e Visit to the Exchange, the Journal of the
Retired Citizen, the Vision of Mirza, the Transmigrations of Pug the
Monkey, and the Death of Sir Roger de Coverley.[12]

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the Spectator are, in
the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his critical papers
are always luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be
regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the school in which
he had been trained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too
good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our generation
as he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were more censured
and derided than those in which he raised his voice against the contempt
with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers
that the same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the
Aeneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the rude dross of Chevy
Chace.

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator should have been
such as no similar work has ever obtained. The number of copies daily
distributed was at first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and
had risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax was imposed. That tax
was fatal to a crowd of journals. The Spectator, however, stood its
ground, doubled its price, and, though its circulation fell off, still
yielded a large revenue both to the state and to the authors. For
particular papers, the demand was immense; of some, it is said, twenty
thousand copies were required. But this was not all. To have the
Spectator served up every morning with the bohea and rolls, was a luxury
for the few. The majority were content to wait till essays enough had
appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume were
immediately taken off, and new editions were called for. It must be
remembered that the population of England was then hardly a third of
what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of
reading was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shopkeeper or a
farmer who found any pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was
doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country seat did not
contain ten books, receipt books and books on farriery included. In
these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as
indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the most successful
works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dicken