Liar
, and in its last form, with
another change or two, has been revived at times with great success. It
is worth while to note how Steele dealt with the story of this piece.
Its original is a play by Alarcon, which Corneille at first supposed to
have been a play by Lope de Vega. Alarcon, or, to give him his full
style, Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza, was a Mexican-born Spaniard
of a noble family which had distinguished itself in Mexico from the time
of the conquest, and took its name of Alarcon from a village in New
Castile. The poet was a humpbacked dwarf, a thorough, but rather
haughty, Spanish gentleman, poet and wit, who wrote in an unusually pure
Spanish style; a man of the world, too, who came to Spain in or about
the year 1622, and held the very well-paid office of reporter to the
Royal Council of the Indies. When Alarcon, in 1634, was chosen by the
Court to write a festival drama, and, at the same time, publishing the
second part of his dramatic works, vehemently reclaimed plays for which,
under disguised names, some of his contemporaries had taken credit to
themselves, there was an angry combination against him, in which Lope de
Vega, Gongora, and Quevedo were found taking part. All that Alarcon
wrote was thoroughly his own, but editors of the 17th century boldly
passed over his claims to honour, and distributed his best works among
plays of other famous writers, chiefly those of Rojas and Lope de Vega.
This was what deceived Corneille, and caused him to believe and say that
Alarcon's
la Verdad sospechosa
, on which, in 1642, he founded his
Menteur
, was a work of Lope de Vega's. Afterwards Corneille learnt how
there had been in this matter lying among editors. He gave to
Alarcon the honour due, and thenceforth it is chiefly by this play that Alarcon has been remembered out of Spain. In Spain, when
in 1852 Don Juan Hartzenbusch edited Alarcon's comedies for the
Biblioteca de Autores Españoles
, he had to remark on the unjust neglect of that good author in Spain also, where the poets and men of letters had long wished in vain for a complete edition of his works. Lope de Vega, it may be added, was really the author of a sequel to
la Verdad sospechosa
, which Corneille adapted also as a sequel to his
Menteur
, but it was even poorer than such sequels usually are.
The
Lying Lover
in Alarcon's play is a Don Garcia fresh from
his studies in Salamanca, and Steele's Latine first appears there as a Tristan, the gracioso of old Spanish comedy. The two ladies are
a Jacinta and Lucrecia. Alarcon has in his light and graceful play no less than three heavy fathers, of a Spanish type, one of whom, the father of Lucrecia, brings about Don Garcia's punishment by threatening to kill him if he will not marry his daughter; and so the Liar is punished for his romancing by a marriage with the girl he does not care for, and not marrying the girl he loves.
Corneille was merciful, and in the fifth act bred in his
Menteur
a new fancy for Lucrece, so that the marriage at cross purposes was rather agreeable to him.
Steele, in adapting the
Menteur
as his
Lying Lover
, altered the close in sharp accordance with that 'just regard to a reforming age,'
which caused him (adapting a line in his 'Procession' then unprinted)
to write in his Prologue to it, 'Pleasure must still have
something that's severe.' Having translated Corneille's translations of Garcia and Tristan (Dorante and Cliton) into Young
Bookwit and Latine, he transformed the servant into a college friend, mumming as servant because, since 'a prating servant is necessary in intrigues,' the two had 'cast lots who should be the other's footman for the present expedition.' Then he adapted the French couplets into pleasant prose comedy, giving with a light touch the romancing of feats of war and of an entertainment on the river, but at last he turned desperately serious, and sent his Young Bookwit to Newgate on a charge of killing the gentleman — here
called Lovemore — who was at last to win the hand of the lady whom the Liar loved. In his last act, opening in Newgate, Steele started with blank verse, and although Lovemore of course was not dead,
and Young Bookwit got at last more than a shadow of a promise
the other lady in reward for his repentance, the changes in construction
of the play took it beyond the bounds of comedy, and were, in fact,
excellent morality but not good art. And this is what Steele means when
he says that he had his play damned for its piety.
