lived esteemed by all his
acquaintance, so he died without leaving ons enemy to reproach his
memory; a felicity which few men of public employments, or possessed
of so distinguished a genius, ever enjoyed. He has left behind
him monuments of fame, which can never perish but with taste and
politeness.

[Footnote A: The two first were never printed from Sir John's
manuscript.]

* * * * *

Sir RICHARD STEELE, Knt.

This celebrated genius was born in Ireland. His father being a
counsellor at law, and private secretary to James duke of Ormond, he
went over with his grace to that kingdom, when he was raised to the
dignity of lord lieutenant[A]. Our author when but very young, came
over into England; and was educated at the Charter-House school
in London, where Mr. Addison was his school-fellow, and where they
contracted a friendship which continued firm till the death of that
great man.

His inclination leading him to the army, he rode for some time
privately in the guards; in which station, as he himself tells us, in
his Apology for his Writings, he first became an author, a way of
life in which the irregularities of youth are considered as a kind of
recommendation.

Mr. Steele was born with the most violent propension to pleasure, and
at the same time was master of so much good sense, as to be able
to discern the extreme folly of licentious courses, their moral
unfitness, and the many calamities they naturally produce. He
maintained a perpetual struggle between reason and appetite. He
frequently fell into indulgencies, which cost him many a pang of
remorse, and under the conviction of the danger of a vicious life,
he wrote his Christian Hero, with a design to fix upon his own mind a
strong impression of virtue and religion. But this secret admonition
to his conscience he judged too weak, and therefore in the year 1701
printed the book with his name prefixed, in hopes that a standing
evidence against himself in the eyes of the world, might the more
forcibly induce him to lay a restraint upon his desires, and make him
ashamed of vice, so contrary to his own sense and conviction.

This piece was the first of any note, and is esteem'd by some as one
of the best of Mr. Steele's works; he gained great reputation by it,
and recommended himself to the regard of all pious and good men. But
while he grew in the esteem of the religious and worthy, he sunk in
the opinion of his old c