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 Number 
 
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 Seventeen, 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON 
 
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 BY 
 
 DANIEL AVISE. D.D. 
 
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 NEW YORK: 
 PHILLIPS & HUNT 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 
 W A L D E N & STOWE 
 
 1883. 
 
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 The " Home CoLLE&e Series" will contain one hundred short papers on 
 a wide range of subjects — biographical; historical, scientific, literary, domes- 
 tic, political, and religious. Indeed, the religious tone will characterize all 
 of them. They are written for every body — for all whose leisure is limited, 
 but who desire to use the minutes for the enrichment of life. 
 
 These papers contain seeds from the best gardens in all the world of 
 human knowledge, and if dropped wisely into good soil, will bring forth 
 harvests of beauty and value. 
 
 They are for the young — especially for young people (and older people, 
 too) who are out of the schools, who are full of "business" and "cares," 
 who are in danger of reading nothing, or of reading a sensational literature 
 that is worse than nothing. 
 
 One of these papers a week read over and over, thought and talked about 
 at "odd times," will give in one year a vast fund of information, an intel- 
 lectual quickening, worth even more than the mere knowledge acquired, a 
 taste for soUd reading, many hours of simple and wholesome pleasure, and 
 ability to talk intelligently and helpfully to one's friends. 
 
 Pastors may organize " Home College " classes, or " Lyceum Reading 
 Unions," or "Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circles," and help the 
 young peopte to read and think and talk and live to worthier purposfe. 
 
 A young man may have his own little "college " all by himself, read this 
 aeries of tracts one after the other, (there will soon be one hundred of them 
 ready,) examine himself on them by the " Thought-Outline to Help the Mem- 
 ory," and thus gain knowledge, and, what is better, a love of knowledge. 
 
 And what a young man may do in this respect, a young woman, and both 
 
 old men and old women, may do. 
 
 J. H. Vincent. 
 New York, Jan., 18S3. 
 
 Copyright, 1S88, by Phillips & Himi, New York. 
 
lomt ColUge Strics. |tumfor StiwittRn. 
 
 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 Joseph Addison was born May 1, 1672, at Milston, En- 
 gland, a pleasant little village of which his father was reel or. 
 His extreme weakness at birth gave so little promise of con- 
 tinued life that the good rector thought it best to christen 
 him on the day he was born. Of his child-life next to 
 nothing is known. But his father, being a learned, pious, 
 and conscientious man, is justly presumed to have trained 
 him carefully, watched over the first unfoldings of his intel- 
 lect, and impressed him with those religious sentiments 
 which so largel)^ influenced his character and career. 
 
 When master Joseph was twelve years old his father was 
 made Dean of Lichfield, and, removing thither with his 
 family, placed his promising boy in the Lichfield Grammar 
 School. His school-life is shrouded with the same mist as 
 his childhood's years. Johnson indeed tells a story of his 
 leadership in barring out the master of his school. This 
 mutinous method of defying a teacher by the boys taking 
 possession of their schoolroom and so barring the doors as to 
 exclude him until he consented to rescind some offensive 
 rule or grant some favor, was not uncommon in those old 
 times. But, although Johnson believed the story of Addi- 
 son's participation in such an affair, Macaulay and other 
 good authorities regard it as apocryphal, because of its im- 
 probability. In his after life Addison was noted for a mod- 
 esty and gentleness utterly out of keeping with the suppo.«»i 
 tion of his leadership in such a rough, rebellious procedure. 
 They also reject another tradition, which described him as 
 running away from school, hiding himself in a forest, sleep- 
 ing in a hollow tree, and subsisting on wild berries until he 
 was found by his anxious friends and taken home. 
 
 From Lichfield he was removed to the Charter Housq 
 f ' 
 
JOSEPH ADBISON. 
 
 School, in London. Such was his aptitude and such his 
 diligence in his studies that when only fifteen years old he 
 was admitted into Queen's College, Oxford, with a reputa- 
 tion for classical attainments and taste such as many a col- 
 lege graduate might envy. Nor was his reputation unmer- 
 ited., as reputation often is, but it was the natural fruitage 
 of his attainments. 
 