With that strong regard for the drama which cannot well be wanting to
the man who has an artist's vivid sense of life, Steele never withdrew
his good will from the players, never neglected to praise a good play,
and, I may add, took every fair occasion of suggesting to the town the
subtlety of Shakespeare's genius. But he now ceased to write comedies,
until towards the close of his life he produced with a remarkable
success his other play, the
Conscious Lovers
. And of that, by the way,
Fielding made his Parson Adams say that
Cato
and the
Conscious
Lovers
were the only plays he ever heard of, fit for a Christian to
read, 'and, I must own, in the latter there are some things almost
solemn enough for a sermon.'
Perhaps it was about this time that Addison wrote his comedy of the
Drummer
, which had been long in his possession when Steele, who had
become a partner in the management of Drury Lane Theatre, drew it from
obscurity, suggested a few changes in it, and produced it — not openly as
Addison's — upon the stage. The published edition of it was recommended
also by a preface from Steele in which he says that he liked this
author's play the better
'for the want of those studied similies and
repartees which we, who have writ before him, have thrown into our
plays, to indulge and gain upon a false taste that has prevailed for
many years in the British theatre. I believe the author would have
condescended to fall into this way a little more than he has, had he
before the writing of it been often present at theatrical
representations. I was confirmed in my thoughts of the play by the
opinion of better judges to whom it was communicated, who observed that
the scenes were drawn after Molière's manner, and that an easy and
natural vein of humour ran through the whole. I do not question but the
reader will discover this, and see many beauties that escaped the
audience; the touches being too delicate for every taste in a popular
assembly. My brother-sharers' (in the Drury Lane patent) 'were of
opinion, at the first reading of it, that it was like a picture in which
the strokes were not strong enough to appear at a distance. As it is not
in the common way of writing, the approbation was at first doubtful, but
has risen every time it has been acted, and has given an opportunity in
several of its parts for as just and good actions as ever I saw on the stage.'
Addison's comedy was not produced till 1715, the year after his
unsuccessful attempt to revive the
Spectator
, which produced what
is called the eighth volume of that work. The play, not known to be his,
was so ill spoken of that he kept the authorship a secret to the last,
and Tickell omitted it from the collection of his patron's works. But
Steele knew what was due to his friend, and in 1722 manfully republished
the piece as Addison's, with a dedication to Congreve and censure of
Tickell for suppressing it. If it be true that the
Drummer
made
no figure on the stage though excellently acted, 'when I observe this,'
said Steele, 'I say a much harder thing of this than of the comedy.'
Addison's Drummer is a gentleman who, to forward his suit to a soldier's
widow, masquerades as the drumbeating ghost of her husband in her
country house, and terrifies a self-confident, free-thinking town
exquisite, another suitor, who believes himself brought face to face
with the spirit world, in which he professes that he can't believe. 'For
my part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' The character
of a free-thinking exquisite is drawn from life without exaggeration,
but with more than a touch of the bitter contempt Addison felt for the
atheistic coxcomb, with whom he was too ready to confound the sincere
questioner of orthodox opinion. The only passages of his in the
Spectator
that border on intolerance are those in which he deals
with the free-thinker; but it should not be forgotten that the commonest
type of free-thinker in Queen Anne's time was not a thoughtful man who
battled openly with doubt and made an independent search for truth, but
an idler who repudiated thought and formed his character upon tradition
of the Court of Charles the Second. And throughout the
Spectator
we may find a Christian under-tone in Addison's intolerance of
infidelity, which is entirely wanting when the moralist is Eustace
Budgell. Two or three persons in the comedy of the
Drummer
give
opportunity for good character-painting in the actor, and on a healthy
stage, before an audience able to discriminate light touches of humour
and to enjoy unstrained although well-marked expression of varieties of
character, the
Drummer
would not fail to be a welcome
entertainment.
