To some of the vigorous spirits of the age the mild and social character of the _Spectator's_ satire did not commend itself. Swift, who had contributed several papers to the _Tatler_ while it was in its infancy, found it too feminine for his taste. "I will not meddle with the _Spectator_," says he in his _Journal to Stella_, "let him _fair sex_ it to the world's end." Personal pique, however, may have done as much as a differing taste to depreciate the _Spectator_ in the eyes of the author of the _Tale of a Tub_, for he elsewhere acknowledges its merits. "The _Spectator_," he writes to Stella, "is written by Steele, with Addison's help; it is often very pretty.... But I never see him (Steele) or Addison." That part of the public to whom the paper was specially addressed read it with keen relish. In the ninety-second number a correspondent, signing herself "Leonora,"[46] writes: "Mr. Spectator,--Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, the _Spectator_ was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment." In a subsequent number "Thomas Trusty" writes: "I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning's pipe (though I can't forbear reading the motto before I fill and light), and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff; each paragraph is fraught either with useful or delightful notions, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved. The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that by pulling some pieces of isinglass over it was changed into a grave senator or a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, a beau or a blackamoor, a prude or a coquette, a country squire or a conjuror, with many other different representations very entertaining (as you are), though still the same at the bottom."[47] The _Spectator_ was read in all parts of the country. "I must confess," says Addison, as his task was drawing to an end, "that I am not a little gratified and obliged by that concern which appears in this great city upon my present design of laying down this paper. It is likewise with much satisfaction that I find some of the most outlying parts of the kingdom alarmed upon this occasion, having received letters to expostulate with me about it from several of my readers of the remotest boroughs of Great Britain."[48] With how keen an interest the public entered into the humour of the paper is shown by the following letter, signed "Philo-Spec:"