Project Gutenberg's The De Coverley Papers, by Joseph Addison and Others

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Title: The De Coverley Papers
From 'The Spectator'

Author: Joseph Addison and Others

Editor: Joseph H. Meek

Release Date: February 22, 2007 [EBook #20648]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_The_ KINGS TREASURIES
OF LITERATURE

GENERAL EDITOR

SIR A. T. QUILLER COUCH

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD

[Illustration: J. Addison.]

_THE_
DE COVERLEY
PAPERS
_FROM_
_'THE SPECTATOR'_

EDITED
_BY_
JOSEPH MEEK _M.A._

All rights reserved
by
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD
Aldine House . Bedford Street . London
Made in Great Britain
at
The Aldine Press . Letchworth . Herts
First published in this edition 1920
Last reprinted 1955

INTRODUCTION

No character in our literature, not even Mr. Pickwick, has more endeared
himself to successive generations of readers than Addison's Sir Roger de
Coverley: there are many figures in drama and fiction of whom we feel
that they are in a way personal friends of our own, that once introduced
to us they remain a permanent part of our little world. It is the abiding
glory of Dickens, it is one of Shakespeare's abiding glories, to have
created many such: but we look to find these characters in the novel or
the play: the essay by virtue of its limitations of space is unsuited for
character-studies, and even in the subject of our present reading the
difficulty of hunting the various Coverley Essays down in the great
number of _Spectator_ Papers is some small drawback. But here before the
birth of the modern English novel we have a full-length portrait of such
a character as we have described, in addition to a number of other more
sketchy but still convincing delineations of English types. We are
brought into the society of a fine old-fashioned country gentleman,
simple, generous, and upright, with just those touches of whimsicality
and those lovable faults which