lain to Fisher, bishop of Rochester, and in the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII he was attainted by parliament of misprision of treason for concealment of the pretended revelations of Elizabeth Barton, the ‘Holy Maid of Kent,’ and it was enacted that he should lose his spiritual promotions from 20 March 1533–4.
Dr. Addison superintended the publication of Bishop Fisher's ‘Assertionis Lutheranæ Confutatio,’ 1523, and had a grant from the king of the sole printing of it for three years. In or about 1538 he wrote a book in support of the pope's supremacy over all bishops, to which a reply was made by Cuthbert Tunstal, bishop of Durham, and John Stokesly, bishop of London.
[Lewis's Life of Bishop Fisher, i. 204, ii. 113, 348, 351, 405; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 68; Calendars of State Papers.]
ADDISON, JOHN (1766?–1844), composer and performer on the double bass, was the son of a village mechanic, and as a child showed considerable musical capability, learning to play on the flageolet, flute, bassoon, and violin. He became member of the Royal Society of Musicians 7 Oct. 1753 (Records of Royal Soc. of Musicians). He married, about 1793, an orphan ward of his parents, Miss Willems, who was a niece of the bass singer Reinhold, and after her marriage sang herself with success at Vauxhall. She soon afterwards obtained an engagement at Liverpool, where her husband adopted the musical profession, playing first violoncello and then double bass in the orchestra. The Addisons then went to Dublin, and in 1796 Mrs. Addison appeared at Covent Garden in ‘Love in a Village.’ In 1797 they went to Bath, and then to Dublin and Manchester, where John Addison for a time abandoned music for mercantile speculations which resulted in the loss of a considerable sum. Resuming his original career, he made himself known by composing several now forgotten operas for Covent Garden and the Lyceum, the most successful of which were the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (1805) and the ‘Russian Impostor’ (1809). He played the double bass for many years at the opera, and at the Ancient and other concerts, besides achieving some success as a teacher of singing. He died at Camden Town 30 Jan. 1844.
[ Grove's Dictionary of Music, i. 30; Musical Examiner for 10 Feb. 1844; The Georgian Era (1834), iii. 530; Gent. Mag. 1844.]
ADDISON, JOSEPH (1672–1719), essayist, poet, and statesman, son of Lancelot Addison [see Addison, Lancelot] by his first wife, was born 1 May 1672, at his father's rectory, Milston, near Amesbury, Wilts, and baptised the same day on account of his apparent delicacy. His father, on becoming dean of Lichfield (1683), sent the boy, who had already been at schools in Amesbury and Salisbury, to a school at Lichfield; and here, according to a story reported by Johnson, he was the leader of a ‘barring-out.’ He was soon transferred to the Charterhouse, though not placed upon the foundation, and there became the hero of Steele, his junior by three years. Steele saw Addison in his home circle, and long afterwards (Tatler, No. 235) commemorated its unique charm. The impartial tenderness of the father, he says, equally developed the mutual affection of his children and their respect for himself. In 1687, Addison was sent to his father's college, Queen's College, Oxford. His classical acquirements soon attracted notice, and Dr. Lancaster, then fellow and afterwards provost of Queen's, happening to see some of his Latin verses, obtained for him in 1689 one of the demyships at Magdalen, many of which were then vacant in consequence of the attack upon the privileges of the college by James II. Addison took his M.A. degree in 1693, and gained a probationary fellowship in 1697, and a fellowship in 1698, which he held till 1711. He took pupils, and rapidly acquired reputation for elegant scholarship, especially for his knowledge of Latin poetry. His own Latin poems are highly praised by Johnson, and Macaulay prefers him to all his British rivals except Milton and Buchanan. They include a poem on the Peace of Ryswick, on an altar-piece of the Resurrection at Magdalen, a description of a bowling-green, a barometer, and a puppet-show, addresses to Dr. Hannes and Burnet of the Charterhouse, and a mock-heroic war between the cranes and pigmies. In the last Macaulay notes an anticipation of Swift's description of the king of Lilliput, taller by the breadth of a nail than any of his courtiers. Addison's classical reputation soon extended to the literary circles of London. He wrote a poetical address, congratulating Dryden upon the translations from the classical poets by which the veteran ruler of English literature was eking out a scanty income. Dryden inserted this in the third part of the ‘Miscellany Poems’ (1693); and to the fourth part, which appeared in 1694, Addison contributed a translation of parts of the fourth Georgic, and a didactic ‘account of the greatest English poets.’ The last is dedicated to H. S., said to be Henry Sacheverell, who was Addison's contemporary at Magdalen, and destined afterwards to be conspicuous as a political opponent. (A correspondent of John-
