This event brought more than mere prosperity to the fortunate young man. If he had been already of note enough to belong to the Kit-Cat Club, with what a blaze of modest glory would he now appear--not swelling in self-conceit, like so many of the wits; not full of silent passion, like the strange big Irish clergyman who pushed into the chattering company in the coffee-house and astounded them with his masterful and arrogant ways: but always modest--never heard at all in a large company, opening out a little when the group dispersed, and an audience fit but few gathered around him--but with one companion _half_ divine. The one companion by and by became often that very same Irishman whose silent prowl about the room in which he knew nobody had amused all the luckier members. Swift found himself in a kind of coffee-house paradise when he got Addison alone, and the two took their wine together, spending their half-crowns according to the stranger’s thrifty record, and wishing for no third. They were as unlike as could be conceived in every particular, and yet what company they must have been, as they sat together, the wine going a little too freely--though Swift was always temperate, and Addison, notwithstanding that common peccadillo, the most irreproachable of men! It was then that the “Travels in Italy” were published, while still the fame of the “Campaign” was warm; and Addison gave his new friend a copy inscribed to “Jonathan Swift, the most Agreeable Companion, the Truest Friend, and the Greatest Genius of his Age.” What quick understanding, what recognition as of two who had been born to know each other! They were both in their prime--Swift thirty-eight, Addison five years younger, still young enough to hope for everything that can befall a man; the one fully entered upon the path of fortune, the other surely so much nearer it for being thus received and welcomed. Addison gave “his little senate laws” for many years in these convivial meetings, and all who surrounded him adored him. But Swift was never again so close a member of the little company. Politics, and the curious part which the Irish parson took in them, separated him from the consistent and moderate politician, who acted faithfully with his party, and who was always true whoever might be false. But Swift held fast to Addison so far at least as feeling was concerned. Over and over he repeated the sentiment, that “if he had a mind to be king he would hardly be refused.” Their meetings ceased, and all those outflowings of wit and wisdom, and the talk long into the night which was the most delightful thing in life; but for years after Swift still continued to say that there was nothing his friend might not be if he would: that his election was carried without a word of opposition when every other member had to fight for his life, and that he might be king in Ireland, or anywhere else, had he the mind. They were used to terms of large