"I am thinking what a veneration we used to have for Sir William Temple because he might have been Secretary of State at fifty; and here is a young fellow hardly thirty in that employment."—Ibid.

"The Secretary is as easy with me as Mr. Addison was. I have often thought what a splutter Sir William Temple makes about being Secretary of State."—Ibid.

"Lord Treasurer has had an ugly fit of the rheumatism, but is now quite well. I was playing at one-and-thirty with him and his family the other night. He gave us all twelvepence a piece to begin with; it put me in mind of Sir William Temple."—Ibid.

"I thought I saw Jack Temple [nephew to Sir William] and his wife pass by me to-day in their coach; but I took no notice of them. I am glad I have wholly shaken off that family."—S. to S. Sept., 1710.

41 "Swift must be allowed," says Dr. Johnson, "for a time, to have dictated the political opinions of the English nation."

A conversation on the Dean's pamphlets excited one of the Doctor's liveliest sallies. "One, in particular, praised his Conduct of the Allies.—Johnson: 'Sir, his Conduct of the Allies is a performance of very little ability.... Why, sir, Tom Davies might have written the Conduct of the Allies!' "—BOSWELL'S Life of Johnson.

42 "Whenever he fell into the company of any person for the first time, it was his custom to try their tempers and disposition by some abrupt question that bore the appearance of rudeness. If this were well taken, and answered with good humour, he afterwards made amends by his civilities. But if he saw any marks of resentment, from alarmed pride, vanity, or conceit, he dropped all further intercourse with the party. This will be illustrated by an anecdote of that sort related by Mrs. Pilkington. After supper, the Dean having decanted a bottle of wine, poured what remained into a glass, and seeing it was muddy, presented it to Mr. Pilkington to drink it. 'For,' said he, 'I always keep some poor parson to drink the foul wine for me.' Mr. Pilkington, entering into his humour, thanked him, and told him 'he did not know the difference, but was glad to get a glass at any rate.' 'Why then,' said the Dean, 'you shan't, for I'll drink it myself. Why, —— take you, you are wiser than a paltry curate whom I asked to dine with me a few days ago; for upon my making the same speech to him, he said, he did not understand such usage, and so walked off without his dinner. By the same token, I told the gentleman who recommended him to me, that the fellow was a blockhead, and I had done with him.' "—SHERIDAN'S Life of Swift.

43 FROM THE ARCHBISHOP OF CASHELL.

"Cashell, May 31st, 1735

"DEAR SIR,—

"I have been so unfortunate in all my contests of late, that I am resolved to have no more, especially where I am likely to be overmatched; and as I have some reason to hope what is past will be forgotten, I confess I did endeavour in my last to put the best colour I could think of upon a very bad cause. My friends judge right of my idleness; but, in reality, it has hitherto proceeded from a hurry and confusion, arising from a thousand unlucky unforeseen accidents rather than mere sloth. I have but one troublesome affair now upon my hands, which, by the help of the prime serjeant, I hope soon to get rid of; and then you shall see me a true Irish bishop. Sir James Ware has made a very useful collection of the memorable actions of my predecessors. He tells me, they were born in such a town of England or Ireland; were consecrated such a year; and, if not translated, were buried in the Cathedral church, either on the north or south side. Whence I conclude, that a good bishop has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die; which laudable example I propose for the remainder of my life to follow; for to tell you the truth, I have for these four or five years past met with so much treachery, baseness, and ingratitude among mankind, that I can hardly think it incumbent on any man to endeavour to do good to so perverse a generation.

"I am truly concerned at the account you give me of your health. Without doubt a southern ramble will prove the best remedy you can take to recover your flesh; and I do not know, except in one stage, where you can choose a road so suited to your circumstances, as from Dublin hither. You have to Kilkenny a turnpike and good inns, at every ten or twelve miles' end. From Kilkenny hither is twenty long miles, bad road, and no inns at all: but I have an expedient for you. At the foot of a very high hill, just midway, there lives in a neat thatched cabin, a parson, who is not poor; his wife is allowed to be the best little woman in the world. Her chickens are the fattest, and her ale the best in all the country. Besides, the parson has a little cellar of his own, of which he keeps the key, where he always has a hogshead of the best wine that can be got, in bottles well corked, upon their side; and he cleans, and pulls out the cork better, I think, than Robin. Here I design to meet you with a coach; if you be tired, you shall stay all night; if not, after dinner we will set out about four, and be at Cashell by nine; and by going through fields and by-ways, which the parson will show us, we shall escape all the rocky and stony roads that lie between this place and that, which are certainly very bad. I hope you will be so kind as to let me know a post or two before you set out, the very day you will be at Kilkenny, that I may have all things prepared for you. It may be, if you ask him, Cope will come: he will do nothing for me. Therefore, depending upon your positive promise, I shall add no more arguments to persuade you, and am, with the greatest truth, your most faithful and obedient servant,

"THEO. CASHELL."

44 "Mr. Swift lived with him [Sir William Temple] some time, but resolving to settle himself in some way of living, was inclined to take orders. However, although his fortune was very small, he had a scruple of entering into the Church merely for support."—Anecdotes of the Family of Swift, by the DEAN.

45 "Dr. Swift had a natural severity of face, which even his smiles could never soften, or his utmost gaiety render placid and serene; but when that sternness of visage was increased by rage, it is scarce possible to imagine looks or features that carried in them more terror and austerity."—ORRERY.

46 "London, April 10th, 1713.

"Lady Masham's eldest boy is very ill: I doubt he will not live; and she stays at Kensington to nurse him, which vexes us all. She is so excessively fond, it makes me mad. She should never leave the queen, but leave everything, to stick to what is so much the interest of the public, as well as her own...."—Journal.

47 "My health is somewhat mended, but at best I have an ill head and an aching heart."—In May, 1719.

48 Perhaps the most melancholy satire in the whole of the dreadful book, is the description of the very old people in the Voyage to Laputa. At Lugnag, Gulliver hears of some persons who never die, called the Struldbrugs, and expressing a wish to become acquainted with men who must have so much learning and experience, his colloquist describes the Struldbrugs to him.

"He said, They commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old, after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more, which arose from the prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament, and repent that others are gone to a harbour of rest, to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect. And for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

"If a Struldbrug happened to marry one of his own kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore. For the law thinks it to be a reasonable indulgence that those who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife.

"As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates, only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit, they cannot purchase lands or take leases, neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meers and bounds.

"At ninety they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things, and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends and relatives. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable.

"The language of this country being always on the flux, the Struldbrugs of one age do not understand those of another; neither are they able, after two hundred years, to hold any conversation (further than by a few general words) with their neighbours, the mortals; and thus they lie under the disadvantage of living like foreigners in their own country.

