thrown into mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins
of houses attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the blast."
How Addison felt or fared during this storm, we have no means of knowing.
Perhaps his timid nature shrank from it in spite of its appeal to
imagination, or perhaps the poetry that was in him triumphed over his
fears, and as he felt what _Zanga_ was afterwards to say--

"I love this rocking of the battlements,"

the image of the Angel, afterwards to be dilated into the vast form of
Wrath, described in the "Campaign," rose on his vision, and remained
there indelibly fixed till the time arrived when, used with artistic
skill, it floated him into fame.

Meanwhile, he spent this winter and spring of 1703-4 in a rather
precarious manner, and like a true poet. He was lodging in an obscure
garret in the Haymarket, up three stairs, when one day the Right
Honourable Henry Boyle, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, called on him
and communicated a project that had been concocted between Godolphin and
Halifax. The Whigs were now again in the ascendant, and the battle of
Blenheim, fought on the 13th August 1704, had brought their triumph to
a climax. Halifax and Godolphin were mortified at the bad poems in
commemoration of it which poured from the press. Their feeling was
sincerely that which Byron affected in reference to Wellington and
Waterloo--

"I wish your bards would sing it rather better."

They bethought themselves of Addison, and sent Boyle to request him to
write some verses on the subject. He readily undertook the task, and when