ench,' appears only in
No. 1, and the first title 'Mercure Scandale' (adopted from a French
book published about 1681) having been much criticized for its grammar
and on other grounds, was dropped in No. 18. Thenceforth Defoe's
pleasant comment upon passing follies appeared under the single head of
'Advice from the Scandalous Club.' Still the verbal Critics exercised
their wits upon the title.

'We have been so often on the Defence of our Title,' says Defoe, in
No. 38, 'that the world begins to think Our Society wants
Employment ... If Scandalous must signify nothing but Personal
Scandal, respecting the Subject of which it is predicated; we desire
those gentlemen to answer for us how 'Post-Man' or 'Post-Boy' can
signify a News-Paper, the Post Man or Post Boy being in all my reading
properly and strictly applicable, not to the Paper, but to the Person
bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by
a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book--From hence
our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege
of making an Allegory as well as other People.'

In No. 46 Defoe made, in one change more, a whimsical half concession of
a syllable, by putting a sign of contraction in its place, and
thenceforth calling this part of his Review, Advice from the Scandal
Club. Nothing can be more evident than the family likeness between this
forefather of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' and its more familiar
descendants. There is a trick of voice common to all, and some papers of
Defoe's might have been written for the 'Spectator'. Take the little
allegory, for instance, in No. 45, which tells of a desponding young
Lady brought before the Society, as found by Rosamond's Pond in the Park
in a strange condition, taken by the mob for a lunatic, and whose
clothes were all out of fashion, but whose face, when it was seen,
astonished the whole society by its extraordinary sweetness and majesty.
She told how she had been brought to despair, and her name proved to
be--Modesty. In letters, questions, and comments also which might be
taken from Defoe's Monthly Supplementary Journal to the Advice from the
Scandal Club, we catch a likeness to the spirit of the 'Tatler' and
'Spectator' now and then exact. Some censured Defoe for not confining
himself to the weightier part of his purpose in establishing the
'Review'. He replied, in the Introduction to his first Monthly
Supplem