“As there was no great danger,” says he, “of hurting the sense of these extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune. Thus the famous song inCamilla,‘Barbara si t’intendo,’ etc.‘Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,’which expresses the resentment of an angry lover, was translated into that English lamentation,‘Frail are a lover’s hopes,’ etc.And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled with the spirit of rage and indignation. It happened also very frequently where the sense was rightly translated; the necessary transposition of words, which were drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:‘And turned my rage into pity,’which the English, for rhyme’s sake, translated,‘And into pity turned my rage.’By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian fell upon the word ‘rage’ in the English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened likewise that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant word in the sentence. I have known the word ‘and’ pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious ‘the;’ and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon ‘then,’ ‘for,’ and ‘from,’ to the eternal honour of our English particles.”[19]
“As there was no great danger,” says he, “of hurting the sense of these extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune. Thus the famous song inCamilla,
‘Barbara si t’intendo,’ etc.‘Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,’
which expresses the resentment of an angry lover, was translated into that English lamentation,
‘Frail are a lover’s hopes,’ etc.
And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled with the spirit of rage and indignation. It happened also very frequently where the sense was rightly translated; the necessary transposition of words, which were drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:
‘And turned my rage into pity,’
which the English, for rhyme’s sake, translated,
‘And into pity turned my rage.’
By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian fell upon the word ‘rage’ in the English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened likewise that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant word in the sentence. I have known the word ‘and’ pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious ‘the;’ and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon ‘then,’ ‘for,’ and ‘from,’ to the eternal honour of our English particles.”[19]
Perceiving these radical defects, Addison seems to have been ambitious of showing by example how they mightbe remedied. “The great success this opera (Arsinoe) met with produced,” says he, “some attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural and reasonable entertainment than what can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation. This alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware, and therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as such to this day, ‘That nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.’”[20]The allusion to the failure of the writer’s own opera ofRosamondis unmistakable. The piece was performed on the 2d of April, 1706, but was coldly received, and after two or three representations was withdrawn.
The reasons which theSpectatorassigns for the catastrophe betray rather the self-love of the author than the clear perception of the critic.Rosamondfailed because, in the first place, it was very bad as a musical composition. Misled by the favour with whichArsinoewas received, Addison seems to have regarded Clayton as a great musician, and he put his poem into the hands of the latter, thinking that his score would be as superior to that ofArsinoeas his own poetry was to the words of that opera. Clayton, however, had no genius, and only succeeded in producing what Sir John Hawkins, quoting with approbation the words of another critic, calls “a confused chaos of music, the only merit of which is its shortness.”[21]
But it may be doubted whether in any case the most skilful composer could have produced music of a high order adapted to the poetry ofRosamond. The play is neither a tragedy, a comedy, nor a melodrama. It seemsthat Eleanor did not really poison Fair Rosamond, but only administered to her a sleeping potion, and, as she takes care to explain to the King,
“The bowl with drowsy juices filled,From cold Egyptian drugs distilled,In borrowed death has closed her eyes.”
This information proves highly satisfactory to the King, not only because he is gratified to find that Rosamond is not dead, but also because, even before discovering her supposed dead body, he had resolved, in consequence of a dream sent to him by his guardian angel, to terminate the relations existing between them. The Queen and he accordingly arrange, in a business-like manner, that Rosamond shall be quietly removed in her trance to a nunnery; a reconciliation is then effected between the husband and wife, who, as we are led to suppose, live happily ever after.
The main motive of the opera in Addison’s mind appears to have been the desire of complimenting the Marlborough family. It is dedicated to the Duchess; the warlike character of Henry naturally recalls the prowess of the great modern captain; and the King is consoled by his guardian angel for the loss of Fair Rosamond with a vision of the future glories of Blenheim:
“To calm thy grief and lull thy cares,Look up and seeWhat, after long revolving years,Thy bower shall be!When time its beauties shall deface,And only with its ruins graceThe future prospect of the place!Behold the glorious pile ascending,Columns swelling, arches bending,Domes in awful pomp arising,Art in curious strokes surprising,Foes in figured fights contending,Behold the glorious pile ascending.”
This is graceful enough, but it scarcely offers material for music of a serious kind. Nor can the Court have been greatly impressed by the compliment paid to its morality, as contrasted with that of Charles II., conveyed as it was by the mouth of Grideline, one of the comic characters in the piece—
“Since conjugal passionIs come into fashion,And marriage so blest on the throne is,Like a Venus I’ll shine,Be fond and be fine,And Sir Trusty shall be my Adonis.”
The ill success ofRosamondconfirmed Addison’s dislike to the Italian opera, which he displayed both in his grave and humorous papers on the subject in theSpectator. The disquisition upon the various actors of the lion inHydaspesis one of his happiest inspirations; but his serious criticisms are, as a rule, only just in so far as they are directed against the dramatic absurdities of the Italian opera. As to his technical qualifications as a critic of music, it will be sufficient to cite the opinion of Dr. Burney: “To judges of music nothing more need be said of Mr. Addison’s abilities to decide concerning the comparative degrees of national excellence in the art, and the merit of particular masters, than his predilection for the productions of Clayton, and insensibility to the force and originality of Handel’s compositions inRinaldo.”[22]
In December, 1708, the Earl of Sunderland was displaced to make room for the Tory Lord Dartmouth, and Addison, as Under-Secretary, following the fortunes of his superior,found himself again without employment. Fortunately for him the Earl of Wharton was almost immediately afterwards made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and offered him the lucrative post of Secretary. The Earl, who was subsequently created a Marquis, was the father of the famous Duke satirised in Pope’s firstMoral Essay; he was in every respect the opposite of Addison—a vehement Republican, a sceptic, unprincipled in his morals, venal in his methods of Government. He was nevertheless a man of the finest talents, and seems to have possessed the power of gaining personal ascendency over his companions by a profound knowledge of character. An acquaintance with Addison, doubtless commencing at the Kit-Kat Club, of which both were members, had convinced him that the latter had eminent qualifications for the task, which the Secretary’s post would involve, of dealing with men of very various conditions. Of the feelings with which Addison on his side regarded the Earl we have no record. “It is reasonable to suppose,” says Johnson, “that he counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant and blasting influence of the Lieutenant; and that, at least, by his intervention some good was done and some mischief prevented.” Not a shadow of an imputation, at any rate, rests upon his own conduct as Secretary. He appears to have acted strictly on that conception of public duty which he defines in one of his papers in theSpectator. Speaking of the marks of a corrupt official, “Such an one,” he declares, “is the man who, upon any pretence whatsoever, receives more than what is the stated and unquestioned fee of his office. Gratifications, tokens of thankfulness, despatch money, and the like specious terms, are the pretences under which corruption very frequently shelters itself. An honest man will, however, look on all these methods as unjustifiable,and will enjoy himself better in a moderate fortune, that is gained with honour and reputation, than in an overgrown estate that is cankered with the acquisitions of rapine and exaction. Were all our offices discharged with such an inflexible integrity, we should not see men in all ages, who grow up to exorbitant wealth, with the abilities which are to be met with in an ordinary mechanic.”[23]His friends perhaps considered that his impartiality was somewhat overstrained, since he always declined to remit the customary fees in their favour. “For,” said he, “I may have forty friends, whose fees may be two guineas a-piece; then I lose eighty guineas, and my friends gain but two a-piece.”