But our sketch now stands at the year 1705, when Steele had ceased for a
time to write comedies. Addison's
Campaign
had brought him fame,
and perhaps helped him to pay, as he now did, his College debts, with
interest. His
Remarks on Italy
, now published, were, as Tickell
says, 'at first but indifferently relished by the bulk of readers;' and
his
Drummer
probably was written and locked in his desk. There
were now such days of intercourse as Steele looked back to when with
undying friendship he wrote in the preface to that edition of the
Drummer
produced by him after Addison's death:
'He was above all men in that talent we call humour, and enjoyed it in
such perfection, that I have often reflected, after a night spent with
him apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of
conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who
had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite
and delightful than any other man ever possessed.' And again in the
same Preface, Steele dwelt upon 'that smiling mirth, that delicate
satire and genteel raillery, which appeared in Mr. Addison when he was
free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and
muffles merit; and his abilities were covered only by modesty, which
doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to
all that are concealed.'
Addison had the self-consciousness of a sensitive and speculative mind.
This, with a shy manner among those with whom he was not intimate,
passed for cold self-assertion. The 'little senate' of his intimate
friends was drawn to him by its knowledge of the real warmth of his
nature. And his friendships, like his religion, influenced his judgment.
His geniality that wore a philosophic cloak before the world, caused him
to abandon himself in the
Spectator
, even more unreservedly than
Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend
like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject,
little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness
with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar
friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as
much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his
store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment of all kindly intercourse
with men. In after years, as expression of thought in the literature of
nations gained freedom and sincerity, two types of literature were
formed from the types of mind which Addison and Steele may be said to
have in some measure represented. Each sought advance towards a better
light, one part by dwelling on the individual duties and
responsibilities of man, and his relation to the infinite; the other by
especial study of man's social ties and liberties, and his relation to
the commonwealth of which he is a member. Goethe, for instance, inclined
to one study; Schiller to the other; and every free mind will incline
probably to one or other of these centres of opinion. Addison was a cold
politician because he was most himself when analyzing principles of
thought, and humours, passions, duties of the individual. Steele, on the
contrary, braved ruin for his convictions as a politician, because his
social nature turned his earnestness into concern for the well-being of
his country, and he lived in times when it was not yet certain that the
newly-secured liberties were also finally secured. The party was strong
that desired to re-establish ancient tyrannies, and the Queen herself
was hardly on the side of freedom.
In 1706, the date of the union between England and Scotland, Whig
influence had been strengthened by the elections of the preceding year,
and Addison was, early in 1706, made Under-Secretary of State to Sir
Charles Hedges, a Tory, who was superseded before the end of the year by
Marlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, a Whig under whom
Addison, of course, remained in office, and who was, thenceforth, his
active patron. In the same year the opera of
Rosamond
was produced,
with Addison's libretto. It was but the third, or indeed the second,
year of operas in England, for we can hardly reckon as forming a year of
opera the Italian intermezzi and interludes of singing and dancing,
performed under Clayton's direction, at York Buildings, in 1703. In
1705, Clayton's
Arsinoe
, adapted and translated from the Italian, was
produced at Drury Lane. Buononcini's
Camilla
was given at the house in
the Haymarket, and sung in two languages, the heroine's part being in
English and the hero's in Italian. Thomas Clayton, a second-rate
musician, but a man with literary tastes, who had been introducer of the
opera to London, argued that the words of an opera should be not only
English, but the best of English, and that English music ought to
illustrate good home-grown literature. Addison and Steele agreed
heartily in this. Addison was persuaded to write words for an opera by
Clayton — his
Rosamond
— and Steele was persuaded afterwards to
speculate in some sort of partnership with Clayton's efforts to set
English poetry to music in the entertainments at York Buildings, though
his friend Hughes warned him candidly that Clayton was not much of a
musician.
Rosamond
was a failure of Clayton's and not a success of
Addison's. There is poor jesting got by the poet from a comic Sir
Trusty, who keeps Rosamond's bower, and has a scolding wife. But there
is a happy compliment to Marlborough in giving to King Henry a vision at
Woodstock of the glory to come for England, and in a scenic realization
of it by the rising of Blenheim Palace, the nation's gift to
Marlborough, upon the scene of the Fair Rosamond story. Indeed there can
be no doubt that it was for the sake of the scene at Woodstock, and the
opportunity thus to be made, that Rosamond was chosen for the subject of
the opera. Addison made Queen Eleanor give Rosamond a narcotic instead
of a poison, and thus he achieved the desired happy ending to an opera.
|
Believe your Rosamond alive. |
| King. |
O happy day! O pleasing view!
