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ENGLISH HUMOURISTS.
Permit me to read to you a passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humour: the subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the humourist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and describes the end of mankind;—[1]
"Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
'Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never err'd through pride;
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
'Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never err'd through pride;
- ↑ Lord Chesterfield sends these verses to Voltaire in a characteristic letter.
TO LADY STEELE.
"March 26, 1717.
"My Dearest Prue,"I have received your's, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head. . . . . When I lay in your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears last night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then awake and in pain; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep.
"For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher. . . . ."At the time when the above later letters were written, Lady Steele was in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by which, as he constantly assures his wife, he firmly believed he should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however.
Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in Westminster Abbey.