He took with him as his own Secretary, Eustace Budgell, who was related to him, and for whom he seems to have felt a warm affection. Budgell was a man of considerable literary ability, and was the writer of the various papers in theSpectatorsigned “X,” some of which succeed happily in imitating Addison’s style. While he was under his friend’s guidance his career was fairly successful, but his temper was violent, and when, at a later period of his life, he served in Ireland under a new Lieutenant and another Secretary, he became involved in disputes which led to his dismissal. A furious pamphlet against the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Bolton, published by him in spite of Addison’s remonstrances, only complicated his position, and from this period his fortunes steadily declined. He lost largely in the South Sea Scheme; spent considerable sums in a vain endeavour to obtain a seat in Parliament; and at last came under the influence of his kinsman, Tindal, the well-known deist, whose will he is accused of having falsified. With his usual infelicity he happened to rouse the resentment of Pope, and was treated inconsequence to one of the deadly couplets with which that great poet was in the habit of repaying real or supposed injuries:
“Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill,And write whate’er he pleased—except his will.”
The lines were memorable, and were doubtless often quoted, and the wretched man finding his life insupportable, ended it by drowning himself in the Thames.
During his residence in Ireland Addison firmly cemented his friendship with Swift, whose acquaintance he had probably made afterThe Campaignhad given him a leading position in the Whig party, on the side of which the sympathies of both were then enlisted. Swift’s admiration for Addison was warm and generous. When the latter was on the point of embarking on his new duties, Swift wrote to a common friend, Colonel Hunter, “Mr. Addison is hurrying away for Ireland, and I pray too much business may not spoille plus honnete homme du monde.” To Archbishop King he wrote: “Mr. Addison, who goes over our first secretary, is a most excellent person, and being my intimate friend I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things.” Addison’s duties took him occasionally to England, and during one of his visits Swift writes to him from Ireland: “I am convinced that whatever Government come over you will find all marks of kindness from any parliament here with respect to your employment, the Tories contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if you will come over again when you are at leisure we will raise an army and make you King of Ireland. Can you think so meanly of a kingdom as not to be pleased that every creature in it,who hath one grain of worth, has a veneration for you?” In hisJournal to Stellahe says, under date of October 12, 1710: “Mr. Addison’s election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king he would hardly be refused.” On his side Addison’s feelings were equally warm. He presented Swift with a copy of hisRemarks on Several Parts of Italy, inscribing it—“To the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.”
This friendship, founded on mutual respect, was destined to be impaired by political differences. In 1710 the credit of the Whig Ministry had been greatly undermined by the combined craft of Harley and Mrs. Masham, and Swift, who was anxious as to his position, on coming over to England to press his claims on Somers and Halifax, found that they were unable to help him. He appears to have considered that their want of power proceeded from want of will; at any rate, he made advances to Harley, which were of course gladly received. The Ministry were at this time being hard pressed by theExaminer, under the conduct of Prior, and at their instance Addison started theWhig Examinerin their defence. Though this paper was written effectively and with admirable temper, party polemics were little to the taste of its author, and, after five numbers, it ceased to exist on the 8th of October. Swift, now eager for the triumph of the Tories, expresses his delight to Stella by informing her, in the words of a Tory song, that “it was down among the dead men.” He himself wrote the first of hisExaminerson the 2d of the following November, and the crushing blows with which he followed it up did much to hasten the downfall of the Ministry. As was natural, Addison was somewhat displeased at hisfriend’s defection. In December Swift writes to Stella, “Mr. Addison and I are as different as black and white, and I believe our friendship will go off by this d—— business of party. He cannot bear seeing me fall in so with the Ministry; but I love him still as much as ever, though we seldom meet.” In January, 1710-11, he says: “I called at the coffee-house, where I had not been in a week, and talked coldly awhile with Mr. Addison; all our friendship and dearness are off; we are civil acquaintance, talk words, of course, of when we shall meet, and that’s all. Is it not odd?” Many similar entries follow; but on June 26, 1711, the record is: “Mr. Addison and I talked as usual, and as if we had seen one another yesterday.” And on September 14, he observes: “This evening I met Addison and pastoral Philips in the Park, and supped with them in Addison’s lodgings. We were very good company, and I yet know no man half so agreeable to me as he is. I sat with them till twelve.”
