Was it any wonder that when Dick Steele, aetat twenty-six, an officer of Fusiliers, and a merry vagabond, wanted to redeem his reputation by writing a rollicking comedy, his thoughts turned to the satirising of the British undertaker?  For the young man must prove to the town that he was not the hypocrite several of his kind friends had dubbed him.  The fact was, that he had been virtuous enough to write a pious work entitled, “The Christian Hero,” which he afterwards published, but as he had not grown sufficiently master of himself to live up to its golden precepts (nay, rather did he continue to spend his evenings in the taverns), the author came in for many a taunt and sneer.  Why did he not practice what he preached? was the sarcastic query of his intimates.

Yet there was no thought of cant in what the soldier had done.  His design in issuing the “Christian Hero” was, as he explained in after years, “principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures.”  This secret admiration was too weak; he therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is to say, of his acquaintances) upon him in a new light, would make him ashamed of understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and living so contrary to life.

But the man was weak where the author was willing, and thus gay Richard went on “living so contrary a life” with true Celtic perversity, and made of himself anything but a Christian Hero.  Rather was he a jolly Pagan, with a passion for his wine and his coffee-house, and a kindly, merry word even for those who twitted him upon his inconsistency.  It was plain, therefore, that he must be some other sort of hero, and so he evolved the brilliant satire of “The Funeral,” to “enliven his character, and repel the sarcasms of those who abused him for his declarations relative to religion.”

[Illustration:  SIR RICHARD STEELE

By Sir GODFREY KNELLER]

In the twinkling of an eye Steele became the spoiled darling of the day.  The comedy, which was produced at Drury Lane in 1702, was the talk of the enthusiastic town, and the playwright arose from his beer-mugs, his wine-flagons, and his contemplation of ideal Christianity, to find himself famous.  He had opened a new vein of satire, and a vein moreover which upheld virtue and laughed to scorn hypocrisy and vice.  That was a moral which the dramatists of his epoch seldom taught.[A] And so the people crowded to the theatre, applauded the sentiment of the play, guffawed at the keen wit of the dialogue, and swore that this young rascal Steele was the prince of bright fellows.  Then they went home—­and revelled, as before, in the funerals of their friends.

[Footnote A:  The “Funeral” is the merriest and most perfect of Steele’s comedies.  The characters are strongly marked, the wit genial, and not indecent.  Steele was among the first who set about reforming the licentiousness of the old comedy.  His satire in the “Funeral” is not against virtue, but vice and silliness.—­DR. DORAN.]