I cannot express to you how very much delighted I am with the "Steele."
I think it incomparably the best of the series. The pleasanter humanity
of the subject may commend it more to one's liking, but that again
requires a delicate handling, which you have given to it in a most
charming manner. It is surely not possible to approach a man with a
finer sympathy, and the assertion of the claims of literature throughout
is of the noblest and most gallant kind.
I don't agree with you about the serious papers in _The Spectator_,
which I think (whether they be Steele's or Addison's) are generally as
indifferent as the humour of _The Spectator_ is delightful. And I have
always had a notion that Prue understood her husband very well, and held
him in consequence, when a fonder woman with less show of caprice must
have let him go. But these are points of opinion. The paper is masterly,
and all I have got to say is, that if ---- had a grain of the honest
sentiment with which it overflows, he never would or could have made so
great a mistake.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. Mark Lemon.]