SIR RICHARD STEELE

1675-1729.

On the Life and Writings of Addison. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY London, 1852,

STEELE and Addison are among the first ghosts met by Fielding in his delightful Journey from this World to the next. A remark from the spirit of Virgil having a little disconcerted the bashful Joseph, he has turned for reassurance to the spirit most familiar and best known to him on earth, when at once Steele heartily embraces him, and tells him he had been the greatest man up in the other world, and that he readily resigned all the merit of his own works to him. In return, Addison gives him a gracious smile, and, clapping him on the back with much solemnity, cries out, "Well said, Dick." Fielding was here laughing at the claim set up by Addison's associates, when they would have struck down his old fellow labourer's fame, to add to the glories of his own. What Steele said so well for his friend, and ill for himself, in the other world, had already been more than broadly hinted in this, in Mr. Tickell's celebrated preface.

Nevertheless, Steele's fame survived that back-handed blow. What the living Addison himself foretold came true; and, out of party contentions so fierce that no character escaped them unsullied, side by side, when

1 From the Quarterly Review, March 1855. With additions.

those contentions ceased, his friend's and his emerged. Though circumstances favoured somewhat the one against the other, there had come to be a corner for both in almost all men's liking;, and those "little diurnal essays "which are extant still," kept also extant, in an equal and famous companionship, the two foremost Essayists of England. A more powerful hand than Mr. Tickell's now strikes them rudely apart. A magnificent eulogy of Addison is here built upon a most contemptuous depreciation of Steele; and if we are content to accept without appeal the judgment of Mr. Macaulay's Essay, there is one pleasant face the less in our Walhalla of British Worthies.

For ourselves we must frankly say Not Content, and our reasons shall be stated in this article. Not, we dare say, without partiality; certainly not without frank and full allowance for the portion of evil which is inseparable from all that is good, and for the something of littleness mixed up with all that is great. In one of his most charming essays Steele has himself reminded us, that the word imperfection should never carry to the considerate man's heart a thought unkinder than the word humanity;" and we shall also think it well to remember, what with not less wisdom on another occasion he remarked, as to the prodigious difference between the figure the same. person bears in our imagination when we are pleased with him, from that wherein we behold him when we are angry.

1 "Their personal friendship and "enmities must cease, and the parties "they are engaged in be at an end, "before their faults or their virtues "can have justice done them. . . I "cannot forbear entertaining my"self very often with the idea of "an imaginary historian describing "the reign of Anne I, and intro"ducing it with a preface to his "readers that he is now entering "upon the most shining part of the "English story. The several anta"gonists who now endeavour to de

Steele we think eminently a man to write or speak of in the mood of pleasure.

But first let Mr. Macaulay speak of him. Introducing him as a person only entitled to distinction as one of the chief members of the small literary coterie to which Addison was the oracle, and deriving from that fact his claim to present recognition, he describes him in general terms as one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate or to respect. He admits his temper to have been sweet, his affections warm, and his spirits lively; but says that his passions were so strong, and his principles so weak, that his life was spent in sinning and repenting, in inculcating what was right and doing what was wrong. Hence, we are told, though he was a man of piety and honour in speculation, he was in practice much of the rake and a little of the swindler; but then again he was so good-natured, that it was not easy to be seriously angry with him; and even rigid moralists felt more inclined to pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a spunging-house, or drank himself into a fever. Among the rigid moralists here referred to we must presume was Mr. Joseph Addison, whose strict abstinence from drink is so well known; but the Essayist is careful to add that the kindness with which that rigid moralist regarded his friend was "not unmingled with scorn."

So much the worse for Addison, if that be true; for very certainly he succeeded in concealing it from his friend, and, we imagine indeed, from every one but Mr. Macaulay. True, no doubt, it is, that so consummate a master of humour could hardly have it always under control; and that the most intimate of his associates would not be spared the pleasant laugh which was raised in turn against all. But Pope, from whom we derive the fact that he would now and then "play a little" on the extraordinary regard which Steele evinced for him, also informs us how well it was always taken; and that any thing of contempt ever passed from one to the other, is most assuredly not to be inferred from any published

record. The first characteristic thing which Pope noted in Addison, that he was always for moderation in parties, and used to blame his dear friend Steele for being too much of a party-man, marks the source of whatever disagreement they had; and he who, on that very ground of party, lavished upon Steele the most unsparing and unscrupulous abuse, and whose old intimacy with both friends had opened to him the secrets of their most familiar hours, never thought of using against him such a formidable weapon as he would have found in Addison's contempt.

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Swift calls Steele a thoughtless fellow, satirises his submission to his wife, and says he was never good company till he had got a bottle of wine in his head; he twits him with his debts, and flings a bailiff at him in every other paragraph through some scores of pages;' he avers that he cannot write grammar; nay, he descends so low (but this through the fouler mouth of one of the professional libellers of the day) as even coarsely to laugh at his short face, little flat nose, broad back, and thick legs; and yet he empties ineffectively all those vials of his own scorn without one allusion to that other which he knew would have gone, with a deadly venom, straight to the heart of his victim. Before their final rupture, he had to answer Steele's reproach that he had spoken of him as" bridled by Addison," and he does this with a denial that frankly admits Steele's right to be jealous of the imputation. Throughout his intimate speech to Stella, whether his humour be sarcastic or polite, the friendship of Steele and Addison is for ever suggesting some annoyance to himself, some mortification, some regret ; but never once the doubt that it was not intimate and sincere, or that into it entered anything inconsistent with a perfect equality. When he wishes to serve the one,

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1 Journal to Stella, Oct. 3, 1710. 2 Importance of the Guardian considered.

3 Public Spirit of the Whigs.

Letter from Dr. Tripe to Nestor Ironside.

5 Letter of Swift to Steele, May 27, 1713.