ar Prue, I cannot come home to dinner. I languish for your
welfare"; "I stay here in order to get Tonson to discount a bill for me,
and shall dine with him to that end"; and so forth. Once only does
Steele really afford the recent humourist the suggestion that is
apparently always so welcome. It is when he writes that he is invited to
supper to Mr. Boyle's, and adds: "Dear Prue, do not send after me, for I
shall be ridiculous." But even this is to be read not ungracefully by a
well-graced reader. Prue was young and unused to the world. Her
husband, by the way, had been already married; and his greater age makes
his constant deference all the more charming.

But with this one exception, Steele's little notes, kept by his wife
while she lived, and treasured after her death by her daughter and his,
are no record of the watchings and dodgings of a London farce. It is
worth while to remember that Steele's dinner, which it was so often
difficult to eat at home, was a thing of midday, and therefore of mid-
business. But that is a detail. What is desirable is that a reasonable
degree of sweetness should be attributed to Prue; for it is no more than
just. To her Steele wrote in a dedication: "How often has your
tenderness removed pain from my aching head, how often anguish from my
afflicted heart. If there are such beings as guardian angels, they are
thus employed. I cannot believe one of them to be more good in
inclination, or more charming in form, than my wife."

True, this was for the public; but not so were these daily notes; and
these carry to her his assurance that she is "the beautifullest object in
the world. I know no happiness in this life in any degree comparable to
the pleasure I have in your person and society." "But indeed, though you
have every perfection, you have an extravagant fault, which almost
frustrates the good in you to me; and that is, that you do not love to
dress, to appear, to shine out, even at my request, and to make me proud
of you, or rather to indulge the pride I have that you are mine." The
correction of the phrase is finely considerate.

Prue cannot have been a dull wife, for this last compliment is a reply,
full of polite alacrity, to a letter from her asking for a little
flattery. How assiduously, and with what a civilized absence of
uncouthness, of shame-facedness, and of slang of the mind, with what
simplicity, alertness, and finish, does he step out at her invitation,
an