=Motto.= "Learning improves native genius, and right training
strengthens the character; but bad morals will bring to shame the best
advantages of truth."--Horace, _Odes_, iv. 33.
=149=: 23. =A story I have heard.= Addison probably invented this
story, and he certainly thought well of it himself. On the same day
this paper was printed he sent to his friend Edward Wortley Montague
a letter beginning thus: "Being very well pleased with this day's
_Spectator_, I cannot forbear sending you one of them, and desiring
your opinion of the story in it. When you have a son, I shall be glad
to be his Leontine, as my circumstances will probably be like his." The
tone of discouragement in the last clause is explained by Addison's
statements, later in the letter, that he has recently lost large sums
of money, "and what is worse than all the rest, my mistress." The
Countess of Warwick was evidently not smiling upon him just then, and
Addison saw himself in the future--if not like Leontine, a widower--a
bachelor in humble circumstances.
=149=: 27. =Like a novel.= The word _novel_ was introduced into
English in the sixteenth century as a name for the Italian _novelle_,
or short tales, translations of which were then very numerous in
England. In Addison's time it was still used to designate a short story
as distinguished from the longer romances like those in the _Ladies
Library_ (V of this volume). The modern novel, an extended narrative of
real life, with careful plot usually having for its central motion the
passion of love, was not yet written in English. It is usually said to
begin with the work of Richardson and Fielding, 1740-1750.
=150=: 14. =Gazette.= The official journal of the government. Steele,
it will be remembered, had been gazetteer from May, 1707, to October,
1710, when the Whigs went out of power.
=150=: 23. =According to Mr. Cowley.= "You would advise me not to
precipitate that resolution [of retiring from public life] but to stay
a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such
an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person
whom you and I love very much and would believe as soon as another man)
'cum dignitate otium.' That were excellent advice to Joshua, who could
bid the sun stay too. But there is no fooling with life when it is once
turned beyond forty. The seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate
after-game."--Cowley's Essay, _The Danger of Procrastination_. Also see
note, p. 234.
=150=: 29. =Of three hundred a year=, _i.e_. yielding an income of
three hundred pounds a year.
=152=: 19. =Inns of Court.= See note, p. 221.