THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE.

The representation of Cato on the stage was a turning point in the political fortunes of the Whigs. In the same month the Queen announced, on the meeting of Parliament, the signature of the Treaty of Utrecht. Whatever were the merits or demerits of the policy embodied in this instrument, it offered many points of attack to a compact and vigorous Opposition. The most salient of these was, perhaps, the alleged sacrifice of British commercial interests through the incompetence or corruption of the negotiators, and on this question the Whigs accordingly raised vehement and reiterated debates. Addison aided his political friends with an ingenious pamphlet on the subject, called The late Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff, containing a narrative of the lawsuit between the Count and Goodman Fact, which is written with much spirit and pleasantry. It is said that he also took the field in answer to the Address to the Queen from the magistrates of Dunkirk, wherein Her Majesty was requested to waive the execution of the article in the Treaty providing for the demolition of the harbour and fortifications of that town; but if he wrote on the subject the pamphlet has not been preserved by Tickell. His old friend Steele was meanwhile involving himself in difficulties through the heat and impetuosity of his party passions. After the painful abstinence from partizanship imposed on him by the scheme of the Tatler and Spectator he had founded the Guardian on similar lines, and had carried it on in a nonpolitical spirit up to the 128th number, when his Whig feelings could restrain themselves no longer, and he inserted a letter signed by “An English Tory,” demanding the immediate demolition of Dunkirk. Soon afterwards he published a pamphlet called The Crisis, to excite the apprehensions of the nation with regard to the Protestant succession, and, dropping the Guardian, started the Englishman, a political paper of extreme Whig views. He further irritated the Tory majority in Parliament by supporting the proposal of Sir Thomas Hanmer, as Speaker of the House of Commons, in a speech violently reflecting on the rejected Bill for a Treaty of Commerce with France. A complaint was brought before the House against the Crisis, and two numbers of the Englishman, and Steele was ordered to attend and answer for his conduct. After the charge had been preferred against him, he asked for time to arrange his defence; and this being granted him, after a warm debate, he reappeared in his place a few days later, and made a long and able speech, which is said to have been prepared for him by Addison, acting under the instructions of the Kit-Kat Club. It did not, however, save him from being expelled from the House.

Addison himself stood aloof, as far as was possible, from the heated atmosphere of party, occupying his time chiefly with the execution of literary designs. In 1713 he began a work on the Evidences of Christianity, which he never finished, and in the last half of the year 1714 he completed the eighth volume of the Spectator. So moderate was his political attitude that Bolingbroke was not without hopes of bringing him over to the Tory side; an interview, however, convinced him that it was useless to dream of converting Addison’s steady constitutional principle to his own ambitious schemes.

The condition of the Tory party was indeed rapidly becoming desperate. Its leaders were at open variance with each other. Oxford, a veteran intriguer, was desirous of combining with the Whigs; the more daring and brilliant Bolingbroke aimed at the restoration of the exiled Stuarts. His influence, joined to natural family affection, prevailed with the Queen, who was persuaded to deprive Oxford of the Treasurer’s staff. But her health was undermined, and a furious and indecent dispute between the two Tory leaders in her own presence completely prostrated her. She was carried from the Council, and sinking into a state of unconsciousness from which she never recovered, died on the 1st of August, 1714.

Meantime the Whigs were united and prepared. On the meeting of the Council, George I. was proclaimed King without opposition: Lord-Justices were authorised to administer affairs provisionally, and Addison was appointed their Secretary. It is said, though on no good authority, that having, in discharge of his office, to announce to George I. the death of the Queen, Addison was embarrassed in his choice of phrases for the occasion, and that the duty to which the best writer in the Spectator proved unequal was performed by a common clerk. Had Addison been quite unfamiliar with public life this story would have been more credible, but his experience in Ireland must have made him acquainted with the peculiarities of official English; and some surviving specimens of his public correspondence prove him to have been a sufficient master in the art of saying nothing in a magnificent way.On the arrival of the King in England, the Earl of Sunderland was appointed to succeed the Duke of Shrewsbury as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and he once more offered Addison the post of Chief Secretary. In that office the latter continued till the Earl’s resignation of the Lord-Lieutenancy in August, 1715. It would appear to have been less lucrative to him than when he previously held it, and, indeed, than he himself had expected; the cause of this deficiency being, as he states, “his Lordship’s absence from that kingdom, and his not being qualified to give out military commissions.”[65] He is said, nevertheless, to have shown the strictest probity and honour in his official dealings, and some of his extant correspondence (the authenticity of which, however, is guaranteed only by the unsatisfactory testimony of Curll) shows him to have declined, in a very high-minded manner, a present of money, evidently intended to secure his interest on behalf of an applicant. He seems to have been in London almost as much as in Dublin during his tenure of office, and he found time in the midst of his public business to compose another play for the stage.