"This was the account given me of the Struldbrugs, as near as I can remember. I afterwards saw five or six of different ages, the youngest not above two hundred years old, who were brought to me several times by some of my friends; but although they were told 'that I was a great traveller, and had seen all the world', they had not the least curiosity to ask me a single question; only desired I would give them slumskudask, or a token of remembrance; which is a modest way of begging, to avoid the law that strictly forbids it, because they are provided for by the public, although indeed with a very scanty allowance.

"They are despised and hated by all sorts of people; when one of them is born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very particularly; so that you may know their age by consulting the register, which, however, has not been kept above a thousand years past, or at least has been destroyed by time or public disturbances. But the usual way of computing how old they are, is, by asking them what kings or great persons they can remember, and then consulting history; for infallibly the last prince in their mind did not begin his reign after they were fourscore years old.

"They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, and the women more horrible than the men; besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not above a century or two between them."—Gulliver's Travels.

49 The name of Varina has been thrown into the shade by those of the famous Stella and Vanessa; but she had a story of her own to tell about the blue eyes of young Jonathan. One may say that the book of Swift's life opens at places kept by these blighted flowers! Varina must have a paragraph.

She was a Miss Jane Waryng, sister to a college chum of his. In 1696, when Swift was nineteen years old, we find him writing a love-letter to her, beginning, "Impatience is the most inseparable quality of a lover." But absence made a great difference in his feelings; so, four years afterwards, the tone is changed. He writes again, a very curious letter, offering to marry her, and putting the offer in such a way that nobody could possibly accept it.

After dwelling on his poverty, &c., he says, conditionally, "I shall be blessed to have you in my arms, without regarding whether your person be beautiful, or your fortune large. Cleanliness in the first, and competency in the second, is all I ask for!"

The editors do not tell us what became of Varina in life. One would be glad to know that she met with some worthy partner, and lived long enough to see her little boys laughing over Lilliput, without any arriere pensee of a sad character about the great Dean!

50 A sentimental Champollion might find a good deal of matter for his art, in expounding the symbols of the "Little Language". Usually, Stella is "M.D.," but sometimes her companion, Mrs. Dingley, is included in it. Swift is "Presto"; also P.D.F.R. We have "Goodnight, M.D.; Night, M.D.; Little M.D.; Stellakins; Pretty Stella; Dear, roguish, impudent, pretty M.D.!" Every now and then he breaks into rhyme, as—

I wish you both a merry new year, Roast beef, minced-pies, and good strong beer, And me a share of your good cheer. That I was there, as you were here, And you are a little saucy dear.

51 The following passages are from a paper begun by Swift on the evening of the day of her death, Jan. 28, 1727-8:

"She was sickly from her childhood, until about the age of fifteen; but then she grew into perfect health, and was looked upon as one of the most beautiful, graceful, and agreeable young women in London—only a little too fat. Her hair was blacker than a raven, and every feature of her face in perfection.

"... Properly speaking"—he goes on with a calmness which, under the circumstances, is terrible—"she has been dying six months!..."

"Never was any of her sex born with better gifts of the mind, or who more improved them by reading and conversation.... All of us who had the happiness of her friendship agreed unanimously, that in an afternoon's or evening's conversation she never failed before we parted of delivering the best thing that was said in the company. Some of us have written down several of her sayings, or what the French call bons mots, wherein she excelled beyond belief."

The specimens on record, however, in the Dean's paper called Bons Mots de Stella, scarcely bear out this last part of the panegyric. But the following prove her wit:

"A gentleman, who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted him—that he should be easy, because 'the child was gone to heaven'. 'No, my lord,' said she; 'that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.'

"When she was extremely ill, her physician said, 'Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again.' She answered, 'Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.'

"A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartees, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty. He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, 'the doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.'

"A quaker apothecary sent her a vial, corked; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. 'What is that?'—said she—'my apothecary's son!' The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us all a-laughing."—Swift's Works, SCOTT'S ed., vol. ix, 295-6.

52 "I am so hot and lazy after my morning's walk, that I loitered at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, where my best gown and periwig was, and out of mere listlessness dine there, very often; so I did to-day."—Journal to Stella. Mrs. Vanhomrigh, Vanessa's mother, was the widow of a Dutch merchant who held lucrative appointments in King William's time. The family settled in London in 1709, and had a house in Bury Street, St. James's—a street made notable by such residents us Swift and Steele; and, in our own time, Moore and Crabbe.

53 "Vanessa was excessively vain. The character given of her by Cadenus is fine painting, but in general fictitious. She was fond of dress; impatient to be admired; very romantic in her turn of mind; superior, in her own opinion, to all her sex; full of pertness, gaiety, and pride; not without some agreeable accomplishments, but far from being either beautiful or genteel;... happy in the thoughts of being reported Swift's concubine, but still aiming and intending to be his wife."—LORD ORRERY.

54 "You bid me be easy, and you would see me as often as you could. You had better have said, as often as you can get the better of your inclinations so much; or as often as you remember there was such a one in the world. If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. It is impossible to describe what I have suffered since I saw you last: I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of yours. Sometimes I have resolved to die without seeing you more;, but those resolves, to your misfortune, did not last long; for there is something in human nature that prompts one so to find relief in this world I must give way to it, and beg you would see me, and speak kindly to me; for I am sure you'd not condemn any one to suffer what I have done, could you but know it. The reason I write to you is, because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you; for when I begin to complain, then you are angry, and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can; did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me; and believe I cannot help telling you this and live."—VANESSA. (M. 1714.)

55 "If we consider Swift's behaviour, so far only as it relates to women, we shall find that he looked upon them rather as busts than as whole figures."—ORRERY.

"You must have smiled to have found his house a constant seraglio of very virtuous women, who attended him from morning to night."—ORRERY.

A correspondent of Sir Walter Scott's furnished him with the materials on which to found the following interesting passage about Vanessa—after she had retired to cherish her passion in retreat:—

