s Under Secretary, and
shortly before his death made him his literary executor, instructing him
to collect his writings in a final and authentic edition. This, for
reasons which will be explained directly, was a task of no small
difficulty, but to this task Tickell loyally addressed himself. In the
spring of 1721 appeared, in four sumptuous quartos, the collected edition
of Addison's works. It was prefaced by the biography which is here
reprinted, and to the biography was appended that noble and pathetic
elegy which will make Tickell's name as immortal as Addison's.

There can be very little doubt that Steele had been greatly distressed
and hurt by the rupture of the friendship which had so long existed
between himself and Addison, but that Tickell should have taken his place
in Addison's affections must have been inexpressibly galling to him.
Naturally irritated, his irritation had no doubt been intensified by
Addison appointing Tickell Under Secretary of State, and still more by
his making him his literary executor--offices which Steel might naturally
have expected, had all gone well, to fill himself. It would not have been
in human nature that he could regard Tickell with any other feelings than
hostility and jealousy. Tickell's omission of the _Drummer_ from Addison's
works was, in all probability--such at least is the impression which the
letter makes on me--a mere pretext for the gratification of personal
spite. There is nothing to justify the interpretation which he puts on
Tickell's words. All that Steele here says about Addison he had said
publicly and quite as emphatically before, as Tickell had recorded. As
Steele had, in Tickell's own words, given to Addison 'the honour of the
most applauded pieces,' it is absurd to accuse Tickell of insinuating
that Addison wished his papers to be marked because he was afraid Steele
would assume the credit of these pieces. In one important particular he
flatly contradicts himself. At the beginning he asks 'whether it was a
decent and reasonable thing that works written, as a great part of Mr.
Addison's were, in correspondence with me, ought to have been published
without my review of the catalogue of them.' Three pages afterward, it
appears that, in compliance with the request of Addison delivered to him
by Tickell, he did mark with his own hand those _Tatlers_ which were
inserted in Addison's works--a statement of Tickell's, but a statement to
which Steele takes no exceptio