honest
dependence that an honest man may not put up with. I came out of the lap
of Alma Mater, puffed up with her praises of me, and thinking to make
a figure in the world with the parts and learning which had got me no
small name in our college. The world is the ocean, and Isis and Charwell
are but little drops, of which the sea takes no account. My reputation
ended a mile beyond Maudlin Tower; no one took note of me; and I learned
this at least, to bear up against evil fortune with a cheerful heart.
Friend Dick hath made a figure in the world, and has passed me in the
race long ago. What matters a little name or a little fortune? There is
no fortune that a philosopher cannot endure. I have been not unknown as
a scholar, and yet forced to live by turning bear-leader, and teaching
a boy to spell. What then? The life was not pleasant, but possible--the
bear was bearable. Should this venture fail, I will go back to Oxford;
and some day, when you are a general, you shall find me a curate in a
cassock and bands, and I shall welcome your honor to my cottage in the
country, and to a mug of penny ale. 'Tis not poverty that's the hardest
to bear, or the least happy lot in life," says Mr. Addison, shaking the
ash out of his pipe. "See, my pipe is smoked out. Shall we have another
bottle? I have still a couple in the cupboard, and of the right sort. No
more?--let us go abroad and take a turn on the Mall, or look in at the
theatre and see Dick's comedy. 'Tis not a masterpiece of wit; but Dick
is a good fellow, though he doth not set the Thames on fire."

Within a month after this day, Mr. Addison's ticket had come up a
prodigious prize in the lottery of life. All the town was in an uproar
of admiration of his poem, the "Campaign," which Dick Steele was
spouting at every coffee-house in Whitehall and Covent Garden. The wits
on the other side of Temple Bar saluted him at once as the greatest poet
the world had seen for ages; the people huzza'ed for Marlborough and
for Addison, and, more than this, the party in power provided for the
meritorious poet, and Addison got the appointment of Commissioner of
Excise, which the famous Mr. Locke vacated, and rose from this place to
other dignities and honors; his prosperity from henceforth to the end of
his life being scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt whether he was not
happier in his garret in the Haymarket, than ever he was in his splendid
palace at Kensington; and I believe the fortune t