"Marley Abbey, near Celbridge, where Miss Vanhomrigh resided, is built much in the form of a real cloister, especially in its external appearance. An aged man (upwards of ninety, by his own account), showed the grounds to my correspondent. He was the son of Mrs. Vanhomrigh's gardener, and used to work with his father in the garden while a boy. He remembered the unfortunate Vanessa well; and his account of her corresponded with the usual description of her person, especially as to her embonpoint. He said she went seldom abroad, and saw little company; her constant amusement was reading, or walking in the garden.... She avoided company, and was always melancholy, save when Dean Swift was there, and then she seemed happy. The garden was to an uncommon degree crowded with laurels. The old man said that when Miss Vanhomrigh expected the Dean she always planted with her own hand a laurel or two against his arrival. He showed her favourite seat, still called 'Vanessa's bower'. Three or four trees and some laurels indicate the spot.... There were two seats and a rude table within the bower, the opening of which commanded a view of the Liffey.... In this sequestered spot, according to the old gardener's account, the Dean and Vanessa used often to sit, with books and writing materials on the table before them."—SCOTT'S Swift, vol. i, pp. 246-7. "... But Miss Vanhomrigh, irritated at the situation in which she found herself, determined on bringing to a crisis those expectations of a union with the object of her affections—to the hope of which she had clung amid every vicissitude of his conduct towards her. The most probable bar was his undefined connexion with Mrs. Johnson, which, as it must have been perfectly known to her, had, doubtless, long elicited her secret jealousy, although only a single hint to that purpose is to be found in their correspondence, and that so early as 1713, when she writes to him—then in Ireland—'If you are very happy, it is ill-natured of you not to tell me so, except 'tis what is inconsistent with mine.' Her silence and patience under this state of uncertainty for no less than eight years, must have been partly owing to her awe for Swift, and partly, perhaps, to the weak state of her rival's health, which, from year to year, seemed to announce speedy dissolution. At length, however, Vanessa's impatience prevailed, and she ventured on the decisive step of writing to Mrs. Johnson herself, requesting to know the nature of that connexion. Stella, in reply, informed her of her marriage with the Dean; and full of the highest resentment against Swift for having given another female such a right in him as Miss Vanhomrigh's inquiries implied, she sent to him her rival's letter of interrogatories, and, without seeing him, or awaiting his reply, retired to the house of Mr. Ford, near Dublin. Every reader knows the consequence. Swift, in one of those paroxysms of fury to which he was liable, both from temper and disease, rode instantly to Marley Abbey. As he entered the apartment, the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the fiercer passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table, and, instantly leaving the house, remounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she only found her own letter to Stella. It was her death warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished, hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived the last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks."—SCOTT.

56 "M. Swift est Rabelais dans son bon sens, et vivant en bonne compagnie. Il n'a pas, a la verite, la gaite du premier, mais il a toute la finesse, la raison, le choix, le bon gout qui manquent a notre cure de Meudon. Ses vers sont d'un gout singulier, et presque inimitable; la bonne plaisanterie est son partage en vers et en prose; mais pour le bien entendre il faut faire un petit voyage dans son pays."—VOLTAIRE, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 22.

57 The following is a conspectus of them:—

ADDISON.—Commissioner of Appeals; Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Keeper of the Records in Ireland; Lord of Trade; and one of the Principal Secretaries of State, successively.

STEELE.—Commissioner of the Stamp Office; Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; and Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians; Commissioner of "Forfeited Estates in Scotland".

PRIOR.—Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague; Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King William; Secretary to the Embassy in France; Under Secretary of State; Ambassador to France.

TICKELL.—Under Secretary of State; Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland.

CONGREVE.—Commissioner for licensing Hackney Coaches; Commissioner for Wine Licences; place in the Pipe-office; post in the Custom-house; Secretary of Jamaica.

GAY.—Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon (when Ambassador to Hanover.)

JOHN DENNIS.—A place in the Custom-house. "En Angleterre ... les lettres sont plus en honneur qu'ici."—

VOLTAIRE, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 20.

58 He was the son of Colonel William Congreve, and grandson of Richard Congreve, Esq., of Congreve and Stretton in Staffordshire—a very ancient family.

59 "PIPE.—Pipe, in law, is a roll in the Exchequer, called also the great roll.

"PIPE-Office is an office in which a person called the Clerk of the Pipe makes out leases of crown lands, by warrant, from the Lord-Treasurer, or Commissioners of the Treasury, or Chancellor of the Exchequer.

"Clerk of the Pipe makes up all accounts of sheriffs, &c."—REES, Cyclopaed. Art. PIPE.

"PIPE-Office.—Spelman thinks so called because the papers were kept in a large pipe or cask.

"These be at last brought into that office of Her Majesty's Exchequer, which we, by a metaphor, do call the pipe ... because the whole receipt is finally conveyed into it by means of divers small pipes or quills."—BACON, The Office of Alienations.

[We are indebted to Richardson's Dictionary for this fragment of erudition. But a modern man of letters can know little on these points—by experience.]

60 "It has been observed that no change of Ministers affected him in the least, nor was he ever removed from any post that was given to him, except to a better. His place in the Custom-house, and his office of Secretary in Jamaica, are said to have brought him in upwards of twelve hundred a year."—Biog. Brit., Art. CONGREVE.

61 Dryden addressed his "twelfth epistle" to "My dear friend Mr. Congreve," on his comedy called The Double Dealer, in which he says—

Great Jonson did by strength of judgement please; Yet, doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his case. In differing talents both adorn'd their age: One for the study, t'other for the stage. But both to Congreve justly shall submit, One match'd in judgement, both o'ermatched in wit. In him all beauties of this age we see, &c. &c.

The Double Dealer, however, was not so palpable a hit as the Old Bachelor, but, at first, met with opposition. The critics having fallen foul of it, our "swell" applied the scourge to that presumptuous body, in the Epistle Dedicatory to the "Right Honourable Charles Montague."

"I was conscious," said he, "where a true critic might have put me upon my defence. I was prepared for the attack, ... but I have not heard anything said sufficient to provoke an answer." He goes on—

"But there is one thing at which I am more concerned than all the false criticisms that are made upon me; and that is, some of the ladies are offended. I am heartily sorry for it; for I declare, I would rather disoblige all the critics in the world than one of the fair sex. They are concerned that I have represented some women vicious and affected. How can I help it? It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.... I should be very glad of an opportunity to make my compliments to those ladies who are offended. But they can no more expect it in a comedy, than to be tickled by a surgeon when he is letting their blood."

62 "Instead of endeavouring to raise a vain monument to myself, let me leave behind me a memorial of my friendship, with one of the most valuable men as well as finest writers of my age and country—one who has tried, and knows by his own experience, how hard an undertaking it is to do justice to Homer—and one who, I am sure, seriously rejoices with me at the period of my labours. To him, therefore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to dedicate it, and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing together in this manner the names of Mr. Congreve and of—A. POPE."—Postscript to Translation of the Iliad of Homer. Mar. 25, 1720.

63 "When asked why he listened to the praises of Dennis, he said, he had much rather be flattered than abused. Swift had a particular friendship for our author, and generally took him under his protection in his high authoritative manner."—THOS. DAVIES, Dramatic Miscellanies.

64 "Congreve was very intimate for years with Mrs. Bracegirdle, and lived in the same street, his house very near hers, until his acquaintance with the young Duchess of Marlborough. He then quitted that house. The Duchess showed us a diamond necklace (which Lady Di. used afterwards to wear) that cost seven thousand pounds, and was purchased with the money Congreve left her. How much better would it have been to have given it to poor Mrs. Bracegirdle."—DR. YOUNG (Spence's Anecdotes).

