The Tatler (Vol 4)

12

No mention is afterwards made of Dorinda.

13

This quotation is attributed erroneously to Horace in the early editions.

14

This paper was probably based on notes by Edward Wortley Montagu. See note to No. 223.

15

See Addison's paper in the Spectator; No. 295, and Sir Harry Gubbin's complaints of "that cursed pin-money" in Steele's "Tender Husband," act i. sc. 2. In No. 231 of the Tatler, Steele says, "The lawyers finished the writings, in which, by the way, there was no pin-money, and they were married."

16

See No. 223.

17

See No. 195.

18

The College of Physicians met in Warwick Lane, and the Royal Society at Gresham College, in Bishopsgate Street.

19

John Mills, the elder, who died in 1736. Cibber says that Mills owed his advancement to Wilks, to whose friendship his qualities as an "honest, quiet, careful man, of as few faults as excellences, commended him." Mills' salary (see table printed in vol. ii. p. 164) was the same as Betterton's – £4 a week, and £1 for his wife.

20

On November 19, 1710, Swift and Steele met at the St. James's Coffee-house. "This evening," says Swift, "I christened our coffee-man Elliot's child, where the rogue had a most noble supper, and Steele and I sat among some scurvy company over a bowl of punch; so that I am come late home."

21

See No. 202, end.

22

Cineas the orator (see Plutarch's "Life of Pyrrhus").

23

See No. 201.

24

See No. 124.

25

Discourse.

26

A writer in Notes and Queries (March 19, 1887) has pointed out that Luther says in his "Colloquies" (1652), p. 90, "Our Lord commonly giveth riches to such gross asses to whom He affordeth nothing else that is good."

27

Chloe's reply is in No. 207.

28

See Nos. 179 and 188.

29

In 1728 we hear of persons arriving in London "from their country-houses in Marylebone" (cf. No. 18). Marylebone Gardens, a favourite place of entertainment, had in the centre a bowling-green, "112 paces one way, 88 another," where persons of quality often played.

30

See No. 155.

31

Samuel Partiger Fuller was M.P. for Petersfield from 1715 to 1722. Steele's letters show that he was an intimate friend of Fuller's in 1716-17; and in February 1716, when Steele spoke in the House of Commons on behalf of the noblemen condemned for the part they had taken in the rebellion of 1715, he was seconded by Fuller. The following passage from Steele's Theatre, No. 26, March 29, 1720, is the authority for attributing this paper to young Fuller, then a secret correspondent:

"I can hardly conceive a more laudable act, than declaring an abhorrence of so fashionable a crime [viz., duelling], which weakness, cowardice, and an impatience of the reproach of fools, have brought upon reasonable men. This sort of behaviour cannot proceed but from a true and undaunted courage; and I cannot but have in great veneration a generous youth, who, in public, declared his assent and concurrence to this law, by saying, that in spite of the prevailing custom, he triumphed more in being a second to prevent, than he should have done in being one to promote murder. A speech thus ingenuous could come only from a heart that scorned reserves, in compliance to falsehood, to do injury to truth.

"This was true greatness of mind; and the man who did it, could not possibly do it for his own sake, but must be conscious of a courage sufficient for his own defence, who could thus candidly, at this time of life, rescue other men from the necessity of bearing contempt, or doing an ill action.

"The mind usually exerts itself in all its faculties with an equal pace towards maturity; and this gentleman, who at the age of sixteen could form such pleasant pictures of the false and little ambitions of low spirits, as Mr. Fuller did, to whom, when a boy, we owe, with several other excellent pieces, "The Vainglorious Glutton," when a secret correspondent of the Tatler: I say, such a one might easily, as he proceeded in human life, arrive at this superior strength of mind at four-and-twenty. The soul that labours against prejudice, and follows reason, ripens in her capacities and grows in her talents at the same time. As therefore courage is what a man attains by thought, as much as he improves his wit by study, it is only from want of opportunities to call the one or the other forth, and draw the respective qualities into habit, if ever a man of sense is a coward."

32

See Nos. 61 and 211. In the Guardian (No. 135), Addison quotes from South a passage which, he says, "cannot but make the man's heart burn within him who reads it with due attention."

33

"Inseparable always from his passion is the exalted admiration he feels; and his love is the very flower of his respect" (Forster's Essay on Steele).

34

See No. 203.

35