TO MR. CONGREVE,

OCCASIONED BY

MR. TICKELL'S PREFACE TO THE FOUR VOLUMES OF MR. ADDISON'S WORKS.

SIR,

THIS is the second time that I have, without your leave, taken the liberty to make a public address to you. However uneasy you may be, for your own sake, in receiving compliments of this nature, I depend upon your known humanity for pardon, when I acknowledge, that you have this present trouble for mine. When I take myself to be ill-treated with regard to my behaviour to the merit of other men, my conduct towards you is an argument of my candour that way, as well as that your name and authority will be my protection in it. You will give me leave, therefore, in a matter that concerns us in the poetical world, to make you my judge, whether I am not injured in the highest manner; for with men of your taste and delicacy, it is a high crime and misdemeanour to be guilty of anything that is disingenuous : but I will go into the matter.

Upon my return out of Scotland, I visited Mr. Tonson's shop, and thanked him for his care in sending to my house the volumes of my dear and honoured friend, Mr. ADDISON, which are at last published by his secretary, Mr. Tickell; but took occasion to observe, that I had not seen the work before it came out, which he did not think fit to excuse any otherwise than by a recrimination, that I had put into his hands at an high price, "A Comedy called The Drummer;" which, by my zeal for it, he took to be written by Mr. Addison, and of which, after his death, he said I directly acknowledged he was the author. To urge this hardship still more home, he produced a receipt under my hand in these words:.

" March 12, 1715.

"Received then the sum of fifty guineas for the copy of the comedy called The Drummer, or the Haunted House. say received by order of the author of the said comedy. "RICHARD STEELE."

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And added, at the same time, that, since Mr. Tickell had not thought fit to make that play a part of Mr. Addison's Works, he would sell the copy to any bookseller that would give most for it.

This is represented thus circumstantially, to show how incumbent it is upon me, as well in justice to the bookseller, as for many other considerations, to produce this comedy a second time, and take this occasion to vindicate myself against certain insinuations thrown out by the publisher of Mr. Addison's writings, concerning my behaviour in the nicest circumstance, that of doing justice to the merit of my friend.

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I shall take the liberty, before I have ended this letter, to say, why I believe the Drummer a performance of Mr. Addison and after I have declared this, any surviving writer may be at ease, if there be any one who has hitherto been vain enough to hope, or silly enough to fear, it may be given to himself.

Before I go any further, I must make my public appeal to you and all the learned world, and humbly demand, whether it was a decent or reasonable thing, that works written (as a great part of Mr. Addison's were) in correspondence with me, ought to have been published without my review of the catalogue of them; or if there were any exception to be made against any circumstance in my conduct, whether an opportunity to explain myself should not have been allowed me before any reflections were made upon me in print.

When I had perused Mr. Tickell's preface, I had soon many objections, besides his omission to say anything of the Drummer, against his long-expected performance. The chief intention of which, and which it concerns me first to examine, seems to aim at doing the deceased author justice against me, whom he insinuates to have assumed to myself part of the merit of my friend.

He is pleased, sir, to express himself concerning the present writer in the following manner:

1"The comedy called The Tender Husband, appeared much about the same time, to which Mr. Addison wrote the Prologue. Sir Richard Steele surprised him with a very handsome dedication of this play, and has since acquainted the public that he owed some of the most taking scenes of it to Mr. Addison."

2“ He was in that kingdom [Ireland] when he first dis. › covered Sir Richard Steele to be the author of the Tatler, by an observation upon Virgil, which had been by him communicated to his friend. The assistance he occasionally gave him afterwards in the course of the paper, did not a little contribute to advance its reputation; and upon the change of the ministry, he found leisure to engage more constantly in that work, which, however, was dropt at last, as it had been taken up, without his participation.

