“I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling ‘Papa.’… My mother catched me in her arms, and almost smothered me in her embraces, and told me, in a flood of tears, ‘Papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more.’”
This is on page 364 of the Tatler, and on page 365 he says: “A large train of disasters were coming into my memory, when my servant knocked at my closet door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of the same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next, at Garraway’s coffee-house.” And he sends for three of his friends—which was so like him!
So he goes through life—a kindly, good-hearted, tender, intractable, winning fellow; talking, odd-whiles, piously—spending freely—drinking fearlessly—loving widely—writing archly, wittily, charmingly.
We have a characteristic glimpse of him in his later years—for he lived far down into the days of the Georges (one of whom gave him his knighthood and title)—when he is palsied, at his charming country home in Wales, and totters out to see the village girls dance upon the green, and insists upon sending off to buy a new gown for the best dancer; this was so like him! And it would have been like him to carry his palsied steps straight thereafter to the grave where his Prue and the memory of all his married joys and hopes lay sleeping.
Joseph Addison.
Addison’s character was, in a measure, the complement of Steele’s. He was coy, dignified, reticent—not given to easy familiarities at sight—nor greatly prone to over-fondling. He was the son of an English rector down in Wiltshire; was born in a cottage still standing in Milston—a few miles north of Salisbury. He was a Charter-house boy and Oxford man; had great repute there as scholar—specially as Latinist—became a Fellow—had great Whig friends, who, somehow, secured him a pension, with which he set out upon European travel; and he wrote about what he saw in Italy, and other parts, in a way that is fresh and readable now. He was a year or two younger than Congreve, and a few weeks[101] only younger than Steele; nine years younger than De Foe, of whom it is probable he never knew or cared to know.
Very early in his career Addison had the aid of Government friends: his dignity of carriage gave them assurance; his reticence forbade fear of babbling; his elegant pen gave hope of good service; and he came to high political task-work—first, in those famous verses where he likens the fighting hero, Marlborough—then fresh from Blenheim—to the angel, who,
“——by Divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,