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ing which the essay was not the least powerful factor; but at the same time it is indubitable that the coffee-house and not the home was the centre of social life, and that the former was regarded as a sort of happy compromise between Restoration profligacy and Puritan domesticity. Most of Steele's letters to his wife are more or less ingenious apologies for his "dining abroad”, but the practice which Lady Steele resented was really a not unimportant element in her husband's education as an essayist. What was written of the earliest coffee-houses is equally descriptive of those in 1709:

"You may see there what fashions are,

How periwigs are curled,

And for a penny you may hear

All novels in the world".

Nor does the doggerel enumerate all the aspects of coffee-house entertainment; at Button's literature was eagerly canvassed, while again at Will's

“The gentle beau, too, joins in wise debate,
Adjusts his cravat, and reforms the state".

Surely in no other school could Steele so well have learned, like Will Honeycomb, "the history of every mode". In May, 1707, he had been appointed Gazetteer, and there can be little doubt that it was during the performance of this duty that the conception of the Tatler dawned upon him. His work in Lord Sunderland's office could not have been very congenial; Steele was more a beau than a politician, and it is easy to conjecture with what pleasure he determined to vary official drudgery by becoming the voluntary gazetteer of the coffee

house. In the dedication of the first collected volume of the Tatler to Arthur Maynwaring, he throws some light on the history of his brilliant project. He resolved, he says, " to publish a paper which should observe upon the manners of the pleasurable, as well as the busy part of mankind". From this it is not rash to infer that Steele claimed to have made a distinct advance on any former periodical, and to have been the first to make the essay an instrument for exhibiting contemporary manners. Had he had any previous paper in his mind, had he in any degree considered himself an imitator, one may be sure that he would have admitted the fact, for he was always unjust to himself in his acknowledgment of debt to others. He also points out that "it seemed the most proper method to form it by way of a letter of intelligence "—and here it is Steele, the Gazetteer, who speaks, while his proposal to include "the ordinary occurrences of common journals of news" indicates his connection with preceding journalists. Indeed, the Tatler contains within itself many signs of the transition from journalism to essay-writing, and may fairly be regarded as standing midway between the Review and the Spectator. It is very noticeable that the journalistic element in the Tatler diminishes as the work proceeds. How much of the change was due to Addison cannot be determined, but probably he was the first to realize the full possibilities of Steele's design, and by the gradual exclusion of communications dated from St. James's coffee-house to make the Tatler ultimately approximate to the form of the Spectator. Usually, in comparisons between them,

great emphasis is laid on the superior unity of the Spectator. Such superiority was inevitable, and only points out, in an indirect way, that the Tatler was the beginning of a new development, and was therefore bound to betray some signs of its journalistic origin.

When two authors collaborate, there is an irresistible tendency for critics to set about apportioning their respective claims, and there is always considerable danger of transferring interest from their actual works to rival theories concerning them. Only irrational optimism can hope that there will ever be a time when disputes will have ceased about Beaumont and Fletcher, or Addison and Steele; and even in the most honest attempts at forming a reconciliation, there is always the necessity of reviewing the history of the antagonism, and the liability of thereby reopening the controversy. In the case of writers like Steele and Addison, where interest in the authors' personalities is a factor in any critical estimate too strong to be wholly eliminated, this danger is especially obvious, so that it is not surprising to find that many writers who deprecate any antagonism are apt to proceed on the tacit assumption that Addison's was the more important share in the partnership. Such an assumption is, to say the least, highly questionable. Phrases such as "Addison's Spectator" or "Addison's Sir Roger" are entirely question-begging phrases, and do a manifest injustice to the originality of Steele. If Addison be allowed to have been the more brilliant contributor, yet to Steele must be given all the credit of having been the projector and editor; and,

whatever his literary deficiencies, it is his name that must rank the higher, if regard be had merely to the development of the English essay. In Steele there was a strange blending of acute enterprise and boyish thoughtlessness, and it is the fate of all authors who have a special place in their readers' affections that the latter side of their character should be unduly emphasized. A claim to pity, even if it be a loving pity, is a dangerous attribute for an author to possess, and it has militated against Steele's purely literary reputation that he is thought of as being, like his friend Gay, "in wit a man, simplicity a child". So enamoured of Addison's "elegance" were his earlier editors that they rather grudged Steele any share of his fame, and it is unfortunate that some of the absurdities of Hurd should have been endorsed by the eloquence of Macaulay. Nor are some of Steele's sincerest admirers free from blame. Perhaps there is no more stimulating introduction to the literature of last century than Thackeray's lectures-or Esmond; but it is well in approaching Steele's writings to recognize that Thackeray's lovable Dick Steele is not altogether the same man as the founder of the English Essay. De Quincey pointed out several necessary qualifications in the exaggerated opinions current as to Addison's extensive learning. It may be admitted that he was better versed in classics than his friend, but it has to be set against this that Steele possessed many qualities even more essential to an essayist than extensive learning. His was an exceptionally strong emotional temperament; he could sympathize with every side of character, and

temporarily identify himself with the feelings of another, and it was this that gave him so wide a knowledge of men and enabled him to sketch the outline of the Spectator Club. Steele rather than Addison was the true Spectator; he mixed freely in every kind of society, and it frequently happened that the general impressions he drew were afterwards improved and amplified by Addison. It is precisely what one would expect from the characters of the two men, that Steele should have taken the chief part in inventing the dramatis personae of the essays, and that Addison should appear to most advantage in handling mental abstractions of his own creation, and in critical and allegorical writing.

The Tatler ran from 12th April, 1709, to 2nd January, 1711, and consisted in all of 271 numbers, of which Steele contributed four to his coadjutor's one. At first somewhat of a medley, it was not till it had run about a third of its course that it attained to anything like the unity of its successors, and for this change, as has been said, probably Addison was responsible. That it was thrown off in a hurry is a boast sometimes made by the author of a laboured composition, but of most of his work Steele could have said so with the utmost sincerity. Indeed, if capacity for taking pains be an indispensable part of the connotation of genius, Steele possessed but a slender stock. His talent lay not in elaboration, but in striking out disconnected happy thoughts, and for this purpose the earlier and looser form of the Tatler was best adapted. Of his sustained pieces of humour there is none better

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