Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 1.djvu/157

Rh of party: Addison raised his objections, and lord Bolingbroke answered them with great complaisance."

From all these accounts, we may see what an amazing difference there was been the minds of Swift and Addison. What a grandeur in the one, what a littleness in the other! Swift, though deeply engaged with the successful party, using all his endeavours to prevent a difference in politicks, from creating a disunion among men of genius: Addison, from a narrowness of mind, growing cool to a man for whose talents he had professed the highest admiration, and for whose person the warmest regard, merely because they were of different parties. Swift, in the plenitude of power, when another would have been glad of so fair a pretence for breaking off all commerce with him, perseveres in his good offices toward him, as if their friendship were still mutual and inviolate; sets him on a good footing with the ministry, and preserves him and his friends, notwithstanding the ill behaviour of the latter in their employments. Addison, notwithstanding he had forfeited all pretensions to Swift's friendship by his unmanly behaviour, and during the continuance of his coldness, is mean enough to solicit Swift's interest in favour of some of his friends. Swift, though never under the least obligation to Addison when he was in power, exerts his interest as if he had been under the highest; and among others, procures for Harrison, one of Mr. Addison's recommending, an employment of no less than twelve hundred pounds a year. When indeed Steele had the assurance, as Swift justly expresses it, of desiring the same favour, he shows what a difference he made between the men,