new purposes for which by its nature it was admirably fitted."

On March 8, 1702, Anne ascended the throne, and three days later the Daily Courant, the first regular daily newspaper, appeared, “giving all the Material News as soon as every Post arrives ". It is not within the scope of this volume to treat of the growth of the newspaper press, but since at some points the essay and the newspaper come into touch, it must be observed that in one form or another papers were plentiful before the appearance of the Tatler. So far back as 1621 Burton complains of the prevalence and popularity of "pamphlets of news", and in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes there is a list of more than two hundred pamphlets and sheets of intelligence which were prior to the Daily Courant. Of most of these the very names are generally forgotten, though a few are famous as indicating important stages in the development of the press, or are remembered, like the British Apollo ridiculed by Thackeray, for the degree of absurdity they succeeded in attaining. None of them, however, influenced the essay in anything like the same degree as Defoe's Review; which, in a manner characteristic both of the daring nature of its author and of the feverish state of the time, was begun, in 1704, within the walls of Newgate. The Review of the Affairs of France became, in the course of its second volume, a tri-weekly, appearing like the Tatler on every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and in this form it survived until 29th July, 1712, when the Stamp Act imposed a duty of a penny per sheet. 'Grub Street has

but ten days to live", wrote Swift on 19th July, and the collapse of the Review was only one of an enormous number of cases which fulfilled the Spectator's punning prophecy of a general "fall of the leaf". While Defoe's Review, with its invention of the leading article, its splendid versatility, and its fearless criticism of topics of the day, must be granted an important place in the history of journalism; large reservation must be made when it is claimed that its author anticipated Steele. Few writers more than Defoe elude classification. He occupies a tantalizing position at the threshold of two great developments in prose literature, and it is as difficult to deny that the Review led the way to the Tatler as to maintain that Pamela was not influenced by Crusoe or Roxana. Although Defoe's object was primarily a political one, it had soon occurred to him that some attention to society scandal would further recommend his paper, and with this in view he added to it the "Mercure Scandale; or Advices from the Scandalous Club". The author of Roxana was clearly the very man to preside over such a club, but it is not surprising to find that he frequently allowed politics to invade the society corner of his journal, and that his gossip is characterized rather by realistic piquancy than by any endeavour to elevate his age. The Scandal Club may not unfairly be supposed to have suggested to Steele the idea of using club life as a suitable framework for his essays. The project can, indeed, be traced farther back to the Athenian Gazette, but then, even in regard to the other novel features of the Review, Defoe humorously complains that he was

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charged with being "only a Mimic of Harry Carr, in his Weekly Packet of Advice from Rome". "All the Wit of Mankind," he adds, "seems now to be composed of but Imitations, and there 'is nothing new under the sun"." Defoe's theory of amusement was better than his practice. He strikingly anticipates Steele when he declares "and thus we wheedle them in (if it may be allowed that expression) to the knowledge of the world, who, rather than take more pains, would be content with their ignorance, and search into nothing"; but his laudable design of wheedling the ignorant into knowledge took the form generally of what he truly calls "impertinence and nonsense", of frivolous answers to fictitious questions, and most frequently of scathing rejoinders to scurrilous attacks from Grub Street upon himself. It is a matter of some difficulty, especially at the present time, to say where literature begins and journalism ends. In Defoe's time the separation was tolerably broad, and he himself in his early efforts at essay-writing did not succeed in deviating into pure literature. With his wonted clear-sightedness he foresaw the possibilities in store for such a paper as the Tatler, but there were several obstacles in the way of his undertaking it. The buffetings of fortune left him no time to indulge in the learned ease of Addison, and he seems to have regarded literature only with the eye of a practical man of business. His extraordinary attention to realistic detail, and his plain, rugged style are only the natural literary expressions of the outstanding traits of his character. M. Taine has said of the Spectator that it "is only an honest man's manual,

and is often like the Complete Lawyer", and this misapplied phrase would not unfitly describe much of Defoe's literary work. He had not sufficient humour in his nature to enable him to laugh at the follies he was chiding, nor was he, in spite of his endless fertility of resource, possessed in large measure of the literary sense. That an essay ought to be something more than a hastily-written article on a subject of passing interest did not occur to him; he did not, like its greatest exponents, regard it as a thing to be lovingly touched and retouched until it emerged from its author's hands as an artistic whole. It is generally hazardous to appeal against any long-sustained verdict of public literary opinion, but it cannot be admitted that the oblivion into which the Review has fallen is a wholly merited one. A rich crop of mushroom periodicals sprang up after the disappearance of the Spectator, and their names and histories have frequently been recorded in literature. Most of them exhibit no ability comparable to that of the Review, so that some other cause must be sought for its failure than want of literary merit. Two reasons are readily found. There is no doubt that the main one is the Review's interference with politics, and the conjecture is supported by the subsequent fate of Addison's Freeholder. Again, the fact must be reckoned with that Defoe was never admitted into the inner circle of wits and gentlemen who presided at that time over the destinies of authors. His works, accordingly, never went forth to the public stamped with the imprimatur of coffee-house applause. He was known in

the highest literary circles only as an old hosier and a seditious brawler. Pope chained him in the Dunciad along with some notorious scribblers, and Swift could allude to him only as an illiterate fellow who had stood in the pillory. However obvious his deficiencies as an essayist, it is impossible to withhold admiration for his single-handed achievement, begun, as he says, "in tenebris", and carried out with indomitable courage. Yet, if the Review be called the prototype of the Tatler, it must be kept in mind that all it could have done was to suggest the possibility of holding up the follies of society in a periodical paper. Defoe's best essays must be looked for among the numerous articles discovered by Mr. Lee, which were subsequently contributed to Mist's and Applebee's Journals. It is not, however, by them but by his earlier work that the question of his priority to Steele must be judged, and it is certainly not of a kind to entitle him to be called the first English essayist. Of any attempt to give a literary finish to his style, or to laugh his age into virtue by means of coherent, neatly-rounded essays, there is no sign in the earlier essays of Defoe; and that he had himself no thought of having been the pioneer of Steele is evident from the fact that, long after the Tatler and the Spectator had begun to meet with the neglect generally paid to established classics, he appeared in the preface of the Universal Spectator as a professed imitator of the Addisonian essay. It remained for some one to follow up Defoe's suggestion by employing as a literary medium a prose style which should have both the

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