any unfixedness of principle, much less of and round every period with the same polany depravity of heart. ished smoothness. Addison's talk learnedly Of all the periodical works, those of John- or lightly, think deeply, or prate flippantly, son, in point of strict and undeviating moral in exact accordance with their character, purity, unquestionably stand highest. Eve- station, and habits of life. ry page is invariably delicate. It is, thereWhat reader, when he meets with the defore, the rare praise of this author, that the scription of sir Roger de Coverly, or Will most vigilant preceptor may commit his vo- Wimble, or of the Tory fox-hunter in the luminous works into the hands of even his Freeholder, does not frame in his own mind female pupil, without caution, limitation, or a living image in each, to which ever after reserve; secure that she cannot stumble on he naturally recurs, and on which his rea pernicious sentiment, or rise from the pe- collection, if we may so speak, rather than rusal with the slightest taint of immorality. his imagination, fastens, as on an old intiEven in his dictionary, moral rectitude has mate? The lapse of a century, indeed, has not only been scrupulously maintained, but, induced a considerable change in modes of as far as the nature of the work would ad- expression and forms of behaviour. But mit, it has been assiduously inculcated. In though manners are mutable, human nature the authorities which he had adduced, he has is permanent. And it can no more be collected, with a discrimination which can brought as a charge against the truth of never be enough admired, a countless multi- Addison's characters that the manners are tude of the most noble sentences which Eng- changed, than it can be produced against the lish literature afforded; yet he has frequent- portraits of sir Peter Lely and Vandyck, ly contented himself with instances borrow- that the fashions of dress are altered. ed from inferior writers, when he found some human character, like the human figure, is passage, which at once served his purpose, the same in all ages; it is only the exterior and that of religion and morality; and also, and the costume which vary. Grace of attias he declared himself. lest he should risk tude, exquisite proportion, and striking recontaminating the mind of the student, by semblance, do not diminish of their first referring him to authors of more celebrity charm, because ruffs, perukes, sattin doubbut less purity. When we reflect how fatal-lets, and slashed sleeves are passed away. ly the unsuspected title of Dictionary has Addison's characters may be likened to that been made the vehicle for polluting princi- expressive style of drawing, which gives the ple, we shall feel the value of this extreme conscientiousness of Johnson.

The

exact contour by a few careless strokes of the pencil. They are rendered amusing, by being in some slight degree caricatures; yet, all is accurate resemblance, nothing is wanton aggravation. They have, in short, that undescribable grace which will always captivate the reader in proportion to the delicacy of his own perceptions.

Still, however, while we ascribe to this excellent author all that is safe, and all that is just, it is less from Johnson than from Addison that we derive the interesting lessons of life and manners; that we learn to trace the exact delineations of character, and to catch the vivid hues, and varied tints of na- Among the benefits which have resulted ture. It is true, that every sentence of the from the writings of Addison, the attention more recent moralist is an aphorism, every first drawn to Paradise Lost by his criticisms paragraph a chain of maxims for guiding was not one of the least. His examination the understanding and guarding the heart. of that immortal work, the boast of our islBut when Johnson describes characters, he and, and of human nature, had the merit of rather exhibits vice and virtue in the abstract, subduing the violence of party-prejudice, than real existing human being: while Ad- and of raising its great author to an eminence dison presents you with actual men and in the minds of his countrymen, corresponwomen; real life figures, compounded of dent to that which he actually held, and will the faults and the excellencies, the wisdom hold, on the scale of genius, till time shall be and the weaknesses, the follies and the vir no more.* tues of humanity. By the Avarus, the Ebu lus, the Misellus, the Sophron, the Zosima, * Milton has dropt his mantle on a poet, inferior and the Viator of Johnson, we are instruct- indeed to himself, in the loftiness of his conceped in the soundest truths, but we are not tions, the variety of his learning, and the structure struck by any vivid exemplification. We of his verse; but the felicity of whose genius is merely hear them, and we hear them with only surpassed by the elevation of his piety: whose devout effusions are more penetrating, and profit, but we do not know them. Whereas, almost equally sublime; and who, in his moral and with the members of the Spectator's club we pathetic strokes, familiar illusions, and touching are acquainted. Johnson's personages are incidents, comes more home to the bosom than elaborately carved figures that fill the nich- even his immortal master. When we observe of es of the saloon; Addison's are the living this fine spirit that he felt the beauties of nature company which animate it: Johnson's have more drapery; Addison's more countenance. Johnson's gentlemen and ladies, scholars and chambermaids, philosophers and coquets, all argue syllogistically, all converse in the same academic language; divide all their sentences into the same triple members, turn every phrase with the same measured solemnity,

