But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst, Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always, incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed an hundred pounds of his friend, probably without much purpose of repayment; but Addison, who seems to have had other notions of a hundred pounds, grew impatient of delay, and reclaimed his loan by an execution, Steele felt with great sensibility the obduracy of his creditor; but with emotions of sorrow rather than of anger[1].
In 1687 he was entered into Queen's College in Oxford, where, in 1689, the accidental perusal of some Latin verses gained him the patronage of Dr. Lancaster, afterwards provost of Queen's College; by whose recommendation he was elected into Magdalen College as a Demy, a term by
- ↑ This fact was communicated to Johnson in my hearing by a person of unquestionable veracity, but whose name I am not at liberty to mention. He had it, as he told us, from lady Primrose, to whom Steele related it with tears in his eyes. The late Dr. Stinton confirmed it to me, by saying, that he had heard it from Mr. Hooke, author of the Roman History; and he, from [[author:Alexander Pope|Mr. Pope.H.
See, Victor's Letters, vol. I. p. 328, this transaction somewhat differently related.R.
