To summarise the contents of these 635 numbers would require a volume. They are so versatile and so varied. As one of Addison's biographers puts it, to-day you have a beautiful meditation, brilliant in imagery and serious as a sermon, or a pious discourse on death, or perhaps an eloquent and scathing protest against the duel; while to-morrow the whole number is perhaps concerned with the wigs, ruffles, and shoe-buckles of the _macaroni_, or the hoops, patches, farthingales and tuckers of the ladies. If you wish to see the plays and actors of the time, "The Spectator" will always show them to you; and, moreover, point out the dress, manners, and mannerisms, affectations, indecorums, plaudits, or otherwise of the frequenters of the theatre.
For here is no newspaper, as we understand the term. "The Spectator" from the first indulged his humours at the expense of the quidnuncs. Says he:
"There is another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to as being altogether unfurnished with ideas till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration when I have heard them asking the first man they have met with whether there was any news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to talk of till about twelve o'clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper; and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours."
Now, the essential, or at least the leading feature of "The Spectator" is this: that the entertainment is provided by an imaginary set of characters forming a Spectator Club. The club represents various classes or sections of the community, so that through its members a corresponding variety of interests and opinions is set before the reader, the Spectator himself acting as a sort of final censor or referee. Chief among the Club members is Sir Roger de Coverley, a simple, kindly, honourable, old-world country gentleman. Here is the description of this celebrated character: