the nose; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of
Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, but never joins
in it. He appears in his works such as he appeared in society. All the
company are convulsed with merriment, while the Dean, the author of all
the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and even sourness of aspect,
and gives utterance to the most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with
the air of a man reading the commination service.

The manner of Addison is as remote from that of Swift as from that of
Voltaire. He neither laughs out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish
wit, throws a double portion of severity into his countenance while
laughing inwardly; but preserves a look peculiarly his own, a look of
demure serenity, disturbed only by an arch sparkle of the eye, an almost
imperceptible elevation of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of
the lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding or of a Cynic.
It is that of a gentleman, in whom the quickest sense of the ridiculous
is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding.

We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opinion, of a more delicious
flavor than the humor of either Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least,
is certain, that both Swift and Voltaire have been successfully
mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic Addison. The letter
of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during
a long time, on the Academicians of Paris. There are passages in
Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, cannot distinguish from
Swift's best writing. But of the many eminent men who have made Addison
their model, though several have copied his mere diction with happy
effect, none has been able to catch the tone of his pleasantry. In the
World, in the Connoisseur, in the Mirror, in the Lounger, there are
numerous papers written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and
Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit; many are very lively
and amusing; but there is not a single one which could be passed off as
Addison's on a critic of the smallest perspicacity.

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from Swift, from Voltaire,
from almost all the other great masters of ridicule, is the grace, the
nobleness, the moral purity, which we find even in his merriment.
Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into misanthropy,
characterizes the works of Swift. The nature of Voltaire was, indeed,
not inh