sociate of Addison, both in his literary and public labors, and always proved himself able, faithful, and honorable in every trust confided to his hands. The only complaint the world has to make of him is, that he has told so few particulars respecting the life of Addison; this shows that Boswells, though their price in the market is not high, are beings of no small value; and that the literary world would consult its own interest by making it a rule to encourage the multiplication of the race, rather than to ridicule and abuse them.

One of the last favors of the Whig administration was, to give Addison the place of secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, who was then the Marquis of Wharton. At a later period, he visited the same country again, as secretary to Sunderland, who, after a fashion more common in church than in state, did not trouble himself to cross the Channel in the discharge of his official duty. Johnson expresses wonder, that Addison should have connected himself with a person so impious, profligate, and shameless as Wharton, when his own character was, in these respects, precisely the reverse of the other's. He appears to have mistaken the father for the Duke, his son, who was so notorious in connection with the Jacobite party. The elder was no saint certainly, but his character was light compared to the utter darkness of his son's. Archbishop King, a very high authority, says that he had known Wharton forty years, and always considered him a true patriot, and one who had his country's interest at heart; no small praise for a statesman in any age, and one which in that season of all corruption it was a special honor to deserve; so that Addison's connection with him was not that confederacy with sin which the great critic seems to have apprehended.

The conduct of the secretary, in both these missions, commanded respect and gave general satisfaction. But here, again, Johnson seems to intimate that he was rather avaricious in his ways. He tells us, on Swift's authority, that the secretary never remitted his fees of office in favor of his friends, giving as a reason, that if it was done in a hundred instances, it would be a loss to himself of two hundred guineas, while no friend would be a gainer of more than two. Swift, who was a great calculator, could not disapprove such exactness; and it should not have been related, without stating at the same time, that Addison's revenues, which might have

been very great, had he, like other secretaries, received the presents offered by applicants for office, were reduced, by his determination to take nothing more than the regular fees, so that his income was comparatively small. Archbishop King speaks with great respect of his exemption from every thing like avarice and corruption in his discharge of duty, a virtue of which Ireland had not seen a very rich display, and which is not valued in proportion to its rarity in that unfortunate island even now.

The truth is, that Addison was one of those who care less for appearance than for reality; he was not disposed to be generous, if that would make it impossible for him to be just. Unlike some other men of great talent, he never felt as if his genius released him from the obligations of common honesty. He would have despised himself, if he had made the flourish of doing liberal favors, while a creditor was suffering or complaining because his debt was unpaid. The knavish repudiation, which is so often tolerated in great men, was not consistent with his regard for his own honor. The feeling of the world with respect to these matters is one that brings a snare. So long as an eminent person is present, to awaken a personal interest in his readers or his party, they forgive him this lavish freedom with money which belongs to others, they forbear to press home that charge of dishonesty to which they know he must plead guilty. But when he is gone from the earth, and the Egyptian tribunal sits in judgment on the dead, that impartial court assumes as the law, that he should first of all have done justly; for if, trampling on that obligation, he professed to have gone on to the love of mercy, it must condemn as a selfish crime that indulgence of feeling at the expense of principle; and it decides that the crown of benevolence and generosity shall never be worn by the unjust, and that a man who is not honest enough to pay his debts, when he has the power, however highly he may be gifted, is the meanest work of God. Addison was sometimes very poor; he was never rich; his circumstances were such as to make exactness of calculation a necessity as well as a virtue. But it is idle to charge with avarice one who resisted temptations to gain wealth which he might have yielded to without censure from others; and which he resisted simply because he feared the censure of his own heart.

It is quite evident, that, with this view of duty, he must

have been often troubled with the reckless improvidence of his friend Steele, who cared little how or from whom he obtained the means of expensive self-indulgence, and when he borrowed, never associated with the act the idea that he must afterwards pay. That Addison was kind and charitable to his follies is evident from their long attachment; but when the revenue of the nation would not have been sufficient to supply Steele's wasteful profusion, it would have been as thoughtless as unavailing to put his own living into the hands of the spendthrift, only to see it fooled away. There are but few traces on record of their dealings, in which, of course, the borrowing was all on one side and the lending on the other; but that Addison lent freely appears from a remark in one of Steele's letters to his wife, in which he says, that "he has paid Mr. Addison the whole thousand pounds." At a later time, he says to her, "You will have Mr. Addison's money to-morrow noon."