There appears to be no good reason for doubting that The Drummer was the work of Addison. It is true that it was not included by Tickell in his edition of his friend’s writings; and Steele, in the letter to Congreve which he prefixed to the second edition of the play, only says that Addison sent for him when he was a patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, and told him “that a gentleman then in the room had written a play which he was sure I should like, but it was to be a secret; and he knew I would take as much pains, since he recommended it, as I would for him.” But Steele could, under such circumstances, hardly have been deceived as to the real authorship of the play, and if confirmatory evidence is required, it is furnished by Theobald, who tells us that Addison informed him that he had taken the character of Vellum, the steward, from Fletcher’s Scornful Lady. Addison was probably not anxious himself to assert his right of paternity to the play. It was acted at Drury Lane, and, the name of the author being unknown, was coldly received; a second performance of it after Addison’s death, when the authorship was proclaimed, was naturally more successful; but, in fact, the piece is, like Cato, a standing proof of Addison’s deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial; nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its author’s peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the tameness of the dramatic situation.

He was soon, however, called upon to employ his pen on a task better suited to his powers. In September, 1715, there was a rising in Scotland and in the North of England on behalf of the Pretender. The rebellion was put down with little difficulty, but the position of the House of Brunswick was far more precarious than on the surface it seemed to be. It could count, no doubt, on the loyalty of a House of Commons elected when the Tories were momentarily stunned by the death of Queen Anne, on the faith of the army, and on the support of the moneyed interest. On the other hand, the two most important classes in the kingdom—the landed proprietors and the clergy—were generally hostile to the new rÉgime, and the influence exercised by the latter was of course exceedingly great in days when the pulpit was still the chief instrument in the formation of public opinion. The weight of some powerful writer was urgently needed on the Whig side, and Addison—who in the preceding August had been obliged to vacate his office of Secretary in consequence of the resignation of the Lord-Lieutenant—was by common consent indicated as the man best qualified for the task. There were indeed hot political partizans who questioned his capacity. Steele said that “the Government had made choice of a lute when they ought to have taken a trumpet.” But if by the “trumpet” he was modestly alluding to himself, it may very well be doubted if the objects of the Government would have been attained by employing the services of the author of the Englishman. What was wanted was not party invective, but the calm persuasiveness of reason; a pen that could prove to all Tory country gentlemen and thoroughgoing High Churchmen that the Protestant succession was indispensable to the safety of the principles which each respectively considered to be of vital importance. This was the task which lay before Addison, and which he accomplished with consummate skill in the Freeholder.

The name of the new paper was selected by him in order to suggest that property was the basis of liberty; and his main argument, which he introduces under constantly varying forms, is that there could be no safety for property under a line of monarchs who claimed the dispensing power, and no security for the liberties of the Church under kings of an alien religion. In order to secure variety of treatment, the exact social position of the Freeholder is not defined:

“At the same time that I declare I am a freeholder I do not exclude myself from any other title. A freeholder may be either a voter or a knight of the shire, a wit or a fox-hunter, a scholar or a soldier, an alderman or a courtier, a patriot or a stock-jobber. But I choose to be distinguished by this denomination, as the freeholder is the basis of all other titles. Dignities may be grafted upon it, but this is the substantial stock that conveys to them their life, taste, and beauty, and without which they are blossoms that would fall away with every shake of wind.”[66]

By this means he was able to impart liveliness to his theme, which he diversifies by philosophical disquisition; by good-natured satire on the prejudices of the country gentlemen; by frequent papers on his favourite subject, “the fair sex;” and by occasional glances at literature. Though his avowed object was to prove the superiority of the Whig over the Tory theory of the Constitution, his “native moderation” never deserts him, and he often lets his disgust at the stupidity of faction, and his preference for social over political writing, appear in the midst of his argument. The best papers in the series are undoubtedly the “Memoirs of a Preston Rebel” and the “Tory Foxhunter,” both of which are full of the exquisite humour that distinguishes the sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley. The Freeholder was only continued for six months (December 23, 1715, to June 9, 1716), being published every Friday and Monday, and being completed in fifty-five numbers. In the last number the essayist described the nature of his work, and gave his reasons for discontinuing it:

“It would not be difficult to continue a paper of this kind if one were disposed to resume the same subjects and weary out the reader with the same thoughts in a different phrase, or to ramble through the cause of Whig and Tory without any certain aim or method in every particular discourse. Such a practice in political writers is like that of some preachers taken notice of by Dr. South, who, being prepared only upon two or three points of doctrine, run the same round with their audience from one end of the year to the other, and are always forced to tell them, by way of preface, ‘These are particulars of so great importance that they cannot be sufficiently inculcated.’ To avoid this method of tautology, I have endeavoured to make every paper a distinct essay upon some particular subject, without deviating into points foreign to the tenor of each discourse. They are, indeed, most of them essays upon Government, but with a view to the present situation of affairs in Great Britain, so that, if they have the good fortune to live longer than works of this nature generally do, future readers may see in them the complexion of the times in which they were written. However, as there is no employment so irksome as that of transcribing out of one’s self next to that of transcribing out of others, I shall let drop the work, since there do not occur to me any material points arising from our present situation which I have not already touched upon.”

