my wife." His breast seems to warm and his eyes to kindle when he meets with a good and beautiful woman, and it is with his heart as well as with his hat that he salutes her. About children, and all that relates to home, he is not less tender, and more than once speaks in apology of what he calls his softness. He would have been nothing without that delightful weakness. It is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It, like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders; and redeemed, like that, by his sweet and compassionate nature. We possess of poor Steele's wild and chequered life some of the most curious memoranda that ever were left of a man's biography.* *The Correspondence of Steele passed after his death into the possession of his daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife, Miss Scurlock, of Carmarthenshire. She married the Hon. John, afterwards third Lord Trevor. At her death, part of the letters passed to Mr. Thomas, a grandson of a natural daughter of Steele's; and part to Lady Trevor's next of kin, Mr. Scurlock. They were published by the learned Nichols from whose later edition of them, in 1809, our specimens are quoted. Here we have him, in his courtship — which was not a very long one: "To MRS. SCURLOCK. “Aug. 30, 1707. It is to my "MADAM, I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee-house, where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me, talking of money; while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love! Love which animates my heart, sweetens my humor, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. lovely charmer I owe, that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions; it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirer some similitude of the object admired. Thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, to that Heaven which made thee such; and join with me to implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the Author of love to bless the rites He has ordained — and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to His will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour to please Him and each other. "I am for ever your faithful servant, "RICH. STEELE." Some few hours afterwards, apparently, Mistress Scurlock received the obviously written later in the day: next one "Saturday night (Aug. 30, 1707). "DEAR, LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK, I have been in very good company, where your health, under the character of the woman I loved best, has been Most men's letters, from Cicero down to Walpole, or down to the great men of our own time, if you will, are doctored compositions, and written with an eye suspicious towards posterity. That dedication of Steele's to his wife is an artificial performance, possibly; at least, it is written with that degree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement for the House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele's to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could have been written but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair; they have all the often drunk; so that I may say that I am dead drunk for your sake; which is more than I die for you. - "To MRS. SCURLOCK. RICH. STEELE." "Sept. 1, 1707. "MADAM, It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business. As for me, all who speak to me find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. "A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Lisbon?' and I answered, 'She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know 'when I had last been at Hampton Court?' I replied, 'It will be on Tuesday come se'nnight.' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that my mind may be in some composure. O Love! 'A thousand torments dwell about thee, Yet who could live, to live without thee?' "Methinks I could write a volume to you; but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, "I am ever yours, "RICH. STEELE." Two days after this, he is found expounding his circumstances and prospects to the young lady's mamma. He dates from "Lord Sunderland's office, Whitehall"; and states his clear income at 1,0251. per annum. "I promise myself," says he, "the pleasure of an industrious and virtuous life, in studying to do things agreeable to you." They were married, according to the most probable conjectures, about the 7th Sept. There are traces of a tiff about the middle of the next month; she being prudish and fidgety, as he was impassioned and reckless. General progress, however, may be seen from the following notes. The "house in Bury Street, St. James's" was now taken. "To MRS. STEELE. "Oct. 16, 1707. "DEAREST BEING ON EARTH, Pardon me if you do not see me till eleven genuineness of conversations; they are as artless as a child's prattle, and as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the printing-office, where he is waiting for the proof-sheets of his Gazette, or his Tatler; some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to come to his wife "within a pint of wine," and where he has given a rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: some are composed in a high state of vinous excitement, when his head is flustered with burgundy, and his heart abounds with amorous warmth for his darling Prue: some are under the influence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning: some, alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have impounded him, o'clock, having met a school-fellow from India, by whom I am to be informed on things this night which expressly concern your obedient husband, RICH. STEELE." "To MRS. STEELE. "Eight o'clock, FOUNTAIN TAVERN, Oct. 22, 1707. "MY DEAR, I beg of you not to be uneasy; for I have done a great deal of business to-day very successfully, and