passion, fashion, or caprice; and there is scarcely a deviation from propriety or decorum as they existed in his days, but what has been noticed and corrected in some parts of his works. Swift complains of his minute attention to the fair, to their dress, their manners, and diversions; and seems to think that the authors of the Tatler and Spectator had rendered their productions frivolous, by dedicating so much of their time and paper to these subjects. He who shall consider, however, the vast influence of the female character on society as now established in Europe; that necessarily the virtues and the frailties of women must immediately affect the whole species, and that man, moulded beneath their direction, indebted to them for his earliest and most vivid impressions, and for that polish and civilization which adorn and distinguish the modern world, must become virtuous or vicious, brutalized or humane, according to the exaltation or depression, the dignity and purity of female manners ;---he who shall consider these consequences must allow, that whatever contributes to render the sex more amiable and deserving, better mothers, wives, and sisters, must essentially promote the comforts and the interests of man. That this was the aim, and the result too, of the numerous animadversions on the fair

sex which we meet with in the essays of Steele and Addison, will be confessed by every one' who has read them with attention, and traced the amelioration of society through the periods immediately subsequent to their publication.

Steele, on a subject so productive of variety and the lighter graces, has, where the topics have been not more important than dress, coquetry, or fashion, drawn with a delicate and sportive. pencil the ever-shifting progeny of caprice and whim; and where more serious defalcations meet his view, his manner, changing with the theme, assumes a graver and a deeper tone. In fact, almost every shade of female character may be traced in the portraits of Steele.*

The dramatis persone in the Spectator's evermemorable club, it should not be forgotten, are the productions of Sir Richard's fertile genius; and that, consequently, the invention, the outlines, and the rough sketch of that inimitable character, Sir Roger de Coverley, must be ascribed not to Addison, but to our author. For the filling up this outline, however, with such infinite humour and discrimination we are prin

The characters of Lætitia and Daphne, No. 33 of the Spectator; of Delamira and Cleomira, Tatler, Vol. ii. No. 52 and 61, may be pointed out, among multitudes equally excellent, as illustrative of these observations.

cipally indebted to Addison; and therefore, not without some propriety, has the character been said to belong more peculiarly to that writer. Yet the few papers which Sir Richard has contributed towards the completion of his first draught, the obnoxious one, N° 410, being now with great probability ascribed to Mr. T. Tickell, prove that he fully entered into the Addisonian conception of the character. The conduct of Sir Roger toward his servants, their fidelity, assiduity, and affection, as recorded by Steele in N° 107 of the Spectator, place the benevolence and generosity of the worthy knight in a very amiable point of view. The exhibition of his gallery, the description of his ancestors according to the arrangement of their pictures, with his brief chronicle of their deeds, form a well sustained scene of humour, and highly consistent with the delineation of Addison. The honest. pride of Sir Roger, founded on the antiquity and exploits of his family, his reluctance to acknowledge affinity to the citizen of his name, though he had conferred a fortune on the house, his eccentric praise of Sir Humphrey de Coverley, and the chivalric enterprize of his great great grandfather, are traits truly characteristic and diverting.* Not less so is the relation of his Spectator, No. 109.

love for and courtship of the widow, who having honourably distinguished him as the tamest and most humane of all the brutes in the country, he immediately on this encouragement obtained new liveries, new paired his coach-horses, sent them to town to be bitted, to be taught to throw their legs well, and to move all together; and, crossing the country with this equipage, requested an interview with the object of his passion, at which having sate half an honr without speaking a word, he returned disconsolate, though ravished by her wit and beauty.*

Of the other members of the club it may be observed, that while the Templar, Sir Andrew Freeport, and Captain Sentry, appear by a kind of convention to have been allotted to Steele, Sir Roger de Coverley, the Spectator, and Will Honeycomb fall more immediately to the share of Addison. The Clergyman is rarely introduced, nor does he seem to have been appropriated to any particular individual.

It has been supposed, though upon no firm foundation, that the personages here enumerated were intended as copies of existing characters; that Sir Roger was drawn for Sir John Packington, of Worcestershire, a Tory not deficient in

*Spect. No. 113.

good sense, but abounding in whimsical peculiarities; that in the person of Capt. Sentry, Col. Kempenfelt, the father of the late unfortunate Admiral Kempenfelt, who was sunk in the Royal George, is alluded to; that Will Honeycomb is a counterpart of a Col. Cleland, and that Sir Andrew Freeport was the representative of Mr. H. Martin, one of the authors of a work entitled, The British Merchant. These are, however, mere conjectures, and therefore claim but little credit. Mr. Tickell, who, from his intimacy with Addison, would most probably have been entrusted with an explanation had there been any to impart, considers the club as a mere fiction, and the characters drawn by Steele in the second number as 66 so many pictures for ornament and explication of the whole.”

It is of more importance to remark, that the characters apportioned to Steele have suffered nothing by their allotment. They are uniformly and correctly maintained, and contribute largely to dramatise and diversify the series of papers with which they are associated.

In the Guardian, as in the Spectator, our author has, in the commencing numbers, though at greater length, inserted striking portraits of the characters that form the plan and outline of the work. Nestor Ironside, the Guardian of the