The Spectator Volume I Part 3

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 a.s.sembly, 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 t.i.tle '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 pa.s.sing follies appeared under the single head of 'Advice from the Scandalous Club.' Still the verbal Critics exercised their wits upon the t.i.tle.

'We have been so often on the Defence of our t.i.tle,' 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 Trans.m.u.tation of Meaning, from a G.o.d 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 establis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sions, 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 superst.i.tion. Referring in his first 'Tatler' to this advertis.e.m.e.nt 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, ill.u.s.trated 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 secretarys.h.i.+p, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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, embarra.s.sed 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 authors.h.i.+p 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-a.s.sertion, 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 a.s.sociated 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 n.o.ble 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 fas.h.i.+onable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have a.s.serted 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 a.s.sured 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 a.s.semblies, 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 a.s.sistant 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 a.s.sured, 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 a.s.sured 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, a.s.sured 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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.