Page 106 - DENG502_PROSE

Prose

Notes Meanwhile the gallant captain had turned aside to another kind of literary work, in which, with
the assistance of his friend Addison, he obtained a more enduring reputation. There never was a
time when literary talent was so much sought after and rewarded by statesmen. Addison had
already been waited on in his humble lodgings in the Haymarket, and advanced to office, when
his friend the successful dramatist was appointed to the office of gazetteer. This was in April or
May 1707. It was Steele’s first connection with journalism. The periodical was at that time taking
the place of the pamphlet as an instrument for working on public opinion. The Gazette gave little
opening for the play of Steele’s lively pen, his main duty, as he says, having been to “keep the
paper very innocent and very insipid”; but the position made him familiar with the new field of
enterprise in which his inventive mind soon discerned materials for a project of his own. The
Tatler made its first appearance on the 12th of April 1709. It was partly a newspaper, a journal of
politics and society, published three tunes a week. Steele’s position as gazetteer furnished him
with special advantages for political news, and as a popular frequenter of coffeehouses he was at
no loss for social gossip. But Steele not only retailed and commented on social news, a function in
which he had been anticipated by Daniel Defoe and others; he also gradually introduced into the
Tatler as a special feature essays on general questions of manners and morality. It is not strictly
true that Steele was the inventor of the English “essay” — there were essayists before the 18th
century, notably Cowley and Temple; but he was the first to use the essay for periodical purposes,
and he and Addison together developed a distinct species, to which they gave a permanent
character, and in which they had many imitators. As a humbler motive for this fortunate venture
Steele had the pinch of impecuniosity, due rather to excess of expenditure than to smallness of
income. He had £300 a year from his gazetteership (paying a tax of £45), £100 as gentleman waiter
to Prince George, £850 from the Barbadoes estates of his first wife, a widow named Margaret
Stretch, and some fortune by his second wife — Mrs Mary Scurlock, the “dear Prue” of his
charming letters. But Steele lived in considerable state after his second marriage, and before he
started the Tatler was reduced to the necessity of borrowing. The assumed name of the editor was
Isaac Bickerstaff, but Addison discovered the real author in the sixth number, and began to
contribute in the eighteenth. It is only fair to Steele to state that the success of the Tatler was
established before Addison joined him, and that Addison contributed to only forty-two of the two
hundred and seventy-one numbers that had appeared when the paper was stopped, obscurely, in
January 1711. Some papers satirizing Harley appeared in the Tatler, and Steele lost or resigned the
post of gazetteer. It is possible that this political recklessness may have had something to do with
the sudden end of the venture.
Only two months elapsed between the stoppage of the Tatler and the appearance of the Spectator,
which was the organ of the two friends from the 1st of March 1711 until the 6th of December 1712.
Addison was the chief contributor to the new venture, and the history of it belongs more to his life.
Nevertheless, it is to be remarked as characteristic of the two writers that in this as in the Tatler
Addison generally follows Steele’s lead in the choice of subjects. The first suggestion of Sir Roger
de Coverley was Steele’s although it was Addison that filled in the outline of a good-natured
country gentleman with the numerous little whimsicalities that convert Sir Roger into an amiable
and exquisitely ridiculous provincial oddity. Steele had neither the fineness of touch nor the
humorous malice that gives life and distinction to Addison’s picture; the Sir Roger of his original
hasty sketch has good sense as well as good nature, and the treatment is comparatively
commonplace from a literary point of view, though unfortunately not commonplace in its charity.
Steele’s suggestive vivacity gave many another hint for the elaborating skill of his friend.
The Spectator was followed by the Guardian, the first number of which appeared on the 12th of
March 1713. It bad a much shorter career, extending to only a hundred and seventy-six numbers,
of which Steele wrote eighty-two. This was the last of his numerous periodicals in which he had
the material assistance of Addison. But he continued for several years to project journals, under

100 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY