we should have anything about us as well as at our own home. All faults, he thinks, might then be reduced into those which proceed from malice or dishonesty; it would quite change our manner of beholding one another; nothing that was not below a man's nature would be below his character; the arts of this life would be proper advances towards the next; and a very good man would be a very fine gentleman. As it is now, human life is inverted, and we have not learned half the knowledge of this world before we are dropping into another. All which Steele winds up by saying that old Dick Reptile, who does not want humour, when he sees another old fellow at their club touchy at being laughed at for having fallen behind the mode, bawls in his ear, "Prithee, don't mind him; tell him thou "art mortal."

Their club is the Trumpet, immortalized in No. 132; and out of the many such societies that owed their life to Steele's untiring invention, and that live still by his wit, we may select this one in especial for brief allusion. Its members are smokers and old story-tellers, rather easy than shining companions, promoting the thoughts tranquilly bedward, and not the less comfortable to Mr. Bickerstaff because he finds himself the leading wit among them. There is old Sir Jeffrey Notch, who has had misfortunes in the world, and calls every thriving man a pitiful upstart, by no means to the general dissatisfaction; there is Major Matchlock, who served in the last civil wars, and every night tells them of his having been knocked off his horse at the rising of the London apprentices, for which he is in great esteem; there is honest old Dick Reptile, who says little himself, but who laughs at all the jokes; and there is the elderly Bencher of the Temple, next to Mr. Bickerstaff the wit of the company, who has by heart ten couplets of Hudibras which he regularly applies before leaving the club of an evening, and who, if any modern wit or town frolic be mentioned, shakes his head at the dulness of the present age and tells a story of Jack Ogle. As for Mr. Bickerstaff him

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self, he is esteemed among them because they see he is something respected by others; but though they concede to him a great deal of learning, they credit him with small knowledge of the world, “insomuch that the Major sometimes, in the height of his military pride, calls me the philosopher; and Sir Jeffrey, no longer ago than last night, upon a dispute what day of the month it was "then in Holland, pulled his pipe out of his mouth, and cried, 'What does the Scholar say to it?'"

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Supplementary to the sketch of these social companions is the paper (208) in which Steele, with as intimate knowledge of nature as of the world, describes the class of easy friends: men with no shining qualities, but in a certain degree above great imperfections; who never contradict us; who gain upon us, not by a fulsome way of commending in broad terms, but by liking whatever we propose to utter; who at the same time are ready to beg our pardons and gainsay us, if we chance to speak ill of ourselves. "We gentlemen of small fortunes," continues Steele with amusing candour, "are extremely necessitous in this par"ticular. I have indeed one who smokes with me often; "but his parts are so low, that all the incense he does me "is to fill his pipe with me, and to be out at just as many "whiffs as I take. This is all the praise or assent that "he is capable of; yet there are more hours when I would "rather be in his company, than in that of the brightest man I know." Which of us will take upon him to say that he has not had some such experience?

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But perhaps the most consummately drawn of all his characters is introduced in the essay, No. 127, in which he discourses of, and illustrates in its humbler varieties, that" affection of the mind called pride" which appears in such a multitude of disguises, every one feeling it in himself, yet wondering to see it in his neighbours. Pursuing it to its detection and exposure under the semblance of quite contrary habits and dispositions, he introduces, as the most subtle example of it he had ever known, a person for whom he had a great respect, as being an old courtier and

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a friend of his in his youth. And then we have a portrait of that kind which, though produced by a few apparently careless touches, never fades, never ceases to charm, and is a study for all succeeding times and painters. "The "man," says Steele, "has but a bare subsistence, just enough to pay his reckoning with us at the Trumpet; "but by having spent the beginning of his life in the 'hearing of great men and persons of power, he is "always promising to do good offices and to introduce

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every man he converses with into the world. He will "desire one of ten times his substance to let him see

him sometimes, and hints to him that he does not for"get him. He answers to matters of no consequence "with great circumspection; but, however, maintains a "general civility in his words and actions, and an inso"lent benevolence to all whom he has to do with. "This he practises with a grave tone and air; and though "I am his senior by twelve years, and richer by forty pounds per annum, he had yesterday the impudence to "commend me to my face and tell me 'he should be

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always ready to encourage me.' In a word, he is a very insignificant fellow, but exceeding gracious." If there is better observation or writing than this, in either Tatler or Spectator, we should be very glad to become acquainted with it.

