He used to say of his mental resources, that though “he could draw bills for a thousand pounds, he had not a guinea in his pocket." Johnson thinks Chesterfield's testimony must be qualified; perhaps so. But though Addison succeeded so well in the world, it does not follow that he was not very timorous and awkward; for high reputation won by literature may cover a good deal of that, and much that is attractive and lovable may be even visibly beneath the surface.

Addison's haunts, we are sorry to notice, lay very much among taverns; and though there is no doubt he there picked up a good deal of that practical wisdom which runs throughout his essays, he could hardly fail to contract habits injurious to his character and welfare. Though it is not known that he was ever intoxicated, he often transgressed the bounds of moderation-a fact we dare not conceal, but which we record with deep sorrow, furnishing as it does one of a large collection of examples showing that the most refined intellectual taste is no sufficient check against temptations to the excessive indulgence of the appetites. Whatever might appear to the contrary in his writings, there must have been in Addison a weakness of moral and religious principle as applied to the deportment of his life; but we hope that in his last days, after religion had more than ever occupied his pen, its influence more powerfully touched his heart, producing contrition for the past and reformation for the future.

The house that Addison most frequented was Button's, on the south side of Russell-street, Covent-garden. The landlord, whose name it bore, had been a servant in the family of the countess of Warwick, and had taken the house under Addison's express patronage. It was in 1712 that the place was opened, just as the fame of the poet was established by the publication of " Cato." A lion's head and paws, serving as a letterbox for the reception of literary communications, was placed in front of the building, and

the editor of the "Guardian " says:-"Whatever the lion swallows, I shall digest for the use of the public." "He is indeed a proper emblem of knowledge and action, being all head and paws." "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."

A glimpse of the relations between Addison and Pope is given in the following extract from the latter:-"There had been a coldness between me and Mr. Addison for some time, and we had not been in company together for a good while anywhere but at Button's coffee-house, where I used to see him almost every day. On his meeting me there one day in particular, he took me . aside and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a tavern, if I would stay till those people (Budgell and Phillips) were gone."

Of a visit by Addison to St. James's Coffee-house, St. James'sstreet, now swept away, we have a graphic sketch from his own. pen, full of easy description and delicate satire-characteristics of a style in which he has few rivals:-"I called at the St. James's, where I found the whole outward room in a buzz of politics. The speculations were but very indifferent towards the door, but grew finer as you advanced towards the upper end of the room, and were so much improved by a knot of theorists who sat in the inner room, within the steams of the coffee-pot, that I heard the whole Spanish monarchy disposed of, and all the line of Bourbon provided for, in less than a quarter of an hour." Addison, also, was a member of the Kit-Kat Club, which met at an obscure house in Shire-lane. Into the archæological question of the origin of its title we cannot enter; some deriving it from Christopher Kat, a pastry-cook, and some from the name given to certain pies of great celebrity. Whencesoever the appellation came, it is still preserved to denote portraits of a certain size, from the circumstance of pictures so

painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller having been hung up round the club-room.

Addison's parliamentary career is quite a mystery. He was for some time a representative, and actually rose to be one of the principal secretaries of state, under the Stanhope ministry, in the reign of George I., yet his name never figures in debate: and though he held high office, the historian of England finds scarcely any occasion for introducing him, except to record his appointment and resignation. He could not speak: so we have to picture him on the ministerial bench in Old St. Stephen's, in the days of the first George, among the curly wigs and court suits that crowded the House of Commons, listening to the orations of others, and well weighing their arguments, and inwardly cogitating replies, but all the while remaining silent—a hard case, indeed, for a secretary of state, and for his fellow-senators too. Nor did the pen, so fluent with the "Spectator," seem made for official documents; for we are informed that his fastidiousness about style so embarrassed him, when called to prepare an urgent despatch, that he was compelled to resign the task into the hands of one of his subordinates in office. In literary composition, we are informed by Steele, that Addison, when he had "made his plan for what he designed to write, would walk about a room, and dictate it into language, with as much freedom and ease as anyone could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he dictated." His difficulty about despatches, and his inability to speak in parliament, would of themselves have speedily necessitated his retirement from public life; but ill health occurred as an additional reason, and brought Addison's official career to an end in 1718. Steele, whom we saw as his playmate in the Charter-house school, had been through life the intimate friend of Addison; but the closing days of the latter were beclouded by the disruption of this friendship, and by a violent controversy between them about a bill for the

limitation of the peerage. "Truly," says the best of books, "a brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, and thei contentions are like the bars of a castle."

In 1716, Addison had married the dowager-countess of Warwick, and thereby became occupant of Holland-house, Kensington, the ancestral abode of that lady.

In the old coaching days, the traveller to the west of England, as he passed through Kensington on a bright summer morning, was sure to turn with admiration and pleasure to look on the fine green elm trees, which line the border of the park next the road; and through the openings under and between the branches he would catch glimpses of the quaint arcades, gables, towers, turrets, roofs, and chimney-tops, which compose this lordly habitation, erected in the reign of the first James. Since that kind of traffic has been drained off by railways, fewer strangers see the most interesting specimen of old architecture to the west of London. Considerable changes have been wrought in its appearance, not indeed at all altering its outlines or even details, but rather restoring the freshness of its original beauty; while the new terrace raised in front of the house, with its bright brick walls, stone balustrades, and huge white garden-vases full of geraniums, greatly adds to the attractiveness of the picture, especially as seen on a clear suminer's afternoon, when a morning's shower has given richer tints and warmer life to grass and trees, plants and shrubs. There is a vast deal connected with the edifice upon which we are here tempted for a while to dwell; but the associations of Hollandhouse, save as they belong to Addison, must be omitted. With the long gallery, or library, which forms the west wing, tradition links his name in by no means honourable conjunction. "I have heard," says Faulkner, "that Addison had a table with a bottle of wine placed at each end, and when in the fervour of composition, was in the habit of pacing this narrow gallery between glass and

glass." He adds, He adds, "Fancy may trace the exquisite good humour which enlivens his paper to the mirth inspired by wine; but there is too much sober good sense in all his lucubrations, even when he indulges most in pleasantry, to allow us to give implicit credence to a tradition invented probably as an excuse for intemperance by such as can empty two bottles of wine, but never produce a 'Spectator' or a 'Freeholder.'”

This is a charitable surmise, and may be true; but if Addisoneven beyond some of his companions in an age not distinguished for sobriety in polite circles—indulged occasionally in potations beyond the limits of temperance, probably it was the result of domestic unhappiness; for it is well known that his marriage with the countess was by no means felicitous. His home had no charms; princely apartments, magnificent furniture, tasteful ornaments, pictures, and statuary, could not compensate for the want of domestic harmony and peace. So he wandered from scenes embittered by sad associations, in quest of social pleasures such as had too often led him astray. A tavern at the bottom of Holland-house-lane, once called the White Horse Inn, now known as the Holland Arms, is said to have been his place of resort in an afternoon, when he wanted to beguile a leisure hour, and there temptations presented themselves, which the theoretical moralist might not always have power entirely to resist.

It was within a chamber in Holland-house that there occurred the scene, so often noticed, of Addison's farewell to the young Earl of Warwick. Having sent for him, he grasped his hand, and softly said "See in what peace a Christian can die." Well-founded, indeed, is that peace which rests on "the hope set before us in the gospel;" when whatever of sin and folly there has been in life becomes the subject of sincere repentance.

Addison sleeps in Westminster Abbey, having been honoured to lie in state in the Jerusalem Chamber. Tickel mourned over his