It may seem odd that
the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, however kind to him, by
such an epithet as _little_; and the reader may fancy that Sherwood forest
had put it into his head, where Robin Hood always called his right hand
man 'Little John,' not _although_, but expressly _because_ John stood
seven feet high in his stockings. But the truth is--that Glumdalclitch
_was_ little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and (says the
captain) 'little of her age,' being barely forty feet high. She had time
to grow certainly, but as she had so much to do before she could overtake
other women, it is probable that she would turn out what, in Westmoreland,
they call a, _little stiffenger_--very little, if at all, higher than a
common English church steeple.
[4.] '_Activity_,'--It is some sign of this, as well as of the more
thoroughly English taste in literature which distinguished Steele, that
hardly twice throughout the 'Spectator' is Shakspeare quoted or alluded to
by Addison. Even these quotations he had from the theatre, or the breath
of popular talk. Generally, if you see a line from Shakspeare, it is safe
to bet largely that the paper is Steele's; sometimes, indeed, of casual
contributors; but, almost to a certainty, _not_ a paper of Addison's.
Another mark of Steele's superiority in vigor of intellect is, that much
oftener in _him_ than in other contributors strong thoughts came forward;
harsh and disproportioned, perhaps, to the case, and never harmoniously
developed with the genial grace of Addison, but original, and pregnant
with promise and suggestion.
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