Steele produced the most successful of all his comedies, “The Conscious Lovers." He dedicated it to the king, who sent him a present of 500l. This was but as a drop in the bucket, for debts like curses come home to roost, and pecuniary difficulties, the result of a life's improvidence, were crowding thick around poor Steele. He left London, first for Bath, then for Hereford, and lastly for Llangunnor, which had come to him from his wife.' He died at Carmarthen on September 1, 1729, and three days later he was buried in St. Peter's Church in that town. "Peace be with him! Let us think gently of one who was so gentle : let us speak kindly of one whose own breast exuberated with human kindness." 2 Two of the papers in this edition of the de Coverley Essays were written by EUSTACE BUDGELL. His father was the Rev. Gilbert Budgell, D.D., of St. Thomas, near Budgell. Exeter; his mother was Mary, the daughter of Gulston, Bishop of Bristol, and consequently the niece of Addison's mother. Eustace, after passing through school and university with more than fair reputation, came to London to study law, and by the help of his kinsman obtained easy access to the best literary society. The young man had much to recommend him, a pleasing person, elegant manners, fashionable dress, in addition to a good knowledge of the classics, and of French, Italian, and English authors. Events had not yet proved that his vanity was stronger than his virtue. Partly by his own abilities, and partly by the help of his "cousin," he rose rapidly in the public service, till in 1717 we find him Accountant and Controller-General of Irish Revenue. Next year he reached the turning-point in his life. The Duke of Bclon came to Dublin as Lord Lieutenant, bringing with him a favourite of his own as Chief Secretary. 2 Thackeray. 1 Lady Steele had died in 1718. Budgell thought the post should have been given to himself, and he attacked the favourite in a violent pamphlet. Not content with this folly, he wrote a second pamphlet in which he did not spare the Duke, who was highly offended and obtained his dismissal. The angry man returned to England, consulted Addison and received sage advice, which, of course, he did not follow. The steps in his downward career need not be traced in detail. The more he tried to recover his lost position, or to obtain fresh employment in the public service, the more enemies he made. At last, despairing of success in this direction, he took to gambling in stocks and lost nearly all his property. Then he tried to live by his pen. In the days of his prosperity he had written with applause in the "Tatler," the "Spectator," and the "Guardian," but nothing that he wrote in the days of his distress is remembered now except the "Bee" and the will of Dr. Toland. Dr. Toland was a wellknown Deist. He was possessed of about two thousand pounds which he had expressed his intention of leaving to a favourite nephew. The surprise was therefore general when it was found that his little fortune was bequeathed to Budgell, and people did not hesitate to say that the will was a forgery. It is to this that Pope alludes in the Prologue to the satires :— 1 "Let Budgell charge low Grub Street 2 on my quill The unhappy man's fortune, reputation, and self-respect were now lost for ever, so he determined to commit suicide. On May 4, 1737, he threw himself into the Thames, leaving on his desk a piece of paper whereon he had written "What Cato did and Addison approved 1 His father had left him 950l. a year. 2 Budgell had accused Pope of writing in the "Grub Street Journal." It need hardly be said that Addison did not approve of suicide, though facts made him cause Cato to die by his own hand in the play. ... The style of Budgell "is often a very happy imitation of Addison's manner; if it possesses not all the mellowness and sweetness of the original it is sweet, unaffected and clear, and in general more correct and rounded than the diction of Steele. . . . That he entered with perfect accuracy into the conception and keeping of a character so original as that of Sir Roger de Coverley is the still greater merit of Budgell. His description of the hunt in No. 116. . . is a picture that one would not exchange for volumes of mediocrity." 1 1 Dr. Nathan Drake: "Essays Biographical, Critical, and Historical, illustrative of the 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' and 'Guardian,'" vol. iii., p. 19. THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE Addive Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem IIOR. His flash ends not in smoke; but out of smoke I HAVE observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting, will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history. I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There B |