was started by his son-in-law, Henry Baker, in October, 1728. There is
more than internal and circumstantial evidence that this prospectus was
Defoe's composition. When Baker retired from the paper five years
afterwards, he drew up a list of the articles which had appeared under
his editorship, with the names of the writers attached. This list has
been preserved, and from it we learn that the first number, containing a
prospectus and an introductory essay on the qualifications of a good
writer, was written by Defoe. That experienced journalist naturally
tried to give an air of novelty to the enterprise. "If this paper," the
first sentence runs, "was not intended to be what no paper at present
is, we should never attempt to crowd in among such a throng of public
writers as at this time oppress the town." In effect the scheme of the
_Universal Spectator_ was to revive the higher kind of periodical essays
which made the reputation of the earlier _Spectator_. Attempts to follow
in the wake of Addison and Steele had for so long ceased to be features
in journalism; their manner had been so effectually superseded by less
refined purveyors of light literature--Defoe himself going heartily with
the stream--that the revival was opportune, and in point of fact proved
successful, the _Universal Spectator_ continuing to exist for nearly
twenty years. It shows how quickly the _Spectator_ took its place among
the classics, that the writer of the prospectus considered it necessary
to deprecate a charge of presumption in seeming to challenge comparison.

"Let no man envy us the celebrated title we have assumed,
or charge us with arrogance, as if we bid the world expect
great things from us. Must we have no power to please, unless
we come up to the full height of those inimitable performances?
Is there no wit or humour left because they are
gone? Is the spirit of the _Spectators_ all lost, and their mantle
fallen upon nobody? Have they said all that can be