showing in strong light, facts that were escaping general noticein relieving the public from the fascination of military success, and fixing their eyes on the other side of the picture. If the Conduct of the Allies' gained its end by a skilful presentation of facts in a calm statement, the Drapier Letters were performances of a very different kind. A Mr Wood, a large owner of mines, had obtained from Government a patent for issuing, under certain regulations, a copper coinage of halfpence for Ireland. In Ireland, then as now, there was strong jealousy of England; and Swift, striking in against the project, took full advantage of the national feeling. The need of a copper coinage was glaring and urgent—he could say nothing on that score; but he represented that the Irish Houses of Parliament had previously requested leave to coin and issue the needful money, and had been refused. What was refused to the nobility and gentry of Ireland had been granted to this man-" a mean ordinary man, a hardware dealer." Swift makes no attempt to argue the justice of the proceeding. He heaps abuse upon Wood,1 asserts against him audaciously groundless charges, pictures the most unreasonable consequences of the measure, and pours out hot appeals to the passions of his readers. The following quotations illustrate the kind of reasoning he used. When to these ludicrous exaggerations of the inconvenience of exchange the simple answer was made that nobody would be obliged to take more than fivepence-halfpenny in copper, Swift blustered about confining the liberty of the subject. But for the strong feeling existing against England, which blinded the Irish to every consideration of reason, the Drapier would have been laughed at. As it was, had the Government refused to give way, his violent and hot exaggerations would have raised an armed rebellion, and his apparent patriotism made him a national hero :— "Suppose you go to an alehouse with that base money, and the landlord gives you a quart for four of those halfpence, what must the victualler do? his brewer will not be paid in that coin; or, if the brewer should be such a fool, the farmers will not take it from them for their bere, because they are bound by their leases to pay their rent in good and lawful money of Eng land; which this is not, nor of Ireland neither; and the 'squire their landlord will never be so bewitched to take such trash for his land; so that it must certainly stop somewhere or other; and wherever it stops, it is the same thing, and we are all undone. "If a squire has a mind to come to town to buy clothes, and wine, and spices, for himself and family, or perhaps to pass the winter here, he must bring with him five or six horses well laden with sacks, as the farmers bring their corn; and when his lady comes in her coach to our shops, it must be followed by a car loaded with Mr Wood's money. And I hope we shall have the grace to take it for no more than it is worth." 1 See p. 372. "And let me in the next place apply myself particularly to you who are the poorer sort of tradesmen. Perhaps you may think you will not be so great losers as the rich if these halfpence should pass; because you seldom see any silver, and your customers come to your shops or stalls with nothing but brass, which you likewise find hard to be got. But you may take my word, whenever this money gains footing among you, you will be utterly undone. If you carry these halfpence to a shop for tobacco or brandy, or any other thing that you want, the shopkeeper will advance his goods accordingly, or else he must break and leave the key under the door. 'Do you think I will sell you a yard of tenpenny stuff for twenty of Mr Wood's halfpence? no, not under 200 at least; neither will I be at the trouble of counting, but weigh them in a lump.' I will tell you one thing further, that if Mr Wood's project should take, it would ruin even our beggars; for when I give a beggar a halfpenny, it will quench his thirst, or go a good way to fill his belly; but the twelfth part of a halfpenny will do him no more service than if I should give him three pins out of my sleeve." JOSEPH ADDISON, 1672-1719. Speaking of the age of William and Anne, Macaulay says"There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished society, and to the highest honours of the State." Nobody profited more than Addison by this accident of the times. His abilities were very soon recognised by the Whig leaders. The son of Lancelot Addison, Rector of Lichfield, educated at Charterhouse and Magdalen College, Oxford, he was dissuaded from his design of entering the Church by Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, who procured him a pension from King William, and sent him to travel in France and Italy (1699-1702). Returning to England on the death of William, which had stopped his pension, he gained some reputation by a poem commemorating the victory of Blenheim (1704); and, having thus proved his value to a party, was in 1705 made Under-Secretary of State. Thereafter he held various political offices: was appointed Keeper of the Records of Ireland in 1709; Secretary to the Regency on the demise of Queen Anne in 1714; one of the Lords of Trade under George I.; one of the Chief Secretaries of State in 1717. From these high posts he drew a large income, while he had considerable leisure for writing. He died in 1719, leaving one daughter by the Countess Dowager of Warwick, whom he had married three years before, and who added little to his comfort while he was alive. Addison's first prose composition, his 'Dialogues on Medals,' was written during his Continental travels. In 1702 he published an account of his travels in Italy, remarkable for happy allusions to ancient Roman history and literature. His fame as a prose writer rests on his contributions to periodical papers— the 'Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the 'Guardian.' The Tatler' was commenced on April 12, 1709, by Sir Richard Steele, under the assumed name of Isaac Pickerstaff. Addison, who was then in Ireland, detected the author by a passage in the sixth number, and sent his first ascertained contribution to No. 20, May 26. The paper appeared three times a-week. Addison did not become a regular contributor till his return from Ireland in September. The last number of the 'Tatler' appeared on January 2, 1711. On the demise of the 'Tatler,' Steele projected the 'Spectator,' to be issued daily it continued from March 1, 1711, to December 6, 1712, and during all that time Addison was a frequent contributor, writing more than half of the numbers. The 'Guardian,' also a daily paper, extended from March 12 to October 1, 1713; Addison's contributions were chiefly to the later numbers. In 1714 came out what is known as the Eighth Volume of the 'Spectator'; of this nearly all the first half was written by Addison. The Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the 'Guardian' formally excluded politics; their professed purpose was to discuss the fashions and manners of society, the pulpit, the theatre, the opera, and general literature; in short, they were open to all the subjects now discussed in the 'Saturday Review,' the 'Spectator,' or the 'Examiner,' except politics. In this respect they differed from