I considered [he says] 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 same time confess my life is at best but pardonable. And with no greater character than this a man could make an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele.
This reason is, however,--though pretty and just enough had its writer renounced the trade,--a somewhat fantastic one when we reflect that though the “Tatler” ended in January, 1711, the “Spectator” began in March of the same year. The one died only to be replaced by the other. It is said that Addison did not know of his friend’s intention to cut the “Tatler” short, and it was he who was the chief agent in beginning the “Spectator.” Therefore it may have been that the breach was but an impatience of Steele’s, which his slow and less impulsive and more constant comrade could not permanently consent to. No doubt Addison had by this time learned the advantage of such a mode of utterance, and felt how entirely it suited his own manner of work and constitution of mind. The fictitious person of Isaac Bickerstaff was relinquished in the new series: it no longer assumed to give any news. Its contents were less varied, consisting generally of a single essay, and, notwithstanding the impression which the casual reader often has, and which some critics have largely dwelt upon, that the comments of this critic are upon the merest vanities of the time, the hoops, the gold-lace, the snuff-boxes, and patches of the period, it is astonishing how little space is actually taken up with these lighter details, and how many graver questions, how many fine sentiments and delicate situations, afford the moralist occasion for those remarks which he makes in the most beautiful and picturesque English to the edification of all the generations. There is, perhaps, no book which is so characteristic of an epoch in history, and none which gives so clear a conception of the English world of the time. We sit and look on, always amused, often instructed, while the delicate panorama unfolds before us--and see everything pass, the fine coaches, the gentlemen on foot, the parsons in their gowns, the young Templars jesting in the doorways: but always with the little monologue going on, which accompanies the movement, and runs off into a hundred byways of thought, sometimes serious, sometimes gay, often with no particular connection with the many-colored streams of passers-by, yet never obscuring our sight of them as they come and go. There is, perhaps, a noisy group at the door while Mr. Spectator talks, with their wigs in the last fashion, and their clouded canes hung to a button, while they discourse. In one corner there are some two or three grave gentlemen putting their heads together over the latest news; and in another the young fellows over their wine eager in discussion of Mrs. Oldfield and Mrs. Bracegirdle at the theater, or of Chloe and Clarissa, the reigning beauties of society; or perhaps it is a poet, poor Ned Softly, as the case may be, who is reading his last sonnet to his mistress’s eyebrow, amid the laughing commentaries or the ridicule of his companions. What is Mr. Spectator talking of all the while? His discourse does not prevent us hearing the impertinences of the others. Perhaps he is talking of honest love, a favorite theme of his, at which the wits do not dare to laugh in his presence,--or he is telling one of his fables, to which everybody in the midst of his levity or his business gives half an ear at least; or by a caprice he has turned aside to metaphysics, and is discussing the processes of the mind, and how “no thought can be beautiful that is not just”; how “’t is a property of the heart of man to be diffusive, its kind wishes spread abroad over the face of the creation,” and such like; not to speak of graver subjects still to which he will direct our minds on Saturdays, perhaps to prepare us for Sunday, when he is silent. Or he will read aloud a letter from some whimsical correspondent, which the wits will pause to hear, for gossip is ever sweet, but which before they know lands them in a case of hardship or trouble which touches their consciences and rouses their pity. Sometimes the hum of life will stop altogether and even Softly put his verses in his pocket to listen: and on the brink of tears the fine gentlemen, and we too along with them, incontinently burst out a-laughing at some touch that no one expected.