possible to enumerate all the particular purposes they were intended or fitted to accomplish; so minutely did they take cognizance of all classes of men, and all human interests, and so various were the subjects to which they drew attention. It would be better, then, to pronounce them a popular medium of truth, and a practical teacher of duty. It might be thought, from the view we have just taken of the times, that the reformer of such a people must necessarily be a stern censor; but it is well known that the usual tone of the essays is cheerful and kind-hearted; and that they have much more of the air of a family journal than of didactic wisdom solemnly addressed to a whole people.

The objects, which we have thus described, were to be effected by a series of little papers, published in a separate form, thrice a week, and at one period every day; and these little papers, thus rapidly thrown off for a present purpose, were destined to become, if not absolutely the most important part of the literature of the last century, yet certainly its most remarkable characteristic. Our attention is first due to the Father, as he has been called, of the Periodical Essay; and his connexion with it will be the chief subject of our remarks.

We owe the project, then, and its successful execution, to Richard Steele; and we say this with a full knowledge of the assistance he received from the wits, moralists, and geniuses of the age, and whose greater popularity has almost cast his merits into the shade. Steele was the originator, conductor, and working-man; and he appears to have been the responsible man, both as to the business concerns of the and papers, the demands of those who might be offended by personalities. His course of life had been perhaps more favorable for a literary undertaking that required sudden and brief composition, than for deliberate and extended discussion; and the sanguine temper, buoyant spirits, and impulsive action, which were the principal causes of his many errors and disappointments, were also the very qualities to cheer and sustain him in the daily calls upon his invention and resources. We will give a few particulars of his life, and notices of his character, derived from different sources, which are thought to bear especially upon his fitness for his great and various enterprise. When he began the Tatler, he was nearly forty years of

He had distinguished himself at Oxford, and while there discovered a taste for dramatic composition, which he culti

vated afterwards with some success, but not to the securing of permanent celebrity. For a season his attention was diverted from literature by the attractions of a military life. And so wayward was he, so resolved to follow out a present humor and have his own way, that upon failing to obtain a commission, he entered himself as a private in the horse-guards; little heeding the forfeiture of a succession to a good property, which a relative had intended for him, but which he left to another upon hearing of his kinsman's voluntary degradation. Steele recommended himself so well to the whole regiment, that the officers sought to have so agreeable a companion in their own number, and succeeded in their application to that effect. It was a dangerous connexion for one of his temper and years, with every temptation to indulgence, and no excitement, it should seem, of active service. Young, social, kindhearted, agreeable, idle, he plunged into the grossest excesses, and recovered from them to suffer the keenest remorse; for his conscience never failed to assert her claims, and his sense of the beauty of virtue was undimmed. Such was his life for several years; and the weakness and redeeming points, which we observe in him then, were, in their degree, to be observed to the end of his days.

One characteristic incident is worth mentioning. In his seasons of contrition, he wrote a little work for his own use, which he thought might strengthen the reflections suggested by a review of his evil and wasted life. Finding the experiment fruitless, and suffering the keener anguish for it, he at last thought, that by publishing his private treatise, and thus exposing himself to the world's contempt should he again fail, he should have the strongest motive to self-restraint. But, like all moral remedies that do not begin in sound principle and motives, his scheme was wholly ineffectual. The "Christian Hero" was published; Steele went on sinning; and his reckless associates had another cause for mirth and ridicule.

He next appears as a dramatic author; but upon his disgust at the failure of one of his comedies, he abandoned playwriting for many years. He then commenced his celebrated series of periodical essays. Those now the best known, The Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, employed him, with little interruption, for nearly five years from the early part of 1709. In this hasty summary it is unnecessary to name other of his

periodical writings, some upon a similar plan with those just enumerated, and some of an exclusively political cast.

His life, as we have seen, was miscellaneous. He had followed no profession, unless his early connexion with the army be called one. His necessities saved him from fastidiousness as to his employment, if it was creditable and yielded a support, and, better still, if it ministered to his love of pleasure and display. He was for a time associated with the managers of the Drury-lane company, and received a good income from the connexion. He entered into political life with a zeal and devotion that seem scarcely compatible with his literary ardor and occupations, and with a fierceness that we should little expect in one who has left so many and beautiful testimonies to his sweetness of spirit. He was a violent partisan writer; and whatever may have been his determination to keep clear of party matters in the three periodical works we have named, the temptation was sometimes too strong, and the poison penetrated even there. We may add, that while in parliament, his offensive pamphlets drew down the vengeance of the Tories, and he was expelled from that body for what they called his scandalous and seditious libels. We refer to these things to show that Steele was far from being a retired scholar or speculatist; and though we care little now for his political course, yet we shall probably understand him better as a literary man, if we bear in mind, what sort of life he led ; that he held offices; that he was connected with the great; that he was fond of action, and disposed to push his fortunes by bold enterprises; and, above all, that he was alive to any measures that affected the prosperity of his country in whatever direction, and especially those that concerned toleration in religion and freedom generally. There can be no doubt that his varied experience, his acquaintance with common topics and all classes, his interest in all that was going on, as well as his natural turn for observation, prepared him to address his countrymen with authority and with the chance of being heard, upon their personal and domestic affairs, and upon most matters of general concern.

