[ [80] Ambrose Phillips, "one of the wits at Button's," and Addison's constant associate at that resort of the literati. In the latter part of Queen Anne's reign, being a Whig, he was secretary to the Hanover Club, and was, soon after the accession of George the First, put into the commission of the peace; and, in 1717, appointed one of the Commissioners of the Lottery. Paul Whitehead relates that when Addison became Secretary of State, Phillips applied to him for some preferment, but was coolly answered, that it was thought he was already provided for, by being made a justice for Westminster. To this observation Phillips with some indignation replied, "Though poetry was a trade he could not live by, yet he scorned to owe subsistence to another which he ought not to live by." Phillips will be long remembered by his translation from Racine of the tragedy of the "Distressed Mother." He died, struck with palsy, in Hanover-street, Hanover-square, June 18, 1749.
[ [81] Young Craggs was the son of a barber, who, by his merit, became Postmaster-general, and home-agent to the Duke of Marlborough; he was one of the first characters of the age, and had distinguished himself in the House of Commons. The classical names of Damon and Pythias, of Pylades and Orestes, of Nisus and Euryalus, are not oftener found conjoined in ancient story than those of Addison and Craggs in the real life of modern times. Addison, notwithstanding the discomfiture evinced in these letters, succeeded in procuring the appointment of a Lord Commissioner at the Board of Trade, which post he held till he was made Secretary of State, April 16, 1717. But Addison was then fast sinking into a bad habit of body: his great care was how to live, and, as Tacitus Gordon, his great admirer, used to relate, was then killing himself in drinking the widow Trueby's water, spoken of in the "Spectator." Unfit for the drudgery of a political life,—the pack-horse of the state,—he pleaded the being incapable of supporting the fatigues of his office, and resigned the seals in March 1718, upon a pension from the King of seventeen hundred pounds per annum. Craggs, who was his successor, died prematurely and unmarried, in his twenty-eighth year, in 1721.
[ [82] Queen Anne, to whom Addison had been recommended by the Duchess of Marlborough, on his appointment to be Secretary for Ireland, augmented the salary annexed to the place of Keeper of the Records in Birmingham Tower, to three hundred pounds per annum, and bestowed it on him.
[ [83] William, first Earl Cowper, Lord High Chancellor of England; he died Oct. 10, 1723.
[ [84] Addison, it is said, was first introduced into the Warwick family as tutor of the young lord here mentioned. The earl died soon after the date of this letter; and Addison, at forty-five, took great pains to woo the countess, who is described as being personally fraught with half the pride of the nation. They were married in August 1716, though not happily; for tradition reports they were seldom in each other's company. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to Pope, written from the East, after this period, says, "I received the news of Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it; and I really believe he would have done well to have declined it now. 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."
[ [85] Dean Addison, who died April 20, 1703, left four children: Joseph, the writer of these letters; Gulston, here spoken of as Captain Addison, who died governor of Fort St. George, in the West Indies; Dorothy, of whom Swift, in a letter dated October 25, 1710, says, "I dined to-day with Addison and Steele, and a sister of Addison's, who is married to Mons. Sartre, a Frenchman, prebendary of Westminster. Addison's sister is a sort of wit, very like him: I am not fond of her." She married, secondly, Daniel Combes, Esq. Addison bequeathed her in his will five hundred pounds, which she lived to enjoy till March 2, 1750. The "other namesake" was possibly Addison's other brother, Lancelot, who, Chalmers states, was fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and an able classical scholar.
[ [86] The original of this letter having been forwarded in an envelope, and wanting the notation, at foot of the first page, of the name of the person to whom addressed, leaves it a conjecture who his grace was, whether Ormond or Grafton. Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, is the Lord Lieutenant whose illness Addison describes. The earl never went to Ireland to assume the vice-regal dignity; and, though this has never been satisfactorily accounted for, the real causes were, in all probability, his lordship's continued indisposition, and the death of Anne, Countess-dowager of Sunderland, his mother. Charles Duke of Grafton, and Henry Earl of Galway, were appointed Lords Justices of Ireland, Nov. 1, 1715.
[ [87] I understand that the distinguished writer mentioned below as having first pointed attention to Milton's comic sonnet, had also in MS. some specimen of his own composing.
[ [88] Mercury, god of eloquence, son of Jupiter and Maia.
[ [89] A pot-house lodging.