who was attainted in 1715); and from his reference to his horse, it is clear that he was a trooper. While in this capacity, he wrote and published anonymously a poem on Queen Mary's funeral (March 5, 1695)1. This he dedicated to John, Lord Cutts, who had recently been made Colonel of the Coldstream, or Second Regiment of Foot-Guards. Cutts, though Swift dubbed him 'the vainest old fool alive,' was nevertheless an accomplished man, a soldier of reckless bravery, and-what was perhaps, more to Steele's purpose-himself a dabbler in verse. He took Steele into his household; and there is evidence in the Marlborough MSS. that, in 1696 and 1697, the quondam trooper was acting as his agent or secretary. Later he gave his protégé a standard in his own regiment. So far, the infirmity which Steele pleads-' of preferring the state of his mind to that of his fortune 2'-had not materially impeded his progress in life.

Already, at Oxford, he had made his first essays in literature, having composed an entire comedy. This, the very name of which has perished, he seems to have destroyed in deference to the candid criticisms of a friend, Mr. Parker of Merton. But his real literary beginning is the little treatise known commonly as the Christian Hero, although it would be better understood if its second title, An Argument proving that no Principles but those of Religion are sufficient to make a great Man, were also remembered. Steele's own account of this book is to the effect that, finding the military life 'exposed to much Irregularity,' he wrote it 'with a design principally to fix upon his own Mind a strong Impression of Virtue and Religion, in opposition to a stronger Propensity towards unwarrantable Pleasures. This frank and perfectly

1 The Procession. By a Gentleman of the Army,' 1695. It was afterwards published in Steele's Poetical Miscellanies of 1714. An account of the rare first edition, by Mr. Edward Solly, appeared in Notes and Queries for March 7, 1885. There is a copy in the Forster Library at South Kensington.

2 Theatre, No. xi. It may here be noted that though Steele distinctly says he was an Ensign of the Guards,' his name does not occur in the roll of the regiment given in MacKinnon's Origin and Services of the Coldstream Guards, 1833, ii. 458 et seq.

3 Mr. Steele's Apology for Himself and his Writings, 1714, p. 80. It is an instance of the growth of scandal in memoir-making that the writer of Steele's life in the Biographia Britannica, 1763, vi. (Pt. 1),

characteristic admission of fallibility has generally been held to amount to a confession of more than ordinary turpitude; but beyond the fact that the author, like most of his contemporaries, was easily led away by the pleasures of the table, there is no good evidence that he led a life of exceptional dissipation. Having-as he says-composed the Christian Hero 'for his own private Use,' Steele was induced, in April 1701, to publish it for the benefit of his fellow-soldiers, with a result which may perhaps be anticipated, to wit, 'that from being thought no undelightful Companion, he was soon reckoned a disagreeable Fellow'.' But however it may have prospered with the military gentlemen of the Tower Guard, where it was composed, the Christian Hero must have succeeded with the public at large, since, a few months later (July 19, 1701)2, it passed into a second and enlarged edition. The book itself is an orderly little treatise enough, illustrating Heroism, in its author's own words, 'by a view of some Eminent Heathen (e. g. Cæsar, Brutus), by a distant Admiration of the Life of our Blessed Saviour, and a near examination of that of his Apostle St. Paul' This is the matter of the first three

show that the common

chapters; the fourth proceeds to motives of human action are 'best us'd and improv'd, when Joyn'd with Religion,' and winds up with an ingenious and not impolitic parallel between Lewis the XIVth and William the Deliverer. The manner of the book is far from being that of the contemporary devotional manual, and the style, ripened and developed, becomes the style of the Spectator, with one of the essays in which a part of it, indeed, was afterwards incorporated. Nor are indications wanting of those sudden felicities of expression, peculiar to Steele, while in one passage that 'reasonable service' of woman, which distinguishes p. 3823, giving this passage as his authority, paraphrases it thus :-He spared not to indulge his genius in the wildest excesses, prosti. tuting the exquisite charms of his conversation-talents to give his pleasures a daintier and more poignant relish.'

Apology, 1714, p. 80.

According to Gildon (Comparison between the Two Stages, 1702), this was only 'a Trick of the Booksellers' to get rid of the first impression-a suggestion to which the date of the 3rd edition, 1710, lends a certain colour.

3 Christian Hero, 2nd Ed., 1701, p. 78.

See Spectator, No. 356.

him from most of the writers of his day, is plainly foreshadowed. It is from want of Wit and Invention in our Modern Gallants (he says) that the Beautiful Sex is so absurdly and vitiously entertain'd by 'em: For there is [that?] in their tender Frame, native Simplicity, groundless Fear, and little unaccountable contradictions, upon which there might be Expostulations to divert a good and Intelligent young Woman, as well as the fulsome raptures, guilty impressions, senseless deifications, and pretended Deaths that are every day offer'd her'. Nevertheless, it is easy to comprehend that, in King William's guard-room, where soldiers of the Havelock and Hedley Vicars type were rarer than they are in the barracks of to-day, the unwonted apparition of Steele's lay-sermon must have been sufficiently incongruous; and that, despite its sincerity, it exposed its author to the inconveniences he describes. 'Every Body he knew,' he says, 'measured the least Levity in his Words and Actions with the Character of a Christian Heroe? This was no doubt inevitable; but from his adding that 'one or two of his Acquaintance thought fit to misuse him, and try their Valour upon him", it has been conjectured that more serious consequences followed, and that he was invited to defend his opinions with his sword. His sole ascertained duel, however, the date of which is now fixed in June, 1700, belongs to an earlier period; and it is possible that this is the occurrence described in Nichols's Tatler, upon the authority of Dr. Thomas Amory. Steele, it is there said, was consulted by a young comrade as to a challenge he was about to send, and by timely counsel prevented him from sending it. Evil-disposed friends afterwards so prejudiced the young man against his Mentor's advice that he challenged Steele himself, who was then recovering from a fever. Having endeavoured by raillery and every indirect expedient to avert a meeting, Steele ultimately yielded, counting upon his skill to disarm his opponent without hurting him. Unfortunately after parrying his thrusts for some time, he had the ill-luck to run him through the body, wounding him dangerously, but not mortally. Thus, apparently, was laid the foundation of that steadfast and un

