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by thinking that he couldn't go very deep. There are no traces of suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so healthy, so cheerfully selfish, if I must use the word. There is no deep sentiment. I doubt, until after his marriage, perhaps, whether he ever lost his night's rest or his day's tranquility about any woman in his life. Whereas poor Dick Steele had capacity enough to melt, and to languish, and to sigh, and to cry his honest old eyes out, for a dozen. His writings do not show insight into or reverence for the love of women, which I take to be, one the consequence of the other. He walks about the world watching their pretty humors, fashions, follies, flirtations, rivalries: and noting them with the most charming archness. He sees them in public, in the theater, or the assembly, or the puppet-show; or at the toy-shop higgling for gloves and lace; or at the auction, battling together over a blue porcelain dragon, or a darling monster in Japan; or at church, eying the width of their rival's hoops, or the breadth of their laces, as they sweep down the aisles. Or he looks out of his window at the "Garter" in Saint James's Street, at Ardelia's coach, as she blazes to the drawing-room with her coronet and six footmen; and remembering that her father was a Turkey merchant in the City, calculates how many sponges went to purchase her earring, and how many drums of figs to build her coach-box; or he demurely watches behind a tree in Spring Garden as Saccharissa (whom he knows under her mask) trips out of her chair to the alley where Sir Fopling is waiting. He sees only the public life of women. Addison was one of the most resolute club men of his day. He passed many hours daily in those haunts. Besides drinking — which, alas! is past praying for, you must know it he owned, too, ladies, that he indulged in that odious practice of smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he did know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been much humor in that story. ***

Addison laughs at women equally; but, with the gentleness and politeness of his nature, smiles at them and watches them, as if they were harmless, half-witted, amusing, pretty creatures, only made to be men's playthings. It was Steele who first began to pay a manly homage to their goodness and understanding, as well as to their tenderness and beauty. In his comedies the heroes do not rant and rave about the divine beauties of Gloriana or Statira, as the characters were made to do in the chivalry romances and the highflown dramas just going out of vogue; but Steele admires women's virtue, acknowledges their sense, and adores their purity and beauty, with an ardor and strength which should win the good-will of all women to their hearty and respectful champion. It is this ardor, this respect, this manliness, which makes his comedies so pleasant and their heroes such fine gentlemen. He paid the finest compliment to a woman that perhaps ever was offered. Of one woman, whom Congreve had also admired and celebrated, Steele says, that "to have loved her was a liberal education." "How often," he says, dedicating a volume to his wife, “how often has your tenderness removed pain from my sick head, how often anguish from my afflicted heart! If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in inclination, or more charming in form, than my wife." His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About children, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders; and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate nature. * * *

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 sponging-houses, and with the frequenters of all the clubs and coffee-houses in the town. He 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 Shakespeare 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.

- William Makepeace Thackeray.

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BOOKS THAT MAY BE CONSULTED IN FURTHER STUDY

RICHARD STEELE. George A. Aitken.
LIFE OF RICHARD STEELE. Austin Dobson.
SIR RICHARD STEELE. John Forster.
HENRY ESMOND. W. M. Thackeray.

ESSAY ON ADDISON. T. B. Macaulay.

THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS. W. M. Thackeray.

ESSAYS OF JOSEPH ADDISON. Edited by J. R. Green. SELECTIONS FROM STEELE. Edited by Austin Dobson. HISTORY OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE. Edmund

Gosse.

SELECTIONS FROM ADDISON. Edited by T. Arnold.

SOCIAL LIFE IN THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. John Ashton. REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. P. H. Stanhope.

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Thos.

D. Perry.

SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. George Saintsbury. ESSAYS ON PERIODICAL LITERATURE. Nathan Drake.

LONDON IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Sir Walter Besant. SOCIAL ENGLAND. H. D. Traill.

GOOD QUEEN ANNE.

Vol. IV.

W. H. D. Adams.

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH IN THE EIGHTEENTH CEN

TURY. W. C. SYDNEY.

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