ortunities of
knowing each other. They were the two shrewdest observers of their age.
But their observations on each other had led them to favorable
conclusions. Swift did full justice to the rare powers of conversation
which were latent under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addison, on
the other hand, discerned much good nature under the severe look and
manner of Swift; and, indeed, the Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738
were two very different men.

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. The Whig statesmen
loaded Addison with solid benefits. They praised Swift, asked him to
dinner, and did nothing more for him. His profession laid them under a
difficulty. In the state they could not promote him; and they had reason
to fear that, by bestowing preferment in the church on the author of the
Tale of a Tub, they might give scandal to the public, which had no high
opinion of their orthodoxy. He did not make fair allowance for the
difficulties which prevented Halifax and Somers from serving him,
thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor and consistency to
revenge, joined the Tories, and became their most formidable champion.
He soon found, however, that his old friends were less to blame than he
had supposed. The dislike with which the Queen and the heads of the
Church regarded him was insurmountable; and it was with the greatest
difficulty that he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value,
on condition of fixing his residence in a country which he detested.

Difference of political opinion had produced, not indeed a quarrel, but
a coolness between Swift and Addison. They at length ceased altogether
to see each other. Yet there was between them a tacit compact like that
between the hereditary guests in the Iliad:--

[Greek:
Egchea d' allelon aleometha kai di' homilou
Polloi men gar emoi Troes kleitoi t' epikouroi,
Kteinein, hon ke theos ge pore kai possi kicheio,
Polloi d' au soi Achaioi, enairemen, hon ke dyneai.]

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated and insulted nobody,
should not have calumniated or insulted Swift. But it is remarkable that
Swift, to whom neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who generally
seemed to find, like most other renegades, a peculiar pleasure in
attacking old friends, should have shown so much respect and tenderness
to Addison.

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the House of Hanover had
secured in England the libertie