Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/152

 statement for the House, or a poet employs in preparing a sentiment in verse or for the stage. But there are some 400 letters of Dick Steele's to his wife, which that thrifty woman preserved accurately, and which could have been written but for her and her alone. They contain details of the business, pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations of the pair; they have all the genuineness of conversation; they are as artless as a child's prattle, and as confidential as a curtain-lecture. Some are written from the printing-office, where he is waiting for the proof sheets of his "Gazette," or his "Tatler;" some are written from the tavern, whence he promises to come to his wife "within a pint of