Later years of Joseph Addison

With the death of Queen Anne on August 1, 1714, and the accession of George I, Addison’s political fortunes rose. He was appointed secretary to the regents (who governed until the arrival of the new monarch from Hanover) and in April 1717 was made secretary of state. Ill health, however, forced him to resign the following year. Meanwhile, he had married the dowager countess of Warwick and spent the remaining years of his life in comparative affluence at Holland House in Kensington. A series of political essays, The Free-Holder, or Political Essays, was published from December 23, 1715, to June 29, 1716, and his comedy The Drummer was produced at Drury Lane on March 10, 1716.

Meanwhile, Addison had a quarrel with the most gifted satirist of the age, Alexander Pope, who after Addison’s death would make him the subject of one of the most celebrated satiric “characters” in the English language. In 1715 Pope had been angered by Addison’s support of a rival translation of the Iliad by Thomas Tickell, and in 1735 Pope published “An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” in which there appears a notable portrait of Addison as a narcissistic and envious man of letters. A second quarrel further embittered Addison; the dispute over a bill for restricting the peerage, in which he and Steele took opposing sides, estranged the two friends during the last year of Addison’s life. Addison was buried in Westminster Abbey, near the grave of his old patron and friend Lord Halifax.

Legacy

Addison’s poem on the Battle of Blenheim brought him to the attention of Whig leaders and paved the way to government employment and literary fame. He became an influential supporter of the Whigs (who sought to further the constitutional principles established by the Glorious Revolution) in a number of government posts. As a writer, Addison produced one of the great tragedies of the 18th century in Cato, but his principal achievement was to bring to perfection the periodical essay in his journal, The Spectator. Dr. Samuel Johnson’s praise of The Spectator as a model of prose style established Addison as one of the most admired and influential masters of prose in the language.