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 Steele; what he knew of books and learning had been almost entirely derived from Addison’s conversation; what moral virtue he had, from Addison’s influence.  And he had repaid this with an admiration and affection which bordered on idolatry.  A more generous and genial, a more kindly, a more warm-hearted man than Steele never lived, and it is easy to conceive what his feelings must have been when he found his friend estranged from him and a rival in his place.  There is much to excuse what this letter to Congreve plainly betrays; but excuse is not justification.  Tickell had a delicate and difficult task to perform:  a duty to his dead friend, which was paramount, a duty to Steele, and a duty to himself, and he succeeded in performing each with admirable tact.  Whether Tickell ever made any reply to Steele’s strictures, I have not been able to discover.