My Queen forgives — |
| Queen. |
— My lord is true. |
| King. |
No more I'll change. |
| Queen. |
No more I'll grieve. |
| Both. |
But ever thus united live. |
That is to say, for three days, the extent of the life of the opera. But
the literary Under-Secretary had saved his political dignity with the
stage tribute to Marlborough, which backed the closet praise in the
Campaign
.
In May, 1707, Steele received the office of Gazetteer, until then worth
£60, but presently endowed by Harley with a salary of £300 a year. At
about the same time he was made one of the gentlemen ushers to Queen
Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark. In the same year Steele
married. Of his most private life before this date little is known. He
had been married to a lady from Barbadoes, who died in a few months.
From days referred to in the 'Christian Hero' he derived a daughter of
whom he took fatherly care. In 1707 Steele, aged about 35, married Miss
(or, as ladies come of age were then called, Mrs.) Mary Scurlock, aged
29. It was a marriage of affection on both sides. Steele had from his
first wife an estate in Barbadoes, which produced, after payment of the
interest on its encumbrances, £670 a year. His appointment as Gazetteer,
less the £45 tax on it, was worth £255 a year, and his appointment on
the Prince Consort's household another hundred. Thus the income upon
which Steele married was rather more than a thousand a year, and Miss
Scurlock's mother had an estate of about £330 a year. Mary Scurlock had
been a friend of Steele's first wife, for before marriage she recalls
Steele to her mother's mind by saying, 'It is the survivor of the person
to whose funeral I went in my illness.'
'Let us make our regards to each other,' Steele wrote just before
marriage, 'mutual and unchangeable, that whilst the world around us is
enchanted with the false satisfactions of vagrant desires, our persons
may be shrines to each other, and sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved
confidence, and heavenly society.'
There remains also a prayer written by Steele before first taking the
sacrament with his wife, after marriage. There are also letters and
little notes written by Steele to his wife, treasured by her love, and
printed by a remorseless antiquary, blind to the sentence in one of the
first of them:
'I beg of you to shew my letters to no one living, but let us be
contented with one another's thoughts upon our words and actions,
without the intervention of other people, who cannot judge of so
delicate a circumstance as the commerce between man and wife.'
But they are printed for the frivolous to laugh at and the wise to
honour. They show that even in his most thoughtless or most anxious
moments the social wit, the busy patriot, remembered his 'dear Prue,'
and was her lover to the end. Soon after marriage, Steele took his wife
to a boarding-school in the suburbs, where they saw a young lady for
whom Steele showed an affection that caused Mrs. Steele to ask, whether
she was not his daughter. He said that she was. 'Then,' said Mrs.
Steele, 'I beg she may be mine too.' Thenceforth she lived in their home
as Miss Ousley, and was treated as a daughter by Steele's wife. Surely
this was a woman who deserved the love that never swerved from her. True
husband and true friend, he playfully called Addison her rival. In the
Spectator
there is a paper of Steele's (No. 142) representing some of
his own love-letters as telling what a man said and should be able to
say of his wife after forty years of marriage. Seven years after
marriage he signs himself, 'Yours more than you can imagine, or I
express.' He dedicates to her a volume of the
Lady's Library
, and
writes of her ministrations to him:
'if there are such beings as guardian angels, thus are they employed.
I will no more believe one of them more good in its inclinations than
I can conceive it more charming in its form than my wife.'
In the year before her death he was signing his letters with 'God bless
you!' and 'Dear Prue, eternally yours.' That Steele made it a duty of
his literary life to contend against the frivolous and vicious ridicule
of the ties of marriage common in his day, and to maintain their sacred
honour and their happiness, readers of the
Spectator
cannot fail to
find.
