Soon after, he was, from being one of the Lords Commissioners of Trade, advanced to the post of Secretary of State; he found his health impaired by the return of that asthmatic indisposition; which continued often, to afflict him during his exercise of that employment: and, at last, obliged him to beg His Majesty's leave to resign. His freedom from the anxiety of business so far re-established his health, that his friends began to hope he might last for many years: but (whether it were from a life too sedentary; or from his natural constitution, in which was one circumstance very remarkable, that, from his cradle, he never had a regular pulse) a long and painful relapse into an asthma and dropsy deprived the World of this great man, on the 17th of June, 1719. He left behind him only one daughter, by the Countess of WARWICK; to whom he was married in the year 1716. Not many days before his death, he gave me directions to collect his Writings, and at the same time committed to my care the _Letter_ addressed to _Mr. CRAGGS_, his successor as Secretary of State, wherein he bequeaths them to him, as a token of friendship. Such a testimony, from the First Man of our Age, in such a point of time, will be perhaps as great and lasting an honour to that Gentleman as any even he could acquire to himself, and yet it is no more than was due from an affection that justly increased towards him, through the intimacy of several years. I cannot, save with the utmost tenderness, reflect on the kind concern with which Mr. ADDISON left Me as a sort of incumbrance upon this valuable legacy. Nor must I deny myself the honour to acknowlege that the goodness of that Great Man to me, like many other of his amiable qualities, seemed not so much to be renewed, as continued in his successor; who made me an example, that nothing could be indifferent to him which came recommended to Mr. ADDISON. Could any circumstance be more severe to me, while I was executing these Last Commands of the Author, than to see the Person to whom his Works were presented, cut off in the flower of his age, and carried from the high Office wherein he had succeeded Mr. ADDISON, to be laid next him, in the same grave? I might dwell upon such thoughts as naturally rise from these minute resemblances in the fortune of two persons, whose names probably will be seldom mentioned asunder while either our Language or Story subsist; were I not afraid of making this _Preface_ too tedious: especially since I shall want all the patience of the reader, for having enlarged it with the following verses. _To the_ EARL OF WARWICK _On the Death of_ MR. ADDISON.