The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 | Page 6

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 show the keenest appreciation of
Shakespeare's powers as poet and philosopher. "The vitiated tastes of
the audience at the theatre could only be amended," says Steele, "by
encouraging the 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 persons 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."[40] Still more
remarkable are the allusions to "Paradise Lost," for Milton was then
even less appreciated than Shakespeare. As in so many other things,
Addison's more elaborate criticism in the Spectator was foreshadowed
in the Tatler by Steele; and the comparison of passages by Milton and
Dryden[41] must have been very striking to the reader of that time, who
usually knew Shakespeare or Chaucer only through the adaptations of
Dryden or Tate.
Though it is not true, as some have represented, that the Tatler is for
the most part a mere society journal, concerned chiefly with the gossip
of the day, yet its contributors made use of the scenes and events
familiar to their readers in order to bring home the kindly lessons they
wished to teach; and in so