The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series by Sir Richard Steele;Joseph Addison
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page 51 of 3879 (01%)
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alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers
put together. It must indeed be confessed that never man threw up his pen, under stronger temptations to have employed it longer. His reputation was at a greater height, than I believe ever any living author's was before him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably considerable. Every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them. Lastly, it was highly improbable that, if he threw off a Character, the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind, however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet with the same reception. To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings I shall, in the first place, observe, that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our gallant and polite authors. The latter have endeavoured to please the Age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the character of a Fine Gentleman. 'Bickerstaff' ventured to tell the Town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth. Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of |
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