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He also held office under David II. In that case also he is believed by some scholars to have translated the poems bearing the titles The Destruction of Troy and The Wars of Alexander. Essayist and dramatist, was a clerk in the Ordnance Office, then sec. for the Commission of the Peace. He contributed to the Spectator, Tatler, and Guardian, ed.
Yet, says Steele, long after, speaking of himself and Addison, "There never was a more strict friendship than between those gentlemen, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from their different way of pursuing the same thing. *Steele in the Theatre, 12. The Tatler, like Defoe's Review, was a leaflet of two or three pages, published three times a week.
Our only knowledge of her temperament in her early life comes from a remark by Nichols that the character of Sappho in the "Tatler" may be "assigned with ...probability and confidence, to Mrs. Elizabeth Heywood, who ...was in all respects just such a character as is exhibited here."
Two hundred years later, after Steele and Addison had set the pattern of the eighteenth-century essay, the drama was comparatively neglected, and every man of letters was found striving for the unattainable ease and charm of the 'Tatler' and the 'Spectator. Even the elephantine Johnson, congenitally incapable of airy nothings and prone always to "make little fishes talk like whales," disported ponderously in the 'Idler' and the 'Rambler. The vogue of the essay was fleeting also; and a century later it was followed by the vogue of the novel, a vogue which has already endured longer than that of the essay, and which has not yet shown any signs of abating.
This was the resort named by Steele as the origin of the political news served up in the Tatler, and it was favoured with many references in the Spectator of Addison, The latter gives an amusing account of a general shiftround of the servants of the house owing to the resignation of one of their number, and in a later paper, devoted to coffee-house speculations on the death of the King of France, he gives the place of honour to the Whig resort as providing the most reliable information.
A pamphlet by John Gay 'The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country' was dated May 3, 1711, about two months after the 'Spectator' had replaced the 'Tatler'. And thus Gay represents the best talk of the town about these papers: "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.
The Reader no doubt is before-hand with me, and concludes, that I mean the Tatler and Spectator, which for the greatest Part, have all the Perfection of Writing, and all the Advantages of Wit and Humour, that are requir'd to entertain and instruct the People: And it must chiefly be owing to the great Depravity of Manners in these loose and degenerate Times, that such worthy Performances have produc'd no better Effects.
It is often impossible in the Tatler essays to separate the work of the two men; but the majority of critics hold that the more original parts, the characters, the thought, the overflowing kindliness, are largely Steele's creation; while to Addison fell the work of polishing and perfecting the essays, and of adding that touch of humor which made them the most welcome literary visitors that England had ever received.
G. P. R. James, ed., Letters Illustrative of the Reign of William III, ... addressed to the Duke of Shrewsbury, by James Vernon, Esq. Spectator, no. 117. Hist. MSS. Comm. Reports, XIV, 3, p. 132. G. P. R. James, ed., op. cit., II, 300. Shrewsbury's opinion may be inferred from Vernon's reply to him. See the Tatler, no. 21, May 28, 1709.
Of the Tatler this is told by Steele in his last paper; and of the Spectator by Budgell in the preface to "Theophrastus," a book which Addison has recommended, and which he was suspected to have revised, if he did not write it. Of those portraits which may be supposed to be sometimes embellished, and sometimes aggravated, the originals are now partly known, and partly forgotten.
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