gratefully remembering Wyche's 'hoc.' 'I have been drinking your health to-day with Sir Richard Shirley,' he writes to Bathurst. 'I have lately had the honour to meet my Lord Effingham at Amsterdam, where we have drunk Mr. Wood's health a hundred times in excellent champagne,' he writes again. Swift* de a letter, so the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a little recover my talent at crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long-lived as Methuselah, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can't forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them, and desiring you to believe me always, 'Dear Sir, 'To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty's Resident at 'Hambourg, May 1703.' 'Yours,' &c. -From the Life of Addison, by Miss AIKIN. Vol. i. p. 146. * It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory from first to last. The value of Swift's testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his vision or warped his judgment, can be doubted by nobody. Sept. 10, 1710.-I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and Steele. 11. Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat with him part of this evening. 18.-To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison's retirement near Chelsea.. I will get what good offices I can from Mr. Addison. 27.-To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland's, with Steele and Addison, too. '29.—I dined with Mr. Addison,' &c.—Journal to Stella. scribes him over his cups, when Joseph yielded to a temptation which Jonathan resisted. Joseph was of a cold nature, and needed perhaps the fire of wine to warm his blood. If he was a parson, he wore a tye-wig, recollect. A better and more Christian man scarcely ever breathed than Joseph Addison. If he had not that little weakness for wine-why, we could scarcely have found a fault with him, and could not have liked him as we do.* At thirty-three years of age, this most distinguished wit, scholar, and gentleman was without a profession and an income. His book of 'Travels' had failed his 'Dialogues on Medals' had had no particular success: his Latin verses, even though reported the best since Virgil, or Statius at any rate, had not brought him a Government place, and Addison was living up three shabby pair of stairs in the Haymarket (in a poverty over which old Samuel Johnson rather chuckles), when in these shabby rooms an emissary from Government and Fortune came and 'Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his travels To Doctor Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'-(SCOTT. From the information of Mr. Theophilus Swift.) 'Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things.'-Letters. 'I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself.'-SWIFT to ADDISON (1717). SCOTT's Swift. Vol. xix. p. 274. Political differenccs only dulled for a while their friendly communications. Time renewed them : and Tickell enjoyed Swift's friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so honourably connected. * Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at Button's ; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.'-POPE. Spence's Anecdotes. found him.* A poem was wanted about the Duke of Marlborough's victory of Blenheim. Would Mr. Addison write one? Mr. Boyle, afterwards Lord Carlton, took back the reply to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin, that Mr. Addison would. When the poem had reached a certain stage, it was carried to Godolphin; and the last lines which he read were these: But, O my Muse! what numbers wilt thou find ; 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war: In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, Addison left off at a good moment. That simile was pronounced to be of the greatest ever produced in poetry. That angel, that good angel, flew off with Mr. Addison, and landed him in the place of Com * When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was, therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his mind.'-JOHNSON : Lives of the Poets. |