The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 by George A. Aitken (easy books to read in english .txt) 📖

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]

Steele's teaching on morals and right living enters intimately into his literary criticism. His love for Shakespeare was real and intelligent; there is no formal discussion of the rules of the drama, but throughout the Tatler there are references which show the keenest appreciation of Shakespeare's powers as poet and philosopher. "The vitiated tastes of the audience at the theatre could only be amended," says Steele, "by encouraging the representation of the noble characters drawn by Shakespeare and others, from whence it is impossible to return without strong impressions of honour and humanity. On these occasions, distress is laid before us with all its causes and consequences, and our resentment placed according to the merit of the persons afflicted. Were dramas of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men who have genius would bend their studies to excel in them."[40] Still more remarkable are the allusions to "Paradise Lost," for Milton was then even less appreciated than Shakespeare. As in so many other things, Addison's more elaborate criticism in the Spectator was foreshadowed in the
Tatler by Steele; and the comparison of passages by Milton and Dryden[41] must have been very striking to the reader of that time, who usually knew Shakespeare or Chaucer only through the adaptations of Dryden or Tate.

Though it is not true, as some have represented, that the Tatler is for the most part a mere society journal, concerned chiefly with the gossip of the day, yet its contributors made use of the scenes and events familiar to their readers in order to bring home the kindly lessons they wished to teach; and in so doing they have given us a picture of the daily life of the town which would alone have given lasting interest to the paper. The distinctly "moral" papers have had countless imitators, and sometimes therefore they are apt to pall upon us, but the social articles are at least as interesting now as when they were written, and one of the reasons why some excellent judges have prefered the Tatler to the Spectator , is that there is a greater proportion of these gossiping papers, combining wisdom with satire, and bringing before us as in a mirror the London of Queen Anne's day. Bickerstaff takes us from club to coffee-house, from St. James's to the Exchange; we see the poets and wits at Will's, the politicians at White's, the merchants at Garraway's, the Templars at the Smyrna; we see Betterton and the rest on the stage, and the ladies and gentlemen in the front or side boxes; we see Pinkethman's players at Greenwich, Powell's puppet-show, Don Saltero's Museum at Chelsea, and the bear-baiting and prize-fights at Hockley-in-the-Hole. We are taken to the Mall at St. James's, or the Ring in Hyde Park, and we study the fine ladies and the beaux, with their red heels and their amber-headed canes suspended from their waistcoats; or we follow them to Charles Lillie's, the perfumer, or to Mather's toy-shop, or to Motteux's china warehouse; or to the shops in the New Exchange, where the men bought trifles and ogled the attendants. Or yet again we watch the exposure of the sharpers and bullies, and the denunciation of others who brought even greater ruin on those who fell into their clutches. We see the worshipping and the flirtations in the church, with Smalridge and Atterbury, Hoadly and Blackall among the preachers, and hear something of the controversies between High and Low Church, Whig and Tory. We hear, too, of the war with France, and of the hopes of peace. Steele tells us not only of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, but of privates and non-commissioned officers, of their lives and tragedies, of their comrades and friends. All Sergeant Hall knew of the battle was that he wished there had not been so many killed; he had himself a very bad shot in the head, but would recover, if it pleased God. "To me," says Steele, recalling his own service as a trooper, "I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed from the same, if not from a nobler impulse than that of gentlemen and officers.... Sergeant Hall would die ten thousand deaths rather than a word should be spoken at the Red Lattice, or any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty." His letter to his friend was "the picture of the bravest sort of man, that is to say, a man of great courage and small hopes."[42]

Something must be said of the events of 1710, which led to the discontinuance of the Tatler . The trial of Dr. Sacheverell in March was followed by the fall of the Whigs in the autumn; and in October Steele lost his post of Gazetteer. Swift says it was "for writing a
Tatler some months ago, against Mr. Harley, who gave him the post at first." There was a growing coldness between Swift and his old friends, and on the 3rd of November Swift wrote, "We have scurvy Tatlers of late, so pray do not suspect me." On the preceding day Swift's first paper in the Tory Examiner had been published. He still met Steele from time to time, and he says that he interceded for him with Harley, but was frustrated by Addison. However this may be, it is certain that Harley saw Steele, and that as the result of their interview Steele retained his post as Commissioner of the Stamp Office, and brought the
Tatler to a close on January 2, 1711, without consulting Addison. "To say the truth, it was time," says Swift; "for he grew cruel dull and dry." It is true that there is a falling off towards the close of the
Tatler , but that it was not want of matter that brought about the abandonment of the paper is proved by the commencement only two months later of the Spectator . Steele himself said that on many accounts it had become an irksome task to personate Mr. Bickerstaff any longer; he had in some places touched upon matters concerning Church and State, and he could not be cold enough to conceal his opinions. Gay tells us, in "The Present State of Wit," that the town being generally of opinion that Steele was quite spent as regards matter, was the more surprised when the Spectator appeared; people were therefore driven to accept the alternative view that the Tatler was laid down "as a sort of submission to, or composition with, the Government for some past offences."

Excellent testimony to the immediate popularity of the Tatler is furnished by the fact that its successive numbers were reprinted in Dublin and in Edinburgh. At least sixty-nine numbers of the Dublin issue, in quarto, were printed. The Scottish re-issue was a folio sheet, commenced about February 1710, and continued until the close of the paper. The date of each number of the Edinburgh paper--"printed by James Watson, and sold at his shop next door to the Red Lion, opposite to the Lucken Booths"--is five or six days later than that of the original issue; it was evidently worked off as soon as the London post came in. Other evidence of the popularity of the Tatler in the provinces is afforded by the foundation of the "Gentleman's Society" at Spalding. Maurice Johnson, a native of Spalding and a member of the Inner Temple, gives this account of the matter: "In April 1709, that great genius Captain Richard Steele ... published the Tatlers , which, as they came out in half-sheets, were taken in by a gentleman, who communicated them to his acquaintances at the coffee-house then in the Abbey Yard; and these papers being universally approved as both instructive and entertaining, they ordered them to be sent down thither, with the Gazettes and Votes, for which they paid out of charity to the person who kept the coffee-house, and they were accordingly had and read there every post-day, generally aloud to the company, who would sit and talk over the subject afterwards. This insensibly drew the men of sense and letters into a sociable way of conversing, and continued the next year, 1710, until the publication of these papers desisted, which was in December, to their great regret." Afterwards the Spectator was taken in, and a regular society was started in 1712, by the encouragement of Addison, Steele, and other members of Button's Club.

One indication of the popularity of