Before the Tatler and Spectator, if the writers for the theatre are excepted, England had no masters of common life. No writers had yet undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how to refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politicks; but an Arbiter Elegantiarum, a judge of propriety, was yet wanting, who should survey the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns and prickles, which tease the passer, though they do not wound him.
For this purpose nothing is so proper as the frequent publication of short papers, which we read not as study but amusement. If the subject be slight, the treatise, likewise, is short. The busy may find time, and the idle may find patience.
This mode of conveying cheap and easy knowledge began among us in the civil war[172], when it was much the interest of either party to raise and fix the prejudices of the people. At that time appeared Mercurius Aulicus, Mercurius Rusticus, and Mercurius Civicus. It is said, that when any title grew popular, it was stolen by the antagonist, who, by this stratagem, conveyed his notions to those who would not have received him, had he not worn the appearance of a friend. The tumult of those unhappy days left scarcely any man leisure to treasure up occasional compositions; and so much were they neglected, that a complete collection is nowhere to be found.
These Mercuries were succeeded by l'Estrange's Observator; and that by Lesley's Rehearsal, and, perhaps, by others; but hitherto nothing had been conveyed to the people, in this commodious manner, but controversy relating to the church or state; of which they taught many to talk, whom they could not teach to judge.
It has been suggested that the Royal Society was instituted soon after the restoration, to divert the attention of the people from publick discontent. The Tatler and Spectator had the same tendency; they were published at a time when two parties, loud, restless, and violent, each with plausible declarations, and each, perhaps, without any distinct termination of its views, were agitating the nation; to minds heated with political contest they supplied cooler and more inoffensive reflections; and it is said by Addison, in a subsequent work, that they had a perceptible influence upon the conversation of that time, and taught the frolick and the gay to unite merriment with decency; an effect which they can never wholly lose, while they continue to be among the first books by which both sexes are initiated in the elegancies of knowledge.
The Tatler and Spectator adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness; and, like la Bruyère, exhibited the characters and manners of the age. The personages introduced in these papers were not merely ideal; they were then known and conspicuous in various stations. Of the Tatler this is told by Steele in his last paper; and of the Spectator by Budgel, in the preface to Theophrastus, a book which Addison has recommended, and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did not write it. Of those portraits, which may be supposed to be sometimes embellished, and sometimes aggravated, the originals are now partly known and partly forgotten.
But to say that they united the plans of two or three eminent writers, is to give them but a small part of their due praise; they superadded literature and criticism, and sometimes towered far above their predecessors; and taught, with great justness of argument and dignity of language, the most important duties and sublime truths.
All these topicks were happily varied with elegant fictions and refined allegories, and illuminated with different changes of style and felicities of invention.
It is recorded by Budgel, that, of the characters feigned or exhibited in the Spectator, the favourite of Addison was sir Roger de Coverley, of whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminated idea[173], which he would not suffer to be violated; and, therefore, when Steele had shown him innocently picking up a girl in the temple, and taking her to a tavern, he drew upon himself so much of his friend's indignation, that he was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing sir Roger for the time to come.
The reason which induced Cervantes to bring his hero to the grave, "para mi solo nacio don Quixote, y yo para el," made Addison declare, with an undue vehemence of expression, that he would kill sir Roger; being of opinion that they were born for one another, and that any other hand would do him wrong.