PAGR A Proposal for Honorary Rewards-Coins and Medals, 315 97. Letter from Simon Softly, complaining of a Widow- Advice to him, £19 452 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. THE first number of the Tatler appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, and immediately attracted the attention of the town. "Hitherto," says Wycherly, writing to Pope on the 17th of May, "your miscellanies have run the gauntlet through all the coffee-houses, which are now entertained with a whimsical new newspaper, called the Tatler, which I suppose you have seen." The honor of the conception belongs to Steele; and Addison, who was upon the point of starting for Ireland, is said to have discovered the author by a criticism in the sixth number upon Virgil's use of Epithet Soon after, he became a contributor himself, and continued to take an ac tive part in it till it was suddenly stopped on the 2d of January, 1710, tc make way for the Spectator. This was the first time that he had found himself free to follow the bent of his genius. None of his earlier works had been of a kind to call out his peculiar powers. In poetry he was never really at his ease, and his travels, as he had planned them, left him no scope for those humorous sketches or graceful disquisitions by which he is best known to posterity. But in the Tatler he was free to be grave or gay, to see visions, or throw his lessons into a dream, and without ever losing sight of a great moral end, amuse himself and his readers with a lively picture of the follies and caprices and wants of the age. His papers soon became the chief ornament of the work. "I fared," says Steele, "like a distressed Prince, who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid; I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence upon him." Unfortunately he had not yet hit upon any way of distinguishing his ɔwn papers from those of other contributors. Many of them were written in a kind of partnership with Steele. In others he is supposed to have furnished the materials, leaving the labor of working them up to his friend. But by far the greater part were written out with all that care and attention which he loved to bestow upon his works. When Tickell prepared his edition he applied, by Addison's instructions, to Steele for a list of Addison's papers. And it is upon the authority of this list that his edition was formed. The list however was far from being complete. Addison |