s fast taking form, and
the resources of social intercourse were being rapidly developed. Men in
public life were intimately allied with society and sensitive to its
opinion; and men of all interests--public, fashionable,
literary--gathered in groups at the different chocolate or coffee
houses, and formed a kind of organized community. It was distinctly an
aristocratic society: elegant in dress, punctilious in manner, exacting
in taste, ready to be amused, and not indifferent to criticism when it
took the form of sprightly badinage or of keen and trenchant satire. The
informal organization of society, which made it possible to reach and
affect the Town as a whole, is suggested by the division of
the Tatler:--

"All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment, shall be under
the article of White's Chocolate-House; Poetry under that of Will's
Coffee-House; Learning under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic
News you will have from St. James's Coffee-House; and what else I have
to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment."

So wrote Steele in his introduction to the readers of the new journal,
which was to appear three times a week, at the cost of a penny. Of the
coffee-houses enumerated, St. James's and White's were the headquarters
of men of fashion and of politics; the Grecian of men of legal learning;
Will's of men of Letters. The Tatler was successful from the start. It
was novel in form and in spirit; it was sprightly without being
frivolous, witty without being indecent, keen without being libelous or
malicious. In the general license and coarseness of the time, so close
to the Restoration and the powerful reaction against Puritanism, the
cleanness, courtesy, and good taste which characterized the journal had
all the charm of a new diversion. In paper No. 18, Addison made his
appearance as a contributor, and gave the world the first of those
inimitable essays which influenced their own time so widely, and which
have become the solace and delight of all times. To Addison's influence
may perhaps be traced the change which came over the Tatler, and which
is seen in the gradual disappearance of the news element, and the steady
drift of the paper away from journalism and toward literature. Society
soon felt the full force of the extraordinary talent at the command of
the new censor of contemporary manners and morals. There was a
well-directed and incessant fire of wit against the prev