Steele had gone on for some numbers before his new venture attracted the attention of Addison. He recognized whose the hand was from a classical criticism in the sixth number which he had himself made to Steele; and he must have been pleased with the idea, since he soon after appears as a coadjutor, sending his contributions from the Secretary’s office in Dublin. There has been a great and prolonged controversy upon the respective merits of these two friends: some, and first among them Macaulay, will have it that Addison had all the merit of the publication. “Almost everything good in the ‘Tatler’ was his,” says the historian. But there are many who, despite Macaulay’s great authority, find a certain difficulty in distinguishing Addison from Steele and Steele from Addison, and are inclined to find the latter writer as entertaining and as gifted as the former. No question could be more difficult to settle. As we glance over the little gray volumes which bring back to us dimly the effect which the little broadsheet must have had when it appeared day by day, there is no doubt that the eye is oftenest caught by something which, when we look again, proves to be from Addison’s hand. We open, it is by chance, and yet not altogether by chance, upon Tom Folio and his humors; upon the poor poet and his verses; upon some group of shabby heroes, or stumbling procession of country gentlemen which there is no mistaking. But on the other hand it is Steele who gives us that family picture, which reads like the Vicar of Wakefield, yet with a more tender touch (for Mrs. Primrose was never her husband’s equal), showing us the good woman among her family, the husband half distracted with the fear of losing her, the wife for his sake smiling her paleness away. Indeed, we think, in these early essays at least, it would be a mistake for the critic to risk his reputation on the superiority of Addison. He set up no higher standard than that which his friend had raised, but fell into the same humor, adding his contribution of social pictures with less force of moral generally, and more delicacy of workmanship, but no remarkable preëminence. The character of the publication changed gradually as the great new pen came into it; but whether by Addison’s influence or by the mere action of time, and a sense of what suited the audience he had obtained—which a soul so sympathetic as Steele’s would naturally divine with readiness—no one can tell. Gradually the news which at first had regularly filled a column dropped away. It had been, no doubt, well authenticated news, the freshest and best, as it came from the authorized hand of the Gazetteer; but either Steele got tired of supplying it, or a sense of the inexpediency of publishing anything which might displease his patrons and the government, convinced him that it was unnecessary. It is scarcely possible, either, to tell why the “Tatler” came to an end. Mr. Austin Dobson, in his recent life of Steele, gives sundry reasons which do not seem, however, of any particular weight. Steele’s own account is that he had become known, and his warnings and lessons were thus made of no avail:
I considered [he says] that severity of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others, and for that reason and that only chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time confess my life is at best but pardonable. And with no greater character than this a man could make an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele.
This reason is, however,—though pretty and just enough had its writer renounced the trade,—a somewhat fantastic one when we reflect that though the “Tatler” ended in January, 1711, the “Spectator” began in March of the same year. The one died only to be replaced by the other. It is said that Addison did not know of his friend’s intention to cut the “Tatler” short, and it was he who was the chief agent in beginning the “Spectator.” Therefore it may have been that the breach was but an impatience of Steele’s, which his slow and less impulsive and more constant comrade could not permanently consent to. No doubt Addison had by this time learned the advantage of such a mode of utterance, and felt how entirely it suited his own manner of work and constitution of mind. The fictitious person of Isaac Bickerstaff was relinquished in the new series: it no longer assumed to give any news. Its contents were less varied, consisting generally of a single essay, and, notwithstanding the impression which the casual reader often has, and which some critics have largely dwelt upon, that the comments of this critic are upon the merest vanities of the time, the hoops, the gold-lace, the snuff-boxes, and patches of the period, it is astonishing how little space is actually taken up with these lighter details, and how many graver questions, how many fine sentiments and delicate situations, afford the moralist occasion for those remarks which he makes in the most beautiful and picturesque English to the edification of all the generations. There is, perhaps, no book which is so characteristic of an epoch in history, and none which gives so clear a conception of the English world of the time. We sit and look on, always amused, often instructed, while the delicate panorama unfolds before us—and see everything pass, the fine coaches, the gentlemen on foot, the parsons in their gowns, the young Templars jesting in the doorways: but always with the little monologue going on, which accompanies the movement, and runs off into a hundred byways of thought, sometimes serious, sometimes gay, often with no particular connection with the many-colored streams of passers-by, yet never obscuring our sight of them as they come and go. There is, perhaps, a noisy group at the door while Mr. Spectator talks, with their wigs in the last fashion, and their clouded canes hung to a button, while they discourse. In one corner there are some two or three grave