The Project Gutenberg EBook of Isaac Bickerstaff, by Richard Steele

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Title: Isaac Bickerstaff

Author: Richard Steele

Commentator: Henry Morley

Posting Date: December 22, 2008 [EBook #2644]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ISAAC BICKERSTAFF ***

Produced by Les Bowler

ISAAC BICKERSTAFF

PHYSICIAN AND ASTROLOGER

By Richard Steele.

Papers from Steele's "Tatler."

INTRODUCTION

By Henry Morley

Of the relations between Steele and Addison, and the origin of Steele's
"Tatler," which was developed afterwards into the "Spectator," account
has already been given in the introduction to a volume of this Library,
* containing essays from the "Spectator"--"Sir Roger de Coverley and
the Spectator Club." There had been a centre of life in the "Tatler,"
designed, as Sir Roger and his friends were designed, to carry the human
interest of a distinct personality through the whole series of papers.
The "Tatler's" personality was Isaac Bickerstaff, Physician and
Astrologer; as to years, just over the grand climacteric, sixty-three,
mystical multiple of nine and seven; dispensing counsel from his
lodgings at Shire Lane, and seeking occasional rest in the vacuity of
thought proper to his club at the "Trumpet."

The name of Isaac Bickerstaff Steele borrowed from his friend Swift,
who, just before the establishment of the "Tatler," had borrowed it
from a shoemaker's shop-board, and used it as the name of an imagined
astrologer, who should be an astrologer indeed, and should attack
John Partridge, the chief of the astrological almanack makers, with a
definite prediction of the day and hour of his death. This he did in
a pamphlet that brought up to the war against one stronghold of
superstition an effective battery of satire. The pamphlet itself has
been given in our volume of "The Battle of the Books, and other short
pieces, by Jonathan Swift." * The joke once set rolling was kept up in
other playful little pamphlets written to announce the fulfilment of the
prophecy, and to explain to Partridge that, whether he knew it or not,
he was dead. This joke was running