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Addison himself stood aloof, as far as was possible, from the heated atmosphere of party, occupying his time chiefly with the execution of literary designs. In 1713 he began a work on the Evidences of Christianity, which he never finished, and in the last half of the year 1714 he completed the eighth volume of the _Spe...
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The condition of the Tory party was indeed rapidly becoming desperate. Its leaders were at open variance with each other. Oxford, a veteran intriguer, was desirous of combining with the Whigs; the more daring and brilliant Bolingbroke aimed at the restoration of the exiled Stuarts. His influence, joined to natural fami...
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Meantime the Whigs were united and prepared. On the meeting of the Council, George I. was proclaimed King without opposition: Lord-Justices were authorised to administer affairs provisionally, and Addison was appointed their Secretary. It is said, though on no good authority, that having, in discharge of his office, to...
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On the arrival of the King in England, the Earl of Sunderland was appointed to succeed the Duke of Shrewsbury as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and he once more offered Addison the post of Chief Secretary. In that office the latter continued till the Earl's resignation of the Lord-Lieutenancy in August, 1715. It would app...
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There appears to be no good reason for doubting that _The Drummer_ was the work of Addison. It is true that it was not included by Tickell in his edition of his friend's writings; and Steele, in the letter to Congreve which he prefixed to the second edition of the play, only says that Addison sent for him when he was a...
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He was soon, however, called upon to employ his pen on a task better suited to his powers. In September, 1715, there was a rising in Scotland and in the North of England on behalf of the Pretender. The rebellion was put down with little difficulty, but the position of the House of Brunswick was far more precarious than...
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The name of the new paper was selected by him in order to suggest that property was the basis of liberty; and his main argument, which he introduces under constantly varying forms, is that there could be no safety for property under a line of monarchs who claimed the dispensing power, and no security for the liberties ...
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"At the same time that I declare I am a freeholder I do not exclude myself from any other title. A freeholder may be either a voter or a knight of the shire, a wit or a fox-hunter, a scholar or a soldier, an alderman or a courtier, a patriot or a stock-jobber. But I choose to be distinguished by this denomination, as t...
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By this means he was able to impart liveliness to his theme, which he diversifies by philosophical disquisition; by good-natured satire on the prejudices of the country gentlemen; by frequent papers on his favourite subject, "the fair sex;" and by occasional glances at literature. Though his avowed object was to prove ...
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"It would not be difficult to continue a paper of this kind if one were disposed to resume the same subjects and weary out the reader with the same thoughts in a different phrase, or to ramble through the cause of Whig and Tory without any certain aim or method in every particular discourse. Such a practice in politica...
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It was probably in reward for his services in publishing the _Freeholder_ that he was made one of the Commissioners for Trade and Colonies. Soon after his appointment to this office he married Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, daughter of Sir Thomas Myddleton, of Chirk Castle, Denbighshire. His attachment to the Countess...
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Report says that the marriage was not a happy one. The tradition, however, like so many others about the same person, seems to have been derived from Pope, who, in his _Epistle to Arbuthnot_, congratulates himself--with an evident glance at Addison--on "not marrying discord with a noble wife." An innuendo of this kind,...
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In April, 1717, the dissensions between the two sections of the Whig Cabinet, led respectively by Townshend and Sunderland, reached a climax, and Townshend being worsted, Sunderland became Prime Minister. He at once appointed his old subordinate one of the Secretaries of State, and Addison filled the office for eleven ...
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But in other respects the evidence of his official incapacity seems to proceed solely from his enemies. "Mr. Addison," said Pope to Spence, "could not give out a common order in writing from his endeavouring always to word it too finely. He had too beautiful an imagination to make a man of business."[67] Copies of offi...
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He resigned his post, however, in March, 1718, with cheerful alacrity, and appears to have looked forward to an active period of literary work, for we are told that he meditated a tragedy on the death of Socrates, as well as the completion of his book on the Evidences of Christianity. But this was not to be; the exigen...
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The rupture seems the more painful when we find Steele, in his third and last _Plebeian_, published April 6th, taunting his opponent with his tardiness in taking the field, at the very moment when his former friend and school-fellow--unknown to him of course--was dying. Asthma, the old enemy that had driven Addison fro...
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Of the closing scene of Addison's life we know little except on rumour. A report was current in Johnson's time, and reached the antiquary John Nichols at the close of the last century, that his life was shortened by over-drinking. But as usual the scandal, when traced to its source, seems to originate with Pope, who to...
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Another story, told on the same questionable authority, represents him as having sent on his death-bed for Gay, and asked his forgiveness for some injury which he said he had done him, but which he did not specify. From the more trustworthy report of Young we learn that he asked to see the Earl of Warwick, and said to ...
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His body, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, was buried by night in Westminster Abbey. The service was performed by Atterbury, and the scene is described by Tickell in a fine passage, probably inspired by a still finer one written by his own rival and his friend's satirist:
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"Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave? How silent did his old companions tread, By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead, Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings! What awe did the slow solemn march inspire, The...
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Such is Addison's history, which, scanty as it is, goes far towards justifying the glowing panegyric bestowed by Macaulay on "the unsullied statesman, the accomplished scholar, the consummate painter of life and manners, the great satirist who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it; who, without inflicting a...
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"Thou hast been As one in suffering all that suffers nothing: A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Has ta'en with equal thanks; and blessed are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please."
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These lines fittingly describe the patient serenity and dignified independence with which Addison worked his way amid great hardships and difficulties to the highest position in the State; but they have a yet more honourable application to the task he performed of reconciling the social dissensions of his countrymen. "...
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I have shown how, after the final subversion by the Civil War of the old-fashioned Catholic and Feudal standards of social life, two opposing ideals of conduct remained harshly confronting each other in the respective moral codes of the Court and the Puritans. The victorious Puritans, averse to all the pleasures of sen...
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"The worthy knight, being but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young Popish cur, and asked him who made Anne a saint. The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met which was ...
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