Steele meant the Tatler to be a newspaper in which one might find all the news of the day, but he also meant it to be something more.

You have heard that, after the Restoration, many of the books that were written, and plays that were acted, were coarse and wicked, and the people who read these books and watched these plays led coarse and wicked lives.  And now a rollicking soldier, noisy, good-hearted Dick Steele, “a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes"* made up his mind to try to make things better and give people something sweet and clean to read daily.  The Tatler, especially after Addison joined with Steele in producing it, was a great success.  But, as time went on, although it continued to be a newspaper, gradually more room was given to fiction than to fact, and to essays on all manner of subjects than to the news of the day.  For Addison is among the greatest of our essayists.  But although these essays were often meant to teach something, neither Steele nor Addison are always trying to be moral or enforce a lesson.  At times the papers fairly bubble with fun.  One of the best humorous articles in the Tatler is one in which Addison gives a pretended newly found story by our friend Sir John Mandeville.  It is perhaps as delightful a lying tale as any that “learned and worthy knight” ever invented.  Here is a part of it:—­

Macaulay.

“We were separated by a storm in the latitude of 73, insomuch that only the ship which I was in, with a Dutch and French vessel, got safe into a creek of Nova Zembla.  We landed, in order to refit our vessels, and store ourselves with provisions.  The crew of each vessel made themselves a cabin of turf and wood, at some distance from each other, to fence themselves against the inclemencies of the weather, which was severe beyond imagination.

“We soon observed, that in talking to one another we lost several of our words, and could not hear one another at above two yards’ distance, and that too when we sat very near the fire.  After much perplexity, I found that our words froze in the air before they could reach the ears of the persons to whom they were spoken.  I was soon confirmed in this conjecture, when, upon the increase of the cold, the whole company grew dumb, or rather deaf.  For every man was sensible, as we afterwards found, that he spoke as well as ever, but the sounds no sooner took air than they were condensed and lost.

“It was now a miserable spectacle to see us nodding and gaping at one another, every man talking, and no man heard.  One might observe a seaman that could hail a ship at a league distance, beckoning with his hands, straining his lungs, and tearing his throat, but all in vain.

“We continued here three weeks in this dismal plight.  At length, upon a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw.  Our cabin was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, which I afterwards found to be the crackling of consonants that broke above our heads, and were often mixed with a gentle hissing, which I imputed to the letter S, that occurs so frequently in the English tongue.