 Merit, however modest it may be, rarely remains undis- 
 covered by those whom circumstances bring into association 
 with its possessor. In Addison's case, accident made his rare 
 abilities known to Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalen College 
 Some of his Latin verses chanced to fall into that learnei 
 gentleman's hands. He was so charmed with their polished 
 diction and correct versification that he determined to do 
 what he could to serve the promising boy. The result of 
 this purpose was to procure Addison's election as a " Demy," 
 or foundation scholar, into Magdalen College. By this elec- 
 tion the young student enjoyed the benefaction of its founder, 
 and was eligible to succeed, in his turn, to one of its vacant 
 fellowships. He took the degree of Master of Arts in 1693, 
 after which he remained within the walls of Magdalen, as 
 one of its fellows, devoting his time with unresting assiduity 
 to the study of poetry, especially Latin poetry, and criticisms. 
 
 Macaulay makes it apparent that Addison's classical at- 
 tainments were not general, but limited chiefly to the 
 Latin poets. He knew comparatively little Greek. With 
 Roman historians and moralists he had only a superficial ac- 
 quaintance. But with the Latin poets he was thoroughly fa- 
 miliar. He was imbued with their spirit and had caught the 
 secret of their style. Hence, in the composition of Latin verse 
 he was unrivaled. It was his superiority in this department, 
 and in the polish of his verses written in English, which first 
 attracted the attention of the literary and political leaders of 
 society to his great abilities, and led to the openings by which 
 he finally attained his high position in society and in political 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 8 
 
 life. Hence he is an illustration of the fact, that the man 
 A\ ho usually succeeds, is not, as Macaulay puts it, " the man 
 ^\\\o does what nobody else ever attempts to do, but the 
 }nait y;ho does best what multitudes do well!''* 
 
 When Addison was twenty-seven years old he w^as still 
 undecided as to his choice of a profession. His father very 
 much desired that he should take orders in the Church of 
 England, He seems himself at one time to have regarded 
 a clerical life, not as his duty, but as his destiny marked out 
 by circumstances. His opinions were orthodox; his life, if 
 not spiritual, was moral; his college had rich livings in its 
 .^ift; his father had influence in the Church; why, then, 
 
 f should he hesitate ? Among churchmen little w^as thought 
 in those times of the need of a divine call to the ministry. 
 Hence he had no scruples on that point. With him the 
 question was, not what God called him to do, but in which 
 profession, literature or the ministry, could he hope to succeed 
 best ? Probably his natural shyness disinclined him to at- 
 tempt the latter, while the success which followed his first 
 poetical publications inclined him to the former. Thus he 
 stood in life's great highway, an undecided man, waiting, not 
 for Providence, but for human events, to direct his course. 
 
 I While he was in this state of mind two distinguished states- 
 men. Lords Montagu and Somers, discerning his possible value 
 to the State, desired his services in foreign courts.. To this 
 end it was necessary that he should be a thorough master of 
 the French language. To enable him to acquire it they 
 offered him a pension of $1,500 a year, that he might pass 
 sufficient time abroad to prepare himself for official duty. His 
 college superiors objected at first; but a letter from Montagu 
 to the head of Magdalen College, in which that statesman 
 said, by way of apology, " I will never do the Church any 
 other injury than the keeping of Mr. Addison out of it," ob- 
 tained permission for Addison to retain his fellowship while 
 pursuing his diplomatic and other studies abroad. 
 
J08EPH ADDlSOlSt. 
 
