In 1717, he published, under the title of The Virgin Muse,' a collection of poems from our most celebrated English poets. He was also the author of The London Vocabulary, English and Latin, &c.' It appears that for a considerable time of his life he was Sur-master of St. Paul's School, in which office he died Sept. 12, 1737.

These are the names of all the contributors whose writings can be ascertained with any degree of probability. When their contributions are deducted, it will be seen that the continual supply of the work rested chiefly on STEELE. That he had however some unknown correspondents whose favours he admitted is certain, and not less so that there were many whose communications he thought proper to reject. In No. 619, of the SPECTATOR, written most probably by STEELE, a design is announced of publishing these rejected contributions. 'I have often thought,' says the writer of that paper, that if the several letters which are written to me under the character of SPECTATOR, and which I have not made use of, were published in a volume, they would not be an unentertaining collection. The variety of the subjects, styles, sentiments, and informations, which are transmitted to me, would lead a very curious, or very idle reader, insensibly along through a great many pages. I know some authors who would pick up a secret history out of such materials, and

make a bookseller an alderman by the copy. I shall therefore carefully preserve the original papers in a room set apart for that purpose, to the end that they may be of service to posterity.'

Such a work actually appeared in 1725, entitled Original and Genuine Letters sent to the TATLER and SPECTATOR, during the time these works were publishing: none of which have been before printed; 2 vols. 8vo. The design of this work, however, is here attributed to CHARLES LILLIE, the perfumer, who probably took the hint from the above passage in the SPECTATOR, and obtained the manuscripts from STEELE ; who, in a short letter prefixed to the first volume, says, 'I have a great deal of business, and very ill health, therefore must desire you to excuse me from looking over them; but if you take care that no person or family is offended at any of them, or any thing in them published contrary to religion or good manners, you have my leave to do what you please with them.'

This sanction being obtained, Mr. LILLIE returned the compliment in as handsome a dedication as he could frame: and, in a long preface written with equal ability, endeavours to recommend these rejected A short specimen of this may, per

wares.

Here are near

haps, amuse the reader. three hundred letters wrote by as many different writers, no two of which, though very

near in their way of thinking, 'tis probable, so much as knew or ever saw each other: from which observation, I think, the whole may claim the title of the dictates of nature. Here is religion and morality for the upright and the just; here is manners for the rude, and a whip for the incorrigible; here is sobriety for the drunkard, and temperance for the epicure. For the droles and laughers, here is odd mirth, and an account of whims, not yet heard or hardly thought of. Here is dress and fashion for the gay, and just satire for the pretenders and insipid. If the avaricious wants gold, here it is. If any man wants to buy or sell a wife, here he may find his trader. Is any one jealous?-let him or her read, mind, and coolly digest, No. 87, 119, in the first volume, and No. 25 in the second.'

The whole is, however, a most wretched farrago of dulness and insipidity, such as the most contemptible of our modern periodical publications would not admit; but LILLIE had the wisdom to secure a very copious list of subscribers, whose curiosity was probably excited by the singular and not very modest attempt to sell dross at the price of pure metal. The work, as may be supposed, was never reprinted, and is now become scarce.

The rival candidates for popularity during the publication of the TATLER were very numerous. A list is given of thirteen, which

made in all fifty-five publications each week. The superior attractions of the TATLER were soon felt by some of those, and excited all the hostility of which they were capable, but which was so feeble that while few years pass without an edition of the TATLER being printed in some part of the kingdom, it is with the utmost difficulty the productions of its contemporaries can be procured. Among them, Mr. THOMAS BAKER, the author of the FEMALE TATLER, laboured hard to gain fame by depreciating the lucubrations of ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, chiefly by vulgar and personal remarks on STEELE'S character, gait, &c. The hostility of the authors of the EXAMINER is rather better known. Another enemy was a monsieur BOURNELLE, whose work is entitled Annotations on the TATLER in two parts,' 24mo. It is said to have been originally written in French, and translated into English by WALTER WAGSTAFF, esq. 1710. The author, however, and his translator seem to have been one

and the same person, perhaps Dr. William Wagstaffe*, who was unfriendly to STEELE, and had published a false and injurious cha

*Or, as some think, O'disworth, an under-spur-leather,' and a coxcomb, as SWIFT calls him, who was also a writer in the FXAMINER, and a poet of some note in his time. In Pope's admirable letter to Lord Burlington, Lintot, the bookseller, is made to testify of him, I'll say that of Oldisworth (though I lost by his Timothy's) he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any man in England.'

racter of him, which as the writer of Dr. WAGSTAFFE'S life acknowledges, does indeed want some apology.' The annotator, whoever he was, points clearly to STEELE as the author of the TATLER and his petulant annotations are minute remarks, quaintly expressed in a strain of coarse irony and undisguised malignity, with such a mixture of the sort of wit that is nearest allied to madness, as sufficiently justifies STEELE'S imputation of insanity in No. 79. There are, however, some passages in both parts of the book, less obnoxious to this general censure, that might incline one to think the writer a distant kinsman of the STAFFS, in consequence of the left hand favours of some open-hearted woman of the family*.

But if STEELE had his enemies, he had also his imitators, whose performances, however, are now little known. One, indeed, by assuming the name and character of TATLAR and BICKERSTAFF, endeavoured to gain the more particular notice of the public, and had some claims to it. STEELE'S Tatler terminated Jan. 2, 1710, and on the 13th of the same month appeared the first number of what has been since called the Spurious Tailer, which was conducted by Swift and the little HARRISON' already mentioned, of whom he speaks with much

Tatler, No. 79, notes.