The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3

t his friend. He lives in his surroundings, and, in friendly intercourse, fixes his whole thought on the worth of his companion. Never abating a jot of his ideal of a true and perfect life, or ceasing to uphold the good because he cannot live to the full height of his own argument, he is too frank to conceal the least or greatest of his own shortcomings. Delight and strength of a friendship like that between Steele and Addison are to be found, as many find them, in the charm and use of a compact where characters differ so much that one lays open as it were a fresh world to the other, and each draws from the other aid of forces which the friendship makes his own. But the deep foundations of this friendship were laid in the religious earnestness that was alike in both; and in religious earnestness are laid also the foundations of this book, its Monument.

Both Addison and Steele wrote verse at College. From each of them we have a poem written at nearly the same age: Addison's in April, 1694, Steele's earl