But Johnson has embalmed a story to Addison's disadvantage, of his sending an execution into Steele's house for a debt of a hundred pounds, communicated to him by Savage, which has appeared in different forms. One account represents Steele as telling the story with tears in his eyes; and, if these had no other source than their mutual compotations, all such embellishments would be easily supplied by the same inspiration. Another version makes the sum a thousand pounds, and says that with a "genteel letter the balance of the produce of the execution was remitted to Steele." When Johnson adopted the story, it was so inconsistent with all that was known of Addison, that the world could not believe it; he was asked to give his authority; there was no other than that of Savage, which he knew was, if high in his estimation, low enough in that of others; and, instead of resting it on that foundation, he said it was part of the familiar literary history of the day. Now there were times when Savage's powers of hearing and speaking were somewhat confused; he may very easily have misinterpreted some hasty suggestion of Steele's, who, at times, labored under the same physical infirmity, into a statement of what had actually taken place; and one must have an accurate knowledge of the circumstances, at least so far as to be informed whether Savage at the time was at the table or under it, before he can put implicit faith in a tradition based

on his authority alone. If the story is true in any part, it is rather strange that it did not interrupt the friendly harmony of the parties, which it certainly never did; and the idea suggested by Thomas Sheridan was undoubtedly correct, that it was done, not so much to secure the debt, as to screen Steele's property from other creditors. The debt was real, without question; Addison could not take such a step in collusion with Steele without giving it the aspect of an underhand proceeding, where fraud or conspiracy there was none. As this solution is perfectly consistent with Addison's character, who had not the least severity in his nature to lead him to such painful extremes, we should receive it at once as the satisfactory explanation; that is, if any was needed beyond the circumstance, that the brains of both Steele and Savage were often rolling in those fine frenzies in which visions become reality, and the boundary separating fact and fiction becomes as variable as the profile of a wave of the sea.

Of the difficulty of ascertaining any fact thus told, and therefore of believing it, we have an illustration in what is said of Swift, who must be prominent in any history where he appears, and who was so wayward and peculiar, that his habits attracted more attention than those of other persons equally high. Odd enough, in all conscience, he was; but this same Sheridan, in his biography, has represented him as making his appearance at Button's coffee-house, then the resort of the wits, in a rusty dress, with a rude and unsocial manner, and a freedom of talk, which, if it did not transcend all propriety, at least hung over the outer edge. These peculiarities gained him the name of the "Mad parson," a title to which he had, probably, a more serious claim than those who applied it were able to discern. The date of these proceedings was somewhere between Swift's first political pamphlet in 1701, and his Tale of a Tub in 1704; and, unless the relater of the story could plead somnambulism to the satisfaction of the great jury of the public, there was something in the dates, which, if challenged, must have sorely plagued the inventor." Addison, who presided in these merry scenes, was all this while residing quietly in Europe; and he did not set up his servant Button in this establishment, till some time after his return at the close of 1703; so that it was in some preëxistent state that Button and his coffee-house must have been regaled with the exploits

of the "Mad parson." It seems a pity to spoil these pleasant stories by this narrow searching into their truth. In common cases, they may go for what they are worth; but where a great man is charged with inhumanity, entirely at variance with all that is known of his character, there seems to be a reason for applying the test of circumstantial evidence, and figures which do not indulge themselves in lying, but on the contrary sometimes expose the carelessness, to say the least, of those who indiscreetly use them.

The whole history of Addison's relations with Swift is one that does him the greatest honor. It was no easy matter to keep always on good terms with such a man, whose natural disposition was cynical and sarcastic, and who was wrought up, by his strange fortune in politics, to a state of exasperation against all mankind;—against the Whigs, because they had not prevented the necessity of his going over to the enemy; and against the Tories, because, with his sharp discernment, he saw that they disliked while they flattered, and distrusted while they used him. He was not blind to the fact, that, with all his power to serve their cause, he had no power to serve his own interests, which he had no idea of disregarding. He fondly persuaded himself that he could do much for others, but it was clear that he could do nothing for himself; and he was not the man to hold a barren sceptre, and be content with the gratification of vanity alone. This unsatisfactory position in which he stood soured his temper, which was not originally of the same growth with sugar-cane, and made his wayward humor, where he put no constraint upon it, about as much as the most Christian spirit could bear.

We have an example in the story told by Pope, of his paying him a visit in company with Gay, and not arriving till after the hour of supper. Swift felt it as a reflection on his hospitality; he therefore calculated how much the meal would have cost him, and forced each of them to accept half a crown, in order that, if they told the story with the idea of his housekeeping which it implied, they might be under the necessity of reporting themselves as the subjects of his munificence too. There have been many attempts to solve the problem of his unhappy history; but it seems to us, there can be no reasonable doubt that in these eccentricities of life, some of which were so painful, we see the approach of that insanity which clouded his fine understanding at last.