gentlemen putting their heads together over the latest news; and in another the young fellows over their wine eager in discussion of Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Bracegirdle at the theater, or of Chloe and Clarissa, the reigning beauties of society; or perhaps it is a poet, poor Ned Softly, as the case may be, who is reading his last sonnet to his mistress’s eyebrow, amid the laughing commentaries or the ridicule of his companions. What is Mr. Spectator talking of all the while? His discourse does not prevent us hearing the impertinences of the others. Perhaps he is talking of honest love, a favorite theme of his, at which the wits do not dare to laugh in his presence,—or he is telling one of his fables, to which everybody in the midst of his levity or his business gives half an ear at least; or by a caprice he has turned aside to metaphysics, and is discussing the processes of the mind, and how “no thought can be beautiful that is not just”; how “’t is a property of the heart of man to be diffusive, its kind wishes spread abroad over the face of the creation,” and such like; not to speak of graver subjects still to which he will direct our minds on Saturdays, perhaps to prepare us for Sunday, when he is silent. Or he will read aloud a letter from some whimsical correspondent, which the wits will pause to hear, for gossip is ever sweet, but which before they know lands them in a case of hardship or trouble which touches their consciences and rouses their pity. Sometimes the hum of life will stop altogether and even Softly put his verses in his pocket to listen: and on the brink of tears the fine gentlemen, and we too along with them, incontinently burst out a-laughing at some touch that no one expected. But whether we laugh or cry, or are shamed in our levity, or diverted in our seriousness, outside the windows the crowd is always streaming on. There is no separating the “Spectator” from the lively, crowded, troublous, and perplexing scenes upon which all his reflections are made. The young lady looking out of her coach—at sight of whom all the young fellows doff their hats and make their comments, how much her fortune is, who is in pursuit of her, or if any mud has yet been flung upon her—shows to the philosopher a face disturbed with all the puzzles of an existence which nobody will allow her to take seriously. The poor wit who endeavors so wistfully to amuse my lord in
his dullness betrays to that critic not so much the soul of a toady, as that of the anxious father with children that starve at home. His young fellows, though they look so careless, have their troubles too. Wherever that keen eye turns another group shows through the crowd, or a lonely whimsical figure as distinct as if there was no one but he. Save perhaps on those Saturdays when he plays his soft accompaniment to Milton’s grand, sonorous organ he is never abstracted or retired from men: on all other occasions, though he is thinking of a great deal else, and has his mind absorbed in other themes, this busy world of which he forms a part is always with him. Sometimes he permits us to see him over their heads only, seated on his familiar bench at his table, from whence he delivers his homilies, with all these figures moving and re-moving on the busy pavement in the foreground; sometimes we are admitted inside, and watch them through open door and window by his side: but he is never to be parted from the society in which he finds his models, his subjects, his audience. Like other men he takes it for granted that the fashion of his contemporaries is to go on forever. For posterity that smiling, keen observer takes no thought.
But of all things else that Addison has done there remains one preëminent figure which is his chief claim to immortality. The “Campaign” has disappeared out of literature; “Cato” is known only by a few well-known lines; the “Spectator” itself, though a work which no gentleman’s library can be without, dwells generally in dignified retirement there, and is seldom seen on any table but the student’s, though we are all supposed to be familiar with it: but Sir Roger de Coverley is the familiar friend of most people who have read anything at all, and the acquaintance by sight, if we may so speak, of everybody. There is no form better known in all literature. His simple rustic state, his modest sense of his own importance, his kind and genial patronage of the younger world, which would laugh at him if it were not overawed by his modesty and goodness, and which still sniggers in its sleeve at all those kind, ridiculous ways of his as he walks about in London, taken in on all sides, with his hand always in his purse and his heart in its right place, are always familiar and delightful. We learn with a kind of shock that it was Steele who first introduced this perfect gentleman to the world, and can only hope that it was Addison’s idea from the first, and that he did not merely snatch out of his friend’s hands and appropriate a conception so entirely according to his own heart. To Steele, too, we are indebted for some pretty scenes in the brief history: for Will the Huntsman’s wooing, which is the most delicate little enamel, and for the knight’s own love-making, which, however, is pushed a little too near absurdity. But it is Addison who leads him forth among his country neighbors, and to the assizes, and meets the gipsies with him, and brings him up to town, carrying him to Westminster and to Spring Gardens, in the wherry with the one-legged waterman, and to the play. The delightful gentleman is never finer than in this latter scene. He has to be conveyed in his coach, attended by all his servants, armed with “good oaken plants,” and Captain Sentry in the sword he had worn at Steinkirk, for fear of the Mohocks, those brutal disturbers of the public peace whom Addison justly feels it would be unbecoming to bring within sight of his noble old knight.
