William Steevens

“ Skottowe, Short History of Parliament, p. 14) . 123 ii 17-19 Stebbing, Henry (1687-1763) : for Malton read Walton 20 ⁠for (d. 1821) read (d. 1721) 138 ii 22 Steele, William: for was admitted to read joined Caius College, Cambridge, in 1627, and was scholar there 1629-31. He entered 143 i 3 Steevens, Charles: for (d. 1761) read (1705-1761) 4 ⁠after rear-admiral, insert born at West Hanningfield, Essex, on 7 Feb. 1705, was fifth son of John Steevens, a captain in the army, and brother of George Steevens, father of the Shakespearean commentator. ”

“ This, at least, shows the popularity of this dance in the reign of George II.
H. C.
Workington.
Footnote 7: (return)
This occurred in the year 1733.
George Steevens and William Stevens (Vol. iii, p. 230.) .—The late Sir J. A. Park wrote Memoirs of William Stevens, the Treasurer of Queen Anne's Bounty, and the biographer of Jones of Nayland. As little resemblance must have existed between this gentleman and "the Puck of commentators," George Steevens, as between the two Harveys ”

“ IV. 5. 49. In the edition of 1778 Steevens reads ‘Ay, sir Tike, like’ ... but it is clear from Farmer’s note that it should be ‘Ay, sir Tike,’ ... and so it is corrected in the later Editions of Steevens. In the Edition annotated by Fanner, mentioned in note V., we find another conjecture of his: ‘Ay, sir, if you like,’ ... or it may have been ‘Ay, sir, an you like,’ for the word preceding ‘you’ has been cut away by the binder.
Note X.
The stage direction of the early Quartos is: Enter Sir Hugh like a Satyre, and boyes drest like Fayries, Mistresse Quickly, like the Queene of Fayries ”

“ As a man Steevens was distinguished by admirable courage and resolution. It was his endeavour in journalism to present in words with all possible vividness, frankness, and terseness what he saw, thought, and felt. The success he often achieved, especially in the miscellaneous articles which were collected after his death in the volume called 'Things Seen,' was sufficient to prove that his capacities were in harmony with his aims. But only a small fraction of his work does genuine justice to his powers. ”

“ Great-hearted, strong-souled, brave without a hesitation, tender as a child, intolerant of wrong because he was incapable of it, tolerant of every human weakness, slashing controversialist in speech, statesman-like in foresight, finely versed in the wisdom of many literatures, a man of genius scarce aware of his innumerable gifts, but playing them all with splendid skill, with full enjoyment of the crowded hours of life,—here was George Steevens. ”

“ Although shy and retiring in general society, Steevens developed in his undergraduate days, both as a talker and as a writer in undergraduate periodicals, a wayward brilliance and amusing tendency to paradox. ”

“ The men of the National Observer and the Pall Mall were such keen fighters that they could not be kind or sentimental—and they grew maudlinly sentimental over Steevens's engagement—without a fight for it. They thought he was making a mistake, forgetting that it was his business, not theirs, if he was. He fought alone against them, but he held his place like a man and won. Our Thursday nights had come to an end before he went to America, to Germany, to Khartoum with Kitchener, to South Africa, where he passed into the great silence that no protest of ours, or any man's can break. ”

“ The futility of death makes that an absolute necessity; but I like to think of a possible George Steevens who, when the dust and sand of campaigns and daily journalism had been wiped away from his shoon, would have combined in a great and single-hearted career all the various powers of his fine mind. ”

“ The people who may have tried, as they read his almost aggressively brilliant articles, to divine something of the personality behind them, can scarcely have contrived to picture him accurately. They will not imagine the silent, undemonstrative person, invariably kind and ready unasked to do a colleague's work in addition to his own, who dwells in the memory of the friends of Mr Steevens. ”

“ Other excursions followed—to Egypt, to India, to Turkey, to Germany, to Rennes, to the Soudan—and the letters, in almost every case, quickly reappeared as a book.
"A rare combination of gifts contributed to Mr Steevens's success. To begin with, he had a wonderful power of finding his way quickly through a tangle of complicated detail: this he owed, no doubt, in large measure to his Oxford training. He alsoPg 173 was one of the few writers who have brought to journalism the talents, and sympathies, and touch hitherto regarded as belonging more properly to the writer of fiction. ”

