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The Tatler published a charming chatty familiar account of Mr. Paraday's "Home-life," and on the wings of the thirty-seven influential journals it went, to use Mr. Morrow's own expression, right round the globe. A week later, early in May, my glorified friend came up to town, where, it may be veraciously recorded he was the king of the beasts of the year.
He must have published his "Pastorals" before the year 1708, because they are evidently prior to those of Pope. He afterwards addressed to the universal patron, the Duke of Dorset, a "Poetical Letter from Copenhagen," which was published in the Tatler, and is by Pope, in one of his first Letters, mentioned with high praise as the production of a man "who could write very nobly."
He was seven years at this work, finishing it in 1755. He intended to model these papers on the lines of The Tatler and The Spectator, but his essays are for the most part ponderously dull and uninteresting. In 1762, for the first time, he was really an independent man, for then George III. gave him a life pension of £300 a year.
The letters are open imitations of the "Spectator" and the "Tatler," and, although sharp upon local follies, are of no consequence at present except as foreshadowing the sensibility and quiet humor of the future author, and his chivalrous devotion to woman.
The reasonableness of a "Test" is not hard to be proved; but perhaps it must be allowed that the proper test has not been chosen. The attention paid to the papers published under the name of "Bickerstaff," induced Steele, when he projected the Tatler, to assume an appellation which had already gained possession of the reader's notice.
Shackleton had the insight to perceive his friend was no common man, and so preserved every scrap of Burke's writing that came his way. About that time there seems to have been a sort of meteoric shower of chipmunk magazines, following in the luminous pathway of the "Spectator" and the "Tatler."
The political tone of the "Tatler" favored the Marlborough administration, and on this account Steele was rewarded with a snug office under the wing of the State. In Seventeen Hundred Ten, the Whig Ministry fell, but Lord Harley knew the value of Steele as a writer, and so notified him that he would not be disturbed in possession of his Stamp Office.
The immediate result for Steele never let an idea remain idle was the famous Tatler, the first number of which appeared April 12, 1709. It was a small folio sheet, appearing on post days, three times a week, and it sold for a penny a copy.
Of the papers in this volume, the first was sent to Steele by the post, and Steele wrote in the original Preface to the completed "Tatler" "written, as I since understand, by Mr. Twisdon, who died at the battle of Mons, and has a monument in Westminster Abbey, suitable to the respect which is due to his wit and valour." The other papers were all written by Steele, with these exceptions: No.
Its fifth edition was appended to the first collection of the 'Tatler' into volumes, at the time of the establishment of the 'Spectator'. The old bent of the English mind was strong in Steele, and he gave unostentatiously a lively wit to the true service of religion, without having spoken or written to the last day of his life a word of mere religious cant.
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