Meanwhile he was writing political papers and advancing in the political profession. He went Secretary to Ireland. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1717. And letters of his are extant, bearing date some year or two before, and written to young Lord Warwick, in which he addresses him as "my dearest lord," and asks affectionately about his studies, and writes very prettily about nightingales, and birds'-nests, which he has found at Fulham for his lordship. Those nightingales were intended to warble in the ear of Lord Warwick's mamma. Addison married her ladyship in 1716; and died at Holland House three years after that splendid but dismal union.'

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

1 "The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused,-to whom the Sultan is reported to pronounce, 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal. . . . . . Rowe's ballad of The Despairing Shepherd' is said to have been written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable pair."-DR. JOHNSON.

"I received the news of Mr. 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 that 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."-LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU TO POPE. Works, Lord Wharncliffe's edit., vol. ii. p. 111.

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who inherited, on

But it is not for his reputation as the great author of "Cato" and the "Campaign," or for his merits as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction as my Lady Warwick's husband, or for his eminence as an Examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a Guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph Addison. It is as a Tatler of small talk and a Spectator of mankind, that we cherish and love him, and owe as much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak with his noble, natural voice. He came, the gentle satirist, who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge who castigated only in smiling. While Swift went about, hanging and ruthless—a literary Jeffries-in Addison's kind court only minor cases were tried: only peccadilloes and small sins against society: only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers and hoops;1 or a her me ther's death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced age. She was of weak intellect.

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship, for his Collection contains 'Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr. Addison's going to Ireland,' in which her ladyship is called 'Chloe,' and Joseph Addison, Lycidas;' besides the ballad mentioned by the Doctor, and which is entitled 'Colin's Complaint.' But not even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a specimen :

"What though I have skill to complain

Though the Muses my temples have crowned;
What though, when they hear my sweet strain,
The Muses sit weeping around.

"Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain ;

Thy pipe and thy laurel resign;

Thy false one inclines to a swain

Whose music is sweeter than thine.

1 One of the most humorous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the "Spectator" tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER.

"Mr. SPECTATOR,

"You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of the

nuisance in the abuse of beaux' canes and snuff-boxes. It may be a lady is tried for breaking the peace of our sovereign lady Queen Anne, and ogling too dangerous from the side-box or a Templar for beating the watch, or breaking Priscian's head: or a citizen's wife for caring too much for the puppet-show, and too little for her husband and children: every one of the little sinners brought

country; it is now high time that you should give the country their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex are run into great extravagancies. Their petticoats, which began to heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, Sir, since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a little too soon, for the modesty of their head-dresses; for as the humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts. What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time that they shorten the superstructure. "The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require more cooling than their mothers before them?

"I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman's honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle within circle, amidst such a variety of out-works and lines of circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow, who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge's way of making love in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some will have it that it portends the downfall of the French king, and observes, that the farthingale appeared in England a little before the ruin of the Spanish monarchy. Others are of opinion that it foretells battle and blood-shed, and believe it of the same prognostication as the tail of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world rather than going out of it," &c. &c.-Spectator, No. 127.