"It was," said Steele, recalling his first remembrance of his long friendship with Addison, and the warmest of welcomes accorded to the poor and fatherless boy at Lichfield, "it was an unspeakable pleasure to visit or sit at a meal with that family." And though during the last days of Addison's life a somewhat heated disagreement on the contemporary peerage question ruffled their old intimacy, the two friends never had any difference of opinion "but what proceeded from their different ways of pursuing the same thing," and when they met, "talked as unreservedly as ever, without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other." The words come a little oddly, perhaps, from such an ardent partisan as Steele, but he was getting old when he wrote them, and less eager than wise. Addison was dead, and his own sun in the west. Friendships as loyal, though few more famous than theirs, have brightened the records of the irritable tribe of authors, but to none is the world under a pleasanter obligation. It made their few years' collaboration in journalism one of the most delightful things in literature. Day after day the two men, at one in their main object, without sign of jealousy, even of rivalry, kept the shuttlecock of the Spectator deftly bobbing over the net of public approval; and when the game was finished it fell as naturally to the generous and impulsive heart of Steele to give Addison all the glory as it has fallen almost with one accord to their countless readers since to share it equally between them.

Like most unusually happy achievements, that of launching and keeping afloat the Spectator seems in retrospect as easy as it was inevitable. But a

slow and groping process preceded the triumphant event. Nathaniel Butters, whom, oddly enough, no satiated victim of the Press has yet connected with the mystical number 666, had set the ball rolling far back in 1622 with his Weekly News, the first of that swarm of newspapers we read to-day with greediness but without respect. Hotfoot after him came all the entirely terrestrial Mercuries, until to John Dunton occurred in 1690 the happy thought of a sheet that should entertain the public with "all the most nice and curious questions propounded by the ingenious of either sex." Questions, that is, which will continue to be asked and answered until the last trump, or a very fat Blue-book, shall resolve them once and for all. In 1704 Defoe's Review appeared, with its "Scandal Club." In 1707 Steele was appointed editor of the London Gazette, and given the man and the office, the precedent and the opportunity all together, the Tatler was a foregone conclusion.

But many numbers of the Tatler were to go by before it took its ripe and final shape. Steele gradually dropped out mere news, even the tastiest piece of which "loseth its flavor when it hath been an hour in the air,” and began to swell out his little essays until they took up whole numbers. Before the Tatler set to tattling practically all newspapers had been true to their name. They retailed in all its natural nakedness what meagre information they could procure, and left reflection, criticism, and commentary to their readers. "Isaac Bickerstaff" began deliberately peering into matters of public taste-discourse, dress, behavior; he took upon himself the censorship of Great Britain, and set out frankly to instruct men what to think, only a less

difficult and dangerous business than that of instructing them how to think. But though in his lucubrations he was a good deal more generous with his physic than most editors of a later age have had the courage or the funds to dare to be, he endeared and won over his readers with a judiciously generous admixture of jam. If, then, Defoe may be called the father, it is not straining a point to call Steele the godfather, of English journalism. And when with the eightieth number of the Tatler Addison joined his old schoolfellow, whose hand he had already detected in what had gone before, the infant was short-coated and well on its way to fending for itself; well on its way, indeed, to the usurpation of that editorial "We" that was to prove, as time went by, more powerful than Henry VIII., more capricious than Elizabeth.

So far as Steele's immediate purpose was concerned, he was in one thing at a real but easily avoidable disadvantage. All his life he was a strong and fearless, occasionally an extreme, party man. He could not, in his own strength, succeed in keeping politics out of his paper. And so in part, perhaps, for personal reasons connected with Harley, and in part because Addison clearly perceived that a dispenser and critic of what is common to all sociable humanity and nourishing to both sexes is apt to lose in persuasiveness and acceptability by any obvious bias to a particular party, on January 2, with its 274th number, the Tatler came to a calm but glorious end. A few weeks afterwards, on March 1, two hundred years ago, introduced by Addison, now at leisure after the fall of the Whigs, the Silent Man, the Looker-on, the quiet, attentive frequenter of all the humming Coffeehouses, the Stander-by who had never espoused any party with violence, who was resolved to observe an exact neu

"

