INTRODUCTION.

WHILE the first volume of this series was being prepared for the press, the editor carefully refrained from using any of the material of the Roger de Coverley papers, being possessed of the pleasing hope that by so doing he might see the public in the possession of more of the sayings of Addison and Steele than it could otherwise have been had there not already existed at least two special collections of the papers relating to the old Knight. But when the selected papers from the "Spectator" appeared, with a statement based upon the facts given above, the editor was surprised and not a little disappointed to learn that Sir Roger was not to be found, either at the warehouses of the largest publishers or at the stalls of the dealers in second-hand books. That the chronicles regarding Sir Roger have been separately published, both in England and America, is a fact of which the editor has absolute proof; there remains probable, then, only the suppositions that in England they made their appearance on

the eve of a war, and in America at a time when every citizen was too busily engaged in the duty of saving the Union at the polls to endure any reading matter which did not emanate from the party press. Although the condition of the public mind last alluded to prevails at the present time, with as much intensity as the most ardent patriot could desire, the editor is constrained to comply with a demand, very gratifying in its frequency and extent, that he should make good the deficiency which he alleged did not exist.

Fortunately for the reader the editor is, by the peculiar nature of the material of this volume, deprived of any discretionary rights or privileges. To subject even the disconnected essays of the "Spectator" to the process of abridgment was a task which, like the hanging of criminals, was no more pleasurable because of its necessity to the welfare of the public; to omit any of the recollections of Sir Roger, however, or of any one inspired by the example of the old man's life, would be to transcend the bounds of necessity and propriety. The papers herein published are, therefore, complete as originally published, while the essays omitted are only those in which Sir Roger appears so seldom that the reader in search of him would arise from his unsuccessful task with a strong sense of having been deceived.

As the character of Sir Roger is so far a model that