"
[11] It was one of his peculiarities, he tells us, to live by the eye
far more than by any other sense (a peculiarity, perhaps, in an
Englishman), and this is what he sees at the early daily service then
common in some City churches. Among those who were come only to see
or be seen, "there were indeed a few in whose looks there appeared a
heavenly joy and gladness upon the entrance of a new day, as if they
had gone to sleep with expectation of it."
The industrious reader, indeed, might select out of these specimens
from Steele, a picture, in minute detail, of the characteristic
manners of that time. Still, beside, or only a little way beneath,
such a picture of passing fashion, what Steele and his fellows really
deal with is the least transitory aspects of life, though still
merely aspects--those points in which all human nature, great or
little, finds what it has in common, and directly shows itself up.
The natural strength of such literature will, of course, be in the
line of its tendencies; in transparency, variety, and directness. To
the unembarrassing matter, the unembarrassed style! Steele is,
perhaps, the most impulsive writer of the school [12] to which he
belongs; he abounds in felicities of impulse.
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