Cibber, nevertheless, was, in the commencement of his career, after he had exchanged the show and uniform of the cavalry for the sock and buskin, not only contented, but delighted, with a salary of ten shillings a week. It is well known, also, that he kept back his play of the “Careless Husband,” in despair of not being able to find an actress to personate, as in those critical days it would be necessary to personate, the woman of fashion, that Lady Betty Modish whom Mrs. Oldfield improved afterwards to perfection, by the society and connexions of her accomplished and high-born admirers. She is acknowledged, indeed, by Cibber, to have been the prototype of that lively being of the dramatist’s fancy; “the agreeably gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her natural attractions;” or, in less courtly language, a well-bred coquet.[359] Originally of the same profession that Cibber had adopted when he waited upon the Duchess of Marlborough at Derby, Sir Richard Steele, afterwards appointed to be the head of the royal company of comedians, deserves to be noticed, from his projected connexion with the fame of the Marlborough family. For Steele, in his paper called “The Reader,” has left an account of his intention to write a life of the Duke of Marlborough, confining himself to the Duke’s military career: a project which, unhappily, was never executed, but the materials for which were, according to Steele’s assertion, in his possession. The conduct and the conscience of Steele were incessantly at variance. His natural disposition was amiable, but so incautious, that his famous parallel between Addison and himself must be admired equally for its candour and its truth. “The one,” says Steele, speaking of his friend, “with patience, foresight, and temperate address, always waited and stemmed the torrent; while the other often plunged himself into it, and was as often taken out by the temper of him who stood weeping on the bank for his safety, whom he could not dissuade from leaping into it.” This beautiful description of true friendship is indeed characteristic of him who found it inconvenient to have written the “Christian Hero,” from the comparisons between his practice and his precepts which were incessantly drawn by his associates. Steele had all the brilliancy, and many of the failings, of his gifted countrymen. That his mind was never debased by the irregular pursuits and dissolute society to which he gave his time, is apparent from the beautiful sentiments which pervade that exquisite comedy, the “Conscious Lovers,” one of the most elegant delineations of that species of love which borders on romance, in the range of our dramatic literature. Those who remember the most pathetic and elevated strain of reflection which is displayed in a certain paper of the Spectator, in which this feeling writer describes his introduction suddenly into the apartment of a dying friend, must allow