character as "a great hero, who frights his mistress, snubs up kings,
baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to number, good
sense, or justice."]

[Footnote 228: John Dyer was a Jacobite journalist who issued a
news-letter to country subscribers, among whom was Sir Roger de Coverley
(_Spectator_, No. 127), by whom he was held in high esteem. Defoe
(_Review_, vi. 132) says that Dyer "did not so much write what his
readers should believe, as what they would believe." Vellum, in
Addison's "The Drummer" (act ii. sc. i), cannot but believe his master
is living, "because the news of his death was first published in Dyer's
Letter." See also _Spectator_, Nos. 43 and 457. At the trial of John
Tutchin for seditious libel (Howell's "State Trials," xiv. 1150), on
complaint being made by counsel that Dyer had charged him with broaching
seditious principles, Lord Chief Justice Holt said, "Dyer is very
familiar with me too sometimes; but you need not fear such a little
scandalous paper of such a scandalous author."]

[Footnote 229: Ichabod Dawks was another "epistolary historian" (see
_Spectator_, No. 457, and _Tatler_, No. 178). Dawks and Dyer are both
introduced by Edmund Smith, author of "Phaedra and Hippolitus," in his
poem, "Charlettus Percivallo suo":

"Scribe securus, quid agit Senatus,
Quid caput stertit grave Lambethanum,
Quid comes Guilford, quid habent novorum.
"Dawksque Dyerque."
]

[Footnote 230: The _Daily Courant_, our first daily newspaper, was begun
in 1702.]

[Footnote 231: Chelsea Hospital, for old soldiers, was founded in 1682.]

No. 19. [STEELE.

From _Saturday, May 21_, to _Tuesday, May 24_, 1709.

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, May 23.

There is nothing can give a man of any consideration greater pain, than
to see order and distinction laid aside amongst men, especially when the
rank (of which he himself is a member) is intruded upon by such as have
no pretence to that honour. The appellation of Esquire is the most
notoriously abused in this kind of any class amongst men, insomuch that
it is become almost the subject of derision: but I will be bold to say,
this behaviour towards it proceeds from the ignorance of the people in
its true origin. I shall therefore, as briefly as possible, do myself
and all true esquires the justice to look into antiquity upon this
subject.

In the first ag