The De Coverley Papers | Page 3

the whole work. His remaining literary productions, popular at the time,
have receded into the background: but the Spectator will keep his name

alive as long as English literature survives.
* * * * *
(In this selection only those essays have been chosen which bear
directly on Sir Roger or the Spectator Club: several have been omitted
which refer to him only en passant or as a peg on which to hang some
disquisition, and also one other which is wholly out of keeping with Sir
Roger's character.)
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
1672. Birth of Addison and Steele. 1697. Addison elected Fellow of
Magdalen College, Oxford. 1701, 3, 5, 22. Steele's Plays. 1702.
Accession of Queen Anne. 1704. Addison's Campaign (poem
celebrating Blenheim). 1706. Addison's Rosamond (opera). 1709-11.
Steele's Tatler. 1711-12-14. The Spectator. 1713. Addison's Cato
(play). 1714. Accession of George I. 1717. Addison appointed
Secretary of State. 1719. Death of Addison. 1729. Death of Steele.

THE DE COVERLEY PAPERS

NO. 1. THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1710-11
Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dart lucem Cogitat, ut speciosa
dehinc miracula promat.
HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 143.
One with a flash begins, and ends in smoke; The other out of smoke
brings glorious light, And (without raising expectation high) Surprises
us with dazzling miracles.
ROSCOMMON.
I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure,

until he knows whether the writer of it be a black[1] or a fair man, of a
mild or choleric[2] 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 account in them of the
several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of
compiling, digesting[3], and correcting will fall to my share, I must do
myself the justice to open the work with my own history.
I was born to a small hereditary estate, 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 before my birth my
mother dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: whether this
might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending[4] 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 it over in silence. I find, that, during my nonage[5], I had the
reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favourite of my
schoolmaster, who used to say, that my parts[6] 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[7] 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.
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
show 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 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