The Scheme for the Treatise upon the Christian Religion was formed by the Author, about the end of the late Queen’s reign; at which time, he carefully perused the ancient Writings, which furnish the materials for it.  His continual employment in business prevented him from executing it, until he resigned his office of Secretary of State; and his death put a period to it, when he had imperfectly performed only one half of the design:  he having proposed, as appears from the Introduction, to add the Jewish to the Heathen testimonies for the truth of the Christian History.  He was more assiduous than his health would well allow, in the pursuit of this Work:  and had long determined to dedicate his Poetry also, for the future, wholly to religious subjects.

Soon after, he was, from being one of the Lords Commissioners of Trade, advanced to the post of Secretary of State; he found his health impaired by the return of that asthmatic indisposition; which continued often, to afflict him during his exercise of that employment:  and, at last, obliged him to beg His Majesty’s leave to resign.

His freedom from the anxiety of business so far re-established his health, that his friends began to hope he might last for many years:  but (whether it were from a life too sedentary; or from his natural constitution, in which was one circumstance very remarkable, that, from his cradle, he never had a regular pulse) a long and painful relapse into an asthma and dropsy deprived the World of this great man, on the 17th of June, 1719.

He left behind him only one daughter, by the Countess of WARWICK; to whom he was married in the year 1716.

Not many days before his death, he gave me directions to collect his Writings, and at the same time committed to my care the Letter addressed to Mr. CRAGGS, his successor as Secretary of State, wherein he bequeaths them to him, as a token of friendship.

Such a testimony, from the First Man of our Age, in such a point of time, will be perhaps as great and lasting an honour to that Gentleman as any even he could acquire to himself, and yet it is no more than was due from an affection that justly increased towards him, through the intimacy of several years.  I cannot, save with the utmost tenderness, reflect on the kind concern with which Mr. ADDISON left Me as a sort of incumbrance upon this valuable legacy.  Nor must I deny myself the honour to acknowlege that the goodness of that Great Man to me, like many other of his amiable qualities, seemed not so much to be renewed, as continued in his successor; who made me an example, that nothing could be indifferent to him which came recommended to Mr. ADDISON.