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It is difficult to realise, in reading the terms of this order, that only thirteen years had elapsed since the death of Charles II., and undoubtedly a very large share of the credit due for such a revolution in the public taste is to be assigned to Collier. Collier, however, did nothing in a literary or artistic sense ...
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"A Rake," says he, "is a man always to be pitied; and if he lives one day is certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good nature; all which he must have by nat...
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That impulsiveness of feeling which is here described, and which was the cause of so many of Steele's failings in real life, made him the most powerful and persuasive advocate of Virtue in fiction. Of all the imaginative English essayists he is the most truly natural. His large heart seems to rush out in sympathy with ...
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"If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and such great things executed by them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet at the battle of Coldstream, in Scotland, when Monk charged at the head of the reg...
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With such excellences of style and sentiment it is no wonder that the _Tatler_ rapidly established itself in public favour. It was a novel experience for the general reader to be provided three times a week with entertainment that pleased his imagination without offending his sense of decency or his religious instincts...
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The authorship of the _Tatler_ was at first kept secret to all the world. It is said that the hand of Steele discovered itself to Addison on reading in the fifth number a remark which he remembered to have himself made to Steele on the judgment of Virgil, as shown in the appellation of "Dux Trojanus," which the Latin p...
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"There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or Post-boys, or by what other name or title soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these ge...
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The appearance of Addison as a regular contributor to the _Tatler_ gradually brought about a revolution in the character of the paper. For some time longer, indeed, articles continued to be dated from the different coffee-houses, but only slight efforts were made to distinguish the materials furnished from White's, Wil...
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"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 ...
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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 i...
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"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. Th...
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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 ...
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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 cha...
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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 t...
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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 th...
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"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 w...
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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 rou...
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"Since," says he in one of his early numbers, "I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both way...
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Johnson, in his _Life of Addison_, says that the task undertaken in the _Spectator_ was "first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his _Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected tha...
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A very large portion of the _Spectator_ is devoted to reflections on the manners of women. Addison saw clearly how important a part the female sex was destined to play in the formation of English taste and manners. Removed from the pedestal of enthusiastic devotion on which they had been placed during the feudal ages, ...
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"There are none," he says, "to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them, rather as they are women than as they are reasonable c...
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To some of the vigorous spirits of the age the mild and social character of the _Spectator's_ satire did not commend itself. Swift, who had contributed several papers to the _Tatler_ while it was in its infancy, found it too feminine for his taste. "I will not meddle with the _Spectator_," says he in his _Journal to St...
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"I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning's pipe (though I can't forbear reading the motto before I fill and light), and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff; each paragraph is fraught either with useful or delightful notions, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved. The variety of...
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"I must confess," says Addison, as his task was drawing to an end, "that I am not a little gratified and obliged by that concern which appears in this great city upon my present design of laying down this paper. It is likewise with much satisfaction that I find some of the most outlying parts of the kingdom alarmed upo...
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"I was this morning in a company of your well-wishers, when we read over, with great satisfaction, Tully's observations on action adapted to the British theatre, though, by the way, we were very sorry to find that you have disposed of another member of your club. Poor Sir Roger is dead, and the worthy clergyman dying; ...
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