wholly at the mercy of Fools or Knaves, or hurried away by his own Caprice; by which he hath committed more Absurdities in Oeconomy, Friendship, Love, Duty, good Manners, Politics, Religion and Writing, than ever fell to one Man's share.-SWIFT, JONATHAN, 1713, The Importance of the Guardian Considered.

D'ye see that black beau (stuck up in a pert chariot), thickset, his eyes in his head with hanging eyebrows, broad face, and tallow complexion. I long

to inform myself if that coach be his own. He is called M. L'Ingrate.

Though he's a most incorrect writer, he pleases in spight of his faults.

I remember him almost t'other day but a wretched common trooper. He had the luck to write a small poem, and dedicated it to a person he never saw. His morals were loose.-MANLEY, MRS. MARY DE LA RIVIERE, 1709, New Atalantis, vol. I, p. 131.

Richard Steel, esq., member of parliament, was on Thursday last, about 12 o'clock at night, expelled the house of commons for a roguish pamphlett called "The Crisis," and for several other pamphletts, in which he hath abused the queen, &c.

This Steel was formerly of Christ Church in Oxford, and afterwards of Merton college. He was a rakish, wild, drunken spark; but he got a good reputation by publishing a paper that came out daily, called "The Tatler," and by another called "The Spectator;" but the most ingenious of these papers were written by Mr. Addison, and Dr. Swift, as 'tis reported. And when these two had left him, he appeared to be a mean, heavy, weak writer, as is sufficiently demonstrated in his papers called "The Guardian," "The Englishman," and "The Lover." He now writes for bread, being involved in debt. - HEARNE, THOMAS, 1713-14, Reliquiæ Hearnianæ, ed. Bliss, March 23, vol. 1, p. 296.

Sir John Edgar is of a middle stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of somebody over a farmer's chimney-a short chin, a short nose, a short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance. Yet with such a face and such a shape, he discovered at sixty that he took himself for a beauty, and appeared to be more mortified at being told that he was ugly, than he was by any

reflection made upon his honour or understanding... He is a gentleman born, witness himself, of very honourable family; certainly of a very ancient one, for his ancestors flourished in Tipperary long before the English ever set foot in Ireland. Ireland. He has testimony of this more. authentic than the Herald's Office or any human testimony. For God has marked him more abundantly than he did Cain, and stamped his native country on his face, his understanding, his writings, his actions, his passions, and, above all, his vanity. The Hibernian brogue is still upon all these, though long habit and length of days have worn it off his tongue. -DENNIS, JOHN, 1720, The Character and Conduct of Sir John Edgar.

Sir Richard Steele was a very goodnatured man. -MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY, 1740-41, Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer, p. 175.

Sir Richard Steele having one day invited to his house a great number of persons of the first quality, they were surprised at the number of liveries which surrounded the table; and after dinner, when wine and mirth had set them free from the observations of a rigid ceremony, one of them inquired of Sir Richard how such an expensive train of domesticks could be consistent with his fortune. Sir Richard very frankly confessed that they were fellows of whom he would willingly be rid. And then, being asked why he did not discharge them, declared that they were bailiffs, who had introduced themselves with an execution, and whom, since he could not send them away, he had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries, that they might do him credit while they staid. JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1744, Life of Richard Savage.

Our author was a man of the highest benevolence; he celebrates a generous action with a warmth that is only peculiar to a good heart; and however he may be blamed for want of economy, &c., yet was he the most agreeable, and if we may be allowed the expression, the most innocent. rake that ever trod the rounds of indulgence. CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. IV, p. 116.

There was a great similitude between his [Fielding] character and that of Sir Richard Steele. He had the advantage both in learning, and, in my opinion,

genius: they both agreed in wanting money in spite of all their friends, and would have wanted it, if their hereditary lands had been as extensive as their imagination. -MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY, 1755, Letter to the Countess of Bute, Sept. 22.

I was told he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would often be carried out in a summer's evening, when the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the best dancer.-VICTOR, BENJAMIN, 1776, Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems, vol. I, p. 330.

He was one of those whose hearts are the dupes of their imaginations, and who are hurried through life by the most despotic volition. He always preferred

his caprices to his interests; or, according to his own notion, very ingenious, but not a little absurd, "he was always of the humour of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune."-DISRAELI, ISAAC, 1812-13, Genius the Dupe of Its Passions, Calamities of Authors.

