The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 | Page 4

intended it! For the
elegance, purity, and correctness which appeared in his writings were
not so much my purpose, as (in any intelligible manner, as I could) to
rally all those singularities of human life, through the different
professions and characters in it, which obstruct anything that was truly
good and great."
It is only fair to Steele to point out that the original idea of the Tatler
was entirely his own, and that he alone was responsible for the regular
supply of material. Addison was in Ireland when the paper was begun,
and did not know who was the author until several numbers had
appeared. His occasional contributions were of little importance until
after eighty numbers had been published; and of the whole 271
numbers Steele wrote about 188 and Addison only 42, while they were
jointly responsible for 36. Swift contributed only to about a dozen
numbers; and the assistance received from other writers was so slight
that it does not call for notice here. Steele, unlike Addison, was
probably at his best in the Tatler, where he had a freer hand, and
described, in a perfectly fresh and unaffected style, the impressions of
the moment. Hastily composed in coffee-house or printing-office, as
they often were, and at very short notice, his papers frequently appeal
to the reader of the present day more than the carefully elaborated and
highly finished work of his friend, who wrote only when he found a
suitable topic. And if Addison's art is of a higher standard than Steele's,

it is to Steele that we owe Addison. A minor poet and the author of a
book of travels and of an unsuccessful opera, Addison found no
opportunity for his peculiar genius until his friend provided the means
in the Tatler. It is tolerably certain that he would himself never have
taken the necessary step of founding a periodical appealing to the
general public; and Steele himself said with perfect truth, "I claim to
myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person
of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any
other means."[4]
If more is said here of Steele than of Addison, it is because it is Steele
whose name is most intimately connected with the Tatler. The field in
which Addison shone brightest was the Spectator, where the whole
plan was arranged in the manner best suited to his genius. But his
influence is, nevertheless, visible in the development of the earlier
paper, and some of his individual articles are equal to anything he
afterwards wrote. It is only necessary to mention his papers on the
Distress of the News-Writers[5]; on the poetaster, Ned Softly[6]; on the
pedant and "broker in learning," Tom Folio[7]; on the Political
Upholsterer, who was more inquisitive to know what passed in Poland
than in his own family[8]; and on the Adventures of a Shilling.[9] His,
too, are the Vision of Justice[10]; the story of a dream;[11] and the
amusing account of the visit to London of Sir Harry Quickset, who,
with his old-world breeding, was the forerunner of Sir Roger de
Coverley.[12]
Unlike the members of the Spectator's Club, the _dramatis personæ_
introduced in the Tatler do not occupy a very prominent place in the
development of the work. Isaac Bickerstaff himself, an old man of
sixty-four, "a philosopher, an humourist, an astrologer, and a censor," is
rather vaguely sketched, and his familiar, Pacolet, is made use of
chiefly in the earlier numbers. The occasional references to
Bickerstaff's half-sister, Jenny Distaff,[13] and her husband, Tanquillus,
and to his three nephews and their conduct in the presence of a
"beautiful woman of honour,"[14] gave Steele a framework for some
charming sketches of domestic life. It is not until No. 132 that we have
the amusing account of the members of Bickerstaff's Club, the Trumpet,
in Shire Lane. There were Sir Geoffrey Notch, a gentleman of an
ancient family, who had wasted his estate in his youth, and called every

thriving man a pitiful upstart; Major Matchlock, with his reminiscences
of the Civil War; Dick Reptile, and the Bencher who was always
praising the wit of former days, and telling stories of Jack Ogle, with
whom he pretended to have been intimate in his youth. Very little use
was afterwards made of this promising material.
The poet John Gay has given an excellent account of the work
accomplished by Steele and Addison in a pamphlet called "The Present
State of Wit" (1711). Speaking of the discontinuance of the Tatler, he
says: "His disappearing seemed to be bewailed as some general
calamity: every one wanted so agreeable an amusement; and the
coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's Lucubrations
alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers
put together. It