[134] Addison's father, Dr. Lancelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield, had three sons: (1) Joseph; (2) Gulston, who died Governor of Fort-George in the East Indies; (3) Lancelot, who was entered in Queen's College, and afterwards became Master of Arts, and Fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford; and a daughter, Dorothy, first married to Dr. Sartre, formerly minister of Montpellier, and afterwards Prebendary of Westminster; and, secondly, to Daniel Combes, Esq. Swift wrote on October 25, 1710: "I dined to-day with Addison and Steele, and a sister of Mr. Addison, who is married to one Mons. Sartre, a Frenchman, prebendary of Westminster, who has a delicious house and garden; yet I thought it was a sort of monastic life in those cloisters, and I liked Laracor better. Addison's sister is a sort of a wit, very like him. I am not fond of her."
Addison had two other sisters, who died young. Of his brother Gulston we read thus in the "Wentworth Papers" (pp. 75-76): "Since I wrote this, I am told a great piece of news, that Mr. Addison is really a very great man with the juncto, and that he has got his elder brother, who has been a factor abroad in those parts, to be Governor of Fort St. George.... It seems Mr. Addison's friends can do what they please with the chief of the East India Company, who, I think, have the liberty of naming their Governor, and by management with them this place is got, which they say some years is worth £20,000" (Peter Wentworth to Lord Raby, January 28, 1709).
[135] In the Dedication to Congreve of Addison's "Drummer" (1722), Steele said, "Mr. Dean Addison, father of this memorable man, left behind him four children, each of whom, for excellent talents and singular perfections, was as much above the ordinary world as their brother Joseph was above them. Were things of this nature to be exposed to public view, I could show, under the Dean's own hand, in the warmest terms, his blessing on the friendship between his son and me; nor had he a child who did not prefer me in the first place of kindness and esteem, as their father loved me like one of them."
[No. 236. [Steele.][136]
From Tuesday, Oct. 10, to Thursday, Oct. 12, 1710.
Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine mentem
Tangit, et immemorem non sinit esse sui.
Ovid, Ep. ex Pont. 1. iii.
From my own Apartment, Oct. 11.
I find in the registers of my family, that the branch of the Bickerstaffs from which I am descended, came originally out of Ireland.[137] This has given me a kind of natural affection for that country. It is therefore with pleasure that I see not only some of the greatest warriors, but also of the greatest wits, to be natives of that kingdom. The gentleman who writes the following letter is one of these last. The matter of fact contained in it is literally true, though the diverting manner in which it is told may give it the colour of a fable.