SPECTATOR. This TATLER, which upon the whole has but little merit, and is very ambiguous as to moral tendency, consists of fifty-two papers, ending May 19, 1710, nearly three months after the commencement of the SPECTATOR, of which paper a sneering notice is taken in No. 26. It imposed on the world so far as to be printed at least three times, as the fifth volume of the TATLER. 1 have not, however, seen any edition of later date than 1727, and I believe it never was printed by the proprietors of the genuine work.

The sale of the TATLER, according to all accounts, was very extensive, and must have been a source of great emolument to STEELE. The first four numbers, we are told, were given gratis*, and the price was then fixed at a penny, which was doubled afterwards. The size, folio, a half-sheet printed on both sides, and deserving the character which an angry correspondent in No. 160 gives it,

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tobacco paper and scurvy letter. They were, however, when collected in volumes, reprinted in royal octavo, and large letter,

The first four numbers of the original folio were printed for the author;' the remaining numbers' sold by John Morphew, near Stationers' Hall, where advertisements are taken in.' When collected into volumes, they were to be delivered to subscribers by Charles Lillie, perfumer, at the corner of Beaufort-buildings in the Strand, and John Morphew, near Stationers' Hall.' But they are entered in Stationers' Hall as the sole property, in folio, octavo, twelves, and all other volumes whatever, of JoHN NUTT.

at one guinea per volume; and a most numerous list of subscribers, the greatest beauties and wits in the whole island of Great Britain,' engaged to take the work at that unprecedented price*. These very generous subscriptions are handsomely acknowledged by STEELE in No. 162. The splendid octavo edition was followed by another in 12mo on a neat Elzevir letter,' a very beautiful book, and like the others printed in the same year, very accurate. The papers were in general corrected by the authors, with some, but few, omissions and additions.

STEELE'S manner of taking leave of the public, as Mr. Bickerstaff, is characteristic and not ungraceful. The general purpose of the whole,' it is said in the last paper, has been to recommend truth, innocence, honour, and virtue, as the chief ornaments of life; but I considered 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 must confess, my life is at best but pardonable. And with a greater character

To print by subscription was, for some time, a practice peculiar to the English. The first considerable work, for which this expedient was employed, is said to have been DRYDEN'S Virgil; and it had been tried again with great success when the TATLERS were collected into voluines." JOHNSON'S Life of POPE.

than this, a man would make but 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.'

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From a scarce pamphlet in the Lambeth library, supposed to be written by GAY, we have authority to add, that STEELE's disappearing was bewailed as some general calamity every one wanted so agreeable amusement: and the coffee-houses began to be sensible that his Lucubrations alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together. Never man threw his up pen under stronger temptations to have employed it longer; for his reputation was at a greater height, says this writer, than ever any living author's was before him. There was this difference between him and all the rest of the polite and gallant authors of the time; the latter endeavoured to please the age by falling in with them, and encouraging them in their fashionable vices, and false notions of things. It would have been a jest some time since, for a man to have asserted that any thing witty could be said in praise of a married state; or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman. Bickerstaff ventured to tell the town, that they were a parcel of fops, fools, and vain coquettes; but in such a manner,

as even pleased them, and made them more than half-inclined to believe that he spoke truth*.

From the same authority we are told, that several of those letters which came from unknown hands to the editor of the Tatler, were written by ANTHONY HENLEY; he is said to have been likewise a contributor to the Spurious Tatler, and wrote at least one paper in the MEDLEY, of which some account will be given in the Preface to the Guardian +.

*The present State of Wit,' reprinted in the two last editions of Swift's Works.

+ I am indebted to a very recent publication for the following account of a rival Tatler. "As early as 1711,

and in the short interval between the cessation of the Tatler and recommencement of the Spectator, a periodical paper was begun at Edinburgh, called the Tatler, by Donald Macstaff, of the North, and was carried through thirty weekly numbers. The author was Mr. Robert Hepburn, of Bearford, then only in his twenty-first year." Lord Woodhouselee's Life of Lord Kames, vol. 2.