tation there, before his name
was so much as known in London. When he was in the 22d year of his
age, he published a copy of verses addressed to Mr. Dryden, which soon
procured him the notice of some of the poetical judges in that age. The
verses are not without their elegance, but if they are much removed
above common rhimes, they fall infinitely short of the character Mr.
Addison's friends bestowed upon them. Some little space intervening, he
sent into the world a translation of the 4th Georgic of Virgil, of which
we need not say any more, than that it was commended by Mr. Dryden. He
wrote also that discourse on the Georgics, prefixed to them by way of
preface in Mr. Dryden's translation, and chose to withhold his name from
that judicious composition, because it contained an untried strain of
criticism, which bore hard upon the old professors of that art, and
therefore was not so fit for a young man to take upon himself; and Mr.
Dryden, who was above the meanness of fathering any one's work, owns
the Essay on the Georgics to have come from a friend, whose name is not
mentioned, because he desired to have it concealed.

The next year Mr. Addison wrote several poems of different kinds;
amongst the rest, one addressed to Henry Sacheverel, who became
afterwards so exceedingly famous. The following year he wrote a poem to
King William on one of his Campaigns, addressed to the Lord Keeper (Sir
John Somers.) That excellent statesman received this mark of a young
author's attachment with great humanity, admitted Mr. Addison into the
number of his friends, and gave him on all occasions distinguishing
proofs of a sincere esteem [2]. While he was at the university, he had
been pressingly sollicited to enter into holy orders, which he seemed
once resolved on, probably in obedience to his father's authority; but
being conscious of the importance of the undertaking, and deterred by
his extreme modesty, he relinquished, says Mr. Tickell, all views that
way; but Sir Richard Steel in his letter to Mr. Congreve prefixed to
the Drummer, who had a quarrel with Tickell, on account of an injurious
treatment of him, says, that those were not the reasons which made Mr.
Addison turn his thoughts to the civil world, 'and as you were the
inducement (says he) of his becoming acquainted with my lord Hallifax,
I doubt not but you remember the warm instances that noble lord made
to the head of the college, not to insist on Mr. Addison's going into