“I have only one gentleman,” says he, in the preface to the Tatler, “who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent assistance to me, which indeed it would have been barbarous in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in intimacy from childhood, considering the great ease with which he is able to despatch the most entertaining pieces of this nature. This good office he performed with such force of genius, humour, wit, and learning that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid; I was undone by my own auxiliary; when I had once called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him.”
With his usual enthusiastic generosity, Steele, in this passage, unduly depreciates his own merits to exalt the genius of his friend. A comparison of the amount of material furnished to the Tatler by Addison and Steele respectively shows that out of 271 numbers the latter contributed 188 and the former only 42. Nor is the disparity in quantity entirely balanced by the superior quality of Addison’s papers. Though it was, doubtless, his fine workmanship and admirable method which carried to perfection the style of writing initiated in the Tatler, yet there is scarcely a department of essay-writing developed in the Spectator which does not trace its origin to Steele. It is Steele who first ventures to raise his voice against the prevailing dramatic taste of the age on behalf of the superior morality and art of Shakespeare’s plays.
“Of all men living,” says he, in the eighth Tatler, “I pity players (who must be men of good understanding to be capable of being such) that they are obliged to repeat and assume proper gestures for representing things of which their reason must be ashamed, and which they must disdain their audience for approving. The amendment of these low gratifications is only to be made by people of condition, by encouraging the noble representation of the noble characters drawn by Shakespeare and others, from whence it is impossible to return without strong impressions of honour and humanity. On these occasions distress is laid before us with all its causes and consequences, and our resentment placed according to the merit of the person afflicted. Were dramas of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men who have genius would bend their studies to excel in them.”
Steele, too, it was who attacked, with all the vigour of which he was capable, the fashionable vice of gambling. So severe were his comments on this subject in the Tatler that he raised against himself the fierce resentment of the whole community of sharpers, though he was fortunate enough at the same time to enlist the sympathies of the better part of society. “Lord Forbes,” says Mr. Nichols, the antiquary, in his notes to the Tatler, “happened to be in company with the two military gentlemen just mentioned” (Major-General Davenport and Brigadier Bisset) “in St. James’ Coffee-House when two or three well-dressed men, all unknown to his lordship or his company, came into the room, and in a public, outrageous manner abused Captain Steele as the author of the Tatler. One of them, with great audacity and vehemence, swore that he would cut Steele’s throat or teach him better manners. ‘In this country,’ said Lord Forbes, ‘you will find it easier to cut a purse than to cut a throat.’ His brother officers instantly joined with his lordship and turned the cut-throats out of the coffee-house with every mark of disgrace.”[40]
The practice of duelling, also, which had hitherto passed unreproved, was censured by Steele in a series of papers in the Tatler, which seemed to have been written on an occasion when, having been forced to fight much against his will, he had the misfortune dangerously to wound his antagonist.[41] The sketches of character studied from life, and the letters from fictitious correspondents, both of which form so noticeable a feature in the Spectator, appear roughly, but yet distinctly, drafted in the Tatler. Even the papers of literary criticism, afterwards so fully elaborated by Addison, are anticipated by his friend, who may fairly claim the honour to have been the first to speak with adequate respect of the genius of Milton.[42] In a word, whatever was perfected by Addison was begun by Steele; if the one has for ever associated his name with the Spectator, the other may justly appropriate the credit of the Tatler, a work which bears to its successor the same kind of relation that the frescoes of Masaccio bear, in point of dramatic feeling and style, to those of Raphael; the later productions deserving honour for finish of execution, the earlier for priority of invention.
The Tatler was published till the 2d of January, 1710-11, and was discontinued, according to Steele’s own account, because the public had penetrated his disguise, and he was therefore no longer able to preach with effect in the person of Bickerstaff. It may be doubted whether this was his real motive for abandoning the paper. He had been long known as its conductor; and that his readers had shown no disinclination to listen to him is proved, not only by the large circulation of each number of the Tatler, but by the extensive sale of the successive volumes of the collected papers at the high price of a guinea apiece. He was, in all probability, led to drop the publication by finding that the political element that the paper contained was a source of embarrassment to him. His sympathies were vehemently Whig; the Tatler from the beginning had celebrated the virtues of Marlborough and his friends, both directly and under cover of fiction; and he had been rewarded for his services with a commissionership of the Stamp-office. When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, Harley, setting a just value on the abilities of Steele, left him in the enjoyment of his office and expressed his desire to serve him in any other way. Under these circumstances, Steele no doubt felt it incumbent on him to discontinue a paper which, both from its design and its traditions, would have tempted him into the expression of his political partialities.
For two months, therefore, “the censorship of Great Britain,” as he himself expressed it, “remained in commission,” until Addison and he once more returned to discharge the duties of the office in the Spectator, the first number of which was published on the 1st of March, 1710-11. The Tatler had only been issued three times a week, but the conductors of the new paper were now so confident in their own resources and in the favour of the public that they undertook to bring out one number daily. The new paper at once exhibited the impress of Addison’s genius, which had gradually transformed the character of the Tatler itself. The latter was originally, in every sense of the word, a newspaper, but the Spectator from the first indulged his humour at the expense of the clubs of Quidnuncs.
“There is,” says he, “another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to as being altogether unfurnished with ideas till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration when I have heard them asking the first man they have met with whether there was any news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to talk of till about twelve o’clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper; and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours.”[43]
For these, and other men of leisure, a kind of paper differing from the Tatler, which proposed only to retail the various species of gossip in the coffee-houses, was required, and the new entertainment was provided by the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of several ideal types of character grouped round the central figure of the Spectator. They represent considerable classes or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, men of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, which furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the Spectator himself, who delivers the judgments of reason and common-sense. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his simplicity, his high sense of honour, and his old-world reminiscences, reflects the country gentleman of the best kind; Sir Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of the enterprising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted moneyed interest; Captain Sentry speaks for the army; the Templar for the world of taste and learning; the clergyman for theology and philosophy; while Will Honeycomb, the elderly man of fashion, gives the Spectator many opportunities for criticizing the traditions of morality and breeding surviving from the days of the Restoration. Thus, instead of the division of places which determined the arrangement of the Tatler, the different subjects treated in the Spectator are distributed among a variety of persons: the Templar is substituted for the Grecian Coffee-House and Will’s; Will Honeycomb takes the place of White’s; and Captain Sentry, whose appearances are rare, stands for the more voluminous article on foreign intelligence published in the old periodical, under the head of St. James’s. The Spectator himself finds a natural prototype in Isaac Bickerstaff, but his character is drawn with a far greater finish and delicacy, and is much more essential to the design of the paper which he conducts, than was that of the old astrologer.
The aim of the Spectator was to establish a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art, and literature.