According they were continually talking of their Maid, Night-Cap,
Spectacles, and Charles Lillie. However there were now and then some
faint endeavours at Humour and Sparks of Wit, which the Town, for want
of better Entertainment, was content to hunt after, through an heap of
Impertinencies; but even those are at present, become wholly Invisible,
and quite swallow'd up in the Blaze of the SPECTATOR.

You may remember I told you before, that one Cause assign'd for the
laying down the TATLER was, want of Matter; and indeed this was the
prevailing Opinion in Town, when we were Surpriz'd all at once by a
paper called The SPECTATOR, which was promised to be continued every
day, and was writ in so excellent a Stile, with so nice a Judgment, and
such a noble profusion of Wit and Humour, that it was not difficult to
determine it could come from no other hands but those which had penn'd
the Lucubrations.

This immediately alarm'd these Gentlemen, who (as 'tis said Mr. Steele
phrases it) had The Censorship in Commission. They found the new
SPECTATOR come on like a Torrent and swept away all before him; they
despaired ever to equal him in Wit, Humour, or Learning; (which had been
their true and certain way of opposing him) and therefore, rather chose
to fall on the Author, and to call out for help to all Good Christians,
by assuring them again and again, that they were the First, Original,
True, and Undisputed Isaac Bickerstaff.

Mean while The SPECTATOR, whom we regard as our shelter from that Flood
of False Wit and Impertinence which was breaking in upon us, is in every
ones Hand, and a constant Topick for our Morning Conversation at
Tea-Tables, and Coffee-Houses. We had at first indeed no manner of
Notion, how a Diurnal paper could be continu'd in the Spirit and Stile