Complete. From “Imaginary Conversations.”

Addison—
DICK! I am come to remonstrate with you on the unlucky habits which have been so detrimental to your health and fortune.

  Steele—Many thanks, Mr. Addison; but really my fortune is not much improved by your arresting me for the hundred pounds; nor is my health, if spirits are an indication of it, on seeing my furniture sold by auction to raise the money.

  Addison—Pooh, pooh, Dick! what furniture had you about the house?

  Steele—At least I had the armchair, of which you never before had dispossessed me longer than the evening; and happy should I have been to enjoy your company in it again and again, if you had left it me.

  Addison—We will contrive to hire another. I do assure you, my dear Dick, I have really felt for you.

  Steele—I only wish, my kind friend, you had not put out your feelers quite so far, nor exactly in this direction; and that my poor wife had received an hour’s notice; she might have carried a few trinkets to some neighbor. She wanted her salts; and the bailiff thanked her for the bottle that contained them, telling her the gold head of it was worth pretty nearly half a guinea.

  Addison—Lady Steele then wanted her smelling bottle? Dear me! the weather, I apprehend, is about to change. Have you any symptoms of your old gout?

  Steele—My health has been long on the decline, you know.

  Addison—Too well I know it, my dear friend, and I hinted it as delicately as I could. Nothing on earth beside this consideration should have induced me to pursue a measure in appearance so unfriendly. You must grow more temperate … you really must.

  Steele—Mr. Addison, you did not speak so gravely and so firmly when we used to meet at Will’s. You always drank as much as I did, and often invited and pressed me to continue, when I was weary, sleepy, and sick.

  Addison—You thought so because you were drunk. Indeed, at my own house I have sometimes asked you to take another glass, in compliance with the rules of society and hospitality.

  Steele—Once, it is true, you did it at your house; the only time I ever had an invitation to dine in it. The Countess was never fond of the wit that smells of wine; her husband could once endure it.

  Addison—We could talk more freely, you know, at the tavern. There we have dined together some hundred times.

  Steele—Most days, for many years.

  Addison—Ah, Dick! Since we first met there, several of our friends are gone off the stage.

  Steele—And some are still acting.

  Addison—Forbear, my dear friend, to joke and smile at infirmities or vices. Many have departed from us, in consequence, I apprehend, of indulging in the bottle! When passions are excited, when reason is disturbed, when reputation is sullied, when fortune is squandered, and when health is lost by it, a retreat is sounded in vain. Some cannot hear it, others will not profit by it.

  Steele—I must do you the justice to declare that I never saw any other effect of hard drinking upon you than to make you more circumspect and silent.

  Addison—If ever I urged you, in the warmth of my heart, to transgress the bounds of sobriety, I entreat you as a Christian to forgive me.

  Steele—Most willingly, most cordially.

  Addison—I feel confident that you will think of me, speak of me, and write of me, as you have ever done, without a diminution of esteem. We are feeble creatures; we want one another’s aid and assistance; a want ordained by Providence, to show us at once our insufficiency and our strength. We must not abandon our friends from slight motives, nor let our passions be our interpreters in their own cause. Consistency is not more requisite to the sound Christian than to the accomplished politician.

  Steele—I am inconsistent in my resolutions of improvement … no man ever was more so; but my attachments have a nerve in them neither to be deadened by ill treatment nor loosened by indulgence. A man grievously wounded knows by the acuteness of the pain that a spirit of vitality is yet in him. I know that I retain my friendship for you by what you have made me suffer.

  Addison—Entirely for your own good, I do protest, if you could see it.

  Steele-Alas! all our sufferings are so; the only mischief is that we have no organs for perceiving it.

  Addison—You reason well, my worthy sir; and relying on your kindness in my favor (for every man has enemies, and those mostly who serve their friends best), I say, Dick, on these considerations, since you never broke your word with me, and since I am certain you would be sorry it were known that fourscore pounds’ worth could be found in the house, I renounce for the present the twenty yet wanting. Do not beat about for an answer; say not one word; farewell.

  Steele—Ah! could not that cold heart, often and long as I reposed on it, bring me to my senses! I have, indeed, been drunken; but it is hard to awaken in such heaviness as this of mine is. I shared his poverty with him; I never aimed to share his prosperity. Well, well; I cannot break old habits. I love my glass; I love Addison. Each will partake in killing me. Why cannot I see him again in the armchair, his right hand upon his heart under the fawn-colored waistcoat, his brow erect and clear as his conscience; his wig even and composed as his temper, with measurely curls and antithetical topknots, like his style; the calmest poet, the most quiet patriot; dear Addison! drunk, deliberate, moral, sentimental, foaming over with truth and virtue, with tenderness and friendship, and only the worse in one ruffle for the wine.