I. The Spectator
Motto. "He does not lavish at a blaze his fire,
Sudden to glare and in a smoke expire;
But rises from a cloud of smoke to light,
And pours his specious miracles to sight."
—Horace, Ars Poetica, 143. P. Francis's tr.
That is, a well-planned work of art will not begin with a flash and end in smoke; but, beginning modestly, will grow more lucid and brilliant as it proceeds. Horace, in the lines immediately preceding these, quotes in translation the opening words of the Odyssey as an example of a good introduction.
The mottoes of the Spectator papers—nearly all chosen from the Latin poets—are usually, as in this case, very apt. They give a certain air of dignity and easy scholarship to the treatment of familiar themes. In a later paper (No. 221, written by Addison) the Spectator defends himself with charming humour against any charge of pedantry in the use of them.
[45]: 12. My own history. In this paper Addison of course is not giving us his own history; but he is giving us a truthful picture of his own temperament. His love of reading and of travel, his dignified composure, his taciturnity, his habit of quiet observation—they are all faithfully set down.
[47]: 20. The measure of a pyramid. Addison perhaps had in mind the works on this subject by John Greaves (1602-1652), a mathematician and antiquary; a posthumous pamphlet by him had recently (1706) been published. Addison's own travels never extended farther than Italy.
47: 28. Place of general resort. The coffee-houses played a very important part in the London life of Queen Anne's time. They were frequented by all classes,—wits and scholars, divines, politicians, men of business, and men of fashion. Each of the more famous houses had its own class of patrons, and thus served as a kind of club. Men frequently had their letters left there—as Swift used to do, instead of at his lodgings—and could count on meeting congenial acquaintances there at any time. An observant French traveler, Henri Misson, whose book was translated in 1719, gives a pleasant glimpse of the coffee-house interior: "You have all Manner of Newes there: You have a good Fire, which you may sit by as long as you please; You have a Dish of Coffee; You meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business; and all for a Penny, if you don't Care to spend more." In the better houses, cards or dicing were not allowed, and swearing and quarrelling were punished by fines.
The coffee-houses mentioned in the text were, in 1710, those most widely known. Will's, at the corner of Bow and Great Russell streets, near the Drury Lane Theatre, was the famous house where, during the last decade of the seventeenth century, the great Dryden had held his chair as literary dictator, and it was still a favourite resort both for men of letters and men of affairs; it was from Will's that Steele dated all those papers in The Tatler which were concerned with poetry. Child's, in St. Paul's church-yard, was frequented by the clergy and by men of learning; the Grecian, in Devereaux Court, just off the Strand, was also the resort of scholars and of barristers from the Temple—Steele dated from there all "accounts of learning" in his Tatler. The St James, near the foot of St. James Street, was a thoroughly Whig house, as the Cocoa Tree on the opposite side of the street was a Tory. Jonathan's, in Exchange Alley, near the heart of the city, was the headquarters of stockjobbers. All these were coffee-houses, except the Cocoa Tree, which called itself a chocolate-house. The chocolate-houses were few in number, higher in prices, and less popular than the coffee-houses.
Steele gives a pleasant account of coffee-house customs in Spectator, No. 49. See also two papers by Addison on coffee-house talk, Spectator, Nos. 403, 568.
For a fuller account of London Coffee-houses in Addison's time, see Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. xviii, and Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century, Chap. xii.
[48]: 5. The Postman. One of the little newspapers of the Queen Anne time, issued thrice a week and edited by a French Protestant named Fontive.
48: 11. Drury Lane and the Haymarket. These two famous theaters were, in 1710, the only ones open in London.
48: 16. Never open my lips but in my own club. "Addison was perfect good company with intimates; and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence." Pope, quoted in Spence's Anecdotes, p. 38. It will be noticed that while this taciturnity and reserve were characteristics of Addison, they were utterly foreign to the disposition of Steele. Steele often talked too soon and too fast, and he threw himself most heartily into the game of life.
48: 27. Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories. The Spectator kept this resolve, though the restriction was difficult for Steele.
[50]: 19. Mr. Buckley's in Little Britain. Samuel Buckley was a printer who, in 1702, had started the first English daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, a little sheet 14 by 8 inches in size. He undertook to print The Spectator for Steele and Addison. Little Britain is the name of a short street in London, near Smithfield.
50: 24. C. All Addison's papers in The Spectator are signed with some one of the four letters forming the word Clio, the name of the muse of history. Steele's are signed R or T. In Spectator, No. 221, Addison gives a droll comment upon these "Capital Letters placed at the End of the papers."