Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/142

 George I landed at Greenwich, and the tide turned. The champion of the Hanoverian succession was speedily appointed J.P., deputy-lieutenant for the county of Middlesex, and surveyor of the royal stables at Hampton Court. What was better still (and more definitely lucrative), he obtained the position of supervisor of the Theatre Royal of Drury Lane, the license of which had expired with the queen's death. The license was shortly afterwards converted into a patent, and Steele in this manner came into receipt of 1,000l. per annum.

Henceforward his life grows more and more barren of notable incident. In the same month in which his honours came upon him he published the compilation known as ‘The Ladies' Library,’ volume iii. of which was dedicated, with much grace and tenderness, to his wife. He also vindicated his past proceedings with considerable spirit in the pamphlet entitled ‘Mr. Steele's Apology for himself and his Writings’ (22 Oct.), citations from which have already been made. On 2 Feb. 1715 he was elected M.P. for Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, and two months later (8 April) the presentation of an address to the king procured him a knighthood. During the next few years he continued as of old to busy himself with projects, literary and otherwise. He established in Villiers Street, York Buildings, Strand, a kind of periodical conversazione called the ‘Censorium,’ which he inaugurated on his majesty's birthday (28 May) by a grand banquet and entertainment, to which Tickell supplied the prologue and Addison the epilogue (Town Talk, No. 4). He wrote another overgrown pamphlet on the Roman catholic religion (13 May), began a new volume of the ‘Englishman’ (11 July to 21 Nov.), and established and abandoned three more periodicals, ‘Town Talk’ (17 Dec.), ‘The Tea-Table’ (2 Feb. 1716), and ‘Chit Chat’ (6 March). In June he was appointed one of the thirteen commissioners for forfeited estates in Scotland, the salary being 1,000l. per annum. Two years later, in June 1718, he obtained a patent for a project called the ‘Fish pool,’ a plan (which proved unsuccessful) for bringing salmon alive from Ireland in a well-boat. Then, in December 1718, he lost his ‘dear and honoured wife.’ Lady Steele died on the 26th, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Early in the succeeding year Steele's evil star involved him in a painful controversy with his lifelong friend Addison. He started a periodical called the ‘Plebeian’ (14 March) to denounce Lord Sunderland's bill for limiting the power of creating new peers. Addison replied acrimoniously in the ‘Old Whig,’ and, what was worse, died so soon afterwards (17 June) that the breach thus created was never healed, while Steele's opposition to the measure (which was dropped) led indirectly to the withdrawal by the Duke of Newcastle in January 1720 of the Drury Lane patent. With this last occurrence is connected the establishment of another, and perhaps the most interesting, of his later periodical efforts, as it was also the last, ‘The Theatre’ (2 Jan. to April 1720).

His next publications were two pamphlets, ‘The Crisis of Property’ (1 Feb.) and its sequel ‘A Nation a Family’ (27 Feb.), in which he warmly combated the South Sea mania. In 1721 his former ally, Walpole, became chancellor of the exchequer, and the Drury Lane patent was restored (2 May). In December of the same year he published a second edition of Addison's ‘Drummer,’ in the preface to which, addressed to Congreve, he vindicated himself against the aspersions cast upon him in the edition of Addison's works, which Tickell had put forth in the preceding October. In March 1722 he became member for Wendover, Buckinghamshire. Then, in November of the same year, he produced at Drury Lane his last comedy, ‘The Conscious Lovers,’ which, notwithstanding that (in Parson Adams's words) it contained ‘some things almost solemn enough for a sermon,’ proved a hit, and brought its writer five hundred guineas from George I, to whom it was dedicated. Its groundwork was the ‘Andria’ of Terence, and it attacked duelling. Besides the ‘Conscious Lovers,’ Steele began, but did not finish, two other pieces, ‘The School of Action’ and ‘The Gentleman,’ fragments of which were printed by Nichols in 1809. Lawsuits and money difficulties thickened upon him in his later days, and in 1724, in pursuance of an honourable arrangement with his creditors, and not, as Swift wrote, ‘from perils of a hundred gaols,’ he retired first to Hereford, and finally to Carmarthen, where he lived chiefly at Tygwyn, a farmhouse overlooking the Towy. In Victor's ‘Original Letters’ (1776, i. 330) there is a pretty picture of his still unabated kindliness of nature. Broken and paralytic, he is shown delightedly watching from his invalid's chair the country folk at their sports on a summer evening, and writing an order upon his agent for a prize of a new gown to the best dancer. He died at a house in King Street, Carmarthen, on 1 Sept. 1729, aged 58, and was buried in St. Peter's Church, where in 1876 a mural tablet was erected to him. There is also an