PART V.

ESSAY.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE EFFECTS OF THE TATLER,

SPECTATOR, AND GUARDIAN, ON THE TASTE, LITERATURE, AND MORALS OF THE AGE.

To the periodical writings of Steele and Addison, we are indebted for a most faithful and masterly delineation of the taste, the manners, and morals, which prevailed during the eventful reign of Queen Anne; a portrait, indeed, by many degrees more highly finished than any which can be produced of preceding or subsequent periods. Of this picture a reduced, but, we hope, an accurate copy, will be found in our introductory essay, where we have endeavoured to present a clear, though compressed, view of literature and manners as they existed in 1709.

That it was the constant endeavour of Steele and Addison to correct the vices, ridicule the follies, and dissipate the ignorance which too generally prevailed at the commencement of the

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eighteenth century, equally appears from their professions, and the tendency of their productions. This great, this noble object, the Spectator ever holds in view; and he has taken an early opportunity of expressing, in the more clear and decided language, what were his views and wishes, and what were the means which he had adopted for the purpose of carrying his intentions into execution. "I shall endeavour," he observes, "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly, into which the age is fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day, sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates, that he brought philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit among men; I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses *.

*Spectator, No 10.

Of the success which attended the efforts of Steele and Addison, in the reformation and improvement of their own immediate age, nothing can afford so decisive a proof as the opinions of contemporaries competent to form a just estimate of the result of their labours. Fortunately, it is in our power to refer to two productions of this kind, the first of which was published on the close of the Tatler, and the second on the death of Sir Richard Steele : they afford a very striking and satisfactory detail of the salutary effect of the Tatlers, Spectators, and Guardians, in ameliorating the morals of society, and in accelerating the progress of intellectual acquirement.

To Gay, there is every reason to suppose, we are indebted for the description of the moral influence of the Tatler. After regretting the recent decease of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. he adds, "to give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings, I shall in the first place observe, that there is this noble difference between him and all the rest of our polite and gallant 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 any thing 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 vain 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 showing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and lastly, how entirely they have convinced our 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 me. thod of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most wel

come guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the Change.

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Lastly, his writings have set all our wits and men of letters upon a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before; and though we cannot yet 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 *."

Of the almost immediate utility accruing to manners and literature from the circulation of the Tatler, no passages can be more decisive than those which we have distinguished by Italics; and to these we can add a testimony equally strong with regard to the moral and mental operation on society of the whole body of periodical writings which issued from the school of Steele and Addison. The author of an Essay on the Character of Sir Richard Steele, printed in 1729, thus emphatically speaks of the great advantages which had then been derived from the diffusion of these inimitable papers.

"To him (Sir Richard) we owe that invalua ble work which he commenced in "The Tatler,” and, assisted by the immortal labours of his in

*The Present State of Wit. In a Letter to a Friend in the Country. First printed in May, 1711.