It was perhaps through the influence of Swift, who spoke warmly with the Tory Ministry on behalf of Addison, that the latter, on the downfall of the Whigs in the autumn of 1710, was for some time suffered to retain the Keepership of the Records in Bermingham’s Tower, an Irish place which had been bestowed upon him by the Queen as a special mark of the esteem with which she regarded him, and which appears to have been worth £400 a year.[24]In other respects his fortunes were greatly altered by the change of Ministry. “I have within this twelvemonth,” he writes to Wortley on the 21st of July, 1711, “lost a place of £2000 per ann., an estate in the Indies worth £14,000, and, what is worse than all therest, my mistress.[25]Hear this and wonder at my philosophy! I find they are going to take away my Irish place from me too; to which I must add that I have just resigned my fellowship, and that stocks sink every day.” In spite of these losses his circumstances were materially different from those in which he found himself after the fall of the previous Whig Ministry in 1702. Before the close of the year 1711 he was able to buy the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, for £10,000. Part of the purchase money was probably provided from what he had saved while he was Irish Secretary, and had invested in the funds; and part was, no doubt, made up from the profits of theTatlerand theSpectator. Miss Aikin says that a portion was advanced by his brother Gulston; but this seems to be an error. Two years before, the Governor of Fort St. George had died, leaving him his executor and residuary legatee. This is no doubt “the estate in the Indies” to which he refers in his letter to Wortley, but he had as yet derived no benefit from it. His brother had left his affairs in great confusion; the trustees were careless or dishonest; and though about £600 was remitted to him in the shape of diamonds in 1713, the liquidation was not complete till 1716, when only a small moiety of the sum bequeathed to him came into his hands.[26]
THETATLERANDSPECTATOR.
The career of Addison, as described in the preceding chapters, has exemplified the great change effected in the position of men of letters in England by the Restoration and the Revolution; it is now time to exhibit him in his most characteristic light, and to show the remarkable service the eighteenth century essayists performed for English society in creating an organised public opinion. It is difficult for ourselves, who look on the action of the periodical press as part of the regular machinery of life, to appreciate the magnitude of the task accomplished by Addison and Steele in the pages of theTatlerandSpectator. Every day, week, month, and quarter now sees the issue of a vast number of journals and magazines intended to form the opinion of every order and section of society; but in the reign of Queen Anne the only centres of society that existed were the Court, with the aristocracy that revolved about it, and the clubs and coffee-houses, in which the commercial and professional classes met to discuss matters of general interest. TheTatlerandSpectatorwere the first organs in which an attempt was made to give form and consistency to the opinion arising out of this social contact. But we should form a very erroneous idea of the character of these publications if weregarded them as the sudden productions of individual genius, written in satisfaction of a mere temporary taste. Like all masterpieces in art and literature, they mark the final stage of a long and painful journey, and the merit of their inventors consists largely in the judgment with which they profited by the experience of many predecessors.
The first newspaper published in Europe was theGazzettaof Venice, which was written in manuscript, and read aloud at certain places in the city, to supply information to the people during the war with the Turks in 1536. In England it was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the increased facilities of communication and the growth of wealth caused the purveyance of news to become a profitable employment. Towards the end of the sixteenth century newsmongers began to issue little pamphlets reporting extraordinary intelligence, but not issued at regular periods. The titles of these publications, which are all of them that survive, show that the arts with which the framers of the placards of our own newspapers endeavour to attract attention are of venerable antiquity: “Wonderful and Strange newes out of Suffolke and Essex, where it rained wheat the space of six or seven miles” (1583); “Lamentable newes out of Monmouthshire, containinge the wonderfull and fearfull accounts of the great overflowing of the waters in the said countrye” (1607).[27]
In 1622 one Nathaniel Butter began to publish a newspaper bearing a fixed title and appearing at stated intervals. It was called theWeekly Newes from Italy and Germanie, etc., and was said to be printed forMercurius Britannicus. This novelty provided much food for merriment to the poets, and Ben Jonson in hisStaple of Newssatirises Butter, under the name of Nathaniel, in a passage which the curious reader will do well to consult, as it shows the low estimation in which newspapers were then held.[28]
Though it might appear from Jonson’s dialogue that the newspapers of that day contained many items of domestic intelligence, such was scarcely the case. Butter and his contemporaries, as was natural to men who confined themselves to the publication of news without attempting to form opinion, obtained their materials almost entirely from abroad, whereby they at once aroused more vividly the imagination of their readers, and doubtless gave more scope to their own invention. Besides, they were not at liberty to retail home news of that political kind which would have been of the greatest interest to the public. For a long time the evanescent character of the newspaper allowed it to escape the attention of the licenser, but the growing demand for this sort of reading at last brought it under supervision, and so strict was the control exercised over even the reports of foreign intelligence that its weekly appearance was frequently interrupted.
In 1641, however, the Star-chamber was abolished, and the heated political atmosphere of the times generated a new species of journal, in which we find the first attempt to influence opinion through the periodical press. This was the newspaper known under the generic title ofMercury. Many weekly publications of this name appeared during the Civil Wars on the side of both King and Parliament,Mercurius Anlicusbeing the representative organ of the Royalist cause, andMercurius PragmaticusandMercurius Politicusof the Republicans. Party animosities were thus kept alive, and proved so inconvenient to theGovernment that the Parliament interfered to curtail the liberty of the press. In 1647 an ordinance passed the House of Lords, prohibiting any person from “making, writing, printing, selling, publishing, or uttering, or causing to be made, any book, sheet, or sheets of news whatsoever, except the same be licensed by both or either House of Parliament, with the name of the author, printer, and licenser affixed.” In spite of this prohibition, which was renewed by Act of Parliament in 1662, many unlicensed periodicals continued to appear, till in 1663 the Government, finding their repressive measures insufficient, resolved to grapple with the difficulty by monopolising the right to publish news.