with a lover's heart, beheld them with a poet's eye, and delineated them with a painter's hand;that the minute accuracy of his lesser figures, and the fancy, as much as the sublimity of his nobler the exquisite finishing of his rural groups, delight images exalt the mind;-that in spite of faults and negligences, and a few instances of ungraceful asperity, he gratifies the judgment as much as he enchants the imagination; that he directs the feel

If the critical writings of Addison do not His Tour to the Hebrides exhibits a depossess the acuteness of Dryden, or the vig-lightful specimen of an intellectual traveller, our of Johnson, they are familiar and elegant, who extracts beauty from barrenness, and and serve to prepare the mind for more elab- builds up a solid mass of instruction with the orate investigation. If it be objected, that most slender materials. He leaves to the he deals too much in gratuitous praise and write of natural history, whose proper provvague admiration, it may be answered, that ince it is, to run over the world in quest of the effect produced by poetry on the mind mosses and grasses, of minerals and fossils. cannot always be philosophically accounted Nor does he swell his book with catalogues for; and Addison was too fair, and, in this of pictures which have neither novelty nor instance, too cordial a cruic to withhold ex- relevancy; nor does he copy, from preceding pressions of delight, merely because he could authors, the ancient history of a country of not analyse the causes which produced it - which we only want to know the existing At any rate, it must be allowed, that he who state; nor does he convert the grand scenes wrote those exquisite Essays on the Pleas which display the wonders of the Creator's ures of the Imagination, could not be super-power into doubts of his existence, or disbeficial through penury. It is allowed, that lief of his government: but fulfilling the the criticisms of Johnson are, in general, office of an inquisitive and moral traveller, much more systematic; they possess more he presents a lively and interesting view of depth, as well as more discrimination; but men and things; of the country which he they are less pleasing, because they are not visited, and of the persons with whom he equally good natured. They are more conversed. And though his inveterate Scottinctured with party spirit, and breathe less tish prejudices now and then break out, his generous and voluntary admiration. But no spleen seems rather to have been exercised critic has been more successful in laying against trees than men. Towards the latter, open the internal structure of the poet; his seeming illiberality has in reality more of though he now and then handles the knife merriment than malice. In his heart he reSo roughly as to disfigure what he means to spected that brave and learned nation.dissect. His learning was evidently much When he is unfair, his unfairness is often deeper, as well as better digested, than that mitigated by some stroke of humour, perof Addison, and the energy of his under- haps of good humour, which effaces the im. standing was almost unrivalled. He there- pression of his severity. Whatever faults fore, discovers a rare ability in appreciating. may be found in the Tour to the Hebrides, with the soundest and most sagacious scruti- it is no small thing, at this period, to possess ny, the poetry of reason and good sense; in a book of travels entirely pure from the the composition of which, he also excels.lightest touch of vanity or impurity, of leviBut to the less bounded excursions of high ty or impiety. imagination, to the bolder achievments of pure invention, he is less just, because less sensible. He appears little alive to that species of writing, whose felicities consist in ease and grace, to the floating forms of ideal beauty, to the sublimer flights of the lyric muse, or to finer touches of dramatic excellence. He would consequently be cold in bis approbation, not to say perverse in his discussion of some of these species of beauty, of which, in fact, his feelings were less susceptible

His Rasselas is a work peculiarly adapted to the royal pupil; and though it paints human life in too dark shades, and dwells despondingly on the unattainableness of human happiness, these defects will afford excellent occasions for the sagacious precepter to unfold, through what pursuits life may be made happy by being made useful; by what superinduced strength the burthens of this mortal state may be cheerfully borne, and by what a glorious perspective its termination may be brightened.

