The Tatler, Volume 1

Preface

The original numbers of the Tatler were reissued in two forms in 1710-11; one edition, in octavo, being published by subscription, while the other, in duodecimo, was for the general public. The present edition has been printed from a copy of the latter issue, which, as recorded on the title-page, was "revised and corrected by the Author"; but I have had by my side, for constant reference, a complete set of the folio sheets, containing the "Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff" in the form in which they were first presented to the world. Scrupulous accuracy in the text has been aimed at, but the eccentricities of spelling—which were the printer's, not the author's—have not been preserved, and the punctuation has occasionally been corrected.

The first and the most valuable of the annotated editions of the Tatler was published by John Nichols and others in 1786, with notes by Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, Dr. John Calder, and Dr. Pearce, Bishop of Rochester; and though these notes are often irrelevant and out of date, they contain an immense amount of information, and have been freely made use of by subsequent editors. I have endeavoured to preserve what is of value in the older editions, and to supplement it, as concisely as possible, by such further information as appeared desirable. The eighteenth-century diaries and letters published of late years have in many cases enabled me to throw light on passages which have hitherto been obscure, and sometimes useful illustrations have been found in the contemporary newspapers and periodicals.

The portraits of Steele, Addison, and Swift, the writers most associated with the Tatler, have been taken from contemporary engravings in the British Museum; and the imaginary portrait of Isaac Bickerstaff in the last volume is from a rare picture drawn by Lens in 1710 as a frontispiece to collections of the original folio numbers.

August 1898.

Introduction

When the first number of the Tatler appeared in 1709, Steele and Addison were about thirty-seven years of age, while Swift, then still counted among the Whigs, was more than four years their senior. Addison and Steele had been friends at the Charterhouse School and at Oxford, and though they had during the following years had varying experiences, their friendship had in no way lessened. Addison had been a fellow of his college, had gained the patronage of Charles Montague and Lord Somers, had made the grand tour, and published an account of his travels; had gained popularity by his poem "The Campaign," written in celebration of the victory at Blenheim; had been made an Under-Secretary of State, and finally (in December 1708) had been appointed secretary to Lord Wharton, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Steele, on the other hand, had enlisted in the Guards, without taking any degree; had obtained an ensign's commission after dedicating to Lord Cutts a poem on Queen Mary's death; and had written a little book called "The Christian Hero," designed "to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures." At the close of the same year (1701) he brought out a successful comedy, "The Funeral," which was followed by "The Lying Lover" and "The Tender Husband," plays which gave strong evidence of the influence of Jeremy Collier's attack on the immorality of the stage. "The Tender Husband" owed "many applauded strokes" to Addison, to whom it was dedicated by Steele, who wished "to show the esteem I have for you, and that I look upon my intimacy with you as one of the most valuable enjoyments of my life." In 1705 Steele married a lady with property in Barbados, and on her death married, in 1707, Mary Scurlock, the "dear Prue" to whom he addressed his well-known letters. For the rest, he had been made gentleman-waiter to Prince George of Denmark, and appointed Gazetteer, with a salary of £300, less a tax of £45 a year. He was disappointed in his hopes of obtaining the Under-Secretaryship vacated by Addison.

From 1705 onwards there is evidence of frequent and familiar intercourse between Swift and Addison and Steele. After Sir William Temple's death, Swift had become chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, who gave him the living of Laracor; and during a visit to England in 1704 he had gained a position in the front rank of authors by the "Tale of a Tub" and the "Battle of the Books." At the close of 1707 he was again in England, charged with a mission to obtain for the Irish clergy the remission of First Fruits and Tenths already conceded to the English, and throughout 1708 what he calls "the triumvirate of Addison, Steele and me" were in constant communication. In that year Swift published a pamphlet called "A Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners," which anticipated many of the arguments used in the Tatler and Spectator; and he also commenced his attack on John Partridge, quack doctor and maker of astrological almanacs. On the appearance of Partridge's "Merlinus Liberatus" for 1708, Swift—borrowing a name from the signboard of a shoemaker—published "Predictions for the year 1708, wherein the month and day of the month are set down, the persons named, and the great actions and events of next year particularly related, as they will come to pass. Written to prevent the people of England from being further imposed on by vulgar almanack-makers. By Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq." Isaac Bickerstaff professed to be a true astrologer, disgusted at the lies told by impostors, and he said that he was willing to be hooted at as a cheat if his prophecies were not exactly fulfilled. His first prediction was that Partridge would die on the 29th of March; and on the 30th a second pamphlet was published, "The accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions … in a letter to a person of quality, in which a detailed account is given of Partridge's death, at five minutes after seven, by which it is clear that Mr. Bickerstaff was mistaken almost four hours in his calculation.... Whether he had been the cause of this poor man's death, as well as the predictor, may be very reasonably disputed." The joke was maintained by Swift and others in various pieces, and when Partridge, in his almanac for 1709, protested that he was still living, Swift replied, in "A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.," which was advertised in the fifth number of the Tatler, that he could prove that Partridge was not alive; for no one living could have written such rubbish as the new almanac. In starting his new paper Steele assumed the name of the astrologer Isaac Bickerstaff, rendered famous by Swift, and made frequent use of Swift's leading idea. He himself summed up the controversy in the words, "if a man's art is gone, the man is gone, though his body still appear."