The author of this new project was the well-known Roger L’Estrange, who in 1663 obtained a patent assigning to him “all the sole privilege of writing, printing, and publishing all Narratives, Advertisements, Mercuries, Intelligencers, Diurnals, and other books of public intelligence.” L’Estrange’s journal was called thePublic Intelligencer; it was published once a week, and in its form was a rude anticipation of the modern newspaper, containing as it did an obituary, reports of the proceedings in Parliament and in the Court of Claims, a list of the circuits of the judges, of sheriffs, Lent preachers, etc. After being continued for two years it gave place first, in 1665, to theOxford Gazette, published at Oxford, whither the Court had retired during the plague; and in 1666 to theLondon Gazette, which was under the immediate control of an Under-Secretary of State. The office of Gazetteer became henceforth a regular ministerial appointment, and was viewed with different eyes according as men were affected towards the Government. Steele, who held it, says of it: “My next appearance as a writer was in the quality of thelowest Minister of State—to wit, in the office of Gazetteer; where I worked faithfully according to order, without ever erring against the rule observed by all Ministers, to keep that paper very innocent and very insipid.” Pope, on the other hand, who regarded it as an organ published to influence opinion in favour of the Government, is constant in his attacks upon it, and has immortalised it in the memorable lines in theDunciadbeginning, “Next plunged a feeble but a desperate pack,” etc.
In 1679 the Licensing Act passed in 1662 expired, and the Parliament declined to renew it. The Court was thus left without protection against the expression of public opinion, which was daily becoming more bold and outspoken. In his extremity the King fell back on the servility of the judges, and, having procured from them an opinion that the publishing of any printed matter without license was contrary to the common law, he issued his famous Proclamation (in 1680) “to prohibit and forbid all persons whatsoever to print or publish any news, book, or pamphlets of news, not licensed by his Majesty’s authority.”
Disregard of the proclamation was treated as a breach of the peace, and many persons were punished accordingly. This severity produced the effect intended. The voice of the periodical press was stifled, and theLondon Gazettewas left almost in exclusive possession of the field of news. When Monmouth landed in 1685 the King managed to obtain from Parliament a renewal of the Licensing Act for seven years, and even after the Revolution of 1688 several attempts were made by the Ministerial Whigs to prolong or to renew the operation of the Act. In spite, however, of the violence of the organs of “Grub Street,” which had grown up under it, these attempts were unsuccessful; itwas justly felt that it was wiser to leave falsehood and scurrility to be gradually corrected by public opinion, as speaking through an unfettered press, than to attack them by a law which they had proved themselves able to defy. From 1682 the freedom of the press may therefore be said to date, and the lapse of the Licensing Act was the signal for a remarkable outburst of journalistic enterprise and invention. Not only did the newspapers devoted to the report of foreign intelligence reappear in greatly increased numbers, but, whereas the oldMercurieshad never been published more than once in the same week, the new comers made their appearance twice and sometimes even three times. In 1702 was printed the first daily newspaper,The Daily Courant. It could only at starting provide material to cover one side of a half sheet of paper; but the other side was very soon covered with printed matter, in which form its existence was prolonged till 1735.
The development of party government of course encouraged the controversial capacities of the journalist, and many notorious, and some famous names are now found among the combatants in the political arena. On the side of the Whigs the most redoubtable champions were Daniel Defoe, of theReview, who was twice imprisoned and once set in the pillory for his political writings; John Tutchin, of theObservator; and Ridpath, of theFlying Post—all of whom have obtained places in theDunciad. The old Tories appear to have been satisfied during the early part of Queen Anne’s reign with prosecuting the newspapers that attacked them; but Harley, who understood the power of the press, engaged Prior to harass the Whigs in theExaminer, and was afterwards dexterous enough to secure the invaluable assistance of Swift for the same paper. In opposition to theExaminerin its early days the Whigs,as has been said, started theWhig Examiner, under the auspices of Addison, so that the two great historical parties had their cases stated by the two greatest prose-writers of the first half of the eighteenth century.
Beside the Quidnunc and the party politician, another class of reader now appeared demanding aliment in the press. Men of active and curious minds, with a little leisure and a large love of discussion, loungers at Will’s or at the Grecian Coffee-Houses, were anxious to have their doubts on all subjects resolved by a printed oracle. Their tastes were gratified by the ingenuity of John Dunton, whose strange account of hisLife and Errorsthrows a strong light on the literary history of this period. In 1690 Dunton published hisAthenian Gazette, the name of which he afterwards altered to theAthenian Mercury. The object of this paper was to answer questions put to the editor by the public. These were of all kinds—on religion, casuistry, love, literature, and manners—no question being too subtle or absurd to extract a reply from the conductor of the paper. TheAthenian Mercuryseems to have been read by as many distinguished men of the period asNotes and Queriesin our own time, and there can be no doubt that the quaint humours it originated gave the first hint to the inventors of theTatlerand theSpectator.
Advertisements were inserted in the newspapers at a comparatively early period of their existence. The editor acted as middleman between the advertiser and the public, and made his announcements in a style of easy frankness which will appear to the modern reader extremely refreshing. Thus, in the “Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade” (1682), there are the following:
“If I can meet with a sober man that has a counter-tenor voice, I can help him to a place worth thirty pound the year or more.“If any noble or other gentleman wants a porter that is very lusty, comely, and six foot high and two inches, I can help.“I want a complete young man that will wear a livery, to wait on a very valuable gentleman; but he must know how to play on a violin or flute.“I want a genteel footman that can play on the violin, to wait on a person of honour.”[29]
“If I can meet with a sober man that has a counter-tenor voice, I can help him to a place worth thirty pound the year or more.
“If any noble or other gentleman wants a porter that is very lusty, comely, and six foot high and two inches, I can help.
“I want a complete young man that will wear a livery, to wait on a very valuable gentleman; but he must know how to play on a violin or flute.
“I want a genteel footman that can play on the violin, to wait on a person of honour.”[29]
Everything was now prepared for the production of a class of newspaper designed to form and direct public opinion on rational principles. The press was emancipated from State control; a reading public had constituted itself out of thehabituésof the coffee-houses and clubs; nothing was wanted but an inventive genius to adapt the materials at his disposal to the circumstances of the time. The required hero was not long in making his appearance.
