try--to his
unwillingness to be put up as a sign-post, and his having his own likeness
turned into the Saracen's head--to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a
gipsy that tells him "he has a widow in his line of life"--to his doubts
as to the existence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches--to
his account of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain--to his
falling asleep at church, and his reproof of John Williams, as soon as he
recovered from his nap, for talking in sermon-time. The characters of
Will. Wimble and Will. Honeycomb are not a whit behind their friend, Sir
Roger, in delicacy and felicity. The delightful simplicity and
good-humoured officiousness in the one, are set off by the graceful
affectation and courtly pretension in the other. How long since I first
became acquainted with these two characters in the Spectator! What
old-fashioned friends they seem, and yet I am not tired of them, like so
many other friends, nor they of me! How airy these abstractions of the
poet's pen stream over the dawn of our acquaintance with human life! how
they glance their fairest colours on the prospect before us! how pure they
remain in it to the last, like the rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the
rude hand of time and experience can neither soil nor dissipate! What a
pity that we cannot find the reality, and yet if we did, the dream would
be over. I once thought I knew a Will. Wimble, and a Will. Honeycomb, but
they turned out but indifferently; the originals in the Spectator still
read, word for word, the same that they always did. We have only to turn
to the page, and find them where we left them!--Many of the most exquisite
pieces in the Tatler, it is to be observed, are Addison's, as the Court of
Honour, and the Personification of Musical Instruments, with almost all
those papers that form regular sets or series. I do not know whether the
picture of the family of an old college acquaintance, in the Tatler, where
the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and where the one
that loses the race that way, turns back to tell the father that he is
come; with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy who is got
into Guy of Warwick, and the Seven Champions, and who shakes his head at
the improbability of AEsop's Fables, is Steele's or Addison's, though I
believe it belongs to the former. The account of the two sisters, one of
whom held up her head higher than ordinary, from having on a