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 the Squire's first Tatlers. Most people fancy, from their frequency, that they must be composed by a Society; I, withall, assign the first place to Mr. Steele and his Friend.

'I have often thought that the conjunction of those two great geniuses (who seem to stand in a class by themselves, so high above all our other wits) resembles that of two famous statesmen1 in a late reign, whose characters are very well expressed in their two mottoes, viz. Prodesse quam conspici, and Otium cum dignitate. Accordingly the first was continually at work behind the curtain; drew up and prepared all these schemes and designs which the latter still drove on; and stood out exposed to the world, to receive its praises or censures.

'Meantime, all our unbiassed well-wishers to learning are in hopes that the known temper and prudence of one of these gentlemen will hinder the other from ever lashing out into party, and rendering that wit, which is at present a common good, odious and ungrateful to the better part of the nation. If this piece of imprudence does not spoil so excellent a paper, I propose to myself the highest satisfaction in reading it with you over a dish of tea, every morning next winter.'

2 <

danger feared by says, ' my paper run into the

Addison was fully aware of the Gay. As I am very sensible,' he would lose its whole effect, should it

1 Lord Somers and the Earl of Halifax.

2 No. 16.

outrages of a party, I shall take care to keep clear of everything which looks that way. If I can any way arrange private inflammations, or allay public ferments, I shall apply myself to it with the utmost endeavours; but will never let my heart reproach me with having done anything towards increasing those feuds and animosities that extinguish religion, deface government, and make a nation miserable.' And again, Among those advantages which the public may reap from this paper, it is not the least, that it draws men's minds off from the bitterness of party, and furnishes them with subject of discourse that may be treated without warmth or passion.'

The arrival of the Spectator was awaited in all parts of the country with even greater eagerness than the Tatler, and much regret was expressed when the discontinuance of the paper was announced, after the disposal of the various members of the imaginary club. In the tenth number Addison said. that 3000 copies a day were already distributed, and he reckoned that each copy found twenty readers. The sale increased month by month, until August 1712, when a halfpenny stamp was imposed upon all newspapers and periodicals, with disastrous results to many of them. of them. Swift wrote to Esther Johnson, 'Do you know that all Grub Street is dead and gone last week? . . . The Observator is fallen; the Medleys are jumbled together with the Flying Post ; the Examiner is deadly sick; the Spectator keeps up and doubles its price: I know not how long it will last.' Though the tax was only a halfpenny,

1 No. 262.

the price of the Spectator, as Swift says, was raised from one penny to twopence, though not without protest from some of its readers. The sale was reduced by more than half. Addison said that a little self-denial would enable subscribers to pay the extra halfpenny, or they could buy the paper when reprinted in volumes. The octavo edition of the first four volumes consisted of nine or ten thousand copies, some of which were printed on large and thick paper, at a guinea a volume; and there was also a pocket edition, which no doubt had a wide sale. The stamp-tax brought in over £20 a week from the folio issue of the Spectator, representing a daily sale, from August to December 1712, of more than 1600 copies a day. The sale before August must therefore have been nearly 4000.

With few exceptions, the authorship of the individual papers in the Spectator is placed beyond doubt by the initials appended by the several writers. Steele tells us that Addison's papers are marked by one of the letters in the name of the Muse Clio. Budgell used the letter X; Steele marked his papers R, up to No. 91; with T, and sometimes R, up to No. 134; and after that always with T. Sometimes, however, Tickell also used the letter T. Later theories that Addison signed C when writing at Chelsea, L when in London, I when in Ireland, and O when at the office, and that Steele used T instead of R when he had merely transcribed a paper received from another writer, are groundless, and inconsistent with the facts. Addison himself laughed 3 No. 555.

1 No. 488.

2 No. 555.

at the ingenious efforts to assign meanings to the initials affixed to the papers.1

We do not know why the Spectator was brought to a close in December 1712; but in the preceding month Steele told Pope of a design-the Guardian -to be opened a month or two hence, and requested his assistance. About the same time Addison and Steele assigned to Samuel Buckley, for the sum of £575, a half-share in the four volumes of the Spectator already published, and in the three which were yet to come; it was intended to continue the paper until the end of November. On the 7th of March 1713, George Berkeley, afterwards Bishop of Cloyne, but then a young man newly arrived from Dublin, told Sir John Perceval that he would soon hear of Steele under the character of the Guardian, which would be published daily; and the first number of that paper appeared accordingly on March 12. The Guardian extended to one hundred and seventy-five numbers, nearly half of them being by Steele; Addison wrote frequently after the paper had been well established, and among others who helped were Pope, Berkeley, Tickell, Budgell, and Hughes. The essays are on the same lines as those in the Spectator, but the machinery, consisting chiefly of Mr. Nestor Ironside (the Guardian) and the Lizard family, is not so happy as that in the earlier periodical; and unfortunately, before many weeks had passed, Steele was drawn into a political controversy with the Examiner, greatly to the detriment of the paper. By June he had

1 No. 221.

decided to enter Parliament, and with that object he resigned his commissionership of stamp duties and his pension as gentleman-waiter to the late Prince George. In August he was elected M.P. for Stockbridge, and embarked in a war of pamphlets respecting the failure to demolish Dunkirk, which had been provided for by the Treaty of Utrecht. In October the Guardian was brought to a sudden end, and its place was taken by the Englishman, a paper professedly political. Addison said that he was in a thousand troubles for poor Dick,' but knew that his friend was determined to go on. Addison had himself brought out in the spring, with great success, his tragedy of 'Cato;' he now declined to join in a new periodical proposed by Hughes on the ground that he required rest to lay in fuel.

After the publication of Swift's bitter 'The Importance of the Guardian Considered,' and of Steele's Crisis,' Steele was expelled by a Tory House of Commons in March 1714. He had in the preceding month commenced a paper called the Lover, a rather feeble imitation of the Tatler. The Lover reached to forty numbers, including one by Addison, and it then gave place to the Reader, of which nine numbers appeared, two of them being by Addison. On the 18th of June Addison began a new series of the Spectator, without Steele's assistance. This issue, which was published three times weekly until December, afterwards formed the eighth volume of the collected edition. The closing numbers of the original series had left the way open for a continuation, by the promise of a new club,