and though not a profound a graceful scholar.  Addison was pleased with a homage which was worth accepting.  As he rose, his protege rose with him.  On his appointment as Chief Secretary in Ireland he took Tickell with him.  When he was appointed Secretary of State he chose him as 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 exception.  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,