OF RICHARD STEELE SELECTED AND EDITED BY L. E. STEELE, M.A. TRINITY COllege, dubLIN 6992 London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK; THE MACMILLAN COMPANY All rights reserved INTRODUCTION WHEN, having refreshed our memories by a reperusal of the Essays of Addison in an earlier volume of this series, we read the delightful 'lucubrations,' as their author quaintly styles them, in the present little volume, it is but just to remember that it was Richard Steele who gave to Addison the opportunity to speak those words of wit and wisdom which have charmed many generations of English readers in the pages of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. To Isaac Bickerstaff belongs, exclusively, the honour of having initiated that form of periodical literature which so admirably suited the genius of his great collaborator; and although the latter maintains more effectively and consistently a higher level of style and exhibits a greater variety of subject than does the friend who so generously acknowledged his superiority, we can say with all truth that there is many an essay from Steele's pen which more than equals Addison at his best, and many also which are possessed of a peculiar charm -the charm of spontaneity and artless enthusiasmwhich we sometimes miss in the more finely wrought and more scholarly essays of the greater writer. It is inevitable that the close relationship of the two men, both in their lives and work, should suggest comparison; but it can be safely instituted without disparaging, as has too often been the case, the claims of the one with the object of magnifying those of the other. It is strange that Steele, of all men, should have suffered in this way, for he was always ready, with a chivalry and generosity by no means common in the world of letters, to sink his own claims in the presence of the friend to whom, as he asserts over and over again, he owed so much. But with a fuller knowledge of Steele's life and labours, a higher appreciation of his character and of his work has come, and the misrepresentations of Lord Macaulay and the picturesque inaccuracies of Thackeray may be forgiven and forgotten. For, indeed, of the writers of the so-called Augustan Period, there is not one who speaks so straight from the heart, nor one who wins our affections so truly, as does Richard Steele. His delightful abandonment, his genial and buoyant spirit, his transparent sincerity, his unaffected chivalry, and his consistent advocacy of what is pure and good, combine to make him the pleasantest and most wholesome of companions. With all his faults, venial for the most part because they spring from an excess of good qualities, he will always be a most attractive personality to numbers of readers who, without abating one jot of their admiration for Addison, yet feel sometimes that the ethical superiority of the one chills, where the less disciplined humanity of the other warms the heart. If fidelity to friends, if generous acknowledgment of services rendered, if a readiness to make every reparation for injury unwittingly done-and Steele never |