Much has been written on the interesting question of the early history of the periodical press; but with one exception none of its predecessors had much effect on the Tatler. John Dunton's Athenian Mercury was the forerunner of our Notes and Queries; and it was followed by the British Apollo (1708-11), the second title of which was "Curious Amusements for the Ingenious. To which are added the most Material Occurrences, Foreign and Domestic. Performed by a Society of Gentlemen." The Gentleman's Journal of 1692-4, a monthly paper of poems and other miscellaneous matter, was succeeded, in 1707, by Oldmixon's Muses' Mercury; or, The Monthly Miscellany, a periodical which contained also notices of new plays and books, and numbered Steele among its contributors. Defoe's Review, begun in 1704, aimed at setting the affairs of Europe in a clearer light, regardless of party; but, added Defoe, "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 will meet with it there." Accordingly, of the eight pages in the first number, one and a half pages consist of "Mercure Scandale; or, Advice from the Scandalous Club, Translated out of French." The censure was to be of the actions of men, not of parties; and the design was to expose not persons but things. A monthly supplement, dealing with "the immediate subject then on the tongues of the town," was begun in September 1704; and pressure on the space before long pushed the Advices from the Scandal Club out of the ordinary issue of the Review. Subsequently Defoe wrote more than once in praise of the way in which his work had been taken up by Isaac Bickerstaff.

Probably the Tatler was started by Steele without any very definite designs for the future. According to the first number, published on April 12, 1709, the aim was to instruct the public what to think, after their reading, and there was to be something for the entertainment of the fair sex. The numbers were published three times a week, on the post-days, at the price of one penny. Each paper consisted of a single folio sheet, and the first four were distributed gratuitously. Steele probably thought that his position of Gazetteer would enable him to give the latest news, and he says that these paragraphs brought in a multitude of readers; but as the position of the Tatler became established, the need for the support of these items of news grew less, and after the first eighty numbers they are of rare occurrence. Quite early in the career of the paper Addison, speaking of the distress which would be caused among the news-writers by the conclusion of a peace, said that Bickerstaff was not personally concerned in the matter; "for as my chief scenes of action are coffee-houses, playhouses, and my own apartment, I am in no need of camps, fortifications, and fields of battle to support me.... I shall still be safe as long as there are men or women, or politicians, or lovers, or poets, or nymphs, or swains, or cits, or courtiers in being."1

The subject of each article was to be indicated by the name of the coffee-house or other place from which it was supposed to come: "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's Coffee-house; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own Apartment." For some time each number contained short papers from all or several of these places; but gradually it became usual to devote the whole number to one topic. The motto of the first forty numbers was "Quicquid agunt homines … nostri farrago libelli"; but in the following numbers it was changed to "Celebrare domestica facta"; and afterwards each number generally had a quotation bearing upon the subject of the day. Writing some time after the commencement of the latter, Steele said, in the Dedication prefixed to the first volume, "The general purpose of this paper is to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour." And elsewhere he says: "As for my labours, which he is pleased to inquire after, if they but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning's cheerfulness to an honest mind; in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive from them the smallest addition to their innocent diversions; I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain."2 At the close, speaking in his own name, Steele wrote: "The general purpose of the whole has been to recommend truth, innocence, honour, and virtue, as the chief ornaments of life; but I considered, that severity of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others, and for that reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess my life is at best but pardonable."3