He had, however, that higher perfection which has been too rarely associated with those faculties, the most discerning taste and the liveliest relish, for the truest as well as the noblest species of the sublime and beautiful. I mean that which belongs to moral excellence. Where this was obvious, it not only conquered his aversion, but attracted his warm affection. It was this which made him the ardent eulogist of Watts, in spite of his non-conformity, and even the advocate However the collection of periodical paof Blackmore whom it must have been nat-pers, entitled The Freeholder, may be passed ural for him to despise as a bad poet, and to over by common readers, it would be unparhate as a whig. It is this best of tastes donable not to direct to them the attention of which he also most displays in that beautiful a royal pupil. The object at which they eulogium of Addison, to which in the pres aim, the strengthening of the Hanoverian ent comparison, it would be injustice to both, cause against the combined efforts of the not to refer the reader. house of Stuart and the French court, makes them interesting; and they exhibit an ex

The praise which has been given to Addison as an essayist can rarely be extended to many of his coadjutors. Talent more or less we every where meet with, and very ingenious sketches of character; but moral delicacy is so often, and sometimes so shamefully violated, that (whatever may have been the practice,) the Spectator ought to be accounted an unfit book for the indiscriminate perusal of youth.*

ings to virtue, and the heart to heaven. Need we designate the sketch by affixing to it the name of Cowper.

*Happily all Addison's papers have been selected by Tickell, in his edition of Addison's works.

quisite specimen of political zeal without or two passages only has he given vent to political acrimony. They abound in strokes his religious feelings; and his sentiments of wit; and the Tory Fox-hunter is perhaps are so soundly, indeed so sublimely excelnext to the Rural Knight in the Spectator, lent, that it is impossible not to regret the one of the most entertaining descriptions of scantiness with which he has afforded them. character in our language. Of these, as But Addison seems to delight in the subject, well as of his other essays, it may be said, and, what is remarkable, his devout feelings that in them the follies, the affectations, and seem to have much transcended his theologithe absurdities of life are portrayed with the cal accuracy. To the latter, exception lightest touches of the most delicate pencil; might justly be taken in one or two instanthat never was ridicule more nicely pointed, cas; to the former, never. If it were to nor satire mor playfully inoffensive. be asked, where are the elevating, ennobling, felicitating effects of religion on the human mind as safely stated, and as happily expressed, as in any English author? perhaps a juster answer could scarcely be given than-in the devotional papers of Addison.

In the Guardian there is hardly any thing that is seriously exceptionable; and this work is enriched with some essays that are not to be placed beneath even those of Addison. It will be obvious, that we allude to the papers ascribed to bishop Berkeley. These essays bear the marks of a mind at once vigorous and correct, deep in reflection, and opulent in imagery. They are chiefly directed against the free-thinkers, a name by which the infidels of that age chose to call themselves. And never, perhaps, has that wretched character been more admirably illustrated than in the simile of the fly on St. Paul's cathedral.

As the royal person will hereafter require books of amusement, as well as instruction, it will be a task of no small delicacy to select such as may be perused with as much profit, and as little injury, as is to be expected from works of mere entertainment. Perhaps there are few books which possess the power of delighting the fancy, without conveying any dangerous lesson to the heart, equally with Don Quixote.

