Note 225 — No. 81. [Steele and Addison.[225]

In the list which he gave to Tickell, Steele describes this paper as written by Addison and himself jointly. Hawkesworth claimed for Swift Nos. 66, 67, 74, and 81, and no doubt the idea of "tables of fame" (No. 67) was started by him. On October 8, Steele wrote to Swift: "I wonder you do not write sometimes to me. The town is in great expectation from Bickerstaff; what passed at the election for the first table being to be published this day seven-night. I have not seen Ben Tooke a great while, but long to usher you and yours into the world." But it seems clear that Swift left his friends to carry out the execution of the plan. As Nichols points out, Swift afterwards wrote: "I was told that Brutus, and his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, and Sir Thomas More, were perpetually together: a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh." Now there are only two of this sextumvirate admitted to seats at the first "table of fame" in the Tatler. There are besides, in this paper, manifest deviations from the plan proposed in No. 67, and palpable contradictions to it. The "side-table" is here forgotten; the heroes of "great fame but dubious existence" are turned into a separate apartment; the number of the company at the second table is reduced from twenty to twelve; Bickerstaff, who "had not been dead an hundred years," is mentioned to make out the dozen; of the third table there is nothing said; and the subject seems finally discussed in one paper, which was evidently intended to have made three.