ate beauties of the Roman classics;
and, when he cultivated his native language, no wonder that he formed
that graceful style, which has been so justly admired; simple, yet
elegant; adorned, yet never over-wrought; rich in allusion, yet pure and
perspicuous; correct, without labour; and though, sometimes, deficient
in strength, yet always musical. His essays, in general, are on the
surface of life; if ever original, it was in pieces of humour. Sir Roger
de Coverly, and the tory fox-hunter, need not to be mentioned. Johnson
had a fund of humour, but he did not know it; nor was he willing to
descend to the familiar idiom, and the variety of diction, which that
mode of composition required. The letter, in the Rambler, No. 12, from a
young girl that wants a place, will illustrate this observation. Addison
possessed an unclouded imagination, alive to the first objects of nature
and of art. He reaches the sublime without any apparent effort. When he
tells us, "If we consider the fixed stars as so many oceans of flame,
that are each of them attended with a different set of planets; if we
still discover new firmaments, and new lights, that are sunk further in
those unfathomable depths of ether; we are lost in a labyrinth of suns
and worlds, and confounded with the magnificence and immensity of
nature;" the ease, with which this passage rises to unaffected grandeur,
is the secret charm that captivates the reader. Johnson is always lofty;
he seems, to use Dryden's phrase, to be "o'erinform'd with meaning," and
his words do not appear to himself adequate to his conception. He moves
in state, and his periods are always harmonious. His Oriental Tales are
in the true style of eastern magnificence, and yet none of them are so
much admired, as the Visions of Mirza. In matters of criticism, Johnson
is never the echo of preceding writers. He thinks, and decides, for
himself. If we except the essays on the Pleasures of Imagination,
Addison cannot be called a philosophical critic. His moral essays are
beautiful; but in that province nothing can exceed the Rambler, though
Johnson used to say, that the essay on "the burthens of mankind," (in
the Spectator, No. 558,) was the most exquisite he had ever read.
Talking of himself, Johnson said, "Topham Beauclerk has wit, and every
thing comes from him with ease; but when I say a good thing, I seem to
labour." When we compare him with Addison, the contrast is still
stronger: Addison lends grace and