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virtues and amiable weaknesses-to his modesty, generosity, hospitality, and eccentric whims to the respect of his neighbours, and the affection of his domestics-to his wayward, hopeless, secret passion for his fair enemy, the widow, in which there is more of real romance and true delicacy than in a thousand tales of knight-errantry-(we perceive the hectic flush of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue in speaking of her bewitching airs and the whiteness of her hand")—to the havoc he makes among the game in his neighbourhood-to his speech from the bench, to show the Spectator' what is thought of him in the countryto his unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his having his own likeness turned into the Saracen's head-to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy that tells him he has a widow in his line of life"-to his doubts as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches-to his account of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain-to his faling asleep at church, an 1 his reproof of John Williams, as soon as he recovered from his nap, for talking in sermon-time. The characters of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind their frien 1, Sir Roger, in delicacy and felicity. delightful simplicity and good-humoured officiousness in the one are set off by the graceful affectation and courtly pretension in the other. How long since I first became acquainted with the se two characters in the Spectator What old-fashioned fʼnends they seem, and yet I am not tired of them, like so many other frien is, nor they of me! How airy these abstractions of the poet's pen stream over the dawn of our acquaintance with human life how they glance their fairest colours on the prospect before us how pure they remain in it to the last, like the rainbow in the evening cloud, which the rude hand of time can neither s. 1 nor dissipate! What a pity that we cannot find the reality, and yet if we did, the dream would be over. I once thought I knew a Will Wim! le, and a Will Honeycomb, but they turned out but indifferently the origin ils in the Spectator still read word for wor 1, the same that they always dil We have only to turn to the page, and find them where we left them --Many of the most exquisite pacres in the Tatler,' it is to be observed, are A !! son's, as the Court of Hot. ur, and the 'Personih ati, a cẩ

Musical Instruments,' with almost all those papers that form regular sets or series. I do not know whether the picture of the family of an old college acquaintance, in the 'Tatler,' where the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one that loses the race that way, turns back to tell the father that he is come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy, who is got into 'Guy of Warwick,' and the 'Seven Champions,' and who shakes his head at the improbability of 'Esop's Fables,' is Steele's or Addison's, though I believe it belongs to the former.* The account of the two sisters, one of whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having on a pair of flowered garters, and that of the married lady who complained to the Tatler' of the neglect of her husband, with her answers to some home questions that were put to her, are unquestionably Steele's. If the 'Tatler' is not inferior to the 'Spectator' as a record of manners and character, it is very superior to it in the interest of many of the stories. Several of the incidents related there by Steele have never been surpassed in the heart-rending pathos of private distress. I might refer to those of the lover and his mistress, when the theatre, in which they were, caught fire; of the bridegroom, who by accident. kills his bride on the day of their marriage; the story of Mr. Eustace and his wife; and the fine dream about his own mistress when a youth. What has given its superior reputation to the 'Spectator,' is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which I confess myself less edified than by other things, which are thought more lightly of Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the extremely moral and didactic tone of the 'Spectator' which makes us apt to think of Addison (according to Mande

• It is Steele's; and the whole paper (No. 95,) observes Mr. Leigh Hunt, is in his most delightful manner. The dream about the mistress, however, is given to Addison by the editors, and the general style of that number is his; though, from the story's being related personally of Bickerstaff, who is also represented as having been at that time in the army, we conclude it to have originally come from Steele, perhaps in the course of conversation. The particular incident is much more like a story of his than of Addison's.

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ville's sarcasm) as "a parson in a tie-wig." Many of his moral Essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful and happy. Such are the reflections on cheerfulness, those in Westminster Abbey, on the Royal Exchange, and particularly some very affecting ones on the death of a young lady in the fourth volume. These, it must be allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His critical Essays are not so good. I prefer Steele's occasional selection of beautiful poetical passages, without any affectation of analysing their beauties, to Addison's fine-spun theories. The best criticism in the Spectator,' that on the Cartoons of Raphael, of which Mr. Fuseli has availed himself with great spirit in his Lectures, is by Steele⚫ I owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has so often put me in good humour with my wif, and everything about me, when few things else could, and when the tomes of casuistry and ecclesiastical history, with which the little duodecimo volumes of the Tatler' were overwhelmed and surrounded, in the only library to which I had access when a boy, had tried their tranquillising effects upon me in vain had not long ago in my hands, by favour of a friend, an origial copy of the quarto edition of the Tatler,' with a list of the subscribers. It is curious to see some names there which we shound hardly think of (that of Sir Isane Newton is among them.) a.d also to observe the degree of interest excited by those of the different persons, which is not determined according to the rules of the Herald's College One literary name lists as long as a whole race of heroes and their descendants' The 'Guardian,” which followed the Spectator,' was, as may be supposed, inferior to it