65 "A glass was put in the hand of the statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it."—THOS. DAVIES, Dramatic Miscellanies.

66 The sum Congreve left her was 200l., as is said in the Dramatic Miscellanies of Tom Davies; where are some particulars about this charming actress and beautiful woman.

She had a "lively aspect", says Tom, on the authority of Cibber, and "such a glow of health and cheerfulness in her countenance, as inspired everybody with desire". "Scarce an audience saw her that were not half of them her lovers."

Congreve and Rowe courted her in the persons of their lovers. "In Tamerlane, Rowe courted her Selima, in the person of Axalla....; Congreve insinuated his addresses in his Valentine to her Angelica, in his Love for Love; in his Osmyn to her Almena, in the Mourning Bride; and, lastly, in his Mirabel to her Millamant, in the Way of the World. Mirabel, the fine gentleman of the play, is, I believe, not very distant from the real character of Congreve."—Dramatic Miscellanies, vol. iii, 1784.

She retired from the stage when Mrs. Oldfield began to be the public favourite. She died in 1748, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.

67 Johnson calls his legacy the "accumulation of attentive parsimony, which," he continues, "though to her (the Duchess) superfluous and useless, might have given great assistance to the ancient family from which he descended, at that time, by the imprudence of his relation, reduced to difficulties and distress."—Lives of the Poets.

68 He replied to Collier, in the pamphlet called "Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations," &c. A specimen or two are subjoined:—

"The greater part of these examples which he has produced, are only demonstrations of his own impurity: they only savour of his utterance, and were sweet enough till tainted by his breath.

"Where the expression is unblameable in its own pure and genuine signification, he enters into it, himself, like the evil spirit; he possesses the innocent phrase, and makes it bellow forth his own blasphemies.

"If I do not return him civilities in calling him names, it is because I am not very well versed in his nomenclatures.... I will only call him Mr. Collier, and that I will call him as often as I think he shall deserve it.

"The corruption of a rotten divine is the generation of a sour critic."

"Congreve," says Dr. Johnson, "a very young man, elated with success, and impatient of censure, assumed an air of confidence and security.... The dispute was protracted through two years; but at last Comedy grew more modest, and Collier lived to see the reward of his labours in the reformation of the theatre."—Life of Congreve.

69 The scene of Valentine's pretended madness in Love for Love is a splendid specimen of Congreve's daring manner:—

Scandal.—And have you given your master a hint of their plot upon him?

Jeremy.—Yes, Sir; he says he'll favour it, and mistake her for Angelica.

Scandal.—It may make us sport.

Foresight.—Mercy on us!

Valentine.—Husht—interrupt me not—I'll whisper predictions to thee, and thou shalt prophesie;—I am truth, and can teach thy tongue a new trick,—I have told thee what's passed—now I'll tell what's to come:—Dost thou know what will happen to-morrow? Answer me not—for I will tell thee. To-morrow knaves will thrive thro' craft, and fools thro' fortune; and honesty will go as it did, frost-nipt in a summer suit. Ask me questions concerning tomorrow.

Scandal.—Ask him, Mr. Foresight.

Foresight.—Pray what will be done at Court?

Valentine.—Scandal will tell you;—I am truth, I never come there.

Foresight.—In the city?

Valentine.—Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and the horn'd herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the cropt prentice that sweeps his master's shop in the morning, may, ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things, that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks. But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look suspiciously. Are you a husband?

Foresight.—I am married.

Valentine.—Poor creature! Is your wife of Covent Garden Parish?

Foresight.—No; St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

Valentine.—Alas, poor man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bow'd. Pray, pray, for a metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the Medea's kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab'ring callous hands, and chine of steel, and Atlas' shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha! That a man should have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather to be laid to his feet! ha, ha, ha!

Foresight.—His frenzy is very high now, Mr. Scandal.

Scandal.—I believe it is a spring-tide.

Foresight.—Very likely—truly; you understand these matters. Mr. Scandal, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical.

Valentine.—Oh! why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long?

Jeremy.—She's here, Sir.

Mrs. Foresight.—Now, Sister!

Mrs. Frail.—O Lord! what must I say?

Scandal.—Humour him, Madam, by all means.

Valentine.—Where is she? Oh! I see her; she comes, like Riches, Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh—welcome, welcome!

Mrs. Frail.—How d'ye, Sir? Can I serve you?

Valentine.—Hark'ee—I have a secret to tell you. Endymion and the moon shall meet us on Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of night. But say not a word. Hymen shall put his torch into a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus's hundred eyes be shut—ha! Nobody shall know, but Jeremy.

Mrs. Frail.—No, no; we'll keep it secret; it shall be done presently.

Valentine.—The sooner the better. Jeremy, come hither—closer—that none may overhear us. Jeremy, I can tell you news; Angelica is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she'll meet me two hours hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't see one another's faces 'till we have done something to be ashamed of, and then we'll blush once for all....

Enter TATTLE.

Tattle.—Do you know me, Valentine?

Valentine.—You!—who are you? No, I hope not.

Tattle.—I am Jack Tattle, your friend.

Valentine.—My friend! What to do? I am no married man, and thou canst not lye with my wife; I am very poor, and thou canst not borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend?

Tattle.—Hah! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a secret.

Angelica.—Do you know me, Valentine?

Valentine.—Oh, very well.

Angelica.—Who am I?

Valentine.—You're a woman, one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white—a sheet of spotless paper—when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled and blotted by every goose's quill. I know you; for I loved a woman, and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out what a woman was good for.

Tattle.—Ay! pr'ythee, what's that?

Valentine.—Why, to keep a secret.

Tattle.—O Lord!

Valentine.—Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she should tell, yet she is not to be believed.

Tattle.—Hah! Good again, faith.

Valentine.—I would have musick. Sing me the song that I like.—CONGREVE, Love for Love.

There is a Mrs. Nickleby, of the year 1700, in Congreve's comedy of The Double Dealer, in whose character the author introduces some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve.

Lady Plyant.—Oh, reflect upon the honour of your conduct! Offering to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady for her daughter's hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one trip—not one faux pas. Oh, consider it; what would you have to answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty! Alas! humanity is feeble, Heaven knows! Very feeble, and unable to support itself.

Mellefont.—Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake? Madam—

Lady Plyant.—O Lord, ask me the question! I'll swear I'll deny it—therefore don't ask me; nay, you shan't ask me, I swear I'll deny it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face; I warrant I am as red as a turkey-cock; O fie, cousin Mellefont!

Mellefont.—Nay, madam, hear me; I mean——

Lady Plyant.—Hear you? No, no; I'll deny you first, and hear you afterwards. For one does not know how one's mind may change upon hearing—hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are fallible. I won't trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is infallible and uncomatable.

