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done violence in this way to higher qualities which were in his nature, and to have checked the growth both of principles and powers which might have made his whole humanity a finer and higher thing than it really was; but there can be no doubt whatever, for all that, that he was a sincere and zealous friend both to morality and religion. He had his weaknesses, like all men; and in some respects, he even led a somewhat free life, when he was out of the public eye; but "of his virtue," as Johnson has observed, "it is a sufficient testimony that the resentment of party has transmitted no charge of any crime." The pious composure in which he died, as evinced by the anecdote of his parting interview with the young nobleman, his step-son,-first told by Dr. Young in his Conjectures on Original Composition,' published in 1759, though previously alluded to by Tickell, in his Elegy on Addison-is known to most readers. Dr. Young's words are:-"After a long and manly, but vain struggle with his distemper, he dismissed his physicians, and with them all hopes of life. But with his hopes of life he dismissed not his concern for the living, but sent for a youth nearly related, and finely accomplished, but not above being the better for good impressions from a dying friend. He came; but, life now glimmering in the socket, the dying friend was silent: after a decent and proper pause, the youth said, 'Dear Sir, you sent for me; I believe and hope that you have some commands: I shall hold them most sacred.' May distant ages not only hear but feel the reply. Forcibly grasping the youth's hand, he softly said,See in what peace a Christian can die.' He spoke with difficulty, and soon expired." Lord Warwick did not long survive his stepfather: he died at the age of twenty-three, in August, 1721. Tyers says that he was esteemed a man of great parts."

Addison's writings present something of the same struggle of opposite principles or tendencies which we find in his character as a man, resulting likewise in the same general effect, of the absence of everything offensive combined with some qualities of high, but none

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perhaps of the highest, excellence. Notwithstanding all the hesitation and embarrassment he is said to have shown on some occasions in the performance of his official duties, so that a common clerk would have to be called in to draw up a despatch which could not wait for his more scrupulous selection of phraseology, he usually wrote easily and rapidly. "When he had taken his resolution," Steele has told us, or made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk about a room and dictate it into language with as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he dictated." (Preface to The Drummer.) Pope told Spence, however, that, though he wrote very fluently, "he was sometimes very slow and scrupulous in correcting." "He would show his

verses," said Pope, "to several friends, and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself, and too much concerned about his character as a poet; or, as he worded it, too solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very little matter after all.' (Anecdotes, p. 49.) By this way of expressing himself, he probably meant to mortify Pope, as well as to make amends, by a piece of moral profession, for his too anxious pursuit of an object which he had neither the self-control to relinquish, nor the heart to enjoy. To Pope he seemed to value himself more upon his poetry than his prose. (Spence, p. 257.) Except, however, in some of his Latin poems, he has scarcely given any example in verse of that easy humour and lively description in which he certainly most excelled. As a writer of serious and elevated poetry, he must be ranked, even without reference to the claims of the school to which he belongs, as standing only a little way above ordinary writers. His 'Cato,' his most ambitious effort, has some stately rhetoric in the principal scenes; but scarcely anything either of true poetic fire, or of the dramatic spirit. Even of strength and beauty of imagination, he has shown much more in his prose than in his poetry; so much, indeed, in one or two instances, as to seem to prove that what he most wanted

to make him a much greater poet was only more selfconfidence and daring. There is far more poetry in his prose Vision of Mirza' and his Roger de Coverley,' than in all the verse he ever wrote. But his most remarkable and peculiar quality, and that in which he most overflowed, was undoubtedly his light, graceful, delicate humour; never, indeed, rising to anything very subtle or aërial; seldom pouring itself out in any rush of mere derisive mirth; not dazzling us with its sparkles of wit and fancy; but with its quiet, even, smiling stream refreshing and illuminating all things, and awakening a pleasurable sense of the ludicrous probably in a larger number and greater variety of minds than any other writer ever succeeded in touching with that emotion. It is the only humour, perhaps, that is perfectly to the satisfaction of the great multitude of reading men and women, who find Swift and Sterne revolting, and Shakspere unintelligible, but to whom Addison enlivens the picture of their familiar daily life, or the general aspect of human society and human nature, with a bright transparent varnish, the effect of which has nothing in it to startle the most simple understanding. A great change of manners, however, and a considerable change of taste, are fast diminishing the once universal popularity of the Tatler' and 'Spectator;' and they will probably very soon be little read. Addison's prose has been praised by Johnson as the model of the middle style;" and, while it is eminently easy, unaffected, and perspicuous, it has a fair degree of purity, and often considerable melody and grace of expression. But, with all its merits, it has scarcely character enough to maintain itself as a model; and it may be apprehended that it is a rare thing now for any one "to give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison," as Johnson recommends, whatever description of English style he wishes to attain. (From the Biographical Dictionary of the Society of Useful Knowledge.,

MARLBOROUGH.

JOHN CHURCHILL, Duke of Marlborough, the restorer of the tarnished lustre of British arms, the ablest general and one of the most consummate statesmen of his times, was born at Ashe in Devonshire, on the 24th of June, 1650, just five days before Oliver Cromwell marched into Scotland, to open that memorable campaign which was terminated by his great victory at Dunbar. As devoted royalists, the Churchills were at this time under a cloud.

Our hero was the second son of Sir Winston Churchill, a gentleman of ancient family (said to have been settled in the West of England ever since the Norman conquest) whose fortunes had suffered severely during the civil wars, through his steady adherence to Charles I. Sir Winston's wife, and the mother of his numerous family, was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Drake of Ashe, who came of the same good old Devonshire stock as Sir Francis Drake, that illustrious warrior and circumnavi