auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in Japan; or at church, eyeing the width of their rivals' hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the Garter in St. James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the city, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her earring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute clubmen of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking, which alas! is past praying for; you must know it, he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he did know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much humour in that story.
He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil; to pace 'Change and the Mall[1]—to mingle in that great club of the world—sitting alone
- ↑ "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 a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with
