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fon makes virtue amiable; Johnson represents it as an awful duty. Addison infinuates himself with an air of modefty; Johnson commands like a dictator; but a dictator in his fplendid robes, not labouring at the plough. Addison is the Jupiter of Virgil, with placid ferenity talking to Venus:

"Vultu, quo coelum tempeftatefque ferenat."

Johnfon is JUPITER TONANS: he darts his lightning, and rolls his thunder, in the cause of virtue and piety. The language feems to fall short of his ideas; he pours along, familiarizing the terms of philofophy, with bold inversions, and fonorous periods; but we may apply to him what Pope has said of Homer: "It is the fentiment that fwells and fills out "the diction, which rises with it, and forms "itself about it; like glafs in the furnace, "which grows to a greater magnitude, as the "breath within is more powerful, and the "heat more intenfe."

It is not the defign of this comparison to decide between these two eminent writers.

VOL. I.

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In matters of taste every reader will chuse for himself. Johnfon is always profound, and of courfe gives the fatigue of thinking. Addifon charms while he inftructs; and writing, as he always does, a pure, an elegant, and idiomatic ftyle, he may be pronounced the fafeft model for imitation.

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The effays written by Johnfon in the Adventurer may be called a continuation of the Rambler. The IDLER, in order to be confiftent with the affumed character, is written with abated vigour, in a style of ease and unlaboured elegance. It is the Odyffey after the Iliad. Intense thinking would not become the IDLER. The first number presents a welldrawn portrait of an Idler, and from that character no deviation could be made. cordingly, Johnson forgets his auftere manner, and plays us into fenfe. He ftill continues his lectures on human life, but he adverts to common occurrences, and is often content with the topic of the day. An advertisement in the beginning of the first volume informs us, that twelve entire effays were a contribution from different hands. One of thefe, N° 33, is the. journal

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journal of a Senior Fellow at Cambridge, but, as Johnfon, being himself an original thinker, always revolted from fervile imitation, he has printed the piece, with an apology, importing that the journal of a citizen in the Spectator almost precluded the attempt of any fubfequent writer. This account of the Idler may be closed, after obferving, that the author's mother being buried on the 23d of January, 1759, there is an admirable paper occafioned by that event, on Saturday the 27th of the fame month, N° 41. The reader, if he pleases, may compare it with another fine paper in the Rambler, N° 54, on the conviction that rushes on the mind at the bed of a dying friend.

"Raffelas," fays Sir John Hawkins, "is a fpecimen of our language fcarcely to be paralleled; it is written in a ftyle refined to a degree of immaculate purity, and difplays the whole force of turgid eloquence." One cannot but smile at this encomium. Raffelas is undoubtedly both elegant and fublime. It is a view of human life, displayed, it must be owned, in gloomy colours. The author's natural melancholy, de preffed, at the time, by the approaching diffolution

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folution of his mother, darkened the picture. À tale, that should keep curiofity awake by the artifice of unexpected incidents, was not the design of a mind pregnant with better things. He, who reads the heads of the chapters, will find, that it is not a course of adventures that invites him forward, but a difcuffion of interesting questions; Reflections on Human Life; the Hiftory of Imlac, the Man of Learning; a Differtation upon Poetry; the Character of a wife and happy Man, who difcourfes with energy on the government of the paffions, and on a sudden, when Death deprives him of his daughter, forgets all his maxims of wisdom and the eloquence that adorned them, yielding to the ftroke of affliction with all the vehemence of the bittereft anguith. It is by pictures of life, and profound moral reflection, that expectation is engaged and gratified throughout the work. The History of the Mad Aftronomer, who imagines that, for five years, he poffeffed the regulation of the weather, and that the fun passed from tropic to tropic by his direction, represents in ftriking colours the fad effects of a distempered imagination. It be

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comes the more affecting when we recollect that it proceeds from one who lived in fear of the fame dreadful vifitation; from one who fays emphatically, "Of the uncertainties in "our present state, the most dreadful and alarming is the uncertain continuance of "reafon." The enquiry into the cause of madness, and the dangerous prevalence of imagination, till, in time, fome particular train of ideas fixes the attention, and the mind recurs conftantly to the favourite conception, is carried on in a strain of acute observation; but it leaves us room to think that the author was tranfcribing from his own apprehenfions. The discourse on the nature of the foul gives us all that philofophy knows, not without a tincture of fuperftition. It is remarkable that the vanity of human pursuits was, about the fame time, the subject that employed both Johnson and Voltaire; but Candide is the work of a lively imagination, and Raffelas, with all its splendour of eloquence, exhibits a gloomy picture. It fhould, however, be remembered, that the world has known the WEEPING as well as the LAUGHING philofopher.

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