But if the words or passages in brackets be omitted; the words or
passages in corresponding foot-notes,--where there are such
foot-notes,--being substituted for them; the text becomes throughout
that of the 'Spectator' as it first came out in daily numbers.

As the few differences between good spelling in Queen Anne's time and
good spelling now are never of a kind to obscure the sense of a word, or
lessen the enjoyment of the reader, it has been thought better to make
the reproduction perfect, and thus show not only what Steele and Addison
wrote, but how they spelt, while restoring to their style the proper
harmony of their own methods of punctuating, and their way of sometimes
getting emphasis by turning to account the use of capitals, which in
their hands was not wholly conventional.

The original folio numbers have been followed also in the use of
_italics_ [_shown between underscored thus_] and other little details of
the disposition of the type; for example, in the reproduction of those
rows of single inverted commas, which distinguish what a correspondent
called the parts 'laced down the side with little c's.' [This last
detail of formatting has not been reproduced in this file. Text Ed.]

The translation of the mottos and Latin quotations, which Steele and
Addison deliberately abstained from giving, and which, as they were
since added, impede and sometimes confound and contradict the text, are
here placed in a body at the end, for those who want them. Again and
again the essayists indulge in banter on the mystery of the Latin and
Greek mottos; and what confusion must enter into the mind of the unwary
reader who finds Pope's Homer quoted at the head of a 'Spectator' long
before Addison's word of applause to the young poet's 'Essay on