[In following excerpt, Stephens traces the history of Addison and Steele's periodical the Guardian,emphasizing its involvement in politics as the cause of its demise.]

If The Spectator had not existed, The Guardian might outrank all periodicals of this kind.

George Sherburn

Of the numerous literary periodicals produced in the eighteenth century, none have been more famous than the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian, in which Addison and Steele brought the familiar essay to a high point of perfection. From their beginnings the three periodicals have been linked together as the prime achievement of their authors' collaboration. For example, a work entitled Histories, Fables, Allegories, and Characters, selected from the Spectator and Guardian reached a fourth edition in 1753 and an eighteenth edition in 1765; and in 1757 there appeared A General Index to the Spectators, Tatlers, and Guardians. In 1763 two volumes of extracts were published entitled Beauties of the Spectators, Tatlers, and Guardians. Evidence of the popularity of the journals is the fact that the Tatler and the Guardian have each been reprinted more than fifty times and the Spectator well over a hundred times since they first appeared to please and inform Queen Anne's England. Together these papers helped to form the taste and to shape the morals and manners of countless generations in Britain and abroad. Nathan Drake was only somewhat hyperbolical when he wrote in 1805, “The result, indeed, of the publication of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, has been of the first national importance.”¹

Before the end of the eighteenth century, the Tatler and the Spectator were reissued by John Nichols in annotated form, and each has received the attention of one or more modern editors. But the Guardian has not fared as well as its predecessors. Nichols published an edition in 1789 which was not done with even as much care as his other two collections. The text is unreliable, though he did preserve (because his main interest was in annotation) a good deal of traditional information and unevaluated gossip about authorship, sources and allusions, and the general social background of the essays. Since that edition there has been no fully edited reprint of the Guardian; indeed, there seems to have been no reprint at all since 1856, when Alexander Chalmers included it in his “British Essayists” series. Nichols's edition was reissued in 1797, and after that time reprints, while multiplying textual errors, offered annotation that was scanty in the extreme and drawn mostly from Nichols. With the passing of the centuries, moreover, references and allusions that were readily understood by eighteenth-century English readers have now become less intelligible even to specialists. It is time, in view of the importance of the Guardian as one of the leading periodicals of the eighteenth century, for an edition with (something we have not had) a reliable text based on the earliest printings and supplying for the reader essential annotation that greatly augments and in some instances corrects Nichols and all other editions.

BEGINNINGS OF THE GUARDIAN

The Guardian essays first appeared in daily half-sheets, Mondays through Saturdays, from 12 March to 1 October 1713. The paper was of course a sequel to the Spectator, which came to a close, after 555 numbers and twenty-two months of continuous publication, on 6 December 1712. Whatever reasons Addison and Steele had for ending their most celebrated work, neither intended to give up entirely the writing of essays, for in Nos. 549 and 550 Addison revealed plans for a recast Spectator to begin on Lady Day (25 March) 1713. Soon after this announcement, however, Addison's literary energies were redirected, and he turned to completing his tragedy Cato and seeing that drama successfully produced at Drury Lane in April 1713. It was consequently Steele who on 12 March brought out the new periodical, The Guardian.

It is uncertain whether the projected continuation of the Spectator would in any case have been a joint effort of Steele and Addison. On 12 November, more than two weeks before Addison broached the idea of a new periodical, Steele in a letter to Alexander Pope mentioned a fresh “design” of his own. “I desire you would let me know,” he wrote, “whether you are at leisure or not? I have a design which I shall open a month or two hence, with the assistance of the few like yourself. If your thoughts are unengaged, I shall explain myself further.”² Pope replied with alacrity on 16 November: “I shall be very ready and glad to contribute to any design that tends to the advantage of mankind, which, I am sure, all yours do. I wish I had but as much capacity as leisure, for I am perfectly idle (a sign that I have not much capacity.)”³ Traditionally, the design about which Steele wrote to Pope was thought to be the Guardian. Professor Rae Blanchard was the first to suggest otherwise:

This comment [she says] has always been taken to mean The Guardian. … But it seems to the present writer that Steele refers to the Censorium, his little theatre for performances of poetry and music which he planned to open early in 1713, and which according to George Berkeley's letter of 7 Mar. to Sir John Perceval was then about ready. The phrasing in the note above—'design which I shall open'—does not necessarily suggest a periodical; moreover, there is Steele's letter of 4 Dec. 1712, requesting Pope to write a poem for music. Pope wrote to his friend Caryll in Feb. 1713 that he had ‘an affair with Mr. Steele, that takes up much consultation daily’, If ‘this affair’ was The Guardian, it is odd that more of Pope's work did not appear in the early numbers.⁴

Steele was busy in fact with two schemes, the Guardian and the Censorium, at the end of 1712 and the beginning of 1713. In the letter to Sir John Perceval of 7 March mentioned by Blanchard, Berkeley reveals:

You will soon hear of Mr. Steele under the character of the ‘Guardian’; he designs his paper shall come out every day as the ‘Spectator.’ He is likewise proposing a noble entertainment for persons of a refined taste. It is chiefly to consist of the finest pieces of eloquence translated from the Greek and Latin authors. They will be accompanied with the best music suited to raise those passions that are proper to the occasion. Pieces of poetry will be there recited. These informations I have from Mr. Steele himself.⁵

Despite his plans and efforts, Steele had to postpone the opening of the Censorium until 1715. In the meantime, whether the specific design he mentioned to Pope was that “noble entertainment” or the Guardian, it would appear that he was counting on Pope to assist with the new essay series.

