nt with them into
politics as he might have travelled in company with them, and for the
sake of their company, although caring nothing for travel himself. No
man was better aware of his incapacity for the real business of public
life. Addison had himself pointed out all the objections to his
political advancement before that advancement was pressed upon him. He
was not a statesman; he was not an administrator; he could not do any
genuine service as head of a department; he was not even a good clerk;
he was a wretched speaker; he was consumed by a morbid shyness, almost
as oppressive as that of the poet Cowper in a later day, or of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American novelist, later still. His whole
public career was at best but a harmless mistake. It has done no harm
to his literary fame. The world has almost forgotten it. Even lovers
of Addison might have to be reminded now that the creator of Sir Roger
de Coverley was once a diplomatic agent and a secretary of State, {181}
and a member of the House of Commons. Some of the essays which Addison
contributed to the _Spectator_ are like enough to outlive the system of
government by party, and perhaps even the whole system of
representative government. Sir Roger de Coverley will not be forgotten
until men forget Parson Adams and Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas, and for
that matter, Sir John Falstaff and Don Quixote.

[Sidenote: 1720--The King and the Prince reconciled]

For some time things were looking well at home and abroad. The policy
of the Government appeared to have been completely successful on the
Continent. The confederations that had been threatening England were
dissolved or broken up; the Jacobite conspiracies seemed to have been
made hopeless and powerless. The friendship established between
England and the Regent of France had to all seeming robbed the Stuarts
of their last chance. James the Chevalier had no longer a home on
French soil. Paris could not any more be the head-quarters of his
organization and the scene of his mock Court. The Regent had kept his
promises to the English Government. It was well known that, so far
from encouraging or permitting the designs of the exiled family against
England, he would do all in his power to frustrate them; as, indeed, he
had an opportunity of doing not long after. Never before, perhaps
never since, was there so cordial an understanding between England and
France. Never could there have been a time whe