Addison took these cards, and played an honest game with them successfully. When, at the end of 1708, the Earl of Sunderland, Marlborough's son-in-law, lost his secretaryship, Addison lost his place as under-secretary; but he did not object to go to Ireland as chief secretary to Lord Wharton, the new Lord-lieutenant, an active party man, a leader on the turf with reputation for indulgence after business hours according to the fashion of the court of Charles II.
Lord Wharton took to Ireland Clayton to write him musical entertainments, and a train of parasites of quality. He was a great borough-monger, and is said at one critical time to have returned thirty members. He had no difficulty, therefore, in finding Addison a seat, and made him in that year, 1709, M.P. for Malmesbury. Addison only once attempted to speak in the House of Commons, and then, embarrassed by encouraging applause that welcomed him he stammered and sat down. But when, having laid his political cards down for a time, and at ease in his own home, pen in hand, he brought his sound mind and quick humour to the aid of his friend Steele, he came with him into direct relation with the English people. Addison never gave posterity a chance of knowing what was in him till, following Steele's lead, he wrote those papers in
Tatler
,
Spectator
, and
Guardian
, wherein alone his genius abides with us, and will abide with English readers to the end. The
Tatler
, the
Spectator
, and the
Guardian
were, all of them, Steele's, begun and ended by him at his sole discretion. In these three journals Steele was answerable for 510 papers; Addison for 369. Swift wrote two papers, and sent about a dozen fragments. Congreve wrote one article in the
Tatler
; Pope wrote thrice for the
Spectator
, and eight times for the
Guardian
. Addison, who was in Ireland when the
Tatler
first appeared, only guessed the authorship by an expression in an early number; and it was not until eighty numbers had been issued, and the character of the new paper was formed and established, that Addison, on his return to London, joined the friend who, with his usual complete absence of the vanity of self-assertion, finally ascribed to the ally he dearly loved, the honours of success.
It was the kind of success Steele had desired — a widely-diffused influence for good. The
Tatlers
were penny papers published three times a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blank half-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of the day's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It was through these, and the daily
Spectators
which succeeded them, that the people of England really learnt to read. The few leaves of sound reason and fancy were but a light tax on uncultivated powers of attention. Exquisite grace and true kindliness, here associated with familiar ways and common incidents of everyday life, gave many an honest man fresh sense of the best happiness that lies in common duties honestly performed, and a fresh energy, free as Christianity itself from malice — for so both Steele and Addison meant that it should be — in opposing themselves to the frivolities and small frauds on the conscience by which manliness is undermined.
A pamphlet by John Gay —
The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country
— was dated May 3, 1711, about two months after the
Spectator
had replaced the
Tatler
. And thus Gay represents the best talk of the town about these papers:
"Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will be necessary to inform you that at the beginning of the winter, to the infinite surprise of all the Town, Mr. Steele flung up hisTatler, and instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, subscribed himself Richard Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the Town for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them.The chief reason he thought fit to give for his leaving off writing was, that having been so long looked on in all public places and companies as the Author of those papers, he found that his most intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to speak or act before him.The Town was very far from being satisfied with this reason, and most people judged the true cause to be, either
However that were, his disappearance seemed to be bewailed as some general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement, and the Coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire'sLucubrationsalone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together.It must indeed be confessed that never man threw up his pen, under stronger temptations to have employed it longer. His reputation was at a greater height, than I believe ever any living author's was before him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably considerable. Every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them.Lastly, it was highly improbable that, if he threw off a Character, the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind, however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet with the same reception.To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings I shall, in the first place, observe, that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our gallant and polite authors. The latter have endeavoured to please the Age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the character of a Fine Gentleman.Bickerstaffventured to tell the Town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth.Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of the Age — either in morality, criticism, or good breeding — he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for Virtue and Good Sense.It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the Town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished or given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to Virtue and Religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by shewing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of Learning.He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the Change. Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best Casuist of any man in England.Lastly, his writings have set all our Wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and, although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.The vast variety of subjects which Mr. Steele has treated of, in so different manners, and yet all so perfectly well, made the World believe that it was impossible they should all come from the same hand. This set every one upon guessing who was the Esquire's friend? and most people at first fancied it must be Doctor Swift; but it is now no longer a secret, that his only great and constant assistant was Mr. Addison.This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much; and who refuses to have his name set before those pieces, which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add to this Gentleman's reputation: whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the World, that he was the greatest Master in Europe in those two languages.I am assured, from good hands, that all the visions, and other tracts of that way of writing, with a very great number of the most exquisite pieces of wit and raillery through theLucubrationsare entirely of this Gentleman's composing: which may, in some measure, account for that different Genius, which appears in the winter papers, from those of the summer; at which time, as theExamineroften hinted, this friend of Mr. Steele was in Ireland.Mr. Steele confesses in his last Volume of theTatlersthat he is obliged to Dr. Swift for hisTown Shower, and theDescription of the Morn, with some other hints received from him in private conversation.I have also heard that several of thoseLetters, which came as from unknown hands, were written by Mr. Henley: which is an answer to your query, 'Who those friends are whom Mr. Steele speaks of in his lastTatler?'But to proceed with my account of our other papers. The expiration ofBickerstaff's Lucubrationswas attended with much the same consequences as the death of Meliboeus'sOxin Virgil: as the latter engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole swarms of little satirical scribblers.One of these authors called himself theGrowler, and assured us that, to make amends for Mr. Steele's silence, he was resolved togrowlat us weekly, as long as we should think fit to give him any encouragement. Another Gentleman, with more modesty, called his paper theWhisperer; and a third, to please the Ladies, christened his theTell tale.At the same-time came out severalTatlers; each of which, with equal truth and wit, assured us that he was the genuineIsaac Bickerstaff.It may be observed that when theEsquirelaid down his pen; though he could not but foresee that several scribblers would soon snatch it up, which he might (one would think) easily have prevented: he scorned to take any further care about it, but left the field fairly open to any worthy successor. Immediately, some of our Wits were for forming themselves into a Club, headed by one Mr. Harrison, and trying how they could shoot in this Bow of Ulysses; but soon found that this sort of writing requires so fine and particular a manner of thinking, with so exact a knowledge of the World, as must make them utterly despair of success.They seemed indeed at first to think that what was only the garnish of the formerTatlers, was that which recommended them; and not those Substantial Entertainments which they everywhere abound in. According they were continually talking of theirMaid,Night Cap,Spectacles, and Charles Lillie. However there were, now and then, some faint endeavours at Humour and sparks of Wit: which the Town, for want of better entertainment, was content to hunt after through a heap of impertinences; but even those are, at present, become wholly invisible and quite swallowed up in the blaze of theSpectator.You may remember, I told you before, that one cause assigned for the laying down theTatlerwas, Want of Matter; and, indeed, this was the prevailing opinion in Town: when we were surprised all at once by a paper called theSpectator, which was promised to be continued every day; and was written in so excellent a style, with so nice a judgment, and such a noble profusion of wit and humour, that it was not difficult to determine it could come from no other hands but those which had penned theLucubrations.This immediately alarmed these gentlemen, who, as it is said Mr. Steele phrases it, had 'the Censorship in Commission.' They found the newSpectatorcame on like a torrent, and swept away all before him. They despaired ever to equal him in wit, humour, or learning; which had been their true and certain way of opposing him: and therefore rather chose to fall on the Author; and to call out for help to all good Christians, by assuring them again and again that they were the First, Original, True, and undisputedIsaac Bickerstaff.Meanwhile, theSpectator, whom we regard as our Shelter from that flood of false wit and impertinence which was breaking in upon us, is in every one's hands; and a constant for our morning conversation at tea-tables and coffee-houses. We had at first, indeed, no manner of notion how a diurnal paper could be continued in the spirit and style of our presentSpectators: but, to our no small surprise, we find them still rising upon us, and can only wonder from whence so prodigious a run of Wit and Learning can proceed; since some of our best judges seem to think that they have hitherto, in general, outshone even theEsquire'sfirstTatlers.Most people fancy, from their frequency, that they must be composed by a Society: I withal assign the first places to Mr. Steele and his Friend.
So far John Gay, whose discussion of the
Tatlers
and
Spectators
appeared when only fifty-five numbers of the
Spectator
had been published.
There was high strife of faction; and there was real peril to the country by a possible turn of affairs after Queen Anne's death, that another Stuart restoration, in the name of divine right of kings, would leave rights of the people to be reconquered in civil war. The chiefs of either party were appealing to the people, and engaging all the wit they could secure to fight on their side in the war of pamphlets. Steele's heart was in the momentous issue. Both he and Addison had it in mind while they were blending their calm playfulness with all the clamour of the press. The spirit in which these friends worked, young Pope must have felt; for after Addison had helped him in his first approach to fame by giving honour in the
Spectator
to his
Essay on Criticism,
and when he was thankful for that service, he contributed to the
Spectator
his
Messiah
. Such offering clearly showed how Pope interpreted the labour of the essayists.