 Accepting this unanticipated opening into political life, 
 Addison, giving up all further thought of the ministry, 
 quitted the venerable cloisters of his beloved Oxford, and 
 went abroad. There he was no idler. Improvement, not 
 pleasure, was his aim. Hence he made good and profitable 
 use of his opportunity, studying not merely languages and 
 ai't, but chiefly men and manners. He gained the acquaintance 
 of many men of note; he wrote poems, letters, observations of 
 the countries through which he passed, and began, as is sup- 
 posed, his well-known tragedy of Cato. But his travels were 
 not without their drawbacks. His pension, after the first 
 year, was withheld, first, on account of the waning power of his 
 patrons and, finally, because the death of King William de- 
 prived them of their oflices. Thus the latter part of his stay 
 on tlie Continent was made uncomfortable because of the 
 pinchings of poverty, and when he returned to England, in 
 1V03, his mean apparel bore witness to his pecuniary straits; 
 and the political downfall of his patrons had cut off his 
 hoi)es of official preferment. His prospects, so brilliant 
 when he left England, were now enveloi3ed in an impenetrable 
 cloud. Still, he had his fellowship left, and, without yielding 
 to discouragement, he again devoted himself to literary pur- 
 suits. 
 
 One year after, Lord Marlborough's famous victory at 
 Blenheim led Lord Godolphin to request Addison to write a 
 poem in honor of that great event. Li the garret of a house 
 in the Haymarket the poverty-stricken poet produced a work 
 which was 50 satisfactory, both to the existing ministry and 
 the public, that he was immediately installed as Commis- 
 sioner of Appeals, a place that had been filled by that dis- 
 tinguished philosopher, John Locke, then lately deceased. 
 This oflice yielded him an annual income of |1,000, and with 
 it his patrons gave him assurance that it should be followed 
 by the gift of some still more profitable place. 
 
 Addison's official duties did not prevent him from contin- 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 uing to use his pen, and he soon published a " Narrative 
 of Travels in Italy/' a work which did not increase his 
 reputation, because it was too exclusively classical in its allu- 
 sions to suit the gossipy and corrupt taste of the times. 
 After his travels he produced the lively opera of "Rosa- 
 mond," which, though it failed on the stage, was highly 
 esteemed in print, and therefore contributed to increase his 
 literary reputation. 
 
 In 1*705 Addison was appointed Under-Secretary of State. 
 Three years after he was elected a member of the House of 
 Commons, where his maiden and only speech served no other 
 purpose than to convince both himself and his friends that 
 he was incapable of serving either his party or his country 
 as an orator, on account of his unconquerable diffidence. In 
 presence of an audience his mind, so fruitful when it sought 
 expression with the pen, or in conversation with a small 
 circle of friends, seemed stricken with torpor ; his wit re- 
 fused to sparkle, his genial humor to flow, his tongue to coin 
 his thoughts into words. Evidently nature had made him a 
 writer, not an orator. He yielded to her authority, and never 
 tried to make another speech in that House ; albeit, Macau, 
 lay thinks there is evidence that during his term of service 
 in Ireland he did make several speeches in the Irish House 
 of Commons, 
 
 His visit to Ireland was occasioned by his appointment as 
 Secretary to the profligate Marquis of Wharton, Lord-lieu- 
 tenant of Ireland. To his credit it appears that, while his 
 superior spotted his official career with corruption, Addison 
 faithfully fulfilled his own duties, and left Ireland not only 
 with an untarnished reputation, but also with the respect and 
 admiration of the public. 
 
 Addison's secretaryship, with the income of one or two 
 sinecure offices Avhich he held, placed him in more than an 
 easy financial condition. He was apparently on the road to 
 wealth as well as to high political and social condition. 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 Hence he resigned his fellowship at Magdalen, and probably 
 looked forward to years of unbroken prosperity. 
 
 But then, as now, political life resembled an uncertain sea 
 which engulfs to-day the proud fleets which yesterday 
 floated in seeming security on its treacherous bosom. Thus, 
 in 1710, when the caprice of Queen Anne and a sudden 
 (•h;jnge in public opinion swept the Whigs out of office, Ad- 
 dition found himself no longer a prosperous man in a fat 
 place, but simply a politician clinging to the wreck of his 
 party. Some unfortunate speculations had robbed him of 
 his savings, his fellowship and official post were lost, his po- 
 litical hopes blighted, and the haughty Lady Warwick, to 
 whom he had at this time begun to pay affectionate atten- 
 tions, seeing his forlorn condition, treated his addresses with 
 more than coquettish coldness. Nevertheless, he had the 
 consciousness of his political integrity and the resources of 
 a cultivated mind to sustain him. To friends who commis- 
 erated him, he cheerfully replied : 
 
 " You ought to admire my philosophy. I have lost at 
 once my place, my fortune, my fellowship, and my mistress. 
 I must think of turning tutor again, and yet my spirits are 
 as good as ever." 
 
