As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are familiar to all readers of eighteenth-century literature. Their work in other departments may be neglected without much loss; but the student who disregards the Tatler, the Spectator, the Guardian, and some of the essay-volumes which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of the most significant literary features of the period.

The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate, that to judge of one apart from the other, would be fair to neither. It may be well, therefore, after giving the leading facts in the lives of the two friends, to bring them together again while considering the work they accomplished in their literary partnership. One point, I think, will come out clearly in this examination, namely, that while Steele might, under very inferior conditions, have produced the Tatler and Spectator without Addison, it is highly improbable that Addison, as an essayist, would have existed without Steele.

Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works, but he thought that he was a poet, and was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries. It was by verse that he won his earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus that he rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st, 1672, at Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his father was the rector, and was educated at the Charterhouse, where he contracted his memorable friendship with Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen, he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few months, thanks to his Latin verses, gained a scholarship at Magdalen, of which college ten years later he became a fellow.

While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the day, what Johnson calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His Latin poem on the Peace of Ryswick was dedicated to Montague, and two years later a pension of £300 a year, gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to travel, in order that by gaining a knowledge of French and Italian, he might be fitted for the diplomatic service. Some time after his return to England he published his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), and dedicated the volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'

Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was left to his own exertions. His difficulties did not last long. In 1704 the battle of Blenheim called forth several weak efforts from the poetasters, and as the Government required verse more worthy of the occasion, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague, now Earl of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer to the appeal, published The Campaign, in 1705. The poem contains the well-known similitude of the angel, and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately destroyed fleets and devastated the country.

The Campaign, which has no other passage worth quoting, proved a happy hit, and was of such service to the Ministry, that Addison found the way to fame and fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, and not long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he accompanied his friend and patron, Halifax, on a mission to Hanover, and two years later he was appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift writes, 'that whatever Government come over, you will find all marks of kindness from any parliament here with respect to your employment; the Tories contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will raise an army and make you king of Ireland.' When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and Addison lost his appointment, he must have gained a fortune, for he was able to purchase an estate for £10,000.

In the early years of the century the Italian opera, which had been brought into England in the reign of William and Mary, excited the mirth and opposition of the wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd and extravagant to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and ears.' Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled entertainment, and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these 'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate its auditors, and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I want a name.' Addison, who has some lively papers on the subject in the Spectator, undertook to give a faithful account of the progress of the Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,' he writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very curious to know why their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in their own country; and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not understand.'

Before writing thus in the Spectator, Addison, in order to oppose the Italian opera, by what he regarded as a more rational pastime, produced his English opera of Rosamond, which was acted in 1706, and proved a failure on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the poetry is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius. Lord Macaulay, who finds a merit in almost everything produced by Addison, praises 'the smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which they bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher than it now does.' The gliding movement of the verse may be admitted; but lyric poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from being a poetical gift, is a mechanical acquisition.

In 1713 his Cato, with its stately rhetoric and cold dignity, received a very different reception. The prologue, written by Pope, is in admirable accordance with the spirit of the play. Addison's purpose is to exhibit a great man struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:

Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character in his representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but the dramatis personÆ, who act a part, or are supposed to act one, in Cato, are mere dummies, made to express fine sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them, and owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play is full of absurdities. Yet Cato was received with immense applause. It was regarded from a political aspect, and both Whig and Tory strove to turn the drama to party account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the head.'

In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it, that the orange wenches and fruit women in the parks offer the books at the side of the coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by the common hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what there was in the state of public affairs in the spring of 1713, which created this enthusiasm. Swift, writing to Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the play, but makes no criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night, is also silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens, by Bolingbroke, on the day that Cato was produced, he indicates the signs of the time, as they appeared to a Tory statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes, 'is dark and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to foretell.'

