ART. II.

The Tatler. Four Volumes. 8vo. London.

Of late years, we have seen much attention directed towards the obscurer portions of English literature, for the purpose of bringing whatever was valuable into notice again; and in addition to this, the lives of many celebrated writers have been diligently investigated to recover the smallest relic, or to find grounds for some new argument or construction, that might render our idea of the men more precise and just. This zeal is for the most part to be taken as a sign of literary activity and love of truth; though at times it may betray an unreasonable distrust of old reports and opinions, and an officious readiness to disturb long-received impressions. The effect has certainly been, that writers, whose fixture in the world's memory seemed immovable, have been brought before us for judgment as if they were but of yesterday, and have occupied a place in journals and in conversation, which seems most proper for those of our own time, and whose pretensions are not yet determined. And if we look to the result of these and similar inquiries into the characters of distinguished men, we shall probably find that the unfavorable judgments of them, which we had inherited from their contemporaries, have gradually been mitigated; while those who have been remembered chiefly for their good or great qualities stand just where they did in common opinion, notwithstanding the discovery of serious flaws in their characters, and the novel and powerful arguments that have been employed to give fresh pungency to their known faults, and thus unsettle their dominion.

The moral aspects of this result are important; but we must pass them by. One effect of such investigations, though it be not always contemplated, may be noticed as somewhat to our purpose. It is, that our interest is increased in many an established writer, whose claims, as we have never dreamed of disputing or defending them, may have less place in our thoughts than they should. This interest is likely to be effective and practical, by drawing general attention to the past and present condition of literature and authors, and the influences that operate upon them. So that, to instance but in one particular, if in the lapse of years false habits of thought or cornposition have crept in, and productions marked most of all by VOL. XLVI. - No. 9.

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monstrous originality have possessed the public mind, we may hope that a fresh acquaintance with our ancient favorites will check the prevalent irregularity and extravagance, and restore the moderation of truth without repressing a healthy spirit of enterprise.

In offering some observations upon the Periodical Essays which constituted the most brilliant and popular form of prose composition in the early part of the last century, we need not say that it makes no part of our object to give them, were it in our power, a notoriety they have lost; for we do not know precisely what their present state is, or whether they have much declined from the high favor they once enjoyed. As we grow older, we certainly do not become more competent judges of the present standing of books that were the delight of our youth. We may not hear the Spectator and Guardian, Addison and Steele, the Lizard family and Sir Roger de Coverley as frequently and heartily named as when we were forming our taste in English literature, and laying up in memory some precious allegories, scenes and characters, which we were not to lose, or suffer to fade, through the longest and most varied experience of life. But the old must remember that they themselves speak but little of these cherished writings. The time has long passed, when they met to cite their favorite passages and interchange their recent opinions and feelings, and when the world of letters was as new to them as that of life and nature. Let us presume, then, that though not one of even our old school-books be now in use, and although the number of new miscellaneous works for daily consumption is far greater than that of Queen Anne's time, yet that the periodical essays of her reign are still a part of our domestic reading, and not merely an indispensable ornament of the library. Though they cannot be quite so exhilarating now as when the just printed sheet, full of the interests and follies of the moment, was laid upon the Londoner's breakfast table, and fourteen thousand copies every morning scarcely served the demands of the kingdom, we will however suppose that they still have the charm of an old family classic, and that all are willing to have some recollections of them revived.

We shall enter but imperfectly into the spirit and importance of these papers, unless we form some idea of the state of society at the time. For we are not to suppose that they were written by a set of literary men to make a sensation by

showing their genius and taste, and upon subjects suggested by their course of study or particular turn of fancy. They were specially intended from the beginning, and the purpose was never forgotten, to bear directly upon the society and the men of the day, upon existing evils and wants, to meet a present emergency and to work a social reform. The state of manners is for the most part made sufficiently clear by the essays themselves, and need not be dwelt on long.

The profligacy, social, political, and literary, of the halfcentury from the Restoration, has set it apart for special reprobation in English history. We speak of it as blighted. It seems a monstrous exception, and not of use even as a warning. The corruption and its continuance are with difficulty traced to an adequate cause, and followed out to those usual good effects which, in the order of providence, are permitted to spring from evil. An English writer but a few months since included that age in a period which he considered as the most vicious that the world had seen, since the corruption of the Roman emperors was chastised and crushed by the invasion of the northern barbarians; and, contrasting it with our own age, he speaks of "the delicacy of moral feeling now that would render it impossible for the most vulgar-minded of living English public men to accept from a foreign power such bribes as a Russell, a Sidney, a Marlborough received without any apparent consciousness of disgrace." And he next designates as a mark of our improvement, "the delicacy of manners, that forbids the remotest allusion in female society to topics familiarly discussed by and with the wives and sisters of those great men."* If this be stated truly, we must prepare ourselves to surrender more than one of the few names, which we had been accustomed to honor as exceptions to the age, and as redeeming it from the reproach of utter shameless

ness.

