BOOKS.
SELECTIONS FROM STEELE.*
THE place occupied by Steele in English literature is remark- able. Among the wits of the Queen Anne period his name is conspicuous. It is difficult to think of one of them without thinking also of him, and it is scarcely too much to assert that to the friendship of Steele is due the high literary reputation achieved by Addison. Yet it cannot be said that Sir Richard has himself produced any work in literature which deserves to be ranked with the masterpieces of the language. His writings have not the mark of greatness ; neither have they that subtle charm of style which in his friend Addison often redeems the commonplace. His composition is frequently careless and even slovenly, and some of his papers might be given by school- masters to their pupils to turn into good English. Yet "the sprightly father of the English essay," as Steele was termed, if we remember rightly, by Leigh Hunt, is, in spite of all deficiencies, one of the most delightful of essayists. All the good qualities of the man come out in these charming speci- mens of humour, of pathos, and of character-drawing. We see in them the heart of the writer, his tenderness, his susceptibility, his hatred of all that is mean and base, his aspirations after what is noble. Everybody knows, of course, that " dear, good, faulty Steele" did not live up to the standard he placed before him when he sat down to write. In one respect, indeed, he was as faulty as the virtuous Addison himself. It is on record—his own record, by the way—that he got " dead drunk " for the sake of the lady whom he afterwards married. Nor does marriage seem to have cared him in this respect, for he writes on one occasion to his " Dear, dearest Prue " to tell her that he is " too fuddled" to attend to her requests, and on another that he is " a little in drink," but at all times her faithful husband. Steele, it will be seen, was not a total abstainer. In an age when Cabinet Ministers fell drunk under the table, and a Prime Minister was not ashamed to enter the Queen's presence in an intoxicated state, a man of Steele's temperament was not likely always to practise the virtues which he well knew how to preach. Then it must be owned that—like his countryman, Goldsmith, whom in many respects he resembled—Sir Richard was culpably extravagant. Alas ! there was no Thrift Society in those days ; and Prue's husband, although he promised "always to have a quarter in advance," was seldom able to keep his word. According to Johnson, who had the story from Savage, Steele on one occasion invited a number of " the quality " to dinner, and, on surprise being expressed at the presence of several men in livery, he con- • Steele : Selections from the " Tatter," "Spectator," end "Guardian." Edited, with Introduction and Notes, br Austin Dobson. "Clarendon Press Series." Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1885.
fessed that they were bailiffs, " who had introduced themselves with an execution, and whom, since he could not send them away, he had thought it convenient to embellish with liveries, that they might do him credit while they stayed." This may not be a strictly true story, but it is characteristic or the man and of the time ; and while we blame Steele for errors no person ever acknowledged more frankly, we must remember that as a man of letters he did more, directly and indirectly, to reform the morals of the period, than any contemporary writer.
It was the fashion of the wits to sneer at women, to say with Pope that they had no character at all, and to treat them as if they had none. Almost all the literature of the period con- veys the impression that the chief end of woman was to maker herself attractive to man, not by her virtues or mental qualities, but by " puffs, powders, patches," by the size of her hoop or the flutter of her fan. "The love of pleasure and the love of sway" are said to be her ruling passions, and " every woman is at heart a rake." When the chief poet of the age could write thus of women it was inevitable that the small-verse men and prose- writers should follow suit. Even Addison, though writing always as a moralist, evidently regards the better half of man- kind as intellectually his inferiors. In his papers on " A Lady's Library," in the essay " On the Vanity and Frivolity of Woman," in the humorous essays On Party Patches," " On Ladies' Headdresses," and" On Extravagances in Female Dress," it is not difficult to note, under a vein of legitimate satire, a sense of male superiority. He seems to take it for granted that it is the nature of women to make fools of themselves, and that in spite of all his moralising they will continue to do so. Of Steele's papers in the Tatter and in the Spectator, a great number touch on the follies of the town, and of the fine ladies who were to be seen at balls and assemblies. More legitimate satire than that " On a fine Lady at Church," " On Fashionable Visiting," or " On the Battle of Eyes " it would be difficult to find ; but while laughing at the foibles of the sex, Steele shows also a chivalric sense of its dignity and purity. The most famous sentence he ever uttered proves this, and in all he wrote on the subject there is the moral elevation that comes from a manly nature. It is this high tone, which is altogether free from the assumption of the moralist, that gives so much vitality to the writings of Steele; and Mr. Dobson says, with perfect truth, that while Addison's essays are "faultless in their art, and in this way achieve an excellence which was beyond the range of
Steele's quicker and more impulsive nature for words which the heart finds when the head is seeking ; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion ; for sentences• which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous indigna- tion, we must go to the essays of Steele."
