Volume I Part 4 (1/2)

They seemed indeed at first to think that what was only the garnish of the former 'Tatlers', was that which recommended them; and not those Substantial Entertainments which they everywhere abound in. According they were continually talking of their 'Maid', 'Night Cap', 'Spectacles', and Charles Lillie. However there were, now and then, some faint endeavours at Humour and sparks of Wit: which the Town, for want of better entertainment, was content to hunt after through a heap of impertinences; but even those are, at present, become wholly invisible and quite swallowed up in the blaze of the 'Spectator'.

You may remember, I told you before, that one cause a.s.signed for the laying down the 'Tatler' was, Want of Matter; and, indeed, this was the prevailing opinion in Town: when we were surprised all at once by a paper called the 'Spectator', which was promised to be continued every day; and was written in so excellent a style, with so nice a judgment, and such a n.o.ble profusion of wit and humour, that it was not difficult to determine it could come from no other hands but those which had penned the 'Lucubrations'.

This immediately alarmed these gentlemen, who, as it is said Mr.

Steele phrases it, had 'the Censors.h.i.+p in Commission.' They found the new 'Spectator' came on like a torrent, and swept away all before him.

They despaired ever to equal him in wit, humour, or learning; which had been their true and certain way of opposing him: and therefore rather chose to fall on the Author; and to call out for help to all good Christians, by a.s.suring them again and again that they were the First, Original, True, and undisputed 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.

Meanwhile, the 'Spectator', whom we regard as our Shelter from that flood of false wit and impertinence which was breaking in upon us, is in every one's hands; and a constant for our morning conversation at tea-tables and coffee-houses. We had at first, indeed, no manner of notion how a diurnal paper could be continued in the spirit and style of our present 'Spectators': but, to our no small surprise, we find them still rising upon us, and can only wonder from whence so prodigious a run of Wit and Learning can proceed; since some of our best judges seem to think that they have hitherto, in general, outshone even the 'Esquire's' first 'Tatlers'.

Most people fancy, from their frequency, that they must be composed by a Society: I withal a.s.sign the first places to Mr. Steele and his Friend.

So far John Gay, whose discussion of the 'Tatlers' and 'Spectators'

appeared when only fifty-five numbers of the 'Spectator' had been published.

There was high strife of faction; and there was real peril to the country by a possible turn of affairs after Queen Anne's death, that another Stuart restoration, in the name of divine right of kings, would leave rights of the people to be reconquered in civil war. The chiefs of either party were appealing to the people, and engaging all the wit they could secure to fight on their side in the war of pamphlets. Steele's heart was in the momentous issue. Both he and Addison had it in mind while they were blending their calm playfulness with all the clamour of the press. The spirit in which these friends worked, young Pope must have felt; for after Addison had helped him in his first approach to fame by giving honour in the 'Spectator' to his 'Essay on Criticism,'

and when he was thankful for that service, he contributed to the 'Spectator' his 'Messiah.' Such offering clearly showed how Pope interpreted the labour of the essayists.

In the fens of Lincolns.h.i.+re the antiquary Maurice Johnson collected his neighbours of Spalding.

'Taking care,' it is said, 'not to alarm the country gentlemen by any premature mention of antiquities, he endeavoured at first to allure them into the more flowery paths of literature. In 1709 a few of them were brought together every post-day at the coffee-house in the Abbey Yard; and after one of the party had read aloud the last published number of the 'Tatler', they proceeded to talk over the subject among themselves.'

Even in distant Perths.h.i.+re

'the gentlemen met after church on Sunday to discuss the news of the week; the 'Spectators' were read as regularly as the 'Journal'.'

So the political draught of bitterness came sweetened with the wisdom of good-humour. The good-humour of the essayists touched with a light and kindly hand every form of affectation, and placed every-day life in the light in which it would be seen by a natural and honest man. A sense of the essentials of life was a.s.sumed everywhere for the reader, who was asked only to smile charitably at its vanities. Steele looked through all shams to the natural heart of the Englishman, appealed to that, and found it easily enough, even under the disguise of the young gentleman cited in the 77th 'Tatler',

'so ambitious to be thought worse than he is that in his degree of understanding he sets up for a free-thinker, and talks atheistically in coffee-houses all day, though every morning and evening, it can be proved upon him, he regularly at home says his prayers.'

But as public events led nearer to the prospect of a Jacobite triumph that would have again brought Englishmen against each other sword to sword, there was no voice of warning more fearless than Richard Steele's. He changed the 'Spectator' for the 'Guardian', that was to be, in its plan, more free to guard the people's rights, and, standing forward more distinctly as a politician, he became member for Stockbridge. In place of the 'Guardian', which he had dropped when he felt the plan of that journal unequal to the right and full expression of his mind, Steele took for a periodical the name of 'Englishman', and under that name fought, with then unexampled abstinence from personality, against the principles upheld by Swift in his 'Examiner'.