"In the last paper, which closed those celebrated performances, and in the preface to the last volume, Sir Richard Steele has given to Mr. Addison the honour of the most applauded pieces in that collection. But as that acknowledgment was delivered only in general terms, without directing the public to the several papers; Mr. Addison, who was content with the praise arising from his own works, and too delicate to take any part of that which belonged to others, afterwards thought fit to distinguish his writings in the Spectators and Guardians by such marks as might remove the least possibility of mistake in the most undiscerning readers. It was necessary that his share in the Tatlers should be adjusted in a complete collection of his works; for which reason Sir Richard Steele, in compliance with the request of his deceased friend, delivered to him by the editor, was pleased to mark with his own hand those Tatlers which are inserted in this edition, and even to point out several, in the writing of which they both were concerned."

3" The plan of the Spectator, as far as it regards the feigned person of the author, and of the several characters that compose his club, was projected in concert with Sir Richard Steele; and because many passages in the course of the work would otherwise be obscure, I have taken leave to insert one single paper, written by Sir Richard Steele, wherein those characters are drawn which may serve as a 3 Page 13.

1 Mr. Tickell's Preface, page 11.

2 Page 12.

Dramatis Personæ, or as so many pictures for an ornament and explication of the whole. As for the distinct papers, they were never or seldom shown to each other by their respective authors, who fully answered the promise they had made, and far out-went the expectation they had raised of pursuing their labour in the same spirit and strength with which it was begun.'

It need not be explained, that it is here intimated that I had not sufficiently acknowledged what was due to Mr. Addison in these writings. I shall make a full answer to what seems intended by the words, "He was too delicate to take any part of that which belonged to others," if I can recite out of my own papers anything that may make it appear groundless.

The subsequent encomiums bestowed by me on Mr. Addison will, I hope, be of service to me in this particular.

1" But I have only one gentleman, 'who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent assistance to me; which, indeed, it would have been barbarous in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in an intimacy from childhood, considering the great ease with which he is able to despatch the most entertaining pieces of this nature. This good office he performed with such force of genius, humour, wit, and learning, that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid; I was undone by my auxiliary: when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.

"The same hand writ the distinguishing characters of men and women, under the names of Musical Instruments, the Distress of the News-Writers, the Inventory of the Playhouse, and the Description of the Thermometer, which I cannot but look upon as the greatest embellishments of this work."

2" As to the work itself, the acceptance it has met with is the best proof of its value; but I should err against that candour which an honest man should always carry about him, if I did not own, that the most approved pieces in it were written by others, and those which have been most excepted against, by myself. The hand that has assisted me in those noble discourses upon the immortality of the Tatler, No. 271.

1 Preface to the 4th vol. of the Tatlers.

soul, the glorious prospects of another life, and the most sublime ideas of religion and virtue, is a person who is too fondly my friend ever to own them: but I should little deserve to be his, if I usurped the glory of them. I must acknowledge, at the same time, that I think the finest strokes of wit and humour, in all Mr. Bickerstaff's lucubrations, are those for which he is also beholden to him."

"I hope the apology I have made as to the licence allowable to a feigned character, may excuse anything which has been said in these discourses of the SPECTATOR and his works. But the imputation of the grossest vanity would still dwell upon me, if I did not give some account by what means I was enabled to keep up the spirit of so long and approved a performance. All the papers marked with a C, L, I, or O; that is to say, all the papers which I have distinguished by any letter in the name of the muse CLIO, were given me by the gentleman, of whose assistance I formerly boasted in the preface and concluding leaf of the Tatler. I am, indeed, much more proud of his long-continued friendship, than I should be of the fame of being thought the author of any writings which he himself is capable of producing. I remember when I finished the Tender Husband, I told him, there was nothing I so ardently wished as that we might some time or other publish a work written by us both, which should bear the name of the Monument, in memory of our friendship. I heartily wish what I have done here, were as honorary to that sacred name, as learning, wit, and humanity, render those pieces which I have taught the reader how to distinguish for his. When the play abovementioned was last acted, there were so many applauded strokes in it, which I had from the same hand, that I thought very meanly of myself that I had never publicly acknowledged them. After I have put other friends upon importuning him to publish dramatic, as well as other writings he has by him, I shall end what I think I am obliged to say on this head, by giving my reader this hint for the better judging of my productions, that the best comment upon them would be an account when the patron to the Tender Husband was in England or abroad.

2" My purpose, in this application, is only to show the 1 Spectator, No. 555.

2 Dedication before the Tender Husband.