Kisses the hurting hand, smiles on the wounding Steele.’
1718.
Sir Richard spent part of the summer of 1718 in Edinburgh, in attendance upon the business of the commission. We find him taking a furnished house for the half-year beginning on the 15th of May (the Whitsunday term in Scotland), from Mr James Anderson, the editor of the Diplomata Scotiæ. But on the 29th July he had not come to take possession: neither could he say when he would arrive, till his ‘great affair’ was finished. He promised immediately thereupon to take his horses for Scotland, ‘though I do not bring my coach, by reason of my wife’s inability to go with me.’ ‘I shall,’ he adds, ‘want the four-horse stable for my saddle-horses.’
He appears to have taken the same house for the same period in 1719, and to have revisited Scotland in the same manner in 1720, when he occupied the house of Mr William Scott, professor of Greek in the Edinburgh University.[[509]] There is a letter to him from Mr James Anderson in February 1721, thanking him for the interest he had taken in forwarding a scheme of the writer, to induce the government to purchase his collection of historical books. Steele was again residing in Edinburgh in October 1721, when we find him in friendly intercourse with Mr Anderson. ‘Just before I received yours,’ he says on one occasion, ‘I sent a written message to Mr Montgomery, advising that I designed the coach [Steele’s own carriage?] should go to your house, to take in your galaxy, and afterwards call for his star:’ pleasant allusions these probably to some party of pleasure in which the female members of Mr Anderson’s and Mr Montgomery’s families were to be concerned. In the ensuing month, he writes to Mr Anderson from the York Buildings Office in London, regarding an application he had had from a poor woman named Margaret Gow. He could not help her with her petition; but he sent a small bill representing money of his own for her relief. ‘This trifle,’ he says, ‘in her housewifely hands, will make cheerful her numerous family at Collingtown.’[[510]]
These are meagre particulars regarding Steele’s visits to |1718.| Scotland, but at least serviceable in illustrating his noted kind-heartedness.
‘Kind Richy Spec, the friend of a’ distressed,’
as he is called by Allan Ramsay, who doubtless made his personal acquaintance at this time.
There is a traditionary anecdote of Steele’s visits to Scotland, which has enough of truth-likeness to be entitled to preservation. It is stated that, in one of his journeys northward, soon after he had crossed the Border, near Annan, he observed a shepherd resting on a hillside and reading a book. He and his companions rode up, and one of them asked the man what he was reading. It proved to be the Bible. ‘And what do you learn from this book?’ asked Sir Richard. ‘I learn from it the way to heaven.’ ‘Very well,’ replied the knight, ‘we are desirous of going to the same place, and wish you would shew us the way.’ Then the shepherd, turning about, pointed to a tall and conspicuous object on an eminence at some miles’ distance, and said: ‘Weel, gentlemen, ye maun just gang by that tower.’ The party, surprised and amused, demanded to know how the tower was called. The shepherd answered: ‘It is the Tower of Repentance.’
It was so in verity. Some centuries ago, a Border cavalier, in a fit of remorse, had built a tower, to which he gave the name of Repentance. It lies near Hoddam House, in the parish of Cummertrees, rendered by its eminent situation a conspicuous object to all the country round.
We are informed by Richard Shiels that Steele, while in Scotland, had interviews with a considerable number of the Presbyterian clergy, with the view of inducing them to agree to a union of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches—a ‘devout imagination,’ which one would have thought a very few such interviews would have been required to dispel. He was particularly struck with the singular and original character of James Hart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, who is universally admitted to have been an excellent man, as he was a most attractive preacher. That strange enthusiast, Mrs Elizabeth West, speaks of a discourse she once heard from him on a passage in Canticles: ‘The king hath brought me into his chambers; we will be glad,’ where he held forth, she says, ‘on the sweet fellowship Christ and believers have together.’ ‘Oh,’ she adds, ‘but this was a soul-refreshing sermon to me!’ What had most impressed the English moralist was the contrast between the good-humour and |1718.| benevolence of Hart in his private character, and the severe style in which he launched forth in the pulpit on the subject of human nature, and on the frightful punishments awaiting the great mass of mankind in another state of existence. Steele called him on this account ‘the Hangman of the Gospel.’[[511]]