in it more charming than I have found in any other man. But this was only when familiar; before strangers, or perhaps a single stranger, he preserved his dignity by a stiff silence."

"His own powers were such as might have satisfied him with conscious excellence. Of very extensive learning he has indeed given us no proofs. He seems to have had small acquaintance with the sciences, and to have read little except Latin and French; but of Latin poets his " Dialogues on Medals" shew that he had perused the works with great diligence and skill. The abundance of his own mind left him little need of adventitious sentiments; his wit always could suggest what the occasion demanded. He had read with critical eyes the important volume of human life, and knew the heart of man from the depths of stratagem to the surface of affectation.

"What he knew, he could easily communicate. This, says Steele, was particular in this writer, that when he had taken his resolution, or made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk about a room, and dictate it into language with as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he dictated."

"As a writer," says Dr. Johnson," his poetry is first to be considered, of which it must be confessed that it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to sentiments, or that vigor of sentiment that animates diction: there is little of ardour, vehemence or transport; there

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is very rarely the awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He thinks justly, but he thinks faintly. This is his general character to which doubtless many single passages will furnish exceptions.

"Yet if he seldom reaches supreme excellence, he rarely sinks into dullness, and is still more rarely entangled in absurdity. He did not trust his powers enough to be negligent. There is in most of his compositions a coolness and equability, deliberate and cautious, sometimes with little that delights, but seldom with any thing that offends."

"The letter from Italy has been always praised, but has never been praised beyond its merit. It is more correct with less appearance of labour, and more elegant with less ambition of ornament, than any other of his poems. There is however one broken metaphor of which notice may properly be taken.

Fir'd with that name

I bridle in my struggling muse with pain,

That longs to launch into a nobler`strain.

"To bridle a Goddess is no very delicate idea; but why must she be bridled! because she longs to launch; an act which was never hindered by a bridle and whither will she launch into a nobler strain.. She is in the first line a horse, in the second a boat; and the care of the poet is to keep his horse or his boat from singing.

"The next composition is the far-famed "Campaign," which Dr. Warton has termed a "Gazette in Rhyme with a harshness not often used by the

good nature of his criticism." Before a censure so severe is admitted, let us consider that war is a frequent subject of poetry, and then inquire who has described it with more justness and force. Many of our own writers tried their powers upon this year of victory, yet Addison's is confessedly the best performance; his poem is the work of a man not blinded by the dust of learning his images are not borrowed merely from books. The superiority which he confers upon his hero is not personal prowess and mighty bone, but deliberate intrepidity, a calm command of his passions, and the power of consulting his own mind in the midst of danger. The rejection and contempt of fiction is rational and manly.

"It may be observed that the last line is imitated by Pope:

Marlb'rough's exploits appear divinely brightRais'd of themselves their genuine charms they boast, And those that paint them truest praise them most.

"This Pope had in his thoughts; but, not knowing how to use what was not his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it:

The well-sung woes shall sooth my pensive ghost;
He best can paint them who shall feel them most.

"Martial exploits may be painted; perhaps woes may be painted; but they are surely not painted by being well sung: it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in colours.

"No passage in the "Campaign" has been more

often mentioned than the similé of the Angel, which is said in the "Tatler" to be one of the noblest thoughts that ever entered into the heart of man.

Johnson then goes on to prove that it is not a simile, but merely an exemplification. He concludes what he says of this poem by giving what Dr. Madden once repeated to him

If I had set, said he, ten schoolboys to write on the battle of Blenheim, and eight had brought me the Angel, I should not have been surprised.

After placing the "Opera of Rosamond" among the first of Addison's compositions, he comes to the Tragedy of Cato," which he says

is unquestionably the noblest production of Addison's genius. Of a work so much read it is difficult to say any thing new. About things on which the public think long, it commonly attains to think right; and of "Cato" it has not been unjustly determined, that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama; rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language, than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here excites or assuages emotion; here is no magical power of raising phantastic terror or wild anxiety. The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing, or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being above our solicitude; a man of whom the Gods take care, and whom we leave to their care with

heedless confidence. To the rest neither Gods nor men can have much attention, for there is not one amongst them that strongly attracts either affection or esteem; but they are made the vehicles of such sentiments and such expression, that there is scarcely a scene in the play which the reader does. not wish to impress upon his memory.

"When "Cato" was shewn to Pope, he advised the Author to print it without any theatrical exhibition, supposing it would be read more favourably than heard. Addison declared himself of the same opinion, but urged the importunity of his. friends for its appearance on the stage. The emulation of parties made it successful beyond expectation, and its success has introduced or confirmed among us the use of dialogue too declamatory, of unaffecting elegance, and chill philanthropy."

Of Addison as a translator Johnson says "His translations, so far as I have compared them, want the exactness of a scholar. That he understood his authors cannot be doubted; but his versions will not teach others to understand them, being too licentiously paraphrastical. They are however, for the most part, smooth and easy; and, what is the first excellence of a translator, such as may be read with pleasure by those who do not know the original.

"In general his poetry is polished and pure; the product of a mind too judicious to commit faults, but not sufficiently vigorous to attain excellence. He has sometimes a striking line, or a shining paragraph; but on the whole he is warm rather than