Chapter II: Introduction (2)

Addison's comedy was not produced till 1715, the year after his unsuccessful attempt to revive the 'Spectator', which produced what is called the eighth volume of that work. The play, not known to be his, was so ill spoken of that he kept the authorship a secret to the last, and Tickell omitted it from the collection of his patron's works. But Steele knew what was due to his friend, and in 1722 manfully republished the piece as Addison's, with a dedication to Congreve and censure of Tickell for suppressing it. If it be true that the 'Drummer' made no figure on the stage though excellently acted, 'when I observe this,' said Steele, 'I say a much harder thing of this than of the comedy.' Addison's Drummer is a gentleman who, to forward his suit to a soldier's widow, masquerades as the drumbeating ghost of her husband in her country house, and terrifies a self-confident, free-thinking town exquisite, another suitor, who believes himself brought face to face with the spirit world, in which he professes that he can't believe. 'For my part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' The character of a free-thinking exquisite is drawn from life without exaggeration, but with more than a touch of the bitter contempt Addison felt for the atheistic coxcomb, with whom he was too ready to confound the sincere questioner of orthodox opinion. The only passages of his in the 'Spectator' that border on intolerance are those in which he deals with the free-thinker; but it should not be forgotten that the commonest type of free-thinker in Queen Anne's time was not a thoughtful man who battled openly with doubt and made an independent search for truth, but an idler who repudiated thought and formed his character upon tradition of the Court of Charles the Second. And throughout the 'Spectator' we may find a Christian under-tone in Addison's intolerance of infidelity, which is entirely wanting when the moralist is Eustace Budgell. Two or three persons in the comedy of the 'Drummer' give opportunity for good character-painting in the actor, and on a healthy stage, before an audience able to discriminate light touches of humour and to enjoy unstrained although well-marked expression of varieties of character, the 'Drummer' would not fail to be a welcome entertainment.

But our sketch now stands at the year 1705, when Steele had ceased for a time to write comedies. Addison's 'Campaign' had brought him fame, and perhaps helped him to pay, as he now did, his College debts, with interest. His 'Remarks on Italy', now published, were, as Tickell says, 'at first but indifferently relished by the bulk of readers;' and his 'Drummer' probably was written and locked in his desk. There were now such days of intercourse as Steele looked back to when with undying friendship he wrote in the preface to that edition of the 'Drummer' produced by him after Addison's death:

'He was above all men in that talent we call humour, and enjoyed it in
such perfection, that I have often reflected, after a night spent with
him apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of
conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who
had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite
and delightful than any other man ever possessed.' And again in the
same Preface, Steele dwelt upon 'that smiling mirth, that delicate
satire and genteel raillery, which appeared in Mr. Addison when he was
free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and
muffles merit; and his abilities were covered only by modesty, which
doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to
all that are concealed.'

Addison had the self-consciousness of a sensitive and speculative mind. This, with a shy manner among those with whom he was not intimate, passed for cold self-assertion. The 'little senate' of his intimate friends was drawn to him by its knowledge of the real warmth of his nature. And his friendships, like his religion, influenced his judgment. His geniality that wore a philosophic cloak before the world, caused him to abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly than Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject, little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment of all kindly intercourse with men. In after years, as expression of thought in the literature of nations gained freedom and sincerity, two types of literature were formed from the types of mind which Addison and Steele may be said to have in some measure represented. Each sought advance towards a better light, one part by dwelling on the individual duties and responsibilities of man, and his relation to the infinite; the other by especial study of man's social ties and liberties, and his relation to the commonwealth of which he is a member. Goethe, for instance, inclined to one study; Schiller to the other; and every free mind will incline probably to one or other of these centres of opinion. Addison was a cold politician because he was most himself when analyzing principles of thought, and humours, passions, duties of the individual. Steele, on the contrary, braved ruin for his convictions as a politician, because his social nature turned his earnestness into concern for the well-being of his country, and he lived in times when it was not yet certain that the newly-secured liberties were also finally secured. The party was strong that desired to re-establish ancient tyrannies, and the Queen herself was hardly on the side of freedom.

