, as revised by their authors for permanent use, form the main text of the present volume. But if the words or passages in brackets be omitted; the words or passages in corresponding foot-notes, — where there are such foot-notes, — being substituted for them; the text becomes throughout that of the
Spectator
as it first came out in daily numbers.
- As the few differences between good spelling in Queen Anne's time and good spelling now are never of a kind to obscure the sense of a word, or lessen the enjoyment of the reader, it has been thought better to make the reproduction perfect, and thus show not only what Steele and Addison wrote, but how they spelt,
- while restoring to their style the proper harmony of their own methods of punctuating,
- and their way of sometimes getting emphasis by turning to account the use of Capitals, which in their hands was not wholly conventional.
- The original folio numbers have been followed also in the use of italics
- and other little details of the disposition of the type; for example, in the reproduction of those rows of single inverted commas, which distinguish what a correspondent called the parts 'laced down the side with little c's.' [This last detail of formatting has not been reproduced in this file. html Ed.]
- The translation of the mottos and Latin quotations, which Steele and Addison deliberately abstained from giving, and which, as they were since added, impede and sometimes confound and contradict the text, are here placed in a body at the end, for those who want them.
Again and again the essayists indulge in banter on the mystery of the Latin and Greek mottos; and what confusion must enter into the mind of the unwary reader who finds Pope's
Homer
quoted at the head of a
Spectator
long before Addison's word of applause to the young poet's
Essay on Criticism.