Mellefont.—For heaven's sake, madam——

Lady Plyant.—Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of Heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you don't think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don't think it a sin; but still, my honour, if it were no sin ——. But, then, to marry my daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities—I'll never consent to that: as sure as can be, I'll break the match.

Mellefont.—Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees——

Lady Plyant.—Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion. 'Tis not your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it, if I have charms? And how can you help it, if you are made a captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault; but, my honour. Well, but your honour, too—but the sin! Well, but the necessity. O Lord, here's somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against it—strive, be sure; but don't be melancholick—don't despair; but never think that I'll grant you anything. O Lord, no: but be sure you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you don't love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me; yet it will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, I can't be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don't hope; but don't despair neither. They're coming; I must fly.—The Double Dealer, act II, scene v, page 156.

70 "There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to have done everything by chance. The Old Bachelor was written for amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant ambition of wit."—JOHNSON, Lives of the Poets.

71 "Among those by whom it ('Will's') was frequented, Southerne and Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden's friendship.... But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon Dryden's friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the celebrated Old Bachelor being put into the poet's hands to be revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the stage, returned it to the author with the high and just commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever seen."—SCOTT'S Dryden, vol. i, p. 370.

72 It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.

The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished "to be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity", is common to all writers on the subject of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire's Letters concerning the English Nation, published in London, 1733, as also in Goldsmith's Memoir of Voltaire. But it is worthy of remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in the edition of Voltaire's OEuvres Completes in the Pantheon Litteraire, Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)

"Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porte le plus loin la gloire du theatre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n'a fait que peu de pieces, mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre.... Vous y voyez partout le langage des honnetes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce qui prouve qu'il connaissait bien son monde, et qu'il vivait dans ce qu'on appelle la bonne compagnie."—VOLTAIRE, Lettres sur les Anglais, Let. 19.

73 On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral—"The Mourning Muse of Alexis." Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the orthodox way. The Queen is called PASTORA.

"I mourn PASTORA dead, let Albion mourn, And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,"

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that—

With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound, And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,—

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that period.... It continues—)

Lord of these woods and wide extended plains, Stretch'd on the ground and close to earth his face, Scalding with tears the already faded grass.

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come? And must Pastora moulder in the tomb? Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far, Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are; With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased, But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized.

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a shepherdess; that figure of the "Great Shepherd", lying speechless on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve!

In the "Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas" (the young Lord Blandford, the great Duke of Marlborough's only son), Amaryllis represents Sarah Duchess!

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come into work here again. At the sight of her grief—

Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forgo, And dumb distress and new compassion show, Nature herself attentive silence kept, And motion seemed suspended while she wept!

And Pope dedicated the Iliad to the author of these lines—and Dryden wrote to him in his great hand:

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, But Genius must be born and never can be taught. This is your portion, this your native store; Heaven, that but once was prodigal before, To SHAKESPEARE gave as much, she could not give him more. Maintain your Post: that's all the fame you need, For 'tis impossible you should proceed; Already I am worn with cares and age, And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage: Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expence, I live a Rent-charge upon Providence: But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn, Whom I foresee to better fortune born, Be kind to my remains, and oh defend Against your Judgement your departed Friend! Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue; But shade those Lawrels which descend to You: And take for Tribute what these Lines express; You merit more, nor could my Love do less.

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day. In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time, when gentlemen meet they fall into each other's arms, with "Jack, Jack, I must buss thee"; or, "'Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee, lad". And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren. Literary gentlemen do not kiss now; I wonder if they love each other better.

Steele calls Congreve "Great Sir" and "Great Author"; says "Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name", and addresses him as if he were a prince; and speaks of Pastora as one of the most famous tragic compositions.

74 "To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey.... After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be claimed by any of our infirm and erring race."—MACAULAY.

"Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is reasonable to believe that Addison's profession and practice were at no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the reverence."—JOHNSON.

75 "Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man; but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of silence."—POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

76 "Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the modern, who rival him in every other part of poetry; but in the greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both modern and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the imagination of man to disturb itself with greater ideas than those which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books."—Spectator, No. 279.

"If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for one."—Ibid., No. 417.

These famous papers appeared in each Saturday's Spectator, from January 19 to May 3, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may place those he did to Sacred Music.

77 "Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy afterwards."—POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

" 'Leave him as soon as you can,' said Addison to me, speaking of Pope; 'he will certainly play you some devilish trick else: he has an appetite to satire.' "—LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU (Spence's Anecdotes).

78 Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield and Archdeacon of Coventry.

79 "The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his company, declared that he was 'a parson in a tye-wig', can detract little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of Mandeville."—JOHNSON, Lives of the Poets.

"Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison: he had a quarrel with him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to say of him—'One day or other you'll see that man a bishop—I'm sure he looks that way; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his heart.' "—POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

"Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative whilst here, and often thoughtful: sometimes so lost in thought, that I have come into his room and stayed five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him; kept very little company beside; and had no amour that I know of; and I think I should have known it, if he had had any."—ABBE PHILIPPEAUX of Blois (Spence's Anecdotes).

80 "His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and profound."—MACAULAY.

81 "Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing the present he made him of the Musae Anglicanae."—TICKELL (Preface to Addison's Works).

82 "It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted with all of them. Addison was the best company in the world. I never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve."—LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU (Spence's Anecdotes).

83 Mr. Addison To Mr. Wyche.

"DEAR SIR,

"My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived as Methusaleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them, and desiring you to believe me always,

"Dear Sir,

"To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at Hambourg, "May, 1703."

—From the Life of Addison, by Miss Aikin, vol. i, p. 146.

84 It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgement, can be doubted by nobody.

"Sept. 10, 1710.—I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele.

"11.—Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening.

"18.—To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement near Chelsea.... I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison.

"27.—To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland's, with Steele and Addison, too.

"29.—I dined with Mr. Addison," &c.—Journal to Stella.

Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his Travels "To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age."—SCOTT. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.

"Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things."—Letters.

"I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself."—Swift to Addison (1717), SCOTT'S Swift, vol. xix, p. 274.

Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time renewed them; and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected.

85 "Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at Button's; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it."—POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

86 "When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind."—JOHNSON, Lives of the Poets.

87 "Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it) too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all!"—POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

88 "As to poetical affairs," says Pope, in 1713, "I am content at present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion:—

"Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost; And factions strive who shall applaud him most.

"The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party 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 hands than the head.... I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgement (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator"—POPE'S "Letter to SIR W. TRUMBULL".

Cato ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.

It is worth noticing how many things in Cato keep their ground as habitual quotations, e.g.:—

" ... big with the fate Of Cato and of Rome." "'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." "Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury." "I think the Romans call it Stoicism." "My voice is still for war." "When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honour is a private station."

Not to mention:—

"The woman who deliberates is lost,"

And the eternal:—

"Plato, thou reasonest well,"

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

89 "The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused—to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal.... Rowe's ballad of The Despairing Shepherd is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair."—DR. JOHNSON.