In 1706, the date of the union between England and Scotland, Whig influence had been strengthened by the elections of the preceding year, and Addison was, early in 1706, made Under-Secretary of State to Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory, who was superseded before the end of the year by Marlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, a Whig under whom Addison, of course, remained in office, and who was, thenceforth, his active patron. In the same year the opera of _Rosamond_ was produced, with Addison's libretto. It was but the third, or indeed the second, year of operas in England, for we can hardly reckon as forming a year of opera the Italian intermezzi and interludes of singing and dancing, performed under Clayton's direction, at York Buildings, in 1703. In 1705, Clayton's _Arsinoe_, adapted and translated from the Italian, was produced at Drury Lane. Buononcini's _Camilla_ was given at the house in the Haymarket, and sung in two languages, the heroine's part being in English and the hero's in Italian. Thomas Clayton, a second-rate musician, but a man with literary tastes, who had been introducer of the opera to London, argued that the words of an opera should be not only English, but the best of English, and that English music ought to illustrate good home-grown literature. Addison and Steele agreed heartily in this. Addison was persuaded to write words for an opera by Clayton--his _Rosamond_--and Steele was persuaded afterwards to speculate in some sort of partnership with Clayton's efforts to set English poetry to music in the entertainments at York Buildings, though his friend Hughes warned him candidly that Clayton was not much of a musician. _Rosamond_ was a failure of Clayton's and not a success of Addison's. There is poor jesting got by the poet from a comic Sir Trusty, who keeps Rosamond's bower, and has a scolding wife. But there is a happy compliment to Marlborough in giving to King Henry a vision at Woodstock of the glory to come for England, and in a scenic realization of it by the rising of Blenheim Palace, the nation's gift to Marlborough, upon the scene of the Fair Rosamond story. Indeed there can be no doubt that it was for the sake of the scene at Woodstock, and the opportunity thus to be made, that Rosamond was chosen for the subject of the opera. Addison made Queen Eleanor give Rosamond a narcotic instead of a poison, and thus he achieved the desired happy ending to an opera.

Believe your Rosamond alive.

'King.' O happy day! O pleasing view!
My Queen forgives--

'Queen.' --My lord is true.

'King.' No more I'll change.

'Queen.' No more I'll grieve.

'Both.' But ever thus united live.

That is to say, for three days, the extent of the life of the opera. But the literary Under-Secretary had saved his political dignity with the stage tribute to Marlborough, which backed the closet praise in the 'Campaign.'

In May, 1707, Steele received the office of Gazetteer, until then worth £60, but presently endowed by Harley with a salary of £300 a-year. At about the same time he was made one of the gentlemen ushers to Queen Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark. In the same year Steele married. Of his most private life before this date little is known. He had been married to a lady from Barbadoes, who died in a few months. From days referred to in the 'Christian Hero' he derived a daughter of whom he took fatherly care. In 1707 Steele, aged about 35, married Miss (or, as ladies come of age were then called, Mrs.) Mary Scurlock, aged 29. It was a marriage of affection on both sides. Steele had from his first wife an estate in Barbadoes, which produced, after payment of the interest on its encumbrances, £670 a-year. His appointment as Gazetteer, less the £45 tax on it, was worth £255 a-year, and his appointment on the Prince Consort's household another hundred. Thus the income upon which Steele married was rather more than a thousand a-year, and Miss Scurlock's mother had an estate of about £330 a-year. Mary Scurlock had been a friend of Steele's first wife, for before marriage she recalls Steele to her mother's mind by saying, 'It is the survivor of the person to whose funeral I went in my illness.'

'Let us make our regards to each other,' Steele wrote just before
marriage, 'mutual and unchangeable, that whilst the world around us is
enchanted with the false satisfactions of vagrant desires, our persons
may be shrines to each other, and sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved
confidence, and heavenly society.'

There remains also a prayer written by Steele before first taking the sacrament with his wife, after marriage. There are also letters and little notes written by Steele to his wife, treasured by her love, and printed by a remorseless antiquary, blind to the sentence in one of the first of them:

'I beg of you to shew my letters to no one living, but let us be
contented with one another's thoughts upon our words and actions,
without the intervention of other people, who cannot judge of so
delicate a circumstance as the commerce between man and wife.'

But they are printed for the frivolous to laugh at and the wise to honour. They show that even in his most thoughtless or most anxious moments the social wit, the busy patriot, remembered his 'dear Prue,' and was her lover to the end. Soon after marriage, Steele took his wife to a boarding-school in the suburbs, where they saw a young lady for whom Steele showed an affection that caused Mrs. Steele to ask, whether she was not his daughter. He said that she was. 'Then,' said Mrs. Steele, 'I beg she may be mine too.' Thenceforth she lived in their home as Miss Ousley, and was treated as a daughter by Steele's wife. Surely this was a woman who deserved the love that never swerved from her. True husband and true friend, he playfully called Addison her rival. In the _Spectator_ there is a paper of Steele's (No. 142) representing some of his own love-letters as telling what a man said and should be able to say of his wife after forty years of marriage. Seven years after marriage he signs himself, 'Yours more than you can imagine, or I express.' He dedicates to her a volume of the _Lady's Library_, and writes of her ministrations to him:

'if there are such beings as guardian angels, thus are they employed.
I will no more believe one of them more good in its inclinations than
I can conceive it more charming in its form than my wife.'

In the year before her death he was signing his letters with 'God bless you!' and 'Dear Prue, eternally yours.' That Steele made it a duty of his literary life to contend against the frivolous and vicious ridicule of the ties of marriage common in his day, and to maintain their sacred honour and their happiness, readers of the 'Spectator' cannot fail to find.