Steele, on his marriage in 1707, took a house in Bury Street, St.
James's, and in the following year went to a house at Hampton, which he
called in jest the Hovel. Addison had lent him a thousand pounds for
costs of furnishing and other immediate needs. This was repaid within a
year, and when, at the same time, his wife's mother was proposing a
settlement of her money beneficial to himself, Steele replied that he
was far from desiring, if he should survive his wife, 'to turn the
current of the estate out of the channel it would have been in, had I
never come into the family.' Liberal always of his own to others, he was
sometimes without a guinea, and perplexed by debt. But he defrauded no
man. When he followed his Prue to the grave he was in no man's debt,
though he left all his countrymen his debtors, and he left more than
their mother's fortune to his two surviving children. One died of
consumption a year afterwards, the other married one of the Welsh
Judges, afterwards Lord Trevor.
The friendship — equal friendship — between Steele and Addison was as
unbroken as the love between Steele and his wife. Petty tales may have
been invented or misread. In days of malicious personality Steele braved
the worst of party spite, and little enough even slander found to throw
against him. Nobody in their lifetime doubted the equal strength and
sincerity of the relationship between the two friends. Steele was no
follower of Addison's. Throughout life he went his own way, leading
rather than following; first as a playwright; first in conception and
execution of the scheme of the
Tatler
,
Spectator
, and
Guardian
;
following his own sense of duty against Addison's sense of expediency in
passing from the
Guardian
to the
Englishman
, and so to energetic
movement upon perilous paths as a political writer, whose whole heart
was with what he took to be the people's cause.
When Swift had been writing to Addison that he thought Steele 'the
vilest of mankind,' in writing of this to Swift, Steele complained that
the
Examiner
, — in which Swift had a busy hand, — said Addison had
'bridled him in point of politics,' adding,
'This was ill hinted both in relation to him and me. I know no party;
but the truth of the question is what I will support as well as I can,
when any man I honour is attacked.'
John Forster, whose keen insight into the essentials of literature led
him to write an essay upon each of the two great founders of the latest
period of English literature, Defoe and Steele, has pointed out in his
masterly essay upon Steele that Swift denies having spoken of Steele as
bridled by his friend, and does so in a way that frankly admits Steele's
right to be jealous of the imputation. Mr. Forster justly adds that
throughout Swift's intimate speech to Stella,
'whether his humours be sarcastic or polite, the friendship of Steele
and Addison is for ever suggesting some annoyance to himself, some
mortification, some regret, but never once the doubt that it was not
intimate and sincere, or that into it entered anything inconsistent
with a perfect equality.'
Six months after Addison's death Steele wrote (in No. 12 of the
Theatre
, and I am again quoting facts cited by John Forster),
'that there never was a more strict friendship than between himself
and Addison, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from
their different way of pursuing the same thing; the one waited and
stemmed the torrent, while the other too often plunged into it; but
though they thus had lived for some years past, shunning each other,
they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual
welfare; and when they met they were as unreserved as boys, and talked
of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed,
without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other.'
As to the substance or worth of what thus divided them, Steele only adds
the significant expression of his hope that, if his family is the worse,
his country may be the better, 'for the mortification
he
has
undergone.'
Such, then, was the Friendship of which the
Spectator
is the abiding
Monument. The
Spectator
was a modified continuation of the
Tatler
,
and the
Tatler
was suggested by a portion of Defoe's
Review
. The
Spectator
belongs to the first days of a period when the people at
large extended their reading power into departments of knowledge
formerly unsought by them, and their favour was found generally to be
more desirable than that of the most princely patron. This period should
date from the day in 1703 when the key turned upon Defoe in Newgate, the
year of the production of Steele's
Tender Husband
, and the time when
Addison was in Holland on the way home from his continental travels.
Defoe was then forty-two years old, Addison and Steele being about
eleven years younger.
