nd hope, which he found from old habit
necessary to his own peace of mind, and thought so to the peace of
mankind. I do not hate, but love him for them. They were between himself
and his conscience; and should be left to that higher tribunal, "where
they in trembling hope repose, the bosom of his Father and his God." In a
word, he has left behind him few wiser or better men.

The herd of his imitators shewed what he was by their disproportionate
effects. The Periodical Essayists, that succeeded the Rambler, are, and
deserve to be, little read at present. The Adventurer, by Hawksworth, is
completely trite and vapid, aping all the faults of Johnson's style,
without any thing to atone for them. The sentences are often absolutely
unmeaning; and one half of each might regularly be left blank. The World,
and Connoisseur, which followed, are a little better; and in the last of
these there is one good idea, that of a man in indifferent health, who
judges of every one's title to respect from their possession of this
blessing, and bows to a sturdy beggar with sound limbs and a florid
complexion, while he turns his back upon a lord who is a valetudinarian.

Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, like all his works, bears the stamp of
the author's mind. It does not "go about to cozen reputation without the
stamp of merit." He is more observing, more original, more natural and
picturesque than Johnson. His work is written on the model of the Persian
Letters; and contrives to give an abstracted and somewhat perplexing view
of things, by opposing foreign prepossessions to our own, and thus
stripping objects of their customary disguises. Whether truth is elicited
in this collision of contrary absurdities, I do not know; but I confess
the process is too ambiguous and full of intricacy to be very amusing to
my plain understanding. For light summer reading, it is like walking in a
garden full of traps and pitfalls. It necessarily gives rise to paradoxes,
and there are some very bold ones in the Essays, which would subject an
author less established to no very agreeable sort of _censura literaria_.
Thus the Chinese philosopher exclaims very unadvisedly, "The bonzes and
priests of all religions keep up superstition and imposture: all
reformations begin with the laity." Goldsmith, however, was staunch in his
practical creed, and might bolt speculative extravagances with impunity.
There is a striking difference in this respect between him and Addis