3

Then turn'd the knight, and to his hall again
Soft pacing, sought of Peace the mossy cell;
Yet down his cheeks the gems of pity fell,
To see the helpless wretches that remain'd,

There left through delves and deserts dire to yell;
Amaz'd, their looks with pale dismay were stain'd,
And spreading wide their hands, they meek repentance feign'd.

But, ah! their scornèd day of grace was past;
For (horrible to tell) a desert wild

Before them stretch'd, bare, comfortless, and vast,
With gibbets, bones, and carcases defil'd.
There nor trim field nor lively culture smil'd,

Nor waving shade was seen, nor mountain fair;
But sands abrupt on sands lay loosely pil'd,

Thro' which they floundering toil'd with painful care, Whilst Phoebus smote them sore, and fir'd the cloudless air.

Then, varying to a joyless land of bogs,

The sadden'd country a gray waste appear'd,

Where naught but putrid streams and noisome fogs
Forever hung on drizzly Auster's beard;

Or else the ground by piercing Caurus sear'd,

Was jagg'd with frost, or heap'd with glazed snow:
Thro' these extremes a ceaseless round they steer'd,
By cruel fiends still hurried to and fro,

Gaunt Beggary, and Scorn, with many hell-hounds moe.
The first was with base dunghill rags yclad,
Tainting the gale in which they flutter'd light;
Of morbid hue, his features sunk and sad;
His hollow eyne shook forth a sickly light;
And o'er his lank jaw-bone, in piteous plight,
His black rough beard was matted rank and vile ;

Direful to see! an heart-appalling sight!

Meantime foul scurf and blotches him defile, And dogs, where'er he went, still barked all the while.

The other was a fell despightful fiend:

Hell holds none worse in baleful bower below;
By pride, and wit, and rage, and rancor, keen'd;
Of man alike, if good or bad, the foe;

With nose upturn'd, he always made a show,
As if he smelt some nauseous scent; his eye
Was cold and keen, like blast from boreal snow,
And taunts he casten forth most bitterly.

Such were the twain that off drove this ungodly fry.

E'en so thro' Brentford town, a town of mud,
An herd of bristly swine is prick'd along;

The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud,

Still grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous song,
And oft they plunge themselves the mire among;
But
aye the ruthless driver goads them on,
And aye, of barking dogs the biter throng
Makes them renew their unmelodious moan;

Ne ever find they rest from their unresting fone.

Stories by Sir Richard Steele.

NOW FIRST COLLECTED.

THESE stories, with the exception of two, compose the entire set contributed by this great master of character and sentiment to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. They are remarkable for going to the heart of their subjects with a comprehensive brevity; and are just such stories as a man might tell over his wine to a party of friends. Addison's stories are of a more fanciful sort, and more elegant in the style; some of them are charming; but they are pieces of writing-these are relations. They have all the warmth as well as brevity of unpremeditated accounts, given as occasion called them forth. Steele, indeed, may be said to have always talked, rather than written; and hence the beauties as well as defects of his style, which is apt to be too carelessly colloquial.

Steele, like Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith-in fact, like almost all our most entertaining wits and novelists, not excepting (on a great scale) Sir Walter Scott himself-was an impulsive and imprudent man, not attentive enough to his outlays, and too sanguine about his income. He warranted, perhaps, the remonstrances of his staider friend Addison; and was more touched than comforted by them, from feeling that they were useless. The remonstrances (if they were of the harsh and practical nature they are said to have been), would have come with less ungraciousness from a more genial and generous man; that is to say, supposing such a man would have thought them advisable. Objections to men like Steele come indeed with grace from none but

