must use the word!"

Such was Addison as a humorist; and when the hearer shall have heard
also,--or the reader read,--that this most charming Tattler also wrote
_Cato_, became a Secretary of State, and married a countess, he will
have learned all that Thackeray had to tell of him.

Steele was one who stood much less high in the world's esteem, and who
left behind him a much smaller name,--but was quite Addison's equal as a
humorist and a wit. Addison, though he had the reputation of a toper,
was respectability itself. Steele was almost always disreputable. He was
brought from Ireland, placed at the Charter House, and then transferred
to Oxford, where he became acquainted with Addison. Thackeray says that
"Steele found Addison a stately college don at Oxford." The stateliness
and the don's rank were attributable no doubt to the more sober
character of the English lad, for, in fact, the two men were born in the
same year, 1672. Steele, who during his life was affected by various
different tastes, first turned himself to literature, but early in life
was bitten by the hue of a red coat and became a trooper in the Horse
Guards. To the end he vacillated in the same way. "In that charming
paper in _The Tatler_, in which he records his father's death, his
mother's griefs, his own most solemn and tender emotions, he says he is
interrupted by the arrival of a hamper of wine, 'the same as is to be
sold at Garraway's next week;' upon the receipt of which he sends for
three friends, and they fall to instantly, drinking two bottles apiece,
with great benefit to themselves, and not separating till two o'clock in
the morning."

He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated badly. He hired grand
houses, and bought fine horses for which he could never pay. He was
often religious, but more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men of
letters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not be very proud of
him. But everybody loved him; and he seems to have been the inventor of
that flying literature which, with many changes in form and manner, has
done so much for the amusement and edification of readers ever since his
time. He was always commencing, or carrying on,--often editing,--some
one of the numerous periodicals which appeared during his time.
Thackeray mentions seven: _The Tatler_, _The Spectator_, _The Guardian_,
_The Englishman_, _The Lover_, _The Reader_, and _The Theatre_; that
three of them are well known to this day,