ing. In the 555th number of the Spectator proper, Steele brought it to a conclusion; but a year and a half later Addison revived it. The revival was not a success from any point of view. Addison, without the guiding hand of his friend, fell below his former standard. His teaching became preaching, and his wit lost both in delicacy and point. After the production of eighty numbers he wisely gave up the struggle, and his supplementary Spectator was allowed to become the eighth volume of the complete series.

Already, on March the 12th, 1713, Steele had issued the first number of his Guardian, the plan of which gave him more liberty to write as a politician, which he became in becoming member for Stockbridge. The Guardian, however, he brought to an end, of his own freewill, on the 1st of October, when it had reached 175 numbers, and five days later he issued the first number of the Englishman. The Englishman did not live very long, but for the writing of its last number, as well as for the celebrated Crisis, he was expelled from the House of Commons by a factious majority. Swift attacked the Crisis with all his force in The Public Spirit of the Whigs. In the Crisis Steele indulged in no personalities, unless we call his praise of the Scottish nation such. Swift, on the other hand, indulged in personal abuse of his manly opponent and one-time friend, and launched his bitterest satire at the poverty and greed of the Scotch. Though expelled the house the moral victory in the mêlée was with Steele.

Being now at leisure, owing to his expulsion and the discontinuance of the Englishman, Steele wrote An Apology for Himself and his Writings, which may be found in his Political Writings, published in 1715. Shortly after he produced a deservedly forgotten treatise en titled Romish Ecclesiastical History of Late Years, and in the same year two papers called The Lover and The Reader.

On the death of Queen Anne and accession of George I., Steele was appointed surveyor of the royal stables, governor of the Royal Company of Comedians, and a magistrate for Middlesex. In April, 1715, he was also knighted, and in George's first parliament he was chosen member for Boroughbridge. Finally, after the suppression of the rebellion in the north, he was made one of the commissioners of the forfeited estates. In this year, 1715, he published An Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Religion throughout the World, as well as A Letter from the

Earl of Mar to the King. In 1716 he produced a second volume of the Englishman; in 1718 An Account of his Fishpool; in 1719 The Spinster, a pamphlet; and A Letter to the Earl of Oxford concerning the Bill of Peerage. This bill he opposed in the House of Commons as well as in the Plebeian. Addison replied to his criticisms in the Old Whig, and thus, a year before the death of the latter, a coolness sprang up between the two friends. In 1720 Steele wrote two pieces against the South Sea scheme: one The Crisis of Property, the other A Nation a Family. In January of the same year, under the assumed name of Sir John Edgar, he commenced a paper called The Theatre, which he continued till the following 5th of April. During its existence his patent as governor of the Royal Company of Comedians was revoked. This, which was a heavy loss to him, he discussed calmly in a pamphlet called The State of the Case. In 1721, on the accession of Walpole to power, he was reinstated in his post, and in 1722 his Conscious Lovers was produced with great success.

Soon after this, having lost in 1723 his only surviving son, his health began to decline, and, hoping for an improvement, he moved from London to Bath, and from there to Llangunnor near Caermarthen, where he lodged with his agent and receiver of rents. In 1726 he had an attack of palsy, and on the 1st of September, 1729, he died, having "retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last."

Steele's position in literature is only now, after many years, beginning to be properly appreciated. In him is well seen how ready the world is to take a man at his own measurement, for as he claimed to be only a “whetstone to the wit of others," as Professor Morley puts it, the world gave him credit for little more. As a dramatist he was superior to Addison-as an editor superior beyond comparison. His essays form that part of the Spectator "which," says the writer just quoted, "took the widest grasp upon the hearts of man." "It was," continues Professor Morley, "the firm hand of his friend Steele that helped Addison up to the place in literature which became him. . . There were those who argued that he was too careless of his own fame in unselfish labour for the exaltation of his friend, and no doubt his rare generosity of temper has been often misinterpreted. But . . . he knew his countrymen, and was in too genuine accord with the spirit of a time then distant but now come, to doubt that, when he was dead, his whole life's work would

