STEELE, OR CONGREVE P
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
cannot regret the trouble I have taken and given in the question of authorship at issue between the respective champions of Congreve and of Steele,. since it has been the means of eliciting—at last—what seems a more than plausible solution of the difficulty. The only point remaining which still appears to me inexplicable is that so ripe and good a scholar as was Leigh Hunt in this branch of English literature should have overlooked the apparently conclusive evidence now alleged by Mr. McCarthy in favour of a writer whom he regarded with such sympathetic tenderness of admiration, and in disproof of the- claim—so long undisputed, yet seemingly so easy to refute—on behalf of the greater author whose genius and disposition he was less qualified to appreciate ; of whom, indeed, he could hardly bring himself to speak without something like an avowal of
distaste or antipathy.—I am, Sir, &c., A. C. SWINBURNE.
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