The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 | Page 3

in which his work had been taken up by Isaac
Bickerstaff.
Probably the Tatler was started by Steele without any very definite
designs for the future. According to the first number, published on
April 12, 1709, the aim was to instruct the public what to think, after
their reading, and there was to be something for the entertainment of
the fair sex. The numbers were published three times a week, on the
post-days, at the price of one penny. Each paper consisted of a single
folio sheet, and the first four were distributed gratuitously. Steele
probably thought that his position of Gazetteer would enable him to
give the latest news, and he says that these paragraphs brought in a
multitude of readers; but as the position of the Tatler became
established, the need for the support of these items of news grew less,
and after the first eighty numbers they are of rare occurrence. Quite
early in the career of the paper Addison, speaking of the distress which
would be caused among the news-writers by the conclusion of a peace,

said that Bickerstaff was not personally concerned in the matter; "for as
my chief scenes of action are coffee-houses, playhouses, and my own
apartment, I am in no need of camps, fortifications, and fields of battle
to support me.... I shall still be safe as long as there are men or women,
or politicians, or lovers, or poets, or nymphs, or swains, or cits, or
courtiers in being."[1]
The subject of each article was to be indicated by the name of the
coffee-house or other place from which it was supposed to come: "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's Coffee-house; and
what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my
own Apartment." For some time each number contained short papers
from all or several of these places; but gradually it became usual to
devote the whole number to one topic. The motto of the first forty
numbers was "Quicquid agunt homines ... nostri farrago libelli"; but in
the following numbers it was changed to "Celebrare domestica facta";
and afterwards each number generally had a quotation bearing upon the
subject of the day. Writing some time after the commencement of the
fatter, Steele said, in the Dedication prefixed to the first volume, "The
general purpose of this paper is to expose the false arts of life, to pull
off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend
a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour."
And elsewhere he says: "As for my labours, which he is pleased to
inquire after, if they but wear one impertinence out of human life,
destroy a single vice, or give a morning's cheerfulness to an honest
mind; in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any
degree less vicious, or receive from them the smallest addition to their
innocent diversions; I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to
have been spent in vain."[2] At the close, speaking in his own name,
Steele wrote: "The general purpose of the whole has been to
recommend truth, innocence, honour, and virtue, as the chief ornaments
of life; but I considered, that severity of manners was absolutely
necessary to him who would censure others, and for that reason, and
that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as
to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess my life

is at best but pardonable."[3]
With his usual generosity, Steele more than once spoke in the warmest
terms of the assistance rendered to him by Addison. In the preface to
the collected edition he said: "I have only one gentleman, 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
had lived in an 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 auxiliary; when
I had called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him."
And in 1722, after Addison's death, in a preface to his friend's play,
"The Drummer," Steele wrote of the Tatler, "That paper was advanced
indeed! for it was raised to a greater thing than I