of his time; and, according to his generous expansive
nature, called upon all his company to like what he liked himself. He did
not damn with faint praise: he was in the world and of it; and his
enjoyment of life presents the strangest contrast to Swift's savage
indignation and Addison's lonely serenity.(105) Permit me to read to you a
passage from each writer, curiously indicative of his peculiar humour: the
subject is the same, and the mood the very gravest. We have said that upon
all the actions of man, the most trifling and the most solemn, the
humourist takes upon himself to comment. All readers of our old masters
know the terrible lines of Swift, in which he hints at his philosophy and
describes the end of mankind:--(106)

Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stood trembling at Jove's throne;
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said:
'Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who through frailty stepped aside,
And you who never err'd through pride;
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you).
The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent your freaks no more;
_I_ to such blockheads set my wit,
I damn such fools--go, go, you're bit!'

Addison, speaking on the very same theme, but with how different a voice,
says, in his famous paper on Westminster Abbey (_Spectator_, No. 26):--"For
my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be
melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep and solemn
scenes with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. When
I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies within me;
when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes
out; when I meet with the grief of parents on a tombstone, my heart melts
with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider
the vanity of grieving for those we must quickly follow." (I have owned
that I do not think Addison's heart melted very much, or that he indulged
very inordinately in the "vanity of grieving".) "When," he goes on, "when
I see kings lying by those who deposed them: when I consider rival wits
placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their
contests and d