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