a
specimen of a proposed Life of Rinaldo Furioso, Critic of the Woful
Countenance,--_i.e._, John Dennis. It contains remarks upon the two good
lines he wrote (_Spectator_, No. 47) upon the difficulty of
distinguishing his comedies from his tragedies, &c. &c. There is, too,
an allusion to the _Tatlers_ and _Spectators_ in the notice that the
virtues of the critic are to be printed in a very small neat Elzevir
character, and his extravagances in a noble large letter on royal
paper.]

No. 161. [ADDISON.

From _Tuesday, April 18_, to _Thursday, April 20, 1710_.

----Nunquam Libertas gratior exstat
Quam sub rege pio----
CLAUDIAN, De Laudibus Stilichonis, iii. 113.

* * * * *

_From my own Apartment, April 19._

I was walking two or three days ago in a very pleasing retirement, and
amusing myself with the reading of that ancient and beautiful allegory,
called "The Table of Cebes."[210] I was at last so tired with my walk,
that I sat down to rest myself upon a bench that stood in the midst of
an agreeable shade. The music of the birds, that filled all the trees
about me, lulled me asleep before I was aware of it; which was followed
by a dream, that I impute in some measure to the foregoing author, who
had made an impression upon my imagination, and put me into his own way
of thinking.

I fancied myself among the Alps, and, as it is natural in a dream,
seemed every moment to bound from one summit to another, till at last,
after having made this airy progress over the tops of several mountains,
I arrived at the very centre of those broken rocks and precipices. I
here, methought, saw a prodigious circuit of hills, that reached above
the clouds, and encompassed a large space of ground, which I had a great
curiosity to look into. I thereupon continued my former way of
travelling through a great variety of winter scenes, till I had gained
the top of these white mountains, which seemed another Alps of snow. I
looked down from hence into a spacious plain, which was surrounded on
all sides by this mound of hills, and which presented me with the most
agreeable prospect I had ever seen. There was a greater variety of
colours in the embroidery of the meadows, a more lively green in the
leaves and grass, a brighter crystal in the streams, than what I ever
met with in any other region. The light itself had something more
shi