7. JOSEPH ADDISON (+1672-1719+), the most elegant prose-writer-- as Pope was the most polished verse-writer-- of the eighteenth century, was born at Milston, in Wiltshire, in the year 1672. He was educated at Charterhouse School, in London, where one of his friends and companions was the celebrated Dick Steele-- afterwards Sir Richard Steele. He then went to Oxford, where he made a name for himself by his beautiful compositions in Latin verse. In 1695 he addressed a poem to King William; and this poem brought him into notice with the Government of the day. Not long after, he received a pension of £300 a-year, to enable him to travel; and he spent some time in France and Italy. The chief result of this tour was a poem entitled +A Letter from Italy+ to Lord Halifax. In 1704, when Lord Godolphin was in search of a poet who should celebrate in an adequate style the striking victory of Blenheim, Addison was introduced to him by Lord Halifax. His poem called +The Campaign+ was the result; and one simile in it took and held the attention of all English readers, and of “the town.” A violent storm had passed over England; and Addison compared the calm genius of Marlborough, who was as cool and serene amid shot and shell as in a drawing-room or at the dinner-table, to the Angel of the Storm. The lines are these:-- “So when an Angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.” For this poem Addison was rewarded with the post of Commissioner of Appeals. He rose, successively, to be Under Secretary of State; Secretary for Ireland; and, finally, Secretary of State for England-- an office which would correspond to that of our present Home Secretary. He married the Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor; but it was not a happy marriage. Pope says of him in regard to it, that-- “He married discord in a noble wife.” He died at Holland House, Kensington, London, in the year 1719, at the age of forty-seven.