 This, if not a Christian, was certainly a manly spirit. 
 The public soon showed its estimate of his character by 
 returning him without a contest to his seat in the House, 
 elected in consequence of the overthrow of the Whigs. 
 Swift, then in London, wrote to Stella, saying, " Addison's 
 election has passed easy and undisputed. I believe if he 
 had a mind to be king he would hardly be refused." 
 
 Four years now passed, during which Addison was con- 
 stantly gaining in popularity both with the public and the 
 leaders in literature and politics by his famous essays, of 
 which we shall presently write. Then, in 1714, the angel 
 of death claimed Queen Anne as his prey, and George I. 
 ascended her vacated throne, The queen's departure was 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 followed by a new election, which restored the Whigs to 
 power. Then Addison's political star grew bright again, 
 and he was restored to his old office of Chief Secretary un- 
 der Lord Sunderland, who was appointed Lord-lieutenant 
 of Ireland. 
 
 But in this hour of returning prosperity he put a fact 
 into his life, which became like a bitter herb cast into a 
 vessel of sweet water. This fact was his marriage \vith the 
 Countess - Dowager of Warwick. His acquaintance with 
 this handsome widow is said to have begun through his act- 
 ing as tutor to her scape-grace son. Macaulay says it was 
 commenced by their living in close neighborhood-^she in 
 Holland House, and he in a dwelling once occupied hj the 
 notorious Nell Gwyn. Meeting first as country neighbors, 
 they soon became intimate friends. On Addison's part 
 friendship ripened into love, and he became her' piersistent 
 wooer. Johnson thinks she treated him disdainfully, and, 
 trifled with his affections. When his political hopes were- 
 bright she met his advances favorably ; when his prospects, 
 darkened, she snubbed him. At last, when he became 
 Chief Secretary to Sunderland, and was likely to become, a 
 cabinet minister; when he had inherited a fortune from his 
 brother; and had bought a country estate, she consented to 
 become his bride; but not, as it appears, because she loved 
 him, but because of his popularity as a writer, his recent 
 good fortune, and his increasing importance in the State. 
 Gruff old Samuel Johnson says, she married him "bn terms 
 like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused; to whom 
 the Sultan is reported to pronounce, ' Daughter, I give thee 
 this man for thy slave ! ' The foolish woman was so vain 
 of her rank that, though she had taken Addison as her hus- 
 band, she persisted in treating him as an inferior. Under 
 such circumstances how could either of them be happy ? " 
 
 Shortly after his ill-starred marriage internal divisions in 
 the Whig party led our essayist's personal friends to desire 
 
8 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 his presence in the Cabinet. They pressed him to accept 
 the portfolio of the Secretary of State, not because of his 
 especial fitness for the office, but because of his reputation 
 for probity and his great literary fame. After some hesita- 
 tion he "Accepted it, and thus grasped the highest prize of 
 his political life. 
 
 For some of the exigencies of this office Addison was nat- 
 urally unfitted. He could write admirable State papers, 
 but, owing to his unconquerable bashfulness, he could not 
 defend either his papers or tho policy of the cabinet in the 
 House of Commons. Besides being in this j^articular un- 
 equal to his great opportunity he was afflicted with a severe 
 asthma. Hence Lady M. W. Montague only echoed the 
 expectation of his friends when, in a letter to Pope, she 
 wrote of his elevation to the secretaryship : " Such a post 
 as that, and such a wife as the countess, do not seem to be 
 in prudence eligible for a man that is asthmatic ; and we 
 may see the day when he will be heartily glad to resign 
 them both." 
 
