The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II — Reading Companion

Social Observation and the Periodical Essay

The selections from Steele, Addison, and Swift demonstrate the periodical essay’s role as a vehicle for social critique. Steele’s “Of Companions and Flatterers” and “How to Be Happy tho Married” from The Tatler offer pointed advice on friendship and matrimony, while his Spectator papers on Sir Roger de Coverley blend character sketch with gentle satire. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is included, its coldly logical tone amplifying the horror of its subject. These pieces rely on a persona—the observer, the moralist, the ironist—to engage readers without overt polemic. The editors have favored essays that are self-contained, often opening with a general reflection before narrowing to a specific example.

Epistolary Intimacy and Public Persona

Several selections are letters, revealing how eighteenth-century writers used correspondence to craft a public self. Pope’s letters to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu describe an “ancient English country seat” with playful detail, while Montagu’s own letter on smallpox inoculation from Adrianople combines personal report with medical advocacy. Johnson’s famous letter to Chesterfield, included via Boswell’s Life, is a masterclass in dignified resentment. The editors have extracted these letters not as biographical documents but as literary performances—each shows the writer adjusting tone for a specific reader while maintaining a consistent voice. The excerpts are brief, often cutting off before the letter’s full argument unfolds.

Narrative Voice and Digression in Sterne

The longest excerpt in the volume is from Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, focusing on Uncle Toby’s courtship of Widow Wadman. The passage displays Sterne’s characteristic digressions, typographical play, and direct address to the reader. The narrator interrupts the action to compare an eye to a cannon, to apostrophize Uncle Toby, and to comment on his own storytelling. The editors have chosen a scene that is nearly self-contained, yet it exemplifies Sterne’s method: the plot advances slowly, if at all, while the narrator’s asides create a comic tension between innocence and desire. This selection stands apart from the volume’s other pieces in its formal experimentation and its willingness to frustrate conventional narrative expectations.

Readers approaching this volume should treat each selection as a sample rather than a summary. The editors have prioritized passages that demonstrate a writer’s characteristic style or argument, often at the expense of context. For fuller understanding, consult the complete works from which these excerpts are drawn. The volume is best used as a survey of prose techniques—from the balanced periods of Johnson to the conversational ease of Steele—rather than as a guide to any single author’s achievement.

Leafing through this old prose collection, I kept returning to Johnson’s patient entries, that immense effort to pin down meaning word by word. It reminded me, rather unexpectedly, of the quiet diligence in Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 2 — Background and Themes, where a life’s correspondence builds a similar portrait of sustained, thoughtful labor. Both feel like listening to someone think aloud, unhurriedly.