made of his influence was to procure young Addison a pension, that he might be forwarded in service of the State.  Party spirit among his political opponents ran high against Somers.  At the close of 1699 they had a majority in the Commons, and deprived him of office, but they failed before the Lords in an impeachment against him.  In Queen Anne’s reign, between 1708 and 1710, the constitutional statesman, long infirm of health, who had been in retirement serving Science as President of the Royal Society, was serving the State as President of the Council.  But in 1712, when Addison addressed to him this Dedication of the first Volume of the first reprint of ‘the Spectator’, he had withdrawn from public life, and four years afterwards he died of a stroke of apoplexy.

Of Somers as a patron Lord Macaulay wrote: 

’He had traversed the whole vast range of polite literature, ancient and modern.  He was at once a munificent and a severely judicious patron of genius and learning.  Locke owed opulence to Somers.  By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a college.  In distant countries the name of Somers was mentioned with respect and gratitude by great scholars and poets who had never seen his face.  He was the benefactor of Leclerc.  He was the friend of Filicaja.  Neither political nor religious differences prevented him from extending his powerful protection to merit.  Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant of all the non-jurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers, permission to study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety.  Vertue, a Strict Roman Catholic, was raised, by the discriminating and liberal patronage of Somers, from poverty and obscurity to the first rank among the engravers of the age.’]

* * * * *

No. 1.  Thursday, March 1, 1711.  Addison.

      ’Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem
      Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.’

      Hor.

I 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 cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author.  To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this Work.  As the chief trouble of Compiling, Digesting, and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do myself the Justice to open the Work with my own History.