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the old Spectator to a reader of the présent day is its admirable continuity. Number after number may be read at a sitting, on subjects ranging from Babylon to Bouts Rimés, from Platonic Love to Rope-dancing, from "Tom, the Tyrant at the Coffee House" to the Mohocks in Fleet-street and the Tombs in Westminster Abbey, and the same rippling philosophy bears them all on, with the same equable ease. Shrewa good-humor is the keynote, their score the heart of man, "from the Depths of Stratagem to the Surface of Affectation." "Is it not much better to be let into the Knowledge of one's Self than to hear what passes in Muscovy or Poland?" This, the least wearying branch of all human knowledge, they treat of without pomposity or flippancy, and, above all, without "the least impropriety of language." They are rarely hurried or professional. They scold without heat, preach without anathematizing, satirize without bitterness; and so much of a length they are, so dexterously they oscillate between grave and gay, that one might almost talk of a Spectatorial metre. Brilliance is constitutionally intermittent, and many a newspaper has flared its unreturning way into extinction. But both Addison and Steele had talent in abundance to ballast their genius. So sure and deft was their guiding hand that the Spectator could without danger afford to be rather ponderous now and again with poor Budgell, could burst into a transitory limelight with poems by "a great genius not ashamed to employ his wit in the praise of his Maker," and could thin itself out oc

casionally with the namby-pambyisms of that minor poet, loyally befriended by Addison, of whom the same "great genius" was afterwards to remark:"Twas all the ambition his high soul could feel,

To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele.

Even Steele himself could at times venture to thump the cushion a little more lustily than usual, and Addison enjoy a few halcyon hours of lofty criticism. In the long run all was in keeping.

It is a curiously blended personality that is the secret of it all. And first and last, what held the Spectator together and kept it going was the impulse and energy, the simple, frank, and understandable humanity of Richard Steele. He was now on the borders of forty, had seen and been seen by the world. Always an Irishman, he had been a Guardsman, had fought a duel, written perhaps the only play that has ever been "damned for its piety," had sought the philosopher's stone (afterwards discovered in the possession of Addison), and at one crisis risked his capital in an ingenious but unsuccessful effort to cheapen London salmon from an extortionate 5s. a pound. His was an earthly story, but it had a very real claim to a heavenly meaning. There is always in the world a numerous audience eager for such a story, and a select few not less eager to approve its sad lessons. And it is because in every sermon that Steele preached-often in haste, at length, and meanderingly-his absolute sincerity is childlike and clear; because, whenever he had need of a warning he would look within, was always self-concerned but never self-conscious, that his homilies may be tedious but are never thin and hypocritical, never hateful. Weaknesses that bring their punishment on this side of the grave are harshly judged only by the rigid mor

alist whose rigidity must look to a hereafter for its full recognition. Swift and Macaulay; neither of them an exactly lovable man, had each his own contemptuous fling at that "rakish, wild, drunken Spark," "poor Dick," "the vilest of mankind." "He was only tolerable company when he had a bottle in his head." To be tolerable in any circumstances is not given to us all. And a man of whom it could be said warmly that he was a friend to the friendless, a father of every orphan, and the most agreeable, and the most innocent rake that ever trod the rounds of indulgence, a man, too, for whom the gallant young Lord Finch could fight but could not speak, need have no dread of the world's judgment while it remains human.

In judging Steele's contributions to the Spectator, the fact that on him lay the burden of getting his daily sheet out with promptitude and despatch must not be forgotten. Each was a web spun from within. The news of the day lent only a twig to fix it to. A few genuine letters from enthusiastic correspondents might be knit into a number. On one occasion a Mr. Barr, a dissenting minister, supplied a version of the "Song of Solomon" in rhymed couplets. But when supplies ran low Steele had often to write in haste, while Addison could pause and ponder and polish at leisure. If to this accident is due something of the formlessness and desultoriness, as well as the spontaneity, dash, and gusto, of Steele's work it is also an additional testimony to Addison's exquisite literary gift. For though Addison in his show-pieces could, and undoubtedly did, take his time, we know from Steele himself that he could dictate his contributions "with as much ease and freedom as anybody could write them down." Addison's was the very rare grace of facility without thinness. Style is born, not made. A man may

labor to clarify and disencumber; he cannot create his style. It is a personal emanation. And if Steele's is the warm bodily presence in the Spectator, the spirituelle is Addison's. Both were indispensable. We may talk of the Spectator and bless Steele; but when it comes to reading it, we read for the most part Addison. Without him-its daintiest, its airiest, keenest, wittiest, its most searching, most blandly satirical-its bouquet is gone. Steele is companionable, face to face with us, hearty and downright. Addison is the artist-subtle, economical, aloof. Steele's easy, inventive mind frequently sowed the seed, Addison brought the bloom to perfection.

The jolly, careless "sketch in chalk" in No. 2 of Sir Roger, for instance, will not bear too close a scrutiny. It is not quite of one piece; Sir Roger is as yet only a stalking horse. Addison, in No. 106, receives an invitation "to pass away a month with him in the country," and at once the Squire steps out of the page to greet us, with a presence and individuality as living and real as any in English fiction. In a dozen lines he is an old friend, in a page he is immortal. Not even Steele, who had conceived the Knight, could refuse Addison the privilege of killing him off at last "to save him from being murdered." The wonder is that either could have tolerated any kind of meddling with him. That limpid water-color, Will Wimble, again, is Addison's; his is the quintessence of the old beau, Honeycomb. The rest of the Club, Sir Andrew Freeport, Captain Sentry, the Batchelour of the Inner Temple, are only phantoms of the half-created. An ever-surprising purity of vision, a keen, whimsical insight, and a nimble, methodical faculty of observation characterize Addison's most trifling papers. His satire is simply a deft method of presenting his facts.

