Swift answered himself, and also published in due time

  ’The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff’s Predictions: 
  being an account of the death of Mr. Partridge, the almanack-maker,
  upon the 29th instant.’

Other wits kept up the joke, and, in his next year’s almanac (that for 1709), Partridge advertised that,

’whereas it has been industriously given out by Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year’s almanack, that John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that he is still living, in health, and they are knaves that reported it otherwise.’

Steele gave additional lightness to the touch of his ‘Tatler’, which first appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, by writing in the name of Isaac Bickerstaff, and carrying on the jest, that was to his serious mind a blow dealt against prevailing superstition.  Referring in his first ‘Tatler’ to this advertisement of Partridge’s, he said of it,

’I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I do not doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance.  For though the legs and arms and whole body of that man may still appear and perform their animal functions, yet since, as I have elsewhere observed, his art is gone, the man is gone.’

To Steele, indeed, the truth was absolute, that a man is but what he can do.

In this spirit, then, Steele began the ‘Tatler’, simply considering that his paper was to be published ’for the use of the good people of England,’ and professing at the outset that he was an author writing for the public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and that he preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office.  Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the mountebank’s sublime professions of disinterestedness,

‘we have a contempt,’ he says, ’for such paltry barterers, and have therefore all along informed the public that we intend to give them our advices for our own sakes, and are labouring to make our lucubrations come to some price in money, for our more convenient support in the service of the public.  It is certain that many other schemes have been proposed to me, as a friend offered to show me in a treatise he had writ, which he called, “The whole Art of Life; or, The Introduction to Great Men, illustrated in a Pack of Cards.”  But being a novice at all manner of play, I declined the offer.’

Addison took these cards, and played an honest game with them successfully.  When, at the end of 1708, the Earl of Sunderland, Marlborough’s son-in-law, lost his secretaryship, Addison lost his place as under-secretary; but he did not object to go to Ireland as chief secretary to Lord Wharton, the new Lord-lieutenant, an active party man, a leader on the turf with reputation for indulgence after business hours according to the fashion of the court of Charles II.