In the fens of Lincolnshire the antiquary Maurice Johnson collected his neighbours of Spalding.
'Taking care,' it is said, 'not to alarm the country gentlemen by any premature mention of antiquities, he endeavoured at first to allure them into the more flowery paths of literature. In 1709 a few of them were brought together every post-day at the coffee-house in the Abbey Yard; and after one of the party had read aloud the last published number of theTatler, they proceeded to talk over the subject among themselves.'
Even in distant Perthshire
'the gentlemen met after church on Sunday to discuss the news of the week; theSpectatorswere read as regularly as theJournal.'
So the political draught of bitterness came sweetened with the wisdom of good-humour. The good-humour of the essayists touched with a light and kindly hand every form of affectation, and placed every-day life in the light in which it would be seen by a natural and honest man. A sense of the essentials of life was assumed everywhere for the reader, who was asked only to smile charitably at its vanities. Steele looked through all shams to the natural heart of the Englishman, appealed to that, and found it easily enough, even under the disguise of the young gentleman cited in the 77th
Tatler
,
'so ambitious to be thought worse than he is that in his degree of understanding he sets up for a free-thinker, and talks atheistically in coffee-houses all day, though every morning and evening, it can be proved upon him, he regularly at home says his prayers.'
But as public events led nearer to the prospect of a Jacobite triumph that would have again brought Englishmen against each other sword to sword, there was no voice of warning more fearless than Richard Steele's. He changed the
Spectator
for the
Guardian
, that was to be, in its plan, more free to guard the people's rights, and, standing forward more distinctly as a politician, he became member for Stockbridge. In place of the
Guardian
, which he had dropped when he felt the plan of that journal unequal to the right and full expression of his mind, Steele took for a periodical the name of
Englishman
, and under that name fought, with then unexampled abstinence from personality, against the principles upheld by Swift in his
Examiner
. Then, when the Peace of Utrecht alarmed English patriots, Steele in a bold pamphlet on
The Crisis
expressed his dread of arbitrary power and a Jacobite succession with a boldness that cost him his seat in Parliament, as he had before sacrificed to plain speaking his place of Gazetteer.
Of the later history of Steele and Addison a few words will suffice. This is not an account of their lives, but an endeavour to show why Englishmen must always have a living interest in the
Spectator
, their joint production. Steele's
Spectator
ended with the seventh volume. The members of the Club were all disposed of, and the journal formally wound up; but by the suggestion of a future ceremony of opening the
Spectator's
mouth, a way was made for Addison, whenever he pleased, to connect with the famous series an attempt of his own for its revival. A year and a half later Addison made this attempt, producing his new journal with the old name and, as far as his contributions went, not less than the old wit and earnestness, three times a week instead of daily. But he kept it alive only until the completion of one volume. Addison had not Steele's popular tact as an editor. He preached, and he suffered drier men to preach, while in his jest he now and then wrote what he seems to have been unwilling to acknowledge. His eighth volume contains excellent matter, but the subjects are not always well chosen or varied judiciously, and one understands why the
Spectator
took a firmer hold upon society when the two friends in the full strength of their life, aged about forty, worked together and embraced between them a wide range of human thought and feeling. It should be remembered also that Queen Anne died while Addison's eighth volume was appearing, and the change in the Whig position brought him other occupation of his time.
In April, 1713, in the interval between the completion of the true
Spectator
and the appearance of the supplementary volume, Addison's tragedy of
Cato
, planned at College; begun during his foreign travels, retouched in England, and at last completed, was produced at Drury Lane. Addison had not considered it a stage play, but when it was urged that the time was proper for animating the public with the sentiments of Cato, he assented to its production. Apart from its real merit the play had the advantage of being applauded by the Whigs, who saw in it a Whig political ideal, and by the Tories, who desired to show that they were as warm friends of liberty as any Whig could be.