Another difference between Addison and Johnson is, that the periodical writings of the former are those in which the powers of his mind appear to most advantage. Not so in the case of Johnson. Solidly valuable as the Rambler must be accounted in the point It does not belong to our subject to aniof celebrity, it probably owes much more to madvert on its leading excellence; that inits author than it has conferred on him. A comparable delicacy of satire, those unriforbidding stateliness, a rigid and yet infla- valled powers of ridicule, which had suffited style, an almost total absence of ease cient force to reclaim the corrupted taste, and cheerfulness, would too probably bring and sober the distempered imagination of a neglect on the great and various excellen whole people This, which on its first apcies of these volumes, if they had been the pearance was justly considered as its presingle work of their author. But his other dominant merit, is now become less intereswritings, and, above all, that inexhaustible ting; because the evil which it assailed no fund of pleasure and profit, the Lives of the longer existing, the medicine which cured Poets, will secure perpetuated attention to the mad is grown less valuable to the sane; every work which bears the name of John yet Don Quixote will be entitled to admirason. On the ground of distinct attraction on imperishable grounds. tiveness, the Idler is the most engaging of Though Cervantes wrote between two Johnson's periodical works: the manner and three hundred years ago, and for a peobeing less severe, and the matter more amu-ple of a national turn of thinking dissimilar sing. to ours; yet that right good sense, which is

The Adventurer, perhaps, on account of of all ages, and all countries, and which its interesting tales, and affecting narratives, pervades this work more almost than even is, of all others of its class, the most strictly its exquisite wit and humour; those mastersuitable to youth. It also contains much ly portraits of character; those sound maxgeneral knowledge, elegant criticism, and ims of conduct; those lively touches of various kinds of pleasing information. In nature; those admirably serious lessons, almost all these works, the Eastern Tales, though given on ridiculous occasions; Allegories, and Visions, are interesting in those penetrating strokes of feeling; those the narrative, elevated in the sentiment; solemnly sententious phrases, tinctured pure in the descriptions, and sublime in the with the characteristic absurdity of the moral, they convey lessons peculiarly appro-speaker, without any injury to the truth of priated to the great, most of the fictitious the sentiment; that mixture of the wise and personages who are made the vehicles of the ludicrous, of action always pitiably exinstruction, being either princes or states- travagant, and of judgment often exemplary If we advert to religion, the praise of Ad-tion in the Idler; and the noble passage in the ac* Number VII in the Rambler; paper on afflicdison in this infinitely important instance count of Iona.

men.

must not be omitted. Johnson never loses See particularly that very exceptionable paper sight of religion; but on very few occasions in the Spectator, No. 459.-Also another on Sa does he particularly dwell upon it. In one perstition and Enthusiasm.

sober. In all these excellencies Don Quixote is without a parallel.

those of the latter convey a contagious sickliness to the mind. The one raises harmless wonder or inoffensive merriment: the other awaken ideas, at best unprofitable. From the flights of the one, we are willing to descend to the rationality of common life; from the seductions of the other, we are disgusted at returning to its insipidity.

How admirable (to produce only one instance out of a thousand) is that touch of buman nature, where the knight of La Mancha having bestowed the most excessive and high-flown compliments on a gentleman whom he encountered when the delirium of chivalry raged most strongly in his imagina- There is always some useful instruction in tion! The gentleman, who is represented those great original works of invention, as a person of admirable sense, is led, by whether poetry or romance, which transmit the effect which these compliments produced a faithful living picture of the manners of the on his own mind, to acknowledge the weak- age and country in which the scene is laid. ness of the heart of man, in the foolish plea- It is this which, independently of its other sure it derives from flattery So bewitch-merits, diffuses that inexpressible charm over ing is praise,' says he, that even I have the the Odyssey: a species of enchantment weakness to be pleased with it, though at the which is not afforded by any other poem in same time, I know the flatterer to be a madman.'

