h a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not
dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.

Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was
inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped
from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith,
whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was
allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to
quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting
lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,'
it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words,
shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never
attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had
fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On
the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look
up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the
evening of that day he wrote:

'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,

'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so
that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than
I _die for you_.

'RICH. STEELE.'

After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved
a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style,
and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his
house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as
'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common
necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a
pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'

On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the
_Tatler_, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name,
thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.'
The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the
convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news,
which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to
supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the _Tatler_,
this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's
Cho