"I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both."—LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU to POPE. Works, Lord Wharncliffe's ed., vol. ii, p. 111.

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on her mother's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect.

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains "Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland", in which her ladyship is called "Chloe", and Joseph Addison, "Lycidas"; besides the ballad mentioned by the doctor, and which is entitled "Colin's Complaint". But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen:—

What though I have skill to complain— Though the Muses my temples have crowned; What though, when they hear my sweet strain, The Muses sit weeping around.

Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain; Thy pipe and thy laurel resign; Thy false one inclines to a swain Whose music is sweeter than thine.

90 One of the most humourous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the Spectator tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER:

"MR. SPECTATOR—

"You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure.

"The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them?

"I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

"Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observe, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the toil of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c. &c.—Spectator, No. 127.

91 "Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to make his own."—POPE'S Letters.

92 "I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings; and shall give some account in them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.... There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favour my mother's dream; for, as she has often told me, I threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.

"As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always the favourite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that my parts were solid and would wear well. I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life....

"I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a dozen of my select friends that know me.... There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Tuesday night at St. James's Coffee-house; and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the 'Cocoa-Tree', and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

"Thus I live in the world rather as a 'Spectator' of mankind than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who are engaged in them—as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game.... In short, I have acted, in all the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper."—Spectator, No. 1.

93 "So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us, the sure mark of a fool."—MACAULAY.

94 "The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but, notwithstanding all the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room for the old knight at the head of them; who for his reputation in the country took occasion to whisper in the judge's ear that he was glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit. I was listening to the proceedings of the Court with much attention, and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our laws; when, after about an hour's sitting, I observed to my great surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much business and great intrepidity.

"Upon his first rising; the Court was hushed, and a general whisper ran among the country people that Sir Roger was up. The speech he made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the country."—Spectator, No. 122.

95 "Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his death-bed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true."—DR. YOUNG (Spence's Anecdotes).

"I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject to the greatest depression of melancholy: on the contrary, cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite gladness, prevents it from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."—ADDISON, Spectator, p. 381.

96 The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father of the young earl, who was brought to his stepfather's bed to see "how a Christian could die". He was amongst the wildest of the nobility of that day; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. He was popular in London, as such daring spirits have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison for his second homicide, when he went on Lord Macclesfield's embassy to the Elector of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent the garter to H. E. Highness. The chronicler of the expedition speaks of his lordship as an amiable young man, who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable baron's name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened him.

97 "Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used to play a little upon them; but he always took it well."—POPE (Spence's Anecdotes).

"Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world: even in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be pleased."—DR. YOUNG (Spence's Anecdotes).

98 The gaiety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene between two brilliant sisters, from his comedy, The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode. Dick wrote this, he said, from "a necessity of enlivening his character", which, it seemed, the Christian Hero had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the eyes of readers of that pious piece.

[Scene draws, and discovers LADY CHARLOTTE, reading at a table,—LADY HARRIET, playing at a glass, to and fro, and viewing herself.]

L. Ha.—Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [looking at herself as she speaks] as you sit staring at a book which I know you can't attend.—Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he pleases, but there's no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do but look on me, now, and deny it if you can.

L. Ch.—You are the maddest girl [smiling].

L. Ha.—Look ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing [looking over Charlotte].—Oh! I see his name as plain as you do—F—r—a—n Fran,—c—i—s, cis, Francis, 'tis in every line of the book.

L. Ch. [rising]—It's in vain, I see, to mind anything in such impertinent company—but granting 'twere as you say, as to my Lord Hardy—'tis more excusable to admire another than oneself.

L. Ha.—No, I think not,—yes, I grant you, than really to be vain of one's person, but I don't admire myself—Pish! I don't believe my eyes to have that softness. [Looking in the glass.] They an't so piercing: no, 'tis only stuff, the men will be talking.—Some people are such admirers of teeth—Lord, what signifies teeth! [Showing her teeth.] A very black-a-moor has as white a set of teeth as I.—No, sister, I don't admire myself, but I've a spirit of contradiction in me: I don't know I'm in love with myself, only to rival the men.

L. Ch.—Aye, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev'n of that rival of his, your dear self.

L. Ha.—Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that insolent intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes,

The public envy and the public care,

I shan't be so easily catched—I thank him—I want but to be sure, I should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should depart this life or not.

L. Ch.—Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your humour does not at all become you.

L. Ha.—Vanity! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere than you wise folks; all your life's an art.—Speak you real.—Look you there.—[Hauling her to the glass.] Are you not struck with a secret pleasure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony in your shape, that promptitude in your mien?

L. Ch.—Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it.

L. Ha.—Pshaw! Pshaw! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale, 'tis tiresome for me to think at that rate.

L. Ch.—They that think it too soon to understand themselves will very soon find it too late.—But tell me honestly, don't you like Campley?

L. Ha.—The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did not think of getting me so easily.—Oh, I hate a heart I can't break when I please.—What makes the value of dear china, but that 'tis so brittle?—were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in your closet.'—The Funeral, Oct. 2nd.

"We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele's]; there being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom his Tatlers had not made better by his recommendation of them."—CIBBER.

99 "There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven made his friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what he should say or do. I will go on in his further encouragement. The best woman that ever man had cannot now lament and pine at his neglect of himself."—STEELE [of himself]. The Theatre, No. 12, Feb., 1719-20.

100 The Funeral supplies an admirable stroke of humour,—one which Sydney Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his Lectures.

The undertaker is talking to his employes about their duty.

Sable.—Ha, you!—A little more upon the dismal [forming their countenances]; this fellow has a good mortal look,—place him near the corpse: that wainscot-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 end of the hall. So—But I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now on any provocation. Look yonder,—that hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, did not I pity you, take you out of a great man's service, and show you the pleasure of receiving wages? Did not I give you ten, then fifteen, and twenty shillings a week to be sorrowful?—and the more I give you I think the gladder you are!

101 "From my own Apartment, Nov. 16.

"There are several persons who have many pleasures and entertainments in their possession, which they do not enjoy; it is, therefore, a kind and good office to acquaint them with their own happiness, and turn their attention to such instances of their good fortune as they are apt to overlook. Persons in the married state often want such a monitor; and pine away their days by looking upon the same condition in anguish and murmuring, which carries with it, in the opinion of others, a complication of all the pleasures of life, and a retreat from its inquietudes.

