up a good correspondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a tuliproot in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a particular favourite of all the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or a setting-dog that he has made himself. He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or sisters; and raises a great deal of mirth among them, by inquiring as often as he meets them "how they wear!" These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humours make Will the darling of the country.

HAUNTED.

At a little distance from Sir Roger's house, among the ruins of an old abbey, there is a long walk of aged elms, which are shot up so very high, that when one passes under them, the rooks and crows that rest upon the tops of them seem to be cawing in another region. I am very much delighted with this sort of noise, which I consider as a kind of natural prayer to that Being who supplies the wants of his whole creation, and who, in the beautiful language of the Psalms, feedeth the young ravens that call upon him. I like this retirement the better, because of an ill report it lies under of being haunted; for which reason (as I have been told in

Patron of Addison

After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller at Dayfordbury

My good friend

the family) no living creature ever walks in it besides the chaplain. the butler desired me with a very grave face not to venture myself in it after sunset, for that one of the footmen had been almost frighted out of his wits by a spirit that appeared to him in the shape of a black horse without an head: to which he added, that about a month ago one of the maids coming home late that way with a pail of milk upon her head, heard such a rustling among the bushes that she let it fall.

I was taking a walk in this place last night between the hours of nine and ten, and could not but fancy it one of the most proper scenes in the world for a ghost to appear in. The ruins of the abbey are scattered up and down on every side, and half covered with ivy and elder-bushes, the harbours of several solitary birds which seldom make their appearance till the dusk of the evening. The place was formerly a churchyard, and has still several marks in it of graves and burying-places. There is such an echo among the old ruins and vaults, that if you stamp but a little louder than ordinary, you hear the sound repeated. At the same time the walk of elms, with the croaking of the ravens which from time to time are heard from the tops of them, looks exceeding solemn and venerable. These objects naturally raise seriousness and attention; and

Sir Richard
Steele
(1672-1729)

when night heightens the awfulness of the place, and pours out her supernumerary horrors upon everything in it, I do not at all wonder that weak minds fill it with spectres and apparitions.

THE HEAD-DRESS.

The ladies have been for some time in a kind of moulting season with regard to that part of their dress, having cast great quantities of riband, lace, and cambric, and in some measure reduced that part of the human figure to the beautiful globular form which is natural to it. We have for a great while expected what kind of ornament would be substituted in the place of those antiquated commodes. But our female projectors were all the last summer so taken up with the improvement of their petticoats, that they had not time to attend to anything else; but having at length sufficiently adorned their lower parts, they now begin to turn their thoughts upon the other extremity, as well remembering the old kitchen proverb, "that if you light the fire at both ends, the middle will shift for itself."

I am engaged in this speculation by a sight which I lately met with at the opera. As I was standing in the hinder part of a box, I took notice of a little cluster of women sitting together in the prettiest-coloured hoods that I ever saw. One of them was blue, another yellow, and another philomot; the fourth was of a pink colour, and the fifth of a pale green. I looked with as much pleasure upon this little party-coloured assembly as upon a bed of tulips, and did not know at first whether it might not be an embassy of Indian queens; but upon my going about into the pit, and taking them in front, I was immediately undeceived, and saw so much beauty in every face that I found them all to be English. Such eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads, could be the growth of no other country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from observing any farther the colour of their hoods, though I could easily perceive, by that unspeakable satisfaction which appeared in their looks, that their own thoughts were wholly taken up on those pretty ornaments they wore upon their heads.

Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729), although always reported as being younger than his most distinguished friend, was, it has lately been discovered, born in March

1672, whereas Addison was not born until May. Steele was born in Dublin, where his father practised as an attorney; the latter died when his son was five years old, and Steele has given an enchanting picture of the emotions which his father's death awakened. In 1685 the boy was sent to the Charterhouse, and passed in 1690 to Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1691 to Merton College. It is supposed that he left the University and became a trooper in the Duke of Ormond's Life Guards in 1694; in his

military capacity he was present at Queen Mary's funeral, of which his earliest publication, The Procession, of 1695, is a versified memorial. Of Steele's movements