Steele, on his marriage in 1707, took a house in Bury Street, St. James's, and in the following year went to a house at Hampton, which he called in jest the Hovel. Addison had lent him a thousand pounds for costs of furnishing and other immediate needs. This was repaid within a year, and when, at the same time, his wife's mother was proposing a settlement of her money beneficial to himself, Steele replied that he was far from desiring, if he should survive his wife, 'to turn the current of the estate out of the channel it would have been in, had I never come into the family.' Liberal always of his own to others, he was sometimes without a guinea, and perplexed by debt. But he defrauded no man. When he followed his Prue to the grave he was in no man's debt, though he left all his countrymen his debtors, and he left more than their mother's fortune to his two surviving children. One died of consumption a year afterwards, the other married one of the Welsh Judges, afterwards Lord Trevor.

The friendship--equal friendship--between Steele and Addison was as unbroken as the love between Steele and his wife. Petty tales may have been invented or misread. In days of malicious personality Steele braved the worst of party spite, and little enough even slander found to throw against him. Nobody in their lifetime doubted the equal strength and sincerity of the relationship between the two friends. Steele was no follower of Addison's. Throughout life he went his own way, leading rather than following; first as a playwright; first in conception and execution of the scheme of the 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian'; following his own sense of duty against Addison's sense of expediency in passing from the 'Guardian' to the 'Englishman', and so to energetic movement upon perilous paths as a political writer, whose whole heart was with what he took to be the people's cause.

When Swift had been writing to Addison that he thought Steele 'the vilest of mankind,' in writing of this to Swift, Steele complained that the 'Examiner',--in which Swift had a busy hand,--said Addison had 'bridled him in point of politics,' adding,

'This was ill hinted both in relation to him and me. I know no party;
but the truth of the question is what I will support as well as I can,
when any man I honour is attacked.'

John Forster, whose keen insight into the essentials of literature led him to write an essay upon each of the two great founders of the latest period of English literature, Defoe and Steele, has pointed out in his masterly essay upon Steele that Swift denies having spoken of Steele as bridled by his friend, and does so in a way that frankly admits Steele's right to be jealous of the imputation. Mr. Forster justly adds that throughout Swift's intimate speech to Stella,

'whether his humours be sarcastic or polite, the friendship of Steele
and Addison is for ever suggesting some annoyance to himself, some
mortification, some regret, but never once the doubt that it was not
intimate and sincere, or that into it entered anything inconsistent
with a perfect equality.'

Six months after Addison's death Steele wrote (in No. 12 of the 'Theatre', and I am again quoting facts cited by John Forster),

'that there never was a more strict friendship than between himself
and Addison, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from
their different way of pursuing the same thing; the one waited and
stemmed the torrent, while the other too often plunged into it; but
though they thus had lived for some years past, shunning each other,
they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual
welfare; and when they met they were as unreserved as boys, and talked
of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed,
without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other.'

As to the substance or worth of what thus divided them, Steele only adds the significant expression of his hope that, if his family is the worse, his country may be the better, 'for the mortification _he_ has undergone.'

Such, then, was the Friendship of which the 'Spectator' is the abiding Monument. The 'Spectator' was a modified continuation of the 'Tatler', and the 'Tatler' was suggested by a portion of Defoe's 'Review'. The 'Spectator' belongs to the first days of a period when the people at large extended their reading power into departments of knowledge formerly unsought by them, and their favour was found generally to be more desirable than that of the most princely patron. This period should date from the day in 1703 when the key turned upon Defoe in Newgate, the year of the production of Steele's 'Tender Husband', and the time when Addison was in Holland on the way home from his continental travels. Defoe was then forty-two years old, Addison and Steele being about eleven years younger.

In the following year, 1704, the year of Blenheim--Defoe issued, on the 19th of February, No. 1 of 'A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France: Purg'd from the Errors and Partiality of 'News-Writers' and 'Petty-Statesmen', of all Sides,' and in the introductory sketch of its plan, said:

'After our Serious Matters are over, we shall at the end of every
Paper, Present you with a little Diversion, as anything occurs to make
the World Merry; and whether Friend or Foe, one Party or another, if
anything happens so scandalous as to require an open Reproof, the
World may meet with it there.'

Here is the first 'little Diversion'; the germ of 'Tatlers' and 'Spectators' which in after years amused and edified the town.

'Mercure Scandale:

or,

ADVICE from the Scandalous CLUB. 'Translated out of French'.

This Society is a Corporation long since established in 'Paris', and
we cannot compleat our Advices from 'France', without entertaining the
World with everything we meet with from that Country.

And, tho Corresponding with the Queens Enemies is prohibited; yet
since the Matter will be so honest, as only to tell the World of what
everybody will own to be scandalous, we reckon we shall be welcome.

