Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: RICHARD STEELE THE TATLER [This periodical was founded by Steele, and issued three times a week for 271 numbers, from April, 1709,10 January, 1711. Steele himself wrote about 188 of these. The papers were supposed to be written by one Isaac Bickerstaff, a pseudonym which had been used by Swift in certain pamphlets in which he attacked, and predicted the death of, an astrologer named Partridge. (See the allusion to this practical joke in the extracts from the first number.)] No. 1. Tuesday, April 12, 1709 Quicquid agunt homines . . . nostri farrago libelli.— Juv., Sat. I, 85,86. Though the other papers which are published for the use of the good people of England have certainly very wholesome effects, and are laudable in their particular kinds, yet they do not seem to come up to the main design of such narrations, which, I humbly presume, should be principally intended for the use of politic persons, who are so public-spirited as to neglect their own affairs to look into transactions of state. Now these gentlemen, for the most part, being men of strong zeal and weak intellects, it is both a charitable and a necessary work to offer something whereby such worthy and well- affected members of the commonwealth may be instructed, after their reading, what to think; which shall be the end and purpose of this my paper; wherein I shall from time to time report and consider all matters of what kind soever that shall occur to me, and publish such my advices and reflections every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday in the week, for the convenience of the post. I have also resolved to have something which may be of entertainment to the fair sex, in honor of whom I have taken the title of this paper. I therefore earnestly desire all persons, without distinction, to take it in for the p...