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.
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,Advicefrom the ScandalousClub.Translated out of French.This Society is a Corporation long since established inParis, and we cannot compleat our Advices fromFrance, 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 lastBartholomewFair; 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 aboutBartholomewFair; 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 nextAugust.On the 10th of September last, there was a long Hearing, before the Club, of a Fellow that said he had killd the Duke ofBavaria. Now as David punishd the Man that said he had killd KingSaul, whether it was so or no, twas thought this Fellow ought to be delivered up to Justice, tho the Duke ofBavariawas 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 howPost-ManorPost-Boycan 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.'