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SIR RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729) was born in Dublin, and was educated at Charterhouse and Oxford. In 1694 he left the University without taking his degree and entered the army. He was noted for his recklessness and improvidence, and seems to have been intimate with the wits of the day. In 1700 he nearly killed a Captain Kelly in a duel, and his remorse produced The Christian Hero, a devotional work, part of which was afterwards embodied in The Spectator. In 1701 his comedy, The Funeral; or Grief a-la-Mode, was acted at Drury Lane. This was followed in 1703 by The Lying Lover and The Tender Husband. In 1708 he succeeded to Addison's under-secretaryship, but in spite of several small Government appointments he was always in difficulties. In April, 1709, he started The Tatler, under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. In 1711 came The Spectator, and in 1713 The Guardian. His political pamphlets involved him in a controversy with Swift, and finally succeeded in producing a coldness between him and his oldest friend, Addison. The Guardian was followed by several more or less unsuccessful papers of the same sort. In 1722 his last comedy, The Conscious Lovers, was acted, but the last few years of his life produced no work of importance.

THE TATLER, No. 181

THERE are those among mankind, who can enjoy no relish of their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think everything lost that passes unobserved; but others find a solid delight in stealing by the crowd, and modelling their life after such a manner, as is as much above the approbation as the practice of the vulgar. Life being too short to give instances great enough of true friendship or good-will, some sages have thought it pious to preserve a certain reverence for the manes of their deceased friends; and have withdrawn themselves from the rest of the world at certain seasons, to commemorate in their own thoughts such of their acquaintance who have gone before them out of this life. And indeed, when we are advanced in

years, there is not a more pleasing entertainment, than to recollect in a gloomy moment the many we have parted with, that have been dear and agreeable to us, and to cast a melancholy thought or two after those, with whom, perhaps, we have indulged ourselves in whole nights of mirth and jollity. With such inclinations in my heart I went to my closet yesterday in the evening, and resolved to be sorrowful; upon which occasion I could not but look with disdain upon myself, that though all the reasons which I had to lament the loss of many of my friends are now as forcible as at the moment of their departure, yet did not my heart swell with the same sorrow which I felt at the time; but I could, without tears, reflect upon many pleasing adventures I have had with some, who have long been blended with common earth. Though it is by the benefit of nature, that length of time thus blots out the violence of afflictions; yet, with tempers too much given to pleasure, it is almost necessary to revive the old places of grief in our memory; and ponder step by step on past life, to lead the mind into that sobriety of thought which poises the heart, and makes it beat with due time, without being quickened with desire, or retarded with despair, from its proper and equal motion. When we wind up a clock that is out of order, to make it go well for the future, we do not immediately set the hand to the present instant, but we make it strike the round of all its hours, before it can recover the regularity of its time. Such, thought I, shall be my method this evening; and since it is that day of the year which I dedicate to the memory of such in another life as I much delighted in when living, an hour or two shall be sacred to sorrow and their memory, while I run over all the melancholy circumstances of this kind which have occurred to me in my whole life.

The first sense of sorrow I ever knew 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 his 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 of what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since. The mind in infancy is, methinks, like the body in embryo; and receives impressions so forcible, that they are as hard to be removed by reason, as any mark with which a child is born is to be taken away by any future application. Hence it is, that good-nature in me is no merit; but having been so frequently overwhelmed with her tears before I knew the cause of any affliction, or could draw defences from my own judgement, I imbibed commiseration, remorse, and an unmanly gentleness of mind, which has since ensnared me into ten thousand calamities; and from whence I can reap no advantage, except it be, that, in such a humour as I am now in, I can the better indulge myself in the softnesses of humanity, and enjoy

that sweet anxiety which arises from the memory of past afflictions.

We, that are very old, are better able to remember things which befell us in our distant youth, than the passages of later days. For this reason it is, that the companions of my strong and vigorous years present themselves more immediately to me in this office of sorrow. Untimely and unhappy deaths are what we are most apt to lament; so little are we able to make it indifferent when a thing happens, though we know it must happen. Thus we groan under life, and bewail those who are relieved from it. Every object that returns to our imagination raises different passions, according to the circumstance of their departure. Who can have lived in an army, and in a serious hour reflect upon the many gay and agreeable men that might long have flourished in the arts of peace, and not join with the imprecations of the fatherless and widow on the tyrant to whose ambition they fell sacrifices? But gallant men, who are cut off by the sword, move rather our veneration than our pity; and we gather relief enough from their own contempt of death, to make that no evil, which was approached with so much cheerfulness, and attended with so much honour. But when we turn our thoughts from the great parts of life on such occasions, and instead of lamenting those who stood ready to give death to those from whom they had the fortune to receive it; I say, when we let our thoughts wander from such noble objects, and consider the havoc which is made among the tender and the innocent, pity enters with an unmixed softness, and possesses all our souls at once.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774) was the son of an Irish clergyman, the original of the poor parson in The Deserted Village. He at first intended to take Orders; then he studied

medicine in Edinburgh, and finally, in 1753, he went to Leyden, and spent the next two years in wandering about the Continent. On his return to England he became assistant to a chemist in London, and afterwards set up as a Physician. Early in 1757 he became employed by Griffiths, the proprietor of The Monthly Review, and from this time turned his attention to literature. He wrote for a number of papers and magazines, and did hack work of every kind. The Chinese Letters, published in book form as The Citizen of the World in 1762, were originally contributed twice a week to The Public Ledger. In 1764 his History of England was published anonymously. Goldsmith was one of the original nine members of the club founded by Johnson, and Johnson seems to have been one of the few people to appreciate his genius at this time. In 1764 came The Traveller, which ran through nine editions. The Vicar of Wakefield was published in 1766, and Goldsmith's reputation was now established. In 1767 his comedy, The Goodnatured Man, was produced. In 1770 came The Deserted Village, and in 1773 She Stoops to Conquer was produced with great success. His last poem, Retaliation, as published after his death.

CITIZEN OF THE WORLD. LETTER XXVI THE CHARACTER OF THE MAN IN BLACK, WITH SOME INSTANCES OF HIS INCONSISTENT CONDUCT

THOUGH fond of many acquaintances, I desire an intimacy only with a few. The man in black whom I have often mentioned, is one whose friendship I could wish to acquire, because he possesses my esteem. His manners, it is true, are tinctured with some strange inconsistencies: and he may be justly termed a humorist in a nation of humorists. Though he is generous even to profusion, he affects to be thought a prodigy of parsimony and prudence; though his conversation be replete with the most sordid and selfish maxims, his heart is dilated with the most unbounded love. I have known him profess himself a man-hater, while his cheek was

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