sedly raised on the malicious hints we have
been noticing. That the _Examiner_ was the seed-plot of "The Character
of Richard St--le, Esq.," appears by its opening--"It will be no
injury, I am persuaded, to the _Examiner_ to _borrow him_ a little
(Steele), upon promise of returning him safe, as children do their
playthings, when their mirth is over, and, they have done with them."

The author of the "Character of Richard St--le, Esq.," was Dr.
Wagstaffe, one of those careless wits[344] who lived to repent a
crazy life of wit, fancy, and hope, and an easy, indolent one, whose
genial hours force up friends like hot-house plants, that bloom and
flower in the spot where they are raised, but will not endure the
change of place and season--this wit caught the tone of Swift, and
because, as his editor tells us, "he had some friends in the ministry,
and thought he could not take a better way to oblige them than by
showing his dislike to a gentleman who had so much endeavoured to
oppose them," he sat down to write a libel with all the best humour
imaginable; for, adds this editor, "he was so far from having any
personal pique or enmity against Mr. Steele, that at the time of his
writing he did not so much as know him, even by sight." This principle
of "having some friends in the ministry," and not "any knowledge" of
the character to be attacked, has proved a great source of invention
to our political adventurers;--thus Dr. Wagstaffe was fully enabled to
send down to us a character where the moral and literary qualities of
a genius, to whom this country owes so much as the father of
periodical papers, are immolated to his political purpose. This severe
character passed through several editions. However the careless Steele
might be willing to place the elaborate libel to the account of party
writings, if he did not feel disturbed at reproaches and accusations,
which are confidently urged, and at critical animadversions, to which
the negligence of his style sometimes laid him too open, his
insensibility would have betrayed a depravity in his morals and taste
which never entered into his character.[345]

Steele was doomed even to lose the friendship of Addison amid
political discords; but on that occasion Steele showed that his taste
for literature could not be injured by political animosity. It was at
the close of Addison's life, and on occasion of the Peerage Bill,
Steele published "The Plebeian," a cry against enlarging the
ari