near in their way of thinking, 'tis probable, so much as knew or ever saw each other: from which observation, I think, the whole may claim the title of the dictates of nature. Here is religion and morality for the upright and the just; here is manners for the rude, and a whip for the incorrigible; here is sobriety for the drunkard, and temperance for the epicure. For the droles and laughers, here is odd mirth, and an account of whims, not yet heard or hardly thought of. Here is dress and fashion for the gay, and just satire for the pretenders and insipid. If the avaricious wants gold, here it is. If any man wants to buy or sell a wife, here he may find his trader. Is any one jealous?---let him or her read, mind, and coolly digest, No. 87, 119, in the first volume, and No. 25 in the second.'

The whole is, however, a most wretched farrago of dullness and insipidity, such as the most contemptible of our modern periodical publications would not admit; but LILLIE had the wisdom to secure a very copious list of subscribers, whose curiosity was probably excited by the singular and not very modest attempt to sell dross at the price of pure metal. The work, as may be supposed, was never re-printed, and is now become scarce.

The rival candidates for popularity during the publication of the TATLER were very numerous. A list is given of thirteen, which

made in all fifty-five publications each week. The superior attractions of the TATLER were soon felt by some of those, and excited all the hostility of which they were capable, but which was so feeble that while few years pass without an edition of the TATLER being printed in some part of the kingdom, it is with the utmost difficulty the productions of its contemporaries can be procured. Among them, Mr. THOMAS BAKER, the author of the FEMALE TATLER, laboured hard to gain fame by depreciating the lucubrations of ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, chiefly by vulgar and personal remarks on STEELE'S character, gait, &c. The hostility of the authors of the EXAMINER is rather better known. Another enemy was a monsieur BOURNELLE, whose work is entitled Annotations on the TATLER in two parts,' 24mo. It is said to have been originally written in French, and translated into English by WALTER WAGSTAFF, esq. 1710. The author, however, and his translator seem to have been one and the same person, perhaps Dr. William Wagstaffe*, who was unfriendly to STEELE, and had published a false and injurious cha

* Or, as some think, Oldisworth, an ' under-spur-leather,' and a cox comb, as SWIFT calls him, who was also a writer in the EXAMINER, and a poet of some note in his time. In Pope's admirable letter to Lord Burlington, Lintot, the bookseller, is made to testify of him,' I'll say that of Oldisworth (though I lost by his Timothy's) he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any man in Eng land.'

ད.g

racter of him, which as the writer of Dr. WAGSTAFFE's life acknowledges, does indeed want some apology.' The annotator, whoever he was, points clearly to STEELE, as the author of the TATLER: and his petulant annotations are minute remarks, quaintly expressed in a strain of coarse irony and undisguised malignity, with such a mixture of the sort of wit that is nearest allied to madness, as sufficiently justifies STEELE'S imputation of insanity in No. 79. There are, however, some passages in both parts of the book, less obnoxious to this general censure, that might incline one to think the writer a distant kinsman of the STAFFS, in consequence of the left-hand favours of some open-hearted woman of the family *.

But if STEELE had his enemies, he had also his imitators, whose performances, however, are now little known. One, indeed, by assuming the name and character of TATLER and BICKERSTAFF, endeavoured to gain the more particular notice of the public, and had some claims to it. STEELE'S Tatler terminated Jan. 2, 1710, and on the 13th of the same month appeared the first number of what has been since called the Spurious Tatler, which was conducted by Swift and the little HARRISON,' already mentioned, of whom he speaks with much

*Tatler, No. 79, notes.

contempt in his Journal to Stella: I am setting up a new Tatler, little Harrison. Others have put him on it, and I encourage him; and he was with me this morning and evening, shewing me his first, which comes out on Saturday. I doubt he will not succeed, for I do not much approve his manner: but the scheme is Mr. Secretary St. John's and mine, and would have done well enough in good hands. I recommended him to a printer, whom I sent for, and settled the matter between them this evening. Harrison has just left me, and I am tired with correcting his trash.'

Six numbers of this new Tatler are with tolerable certainty attributed to SWIFT, but there are SWIFTIANA in many others. The first number chiefly, if not entirely, from his pen, is an ingenious, though somewhat impudent, imposition on the public, which pretends to account for BICKERSTAFF'S resuming his functions. Nos. 5 and 20, were published by Dr. HAWKESWORTH in SWIFT'S Works; but it is singular, that the former of these should have escaped the animadversion of HAWKESWORTH's purer morals. No. 28 is asserted to be SWIFT's by the authors of the notes on the TATLER, who observe, 'that his account of himself, under the feigned name of Hiereus, is so arrogant and vain, that a transcript of it here would be censured as invidious.' Nos. 5 and 24 are printed as SWIFT's in the Supplement to his

Works, 3 vols. 1779, and in the late very splendid and correct edition of his works by the editor of that Supplement. HARRISON, however, was the principal author: and among the inferior assistants was Sewell, a physician, of whom I have received the following account, written by the late George Steevens, esq. Dr. George Sewell (whose name is joined with that of Mr. Pope in a duodecimo edition of Shakspeare) followed his profession with some degree of success, after he had retired to Hampstead: but three other physicians being soon settled in the place, his profits at last became very inconsiderable. He kept no house, but was a boarder. He was much esteemed, and so frequently invited to the tables of gentlemen in the neighbourhood, that he had seldom occasion to dine at home. An ancient inhabitant of Hampstead, now living, was present at his funeral. He was supposed to be very indigent at the time of his death, as he was interred, on the 12th of February, 1726, in the meanest manner, his coffin being little better than those allotted by the parish to their poor who are buried from the workhouse; neither did a single friend, or relation, attend him to the grave. No memorial was placed over his remains; but they lie just under a hollow-tree which formed a part of a hedgerow that was once the boundary of the church-yard. A farther account will be given in the Preface to the

VOL. I.

h