paper in which Steele has pursued so closely an argument resembling this, that we may adapt it to our present use. We may stigmatise it as not less a want of sense than of good nature to say that Addison has less exuberant spirits than Steele, but Steele not such steady self-control as Addison; for that such men have not each other's capacities is no more a diminution to either, than if you should say Addison is not Steele, or Steele not Addison. The heathen world, as Mr. Bickerstaff reasons the matter, had so little notion that perfection was to be expected from men, that among them any one quality or endowment in a heroic degree made a god. Hercules had strength, but it was never objected to him that he wanted wit. Apollo presided over wit, and it was never asked whether he had strength. Those wise heathens were glad to immortalise any one serviceable gift, and to overlook all imperfections in the person who had it. But with us it is far otherwise. We are only too eager to reject many manifest virtues, if we find them accompanied with a single apparent weakness.

Nor does the shrewd Mr. Bickerstaff end the argument here. He discovers in it the secret why principally it is that the worst of mankind, the libellers, receive so much encouragement. The low race of men take a great

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pleasure in finding an eminent character levelled to "their condition by a report of its defects, and keep them"selves in countenance, though they are excelled in a "thousand virtues, if they believe they have in common "with a great person any one fault." It would not be easy to express more perfectly than in these few words the danger of those extremes of depreciation to which Steele more than any man has been subjected. It is our firm belief that, whatever his improvidence may have been, he was incapable of a dishonourable action. It will not be difficult to show, in the brief sketch we shall presently give of his career, how little avoidable in his circumstances were not a few of his embarrassments and troubles. We wish it were possible to doubt that the life

to which only he was warranted in applying the modest expression that it was "at best but pardonable," was not better than ninety-nine hundredths of theirs who would be apt to pass the harshest judgments upon it. It was at least the life of a disinterested politician and patriot, of a tender husband, of an attached father, of a scholar, a wit, a man of genius, a gentleman. But the wit and the genius brought with them their usual penalties; and the world, not content that their exercise should have enlarged the circle of its enjoyments, and added enormously to human happiness in various ways, must satisfy its vulgar eagerness to find feet of clay for its image of gold, and give censorious fools the comfort of speaking as ill as may be of their benefactor.

And so the inquisition, far worse than Torquemada's, is opened. Circumstances of life the most minute, nor any longer intelligible without the context that has perished, are dragged into monstrous prominence. Relations the most intimate are rudely exposed. Letters are printed without concealment, though written in the confidence of a privacy so sacred that to break it in the case of ordinary men would be to overturn society altogether. And if the result should finally show that the man who has taught us all so well what our own conduct ought to be, had unhappily failed in such wisdom for the guidance of his own, the general complacence and satisfaction are complete. Silly world! as even Swift can find it in his heart to say; not to understand how much better occupied it would be in finding out that men of wit may be the most, rather than the least, moral of mankind. Unlucky man of wit, who, in the teeth of his own earnest warning, that only he who lives below his income lays up efficient armour against those who will cover all his frailties when he is so fortified, and exaggerate them when he is naked and defenceless,' goes incontinently and lives above his own income, and gets himself rated as "a "swindler."

1 The Tatler, No. 180.

Nor does Mr. Macaulay's disparagement of Steele take only the form of such harsh and quite unwarrantable expressions. It extends from his moral to his intellectual character; and we are not permitted to believe that a man could write excellent Tatlers who was not able to pay his tavern-bills with unvarying punctuality.

In forming his most celebrated literary project, we are told, Steele was far indeed from seeing its consequences. It had originated in his access to early and authentic foreign news opened by that appointment of Gazetteer, which, says Mr. Macaulay, he had received "from Sunderland, at "the request, it is said, of Addison." This is another of the many attempts which we grieve to see in his Essay to exhibit Steele as wholly dependent on Addison for his position with public men; but it is certainly incorrect. Swift expressly tells us, on the information of Undersecretary Erasmus Lewis, that it was Harley from whom he received his appointment, and at the request of Maynwaring. Indeed, Steele has himself left us in no doubt as to this; for when he was reproached for attacking the man to whom his thanks for it were due, he excused himself by saying that Harley, the person referred to, had refused at the time to accept such thanks, and had transferred them wholly to Maynwaring; that very leader among the Whigs who is now known himself to have written the attack complained of.'