But if, as we have represented him, he was a man of pleasure and fashion, and violent in his political warfare, and, we may add, improvident, and at the mercy of his creditors, it may be reasonably thought that he was not the most proper person to set about the work of public moral reformation.

And yet his imperfections seem, in some points of view, to be an important part of his qualifications for this office. Steele was never thoroughly in love with vice, or hardened by acquaintance with it. His lively though fluctuating sense of the obligations, the elevating influences and happiness of religion, by reminding him of his weakness and low attainments, teaches him humility, and carries him directly to the wants and sins of others without the least air of pretension or oppressive injunction. Remorse for his own failings is not strong enough to make him a good example, and he never set up for one; nor was it of sufficient force to give him, what he most wanted, steadiness and consistency of character; but it brings him into close and effective connexion with those, whom, under his disguise, he would touch to the quick. Neither does his contrition create a morbid and repelling tone of remonstrance; but he talks with men as a companion and friend, who has as much at least to correct in himself as in them, and who would have it the joint interest of all to help each other. He has not brooded so long over his own and others' imperfections, that his mind has become narrowed and impoverished by the very importance of his purpose, that every thought and word is made solemn and weighty, and his aim for ever prominent. He has no single or prevailing class of sentiments or topics, and no system to unfold or maintain. Any thing of present human interest is good enough subject and occasion for him. It brings him to some point in the minds of others, where he is sure to find or make them alive. And though he does not profess to analyze truths or settle general principles, yet he has admirable skill in applying familiar truths and principles. And perhaps nothing is more observable in him, than the profound reflections and close perception of character and feeling, which attend upon his most familiar writings. Something perpetually comes up, which the occasion does not seem to demand; and generally it will be found that the choicest matter is in those papers, let the main subject be what it may, in which he allows himself to say, almost irresponsibly, whatever occurs to his mind. We feel then that he is hearty in his business, and that he is well prepared for it.

From considerations like these, it should seem that his very faults qualified him in some degree to be a teacher, by showing him how to probe the faults of others and adapt his instructions to their moral wants. Nothing is clearer than that VOL. XLVI. No. 99.

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he never relied a moment upon his character to give weight to his lessons. He wrote under the different disguises of Isaac Bickerstaff and Nestor Ironside, and in the Spectator as one of a club; and for part of the time at least, he was not known as the writer. On giving up the Tatler, he says the purpose of the work was wholly lost by its being so long understood that he was the author.

"I never designed," he continues, "to give any man a secret wound by my concealment, but spoke in the character of an old. man, a philosopher, a humorist, an astrologer and a censor, to allure my reader with the variety of my subjects, and insinuate, if I could, the weight of reason with the agreeableness of wit. The general purpose of the whole has been to recommend truth, innocence, honor, and virtue, as the chief ornaments of life; but I considered that severity of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others; and for that reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess my life is at best but pardonable. And with no greater character than this, a man would make but an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit, that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy, had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele." Tatler, No. 271.

It may still be supposed, that he assumed his serious mood, like his different titles, to serve his purpose. But there is every reason to think him sincere. We will not allow that the lightness of his character is against this. We judge rather by the fact, that, though in the great variety of his topics he says many things frivolous and exceptionable, yet the inculcation of religious truth, motives, and obligations is, in his later essays at least, steadily, perseveringly pursued. It is postponed for nothing else. It is introduced at any moment, and in any connexion where it can be with prudence and decency; and for the most part in a strictly practical manner. While Addison and Berkeley, among his coadjutors, are frequently prone to speculation and argument in their religious papers, Steele aims chiefly at instruction that shall bear directly upon conduct. While Johnson, at a later day, made use of the same form of writing to convey the speculations of a profound religious philosopher upon man and duty, and the results of his observation of human life, Steele, on the other hand,