duced his comedy of the Conscious Lovers, the most successful of his productions, and so carefully written that Parson Adams thought it as good as a sermon. There is a theatrical on dit that George I. gave Steele 500l. for this piece. Dr. Drake says of it, in his oracular manner:

The great, the appropriate praise of Steele is to have been the first who, after the licentious age of Charles II., endeavoured to introduce the Virtues on the stage. He clothed them with the brilliancy of genius; he placed them in situations most interesting to the human heart; and he taught his audience not to laugh at, but to execrate vice, to despise the lewd fool and the witty rake, to applaud the efforts of the good, and to rejoice in the punishment of the wicked.

In his preface to the Conscious Lovers (published after its representation,) Steele records that at one of its early performances, a general officer in a front box was observed to be weeping at the scene between Indiana and her father; when Wilks, the comedian, observed that he was certain the officer would fight ne'er the worse for that.

STEELE RETIRES TO WALES.

We have seen that on various trying occasions Steele's political virtue stood firm; and it is only justice to add that when overwhelmed with debt, he evinced unceasing anxiety to retrieve his fortunes. Nor were his embarrassments solely the result of extravagant living: he was altogether of a speculative turn of mind, and living in an age of bubble schemes, he fell a victim to its perils. "No man's projects for fortune," says Mr. Forster, "had so often failed, yet none were so often renewed. Indeed the art of his genius told against him in his life, and that he could so readily disentangle his thoughts from what most gave them pain and uneasiness, and direct his sensibility at will, to flow into many channels, had certainly not a tendency to favour the balance at his banker's."

Upon the authority of a Bishop, we find it stated that when Steele's affairs became involved shortly before his death, he retired into Wales solely for the purpose of doing justice to his creditors, at a time when he had the fairest prospect of satisfying their claims to the uttermost farthing.* Steele owed his property in South Wales to his wife, the only

*See Bishop Hoadly's Works, vol. i. p. 19.

daughter and heiress of Jonathan Scurlock, Esq.; and he appears to have lived partly at Tylgewyn (the White House) —a clean farm-house half way between Caermarthen and Llangunnor church, which is situate on a hill commanding one of the most pleasing views in Wales. A field near the house is pointed out as the site of Steele's garden, in the bower of which he was accustomed to write.

In Steele's three years' retirement in Wales, his two little daughters were his greatest solicitude; amid failing health and growing infirmities he was never tired of superintending their lessons, or of writing them gay and entertaining letters, as from friend or playfellow. Mr. Forster concludes his delightful essay with this graceful sketch of the closing scenes of Steele's earthly pilgrimage :

He had survived much, but neither his cheerful temper nor his kind philosophy. He would be carried out in a summer's evening, where the country lads and lasses were at their rural sports, and with his pencil give an order on his agent for a new gown to the best dancer. That was the last thing seen of Richard Steele. And the youths and maidens who so saw him in his invalid chair, enfeebled and dying, saw him still as the wits and fine ladies and gentlemen had seen him in his gaiety and youth, when he sat in the chair of Mr. Bickerstaff, creating pleasure for himself by the communication of pleasure to others, and in proportion to the happiness he distributed increasing his own.

What a touching picture does this scene afford of the artless simplicity of rustic life contrasted with the waste of existence the wear and tear of reckless dissipation—which embitter whole years as a fitful fever. Our painters love to transfer to their canvas such scenes of enjoyment as the dance upon the village green and kindred pleasures of pastoral life; when to these is added man returning to the simplicity he had long outlived—as we see in Steele among his humble neighbours in Wales-how is the moral pointed and the tale adorned!

DEATH OF STEELE.-HIS BURIAL-PLACE.

Before Steele had carried into effect his honest intentions, death overtook his frame, enfeebled by dissipation and excess. He died September 1, 1729, at the age of fifty-eight, it is said, in the house now the Ivy Bush Hotel, the principal inn in Caermarthen. (See Cliff's trustworthy Book of South Wales, p. 237.)

His funeral, according to his own desire, was strictly private. The entry stands thus in the Register:

1729

Sep. 4, Sr Richard Steel.

He is buried in the chancel of St. Peter's Church, at Caermarthen, in a vault belonging to the Scurlock family. The church is visited for its monuments: there are effigies of a warrior in plate-armour, with knightly insignia and heraldic honours; there are grotesque figures and other memorials, but none so suggestive as the church being the burial-place of Richard Steele. A more fitting resting-place for lis remains would have been in Westminster Abbey, beside his wife “Prue;" his genius and his conjugal love would then have been together commemorated.

Dr. Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, was a steady friend of Steele's, and consented ultimately to act as executor and guardian to his children.

MONUMENT TO STEELE.

