If Joseph Addison is the noble moralist, his partner Richard Steele is the nearer spirit to ours; roistering, improvident, warm hearted, commercial and striving. He had a vulgar, funny wife, and an exciting, sometimes ridiculous life. He was a brilliant and easy writer; inventive, innovation, funny, and a good and loyal friend.It is in that last light I've cast him here, in reflection rather than his more usual fun. There are few works in prose that equal poetry in the expression of love, and none in English that are better than this of Steele's in expressing the devotion of a good man to his friends.
Why Richard Steele? I should only hope to serve the memory of my friends so well.
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