CHAPTER XXVIII. Of periodical essay writers, particularly Addison and Johnson. To hardly any species of composition has the British public been more signally indebted than to the periodical essay; and, perhaps, it was only from the British press, that such a publication could have issued. The attempt to excite mental appetite, by furnishing, from day to day, intellectual aliment of such peculiar freshness, must have been fatally obstructed by any jealousy of superintendence, or formality of licensing. The abuse of the press is to be deplored as a calamity, and punished as a crime but let neither prince nor people forget the providential blessings which have been derived to both from its constitutional liberty. As this was one of the invaluable effects of the Revolution in 1688, so, perhaps, no other means more contributed to carry the blessings of that period to their consummate establishment, in the accession of the house of Brunswick. The two writers who have most eminently distinguished themselves in this path of literature, are Addison and Johnson. At a period when religion was held in more than usual contempt, from its having been recently abused to the worst purposes; and when the higher walks of life still exhibited that dissoluteness which the profligate reign of the second Charles had made so deplorably fashionable, Addison seems to have been raised by Providence for the double purpose of improving the public taste, and correcting the public morals. As the powers of the imagination had, in the preceding period, been peculiarly abused to the purposes of vice, it was Addison's great object to shew that wit and impurity had no necessary connexion. He not only evinced this by his reasonings, but he so exemplified it in his own compositions, as to become in a short time more generally useful, by becoming more popular than any English writer who had yet appeared. This well-earned celebrity he endeavoured to turn to the best of all purposes; and his success was such as to prove, that genius is never so advantageously employed as in the service of virtue, nor influence so well directed as in rendering piety fashionable. At this distance, when almost all authors have written the better because Addison wrote first, and when the public taste which he refined has become competent, through that refinement, to criticise its benefactor, it is not easy fully to appreciate the value of Addison. To do this, we must attend to the progress of English literature, and make a comparison between him and his predecessors. But, noble as the views of Addison were, and happily as he has, in general, accomplished what he intended; the praise which justly belongs to him must be qualified by the avowal, that it does not extend to every passage which he has written. From the pernicious influence of those very manners which it was his object to correct, some degree of taint has occasionally affected his own pages, which will make it necessary to guard the royal pupil from a wholly promiscuous perusal. It is, however, but justice to add, that the few instances referred to, however exceptionable, are of such a kind as to expose him to the charge rather of inadvertence, or momentary levity, than of any unfixedness of principle, much less any depravity of heart. Of all the periodical works, those of Johnson, in point of strict and undeviating moral purity, unquestionably stand highest. Every page is invariably delicate. It is, therefore, the rare praise of this author, that the most vigilant preceptor may commit his voluminous works into the hands of even his female pupil, without caution, limitation, or reserve; secure that she cannot stumble on a pernicious sentiment, or rise from the perusal with the slightest taint of immorality. Even in his dictionary, moral rectitude has not only been scrupulously maintained, but, as far as the nature of the work would admit, it has been assiduously inculcated. In the authorities which he has adduced, he has collected, with a discrimination which can never be enough admired, a countless multitude of the most noble sentences which English literature afforded; yet he has frequently contented himself with instances borrowed from inferior writers, when he found some passage, which at once served his purpose, and that of religion and morality; and also, as he declared himself, lest he should risk contaminating the mind of the student, by referring him to authors of more celebrity but less purity. When we reflect how fatally the unsuspected title of Dictionary has been made the vehicle for polluting principle, we shall feel the value of this extreme conscientiousness of Johnson. 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 nature. It is true, that every sentence of the more recent moralist is an aphorism, every paragraph a chain of maxims for guiding the understanding and guarding the heart. But when John : son describes characters, he rather exhibits vice and virtue in the abstract, than real existing human beings while Addison presents you with actual men and women; real-life figures, compounded of the faults and the excellencies, the wisdom and the weaknesses, the follies and the virtues, of humanity. -By the Avarus, the Eubulus, the Misellus, the Sophron, the Zosima, and the Viator of Johnson, we are instructed in the soundest truths, but we are not struck by any vivid exemplification. We merely hear them, and we hear them with profit, but we do not know them. Whereas, with the members of the Spectator's club we are acquainted. Johnson's personages are elaborately carved figures, that fill the niches of the saloon: Addison's are the living 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, and round every period with the same polished smoothness. Addison's talk learnedly or lightly, think deeply, or prate flippantly, in exact accordance with their character, station, and habits of life. What reader, when he meets with the description of sir Roger de Coverley, or Will Wimble, or of the Tory fox-hunter in the Freeholder, does not frame in his own mind a lively image of each, to which ever after he naturally recurs, and on which his recollection, if we may so speak, rather than his imagination, fastens, as on an old intimate ? The lapse of a century, indeed, has induced a considerable change in modes of expression and forms of behaviour. But, though manners are mutable, human nature is permanent. And it can no more be brought as a charge against the truth of Addison's characters, that the manners are changed, than it can be produced against the portraits of sir Peter Lely and Vandyck, that the fashions of dress are altered. The human character, like the human figure, is the same in all ages; it is only the exterior and the costume which vary. Grace of attitude, exquisite proportion, and striking resemblance, do not diminish of their first charm, because ruffs, perukes, satin doublets, and slashed sleeves. are passed away. Addison's characters may be likened to that expressive style of drawing, which gives 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 percep tions. Among the benefits which have resulted from the writings of Addison, the attention first drawn to Paradise Lost by his criticisms was not one of the least. His examination of that immortal work, the boast of our island, and of human nature, had the merit of subduing the violence of party-` prejudice, and of raising its great author to an eminence in the minds of his countrymen, correspondent to that which he actually held, and will hold, on the scale of genius, till time shall be no more.* * Milton has dropt his mantle on a poet, inferior indeed to himself, in the loftiness of his conceptions, the variety of his learning, and the structure of his verse; but the felicity of whose genius is only surpassed by the elevation of his piety'; whose devout effusions are more penetrating, and almost equally sublime; and who, in his moral and pathetic strokes, familiar allusions, and touching incidents, comes more home to the bosom than even his immortal master. When we observe of |