Upon the death of Queen Anne Addison acted for a short time as secretary to the Regency, and when George I appointed Addison's patron, the Earl of Sunderland, to the Lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, Sunderland took Addison with him as chief secretary. Sunderland resigned in ten months, and thus Addison's secretaryship came to an end in August, 1716. Addison was also employed to meet the Rebellion of 1715 by writing the
Freeholder
. He wrote under this title fifty-five papers, which were published twice a week between December, 1715, and June, 1716; and he was rewarded with the post of Commissioner for Trade and Colonies. In August, 1716, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, mother to the young Earl of Warwick, of whose education he seems to have had some charge in 1708. Addison settled upon the Countess £4000 in lieu of an estate which she gave up for his sake. Henceforth he lived chiefly at Holland House. In April, 1717, Lord Sunderland became Secretary of State, and still mindful of Marlborough's illustrious supporter, he made Addison his colleague. Eleven months later, ill health obliged Addison to resign the seals; and his death followed, June 17, 1719, at the age of 47.
Steele's political difficulties ended at the death of Queen Anne. The return of the Whigs to power on the accession of George I brought him the office of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; he was also first in the Commission of the peace for Middlesex, and was made one of the deputy lieutenants of the county. At the request of the managers Steele's name was included in the new patent required at Drury Lane by the royal company of comedians upon the accession of a new sovereign. Steele also was returned as M.P. for Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, was writer of the Address to the king presented by the Lord-lieutenant and the deputy lieutenants of Middlesex, and being knighted on that occasion, with two other of the deputies, became in the spring of the year, 1714, Sir Richard Steele. Very few weeks after the death of his wife, in December, 1718, Sunderland, at a time when he had Addison for colleague, brought in a bill for preventing any future creations of peers, except when an existing peerage should become extinct. Steele, who looked upon this as an infringement alike of the privileges of the crown and of the rights of the subject, opposed the bill in Parliament, and started in March, 1719, a paper called the
Plebeian
, in which he argued against a measure tending, he said, to the formation of an oligarchy. Addison replied in the
Old Whig
, and this, which occurred within a year of the close of Addison's life, was the main subject of political difference between them. The bill, strongly opposed, was dropped for that session, and reintroduced (after Addison's death) in the December following, to be thrown out by the House of Commons.
Steele's argument against the government brought on him the hostility of the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain; and it was partly to defend himself and his brother patentees against hostile action threatened by the Duke, that Steele, in January, 1720, started his paper called the
Theatre
. But he was dispossessed of his government of the theatre, to which a salary of £600 a-year had been attached, and suffered by the persecution of the court until Walpole's return to power. Steele was then restored to his office, and in the following year, 1722, produced his most successful comedy,
The Conscious Lovers
. After this time his health declined; his spirits were depressed. He left London for Bath. His only surviving son, Eugene, born while the
Spectator
was being issued, and to whom Prince Eugene had stood godfather, died at the age of eleven or twelve in November, 1723. The younger also of his two daughters was marked for death by consumption. He was broken in health and fortune when, in 1726, he had an attack of palsy which was the prelude to his death. He died Sept. 1, 1729, at Carmarthen, where he had been boarding with a mercer who was his agent and receiver of rents. There is a pleasant record that
'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would often be carried out, of a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, — and, with his pencil, gave an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the best dancer.'
Two editions of the
Spectator
, the tenth and eleventh, were published by Tonson in the year of Steele's death. These and the next edition, dated 1739, were without the translations of the mottos, which appear, however, in the edition of 1744. Notes were first added by Dr. Percy, the editor of the
Reliques of Ancient Poetry
, and Dr. Calder. Dr. John Calder, a native of Aberdeen, bred to the dissenting ministry, was for some time keeper of Dr. Williams's Library in Redcross Street. He was a candidate for the office given to Dr. Abraham Rees, of editor and general super-intendent of the new issue of
Chambers's Cyclopædia
, undertaken by the booksellers in 1776, and he supplied to it some new articles. The Duke of Northumberland warmly patronized Dr. Calder, and made him his companion in London and at Alnwick Castle as Private Literary Secretary. Dr. Thomas Percy, who had constituted himself cousin and retainer to the Percy of Northumberland, obtained his bishopric of Dromore in 1782, in the following year lost his only son, and suffered from that failure in eyesight, which resulted in a total blindness.
