opics of a more general speculation. _Sir Richard Steele_ formed the
plan of his _Tatler_. He designed it to embrace the three provinces, of
manners and morals, of literature, and of politics. The public were to
be conducted insensibly into so different a track from that to which
they had been hitherto accustomed. Hence politics were admitted into his
paper. But it remained for the chaster genius of _Addison_ to banish
this painful topic from his elegant pages. The writer in polite letters
felt himself degraded by sinking into the diurnal narrator of political
events, which so frequently originate in rumours and party fictions.
From this time, newspapers and periodical literature became distinct
works--at present, there seems to be an attempt to revive this union; it
is a retrograde step for the independent dignity of literature.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: Since the appearance of the _eleventh_ edition of this
work, the detection of a singular literary deception has occurred. The
evidence respecting _The English Mercurie_ rests on the alleged
discovery of the literary antiquary, George Chalmers. I witnessed, fifty
years ago, that laborious researcher busied among the long dusty shelves
of our periodical papers, which then reposed in the ante-chamber to the
former reading-room of the British Museum. To the industry which I had
witnessed, I confided, and such positive and precise evidence could not
fail to be accepted by all. In the British Museum, indeed, George
Chalmers found the printed _English Mercurie_; but there also, it now
appears, he might have seen _the original_, with all its corrections,
before it was sent to the press, written on paper of modern fabric. The
detection of this literary imposture has been ingeniously and
unquestionably demonstrated by Mr. Thomas Watts, in a letter to Mr.
Panizzi, the keeper of the printed books in the British Museum. The fact
is, the whole is a modern forgery, for which Birch, preserving it among
his papers, has not assigned either the occasion or the motive. Mr.
Watts says--"The general impression left on the mind by the perusal of
the _Mercurie_ is, that it must have been written after the
_Spectator_"; that the manuscript was composed in modern spelling,
afterwards _antiquated_ in the printed copy; while the type is similar
to that used by Caslon in 1766. By this accidental reference to the
originals, "the unaccountably successful imposition of fifty years was
shattered t