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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION j]N any account of the Spectator, something must be said of the periodicals that preceded it; but what is more essential to a right understanding of the book is some knowledge of the earlier history of Addison and of Steele. A brief sketch of the life of these friends will therefore be the best framework for other matters that call for notice. Richard Steele, son of a solicitor in Dublin, was born in March 1672; Joseph Addison, who was about seven weeks younger, was the son of Lancelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield. Steele's father died when he was about five, and he has left us in the Tatler (No. 181) a touching account of the grief of his mother, ' a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit.' She does not appear to have lived very long afterwards, but Steele was fortunate in finding a kind guardian in his uncle, Henry Gascoigne, private secretary to the Duke of Ormond. Through Gascoigne's influence he was sent to the Charterhouse, where he was admitted in November 1684; and in 1686, with Addison's arrival at the school, began the friendship which was to have such important results. Steele never forgot the kindnesswith which he was welcomed at Addison's home; the dean, he says, loved him as one of his own family; ' his method was to make it the only pretension in his children to his favour to be kind to each other. It was an unspeakable pleasure to visit or sit at a meal in that family.' Addison was sent to Queen's College, Oxford, in 1687; it was not until 1689 that Steele was elected to the University, when he was entered at Christ Church. In 1691 he was made a postmaster of Merton College; Addison had in the meantime gained a demyship at Magdalen, and in due course took his degree and obtained a fellowship. Steele took no degree, but enlisted, in 1...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217106733 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217106730 |
| Weight | 1.17 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.80 In |
| List Price | $21.51 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 360 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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