With his usual generosity, Steele more than once spoke in the warmest terms of the assistance rendered to him by Addison. In the preface to the collected edition he said: "I have only one gentleman, 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 had lived in an 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 auxiliary; when I had called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him." And in 1722, after Addison's death, in a preface to his friend's play, "The Drummer," Steele wrote of the Tatler, "That paper was advanced indeed! for it was raised to a greater thing than I intended it! For the elegance, purity, and correctness which appeared in his writings were not so much my purpose, as (in any intelligible manner, as I could) to rally all those singularities of human life, through the different professions and characters in it, which obstruct anything that was truly good and great."

It is only fair to Steele to point out that the original idea of the Tatler was entirely his own, and that he alone was responsible for the regular supply of material. Addison was in Ireland when the paper was begun, and did not know who was the author until several numbers had appeared. His occasional contributions were of little importance until after eighty numbers had been published; and of the whole 271 numbers Steele wrote about 188 and Addison only 42, while they were jointly responsible for 36. Swift contributed only to about a dozen numbers; and the assistance received from other writers was so slight that it does not call for notice here. Steele, unlike Addison, was probably at his best in the Tatler, where he had a freer hand, and described, in a perfectly fresh and unaffected style, the impressions of the moment. Hastily composed in coffee-house or printing-office, as they often were, and at very short notice, his papers frequently appeal to the reader of the present day more than the carefully elaborated and highly finished work of his friend, who wrote only when he found a suitable topic. And if Addison's art is of a higher standard than Steele's, it is to Steele that we owe Addison. A minor poet and the author of a book of travels and of an unsuccessful opera, Addison found no opportunity for his peculiar genius until his friend provided the means in the Tatler. It is tolerably certain that he would himself never have taken the necessary step of founding a periodical appealing to the general public; and Steele himself said with perfect truth, "I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them appear by any other means."4

If more is said here of Steele than of Addison, it is because it is Steele whose name is most intimately connected with the Tatler. The field in which Addison shone brightest was the Spectator, where the whole plan was arranged in the manner best suited to his genius. But his influence is, nevertheless, visible in the development of the earlier paper, and some of his individual articles are equal to anything he afterwards wrote. It is only necessary to mention his papers on the Distress of the News-Writers5; on the poetaster, Ned Softly6; on the pedant and "broker in learning," Tom Folio7; on the Political Upholsterer, who was more inquisitive to know what passed in Poland than in his own family8; and on the Adventures of a Shilling.9 His, too, are the Vision of Justice10; the story of a dream;11 and the amusing account of the visit to London of Sir Harry Quickset, who, with his old-world breeding, was the forerunner of Sir Roger de Coverley.12

Unlike the members of the Spectator's Club, the dramatis personæ introduced in the Tatler do not occupy a very prominent place in the development of the work. Isaac Bickerstaff himself, an old man of sixty-four, "a philosopher, an humourist, an astrologer, and a censor," is rather vaguely sketched, and his familiar, Pacolet, is made use of chiefly in the earlier numbers. The occasional references to Bickerstaff's half-sister, Jenny Distaff,13 and her husband, Tanquillus, and to his three nephews and their conduct in the presence of a "beautiful woman of honour,"14 gave Steele a framework for some charming sketches of domestic life. It is not until No. 132 that we have the amusing account of the members of Bickerstaff's Club, the Trumpet, in Shire Lane. There were Sir Geoffrey Notch, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had wasted his estate in his youth, and called every thriving man a pitiful upstart; Major Matchlock, with his reminiscences of the Civil War; Dick Reptile, and the Bencher who was always praising the wit of former days, and telling stories of Jack Ogle, with whom he pretended to have been intimate in his youth. Very little use was afterwards made of this promising material.

The poet John Gay has given an excellent account of the work accomplished by Steele and Addison in a pamphlet called "The Present State of Wit" (1711). Speaking of the discontinuance of the Tatler, he says: "His disappearing 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's Lucubrations alone 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.... There is this noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant authors: the latter have endeavoured to please the age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state; or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and vain coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth. Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of the age, either in morality, criticism, or good breeding, he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong, and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for virtue and good sense.

