STEELE, Sir Richard, was born in Dublin about the year 1676. One branch of the family was possessed of a considerable estate in the county of Wexford. His father, a counsellor at law in Dublin, was private secretary to James, Duke of Ormond; but he was of English extraction; and his son, while very young, being carried to London, he put him to school at the Charter-house, whence he was removed to Merton College in Oxford. He left the university without taking any degree, in the full resolution to enter into the army. This step was highly displeasing to his friends; but the ardour of his passion for a military life rendered him deaf to any other proposal. Not being able to procure a better station, he entered as a private gentleman in the horse guards, notwithstanding he thus lust the succession to his Irish estate. However, as he had a flow of good nature, a generous openness and frankness of spirit, and a sparkling vivacity of wit, these qualities rendered him the delight of the soldiery, and procured him an ensign’s commission in the guards. In the mean time, as he had made choice of a profession[7:20:714] which set him free from all the ordinary restraints in youth, he spared not to indulge his inclinations in the wildest excesses. Yet his gayeties and revels did not pass without some cool hours of reflection; it was in these that he drew up his little treatise entitled The Christian Hero, with a design, if we may believe himself, to be a check upon his passions. For this purpose it had lain for some time by him, when he printed it in 1701, with a dedication to Lord Cutts, who had not only appointed him his private secretary, but procured for him a company in Lord Lucas’s regiment of fusiliers.

During the same year he brought out his comedy, called The Funeral, or Grief à la Mode. This play procured him the notice of King William, who resolved to give him some essential marks of his favour; and though, upon that prince’s death, bis hopes were disappointed, yet, in the beginning of Queen Anne’s reign, he was appointed to the profitable place of gazetteer. This post he owed to the friendship of Lord Halifax and the Earl of Sunderland, to whom be had been recommended by his schoolfellow Mr Addison. That gentleman also lent him a helping hand in promoting the comedy called The Tender Husband, which was acted in 1704 with great success. But his next play, The Lying Lover, had a very different fate. Upon this rebuff from the stage, he turned the same humorous current into another channel; and early in the year 1709, he began to publish the Tatler; which admirable paper was undertaken in concert with Dr Swift. His reputation was perfectly established by this work; and, during the course of it, he was made a commissioner of the stamp-duties in 1710. Upon the change of the ministry the same year, he joined the Duke of Marlborough, who had several years entertained a friendship for him; and upon his Grace’s dismission from all employments in 1711, Mr Steele addressed a letter of thanks to him for the services which he had rendered to his country. As, however, he still continued to hold his place in the stampoffice under the new administration, he wisely declined the discussion of political subjects; and, adhering more closely to Addison, he dropped the Tatler, and afterwards, by the assistance chiefly of that steady friend, he carried on the same plan, much improved, under the title of the Spectator. The success of this paper was equal to that of the former; and, before the close of it, he was thus encouraged to proceed upon the same design in the character of the Guardian. This was opened in the beginning of the year 1713, and was laid down in October the same year. But in the course of it his thoughts took a stronger turn to politics: he engaged with great warmth against the ministry; and being determined to prosecute iiis views by procuring a seat in the House of Commons, he immediately removed all the obstacles that stood in his way. For that purpose he took care to prevent a forcible dismission from his post in the stamp-office, by a timely resignation of it to the Earl of Oxford; and at the same time gave up a pension, which had hitherto been paid to him by the Queen as a servant to the late Prince George of Denmark. He now wrote the famous Guardian upon the demolition of Dunkirk. It was published August 7, 1613; and the parliament being dissolved next day, the Guardian was soon followed by several other warm political tracts against the administration. Upon the meeting of the new parliament, Steele having been returned a member for the borough of Stockbridge in Hampshire, took his seat accordingly in the House of Commons; but was expelled in the course of a few days, for writing the close of the paper called the Englishman, and one of his political pieces entitled the Crisis. Presently after his expulsion, he published proposals for writing the history of the Duke of Marlborough. At the same time he also wrote the Spinster; and, in opposition to the Examiner, he set up a paper called the Reader, and continued publishing several other papers and tracts in the same spirit till the death of the queen. As a reward for these services, he was immediately taken into favour by her successor to the throne, King George