Then, when the Peace of Utrecht alarmed English patriots, Steele in a bold pamphlet on 'The Crisis' expressed his dread of arbitrary power and a Jacobite succession with a boldness that cost him his seat in Parliament, as he had before sacrificed to plain speaking his place of Gazetteer.

Of the later history of Steele and Addison a few words will suffice.

This is not an account of their lives, but an endeavour to show why Englishmen must always have a living interest in the 'Spectator', their joint production. Steele's 'Spectator' ended with the seventh volume.

The members of the Club were all disposed of, and the journal formally wound up; but by the suggestion of a future ceremony of opening the 'Spectator's' mouth, a way was made for Addison, whenever he pleased, to connect with the famous series an attempt of his own for its revival. A year and a half later Addison made this attempt, producing his new journal with the old name and, as far as his contributions went, not less than the old wit and earnestness, three times a week instead of daily. But he kept it alive only until the completion of one volume.

Addison had not Steele's popular tact as an editor. He preached, and he suffered drier men to preach, while in his jest he now and then wrote what he seems to have been unwilling to acknowledge. His eighth volume contains excellent matter, but the subjects are not always well chosen or varied judiciously, and one understands why the 'Spectator' took a firmer hold upon society when the two friends in the full strength of their life, aged about forty, worked together and embraced between them a wide range of human thought and feeling. It should be remembered also that Queen Anne died while Addison's eighth volume was appearing, and the change in the Whig position brought him other occupation of his time.

In April, 1713, in the interval between the completion of the true 'Spectator' and the appearance of the supplementary volume, Addison's tragedy of 'Cato', planned at College; begun during his foreign travels, retouched in England, and at last completed, was produced at Drury Lane.

Addison had not considered it a stage play, but when it was urged that the time was proper for animating the public with the sentiments of Cato, he a.s.sented to its production. Apart from its real merit the play had the advantage of being applauded by the Whigs, who saw in it a Whig political ideal, and by the Tories, who desired to show that they were as warm friends of liberty as any Whig could be.

Upon the death of Queen Anne Addison acted for a short time as secretary to the Regency, and when George I. appointed Addison's patron, the Earl of Sunderland, to the Lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, Sunderland took Addison with him as chief secretary. Sunderland resigned in ten months, and thus Addison's secretarys.h.i.+p came to an end in August, 1716. Addison was also employed to meet the Rebellion of 1715 by writing the 'Freeholder'. He wrote under this t.i.tle fifty-five papers, which were published twice a week between December, 1715, and June, 1716; and he was rewarded with the post of Commissioner for Trade and Colonies. In August, 1716, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, mother to the young Earl of Warwick, of whose education he seems to have had some charge in 1708. Addison settled upon the Countess 4000 in lieu of an estate which she gave up for his sake. Henceforth he lived chiefly at Holland House. In April, 1717, Lord Sunderland became Secretary of State, and still mindful of Marlborough's ill.u.s.trious supporter, he made Addison his colleague. Eleven months later, ill health obliged Addison to resign the seals; and his death followed, June 17, 1719, at the age of 47.

Steele's political difficulties ended at the death of Queen Anne. The return of the Whigs to power on the accession of George I. brought him the office of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; he was also first in the Commission of the peace for Middles.e.x, and was made one of the deputy lieutenants of the county. At the request of the managers Steele's name was included in the new patent required at Drury Lane by the royal company of comedians upon the accession of a new sovereign. Steele also was returned as M.P. for Boroughbridge, in Yorks.h.i.+re, was writer of the Address to the king presented by the Lord-lieutenant and the deputy lieutenants of Middles.e.x, and being knighted on that occasion, with two other of the deputies, became in the spring of the year, 1714, Sir Richard Steele. Very few weeks after the death of his wife, in December, 1718, Sunderland, at a time when he had Addison for colleague, brought in a bill for preventing any future creations of peers, except when an existing peerage should become extinct. Steele, who looked upon this as an infringement alike of the privileges of the crown and of the rights of the subject, opposed the bill in Parliament, and started in March, 1719, a paper called the 'Plebeian', in which he argued against a measure tending, he said, to the formation of an oligarchy. Addison replied in the 'Old Whig', and this, which occurred within a year of the close of Addison's life, was the main subject of political difference between them. The bill, strongly opposed, was dropped for that session, and reintroduced (after Addison's death) in the December following, to be thrown out by the House of Commons.