raffles at the wells, races on the Heath, and music-house at Belsize; the Lower Flask tavern is made by Richardson Clarissa Harlowe's retreat; and at the Upper Flask met the Kit-Kat Club in the summer months. Gay, Akenside, and Shakspeare Steevens were among the literary celebrities of Hampstead.

STEELE'S QUARREL WITH ADDISON.

Steele became gradually estranged by various causes from his friend, Addison. He considered himself as one who, in evil days, had braved martyrdom for his political principles, and demanded, when the Whig party was triumphant, a large compensation for what he had suffered when it was militant. The Whig leaders took a very different view of his claims. They thought that he had, by his own petulance and folly, brought them as well as himself into trouble, and though they did not absolutely neglect him, doled out favours to him with a sparing hand. It was natural that he should be angry with them, and especially angry with Addison. But what above all seems to have disturbed Sir Richard, was the elevation of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison Under-Secretary of State; while the editor of the Tatler and Spectator, the author of the Crisis, the member for Stockbridge, who had been persecuted for firm adherence to the House of Hanover, was, at near fifty, forced, after many solicitations and complaints, to content himself with a share in the patent of Drury Lane Theatre. Steele himself says, in his celebrated letter to Congreve, that Addison, by his preference of Tickell," incurred the warmest resentment of other gentlemen ;" and everything seems to indicate that, of these resentful gentlemen, Steele was himself one.

While poor Sir Richard was brooding over what he considered as Addison's unkindness, a new kind of quarrel arose upon the Bill for Limiting the Number of Peers. Steele took part with the Opposition, Addison with the Ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, vehemently attacked the Bill; and Addison in the Old Whig, answered Steele's arguments. In the controversy was one calumny, which was often repeated, and never contradicted, until it was exposed by Lord Macaulay. It is asserted in the Biographia Britannica, that Addison designated Steele as "Little Dicky." This assertion was repeated by Johnson, who had never seen the Old Whig,

and was therefore excusable. Now it is true that the words "Little Dicky" occur in the Old Whig, and that Steele's name was Richard. It is equally true that the words "Little Isaac" occur in the Duenna, and that Newton's name was Isaac. But we confidently affirm that Sheridan's Little Dicky had no more to do with Steele, than Sheridan's Little Isaac with Newton. If we apply Little Dicky to Steele, we deprive a very lively and ingenious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of great humour, who played the usurer Gomez, then a most popular part, in Dryden's Spanish Friar.

Such is Lord Macaulay's account of the affair in a paper in the Edinburgh Review, wherein, as Mr. Forster truly remarl.s, "a magnificent eulogy of Addison is built upon a a most contemptuous depreciation of Steele," as follows:

Addison tried, with little success, to keep Steele out of scrapes; introduced him to the great, procured a good place for him, corrected his plays, and though, by no means rich, lent him large sums of money. One of these loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These pecuniary transactions probably led to frequent bickerings. It is said that, on one occasion, Steele's negligence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to repay himself by help of a bailiff. The real history, we have little doubt, was something like this:-A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy repayment. Poor Dick declares that he has not an inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. He determines to deny himself some medals which are wanting to his series of the Twelve Cæsars; to put off buying the new edition of Bayle's Dictionary, and to wear his old sword and buckles another year. In this way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of ladies and gentlemen assembled, the fiddles are playing, the table is groaning under champagne, Burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a man whose kindness is thus abused, should send sheriffs' officers to reclaim what is due to him?

Now Pope noted ir Addison that he was always for mode, ration in parties, and used to blame his dear friend Steele for being too much of a party man; but this does not prove that

he provoked Addison's scorn and contempt. It is quite true that some coldness and estrangement did grow between Steele and Addison as time went on; but it was never so complete as Macaulay wished to convey. Steele, only six months after Addison's death, asserted that there never was a more strict friendship than between himself and Addison, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from their dif ferent way of pursuing the same thing: the one waited and stemmed the torrent, while the other too often plunged into it; but though they had thus lived for some years last past, shunning each other, they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual welfare; and when they met," they were as unreserved as boys, and talked of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed, without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other." As to the substance or worth of what thus divided them, Steele only adds the significant expression of his hope that, if his family is the worse, his country may be the better for the mortification he has undergone.

Thus, we see, that Steele, by his opposition to the Peerage bill became embroiled in a quarrel with Addison, which arose during a war of pamphlets, in which Joseph took the side of the ministry. He forgot his dignity so far as to speak of Steele as "Little Dicky, whose trade it was to write pamphlets;" and it is highly creditable to Steele, that, notwithstanding so gross an insult, he retained both the feeling and language of respect for his antagonist, and was content with administering a mild reproof through the medium of a quotation from the tragedy of Cato. Dr. Johnson laments this controversy "between these two illustrious friends, after so many years passed in confidence and endearment, in unity of interest, conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study." "But among the uncertainties of the human state, we are doomed to number the instabilities of friendship." Notwithstanding this contest, Steele continued to speak with uniform respect of his friend, with whom he would assuredly have been reconciled if another year of life had been spared to Addison.