in the next six years we know very little, but during part of the time, at least,
he served as a captain of Fusiliers. In 1701 Steele published his first important.
work, the Christian Hero, which was considered puritanical by his companions,
and landed him in a duel, in which he ran his critic through the body. He now
began to write for the stage, and his first comedy, The Funeral, dates from the close
of 1701.
His idea was to introduce morality to the stage, and make "virtue and
vice appear just as they ought to do," and not as they are travestied in the art of
Wycherley and Congreve. In the Lying Lover (1703) Steele was still more didactic, and
it is not to be wondered at that
his comedy was "damned for
its piety." He tried a third
time, with the Tender Husband
(1705), a better play, but as
complete a failure. He was
by this time married to a lady,
vaguely spoken of as "of vast
possessions," who died in 1706.
In May 1707 Steele received
from Harley the important
post of Gazetteer. Imme-
diately after the death of his
first wife, and perhaps at her
funeral, Steele is believed to
have made the acquaintance of
Miss Mary Scurlock, a Welsh
lady with "expectations." It
was to her, before and after
their marriage, that Steele
addressed the extraordinary
correspondence which, printed
first in 1787, has done more
than anything else to make us
acquainted with his character.
The marriage between Dick
Steele and his "dear lovely
Prue" took place in September
1707. His life with this handsome and fairly amiable lady was a chequered one.
As Mr. Austin Dobson says, Steele was loyal, affectionate, and warm-hearted, but
"hopelessly sanguine, restless, and impulsive." He took wine too freely; he
squandered money far beyond his means; and these faults greatly strained
Mrs. Steele's patience; but though they fought, they never parted, and to the last
she was his "absolute governess," and "adored capricious beauty." The great wits
of the age of Anne were now coming closer and closer; in 1708 Swift speaks of the
"triumvirate of Addison, Steele and me," and when they met, Congreve and Pope
were often of the party. Early in 1709 Steele borrowed the name of "Isaac
Bickerstaff" from Swift to use as a pseudonym in the Tatler, which he began to
publish on the 12th of April; this was a Letter of Intelligence destined to "gratify

Sir Richard Steele
After the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller at Bayfordbury

the curiosity of persons of all conditions, and each sex." At first Steele wrote it all himself, but soon he called in Addison to help. It ceased in January 1711, and was succeeded within two months by the Spectator, another folio sheet, consisting only of a single essay, whereas the Tatler had given a variety of news. The Spectator, too, came out on every week-day. The plan of this famous literary journal was, as we have it upon the evidence of Tickell, projected by Steele and Addison in concert, but it was the latter who represented the central figure of the Spectator Club, the celebrated Sir Roger de Coverley.

When the paper ceased,

Facsimile Title and Frontispiece of First Collected Edition of the "Tatler"

it was found that Addison had contributed a somewhat larger number of essays than Steele, very few being from the pen of Eustace Budgell, Pope, and one or two others. The sale was enormous for those days, it is estimated at 10,000 copies. In December 1712 this "noble entertainment for persons of a refined taste," as Berkeley called it, came abruptly to an end. Early in the career of the Spectator Swift had quarrelled with Addison, but he remained some time longer on terms of amity with Steele. The latter was now deep in debt, but the death of his motherin-law, in 1713, brought him considerable accession of wealth. He was foolish enough to take a costly house in Bloomsbury Square, and to launch out into

every form of extravagance. In March he started a new daily paper, the Guardian, in which Addison originally took no part, but was soon drawn in. Steele and Swift were presently involved in acute hostility, and for political reasons the former resigned his offices; he left the Guardian almost entirely to Addison and Budgell, and entered the House of Commons as M.P. for Stockbridge. His purely literary work now took mainly the character of pamphlets, and for what he wrote about the fall of Dunkirk he was, in March 1714, expelled from the House. Steele, who had given up £400 a year to enter Parliament, was now in a deplorable

To

My

Lood Tutour Dr Ellij

With Seerat impulse this do Streams return To that Capacious Seean whence they're boom= Oh Nond but Fortune come in id bounty fraugh Proportiond to & mind v. thou hast taught Till then let these unpolished leaves imen the Humble Offering of a Gratefull Heart

plight.

N.

Rid. Seek

Autograph Verse from Steele to Dr. Ellis

He continued the active publication of newspapers and pamphlets, and the death of Queen Anne restored him to success. He went on writing dull political tracts, and Swift in cruel justice said that Steele had "obliged his party with a very awkward pamphleteer in the room of an excellent droll." In 1715 he was knighted, and became Supervisor (or Manager) of Drury Lane Theatre, at a salary of £700 a year. Early in the same year he was elected M.P. for Boroughbridge. In the following years we find him frequently visiting Scotland, upon public business; and in 1717 Lady Steele was principally living in Wales, to look after an estate they had at Carmarthen; to this circumstance we owe a large number of her husband's delightful letters to her. She died late in 1718, and