Wit, it has been said, is gay, but humour is grave. It is a striking illustration of this opinion, that the most serious and solemn nation in the world has produced the work of the most genuine humour. Nor is it easy to express how admirably the pomp and stateliness of the Spanish language are suit ed to the genius of this work. It is not un favourable to the true heroic, but much more especially it is adapted to the mock dignity of the sorrowful knight. It is accommodated to the elevation of the fantastic hero's tiptoe march, when he is sober, and still more to his stilts, when he is raving.

the world. This, in a less degree, is also one of the striking merits of Don Quixote. And this after having soared so high, if we may descend so low, is the principal recommendation of the Arabian Tales These Tales also, though faulty in some respects, possess another merit which we should be glad to see transferred to some of the novels of a country nearer home. We learn from these Arabian stories, and indeed from most of the works of imagination of the Mahometan authors, what was the specific religion of the people about whom they write; how much they made religion enter into the ordinary concerns of life; and how observant persons professing religion were of its peculiarities and its worship.

The two very ingenious French and English novelists, who followed Cervantes, It is but justice to observe, how far more though with unequal steps even as to talent, deeply mischievous the French novel writers are still farther below their great master are, than those of our own country; they both in mental and moral delicacy. Though not only seduce the beart through the senses, the scenes, descriptions, and expressions of and corrupt it through the medium of the Le Sage, are far less culpable, in point of de-imagination, but fatally strike at the very cency, than those of his English competitor; root and being of all virtue, by annihilating yet both concur in the same inexpiable fault, all belief in that religion, which is its only each labouring to excite an interest for a vi- vital source and seminal principle. cious character, each making the hero of his tale an unprincipled profligate. Shakspeare.

hands of a judicious preceptor, many of Shakspeare's tragedies, especially of his historical pieces, and still more such as are rendered peculiarly interesting by local circumstances, by British manners, and by the introduction of royal characters who once filled the English throne, will furnish themes on which to ground much appropriate and

If novels are read at all, in early youth, a But lessons of a nobler kind may be expractice which we should think more hon-tracted from some works which promise nooured in the breach than the observance,' we thing better than mere entertainment; and should be tempted to give the preference to which will not, to ordinary readers, appear those works of pure and genuine fancy, susceptible of any higher purpose In the which exercise and fill the imagination, in preference to those which, by exhibiting passion and intrigue in bewitching colours, lay hold too intensely on the feelings. We should even venture to pronounce those stories to be most safe, which, by least assimilating with our own habits and manners, are less likely to infect and soften the heart, by those amatory pictures, descriptions, and sit-instructive conversation. uations, which too much abound, even in Those mixed characters especially, which some of the chastest compositions of this na- he has drawn with such a happy intuition inture. The young female is pleasantly inter- to the human mind, in which some of the ested for the fate of Oriental queens, for Zo- worst actions are committed by persons not beide, or the heroine of Alamoran and Ham- destitute of good dispositions and amiable et; but she does not put herself in their qualities, but overwhelmed by the storm of place; she is not absorbed in their pains or unresisted passion, sinking under strong their pleasures; she does not identify her temptation, or yielding to powerful flattery, feelings with theirs, as she too probably does are far more instructive in the perusal than in the case of Sophia Western and the prin- the 'faultless monsters,' or the heroes of uncess of Cleves.-Books of the former de- mixed perfection of less skilful dramatists. scription innocently invigorate the fancy,The agitations, for instance of the time

rous Thane, a man not destitute of generous check those inquiries into his title to the sentiments; but of a high and aspiring mind, crown to which peace and rest might lead; stimulated by vain credulity, tempting oppor- and exhorting the prince, with a foreseeing tunity, and an ambitious wife.-Goaded by subtlety which little became a dying monthe woman he loved to the crime he hated, arch, to keep up quarrels with foreign powgrasping at the crown, but abhorring the sin ers, in order to wear out the memory of dowhich was to procure it;--the agonies of mestic usurpation;-all this presents a striguilt combatting with the sense of honour-king exhibition of a superior mind, so long agonies not merely excited by the vulgar habituated to the devious paths of worldly dread of detection and of punishment which wisdom, and crooked policy, as to be unable would have engrossed an ordinary mind, but to desert them, even in the pangs of dissolusharpened by unappeasable remorse: which tion. remorse, however, proves po hindrance to the commission of fresh crimes,-crimes which succeed each other as numerously, and as rapidly, as the visionary progeny of Banquo.-At first,

