His fidelity to Pitt received a speedy and ample acknowledgment when he was elected, in May 1789, speaker of the House, in succession to Grenville. For a period of twelve years he discharged the duties of the chair to the general satisfaction of all parties, if with no very marked ability. In 1801, when Pitt resigned on the question of Catholic emancipation, Addington succeeded him in the offices of prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer. He was head of the party that had come to be known as "the king's friends," and took office, it is said, on the Urgent personal solicitation of his majesty. The most memorable event of his brief administration was the negotiation of the peace of Amiens, which was concluded on terms that were considered very favourable. It proved, however, but a short-lived truce, the ambition of the First Consul necessitating a renewal of hostilities in May 1803. From this period Pitt assumed a critical attitude towards the ministry, and at length he joined Fox and the opposition in demanding more vigorous measures for the defence of the country. The result was that Addington was compelled to resign, and Pitt was restored to power in May 1804. Addington abstained from all factious opposition, and indeed gave a general support to the Government. In January 1805 he joined the cabinet as president of the council, accepting at the same time the dignity of a peerage, which he had previously declined. He resigned office, however, in July of the same year, in consequence of the share he took in the prosecution of Lord Melville having estranged him from Pitt. After the death of the latter in 1806, he became lord privy seal, and subsequently lord president in the cabinet of Fox and Grenville, but resigned office in 1807. He became a third time lord president under Mr Perceval in 1812, and in June of the same year received the seals of the Home Office under the administration of Lord Liverpool. He held this position for ten eventful years, during which he received his full share of the hostile criticism to which home secretaries are peculiarly exposed. His administration had the merit of being vigorous, fearless, and consistent; but it frequently occasioned great irritation, and all but provoked rebellion. The policy of repression which he pursued in regard to the reform meeting at Manchester in 1819, was not justifiable even according to the limited ideas of liberty prevalent at that time. Lord Sidmouth resigned office in 1822, retaining his seat in the cabinet, however, until 1824. He died on the 15th Feb. 1844, at the advanced age of 87. (Life and Correspondence cf Lord Sidmouth, by Dean Pellew, 3 vols. 8vo, 1847; Life of William Pitt by Lord Stanhope, 4 vols. p. 8vo, 1867.)
ADDISON, Joseph, was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield, and was born at his father's rectory of Milston in Wiltshire, on the 1st day of May 1672. After having passed through several schools, the last of which was the Charter-house, he went to Oxford when he was about fifteen years old. He was first entered of Queen's College, but after two years was elected a scholar of Magdalen College, having, it is said, been recommended by his skill in Latin versification. He took his master's degree in 1693, and held a fellowship from 1699 till 1711.
The eleven years extending from 1693, or his twenty-first year, to 1704, when he was in his thirty-second, may be set down as the first stage of his life as a man of letters. During this period, embracing no profession, and not as yet entangled in official business, he was a student, an observer, and an author; and though the literary works which he then produced are not those on which his permanent celebrity rests, they gained for him in his own day a high reputation. He had at first intended to become a clergyman; but his talents having attracted the attention of leading statesmen belonging to the Whig party, he was speedily diverted from his earlier views by the countenance which these men bestowed on him. His first patron (to whom he seems to have been introduced by Congreve) was Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax, who was himself a dabbler in literature, and a protector of literary men; and he became known afterwards to the accomplished and excellent Somers. While both of them were quite able to estimate justly his literary merits, they had regard mainly to the services which they believed him capable of rendering to the nation or the party; and accordingly they encouraged him to regulate his pursuits with a view to public and official employment. For a considerable time, however, he was left to his own resources, which cannot have been otherwise than scanty.
His first literary efforts were poetical. In 1693 a short poem of his, addressed to Dryden, was inserted in the third volume of that veteran writer's Miscellanies. The next volume of this collection contained his translation, in tolerable heroic couplets, of "all Virgil's Fourth Georgic, except the story of Aristæus." Two and a half books of Ovid were afterwards attempted; and to his years of early manhood belonged also his prose Essay on Virgil's Georgics, a performance which hardly deserved, either for its style or for its critical excellence, the compliment paid it by Dryden, in prefixing it to his own translation of the poem. The most ambitious of those poetical assay-pieces is the Account of the Greatest English Poets, dated April 1694, and addressed affectionately to Sacheverell, the poet's fellow-collegian, who afterwards became so notorious in the party-quarrels of the time. This piece, spirited both in language and in versification, is chiefly noticeable as showing that ignorance of old English poetry which was then universal. Addison next, in 1695, published one of those compositions, celebrating contemporary events, and lauding contemporary great men, on which, during the half-century that succeeded the revolution, there was wasted so much of good writing and of fair poetical ability. His piece, not very meritorious even in its own class, was addressed "To the King," and commemorates the campaign which was distinguished by William's taking of Namur. Much better than the poem itself are the introductory verses to Somers, then lord keeper. This production, perhaps intended as a remembrancer to the writer's patrons, did not at once produce any obvious effect: and we are left in considerable uncertainty as to the manner in which about this time Addison contrived to support himself. He corresponded with Tonson the book seller about projected works, one of these being a Translation of Herodotus. It was probably at some later time that he purposed compiling a Dictionary of the English Language. In 1699 a considerable collection of his Latin verses was published at Oxford, in the Musæ Anglicanæ. These appear to have interested some foreign scholars; and several of them show curious symptoms of his characteristic humour.
In the same year, his patrons, either having still no office to spare for him, or desiring him to gain peculiarly high qualifications for diplomatic or other important business, provided for him temporarily by a grant, which, though bestowed on a man of great merit and promise, would not pass unquestioned in the present century. He obtained, on the recommendation of Lord Somers, a pension of £300 a year, designed (as Addison himself afterwards said in a memorial addressed to the crown) to enable him "to travel, and qualify himself to serve His Majesty." In the summer of 1699 he crossed into France, where, chiefly for the purpose of learning the language, he remained till the end of 1700; and after this he spent a year in Italy. In Switzerland, on his way home, he was stopped by receiving notice that he was to be appointed envoy to Prince Eugene, then engaged in the war in Italy. But his Whig friends