I.; was appointed surveyor of the royal stables at Hampton Court, and governor of the royal company of comedians was put into the commission of the peace for the county of Middlesex, and in 1715 received the honour of knighthood. In the first parliament of that king, he was chosen member for Boroughbridge in Yorkshire; and, after the suppression of the rebellion in the north, was appointed one of the commissioners of the forfeited estates in Scotland. In 1718, he buried his second wife, who had brought him a handsome fortune with a good estate in Wales; but neither this, nor the ample addition lately made to his income, was sufficient to answer his demands. The thoughtless vivacity of his spirit often reduced him to little shifts of wit for its support; and the project of the fish-pool this year, owed its birth chiefly to the projector’s necessities. This vessel was intended to carry fish alive, and without wasting, to any part of the kingdom; but notwithstanding all bis towering hopes, the scheme proved very ruinous to him; for after he had been at an immense expence in contriving and building his vessel, besides the charge of the patent, which he had procured, it turned out upon trial to be a mere project. His plan was to bring salmon alive from the coast of Ireland; but these fish, though supplied by this contrivance with a continual stream of water while at sea, yet uneasy at their confinement, shattered themselves to pieces against the sides of the pool; so that when they were brought to market they were worth very little.

The following year he opposed the remarkable peerage bill in the House of Commons; and, during the course of this opposition to the court, his license for acting plays was revoked, and his patent rendered ineffectual at the instance of the Lord Chamberlain. He did his utmost to prevent so great a loss; and finding every direct avenue of approach to his royal master effectually barred against him by his powerful adversary, he had recourse to the method of applying to the public, in hopes that his complaints would reach the ears of his sovereign, though in an indirect course, by that channel. In this spirit he formed the plan of a periodical paper, to be published twice a-week, under the title of the Theatre; the first number of which appeared on the 2d of January 1719-20. In the mean time, the misfortune of being out of favour at court, like other misfortunes, drew after it a train of more. During the course of this paper, in which he had assumed the feigned name of Sir John Edgar, he was outrageously attacked by Mr Dennis, the noted critic, in a very abusive pamphlet, entitled The Character and Conduct of Sir John Edgar. To this insult he made a proper reply in the Theatre.

While he was struggling with all his might to save himself from ruin, he found time to turn his pen against the mischievous South Sea scheme, which had nearly brought the nation to ruin in 1720; and the next year he was restored to his office and authority in the playhouse in Drury-Lane. Of this it was not long before he made an additional advantage, by bringing his celebrated comedy called the Conscious Lovers upon that stage, where it was acted with prodigious success; so that the receipt there must have been very considerable, besides the profits accruing by the sale of the copy, and a purse[7:20:715] of £300 given to him by the king, to whom he dedicated it. Yet notwithstanding these ample supplies, about the year following, being reduced to the utmost extremity, he sold his share in the playhouse; and soon after commenced a lawsuit with the managers, which in 1726, was decided against him. Having now again, for the last time, brought himself by the most heedless profusion into a desperate condition, he was rendered altogether incapable of retrieving the loss, by being seized with a paralytic disorder, which greatly impaired his understanding. In these unhappy circumstances, he retired to his seat at Languanor near Caermarthen in Wales, where he died on the 21st of September 1729, and, according to his own desire, was privately interred in the church of Caermarthen. Among his papers were found the manuscripts of two plays, one called The Gentlemen, founded upon the Eunuch of Terence, and the other entitled The School of Action, both nearly finished.

Sir Richard was a man of undissembled and extensive benevolence, a friend to the friendless, and, as far as his circumstances would permit, the father of every orphan. His works are chaste and manly. He was a stranger to the most distant appearance of envy or malevolence; never jealous of any man’s growing reputation; and so far from arrogating any praise to himself from his conjunction with Mr Addison, that he was the first who desired him to distinguish his papers. His great fault was want of economy; and it has been said of him, he was certainly the most agreeable and the most innocent rake that ever trode the rounds of dissipation.