It was the kind of success Steele had desired--a widely-diffused influence for good. The 'Tatlers' were penny papers published three times a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blank half-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of the day's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It was through these, and the daily 'Spectators' which succeeded them, that the people of England really learnt to read. The few leaves of sound reason and fancy were but a light tax on uncultivated powers of attention. Exquisite grace and true kindliness, here associated with familiar ways and common incidents of everyday life, gave many an honest man fresh sense of the best happiness that lies in common duties honestly performed, and a fresh energy, free as Christianity itself from malice--for so both Steele and Addison meant that it should be--in opposing themselves to the frivolities and small frauds on the conscience by which manliness is undermined. A pamphlet by John Gay--'The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a Friend in the Country'--was dated May 3, 1711, about two months after the 'Spectator' had replaced the 'Tatler'. And thus Gay represents the best talk of the town about these papers: "Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will be necessary to inform you that at the beginning of the winter, to the infinite surprise of all the Town, Mr. Steele flung up his 'Tatler', and instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, subscribed himself Richard Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the Town for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them. The chief reason he thought fit to give for his leaving off writing was, that having been so long looked on in all public places and companies as the Author of those papers, he found that his most intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to speak or act before him. The Town was very far from being satisfied with this reason, and most people judged the true cause to be, either That he was quite spent, and wanted matter to continue his undertaking any longer; or That he laid it down as a sort of submission to, and composition with, the Government for some past offences; or, lastly, That he had a mind to vary his Shape, and appear again in some new light. However that were, his disappearance seemed to be bewailed as some general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement, and the Coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's 'Lucubrations' alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers put together.