The Spectator

Excerpt from The Spectator: Essays I.-L
Two months after the cessation of the Tatler, this second-born of our Essayists was ushered into the world; but under auspices greatly superior to its predecessor's. Large materials had been collected in that short interval, both by Steele and Addison; their plan, hitherto undefined and desultory, was now ripened and methodized; and they appeared in the ring for this new race of glory with many advantages that experience had superadded, and with that confidence in their own resources, which is always the surest herald of success. The first paper is by Addison, and very finely conceived. It introduces the Spectator to his readers as a silent and speculative personage - a sort of mute Argus in society, whom nothing is likely to escape - and who has formed a resolution, in his unconquerable antipathy to speech, 'to print himself out, if possible, before he die.' The account of the Spectator's Club, in the second paper, is by Steele; and it contains the outline of a portrait which Addison afterwards adopted to himself, and filled up with incomparable felicity. Of this portrait, we shall take occasion presently to speak more at large. In the mean time, let it be remarked, that no two persons were ever more formed to co-operate in a literary undertaking, than were Steele and Addison. It is true, their great talents in some respects were totally dissimilar; but from this dissimilitude only resulted a greater diversity of beauties, that matchless whole of the Spectator, which to this day, as a model for periodical writing, remains unrivalled.
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