. On these occasions, distress
is laid before us with all its causes and consequences, and our
resentment placed according to the merit of the persons afflicted. Were
dramas of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men who
have genius would bend their studies to excel in them."[40] Still more
remarkable are the allusions to "Paradise Lost," for Milton was then even
less appreciated than Shakespeare. As in so many other things, Addison's
more elaborate criticism in the _Spectator_ was foreshadowed in the
_Tatler_ by Steele; and the comparison of passages by Milton and
Dryden[41] must have been very striking to the reader of that time, who
usually knew Shakespeare or Chaucer only through the adaptations of Dryden
or Tate.

Though it is not true, as some have represented, that the _Tatler_ is
for the most part a mere society journal, concerned chiefly with the
gossip of the day, yet its contributors made use of the scenes and
events familiar to their readers in order to bring home the kindly
lessons they wished to teach; and in so doing they have given us a
picture of the daily life of the town which would alone have given
lasting interest to the paper. The distinctly "moral" papers have had
countless imitators, and sometimes therefore they are apt to pall upon
us, but the social articles are at least as interesting now as when they
were written, and one of the reasons why some excellent judges have
prefered the _Tatler_ to the _Spectator_, is that there is a greater
proportion of these gossiping papers, combining wisdom with satire, and
bringing before us as in a mirror the London of Queen Anne's day.
Bickerstaff takes us from club to coffee-house, from St. James's to the
Exchange; we see the poets and wits at Will's, the politicians at
White's, the merchants at Garraway's, the Templars at the Smyrna; we see
Betterton and the rest on the stage, and the ladies and gentlemen in the
front or side boxes; we see Pinkethman's players at Greenwich, Powell's
puppet-show, Don Saltero's Museum at Chelsea, and the bear-baiting and
prize-fights at Hockley-in-the-Hole. We are taken to the Mall at St.
James's, or the Ring in Hyde Park, and we study the fine ladies and the
beaux, with their red heels and their amber-headed canes suspended from
their waistcoats; or we follow them to Charles Lillie's, the perfumer,
or to Mather's toy-shop, or to Motteux's china warehouse; or to the
shops in the New Exchange, where the men