The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 | Page 5

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 F?|licia, 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