As soon as the house was full and the candles lighted my old friend stood up and looked about him with that pleasure which a mind seasoned with humanity naturally feels in itself at the sight of a multitude of people who seem pleased with one another, and partake of the same common entertainment. I could not but fancy to myself as the old man stood up in the middle of the pit that he made a very proper centre to a tragick Audience. Upon the entering of Pyrrhus the Knight told me that he did not believe the King of France had a better strut. I was indeed very attentive to my old friend’s remarks because I looked upon them as a piece of natural criticism and was well pleased to hear him, at the conclusion of almost every scene, telling me that he could not imagine how the play would end; one while he appeared much concerned for Andromache, and a little while after as much for Hermione; and was extremely puzzled to know what would become of Pyrrhus. When Sir Roger saw Andromache’s obstinate refusal to her lover’s importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence, “You can’t imagine, sir, what ’t is to have to do with a widow.” Upon Pyrrhus, his threatening afterwards to leave her, the Knight shook his head and murmured, “Ay! do it if you can.” This part dwelt so much upon my friend’s imagination that at the close of the third act, as I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, “These widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray,” says he, “you that are a critick, is this play according to your dramatick rules, as you call them? Should your People in Tragedy always talk to be understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do not know the meaning of!”
The fourth act very luckily began before I had time to give the old gentleman an answer. “Well,” says the Knight, sitting down with great satisfaction, “I suppose we are now to see Hector’s Ghost?” He then renewed his attention, and from time to time fell a-praising the widow. He made, indeed, a little mistake as to one of her pages, whom, at his first entering, he took for Astyanax; but we quickly set him right in that particular, though at the same time he owned he should have been very glad to see the little boy, who, says he, must needs be a very fine child by the account that is given of him.
Could anything be more delightful than this genial picture? We have all met in later years a certain Colonel Newcome, who is very like Sir Roger, one of his descendants, though he died a bachelor. But the Worcestershire knight was the first of his lineage, and few are the gifted hands who have succeeded in framing men after his model. Those little follies which are so dear to us, the good faith which makes the young men laugh, yet feel ashamed of themselves for laughing, and all the circumstances of that stately simple life which are so different from anything we know, yet so lifelike and genuine, have grown into the imagination of the after-generations. We seem to know Sir Roger from our cradle, though we may never even have read the few chapters of his history. This is the one infallible distinction of genius above all commoner endowments. Of all the actors in that stirring time Sir Roger remains the most living and real. The queen and her court are no more than shadows moving across the historic stage. Halifax, and Somers, and Harley, and even the great Bolingbroke, what are they to us? Figures confused and uncertain, that appear and disappear in one combination or another, so that our head aches in the effort to follow, to identify, to make sure what the intrigues and the complications mean. But we have no difficulty in recollecting all about Sir Roger. We would not have the old man mocked at any more than Mr. Addison would, but kiss his kind old hand as we smile at those little foibles which are all ingratiating and delightful. In that generation, with all its wars and successes, there was, perhaps, no such gain as Sir Roger. Marlborough’s victories made England feared and respected, but cost the country countless treasure, and gave her little advantage; the good knight cost nobody anything, and made all the world the richer. He is one of those inhabitants who never grow old or pass away, and he gives us proof undeniable that when we speak of a corrupt and depraved age, as we have reason to do, we have still nobler reason for believing—as the despairing prophet was taught by God himself in far older times: that however dark might be the prospect there were still seven thousand men in Israel who had never bowed the knee to Baal—what we learn over again, thank Heaven! from shining example everywhere, that there are always surviving the seed of the just, the salt of the earth, by whose silent agency, and pure love, and honest truth, life is made practicable and the world rolls on.