persons almost as
well worth knowing as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace,
the knight of the shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his
nephew, who came to wait on him at his chambers, in such form and
ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this
hour;[130] and I should hope that the upholsterer and his companions, who
used to sun themselves in the Green Park, and who broke their rest and
fortunes to maintain the balance of power in Europe, stand as fair a
chance for immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself
is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist, and a man of the world; with a
great deal of nice easy _naivete_ about him. If he walks out and is caught
in a shower of rain, he makes amends for this unlucky accident by a
criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque copy of
verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own
apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch, or a moral reflection; from the
Grecian coffee-house with politics; and from Wills', or the Temple, with
the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town.
In reading the pages of the Tatler, we seem as if suddenly carried back to
the age of Queen Anne, of toupees and full-bottomed periwigs. The whole
appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis.
The beaux and the belles are of a quite different species from what they
are at present; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty
fellows, as they pass by Mr. Lilly's shop-windows in the Strand; we are
introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes; are made
familiar with the persons and performances of Will Estcourt or Tom Durfey;
we listen to a dispute at a tavern, on the merits of the Duke of
Marlborough, or Marshal Turenne; or are present at the first rehearsal of
a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem by Mr. Pope. The
privilege of thus virtually transporting ourselves to past times, is even
greater than that of visiting distant places in reality. London, a hundred
years ago, would be much better worth seeing than Paris at the present
moment.

It will be said, that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater
degree, in the Spectator. For myself, I do not think so; or at least,
there is in the last work a much greater proportion of commonplace matter.
I have, on this account, always preferred the Tatler to