Another distemper of the mind is treated of in No. 227, where he condemns the nil admirari as the shallowest of doctrines; points out the great mistake which Milton represents the Devil making when he can find nothing even in Paradise to please him; and looks upon a man as afflicted with disease, when he cannot discern anything to be agreeable which another is master of. We are to remember, Steele shrewdly says, that a man cannot have an idea of perfection in another which he was never sensible of in himself; he is forced to form his conceptions of ideas he has not, by those which he has; and who is there, asking an envious man what he thinks of virtue, need feel surprise if he should call it design, or of good nature,

if he should term it dullness? With this we may connect the very perfect description, in No. 184, of that social nuisance, a professed wag; which never in its life beheld a beautiful object, but sees always what it does see, in the most low and inconsiderable light it can be placed in. The wag's gaiety, Steele adds, consists in a certain professed ill-breeding, as if it were an excuse for committing a fault that a man knows he does so; but the truth is, that his mind is too small for the ability necessary to behold what is amiable and worthy of approbation, and this he attempts to hide by a disregard to everything above what he is able to relish. A yet earlier essay, bearing somewhat upon the same matter, is in No. 92: where, contrary to the common notion, Steele declares his belief that the love of praise dwells most in great and heroic spirits; and that it is those who best deserve it who have generally the most exquisite relish of it. But this also induces a corresponding sensibility to reproach, which is the common weakness of a virtuous man; and for which the only cure is, that they should fix their regard exclusively upon what is strictly true, in relation to their advantage as well as diminution. "For if I am pleased "with commendation which I do not deserve, I shall "from the same temper be concerned at scandal I do not "deserve. But he that can think of false applause with "as much contempt as false detraction, will certainly be prepared for all adventures, and will become all occa"sions." Let us add from an essay on impudence, in No. 168, as one of many admirable thoughts conceived in the same noble spirit, that he notes it as a mean want of fortitude in a good man not to be able to do a virtuous action with as much confidence as an impudent fellow does an ill one.

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For our next examples, shall we turn to the innumerable little sketches of individual character by which these and other truths are so abundantly and pleasantly enforced, are vivified, and put into action? No unattainable impossible virtues, no abstract speculative vices, occupy

the page of Steele. As promptly as his heart or knowledge suggests, his imagination creates; his fancies crowd in bodily form into life; everything with him becomes actual, and to all his airy nothings he has given lasting habitation and a name.

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Shall we take a lesson against over-easiness in temper from the crafty old cit in No. 176, who, speaking of a well-natured young fellow set up with a good stock in Lombard-street, "I I will," says he, " lay no more money in his hands, for he never denied me anything"? Or shall we introduce Tom Spindle from No. 47, who takes to his bed on hearing that the French tyrant won't sign the treaty of peace, he having just written a most excellent poem on that subject? Or, from the proof in No. 173 that by the vanity of silly fathers half the only'time for education is lost, shall we make acquaintance with the Shire-lane pastrycook who has an objection to take his son from his learning, but is resolved, as soon as he has a little smattering in the Greek, to put him apprentice to a soap-boiler?1 Or

1 This paper exposes with so much force an absurdity still prevalent in education, that it will be worth while to subjoin a few passages. Steele is laughing at the ridiculous way of preferring the useless to the useful in what is taught to children of the middle class, by devoting so much of the time, which, to fall in with their ways and prospects in life, should be spent in learning the useful arts, to the over-cramming of latin and greek, and those kind of accomplishments which they only acquire to forget, or to find utterly useless in their after career. It arises, he says, "from the vanity of "parents who are wonderfully delight"ed with the thought of breeding their "children to accomplishments, which "they believe nothing but want of the 66 same care in their own fathers pre"vented themselves from being mas"ters of. Thus it is, that the part of "life most fit for improvement is "generally employed in a method "against the bent of nature; and a "lad of such parts as are fit for an

or three years of his time wholly "taken up in knowing how well "Ovid's mistress became such a dress, "how such a nymph for her cruelty

'was changed into such an animal, "and how it is made generous in "Eneas to put Turnus to death:

gallantries that can no more come "within the occurrences of the lives "of ordinary men, than they can be "relished by their imaginations. "However, still the humour goes on "from one generation to another; "and the pastrycook here in the "lane, the other night, told me he "would not yet take away his son "from his learning; but has re"solved as soon as he had a little "smattering in the Greek to put "him apprentice to a soap-boiler. "These wrong beginnings determine our success in the world; and when

our thoughts are originally falsely "bitssed, their agility and force do "but carry us the further out of our