This Corporation has been set up some months, and opend their first
Sessions about last 'Bartholomew' Fair; but having not yet obtaind a
Patent, they have never, till now, made their Resolves publick.

The Business of this Society is to censure the Actions of Men, not of
Parties, and in particular, those Actions which are made publick so by
their Authors, as to be, in their own Nature, an Appeal to the general
Approbation.

They do not design to expose Persons but things; and of them, none but
such as more than ordinarily deserve it; they who would not be censurd
by this Assembly, are desired to act with caution enough, not to fall
under their Hands; for they resolve to treat Vice, and Villanous
Actions, with the utmost Severity.

The First considerable Matter that came before this Society, was about
'Bartholomew' Fair; but the Debates being long, they were at last
adjourned to the next Fair, when we suppose it will be decided; so
being not willing to trouble the World with anything twice over, we
refer that to next 'August'.

On the 10th of September last, there was a long Hearing, before the
Club, of a Fellow that said he had killd the Duke of 'Bavaria'. Now as
David punishd the Man that said he had killd King 'Saul', whether it
was so or no, twas thought this Fellow ought to be delivered up to
Justice, tho the Duke of 'Bavaria' was alive.

Upon the whole, twas voted a scandalous Thing, That News. Writers
shoud kill Kings and Princes, and bring them to life again at
pleasure; and to make an Example of this Fellow, he was dismissd, upon
Condition he should go to the Queens-bench once a Day, and bear
Fuller, his Brother of the Faculty, company two hours for fourteen
Days together; which cruel Punishment was executed with the utmost
Severity.

The Club has had a great deal of trouble about the News-Writers, who
have been continually brought before them for their ridiculous
Stories, and imposing upon Mankind; and tho the Proceedings have been
pretty tedious, we must give you the trouble of a few of them in our
next.

The addition to the heading, 'Translated out of French,' appears only in No. 1, and the first title 'Mercure Scandale' (adopted from a French book published about 1681) having been much criticized for its grammar and on other grounds, was dropped in No. 18. Thenceforth Defoe's pleasant comment upon passing follies appeared under the single head of 'Advice from the Scandalous Club.' Still the verbal Critics exercised their wits upon the title.

'We have been so often on the Defence of our Title,' says Defoe, in
No. 38, 'that the world begins to think Our Society wants
Employment ... If Scandalous must signify nothing but Personal
Scandal, respecting the Subject of which it is predicated; we desire
those gentlemen to answer for us how 'Post-Man' or 'Post-Boy' can
signify a News-Paper, the Post Man or Post Boy being in all my reading
properly and strictly applicable, not to the Paper, but to the Person
bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by
a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book--From hence
our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege
of making an Allegory as well as other People.'

In No. 46 Defoe made, in one change more, a whimsical half concession of a syllable, by putting a sign of contraction in its place, and thenceforth calling this part of his Review, Advice from the Scandal Club. Nothing can be more evident than the family likeness between this forefather of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' and its more familiar descendants. There is a trick of voice common to all, and some papers of Defoe's might have been written for the 'Spectator'. Take the little allegory, for instance, in No. 45, which tells of a desponding young Lady brought before the Society, as found by Rosamond's Pond in the Park in a strange condition, taken by the mob for a lunatic, and whose clothes were all out of fashion, but whose face, when it was seen, astonished the whole society by its extraordinary sweetness and majesty. She told how she had been brought to despair, and her name proved to be--Modesty. In letters, questions, and comments also which might be taken from Defoe's Monthly Supplementary Journal to the Advice from the Scandal Club, we catch a likeness to the spirit of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' now and then exact. Some censured Defoe for not confining himself to the weightier part of his purpose in establishing the 'Review'. He replied, in the Introduction to his first Monthly Supplement, that many men

'care but for a little reading at a time,' and said, 'thus we wheedle
them in, if it may be allow'd that Expression, to the Knowledge of the
World, who rather than take more Pains, would be content with their
Ignorance, and search into nothing.'

Single-minded, quick-witted, and prompt to act on the first suggestion of a higher point of usefulness to which he might attain, Steele saw the mind of the people ready for a new sort of relation to its writers, and he followed the lead of Defoe. But though he turned from the more frivolous temper of the enfeebled playhouse audience, to commune in free air with the country at large, he took fresh care for the restraint of his deep earnestness within the bounds of a cheerful, unpretending influence. Drop by drop it should fall, and its strength lie in its persistence. He would bring what wit he had out of the playhouse, and speak his mind, like Defoe, to the people themselves every post-day. But he would affect no pedantry of moralizing, he would appeal to no passions, he would profess himself only 'a Tatler.' Might he not use, he thought, modestly distrustful of the charm of his own mind, some of the news obtained by virtue of the office of Gazetteer that Harley had given him, to bring weight and acceptance to writing of his which he valued only for the use to which it could be put. For, as he himself truly says in the 'Tatler',

'wit, if a man had it, unless it be directed to some useful end, is
but a wanton, frivolous quality; all that one should value himself
upon in this kind is that he had some honourable intention in it.'

