left it. A good recent edition
contains in the first 18 papers, which are a fair sample of the whole,
88 petty variations from the proper text (at that rate, in the whole
work more than 3000) apart from the recasting of the punctuation, which
is counted as a defect only in two instances, where it has changed the
sense. Chalmers's text, of 1817, was hardly better, and about two-thirds
of the whole number of corruptions had already appeared in Bisset's
edition of 1793, from which they were transferred. Thus Bisset as well
as Chalmers in the Dedication to Vol. I. turned the 'polite _parts_ of
learning' into the 'polite _arts_ of learning,' and when the silent
gentleman tells us that many to whom his person is well known speak of
him 'very currently by Mr. What-d'ye-call him,' Bisset before Chalmers
rounded the sentence into 'very correctly by _the appellation_ of Mr.
What-d'ye-call him.' But it seems to have been Chalmers who first
undertook to correct, in the next paper, Addison's grammar, by turning
'have laughed _to have seen_' into 'have laughed _to see_' and
transformed a treaty '_with_ London and Wise,'--a firm now of historical
repute,--for the supply of flowers to the opera, into a treaty
'_between_ London and Wise,' which most people would take to be a very
different matter. If the present edition has its own share of misprints
and oversights, at least it inherits none; and it contains no wilful
alteration of the text.

The papers as they first appeared in the daily issue of a penny (and
after the stamp was imposed two-penny) folio half-sheet, have been
closely compared with the first issue in guinea octavos, for which they
were revised, and with the last edition that appeared before the death
of Steele. The original text is here given precisely as it was left
after revision by its authors; and there is shown at the same time the
amount and character of the revision.

Sentences added in the reprint are placed between square brackets [ ],
without any appended note.

Sentences omitted, or words altered, are shown by bracketing the revised
version, and giving the text as it stood in the original daily issue
within corresponding brackets as a foot-note.[1]

Thus the reader has here both the original texts of the 'Spectator'. The
Essays, as revised by their authors for permanent use, form the main
text of the present volume.

But if the words or passages in brackets be omitted; the words or
passages in correspon