Richard Steele, the son of an official under the Irish Government, was, above all things, “a creature of ebullient heart.” Impulse and sentiment were with him always far stronger motives of action than reason, principle, or even interest. He left Oxford, without taking a degree, from an ardent desire to serve in the army, thereby sacrificing his prospect of succeeding to a family estate; his extravagance and dissipation while serving in the cavalry were notorious; yet this did not dull the clearness of his moral perceptions, for it was while his excesses were at their height that he dedicated to his commanding officer, Lord Cutts, hisChristian Hero. Vehement in his political, as in all other feelings, he did not hesitate to resign the office he held under the Tory Government in 1711 in order toattack it for what he considered its treachery to the country; but he was equally outspoken, and with equal disadvantage to himself, when he found himself at a later period in disagreement with the Whigs. He had great fertility of invention, strong natural humour, true though uncultivated taste, and inexhaustible human sympathy.
His varied experience had made him well acquainted with life and character, and in his office of Gazetteer he had had an opportunity of watching the eccentricities of the public taste, which, now emancipated from restraint, began vaguely to feel after new ideals. That, under such circumstances, he should have formed the design of treating current events from a humorous point of view was only natural, but he was indebted for the form of his newspaper to the most original genius of the age. Swift had early in the eighteenth century exercised his ironical vein by treating the everyday occurrences of life in a mock-heroic style. Among his pieces of this kind that were most successful in catching the public taste were the humorous predictions of the death of Partridge, the astrologer, signed with the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Steele, seizing on the name and character of Partridge’s fictitious rival, turned him with much pleasantry into the editor of a new journal, the design of which he makes Isaac describe as follows:
“The state of conversation and business in this town having long been perplexed with Pretenders in both kinds, in order to open men’s minds against such abuses, it appeared no unprofitable undertaking to publish a Paper, which should observe upon the manners of the pleasurable, as well as the busy part of mankind. To make this generally read, it seemed the most proper method to form it by way of a Letter of Intelligence, consisting of such parts as might gratify the curiosity of persons of all conditions and of each sex.... The general purposes of this Paper is to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and torecommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour.”[30]
The name of theTatler, Isaac informs us, was “invented in honour of the fair sex,” for whose entertainment the new paper was largely designed. It appeared three times a week, and its price was a penny, though it seems that the first number, published April 12, 1709, was distributedgratisas an advertisement. In order to make the contents of the paper varied it was divided into five portions, of which the editor gives the following account:
“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’ Coffee-House; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment.”[31]
In this division we see the importance of the coffee-houses as the natural centres of intelligence and opinion. Of the four houses mentioned, St. James’ and White’s, both of them in St. James’ Street, were the chief haunts of statesmen and men of fashion, and the latter had acquired an infamous notoriety for the ruinous gambling of itshabitués. Will’s, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, kept up the reputation which it had procured in Dryden’s time as the favourite meeting-place of men of letters; while the Grecian, in Devereux Court in the Strand, which was the oldest coffee-house in London, afforded a convenientrendezvousfor the learned Templars. At starting, the design announced in the first number was adhered to with tolerable fidelity. The paper dated from St. James’ Coffee-House was always devoted to the recital of foreign news; that from Will’s either criticised the current dramas, orcontained a copy of verses from some author of repute, or a piece of general literary criticism; the latest gossip at White’s was reproduced in a fictitious form and with added colour. Advertisements were also inserted; and half a sheet of the paper was left blank, in order that at the last moment the most recent intelligence might be added in manuscript, after the manner of the contemporary news-letters. In all these respects the character of the newspaper was preserved; but in the method of treating news adopted by the editor there was a constant tendency to subordinate matter of fact to the elements of humour, fiction, and sentiment. In his survey of the manners of the time, Isaac, as an astrologer, was assisted by a familiar spirit, named Pacolet, who revealed to him the motives and secrets of men; his sister, Mrs. Jenny Distaff, was occasionally deputed to produce the paper from the wizard’s “own apartment;” and Kidney, the waiter at St. James’ Coffee-House, was humorously represented as the chief authority in all matters of foreign intelligence.
The mottoes assumed by theTatlerat different periods of its existence mark the stages of its development. On its first appearance, when Steele seems to have intended it to be little more than a lively record of news, the motto placed at the head of each paper was
“Quidquid agunt homines,nostri est farrago libelli.”
It soon became evident, however, that its true function was not merely to report the actions of men, but to discuss the propriety of their actions; and by the time that sufficient material had accumulated to constitute a volume, the essayists felt themselves justified in appropriating the words used by Pliny in the preface to hisNatural History:
“Nemo apud nos qui idem tentaverit: equidem sentio peculiarem in studiis causam corum esse, qui difficultatibus victis, utilitatem juvandi, protulerunt gratiæ placendi. Res ardua vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, fastidiis gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero naturam, et naturæ suæ omnia. ItaqueNON ASSECUTISvoluisse, abunde pulchrum atque magnificum est.”
The disguise of the mock astrologer proved very useful to Steele in his character of moralist. It enabled him to give free utterance to his better feelings, without the risk of incurring the charge of inconsistency or hypocrisy, and nothing can be more honourable to him than the open manner in which he acknowledges his own unfitness for the position of a moralist: “I shall not carry my humility so far,” says he, “as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess my life is at best but pardonable. With no greater character than this, a man would make but an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele.”[32]
As Steele cannot claim the sole merit of having invented the form of theTatler, so, too, it must be remembered that he could never have addressed society in the high moral tone assumed by Bickerstaff if the road had not been prepared for him by others. One name among his predecessors stands out with a special title to honourable record. Since the Restoration the chief school of manners had been the stage, and the flagrant example of immorality set by the Court had been bettered by the invention of the comic dramatists of the period. Indecency was the fashion; religion and sobriety were identified by the polite world with Puritanism and hypocrisy. Even the Churchhad not yet ventured to say a word in behalf of virtue against the prevailing taste, and when at last a clergyman raised his voice on behalf of the principles which he professed, the blow which he dealt to his antagonists was the more damaging because it was entirely unexpected. Jeremy Collier was not only a Tory but a Jacobite, not only a High Churchman but a Nonjuror, who had been outlawed for his fidelity to the principles of Legitimism; and that such a man should have published theShort View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, reflecting, as the book did, in the strongest manner on the manners of the fallen dynasty, was as astounding as thunder from a clear sky. Collier, however, was a man of sincere piety, whose mind was for the moment occupied only by the overwhelming danger of the evil which he proposed to attack. It is true that his method of attack was cumbrous, and that his conclusions were far too sweeping and often unjust; nevertheless, the general truth of his criticisms was felt to be irresistible. Congreve and Vanbrugh each attempted an apology for their profession; both, however, showed their perception of the weakness of their position by correcting or recasting scenes in their comedies to which Collier had objected. Dryden accepted the reproof in a nobler spirit. Even while he had pandered to the tastes of the times, he had been conscious of his treachery to the cause of true art, and had broken out in a fine passage in hisOde to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew:
“O gracious God! how far have weProfaned thy heavenly gift of poesy!Made prostitute and profligate the Muse,Debased to each obscene and impious use!·······“O wretched we! why were we hurried downThis lubrique and adulterous age(Nay, added fat pollutions of our own)To increase the streaming ordure of the stage?”
