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and political opposition, much expence and hazard, he vigorously persevered in carrying his views into execution; we shall, without doubt, be convinced, that few men have deserved better of society; and that no one, every circumstance considered, can with greater propriety be termed a benefactor to mankind.

PART III.

ESSAY I.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF ADDISON.

JOSEPH ADDISON was the eldest son of

the Reverend Launcelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield; and was born on the first of May, 1672, at Milston, near Ambresbury in Wiltshire, of which place his father was then rector.* He was baptized on the day of his birth, owing to his apparently weak state, which threatened a speedy termination to his existence. †

* Dr. Launcelot Addison lived to the age of 71, and at his death, in 1703, left three sons; 1. Joseph; 2. Gulston, who died governor of Fort George in the East Indies; 3. Launcelot, who was first entered in Queen's College, and afterwards master of arts and fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford; and one daughter, Dorothy, first married to Dr. Sartré, formerly minister of Montpelier, and afterwards prebendary of Westminster; and, secondly, to Daniel Combes, Esq. She died March 2, 1750, and left her estate, after the payment of some legacies, for the erection of a monument for her brother Joseph in Westminster Abbey.

+ Mr. Tyers even asserts, that he was laid out for dead as soon as he was born.

Dr. Addison was a man of considerable learning, of amiable manners and unaffected piety; he was consequently solicitous that his children should imbibe the purest principles of virtue and religion, and he exerted every effort of example and precept to render them what he wished. Assuming no portion of harshness on the one hand, nor too much relaxing the reins of discipline on the other, he became the object of united love and reverence to all his family. Steele, who was well acquainted with the Dean, has given us a most lively and exquisite picture of his parental and domestic conduct.

"I remember, among all my acquaintance," say's he," but one man whom I have thought to live with his children with equanimity and a good grace. He had three sons and one daughter, whom he bred with all the care imaginable in a liberal and ingenuous way. I have often heard him say, he had the weakness to love one much better than the other, but that he took as much pains to correct that as any other criminal passion that could arise in his mind. His method was, to make it the only pretension in his children to his favour, to be kind to each other; and he would tell them, that he who was the best brother, he would reckon the best son. This

turned their thoughts into an emulation for the superiority in kind and tender affection towards each other. The boys behaved themselves very early with a manly friendship; and their sister, instead of the gross familiarities and impertinent freedoms in behaviour usual in other houses, was always treated by them with as much complaisance as any other young lady of their acquaintance. It was an unspeakable pleasure to visit, or sit at a meal, in that family. I have often seen the old man's heart flow at his eyes with joy, upon occasions which would appear indiffe rent to such as were strangers to the turn of his mind; but a very slight accident, wherein he saw his children's good-will to one another, created in him the god-like pleasure of loving them, because they loved each other. This great command of himself, in hiding his first impulse to partiality, at last improved to a steady justice towards them; and that, which at first was but an expedient to correct his weakness, was afterwards the measure of his virtue."*

To this judicious treatment of his children in their earliest years, we owe that sweetness of disposition, that philanthropy and piety which distinguished his son Joseph through life. As the

Tatler, No. 235.

Doctor was, however, much employed in the necessary and useful duties of a parish priest, and a great portion of his leisure was devoted to compositions in defence of the established church, young Addison, when arrived at a proper age. for public tuition, was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr. Nash, who at that time kept a school at Ambresbury. He had resided some time, and made no inconsiderable progress with this gentleman, when he was removed by the wish of his father to a larger seminary at Salisbury, under the superintendance of Mr. Taylor.

Here, however, he remained not long; for in 1683, when he had entered his twelfth year, his father, now just promoted to the deanery of Lichfield, and wishing to have his son nearer his new residence, and more beneath his eye, committed him to the care of Mr. Shaw, master of the grammar school in that city, and father of the late Dr. Peter Shaw.

In this situation, nothing more material is recorded of him, than his enterprize and courage in leading and conducting successfully a plan for barring-out his master; a disorderly privilege which, until the middle of the last century, universally prevailed in our principal seminaries for education; where the boys, exulting at the re

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