115 



marked, that fire is a conclusive, but not a convincing argu- 

 ment; it will certainly destroy any book, but it refutes none.* 

 In an Obituary, preserved in Peck's Desid. Curiosa, it thus 

 mentions the death of a Jeffery Fleetwood, " leaving a wife 

 and six little children behind him. God bless them. One 

 of these little children was the famous William Fleetwood, 

 Bishop of Ely." 



Joseph Addison, Esq. There is an original portrait of 

 this eminent man, at Holland House. Another at Oxford. 

 Noble's continuation of Granger enumerates several engrav- 

 ings of him, from Kneller's portraits. Dayl, the painter, also 

 drew him. His portrait appears in the Kit Cat Club. In Ire- 

 land's " Picturesque Views on the River Avon," he gives an 

 interesting description of Mr. Addison's house at Bilton, 

 near Rugby, two miles from Dunchurch; with a view of the 

 same. The house " remains precisely in the state it was at 

 the decease of its former possessor, nor has the interior 

 suffered much change in its former decoration. The furni- 

 ture and pictures hold their places with an apparent sacred 

 attention to his memory. Among the latter, are three of 

 himself, at different periods of his life ; in each of which is 

 strongly marked with the pencil, the ease of the gentleman, 

 and the open and ingenuous character of the friend to hu- 

 manity." From Dr. Drake's Biographical Sketch of Addison, 

 it appears, that these portraits were still remaining in his 

 house in 1797. A copy of the above view is given in the 

 Monthly Magazine for February, 1822, and it there says, 

 that '* the spacious gardens retain the fashion of the age of 

 the Spectator." The origin of the modern style of landscape 

 gardening, or the first writers on that subject, were unques- 

 tionably Mr. Addison, in Nos. 414 and 477 of the Spectator, 



* Mr. Johnson, in his History of English Gardening, admirably confirms 

 this conflagration argument, by quoting the opinion or testimony of the cele- 

 brated Goethe. 



