The sale of the _Spectator_ was doubtless very large relatively to the number of readers in Queen Anne's reign. Johnson, indeed, computes the number sold daily to have been only sixteen hundred and eighty, but he seems to have overlooked what Addison himself says on the subject very shortly after the paper had been started: "My publisher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day."[50] This number must have gone on increasing with the growing reputation of the _Spectator_. When the Preface of the _Four Sermons_ of Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Llandaff, was suppressed by order of the House of Commons, the _Spectator_ printed it in its 384th number, thus conveying, as the Bishop said in a letter to Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, "fourteen thousand copies of the condemned preface into people's hands that would otherwise have never seen or heard of it." Making allowance for the extraordinary character of the number, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the usual daily issue of the _Spectator_ to readers in all parts of the kingdom would, towards the close of its career, have reached ten thousand copies. The separate papers were afterwards collected into octavo volumes, which were sold, like the volumes of the _Tatler_, for a guinea apiece. Steele tells us that more than nine thousand copies of each volume were sold off.[51] Nothing could have been better timed than the appearance of the _Spectator_; it may indeed be doubted whether it could have been produced with success at any other period. Had it been projected earlier, while Addison was still in office, his thoughts would have been diverted to other subjects, and he would have been unlikely to survey the world with quite impartial eyes; had the publication been delayed it would have come before the public when the balance of all minds was disturbed by the dangers of the political situation. The difficulty of preserving neutrality under such circumstances was soon shown by the fate of the _Guardian_. Shortly after the _Spectator_ was discontinued this new paper was designed by the fertile invention of Steele, with every intention of keeping it, like its predecessor, free from the entanglements of party. But it had not proceeded beyond the forty-first number when the vehement partizanship of Steele was excited by the Tory _Examiner_; in the 128th number appeared a letter, signed "An English Tory," calling for the demolition of Dunkirk, while soon afterwards, finding that his political feelings were hampered by the design on which the _Guardian_ was conducted, he dropped it and replaced it with a paper called the _Englishman_. Addison himself, who had been a frequent contributor to the _Guardian_, did not aid in the _Englishman_, of the violent party tone of which he strongly disapproved. A few years afterwards the old friends and coadjutors in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ found themselves maintaining an