tained 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

1

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.' 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

1 English Dramatic Literature, vol. ii., p. 603.

married,' 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. 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:

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DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,

'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the character of the woman I loved best, has been often drunk, so that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than I die for you.

'RICH. STEELE,'

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.'

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''It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I must be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time.'

2 Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow, who possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not long survive the marriage.

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 Chocolatehouse, 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 Favette, 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