PUBLICATION AND DISTRIBUTION

On Thursday, 12 March 1713, the first number of the Guardian was published. Like the Tatler and Spectator, it consisted of four columns printed on both sides of a single folio half-sheet with provision for advertisements at the end of the fourth column. The colophon reads: “London: Printed for J. Tonson in the Strand; and Sold by A. Baldwin in Warwick-Lane.” With the second number the words “where Advertisements are taken in” were added after “in Warwick-Lane,” and this form continued unaltered throughout the run of the Guardian. Below the motto of No. 1 was the announcement: “To be Continued every Day,” and at the bottom of the first column was the notation, “Price Two Pence.” The publisher was Jacob Tonson, junior (1682-1735), nephew and partner of the more famous Jacob Tonson (1655-1736). Their well-known shop was located at Shakespeare's Head over against Catherine-street in the Strand. In October 1712 the younger Tonson had become, together with his uncle and Samuel Buckley, co-publisher of the Spectator; and in November of the same year he bought from Addison and Steele half the rights in the first seven volumes of the collected Spectators. In October 1714 he secured from Buckley the remaining rights to that periodical. In 1713 Tonson also had a partnership arrangement with John Watts (1678-1763). Plomer describes Watts's establishment as “one of the most important printing houses in London in the first half of the eighteenth century, and … the school in which many eminent printers learnt the art.”⁶ Watts was especially noted for his elegant editions of Greek, Latin, and English classics. In the Guardian, No. 114, Tonson and Wats advertised:

This Day is Published, with Her Majesty's Royal Privilege and Licence, Proposals for Printing by Subscription a very fine Edition of all the Ancient Greek Poets in three Vols. in Folio. This Work is prepared for the Press by Mr. Michael Maittaire from the best Editions. … The Undertakers are Jacob Tonson at Shakespeare's Head over against Catherine-street in the Strand, and John Watts at the Printing-House in Bow-street, Covent-Garden, where Subscriptions are taken in, and Proposals deliver'd out.

Mrs. Anne Baldwin, widow of the bookseller Richard Baldwin (d. 1698), had been associated with the Spectator. The first number of that periodical announced that it would be “sold by A. Baldwin in Warwick-Lane,” and she continued as an agent for the full run of the Spectator. Her shop was likewise a place “where Advertisements are taken in.” She was a zealous Whig and encountered difficulties with the Tory Government as a result of some of her publications. Her shop was located near the Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane, between Newgate Street and Ludgate Hill. Mrs. Baldwin died in November 1713.⁷

Mrs. Baldwin may be thought of as the official distribution agent for the Guardian. In No. 6, however, of the original sheets, four additional agents were named: “This Paper is to be had at Mr. Yemes under the Thatch'd-house Tavern in St. James's-street; Mrs. Bond at Charing-cross; Mrs. Bolter near the Temple-gate; and Mr. Round in Exchange-Ally.” To this list was added in No. 67 (28 May 1713) “Mrs. Dodd near the Temple-gate.” All of these, with the exception of Yemes (about whom nothing else is known beyond the fact that his first name may have been Henry), had been agents for the Spectator. Mrs. Bond was located at the Old Vine at Charing Cross. She operated a “news-shop” in which “books and pamphlets, newspapers, patent medicines, &c. were sold.”⁸ Mrs. Bolter, or Boulter, had her shop next to the Rose Tavern at Temple Bar, and in October 1711 she and Mrs. Bond were in trouble with the Government, being charged with “printing, publishing, vending, and dispersing several scandalous Pamphlets and Libels, highly reflecting on the Government and Church of England, by Law Establish'd.”⁹ In February and again in April 1713, Mrs. Bolter was ordered to appear at the Queen's Bench. The shop of Mrs. Ann Dodd, or Dodds, described as “a Retailer of News Papers & Pamphlets commonly called a Mercury,” was at the sign of the Peacock at Temple Bar.¹⁰ James Round (d. 1745) was an established and recognized bookseller. Plomer describes him as “one of the most important booksellers in London, and was Master of the Company.”¹¹ His shop was at Seneca's Head, Exchange Alley, Cornhill.

PURPOSE AND DRAMATIS PERSONAE

In the opening number of the Guardian, Steele informed his readers that “The main Purpose of the Work shall be to protect the Modest, the Industrious, to celebrate the Wise, the Valiant, to encourage the Good, the Pious, to confront the Impudent, the Idle, to contemn the Vain, the Cowardly, and to disappoint the Wicked and Prophane.” In general, according to the plan laid out in the first issue, the Guardian was intended to resemble the Spectator with two important differences. Unlike the Spectator—though like the Tatler—the new paper would from time to time carry items of news. The Guardian did not, moreover, intend to eschew politics nor hint, as Mr. Spectator had done, a resolution “to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories.” Rather, said Nestor Ironside, “The Parties among us are too violent to make it possible to pass them by without Observation. As to these Matters, I shall be impartial, tho' I cannot be Neuter.” But, as the Guardian was conducted, Steele forgot or came to ignore both these early promises. News items were never included, and partisan politics did indeed find a place in the Guardian.

The “Guardian” who is the persona or putative editor of the new periodical is Nestor Ironside, a name suggesting at once wisdom and strength. Descended from the ancient family of Ironside, he traces his lineage to a great-grandfather, Gilbert Ironside, who fought at Edge Hill. Nestor is skeptical of the claim of his late Aunt Martha that on his mother's side the family is nearly related to half a dozen peers. It was, nevertheless, a “particular Distinction of the Ironsides to be robust and hardy.” Nestor's father “lived till a hundred without a Cough,” and there is a family tradition that his grandfather “used to throw off his Hat and go open Breasted after Fourscore.” As a boy, Nestor was periodically soused head over ears in cold water to foster and preserve his ancestral hardiness.

Born near Brandford in Middlesex in 1642, Nestor has one sister, Margaret, who inherited Aunt Martha's estate because he on one occasion failed to show a proper enthusiasm for family history. At sixteen he was admitted to Magdalen Hall, Oxford. There he enjoyed a friendly converse with the famous Joseph Pullen and made a number of friends among his fellow students. Chief of these was Ambrose Lizard of a neighboring college, and it was their enduring friendship that shaped a significant part of Nestor's ensuing years.

After graduation from Magdalen Hall, Nestor was made a fellow of Lincoln College. Ambrose in the meantime was married in 1662 to Miss Jane Lizard, and after his graduation settled at the family seat, Lizard Hall in Northamptonshire. Having become himself Sir Ambrose on the death of his father, he had one son, whom he named Marmaduke. Every year except one for eighteen years after the marriage of Sir Ambrose, Nestor Ironside left Oxford and spent the months of June, July, and August with his friends at Lizard Hall. There on 4 July 1674, when Marmaduke was not quite twelve, Ambrose asked Nestor to become guardian and tutor to his only son and heir. From that day on, Marmaduke was under the special care of Nestor Ironside.

