The date of the founding of _The Tatler_ is important as marking the beginning of popular literature in England. From this humble origin sprang the great army of magazines and reviews which, for the last two hundred years, have contained so much of the best English writing. Before _The Tatler_, it may be said that there was no good reading in popular form. The English novel was not yet born. The newspapers, about as large as a lady's pocket handkerchief, contained nothing but news, and very little of that. The political pamphlet was purely partisan, was usually written by penny-a-liners, and could rarely pretend to any permanent interest or literary quality. In 1704 Daniel Defoe had founded his _Review_, which deserves to be called the earliest of political journals; but the _Review_, though it contains much vigorous writing, was strictly a party organ. Steele's purpose in _The Tatler_ was quite different. He is a humorist and moralist. He writes to entertain, and incidentally, to correct or improve; he aims to depict all the charms and the humours of society, and to turn a playful satire upon its follies. To do this is always to make literature; to do it as Steele and Addison could, is to "show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." The immediate success of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_ is easily understood. In the first place, there was now coming to be, for the first time, a large reading public in England. Before 1700 no English author had made a fortune or even a competence by the sale of his books. But the most important social fact in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century is the rapid growth of a great middle class. Shrewd, energetic, these men were getting the trade and commerce of England mostly into their hands, filling up the great towns, and exerting an influence in public affairs which neither political party could afford to overlook. It was for them that the political pamphlet was written. How large a reading public a popular pamphleteer might command at this time, may be inferred from the fact that sixty thousand copies of one of Defoe's pamphlets are said to have been sold on the streets of London, and Swift's famous tract, _The Conduct of the Allies_, ran through four editions in a week. But these people demanded something better than the party pamphlet. Intelligent, ambitious, they had social aspirations, and were interested in the life of the hour, in the club, in the drawing-room, at the theatre. They had some relish, too, of the best things in poetry and art. When Pope translated the _Iliad_ his publisher issued an elegant subscription edition of six hundred and fifty copies for more aristocratic purchasers; but he issued also a cheap duodecimo edition for the general public, and of this he seems to have sold about seven thousand copies almost immediately after publication. Indeed, if we except Addison, all the prominent men of letters of the Queen Anne time--Steele, Swift, Pope,