of biography upon our interest and attention, and is peculiarly applicable in reference to that of one who was so distinguished by his fine humanity, and the catholic range of his sympathies.

This fascinating field of literature, which unites much of the personal charm of fiction with the utility of history, abounds more than any other in human interest. It appeals to our curiosity, our sympathy, and our self-love. We are curious to know how men who have left their impress on their time, and influenced not merely their own, but, it may be, many a subsequent age, attained to this enviable pre-eminence; we feel a pride in bearing a common nature with such spirits, and are consoled, too, for the mortifying sense of our own mediocrity, in exemption from the envy, care, and disappointment which too often, if not invariably, attend upon superior merit ;* and in feeling our weaknesses and shortcomings kept in countenance by finding that, with all their great qualities, the subjects of the historian were men of like passions with ourselves.

Biography brings us acquainted with the best company in the world. The wisest, the wittiest, the bravest, the best, of all ages become our contemporaries,-they converse with us at our firesides, not in pomp and state, but without ceremony or constraint.

From what other source do we derive so much of the spirit of antiquity as from the lives of Plutarch?-one of

This remarkable fact of the large number of "unsuccessful great men" who were distanced in the race by mediocrity, is, according to Swift's theory, explained by their attaching too little importance to the "little helps and little hindrances" to which smaller men look more carefully. This is even applicable to the sons of great men, who though, with few exceptions, excelling like their fathers, have been generally more successful socially.

those productions which, it has been said, we would desire to rescue from destruction if all other books were to suffer annihilation, or which we would choose for our companion if cast upon a desolate island.

Richard Steele was born in Dublin in the year 1671.* He was descended of a good family, one branch of which possessed considerable landed property in Wexford county, of part of which Steele was disinherited, owing to his imprudent wilfulness in entering the army in the way he did, and against the wish of his friends.†

His father, who was a counsellor-at-law, had been private secretary to James, first Duke of Ormond, when LordLieutenant of Ireland, and died when Steele (his only son) was very young. It is a prevalent notion, justified by many striking examples, that the shining qualities of eminent men are most commonly inherited from the mother. Of Steele's mother (whose maiden name was Gascoigne) little is known; but, from a passage in one of his descriptive sketches, which has always been justly admired for its beautiful simplicity, tenderness, and pathos, it appears that she was a very superior woman, and that her

On the authority of his baptismal register, dated March 12. The inaccuracy of the early authorities in giving the year 1675 or '76 has been followed by a writer generally so careful and painstaking as Dr Drake, in common with the writers of almost every other sketch of his life, except Miss Aikin.

+ By a curious coincidence there was a Sir Richard Steele high sheriff of county Dublin in 1821, who was made the subject of one of his squibs by Moore, referred to in his Memoirs, vol. iii., p. 190, where he says,-" Sent a copy of them [lines of Byron to himself] to Perry, [of Morn. Chron.,] and added some nonsense of my own about Sir Richard Steele, the high sheriff, who has just dispersed a meeting in Dublin by the military, beginning,—

Though sprung from the clever Sir Richard this man be,
He's as different a sort of Sir Richard as can be.'"

The genealogical allusion is probably only apparent.

memory was cherished with fond affection by her son. Speaking of the impression of a first grief, "The first sorrow I ever knew," he says, "was upon the death of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember, I went into the room where the body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling, 'Papa ;' for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and told me, in a flood of tears, 'Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit; and there was a dignity in her grief, amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought, struck me with an instinct of sorrow that, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since."*

Young Steele, at twelve years of age, (1684,) had the good fortune to be sent for his education to a noble institution in London. Some distance in the rear of Christ's Hospital and Little Britain, in the city, stands the Chartreuse, or, as it has been corrupted, Charter-House, founded by Sir Thomas Sutton, in 1611, on the site of a Carthusian priory, and of a terrible charnel-house, caused by the visitation of the plague in 1348, where fifty thousand victims are

*Tatler, No. 181.

said to have been interred in one year, to commemorate which a church and religious house called The Salutation were established. Many are the celebrated names which it boasts among its alumni; and, among other ornaments of recent times, claims the pen of Thackeray, which was employed in its illustration, and the pencil of Leech. The Duke of Ormond being one of the governors of the house, used his interest in placing the son of his former secretary upon the foundation, not the least considerable advantage of which was the formation of his friendship with Joseph Addison, who, one year his junior, was then pursuing his studies there as a private pupil. Of the life-intimacy thus formed, it is difficult to overestimate the beneficial effect on the happiness and fame of both.

In 1689, Steele was matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford; and his name stood at the head of the Postmasters* of Merton College in 1691. Of his academic career, in which he was probably assisted by the liberality of his uncle Gascoigne, little is known; but as he began there the cultivation of the dramatic literature to which he afterwards successfully devoted himself, it is not unreasonable to conclude that such pursuits were scarcely compatible with any very ardent devotion to his scholastic studies; nor is it improbable that, like many men of lively parts, and some of the most shining names in literature, including that of Swift, he may have felt the drudgery of the college

A corruption of Portionista, signifying those having an interest in the emoluments of the house, in other words, scholarships. The date of his entrance, erroneously given in the previous notices of his life, has been authenticated by the kindness of the Rev. J. Griffiths, M.A., keeper of the University archives at Oxford.

course an irksome task, beyond the moderate application necessary to go through the routine without discredit. Thus much, at least, he is believed to have done. He left the university without taking his degree,* but not, however, without leaving the most kindly feelings behind him. During his residence there he completed a comedy, which he submitted to the inspection of one of his particular friends, Mr Parker, afterwards one of the Fellows of Merton, who, either from his high opinion of his friend's powers, or the intrinsic demerit of the performance in his estimate, pronounced unfavourably upon it; and Steele, with that docility which he united to high spirit in a remarkable degree, never called the decision in question, but submitted to it with a humility truly exemplary in a budding author. Of his college tutor, the Rev. Dr Ellis, he afterwards makes grateful mention in the preface to the "Christian Hero," for his valuable services.

Whether Steele afterwards recast the rejected comedy, or in any shape dragged it from the oblivion to which the voice of friendly criticism had consigned it, would be interesting to know, as a somewhat similar fate attended the first production of the author of "Waverley." The first occasion on which he indemnified himself for this miscarriage was in some verses on the death of Queen Mary in 1695. The poem is entitled, "The Procession," and gives a pleasing picture of the mourners of all classes for the loss of their royal mistress, that portion which

* We understand that, in those times, this was not what Miss Aikin, in her Life of Addison, has naturally enough termed it, "a significant circumstance," but might arise from various causes, in no way affecting his scholarship, and that little importance was then attached to it. We state this on the authority of Dr Haig Brown, the present head-master of the Charter-House.