Steevens died unmarried at his house at Hampstead on 22 Jan. 1800. ‘The outlaw is at last dead in his den,’ wrote Samuel Rogers four days later (Clayden, Early Life of Rogers, p. 393). He was buried in the chapel at Poplar, beside other members of his family. A fine monument by Flaxman, with full-length portrait in bas-relief, still stands in the north aisle. The inscription describes Steevens as having cheerfully employed a considerable portion of his life and fortune in the illustration of Shakespeare. There follow some eulogistic verses by William Hayley (cf. engraving in Nichol's Illustrations, v. 427; Lysons, Environs, Suppl.). Steevens bequeathed Zoffany's portrait-group of Garrick and Mrs. Cibber to George Keate; his fine collection of Hogarth's prints to the statesman, William Windham; his edition of Shakespeare, illustrated with fifteen hundred drawings or engravings of persons and places mentioned in the text, to Earl Spencer (it is now in the John Rylands Library at Manchester); and a corrected copy of his edition of Shakespeare, with many unprinted notes in manuscript, to his friend Isaac Reed, with two hundred guineas.
Apart from bequests of 500l. to Charlotte Collins of Graffham, Midhurst, and of 300l. ‘for a ring’ to his cousin and housekeeper, Mrs. Mary Collinson, all the rest of his property, including his library, passed to Mrs. Collinson's sister, his ‘dearest cousin,’ Elizabeth Steevens of Poplar (Monthly Mirror, 1800; cf. Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 20082, f. 126); she died at his house at Hampstead in March 1801, aged ‘about 52’ (Nichols, Illustrations, vii. 53). Steevens's books were sold by the auctioneer King some months before, in May 1800. The 1943 lots brought 2,740l. 15s. A copy of the second folio of Shakespeare, which had belonged to Charles I, was purchased for 18l. on behalf of George III, and it is now in the king's library at the British Museum. Two copies of Langbaine's ‘Dramatick Poets,’ into which he had transcribed Oldys's and others' notes, are also in the British Museum (cf. Addit. MSS. 22592–5 and c. 45 d. 14–15). A copy of Fuller's ‘Worthies,’ with his manuscript additions, formed lot 1799 (cf. Bibliotheca Steevensiana: a Catalogue of the curious and valuable Library of George Steevens, esq., 1800, with names of purchasers and prices in manuscript in British Museum; Clarke, Repertorium Bibliographicum, p. 543). Some of Steevens's letters to Thomas Hill, William Cole, and others are among the additional manuscripts at the British Museum. His handwriting was small, neat, and clear.
Isaac Reed [q. v.] brought out in 1803 a new issue of Steevens's edition of Shakespeare in twenty-one volumes, in which he embodied Steevens's unpublished notes. This is usually quoted as ‘the first variorum.’ The ‘second variorum.’ of 1813 was mainly a reprint. The third and best ‘variorum,’ which was begun by Malone, was completed by James Boswell the younger in 1821. It was the last edition in which Steevens's valuable and suggestive notes were reproduced in their entirety, but every recent edition of Shakespeare draws from them the aptest of their illustrative extracts from contemporary literature.
According to Cole's account of Steevens in 1780, he was ‘well made, black, and tall.’ A portrait by Zoffany was engraved at the expense of Sylvester Harding. Another portrait by George Dance, R.A., was engraved by W. Daniell. A reduced copy forms the frontispiece of Nichols's ‘Illustrations,’ vol. vii. A miniature belongs to Mrs. Inglis of Cheltenham, a great-granddaughter of Mrs. Collinson. Steevens perversely destroyed two portraits of himself—a miniature by Meyer, and a painting of him in the character of Barbarossa, a character he assumed in private theatricals.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ii. 650–63, and Illustrations, v. 440 seq. (Correspondence with Nichols and Gough), vii. 1–3 (Correspondence with Percy); Gent. Mag. 1800, i. 178; Thespian Dict. 1805; Chalmers's Biogr. Dict.; Lysons's Environs, Suppl. 1811, pp. 293–5; Park's Hampstead; D'Israeli's Curiosities of Lit.; Walpole's Letters, ed. Cunningham; Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill.]
STEEVENS, RICHARD (1653–1710), Irish physician, and Grizell his sister (1653–1746), were the twin children of John Steevens, an English royalist clergyman who settled in Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century, and was rector of Athlone from 1660 to 1682. Richard Steevens received his education at the Latin school in Athlone and subsequently at Trinity College, Dublin, where he obtained a scholarship in 1674, graduated B.A. in 1675, and M.A. in 1678. Being intended by his father for the church, he took deacon's orders, but proceeded no further in the ministry, and devoted himself to the medical profession. In 1687 he received the degree of M.D. from his university, and thenceforward practised as a physician in Dublin, where he amassed a large fortune. He was a fellow of the Irish College of Physicians, and in 1710 was elected president of that body. He died before the close of his year of office, on 15 Dec. 1710.
By his will Steevens bequeathed the bulk of his property to his sister Grizell for her
