"I fared like a distressed prince," the kindly prodigal writes, generously complimenting Addison for his assistance in the Tatler, I fared like a distressed prince, who calls in a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary ; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him." Poor, needy Prince of Bloomsbury! think of him in his palace, with his allies from Chancery Lane ominously guarding him. All sorts of stories are told indicative of his recklessness and his good humor. One narrated by Dr. Hoadly is exceedingly characteristic; it shows the life of the time and our poor friend very weak, but very kind both in and out of his cups. "My father," says Dr. John Hoadly, the Bishop's son, "when Bishop of Bangor, was, by invitation, present at one of the Whig meetings, held at the Trumpet,' in Shire Lane, when Sir Richard, in his zeal, rather exposed himself, having the double duty of the day upon him, as well to celebrate the immortal memory of King William, it being the 4th November, as to drink his friend Addison up to conversation pitch, whose phlegmatic constitution was hardly warmed for society by that time. Steele was not fit for it. Two remarkable circumstances happened. John Sly, the hatter of facetious memory, was in the house; and John, pretty mellow, took it into his head to come into the company on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand to drink off to the immortal memory, and to return in the same manner. Steele, sitting next my father, whispered him-Do laugh. It is humanity to laugh. Sir Richard, in the eveffing, being too much in the same condition, was put into a chair, and sent home. Nothing would serve him but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor's, late as it was. However, the chairmen carried him home, and got him up stairs, when his great complaisance would wait on them down stairs, which he did, and then was got quietly to bed." * There is another amusing story which, I believe, that renowned collector, Mr. Joseph Miller, or his successors, have incorporated into their work. Sir Richard Steele, at a time when he was much occupied with theatrical affairs, built himself a pretty private theatre, and, before it was opened to his friends and guests, was anxious to try whether the hall was well adapted for hearing. Accordingly he placed himself in the Of his famous Bishop, Steele wrote,— "Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits." most remote part of the gallery, and begged the carpenter who had built the house to speak up from the stage. The man at first said that he was unaccustomed to public speaking, and did not know what to say to his honor; but the good-natured knight called out to him to say whatever was uppermost; and, after a moment, the carpenter began, in a voice perfectly audible: "Sir Richard Steele!" he said, for three months past me and my men has been a working in this theatre, and we've never seen the color of your honor's money: we will be very much obliged if you'll pay it directly, for until you do we won't drive in another nail.' Sir Richard said that his friend's elocution was perfect, but that he didn't like his subject much. He The great charm of Steele's writing is its naturalness. He wrote so quickly and carelessly, that he was forced to make the reader his confidant, and had not the time to deceive him. He had a small share of book-learning, but a vast acquaintance with the world. He had known men and taverns. He had lived with gownsmen, with troopers, with gentlemen ushers of the Court, with men and women of fashion; with authors and wits, with the inmates of the spunging-houses, and with the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. was liked in all company because he liked it; and you like to see his enjoyment as you like to see the glee of a boxful of children at the pantomime. He was not of those lonely ones of the earth whose greatness obliged them to be solitary; on the contrary, he admired, I think, more than any man who ever wrote; and full of hearty applause and sympathy, wins upon you by calling you to share his delight and good humor. His laugh rings through the whole house. He must have been invaluable at a tragedy, and have cried as much as the most tender young lady in the boxes. He has a relish for beauty and goodness wherever he meets it. He admired Shakspeare affectionately, and more than any man of his time; and, according to his generous expansive nature, called upon all his company to like what he liked himself. He did not damn with faint praise: he was in the world and of it; and his enjoyment of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift's savage indignation and Addison's lonely serenity.* Permit me to read to you *Here we have some of his later letters: : "TO LADY STEELE. "HAMPTON COURT, March 16, 1716-17. "DEAR PRUE, - If you have written anything to me which I should have received last night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the a passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humor: the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the humorist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and describes the end of mankind: next post . . . . Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall think for his service." "TO LADY STEELE. [UNDATED.] "You tell me you want a little flattery from me. I assure you I know no one who deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom saying the best things would be so little like flattery. The thing speaks for itself, considering you as a very handsome woman that loves retirementone who does not want wit, and yet is extremely sincere; and so I could go through all the vices which attend the good qualities of other people, of which you are exempt. But, indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine. .... Your most affectionate, obsequious husband, RICHARD STEELE. "A quarter of Molly's schooling is paid. The children are perfectly well." "TO LADY STEELE. "March 26, 1717. "MY DEAREST PRUE, -I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head. When I lay in your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears last night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then awake and in pain; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep. "For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher... At the time when the above later letters were written, Lady Steele was in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by which, as he constantly assures his wife, he firmly believed he should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however. Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in Westminster Abbey. * Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic letter. "Amazed, confused, its fate unknown, I damn such fools—go, go, you're bit!'" Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how different a voice, says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey (Spectator, No. 26): - "For my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow." (I have owned that I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the vanity of grieving.") "When," he goes on, "when I see kings lying by those who deposed them: when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. And, when I read the several dates on the tombs of some that died yesterday and some 600 years ago, I consider that Great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together." 66 Our third humorist comes to speak upon the same subject. You will have observed in the previous extracts the characteristic humor of each writer- the subject and the contrast the fact of Death, and the play of individual thought, by which each comments on it, and now hear the third writer-death, sorrow, and the grave being for the moment also his theme. "The first sense of sorrow I ever knew," Steele says in the Tatler, " was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age: but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed of a real understanding why nobody would play with us. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling papa; for, I know not how, I had some idea that he was locked up there. My mother caught me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me in a flood of tears, Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more: for they were going to put him under ground, whence he would never come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since." Can there be three more characteristic moods of minds and men? "Fools, do you know anything of this mystery?" says Swift, stamping on a grave, and carrying his scorn for mankind actually beyond it. "Miserable, purblind wretches, how dare you to pretend to comprehend the Inscrutable, and how can your dim eyes pierce the unfathomable depths of yonder boundless heaven?" Addison, in a much kinder language and gentler voice, utters much the same sentiment: and speaks of the rivalry of wits, and the contests of holy men, with the same sceptic placidity. “Look what a little vain dust we are," he says, smiling over the tombstones; and catching, as is his wont, quite a divine effulgence as he looks heavenward, he speaks, in words of inspiration almost, of “ the Great Day, when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together." The third, whose theme is death, too, and who will speak his word of moral as Heaven teaches him, leads you up to his father's coflin, and shows you his beautiful mother weeping, and himself an unconscious little boy wondering at her side. His own natural tears flow as he takes your hand and confidingly asks your sympathy. "See how good and innocent and beautiful women are," he says; "how tender little children! Let us love these and one another, brother God knows we have need of love and pardon." So it is each man looks with |