out in 1703. It was adapted from one of the plays of Corneille and was intended, like its predecessor, to show that wit and humor were not necessarily the associates of vice and libertinism.

There are scenes in this play well worth reading and it had on the stage a run of six nights, but after that the public took no interest in it. Late in life Steele said that the play was " damned for its piety," and this was true to the extent that it undertook to lecture the public on the sort of plays it should patronize. In a measure it assumed to present the arguments of Jeremy Collier upon the stage.

Steele's next play was "The Tender Husband," which he dedicated to Addison as a memorial of inviolable friendship. "I should not offer it to you as such," he writes, "had I not been careful to avoid everything ill-natured, immoral or prejudicial to what the better part of mankind hold sacred and honorable."

In

The play is really as readable as a novel. outline it runs as follows: Sir Henry Gubbins brings his son Humphrey, a booby and dullard, up to town to effect a match with his cousin, the niece of Hezekiah Tipkin, a city banker. The young lady is an heiress and has passed her life in reading romances. She scorns her country

cousin and takes up with Captain Clerimont, a gallant, handsome fellow who finally carries her off in triumph, leaving the booby in the most ridiculous of situations. There is lots of wit and fun in the dialogue, and the play had considerable success, but it does not survive for the reason that its plot and situations have for more than a century been appropriated, with variations, by other playwrights. They in fact belong to the stock properties of theaters, and are used even today by the writers of plays who with a modern environment present the ever-new and ever-old dramatic situation of human life.

As a matter of fact, many distinguished English writers have borrowed ideas from Steele's "The Tender Husband." The country squire, Sir Henry Gubbins, is the prototype of Fielding's Squire Western, and his son Humphrey furnished Goldsmith with the suggestion of Tony Lumpkin. The romance-loving Biddy Tipkin suggested to Sheridan his creation of Lydia Languish, and thus it has been that for nearly two centuries Steele has supplied more or less matter to the playwrights who were his successors.

When George I. came to the throne in succession to Anne in 1714 Steele found favor at court. He was knighted and appointed one of the paten

tees of Drury Lane Theater, in association with Cibber, Booth, Doggett and Wilks. He also became a member of parliament, but that has nothing to do with our present story, which is concerned simply with Steele as a writer of plays. As a theatrical manager he was not successful, but he held on for seven or eight years, but at last was obliged to relinquish the position. He then produced his last and perhaps his best play. It was "The Conscious Lovers," and was brought out at Drury Lane in November, 1722. It was a great success, enjoying what was then considered a long run of eighteen nights, after which it was published with a dedication to George I., for which the author received five hundred guineas.

The play excited a very great interest and was received in the most flattering manner. Commendation came from all quarters, and some years afterward Fielding puts it into the mouth of Parson Adams to say that "The Conscious Lovers" was the only play fit for a Christian to see, and that it contained some things almost solemn enough to be a sermon.

Nevertheless it is an excellent comedy, but John Dennis, after his style of those days, savagely attacked it in a criticism, and for nearly a year there was a bitter bandying of words between

Steele's friends on the one hand and Dennis on the other. The play held its own for a considerable time, but it did not survive for many years.

Steele's comedies are now forgotten, but his endeavor to purge the stage of its grossness has not been forgotten. He was the pioneer of a purer drama, and he pointed the way that Goldsmith and Sheridan and the Colmans afterwards followed.

Hazlitt says: "The comedies of Steele were the first to be written expressly with a view, not to imitate, but to reform the manners of the age." But he adds: "It is almost a misnomer to call them comedies; they are rather homilies in dialogue, in which a number of pretty young ladies and gentlemen discuss the fashionable topics of gaming, dueling, etc.' Thackeray in his lecture on Steele accords him still higher praise for his devotion toward women in all his writings and his respect for them. He says most truly :

It was Steele who first began to pay a manly homage to woman's goodness and understanding, as well as to their tenderness and beauty. In his comedies his heroes do not rant and rave about the divine beauties of Gloriana or Statira. Steele admires women's virtue, acknowledges their sense and adores their purity and beauty, with an ardor that should win the good will of all women to their hearty and respectful champion.

Steele's admiration for pure and noble womanhood is one of his passports to fame. He strove in all his writings to inculcate a purer and more chivalrous feeling toward women His description of Lady Elizabeth Hastings has passed into a proverb: "Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behavior, and to love her is a liberal education."

Every woman's club in the land should have a portrait of Richard Steele in its rooms, under which should be displayed this splendid tribute to noble womanhood.