Swift, not then a deserter to the Tories, was a friend of Steele's, who, when the first 'Tatler' appeared, had been amusing the town at the expense of John Partridge, astrologer and almanac-maker, with 'Predictions for the year 1708,' professing to be written by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. The first prediction was of the death of Partridge,

'on the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.'

Swift answered himself, and also published in due time

'The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions:
being an account of the death of Mr. Partridge, the almanack-maker,
upon the 29th instant.'

Other wits kept up the joke, and, in his next year's almanac (that for 1709), Partridge advertised that,

'whereas it has been industriously given out by Isaac Bickerstaff,
Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that
John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that
he is still living, in health, and they are knaves that reported it
otherwise.'

Steele gave additional lightness to the touch of his 'Tatler', which first appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, by writing in the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, and carrying on the jest, that was to his serious mind a blow dealt against prevailing superstition. Referring in his first 'Tatler' to this advertisement of Partridge's, he said of it,

'I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently
convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I do not
doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance. For
though the legs and arms and whole body of that man may still appear
and perform their animal functions, yet since, as I have elsewhere
observed, his art is gone, the man is gone.'

To Steele, indeed, the truth was absolute, that a man is but what he can do.

In this spirit, then, Steele began the 'Tatler', simply considering that his paper was to be published 'for the use of the good people of England,' and professing at the outset that he was an author writing for the public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and that he preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office. Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the mountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness,

'we have a contempt,' he says, 'for such paltry barterers, and have
therefore all along informed the public that we intend to give them
our advices for our own sakes, and are labouring to make our
lucubrations come to some price in money, for our more convenient
support in the service of the public. It is certain that many other
schemes have been proposed to me, as a friend offered to show me in a
treatise he had writ, which he called, "The whole Art of Life; or, The
Introduction to Great Men, illustrated in a Pack of Cards." But being
a novice at all manner of play, I declined the offer.'

Addison took these cards, and played an honest game with them successfully. When, at the end of 1708, the Earl of Sunderland, Marlborough's son-in-law, lost his secretaryship, Addison lost his place as under-secretary; but he did not object to go to Ireland as chief secretary to Lord Wharton, the new Lord-lieutenant, an active party man, a leader on the turf with reputation for indulgence after business hours according to the fashion of the court of Charles II.

Lord Wharton took to Ireland Clayton to write him musical entertainments, and a train of parasites of quality. He was a great borough-monger, and is said at one critical time to have returned thirty members. He had no difficulty, therefore, in finding Addison a seat, and made him in that year, 1709, M.P. for Malmesbury. Addison only once attempted to speak in the House of Commons, and then, embarrassed by encouraging applause that welcomed him he stammered and sat down. But when, having laid his political cards down for a time, and at ease in his own home, pen in hand, he brought his sound mind and quick humour to the aid of his friend Steele, he came with him into direct relation with the English people. Addison never gave posterity a chance of knowing what was in him till, following Steele's lead, he wrote those papers in 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian', wherein alone his genius abides with us, and will abide with English readers to the end. The 'Tatler', the 'Spectator', and the 'Guardian' were, all of them, Steele's, begun and ended by him at his sole discretion. In these three journals Steele was answerable for 510 papers; Addison for 369. Swift wrote two papers, and sent about a dozen fragments. Congreve wrote one article in the 'Tatler'; Pope wrote thrice for the 'Spectator', and eight times for the 'Guardian'. Addison, who was in Ireland when the 'Tatler' first appeared, only guessed the authorship by an expression in an early number; and it was not until eighty numbers had been issued, and the character of the new paper was formed and established, that Addison, on his return to London, joined the friend who, with his usual complete absence of the vanity of self-assertion, finally ascribed to the ally he dearly loved, the honours of success.

It was the kind of success Steele had desired--a widely-diffused influence for good. The 'Tatlers' were penny papers published three times a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blank half-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of the day's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It was through these, and the daily 'Spectators' which succeeded them, that the people of England really learnt to read. The few leaves of sound reason and fancy were but a light tax on uncultivated powers of attention. Exquisite grace and true kindliness, here associated with familiar ways and common incidents of everyday life, gave many an honest man fresh sense of the best happiness that lies in common duties honestly performed, and a fresh energy, free as Christianity itself from malice--for so both Steele and Addison meant that it should be--in opposing themselves to the frivolities and small frauds on the conscience by which manliness is undermined.

A pamphlet by John Gay--'The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country'--was dated May 3, 1711, about two months after the 'Spectator' had replaced the 'Tatler'. And thus Gay represents the best talk of the town about these papers:

"Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will
be necessary to inform you that at the beginning of the winter, to the
infinite surprise of all the Town, Mr. Steele flung up his 'Tatler',
and instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, subscribed himself Richard
Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the
Town for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them.

