not without historical value.
For one pamphlet of a political character, entitled _The Crisis_, he was
expelled from parliament for libel; but upon the death of Queen Anne, he
again found himself in favor. He was knighted in 1715, and received
several lucrative appointments.

He was an eloquent orator, and as a writer rapid and brilliant, but not
profound. Even thus, however, he catered to an age at once artificial and
superficial. Very observant of what he saw, he rushed to his closet and
jotted down his views in electrical words, which made themselves
immediately and distinctly felt.

HIS LAST DAYS.--Near the close of his life he produced a very successful
comedy, entitled _The Conscious Lover_, which would have been of pecuniary
value to him, were it not that he was already overwhelmed with debt. His
end was a sad one; but he reaped what his extravagance and recklessness
had sown. Shattered in health and ruined in fortune, he retreated from the
great world into homely retirement in Wales, where he lived, poor and
hidden, in a humble cottage at Llangunnor. His end was heralded by an
attack of paralysis, and he died in 1729.

After his death, his letters were published; and in the private history
which they unfold, he appears, notwithstanding all his follies, in the
light of a tender husband and of an amiable and unselfish man. He had
principle, but he lacked resolution; and the wild, vacillating character
of his life is mirrored in his writings, where _The Christian Hero_ stands
in singular contrast to the comic personages of his dramas. He was a
genial critic. His exuberant wit and humor reproved without wounding; he
was not severe enough to be a public censor, nor pedantic enough to be the
pedagogue of an age which often needed the lash rather than the gentle
reproof, and upon which a merciful clemency lost its end if not its
praises. He deserves credit for an attempt, however feeble, to reward
virtue upon the stage, after the wholesale rewards which vice had reaped
in the age of Charles II.

Steele has been overshadowed, in his connection with Addison, by the more
dignified and consistent career, the greater social respectability, and
the more elegant and scholarly style of his friend; and yet in much that
they jointly accomplished, the merit of Steele is really as great, and
conduces much to the reputation of Addison. The one husbanded and
cherished his fame; the other flung it away or lavished it upon his
c