season of the year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of a tender constitution in any other.

"There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the Flutter of a Fan: there is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan; insomuch, that if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes.”

Not content with satirising the ladies of his own generation, he carries his cynical raillery of the sex into imaginary generations before the Flood. In his papers on the loves of Shalum and Hilpah, the humour receives a satirical turn from the imputation of unworthy motives to Hilpah.

Besides the redeeming graces of expression, two things may be urged in extenuation of the malicious or satirical basis of Addison's wit. First, his ridicule is not personal; it is aimed at what the author takes to be vice, folly, or bad taste, not at an actual offender. Secondly, "it is justly observed by Tickell that he employed wit on the side of virtue and religion."

Melody.-A good deal of Johnson's panegyric of Addison's style is really the picture of an ideal to which, in his opinion, Addison approaches; but many of the particulars are happy, and none more so than this-that "it was his principal endeavour to avoid all harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends too much to the language of conversation." The melodious flow of the diction is a very striking quality of our author's style; and doubtless his endeavour after this beauty accounts for many of his sins against precision. In the Appendix to Bain's Rhetoric,' a passage is analysed with a view to this quality, and it is traced to the fewness of abrupt consonants or harsh combinations, the variety of the vowels, and "the rhythinical construction, or the alternation of long and short, emphatic and unemphatic sounds."

3

Taste.-Elegance is the ruling quality of Addison's style. He sacrifices everything to the unctuous junction of syllables, and the W harmonious combination of Ideas. The pedantic scholarship of Taylor, the rough vigour and profusion of Barrow, are illustrative by extreme contrast. But we might go the round of our great writers without finding such another example of superficial smoothness. We have remarked the studied refinement of Temple; but in Temple refinement is united with majesty and depth of feeling. Cowley's diction is studied, and his thoughts light and trivial; but as compared with Addison, his rhythm is often awkward and stumbling, his fancy exuberant, and his ridicule bare and undisguised.

The following is at once an illustration of his elegant treatment

of a theme that might easily be made pedantic, and an example of the principles that guided his own composition:—

"Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful. A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round it, and darts a lustre through a whole sentence. These different kinds of allusion are but so many different manners of similitude, and that they may please the imagination, the likeness ought to be very exact, or very agreeable, as we love to see a picture where the resemblance is just, or the posture and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this respect; great scholars are apt to fetch their comparisons and allusions from the sciences in which they are most conversant, so that a man may see the compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent subject. I have read a discourse upon love which none but a profound chymist could understand, and have heard many a sermon that should only have been preached before a congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your men of business usually have recourse to such instances as are too mean and familiar. They are for drawing the reader into a game of chess or tennis, or for leading him from shop to shop, in the cant of particular trades and employments. It is certain there may be found an infinite variety of very agreeable allusions in both these kinds; but for the generality, the most entertaining ones lie in the works of nature, which are obvious to all capacities, and more delightful than what is to be found in arts and sciences."

SIR RICHARD STEELE, 1675-1729.

"When Mr Addison was abroad," writes Thackeray, "and after he came home in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabby lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk." Steele, born in Dublin, of English parents, was also a Charterhouse boy and an Oxonian, his college being Merton. A gay, impetuous youth, overflowing with wit and good-nature, and fond of company, he yet gained some celebrity as a scholar, and before he graduated had written a poem and a comedy. When he had to choose a profession he fixed upon the army; and his friends refusing to buy him a commission, he enlisted as a private in the Horse Guards. His wit making him a general favourite, he had, by the year 1701, been promoted to the rank of captain in the Fusiliers. He is said to have passed a dissipated and reckless life: he "probably wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy, in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern-fled from many a bailiff." But if this debauchery was as bad as has been represented, in the midst of it all he kept up his literary tastes. 1701 he published "The Christian Hero,' a curious production for a dissipated officer, and an indication of the sinning and repenting character of the man. In the following year he produced a comedy, 'The Funeral, or, Grief à la Mode,' a satire on hired

In

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

mourners and will-making lawyers. By the death of King William he lost his chances of promotion in the army, and turned all his powers to literature and politics. In 1703 appeared his comedy of The Tender Husband; in 1704 the 'Lying Lovers,' a piece too tame and moralising to succeed on the stage of those days. About 1705, through the influence of his friend Addison, he was appointed Gazetteer-"the lowest Minister of State," as he faceWe shall not follow the windings of his tiously styled himself. fortunes chronologically. His literary projects were 'The Tatler,' "The Spectator,' 'The Guardian,' and 'The Lover,' already mentioned; The Englishman' and 'The Crisis,' 1714 (two intense political pamphlets, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons); 'The Reader,' 1714, also political, like Addison's 'Whig Examiner,' an opposition print to the Tory Examiner'; occasional political and anti-Popery tracts; a collection of his political writings, 1715; 'The Town-Talk,' 'The Tea-Table,' 'The Chit-Chat,' short-lived periodicals, 1716; in 1719 'The Plebeian,' which was opposed by Addison in the 'Old Whig,' and produced a quarrel between the two friends; 'The Theatre,' a periodical, 1719-20, under the feigned name of Sir John Edgar; The ConHis Government appointscious Lovers,' his best comedy, 1722. ments were, after the Gazetteership, Commissionership of Stamps, 1710; Surveyorship of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court, and Governorship of the Royal Company of Comedians, 1715; Commissionership of Forfeited Estates in Scotland, 1717.

His personal appearance would seem to have been rather unfavourable. The satirical portrait by John Dennis is said by Thackeray to bear "a dreadful resemblance" to the originalin Ireland, is of a middle "Sir John Edgar, of the county of stature, broad shoulders, thick legs, a shape like the picture of somebody over a farmer's chimney-a short chin, a short nose, a short forehead, a broad flat face, and a dusky countenance."

