surer did not know. He understood
how to negotiate a loan, or remit a subsidy; he was also well versed in
the history of running horses and fighting cocks; but his acquaintance
among the poets was very small. He consulted Halifax; but Halifax
affected to decline the office of adviser. He had, he said, done his
best, when he had power, to encourage men whose abilities and
acquirements might do honor to their country. Those times were over.
Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was suffered to pine in obscurity; and
the public money was squandered on the undeserving. "I do know," he
added, "a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in a manner worthy of
the subject; but I will not name him." Godolphin, who was expert at the
soft answer which turneth away wrath, and who was under the necessity of
paying court to the Whigs, gently replied that there was too much ground
for Halifax's complaints, but that what was amiss should in time be
rectified, and that in the meantime the services of a man such as
Halifax had described should be liberally rewarded. Halifax then
mentioned Addison, but, mindful of the dignity as well as of the
pecuniary interest of his friend, insisted that the Minister should
apply in the most courteous manner to Addison himself; and this
Godolphin promised to do.

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of stairs, over a small
shop in the Haymarket. In this humble lodging he was surprised, on the
morning which followed the conversation between Godolphin and Halifax,
by a visit from no less a person than the Right Honorable Henry Boyle,
then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards Lord Carleton. This
high-born Minister had been sent by the Lord Treasurer as ambassador to
the needy poet. Addison readily undertook the proposed task, a task
which, to so good a Whig, was probably a pleasure. When the poem was
little more than half finished, he showed it to Godolphin, who was
delighted with it, and particularly with the famous similitude of the
Angel. Addison was instantly appointed to a Commissionership worth about
two hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this appointment was
only an earnest of greater favors.

The Campaign came forth, and was as much admired by the public as by the
Minister. It pleases us less on the whole than the Epistle to Halifax.
Yet it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which appeared during the
interval between the death of Dryden and the dawn of Pope's genius. The