When Collier attacked him he bent his head in submission. “In many things,” says he, “he has taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thought and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.”[33]
The first blow against fashionable immorality having been boldly struck, was followed up systematically. In 1690 was founded “The Society for the Reformation of Manners,” which published every year an account of the progress made in suppressing profaneness and debauchery by its means. It continued its operations till 1738, and during its existence prosecuted, according to its own calculations, 101,683 persons. William III. showed himself prompt to encourage the movement which his subjects had begun. TheLondon Gazetteof 27th February, 1698-99, contains a report of the following remarkable order:
“His Majesty being informed, That, notwithstanding an order made the 4th of June, 1697, by the Earl of Sunderland, then Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty’s Household, to prevent the Prophaneness and Immorality of the Stage, several Plays have been lately acted containing expressions contrary to Religion and Good Manners: and whereas the Master of the Revels has represented, That, in contempt of the said order, the actors do often neglect to leave out such Prophane and Indecent expressions as he has thought proper to be omitted. These are therefore to signifie his Majesty’spleasure, that you do not hereafter presume to act anything in any play contrary to Religion and Good Manners as you shall answer it at your utmost peril. Given under my Hand this 18th of February, 1698. In the eleventh year of his Majesty’s reign.”
It is difficult to realise, in reading the terms of this order, that only thirteen years had elapsed since the death of Charles II., and undoubtedly a very large share of the credit due for such a revolution in the public taste is to be assigned to Collier. Collier, however, did nothing in a literary or artistic sense to improve the character of English literature. His severity, uncompromising as that of the Puritans, inspired Vice with terror, but could not plead with persuasion on behalf of Virtue; his sweeping conclusions struck at the roots of Art as well as of Immorality. He sought to destroy the drama and kindred pleasures of the Imagination, not to reform them. What the age needed was a writer to satisfy its natural desires for healthy and rational amusement, and Steele, with his strongly-developed twofold character, was the man of all others to bridge over the chasm between irreligious licentiousness and Puritanical rigidity. Driven headlong on one side of his nature towards all the tastes and pleasures which absorbed the Court of Charles II., his heart in the midst of his dissipation never ceased to approve of whatever was great, noble, and generous. He has described himself with much feeling in his disquisition on theRake, a character which he says many men are desirous of assuming without any natural qualifications for supporting it:
“A Rake,” says he, “is a man always to be pitied; and if he lives one day is certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good nature; all which he must have by nature and educationbefore he can be allowed to be or to have been of this order.... His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures before reason has power to come in to his rescue.”
That impulsiveness of feeling which is here described, and which was the cause of so many of Steele’s failings in real life, made him the most powerful and persuasive advocate of Virtue in fiction. Of all the imaginative English essayists he is the most truly natural. His large heart seems to rush out in sympathy with any tale of sorrow or exhibition of magnanimity; and even in criticism, his true natural instinct, joined to his constitutional enthusiasm, often raises his judgments to a level with those of Addison himself, as in his excellent essay in theSpectatoron Raphael’s cartoons. Examples of these characteristics in his style are to be found in theStory of Unnion and Valentine,[34]and in the fine paper describing two tragedies of real life;[35]in the series of papers on duelling, occasioned by a duel into which he was himself forced against his own inclination;[36]and in the sound advice which Isaac gives to his half-sister Jenny on the morrow of her marriage.[37]Perhaps, however, the chivalry and generosity of feeling which make Steele’s writings so attractive are most apparent in the delightful paper containing the letter of Serjeant Hall from the camp before Mons. After pointing out to his readers the admirable features in the serjeant’s simple letter, Steele concludes as follows:
“If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and such great thingsexecuted by them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet at the battle of Coldstream, in Scotland, when Monk charged at the head of the regiment now called Coldstream, from the victory of that day—I remember it as well as if it were yesterday; I stood on the left of old West, who I believe is now at Chelsea—I say to me, who know very well this part of mankind, I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed from the same, if not from a nobler, impulse than that of gentlemen and officers. They have the same taste of being acceptable to their friends, and go through the difficulties of that profession by the same irresistible charm of fellowship and the communication of joys and sorrows which quickens the relish of pleasure and abates the anguish of pain. Add to this that they have the same regard to fame, though they do not expect so great a share as men above them hope for; but I will engage Serjeant Hall would die ten thousand deaths rather than that a word should be spoken at the Red Lettice, or any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty. If you will have my opinion, then, of the Serjeant’s letter, I pronounce the style to be mixed, but truly epistolary; the sentiment relating to his own wound in the sublime; the postscript of Pegg Hartwell in the gay; and the whole the picture of the bravest sort of men, that is to say, a man of great courage and small hopes.”[38]
With such excellences of style and sentiment it is no wonder that theTatlerrapidly established itself in public favour. It was a novel experience for the general reader to be provided three times a week with entertainment that pleased his imagination without offending his sense of decency or his religious instincts. But a new hand shortly appeared in theTatler, which was destined to carry the art of periodical essay-writing to a perfection beside which even the humour of Steele appears rude and unpolished. Addison and Steele had been friends since boyhood. They had been contemporaries at the Charter House, and, as we have seen, Steele had sometimes spent his holidays in the parsonage of Addison’s father. Hewas a postmaster at Merton about the same time that his friend was a Fellow of Magdalen. The admiration which he conceived for the hero of his boyhood lasted, as so often happens, through life; he exhibited his veneration for him in all places, and even when Addison indulged his humour at his expense he showed no resentment. Addison, on his side, seems to have treated Steele with a kind of gracious condescension. The latter was one of the few intimate friends to whom he unbent in conversation; and while he was Under-Secretary of State he aided him in the production ofThe Tender Husband, which was dedicated to him by the author. Of this play Steele afterwards declared with characteristic impulse that many of the most admired passages were the work of his friend, and that he “thought very meanly of himself that he had never publicly avowed it.”
