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2. Richard Steele and Joseph Addison
Although differed in
both life and writing styles, Joseph Addition（1672-1719）and Sir Richard
Steele（1672-1729）are often linked together, because they were intimate
friends, old classmates, and stood at the same political side, shared the
partnership in literary career and cooperated in setting up
Spectator
and
Tatler.
Sir Richard Steele（1627-1729）
Richard Steele, an Irish writer under a Pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, was an
essayist, dramatist, journalist, and politician. He was born in Dublin, in
the same year as Addison and was educated with him at the Charterhouse. He
was later at Merton College, Oxford, where he entered the army as a cadet in
the life Guard. Because of the poem on Queen Mary’s funeral he became a
lord’s secretary and obtained the rank of captain. He published The
Christian Hero in1701, in which he first displayed his missionary and
reforming spirit. In the same year, he produced his first comedy The
Funeral. In 1706 he was appointed gentleman waiter to Prince George of
Denmark.
In 1709 he started The Tatler, which contained several
essays each issue and appeared three times per week. The essays in his
Tatler attempted to reform the public opinions and propagating new
thought—the rational spirit, freedom from superstition. His appeal
enlightened the “coffee-houses goers” greatly.
The Talter carried on schedule until 2nd January 1711
when he began to run another paper The Spectator during 1711-12 with
the help of Addison. This was followed by The Guardian, which was
contributed by Addison, Berkeley and Pope, and attacked by the
Tory
“Examiner”. Steele next conducted The Englishman（1713-14）a more
political paper. In 1713 he was elected MP for Stockbridge. In 1714 he
published The Crisis, a pamphlet in favor of Hanoverian succession
but was answered by Swift. He was appointed supervisor of Drury Lane
Theater, and to other posts, and was knighted in1715. In 1718 he denounced
in The Plebeian Lord Sunderland’s Peerage Bill, and was answered by Addison
in the Old Whig. This incident led the ending of his friendship with
Addison. Money difficulties forced him to leave London in 1724, and he died
at Carmarthen.
Compared to Addison, he was less highly regarded as an
essayist, for his careless, but his influence was not less great. His
attacks on Restoration drama, his approval of the “sober and polite Mirth”
of Terence, his praise of tender and affectionate domestic and family life
and his reformed and sentimental dramas did much to create an image of
behavior for the new century.
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