decency--an effect which they can never wholly lose while they
continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are
initiated in the elegances of knowledge.

The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice
of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like La
Bruyere, exhibited the "Characters and Manners of the Age." The
personages introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they
were then known, and conspicuous in various stations. Of the Tatler
this is told by Steele in his last paper; and of the Spectator by
Budgell in the preface to "Theophrastus," a book which Addison has
recommended, and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did
not write it. Of those portraits which may be supposed to be
sometimes embellished, and sometimes aggravated, the originals are
now partly known, and partly forgotten. But to say that they united
the plans of two or three eminent writers, is to give them but a
small part of their due praise; they superadded literature and
criticism, and sometimes towered far above their predecessors; and
taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of language, the
most important duties and sublime truths. All these topics were
happily varied with elegant fictions and refined allegories, and
illuminated with different changes of style and felicities of
invention.

It is recorded by Budgell, that of the characters feigned or
exhibited in the Spectator, the favourite of Addison was Sir Roger
de Coverley, of whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminate
idea, which he would not suffer to be violated; and therefore when
Steele had shown him innocently picking up a girl in the Temple, and
taking her to a tavern, he drew upon himself so much of his friend's