The subject of each article was to be indicated by the name of the
coffee-house or other place from which it was supposed to come: "All
accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the
article of White's Chocolate-house; Poetry, under that of Will's
Coffee-house; Learning, under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic
News you will have from Saint James's Coffee-house; and what else I have
to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own Apartment." For
some time each number contained short papers from all or several of
these places; but gradually it became usual to devote the whole number
to one topic. The motto of the first forty numbers was "Quicquid agunt
homines ... nostri farrago libelli"; but in the following numbers it was
changed to "Celebrare domestica facta"; and afterwards each number
generally had a quotation bearing upon the subject of the day. Writing
some time after the commencement of the fatter, Steele said, in the
Dedication prefixed to the first volume, "The general purpose of this
paper is to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of
cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity
in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour." And elsewhere he says:
"As for my labours, which he is pleased to inquire after, if they but
wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give
a morning's cheerfulness to an honest mind; in short, if the world can
be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive
from them the smallest addition to their innocent diversions; I shall
not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain."[2]
At the close, speaking in his own name, Steele wrote: "The general
purpose of the whole has been to recommend truth, innocence, honour, and
virtue, as the chief ornaments of life; but I considered, that severity
of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others, and
for that reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not
carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but at the