In time Sir Ambrose died, leaving his widow, Jane, to mourn him. When Marmaduke grew to manhood, he married Lady Aspasia Lizard, then just sixteen years old. They had four sons and five daughters before Marmaduke died, about the year 1697, leaving “an improved Paternal Estate of Six thousand Pounds a Year to his eldest Son, and one Year's Revenue in ready Mony as a Portion to each younger Child.” His widow was not yet thirty years old. It is to this family that Nestor acts not only as guardian but also as counsellor, philosopher, and friend. He is now seventy-one and thinks “An healthy old Fellow, that is not a Fool, is the happiest Creature living.” He finds special contentment at gatherings of his wards when he can take his “Place in an Elbow Chair, which is always left empty for me in one Corner.” He derives “great Pleasure in playing with Children, and am seldom unprovided of Plumms or Marbles, to make my Court to such entertaining Companions.” But his highest duty is always “to preserve Peace and Love among my Wards.”

When Addison talked in December 1712 of continuing the Spectator, he remarked that “The Ladies are in great Pain to know whom I intend to elect in the Room of Will. Honeycomb. Some of them indeed are of Opinion that Mr. Honeycomb did not take sufficient Care of their Interests in the Club, and are therefore desirous of having in it hereafter a Representative of their own Sex.”¹² One wonders if this alleged neglect of the distaff side in Mr. Spectator's club had something to do with the invention of the Lizard family as the device around which the Guardian was to be built. Apparently, Steele meant for his paper to have special appeal for feminine readers. “I am to let the Reader know,” he says in No. 2, “that his chief Entertainment will arise from what passes at the Tea Table of my Lady Lizard.” And at the close of the same number he adds: “The Members of this Family, their Cares, Passions, Interests and Diversions shall be represented from time to time, as News from the Tea Table of so accomplished a Woman as the intelligent and discreet Lady Lizard.” Thus, as originally conceived, the three generations of the Lizard family would serve, like the Spectator Club, to give interest and variety to the subjects treated in the Guardian. Nestor promises that accounts of their affairs will make “a Series of History of Common Life, as useful as the Relations of the more pompous Passages in the Lives of Princes and Statesmen.”

The matriarch of the Lizards is Lady Jane, widow of Sir Ambrose. She is an “Ancient and Religious Lady,” who “has for some time estranged her self from Conversation, and admits only of the Visits of her own Family.” On occasion, Lady Jane and Nestor reminisce about Sir Ambrose and “those Days which only we call good ones”; but after her introduction in No. 5, she plays no part in the scheme of the Guardian.

Steele's admiration for Lady Aspasia Lizard, Marmaduke's widow, is evident. She is in all respects the ideal lady, wife, and mother. Her husband has been dead for sixteen years, and she is now forty-six. She retains, however, a good measure of her youthful attractiveness and might well marry again, but she prefers to spend her time in the management of her family and her financial affairs, tasks which she carries on with intelligence and prudence.

Of the nine Lizard children, Sir Harry, at the age of twenty-six, is the eldest. He embodies Steele's concept of the ideal country squire, loyal to landed interests but at the same time recognizing the importance of trade and commerce to the welfare of himself and the nation. The second son, Thomas, is of easy carriage and complacent disposition. He has a native skill in conversation and story telling and would like to find a place at Court. William is the antithesis of his brother Tom. He lacks the latter's social graces and is especially awkward at story telling. He aspires to be a lawyer and is presently pursuing his studies in the Temple. The youngest son is John, who, having entered Oxford at fifteen, has at the age of twenty just been chosen a fellow of All-Souls. Graceful and serene in manner, he “has a Sublime Vein in Poetry” and intends to take holy orders.

At twenty-three Jane is the oldest of the Lizard daughters. In personality she takes after her mother, whom she assists in the management of the family and the household. She is very much in love with Tom Worthy, who is unfortunately “a young Gentleman of great Expectation, but small Fortune.” She does not lack other suitors, and her mother encourages her to make a prudent marriage to one of these. The second daughter, Annabella, is witty, lively, and pretty, though Nestor fears that she has a “certain dishonest Cunning.” She has a special interest in song writing, her eye rambles at the playhouse, and on one occasion she receives a wink from Sir Harry Pandolf. Annabella looks for affluence in a husband and buys clothes, so she says, in order to set poor people to work. Cornelia is the middle daughter and a great reader of romances, which she buys for the benefit of the great learning they contain. Cornelia is a true romantic who revels in thoughts of woodland solitude and pastoral poetry and corresponds with a female friend using the pseudonyms of “Astrea” and “Dorinda.” Betty Lizard is well versed in Town gossip and finds her happiness in “Equipages, Assemblies, Balls and Birthnights.” The youngest of the Lizard children is Mary. She is Nestor's acknowledged favorite, and he has nicknamed her “The Sparkler.” From time to time he discusses with her such topics as virtue and the proprieties of dress. On one occasion she reads the Plurality of Worlds to her mother and sisters while they carry out their household duties.

The Lizard family had evident possibilities as a literary device. The four sons and five daughters, together with their mother and grandmother, as well as their homes in London and the country, could have provided for a considerable span of variety in terms of age and interests, and for the first month or so Steele gave a good bit of attention to the Lizards. As the Guardian progressed, however, they fell into the background, and whatever potential they had as a literary framework was never exploited to the full.

PROGRESS OF THE GUARDIAN AND INVOLVEMENT IN POLITICS

Besides essays on the Lizards, the Guardian offered readers for the remainder of March a number of miscellaneous pieces, several of which are commendable in their kind. Steele's attack on Anthony Collins in No. 3, though timely and perceptive, says nothing about the deists that had not been said before, but Pope's essay on dedications (No. 4) is light satire at its very best as is also Gnatho's letter on flattery in No. 11. Philips's comments on song writing are informative and amusing and constitute, according to John Aikin, the first “professed criticism” on song writing as an art.¹³ Simon Sleek's treatment of dress is refreshing burlesque on a perennial theme, while a series of Lenten pieces begun on 31 March is appropriately serious and hortatory.

