He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all mankind.  In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the merchants on the Change.  Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain STEELE is the greatest Scholar and best Casuist of any man in England.

Lastly, his writings have set all our Wits and Men of Letters on a new way of Thinking, of which they had little or no notion before:  and, although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.

The vast variety of subjects which Mr. STEELE has treated of, in so different manners, and yet ALL so perfectly well, made the World believe that it was impossible they should all come from the same hand.  This set every one upon guessing who was the Esquire’s friend? and most people at first fancied it must be Doctor SWIFT; but it is now no longer a secret, that his only great and constant assistant was Mr. ADDISON.

This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. STEELE owes so much; and who refuses to have his name set before those Pieces which the greatest pens in England would be proud to own.  Indeed, they could hardly add to this Gentleman’s reputation:  whose works in Latin and English Poetry long since convinced the World, that he was the greatest Master in Europe of those two languages.

I am assured, from good hands, that all the visions, and other tracts of that way of writing, with a very great number of the most exquisite pieces of wit and raillery throughout the Lucubrations are entirely of this Gentleman’s composing:  which may, in some measure, account for that different Genius, which appears In the winter papers, from those of the summer; at which time, as the Examiner often hinted, this friend of Mr. STEELE was in Ireland.

Mr. STEELE confesses in his last Volume of the Tatlers that he is obliged to Dr. SWIFT for his Town Shower, and the Description of the Morn, with some other hints received from him in private conversation.

I have also heard that several of those Letters, which came as from unknown hands, were written by Mr. HENLEY:  which is an answer to your query, “Who those friends are, whom Mr. STEELE speaks of in his last Tatler?”

But to proceed with my account of our other papers.  The expiration of BICKERSTAFF’s Lucubrations was attended with much the same consequences as the death of MELIBOEUS’s Ox in VIRGIL:  as the latter engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole swarms of little satirical scribblers.

One of these authors called himself the Growler, and assured us that, to make amends for Mr. STEELE’s silence, he was resolved to growl at us weekly, as long as we should think fit to give him any encouragement.  Another Gentleman, with more modesty, called his paper, the Whisperer; and a third, to please the Ladies, christened his, the Telltale.