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tation there, before his name was so much as known in London. When he was in the 22d year of his age, he published a copy of verses addressed to Mr. Dryden, which soon procured him the notice of some of the poetical judges in that age. The verses are not without their elegance, but if they are much removed above common rhimes, they fall infinitely short of the character Mr. Addison's friends bestowed upon them. Some little space intervening, he sent into the world a translation of the 4th Georgic of Virgil, of which we need not say any more, than that it was commended by Mr. Dryden. He wrote also that discourse on the Georgics, prefixed to them by way of preface in Mr. Dryden's translation, and chose to withhold his name from that judicious composition, because it contained an untried strain of criticism, which bore hard upon the old professors of that art, and therefore was not so fit for a young man to take upon himself; and Mr. Dryden, who was above the meanness of fathering any one's work, owns the Essay on the Georgics to have come from a friend, whose name is not mentioned, because he desired to have it concealed. The next year Mr. Addison wrote several poems of different kinds; amongst the rest, one addressed to Henry Sacheverel, who became afterwards so exceedingly famous. The following year he wrote a poem to King William on one of his Campaigns, addressed to the Lord Keeper (Sir John Somers.) That excellent statesman received this mark of a young author's attachment with great humanity, admitted Mr. Addison into the number of his friends, and gave him on all occasions distinguishing proofs of a sincere esteem [2]. While he was at the university, he had been pressingly sollicited to enter into holy orders, which he seemed once resolved on, probably in obedience to his father's authority; but being conscious of the importance of the undertaking, and deterred by his extreme modesty, he relinquished, says Mr. Tickell, all views that way; but Sir Richard Steel in his letter to Mr. Congreve prefixed to the Drummer, who had a quarrel with Tickell, on account of an injurious treatment of him, says, that those were not the reasons which made Mr. Addison turn his thoughts to the civil world, 'and as you were the inducement (says he) of his becoming acquainted with my lord Hallifax, I doubt not but you remember the warm instances that noble lord made to the head of the college, not to insist on Mr. Addison's going into
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