=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."