generous persons, liable to his temptations, and superior to them. Such persons have made such objections, though not unaccompanied with assumptions that might have been spared; probably in consequence of the re-action in Steele's favor in the writings of Hazlitt and others. The objections, however, deserve to be respectfully replied to; and the just reply, we think, is, that you must consider every writer and every man as the result of all the circumstances that have made him what he is, bodily and mental, and then judge whether that result is a gain and pleasure to the world, and a compensation for the less allowable of those circumstances. For a man cannot be one man and another too; cannot be Steele and Addison both; at least we are not aware that any such person has been met with, however modified the varieties of their like may be. Would you have had no such thing as Steele's imprudence, and been content to lose the Tatler and the Guardian? as Fielding's, and been without Tom Jones and Amelia? as Smollett's, and had no Roderick Random or Humphrey Clinker? Or, if you say that Addison could have written, and did write, as good and humorous things as those, will you say that the others did not write with a difference from Addison; and with such a difference as the world strongly feels and highly delights in? You will grant this of course. What constitutes, then, the difference of Steele, of Fielding, and of Smollet, from such a writer as Addison? and could that difference have delighted us as it does, had it not resulted from the entire natures and circumstances of the men? Very foolish and very presumptuous, we grant, would it be in any given imprudent person to quote their example in his defence, even though he should turn out some day to have had warrant for it, or be regarded with indulgence meantime by such as think he has. Those who have nothing in them to justify such an exceptional consideration, come under another category altogether, whatever may be said in their excuse; and those who have something, must be content modestly to await the chance of its recognition, and to pay in the meantime the penalty of its drawbacks.

If there were no worse men in the world than Steele, what a planet we should have of it? Steele knew his own foibles as well as any man. He regretted, and made amends for them, and left posterity a name for which they have reason to thank and love him. Posterity thanks Addison too; but it can hardly be said to love him, even by the help of the good old knight Sir Roger, whom Steele invented for him.

Perhaps they would have loved him more, had he too confessed his faults; or even had he told them in what the only one consisted, at which he hinted when he sent for Gay on his death-bed, and asked his pardon for having done him some wrong. Steele asked pardon for wrong, long before he died. The last thing we hear of him is neither a solitary acknowledgment nor a Christian vaunt, but his sitting out of doors in his retirement, giving the village maidens prizes to contend for. He said modestly of his life-(far too modestly, for he was a loving husband and father, and a disinterested patriot), that . it " was but pardonable;" and in his beautiful effusion to the memory of his friend Estcourt the comedian, he expressed his gratitude to that honest mimic for having made him sensible of his defects, and taught him to care for nothing but the subjection of his will.

The reader will find the passage below.*

Truly curious was it, and lucky for the world that Dick Steele and Joseph Addison should have grown up together from childhood, and become the Beaumont and Fletcher of social ethics. But they had

* "What was peculiarly excellent in this memorable companion was, that in the accounts he gave of persons and sentiments he did not only hit the figure of their faces and manner of their gestures, but he would, in his narrations, fall into their way of thinking, and this when he recounted passages wherein men of the best wits were concerned, as well as such wherein were represented men of the lowest rank of understanding. It is certain as great an instance of self-love to a weakness, to be impatient of being mimicked, as any can be imagined. There were none but the vain, the formal, the proud, or those who were incapable of amending their faults, dreaded him; to others he was in the highest degree pleasing: and I do not know any satisfaction of any different kind I ever tasted so much, as having got over an impatience of seeing myself in the air he could put me when I had displeased him. It is indeed owing to his exquisite talent this way, more than any philosophy I could read on the subject, that my person is very little of my care; and it is indefferent to me what is said of my shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my address. It is to poor Estcourt I chiefly owe, that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing a diminution to me, but what argues a depravity of my will.

"I have been present with him among men of the most delicate taste the whole night, and have known him (for he saw it was desired) keep the discourse to himself the most part of it, and maintain his good-humor with a countenance and in a language so delightful, without offence to any person or thing upon earth, still preserving the distance his circumstances obliged him to; I say, I have seen him do all this in such a charming manner, that I am sure none of those I hint at will read this, without giving some sorrow for their abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter. I wish it were any honor to the pleasant creature's memory, that my eyes are too much suffused to let me go on