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"and therefore may speak my heart, and the vanity of it. "I know, and you are witness, that I have served the Royal Family with an unreservedness due only to "Heaven; and I am now (I thank my brother Whigs) "not possessed of twenty shillings from the favour of the "Court." But neither should we attempt to conceal that a man of a different temperament and more self-control would hardly at this time, after all the opportunities his own genius had opened to him, have needed the exercise, or have complained of the absence, of such "favour."

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So it was, however, and we must take the man even as he was, subject to all the remarks which duller men in his own day, or greater men since, may have thought themselves entitled to make upon him. Such remarks do not then seem to have troubled him very much, and perhaps his reputation may survive them now. On the day after his speech in the House of Commons interceding for mercy to the South Sea directors, Mr. William Whiston, for whom also he had interceded formerly when in straits hardly less difficult, met him at Button's. "Why, Sir "Richard," said the worthy man," they say you have been making a speech in the House for the South Sea direc"tors." Well," said he quietly, "they do say so." To which Whiston, who confesses that he had been a little nettled personally some time before by a ludicrous remark of Sir Richard's, made the somewhat illogical reply, "Then "how does this agree with your former writing against the "scheme?" "Mr. Whiston," rejoined Steele, "you can "walk on foot, and I can not." Of course the dull man tells the anecdote by way of showing that Steele could change his opinions for his interest, but that is not the construction any well-informed reader will put upon it. To look after his own interest at any time was the very last thing Steele ever thought of doing; and as to the matter in question, it was notorious that in speaking for Lord Stanhope and the other misguided men, he discharged himself only of a debt of kindness that could have no effect, save such as might be unfavourable, upon

his own fortune. It was simply his wit and good breeding that politely had declined debate, and left Mr. Whiston in enjoyment of his own sordid fancy.

Very far indeed from such admission as any such fancy would father on him, that he owed to the ministers the coach he rode in, are those repeated complaints at this very time of the utter absence of all ministers' favours, which might more wisely perhaps, with a little dignity and self-denial, have been spared. This we have already said, though we will not say that the complaints were altogether unjust. The Whigs treated Steele badly. They never sufficiently remembered the actual service he had rendered them and their cause when actual danger was abroad. Nor was he without ample justification for the statement he left on record against them in his Apologue of the husbandman and the bridge, with which the subject may be left also in these pages. There was, he said, a certain husbandman in a certain kingdom, who lived in a certain place under a certain hill, near a certain bridge. This poor man was a little of a scholar, being given to country learning, such as astrological predictions of the weather, and the like; and one night, in one of those musings of his about his house, he saw a party of soldiers belonging to a prince in enmity with his own, coming towards the bridge. Off he immediately ran, and drew up that part which is called the draw-bridge. Then calling his family, and getting his cattle together, he put forward his plough, behind that his stools, and his chairs behind them; and by this means stopped the march till it was day-light, when all the neighbouring lords and gentlemen, being roused by this time and thoroughly waked from sleep, were able to see the enemy as well as he. Hereupon, with undoubted gallantry and spirit, they crowded on to oppose the foe, and in their zeal and hurry, pitching our poor husbandman over-bridge, and his goods after him, they most effectually kept out the invaders. And a great mercy was that accident, for it was nothing less than the safety of the kingdom. Therefore ought no one, pursues the author of the Apologue,

to be discomfited from the public service, by what had happened to this rustic. For though he was neglected at the present, and every man said he was an honest fellow and no one's enemy but his own in exposing his all, and though nobody said he was every one's friend but his own, still the man had ever after the liberty, the invaluable liberty and privilege, that he, and no other but he and his family, should beg on the bridge in all times following. And he is begging on the bridge accordingly to this very hour.

