er which is wholly out of keeping with Sir
Roger's character.)

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

1672. Birth of Addison and Steele.
1697. Addison elected Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
1701, 3, 5, 22. Steele's Plays.
1702. Accession of Queen Anne.
1704. Addison's _Campaign_ (poem celebrating Blenheim).
1706. Addison's _Rosamond_ (opera).
1709-11. Steele's _Tatler_.
1711-12-14. The _Spectator_.
1713. Addison's _Cato_ (play).
1714. Accession of George I.
1717. Addison appointed Secretary of State.
1719. Death of Addison.
1729. Death of Steele.

THE DE COVERLEY PAPERS

NO. 1. THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1710-11

_Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dart lucem
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat._

HOR. _Ars Poet._ ver. 143.

One with a flash begins, and ends in smoke;
The other out of smoke brings glorious light,
And (without raising expectation high)
Surprises us with dazzling miracles.

ROSCOMMON.

I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, until
he knows whether the writer of it be a black[1] or a fair man, of a mild
or choleric[2] disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars
of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of
an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I
design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following
writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that
are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling,
digesting[3], and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the
justice to open the work with my own history.

I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the
tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges
and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and
has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the
loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six
hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that before my birth my
mother dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge: whether this might
proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending[4] in the family, or my
father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not
so vain as