“ Johnson was not blind to his congenital faults, but took so charitable a view of them as to nominate him for membership of ‘The Club’ in February 1774, and of the Essex Head Club in 1783. Steevens had already joined both the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society in 1767. With a few of the men of letters whose acquaintance he thus had opportunities of making—with John Nichols, Bishop Percy, Dr. Parr, Isaac Reed, Thomas Tyrwhitt, and Dr. Farmer—he lived in amity. On occasion, too, he was amiable to strangers. ”

“ But there was one who found, to use his own words, 'a strange sideway out of Ladysmith,' whose memory many English-speaking people will preserve. I do not write of Steevens as a journalist, nor as the master of a popular and pleasing style, but as a man. ”

“ But I ask you, my friend, is it natural that I—I, Hollander born, Dutch Afrikander since '60—should be as loyal to the British Government asPg 24 a Britisher should be? No, I say; one can be loyal only to one's own country. I am law-abiding subject of the Queen, and that is all that they can ask of me.
"How will the war go? That it is impossible, quite impossible, to say. The Boer might run away at the first shot and he might fight to the death. All troops are liable to panic ”

“ Remains the loss to the great reading public, which we believe that Steevens must have done a vast deal to educate, not to literature so much as to a pride in our country's imperial destiny. Where the elect chiefly admired a scarcely exampled grasp and power of literary impressionism, the man in the street was learning the scope and aspect of his and our imperial heritage, and gaining a new view of his duties as a British citizen. ”

“ It is said that Steevens was so well satisfied with his conduct on this occasion that he promised him the first vacancy, and that his commission to command the Tiger, a 60-gun ship, was actually made out ”

“ STEEVENS, RICHARD (1653–1710) , Irish physician, and Grizell his sister (1653–1746) , were the twin children of John Steevens, an English royalist clergyman who settled in Ireland in the middle of the seventeenth century, and was rector of Athlone from 1660 to 1682. ”

“ Trash, to shred or lop.—So said Steevens, alleging that he had met with it in books containing directions for gardeners, published in the time of {567} Queen Elizabeth. I fear his memory deceived him, or why should a man of his sound learning afterwards incline to vail bonnet to the dogmatist Warburton? whose knowledge of dogs, by the way, must have been marvellously small, or he could never have imagined them to overtop one another in a horizontal course. Overrun, overshoot, overslip, are terms in hunting, overtop never ”

“ Inferior artists were left to hunt up smaller matters. Research, such as the occasion required—long, laborious, minute, often irksome—defied his eyes, his patience, and his time of life.
Upon his colleague in the edition, Mr. George Steevens, devolved this portion of the duty. As a critic, he had several qualifications—a scholar, a wit, of ready perceptions, an appetite for work, and not indisposed to those antiquarian pursuits required by the undertaking. ”

“ Even harmless impostures by some unexpected accident have driven an unwary inquirer out of the course. George Steevens must again make his appearance for a memorable trick played on the antiquary Gough. ”

“ Johnson was silent, and left the explanation of the word to Steevens, who, observing that Hamlet meant to rant (as he says he will) , supposed him to defy Laertes "to drink up a river, or try his teeth on an animal whose scales are supposed to be impenetrable." ”

“ As my impressions are remarkably good, having been selected for me by Hogarth himself, I should wish to}} have these the best that can be had; and if Mr. Steevens, who promised me his assistance, should happen to meet with any of those prints of which I am not possessed—I mean such compositions as do honour to the author, as, for instance, The Satire on the Methodists, The Masquerade, &c.—I should be much obliged to him to purchase them for me. To that gentleman I beg my best compliments. Should he purchase anything, you will be so good as to account with him. ”