The London theatrical event of April 1713—and indeed of the entire spring—was of course Cato, which was first acted on the fourteenth. Addison's tragedy received due notice in the Guardian, No. 33, four days after the opening performance, and was thereafter mentioned favorably whenever opportunity offered. Thomas Tickell's observations on pastoral poetry (Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, and 32) began to appear on 6 April. These essays compose the most substantial piece of literary criticism in the Guardian and retain their significance as the “main English document” of the rationalist school of pastoral theory.¹⁴ Their appearance, on the other hand, caused friction in the ranks of contributors to the journal. The extravagant praise of Ambrose Philips and the rationalists and the neglect of Pope and the classicists led to Pope's incomparable attack in No. 40, the ironic bite of which must have been felt keenly by Philips and his friends among the Little Senate at Button's coffeehouse. The episode was one of the irritations that produced Pope's portrait of Addison as “Atticus.”

It was in April also that Steele first involved the Guardian in partisan politics by directly confronting the principal Tory newspaper, the Examiner. The latter had attacked—Steele thought in most ungentlemanly fashion—Lady Charlotte, daughter of the Earl of Nottingham. Steele defended Lady Charlotte in the Guardian. No. 41 (28 April), and for his effrontery the Examiner was called a “fawning Miscreant” and a “Wretch, as dull as he is wicked,” and one who acted with the “utmost Malice and Invention.” The Examiner made a heated reply to this charge, and on 12 May, two weeks after his opening attack, Steele took up the matter of Lady Charlotte again, this time devoting the close of No. 53 to insinuations about the anonymity of the author of the Examiner, whom he took to be either Mrs. Mary Manley or Jonathan Swift, saying:

I will give my self no manner of Liberty to make Guesses at him, if I may say him; for tho' sometimes I have been told, by familiar Friends, that they saw me such a time talking to the Examiner; others, who have rally'd me upon the Sins of my Youth, tell me it is credibly reported that I have formerly lain with the Examiner. I have carried my Point, and rescued Innocence from Calumny; and it is nothing to me, whether the Examiner writes against me in the Character of an estranged Friend, or an exasperated Mistress.

The current editor of the Examiner was William Oldisworth, and Swift was deeply offended at Steele's comments. On 13 May, Swift wrote to Addison indicating his resentment and asking, “Have I deserved this usage from Mr. Steele, who knows very well that my Lord Treasurer has kept him in his employment upon my intreaty and intercession?” In a characteristic act of caution, Addison did not answer Swift's letter but turned it over to Steele, who wrote a reply on 19 May. He chided Swift for not denying categorically any connection with the Examiner. Furthermore, he countered the charge that he had kept his place as Commissioner in the Stamp Office only through Swift's good offices by saying, “They laugh at you, if they make you believe your interposition has kept me thus long in my office.”¹⁵ Several more letters passed between Swift and Steele during the month of May, and the latter seems never to have been convinced that Swift was not somehow party to the Examiner essays. Finally, however, on 23 May the Guardian (No. 63) apologized to Mrs. Manley—who, incidentally, was never mentioned in the Steele-Swift exchange—and added, “I have named no Man, but if there be any Gentleman, who wrongfully lies under the Imputation of being, or assisting the Examiner, he would do well to do himself Justice, under his own Hand, in the Eye of the World.” The point of this, Steele's final comment on the matter, was that he had acknowledged or signed his name to his sallies at the Examiner. His opponent, by contrast, had never revealed his identity. “If Steele can be thought to be less to blame than Swift in their quarrel,” observes Rae Blanchard, “it is on the ground of his candour in putting his name to the Guardian papers giving offence.”¹⁶

Busy with Cato, Addison did not contribute to the Guardian during the first month and a half of its publication. In that time Steele was responsible for most of the essays, although he received help from Pope and other friends, notably George Berkeley, Eustace Budgell, Thomas Tickell, and Ambrose Philips. The last of May, however, Addison, having seen Cato successfully produced, felt that he could now contribute a Guardian, and his first paper, No. 67, appeared on 28 May. He paid kindly tribute to the aging Tom D'Urfey and set the stage for a benefit revival of D'Urfey's comedy The Fond Husband to take place on 15 June. Perhaps the best Guardians during June were Pope's on the Little Club and the Receipt to make an Epic Poem in No. 78. But the popularity of the Guardian was by midsummer scant enough to elicit comment. Swift's report to Stella must be taken with some caution; on 1 April, however, he wrote, “did I tell you, tht Steel has begun a new daily Paper called the Guardian, they say good for nothing; I have not seen it.”¹⁷ Matthew Prior writing from Paris said, “I make but little of the English wit, the Guardian; but, possibly, I do not yet enter into his design.”¹⁸ Pope, less likely to be swayed by party bias, is a better witness when he writes to Caryll on 23 June: “I wholly agree with you in your opinion of the Guardian in general; only I must do Mr Steel the justice to assure you, those he writes himself are equal to any he has wrote. The grand difference is caused by the want of Mr Addison's assistance, who writes as seldom as I do, one a month or so.”¹⁹ Addison's failure to take part in the early numbers may detract from the Guardian when compared, for example, with the sustained quality of the Spectator. At any rate, Pope's words carried a hint of prophecy, for on 1 July Addison took over the editorship of the Guardian for just over a month.

