utiful pieces from Steele's pen.

'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was upon the death
of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and
calling "Papa," for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was
locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, "Papa
could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going
to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She
was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought,
struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what
it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of
my heart ever since.'

Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele
recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with
love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes
the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters
were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door,
and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the
same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my
friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of
mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to
rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a
heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the
spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the
clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we
found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to
recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'

Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that
ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that
does not harmon