These were the days of the War of the Spanish Succession and of the brilliant victories of Marlborough of which you have read in the history of the time of Anne.  Blenheim had been fought.  All England was ringing with the praises of the great General in prose and verse.  But the verse was poor, and it seemed to those in power that this great victory ought to be celebrated more worthily, so the Lord Treasurer looked about him for some one who could sing of it in fitting fashion.  The right person, however, seemed hard to find, and the laureate of the day, an honest gentleman named Nahum Tate, who could hardly be called a poet, was quite unable for the task.  To help the Lord Treasurer out of his difficulty one of the great men who had already befriended Addison suggested him as a suitable writer.  And so one morning Addison was surprised in his little garret by a visit from no less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

A shy boy at school, Addison had grown into a shy, retiring man, and no doubt he was not a little taken aback at a visit from so great a personage.  The Chancellor, however, soon put him at his ease, told him what he had come about, and begged him to undertake the work.  “In short, the Chancellor said so many obliging things, and in so graceful a manner, as gave Mr. Addison the utmost spirit and encouragement to begin that poem, which he afterwards published and entitled The Campaign."*

Budgell, Memories of the Boyles.

The poem was a great success, and besides being paid for the work, Addison received a Government post, so once more life ran smoothly for him.  He had now both money and leisure.  His Government duties left him time to write, and in the next few years he published a delightful book of his travels, and an opera.

Shy, humorous, courteous, Addison steadily grew popular.  Everything went well with him.  “If he had a mind to be chosen king he would hardly be refused,” said Swift.  He, however, only became a member of Parliament.  But he was too shy ever to make a speech, and presently he went to Ireland as Secretary of State.  Swift and Addison already knew each other, and Addison had sent a copy of his travels to Swift as “to the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.”  Now in Ireland they saw much of each other, and although they were, as Swift himself says, as different as black and white, they became fast friends.  And even later, in those days of bitter party feeling, when Swift left his own side and became a Tory, though their friendship cooled, they never became enemies.  Swift’s bitter pen was never turned against his old friend.  Addison with all his humor and his satire never attacked any man personally, so their relations continued friendly and courteous to the end.