He embalms the poor fly in the

flawless clarity of his prose, detesting "the authors who by obscurity take pains to be ridiculous." By some miracle his fastidiousness and sensitiveness never betray him into prudery. The thinnest ice carries him without a creak. His sharpest censure is a suave irony delivered with a fastidiously affable sangfroid. Even in his atrocious gallery of Widows there is nothing sour, nothing vindictive. Whatever his subject, he is free from sentiment, self-possessed, and however much in earnest, in earnest with a finish. Steele's pulpiteering might sometimes convict the sinner; Addison's better served to reassure and reestablish the righteous.

"Delicacy, virtue, and modesty" were his avowed aim in his writings, but it was not merely an afterthought that added "discretion." The Secretary of State "who was born to be a Bishop," of whom it was said, too, that "when he turns to heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man's mind," often appears in full canonicals in the Spectator, as also does the critic who in spite of their "horrifying habits" borrowed freely from the French, and the scholar who had written a Latin signally belauded by Boileau. To this cultured side of Addison are due the rather shallow essays on that tiresome old tandem, Imagination and Fancy, the elaborate appreciation of "Paradise Lost," and the eloquent but somewhat dispiriting description of the Pleasures of the State of Bliss we call Heaven. These, the dreams and the allegories, and the Oriental fantasias, "the saturnine" may best enjoy. "The mercurial," the other of the two categories into which Addison divided his readers, will prefer the more approachable Mr. Spec, almost sheepishly shy before strangers, open and charming to intimates, and certainly on paper "the best company in the world." This is the Addison who so frequently

deserted his Bayle's Dictionary "to go abroad in search of game," who with all his seriousness did not know what it is to be melancholy, who used to go on from Button's to sit for five hours at a stretch, and often far into the night, among his cronies at a tavern. On his own confession, it was odd and uncommon company that delighted Addison, and, fortunately for posterity, to that serene philosopher at least nine-tenths of the world must have seemed both. Nothing in life, from area to attic, from buckle to wig, that concerned social man in the social London of that most social age came amiss to him.

But far beyond everything else it was the "most beautiful Pieces in Human Nature" that never, never came amiss to the Spectator. Twenty thousand copies of it were sold in its heyday every morning, and Addison reckoned that each of these beguiled at least twenty readers. Of that twofifths of a million, how many, we wonder, were of the fair sex? Without them the Spectator would have been Eden without Eve, Punch without Judy. Dulciniara, Hecatissa, Orestilla, and the rest, fortuned and unfortunate, their dress, their manners, their morals, tongues, hair, paint, vapors, caprices, "dangers," naked shoulders, and shrunken souls were one perpetual and inexhaustible inspiration. Whether tired of marriage, irked with spinsterhood, or crossed in love, they are preached at, flattered, warned, cajoled, made fun of at least six days of the week.

This intensive culture makes the atmosphere a little spent and rarefied. "What men or gods are these? what maidens loth?" Human nature becomes a little marionettish. We step indoors to the Spectator into a long, low, pretty parlor, and look at the

The Times.

country and listen to the great world without from behind a window. It is getting towards evening; candles are gleaming in these teacup times. Gone beyond recall is the glorious morning of the Elizabethans. The bullion of their noble prose has been thinned and twisted into an exquisite filigree. The comparison is difficult to avoid, though not less ungracious than it is unfair. The Spectator deliberately set itself up to be the genial but candid physician of a sophisticated age, and even those who had no need of its advice paid tribute to its skill, the vastness of its practice, and its immense success. It cannot entirely be acquitted of nursing its public, of innocent logrolling, of occasionally matching its morals to its advertisements. But all its main policy was based upon conviction. "Much might be said on both sides," was Mr. Spectator's famous verdict on the sign of the Saracen, and the aphorism held good for him in all problems where "virtue" was not concerned. The Spectator stood soundly and bravely for wholesomeness and common sense; its constant effort was to shine like a cheerful beacon above the shoals and quicksands of life, to make a scarecrow of the vicious. England, in the words of Coleridge, has been through the throes of three silent revolutions-when the professions fell from the Church; when literature fell from the professions; when the Press fell from literature. So far as literature is concerned, the Spectator, with all its limitations, marks high tide. Its eight volumes can be read to-day with almost as much freshness and delight as they had for their readers from one end of England to the other two centuries ago. How will our really popular contemporary journalism answer a like test two hundred years hence?