widow of fifteen years' standing. She seems to have forfeited her jointure by the marriage, and to have brought her husband nothing but the occupancy of Holland House at Kensington. We know hardly anything positively in regard to the affair, or as to the origin or duration of his acquaintance with the lady or her family. But the current assertion that the courtship was a long one is very probably erroneous. There are better grounds for believing the assertion, transmitted from Addison's own time, that the marriage was unhappy. The countess is said to have been proud as well as violent, and to have supposed that, in contracting the alliance, she conferred honour instead of receiving it. To the uneasiness caused by domestic discomfort, the most friendly critics of Addison's character have attributed those habits of intemperance, which are said to have grown on him in his later years to such an extent as to have broken his health and accelerated his death. His biographer, Miss Aikin, who disbelieves his alleged want of matrimonial quiet, has called in question, with much ingenuity, the whole story of his sottishness; and it must at any rate be allowed that all the assertions which tend to fix such charges on him in the earlier parts of his life, rest on no evidence that is worthy of credit, and are in themselves highly improbable. Sobriety was not the virtue of the day; and the constant frequenting of coffee-houses, which figures so often in the Spectator and elsewhere, and which was really practised among literary men as well as others, cannot have had good effects. Addison, however, really appears to have had no genuine relish for this mode of life; and there are curious notices, especially in Steele's correspondence, of his having lodgings out of town, to which he retired for study and composition. But, whatever the cause may have been, his health was shattered before he took that which was the last, and certainly the most unwise step, in his ascent to political power.
For a considerable time dissensions had existed in the ministry; and these came to a crisis in April 1717, when those who had been the real chiefs passed into the ranks of the opposition. Townshend was dismissed, and Walpole anticipated dismissal by resignation. There was now formed, under the leadership of General Stanhope and Lord Sunderland, an administration which, as resting on court influence, was nicknamed the "German ministry." Sunderland, Addison's former superior, became one of the two principal secretaries of state; and Addison himself was appointed as the other. His elevation to such a post had been contemplated on the accession of George I., and prevented, we are told, by his own refusal; and it is asserted, on the authority of Pope, that his acceptance now was owing only to the influence of his wife. Even if there is no ground, as there probably is not, for the allegation of Addison's inefficiency in the details of business, his unfitness for such an office in such circumstances was undeniable and glaring. It was impossible that a Government, whose secretary of state could not open his lips in debate, should long face an opposition headed by Robert Walpole. The decay of Addison's health, too, was going on rapidly, being, we may readily conjecture, precipitated by anxiety, if no worse causes were at work. Ill health was the reason assigned for retirement, in the letter of resignation which he laid before the king in March 1718, eleven months after his appointment. He received a pension of £1500 a year.
Not long afterwards the divisions in the Whig party alienated him from his oldest friend. The Peerage Bill, introduced in February 1719, was attacked, on behalf of the opposition, in a weekly paper, which was called the Plebeian, and written by Steele. Addison answered it temperately enough in the Old Whig; provocation from the Plebeian brought forth angry retort from the Whig; Steele charged Addison with being so old a Whig as to have forgotten his principles; and Addison sneered at Grub Street, and called his friend "Little Dicky."[1] How Addison felt after this painful quarrel we are not told directly; but the Old Whig was excluded from that posthumous collection of his works for which his executor Tickell had received from him authority and directions. In that collection was inserted a treatise on the evidences of the faith, entitled Of the Christian Religion. Its theological value is very small; but it is pleasant to regard it as the last effort of one who, amidst all weaknesses, was a man of real goodness as well as of eminent genius.
The disease under which Addison laboured appears to have been asthma. It became more violent after his retirement from office, and was now accompanied by dropsy. His deathbed was placid and resigned, and comforted by those religious hopes which he had so often suggested to others, and the value of which he is said, in an anecdote of doubtful authority, to have now inculcated in a parting interview with his stepson. He died at Holland House on the 17th day of June 1719, six weeks after having completed his 47th year. His body, after lying in state, was interred in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
The Biographia Britannica gives an elaborate memoir of him; particulars are well collected in the article under his name in the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge; and a good many new materials, especially letters, will be found in The Life of Joseph Addison, by Lucy Aikin, 1843. (w. s.)
An edition of Addison's works, in four volumes quarto, was published by Baskerville at Birmingham in 1761. Dibdin characterises this as a "glorious performance." A complete edition in six volumes, with notes, by Richard Hurd, appeared in 1811. An American edition (New York, 1854), in six volumes, with notes, by G. W. Greene, contains several pieces collected for the first time. An edition of the Spectator, with valuable notes by Henry Morley, appeared in 1871.
ADEL or Somauli, an extensive tract of country, stretching eastward from the neighbourhood of Tajurrah to Cape Guardafui, between 43° and 51° E. long., with a breadth not accurately ascertained. Zeila and Berbera are the chief ports on the coast, and have some trade with the opposite shores of Arabia, exporting spices, ivory, gold dust, cattle, and horses, and receiving Indian commodities in exchange. The country, which is marshy and unhealthy, is inhabited by the Somauli, who are governed by an Iman, and are Mahometans.
- ↑ On this point, however, see Macaulay's Essay on The Life and Writings of Addison.
