at this place. He wrote a comedy, which, by the advice of
a friend, the humble fellow burned there; and some verses, which I dare
say are as sublime as other gentlemen's composition at that age; but being
smitten with a sudden love for military glory, he threw up the cap and
gown for the saddle and bridle, and rode privately in the Horse Guards, in
the Duke of Ormond's troop--the second--and, probably, with the rest of the
gentlemen of his troop, "all mounted on black horses with white feathers
in their hats, and scarlet coats richly laced," marched by King William,
in Hyde Park, in November, 1699, and a great show of the nobility, besides
twenty thousand people, and above a thousand coaches. "The Guards had just
got their new clothes," the _London Post_ said: "they are extraordinary
grand, and thought to be the finest body of horse in the world." But
Steele could hardly have seen any actual service. He who wrote about
himself, his mother, his wife, his loves, his debts, his friends, and the
wine he drank, would have told us of his battles if he had seen any. His
old patron, Ormond, probably got him his cornetcy in the Guards, from
which he was promoted to be a captain in Lucas's Fusiliers, getting his
company through the patronage of Lord Cutts, whose secretary he was, and
to whom he dedicated his work called the _Christian Hero_. As for Dick,
whilst writing this ardent devotional work, he was deep in debt, in drink,
and in all the follies of the town; it is related that all the officers of
Lucas's, and the gentlemen of the Guards, laughed at Dick.(98) And in
truth a theologian in liquor is not a respectable object, and a hermit,
though he may be out at elbows, must not be in debt to the tailor. Steele
says of himself that he was always sinning and repenting. He beat his
breast and cried most piteously when he _did_ repent: but as soon as
crying had made him thirsty, he fell to sinning again. 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."

His life was so. Jack the drawer was always interrupting it, bringing him
a bot