Mr. Macaulay proceeds to give us his own description of the aim and design of the Tatler. Suggested by Steele's experience as Gazetteer, it was to be on a plan quite new, and to appear on the days

when the post left London

"pounds. This was devilish un"grateful." "When," he says, in the Importance of the Guardian considered, (Works, ed. Scott, iv. 192-3), "Mr. Maynwaring recom"mended him to the employment of "Gazetteer, Mr. Harley, out of an "inclination to encourage men of "parts, raised that office from fifty 66 pounds to three hundred pounds a"year."

for the country, which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Mr. Macaulay thinks it immaterial to mention that De Foe's Review, with not a few points of resemblance, had already for five years travelled by the country posts on those days; but indeed the resemblance could hardly be expected to suggest itself, with such a low opinion of Steele's purpose in the Tatler as he seems to have formed. It was to contain, he says, the foreign news, accounts of theatrical representations, and the literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. It was also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. "The aim of Steele does not appear to have "been at first higher than this." Mr. Macaulay's manifest object is to convey the impression that the Tatler had no real worth until Addison joined it.

Now the facts are, that, with the exception of very rare occasional hints embodied in papers indubitably by Steele, and of the greater part of one essay which appeared in May, and of another published in July, Addison's contributions to the Tatler did not begin until his return from Ireland in the middle of October, 1709, when eighty numbers had been issued. If, therefore, what Mr. Macaulay would convey be correct, Steele's narrow and limited design must have lasted at least so long; and that which gives the moral not less than the intellectual charm to these famous Essays, which turned their humour into a censorship of manners at once gentle and effective, and made their wit subservient to wisdom and piety, could not have become apparent till after the middle of the second. volume. Up to that time, according to Mr. Macaulay, Steele must have been merely compiling news, reviewing theatres, retailing literary gossip, remarking on fashionable topics, complimenting beauties, pasquinading sharpers, or criticising preachers; and could not yet have entered the higher field which the genius of Addison was to open to him. Nevertheless this is certain, that in

dedicating the first volume of the work to Maynwaring he describes in language that admits of no misconstruction, not only his own intention in setting it on foot, but what he calls "the sudden acceptance," the extraordinary success, which immediately followed, and which attracted to its subscription almost every name now "eminent among us for power, wit, beauty, valour, or "wisdom." His wish being, he says, to observe upon the manners, both in the pleasurable and the busy part of mankind, with a view to an exposure of the false arts of life, he resolved to do this by way of a letter of intelligence constructed on so novel a plan that it should appeal to the curiosity of all persons, of all conditions and of each sex; and he proceeds at once to explain the character of his design as precisely that attempt "to pull "off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and "to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our "discourse, and our behaviour," which was remarked by Johnson, three-quarters of a century afterwards, as its most happy distinguishing feature. It was this that the old critic and philosopher singled out as the very drift of all its labour in teaching us the minuter decencies and inferior duties, in regulating the practice of our daily conversation, in correcting depravities rather ridiculous than criminal, and in removing, if not the lasting calamities of life, those grievances which are its hourly vexation.

But the papers themselves are before us, if we want evidence more conclusive. Here is the first number with its motto superscribed, claiming for its comprehensive theme the quicquid agunt homines; and here, among the very first words that give us hearty greeting-" and for as "much as this globe is not trodden upon by mere drudges "of business only, but that men of spirit and genius are "justly to be esteemed as considerable agents in it ”—the lively note seems struck for every pleasant strain that followed. Where are the commonplaces described by Mr. Macaulay? How shall we limit our selection of examples in disproof of the alleged restriction to compiling, gossip