 These words were prophetic, at least so far as his office was 
 concerned. His asthma growing worse in the spring of 1718, 
 he resigned his portfolio, and retired on a comfortable pen- 
 sion of seventy-five hundred dollars a year. Henceforth, he 
 devoted his available strength to his more congenial literary 
 work. But his uncongenial marriage bond, like his asthma, 
 was a burden not to be laid down except with his life. 
 
 We have now traced the steps of this poor clergyman's 
 son from the humble rectory, which was his birthplace, to a 
 post in the State so honorable that the proudest nobles of 
 England have regarded it as Avorthy of their ambition. 
 Chatham and Fox, first among Britain's Parliamentary ora- 
 tors, never rose higher. But in Addison we see a man with 
 no high ancestral connections, with only a small fortune, and 
 utterly incapable of public debate, after only nine years of 
 service in the House of Commons, put in possession of this 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 highly esteemed office. His abilities were purely literary. 
 Macaulay pronounces his elevation a " seeming miracle," and 
 without a parallel in the history of England. He makes its 
 causes, however, very obvious by showing that, in Addison's 
 time, a superior writer, a lirst-class pamphleteer, was really 
 of more importance to party leaders than a fine orator. 
 There were no newspapers then, as now, to give the orator's 
 words spoken in debate to his constituents and the country. 
 Hence the Government and party leaders had to reach the 
 people by means of pamphlets, and Addison, having no 
 equal as a political writer, except, perhaps, in Swift, neces- 
 sarily acquired a political importance which a mere orator 
 might envy, but not surpass. This fact, in connection with 
 his unspotted reputation for integrity, for fidelity to his 
 friends and to his opinions, for humane feeling, and modesty 
 of deportment, explains why " he should have climbed high- 
 er than any other Englisliman has ever, by means merely of 
 literary talents, been able to climb." In a period of very 
 general corruption, he was an exceptionally pure politician. 
 His influence was the eflftuence of his really great character; 
 his power resided in his imperial pen. 
 
 Addison's fame stands, not on his poems, nor his plays, 
 nor his political and polemical pamphlets, but on his incom- 
 parable essays found mostly in the '' Tatler," the " Specta- 
 tor," and the " Guardian." But for these, the world would 
 have taken little interest in his productions. And their 
 composition was brought about by an accident, trifling in 
 itself, but interesting in its consequences. When at the 
 Charter House and at Oxford, he had formed a friendly in- 
 timacy with Richard Steele, who, on reaching the years of 
 manhood, became a good-natured profligate, whose life, says 
 Macaulay, " was spent in inculcating what was right and 
 doing what was wrong." This man, whose will was too 
 weak to combat his passions and to obey the impulses of his 
 clear conscience, started a periodical in London which he 
 
10 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 named the " Tatler," in 1*709. Addison was in Dublin at 
 that time with Lord Wharton, and knew nothing of his old 
 friend's purpose until he had issued two or three numbers of 
 his paper, which professed to be edited by one Isaac Bicker- 
 staff, Esq., Astrologer. But Addison at once discovered 
 Steele behind the fictitious personage, and immediately sent 
 him an essay for its columns, little dreaming that, in doing 
 so, he was giving his mind an opportunit^y to develop the 
 rare powers of which he was, as yet, the unconscious pos- 
 sessor. Steele was no ordinary writer. He had considera- 
 ble learning. His wit, humor, and vivacious style of writing, 
 though not of the very highest order, were sufficient to com- 
 mand the attention of readers in fashionable circles, but 
 when Addison's essays appeared in his "Tatler," Steele was 
 eclipsed. He was sufficiently a critic to perceive, and good- 
 natured enough to confess, his friend's superiority, and to 
 say subsequently: 
 
 " I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful 
 neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When 
 I had once called him in, I could not subsist without depend- 
 ence on him. . . . The paper was advanced indeed. It was 
 raised to a greater thing, than I intended." 
 
