to be sensible that the Esquire's Lucubrations alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together. It must, indeed, be confessed that never man threw up his pen under stronger temptations to have employed it longer; his reputation was at a greater height than, I believe, ever any living author's was before him.... There is this noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant authors: the latter have endeavoured to please the age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state; or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and vain coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth. Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of the age, either in morality, criticism, or good breeding, he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong, and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for virtue and good sense.
"It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished, or given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to virtue and religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by showing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of learning. He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the 'Change; accordingly, there is not a lady at Court, nor a banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England.
"Lastly, his writings have set all our wits and men of letters upon a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before; and though we cannot yet say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since."
Gay's opinion has been confirmed by the best judges of nearly two centuries, and there is no need to labour the question of the wit and wisdom of the Tatler. But some examples may be cited in illustration of the topics on which Steele and his friends wrote, and the manner in which they dealt with them. The very first numbers contained illustrations of most of what were to be the characteristics of the paper. There is the account of the very pretty gentleman at White's Chocolate-house thrown into a sad condition by a passing vision of a young lady; the notice of Betterton's benefit performance; the comments on the war; the campaign against Partridge, with the declaration that all who were good for nothing would be included among the deceased; the discussion on the morality of the stage, with praise of Mrs. Bicknell and reproaches upon a young nobleman who came drunk to the play; the comparison of the rival beauties, Chloe and Clarissa; the satire on the Italian opera, and on Pinkethman's company of strollers; and the allegorical paper on Fælicia, or Britain. All these and other matters are dealt with in the four numbers which were distributed gratuitously; as the work progressed the principal change, besides the disappearance of the paragraphs of news, was the development of the sustained essay on morals or manners, and the less frequent indulgence in satire upon individual offenders, and in personal allusions in general. This change seems to have been the result partly of design, and partly of circumstances, including Addison's influence on the work. Steele himself said, as we have seen, that the Tatler was raised to a greater height than he had designed; but no doubt he realised that he must feel his way, and be at first a tatler rather than a preacher. After some grave remarks about duelling in an early paper (No. 26), he makes Pacolet, Bickerstaff's familiar, say, "It was too soon to give my discourse on this subject so serious a turn; you have chiefly to do with that part of mankind which must be led into reflection by degrees, and you must treat this custom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce sentence upon it."
Follies and weaknesses are ridiculed in the Tatler in a genial spirit, by one who was fully alive to his own imperfections, and point is usually given to the papers by a sketch of some veiled or imaginary individual. In this way Bickerstaff treats of fops,15 of wags,16 of coquettes,17 of the lady who condemned the vice of the age, meaning the only vice of which she was not guilty;18 of impudence;19 and of pride and vanity.20 In a graver tone he attacks the practice of duelling;21 gamesters and sharpers;22 drunken "roarers" and "scowrers";23 and brutal pastimes at the Bear Garden and elsewhere.24 The campaign against swindlers exposed Steele to serious threats on more than one occasion.25
Of what Coleridge called Steele's "pure humanity" there is nowhere better evidence than in the Tatler. It is enough to cite once more the well-known examples of the account of his father's death and his mother's grief;26 the stories of Unnion and Valentine,27 of the Cornish lovers,28 of Clarinda and Chloe,29 and of Mr. Eustace,30 and the charming account of the married happiness of an old friend, with the pathetic picture of the death of the wife, and the grief of husband and children.31 In the last number Steele said, "It has been a most exquisite pleasure to me to frame characters of domestic life"; and we know from his letters that when he wrote of children he was only expressing the deep affection which he felt for his own. Equally in advance of his time was his respect for women, one of whom—Lady Elizabeth Hastings—he has immortalised in the words, "To love her is a liberal education."32 In the same number he wrote, "As charity is esteemed a conjunction of the good qualities necessary to a virtuous man, so love is the happy composition of all the accomplishments that make a fine gentleman." In a time of much laxity he constantly dwelt on the happiness of marriage; "wife is the most amiable term in human life."33 But good nature must be cultivated if the married life is to be happy,34 and all unnecessary provocations avoided. "Dear Jenny," says Bickerstaff to his sister, "remember me, and avoid Snap-Dragon."35 Women must be rightly educated before they can expect to be treated by, and to influence men as they should.36 The make of the mind greatly contributes to the ornament of the body; "there is so immediate a relation between our thoughts and gestures that a woman must think well to look well."37 The habit of scandal-mongering and other weaknesses are the result of an improper training of the mind.38 "All women especially," says Thackeray, "are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them." His pity extended to the hunted deer: "I have more than once rode off at the death," he says; "to be apt to shed tears is a sign of a great as well as a little spirit."39
Steele's teaching on morals and right living enters intimately into his literary criticism. His love for Shakespeare was real and intelligent; there is no formal discussion of the rules of the drama, but throughout the Tatler there are references which
No. 184.
No. 210.
No. 168.
Nos. 127, 186.
Nos. 56, &c.
No. 134.
See Nos. 115, 271.
No. 181.
No. 82.
No. 94.
No. 172.
Nos. 95, 114.
No. 149.
No. 85. See, too, No. 104.
Nos. 141, 248.
No. 212.
Nos. 40, 42, 47.
No. 68.
