The very conception of these papers contained an accidental discovery of a possibility in fiction. _The Tatler_ was not written by Steele, or Swift, or Addison, or indeed by any one of its contributors, but by a Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff, an oldish gentleman, a bachelor, a lover of children and discreet good fellowship, of an austere but kindly life, possessed by a pleasant, old-gentlemanly desire to better the manners of the town. This is personal, yes, but ... and the _but_ has the dignity of the sentence ... the personality is imaginary. It is a Character so far alive as to be able to conduct a magazine. It was a utilitarian conception. Steele was, or pretended to be, vastly annoyed when the authorship was found out and his own jolly person discovered under the sober clothes of Mr. Bickerstaff. 'The work,' he says, 'has indeed for some time been disagreeable to me, and the purpose of it wholly lost by my being so long understood as its author.... The general purpose of the whole has been to recommend truth, innocence, honour, and virtue as the chief ornaments of life; but I considered that severity of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others, and for that reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess, my life is at best but pardonable. And, with no greater character than this, a man would make but an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit, that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy, had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele.' It is as if we were to hear Defoe apologising for dressing up as Robinson Crusoe, assuring us that his book is but an allegory, and telling us with due solemnity that he has lived with his wife these many years, and hardly above once set foot on shipboard, and then only between London Bridge and Greenwich. Steele was quite unaware that _The Tatler_ was an embryo novel. And yet, what is it, but an imaginary character, sometimes meeting other imaginary characters, and experiencing subjects instead of undergoing adventures? [Illustration: RICHARD STEELE AND JOSEPH ADDISON] [The Character and the short story.]