the Fox family, by whom the title had been
consequently allowed to be taken; and in
the possession of this distinguished race it
remains.

Addison, notwithstanding the popularity
of the Foxes, is still the greatest celebrity of
Holland House. His death in it is its
greatest event. Places in the vicinity are
named after him; and the favourite record
of its library is the tradition, before mentioned,
of the bottle of wine at each end of it, by
which he is said to have refreshed his
moralities, while concocting their sentences to
and fro.

It is added, unfortunately, that Addison
drank the more because he was unhappily
married. The question is still discussed, and
will probably never be settled. The received
opinion is, that Addison's marriage with the
Countess of Warwick originated in his being
tutor to her son; that the Countess became
ashamed of it, as a descension from her rank;
and that their lives were rendered unhappy
in consequence. The prevalence of this opinion
appears to have been owing to Johnson's
Lives of the Poets, in which the case is
stated with so evident a willingness to
believe it, that people in general, who are
ready enough to fall in with such an inclination,
have overlooked the manifest assumptions
on which it is founded, and the "saids"
and "perhapses" with which it is qualified.
Setting aside higher points of view on such
questions, there is, in fact, no proof that
Addison was tutor to the young Earl, or that
the Countess felt any regret for the marriage
on the score of rank. Tutorship, had he been
a tutor, need not have hindered him from
making a pleasant husband. Tutors have
married highly, before and since, and have
become lords and archbishops; and though
the lady was a countess by marriage, her
birth was but that of a baronet's daughter.
The truth of the matter we take to have
been, that the match was unsuitable on
very ordinary grounds. The lady was well
and merry; the gentleman fit only to
muse. Addison died at the end of three
years. And hence (as Johnson would have
been the first to say, had anybody provoked
him to differ with the other opinion) hence
all this mighty fuss, sir, about a tutor, and a
countess, and the punctilios of rank.

Mighty versions are often given to things
that have quite another significancy. It has
been questioned of late under what real
impulse another circumstance occurred, which
is connected with Addison and Holland
House. We allude to the famous words
which he is said to have addressed in his
last moments to the young Earl of Warwick:
"See in what peace a Christian can die."
The story originated with Young, who said
he had it from Tickell; adding, that the Earl
led an irregular life, and that Addison wished
to reclaim him. But according to Malone, who
was a scrupulous inquirer, there is no
evidence of the Earl's having led any such life;
and Walpole, in one of his letters that were
published not long ago, startled—we should
rather say shocked—the world, by telling
them that Addison "died of brandy." It is
acknowledged by his best friends, that the
gentle moralist, whose bodily temperament
was as sorry a one as his mind was otherwise,
had gradually been tempted to stimulate it
with wine, until he became intemperate in the
indulgence. It is impossible to say what
other stimulants might not gradually have
crept in; nor is it improbable that, during
the patient's last hours, the physician himself
might have ordered them. Addison, therefore,
may have had some stimulus given him,
whatever it was, not because he had
contracted a habit which he could not leave off,
and so "died of it," but because, like many
a sober man before him, he had not strength
enough to speak without it. Again, he might
or might not have known the nature of the
draught, yet still have regarded his peace of
mind as a thing apart from the composure of
his nerves, and justly founded on what had
been a conviction of his life. He might have
said to himself, "Nothing can compose me
longer, but my religious belief. Let me show
in this last trial, how tranquillising it can
be." It is in vain that we fancy the light
spirit of Walpole laughing at us for these
considerations—saying to us, "Oh, what need
of words? He died drunk and maudlin, and
there's an end." We cannot thus consent to
think the worst, instead of best, of a man
who has given the world so much instruction
and entertainment, and whose Christianity,
at all events, was of a kind superior to vulgar
intolerances, and who was disposed to think
the best of most things.

Good words are good things; yet good
deeds are better. Addison, we doubt not,
had his rights of comfort from both; yet
there is one thing which we could have
preferred his doing in his last hours, to
anything which he may have said. It is the
amends which, for some mysterious reason
or other, he said he would have made to Gay,
"if he lived." The story, as related by Pope,
is, that "a fortnight before Addison's death,
Lord Warwick came to Gay, and pressed him
in a very particular manner to go and see
Mr. Addison, which he had not done for a
great while. Gay went, and found Addison
in a very weak way. Addison received him
in the kindest manner, and told him that he
had desired this visit to beg his pardon; that
he had injured him greatly; but that if he
lived, he should find that he would make it
up to him. Gay, on his going to Hanover,
had great reasons to hope for some good
preferment; but all those views came to nothing.
It is not impossible but that Mr. Addison
might prevent them, from his thinking
Gay too well with some of the former
ministry. He did not at all explain
himself in what he had injured him; and Gay