1 Christian Hero, 2nd Ed., 1701, p. 71.

Apology, 1714, p. 80.

3 Ibid., p. 80.

Nichols's Tatler, 1797, i, p. 215, and ibid., 1806, i, p. 267.

flinching opposition to so-called 'affairs of honour,' which is a distinguishing trait in Steele's literary character.

The Christian Hero had, however, one result, of more moment to letters than its irreverent reception by the author's unsympathetic comrades. Being 'slighted,' he says, instead of 'encouraged, for his Declarations as to Religion'. . . 'it was now incumbent upon him to enliven his Character, for which Reason he writ the Comedy called The Funeral, in which (tho' full of Incidents that move Laughter) Virtue and Vice appear just as they ought to do. This play, the full title of which is the Funeral; or, Grief a-la-Mode, was produced at Drury Lane late in 1701, the principal parts being taken by Wilks, Cibber, and Mrs. Verbruggen; and, though dated 1702, it was published in the same year with a preface containing a fine compliment to Lord Somers. The satire, as may be guessed from the name, is chiefly levelled against the lawyers and undertakers, the latter being admirably caricatured in Mr. Sable, whose wellknown speech, when sorting his mutes, has won the warm approval both of Thackeray and Sidney Smith :

Well come you that are to be Mourners in this House put on your sad Looks, and walk by Me that I may sort you: Ha you! a little more upon the Dismal; [forming their Countenances — this Fellow has a good mortal Look-place him near the Corps: That Wanscot Face must be o'top of the Stairs, that Fellow's almost in a Fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the Entrance of the HallSo-but I'll fix you all myself-Lets have no Laughing now on any proVocation: [makes faces] Look Yonder that Hale Well-looking Puppy! You ungrateful Scoundrel; Did I not pity you, take you out of a Great Man's Service, and shew you the Pleasure of receiving Wages? Did I not give you Ten, then Fifteen, now Twenty shillings a Week, to be Sorrowful? and the more I give you, I think, the Glader you are??

Scarcely less happy is the dialogue with his clerk of that 'last great prophet of tautology,' Mr. Puzzle, in which, like Fielding afterwards in the Champion, Steele ridicules the longa ambages of the Law. These subordinate characters are more amusing than the heroes and heroines of the piece or even Lady Brumpton herself, whom Mr. Forster praises so highly. But the central idea-that of a nobleman supposed to be dead, who becomes, as it were, a spectator at his own obsequies, despite its inconsistencies, was fairly new; the action is varied and 2 The Funeral, 1702, Act i, p. 4.

1

Apology, 1714, p. 80.

b

sprightly; and aided by a friendly claque of Fusileers and Coldstreams, the Funeral was a success. Moreover, its author tells us, 'with some Particulars enlarged upon to his Advantage1 (by which we are perhaps to understand that timely reference to his Majesty in the Christian Hero), it obtained for him the notice of William the Third, in whose 'last Table-Book' the name of Richard Steele was noted for promotion.

The death of the king on March 8, 1702, put an end to all these projects of advancement; and a period of two years elapsed before Steele again tempted fate as a dramatist. Strangely enough, his next effort was much more what one might have expected from the author of the Christian Hero than was the Funeral. The Funeral, though unobjectionable enough in its author's day, was nevertheless far from deserving the reproachful title of 'homily in dialogue,' hastily given by Hazlitt to all Steele's comedies, and, it may be added, applied, with greater reason, to the first essays of sentimental comedy in France,-the drames serieux of La Chaussée. Still its tone was infinitely more 'cleanly and beneficial' than that of the Restoration Comedy, which, only a few years earlier, Jeremy Collier had so unanswerably assailed. Steele's second play, however, was a deliberate attempt to put Collier's precepts into practice; and 'to write a Comedy in the Severity he required '.' The Lying Lover; or, the Ladies Friendship, as he christened the new piece, was based upon the Menteur of Corneille, whose Geronte and Dorante its Old and Young Bookwit reproduce3. Several of its scenes are lively and animated; and there are passages in Steele's best manner. Here, for instance, is an early example of that pretty caressing flattery of the 'beautiful Sex,' which, to the contempt of Swift, formed so large and so popular an element in the subsequent 'lucubrations of Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff of the Tatler :

Young Bookwit. No Faith, the New Exchange has taken up all my Curiosity.

Old Bookwit. Oh! but, Son, you must not go to Places to stare at Women. Did you buy any thing?

Y. Book. Some Bawbles.- But my Choice was so distracted among the pretty Merchants and their Dealers, I knew not where to run first.— Ibid., 1714, P. 48.

1 Apology, 1714, p. 8o. The serious or 'sentimental' portion of Steele's comedy is not, however, to be found in his French model.