to correct. Warton had heard that Addison would stop the press, when almost the whole impression of a ‘Spectator’ had been worked off, to insert a new preposition or conjunction (Essay on Pope, i. 145). We can hardly say with confidence how far his nicety may have sometimes interfered with his official despatch writing.
Addison's health was meanwhile breaking. He retired in March 1718, with a pension of 1,500l. a year, and undertook some literary work never completed. A tragedy on the death of Socrates is mentioned; and he left behind a fragmentary and very superficial work on the evidences of the christian religion. He also meditated a paraphrase of the Psalms. His last published work was destined to be of a different character, and brought him into conflict with his old friend Steele.
Steele's boundless admiration for Addison has been noticed. When supplanted by his ally, he rejoiced, as he says, to be excelled, and proudly declared that, whatever Mr. Steele owed to Mr. Addison, the world owed Addison to Steele. The harmony, however, was disturbed. We learn from Steele's correspondence that he borrowed money occasionally from his richer friend. Johnson tells a story, upon apparently good authority, that Addison once put an execution into Steele's house for 100l., and that Steele was deeply hurt. The most authentic form of the anecdote comes from the actor, B. Victor (Original Letters, &c., vol. i. pp. 328–9), who knew Steele and gave the facts in a letter to Garrick. The statement is that Steele borrowed 1,000l. from Addison in order to build a house at Hampton Court; that Addison advanced the money through his lawyers with instructions to enforce the debt when due; and that upon Steele's failure to pay at the year's end, the house and furniture were sold and the balance paid to Steele, with a letter briefly telling him that the step had been taken to arouse him from his ‘lethargy.’ Steele, it is added, took the reproof with ‘philosophical composure,’ and was afterwards on good terms with Addison. Upon this showing, it was not a case of a friend suddenly converted by anger into a severe creditor, but a deliberate plan from the first to give a serious lesson. However well meant or well taken, such reproofs are severe tests of friendship. Steele, whose imprudent zeal made him the scapegoat of his party, was probably hurt when he received no office, and only a share in the patent of the playhouse, upon the triumph of the whigs. He was hurt, too, at being superseded by Tickell in Addison's favour, and at the appointment of the younger man as under-secretary to their common friend. Steele says to his wife in 1717 that he asks nothing from ‘Mr. Secretary Addison.’
Steele published a paper called the ‘Plebeian’ (14 March 1719), attacking the proposed measure for limiting the number of peers. Addison replied temperately in the ‘Old Whig’ (19 March), with a constitutional argument for a measure calculated, as he thought, to preserve the right balance of power. Steele replied in two more ‘Plebeians’ (29 and 30 March), and in one of them made an irrelevant and coarse allusion, harshly described by Macaulay as an ‘odious imputation’ upon the morals of his opponents. Addison made a severe and contemptuous reply in a second ‘Old Whig’ (2 April), ending, however, with an expression of his belief that the ‘Plebeian’ would write well in a good cause. Macaulay first pointed out that Addison did not, as Johnson says, call Steele ‘little Dicky.’ Steele had the last word in a ‘Plebeian’ (6 April) written with some bitterness about Addison's whiggism, but ending with a quotation from ‘Cato’ as expressive of sound nature. Some regret for the breach of their old alliance appears in the concluding sentences, but there is no trace of a reconciliation.
Addison was fast breaking. On his deathbed he sent for Gay, and begged forgiveness for some injury, presumably an interference with Gay's preferment, of which he accused himself. He sent also, as Young tells us (‘Conjectures on Original Composition,’ Works, p. 136), for his stepson Warwick, and said to him: ‘See in what peace a christian can die.’ The incident is supposed to be alluded to in Tickell's fine address to Warwick with Addison's words. He
taught us how to live, and (oh! too high
The price of knowledge) taught us how to die.
He left to Tickell the care of his works, which he bequeathed to Craggs in a touching letter; and died of asthma and dropsy, 17 June 1719. Lady Warwick died 7 July 1731.
He left a daughter, born 30 Jan. 1719, apparently of rather defective intellect (Gentleman's Magazine, March 1797 and May 1798; Lady Louisa Stewart's introduction to the Works of Lady M. W. Montagu, p. 15; and letters in Egerton MS. 1974), who lived many years at Bilton, dying unmarried in 1797. His library was sold in May 1799, bringing 456l. 2s. 9d.
There is a portrait of Addison in the National Portrait Gallery, two at Magdalen, and one (presented by his daughter in 1750) at the Bodleian. A so-called portrait in Holland House seems to be really the portrait