"I am led into this thought by a visit I made to an old friend who was formerly my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his family, for the winter; and yesterday morning sent me word his wife expected me to dinner. I am, as it were, at home at that house, and every member of it knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot, indeed, express the pleasure it is to be met by the children with so much joy as I am when I go thither. The boys and girls strive who shall come first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the door; and that child which loses the race to me runs back again to tell the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by a pretty girl that we all thought must have forgot me; for the family has been out of town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance; after which, they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories they heard in the country, about my marriage to one of my neighbours' daughters; upon which, the gentleman, my friend, said, 'Nay; if Mr. Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old companions, I hope mine shall have the preference: there is Mrs. Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best of them. But I know him too well; he is so enamoured with the very memory of those who flourished in our youth, that he will not so much as look upon the modern beauties. I remember, old gentleman, how often you went home in a day to refresh your countenance and dress when Teraminta reigned in your heart. As we came up in the coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.' With such reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady left the room, as did also the children. As soon as we were alone, he took me by the hand: 'Well, my good friend,' says he, 'I am heartily glad to see thee; I was afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think the good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her from the playhouse to find out who she was for me?' I perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little. But, to turn the discourse, I said, 'She is not, indeed, that creature she was when she returned me the letter I carried from you, and told me, "She hoped, as I was a gentleman, I would be employed no more to trouble her, who had never offended me; but would be so much the gentleman's friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in." You may remember I thought her in earnest, and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to be for ever fifteen.' 'Fifteen!' replied my good friend. 'Ah! you little understand—you, that have lived a bachelor—how great, how exquisite a pleasure there is in being really beloved! It is impossible that the most beauteous face in nature should raise in me such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had like to have carried me off last winter. I tell you, sincerely, I have so many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of moderation, think of her present state of health. But, as to what you say of fifteen, she gives me every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her beauty when I was in the vigour of youth. Every moment of her life brings me fresh instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it; there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my welfare and interests. Thus, at the same time, methinks, the love I conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the idle passion commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of buffoons is inferior to the elegant mirth of gentlemen. Oh, she is an inestimable jewel! In her examination of her household affairs, she shows a certain fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her servants obey her like children; and the meanest we have has an ingenuous shame for an offence not always to be seen in children in other families. I speak freely to you, my old friend; ever since her sickness, things that gave me the quickest joy before turn now to a certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do should they lose their mother in their tender years. The pleasure I used to take in telling my boy stories of battles, and asking my girl questions about the disposal of her baby, and the gossipping of it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy.'

"He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady entered, and, with an inexpressible sweetness in her countenance, told us 'she had been searching her closet for something very good, to treat such an old friend as I was'. Her husband's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her countenance; and I saw all his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observing something in our looks which showed we had been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of; and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, 'Mr. Bickerstaff, do not believe a word of what he tells you: I shall still live to have you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. You must know he tells me, that he finds London is a much more healthy place than the country; for he sees several of his old acquaintances and schoolfellows are here—young fellows with fair, full-bottomed periwigs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out open-breasted.' My friend, who is always extremely delighted with her agreeable humour, made her sit down with us. She did it with that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense; and to keep up the good humour she had brought in with her, turned her raillery upon me. 'Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember you followed me one night from the playhouse; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow night, and lead me in the front box.' This put us into a long field of discourse about the beauties who were the mothers to the present, and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her, 'I was glad she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.'

"We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the young lady, when, on a sudden, we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him out of the room; but I would not part with him so. I found, upon conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other side of eight years old. I perceived him a very great historian in Aesop's Fables; but he frankly declared to me his mind, 'that he did not delight in that learning, because he did not believe they were true;' for which reason I found he had very much turned his studies, for about a twelvemonth past, into the lives of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the Seven Champions, and other historians of that age. I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his son, and that these diversions might turn to some profit. I found the boy had made remarks which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagement of John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England; and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honour. I was extolling his accomplishments, when his mother told me, 'that the little girl who led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he. Betty,' said she, 'deals chiefly in fairies and sprites; and sometimes in a winter night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are afraid to go up to bed.'

"I sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure, which gives the only true relish to all conversation, a sense that every one of us liked each other. I went home, considering the different conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor; and I must confess it struck me with a secret concern, to reflect, that whenever I go off I shall leave no traces behind me. In this pensive mood I return to my family; that is to say, to my maid, my dog, my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to me."—The Tatler.

102 "As to the pursuits after affection and esteem, the fair sex are happy in this particular, that with them the one is much more nearly related to the other than in men. The love of a woman is inseparable from some esteem of her; and as she is naturally the object of affection, the woman who has your esteem has also some degree of your love. A man that dotes on a woman for her beauty, will whisper his friend, 'that creature has a great deal of wit when you are well acquainted with her.' And if you examine the bottom of your esteem for a woman, you will find you have a greater opinion of her beauty than anybody else. As to us men, I design to pass most of my time with the facetious Harry Bickerstaff; but William Bickerstaff, the most prudent man of our family, shall be my executor."—Tatler, No. 206.

103 The Correspondence of Steele passed after his death into the possession of his daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss Scurlock, of Carmarthenshire. She married the Hon. John, afterwards third Lord Trevor. At her death, part of the letters passed to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of a natural daughter of Steele's; and part to Lady Trevor's next of kin, Mr. Scurlock. They were published by the learned Nichols—from whose later edition of them, in 1809, our specimens are quoted.

Here we have him, in his courtship—which was not a very long one.

TO MRS. SCURLOCK

"Aug. 30, 1707.

"MADAM,—

"I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee-house, where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money; while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love! Love which animates my heart, sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul; and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions; it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirer some similitude of the object admired. Thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, to that Heaven which made thee such; and join with me to implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the Author of love to bless the rites He has ordained—and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour to please Him and each other.

"I am for ever your faithful servant,

"RICH. STEELE."

Some few hours afterwards, apparently, Mistress Scurlock received the next one—obviously written later in the day!

"Saturday night (Aug. 30, 1707).

"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 that I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than I die for you.

"RICH. STEELE."

TO MRS. SCURLOCK.

"Sept. 1, 1707.

"MADAM,—

"It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me.

"A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Lisbon?' and I answered, 'She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know 'when I had last been at Hampton Court?' I replied, 'It will be on Tuesday come se'nnight.' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that my mind may be in some composure. O Love!

"A thousand torments dwell about thee, Yet who could live, to live without thee?

"Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion,

"I am ever yours, "RICH. STEELE."

Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and prospects to the young lady's mamma. He dates from "Lord Sunderland's office, Whitehall"; and states his clear income at 1,025l. per annum. "I promise myself," says he, "the pleasure of an industrious and virtuous life, in studying to do things agreeable to you."

They were married according to the most probable conjectures about the 7th inst. There are traces of a tiff about the middle of the next month; she being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and reckless. General progress, however, may be seen from the following notes. The "house in Bury Street, St. James's", was now taken.

TO MRS. STEELE.

"Oct. 16, 1707.

"DEAREST BEING ON EARTH,—

"Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven o'clock, having met a schoolfellow from India, by whom I am to be informed on things this night which expressly concern your obedient husband,

"RICH. STEELE."

