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Wisdom of the Ages: Sir Richard Steele
Essayist and playwright Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) was a contemporary of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and Daniel Defoe.
Steele is best remembered for creating, with his friend Joseph Addison, "The Spectator," a series of over 500 essays that appeared between March, 1711, and December, 1712.
The essays in "The Spectator" belong to the literary heritage of the period that became known as the Age of Reason. They were written for a new, literate middle class that was interested in social and civic affairs, literature and philosophy.
Steele and Addison wrote with the aim of improving manners and morals and attempted to popularize serious ideas on science and ethics while also entertaining their readers. Their goal, they declared, was "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality."
In one of his essays, Steele declared: "Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth."
Steele is best remembered for creating, with his friend Joseph Addison, "The Spectator," a series of over 500 essays that appeared between March, 1711, and December, 1712.
The essays in "The Spectator" belong to the literary heritage of the period that became known as the Age of Reason. They were written for a new, literate middle class that was interested in social and civic affairs, literature and philosophy.
Steele and Addison wrote with the aim of improving manners and morals and attempted to popularize serious ideas on science and ethics while also entertaining their readers. Their goal, they declared, was "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality."
In one of his essays, Steele declared: "Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth."