 The "Tatler," after an existence of one year and nine 
 months, was brought to a sudden end by the caprice of 
 Steele, who acted without consulting Addison. Two months 
 later they started the " Spectator " as a daily sheet. Of this 
 paper five hundred and fifty-five numbers were printed. It 
 was succeeded by the "Guardian," which, in its turn, was 
 followed, in June, 1714, by a new series of the "Spectator," 
 which, after the issue of eighty numbers, also came to an end. 
 Macanlay says of this eighth volume of the " Spectator," 
 which was conducted by Addison without Steele's assistance, 
 that " it contains jjerhaps the finest essays, both serious and 
 playful, in the English language." It did not cease, there- 
 fore, through lack of merit, but because the political strifes 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 11 
 
 of the times diverted the attention of the people from the 
 claims of polite literature to topics of graver importance. 
 ^ The charm of Addison's essays must be sought, not in 
 their ideas, their style, their humor, or their spirit taken 
 separately, but in their happy combination of good thoughts, 
 
 / a graceful style, delightful humor, and a cheerful spirit. 
 
 I Their thought is neither profound on the one hand, nor su- 
 perficial" on the other ; yet fully up to the level of the 
 average cultivated understanding; it is always luminous, 
 seldom commonplace, and usually instructive. Their style^ 
 though not always faultless, is a model of ease and graceful- 
 ness, ornamented, but not burdened with, rhetorical adorn- 
 ments. It is almost passionless, never enthusiastic, scarcely 
 energetic indeed, and yet it is always vivacious and strong. 
 The humor of these essays is, perhaps, incomparable in that it 
 is, in the main, free from coarseness and vulgarity, entirely un- 
 forced, and diffused like the moisture of a dewy morning in 
 JBummer. His pages also sparkle with wit which, though it 
 ii-arely provokes outright laughter, keeps the reader constantly 
 Bmiling at its point. To these qualities is added a genial cheer- 
 fulness which keeps the reader good natured, even while he 
 .feels compelled to condemn his own follies as they are por- 
 Itrayed by his impassive critic. " Whoever wishes," says 
 Bamuel Johnson, " to attain an English style, familiar but 
 not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his 
 days and nights to the volumes of Addison." 
 
 The ethical value of these essays, proper allowance being 
 made for the times in which they appeared, must be rated 
 high. They are moral satires aiming to make the follies of 
 the hour ridiculous and deserving of the censure of common 
 sense and conscience. As a satirist, Addison is unrivaled 
 in that he is never bitter, never malignant, never scurrilous, 
 never personal. He satirizes the vice, not the vicious man. 
 Still more to his credit is the fact that he never sports with 
 either virtue or religion, but always gives the support of his 
 
JOSEPH ADDISOm 
 
 pen to both. If his essays do not meet the wants of a re- 
 ligious mind, they are, nevertheless, full of the lessons of 
 practical wisdom. \ 
 
 As a poet Addison does not rank very high. Warburton 
 said, "He was but an ordinary poet and a worse critic;" a 
 verdict to Avhich Johnson does not strongly object, and 
 which the critics will probably never reverse. He had a 
 poet's nature ; his Roger de Coverley proves that he pos- 
 sessed creative powers, but he was not endued with the full 
 power of poetic expression. 
 
 Johnson, speaking of bim as a poet, says : " His poetry is 
 polished and pure, the product of a mind too judicious to 
 commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excel- 
 lence. He has sometimes a striking line or a shining para- 
 graph, but on the whole he is warm rather than fervid, and 
 shoAvs more dexterity than strength. He was, however, one 
 of our earliest examples of correctness. 
 
 "The versification he had learned of Dryden he debased 
 rather than refined. His rhymes are rather dissonant. . . . 
 The mere structure of verses seems never to have engaged 
 much of his care. But his lines are very smooth in Rosa- 
 mond, and too smooth in Cato." 
 