The authorship of theTatlerwas at first kept secret to all the world. It is said that the hand of Steele discovered itself to Addison on reading in the fifth number a remark which he remembered to have himself made to Steele on the judgment of Virgil, as shown in the appellation of “Dux Trojanus,” which the Latin poet assigns to Æneas, when describing his adventure with Dido in the cave, in the place of the usual epithet of “pius” or “pater.” Thereupon he offered his services as a contributor, and these were of course gladly accepted. The first paper sent by Addison to theTatlerwas No. 18, wherein is displayed that inimitable art which makes a man appear infinitely ridiculous by the ironical commendation of his offences against right, reason, and good taste. The subject is the approaching peace with France, and it is noticeable that the article of foreign news, which had been treated in previousTatlerswith complete seriousness,is here for the first time invested with an air of pleasantry. The distress of the news-writers at the prospect of peace is thus described:
“There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or Post-boys, or by what other name or title soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they have taken more towns and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes when our armies have lain still, and given the general assault to many a place when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it, and completed victories when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands Boyer has slain his ten thousands. This gentleman can indeed be never enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during this whole war: he has laid about him with an inexpressible fury, and, like offended Marius of ancient Rome, made such havoc among his countrymen as must be the work of two or three ages to repair.... It is impossible for this ingenious sort of men to subsist after a peace: every one remembers the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King Charles the Second, when they could not furnish out a single paper of news without lighting up a comet in Germany or a fire in Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies were grown so familiar that they had lost their name, as a great poet of that age has it. I remember Mr. Dyer, who is justly looked upon by all the foxhunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales, in so much that in five months’ time (for I had the curiosity to examine his letters on that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of the river Thames, besides two porpusses and a sturgeon.”
The appearance of Addison as a regular contributor to theTatlergradually brought about a revolution in thecharacter of the paper. For some time longer, indeed, articles continued to be dated from the different coffee-houses, but only slight efforts were made to distinguish the materials furnished from White’s, Will’s, or Isaac’s own apartment. When the hundredth number was reached a fresh address is given at Shere Lane, where the astrologer lived, and henceforward the papers from White’s and Will’s grow extremely rare; those from the Grecian may be said to disappear; and the foreign intelligence, dated from St. James’, whenever it is inserted, which is seldom, is as often as not made the text of a literary disquisition. Allegories become frequent, and the letters sent, or supposed to be sent, to Isaac at his home address furnish the material for many numbers. The Essay, in fact, or that part of the newspaper which goes to form public opinion, preponderates greatly over that portion which is devoted to the report of news. Spence quotes from a Mr. Chute: “I have heard Sir Richard Steele say that, though he had a greater share in theTatlersthan in theSpectators, he thought the news article in the first of these was what contributed much to their success.”[39]Chute, however, seems to speak with a certain grudge against Addison, and the statement ascribed by him to Steele is intrinsically improbable. It is not very likely that, as the proprietor of theTatler, he would have dispensed with any element in it that contributed to its popularity, yet after No. 100 the news articles are seldom found. The truth is that Steele recognised the superiority of Addison’s style, and with his usual quickness accommodated the form of his journal to the genius of the new contributor.
“I have only one gentleman,” says he, in the preface to theTatler, “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 has lived in 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 own auxiliary; when I had once called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him.”
With his usual enthusiastic generosity, Steele, in this passage, unduly depreciates his own merits to exalt the genius of his friend. A comparison of the amount of material furnished to theTatlerby Addison and Steele respectively shows that out of 271 numbers the latter contributed 188 and the former only 42. Nor is the disparity in quantity entirely balanced by the superior quality of Addison’s papers. Though it was, doubtless, his fine workmanship and admirable method which carried to perfection the style of writing initiated in theTatler, yet there is scarcely a department of essay-writing developed in theSpectatorwhich does not trace its origin to Steele. It is Steele who first ventures to raise his voice against the prevailing dramatic taste of the age on behalf of the superior morality and art of Shakespeare’s plays.
“Of all men living,” says he, in the eighthTatler, “I pity players (who must be men of good understanding to be capable of being such) that they are obliged to repeat and assume proper gestures for representing things of which their reason must be ashamed, and which they must disdain their audience for approving. The amendment of these low gratifications is only to be made by people of condition, by encouraging the noble 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 theperson 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.”
Steele, too, it was who attacked, with all the vigour of which he was capable, the fashionable vice of gambling. So severe were his comments on this subject in theTatlerthat he raised against himself the fierce resentment of the whole community of sharpers, though he was fortunate enough at the same time to enlist the sympathies of the better part of society. “Lord Forbes,” says Mr. Nichols, the antiquary, in his notes to theTatler, “happened to be in company with the two military gentlemen just mentioned” (Major-General Davenport and Brigadier Bisset) “in St. James’ Coffee-House when two or three well-dressed men, all unknown to his lordship or his company, came into the room, and in a public, outrageous manner abused Captain Steele as the author of theTatler. One of them, with great audacity and vehemence, swore that he would cut Steele’s throat or teach him better manners. ‘In this country,’ said Lord Forbes, ‘you will find it easier to cut a purse than to cut a throat.’ His brother officers instantly joined with his lordship and turned the cut-throats out of the coffee-house with every mark of disgrace.”[40]
The practice of duelling, also, which had hitherto passed unreproved, was censured by Steele in a series of papers in theTatler, which seemed to have been written on an occasion when, having been forced to fight much against his will, he had the misfortune dangerously to wound his antagonist.[41]The sketches of character studied from life, and the letters from fictitious correspondents, both ofwhich form so noticeable a feature in theSpectator, appear roughly, but yet distinctly, drafted in theTatler. Even the papers of literary criticism, afterwards so fully elaborated by Addison, are anticipated by his friend, who may fairly claim the honour to have been the first to speak with adequate respect of the genius of Milton.[42]In a word, whatever was perfected by Addison was begun by Steele; if the one has for ever associated his name with theSpectator, the other may justly appropriate the credit of theTatler, a work which bears to its successor the same kind of relation that the frescoes of Masaccio bear, in point of dramatic feeling and style, to those of Raphael; the later productions deserving honour for finish of execution, the earlier for priority of invention.