wait an hour or two about my Gazette." "Dec. 22, 1707. "MY DEAR, DEAR WIFE, I write to let you know I do not come home to dinner, being obliged to attend some business abroad, of which I shall give you an account (when I see you in the evening), as becomes your dutiful and obedient husband.” "DEVIL TAVERN, TEMPLE BAR, Jan. 3, 1707-8. "DEAR PRUE, -I have partly succeeded in my business to-day, and inclose two guineas as earnest of more. Dear Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your welfare, and will never be a moment careless more. Your faithful husband," &c. "Jan. 14, 1707-8. "DEAR WIFE, Mr. Edgecombe, Ned Ask, and Mr. Lumley have desired me to sit an hour with them at the 'George,' in Pall Mall, for which I desire your patience till twelve o'clock, and that you will go to bed," &c. "GRAY'S INN, Feb. 3, 1708. "DEAR PRUE, If the man who has my shoemaker's bill calls, let him be answered that I shall call on him as I come home. I stay here in order to and where he is waiting for bail. You trace many years of the poor fellow's career in these letters. In September, 1707, from which day she began to save the letters, he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You have his passionate protestations to the lady; his respectful proposals to her mamma; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired was completed; his fond professions of contrition and promises of amendment, when, immediately after his marriage there began to be just cause for the one and need for the other. Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, "the third door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street," get Jonson to discount a bill for me, and shall dine with him for that end. He is expected at home every minute. "Your most humble, obedient servant," &c. "TENNIS-COURT, COFFEE-HOUSE, May 5, 1708. "DEAR WIFE, -I hope I have done this day what will be pleasing to you; in the meantime shall lie this night at a baker's, one Leg, over against the 'Devil Tavern,' at Charing Cross. I shall be able to confront the fools who wish me uneasy, and shall have the satisfaction to see thee cheerful and at ease. "If the printer's boy be at home, send him hither; and let Mrs. Todd send by the boy my night-gown, slippers, and clean linen. You shall hear from me early in the morning," &c. Dozens of similar letters follow, with occasional guineas, little parcels of tea, or walnuts, &c. In 1709 the Tatler made its appearance. The following curious note dates April 7th, 1710:— "I inclose to you ['Dear Prue'] a receipt for the saucepan and spoon, and a note of 231. of Lewis's, which will make up the 50l. I promised for your ensuing occasions. "I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to the pleasure I have in your person and society. I only beg of you to add to your other charms a fearfulness to see a man that loves you in pain and uneasiness, to make me as happy as it is possible to be in this life. Rising a little in a morning, and being disposed to a cheerfulness . . . . would not be amiss." In another, he is found excusing his coming home, being "invited to supper to Mr. Boyle's." "Dear Prue," he says on this occasion, “do not send after me, for I shall be ridiculous." and the next year he presented his wife with a country-house at Hampton. It appears she had a chariot and pair, and sometimes four horses: he himself enjoyed a little horse for his own riding. He paid, or promised to pay, his barber fifty pounds a year, and always went abroad in a laced coat and a large black buckled periwig, that must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was rather a well-to-do gentleman, Captain Steele, with the proceeds of his estates in Barbadoes (left to him by his first wife), his income as a writer of the Gazette, and his office of gentleman waiter to his Royal Highness Prince George. His second wife brought him a fortune too. But it is melancholy to relate, that with these houses and chariots and horses and income, the Captain was constantly in want of money, for which his beloved bride was asking as constantly. In the course of a few pages we begin to find the shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from the Captain, who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife," the beautifullest object in the world," as he calls her, and evidently in reply to applications of her own, which have gone the way of all waste paper, and lighted Dick's pipes, which were smoked a hundred and forty years ago he sends his wife now a guinea, then a halfguinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound of tea; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise that his darling Prue shall have some in a day or two: or a request, perhaps, that she will send over his night-gown and shaving-plate to the temporary lodging where the nomadic Captain is lying, hidden from the bailiffs. Oh! that a Christian hero and late Captain in Lucas's should be afraid of a dirty sheriff's officer! That the pink and pride of chivalry should turn pale before a writ! It stands to record in poor Dick's own handwriting the queer collection is preserved at the British Museum to this present day — that the rent of the nuptial house in Jermyn Street, sacred to unutterable tenderness and Prue, and three doors from Bury Street, was not paid until after the landlord had put in an execution on Captain Steele's furniture. Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, and, after deducting the sum in which his incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who wasn't in the least angry at Addison's summary proceeding, and I dare say was very glad of any sale or execution, the result of which was to give him a little ready money. Having a small house in Jermyn Street for which he couldn't pay, and a country |