at Lord Sunderland's office, with his best periwig and new shoes in the coach-box, and they have a cheerful drive together. Not many days later, just as he is going to dine with Lord Halifax, he has to inclose her a guinea for her pocket. She has driven in her chariot-and-four to Hampton-court on the Tuesday, and on the Thursday he sends her a small quantity of tea she was much in want of. On the day when he had paid Addison back his first thousand pounds, he incloses for her immediate uses a guinea and a half. The day before he and "her favourite " Mr. Addison are going to meet some great men of the State, he sends her a quarter of a pound of black tea, and the same quantity of green. The day before he goes into his last attendance at Court upon Prince George, he conveys to her a sum so small, that he can only excuse it by saying he has kept but half as much in his own pocket. And a few days after Mr. Addison has taken him in a coachand-four to dine with his sister and her husband, he tells his dearest Prue that he has despatched to her seven pennyworth of walnuts, at five a penny; the packet containing which he opens with much gravity before it goes, to inform her that since the invoice six walnuts have been abstracted.

In that humorous touch, not less than in the change from his "dearest Molly," to his "dearest Prue," by which latter name he always in future called her, we get glimpses of the character of Mrs. Richard Steele. That she had unusual graces both of mind and person, so to have fascinated a man like her husband, may well be assumed; but here we may also see something of the defects and demerits that accompanied them. She seems to have been thrifty and prudent of everything that told against him (as in keeping every scrap of his letters), but by no means remarkably so in other respects. Clearly also, she gave herself the most capricious and prudish airs; and quite astonishing is the success with which she appears to have exacted of him, not only an amount of personal devotion unusual in an age much the reverse of

chivalrous, but accounts the most minute of all he might be doing in her absence. He thinks it hard, he says in one letter, that because she is handsome she will not behave herself with the obedience that people of worse features do, but that he must be continually giving her an account of every trifle and minute of his time; yet he does it nevertheless. In subjoining some illustrations on this point from their first year of marriage, let us not fail to observe how characteristically the world has treated such a record. If Mr. Steele's general intercourse with his wife had been in keeping with the customary habits of the age, he would have had no need to make excuses or apologies of any kind; yet these very excuses, an exception that should prove the rule, are in his case taken as a rule to prove against him the exception.

He meets a schoolfellow from India, and he has to write to the dearest being on earth to pardon him if she does not see him till eleven o'clock. He has to dine at the gentlemen-ushers' table at Court, and he sends his adorable ruler a messenger to bring him back her orders. He cannot possibly come home to dinner, and he writes to tell his dear dear wife that he cannot. He "lay last night "at Mr. Addison's," and he has to tell the dear creature the how and the why, and all about the papers they were preparing for the press. A friend stops him as he is going home, and carries him off to Will's, whereon he sends a messenger, at eleven at night, to tell her it is a Welsh acquaintance of hers, and that they are only drinking her health, and that he will be with her "within a pint of "wine." If, on another occasion, he has any fear of the time of his exact return, he sends a special despatch to tell her to go to bed. When any interesting news reaches him for his Gazette, he sends it off at once to her. From the midst of his proofs at the office, he is continually writing to her. When, at the close of a day of hard work, he has gone to dine with Addison at Sandy-end, he snatches a little time from eating while the others are busy at it at the table, to tell her he is "yours, yours,

66 ever, ever." He sends her a letter for no other purpose than to tell his dear, dear Prue, that he is sincerely her fond husband. He has a touch of the gout, and exasperates it by coming down stairs to celebrate her first birthday since their wedding; but it is his comfort, he tells her mother, as he hobbles about on his crutches, to see his darling little wife dancing at the other end of the

room.