“ Steevens had already made valuable contributions. Reed completed his editorial labours on Steevens's ‘Shakespeare’ in 1785. Two years later Steevens was induced to act as literary adviser in Boydell's scheme of a fully illustrated edition of the plays (Charlemont MSS., Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. App. x. 383) . But he affected to regard his labours in Shakespearean exegesis as at an end.
Steevens obtained admission to much literary society, and was rarely unready to aid others in literary research, although he was more at home in adverse criticism of their work. ”

“ And Hamlet speaks of more impossibilities, when he talks of throwing up "millions of acres," to [68] "make Ossa like a wart." The drinking up a river is certainly more in unison with these extravagant proposals than a defiance "to swallow down (as Theobald has it) large draughts of vinegar;" or, as Malone gives it, "to drink a potion of vinegar." Such a proposition, Theobald admits, "is not very grand;" "a challenge to hazard a fit of the heartburn or the colic, is," says Steevens, "not very magnificent." ”

“ The river shone silver under its high banks. Beyond it, in the enemy's country, the veldt too was silvered over with moonlight and was blotted inkily with shadow from the kopjes. Three miles to the right, over a rise and down in a dip, they said there lay the Rouxville commando of 350 men. That night they were to receive 700 or 800 more from Smithfield, and thereon would ride through Aliwal on their way to eat up the British half-battalion at Stormberg. On our side of the bridge slouched a score of Boers—waiting, they said, to join and conduct their kinsmen. ”

“ These sonnets were long overlooked; Steevens spoke of them with the utmost scorn, as productions which no one could read; but a very different suffrage is generally given by the lovers of poetry, and perhaps there is now a tendency, especially among young men of poetical tempers, to exaggerate the beauties of these remarkable productions. They rise, indeed, in estimation as we attentively read and reflect upon them ”

“ How the malice of man can fetch poison from Hell
(Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, viii. 532, 540) .
The proofs that Steevens was guilty of publishing anonymous libels on his boon companions are happily incomplete. In the case of Garrick some allowance must be made for the vanity which detects slander in all criticism that is not unmitigated eulogy. He contributed an appreciative notice of Garrick to Baker's ‘Biographia Dramatica,’ and the charge made against him by Garrick's biographer, Tom Davies, that he unfairly denounced Garrick's avarice after his death, is untrue ”

“ If he did not marry below him, like his father, his sister, and a certain great-uncle William, it was perhaps because he never married at all.
The second brother, Thomas, who was employed in the General Post Office, followed in all material points the example of Stephen, married “not very creditably,” and spent all the money he could lay his hands on. He died without issue; as did the fourth brother, John, who was of weak intellect and feeble health, and the fifth brother, William, whose brief career as one of Mrs. Buckner’s satellites will fall to be considered later on. ”

“ Lemuel and William, the father and uncle of the subject of this notice were engaged many years in the grand bank fishery, and Stephens’ wharf, which since the abandonment of the fishery has gradually crumbled away, presented once a busy scene when the Jane and Constitution and the Duck and the Industry were fitting out in the spring, and washing out in the autumn. The Stephens brothers were men of brains, and consequently men of ideas, men who were called pessimists because they looked out for weak spots in government and society, and sought to correct them. ”

“ Samuel Parris? and pass by this house?" exclaimed the lady in astonishment. "This is a strange thing, Sir William."
"It is strange—very strange," answered the governor, rising. "I will seek our old friend and reason with him."
"And I," said his wife, "will seek out the stranger. Goody Brown is a kind woman, but the poor lady may not obtain all she needs in the farm-house. Did you hear her name, Lovel?"
"No," answered the youth, with unaccountable hesitation; "but you will find it embroidered on this handkerchief, which I picked up on the beach in coming along. ”

“ Professor Steffens and hundreds of his hearers left the lecture-room, exchanged the university gown for the uniform, and from that day were the pith and marrow of the black band of Lutzow. It is matter of history how Henry Steffens, at the head of his wild Jägers, greatly distinguished himself in the field, won the Iron Cross, and by his animated eloquence and noble example, drew thousands of brave defenders around the standard of German independence. Thirty-two years later, at Berlin, Baron von Rahden followed his mortal remains to their last resting-place. ”