ADDISON'S EDITORSHIP AND DENNIS'S ATTACK ON CATO

Cato enjoyed its brilliant success for four weeks, and on 9 May closed in London and removed to Oxford for a second triumphant run. Addison was tired from his exertions in dramatic enterprise and also from an especially trying episode in the House of Commons when his friend Lord Wharton was accused of the sale of an office. Consequently, at the end of May he left London for a short rest. On his return he was refreshed and ready to enter with enthusiasm into Steele's literary venture. He was able, in addition, to do his friend a favor by freeing him to attend to a matter of personal concern, for Steele had decided to seek election to Parliament from the borough of Stockbridge. As a prelude to his campaign, Steele wrote on 4 June to the Earl of Oxford: “I presume to Give Your Lordship this trouble to acquaint You that having an Ambition to Serve in the ensuing Parliament I humbly desire Your Lordship will please to accept of my resignation of my office as Commissioner of the Stamp-Revenue.”²⁰ Presumably, during July, while Addison took care of the Guardian, Steele spent much of his time preparing for the coming election.

When Addison took charge of the Guardian, he made a special effort to enliven the paper. He began a series of lighthearted essays on the lady's tucker, started a running vein of humor on lions, and conceived the notion of a lion's-head letter box to be erected at Button's coffeehouse for the reception of contributions to the Guardian. The setting up of the letter box probably indicated a need for more, and more varied, material. Addison then proceeded to commend William Whiston's scheme for finding the longitude and tilted briefly at Pope's Little Club. He wished likewise to avoid politics, although he felt it necessary to defend Sir Thomas Parker, the Whig Chief Justice, in No. 99. He was careful, on the other hand, to be nonpartisan and noncommital in the papers he wrote at the time of the Thanksgiving for the Peace of Utrecht. He had already published (30 June) comments on the commercial clauses of the treaty in a pamphlet, The Late Tryal and Conviction of Count Tariff. In the Guardian, therefore, he said nothing directly about the treaty. Instead, he noted the peace celebrations, described the festivities on the Thanksgiving Day, and printed material from some of his own letters written during his Continental travels more than a decade before.

Addison kept aloof likewise from a literary quarrel that erupted around Cato in July. Amidst the chorus of critical praise attending the play, a discordant note was struck by the notoriously irascible critic John Dennis. In Remarks upon the Tragedy of Cato, published on 11 July, Dennis attacked the play for violating classical rules of dramatic construction. He also took exception to the widespread commendation of Cato as a work espousing, in the Guardian phrasing, “the Cause of Truth and Liberty.” According to Dennis,

That Cato's being writ with a Design to support Liberty, is an Objection of no manner of Force; That let the Design be what it will, the Effect is sure to the contrary; That the shewing a Man of consummate Virtue unfortunate only for supporting Liberty, must of Necessity in a free Nation be of pernicious Consequence, and must justly raise the highest Indignation in all true Lovers of Liberty.²¹

Dennis's Remarks were thought offensive by a number of persons, among them Pope, who had a score to settle with Dennis for the latter's attack two years before on the Essay on Criticism. Acting on the avowed premise that only a lunatic would attack Cato, Pope (aided probably by others) wrote a pamphlet, The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable Frenzy of Mr. John Denn—s, which was published by Bernard Lintot on 28 July. Norris was a real person whose services for the cure and treatment of the mentally ill were frequently advertised (see, e.g., the Guardian, No. 111, in folio). Though the Narrative does treat Dennis harshly, it is not unduly offensive. Nevertheless, on 4 August, Steele wrote to Lintot that “Mr. Addison desir'd me to tell you, that he wholly disapproves the Manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little Pamphlet, by way of Dr. Norris's Account.”²² There are several curious aspects to this episode, and no matter what the true explanation may be, it could not fail to put additional strain on the relations of Pope and Addison while both were engaged in the Guardian.

POLITICS, DUNKIRK, AND THE CONCLUSION OF THE GUARDIAN

After a month as editor and chief contributor, Addison put aside these efforts at the beginning of August in order to prepare for the expected general election toward which Steele had lately been pointing his activities. The latter returned in time to write the piece for 4 August, and three days afterwards took a step that would turn out to be crucial in its effect on the future of the Guardian. On 7 August, Steele published his famous Guardian, No. 128, on Dunkirk, thus touching off a controversy that would last for months and lead eventually to the termination of the Guardian and the founding of the more partisan Englishman.

Politically the summer of 1713 was an unquiet time. Underlying particular events were two long-standing issues: apprehension over Queen Anne's health, attended by fears about the succession, and deep-seated differences over the Treaty of Utrecht. Suffering from rheumatic gout, the Queen was often forced to cancel public appearances (see Guardian, No. 105), and her condition finally declined to such an extent that she had to be conveyed from one floor to another by a kind of hoisting apparatus once used by Henry VIII. The Act of Settlement of 1701 had provided for the Hanoverian succession, and the Whigs could find unity in supporting its provisions. The Tories, by contrast, were seriously divided on the succession issue. Occasionally, one might have heard alarm, and in some instances hope, that when the Queen should die the Pretender would try for the English throne.

In the political foreground for the first months of 1713 was the Treaty of Utrecht. Negotiations for peace in the War of the Spanish Succession had moved with frustrating slowness. The Tory Government sought to bring peace on terms as favorable to England as they could, but they had to contend with constant attacks by the opposition at home and the added threat that Britain might be abandoned by her Continental allies if too much were demanded of the French. Even after peace was finally concluded at the beginning of April, there was no letup in Whig dissatisfaction with the treaty, especially its commercial clauses. In addition, a general election was imminent toward the end of August. It was in this atmosphere that Steele—the strongest voice of Whig propaganda—published the Guardian of August 7 (No. 128), declaring that the English people “expected” the demolition of the port of Dunkirk. The Guardian henceforth was a subject of partisan debate, with most of the Dunkirk controversy taking place in the pamphlet press.

Besides No. 128, two other essays treated of Dunkirk; but for the last two months of publication, Guardian papers were miscellaneous and as before on a variety of subjects. There is, it must be confessed, a decline in overall quality. Addison, who, after a ten-day respite, resumed regular contributions, continued to talk of lions and the current fad for masquerades. Pope had a hand in No. 132 (12 August), the first time he had furnished a piece for at least a month, while more than another month would pass until his final paper on 29 September. Those essays that can reasonably be taken as Steele's are noticeable for their use of quoted and paraphrased material, especially after No. 160 (14 September).