It was probably in reward for his services in publishing the Freeholder that he was made one of the Commissioners for Trade and Colonies. Soon after his appointment to this office he married Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, daughter of Sir Thomas Myddleton, of Chirk Castle, Denbighshire. His attachment to the Countess is said to have begun years before; and this seems not unlikely, for, though the story of his having been tutor to the young Earl is obviously groundless, two charming letters of his to the latter are in existence which show that as early as 1708 he took a strong interest in the family. These letters, which are written entirely on the subject of birds, may, of course, have been inspired merely by an affection for the boy himself; but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the writer felt a yet stronger interest in the mother, though her indifference, or his natural diffidence, led him to disguise his feelings; perhaps, indeed, the episode of Sir Roger de Coverley’s love passage with the cruel widow may be founded on personal experience. We have seen him in 1711 reporting to a friend that the loss of his place had involved that of his mistress. Possibly the same hard-hearted mistress condescended to relent when she saw her former lover once more on the road to high State preferment.

Report says that the marriage was not a happy one. The tradition, however, like so many others about the same person, seems to have been derived from Pope, who, in his Epistle to Arbuthnot, congratulates himself—with an evident glance at Addison—on “not marrying discord with a noble wife.” An innuendo of this kind, and coming from such a quarter, ought not to be accepted as evidence without some corroboration; and the only corroboration which is forthcoming is a letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who writes from Constantinople in 1717: “I received the news of Mr. Addison’s being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise in that I know the post was offered to him before. At that time he declined it; and I really believe he would have done well to decline 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 glad to resign them both.” Lady Mary, however, does not hint that Addison was then living unhappily with his wife; her expressions seem to be inspired rather by her own sharp wit and a personal dislike of the Countess than by any knowledge of discord in the household. On the other hand, Addison speaks of his wife in a way which is scarcely consistent with what Johnson calls “uncontradicted report.” On March 20th, 1718, he writes to Swift: “Whenever you see England your company will be the most acceptable in the world at Holland House, where you are highly esteemed by Lady Warwick and the young Lord.” A henpecked husband would hardly have invited the Dean of St. Patrick’s to be the witness of his domestic discomfort. Nor do the terms of his will, dated only a month before his death, indicate that he regarded his wife with feelings other than those of affection and respect: “I do make and ordain my said dear wife executrix of this my last will; and I do appoint her to be guardian of my dear child, Charlotte Addison, until she shall attain her age of one-and-twenty, being well assured that she will take due care of her education, and provide for her in case she live to be married.” On the whole, it seems reasonable to put positive evidence of this kind against those vague rumours of domestic unhappiness which, however unsubstantial, are so easily propagated and so readily believed.

In April, 1717, the dissensions between the two sections of the Whig Cabinet, led respectively by Townshend and Sunderland, reached a climax, and Townshend being worsted, Sunderland became Prime Minister. He at once appointed his old subordinate one of the Secretaries of State, and Addison filled the office for eleven months. “It is universally confessed,” says Johnson, “that he was unequal to the duties of his place.” Here again the “universal confession” dwindles on examination to something very different. As far as his conduct in administration required to be defended in Parliament, his inaptitude for the place was no doubt conspicuous. He had been elected member of Parliament for Lostwithiel in 1708, and when that election was set aside he was chosen for Malmesbury, a seat which he retained for the rest of his life. He made, however, but one effort to address the House, when, being confused with the cheers which greeted him, he was unable to complete his sentence, and, resuming his seat, never again opened his lips.

But in other respects the evidence of his official incapacity seems to proceed solely from his enemies. “Mr. Addison,” said Pope to Spence, “could not give out a common order in writing from his endeavouring always to word it too finely. He had too beautiful an imagination to make a man of business.”[67] Copies of official letters and despatches written by Addison are, however, in existence, and prove him to have been a sufficient master of a business style, so that, though his lack of ability as a speaker may well have impaired his efficiency as a member of the Government, Johnson has little warrant for saying that “finding by experience his own inability, he was forced to solicit his dismission with a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year.” As a matter of fact, Addison’s own petition to the King and his private correspondence prove with sufficient clearness that his resignation was caused entirely by his failing health; while the congratulatory Latin verses addressed to him by Vincent Bourne, on his recovery from one of his seizures of asthma, show that his illness was of the most serious nature.

