The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Joseph Addison
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a good deal the wiser of the two; and there may have been in his regard a touch of that patronizing temper which in later life he sometimes showed in too superior a fashion. But for Steele the acquaintance was certainly very fortunate. There are pleasant glimpses of the young Irish lad invited for a holiday to the home of his friend Addison, the quiet deanery under the trees at Lichfield. Good Dean Addison, Steele said many years after, loved him as one of his own sons; and in that home the fatherless boy saw how domestic love and purity lend a charm to manners that all the wit and fashion of the town can never give. In one of the most delightful of the Tatler papers[2] he gives a portrait of a father, dignified and decorous yet affectionate, which is evidently drawn from his recollections of the Lichfield household.
Addison was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1687, at the early age of fifteen, and next year obtained a scholarship at Magdalen, where he continued in residence, as undergraduate, Master, and Fellow, until 1699. Steele, whose scholarship was probably not brilliant, though he had been in the Charterhouse two years longer than Addison, did not follow him to Oxford until 1690, when he was matriculated at Christ Church. He did not remain there, however, long enough to take any degree. He never had the retiring and scholarly tastes of his friend Addison, and after three years in the university could resist the attractions of the great outside world no longer. Looking about for a career, he not unnaturally decided for the army; and in 1694 he left Oxford to enlist as a private in the Horse Guards. He soon received a commission as ensign in the regiment of Lord Cutts, and before 1700 is mentioned as Captain Steele.
Steele's soldiering, which was nearly all done in London and served chiefly to make him acquainted with the town, might be passed over were it not for one thing that came of it. His life in the Guards was doubtless not so irregular as that of most soldiers; but it was more irregular than his conscience could approve. In the sincerity of his heart the young Captain of the Guards bethought himself of strengthening his moral and religious principles by writing them down in black and white, judging, as he said, that he might thereby be led to think about them the more and by his desire of consistency make his life conform to them the better. The result was the first—if we except some verses printed at the death of Queen Mary in 1695—of Steele's ventures in authorship, The Christian Hero, An Argument to prove that No Principles save those of Religion are sufficient to make a Great Man. The Christian Hero is by no means a piece of priggery, but a sensible and wise little book. It shows, moreover, on almost every page, some flavour of Steele's engaging ingenuousness and humour. It is of historic interest, too, as introducing a new style of writing. For it may be called the first attempt to enlist the charm of wit and good breeding in the service of religion; it contains the germs of scores of essays Steele afterward wrote with that intent.
The Christian Hero did not correct all of Steele's irregularities; but it did reveal to him where his best ability lay. He said complacently, later in life, that when he put on his jack-boots and mounted his horse as a dragoon he wasn't acquainted with his own parts, and didn't know that he could handle a pen better than a sword; The Christian Hero taught him that. As soon as the book was through the press he tried his hand at a comedy, finding it necessary, as he said, to "enliven his character." He might seem to have been careful, however, not to overdo this enlivening of his character, for his comedy was entitled The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode. But in spite of its lugubrious title, it contained some genuinely humorous scenes, and by grace of very good acting and the applause of Steele's fellow soldiers of the Guards—who packed the house—it scored a satisfactory stage success. Two other comedies followed this in the next three years, The Lying Lover in 1703, and The Tender Husband in 1705. By this time Steele's reputation as a wit was assured. Always what Doctor Johnson used to call "a clubbable man," his easy gayety and rather too convivial habits made him a typical man about town; and Captain Steele began to be spoken of as a man who talked charmingly, and who could write as well as he talked.
In 1705 he married a widow, one Mrs. Stretch, who died a year and a half later and left him a snug estate in the Barbadoes. Thus secured against the chance of adverse fortune, he sold his commission in the army, and set up as man of letters. Like all the writers of his time, however, he considered his pen to be at the service of his political party, and expected a reward in some civil office. In 1706 he was appointed Gentleman Usher to Prince George of Denmark, the stupid husband of Queen Anne, and in the following year was given the more lucrative position of Gazetteer. This office he held when, in 1709, he started The Tatler.
About a year after the death of his first wife, Steele had married again, this time a "Welsh beauty," Miss Mary Scurlock. The letters of Steele to this lady, during the few weeks of acquaintance that preceded the marriage and for years thereafter, are the most delightful domestic correspondence in our language. They are most of them mere notelets, written in his office, at the club, in a tavern, anywhere whence he may send her a kind word. Steele never had any mastery of business, and it is probable that the bailiffs had something to do with the frequent absences from home that these letters record. Mrs. Steele, on the other hand, was a woman of unusually thrifty and methodical habit, to whom the carelessness and extravagance of her husband must have been very trying. It is evident from his letters that she sometimes gave him quite as much advice as he felt himself able to use. After the first few months, he has dropped the "Molly," and the letters are uniformly addressed to his "Dear Prue"; and once or twice he goes so far as to remonstrate with her quietly for an unendurable interference with his "business." Yet nothing disturbs his constant affection, and the letters are filled with the same playful, tender prettinesses to the last. That was a truthful signature with which he once signed a midnight letter when he could not come home: "I am, my dear Prue, a little in drink, but at all times, Your Own Faithful Husband, Richard Steele." There was no other man of letters in the Queen Anne time, I am sure, whose domestic life would bear turning wrong side out so well. Indeed, no other writer of that age appreciated so well the character of woman, or has given us such pictures of the beauty and charm of home. It was Steele who paid to Lady Elizabeth Hastings that best compliment ever offered to a lady, "To love her is a liberal education."
It was in these happy, early years of his married life, when his fortunes, though always precarious, were hopeful, when he was enjoying the friendship of Halifax and Addison and Swift, when his own humor and invention were at their brightest, that Steele had the one great inspiration of his life—he conceived the idea of The Tatler.
Meantime, Addison had begun his career both in politics and in letters. He had not been in haste—Mr. Addison was never in haste. In 1698, some three years after his friend Steele left Oxford, he had been elected Fellow of Magdalen College, and seemed well satisfied with the retired and scholarly life there. He had some modest literary aspirations. In 1697 he published some verses entitled An Account of the English Poets, which make it evident that he had no relish for Chaucer and Spenser, and which do not mention Shakespeare at all. In Latin poetry his taste was happier. He made a translation of the Georgics of Virgil, prefaced by an essay that won compliments from the great Dryden, and he wrote Latin verses of his own that were thought to be of quite surprising excellence. His classical studies may not have broadened his taste or his intellect very much, but they doubtless did something to cultivate that smoothness and nicety of phrase for which he was afterward to be so noted. In those years at Magdalen everybody supposed he would go into the church. He seemed a parson born and bred. And he doubtless would have taken orders, had it not been for a piece of signal good fortune that befell him. Dryden had introduced young Addison to Mr. Congreve, and Mr. Congreve had introduced him to Montague, afterward Lord Halifax. Montague it was worth while to know. Really a great statesman and financier, he had won some reputation as a poet in his earlier days, and was always ambitious to be accounted the friend and patron of letters. In those years the leaders of both political parties were coming to see the need of enlisting the services of young men of wit and learning; and Montague, whose appreciation perhaps was quickened by some complimentary verses in excellent Latin, deemed this Mr. Addison too promising an ally to lose. Accordingly, in 1699, when he was twenty-seven, Addison was given a handsome pension of three hundred pounds a year, bidden go travel on the continent, keep his eyes open, and learn French. He remained on the continent about three years, when, at the death of King William, his pension lapsed, and at the breaking out of the great war of the Spanish Succession he was obliged to return to England. His prospects for the