Note 345 — QUARRELS OF AUTHORS; (continued 3)

I shall content myself with referring to “The Character of Richard St—le, Esq.,” in Dr. Wagstaffe’s Miscellaneous Works, 1726. Considering that he had no personal knowledge of his victim, one may be well surprised at his entering so deeply into his private history; but of such a character as Steele, the private history is usually too public—a mass of scandal for the select curious. Poor Steele, we are told, was “arrested for the maintenance of his bastards, and afterwards printed a proposal that the public should take care of them;” got into the House “not to be arrested;”—“his set speeches there, which he designs to get extempore to speak in the House.” For his literary character we are told that “Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock, another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye; so that Dick is made up of borrowed colours; he borrowed his humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of Pope, and his politics of Ridpath; so that his qualifications as a man of genius, like Mr. T——s, as a member of Parliament, lie in thirteen parishes.” Such are the pillows made up for genius to rest its head on!

Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour; Steele, who often wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this sentence: “And ALL, as one man, will join in a common indignation against ALL who would perplex our obedience:” on which our pleasant critic remarks—“Whatever contradiction there is, as some suppose, in all joining against all, our author has good authority for what he says; and it may be proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything consists of two alls, that these alls are capable of being divided and subdivided into as many alls as you please, and so ad infinitum. The following lines may serve for an illustration:—

‘Three children sliding on the ice Upon a summer’s day; As it fell out, they all fell in; The rest they ran away.’

“Though this polite author does not directly say there are two alls, yet he implies as much; for I would ask any reasonable man what can be understood by the rest they ran away, but the other all we have been speaking of? The world may see that I can exhibit the beauties, as well as quarrel with the faults, of his composition, but I hope he will not value himself on his hasty productions.”

Poor Steele, with the best humour, bore these perpetual attacks, not, however, without an occasional groan, just enough to record his feelings. In one of his wild, yet well-meant projects, of the invention of “a Fish-pool, or Vessel for Importing Fish Alive,” 1718, he complains of calumnies and impertinent observations on him, and seems to lay some to the account of his knighthood:—“While he was pursuing what he believed might conduce to the common good, he gave the syllables Richard Steele to the publick, to be used and treated as they should think fit; he must go on in the same indifference, and allow the Town their usual liberty with his name, which I find they think they have much more room to sport with than formerly, as it is lengthened with the monosyllable Sir.”