The chief reason he thought fit to give for his leaving off writing
was, that having been so long looked on in all public places and
companies as the Author of those papers, he found that his most
intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to speak or act before
him.

The Town was very far from being satisfied with this reason, and most
people judged the true cause to be, either

That he was quite spent, and wanted matter to continue his
undertaking any longer; or
That he laid it down as a sort of submission to, and composition
with, the Government for some past offences; or, lastly,
That he had a mind to vary his Shape, and appear again in some new
light.

However that were, his disappearance seemed to be bewailed as some
general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement, and the
Coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's 'Lucubrations'
alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers
put together.

It must indeed be confessed that never man threw up his pen, under
stronger temptations to have employed it longer. His reputation was at
a greater height, than I believe ever any living author's was before
him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably
considerable. Every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the
Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven
his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them.

Lastly, it was highly improbable that, if he threw off a Character,
the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind,
however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet
with the same reception.

To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings I shall, in
the first place, observe, that there is a noble difference between him
and all the rest of our gallant and polite authors. The latter have
endeavoured to please the Age by falling in with them, and encouraging
them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would
have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that
anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that
Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the character of a Fine
Gentleman. 'Bickerstaff' ventured to tell the Town that they were a
parcel of fops, fools, and coquettes; but in such a manner as even
pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he
spoke truth.

Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of
the Age--either in morality, criticism, or good breeding--he has
boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and
commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to
surrender themselves to his arguments for Virtue and Good Sense.

It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the
Town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished or
given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to
Virtue and Religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by
shewing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly,
how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of
the value and advantages of Learning.

He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and
discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all
mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at
tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the
merchants on the Change. Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor
a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain
Steele is the greatest scholar and best Casuist of any man in England.

Lastly, his writings have set all our Wits and men of letters on a new
way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and,
although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties
of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of
them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.

The vast variety of subjects which Mr. Steele has treated of, in so
different manners, and yet all so perfectly well, made the World
believe that it was impossible they should all come from the same
hand. This set every one upon guessing who was the Esquire's friend?
and most people at first fancied it must be Doctor Swift; but it is
now no longer a secret, that his only great and constant assistant was
Mr. Addison.

This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much; and who
refuses to have his name set before those pieces, which the greatest
pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add
to this Gentleman's reputation: whose works in Latin and English
poetry long since convinced the World, that he was the greatest Master
in Europe in those two languages.

I am assured, from good hands, that all the visions, and other tracts
of that way of writing, with a very great number of the most exquisite
pieces of wit and raillery through the 'Lucubrations' are entirely of
this Gentleman's composing: which may, in some measure, account for
that different Genius, which appears in the winter papers, from those
of the summer; at which time, as the 'Examiner' often hinted, this
friend of Mr. Steele was in Ireland.

Mr. Steele confesses in his last Volume of the 'Tatlers' that he is
obliged to Dr. Swift for his 'Town Shower', and the 'Description of
the Morn', with some other hints received from him in private
conversation.

I have also heard that several of those 'Letters', which came as from
unknown hands, were written by Mr. Henley: which is an answer to your
query, 'Who those friends are whom Mr. Steele speaks of in his last
'Tatler?''

But to proceed with my account of our other papers. The expiration of
'Bickerstaff's Lucubrations' was attended with much the same
consequences as the death of Meliboeus's 'Ox' in Virgil: as the latter
engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole
swarms of little satirical scribblers.

One of these authors called himself the 'Growler', and assured us
that, to make amends for Mr. Steele's silence, he was resolved to
'growl' at us weekly, as long as we should think fit to give him any
encouragement. Another Gentleman, with more modesty, called his paper
the 'Whisperer'; and a third, to please the Ladies, christened his the
'Tell tale'.

At the same-time came out several 'Tatlers'; each of which, with equal
truth and wit, assured us that he was the genuine 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.

It may be observed that when the 'Esquire' laid down his pen; though
he could not but foresee that several scribblers would soon snatch it
up, which he might (one would think) easily have prevented: he scorned
to take any further care about it, but left the field fairly open to
any worthy successor. Immediately, some of our Wits were for forming
themselves into a Club, headed by one Mr. Harrison, and trying how
they could shoot in this Bow of Ulysses; but soon found that this sort
of writing requires so fine and particular a manner of thinking, with
so exact a knowledge of the World, as must make them utterly despair
of success.

They seemed indeed at first to think that what was only the garnish of
the former 'Tatlers', was that which recommended them; and not those
Substantial Entertainments which they everywhere abound in. According
they were continually talking of their 'Maid', 'Night Cap',
'Spectacles', and Charles Lillie. However there were, now and then,
some faint endeavours at Humour and sparks of Wit: which the Town, for
want of better entertainment, was content to hunt after through a heap
of impertinences; but even those are, at present, become wholly
invisible and quite swallowed up in the blaze of the 'Spectator'.