As we may judge from this picture, he possessed great bodily energy, and his constitutional vigour supported him in the heartiest enjoyment of life. Living in a whirl of social dissipation, he yet, as Gazetteer, as editor of periodicals, and in other offices, went through a great deal of worrying business; and in the hurry of his active life was constantly snatching moments to despatch little Of these affectionate billets, Mrs notes to his "dearest Prue."

Steele preserved no less than 400.

It is the

His intellect was of a rougher cast than his friend's. emotional character of the man that renders him interesting, and entitles him to a good secondary place among our great writers of prose. Probably a large fraction of his energy was spent in the rollicking enjoyment of existence; otherwise his rank would have been higher than it is. His contributions to the 'Spectator' and

allied periodicals take their distinction from his prevailing tenderness of heart and wide acquaintance with human life. To him these papers owe their pathos, their humour, and their extraordinary variety of characters. He loved company, and the quickness of his sympathies made him constantly alive to differences in the personalities of his companions.

His habits were irregular; he had not the familiar routine and select circle of Addison. He was under no necessity of economising his energies; he seems to have been capable of bearing practically any amount of work and dissipation. He had small power of resisting the impulses of emotion. His plans for the day were easily disconcerted by the entrance of a good companion. In politics, when any of his darling principles seemed to be in danger, he rushed to the rescue without regard to consequences.

In this place we shall remark upon and exemplify chiefly his pathos and his humour. His characters are really artistic creations, and belong to poetry and fiction.

On the other qualities of his style we remark cursorily. In command of words he is not equal to Addison; his choice is much less felicitous. His sentence composition is irregular and careless, often ungrammatical: writing in the character of a Tatler, he thought it incumbent to assume "incorrectness of style, and an air of common speech' -a style very agreeable to his own inclinations. He has not the polished and felicitous melody of Addison. His language and sentiments are much more glowing and extravagant; his papers may be distinguished by this feature alone.

The chief differences between his own style and Addison's are well summed up by himself "The elegance, purity, and correctness in his writings were not so much my purpose as, in any intelligible manner as I could, to rally all those singularities of human life, through the different professions and characters in it, which obstruct anything that was truly good and great."

Pathos.-Steele is one of the most touching of our writers. Himself of a nature the reverse of melancholy, he yet at certain seasons "resolved to be sorrowful"; and when the sorrowful mood was upon him, the incidents that he recalled or imagined were of the most heartrending character. The kind of pathos that we find in him would not be pathetic at all, in a poetic sense, to the more delicate order of sensibilities: it would be a pain, and not an æsthetic pleasure. There are not many of these affecting papers in either Tatler,' 'Spectator,' or 'Guardian.' Most of those that do appeal to our tender sensibilities lay before us situations of extreme anguish. We shall quote two examples, in which the extreme painfulness of the incidents is relieved only

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

by the exhibition of extreme devotedness. The first is the story of Unnion and Valentine ('Tatler,' No. 5):

"At the siege of Namur by the Allies, there were in the ranks, of the company commanded by Captain Pincent, in Colonel Frederick Hamilton's regiment, one Unnion, a corporal, and one Valentine, a private centinel; there happened between these two men a dispute about a matter of love, which, upon some aggravations, grew to an irreconcileable hatred. Unnion, being the officer of Valentine, took all opportunities even to strike his rival, and profess the spite and revenge which moved him to it. The centinel bore it without resistance, but frequently said he would die to be revenged of that tyrant. They had spent whole months thus, one injuring, the other complaining; when, in the midst of this rage towards each other, they were commanded upon the attack of the castle, where the corporal received a shot in the thigh, and fell; the French pressing on, and he expecting to be trampled to death, called out to his enemy, Ah, Valentine! can you leave me here?' Valentine immediately ran back, and in the midst of a thick fire of the French, took the corporal upon his back, and brought him through all that danger, as far as the abbey of Salsine, where a cannon-ball took off his head: his body fell under his enemy whom he was carrying off. Unnion immediately forgot his wound, rose up, tearing his hair, and then threw himself upon the bleeding carcase, crying, 'Ah, Valentine! was it for me, who have so barbarously used thee, that thou hast died? I will not live after thee!' He was not by any means to be forced from the body, but was removed with it bleeding in his arms, and attended with tears by all When he was brought to a tent, their comrades who knew their enmity. his wounds were dressed by force; but the next day, still calling upon Valentine, and lamenting his cruelties to him, he died in the pangs of remorse and despair."

This story is given "in order to inspire the love and admiration of worthy actions," and "as an instance of the greatness of spirit in the lowest of her Majesty's subjects." The next is a deathbed scene, from an account of a family where Mr Bickerstaff was very intimate (Tatler,' Nos. 95, 114):

"I went up directly to the room where she lay, and was met at the entrance by my friend, who, notwithstanding his thoughts had been composed a little before, at the sight of me turned away his face and wept. The little family of children renewed their expressions of their sorrow acThe eldest cording to their several ages and degrees of understanding. daughter was in tears, busied in attendance upon her mother; others were kneeling about the bedside; and what troubled me most was, to see a little boy, who was too young to know the reason, weeping only because his sisters did. The only one in the room who seemed resigned and comforted was the dying person. At my approach to the bedside, she told me, with a Take care of your friend--do not low broken voice, 'This is kindly done. She had before taken leave of her husband and children, in go from him.' a manner proper for so solemn a parting, and with a gracefulness peculiar to a woman of her character. My heart was torn in pieces, to see the husband on one side suppressing and keeping down the swellings of his grief, for fear of disturbing her in her last moments; and the wife, even at that time, concealing the pains she endured, for fear of increasing his affliction. She kept her eyes upon him for some moments after she grew speechless, In the moment of her departure, my and soon after closed them for ever.