CHARACTERS. 



353 



liumours, condescend to a degree of 

 ribaldry but little above O'Keeffe : 

 with him, however, it lost all its 

 coarseness, and assumed the air of 

 classical vivacity. He was indeed 

 too apt to catch the ridiculous, both 

 in characters and things, and to 

 indulge rather an indiscreet ani- 

 mation wherever he found it. It 

 must be acknowledged, that he 

 scattered his wit and his humour, 

 his gibes and his jeers, too freely 

 aroundhim; and they were not lost 

 for want of gathering. This dis- 

 position made him many enemies, 

 and attached an opinion of malig- 

 nity to his character which it did 

 not in reality possess. But there 

 are many who would rather receive 

 a serious injury than be the object 

 of a joke, or at least of such jokes 

 as were uttered by Steevens, which 

 were remembered by all who heard 

 them, and repeated by all who re- 

 membered them. A characteristic 

 bon mot is a kind of oral caricature, 

 copies of which are multiplied by 

 every tongue which utters it; and 

 it is much less injurious or mortify- 

 ing to be the ohject of a satirical 

 work, which is seldom read but 

 once, and is often thought of no 

 more, than to be hitched into a 

 sarcastic couplet, or condensed into 

 a stringing epithet, which will be 

 equally treasured up by good-hu- 

 mour, or ill-nature, for the different 

 purposes of mirth or resentment. — 

 Mr. Steevens loved what is called 

 fun ; a disposition which has a 

 strong tendency to mischief. It is 

 a hobby horse, which, while it cur- 

 vets and piances merely to frighten 

 a timorous rider, will sometimes 

 unintentionally throw him in the 

 dirt. Some open charges of a ma- 

 lignant disposition have been made 

 against him ; and, in the preface to 

 Vol. XLII. 



the works of a distinguished literary 

 character, he is accused, while in 

 the habits of intimate friendship and 

 daily intercourse with that gentle- 

 man, of writing calumniating para- 

 graphs in the newspapers against 

 him. But these paragraphs Mr. 

 Steevens did not write ; and the 

 late Mr. Seward has asserted that 

 Mr. Bicknell, the author of a poem, 

 called " The Dying Negro," ac- 

 knowledged to him that he was the 

 author of them. 



Mr. Steevens possessed a very 

 handsome fortune, which he ma- 

 naged with discretion, and was en- 

 abled by it to gratify his wishes, 

 which he did without any regard to 

 expense, in forming hisdistinguish- 

 ed collections of classical learning, 

 literary antiquity, and the arts con- 

 nected with it. His generosity also 

 was equal to his fortune ; and, 

 though he was not seen to give 

 eleemosynary sixpences to sturdy 

 beggars or sweepers of the crossings, 

 few persons distributed bank-notes 

 with more liberality ; and some of 

 his acts of pecuniary kindness might 

 be named, and probably among 

 many others that are not known, 

 which could only proceed from a 

 mind adorned with the noblest sen- 

 timents of humanity Mr. Steevens 

 received the first part of his educa- 

 tion at Kingston-iipon-Thames; he 

 went thence to Eton, and was after- 

 wards a fellow-commoner of King's 

 College, Cambridge. He also ac- 

 cepted a commission in the Essex 

 militia on its first establishment . The 

 latter years of his life he chiefly 

 passed at Hampstead in unvisitable 

 retirement, and seldom mixed with 

 society but in booksellers' shops, or 

 the Shakspeare gallery, or the morn- 

 ing conversazioni of sir Joseph 

 Banks. 



Aa 



