age; and, after his characteristic fashion, he made his
Ben Legend a selfish, coarse, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannot
admire many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one cannot help
admiring every sentence they speak. The only fault to be found with
their talk is that it is too witty, too brilliant, for any manner of
real life. Society would have to be all composed of male and female
Congreves to make such conversation possible. There is more strength,
originality, and depth in it than even in the conversation in "The
Rivals" and "The School for Scandal." The same fault has been found
with Sheridan which is to be found with Congreve. We need not make too
much of it. No warning example is called for. There will never be
many dramatists whose dialogue will deserve the censure of critics on
the ground that it is too witty.

[Sidenote: 1729--Death of Steele]

Of Steele we have often had occasion to speak. His fame has been
growing rather than fading with time. At one period he was ranked by
critics as far below the level of Addison; few men now would not set
him on a pedestal as high. He was more natural, more simple, more
fresh than Addison. There is some justice in the remark of Hazlitt
that "Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set down
what he had observed out-of-doors;" {301} while Addison appears "to
have spent most of his time in his study," spinning out to the utmost
there the hints "which he borrowed from Steele or took from nature."
Every one, however, will cordially say with Hazlitt, "I am far from
wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice
to Steele." There are not many names in English literature round which
a greater affection clings than that of Steele. Leigh Hunt, in writing
of Congreve, speaks of "the love of the highest aspirations" which he
sometimes displays, and which makes us think of what he might have been
under happier and purer auspices. Leigh Hunt refers in especial to
Congreve's essay in the _Tatler_ on the character of Lady Elizabeth
Hastings, whom Congreve calls Aspasia--"an effusion so full of
enthusiasm for the moral graces, and worded with an appearance of
sincerity so cordial, that we can never read it without thinking it
must have come from Steele." "It is in this essay," Leigh Hunt goes
on, "that he says one of the most elegant and truly loving things that
were ever uttered by an unworldly passion: 'To love her is