You may remember, I told you before, that one cause assigned for the
laying down the 'Tatler' was, Want of Matter; and, indeed, this was
the prevailing opinion in Town: when we were surprised all at once by
a paper called the 'Spectator', which was promised to be continued
every day; and was written in so excellent a style, with so nice a
judgment, and such a noble profusion of wit and humour, that it was
not difficult to determine it could come from no other hands but those
which had penned the 'Lucubrations'.

This immediately alarmed these gentlemen, who, as it is said Mr.
Steele phrases it, had 'the Censorship in Commission.' They found the
new 'Spectator' came on like a torrent, and swept away all before him.
They despaired ever to equal him in wit, humour, or learning; which
had been their true and certain way of opposing him: and therefore
rather chose to fall on the Author; and to call out for help to all
good Christians, by assuring them again and again that they were the
First, Original, True, and undisputed 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.

Meanwhile, the 'Spectator', whom we regard as our Shelter from that
flood of false wit and impertinence which was breaking in upon us, is
in every one's hands; and a constant for our morning conversation at
tea-tables and coffee-houses. We had at first, indeed, no manner of
notion how a diurnal paper could be continued in the spirit and style
of our present 'Spectators': but, to our no small surprise, we find
them still rising upon us, and can only wonder from whence so
prodigious a run of Wit and Learning can proceed; since some of our
best judges seem to think that they have hitherto, in general,
outshone even the 'Esquire's' first 'Tatlers'.

Most people fancy, from their frequency, that they must be composed by
a Society: I withal assign the first places to Mr. Steele and his
Friend.

So far John Gay, whose discussion of the 'Tatlers' and 'Spectators' appeared when only fifty-five numbers of the 'Spectator' had been published.

There was high strife of faction; and there was real peril to the country by a possible turn of affairs after Queen Anne's death, that another Stuart restoration, in the name of divine right of kings, would leave rights of the people to be reconquered in civil war. The chiefs of either party were appealing to the people, and engaging all the wit they could secure to fight on their side in the war of pamphlets. Steele's heart was in the momentous issue. Both he and Addison had it in mind while they were blending their calm playfulness with all the clamour of the press. The spirit in which these friends worked, young Pope must have felt; for after Addison had helped him in his first approach to fame by giving honour in the 'Spectator' to his 'Essay on Criticism,' and when he was thankful for that service, he contributed to the 'Spectator' his 'Messiah.' Such offering clearly showed how Pope interpreted the labour of the essayists.

In the fens of Lincolnshire the antiquary Maurice Johnson collected his neighbours of Spalding.

'Taking care,' it is said, 'not to alarm the country gentlemen by any
premature mention of antiquities, he endeavoured at first to allure
them into the more flowery paths of literature. In 1709 a few of them
were brought together every post-day at the coffee-house in the Abbey
Yard; and after one of the party had read aloud the last published
number of the 'Tatler', they proceeded to talk over the subject among
themselves.'

Even in distant Perthshire

'the gentlemen met after church on Sunday to discuss the news of the
week; the 'Spectators' were read as regularly as the 'Journal'.'

So the political draught of bitterness came sweetened with the wisdom of good-humour. The good-humour of the essayists touched with a light and kindly hand every form of affectation, and placed every-day life in the light in which it would be seen by a natural and honest man. A sense of the essentials of life was assumed everywhere for the reader, who was asked only to smile charitably at its vanities. Steele looked through all shams to the natural heart of the Englishman, appealed to that, and found it easily enough, even under the disguise of the young gentleman cited in the 77th 'Tatler',

'so ambitious to be thought worse than he is that in his degree of
understanding he sets up for a free-thinker, and talks atheistically
in coffee-houses all day, though every morning and evening, it can be
proved upon him, he regularly at home says his prayers.'

But as public events led nearer to the prospect of a Jacobite triumph that would have again brought Englishmen against each other sword to sword, there was no voice of warning more fearless than Richard Steele's. He changed the 'Spectator' for the 'Guardian', that was to be, in its plan, more free to guard the people's rights, and, standing forward more distinctly as a politician, he became member for Stockbridge. In place of the 'Guardian', which he had dropped when he felt the plan of that journal unequal to the right and full expression of his mind, Steele took for a periodical the name of 'Englishman', and under that name fought, with then unexampled abstinence from personality, against the principles upheld by Swift in his 'Examiner'. Then, when the Peace of Utrecht alarmed English patriots, Steele in a bold pamphlet on 'The Crisis' expressed his dread of arbitrary power and a Jacobite succession with a boldness that cost him his seat in Parliament, as he had before sacrificed to plain speaking his place of Gazetteer.

