1800.--On the 22d of January, in this year, died George Steevens, Esq.
F. R. S. F. A. S. He was born at Stepney, in 1751 or 1752, and is best
known as the editor of Shakspeare, though to the versatility and
richness of his talents there are numerous testimonials. He maintained
the greatest perseverance in every thing he undertook. He never relaxed,
but sometimes broke off favourite habits of long indulgence suddenly. In
this way he discontinued his daily visits to two booksellers. This, says
his biographer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, he did “after many years’
regular attendance, for no real cause.” It is submitted, however, that
the cause, though unknown to others may have been every way sufficing
and praiseworthy. He who has commenced a practice that has grown into a
destroyer of his time and desires to end it, must snap it in an instant.
If he strive to abate it by degrees, he will find himself relaxing by
degrees.
“Delusions strong as hell will bind him fast,” unless he achieve, not
the determination to destroy, but the act of destruction. The will and
the power are two. Steevens knew this, and though he had taken snuff all
his life, he never took one pinch after he lost his box in St. Paul’s
church-yard. Had he taken one he might have taken one more, and then
only another, and afterwards only a little bit in a paper, and then, he
would have died as he lived--a snuff-taker. No; Steevens appears to have
discovered the grand secret, that a man’s self is the great enemy of
himself, and hence his intolerance of self-indulgence even in degree.
His literary collections were remarkably curious, and as regards the
days that are gone, of great value.
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