"It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished, or given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to virtue and religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by showing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of learning. He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the 'Change; accordingly, there is not a lady at Court, nor a banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England.

"Lastly, his writings have set all our wits and men of letters upon a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before; and though we cannot yet say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since."

Gay's opinion has been confirmed by the best judges of nearly two centuries, and there is no need to labour the question of the wit and wisdom of the Tatler. But some examples may be cited in illustration of the topics on which Steele and his friends wrote, and the manner in which they dealt with them. The very first numbers contained illustrations of most of what were to be the characteristics of the paper. There is the account of the very pretty gentleman at White's Chocolate-house thrown into a sad condition by a passing vision of a young lady; the notice of Betterton's benefit performance; the comments on the war; the campaign against Partridge, with the declaration that all who were good for nothing would be included among the deceased; the discussion on the morality of the stage, with praise of Mrs. Bicknell and reproaches upon a young nobleman who came drunk to the play; the comparison of the rival beauties, Chloe and Clarissa; the satire on the Italian opera, and on Pinkethman's company of strollers; and the allegorical paper on Fælicia, or Britain. All these and other matters are dealt with in the four numbers which were distributed gratuitously; as the work progressed the principal change, besides the disappearance of the paragraphs of news, was the development of the sustained essay on morals or manners, and the less frequent indulgence in satire upon individual offenders, and in personal allusions in general. This change seems to have been the result partly of design, and partly of circumstances, including Addison's influence on the work. Steele himself said, as we have seen, that the Tatler was raised to a greater height than he had designed; but no doubt he realised that he must feel his way, and be at first a tatler rather than a preacher. After some grave remarks about duelling in an early paper (No. 26), he makes Pacolet, Bickerstaff's familiar, say, "It was too soon to give my discourse on this subject so serious a turn; you have chiefly to do with that part of mankind which must be led into reflection by degrees, and you must treat this custom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce sentence upon it."

Follies and weaknesses are ridiculed in the Tatler in a genial spirit, by one who was fully alive to his own imperfections, and point is usually given to the papers by a sketch of some veiled or imaginary individual. In this way Bickerstaff treats of fops,15 of wags,16 of coquettes,17 of the lady who condemned the vice of the age, meaning the only vice of which she was not guilty;18 of impudence;19 and of pride and vanity.20 In a graver tone he attacks the practice of duelling;21 gamesters and sharpers;22 drunken "roarers" and "scowrers";23 and brutal pastimes at the Bear Garden and elsewhere.24 The campaign against swindlers exposed Steele to serious threats on more than one occasion.25

Of what Coleridge called Steele's "pure humanity" there is nowhere better evidence than in the Tatler. It is enough to cite once more the well-known examples of the account of his father's death and his mother's grief;26 the stories of Unnion and Valentine,27 of the Cornish lovers,28 of Clarinda and Chloe,29 and of Mr. Eustace,30 and the charming account of the married happiness of an old friend, with the pathetic picture of the death of the wife, and the grief of husband and children.31 In the last number Steele said, "It has been a most exquisite pleasure to me to frame characters of domestic life"; and we know from his letters that when he wrote of children he was only expressing the deep affection which he felt for his own. Equally in advance of his time was his respect for women, one of whom—Lady Elizabeth Hastings—he has immortalised in the words, "To love her is a liberal education."32 In the same number he wrote, "As charity is esteemed a conjunction of the good qualities necessary to a virtuous man, so love is the happy composition of all the accomplishments that make a fine gentleman." In a time of much laxity he constantly dwelt on the happiness of marriage; "wife is the most amiable term in human life."33 But good nature must be cultivated if the married life is to be happy,34 and all unnecessary provocations avoided. "Dear Jenny," says Bickerstaff to his sister, "remember me, and avoid Snap-Dragon."35 Women must be rightly educated before they can expect to be treated by, and to influence men as they should.36 The make of the mind greatly contributes to the ornament of the body; "there is so immediate a relation between our thoughts and gestures that a woman must think well to look well."37 The habit of scandal-mongering and other weaknesses are the result of an improper training of the mind.38 "All women especially," says Thackeray, "are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who really seemed to admire and respect them." His pity extended to the hunted deer: "I have more than once rode off at the death," he says; "to be apt to shed tears is a sign of a great as well as a little spirit."39