He resigned his post, however, in March, 1718, with cheerful alacrity, and appears to have looked forward to an active period of literary work, for we are told that he meditated a tragedy on the death of Socrates, as well as the completion of his book on the Evidences of Christianity. But this was not to be; the exigencies of the Ministry in the following year demanded the services of his pen. A Peerage Bill, introduced by Sunderland, the effect of which was to cause the sovereign to divest himself of his prerogative of creating fresh peers, had been vehemently attacked by Steele in a pamphlet called the Plebeian, published March 14, 1719, which Addison undertook to answer in the Old Whig (March 19). The Plebeian returned to the attack with spirit and with some acrimony in two numbers published March 29th and 30th, and the Old Whig made a somewhat contemptuous reply on April 2nd. “Every reader,” says Johnson, “surely must regret that these two illustrious friends, after so many years passed in confidence and endearment, in unity of interest, conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was ‘Bellum plusquam civile,’ as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find other advocates? But among the uncertainties of the human state we are doomed to number the instability of friendship.”

The rupture seems the more painful when we find Steele, in his third and last Plebeian, published April 6th, taunting his opponent with his tardiness in taking the field, at the very moment when his former friend and school-fellow—unknown to him of course—was dying. Asthma, the old enemy that had driven Addison from office, had returned; dropsy supervened, and he died, 17th June, 1719, at Holland House, at the early age of forty-seven. We may imagine the grief, contrition, and remorse that must have torn the affectionate heart of Steele when he had found he had been vexing the last hours of one whom, in spite of all their differences, he loved so well. He had always regarded Addison with almost religious reverence, which did not yield even to acts of severity on his friend’s part that would have estranged the feelings of men of a disposition less simple and impulsive. Addison had once lent him £1000 to build a house at Hampton Court, instructing his lawyer to recover the amount when due. On Steele’s failure to repay the money, his friend ordered the house and furniture to be sold and the balance to be paid to Steele, writing to him at the same time that he had taken the step to arouse him from his lethargy. B. Victor, the actor, a friend of Steele, who is the authority for the story, says that Steele accepted the reproof with “philosophical composure,” and that the incident caused no diminution in their friendship. Political differences at last produced a coldness between them, and in 1717 Steele writes to his wife, “I ask no favour of Mr. Secretary Addison.” Great must have been the revulsion of feeling in a man of his nature when he learned that death had now rendered impossible the renewal of the old associations. All the love, admiration, and enthusiasm for Addison, which his heart and memory still preserved, broke out in the letter to Congreve which he prefixed to The Drummer.

Of the closing scene of Addison’s life we know little except on rumour. A report was current in Johnson’s time, and reached the antiquary John Nichols at the close of the last century, that his life was shortened by over-drinking. But as usual the scandal, when traced to its source, seems to originate with Pope, who told Spence that he himself was once one of the circle at Button’s, and left it because he found that their prolonged sittings were injuring his health. It is highly probable that Addison’s phlegmatic temperament required to be aroused by wine into conversational activity, and that he was able to drink more than most of his companions without being affected by it; but to suppose that he indulged a sensual appetite to excess is contrary alike to all that we know of his character and to the direct evidence of Bishop Berkeley, who, writing of the first performance of Cato, says: “I was present with Mr. Addison and a few more friends in a side box, where we had a table and two or three flasks of Burgundy and champagne, with which the author (who is a very sober man) thought it necessary to support his spirits.”Another story, told on the same questionable authority, represents him as having sent on his death-bed for Gay, and asked his forgiveness for some injury which he said he had done him, but which he did not specify. From the more trustworthy report of Young we learn that he asked to see the Earl of Warwick, and said to him, “See in what peace a Christian can die:” words which are supposed to explain the allusion of the lines in Tickell’s elegy—

“He taught us how to live and (oh! too high
The price of knowledge) taught us how to die.”

His body, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, was buried by night in Westminster Abbey. The service was performed by Atterbury, and the scene is described by Tickell in a fine passage, probably inspired by a still finer one written by his own rival and his friend’s satirist:

“Can I forget the dismal night that gave
My soul’s best part for ever to the grave?
How silent did his old companions tread,
By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead,
Through breathing statues, then unheeded things,
Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings!
What awe did the slow solemn march inspire,
The pealing organ, and the pausing choir;
The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,
And the last words that dust to dust conveyed!
While speechless o’er the closing grave we bend,
Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend!
Oh gone for ever; take this last adieu,
And sleep in peace next thy loved Montague.”[68]

He left by the Countess of Warwick one daughter, who lived in his old house at Bilton, and died unmarried in 1797.