and unseasonable detection, a pang should be given to a widow,
a daughter, a brother, or a friend. As the process of these narratives
is now bringing me among my contemporaries, I begin to feel myself
"walking upon ashes under which the fire is not extinguished," and
coming to the time of which it will be proper rather to say "nothing
that is false, than all that is true."

The end of this useful life was now approaching. Addison had for some
time been oppressed by shortness of breath, which was now aggravated
by a dropsy; and, finding his danger pressing, he prepared to die
conformably to his own precepts and professions. During this lingering
decay, he sent, as Pope relates, a message by the Earl of Warwick to
Mr. Gay, desiring to see him. Gay, who had not visited him for some
time before, obeyed the summons, and found himself received with great
kindness. The purpose for which the interview had been solicited was
then discovered. Addison told him that he had injured him; but that, if
he recovered, he would recompense him. What the injury was he did
not explain, nor did Gay ever know; but supposed that some preferment
designed for him had, by Addison's intervention, been withheld.

Lord Warwick was a young man, of very irregular life, and perhaps of
loose opinions. Addison, for whom he did not want respect, had
very diligently endeavoured to reclaim him, but his arguments and
expostulations had no effect. One experiment, however, remained to be
tried; when he found his life near its end, he directed the young lord
to be called, and when he desired with great tenderness to hear his
last injunctions, told him, "I have sent for you that you may see how a
Christian can die." What effect this awful scene had on the earl, I know
not; he likewise died himself in a short time.

In Tickell's excellent Elegy on his friend are these lines:--

"He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high
The price of knowledge, taught us how to die"--

in which he alludes, as he told Dr. Young, to this moving interview.

Having given directions to Mr. Tickell for the publication of his works,
and dedicated them on his death-bed to his friend Mr. Craggs, he died
June 17, 1719, at Holland House, leaving no child but a daughter.

Of his virtue it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party
has transmitted no charge of any crime. He was not one of those who are
praised only after death; for his merit was so generally ackno