"Since," says he in one of his early numbers, "I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses."[44] Johnson, in his _Life of Addison_, says that the task undertaken in the _Spectator_ was "first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his _Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their precepts now are no longer wanted." He afterwards praises the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ by saying that they "adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness, and, like La Bruyère, exhibited the characters and manners of the age." This commendation scarcely does justice to the work of Addison and Steele. Casa, a man equally distinguished for profligacy and politeness, merely codified in his _Galateo_ the laws of good manners which prevailed in his age. He is the Lord Chesterfield of Italy. Castiglione gives instructions to the young courtier how to behave in such a manner as to make himself agreeable to his prince. La Bruyère's characters are no doubt the literary models of those which appear in the _Spectator_. But La Bruyère merely described what he saw, with admirable wit, urbanity, and scholarship, but without any of the earnestness of a moral reformer. He could never have conceived the character of Sir Roger de Coverley; and, though he was ready enough to satirise the follies of society as an observer from the outside, to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, to dwell in clubs and assemblies," was far from being his ambition. He would probably have thought the publication of a newspaper scarcely consistent with his position as a gentleman.