CHARLOTTE MYDDLETON.

291

the Nottingham House and so were better to begin with. Perhaps also, William did not find the grounds about Holland House flat enough to suit his Dutch predilec

tions.

To return to the owners of the mansion which had thus been successively occupied : nothing seems known of Robert, second Earl of Holland, who had quietly succeeded his father, except that, in failure of the elder branch of the family, he also succeeded as fifth Earl of Warwick, the title being thenceforth the conjoined one of Warwick and Holland.

His son and successor, Edward, married Charlotte, daughter of Sir Thomas Myddleton, of Chirk Castle in the county of Flint; a lady, whose name and origin we mention, because after the Earl's death she became the wife of Addison. Edward Henry, her

son, the next earl, is the youth whose statue in Kensington Church has has been noticed in a former chapter. He was succeeded by another Edward, his kinsman; and the daughter and only child of this nobleman dying unmarried, the title became extinct. This was in the year seventeen hundred and fifty-nine.

The house fell into the possession of William Edwardes, a Welsh Welsh gentleman, whose father had married the daughter of the first Earl of Warwick and Holland, and who, in the year seventeen hundred and seventy-six, was created Baron Kensington; but fourteen years previous he had sold the family mansion to the first Lord Holland of the Fox family, by whom the title had been consequently allowed to be taken; and in the possession of this distinguished race it remains.

EDWARDES, LORD KENSINGTON.

293

We have a good deal to say of them; but first we must return to Countess Char

lotte and her still more distinguished husband.

CHAPTER XV.

HOLLAND HOUSE CONTINUED ADDISON'S LIFE AND DEATH THERE—QUESTIONS RESPECTING HIS MARRIAGE, HIS LAST MOMENTS, AND HIS CONDUCT TOWARDS GAY-HIS

INTERVIEW WITH THE DAUGHTER OF HILTON-FIRST

PROPOSER OF A WINTER GARDEN.

ADDISON, notwithstanding the popularity of the Foxes, is still the greatest celebrity of Holland House. His death in it is its greatest event. Places in the vicinity are named after him; and the favourite record of its library is the tradition, before mentioned,

ADDISON'S MARRIAGE.

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of the bottle of wine at each end of it, by which he is said to have refreshed his moralities, while concocting their sentences to and fro. It is added, unfortunately, that he drank the more because he was unhappily married.

The question upon this point is still discussed, and will probably never be settled. The received opinion is, that Addison's marriage with the Countess of Warwick originated in his being tutor to her son; that the Countess became ashamed of it, as a descension from her rank; and that their lives were rendered unhappy in consequence. The prevalence of this opinion appears to have been owing to Johnson's Lives of the Poets, in which the case is stated with so evident a willingness to believe it, that people in general, who are ready enough to fall in with such an inclination, have overlooked the manifest assump