I must own I conceived very extraordinary hopes of you from the Moment that you confessed your Age, and from eight and forty (where you had stuck so many Years) very ingenuously step’d into your Grand Climacterick.  Your Deportment has since been very venerable and becoming.  If I am rightly informed, You make a regular Appearance every Quarter-Sessions among your Brothers of the Quorum; and if things go on as they do, stand fair for being a Colonel of the Militia.  I am told that your Time passes away as agreeably in the Amusements of a Country Life, as it ever did in the Gallantries of the Town:  And that you now take as much pleasure in the Planting of young Trees, as you did formerly in the Cutting down of your Old ones.  In short, we hear from all Hands that You are thoroughly reconciled to your dirty Acres, and have not too much Wit to look into your own Estate.

After having spoken thus much of my Patron, I must take the Privilege of an Author in saying something of my self.  I shall therefore beg leave to add, that I have purposely omitted setting those Marks to the End of every Paper, which appeared in my former Volumes, that You may have an Opportunity of showing Mrs. Honeycomb the Shrewdness of your Conjectures, by ascribing every Speculation to its proper Author:  Though You know how often many profound Criticks in Style and Sentiments have very judiciously erred in this Particular, before they were let into the Secret.  I am,
  SIR,
  Your most Faithful,
  Humble Servant,
  THE SPECTATOR.

(THE Bookseller to the Reader.

In the Six hundred and thirty second Spectator, the Reader will find an Account of the Rise of this Eighth and Last Volume.

I have not been able to prevail upon the several Gentlemen who were concerned in this Work to let me acquaint the World with their Names.

Perhaps it will be unnecessary to inform the Reader, that no other Papers, which have appeared under the Title of_ Spectator, since the closing of this Eighth Volume, were written by any of those Gentlemen who had a Hand in this or the former Volumes.)

[Footnote 1:  This Dedication to Addison’s supplementary Spectator, begun a year and a half after the close of Steele’s, is thought to be by Eustace Budgell.]

* * * * *

No. 556.  Friday, June 18, 1714.  Addison. [1]

       To be continued every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

  ’Qualis ubi in lucem coluber, mala gramina, pastus,
  Frigida sub terra tumidum quem bruma tegebat;
  Nunc positis novus exuviis, nitidusque juventa,
  Lubrica convolvit sublato pectore terga
  Arduus ad solem, et linguis micat ore trisulcis.’

  Virg.

Upon laying down the Office of SPECTATOR, I acquainted the World with my Design of electing a new Club, and of opening my Mouth in it after a most solemn Manner.  Both the Election and the Ceremony are now past; but not finding it so easy as I at first imagined, to break thro’ a Fifty Years Silence, I would not venture into the World under the character of a Man who pretends to talk like other People, till I had arrived at a full Freedom of Speech.