For this reason and for many others it is to be hoped that Mr. Dobson's charming selection will encourage readers to go to them. They are fall of delight, and of the geniality which charms us rarely in society, but far more rarely in literature. And in connection with the essays of Addison, which may be read with advantage in the companion volume published ten years ago at the Clarendon Press, what a picture they present of the ways of the Town at a time when, for most men of letters, the Town, with an occasional visit to Bath, was the world in which they lived and moved. The eighteenth century essay belongs to the past like the patches and the hoops, like the Mohawks who took possession of our London streets by night, or the fine gentlemen who walked the streets by day in full-bottomed wigs, laced shirts, embroidered snits, and fringed gloves. The very titles of many of the essays that appeared in the Tatler and the Spectator show at a glance that the style of literature then in vogue is not our style. " On Anger," " On Envy," " On Flattery," " On Pride," " On Batton Holding," "Apollo the God of Verse and Physic," " On Snuff-taking," " On Pin- money,"—these and similar topics were found to attract readers in those days, but would scarcely suggest themes to the essay- writer in ours. Thinness of matter and charm of manner is a frequent peculiarity of the Queen-Anne essayists. It would seem as if readers in those days were satisfied with little in quantity ; and when we remember how, after the imposi- tion of the tax, Addison's short morning article, often not so long as a Times leader, was sold for twopence, one wonders at the readiness of the public to pay so dearly for their literature. Possibly we have too much for our money, and value it the less in consequence; possibly the essay-writers of the day do not always reach the mark of an Addison or a Steele.
Sir Richard has other claims on our regard. Not only did he
start the Tatler, and thus in his own generous language win from Addison " the finest strokes of wit and humour in Mr. Bickerstaff's Luctlbrations,' " and the still finer strokes in the Spectator, but to his own genius as an essayist he added that of a masterly critic. This feature of his literary character attracted Landor. " What a good critic he was," he writes ; " I doubt if he has ever been surpassed." As a moralist, too, he was in some respects considerably before his age. He denounced duelling in the strongest language at a time when gentlemen regarded affairs of honour as essential to their gentility, and did this with a good-natured raillery likely to carry more weight than the most carefully weighed arguments.
" ' It is called,' he writes, 'giving a man satisfaction' to urge your offence against him with your sword If the contradiction, in the very terms of one of our challenges, were as well explained and turned into downright English, would it not run after this manner ?— Sia,—Your extraordinary behaviour last night, and the liberty you were pleased to take with me, makes me this morning give you this to tell you,—because you are an ill-bred puppy, I will meet you in Hyde Park an hour hence ; and because you want both breeding and humanity, I desire you would come with a pistol in your hand, on horseback, and endeavour to shoot me through the head, to teach you more manners. If you fail of doing me this pleasure I shall say you are a rascal on every post in town ; and so, Sir, if you will not injure me more, I shall never forgive what you have done already. Pray, Sir, do not fail of getting everything ready, and you will infinitely oblige, Sir, your most obedient, humble servant, &c."
If Steele, on this and other points of morality, was in advance of his age, on some others he is either in advance of ours or thinks differently from it. Thus he writes on the training and flogging at schools :-
" There are many excellent tempers which are worthy to be nourished and cultivated with all possible diligence and care that were never designed to be acquainted with Aristotle, Tully, or Virgil ; and there are as many who have capacities for understanding every word those great persons have writ, and yet were not born to have any relish of their writings. For want of this common and obvious discerning in those who have the care of youth, we have so many hundred unaccountable creatures every age whipped up into great scholars, that are for ever near a right understanding, and will never arrive at it. These are the scandal of letters, and these are generally the men who are to teach others. The sense of shame and honour is enough to keep the world itself in order without corporal punishment, much more to train the minds of uncorrupted and innocent children. It happens, I doubt not, more than once in a year, that a lad is chastised for a blockhead, when it is good apprehension that makes him incapable of knowing what his teacher means Bat there is no mercy even towards a wrong interpretation of his meaning; the sufferings of the scholar's body are to rectify the mistakes of his mind. I am confident that no boy who will not be attuned to letters without blows, will ever be brought to anything with them. A great or good mind must necessarily be the worse for such indignities ; and it is a sad change, to lose of its virtue for the improvement of its knowledge."
In the cast of his mind Steele was essentially a reformer, not always wise, indeed, but invariably honest and zealous. His name is a pleasant one to remember, and it may be hoped that Mr. Dobson's choice and carefully edited volume of selections from his essays will lead many readers to turn once more to those much neglected but delightful books, the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian. They belong to another age, as almost every essay will show ; but it is an age rich in literary worth, and some of its choicest treasures of wit, of humour, and of pathos will be found in the pages of these once famous and dearly loved periodicals.
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