APPENDIX II
ON THE SPECTATOR'S ACQUAINTANCE
Various suggestions have been made concerning the identity of the characters drawn in these papers. Tradition reported that Sir Roger was drawn from Sir John Pakington or Packington, Knight of Worcester. This theory was maintained by Tyers in 1783, but has been conclusively disproved by Wills. Mr. R. E. H. Duke has made an exhaustive study to show that his original was Richard Duke, of Bulford, near Milston, where Addison's early years were spent.
For the prototype of Sir Andrew Freeport Mr. Henry Martin has been suggested. He was one of the authors of The British Merchant; he contributed No. 180, and probably other papers, to the Spectator.
Rumour has also identified Will Honeycomb with Pope's friend, Colonel Cleland; Captain Sentry with Colonel Kempenfeldt, father of Admiral Kempenfeldt of the Royal George; and Will Wimble with Thomas Morecraft, a Yorkshire gentleman introduced to Addison by Steele. Will Wimble seems, however, to be more nearly akin to the Hon. Thomas Gules of the Tatler (256), who 'produced several witnesses that he had never employed himself beyond the twisting of a whip, or the making of a pair of nut-crackers, in which he only worked for his diversion, in order to make a present now and then to his friends'; [Footnote: Cf. p. 20, I, 13 and p. 21, II, 2-11.] and the imaginary nature of Will Honeycomb's existence is sufficiently indicated by the style in which Addison's eighth and supplementary volume of the Spectator is dedicated to him.
The same questionable authority has given to the perverse widow the name of Mrs. Catharine Bovey, or Boevey, of Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire, to whom Steele dedicated the second volume of the Ladies' Library.
It is, however, very doubtful that the characters of the Spectator were drawn from individual persons. Budgell certainly says of Theophrastus that he 'was the Spectator of the age he lived in; he drew the pictures of particular men', but Tickell, who was Addison's friend and literary executor, speaks expressly of 'the feigned person of the Author, and of the several characters that compose his club', and the Spectator himself in two papers exhorts every reader 'never to think of himself or any one of his friends or enemies aimed at in what is said', [Footnote: Spectator 34] for 'when I draw a faulty character I … take care to dash it with such particular circumstances as may prevent all such ill-natured applications.' [Footnote: Spectator 262] The characters are almost certainly created by the Spectator's genius out of the material gathered from his observation of many men.