way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his friend. The next
day he calls on Steele, and finds scores of gentlemen and ladies
assembled. The fiddles are playing. The table is groaning under
champagne, burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange that a
man whose kindness is thus abused should send sheriff's officers to
reclaim what is due to him?

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who had introduced himself
to public notice by writing a most ingenious and graceful little poem in
praise of the Opera of Rosamond. He deserved, and at length attained,
the first place in Addison's friendship. For a time Steele and Tickell
were on good terms. But they loved Addison too much to love each other,
and at length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in Virgil.

At the close of 1708 Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and
appointed Addison Chief Secretary. Addison was consequently under the
necessity of quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief
secretaryship, which was then worth about two thousand pounds a year, he
obtained a patent appointing him keeper of the Irish Records for life,
with a salary of three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied his
cousin in the capacity of private Secretary.

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but Whiggism. The Lord
Lieutenant was not only licentious and corrupt, but was distinguished
from other libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which presented
the strongest contrast to the Secretary's gentleness and delicacy. Many
parts of the Irish administration at this time appear to have deserved
serious blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. He long
afterwards asserted, what all the evidence which we have ever seen tends
to prove, that his diligence and integrity gained the friendship of all
the most considerable persons in Ireland.

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland has, we think, wholly
escaped the notice of all his biographers. He was elected member for the
borough of Cavan in the summer of 1709; and in the journals of two
sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the entries appear to
indicate that he so far overcame his timidity as to make speeches. Nor
is this by any means improbable; for the Irish House of Commons was a
far less formidable audience than the English House; and many tongues
which were tied by fear in the greater assembly became fluent in the
smaller. Gerard Hamilton, for example, who, from fear