speak for him to posterity." Let us now at last make this belief a true one, and let us no longer be found speaking of the Spectator as "Addison's Spectator;" but, if the admirers of Addison will have it so, as "the Steele-Addison Spectator." For among other things let it be remembered that of the essays in the Tutler, Spectator, and Guardian, 510 belonged to Steele and 369 to Addison, while Steele was in addition projector, founder, and editor and what he was as an editor may be inferred when we look at Addison attempting to walk alone.]

THE CIVIL HUSBAND.1

The fate and character of the inconstant Osmyn is a just excuse for the little notice taken by his widow of his departure out of this life, which was equally troublesome to Elmira, his faithful spouse, and to himself. That life passed between them after this manner is the reason the town has just now received a lady with all that gaiety, after having been a relict but three months, which other women hardly assume under fifteen after such a disaster. Elmira is the daughter of a rich and worthy citizen, who gave her to Osmyn with a portion which might have obtained her an alliance with our noblest houses, and fixed her in the eye of the world, where her story had not been now to be related; for her good qualities had made her the object of universal esteem among the polite part of mankind, from whom she has been banished and immured till the death of her jailer.

It is now full fifteen years since that beauteous lady was given into the hands of the happy Osmyn, who in the sense of all the world received at that time a present more valuable than the possession of both the Indies. She was then in her early bloom, with an understanding and discretion very little inferior to the most experienced matrons. She was not beholden to the charms of her sex, that her company was preferable to any Osmyn could meet with abroad; for were all she said considered, without regard to her being a woman, it might stand the examination of the severest judges. She had all the beauty of her own sex, with all the conversation-accomplishments of ours.

But Osmyn very soon grew surfeited with

1 Number 53 of The Tatler.

the charms of her person by possession, and of her mind by want of taste; for he was one of that loose sort of men, who have but one reason for setting any value upon the fair sex, who consider even brides but as new women, and consequently neglect them when they cease to be such. All the merit of Elmira could not prevent her becoming a mere wife within few months after her nuptials; and Osmyn had so little relish for her conversation that he complained of the advantages of it.

"My spouse," said he to one of his companions, "is so very discreet, so good, so virtuous, and I know not what, that I think her person is rather the object of esteem than of love; and there is such a thing as a merit which causes rather distance than passion."

But there being no medium in the state of matrimony, their life began to take the usual gradations to become the most irksome of all beings. They grew in the first place very complaisant; and having at heart a certain knowledge that they were indifferent to each other, apologies were made for every little circumstance which they thought betrayed their mutual coldness. This lasted but few months, when they showed a difference of opinion in every trifle; and, as a sign of certain decay of affection, the word perhaps was introduced in all their discourse.

"I have a mind to go to the park," says she, "but perhaps, my dear, you will want the coach on some other occasion." He would very willingly carry her to the play, but perhaps she had rather go to Lady Centaure's and play at ombre. They were both persons of good discerning, and soon found that they mortally hated each other, by their manner of hiding it. Certain it is, that there are some Genio's which are not capable of pure affection, and a man is born with talents for it as much as for poetry or any other science.

Osmyn began too late to find the imperfection of his own heart, and used all the methods in the world to correct it, and argue himself into return of desire and passion for his wife, by the contemplation of her excellent qualities, his great obligations to her, and the high value he saw all the world except himself did put upon her. But such is man's unhappy condition, that though the weakness of the heart has a prevailing power over the strength of the head, yet the strength of the head has but small force against the weakness of the heart. Osmyn therefore struggled in vain to revive departed desire; and for that reason resolved to retire to one of his estates in the country,