STEELE'S JOURNEY TO EDINBURGH.

In 1716, Steele received the appointment upon the Forfeited Estates Commission in Edinburgh, " to inquire of the estates of certain traitors, and popish recusants, and of estates

given to superstitious uses, in order to raise money out of them for the use of the public." Their first and most prominent object was to appropriate the lands of the Scottish nobles and gentlemen who had taken part in the late insurrection for the House of Stuart. Four out of the six Commissioners were Englishmen ; and among these was Sir Richard Steele.

Mr. Robert Chambers has, in the third volume of his valuable Domestic Annals of Scotland, thus described the difficulties which the Commissioners had to encounter:

It was a matter of course that strangers of such distinction should be honoured in a city which received few such guests; and doubtless the Government officials in particular paid them many flattering attentions. But the Commissioners very soon found that their business was not an easy or agreeable one. There was in Scotland plenty of hatred to the Jacobite cause; but battling off its adherents at Sheriffmuir, and putting down its seminaries, the episcopal chapels, was a different thing from seeing an order come from England which was to extinguish the names and fortunes of many old and honourable families, and turn a multitude of women and children out of house and home, and throw them upon the charity of their friends or the public. Most of the unfortunates, too, had connexions among the Whigs themselves, with claims upon them for commiseration, if not assistance; and we all know the force of the old Scottish maxim-eternal blessings rest on the nameless man who first spoke it!-bluid is thicker than water.

These English Whig gentlemen soon discovered how hard it was to turn the forfeited estates into money, or indeed to make any decent progress at all in the business they came about. The general result was that they quitted Edinburgh, leaving the whole matter to be disposed of by further acts of the legislature.

One can hardly imagine Sir Richard Steele's fitness for the above office; however, this want might not be any bar to his receiving the appointment. Steele does not appear to have attended the business of the Commission in Edinburgh during the year 1716, but given his time, as usual, to literary and political pursuits in London; and to a project for bringing fish "alive and in good health" to the metropolis. It was reported that he would get no pay for the first year, as he had performed no duty; "but," Mr. Chambers good-humouredly says, "those who raised this rumour must have had a very wrong notion of the way that public affairs were then administered." Steele tells his wife, May 22, 1717, in one of his fond letters to her, that "five hundred pounds for the time the Commission was in Scotland is already ordered me." Mr. Chambers, in more grave humour observes: "It

is strange to reflect that payment of coach-horses, which he, as a man of study, rarely used, and condemned as vain superfluities, was among the things on which was spent the property wrung out of the vitals of the poor Scotch Jacobites."

When the second year's session of the Commissioners was about to commence, it was proposed that Steele should go at the first; but he dallied on in London, scheming about his journey, which, it must be admitted, was not an easy one in 1717. He tells his wife: "I alter the manner of taking my journey every time I think of it. My present disposition is to borrow what they call a post-chaise of the Duke of Roxburgh, (Secretary of State for Scotland.) It is drawn by one horse, runs on two wheels, and is led by a servant riding by. This rider and leader is to be Mr. Wilmot, formerly a carrier, who answers to managing on a road to perfection, by keeping tracks, and the like." Next it was: "I may possibly join with two or three gentlemen, and hire a coach for ourselves." On the 30th of September, he tells Lady Steele: "The Comnission in Scotland stands still for want of me at Edinburgh. It is necessary there shall be four there, and there are now but two; three others halt on the road, and will not go forward till I have passed by York. I have therefore taken places in the York coach for Monday next." On the 20th of October: "After many resolutions and irresolutions concerning my way of going, I go, God willing, to-morrow morning, by the Wakefield coach, on my way to York and Edinburgh.' And now he did go, for his next letter is dated on the 23rd from Stamford, to which place, two days' coaching had brought him.

"An odd but very characteristic circumstance connected with Steele's first journey to Scotland was," says Mr. Chambers, "that he took a French master with him, in order that the long idle days and evenings of travelling might be turned to some account in his acquisition of that language, which he believed would be useful to him on his return. He lies in the same room with me [writes Steele]; and the loquacity which is usual at his age, and inseparable from his nation, at once contributes to my purpose, and makes him very agreeable.'"

STEELE'S RECEPTION IN EDINBURGH.

Sir Richard was in Edinburgh on the 5th of November, 1717; and we know that, about the 9th, he set out on his

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