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.