his 'Tatler', in his 'Spectator', with persistent energy.

Of the 'Christian Hero' his companions felt, and he himself saw, that
the book was too didactic. It was indeed plain truth out of Steele's
heart, but an air of superiority, freely allowed only to the
professional man teaching rules of his own art, belongs to a too
didactic manner. Nothing was more repugnant to Steele's nature than the
sense of this. He had defined the Christian as 'one who is always a
benefactor, with the mien of a receiver.' And that was his own
character, which was, to a fault, more ready to give than to receive,
more prompt to ascribe honour to others than to claim it for himself. To
right himself, Steele wrote a light-hearted comedy, 'The Funeral', or
'Grief à la Mode'; but at the core even of that lay the great
earnestness of his censure against the mockery and mummery of grief that
should be sacred; and he blended with this, in the character of Lawyer
Puzzle, a protest against mockery of truth and justice by the
intricacies of the law. The liveliness of this comedy made Steele
popular with the wits; and the inevitable touches of the author's
patriotism brought on him also the notice of the Whigs. Party men might,
perhaps, already feel something of the unbending independence that was
in Steele himself, as in this play he made old Lord Brumpton teach it to
his son:

'But be them honest, firm, impartial;
Let neither love, nor hate, nor faction move thee;
Distinguish words from things, and men from crimes.'

King William, perhaps, had he lived, could fairly have recognized in
Steele the social form of that sound mind which in Defoe was solitary.
In a later day it was to Steele a proud recollection that his name, to