 AVith the demise of the " Spectator " Addison's literary ca- 
 reer came to an end. Not that his mind was inactive or his 
 pen idle, since he formed the plan of several grave works, and 
 wrote numerous papers on the political questions of the hour. 
 But these added nothing to his fame. Moreover, although 
 repose from the activities of official life gave him temporary 
 hope that his asthma was likely to release its hold, yet that 
 hope soon proved illusive. His disease not only returned 
 in greater severity, but was accompanied with dangerous 
 dropsy. He then saw that the curtain was about to fall on 
 the drama of his brief but eventful life. Resigning himself 
 to the will of the great Supreme, he gave his thoughts to 
 preparation for the inevitable. Reviewing his career, his 
 
JOSEPH ADDISON. 13 
 
 conscience rebuked him for some real or imaginary injury- 
 done by him to Gaj', the poet. To relieve his mind he sent 
 for Gay to visit his sick room at Holland House, and on his 
 arrival solicited his forgiveness. Gay readily granted it, 
 since he neither knew, nor could he imagine, what the injury 
 was. Addison's biographers think that he had opposed his 
 fellow-poet's appointment to some office. If this were it, his 
 conscience ought to have approved instead of blaming him, 
 seeing that Gay was a parasite of great men and unworthy 
 of office. 
 
 Addison had been tutor to Lord Warwick, the son of his 
 countess by her first marriage. The young man was ad- 
 dicteil to the fashionable vices of the day, and was wearing 
 out his life by guilty excesses. Addison, it is said, on what 
 some think doubtful authority, sent for the gay young lord 
 shortly before his end, but was at first unable to speak to 
 him when he arrived. After waiting awhile the young man 
 said : 
 
 " Dear sir, you sent for me, I believe. 1 hope you have 
 some commands. I shall hold them most sacred." 
 
 Addison rallied sufficiently to press the hand of his step- 
 son; and to reply: "See in what peace a Christian can 
 die !" 
 
 Not long after, on the 17th of June, 1719, he died in hum- 
 ble reliance upon the goodness of God. His remains were 
 interred, at midnight, with the noble dead in Westminister 
 Abbey. He had lived for little more than forty-seven years. 
 His fame will live as long as men are found who have taste 
 to relish the beauties of style and the charms of polite liter- 
 ature. 
 
 That Addison's character was strongly virtuous there can 
 be little serious question. Neither friends nor foes alleged 
 aught against his morality, with one sad exception, namely, 
 that after his marriage he sought refuge from his marital 
 vexations in the wine cup. Drinking was then a universal 
 
14 Joseph abdtsok 
 
 vice, and, following the general custom, this great essayist 
 without doubt drank wine, especially when he visited the cof- 
 fee houses to observe men's manners, to gather materials for 
 his essays, and to enjoy the conversation of his literary and 
 political associates. 
 
 It seems that he was in the habit, when vexed by his 
 capricious wife, of going to a coffee-house kept by a man 
 named Button, who had been a servant in the establishment 
 of the Countess of Warwick. " From thence," says Johnson, 
 he went to a tavern where he often sat late, and drank too 
 much wine. In the bottle discontent seeks foi- comfort, 
 cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for, confidence. It 
 is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by 
 the manumission he obtained from the servile timidity of 
 his sober hours." When in a chosen company of wits, of 
 whom his friend Steele was one, and under the inspiration 
 of the wine bottle, his conversational powers asserted them- 
 selves, despite his bashfulness ; and long after poor Steele 
 became stupid, Addison, who was only elevated, not over- 
 come, by wine, was the life of the company. How frequent 
 these occasions were, and how far he yielded himself to the 
 charm of the wine cup is not known, and it is not clearly 
 proven that he ever became either a sot or a drunkard. Let 
 us, therefore, give him the benefit of the doubt, especially 
 as in all other respects his morality was above suspicion, 
 though living in an age and among men who did not scruple 
 to use falsehood, detraction, trickery, and dishonesty, to pro- 
 mote the ends of their selfish ambitions, nor to indulge in 
 malignant hatreds, in bestial convivialities, in unchaste con 
 nections. 
 
 Addison was true, kind, open, honest, unrevengeful, chaste, 
 and, as one may charitably hope, only a moderate drinker. 
 It is also true that in his essays he never pandered to the 
 vices of the times, although he knew that by so doing his 
 writings would meet with higher favor in the aristocratic 
 
JOSEPH ADDISO]^. 15 
 
 circles, in which alone he could expect to find jiatrons. On 
 the contrary, he made his essays tributary both to virtue and 
 religion. Most surely these facts prove the great strength 
 of his character and of his loyalty to \ irtuous principles. 
 