On 21 August, Addison won reelection to the House of Commons as member for Malmesbury, and on 24 August Steele was elected for Stockbridge. In Steele's case politics was now an increasing preoccupation, and more and more of his thoughts and energies were devoted to his emergent role as chief propaganda spokesman for the Whig party. As soon as he was chosen for Stockbridge, therefore, the Tories made plans to prevent his being seated in the House. On 31 August, Pope told Caryll: “Mr. Steele, you know, has carried his election, tho' 'tis said a petition will be lodged against him, and he is of that opinion himself. Some people say, that passage in Scripture may be applied to him, upon the resignation of his places: I have left all and have followed you. But whether or no his Reward will therefore be great is hard to determine.”²³ Addison, writing to John Hughes on 12 October, said nearly the same thing: “I am in a thousand troubles for poor Dick, and wish that his zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself; but he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, and that any advice I can give him in this particular, will have no weight with him.”²⁴

Such was Steele's temper when he brought the Guardian to an abrupt end on 1 October 1713. No hint had been given to readers that the journal would cease publication, nor was there any explanation for thus ending the periodical. But on 6 October, a mere five days after the close of the Guardian, Steele issued the first number of The Englishman: Being the Sequel to the Guardian, and there explained:

All which I shall say at present is, that for valuable Considerations I have purchased the Lion, Desk, Pen, Ink, and Paper, and all other Goods of Nestor Ironside, Esq; who has thought fit to write no more himself, but has given me full Liberty to report any sage Expressions or Maxims which may tend to the Instruction of Mankind, and the Service of his Country. It is not, said the good Man, giving me the Key of the Lion's Den, now a Time to improve the Taste of Men by the Reflections and Railleries of Poets and Philosophers, but to awaken their Understanding, by laying before them the present State of the World like a Man of Experience and a Patriot: It is a Jest to throw away our Care in providing for the Palate, when the whole Body is in danger of Death; or to talk of amending the Mein and Air of a Cripple that has lost his Legs and Arms.

In a letter to Caryll on 17 October, Pope discussed the termination of the Guardian: “The true reason that Mr S[teele] laid down the paper, was a quarrel between him and Jac[ob] Tonson. He stood engaged to his bookseller, in articles of penalty, for all the Guardians; and by desisting 2 days, and altering the title of the paper to that of Englishman, was quit of his obligation. These papers being printed by Buckley.”²⁵ Touching the political tone of the Englishman, Pope said of Steele:

As to his taking a more politic turn, I cannot any way enter into that secret, nor have I been let into it, any more than into the rest of his politics, tho' 'tis said he will take into these papers also several subjects of the politer kind, as before. But, I assure you, as to myself, I have quite done with 'em, for the future. The little I have done, and the great respect I bear Mr Steele as a man of wit, has rendered me a suspected Whig to some of the [over zealous] and violent. But (as old Dryden said before me), 'Tis not the violent I design to please. And in very truth, sir, I believe they will all find me, at long run, a mere papist.²⁶

Whatever quarrel there might have been between Steele and Tonson, the decision to end the Guardian and begin the Englishman was motivated by politics, and Rae Blanchard believes that Steele made the change in consultation with Whig leaders.

Undoubtedly [she says] these moves were arranged within the councils of the Whig party—with the leaders of the old guard, Lord Halifax, Steele's personal friend, for one; with the younger generation of Whig leaders, Walpole and Stanhope, lately returned from war service overseas; with the Hanover Club, organized avowedly to fight the dynasty battle to a finish; and with the trade-minded sponsors of the Whig anti-French commercial policy. The immediate need was for a Whig journal that could stand up to The Examiner, … and Steele was selected as editor.²⁷

CIRCULATION OF THE DAILY SHEETS AND PUBLICATION OF COLLECTED EDITIONS

While political developments may have been an overriding reason for discontinuing the Guardian, it seems evident that the periodical was not a financial success, a fact that may have entered into the decision to bring it to a close. There are no contemporary records giving the circulation of the Guardian. Apparently, however, it was much less than that of the Spectator. As already mentioned, four distributing agents, in addition to Mrs. Baldwin, were named in No. 6 (18 March); another name was added in No. 67 (28 May), making a total of six persons active in selling the daily sheets. This number is in obvious contrast with the experience with the Spectator. During March 1711, the first month of its publication, there were already six agents for the Spectator, and by mid-November this number had risen to twelve, exactly double the number for the Guardian during its entire run. The setting up of the lion's-head letter box was designed to increase contributions from correspondents; it may also have been an effort to increase reader interest. While in No. 138 (19 August 1713) Addison remarked that “the Number of my Papers is every Day increasing,” advertising revenues for the Guardian did not approach those for the Spectator, which was carrying by July 1712 ten or twlve advertisements in every issue. Only on two occasions (Nos. 44 and 54) did the Guardian print as many as seven advertisements, and there were six advertisements in only four other issues (Nos. 10, 34, 41, and 56). Thus the 480 advertisements that appeared in the Guardian represent an average of 2.7 for each issue.

Although the daily sheets ceased to appear after 1 October 1713, appreciation of the literary excellencies of the Guardian, though somewhat slow in coming, continued to grow, and the journal was reprinted numerous times in the eighteenth century. At the close of 1713, Tonson brought out the first collected edition in both octavo and duodecimo volumes. In the Englishman, No. 37 (26-29 December 1713), the following advertisement was printed: “This Day is published, Mr. Steele's Collection of Poetical Miscellanies, consisting of original Poems and Translations of the best Hands. Also the Guardians compleat, printed in 8vo and 12mo, upon the same Paper and Letter with the Spectators. Both printed for Jacob Tonson at Shakespear's Head against Catherine-street in the Strand.” This notice was repeated in the Englishman, No. 38 (29-31 December 1713), and (slightly altered) in No. 40 (2-5 January 1714). The title pages of both the octavo and duodecimo editions bear the date 1714.

