Sir Roger de Coverley is a delightful country squire created by Richard Steele as a chief character in the imaginary club that supposedly wrote The Spectator. He is a character described in The Spectator as a member of the Spectator Club, a gentleman of Worcestershire of ancient descent, a baronet, to all "intents and purposes an actual country gentleman" His character was further developed by Joseph Addison as the perfect English gentleman in the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719) was an English essayist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was a man of letters, the eldest son of Lancelot Addison. His name is usually remembered alongside that of his long-standing friend, Richard Steele, with whom he founded The Spectator magazine. Addison was born in Milston, Wiltshire, but soon after his birth his father, Lancelot Addison, was appointed Dean of Lichfield and the Addison family moved into the cathedral close. He was educated at Charterhouse School, where he first met Richard Steele, and at The Queen's College, Oxford. He excelled in classics, being specially noted for his Latin verse, and became a Fellow of Magdalen College. In 1693, he addressed a poem to John Dryden, and his first major work, a book of the lives of English poets, was published in 1694. His translation of Virgil's Georgics was published in the same year. Dryden, Lord Somers, and Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax took an interest in Addison's work and obtained for him a pension of 300 pounds to enable him to travel to Europe with a view to diplomatic employment, all the time writing and studying politics. While in Switzerland in 1702, he heard of the death of William III, an event which lost him his pension, as his influential contacts, Halifax and Somers, had lost their employment with the Crown.