Note 81 — Chapter I · N THE LIFE OF A STATESMAN,

Young Craggs was the son of a barber, who, by his merit, became Postmaster-general, and home-agent to the Duke of Marlborough; he was one of the first characters of the age, and had distinguished himself in the House of Commons. The classical names of Damon and Pythias, of Pylades and Orestes, of Nisus and Euryalus, are not oftener found conjoined in ancient story than those of Addison and Craggs in the real life of modern times. Addison, notwithstanding the discomfiture evinced in these letters, succeeded in procuring the appointment of a Lord Commissioner at the Board of Trade, which post he held till he was made Secretary of State, April 16, 1717. But Addison was then fast sinking into a bad habit of body: his great care was how to live, and, as Tacitus Gordon, his great admirer, used to relate, was then killing himself in drinking the widow Trueby's water, spoken of in the "Spectator." Unfit for the drudgery of a political life,—the pack-horse of the state,—he pleaded the being incapable of supporting the fatigues of his office, and resigned the seals in March 1718, upon a pension from the King of seventeen hundred pounds per annum. Craggs, who was his successor, died prematurely and unmarried, in his twenty-eighth year, in 1721.