Having become intimately acquainted with Dr. Calder when at Northumberland House and Alnwick, Percy intrusted to him the notes he had collected for illustrating the
Tatler
,
Spectator
, and
Guardian
. These were after-wards used, with additions by Dr. Calder, in the various editions of those works, especially in the six-volume edition of the
Tatler
, published by John Nichols in 1786, where Percy's notes have a P. attached to them, and Dr. Calder's are signed 'Annotator.' The
Tatler
was annotated fully, and the annotated
Tatler
has supplied some pieces of information given in the present edition of the
Spectator
. Percy actually edited two volumes for R. Tonson in 1764, but the work was stopped by the death of the bookseller, and the other six were added to them in 1789. They were slightly annotated, both as regards the number and the value of the notes; but Percy and Calder lived when
Spectator
traditions were yet fresh, and oral information was accessible as to points of personal allusion or as to the authorship of a few papers or letters which but for them might have remained anonymous. Their notes are those of which the substance has run through all subsequent editions. Little, if anything, was added to them by Bisset or Chalmers; the energies of those editors having been chiefly directed to the preserving or multiplying of corruptions of the text. Percy, when telling Tonson that he had completed two volumes of the
Spectator
, said that he had corrected 'innumerable corruptions' which had then crept in, and could have come only by misprint. Since that time not only have misprints been preserved and multiplied, but punctuation has been deliberately modernized, to the destruction of the freshness of the original style, and editors of another 'understanding age' have also taken upon themselves by many a little touch to correct Addison's style or grammar.
This volume reprints for the first time in the present century the text of the
Spectator
as its authors left it. A good recent edition contains in the first 18 papers, which are a fair sample of the whole, 88 petty variations from the proper text (at that rate, in the whole work more than 3000) apart from the recasting of the punctuation, which is counted as a defect only in two instances, where it has changed the sense. Chalmers's text, of 1817, was hardly better, and about two-thirds of the whole number of corruptions had already appeared in Bisset's edition of 1793, from which they were transferred. Thus Bisset as well as Chalmers in the Dedication to Vol. I turned the 'polite
parts
of learning' into the 'polite
arts
of learning,' and when the silent gentleman tells us that many to whom his person is well known speak of him 'very currently by Mr. What-d'ye-call him,' Bisset before Chalmers rounded the sentence into 'very correctly by
the appellation
of Mr. What-d'ye-call him.' But it seems to have been Chalmers who first undertook to correct, in the next paper, Addison's grammar, by turning 'have laughed
to have seen
' into 'have laughed
to see
' and transformed a treaty '
with
London and Wise,' — a firm now of historical repute, — for the supply of flowers to the opera, into a treaty '
between
London and Wise,' which most people would take to be a very different matter. If the present edition has its own share of misprints and oversights, at least it inherits none; and it contains no wilful alteration of the text.
The papers as they first appeared in the daily issue of a penny (and after the stamp was imposed two-penny) folio half-sheet, have been closely compared with the first issue in guinea octavos, for which they were revised, and with the last edition that appeared before the death of Steele.
The original text is here given
precisely
as it was left after revision by its authors; and there is shown at the same time
the amount and character of the revision
.
Thus the reader has here both the original texts of the
Spectator
. The
Essays
, as revised by their authors for permanent use, form the main text of the present volume. But if the words or passages in brackets be omitted; the words or passages in corresponding foot-notes, — where there are such foot-notes, — being substituted for them; the text becomes throughout that of the
Spectator
as it first came out in daily numbers.
Again and again the essayists indulge in banter on the mystery of the Latin and Greek mottos; and what confusion must enter into the mind of the unwary reader who finds Pope's
Homer
quoted at the head of a
Spectator
long before Addison's word of applause to the young poet's
Essay on Criticism.
In the large number of notes here added to a revision of those bequeathed to us by Percy and Calder, the object has been to give information which may contribute to some nearer acquaintance with the writers of the book, and enjoyment of allusions to past manners and events.
H. M.
Footnote 1:
"Sentences omitted, or words altered;" not, of course, the immaterial variations of spelling into which compositors slipped in the printing office. In the
Athenaeum
of May 12, 1877, is an answer to misapprehensions on this head by the editor of a Clarendon Press volume of
Selections from Addison
.
return to footnote mark
Contents
To The Right Honourable John Lord Sommers, Baron Of Evesham1.My Lord,
I should not act the Part of an impartial Spectator, if I Dedicated the following Papers to one who is not of the most consummate and most acknowledged Merit.
None but a person of a finished Character can be the proper Patron of a Work, which endeavours to Cultivate and Polish Human Life, by promoting Virtue and Knowledge, and by recommending whatsoever may be either Useful or Ornamental to Society.