It is not our desire to extenuate the failings of Sir Richard Steele, the begging on the bridge included; nor have we sought to omit them from this picture of his career. But his claim to have had more liberal consideration is quite apart from the question of whether he would himself have been likely very greatly to profit by it. We much doubt if he would. His genius, and the means then open to it, would itself have sufficed for all his wants, if in a worldly sense he could have been more true to it. But it was unhappily of the very essence of his character that any present social impression took, so far, the place of all previous moral resolutions; and that, bitterly as he had often felt the "shot of accident and "the dart of chance," he still thought them carelessly to be brushed aside by the smiling face and heedless hand. No man's projects for fortune had so often failed, yet none were so often renewed. Indeed the very 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. But such a man is no example of improvidence for others. Its ordinary warnings come within quite another class of cases; and, even in stating what is least to be commended in Steele, there is no need to omit what in his case will justify some exceptional consideration of it. At least we have the example of a bishop to quote, for as much good nature as we can spare.

Doctor Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, was a steady friend of Steele's, and consented ultimately to act as executor and guardian to his children. He accompanied him and Addison one day to a Whig celebration of King William's anniversary, and became rather grave to see the lengths at which the festivity threatened to arrive. In the midst of his misgivings, in came a humble but facetious Whig on his knees, with a tankard of ale in his hand; drank it off to the immortal memory; and then, still in his kneeling posture, managed to shuffle out. "Do laugh," whispered Steele to the bishop, next to whom he sat, "it's humanity "to laugh." For which humane episcopal exertion, carried to a yet higher tolerance in his own case at a later period of the evening, Steele sent him next morning this pleasant couplet,

"Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits,

All faults he pardons, though he none commits."

In another humorous anecdote of this date, Hoadly was also an actor with Steele. They went together on a visit to Blenheim, and sat next each other at a private play got up for the amusement of the great Duke, now lapsing into his last illness; when, as they both observed how well a love-scene was acted by the Duke's aide-de-camp, Captain Fishe, "I doubt this fish is flesh, my Lord," whispered Steele. On going away, they had to pass through an army of laced coats and ruffles in the hall; and as the Bishop was preparing the usual fees, "I have not "enough," cried his companion, and much to the episcopal discomposure proceeded to address the footmen, told them he had been much struck by the good taste with which he had seen them applauding in the right places up stairs, and invited them all gratis to Drury-lane theatre, to whatever play they might like to bespeak.

At this date it was, too, that young Savage, for whom Wilks had produced a comedy at Drury-lane, was kindly noticed and greatly assisted by Steele, though all the stories of him that were afterwards told to Johnson by

his ill-fated friend only showed how sorely poor Sir Richard needed assistance himself. He surprised Savage one day by carrying him in his coach to a tavern, and dictating a pamphlet to him, which he was sent out into Grub-street to sell; when he found that Sir Richard had only retired for the day to avoid his creditors, and had composed the pamphlet to pay his reckoning. Johnson also believed, on the same authority, that at one of Steele's great dinner parties he had been obliged to dress up in expensive liveries, and to turn to use as additional footmen, certain bailiffs whose attendance, though unavoidable, might not else have seemed so creditable.' It was from Savage, too, Johnson heard the story of the bond put in execution against his friend by Addison, which Steele mentioned, he said, with tears in his eyes. Not so, however, did Steele tell it to another friend, Benjamin Victor, who, before Savage's relation was made public, had told it again to Garrick. To Victor, Steele said that certainly his bond on some expensive furniture had been put in force; but that, from the letter he received with the surplus arising from the sale, he knew that Addison only intended a friendly warning against a manner of living altogether too costly, and that, taking it as he believed it to be meant, he met him afterwards with the same gaiety of temper he had always shown.

This story is not incredible, we think; and to invent, as Mr. Macaulay has done, another story in place of one so well authenticated, involved at least some waste of ingenuity. One may fairly imagine such an incident following not long after the accession of King George, when, in his new house in York-buildings, Steele gave an extravagant entertainment to some couple of hundred friends, and amused his guests with a series of dramatic