In 1708 Addison lost his post as under-secretary by a change of the ministry, or rather of the minister, it being the habit in those days to form a government piecemeal, a Whig here, a Tory there, as favor or circumstances required, so that it was by no means needful that all should go out or come in together. In fact, no sooner was the under-secretary deprived of one place than he obtained another, that of secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, the same office, we presume, as that which is now called chief secretary for Ireland, though its seriousness and power are now so much greater. In those days there was no Irish people to deal with, but only a very lively, contentious, pushing, and place-hunting community--the Protestant English-Irish, which, so far as literature and public knowledge go, has been accepted as the type of the much darker and less simple character of the Celt. The wild, mystic, morose, and often cruel nature of the native race, with its gleams of poetry and dreams of fortune, has turned out a very different thing to reckon with. No such problem was presented to the statesmen of that time. The admixture of Irish blood would seem to go to the head of the Saxon and endow him with a gaiety and sparkle which does not exist either in one race or the other unmixed; and it was with the society formed on this basis, the ascendant minority, contemptuous of every possible power of the people so-called, yet far less unsympathetic than the anxious politicians of to-day, that Addison had to deal. His post was “very lucrative,” we are told--in fees and pieces of patronage, no doubt, for the income was but £2000 a year--and he soon acquired an even greater popularity on the one side of the channel than on the other. Something amiable and conciliatory must have rayed out of the man: otherwise it is curious to understand the popularity in brilliant and talkative Dublin of a stranger whose chief efforts in conversation were only to be accomplished _tête-a-tête_. But he had the foil of a detestable and detested chief--Wharton, whose corrupt and brutal character gave double acceptance to the secretary’s charm and goodness, and the Tories contended with the Whigs, says Swift, which should speak best of this favorite of fortune. “How can you think so meanly of a kingdom,” he exclaims, “as not to be pleased that every creature in it who hath one grain of worth has a veneration for you?” It is not often that even in hyperbole such a thing can be said.