Chapter III: Preface

The text of the _Coverley_ papers in this volume is that of G. Gregory Smith's edition of _The Spectator_. This edition has been chosen because it reproduces the original form of the papers after they had been corrected by Steele and Addison for the first Collected Edition of _The Spectator_, 1712-1715, and before they had been tampered with by later editors. In three or four instances, a few words have been omitted--the omission in every case being indicated, and spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been modernized, as they must be for a school text. In other particulars it is believed the papers stand in this volume as they were left by their authors.

All the _Coverley_ papers are included except that one by Tickell of which Addison himself disapproved. I have thought it best, however, to print only entire papers; and have not, therefore, culled the few paragraphs in which incidental mention is made of Sir Roger in the course of essays devoted chiefly to other subjects.

In accordance with the plan of this Series, the occasional brief notes needed to explain a word or to call attention to some peculiar idiom or structure are set at the foot of the page; longer, illustrative notes follow the text at the end of the volume.

The best method of approach to the work of any author is usually through a study of his life and surroundings; this is certainly true of a literature so full of personal interest as the literature of the age of Queen Anne. I have, therefore, in the Introduction attempted to give some notion of the personality of Steele and Addison, and then some account of the social conditions that explain the remarkable success of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_. Two or three books, like Thackeray's _English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century_ and Ashton's _Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne_, will help the student in his endeavour to frame in his imagination a picture of the men and their time; but for comment on _The Spectator_, nothing, after all, is worth so much as _The Spectator_ itself. The student should be encouraged to read more of these charming papers, and to make himself, if possible, a little at home in that most urbane and hospitable period of English literature.

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