SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.--But it is the unconscious historian with whom we
are most charmed, and by whom we are best instructed. It is in this
character that Addison presents himself in his numerous contributions to
_The Spectator_, _The Tatler_, and _The Guardian_. Amid much that is now
considered pedantic and artificial, and which, in those faults, marks the
age, are to be found as striking and truthful delineations of English life
and society in that day as Chaucer has given us of an earlier period.
Those who no longer read _The Spectator_ as a model of style and learning,
must continue to prize it for these rare historic teachings. The men and
women walk before us as in some antique representation in a social
festival, when grandmothers' brocades are taken out, when curious fashions
are displayed, when Honoria and Flavia, Fidelia and Gloriana dress and
speak and ogle and flirt just as Addison saw and photographed them. We
have their subjects of interest, their forms of gossip, the existing
abuses of the day, their taste in letters, their opinions upon the works
of literature, in all their freshness.
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