ed,
added a greater liveliness and _piquancy_ to the descriptions. The
philosopher and wit here commences newsmonger, makes himself master of
"the perfect spy o' th' time," and from his various walks and turns
through life, brings home little curious specimens of the humours,
opinions, and manners of his contemporaries, as the botanist brings home
different plants and weeds, or the mineralogist different shells and
fossils, to illustrate their several theories, and be useful to mankind.

The first of these papers that was attempted in this country was set up by
Steele in the beginning of the last century; and of all our Periodical
Essayists, the Tatler (for that was the name he assumed) has always
appeared to me the most amusing and agreeable. Montaigne, whom I have
proposed to consider as the father of this kind of personal authorship
among the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and
sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most magnanimous
and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was the more
disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is contented to
describe the peculiarities of his own mind and constitution, which he does
with a copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist good-naturedly
lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of others. A
young lady, on the other side Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for
half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it; and he
has the first intelligence of the symptoms of the _belle_ passion
appearing in any young gentleman at the West-end of the town. The
departures and arrivals of widows with handsome jointures, either to bury
their grief in the country, or to procure a second husband in town, are
punctually recorded in his pages. He is well acquainted with the
celebrated beauties of the preceding age at the court of Charles II; and
the old gentleman (as he feigns himself) often grows romantic in
recounting "the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered" from the
glances of their bright eyes, and their unaccountable caprices. In
particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction on the recollection of
one of his mistresses, who left him for a richer rival, and whose constant
reproach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was "I,
that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this
manner!" The club at the Trumpet consists of a set of