In the following year, 1704, the year of Blenheim — Defoe issued, on the
19th of February, No. 1 of 'A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France:
Purg'd from the Errors and Partiality of
News-Writers
and
Petty-Statesmen
, of all Sides,' and in the introductory sketch of its
plan, said:
'After our Serious Matters are over, we shall at the end of every
Paper, Present you with a little Diversion, as anything occurs to make
the World Merry; and whether Friend or Foe, one Party or another, if
anything happens so scandalous as to require an open Reproof, the
World may meet with it there.'
Here is the first 'little Diversion'; the germ of
Tatlers
and
Spectators
which in after years amused and edified the town.
Mercure Scandale:
or,
Advice from the Scandalous Club.
Translated out of French.
This Society is a Corporation long since established in Paris,
and we cannot compleat our Advices from France, without entertaining
the World with everything we meet with from that Country.
And, tho Corresponding with the Queens Enemies is prohibited;
yet since the Matter will be so honest, as only to tell the
World of what everybody will own to be scandalous, we reckon we
shall be welcome.
This Corporation has been set up some months, and opend
their first Sessions about last Bartholomew Fair; but having not
yet obtaind a Patent, they have never, till now, made their Resolves
publick.
The Business of this Society is to censure the Actions of Men,
not of Parties, and in particular, those Actions which are made
publick so by their Authors, as to be, in their own Nature, an
Appeal to the general Approbation.
They do not design to expose Persons but things; and of them,
none but such as more than ordinarily deserve it; they who would
not be censurd by this Assembly, are desired to act with caution
enough, not to fall under their Hands; for they resolve to treat
Vice, and Villanous Actions, with the utmost Severity.
The First considerable Matter that came before this Society, was
about Bartholomew Fair; but the Debates being long, they were
at last adjourned to the next Fair, when we suppose it will be
decided; so being not willing to trouble the World with anything
twice over, we refer that to next August.
On the 10th of September last, there was a long Hearing, before
the Club, of a Fellow that said he had killd the Duke of Bavaria.
Now as David punishd the Man that said he had killd King Saul,
whether it was so or no, twas thought this Fellow ought to be
delivered up to Justice, tho the Duke of Bavaria was alive.
Upon the whole, twas voted a scandalous Thing, That News.
Writers shoud kill Kings and Princes, and bring them to life again
at pleasure; and to make an Example of this Fellow, he was dismissd,
upon Condition he should go to the Queens-bench once a
Day, and bear Fuller, his Brother of the Faculty, company two
hours for fourteen Days together; which cruel Punishment was
executed with the utmost Severity.
The Club has had a great deal of trouble about the News-Writers,
who have been continually brought before them for their
ridiculous Stories, and imposing upon Mankind; and tho the
Proceedings have been pretty tedious, we must give you the
trouble of a few of them in our next.
The addition to the heading, 'Translated out of French,' appears only in
No. 1, and the first title
Mercure Scandale
(adopted from a French
book published about 1681) having been much criticized for its grammar
and on other grounds, was dropped in No. 18. Thenceforth Defoe's
pleasant comment upon passing follies appeared under the single head of
Advice from the Scandalous Club.
Still the verbal Critics exercised
their wits upon the title.
'We have been so often on the Defence of our Title,' says Defoe, in
No. 38, 'that the world begins to think Our Society wants
Employment ... If Scandalous must signify nothing but Personal
Scandal, respecting the Subject of which it is predicated; we desire
those gentlemen to answer for us how Post-Man or Post-Boy can
signify a News-Paper, the Post Man or Post Boy being in all my reading
properly and strictly applicable, not to the Paper, but to the Person
bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by
a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book — From hence
our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege
of making an Allegory as well as other People.'
In No. 46 Defoe made, in one change more, a whimsical half concession of
a syllable, by putting a sign of contraction in its place, and
thenceforth calling this part of his Review,
Advice from the Scandal
Club
. Nothing can be more evident than the family likeness between this
forefather of the
Tatler
and
Spectator
and its more familiar
descendants. There is a trick of voice common to all, and some papers of
Defoe's might have been written for the
Spectator
. Take the little
allegory, for instance, in No. 45, which tells of a desponding young
Lady brought before the Society, as found by Rosamond's Pond in the Park
in a strange condition, taken by the mob for a lunatic, and whose
clothes were all out of fashion, but whose face, when it was seen,
astonished the whole society by its extraordinary sweetness and majesty.