terests. I made her a visit this afternoon, having been formerly introduced to the honour of her acquaintance by my friend Will. Honeycomb, who has prevailed upon her to admit me sometimes into her assembly as a civil, inoffensive man. I found her accompanied with one person only, a commonplace talker, who, upon my entrance, rose, and after a very slight civility sat down again; then turning to Arietta, pursued his discourse, which I found was upon the old topic, of constancy in love. He went on with great facility in repeating what he talks every day of his life; and, with the ornaments of insignificant laughs and gestures, enforced his arguments by quotations out of plays and songs, which allude to the perjuries of the fair and the general levity of women. Methought he strove to shine more than ordinarily in his talkative way, that he might insult my silence, and distinguish himself before a woman of Arietta's taste and understanding. She had often an inclination to interrupt him, but could find no opportunity, 'till the larum ceased of itself; which it did not till he had repeated and murdered the celebrated story of the Ephesian matron.1

Arietta seemed to regard this piece of raillery as an outrage done to her sex; as indeed I have always observed that women, whether out of a nicer regard to their honour, or what other reason I cannot tell, are more sensibly touched with those general aspersions which are cast upon their sex than men are by what is said of theirs.

When she had a little recovered herself from the serious anger she was in, she replied in the following manner:

Sir, when I consider how perfectly new all you have said on this subject is, and that the story you have given us is not quite two thousand years old, I cannot but think it a piece of presumption to dispute with you: but your quotations put me in mind of the fable of the lion and the man. The man walking with that noble animal, showed him, in the ostentation of human superiority, a sign of a man killing a lion. Upon which the lion said very justly, "We lions are none of us painters, else we could show a hundred men killed by lions for one lion killed by a man." You men are writers, and can represent us women as unbe

1 Told in the prose "Satyricon" ascribed to Petronius, whom Nero called his arbiter of elegance. The tale was known in the middle ages from the stories of the "Seven Wise Masters." She went down into the vault with her husband's corpse, resolved to weep to death or die of

coming as you please in your works, while we are unable to return the injury. You have twice or thrice observed in your discourse that hypocrisy is the very foundation of our education; and that an ability to dissemble our affections is a professed part of our breeding. These, and such other reflections, are sprinkled up and down the writings of all ages, by authors, who leave behind them memorials of their resentment against the scorn of particular women, in invectives against the whole sex. Such a writer, I doubt not, was the celebrated Petronius, who invented the pleasant aggravations of the frailty of the Ephesian lady; but when we consider this question between the sexes, which has been either a point of dispute or raillery ever since there were men and women, let us take facts from plain people, and from such as have not either ambition or capacity to embellish their narrations with any beauties of imagination. I was the other day amusing myself with Ligon's account of Barbadoes; and, in answer to your wellwrought tale, I will give you (as it dwells upon my memory) out of that honest traveller, in his fifty-fifth page, the history of Inkle and Yarico.

Mr. Thomas Inkle of London, aged twenty years, embarked in the Downs, on the good ship called the Achilles, bound for the West Indies, on the 16th of June, 1647, in order to improve his fortune by trade and merchandise. Our adventurer was the third son of an eminent citizen, who had taken particular care to instil into his mind an early love of gain, by making him a perfect master of numbers, and consequently giving him a quick view of loss and advantage, and preventing the natural impulses of his passions, by prepossession towards his interests. With a mind thus turned, young Inkle had a person every way agreeable, a ruddy vigour in his countenance, strength in his limbs, with ringlets of fair hair loosely flowing on his shoulders. It happened, in the course of the voyage, that the Achilles, in some distress, put into a creek on the main of America in search of provisions: the youth, who is the hero of my story, among others, went ashore on this occasion. From their first landing they were observed by a party of Indians, who hid themselves in the woods for that purpose. The English unadvisedly marched a great dis

famine; but was tempted to share the supper of a soldier who was watching seven bodies hanging upon trees, and that very night, in the grave of her husband and in her funeral garments, married her new and stranger guest.— Prof. Morley.