in melons, consigned by Mr. Cuffe, of that place, to Sarah Sewell and Company, at their stall in Covent Garden. We clock, and were unloading, when the hackney-coachmen of the foregoing night took their leave of each other at the laced shoe on her left foot, with a careless gesture, just appearing on the opposite cushion, held her both firm and in a proper attitude to receive the next 5 jolt. As she was an excellent coach-woman, many were the glances at each other which we had for an hour and a half in all parts of the town, by the skill of our drivers, till at last my lady was conveniently lost, with notice from her coachman to ours to make off, and he should hear where she went. This chase was now at an end, and the fellow who drove was ordered to come again in an hour, for that she was a silk-worm. I was surprised with this phrase, but found it was a cant among the hackney fraternity for their best customers, women who ramble twice or thrice a week from shop to shop, to turn over all the goods in town without buying anything. The silk-worms are, it seems, indulged by the tradesmen; for, though they never buy, they are ever talking of new silks, laces, and ribbons, and serve the owners in getting them customers, as their common dunners do in making them pay. Darkhouse, to go to bed before the day was too far spent. Chimney-sweepers passed by us as we made up to the market, and some raillery happened between one of the fruit-wenches and those black men about the Devil and Eve, with allusion to their several professions. I could not believe any place more entertaining than Covent Garden, where I strolled from one fruit-shop to another, 10 with crowds of agreeable young women, around me, who were purchasing fruit for their respective families. It was almost eight of the clock before I could leave that variety of objects. I took 15 her came to us, and discovered that he coach and followed a young lady, who tripped into another just before me, attended by her maid. I saw immediately she was of the family of the Vainloves. There are a set of these, who, of all 20 things, affect the play of blindman's*buff, and leading men into love for they know not whom, who are fled they know not where. This sort of woman is usually a jaunty slattern; she hangs on her 25 clothes, plays her head, varies her posture, and changes place incessantly, and all with an appearance of striving at the same time to hide herself, and yet give you to understand she is in humor to 30 laugh at you. You must have often seen the coachmen make signs with their fingers, as they drive by each other, to intimate how much they have got that day. They can carry on that language to give 35 intelligence where they are driving. In an instant my coachman took the wink to pursue, and the lady's driver gave the hint that he was going through Longacre toward St. James's; while he whipped up 40 James Street, we drove for King Street, to save the pass at St. Martin's Lane. The coachmen took care to meet, jostle, and threaten each other for way, and be entangled at the end of Newport 45 Street and Longacre. The fright, you must believe, brought down the lady's coach-door, and obliged her, with her mask off, to inquire into the bustle,when she sees the man she would avoid. 50 The tackle of the coach-window is so bad she cannot draw it up again, and she drives on, sometimes wholly discovered, and sometimes half escaped, according to the accident of carriages in 55 her way. One of these ladies keeps her seat in a hackney-coach as well as the best rider does on a managed horse. The The day of people of fashion began now to break, and carts and hacks were mingled with equipages of show and vanity, when I resolved to walk it, out of cheapness; but my unhappy curiosity is such, that I find it always my interest to take a coach, for some odd adventure among beggars, ballad-singers, or the like, detains and throws me into expense. It happened so immediately, for at the corner of Warwick Street, as I was listening to a new ballad, a ragged rascal, a beggar who knew me, came up to me, and began to turn the eyes of the good company upon me, by telling me he was extreme poor, and should die in the street for want of drink, except I immediately would have the charity to give him sixpence to go into the next ale-house and save his life. He urged with a melancholy face, that all his family had died of thirst. All the mob have humor, and two or three began to take the jest; by which Mr. Sturdy carried his point, and let me sneak off to a coach. As I drove along, it was a pleasing reflection to see the world so prettily checkered since I left Richmond, and the scene still filling with children of a new hour. This satis I went afterward to Robin's, and saw people who had dined with me at the five-penny ordinary just before, give bills for the value of large estates; and 5 could not but behold with great pleasure property lodged in and transferred in a moment from, such as would never be masters of half as much as is seemingly in them, and given from them, every faction increased as I moved towards the city; and gay signs, well-disposed streets, magnificent public structures, and wealthy shops adorned with contented faces, made the joy still rising till we came into the center of the city, and center of the world of trade, the Exchange of London. As other men in the crowds about me were pleased with their hopes and bargains, I found my account in observing 10 day they live. But before five in the them, in attention to their several interests. I, indeed, looked upon myself as the richest man that walked the Exchange that day; for my benevolence made me share the gains of every bargain that 15 was made. It was not the least of my satisfaction in my survey, to go up stairs and pass the shops of agreeable females; to observe so many pretty hands busy in the folding of ribbons, and the 20 utmost eagerness of agreeable faces in the sale of patches, pins, and wires, on each side of the counters, was an amusement in which I could longer have indulged myself, had not the dear creatures 25 called to me, to ask what I wanted, when I could not answer, Only to look at you.' I went to one of the windows which opened to the area below, where all the several voices lost their distinc- 30 tion, and rose up in a confused humming, which created in me a reflection that could not come into the mind of any but of one a little too studious; for I said to myself with a kind of pun in thought, 35 What nonsense is all the hurry of this world to those who are above it?' In these, or not much wiser thoughts, I had like to have lost my place at the chophouse, where every man, according to 40 the natural bashfulness or sullenness of our nation, eats in a public room a mess of broth, or chop of meat, in dumb silence, as if they had no pretense to speak to each other on the foot of being men, 45 except they were of each other's acquaintance. afternoon I left the city, came to my common scene of Covent Garden, and passed the evening at Will's in attending the discourses of several sets of