Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/153

 altercation with him when they chanced to meet at Cambridge in the autumn of 1785 (Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ix. 282–3).

Some of the uses to which he was charged with putting his satiric talents entitled him to no quarter if the facts alleged against him can be proved. He received much attention from Garrick, who aided him in his Shakespearean researches. Garrick showed his confidence in Steevens in 1776 by adopting his barbarous proposal to play ‘Hamlet’ with ‘all the rubbish of the fifth act omitted.’ Steevens somewhat ironically suggested at the time that the omitted scenes might follow the tragedy in the guise of a farce, to be entitled ‘The Gravediggers, with the pleasant humours of Osric the Danish macaroni’ (Garrick Correspondence, i. 451). A little later, according to Garrick, Steevens slandered him in the press, and, when taxed with the offence, denied it on his word of honour, but afterwards bragged that ‘it was fun to vex Garrick.’ Garrick declined further intercourse with him, and denounced him to common acquaintances as ‘a pest to society’ (ib. ii. 361). Johnson's friend Topham Beauclerk, whose hospitality Steevens often enjoyed, similarly represented to Johnson that Steevens deserved ‘to be kicked’ for attacking in the newspapers ‘those with whom he lives on the best terms.’ Another of Johnson's friends, Sir John Hawkins—of whose ‘History of Music’ he always spoke with bitter scorn—thoroughly mistrusted him (, iv. 406). One of the Chatterton advocates, [q. v.], sent to Horace Walpole some ironical verses in the same sense in 1789:

The proofs that Steevens was guilty of publishing anonymous libels on his boon companions are happily incomplete. In the case of Garrick some allowance must be made for the vanity which detects slander in all criticism that is not unmitigated eulogy. He contributed an appreciative notice of Garrick to Baker's ‘Biographia Dramatica,’ and the charge made against him by Garrick's biographer, Tom Davies, that he unfairly denounced Garrick's avarice after his death, is untrue; the offender was (1724–1808) [q. v.] (, Anecdotes, vi. 633). Seward declared that the offensive paragraphs about literary persons that appeared from time to time in the ‘St. James's Chronicle,’ and were assigned to Steevens, were by an insignificant journalist, [q. v.]

The suspicion had a prima facie justification in the fact that Steevens at one time owned a share in the ‘St. James's Chronicle,’ and was an occasional contributor to it, as well as to other journals (the ‘Critical Review,’ the ‘Morning Post,’ and the ‘General Evening Post’). But many of his contributions have been identified, and, although biting enough, do not transgress the bounds of social decency. His journalistic achievements mainly consisted of epigrams and parodies suggested by contemporary literary crazes, or of burlesque accounts of alleged antiquarian discoveries. The former were often smart and pointed. The latter, conceived in a spirit of mere mischief, caused inevitable irritation. His skits included ‘The Frantic Lover’ (reprinted from Dodsley's ‘Annual Register’ in New Foundling Hospital for Wit, 1771, iv. 89); ‘A Song in the Character of a Stationer’ (in the St. James's Chronicle, 11 Jan. 1774); ‘The Insensible Lover’ (ib.); a satiric account of the installation of John Rivington as master of the Stationers' Company (ib. 8 July 1775;, Illustrations, vi. 433–4); ‘Elinor Rummin,’ an epigram on the ‘grangerising’ craze, suggested by the excitement among collectors caused by the discovery of an illustrated copy of the so-named poem by Skelton in Lincoln Cathedral Library (, Anecdotes, ii. 660); and laughably stinging verses on the birthday odes of the poet laureate,  [q. v.] ‘Reasons why it is probable ‘that the coffin [usually alleged to] contain the body of Milton’ should really contain that of Mrs. Smith (St. James's Chronicle, 7 Sept. 1790; reprinted in European Magazine, September 1790, p. 206) was a skit on a dry antiquarian pamphlet on the subject of Milton's burial by [q. v.] Steevens's pretended description of the upas tree of Java in the ‘London Magazine,’ on the authority of a fictitious Dutch traveller, was conceived in a like vein.

Less can be urged in defence of other journalistic diversions. He contributed to the ‘Theatrical Review’ (1763, i. 61–6) a forged letter purporting to be a description by George Peele of a meeting at the Globe with Shakespeare and others. This was unsuspectingly transferred to Berkenhout's ‘Biographia Literaria,’ and has led later investigators into needless perplexity (cf. Shakespeare and the Modern Stage, 188–197). A practical joke of a more laboured kind, which does Steevens even less credit, was devised to play off a trivial score against Richard Gough, director of the Society of Antiquaries, who declined