It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation that gave significance to trifles. The political atmosphere was charged with electricity. The Tories, though in office, were far from feeling themselves secure, and both Harley and Bolingbroke were in correspondence with the Pretender. Atterbury, who was heart and soul with him, had just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the frail life of the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the time was easily fanned into a flame. We cannot now place ourselves in the position of the spectators whose passions gave such popularity to Cato. Its mild platitudes and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison, whose good luck rarely failed him, was especially fortunate in the moment chosen for the representation of the play. Had Cato exhibited genius of the highest order, it could not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it was acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly crowded houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says, 'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late for places.'[36]

Cato had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that Cato was 'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live, while the Essays which he had already contributed to the Tatler and Spectator would make his name familiar to future generations.

Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration. Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed, a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity—witness the Epitaphium Damonis of Milton—but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest poem, the Account of the greatest English Poets (1694), the tameness of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like Drayton in his Epistle to Reynolds; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's Letter from Italy (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in Goldsmith's Traveller, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.

says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a large portion of its strength to song.

Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book. 'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in his essay on The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century, 'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.'

In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the Freeholder, a paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects. Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'

The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that their very enemies acknowledge the finest women of Great Britain to be of that party;' and in an amusing but rather absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and widows on the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government. It is characteristic of Addison that a political paper like the Freeholder should be flavoured with the humour and badinage he found so effective in the Spectator. To the ladies he appeals again and again, but not to their reason. He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The Freeholder has several papers worthy of the author in his best moods, the best of them, perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,' with which, to quote Johnson's words, 'bigotry itself must be delighted.' In the year which gave birth to the Freeholder, The Drummer, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane, and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged by Addison, neither was it printed in Tickell's edition of his works; but Steele, who published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author. 'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like Cato, a standing proof of Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial, nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the tameness of the dramatic situation.'[37]

After the Freeholder Addison wrote nothing of importance, unless we except the essay published after his death On the Evidences of Christianity. Of this essay it will suffice to quote the judgment of his most distinguished eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds: 'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of superstition, for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'

In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners for Trades and Colonies, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had been acquainted for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to have driven Addison to the consolations of the tavern. He did not need them long. In 1717 Sunderland became Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of State, an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards; and in 1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven, leaving one daughter as the memorial of the union. He lies, as is fitting, in the great Abbey of which he has written so beautifully.

Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs to the undying poetry which neither age nor fresher forms of verse can render obsolete. It must suffice to quote here a few lines from a poem which, despite some conventional expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme throughout:

There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth century of whom we know so little as of Addison. His own Spectator, who never opened his lips but in his club, is scarcely more silent than the essayist's biographers, so trifling are the details they have to record beyond the bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew him better, and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at the last, probably loved him more than anyone else, and had he written his story, as he once proposed doing, the narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's resolutions!

That Addison was a shy man we know—Lord Chesterfield said he was the most timid man he ever knew—and it speaks well for his resolution and strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir James Macintosh was probably right in saying that Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and Swift as Secretary of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune, putting each into the place most fitted for him. The essayist's reserve, while it closed his lips in general society, did not prevent him from being one of the most fascinating of companions in the freedom of conversation with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even Pope, testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select society that he loved. Young said he could chain the attention of every hearer, and Lady Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company in the world.

Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English parents, and educated at the Charterhouse, where, as we have said, Addison was at the same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, Addison being then demy at Magdalen. Steele left college without taking a degree, and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he obtained the rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and wrote his treatise, The Christian Hero (1701), with the design, he says, 'principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.' Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of love, but his frailty too often proved stronger than his virtue, and the purpose of The Christian Hero was not answered.

Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the English Stage, published in 1698, had made, as it well might, a powerful impression, and Steele, who was always ready to inculcate morality on other people, wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. The Funeral; or Grief À-la-Mode was acted with success at Drury Lane in 1701, and when published passed through several editions. The Lying Lover followed two years later, and was, in the comfortable judgment of the author, 'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by The Tender Husband, a play suggested by the Sicilien of MoliÈre, as The Lying Lover had been founded on the Menteur of Corneille. Many years later Steele's last play, The Conscious Lovers (1722), completed his performances as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said to have sent the author £500. The modern reader will find little worthy of attention in the dramas of Steele. His sense of humour enlivens some of the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible in The Funeral; but for the most part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is frequently mawkish. The Conscious Lovers, said Parson Adams, contains 'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' This may be true, but we do not desire a sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It has been observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.' 'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the English drama.'[38] One of the prominent offenders who followed in Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739), whose highly moral tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, George Barnwell (1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and The Fatal Curiosity (1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.

Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith, whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,' it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words, shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the evening of that day he wrote:

After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style, and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as 'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'

On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the Tatler, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name, thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.' The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news, which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the Tatler, this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's Chocolate-house, from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and from the St. James's. It is probable that the column in Defoe's Review, containing Advice from the Scandal Club, suggested his 'Lucubrations' to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment, for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a frequent contributor, and before that time Steele had made his mark. When the essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele, who was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged the help he had received. 'I fared,' he says, 'like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' The Tatler still supplies delightful entertainment, and in the almost total absence of amusing and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must have proved a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by what is called 'light literature' can with difficulty imagine the dearth suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable romances of CalprenÈde, of Mdlle. de Scuderi and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read. A novel, however, in ten volumes, like the Grand Cyrus or ClÉlie, had one advantage over the cheap fictions of our time, its interest was not soon exhausted.

The Tatler has claims upon the student's attention, apart from the entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The Essay, as we now understand the word, dates from the Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny, have in Charles Lamb the noblest of their sons.

On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number of the Tatler, partly on the plea that the essays would suffice to make four volumes, and partly because he was known to be the author, and could not, as Mr. Steele, attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison, who had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture, was as ignorant of his intention to close the work as he was of its initiation. Two months later The Spectator appeared, and this time the friends worked in concert. It proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second number, in which the characters of the club are introduced, was written by Steele, and to him we owe the first sketch of the immortal Sir Roger de Coverley:

'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse, beautiful widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon his first coming to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling him youngster. But being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself, and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty, keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and three months ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act.'

In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the price of the Spectator. The vivacity and humour of the paper were visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have gathered new life, and to have a new fund of wit.' Of 555 papers, Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were the work of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success, and without any assigned reason, the Spectator was brought to a conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following spring Steele started the Guardian, which might have been as fortunate as its predecessor, had not the editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He had also a disagreement with his publisher, and the Guardian was allowed but a short life of 175 numbers. Of these about fifty were due to Addison, and upwards of eighty to Steele.

Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in the Guardian (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk, called forth a pamphlet from Swift, in which the weaknesses of his former friend are sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy, friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in anticipation of the Queen's death, Steele published The Crisis (1714), a political pamphlet, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons. It was answered by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, The Public Spirit of the Whigs, in which it is suggested that Steele might be superior to other writers on the Whig side 'provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get some information in the subject he intends to handle.'

The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist, and it is unnecessary to follow his career in the House of Commons and out of it. Yet there is one anecdote too characteristic to be omitted in the briefest notice of his life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in the Examiner 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during divine service, in the immediate presence both of God and her Majesty, who were affronted together.' Steele denounced the calumny in the Guardian. Upon taking his seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the Tories on account of The Crisis, which they deemed an inflammatory libel, and defended himself in a speech which occupied three hours. When he left the House, Lord Finch, who, like Steele, was a new member, rose to make his maiden speech in defence of the man who had defended his sister; a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down, exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could readily fight for him.' The House cheered these generous words, and Lord Finch rising again, made an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and Steele lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of Queen Anne, he entered the House again as member for Boroughbridge, and having been placed in the commission of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an address from the county, he received the honour of knighthood.

Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist. The Guardian was followed by the Englishman (1713), the Englishman by the Lover (1714), and the Lover by the Reader (1714), a journal strongly political in character. Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came Town Talk, the Tea Table, Chit-chat, and the Theatre. Sir Richard appears to have been always in a hurry to break new ground, a foible not confined to literature. He was continually starting new projects, and never doubted, in spite of numberless failures, that his latest effort to make a fortune would be successful.

Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury Lane and as a Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the Estates of Traitors, Steele's money difficulties did not lessen as he advanced in life; worse still, he had the misfortune to quarrel with his oldest and dearest friend. For this he and Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a few months later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining son. Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir Richard retired to Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.

'I was told,' says Victor, '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.'[41]

All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the writer's life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims; and since man is a moral being, it cannot be severed from morality. To point a moral, if it be within the scope of imaginative art, is subordinate to its main purpose. To delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new beauty to existence by widening the realm of thought,—these are some of the noblest purposes of literature; and while men and women of creative genius are among our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them comes to us without direct enforcement. In the last century, however, authors of good character, and authors who had no character to boast of, were equally impressed with the necessity of adorning their pages with moral maxims, and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the work, it was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the end of it like a tail to a kite. Steele in his artless way had a moral end in view, though his method of reaching it was not always wise or even discreet. Addison had his moral also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious of a purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete form of literature, but one of them at least The Vision of Mirza, may be still read with pleasure. His Saturday essays, which are nearly always serious in character, are the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories, have lost much of their flavour, but the humorous essays, in which he depicts the manners of the time, as well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator Club and to Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm. There is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond imitation, although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested, days and nights to the study. The style is the man, and to write as Addison wrote it would be necessary to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of humour. His faults, too, must be shared by his imitator—the somewhat too delicate refinement of a nature that never yields to impulse—the feminine sensitiveness that is allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of his admirers, comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical to say so, the defect of his essays. There is nothing definite to find fault with in them, but we feel that strength is wanting. The clear and silent stream is a beautiful object, but after awhile it becomes monotonous, and we long for the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent. It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently on the deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature, and so much, too, for what is better than literature. We may wish that he had more warmth in him, somewhat more of energy and passion, yet such merits would be scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to the prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in Pope's age, and, it might be added, in the eighteenth century, were it not for the priceless literary gift bestowed upon Oliver Goldsmith.

Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the more exquisite genius of Addison, and his reputation has suffered partly from his own frailties and partly from the contemptuous way in which he has been treated by the panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely allied to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as a scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship of the accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who created the form of literature in which Addison earned his laurels, and without which he would in the present day be utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer of a new country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion, it was after his friend had pointed out the path and made the way easy. It would be very unjust, however, to treat of Steele solely as a pioneer. His own work, though less perfect than that of Addison, a consummate master of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in pathos and in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but he is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm that excites the reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson say that while Addison's essays are faultless in their art and beyond the range of his friend's more impulsive nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion; for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous indignation, we must go to the essays of Steele.'[42]

Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of expression come from the heart. He is the most natural of writers, but does not seem to be aware that nature, in order to be converted into good literature, needs a little clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A conspicuous illustration of this defect may be seen in No. 181 of the Tatler, one of the most beautiful pieces from Steele's pen.

'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew 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 with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. 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 slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched 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 could 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 of what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since.'

Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'

Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that does not harmonize with the character of a rake; and although he hurt himself by his follies, he did his best to help others by his genial wisdom. If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his country's good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of somewhat extravagant eulogy, exclaimed, 'What a good critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been surpassed.' This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination. Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is noble in art and literature, which some men possess instinctively. He felt what was good, but does not appear either to have reached or strengthened his conclusions by any process of study.

As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and disposed to be on the best terms with himself and with his readers. He makes them sure that if they could have met him in his rollicking mood at Will's Coffee-house, he would have treated them all round, even if, like Goldsmith, he had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he was not always in this reckless humour. His heart was expansive in its sympathies and tender as a woman's; his mind was open to all kindly influences, and his essays have in them the rich blood and vivid utterances of a man who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'

Between Steele's Guardian (1713) and the Rambler of Johnson (1750), a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm of periodicals testify to the fame of Steele and Addison. The reader curious on the subject will find in Dr. Drake's essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the close of the eighth volume of the Spectator and the beginning of the present century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the immeasurable superiority of the writers who created the English Essay.

[36] Cibber's Apology, p. 386.