In the Englishman, No. 26 (1-3 December 1713), the following advertisement was printed: “This Day is published, The Motto's to the two Volumes of Guardians, translated into English. Printed in Octavo and Twelves, design'd to bind up with either Edition. N. B. There is a small Number printed on Royal Paper, to be bound up with the Royal Paper Books. Printed for J. Roberts near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane.” Robert's announcement, anticipating the forthcoming collected Guardian, was carried also in the Post-Boy for 2-4 December 1713 and again in the Englishman, Nos. 38 and 40. Tonson's advertisement does not mention a royal (i. e., larger) paper edition; Roberts alone says anything of such a printing. No copy of Roberts's Motto's has been found. In 1723 a “Third” edition of the Guardian was published; there was a “Fourth” edition in 1726 and a “Fifth” in 1729, the year of Steele's death. All were printed by Tonson in duodecimo. There was likewise a so-called “Fifth Edition” printed in Dublin in 1728.

Aside from the folio sheets and the first collected volumes of 1714, the most important edition of the Guardian has been that printed by John Nichols in 1789. A quarter of a century before that date, Thomas Percy (1729-1811), who published his famous Reliques in 1765 and became Bishop of Dromore in 1782, entered into an agreement with the publisher Jacob Tonson, the third, great-nephew of the first Jacob Tonson, to furnish annotations for new editions of the Spectator, the Guardian, and the Tatler. Of this venture Percy wrote in April 1764 to his friend Richard Farmer:

Mr Tonson is going to publish a new Edition of the Spectators, which he proposes to accompany with a few marginal notes. Can you furnish him with any illustrations, anecdotes, or names of concealed authors: or can you procure them from any of your friends? I am now ransacking the Biographia Britannica and other books of that kind for him.—Some personal and temporary allusions require clearing up, and these only it is proposed to annotate upon in as few words as may be. It is not perhaps too late yet to recover the key to these: but if delayed much longer it will become difficult, if not impossible: and then one of the most valuable works in our language will be handed down to posterity full of obscurities, which a few timely illustrations might have prevented.

The progress of Percy's work may be gauged by the fact that the projected edition of the Tatler did not appear until 1786 and those of the Spectator and Guardian not till 1789. All were printed not by Tonson, who died in 1767, but by John Nichols (1745-1826). In the meantime, Percy had given up the editorial work and in 1783 turned his material over to Dr. John Calder (1733-1815). Calder, who had been private secretary to the Duke of Northumberland when Percy had been the Duke's chaplain, had already helped with the annotating. Much later he recorded:

On my coming to settle in London, about half a century ago, I was engaged to prepare a new edition of the Tatler, Spectator and Guardian, with Notes and Illustrations, by such of the Booksellers as before the last Act of Parliament limiting the property of Copy-right took place, claimed an exclusive right to these books. I had begun this work at Alnwick for Dr. Percy, late Bishop of Dromore, who on my coming to town entirely relinquished his contract for this purpose to me, on whom it devolved with the request and at the consent of the Booksellers above mentioned.

Calder himself received some assistance from Zachary Pearce (1690-1774), Bishop of Rochester.

Of the three editions thus prepared, the Tatler is by far the fullest and best, although, as Aitken observes, “the notes were very discursive.” The Guardian is the least satisfactory. Signs of haste are evident throughout the annotation, and it appears that Nichols augmented the material furnished by Calder. The notes are relatively scanty and carelessly prepared. Percy was so dissatisfied with all three editions that he did not want his name associated with any of them. But Nichols's edition of the Guardian, despite its faults and limitations, has been the best available since and is still valuable for any study of the periodical, preserving as it does a certain amount of information that would otherwise have been lost. It was reprinted in 1797.

.....

CRITICAL OPINION OF THE GUARDIAN

The Guardian, in part because it is a sequel, has not received the attention or acclaim given to the Spectator, and it has remained for the twentieth century to make a judicious assessment of its merits. Contemporary reaction to the journal was tainted with politics and personalities. We have seen that Swift and Prior spoke disparagingly of the Guardian, though Swift had not read any of the essays before passing judgment. And dislike for Steele personally and politically animated the attack made by John Dennis in his Character and Conduct of Sir John Edgar (1720):

I must confess that several of the Tatlers have Wit and Humour in them, a fine Raillery, and an agreeable Pleasantry; and some of the Spectators likewise have some of these good Qualities; but I have powerful reasons to believe, that for the most part the good Qualities in those Writings are deriv'd from thy Correspondents, and that only the Pedantry of them is thine. For when thou endeavourdst to entertain the World with a Paper call'd the Guardian, after that Mr. Addison had abandon'd thee, and Mr. Manwaring was entirely employ'd against the Examiner, I found nothing in that Paper of the Qualities of the other, but only thy eternal Dogmatizing, and the haughty and pedantick Air of a School-master. Nay, in this Paper thou wert dwindled into a Pedant, even according to the Litteral Acceptation of the Words; and appear'dst every Morning with thy formal Instructors amidst thy Boys and thy Girls.

Besides revealing his animus against Steele, Dennis's statement formulates a judgment that would be heard for a hundred years, namely, that Steele's writings were inferior to Addison's and that his work was nearly devoid of merit except when he was stimulated and held in check by collaboration with Addison. Pope hinted at this opinion in a letter to Caryll of 23 June 1713, and this exaltation of Addison at the expense of Steele is reflected in an entry in Thomas Hearne's Diary for 23 March 1714:

Richard Steel, Esqr, Member of Parl. was on Thursday last, about 12 o'clock at Night, expelled the House of Commons for a Roguish Pamphlett called the Crisis, & for several other Pamphletts, in wch he hath abused the Q[ueen], &c. This Steel was formerly of Christ Church in Oxford, and afterwards of Merton-College. He was a rakish, wild, drunken Spark; but he got a good Reputation by publishing a Paper that came out daily [sic] called the Tattler, and by another called the Spectator; but the most ingenious of these Papers were written by Mr Addison, and Dr Swift, as 'tis reported. And when these last two had left him, he appeared to be a mean, heavy, weak Writer, as is sufficiently demonstrated in his Papers called the Guardian, the Englishman, and the Lover. He now writes for Bread, being involved in Debt.

