HIS PERSON AND CHARACTER.--In closing this brief sketch of Addison, a few
words are necessary as to his personality, and an estimate of his powers.
In 1716 he married the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, and parted with
independence to live with a coronet. His married life was not happy. The
lady was cold and exacting; and, it must be confessed, the poet loved a
bottle at the club-room or tavern better than the luxuries of Holland
House; and not infrequently this conviviality led him to excess. He died
in 1719, in his forty-eighth year, and made a truly pious end. He wished,
he said, to atone for any injuries he had done to others, and sent for his
sceptical and dissolute step-son, Lord Warwick, to show him how a
Christian could die. A monument has been erected to his memory in the
Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, and the closing words of the
inscription upon it calls him "the honor and delight of the English
nation."
As a man, he was grave and retiring: he had a high opinion of his own
powers; in company he was extremely diffident; in the main, he was moral,
just, and consistent.
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