The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series by Sir Richard Steele;Joseph Addison
page 49 of 3879 (01%)
page 49 of 3879 (01%)
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the 'Spectator', and the 'Guardian' were, all of them, Steele's, begun
and ended by him at his sole discretion. In these three journals Steele was answerable for 510 papers; Addison for 369. Swift wrote two papers, and sent about a dozen fragments. Congreve wrote one article in the 'Tatler'; Pope wrote thrice for the 'Spectator', and eight times for the 'Guardian'. Addison, who was in Ireland when the 'Tatler' first appeared, only guessed the authorship by an expression in an early number; and it was not until eighty numbers had been issued, and the character of the new paper was formed and established, that Addison, on his return to London, joined the friend who, with his usual complete absence of the vanity of self-assertion, finally ascribed to the ally he dearly loved, the honours of success. It was the kind of success Steele had desired--a widely-diffused influence for good. The 'Tatlers' were penny papers published three times a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blank half-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of the day's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It was through these, and the daily 'Spectators' which succeeded them, that the people of England really learnt to read. The few leaves of sound reason and fancy were but a light tax on uncultivated powers of attention. Exquisite grace and true kindliness, here associated with familiar ways and common incidents of everyday life, gave many an honest man fresh sense of the best happiness that lies in common duties honestly performed, and a fresh energy, free as Christianity itself from malice--for so both Steele and Addison meant that it should be--in opposing themselves to the frivolities and small frauds on the conscience by which manliness is undermined. A pamphlet by John Gay--'The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a |
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