But whether Addison was happy in his married life or not, one sorrow he did have.  Between his old friend, Dick Steele, and himself a coldness grew up.  They disagreed over politics.  Steele thought himself ill-used by his party.  His impatient, impetuous temper was hurt at the cool balance of his friend’s, and so they quarreled.  “I ask no favour of Mr. Secretary Addison,” writes Steele angrily.  During life the quarrel was never made up, but after Addison died Steele spoke of his friend in his old generous manner.  Under his new honors and labours Addison’s health soon gave way.  He suffered much from asthma, and in 1718 gave up his Government post.  A little more than a year later he died.

He met his end cheerfully and peacefully.  “See how a Christian can die,” he said to his wild stepson, the Earl of Warwick, who came to say farewell to his stepfather.

The funeral took place at dead of night in Westminster Abbey.  Whig and Tory alike joined in mourning, and as the torchlight procession wound slowly through the dim isles, the organ played and the choir sang a funeral hymn.

    “How silent did his old companions tread,
    By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead,
    Thro’ breathing statues, then unheeded things,
    Thro’ rows of warriors, and thro’ walks of Kings! 
    What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire,
    The pealing organ, and the pausing choir;
    The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid,
    And the last words, that dust to dust conveyed!

    While speechless o’er thy closing grave we bend,
    Accept these tears, thou dear departed Friend!"*

    T.  Tickell.

So our great essayist was laid to rest, but it was not until many years had come and gone that a statue in his honor was placed in the Poets’ Corner.  This, says Lord Macaulay, himself a great writer, was “a mark of national respect due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and manners.  It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it, who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit with virtue, after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been lead astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism.”

BOOKS TO READ

Sir Roger de Coverley.  The Coverley Papers, edited by O. M. Myers.

Chapter LXVI STEELE—­THE SOLDIER AUTHOR

YOU have heard a little about Dick Steele in connection with Joseph Addison.  Steele is always overshadowed by his great friend, for whom he had such a generous admiration that he was glad to be so overshadowed.  But in this chapter I mean to tell you a little more about him.

He was born, you know, in Dublin in 1671, and early lost his father.  About this he tells us himself in one of the Tatlers: