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Unit 12: Steele-On The Death of Friend: Introduction

various titles, some of them political, some social in their objects, most of them very short-lived. Notes
Steele was a warm partisan of the principles of the Revolution, as earnest in his political as in his
other convictions. The Englishman was started in October 1733, immediately after the stoppage of
the Guardian, to assail the policy of the Tory ministry. The Lover, started in February 1714, was
more general in its aims; but it gave place in a month or two to the Reader, a direct counterblast to
the Tory Examiner. The Englishman was resuscitated for another volume in 1715; and he subsequently
projected in rapid succession three unsuccessful ventures — Town Talk, the Tea Table and Chit Chat.
Three years later he started his most famous political paper the Plebeian, rendered memorable by
the fact that it embroiled him with his old ally Addison. The subject of controversy between the
two lifelong friends was Sunderland’s Peerage Bill. Steele’s last venture in journalism was the
Theatre, 1720, the immediate occasion of which was the revocation of his patent for Drury Lane.
Besides these journals he wrote also several pamphlets on passing questions — on the disgrace of
Marlborough in 1711, on the fortifications of Dunkirk in 1713, on the crisis in 1714, An Apology for
Himself and His Writings (important biographically) in the same year, and on the South Sea mania
in 1720.
The fortunes of Steele as a zealous Whig varied with the fortunes of his party. Over the Dunkirk
question he waxed so hot that he threw up a pension and a commissionership of stamps, and went
into parliament as member for Stockbridge to attack the ministry with voice and vote as well as
with pen. But he had not sat many weeks when he was expelled from the house for the language
of his pamphlet on the Crisis, which was stigmatized as seditious. The Apology already mentioned
was his vindication of himself on this occasion. With the accession of the House of Hanover his
fortunes changed. Honors and substantial rewards were showered upon him. He was made a
justice of the peace, deputy-lieutenant of Middlesex, surveyor of the royal stables, governor of the
royal company of comedians — the lasta lucrative post — and was also knighted (1715). After the
suppression of the Jacobite rebellion he was appointed one of the commissioners of forfeited
estates, and spent some two years in Scotland in that capacity. In 1718 he obtained a patent for a
plan for bringing salmon alive from Ireland. Differing from his friends in power on the question
of the Peerage Bill he was deprived of some of his offices, but when Robert Walpole became
chancellor of the exchequer in 1721 he was reinstated. With all his emoluments however the
imprudent, impulsive, ostentatious and generous Steele could never get clear of financial difficulties,
and he was obliged to retire from London in 1724 and live in the country. He spent his last years
on his wife’s estate of Llangunnor in Wales, and, his health broken down by a paralytic seizure,
died at Carmarthen on the 1st of September 1729.

12.2 Steele as a Writer

As mentioned above, in 1701, Steele published his first booklet entitled “The Christian Hero,”
which was written while Steele was serving in the army, and was his idea of a pamphlet of moral
instruction. “The Christian Hero” was ultimately ridiculed for what some thought was hypocrisy
because he did not necessarily follow his own preaching. He was criticized for publishing a
booklet about morals when he, himself, enjoyed drinking, occasional dueling, and debauchery
around town. In fact, Steele even had an illegitimate child Elizabeth Ousley, whom he later adopted.
Steele wrote a comedy that same year titled The Funeral. This play was met with wide success and
was performed at Drury Lane, bringing him to the attention of the King and the Whig party. Next,
Steele wrote The Lying Lover, which was one of the first sentimental comedies, but was a failure
on stage. In 1705, Steele wrote The Tender Husband with Addison’s contributions, and later that
year wrote the prologue to The Mistake, by John Vanbrugh, also an important member of the
Whig Kit-Kat Club with Addison and Steele.
The Tatler, Steele’s first journal, first came out on 12 April 1709, and ran three times a week:
Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Steele wrote this periodical under a pseudonym of Isaac

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