TheTatlerwas published till the 2d of January, 1710-11, and was discontinued, according to Steele’s own account, because the public had penetrated his disguise, and he was therefore no longer able to preach with effect in the person of Bickerstaff. It may be doubted whether this was his real motive for abandoning the paper. He had been long known as its conductor; and that his readers had shown no disinclination to listen to him is proved, not only by the large circulation of each number of theTatler, but by the extensive sale of the successive volumes of the collected papers at the high price of a guinea apiece. He was, in all probability, led to drop the publication by finding that the political element that the paper contained was a source of embarrassment to him. His sympathies were vehemently Whig; theTatlerfrom the beginning had celebrated the virtues of Marlborough and his friends, both directly and under cover of fiction; and he had been rewarded for his services with a commissionership of theStamp-office. When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, Harley, setting a just value on the abilities of Steele, left him in the enjoyment of his office and expressed his desire to serve him in any other way. Under these circumstances, Steele no doubt felt it incumbent on him to discontinue a paper which, both from its design and its traditions, would have tempted him into the expression of his political partialities.
For two months, therefore, “the censorship of Great Britain,” as he himself expressed it, “remained in commission,” until Addison and he once more returned to discharge the duties of the office in theSpectator, the first number of which was published on the 1st of March, 1710-11. TheTatlerhad only been issued three times a week, but the conductors of the new paper were now so confident in their own resources and in the favour of the public that they undertook to bring out one number daily. The new paper at once exhibited the impress of Addison’s genius, which had gradually transformed the character of theTatleritself. The latter was originally, in every sense of the word, a newspaper, but the Spectator from the first indulged his humour at the expense of the clubs of Quidnuncs.
“There is,” says he, “another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to as being altogether unfurnished with ideas till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration when I have heard them asking the first man they have met with whether there was any news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to talk of till about twelve o’clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinentall the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper; and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours.”[43]
For these, and other men of leisure, a kind of paper differing from theTatler, which proposed only to retail the various species of gossip in the coffee-houses, was required, and the new entertainment was provided by the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of several ideal types of character grouped round the central figure of the Spectator. They represent considerable classes or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, men of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, which furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the Spectator himself, who delivers the judgments of reason and common-sense. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his simplicity, his high sense of honour, and his old-world reminiscences, reflects the country gentleman of the best kind; Sir Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of the enterprising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted moneyed interest; Captain Sentry speaks for the army; the Templar for the world of taste and learning; the clergyman for theology and philosophy; while Will Honeycomb, the elderly man of fashion, gives the Spectator many opportunities for criticizing the traditions of morality and breeding surviving from the days of the Restoration. Thus, instead of the division of places which determined the arrangement of theTatler, the different subjects treated in theSpectatorare distributed among a variety of persons: the Templar is substituted for the Grecian Coffee-House and Will’s;Will Honeycomb takes the place of White’s; and Captain Sentry, whose appearances are rare, stands for the more voluminous article on foreign intelligence published in the old periodical, under the head of St. James’s. The Spectator himself finds a natural prototype in Isaac Bickerstaff, but his character is drawn with a far greater finish and delicacy, and is much more essential to the design of the paper which he conducts, than was that of the old astrologer.
The aim of the Spectator was to establish a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art, and literature.
“Since,” says he in one of his early numbers, “I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.”[44]
Johnson, in hisLife of Addison, says that the task undertaken in theSpectatorwas “first attempted by Casa in his book ofManners, and Castiglione in hisCourtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected that reformation which theirauthors intended, and their precepts now are no longer wanted.” He afterwards praises theTatlerandSpectatorby saying that they “adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness, and, like La Bruyère, exhibited the characters and manners of the age.” This commendation scarcely does justice to the work of Addison and Steele. Casa, a man equally distinguished for profligacy and politeness, merely codified in hisGalateothe laws of good manners which prevailed in his age. He is the Lord Chesterfield of Italy. Castiglione gives instructions to the young courtier how to behave in such a manner as to make himself agreeable to his prince. La Bruyère’s characters are no doubt the literary models of those which appear in theSpectator. But La Bruyère merely described what he saw, with admirable wit, urbanity, and scholarship, but without any of the earnestness of a moral reformer. He could never have conceived the character of Sir Roger de Coverley; and, though he was ready enough to satirise the follies of society as an observer from the outside, to bring “philosophy out of closets and libraries, to dwell in clubs and assemblies,” was far from being his ambition. He would probably have thought the publication of a newspaper scarcely consistent with his position as a gentleman.
A very large portion of theSpectatoris devoted to reflections on the manners of women. Addison saw clearly how important a part the female sex was destined to play in the formation of English taste and manners. Removed from the pedestal of enthusiastic devotion on which they had been placed during the feudal ages, women were treated under the Restoration as mere playthings and luxuries. As manners became more decent they found themselves secured in their emancipated position but destitute of seriousand rational employment. It was Addison’s object, therefore, to enlist the aid of female genius in softening, refining, and moderating the gross and conflicting tastes of a half-civilised society.
“There are none,” he says, “to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them, rather as they are women than as they are reasonable creatures, and are more adapted to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is reckoned a very good morning’s work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer’s or a toy shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women, though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as of love, into their male beholders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, if not an improving entertainment, and by that means, at least, divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles.”[45]