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Prose

Notes 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.
Self Assessment
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) Steele was born in
(a) 1672 (b) 1680 (c) 1691 (d) None of these
(ii) Steele began to write in
(a) 1702 (b) 1704 (c) 1705 (d) 1701
(iii) Steele was baptised on the 12th March 1672 in
(a) Paris (b) Dublin (c) London (d) None of these
(iv) The Funeral was published in
(a) 1701 (b) 1705 (c) 1703 (d) 1704

12.4 Summary

• English man of letters in the reign of Queen Anne, is inseparably associated in the history of
literature with his personal friend Joseph Addison. He cannot be said to have lost in reputation
by the partnership, because he was inferior to Addison in purely literary gift, and it is
Addison’s literary genius that has floated their joint work above merely journalistic celebrity;
but the advantage was not all on Steele’s side, inasmuch as his more brilliant coadjutor has
usurped not a little of the merit rightly due to him. Steele’s often-quoted generous
acknowledgment of Addison’s services in the Tatler has proved true in a somewhat different
sense from that intended by the writer: “I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a
powerful neighbor to his aid; I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in
I could not subsist without dependence on him.
• Steele, the senior by less than two months, was baptized on the 12th of March 1672 in Dublin.
His father, also Richard Steele, was an attorney. He died before his son had reached his sixth
year, but the boy found a protector in his maternal uncle, Henry Gascoigne, secretary and
confidential agent to two successive dukes of Ormond. Through his influence he was
nominated to the Charterhouse in 1684, and there first met with Addison. Five years afterwards
he proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, and was a postmaster at Merton when Addison was
a demy at Magdalen. Their schoolboy friendship was continued at the university, and probably
helped to give a more serious turn to Steele’s mind than his natural temperament would
have taken under different companionship. A duel which he fought with Captain Kelly in
Hyde Park in 1700.
• Steele probably owed the king’s favor to a timely reference to his majesty in The Christian
Hero, his first prose treatise, published in April 1701. The “reformation of manners” was a
cherished purpose with King William and his consort, which they tried to effect by
proclamation and act of parliament; and a sensible well-written treatise, deploring the
irregularity of the military character, and seeking to prove by examples — the king himself
among the number — “that no principles but those of religion are sufficient to make a great
man”, was sure of attention. The Funeral was produced and published in 1701. Tatler made
its first appearance on the 12th of April 1709. The Englishman was started in October 1733.
In 1718 he obtained a patent for a plan for bringing salmon alive from Ireland
• 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

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