Of the later history of Steele and Addison a few words will suffice. This is not an account of their lives, but an endeavour to show why Englishmen must always have a living interest in the 'Spectator', their joint production. Steele's 'Spectator' ended with the seventh volume. The members of the Club were all disposed of, and the journal formally wound up; but by the suggestion of a future ceremony of opening the 'Spectator's' mouth, a way was made for Addison, whenever he pleased, to connect with the famous series an attempt of his own for its revival. A year and a half later Addison made this attempt, producing his new journal with the old name and, as far as his contributions went, not less than the old wit and earnestness, three times a week instead of daily. But he kept it alive only until the completion of one volume. Addison had not Steele's popular tact as an editor. He preached, and he suffered drier men to preach, while in his jest he now and then wrote what he seems to have been unwilling to acknowledge. His eighth volume contains excellent matter, but the subjects are not always well chosen or varied judiciously, and one understands why the 'Spectator' took a firmer hold upon society when the two friends in the full strength of their life, aged about forty, worked together and embraced between them a wide range of human thought and feeling. It should be remembered also that Queen Anne died while Addison's eighth volume was appearing, and the change in the Whig position brought him other occupation of his time.

In April, 1713, in the interval between the completion of the true 'Spectator' and the appearance of the supplementary volume, Addison's tragedy of 'Cato', planned at College; begun during his foreign travels, retouched in England, and at last completed, was produced at Drury Lane. Addison had not considered it a stage play, but when it was urged that the time was proper for animating the public with the sentiments of Cato, he assented to its production. Apart from its real merit the play had the advantage of being applauded by the Whigs, who saw in it a Whig political ideal, and by the Tories, who desired to show that they were as warm friends of liberty as any Whig could be.

Upon the death of Queen Anne Addison acted for a short time as secretary to the Regency, and when George I. appointed Addison's patron, the Earl of Sunderland, to the Lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, Sunderland took Addison with him as chief secretary. Sunderland resigned in ten months, and thus Addison's secretaryship came to an end in August, 1716. Addison was also employed to meet the Rebellion of 1715 by writing the 'Freeholder'. He wrote under this title fifty-five papers, which were published twice a week between December, 1715, and June, 1716; and he was rewarded with the post of Commissioner for Trade and Colonies. In August, 1716, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, mother to the young Earl of Warwick, of whose education he seems to have had some charge in 1708. Addison settled upon the Countess £4000 in lieu of an estate which she gave up for his sake. Henceforth he lived chiefly at Holland House. In April, 1717, Lord Sunderland became Secretary of State, and still mindful of Marlborough's illustrious supporter, he made Addison his colleague. Eleven months later, ill health obliged Addison to resign the seals; and his death followed, June 17, 1719, at the age of 47.

Steele's political difficulties ended at the death of Queen Anne. The return of the Whigs to power on the accession of George I. brought him the office of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; he was also first in the Commission of the peace for Middlesex, and was made one of the deputy lieutenants of the county. At the request of the managers Steele's name was included in the new patent required at Drury Lane by the royal company of comedians upon the accession of a new sovereign. Steele also was returned as M.P. for Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, was writer of the Address to the king presented by the Lord-lieutenant and the deputy lieutenants of Middlesex, and being knighted on that occasion, with two other of the deputies, became in the spring of the year, 1714, Sir Richard Steele. Very few weeks after the death of his wife, in December, 1718, Sunderland, at a time when he had Addison for colleague, brought in a bill for preventing any future creations of peers, except when an existing peerage should become extinct. Steele, who looked upon this as an infringement alike of the privileges of the crown and of the rights of the subject, opposed the bill in Parliament, and started in March, 1719, a paper called the 'Plebeian', in which he argued against a measure tending, he said, to the formation of an oligarchy. Addison replied in the 'Old Whig', and this, which occurred within a year of the close of Addison's life, was the main subject of political difference between them. The bill, strongly opposed, was dropped for that session, and reintroduced (after Addison's death) in the December following, to be thrown out by the House of Commons.

Steele's argument against the government brought on him the hostility of the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain; and it was partly to defend himself and his brother patentees against hostile action threatened by the Duke, that Steele, in January, 1720, started his paper called the 'Theatre'. But he was dispossessed of his government of the theatre, to which a salary of £600 a-year had been attached, and suffered by the persecution of the court until Walpole's return to power. Steele was then restored to his office, and in the following year, 1722, produced his most successful comedy, 'The Conscious Lovers'. After this time his health declined; his spirits were depressed. He left London for Bath. His only surviving son, Eugene, born while the 'Spectator' was being issued, and to whom Prince Eugene had stood godfather, died at the age of eleven or twelve in November, 1723. The younger also of his two daughters was marked for death by consumption. He was broken in health and fortune when, in 1726, he had an attack of palsy which was the prelude to his death. He died Sept. 1, 1729, at Carmarthen, where he had been boarding with a mercer who was his agent and receiver of rents. There is a pleasant record that

'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would
often be carried out, of a summer's evening, where the country lads
and lasses were assembled at their rural sports,--and, with his
pencil, gave an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the
best dancer.'