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 own 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 had occasionally indulged in allusions which he did not care to have laid to his door; and sometimes, too, Steele, who was always in a hurry, forgot to distinguish his own papers from those of his friend. Thus, No. 18, which he ascribes to Addison in his preface, was omitted in the list which he gave to Tickell. Hurd, indeed, pretends that there was an immeasurable distance between the two writers, and in the papers which they wrote together, points you out with a confidence not unworthy of Warburton himself, the very spot in which one stopped and the other began. Nichols, however, with better judgment, sought for more positive testimony, and has succeeded, by means of tradition, contemporary records and internal evidence, in detecting the hand of Addison in several pieces which had always been attributed to Steele. A full account of the method which he followed in this process of restoration will be found in his edition of the Tatler. Subsequent editors have followed his example, and in most of the reprints of that work since the appearance of his edition several papers are assigned to Addison which are not admitted either by Tickell or Hurd. Thus the second part of No. 18 is omitted by Tickell, though Steele in the preface to vol. iv. of the Tatler, clearly points to Addison as its author. In No. 24 the case is not so clear. Nichols refers to Tickell-but why was it omitted in Tickell's edition? or where else does he mention it? The internal evidence is not decisive, the manner having full as much of Steele as of Addison—even supposing that it were always possible to distinguish them. It should be observed, however, that Nichols generally cites the Baskerville edition as Tickell's-though it is, I believe, merely a reprint of the original edition of 1721. For a fuller account of this subject I would refer to the Introduction to the American reprint of Nichols's edition of the Tatler, Guardian, and Spectator, which will be given as the complement of the present edition of Addison. The notes marked N. are by Nichols-those with a star from the edition of the British Essayists, London, 1825, 3 vols. 8vo. Hurd's and those of the present editor are distinguished in the same way as in the other volumes of this edition. Hurd says: "We now enter on those parts of Mr. Addison's proseworks, which have done him the greatest honour, and have placed him at the head of those, whom we call our polite writers. I know that many readers prefer Dr. Swift's prose to his :-but whatever other merit the Dean's writings may have (and they have, certainly, a great deal), I affirm it with confidence (because I have examined them both with care) that they are not comparable to Mr. Addison's, in the correctness, propriety, and elegance of expression. "Mr. Addison possessed two talents, both of them very uncommon, which singularly qualified him to excel in the following essays: I mean an exquisite knowledge of the English tongue, in all its purity and delicacy · and a vein of humour, which flowed naturally and abundantly from him on every subject; and which experience hath shown to be inimitable. But it is in the former respect only, that I shall criticise these papers; and I shall do it with severity, lest time, and the authority of his name (which, of course, must become sacred), should give a sanction even to his defects. If any man of genius should be so happy, as to equal all the excellencies of his prose, and to avoid the few blemishes, which may, haply, be found in it, he would be a perfect model of style, in this way of writing: but of such an one, it is enough to say at present (and I shall, surely, offend no good writer in saying it), |