tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, _George Barnwell_ (1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and _The Fatal Curiosity_ (1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature. Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith, whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,' it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words, shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the evening of that day he wrote: 'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK, 'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than I _die for you_. 'RICH. STEELE.' After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style, and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as 'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'