When Lord Sunderland orders him to attend at council, he sends a special note to warn Prue of the uncertainty of his release. When, in May 1708, Mr. Addison is chosen member for Lostwithiel, and he is obliged, with some persons concerned, to go to him immediately, he has to write to acquaint her with that fact. He will write from the Secretary's office at seven in the evening, to tell her he hopes to be richer next day'; and again he will write at half-past ten the same night, to assure her he is then going very soberly to bed, and that she shall be the last thing in his thoughts as he does so, as well as the first next morning. Next morning he tells her she was not, he is sure, so soon awake as he was for her, desiring upon her the blessing of God. He writes to her as many letters in one day as there are posts, or stage-coaches, to Hampton-court; and then he gets Jervas the painter to fling another letter for her over their gardenwall, on passing there at night to his own house. He lets her visit his Gazette office, nay, is glad of visits at such a place, he tells her, from so agreeable a person as herself; and when her gay dress comes fluttering in, and with it "the beautifulest object his eyes can rest upon," he forgets all his troubles. And if charming words could enrich what they accompanied, of priceless value must have been the guineas, the five guineas, the two guineas, the ten shillings, the five shillings, they commended to her. He has none of Sir Bashful Constant's scruples in confessing that he is in love with his wife. His life is bound up with her; he values nothing truly but as she is its partaker; he is but what she makes him; with the strictest fidelity and love, with the utmost kindness and

duty, with every dictate of his affections, with every pulse of his heart, he is her passionate adorer, her enamoured husband. To which the measure of her return, in words at least, may perhaps be taken from the fact, that he has more than once to ask her to "write him word" that she shall really be overjoyed when they meet.

The tone of her letters is indeed often a matter of complaint with him, and more often a theme for loving banter and pleasant raillery. What does her dissatisfaction amount to, he asks her on one occasion, but that she has a husband who loves her better than his life, and who has a great deal of troublesome business out of the pain of which he removes the dearest thing alive? Her manner of writing, he says to her on some similar provocation, might to another look like neglect and want of love; but he will not understand it so, for he takes it only to be the uneasiness of a doating fondness which cannot bear his absence without disdain. She may think what she pleases, again he tells her, but she knows she has the best husband in the world. On a particular letter filled with her caprices reaching him, he says of course he must take his portion as it runs without repining, for he considers that good nature, added to the beautiful form God had given her, would make a happiness too great for human life. But, be it lightly or gravely expressed, the feeling in which all these little strifes and contentions close, on his part, still is that there are not words to express the tenderness he has for her; that lore is too harsh a word; that if she knew how his heart aches when she speaks an unkind word to him, and springs with joy when she smiles upon him, he is sure she would be more eager to make him happy like a good wife, than to torment him like a peevish beauty.

Nevertheless there are differences, more rare, which the peevish beauty will push into positive quarrels ; and from these his kind heart suffers much. The first we trace some eight months after the marriage (we limit all our present illustrations, we should remark, to the first year

and a half of their wedded life), when we find him trying to court her into good humour after it, and protesting that two or three more such differences will despatch him quite. On another occasion he knows not, he says, what she would have him do; but all that his fortune will compass he promises that she shall always enjoy, and have nobody near her that she does not like, unless haply he should himself be disapproved for being so devotedly her obedient husband. At yet another time he tells her he shall make it the business of his life to make her easy and happy; and he is sure her cool thoughts will tell her that it is a woman's glory to be her husband's friend and companion, and not his sovereign director. On the day following this he takes a higher tone. She has saucily told him that their little dispute has been far from a trouble to her, to which he gravely replies, that to him it has been the greatest affliction imaginable: and since she has twitted him with the judgment of the world, his answer must be, that he shall never govern his actions by it, but by the rules of morality and right reason; and so he will have her understand, that, though he loves her better than the light of his eyes, or the life-blood in his heart, yet he will not have his time or his will, on which her interests as well as his depend, under any direction but his own. Upon this a great explosion appears to have followed; and almost the only fragment we possess of her writing is a confession of error consequent upon it, which so far is curiously characteristic of what we believe her nature to have been, that while, in language which may somewhat explain the secret of her fascination over him, it gives even touching expression to her love and her contrition, it yet also contrives, in the very act of penitence, to plant another thorn. She begs his pardon if she has offended him, and she prays God to forgive him for adding to the sorrow of a heavy heart, which is above all sorrow but for his sake. This he is content to put aside by a very fervent assurance that there is not that thing on earth, except his honour, and that dignity which every