civil power, in the late and present reign, has been indebted to your counsels and wisdom. But to enumerate the great advantages which the public has received from your administration, would be a more proper work for an hiftory than for an address of this nature. Your Lordship appears as great in your private life, as in the most important offices which You have borne. I would therefore rather choose to speak of the pleasure You afford all who are admitted into your conversation, of your elegant taste in all the polite parts of learning, of your great humanity and complacency of manners, and of the surprising influence which is peculiar to You in making every one who converses with your Lordship prefer You to himself, without thinking the less meanly of his own talents. But if I should take notice of all that might be observed in your Lordship, I should have nothing new to say upon any other character of distinction. I am, MY LORD, YOUR LORDSHIP'S MOST OBEDIENT, MOST DEVOTED, HUMBLE SERVANT, THE SPECTATOR. On public credit 3 On the Italian opera Spectator's farther account of himself and his design 4 On clubs, with the rules of the two-penny club The Spectator recommends the perufal of bis papers Arietta's character; the story of Inkle and Yarico 5678 Letters to the ugly club; from Hecatiffa, &c. On coffee-houses; with the character of Eubulus Obfervations on the English, by four Indian kings Letter from the president of the Ugly Club THE SPECTATOR. N° 1. Thursday, March 1, 1710-11. I Non fumum ex fulgore, fed ex fumo dare lucem Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 143. One with a flash begins, and ends in smoke; ROSCOMMON. HAVE observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiofity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory difcourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several perfons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digefting, |