A few particulars may be mentioned to show what sorts of public and private evils the periodical essays were intended to mitigate or remove. It was, first, an age of bitter political strife, religious intolerance, and fierce foreign wars that were. closely allied with the domestic dissensions. These contests at home were not of the kind we ordinarily expect and rarely dread in free communities. Those divisions among men, which usually pass under the name of parties, seem to us at this dis* Foreign Quarterly Review, No. XXXVII. Art. V.

tance like the rising up of whole orders against each other. The passions and interests of every individual had an object that might be called public. The points in controversy were no less than a change of dynasty, a change or restoration of the constitution, the overthrow of the established church, the silencing of dissent. It seems as if the whole community were made up of cavaliers, puritans, republicans, lovers of the church, lovers of papacy, all in battle array for some public object, all filled with a sense of burning wrongs or a dread of sudden fall from eminent station, and intermingled with the idle and desperate who find their opportunities in the general trouble and confusion. And this idea is the more forced upon us, as we see few if any of those softening influences in operation, those, for example, of a refined, popular, and easily accessible literature, - which invite all to seek some interval of retirement and repose, when they may think for themselves, and get loose from the thraldom of public questions and agita

tions.

From such a state of things, and this mutual distrust, we might have expected seriousness, anxiety, severity of manners, and something of a tragical cast even in the dissoluteness of the times. But it was remarkably an age of luxury, frivolity, and licentious wit, and of skepticism or relaxed devotion, save in the humbler classes, who were sure to be derided for the singularity of their virtue.

In the next place, the general estimation and influence of females, we mean those of the fashionable class, may be ascertained pretty nearly from the tone of Pope's and Swift's satire, and from the plays of that day. And the manner in which they are addressed or spoken of in the essays themselves, at the moment when the writers are lamenting female degradation, and seeking to begin the reform of the state by a purification of home, often betrays, in the midst of their courtesy and kindness, a degree of contempt which must have been forced from men whose benevolence was as remarkable as their genius. How painful is it to see them appealing to the honor or selfishness of their own sex as the chief protection of the other, and confiding so faintly in the self-respect of the mothers and daughters of England.

It is admitted that exaggeration will find a place in our estimates of society at any period. We seize upon obvious ill or good, and praise or blame in the mass, forgetting how much

secret virtue there is and must be in every class, if society still holds together; and how much refined iniquity is concealed or tolerated in what appear to us the best of times. We forget, too, in the contemplation of different periods, that the forms, the exterior of life vary, and that as deadly profligacy, the more deadly for being subtle, may subsist amidst artificial decencies as in shameless effrontery. We forget that the topics and phrases which offend one age were familiar in another, and we may say almost harmless; for they grew from a low state of refinement, and indicate but did not produce it; and a merely conventional abandonment of them would have. very little operation towards purifying society, and furnish very uncertain evidence of its true state. And further to moderate our judgments of others, we may adopt Steele's generous observation; "As bad as the world is," he says, "I find by very strict observation upon virtue and vice, that if men appeared no worse than they really are, I should have less work than at present I am obliged to undertake for their reformation. They have generally taken up a kind of inverted ambition, and affect even faults and imperfections of which they are innocent." But after all this acknowledged exposure to exaggeration, we do not hesitate to pronounce the period we have spoken of, rather than described, as marked out for reprobation in the history of English if not of European society. We might discriminate so far as to say that there was bolder profligacy, and certainly more reckless persecution, in the earlier than in the latter part of this half century; in the reign of Charles the Second than of Anne; and it would be easy to show that corruption did not cease with the coming in of the new dynasty, and the wide diffusion of the writings we are to speak of. But it is enough for the present purpose to have taken this general view of the times.

It was then the object of the Periodical Essays to resist a vicious age; to purify the sources of pleasure; to divert and soften party hostilities by recommending topics which had a common interest and led naturally to reflection; to elevate and refine familiar conversation by a colloquial elegance of their own, and to regulate it by fixed laws; to bring literature near to a people apparently little versed in books; to establish and make clear that beautiful and delicate boundary, which marks off our home and makes it a little world within itself, without diminishing general benevolence. But it is scarcely