s hour of success now came, and he was able to help our friend,
the _Christian Hero_, in such a way, that, if there had been any chance of
keeping that poor tipsy champion upon his legs, his fortune was safe, and
his competence assured. Steele procured the place of Commissioner of
Stamps: he wrote so richly, so gracefully often, so kindly always, with
such a pleasant wit and easy frankness, with such a gush of good spirits
and good humour, that his early papers may be compared to Addison's own,
and are to be read, by a male reader at least, with quite an equal
pleasure.(101)

After the _Tatler_, in 1711, the famous _Spectator_ made its appearance,
and this was followed, at various intervals, by many periodicals under the
same editor--the _Guardian_--the _Englishman_--the _Lover_, whose love was
rather insipid--the _Reader_, of whom the public saw no more after his
second appearance--the _Theatre_, under the pseudonym of Sir John Edgar,
which Steele wrote, while Governor of the Royal Company of Comedians, to
which post, and to that of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court,
and to the Commission of the Peace for Middlesex, and to the honour of
knighthood, Steele had been preferred soon after the accession of George
I, whose cause honest Dick had nobly fought, through disgrace and danger,
against the most formidable enemies, against traitors and bullies, against
Bolingbroke and Swift in the last reign. With the arrival of the King,
that splendid conspiracy broke up; and a golden opportunity came to Dick
Steele, whose hand, alas, was too careless to grip it.

Steele married twice; and outlived his places, his schemes, his wife, his
income, his health, and almost everything but his kind heart. That ceased
to trouble him in 1729, when he died, worn out and almost forgotten by his
contemporaries, in Wales, where he had the remnant of a property.

Posterity has been kinder to this amiable creature; all women especially
are bound to be grateful to Steele, as he was the first of our writers who
really seemed to admire and respect them. Congreve the Great, who alludes
to the low estimation in which women were held in Elizabeth's time, as a
reason why the women of Shakespeare make so small a figure in the poet's
dialogues, though he can himself pay splendid compliments to women, yet
looks on them as mere instruments of gallantry, and destined, like the
most consummate fortifications, to fall, after a certain time, before t