There is no monument to Steele's memory in St. Peter's Church; but in Llangunnor Church there is a plain monumental tablet, with the following inscription:

This stone was erected at the instance of William Williams, of Ivy Tower, owner of Penddaylwn Vawr, in Llangunnor; part of the estate there once belonging to the deservedly celebrated Sir Richard Steele, Knight, chief author of the essays named Tatlers, Guardians, and Spectators; and he wrote the Christian Hero, the Englishman and the Crisis, The Conscious Lovers, and other fine plays. He represented several places in Parliament; was a staunch and able patriot; finally an incomparable writer on morality and Christianity. Hence the ensuing lines in a poem called the Head of the Rock:

Behold Llangunnor, leering o'er the vale,
Pourtrays a scene t'adorn romantic tale;
But more than all the beauties of its site,
Its former owner gives the mind delight.
Is there a heart that can't affection feel
For lands so rich as once to boast a Steele?
Who warm for freedom, and with virtue fraught,
His country dearly lov'd, and greatly taught;
Whose morals pure, the purest style conveys,
Tinstruct his Britain to the last of days.

Communication of W. Spurrell, Caermartnen;
Notes and Queries, No. 56.

CHARACTERISTICS, PERSONAL TRAITS,
AND OPINIONS.

STEELE was famed as a wit before Pope came upon the
town, and in those days a young poet who could say he had
Idined with him was not without claims to consideration.
The reader of Pope will remember his laugh at Ambrose
Philips :

"When simple Macer, now of high renown,
First sought a poet's fortune in the town:
'Twas all the ambition his high soul could feel,
To wear red stockings, and to dine with Steele."

Steele had a real love and reverence for virtue, Pope told Spence. He had the best nature in the world, and was a man of almost boundless benevolence, said Young. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived much with all the wits, and knew no one with the kind nature of Steele. "It is his admitted weakness to have yielded to the temptation which yet he never lost the strength to condemn; but we know who has said that, if at all times to do were as easy as to teach what is good to be done, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces."-Forster's Essays.

Dr. Young said: "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."

Mr. Forster's life of Steele is a protest against Lord Macaulay's somewhat contemptuous pity. Mr. Forster presents him to us as a man who, with some irregularities-which have, as he thinks, been exaggerated-was possessed of a far more fearless and disinterested temper, and of a genius not much less admirable than that of his great contemporary Addison, whom Lord Macaulay and Mr. Thackeray agree in representing as having been his kind, watchful, and somewhat depreciatory monitor. There is great generosity and kindness in Mr. Forster's views on the subject; but the old objection always recurs there is evidence both ways. Steele may have been a scamp, or he may not. It is a question of fact which no one now can really settle.*

CHARACTER OF DICK EASTCOURT.

Eastcourt, the comedian, was a man of wit as well as a mimic; he was caterer of the Beef-steak Club, and, as a badge of his office, wore a small gridiron of gold about his neck fastened to a green ribbon. He was a great favourite with Steele, who thus introduces him in the Spectator, No. 358:

The best man that I know of for heightening the real gaiety of a company is Eastcourt, whose jovial humour diffuses itself from the highest person at an entertainment to the meanest waiter. Merry tales, accompanied with apt gestures and lively representations of circumstances and persons, beguile the gravest mind into a consent to be as humorous as himself. Add to this, that when a man is in his good graces, he has a mimicry that does not debase the person he represents, but which, taken from the gravity of the character, adds to the agreeableness of it.

And in the Spectator, No. 468, August 27, 1712, we find:

I am very sorry that I have at present a circumstance before me, which is of very great importance to all who have a relish for gaiety, wit, mirth, or humour; I mean the death of poor Dick Eastcourt. I have been obliged to him for so many hours of jollity, that it is but a small recompence, though all I can give him, to pass a moment or two in sadness for the loss of so agreeable a man. Poor Eastcourt the last time I saw him we were plotting to show the town his great capacity for acting in its full light, by introducing him as dictating to a set of young players, in what manner to speak this sentence, and utter t'other passion. He had so exquisite a discerning of what was defective in any object before him, that in an instant he could show you the ridiculous side of what would pass for beautiful and just, even to men of no ill judgment, before he had pointed out the failure. He was no less skilful in the knowledge of beauty; and, I dare say, there is no one who knew him well but can repeat more well-turned compliments, as well as smart repartees of Mr. Eastcourt's, than of any other man in England. This was easily to be observed in his inimitable faculty of telling a story, in which he would throw in natural and unexpected incidents to make his court to one part, and rally the other part of the company. Then he would vary the usage he gave them, according as he saw them bear kind or sharp language. He had the knack to raise up a pensive temper, and mortify an impertinently gay one, with the most agreeable skill imaginable.

It is an insolence natural to the wealthy, to affix, as much as in them lies, the character of a man to his circumstances. Thus it is ordinary with them to praise faintly the good qualities of those below them, and say, it is very extraordinary in such a man as he is, or the like, when they are forced to acknowledge the value of him whose lowness upbraids their exaltation. It is to this humour only, that it is to be ascribed, that a quick wit, in conversation, a nice judgment upon any emergency that could arise, and a most blameless inoffensive behaviour, could not raise this man above being received only upon the foot of contributing to mirth and diversion. But he was as easy under that con