The dramatic and conversational turn which forms the d. tinguishing feature and greatest charm of the Spectat. r' arəd Tatler,' is quite lost in the Rambler,' by Dr Johnson There

is no reflected light thrown on human life from an assuredi character, nor any direct one from a display of the author's ow m. The 'Tatler' and Spectator' are, as it were, made up of moti

• The antithetical style and verbal parodoses which Burke was so of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive sur “proud submission" and "dignified obedience," are, I think, first ta found in the 'Tatier '

and memorandums of the events and incidents of the day, with finished studies after nature, and characters fresh from the life, which the writer moralises upon, and turns to account as they come before him. The 'Rambler' is a collection of moral Essays, or scholastic theses, written on set subjects, and of which the individual characters and incidents are merely artificial illustrations, brought in to give a pretended relief to the dryness of didactic discussion. The Rambler' is a splendid and imposing common-place-book of general topics, and rhetorical declamation on the conduct and business of human life. In this sense, there is hardly a reflection that had been suggested on such subjects which is not to be found in this celebrated work, and there is, perhaps, hardly a reflection to be found in it which had not been already suggested and developed by some other author, or in the common course of conversation. The mass of intellectual wealth here heaped together is immense, but it is rather the result of gradual accumulation, the produce of the general intellect, labouring in the mine of knowledge and reflection, than dug out of the quarry, and dragged into the light by the industry and sagacity of a single mind. I am not here saying that Dr. Johnson was a man without originality, compared with the ordinary run of men's minds, but he was not a man of original thought or genius, in the sense in which Montaigne or Lord Bacon was. He opened no new vein of precious ore, nor did he light upon any single pebbles of uncommon size and unrivalled lustre. We seldom meet with anything to "give us pause;" he does not set us thinking for the first time. His reflections present themselves like reminiscences; do not disturb the ordinary march of our thoughts; arrest our attention by the stateliness of their appearance, and the costliness of their garb, but pass on and mingle with the throng of our impressions. After closing the volumes of the 'Rambler,' there is nothing that we remember as a new truth gained to the mind, nothing indelibly stamped upon the memory; nor is there any passage that we wish to turn to as embodying any known principle or observation, with such force and beauty that justice can only be done to the idea in the author's own words. Such, for instance, are many of the passages to be found in Burke, which

shine by their own light, belong to no class, have neither equal nor counterpart, and of which we say that no one but the author could have written them! There is neither the same boldness of design nor mastery of execution in Johnson. In the one, the spark of genius seems to have met with its congenial matter; the shaft is sped: the forked lightning dresses up the face of nature in ghastly smiles, and the loud thunder rolls far away from the ruin that is made. Dr. Johnson's style, on the contrary, resembles rather the rumbling of mimic thunder at one of our theatres; and the light he throws upon a subject is like the dazzling effect of phosphorus, or an ignis faluus of words There is a wide difference, however, between perfect originsly and perfect common-place: neither ideas nor expressions are trite or vulgar because they are not quite new They are valu able, and ought to be repeated, if they have not become quarte common; and Johnson's style both of reasoning and imagery he'l the middle rank between startling novelty and vapid comm place. Johnson has as much originality of thinking as Ads but then he wants his familiarity of illustration, knowledze of character, and delightful humour-What most distinguishes Dr Johnson from other writers, is the pomp and uniformity of his style. All his periods are cast in the same mould, are of the same size and shape, and consequently have little fitness to the variety of things he professes to treat of His subjects are familiar, but the author is always upon stilts He has ne thet ease nor simplicity, and his efforts at playfulness, in part, remini one of the lines in Milton -

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His Letters from Correspondents,' in particular, are mere pe pous and unwieldy than what he writes in his own pers This want of relaxation and variety of manner has, I ther. A after the first effects of novelty and surprise were over, bee prejudicial to the matter. It takes from the general power, D only to please, but to instruct The monotony of style promi ces an apparent monotony of ideas What is really strik and valuable, 19 lost in the vain ostentation and circumlocu:

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