ABSTRACT
Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) was educated at Charterhouse, where he met Addison, and proceeded to Christ Church and Merton. The Spectator piece comes in response to a letter from one M.R., reprinted in Bond, IV. 432: 'I am now in the country, and reading in Spencer's fairy-queen. Pray what is the matter with me? When the poet is sublime my heart bums, when he is compassionate I faint, when he is sedate my soul is becalm'd.' The writer asks for a stanza [a canto?] to be treated each week, but the request was never met. The Tatler piece may be by Hughes (see G. A. Aitken, The Tatler (1899), IV. 7), but the possibility is not in my opinion at all strong.
