is that which gives his works their worth and his style its charm. It,
like his life, is full of faults and careless blunders; and redeemed, like
that, by his sweet and compassionate nature.

We possess of poor Steele's wild and chequered life some of the most
curious memoranda that ever were left of a man's biography.(103) Most
men's letters, from Cicero down to Walpole, or down to the great men of
our own time, if you will, are doctored compositions, and written with an
eye suspicious towards posterity. That dedication of Steele's to his wife
is an artificial performance, possibly; at least, it is written with that
degree of artifice which an orator uses in arranging a statement for the
House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for the
stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele'e to his wife, which
that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could have been written
but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business,
pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair; they have all the
genuineness of conversation; they are as artless as a child's prattle, and
as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the
printing-office, where he is waiting for the proofsheets of his _Gazette_,
or his _Tatler_; some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to
come to his wife "within a pint of wine", and where he has given a
rendezvous to a friend, or a money-lender: some are composed in a high
state of vinous excitement, when his head is flustered with burgundy, and
his heart abounds with amorous warmth for his darling Prue: some are under
the influence of the dismal headache and repentance next morning: some,
alas, are from the lock-up house, where the lawyers have impounded him,
and where he is waiting for bail. You trace many years of the poor
fellow's career in these letters. In September, 1707, from which day she
began to save the letters, he married the beautiful Mistress Scurlock. You
have his passionate protestations to the lady; his respectful proposals to
her mamma; his private prayer to Heaven when the union so ardently desired
was completed; his fond professions of contrition and promises of
amendment, when, immediately after his marriage, there began to be just
cause for the one and need for the other.

Captain Steele took a house for his lady upon their marriage, "the third
door from Germain Street, left hand of Berry Street," and the next year he