The privilege [expulsion from Parliament] was far more unwarrantably exerted by the opposite party in 1714, against sir Richard Steele, expelled the house for writing "The Crisis," a pamphlet reflecting on the ministry. This was, perhaps, the first instance wherein the house of commons so identified itself with the executive administration, independently of the sovereign's person, as to consider itself libelled by those who impugned its measures. HALLAM, HENRY, 1827-41, The Constitutional History of England, vol. II, ch. xvi, p. 470.

Steele is said to have behaved to Addison in society with a marked deference, very uncommon and striking between old comrades, equal in age, and nearly so in all things excepting genuis and conduct. In private, however, there can be little doubt that they associated together on terms of great familiarity and confidence, and were frequent depositaries of the literary projects of each other.-AIKIN, LUCY, 1843, Life of Addison, ch. vii.

He was one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections

warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and repenting, in inculcating what was right, and doing what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of piety and honour; in practice, he was much of the rake and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so goodnatured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a sponging-house, or drank himself into a fever. MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON, 1843, Life and Writings of Addison, Edinburgh Review; Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.

If there were no worse men in the world than Steele, what a planet we should have of it? Steele knew his own foibles as well as any man. He regretted, and made amends for them, and left posterity a name for which they have reason to thank and love him.-HUNT, LEIGH, 1849, A Book for the Corner, vol. 11, p. 40.

He had survived much, but neither his cheerful temper nor his kind philosophy. He would be carried out in a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were at their rural sports, and with his pencil give an order on his agent for a new gown to the best dancer. That was the last thing seen of Richard Steele. And the youths and maidens who saw him in his invalid-chair, enfeebled and dying, saw him still as the wits and fine ladies and gentlemen had seen him in his gaiety and youth, when he sat in the chair of Mr. Bickerstaff, creating pleasure for himself by the communication of pleasure to others, and in proportion to the happiness he distributed increasing his own.-FORSTER, JOHN, 1855, Sir Richard Steele, Quarterly Review, vol. 96, p. 568.

Who has not heard of Sir Richard Steele? Wordsworth says of one of his characters

"She was known to every star,

And every wind that blows." Poor Dick was known to every sponginghouse, and to every bailiff that, blowing in pursuit, walked the London streets. A fine-hearted, warm-blooded character, without any atom of prudence, selfcontrol, reticence, or forethought; quite as destitute of malice or envy; perpetually sinning and perpetually repenting;

never positively irreligious, even when drunk; and often excessively pious when recovering sobriety,-Steele reeled his way through life, and died with the reputation of being an orthodox Christian and a (nearly) habitual drunkard; the most affectionate and most faithless of husbands; a brave soldier, and in many points an arrant fool; a violent politician, and the best natured of men; a writer extremely lively, for this, among other reasons, that he wrote generally on his legs, flying or meditating flight from his creditors; and who embodied in himself the titles of his three principal works"The Christian Hero," "The Tender Husband," and the "Tatler;"-being a "Christian Hero," in intention, one of those intentions with which a certain place is paved; a "Tender Husband," if not a true one, to his two ladies; and a "Tatler" to all persons, in all circumstances and at all times.-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, 1859, ed., Poetical Works of Joseph Addison, etc., Life, p. xiv.

From the time of his leaving college without a degree, to the day of his death on the banks of the Towy, at the age of 58, an old man before his time, he was the victim of his own temperament. He was completely incapable of restraining himself. He was genial, good-natured to excess, fond of good society, and, to use the words of Lady Mary W. Montagu, like Fielding, so made for happiness, that it is a pity he was not immortal. But happiness never came. In politics and in the business of life he was equally unsuccessful. Even in affairs of the heart, in which, as might be supposed, he had his share, he does not seem to have prospered. The "perverse" widow (widows, as De Coverley and more of us have experienced, are too often "perverse") left a wound in his heart that, we suspect, was never quite healed. Indeed, as Charter-house boy, collegian, soldier, lover, pamphleteer, gazetteer, Parliament man, patentee, inventor of fish machines, and father of a family, poor Sir Richard failed to reach the personal success he promised himself. He was a brave adventurer, but he never had the luck to secure a great prize; or, having secured it, he was unable to retain it. And the reason is plain. He failed, as all others have failed who attempted to eat the grape and drink the wine.

-PURNELL, THOMAS, 1867, Literature and Its Professors, p. 202.

