"Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will be necessary to inform you that at the beginning of the winter, to the infinite surprise of all the Town, Mr. Steele flung up his Tatler, and instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, subscribed himself Richard Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the Town for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them.

The chief reason he thought fit to give for his leaving off writing was, that having been so long looked on in all public places and companies as the Author of those papers, he found that his most intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to speak or act before him.

The Town was very far from being satisfied with this reason, and most people judged the true cause to be, either

• That he was quite spent, and wanted matter to continue his undertaking any longer; or
• That he laid it down as a sort of submission to, and composition with, the Government for some past offences; or, lastly,
• That he had a mind to vary his Shape, and appear again in some new light.

However that were, his disappearance seemed to be bewailed as some general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement, and the Coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's Lucubrations alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together.

It must indeed be confessed that never man threw up his pen, under stronger temptations to have employed it longer. His reputation was at a greater height, than I believe ever any living author's was before him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably considerable. Every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them.

Lastly, it was highly improbable that, if he threw off a Character, the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind, however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet with the same reception.

To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings I shall, in the first place, observe, that there is a noble difference between him and all the rest of our gallant and polite authors. The latter have endeavoured to please the Age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the character of a Fine Gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the Town that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and coquettes; but in such a manner as even pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he spoke truth.

Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of the Age — either in morality, criticism, or good breeding — he has boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to surrender themselves to his arguments for Virtue and Good Sense.

It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the Town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished or given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to Virtue and Religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by shewing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly, how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of the value and advantages of Learning.

He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the Change. Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain Steele is the greatest scholar and best Casuist of any man in England.

Lastly, his writings have set all our Wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and, although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.

The vast variety of subjects which Mr. Steele has treated of, in so different manners, and yet all so perfectly well, made the World believe that it was impossible they should all come from the same hand. This set every one upon guessing who was the Esquire's friend? and most people at first fancied it must be Doctor Swift; but it is now no longer a secret, that his only great and constant assistant was Mr. Addison.

This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much; and who refuses to have his name set before those pieces, which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add to this Gentleman's reputation: whose works in Latin and English poetry long since convinced the World, that he was the greatest Master in Europe in those two languages.

I am assured, from good hands, that all the visions, and other tracts of that way of writing, with a very great number of the most exquisite pieces of wit and raillery through the Lucubrations are entirely of this Gentleman's composing: which may, in some measure, account for that different Genius, which appears in the winter papers, from those of the summer; at which time, as the Examiner often hinted, this friend of Mr. Steele was in Ireland.

Mr. Steele confesses in his last Volume of the Tatlers that he is obliged to Dr. Swift for his Town Shower, and the Description of the Morn, with some other hints received from him in private conversation.

I have also heard that several of those Letters, which came as from unknown hands, were written by Mr. Henley: which is an answer to your query, 'Who those friends are whom Mr. Steele speaks of in his last Tatler?'

But to proceed with my account of our other papers. The expiration of Bickerstaff's Lucubrations was attended with much the same consequences as the death of Meliboeus's Ox in Virgil: as the latter engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole swarms of little satirical scribblers.

One of these authors called himself the Growler, and assured us that, to make amends for Mr. Steele's silence, he was resolved to growl at us weekly, as long as we should think fit to give him any encouragement. Another Gentleman, with more modesty, called his paper the Whisperer; and a third, to please the Ladies, christened his the Tell tale.

At the same-time came out several Tatlers; each of which, with equal truth and wit, assured us that he was the genuine Isaac Bickerstaff.

It may be observed that when the Esquire laid down his pen; though he could not but foresee that several scribblers would soon snatch it up, which he might (one would think) easily have prevented: he scorned to take any further care about it, but left the field fairly open to any worthy successor. Immediately, some of our Wits were for forming themselves into a Club, headed by one Mr. Harrison, and trying how they could shoot in this Bow of Ulysses; but soon found that this sort of writing requires so fine and particular a manner of thinking, with so exact a knowledge of the World, as must make them utterly despair of success.

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 assigned 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 noble 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 Censorship 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 assuring 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 assign the first places to Mr. Steele and his Friend.

'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.'

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

'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.'

'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would often be carried out, of a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, — and, with his pencil, gave an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the best dancer.'

• Sentences added in the reprint are printed in brown without any appended note.
• Sentences omitted, or words altered, are shown by printing the revised version in brown, and giving the text as it stood in the original daily issue as a foot-note¹.

• As the few differences between good spelling in Queen Anne's time and good spelling now are never of a kind to obscure the sense of a word, or lessen the enjoyment of the reader, it has been thought better to make the reproduction perfect, and thus show not only what Steele and Addison wrote, but how they spelt,
• while restoring to their style the proper harmony of their own methods of punctuating,
• and their way of sometimes getting emphasis by turning to account the use of Capitals, which in their hands was not wholly conventional.
• The original folio numbers have been followed also in the use of italics
• and other little details of the disposition of the type; for example, in the reproduction of those rows of single inverted commas, which distinguish what a correspondent called the parts 'laced down the side with little c's.' [This last detail of formatting has not been reproduced in this file. html Ed.]
• The translation of the mottos and Latin quotations, which Steele and Addison deliberately abstained from giving, and which, as they were since added, impede and sometimes confound and contradict the text, are here placed in a body at the end, for those who want them.

• The mottos then are placed in an Appendix.
• There is a short Appendix also of advertisements taken from the original number of the Spectator, and a few others, where they seem to illustrate some point in the text, will be found among the notes.

• Finally, from the General Index to the Spectators, &c., published as a separate volume in 1760, there has been taken what was serviceable, and additions have been made to it with a desire to secure for this edition of the Spectator the advantages of being handy for reference as well as true to the real text.

Contents

Original Dedication