 His religious character, judged by strictly evangelical 
 standards, is somewhat problematical. That he had relig- 
 ious convictions, that he loved religious truth, that he had 
 some religious experiences, his early poems and his later essays 
 abundantly prove. But he was a habitue of the theater; a 
 writer of plays; and a voluntary companion of very worldly 
 men. It is difticult to harmonize these practices with genu- 
 ine piety. It is equally difticult to believe that his bold 
 advocacy of religious truth and his many virtues had no 
 roots in his spiritual affections. Perhaps these contradictions 
 grew^ out of his apparently incorrect views of the scriptural 
 theory of salvation by faith only. He does indeed recognize 
 the need of trust in the divine Goodness ; and he occasionally 
 recognizes the Chri>t as man's Redeemer; but he associates 
 repentance with trust in such a way as to imply that it is in 
 some way meritoriously related to the pardon of sin. Per- 
 liaps his imperfect theories and the notoriously anti-evangel- 
 ical, not to say anti-Christian, character of his times are 
 responsible for his indulgences in practices which with 
 clearer light he would have rejected as inconsistent with 
 spiritual religion. One is, therefore, disposed to throw the 
 mantle of charity over his faults, and to hope that in his 
 last years of suffering and of repentance he sought and 
 found clearer light, and complete redemption from all his 
 sins in that precious blood of the Christ which cleanses the 
 soul from all sin. 
 
16 JOSEPH ADDISON. 
 
 INSPIRED AND UNINSPIRED THOUGHTS. 
 
 Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is 
 full of his glory. — Isaiah, 
 
 What man can think of himself as called out and separated 
 from nothing, of his being made a conscious, a reasonable, 
 a happy creature, in short as being taken in as a sharer of I 
 existence and a kind of partner in eternity, without being 
 swallowed up in wonder, in ])raise, in adoration! It is indeed 
 a thought too big for the mind of men, and rather to be en- 
 tertained in the secrecy of devotion and in the silence of the 
 soul, than to be expressed in words. The Supreme Being | 
 has not given us powers or faculties sufficient to extol or 
 magnify such unutterable goodness." — Addison in Spectator. . 
 
 The fool hath said in his heart there is no God. — David. 
 
 There is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheist in 
 retirement. His mind is incapable of rapture or elevation; 
 he can only consider himself as an insignificant figure in a 
 landscape, and wandering up and down in a field or a 
 meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about 
 him, and as subject to as total a mortality as they, with this 
 aggravation, that he is the only one among them who lies 
 under the apprehension of it. — Addison in the Tatler. 
 
 Knowledge is, indeed, that which next to virtue truly and 
 essentially raises one man above another. It finishes one 
 half of the human soul. It makes being pleasant to us, fills 
 the mind with entertaining views, and administers to it a 
 perpetual series of gratifications. It gives ease to solitude, 
 and gracefulness to retirement. — Addison in the Guardian. 
 
[thought outline to help the memory.] 
 
 1. Birth? Father? At twelve years? The "barring out?" Another tradi- 
 
 tion? Charter House School? Oxford? Latin verses and the " Demy ? " 
 1693? Knowledge of Greek { His special gift ? 
 
 2. Abroad? Why? Advantages? Trouble? A poem and a new office? 
 
 " Travels in Italy ? " " Eosamond ? " 
 
 3. Under-Secretary of State? House of Commons? As an orator? Visit to 
 
 Ireland? Financial disaster ? How he bore it? 
 
 4. New rkjime and prosperity? Marriage? Trouble? Promotion? Lady 
 
 Montagu to Pope about Addison ? Retirement ? 
 
 5. Addison's real power? "Tatler," "Spectator," "Guardian?" Secret of 
 
 charm in Addison's essays? " Ethical value ? " As a " poet? " 
 
 6. Visit of " Gay ? " Words to " Lord Warwick? " Death? General char- 
 
 acter ? Faults ? Religious views and life ? 
 
 OI3:^A^XJT^A^XJQXJ^^ TEI^^T-IBOOKIS. 
 
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