The pathetic soliloquies of the repentant Wolsey, fallen from the pinnacle of wealth and power, to a salutary degradation! A disgrace which restored him to reason, and raised him to religion; which destroyed his fortune but rescued his soul:-his counsels What he would highly, he would holily: to the rising statesman Cromwell, on the perBut a familiarity with horrors soon cured this ils of ambition, and the precariousness of delicacy; and in his subsequent and multi- royal favour; the vanity of all attachment plied murders, necessity became apology. which has not religion for its basis; the The whole presents an awful lesson on the weakness of all fidelily which has not the fear terrible consequences of listening to the first of God for its principle; and the perilous end slight suggestion of sin, and strikingly ex- of that favour of the courtier, which is enjoyemplifies that from harbouring criminal ed at the dear price of his integrity to thoughts, to the forming black designs, and Heaven !'perpetrating the most atrocious deeds, the The pernicious power of flattery on a femind is led by a natural progress, and an un-male mind, so skilfully exemplified in that resisted rapidity.

memorable scene in which the bloody Richard conquers the aversion of the princess Anne to the murderer of her husband, and of all his royal race! The deplorable error of the feeble-minded princess, in so far forgetting his crimes in his compliments, as to consent to the monstrous union with the murderer! Can there be a more striking exemplification of a position we have ventured so frequently to establish, of the dangers to which vanity is liable, and of the miseries to which flatter leads?

The conflicting passions of the capricious Lear! tender and affectionate in the extreme, but whose irregular affections were neither controuled by nature, reason, or justic; a character weak and vehement, fond and cruel; whose kindness was determined by no principle; whose mind governed by no fixed sense of right, but vibrating with the accident of the moment, and the caprice of the predominant humour; sacrificing the virtuous child, whose sincerity should have secured his affection, to the preposterous flat The reflections of Henry VI. and of Richtery of her unnatural sisters.-These highly ard II. on the cares and duties, the unsatiswrought scenes do not merely excite in the factoriness and disappointment attending reader a barren sympathy for the pangs of great situations, the vanity of human granself-reproach, of destitute age, and suffering deur while enjoyed, and the uncertain tenure royalty, but inculcate a salutary abhorrence by which it is held !—These fine soliloquies of adulation and falsehood; a useful caution preach powerfully to the hearts of all in high against partial and unjust judgment; a soud stations, but most powerfully to those in the admonition against paternal injustice and fil- highest.

ial ingratitude.

The 'erribly instructive death-bed of car

The beautiful and touching reflection of dinal Beaufort, whose silence, like the veil Henry IV. in those last soul-searching mo- in the celebrated picture of the sacrifice of ments, when the possession of a crown be- Iphigenia by Timanthes, thrown over the facame nothing, and the unjust ambition by ther's face, penetrates the soul more by what which he had obtained it every thing-Yet, it conceals, than could have been effected by exhibiting a prince still so far retaining to any thing that its removal might have disthe last the cautious policy of his character, covered. as to mix his concern for the state, and his These, and a thousand other instances, too affection for his son, with the natural dissim- various to be enumerated, too obvious to reulation of his own temper; an blending the quire specifving, and too beautiful to stand finest sentiments on the uncertainty of hu-in need of comment, may, when properly seman applause and earthly prosperity, with a lected, and judiciously animadverted on. not watchful attention to confine the knowledge only delight the imagination, and gratify the of the unfair means by which he had obtain- feelings, but carry instruction to the heart. ed the crown to the heir who was to possess The roval pupil may discern in Shakspeare it;-the wily politician predominating to the an originality which has no parallel. He exlast moment, and manifesting rather regret hibits humour the most genuine, and, what than repentance-disclosing that the as-is far more extraordinary, propriety of sen. sumed sanctity with which he had been pre- timent, and delicacies of conduct, where, paring for a crusade, was only a project to from his low opportunities, failure had been