The Spectator, Volume One. Addison, Steele and Others.

The Spectator, Volume One
Addison, Steele and Others. Ed. Gregory Smith.
New York: Dutton, Everyman’s Library. March 1, 1711 to Thursday, Sept. 13, 1711. 1945.

Why read it? The Spectator essays were not sermons. They amused. They were short. They made fun of anything that was not common sense. They recommended good manners by making fun of awkward and clumsy manners. Everyone recognized the targets of their humor. They also commented thoughtfully on life.

Some topics of the essays: taciturnity; rich men; characters; solitude; operas; manners; applying wit and learning; imagination; superstition; clubs; morality and wit; self-knowledge; women; lawyers; fashion; happiness; impudence; physicians; Westminster Abby; death; tombs; impatience; travel; business signs; humor; plain writing; plays; theater; men of business; the French; butts (objects of jokes); conversation/self-contained personality; knowledge; “loungers”; shaped poetry; unusual poems; marriage; education; wise man and the fool; gentleman; reclusives; on meeting people the first time; life; ladies’ headdresses; honor; books of chivalry; lying; good humor; criticism (political and social); ladies’ fans; pedants; court follower; clergymen; exercise; labor, study and contemplation; witches; the instincts of animals; litigators; oldest sons; writers and readers; literary critics; zealots; hoop petticoats; women and men compared; ladies’ men; visiting; riding in public carriages; British manner of speaking and shortening syllables; story tellers; coquettes; loud talkers in society; Rome; leadership; generation gap; school-masters; protecting the language; books; authors.

How many of these topics could I turn into humorous essays if I had the talent? RayS: Women, lawyers, fashion, physicians, travel, plain writing, business, marriage, education, political and social criticism, clergymen, exercise, zealots, women and men, loud talkers, leadership, generation gap, teachers, to mention a few.

Some ideas from the book: “When I walk the street, and observe the hurry about me in this town, 'Where with like haste, tho’ different ways, they run;/ Some to undo, and some to be undone.’ ” “…human life turns upon the same principles and passions in all ages.” “We are no sooner presented to anyone we never saw before, but we are immediately struck with the idea of a proud, a reserved, an affable, or a good-natured man; and upon our first going into a company of strangers, our benevolence or aversion, awe or contempt, rises naturally toward several particular persons, before we have heard them speak a single word, or so much as know who they are.” “Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end.” “I remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a certain mineral, tells us, that a man may consume his whole life in the study of it, without arriving at the knowledge of all its qualities.”

“The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions.” “There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady’s head-dress.” “In books of chivalry…the knight goes off, attacks everything he meets that is bigger and stronger than himself, seeks all opportunities of being knocked on the head; and after seven years rambling returns to his mistress, whose chastity has been attacked in the mean time by giants and tyrants, and undergone as many trials as her lover’s valor.” “One may tell another he whores, drinks, blasphemes, and it may pass unresented; but to say he lies, though but in jest, is an affront that nothing but blood can expiate.” “A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back upon his former life will find that sickness, ill humor and idleness will have robbed him of a great share of that space we ordinarily call our life.”

“It is a wonderful thing, that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches; and imagine such narrations their quota of the conversation.” “Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet.” “Censure, says a late ingenious author, is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.” “There is no defense against reproach, but obscurity.” “The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men’s words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.” “A man who has been brought up among books, and is able to talk of nothing else, is a very indifferent companion, and what we call a pedant.” “…he ruined everybody that had anything to do with him, but never said a rude thing in his life.” “…among arguments for the immortality of the soul, there is one drawn from the perpetual progress of the soul to its perfection, without a possibility of ever arriving at it.”

Quote: “I consider the body as a system of tubes and glands…a bundle of pipes and strainers, fitted to one another after so wonderful a manner as to make a proper engine for the soul to work with.”

Quote: “…good breeding shows itself most, where to an ordinary eye it appears the least.”