House, and a patron of the lad's family. The boy was an orphan, and described, twenty years after, with a sweet pathos and simplicity, some of the earliest recollections of a life which was destined to be chequered by a strange variety of good and evil fortune.

I am afraid no good report could be given by his masters. and ushers of that thick-set, square-faced, black-eyed, softhearted little Irish boy. He was very idle. He was whipped deservedly a great number of times. Though he had very good parts of his own, he got other boys to do his lessons for him, and only took just as much trouble as should enable him to scuffle through his exercises, and by good fortune escape the flogging-block. One hundred and fifty years after, I have myself inspected, but only as an amateur, that instrument of righteous torture still existing, and in occasional use, in a secluded private apartment of the old Charterhouse School; and have no doubt it is the very counterpart, if not the ancient and interesting machine itself, at which poor Dick Steele submitted himself to the tormentors.

Besides being very kind, lazy, and good-natured, this boy went invariably into debt with the tart-woman; ran out of bounds, and entered into pecuniary, or rather promissory, engagements with the neighbouring lollipop vendors and piemen-exhibited an early fondness and capacity for drinking mum and sack, and borrowed from all his comrades who had money to lend. I have no sort of authority for the statements here made of Steele's early life; but if the child is father of the man, the father of young Steele of Merton, who left Oxford without taking a degree, and entered the Life Guards-the father of Captain Steele of Lucas's Fusiliers, who got his company through the patronage of my Lord Cutts-the father of Mr. Steele the Commissioner of Stamps, the editor of the Gazette, the Tatler, and Spectator, the expelled Member of Parliament, and the author of the "Tender Husband" and the "Conscious Lovers;" if man and boy resembled each other, Dick Steele the schoolboy must have been one of the most generous, good-for-nothing, amiable little creatures that ever conjugated the verb tupto, I beat, tuptomai, I am whipped, in any school in Great Britain.

Almost every gentleman who does me the honour to hear me will remember that the very greatest character which he has seen in the course of his life, and the person to whom he has looked up with the greatest wonder and reverence, was the head boy at his school. The schoolmaster himself hardly inspires such an awe. The head boy construes as well as the schoolmaster himself. When he begins to speak the hall is hushed, and every little boy listens. He writes off copies of Latin verses as melodiously as Virgil. He is good-natured, and, his own masterpieces achieved, pours out other copies of verses for other boys with an astonishing ease and fluency; the idle ones only trembling lest they should be discovered on giving in their exercises and whipped because their poems were too good. I have seen great men in my time, but never such a great one as that head boy of my childhood: we all thought he must be Prime Minister, and I was disappointed on meeting him in after life to find he was no more than six feet high.

Dick Steele, the Charterhouse gownboy, contracted such an admiration in the years of his childhood, and retained it faithfully through his life. Through the school and through the world, whithersoever his strange fortune led this erring, wayward, affectionate creature, Joseph Addison was always his head boy. Addison wrote his exercises. Addison did his best themes. He ran on Addison's messages; fagged for him and blacked his shoes: to be in Joe's company was Dick's greatest pleasure; and he took a sermon or a caning from his monitor with the most boundless reverence, acquiescence, and affection.*

Steele found Addison a stately College Don at Oxford, and himself did not make much figure at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of a friend, the humble fellow burned there; and some verses, which I dare say are as

* "Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then, used to play a little upon him; but he always took it well."-POPE. Spence's Anecdotes.

"Sir Richard Steele was the best natured creature in the world: even in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to please and be pleased."-Dr. YOUNG. Spence's Anecdotes.

sublime as other gentlemen's compositions at that age; but being smitten with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in the Duke of Ormond's troop -the second-and, probably, with the rest of the gentlemen of his troop, "all mounted on black horses with white feathers in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced," marched by King William, in Hyde Park, in November 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. "The Guards had just got their new clothes," the London Post said: "they are extraordinary grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world." But Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about himself, his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas's Fusiliers, getting his company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and to whom he dedicated his work called the "Christian Hero." As for Dick, whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink, and in all the follies of the town; it is related that all the officers of Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.* And in

* "The gaiety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene between two brilliant sisters, from his comedy The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode. Dick wrote this, he said, from "a necessity of enlivening his character," which, it seemed, the Christian Hero had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the eyes of readers of that pious piece.

[Scene draws and discovers LADY CHARLOTTE, reading at a table,-LADY HARRIET, playing at a glass, to and fro, and viewing herself.]

"L. Ha. Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [looking at herself as she speaks] as sit staring at a book which I know you can't attend.- Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he pleases, but there's no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do but look on me, now, and deny it if you can. "L. Ch. You are the maddest girl [smiling].

"L. Ha. Look ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing. [Looking over Charlotte.]-Oh! I see his name as plain as you do—F-r-a-n, Fran, c-i-s, cis, Francis, 'tis in every line of the book.

“L. Ch. [rising]. It's in vain, I see, to mind anything in such impertinent

truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit, though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele says of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. He beat his breast and cried most piteously when he did repent: but as soon as crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. In that charming

company-but, granting 'twere as you say, as to my Lord Hardy-'tis more excusable to admire another than oneself.

"L. Ha. No, I think not,-yes, I grant you, than really to be vain of one's person, but I don't admire myself,-Pish! I don't believe my eyes to have that softness. [Looking in the glass.] They a'n't so piercing: no, 'tis only stuff, the men will be talking.-Some people are such admirers of teethLord, what signifies teeth! [Showing her teeth.] A very black-a-moor has as white a set of teeth as I.-No, sister, I don't admire myself, but I've a spirit of contradiction in me: I don't know I'm in love with myself, only to rival the

men.

"L. Ch. Ay, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev'n of that rival of his, your dear self.

"L. Ha. Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that insolent intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes,

'The public envy and the public care,'

I shan't be so easily catched-I thank him-I want but to be sure I should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider whether he should depart this life or not.

“L. Ch. Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your humour does not at all become you.

"L. Ha. Vanity! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere than you wise folks: all your life's an art.-Speak your soul.-Look you there. -[Hauling her to the glass.] Are you not struck with a secret pleasure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony in your shape, that promptitude in your mien ?

L. Ch. Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to correct it.

L. Ha. Pshaw! Pshaw! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale, 'tis too soon for me to think at that rate.

L. Ch. They that think it too soon to understand themselves will very soon find it too late.-But tell me honestly, don't you like Campley?

"L. Ha. The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did not think of getting me so easily.—Oh, I hate a heart I can't break when I please. -What makes the value of dear china, but that 'tis so brittle ?-were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in your closet.”—The Funeral, Oct. 2nd.

"We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele's]; there being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom his Tatlers had not made better by his recommendation of them."-Cibber.