n. So far from attempting to disparage
Steele, Tickell does ample justice to him; and to accuse him of
insensibility to Addison's virtues, and of cold indifference to him
personally, is a charge refuted not only by all we know of Tickell, but
by every page in the tract itself. Many of the objections which he makes
to Tickell's remarks are too absurd to discuss. From nothing indeed which
Tickell says, but from one of Steele's own admissions, it is impossible
not to draw a conclusion very derogatory to Steele's honesty, and to make
us suspect that his sensitiveness was caused by his own uneasy conscience:
'What I never did declare was Mr. Addison's I had his direct injunctions
to hide.' This certainly seems to imply that Steele had allowed himself
to be credited with what really belonged to his friend. A month after
Addison's death he had written in great alarm to Tonson, on hearing that
it had been proposed to separate Addison's papers in the _Tatler_ from
his own. He bases his objection, it is true, on the pecuniary injury
which he and his family would suffer, but this is plainly mere
subterfuge. The truth probably is, that Steele wished to leave as
undefined as possible what belonged to Addison and what belonged to
himself; that he was greatly annoyed when he found that their respective
shares were by Addison's own, or at least his alleged, request to be
defined; that in his assignation of the papers he had not been quite
honest; and that, knowing this, he suspected that Tickell knew it too.
There is nothing to support Steele's assertion that it was at his
instigation that Addison distinguished his contributions to the
_Spectator_ and the _Guardian_. Addison, as his last injunctions showed,
must have contemplated a collective edition of his works, and must have
desired therefore that they should be identified. Steele's ambition, no
doubt, was that he and his friend should go down to posterity together,
but the appointment of Tickell instead of himself as Addison's literary
executor dashed this hope to the ground.

Few things in literary biography are more pathetic than the estrangement
between Addison and Steele. They had played as boys together; they had,
for nearly a quarter of a century, shared each other's burdens, and the
burdens had not been light; in misfortune and in prosperity, in business
and in pleasure, they had never been parted. The wisdom and prudence of
Addison had more than once been the salvation of St