She told how she had been brought to despair, and her name proved to
be — Modesty. In letters, questions, and comments also which might be
taken from Defoe's
Monthly Supplementary Journal
to the
Advice from the
Scandal Club
, we catch a likeness to the spirit of the
Tatler
and
Spectator
now and then exact. Some censured Defoe for not confining
himself to the weightier part of his purpose in establishing the
Review
. He replied, in the Introduction to his first
Monthly
Supplement
, that many men
'care but for a little reading at a time,' and said, 'thus we wheedle
them in, if it may be allow'd that Expression, to the Knowledge of the
World, who rather than take more Pains, would be content with their
Ignorance, and search into nothing.'
Single-minded, quick-witted, and prompt to act on the first suggestion
of a higher point of usefulness to which he might attain, Steele saw the
mind of the people ready for a new sort of relation to its writers, and
he followed the lead of Defoe. But though he turned from the more
frivolous temper of the enfeebled playhouse audience, to commune in free
air with the country at large, he took fresh care for the restraint of
his deep earnestness within the bounds of a cheerful, unpretending
influence. Drop by drop it should fall, and its strength lie in its
persistence. He would bring what wit he had out of the playhouse, and
speak his mind, like Defoe, to the people themselves every post-day. But
he would affect no pedantry of moralizing, he would appeal to no
passions, he would profess himself only 'a Tatler.' Might he not use, he
thought, modestly distrustful of the charm of his own mind, some of the
news obtained by virtue of the office of Gazetteer that Harley had given
him, to bring weight and acceptance to writing of his which he valued
only for the use to which it could be put. For, as he himself truly says
in the
Tatler
,
'wit, if a man had it, unless it be directed to some useful end, is
but a wanton, frivolous quality; all that one should value himself
upon in this kind is that he had some honourable intention in it.'
Swift, not then a deserter to the Tories, was a friend of Steele's, who,
when the first
Tatler
appeared, had been amusing the town at the
expense of John Partridge, astrologer and almanac-maker, with
'Predictions for the year 1708,' professing to be written by Isaac
Bickerstaff, Esq. The first prediction was of the death of Partridge,
'on the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.'
Swift answered himself, and also published in due time
'The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions:
being an account of the death of Mr. Partridge, the almanack-maker,
upon the 29th instant.'
Other wits kept up the joke, and, in his next year's almanac (that for
1709), Partridge advertised that,
'whereas it has been industriously given out by Isaac Bickerstaff,
Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that
John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that
he is still living, in health, and they are knaves that reported it
otherwise.'
Steele gave additional lightness to the touch of his
Tatler
, which
first appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, by writing in the name of
Isaac Bickerstaff, and carrying on the jest, that was to his serious
mind a blow dealt against prevailing superstition. Referring in his
first
Tatler
to this advertisement of Partridge's, he said of it,
'I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently
convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I do not
doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance. For
though the legs and arms and whole body of that man may still appear
and perform their animal functions, yet since, as I have elsewhere
observed, his art is gone, the man is gone.'
To Steele, indeed, the truth was absolute, that a man is but what he can
do.
In this spirit, then, Steele began the
Tatler
, simply considering that
his paper was to be published 'for the use of the good people of
England,' and professing at the outset that he was an author writing for
the public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and that
he preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office.
Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the
mountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness,
'we have a contempt,' he says, 'for such paltry barterers, and have
therefore all along informed the public that we intend to give them
our advices for our own sakes, and are labouring to make our
lucubrations come to some price in money, for our more convenient
support in the service of the public. It is certain that many other
schemes have been proposed to me, as a friend offered to show me in a
treatise he had writ, which he called, The whole Art of Life; or, The
Introduction to Great Men, illustrated in a Pack of Cards. But being
a novice at all manner of play, I declined the offer.'