TO MRS. STEELE.

"Eight o'clock, Fountain Tavern,

"Oct. 22, 1707.

"MY DEAR,—

"I beg of you not to be uneasy; for I have done a great deal of business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my Gazette."

"Dec. 22, 1707.

"MY DEAR, DEAR WIFE,—

"I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband."

"Devil Tavern, Temple Bar.

"Jan. 3, 1707-8.

"DEAR PRUE,—

"I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless more.

"Your faithful husband," &c.

"Jan. 14, 1707-8.

"DEAR WIFE,—

"Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley, have desired me to sit an hour with them at the George, in Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve o'clock, and that you will go to bed," &c.

"Gray's Inn, Feb. 3, 1708.

"DEAR PRUE,—

"If the man who has my shoemaker's bill calls, let him be answered that I shall call on him as I come home. I stay here in order to get Jonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with him for that end. He is expected at home every minute.

"Your most humble, obedient servant," &c.

"Tennis Court Coffee-house, "May 5, 1708.

"DEAR WIFE,—

"I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you; in the meantime shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against the 'Devil' Tavern, at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools who wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see thee cheerful and at ease.

"If the printer's boy be at home, send him hither; and let Mrs. Todd send by the boy my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear from me early in the morning," &c.

Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little parcels of tea, or walnuts, &c. In 1709 the Tatler made its appearance. The following curious note dates April 7, 1710:—

"I inclose to you ['Dear Prue'] a receipt for the saucepan and spoon, and a note of 23l. of Lewis's, which will make up the 50l. I promised for your ensuing occasion.

"I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the pleasure I have in your person and society. I only beg of you to add to your other charms a fearfulness to see a man that loves you in pain and uneasiness, to make me as happy as it is possible to be in this life. Rising a little in a morning, and being disposed to a cheerfulness ... would not be amiss."

In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being "invited to supper to Mr. Boyle's". "Dear Prue," he says on this occasion, "do not send after me, for I shall be ridiculous."

104 Of this famous Bishop, Steele wrote,—

Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits.

105 Here we have some of his later letters:—

TO LADY STEELE. "Hampton Court, March 16, 1716-17.

"DEAR PRUE,

"If you have written anything to me which I should have received last night, I beg your pardon that I cannot answer till the next post.... Your son at the present writing is mighty well employed in tumbling on the floor of the room and sweeping the sand with a feather. He grows a most delightful child, and very full of play and spirit. He is also a very great scholar: he can read his primer; and I have brought down my Virgil. He makes most shrewd remarks about the pictures. We are very intimate friends and playfellows. He begins to be very ragged; and I hope I shall be pardoned if I equip him with new clothes and frocks, or what Mrs. Evans and I shall think for his service."

TO LADY STEELE. [Undated.]

"You tell me you want a little flattery from me. I assure you I know no one who deserves so much commendation as yourself, and to whom saying the best things would be so little like flattery. The thing speaks for itself, considering you as a very handsome woman that loves retirement—one who does not want wit, and yet is extremely sincere; and so I could go through all the vices which attend the good qualities of other people, of which you are exempt. But, indeed, though you have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which almost frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, that you do not love to dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, and to make me proud of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine....

"Your most affectionate, obsequious husband, "RICH. STEELE.

"A quarter of Molly's schooling is paid. The children are perfectly well."

TO LADY STEELE. "March 26, 1717.

"MY DEAREST PRUE,

"I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head.... When I lay in your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears last night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then awake and in pain; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep.

"For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher."

At the time when the above later letters were written, Lady Steele was in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by which, as he constantly assures his wife, he firmly believed he should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however.

Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in Westminster Abbey.

106 Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic letter.

107 Steele replied to Dennis in an _Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called _"_The Character of Sir John Edgar_"_. What Steele had to say against the cross-grained old Critic discovers a great deal of humour:

"Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should bring a bailiff along with him....

"Your years are about sixty-five, an ugly, vinegar face, that if you had any command you would be obeyed out of fear, from your ill-nature pictured there; not from any other motive. Your height is about some five feet five inches. You see I can give your exact measure as well as if I had taken your dimension with a good cudgel, which I promise you to do as soon as ever I have the good fortune to meet you....

"Your doughty paunch stands before you like a firkin of butter, and your duck-legs seem to be cast for carrying burdens.

"Thy works are libels upon others, and satires upon thyself; and while they bark at men of sense, call him knave and fool that wrote them. Thou hast a great antipathy to thy own species; and hatest the sight of a fool but in thy glass."

Steele had been kind to Dennis, and once got arrested on account of a pecuniary service which he did him. When John heard of the fact—"'Sdeath!" cries John; "why did not he keep out of the way as I did?"

The Answer concludes by mentioning that Cibber had offered Ten Pounds for the discovery of the authorship of Dennis's pamphlet; on which, says Steele,—

"I am only sorry he has offered so much, because the twentieth part would have over-valued his whole carcass. But I know the fellow that he keeps to give answers to his creditors will betray him; for he gave me his word to bring officers on the top of the house that should make a hole through the ceiling of his garret, and so bring him to the punishment he deserves. Some people think this expedient out of the way, and that he would make his escape upon hearing the least noise. I say so too; but it takes him up half an hour every night to fortify himself with his old hair trunk, two or three joint-stools, and some other lumber, which he ties together with cords so fast that it takes him up the same time in the morning to release himself."

108 Gay calls him—"Dear Prior ... beloved by every muse".—Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece.

Swift and Prior were very intimate, and he is frequently mentioned in the Journal to Stella. "Mr. Prior," says Swift, "walks to make himself fat, and I to keep myself down.... We often walk round the park together."

In Swift's works there is a curious tract called Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne [Scott's edition, vol. xii]. The Remarks are not by the Dean: but at the end of each is an addition in italics from his hand, and these are always characteristic. Thus, to the Duke of Marlborough, he adds, "Detestably Covetous," &c. Prior is thus noticed—

"MATTHEW PRIOR, ESQ., Commissioner of Trade.

"On the Queen's accession to the throne, he was continued in his office; is very well at Court with the ministry, and is an entire creature of my Lord Jersey's, whom he supports by his advice; is one of the best poets in England, but very facetious in conversation. A thin, hollow-looked man, turned of 40 years old. This is near the truth."

Yet counting as far as to fifty his years, His virtues and vices were as other men's are, High hopes he conceived and he smothered great fears, In a life party-coloured—half pleasure, half care.

Not to business a drudge, nor to faction a slave, He strove to make interest and freedom agree, In public employments industrious and grave, And alone with his friends, Lord, how merry was he!

Now in equipage stately, now humbly on foot, Both fortunes he tried, but to neither would trust; And whirled in the round as the wheel turned about, He found riches had wings, and knew man was but dust.