Was it not in this age that loose Dick Steele paid his wife the finest compliment ever paid to woman, when he said "that to love her was a liberal education?"LoWELL, JAMES RUSSELL, 1871-90, Pope, Prose Works, Riverside ed., vol. IV, p. 49. That bundle of failings and weaknesses. It was surface wickedness with Steele entirely: His heart was tender, and his character simple as a child's.SMITH, GEORGE BARNETT, 1875, Poets and Novelists, p. 43.

He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated badly. He hired grand houses, and bought fine horses for which he could. never pay. He was often religious, but more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men of letters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not be very proud of him. But everybody loved him; and he seems to have been the inventor of that flying literature which, with many changes in form and manner, has done so much for the amusement and edification of readers ever since his time.-TROLLOPE, ANTHONY, 1879, Thackeray (English Men of Letters), p. 162.

Dick Steele may have had many weaknesses and some vices, but we could forgive a good deal of both to a man who could write so tenderly to a woman as he writes to his "dear Prue." . . . After marriage Steele's gayety, his conviviality, and his recklessness about getting into debt, must often have made trouble for Mrs. Steele, and she must have had much cause to reproach him. Yet he almost disarms censure by his penitent acknowledgement of his faults and by his constant affection.-RICHARDSON, ABBY SAGE, 1882, ed., Old Love-Letters, p. 61.

I am confident that the result of the fuller study of his life, which is now rendered practicable, will be the conviction that, in spite of weaknesses, which are among the most apparent of all those to which mortals are liable, Steele's character is more attractive and essentially nobler than, perhaps that of any of the greatest of his contemporaries in the world of letters.-AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1889, The Life of Richard Steele, vol. 1, Preface.

We have a characteristic glimpse of him in his later years-for he lived far

down into the days of the Georges (one of whom gave him his knighthood and title) when he is palsied, at his charming country home in Wales, and totters out to see the village girls dance upon the green, and insists upon sending off to buy a new gown for the best dancer; this was so like him! And it would have been like him to carry his palsied steps straight thereafter to the grave where his Prue and the memory of all his married joys and hopes lay sleeping.-MITCHELL, DONALD G., 1890, English Lands Letters and Kings, From Elizabeth to Anne, p. 287.

That Steele was an undetected hypocrite and a sentimental debauchee is now no longer maintained, although it cannot be denied that his will was often weaker than his purpose; that he was constitutionally improvident and impecunious; and that, like many of his contemporaries in that hard-drinking century, he was far too easily seduced by his compliant goodfellowship into excess in wine. "I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man.' he wrote in "Tatler" No. 271, "but must confess my life is at best but pardonable." When so much is admitted, it is needless to charge the picture, though it may be added that, with all his faults, allowed and imputed, there is abundant evidence to prove that he was not only a doting husband and an affectionate father, but also a loyal friend and an earnest and unselfish patriot.-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1898, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LIV, p. 136. Steele was not cast in the heroic mould. He was a man of many weaknesses, inconsistencies-careless, improvident, foolishly sanguine; and easy prey to the temptations of conviviality; often reckless in word and deed. But his personality is none the less a singularly attractive one. He was full of the milk of human kindness. With the defects of his Irish blood, he had its good qualities as well-its warmth, sympathy, buoyant courage. Often as he fell short of his own ideals, he honestly loved what was true, pure, and good. was a loyal friend and a devoted husband and father. But nowhere is his thorough manliness exhibited more fully than in his chivalrous treatment of women. In that age of coarseness and frivolity, he spoke of them always with genuine admiration and respect; and were there no reason

He

for it but this, we ought to hold his name in kindly remembrance. Other men of his time may make larger claims upon our attention; for none do we conceive so deep an affection. Perhaps our feeling toward him is best illustrated by the fact that, despite the dignity of knighthood bestowed upon him by George I., we still find ourselves constantly thinking and speaking of him as "Dick" Steele.-HUDsON, WILLIAM HENRY, 1899, ed., The Sir Roger De Coverley Papers, Introduction, p. xi.

Dick Steele, who did so love his wife and friend,

Who gave to Addison of praise no end,

And wrote his Prue such tender letters daily

I like and love. What though he took life gaily

And sometimes did strict laws of right offend? His sins are free from guile. His deeds portend

No serpent's craft: he crawls not, is not
scaly.

No faults of his could land him in Old
Bailey.

High spirits and warm heart; a wit as sweet
As it was shining; courage as high as any;
And civic virtue, giving to his seat

In Parliament a fortress for the manySay, are not these a character complete, And need we care for wasted pound or penny?

