Addison, JOSEPH, was born on the 1st of May 1672. He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison, then rector of Milston, in Wiltshire, and afterwards dean of Lichfield, and of Jane, his wife, daughter of Dr Nathaniel Gulston. He was educated at Amesbury, at the grammar-school in Lichfield, and afterwards at the Charter-house, from which, in his sixteenth year, he passed to Queen's College, Oxford. Having obtained a demyship at Magdalen, he proceeded to his Master's degree in 1693, and in the same year began his literary career with a poetical address to Dryden. Next year appeared his Account of the Greatest English Poets, and a translation of the fourth book of the Georgics, with an Essay on that poem. Through Dryden, he became acquainted with Jacob Tonson, the publisher, and by him was introduced to Charles Montague and Somers, at whose suggestion, probably, he wrote in 1695 his complimentary Address to King William. In 1697 he was elected probationary fellow of his college, and would in the regular course have been obliged to take orders, had not Montague, who wished him to enter political life, prevailed on the president not to insist on the fulfilment of this condition. Through the influence of Montague, he obtained in 1699 a pension from the crown of £300, for the purpose of enlarging his experience by continental travel. He spent four years in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Holland, during which period he wrote his Letter to Lord Halifax, and made notes for his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, and his Dialogue on Medals. He returned to England in the autumn of 1703. His chief patron, Halifax, having been removed by Queen Anne, on her accession, from the Privy Council, he was now without hope of political advancement, and was apparently reduced to a state approaching poverty, when he was invited by the ministry, acting on the advice of Halifax, to commemorate in verse the victory of Blenheim. This was the origin of The Campaign, written in 1704, in return for which he received a commissionery of appeal in Excise.
In 1706 he was promoted to be under-secretary of state, first to Sir Charles Hedges, and, after his removal, to the Earl of Sunderland. While acting in this capacity, he produced his opera Rosamond, which was performed, but without much success, in April 1706. In 1707 he attended Lord Halifax to the court of Hanover, whither the latter was sent to carry the Act for the Naturalisation of the Electress Sophia. When the Earl of Sunderland was replaced in 1708 by Lord Dartmouth, Addison found himself without employment, but he was almost at once appointed by Lord Wharton, who at that time became lord-lieutenant of Ireland, to the post of secretary. In this year he was also elected member of parliament for Lostwithiel, and on that election being invalidated, was chosen to represent Malmesbury. While he was secretary in Ireland, he formed a warm friendship with Swift, who frequently mentions him with affection in his Journal to Stella, and regrets the estrangement which afterwards grew up in consequence of their party differences. He also contributed largely to the Tatler, which had been started by his friend Steele in 1709; 41 papers being wholly by Addison, and 34 by him and Steele conjointly. The Whig ministry fell in the autumn of 1710, and Addison had to vacate his appointment, though he was allowed to keep, apparently through Swift's influence, the keepership of the records in Birmingham's Tower, a place worth £400 a year. In March 1711 was founded the Spectator, 274 numbers of which, namely those signed with one of the letters C L I O, were the work of Addison.
His fortune was now so much augmented, that in 1711 he was enabled to purchase for £10,000 the estate of Bilton, near Rugby. While he was on his travels, he had written four acts of his tragedy, Cato, which his political friends, perceiving that it would be valuable for party purposes, persuaded him in 1713 to finish for the stage. It was acted on the 14th of April 1713, and in consequence of the vehement party-spirit of the times, aroused such enthusiasm, that it kept the stage for thirty-five nights. When the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, Addison, in promotion of Whig interests, attacked its commercial policy in a pamphlet called The Late Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff. These party services gave him great consideration with the Whigs, and on the death of Queen Anne in August 1714, he was named secretary to the lord-justices appointed provisionally to administer affairs. After the accession of George I., he became once more secretary to the Earl of Sunderland as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, holding the appointment till August 1715. In this year, a suspicion that he was the author of Tickell's translation of the first book of the Iliad, brought him into collision with Pope, who afterwards satirised him in the famous character of Atticus, declaring, in all probability falsely, that he had actually sent the verses to Addison himself. He also wrote his comedy of The Drummer, which was acted without success at Drury Lane; and, in order to reconcile the nation to the accession of the House of Brunswick, at the instigation of the government he started the Freeholder, which was continued from December 23, 1715, to June 9, 1716. He was soon afterwards made one of the commissioners for trade and colonies, and in August 1716, married Charlotte, Countess of Warwick. A report, in all probability unfounded, as it is inconsistent with the mention of the Countess in Addison's will, says that the marriage was an unhappy one. In April 1717 he was appointed secretary of state, but resigned his post, owing to his failing health, in March 1718. Almost his last literary undertaking was unfortunately a paper-war, on the subject of the Peerage Bill of 1719, with his old friend Steele, whose attack on the bill in a series of pamphlets called the Plebeian, was answered by Addison in the Old Whig. He was suffering at the time from asthma; dropsy soon after supervened; and he died at Holland House, on the 17th of June 1719, at the age of 47.
Addison's literary genius must be judged from different points of view. As a poet, his capacity is very moderate. The Campaign professes to be no more than an unadorned recital in verse of Marlborough's exploits; Cato is written with great elegance and correctness, but is wanting in dramatic spirit; the Letter to Lord Halifax has many fine verses, particularly in the apostrophe to Liberty. As a light essayist he has no equal, and scarcely a second, in English literature. It was his object to form a sound public taste, and to recover the nation from the distracted intellectual state into which it had fallen after the Restoration, by preserving the morality of the Puritans without their fanaticism, and the elegance of the court without its licentiousness. The noble monument of his success is the Spectator, a paper in which the foundations of all that is sound and healthy in modern English thought may readily be traced. As an 'abstract and brief chronicle' of the manners of the time, it is incomparable, and the name of Sir Roger de Coverley alone is associated with one of those creations which are instinctively selected as characteristic of the English genius and language. Addison's criticism does not aim at being profound; but in its sobriety and good sense, it afforded precisely the antidote which the age required against the extravagant conceits and false wit which had found favour with the 17th century. The praise of his prose style has been written by Johnson, and it is not exaggerated; his manner reflects the peculiar character of his humour, a singular grace and breeding being conveyed in sentences full of subtle irony, which are balanced without being formal, and though constructed with apparent simplicity, defy mechanical imitation. See the Life, by Lucy Aikin (1843), and Macaulay's review of it; also the present writer's Addison (1884).