"
Next they visited the French cabin and here Sir John says, "I was
convinced of an error into which I had before fallen. For I had
fancied, that for the freezing of the sound, it was necessary for
it to be wrapped up, and, as it were, preserved in breath. But I
found my mistake, when I heard the sound of a kit playing a
minuet over our heads."
The kit was a small violin to the sound of which the Frenchmen
had danced to amuse themselves while they were deaf or dumb. How
it was that the kit could be heard during the frost and yet still
be heard in the thaw we are not told. Sir John gave very good
reasons, says Addison, but as they are somewhat long "I pass over
them in silence."*
*Tatler, 254.
Addison and Steele carried on the Tatler for two years, then it
was stopped to make way for a far more famous paper called the
Spectator. But meanwhile the Whigs fell from power and Addison
lost his Government post. In twelve months, he said to a friend,
he lost a place worth two thousand pounds a year, an estate in
the Indies, and, worst of all, his lady-love.
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