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Notes Bickerstaff and gave him an entire, fully developed personality. Steele described his motive in
writing The Tatler as “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
behavior”. Steele founded the magazine, and although he and Addison collaborated, Steele wrote
the majority of the essays; Steele wrote roughly 188 of the 271 total, Addison 42, and 36 were the
pair’s collaborative works. While Addison contributed to The Tatler, it is widely regarded as
Steele’s work.
Following the demise of The Tatler, the two men founded The Spectator and also the Guardian.
In popular culture
Steele plays a minor role in the novel The History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray.
It is during his time with the Life Guards, where he is mostly referred to as Dick the Scholar and
makes mention of his friend “Joe Addison.” He befriends the title character when Esmond is a
boy.

12.3 Text-On the Death of Friends
Dies, ni fallor, adest, quem semper acerbum, Semper honoralum, sic dii voluistis, habebo. [“That day I
shall always recollect with grief; with reverence also, for the gods so willed it”] Virgil. And now
the rising day renews the year, A day for ever sad, for ever dear. Dryden
From my own Apartment, June 5. There are those among mankind, who can enjoy no relish of
their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think every
thing lost that passes unobserved; but others find a solid delight in stealing by the crowd, and
modelling their life after such a manner, as is as much above the approbation as the practice of the
vulgar. Life being too short to give instances great enough of true friendship or good will, some
sages have thought it pious to preserve a certain reverence for the names of their deceased friends;
and have withdrawn themselves from the rest of the world at certain seasons, to commemorate in
their own thoughts such of their acquaintance who have gone before them out of this life. And
indeed, when we are advanced in years, there is not a more pleasing entertainment, than to
recollect in a gloomy moment the many we have parted with that have been dear and agreeable to
us, and to cast a melancholy thought or two after those with whom, perhaps, we have indulged
ourselves in whole nights of mirth and jollity. With such inclinations in my heart I went to my
closet yesterday in the evening, and resolved to be sorrowful; upon which occasion I could not but
look with disdain upon myself, that though all the reasons which I had to lament the loss of many
of my friends are now as forcible as at the moment of their departure, yet did not my heart swell
with the same sorrow which I felt at the time; but I could, without tears, reflect upon many
pleasing adventures I have had with some, who have long been blended with common earth.
Though it is by the benefit of nature, that length of time thus blots out the violence of afflictions;
yet, with tempers too much given to pleasure, it is almost necessary to revive the old places of
grief in our memory; and ponder step by step on past life, to lead the mind into that sobriety of
thought which poises the heart, and makes it beat with due time, without being quickened with
desire, or retarded with despair, from its proper and equal motion. When we wind up a clock that
is out of order, to make it go well for the future, we do not immediately set the hand to the present
instant, but we make it strike the round of all its hours, before it can recover the regularity of its
time. Such, thought I, shall be my method this evening; and since it is that day of the year which
I dedicate to the memory of such in another life as I much delighted in when living, an hour or two
shall be sacred to sorrow and their memory, while I run over all the melancholy circumstances of
this kind which have occurred to me in my whole life.
The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not
quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with

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