adventure to say they are, from their being word for word the same, he has cast an inhuman reflection upon Mr. DRYDEN:  who, though tied down not to name Mr. ADDISON, pointed at him so as all Mankind conservant in these matters knew him, with an eulogium equal to the highest merit, considering who it was that bestowed it, I could not avoid remarking upon this circumstance, out of justice to Mr. DRYDEN:  but confess, at the same time, I took a great pleasure in doing it; because I knew, in exposing this outrage, I made my court to Mr. CONGREVE.

I have observed that the Editor will not let me or any one else obey Mr. ADDISON’s commands, in hiding anything he desired to be concealed.

I cannot but take further notice, that the circumstance of marking his Spectators [with the letters C, L, I, O,], which I did not know till I had done with the Work; I made my own act! because I thought it too great a sensibility in my friend; and thought it (since it was done) better to be supposed marked by me than the Author himself.  The real state of which, this zealot rashly and injudiciously exposes!  I ask the reader, Whether anything but an earnestness to disparage me could provoke the Editor, in behalf of Mr. ADDISON, to say that he marked it out of caution against me:  when I had taken upon me to say, it was I that did it! out of tenderness to him.

As the imputation of any the Least Attempt of arrogating to myself, or detracting from Mr. ADDISON, is without any Colour of Truth:  you will give me leave to go on in the same ardour towards him, and resent the cold, unaffectionate, dry, and barren manner, in which this Gentleman gives an Account of as great a Benefactor as any one Learned Man ever had of another.  Would any man, who had been produced from a College life, and pushed into one of the most considerable Employments of the Kingdom as to its weight and trust, and greatly lucrative with respect to a Fellowship [i.e., of a College]:  and who had been daily and hourly with one of the greatest men of the Age, be satisfied with himself, in saying nothing of such a Person besides what all the World knew! except a particularity (and that to his disadvantage!) which I, his friend from a boy, don’t know to be true, to wit, that “he never had a regular pulse”!

As for the facts, and considerable periods of his life, he either knew nothing of them, or injudiciously places them in a worse light than that in which they really stood.

When he speaks of Mr. ADDISON’s declining to go into Orders, his way of doing it is to lament his seriousness and modesty, which might have recommended him, proved the chief obstacles to it, it seems these qualities, by which the Priesthood is so much adorned, represented the duties of it as too weighty for him, and rendered him still more worthy of that honour which they made him decline.  These, you know very well! were not the Reasons which made