"It fills the Imagination with an Assemblage of such Ideas and Pictures as are hardly any thing but Shade, such as Night, the Devil, &c. These Portraitures very near over-power the Light of the Understanding, almost benight the Faculties, and give that melancholy Tincture to the most sanguine Complexion, which this Gentleman calls an Inclination to be in a Brown-study, and is usually attended with worse Consequences in case of a Repulse."
Spectator, No. 396
At least 80 entries in ESTC (1711, 1712, 1713, 1714, 1715, 1716, 1717, 1718, 1720, 1721, 1723, 1724, 1726, 1729, 1733, 1734, 1735, 1737, 1738, 1744, 1745, 1747, 1748, 1749, 1750, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1756, 1757, 1761, 1763, 1765, 1766, 1767, 1769, 1771, 1776, 1778, 1785, 1788, 1789, 1781, 1793, 1797, 1799, 1800).<br>
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By Steele, Addison, Budgell and others, <u>The Spectator</u> (London: Printed for Sam. Buckley, at the Dolphin in Little Britain; and sold by A[nn]. Baldwin in Warwick-Lane, 1711-1714). &lt;<a href="http://estc.bl.uk/P1724">Link to ESTC</a>&gt; -- No. 1 (Thursday, March 1. 1711) through No. 555 (Saturday, December 6. 1712); 2nd series, No. 556 (Friday, June 18. 1714), ceased with No. 635 (20 Dec. 1714).<br>
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Some text from <u>The Spectator</u>, 3 vols. Ed. Henry Morley (London: George Routledge, 1891). &lt;<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12030/12030-h/12030-h/12030-h.htm">Link to PGDP edition</a>&gt;<br><br>
Reading in Donald Bond's edition: <u>The Spectator</u>, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). -- Note, No. 396 also attributed to Orator Henley