Such negative opinion of the Guardian, influenced by a false contrasting of Steele and Addison, reached a climax in Macaulay's hagiological essay on Addison (1843). In a prime example of his “pistolling ways,” Macaulay pontificated:

But The Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth and in its death. It began in dulness, and disappeared in a tempest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had appeared; and it was then impossible to make The Guardian what The Spectator had been. Nestor Ironside and the Miss Lizards were people to whom even he could impart no interest. He could only furnish some excellent little essays, both serious and comic; and this he did.

In his Life of Addison (1781), Samuel Johnson, wise enough not to play off Addison against Steele, gave his sober judgment of the Guardian:

The character of Guardian was too narrow and too serious: it might properly enough admit both the duties and the decencies of life, but seemed not to include literary speculations, and was in some degree violated by merriment and burlesque. What had the Guardian of the Lizards to do with clubs of tall or of little men, with nests of ants, or with Strada's prolusions?

Of this paper nothing is necessary to be said, but that it found many contributors, and that it was a continuation of The Spectator, with the same elegance and the same variety, till some unlucky sparkle from a Tory paper set Steele's politicks on fire, and wit at once blazed into faction. He was soon too hot for neutral topicks, and quitted The Guardian to write The Englishman.

While continuing to recognize the position of the Guardian as a sequel to the Spectator, twentieth-century critics have tended to be kinder to the later journal. George S. Marr, for example, declares:

The general impression derived from a reading of the Guardian is that it is very much a reproduction of the Spectator both in style and tone, weaker as a whole, smaller in bulk, and with the almost inevitable suggestion of staleness. It contains, however, much interesting and readable matter, and deserves to rank along with the Tatler and Spectator as giving a wonderful picture of the life of the times worked up in essays of no mean merit.

And Walter Graham, after observing that “the new serial began agreeably,” goes on to say that, “The Guardian, while it continued, was a periodical not unworthy to take its place beside the Tatler and Spectator, although its contents lack the freshness and novelty of those earlier essays.” Citing especially Nos. 12, 15, 22, 23, 28, 30, 32, 33, 37, 40, 43, and 78, Graham says that “all these make up a not inconsiderable body of critical literature, and give the Guardian a distinguished place in the history of critical periodicals.”

Beyond the opinions of critics, a measure of a work of literature is its appeal to readers. Despite the fact that nine years passed between Tonson's collected editions of 1714 and the so-called “Third” edition of 1723, the Guardian enjoyed in the eighteenth century an excellent and growing reputation and demand. Before 1900 about thirty editions were printed in England; there were at least five Dublin editions and two came out in Edinburgh; it was published four times in French translation, three in Dutch, and one in German. Toward the end of the century, the Guardian began to find place in various collections of British “classics” and “essayists,” and about a dozen nineteenth-century versions of this kind were printed. Portions are also included in selections from the works of Addison and Steele, such as those by J. and R. Tonson (1763), G. Harmonière (Paris, 1819), and Mrs. Letitia Barbauld (1849). The best listing of the various reprintings is in George A. Aitken's Life of Richard Steele (1889).

Those who emphasize the literary side of the Guardian deem it unfortunate that Steele permitted his paper to become embroiled in politics to the extent that Rae Blanchard could call it a “semi-literary” journal. But, let it be noted, that the heat given off by controversy exaggerated out of all proportion the partisan aspects of the periodical, for in reality only a dozen of the 175 essays deal with party matters. And these pieces have their own interest as examples of the rough and tumble of Augustan political debate and likewise as statements illustrative of the set of Richard Steele's mind. In like manner, the essays on economic themes are reminders of how strong protectionist commercial theory was in certain circles and how long such ideas persisted in Britain. Among the more literary Guardians are many enduring examples of the essayist's art. They record with amused perception and tolerance the manners, the peccadilloes, the fashions and foibles of polite society, and their humor remains fresh and engaging. Stephen Spender once remarked that, “One might define a great essay as a short excursion which has infinite readability.” By that standard, the Guardian deserves its established place in the annals of journalism and literature.

Notes

1. Drake, 3:398.

2. Blanchard, p. 63.

3. Ibid., p. 64.

4. Ibid., p. 63.

5. Benjamin Rand, Berkeley and Percival: The Correspondence of George Berkeley … and Sir John Percival (1914), p. 110.

6. Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668 to 1725 (1922), p. 304. See also Kathleen M. Lynch, Jacob Tonson: Kit-Cat Publisher (1971), pp. 123, 206.

7. Plomer, p. 15; Bond, l:xxi-xxii; and Leona Rostenberg, “Richard and Anne Baldwin, Whig Patriot Publishers,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 47 (1953), 1-42.

8. Bond, l:xxiv.

9. Ibid., xxiv-xxv.

10. Ibid., xxiv; H. R. Plomer, G. H. Bushnell, and E. R. McC.Dix, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were At Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1726-1775 (1932), p. 75.

11. Plomer, Dictionary … 1668-1725, p. 258.

12. Spectator, No. 550.

13. John Aikin, Essays on Song-Writing (1772), pp. 2-3.

14. J. E. Congleton, Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England, 1684-1798 (1952), p. 87.

15. Blanchard, pp. 70-73.

16. Ibid.

17. Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams (1948), 2:651.

18. Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. F. Elrington Ball (1911), 2:19.

19. Sherburn, 1:180.

20. Blanchard, p. 79.

21. Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward N. Hooker (1939-1943), 2:43.

22. Blanchard, p. 82.

23. Sherburn, 1:189.

24. Graham, p. 280.

25. Sherburn, 1:193.

26. Ibid., 1:194.

27. Englishman, ed. Rae Blanchard (1955), p. 405.

Reference Abbreviations

Quotations from the Tatler are from the edition of George A. Aitken (1898-1899); those from the Spectator from the edition of Donald F. Bond (1965); and those from the Englishman from the edition of Rae Blanchard (1955). Certain works frequently cited are abbreviated as follows:

Blanchard: Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (1968)

Bond: The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond (1965)

Drake: Nathan Drake, Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian (1805)

Graham: Letters of Joseph Addison, ed. Walter Graham (1941)

Sherburn: Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (1956)