of it from the start, and their contributions were about equal in number--Addison writing 274 papers, and Steele 236. The second number of _The Spectator_, written by Steele, contains the account of that club, of which Sir Roger de Coverley was the most famous member; and the Coverley papers followed at intervals through the next year and a half. The friendship of Steele and Addison was not of recent growth. They had been boys together in the Charterhouse School, London. Dick Steele at that time was a fatherless,[1] and almost friendless, lad who had been recommended to the Charterhouse by a distant relative, the Duke of Ormond. Addison was the son of the Dean of Lichfield, and came up to the Charterhouse from a home of culture and learning. The two young fellows formed here one of those school friendships that last a lifetime. Addison, though a little the younger, was doubtless a good deal the wiser of the two; and there may have been in his regard a touch of that patronizing temper which in later life he sometimes showed in too superior a fashion. But for Steele the acquaintance was certainly very fortunate. There are pleasant glimpses of the young Irish lad invited for a holiday to the home of his friend Addison, the quiet deanery under the trees at Lichfield. Good Dean Addison, Steele said many years after, loved him as one of his own sons; and in that home the fatherless boy saw how domestic love and purity lend a charm to manners that all the wit and fashion of the town can never give. In one of the most delightful of the _Tatler_ papers[2] he gives a portrait of a father, dignified and decorous yet affectionate, which is evidently drawn from his recollections of the Lichfield household. [1] Read the touching account of his father's death. _The Tatler_, No. 181. [2] No. 235. Addison was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1687, at the early age of fifteen, and next year obtained a scholarship at Magdalen, where he continued in residence, as undergraduate, Master, and Fellow, until 1699. Steele, whose scholarship was probably not brilliant, though he had been in the Charterhouse two years longer than Addison, did not follow him to Oxford until 1690, when he was matriculated at Christ Church. He did not remain there, however, long enough to take any degree. He never had the retiring and scholarly tastes of his friend Addison, and after three years in the university could resist the attractions of the great outside world no longer. Looking about for a career, he not unnaturally decided for the army; and in 1694 he left Oxford to enlist as a private in the Horse Guards. He soon received a commission as ensign in the regiment of Lord Cutts, and before 1700 is mentioned as Captain Steele.