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When, in the spring of 1709, Steele was about to start the Tatler, he thought he could best secure the ear of the public by adopting the name with which Englishmen were then as familiar as a century and a half afterwards they became with the name of Pickwick.
N.E. This is, perhaps, as old as Philip and Mary. TO SPREAD ONE'S SELF is defined by Mr. Bartlett "to exert one's self." It means rather to exert one's self ostentatiously. It is a capital metaphor, derived, we fancy, from the turkey-cock or peacock, like the Italian pavoneggiarsi. We find in the Tatler "spreading her graces in assemblies." This last, however, may be a Gallicism, from etaler.
From this tendency, from this gradual attrition of life, in which everything pointed and characteristic is being rubbed down, till the whole world begins to slip between our fingers in smooth undistinguishable sands, from this, we say, it follows that we must not attempt to join Mr. Tatler in his simple division of students into Law, Divinity, and Medical.
A kind of lassitude a sense of uncongenial task-work broods heavily over Fielding's contributions, except the one or two in which he is quickened into animation by his antagonism to Cibber; and although, with our knowledge of his after achievements, it is possible to trace some indications of his yet unrevealed powers, in the absence of such knowledge it would be difficult to distinguish the Champion from the hundred-and-one forgotten imitators of the Spectator and Tatler, whose names have been so patiently chronicled by Dr.
Everything is turning upside down; every Whig in great office will, to a man, be infallibly put out; and we shall have such a winter as hath not been seen in England. The Tatler expects every day to be turned out of his employment; and the Duke of Ormond, they say, will be Lieutenant of Ireland.
At Hampton Wick, the village on the opposite bank, resided the witty but profligate Sir Richard Steele, in a house which he whimsically denominated "the hovel;" and "from the Hovel at Hampton Wick, April 7, 1711," he dedicated the fourth volume of the Tatler to Charles, Lord Halifax.
In the two hundred and twenty-ninth number of the Tatler, Addison, enumerating his antagonists, says, 'I was threatened to be answered weekly Tit for Tat, I was undermined by the Whisperer, scolded at by a Female Tatler, and slandered by another of the same character under the title of Atalantis. To confine ourselves, however, to the publications mentioned by Gay.
I went home considering the different conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor. And I must confess it struck me with a secret concern to reflect that, whenever I go off, I shall leave no traces behind me. In this pensive mood I returned to my family, that is to say, to my maid, my dog, and my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to me."* *Tatler, 96.
Some of the papers of Steele and Addison in the Tatler, Guardian, and the Spectator are of course notable; but it was not until the appearance of Charles Lamb that the personal essay reached its climax in English literature. Over the pages of the Essays of Elia hovers an immortal charm the charm of a nature inexhaustible in its humour and kindly sympathy for humanity.
In the earlier contributions of Addison to the Tatler his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet from the first, his superiority to all his coadjutors was evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal to anything that he ever wrote. Among the portraits we most admire "Tom Folio," "Ned Softly," and the "Political Upholsterer."
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