“All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment, shall be under the article of White’s Chocolate-House; Poetry under that of Will’s Coffee-House; Learning under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James’ Coffee-House; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment.”[31]
In this division we see the importance of the coffee-houses as the natural centres of intelligence and opinion. Of the four houses mentioned, St. James’ and White’s, both of them in St. James’ Street, were the chief haunts of statesmen and men of fashion, and the latter had acquired an infamous notoriety for the ruinous gambling of its habitués. Will’s, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, kept up the reputation which it had procured in Dryden’s time as the favourite meeting-place of men of letters; while the Grecian, in Devereux Court in the Strand, which was the oldest coffee-house in London, afforded a convenient rendezvous for the learned Templars. At starting, the design announced in the first number was adhered to with tolerable fidelity. The paper dated from St. James’ Coffee-House was always devoted to the recital of foreign news; that from Will’s either criticised the current dramas, or contained a copy of verses from some author of repute, or a piece of general literary criticism; the latest gossip at White’s was reproduced in a fictitious form and with added colour. Advertisements were also inserted; and half a sheet of the paper was left blank, in order that at the last moment the most recent intelligence might be added in manuscript, after the manner of the contemporary news-letters. In all these respects the character of the newspaper was preserved; but in the method of treating news adopted by the editor there was a constant tendency to subordinate matter of fact to the elements of humour, fiction, and sentiment. In his survey of the manners of the time, Isaac, as an astrologer, was assisted by a familiar spirit, named Pacolet, who revealed to him the motives and secrets of men; his sister, Mrs. Jenny Distaff, was occasionally deputed to produce the paper from the wizard’s “own apartment;” and Kidney, the waiter at St. James’ Coffee-House, was humorously represented as the chief authority in all matters of foreign intelligence.
The mottoes assumed by the Tatler at different periods of its existence mark the stages of its development. On its first appearance, when Steele seems to have intended it to be little more than a lively record of news, the motto placed at the head of each paper was
“Quidquid agunt homines,
nostri est farrago libelli.”
It soon became evident, however, that its true function was not merely to report the actions of men, but to discuss the propriety of their actions; and by the time that sufficient material had accumulated to constitute a volume, the essayists felt themselves justified in appropriating the words used by Pliny in the preface to his Natural History:
“Nemo apud nos qui idem tentaverit: equidem sentio peculiarem in studiis causam corum esse, qui difficultatibus victis, utilitatem juvandi, protulerunt gratiæ placendi. Res ardua vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, fastidiis gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero naturam, et naturæ suæ omnia. Itaque NON ASSECUTIS voluisse, abunde pulchrum atque magnificum est.”
The disguise of the mock astrologer proved very useful to Steele in his character of moralist. It enabled him to give free utterance to his better feelings, without the risk of incurring the charge of inconsistency or hypocrisy, and nothing can be more honourable to him than the open manner in which he acknowledges his own unfitness for the position of a moralist: “I shall not carry my humility so far,” says he, “as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess my life is at best but pardonable. With no greater character than this, a man would make but 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.”[32]
As Steele cannot claim the sole merit of having invented the form of the Tatler, so, too, it must be remembered that he could never have addressed society in the high moral tone assumed by Bickerstaff if the road had not been prepared for him by others. One name among his predecessors stands out with a special title to honourable record. Since the Restoration the chief school of manners had been the stage, and the flagrant example of immorality set by the Court had been bettered by the invention of the comic dramatists of the period. Indecency was the fashion; religion and sobriety were identified by the polite world with Puritanism and hypocrisy. Even the Church had not yet ventured to say a word in behalf of virtue against the prevailing taste, and when at last a clergyman raised his voice on behalf of the principles which he professed, the blow which he dealt to his antagonists was the more damaging because it was entirely unexpected. Jeremy Collier was not only a Tory but a Jacobite, not only a High Churchman but a Nonjuror, who had been outlawed for his fidelity to the principles of Legitimism; and that such a man should have published the Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, reflecting, as the book did, in the strongest manner on the manners of the fallen dynasty, was as astounding as thunder from a clear sky. Collier, however, was a man of sincere piety, whose mind was for the moment occupied only by the overwhelming danger of the evil which he proposed to attack. It is true that his method of attack was cumbrous, and that his conclusions were far too sweeping and often unjust; nevertheless, the general truth of his criticisms was felt to be irresistible. Congreve and Vanbrugh each attempted an apology for their profession; both, however, showed their perception of the weakness of their position by correcting or recasting scenes in their comedies to which Collier had objected. Dryden accepted the reproof in a nobler spirit. Even while he had pandered to the tastes of the times, he had been conscious of his treachery to the cause of true art, and had broken out in a fine passage in his Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew:
“O gracious God! how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!
Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,
Debased to each obscene and impious use!
·······
“O wretched we! why were we hurried down
This lubrique and adulterous age
(Nay, added fat pollutions of our own)
To increase the streaming ordure of the stage?”
When Collier attacked him he bent his head in submission. “In many things,” says he, “he has taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thought and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.”[33]