ABSTRACT
Addison’s celebrated discourse on wit extended over a week’s issues of the ‘Spectator’ (‘I dare promise myself, if my Readers will give me a week’s Attention, that this great City will be very much changed for the better by next Saturday Night’). The mention of Herbert in the first issue, which was devoted to false wit, confirmed the gathering disapprobation of the poet that would linger throughout the eighteenth century. See also above, p. 14.
Source: ‘Spectator’, no. LVIII (7 May 1711).