people, who relieved each other within my hearing on the subjects of cards, dice, love, learning, and politics. The last subject kept me till I heard the streets in the possession of the bellman, who had now the world to himself, and cried, 'Past two o'clock.' This roused me from my seat; and I went to my lodgings, led by a light, whom I put into the discourse of his private economy, and made him give me an account of the charge, hazard, profit, and loss of a family that depended upon a link, with a design to end my trivial day with the generosity of sixpence, instead of a third part of that sum. When I came to my chambers, I writ down these minutes, but was at a loss what instruction I should propose to my reader from the enumeration of so many insignificant matters and Occurrences; and I thought it of great use, if they could learn with me to keep their minds open to gratification, and ready to receive it from anything it meets with. This one circumstance will make every face you see give you the satisfaction you now take in beholding that of a friend; will make every object a pleasing one; will make all the good which arrives to any man an increase of happiness to yourself. Monday, August 11, 1712. JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719) From a refined clerical home, Addison was sent to Charterhouse School and thence, at fifteen to Oxford, where he distinguished himself as a scholar and rose to a fellowship at Magdalen College (1697-99). By his twenty-second year, he was known as a cultivated writer of English and Latin verses and Dryden had welcomed him to the world of letters. While he was considering the church, the Whig government, desiring to enlist the service of his pen, granted him a pension which enabled him to spend four years in study and travel on the continent. Returning, in 1704, to a mean London lodging, he was directly sought out by the Whig leaders and commissioned to celebrate the recent victory of Marlborough at Blenheim. His poem, The Campaign, proved satisfactory, and he was rewarded with lucrative secretaryships, one of which took him to Ireland, where he was eminently successful and popular. Meantime, he had become a leader among the coffee-house wits and had won the friendship of Swift. He renewed his Charterhouse intimacy with Steele, was responsible for many applauded strokes' in the latter's comedy, The Tender Husband (1705), and contributed to The Tatler (1709), 42 of its 271 numbers. With Steele, he started The Spectator (1711-12) which appeared daily and ran to 555 numbers, of which Addison wrote 274. In The Spectator, Addison's genius found its aptest expression. No other periodical writing has every combined, in so high a degree, immediate journalistic effectiveness and permanent literary charm. This success was promptly followed by that of his tragedy, Cato (1713), which, though intrinsically undramatic, became immensely famous because of its supposed political sentiments. When the Whigs returned to power, he was made chief secretary for Ireland; carried on, for a time, a party periodical called The Freeholder; became in 1716 commissioner for trade and the colonies, and, in 1717, secretary of state. Ill-health and, possibly, ill-success as a public speaker induced him to resign his post after a few months. In the midst of new literary plans and an unkind political squabble with his old friend Steele, he was cut off by death when only forty-seven years of age. A fine elegy, by his friend Tickell, gives us a good idea of his impressive night burial in Westminster Abbey. Addison's central qualities are discretion and self-possession. He always preferred cheerfulness to mirth,' and those who look for sensational elements, whether in style or behavior, will find him tame. A profane person once pronounced him a parson in a tye-wig,' and another vindictively declared, One day or other you'll see that man a bishop.' But the chiefs of a witty and sociable age owned that, after the bottle had been round and among friends, he was the most delightful companion alive. As a writer, he profoundly influenced English manners and morals by demonstrating that urbanity and good breeding might be associated with learning, and that virtue is not necessarily incompatible with elegance and wit. Of his merit as a prose stylist, no one has spoken more roundly than Dr. Johnson in his measured statement, that Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.' [No. 1.] FROM THE SPECTATOR THE SPECTATOR INTRODUCES HIMSELF standing 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 5 writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting, will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history. I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, til he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric dis- 10 position, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that I was born to a small hereditary esconduce very much to the right under- tate, which, according to the tradition of the village 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 my mother, near the time osity 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 5 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 of my birth, dreamed that her son was 10 city, where I am frequently seen in most become a judge; whether this might proceed from a law-suit 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 15 it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the 20 tives that are made in those little circular world seemed to favor my mother's dream: for as she 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 25 it. 30 35 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 narra audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-tree, and in the theaters both of Drury-Lane and the Hay-market. I have been taken for a merchant upon the exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stockjobbers at Jonathan's: in short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club. As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find, that during my nonage, I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favorite of 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 40 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, 45 dling with any practical part in life. I either in the learned or the modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with. Upon the death of my father, I was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the university, with the character of an odd unaccountable fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if I would but shew it. An insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of Europe, in which there was anything new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curi 50 55 Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant and artisan, without ever med am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as standers-by discover blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the whigs and tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted |