It is Addison’s friend Tickell who tells us that the sale of the
‘Spectator’ sometimes amounted to 20,000 copies. The statement, however,
is scarcely credible. In the tenth number of the work it is mentioned on
the authority of the publisher, that the sale was already 3,000 a day.
We question if it ever rose much higher than this. No. 445, which
appeared on the 31st of July, 1712, was the last published without a
stamp; and in it the writer (Addison) intimates that the price will in
future be two-pence instead of a penny. Half of the addition was to pay
for the halfpenny stamp, and the other half to compensate for the
diminished circulation. A hope is at the same time expressed that the
country may receive “five or six pounds a day” by means of this tax laid
on the work. Even if this hope had been realised to its utmost extent,
it would have implied a sale of only 2,880 copies. But in point of fact
this appears to have been nearly the full circulation before the duty
was put on; for, in No. 555, the concluding paper (of the first series)
which is written and signed by Steele, the editor, the average produce
of the tax is only rated as being then “above 20_l._ a week.” The sale
must therefore have been only about 1,600 a day. And yet it seems to be
intimated that it had for some time been rather recovering from the
depression occasioned by the imposition of the tax: it was at first
reduced, we are told, “to less than half the number that was usually
printed before this tax was laid.” The circulation before the imposition
of the tax, therefore, could not have greatly exceeded 3,000; and, such
being its average amount, it seems scarcely possible that even on
extraordinary occasions it should have ever risen to anything like the
number mentioned by Tickell. At the time he wrote, however, the papers
making the first four volumes had been reprinted and published in a
cheaper form, and above 9,000 copies of each volume have been sold. This
sale of the third and fourth volumes appears to have been effected in
the course of the preceding three months; during which time, however,
very few copies, if any at all, of the first and second volumes, would
seem to have been disposed of. For, in No. 448, we are told that of
these two volumes an edition of about 10,000 copies had already been
carried off. It may be concluded, therefore, that this was the whole
number which the demands of the public would be made to absorb. Many
editions, however, of what extent we do not know, were sold in the
course of the next twenty or thirty years. We have before us Tonson’s
tenth edition, published in 1729; and his eleventh, dated 1733. There
had been a new edition, therefore, about once in every two years since
the first appearance of the work.
It was probably this stamp duty which chiefly contributed to bring the
‘Spectator’ to a close. In the number in which the rise of price is
announced, considerable hesitation is expressed as to whether the
publication should be continued or dropt, as it was understood many of
the other penny papers would be. From a letter in No. 461, it appears
that the ‘Spectator’ was the only one of these periodicals which had
doubled its price; the others which survived contented themselves with
merely charging their subscribers the additional halfpenny required to
defray the tax. These, however, could not have allowed the retailers any
additional profit concurrent with the additional price. On account of
the increased price several coffee-houses had left off taking the
‘Spectator.’ In No. 488 we have again a notice of complaints made by
subscribers on account of this rise in the price of the publication. In
a short time after this we find the writers evidently beginning to make
preparations for concluding their work. The members of the club drop off
one by one. In No. 513 the clergyman is laid on his death-bed. No. 517
announces the death of Sir Roger; and No. 530 the marriage of Will
Honeycomb. In No. 541 the Templar withdraws himself to study law. “What
will all this end in?” says a letter in the next day’s publication; “we
are afraid it portends no good to the public. Unless you speedily fix a
day for the election of new members, we are under apprehensions of
losing the ‘_British Spectator_.’” But the process of dissolution goes
on. No. 544 communicates, in an epistle from himself, the transformation
of Captain Sentry into a Squire; and, finally, No. 549 the removal of
Sir Andrew Freeport by the same fate. Another week terminated the
original series of the ‘Spectator,’ after it had continued to delight
the public for about a year and three quarters. It was resumed about
half a year afterwards, as a thrice-a-week publication; but the attempt
is not understood to have met with the success by which it had formerly
been attended; and the work was again laid down after it had continued
for about six months.
---------------------