invective, we yet owe to COLLIER much amelioration as to the state of public decency and morals. His "Essays upon several Subjects," first printed in 1697, in one volume, 8vo. and afterward extended to three, together with his " Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage," were of essential service, at that dissolute period, to the cause of virtue and decorum. Their deficiencies in composition, however, their antithesis, affectation, and quaintness, and their total want of good taste with regard to selection of language, and harmony of cadence, have, although not devoid of learning, wit, or just sentiment, irretrievably plunged them into oblivion: an event which should teach us how necessary are purity and grace of style to the longevity of any work intended for popular use.

Such were the principal moral essays, and such the periodical works, which preceded the successful effort of Steele. His elegant and useful paper commenced at a period when literature and manners in this island were far distant from the universality and polish which they have since obtained. So widely different indeed was their situation from any thing we are now familiar with, that, in order to place the merit of our early pe riodical productions in its due light, a slight sketch of their state, as existing in 1709, will,

before we enter more at large into our work, be deemed, perhaps, indispensably requisite.

Though the reign of Queen Anne has been generally termed the Augustan age of literature in this kingdom, owing to the co-existence of a few celebrated writers, it is astonishing how little, during the greatest part of that period, was the information of the higher and middle classes of society. To the character of the gentleman, neither education nor letters were thought necessary; and any display of learning, however superficial, was, among the fashionable circles, deemed rudeness and pedantry. "That general knowledge," observes Johnson, "which now circulates in common talk, was then rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world, any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured."* When we reflect, that to express contempt for all literary acquirement was then a certain proof of gentility, and ignorance the characteristic of superior station, a statement which, I believe, previous to the publication of the Tatler, is nearly correct, we ought to hesitate in assigning the epithet of Augustan to this era of our history. We should recollect that two-thirds of the reign of Anne were en

* Johnson's Life of Addison-Lives of the Poets, vol. ii.

tirely occupied by politics; that the struggles of faction, the inveterate contentions of the Whigs and Tories, banished for many years, even among the learned, almost all attention to useful and elegant pursuits; and that the commencement of taste, and the diffusion of knowledge, may be dated from the well-timed efforts of Steele and Addison, efforts which illuminated but the latter days of Anne, and were independent of any encouragement from the throne. From this time only has the public mind been powerfully excited to intellectual emulation, and gradually has it acquired that polish and intimacy with literary subjects which distinguish the present age. It is solely indeed to a nation that has long cherished a strong relish for literature in all its departments, whose taste is correct and pure, and which fosters in her bosom every rising genius, that the title of Augustan can be given, and not to the casual appearance of a few luminaries, surrounded by wastes of interminable darkness.

That extension of mental light, which was first happily effected by our periodical essayists, and which has by degrees led to the brilliancy we now enjoy, had been for a long time intercepted by the dissolute and licentious manners which the court of Charles the Second had introduced, and which continued for several years after the com

mencement of the eighteenth century, though in a less virulent manner, to pollute the channels of public decency, and to choke the germs of intellectual excellence. The theatre, that, powerful regulator of the general tone of thinking and of acting, had given birth to a host of writers educated in the school of Charles, and whose talents were employed to vitiate all the sources of morality, to inculcate debauchery as a duty, and to tinge the grossness of vice with the colours of imagination and wit.The dramas of Dryden and Wycherly, of Congreve, of Farquhar, and of Vanbrugh, were the panders of lewdness and profligacy. The usual fine gentleman of their comedy was an unprincipled villain, to whom seduction and adultery, extravagance and ingratitude, and an utter contempt for every thing sacred and serious, are apportioned by the poet as the most splendid ornaments he can bestow upon him, and for the adroit employment of which he is gratified by success, and rewarded by beauty.

The model was but too faithfully copied in real life. He who aspired to reputation in the circles of gallantry assumed that laxity of morals and looseness of manners which he had so frequently contemplated and admired upon the stage; whilst to be known to have devoted any leisure to the duties of devotion, to the study of the classics, or

the acquisition of science, would have ruined him. for ever in the estimation of the fashionable world. Nor after all these sacrifices at the shrine of dissipation and vice, were the accomplishments and address of these gentlemen entitled to the praise of either refinement or grace. On the contrary, their manners were coarse, their conversation obscene, and their amusements frequently so gross, that bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and prizefighting, were considered as appropriate recrea tions for the highest ranks; "they were not only attended," remarks an annotator upon the Tatler, "by butchers, drovers, and great crowds of all sorts of mob, but likewise by dukes, lords, knights, squires, &c. There were seats particularly set apart for the quality, ornamented with old tapestry hangings, into which none were admitted under half a crown at least. "The" neighbourhood" of these amusements" was famous for sheltering thieves, pickpockets, and infamous women; and for breeding bull-dogs." Their flagrant improprieties in company and conversation are frequently noticed in the Spectator, of which curious examples may be found in Nos, 148, and 242.

If such were the general manners of men, who esteemed themselves exclusively entitled to the

• Tatler with notes, vol. i. ed. 1797,