John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that
he is still living, in health, and they are knaves that reported it
otherwise.'

Steele gave additional lightness to the touch of his 'Tatler', which
first appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, by writing in the name of
Isaac Bickerstaff, and carrying on the jest, that was to his serious
mind a blow dealt against prevailing superstition. Referring in his
first 'Tatler' to this advertisement of Partridge's, he said of it,

'I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently
convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I do not
doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance. For
though the legs and arms and whole body of that man may still appear
and perform their animal functions, yet since, as I have elsewhere
observed, his art is gone, the man is gone.'

To Steele, indeed, the truth was absolute, that a man is but what he can
do.

In this spirit, then, Steele began the 'Tatler', simply considering that
his paper was to be published 'for the use of the good people of
England,' and professing at the outset that he was an author writing for
the public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and that
he preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office.
Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the
mountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness,

'we have a contempt,' he says, 'for such paltry barterers, and have
therefore all along informed the public that we intend to give them