the Review' of Defoe, the real prototype of modern periodicals. But while they excluded politics in form, Addison, as we shall see, in many of his papers was in no small degree influenced by political prejudices. Besides these universally-known performances, Addison wrote some strictly political papers: in 1707, a pamphlet on the 'Present State of the War'; the 'Whig Examiner,' a weekly tract, not carried beyond the fifth number; the Trial of Count Tariff,' a satire on the commercial treaty of Utrecht, 1713; and 'The Freeholder,' a bi-weekly, carried through 55 numbers, 1715-16. Addison's personal appearance has not been very vividly recorded. Thackeray speaks of "his chiselled features, pure and cold." We know also that he was a fair man, of a full habit of body, soft and flabby from winebibbing and want of exercise. He was so weakly a child that he was christened on the day of his birth, not being expected to live. The most general characteristic of his intellect is happily expressed by Johnson-" He thinks justly, but he thinks faintly." He is a great contrast to the prolific and vigorous Defoe. Not only had he little spontaneous activity of intellect, little impulsiveness this might be said of the cautious and sober Temple. More than this, he had not sufficient constitutional energy to be equal to the mere effort requisite for forining a clear and profound judg ment on any question of difficulty. With his languid vitality, he was content to be superficial. He had naturally a fine memory for words, and was, in his quiet way, an accurate observer of what passed before him. His chief intellectual exercise was the stu ly of "putting things"-whether things that he had seen and heard, reflections that he had made upon them, or thoughts that he had met with in the course of his reading. He had neither scholarship nor original thought—“a fine gentleman living upon town, not professing any deep scholastic knowledge of litera ure," and employing his leisure in writing elegant periodical articles.1 Like Cowley, he had no depth of sentiment for imagination to work upon. Not only so, but he was deficient in constitutional power of enjoyment; he was by nature shy, irritable, and captious,— sitting in company reserved and taciturn, until his cups had raised him to the point of geniality. Even his panegyrist Thackeray admits-"I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged very inordinately in the vanity of grieving.'" "This great man was also one of the lonely ones of the world." The chief emotion that he cultivated may be described in the words of Johnson as "gay malevolence and satirical humour": the malevolence being due to his constitutional incapacity for enjoyment—to ill-nature, in the strict sense of the words; while the gaiety or humour arises chiefly from the delicate elegance of his language, and the writer's pleasure in the exercise of his gift. His essays on Milton and on the Pleasures of the Imagination would seem to show that, though he had not energy to write with sublimity himself," he enjoyed sublime writing when it was presented to him; he could at least utter the formula of indolent admiration "There is a pleasure in what is great, in what is beautiful, and in what is new." Although engaged in politics, he had no natural gifts for active. 1 "With reference to Addison in particular, it is time to correct the popular notion of his literary character, or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinction. It is already pretty well known that Addison had no very intimate acquaintance with the literature of his own country. It is known, also, that he did not think such an acquaintance any ways essential to the character of an elegant scholar and littérateur. Quite enough he found it, and more than enough for the time he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable familiarity with the foremost Latin poets, and a very slender one indeed with the Grecian. How slender, we can see in his Travels."-De Quincey, xv. 8. 2 "Though Addison generally hated the impassioned, and shrank from it as from a fearful thing, yet this was when it combined with forms of life and fleshly realities (as in dramatic works), but not when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence he did not read, and did not like, Shakspeare-the music was here too rapid and lifelike; but he sympathised profoundly with the solemn cathedral chanting of Milton. An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a more station. ary key of solemnity he could."-De Quincey, vii. 56. This is explained by his want of constitutional energy, and consequent incapability of supporting excitement. life. He could not have made his own position; the accident of the times rendered literary service valuable, and he was virtually nothing more than the literary retainer and protégé of the leaders of a party. His easy indolent habits, with some other features of his character, appear in the following sketch by Johnson : "Of the course of Addison's familiar day, before his marriage, Pope has given a detail. He had in the house with him Budgell, and perhaps Philips. His chief companions were Steele, Budgell, Philips [Ambrose], Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett. With one or other of these he always breakfasted. He studied all morning; then dined at a tavern; and went afterwards to Button's. Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of the time used to assemble. It is said, when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company from Button's house. From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too much wine. In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. is not unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours.' It His conduct generally was marked by great prudence. He made few enemies. He was at great pains to conciliate Swift. "Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party has transmitted no charge of any crime." Yet his irritable temper was not under thorough control. On one occasion he put an execution in force against Steele for a hundred pounds that his improvident friend had borrowed, and he has never been cleared of the charge of jealous intriguing against Pope. De Quincey, in his Life of Pope,' says that "Addison's petty manoeuvring against Pope proceeded entirely from malignant jealousy. That Addison was more in the wrong even than has generally been supposed, and Pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more generous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of showing decisively." He Opinions. In practical politics he adhered steadfastly to the Whigs. In 1707 he elaborately justified the war with France, maintaining that France and Britain were natural enemies. strongly supported the Hanoverian succession, and turned his most malicious and unqualified ridicule against the "Pretender and his foreign adherents. With equal animosity he satirised the Tory country gentlemen, or Tory fox-hunters, as he delighted to nickname them. Party politics, as we have said, had no place in the 'Tatler,' the 'Spectator,' and the Guardian.' The professed object of our author in these periodicals was to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain," and "to bring philosophy out |