-HUTSON, CHARLES WOODWARD, 1899, The Bookman, August.

Steele himself was no model of propriety like Addison. Indeed, he resembled Hogarth's "bad apprentice" in comparison. He had been a shuttlecock on the battledore of chance. He had dabbled in lotteries, in the philosopher's stone, in political intrigue, in what you will. He was fond of pleasure and display; he was indiscreet; he was ever falling, and always repenting. Debt, and even dissipation, were his concomitants. But nevertheless he loved his home and humbly adored his God. He was human to the core, in frailty as in generous aspiration. Politics drummed him out of his office, as his patron, Mainwaring, had drummed him in. He was no politician, and in this sphere merely a mouthpiece. He was intemperate in his quarrels, especially with Swift. He lacked self-control. But he was irrepressible and pressible and inexhaustible. - SICHEL, WALTER, 1901, Bolingbroke and His Times, p. 118.

THE CHRISTIAN HERO

1701

Steele began his career as a writer, with a poem, his "Christian Heroes," which justified no great expectations. This poem could have little of soul or of nature in it, because the contents stood in a most surprising contradiction with Steele's scandalous and dissolute course of life. SCHLOSSER, FRIEDRICH CHRISTOPH, 182343, History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. I, p. 102.

Breathes the very spirit of piety. MORRIS, EDWARD E., 1876, The Age of Anne (Epochs of Modern History), p. 239.

One would hardly have looked to him for any early talk about the life of a true Christian Hero. But he did write a book so entitled, in those wild young days, as a sort of kedge anchor, he says, whereby he might haul out from the shoals of the wicked town, and indulge in a sort of contemplative piety. It was and is a very good little book, but it did not hold a bit,

A manual of ethics; pious, but dull. EMERY, FRED PARKER, 1891, Notes on English Literature, p. 62.

It differs considerably both in style and teaching from the ordinary devotional manual, and without much straining may be said to exhibit definite indications of that faculty for essay-writing which was to be so signally developed in the "Spectator," in which indeed certain portions of it were afterwards embodied.-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1898, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. LIV, p. 131.

THE FUNERAL 1702

Nothing can establish a better proof of the admirable merit of this play than the diligence with which the critics have attempted, to no purpose, to discover that it is not genuine; for the plot and the style are unquestionably the author's own, and the last is so peculiar, which is indeed the characteristic of Steele's writings, that nothing can be more difficult to get by heart; but when attached to the memory, nothing can be more easy to retain. Every thing is perfectly in nature, and the moral is complete.DIBDIN, CHARLES, 1795, A Complete History of the Stage, vol. IV, pp. 307, 308.

Very sprightly and pleasant throughout, it was full of telling hits at lawyers and undertakers, and, with a great many laughable incidents, and no laugh raised at the expense of virtue or decency, it had one character (the widow on whom the artifice of her husband's supposed death is played off) which is a masterpiece of comedy.-FORSTER, JOHN, 1855, Sir Richard Steele, Quarterly Review, vol. 96, p. 540.

His sense of humour enlivens some of in "The Funeral;" but for the most part the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is frequently mawkish.-DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 137.

THE TENDER HUSBAND

1705

In the "Tender Husband" he seems to have contented himself with the more modest aim of being harmless, instead of didactic, in other words, he tried to be simply amusing.-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1886, Richard Steele (English Worthies), p. 45.

In this play he gave unmistakable evidence of his happy genius for conceiving and embodying humorous types of character, putting on the stage the parents or the grandparents of Squire Western, Tony Lumpkin, and Lydia Languish.-MINTO, WILLIAM, 1887, Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth ed., vol. 22, p. 555.

The "Tender Husband," though not so good as the "Funeral," contains a great deal of genuine comedy. The weakness of the play lies in the "moral" scenes in which Cleriment, senior, makes trial of his wife by means of Fainlove. This part of the story, together with Fainlove's marriage with Humphery Gubbin, is farfetched and out of place.-AITKEN, GEORGE A., 1889, The Life of Richard Steele, vol. 1, p. 109.

The appropriateness of the title is a little open to question. The pair of innocents, the romantic heiress Biddy Tipkin and the clumsy heir Humphrey Gubbin, are really diverting, and in the first case to no small extent original; while they have furnished hints to no less successors than Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan, and Miss Austen. The lawyer and the gallant are also distinctly good, and the aunt has again furnished hints for Mrs. Malaprop, as Biddy has for Lydia. Steele, who