The date of the founding of _The Tatler_ is important as marking the
beginning of popular literature in England. From this humble origin
sprang the great army of magazines and reviews which, for the last
two hundred years, have contained so much of the best English writing.
Before _The Tatler_, it may be said that there was no good reading in
popular form. The English novel was not yet born. The newspapers, about
as large as a lady's pocket handkerchief, contained nothing but news,
and very little of that. The political pamphlet was purely partisan,
was usually written by penny-a-liners, and could rarely pretend to
any permanent interest or literary quality. In 1704 Daniel Defoe had
founded his _Review_, which deserves to be called the earliest of
political journals; but the _Review_, though it contains much vigorous
writing, was strictly a party organ. Steele's purpose in _The Tatler_
was quite different. He is a humorist and moralist. He writes to
entertain, and incidentally, to correct or improve; he aims to depict
all the charms and the humours of society, and to turn a playful satire
upon its follies. To do this is always to make literature; to do it as
Steele and Addison could, is to "show the very age and body of the time
his form and pressure."
The immediate success of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_ is easily
understood. In the first place, there was now coming to be, for the
first time, a large reading public in England. Before 1700 no English
author had made a fortune or even a competence by the sale of his
books. But the most important social fact in England at the beginning
of the eighteenth century is the rapid growth of a great middle class.
Shrewd, energetic, these men were getting the trade and commerce
of England mostly into their hands, filling up the great towns, and
exerting an influence in public affairs which neither political party
could afford to overlook. It was for them that the political pamphlet
was written. How large a reading public a popular pamphleteer might
command at this time, may be inferred from the fact that sixty thousand
copies of one of Defoe's pamphlets are said to have been sold on the
streets of London, and Swift's famous tract, _The Conduct of the
Allies_, ran through four editions in a week. But these people demanded
something better than the party pamphlet. Intelligent, ambitious,
they had social aspirations, and were interested in the life of the
hour, in the club, in the drawing-room, at the theatre. They had some
relish, too, of the best things in poetry and art. When Pope translated
the _Iliad_ his publisher issued an elegant subscription edition of
six hundred and fifty copies for more aristocratic purchasers; but
he issued also a cheap duodecimo edition for the general public, and
of this he seems to have sold about seven thousand copies almost
immediately after publication. Indeed, if we except Addison, all the
prominent men of letters of the Queen Anne time--Steele, Swift, Pope,
Prior, Gay--themselves belonged to this middle class; they were all the
sons of tradesmen.
The readers for whom Steele and Addison wrote nearly all lived in
London--and loved it. They were interested in the passing life of the
town, in the street, the stage, the coffee-house. Doubtless that old
London was an ugly, unkempt town. Its population was only about half
a million--less than one-tenth what it is to-day. Its streets were
narrow, ill-paved, and dirty, separated from the strip of sidewalk
on either hand by reeking gutters. After nightfall, lighted only by
flickering oil lamps, they were the haunt of footpads who terrorized
the watchmen, and of bands of roistering young blades who headed up
women in barrels and rolled them down hill for diversion, or chased
the unwary stranger into a corner and made him dance by pricking him
with their sword points. Public morals were very low. Drunkenness
and license confronted the decent citizen on every hand, and, in
public gardens like Vauxhall, often held high carnival. Taste and
manners, even in what called itself polite society, were often coarse.
Profanity, loud and open, might have been heard on the lips of fine
ladies in places of public resort; while Swift's _Polite Conversation_
affords convincing proof of how vapid and how gross the talk might be
at the ridotto or over the card table.
Yet if society at this time had its seamy side, it was in the age of
Anne that Englishmen began to feel the charm of wit and manners, of
fashion and breeding. To the man about town, this murky London was
the centre of all that was best and brightest in a new society. It
was not so large but that he felt at home in every part of it. In
one coffee-house he met the wits and men of letters, in another the
scholars and clergy, in another the merchants, in another the men of
fashion and gallantry, and in all he could hear bright talk upon the
news of the day. In the theatre he could see the latest play, written
by Mr. Congreve or Mr. Addison, and with a prologue by Mr. Pope. He
probably belonged to two or three clubs; and in the drawing-room or
at the assembly he enjoyed the society of women with the charm of
gentle manners and brilliant conversation. All that served to make life
attractive and character urbane he found between Hyde Park and the Bank.
Now it was to this quickened social sense that _The Tatler_ and _The
Spectator_ made appeal. They pictured the life of the town from day
to day, especially in its lighter, more humorous phases. And this was
always done with some underlying moral purpose. As the months go past,
we have in these papers an exhaustless flow of kindly satire upon the
manners and minor morals of society,--on behaviour at church, on ogling
the ladies, on snuff-taking, on the folly of enormous petticoats and
low tuckers, on the brainless fops that display themselves in club
windows and the brainless flirts that display themselves in stage
boxes. We have bits of keen character-painting too--the small poet
who assures you that poets are born, not made; the beau who is caught
practising before the mirror to catch a careless air; the man who is
so ambitious to be thought wise that he sets up for a free-thinker and
talks atheism all day at the club, though he says his prayers very
carefully every night at home. One can imagine with what pleasure the
town must have seen its follies taken off so smartly. Occasionally,
too, there are short stories--usually written by Steele--bits of
domestic narrative showing the peace and purity of home. In _The
Spectator_, the papers are somewhat longer and more ambitious than
those of _The Tatler_, and here are many essays on graver themes,
and carefully elaborated critical studies, like the famous series by
Addison on Milton's _Paradise Lost_. Yet, from first to last, the most
interesting papers, both of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, are
those which depict with kindly irony the daily life of the town. There
is not to be found in English literature up to that time any satire
so wholesome, any pictures of contemporary society so vivid and so
entertaining. Indeed, it may perhaps be said that, of the sort, we have
had nothing better in English literature since.
For such writing as this it would be difficult to imagine two men
better fitted than Richard Steele and Joseph Addison. Each supplied the
deficiencies of the other. Steele was an impulsive, warm-hearted man
of the world. Few men knew the society of that day in all its phases
better than he did, and certainly no man liked it better. No English
writer before him feels so keenly the charm of the passing hour, or
takes such brisk and cheery interest in all the thousand events of
daily experience. His sympathies, too, were warm as well as broad.
His heart was tender, and he always carried it on his sleeve. This
amiable and ingenuous temper made his writing very attractive, and
still goes far to atone for all its imperfections. Addison, on the
other hand, was a rather cool, self-contained, observant man, who loved
to sit in his club with a little circle of admirers about him, and
promote the good-nature of the world in a somewhat superior and distant
fashion. His temper, less buoyant than Steele's, was more thoughtful
and reflective; his humour, more delicate and subtle. And if his
observation was not so broad as that of Steele, it was nicer and more
penetrating. Steele, seeing life at more points, struck out more new
incidents and characters; Addison had more skill to elaborate them.
In point of style the work of Addison is manifestly superior to that of
Steele. Steele's writing has, indeed, the great merit of spontaneity.
It is full of himself. To read his easy, lively page is like hearing
him talk at your elbow; and, now and then, when his emotions are
warmed, he can snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. But he was too
impulsive and eager to stay for that painstaking correction without
which literary finish is impossible. His rhetoric and even his grammar
are sometimes sadly to seek. The faults of his extempore writing were
matter of caustic comment by the critics of his own day; and ever since
it has been customary to award the literary honours of _The Tatler_
and _The Spectator_ not to Steele but to Addison. Nor is this unjust.
For Addison was the first of our writers to perceive clearly that
simple and popular prose was capable of finished, artistic treatment.
That minute care, that trained skill which hitherto had been reserved
for poetry, he bestowed upon his prose. He had naturally a nice taste,
an especially quick sense of movement and melody in prose, and he
took infinite pains. He would stop the press to change a phrase, or
set right a conjunction. And this effort issued in a style in which
all sense of effort is lost in graceful ease. His thought is never
profound, and seldom vigorous; his range is not wide; on serious
subjects he is sometimes a little dull, and on lighter subjects
sometimes a little trivial; but his manner is always suave, refined,
urbane. He was the first Englishman who succeeded in writing prose at
once familiar, idiomatic to the very verge of colloquialism, and at the
same time highly finished. You think such writing is easily done until
you try it yourself; then you soon find your mistake.