tency of character. But to be a general writer exacts a variableness of manner, a variety in the forms of speech, a power of using colloquial phrases without loss of elegance, and of conveying sentiments with a fervid spontaneousness or a playful lightness of expression, which are incompatible with a pre-arranged form of sentences and a studied preference of learned and uncommon words.

In Johnson's political writings we see the declamatory sophist of the schools: refuting his adversary according to the strictest rules of dialectic; and even dealing out his irony with a self-betrayed consciousness of a command of the figures of speech. We miss the plain business-like statement; the popular appeal; the contagious fervour and rapid pliability of the orator combined with the masked art of the logician; qualities which acquired to the Letters of Junius their unexampled and irresistible ascendancy. The author of the pamphlet on • Falkland's Islands' adopts the grave and weighty style of the historian: he writes to scholars and to statesmen, but not to the people. Were the following passage to be translated by Cobbett into his familiar and brief, yet forcible language, it might have its effect; but what convert among the readers of pamphlets would be made by diction like the following?

"When they found that all were happy in spite of "their machinations, and the soft effulgence of peace "shone out upon the nation, they felt no motion but "that of sullen envy: they could not, like Milton's

prince of hell, abstract themselves a moment from "their evil: as they have not the wit of Satan, they have "not his virtue; they tried once again what could be " done by sophistry without art, and confidence without "credit."

In his Parliamentary Reports there is any thing but the tone of eloquence: we imagine ourselves introduced into a literary club, where essays are read aloud, instead of into a senate-house, where harangues are made. What would be thought of a peer who should observe in a debate on the policy of repealing the duties on spirituous liquors" Pride, my Lords! is the parent, and intrepi"dity the fosterer of resentment; for this reason men " are almost always inclined in their debauches to quar"rels and bloodshed. They think more highly of their "own merit, and therefore more readily conclude them“selves injured; they are wholly divested of fear, insen"sible of present danger, superior to all authority, and "therefore thoughtless of future punishment; and what "then can hinder them from expressing their resentment "with the most offensive freedom, or pursuing their "revenge with the most daring violence?"

Had Lord Harvey spoken thus, it would surely have been surmised that his speech had been penned by his college-tutor.

But perhaps they who have not forgotten the facetious sallies of Sheridan or his vein of easy yet pointed irony, may be curious to see a lighter specimen of the reporter's extemporaneous oratory:-" The cyder, Sir! which. "I am now rescuing from contemptuous comparisons, "has often exhilarated my social hours, enlivened the "freedom of conversation, and improved the tenderness "of friendship."

Mr. Cornwall appears to have taken a leaf out of The Rambler.

But the inapplicableness of Johnson's style to the purposes of universal literature is no where so visible as ' in his Essays on Manners. What raises our opinion of

Addison as a master of language, is chiefly the surprising versatility of his style. Most writers, most modern writers in particular, are easily detected. They have formed a structure of style, which is recognised with as much ease as a man's hand-writing or the impression of his seal. But Addison cannot always be tracked. His serious papers can indeed be distinguished by the smoothness of the sentences, the unpremeditated air of the expression, and the striking propriety and elegant choice exhibited in the words. There is, however, nothing like what may be called a settishness of style; and in his lighter papers he seems to have scarcely any marked characteristic. His wit and his humour may be recognised by their neatness and delicacy, but his style has all the playful changeableness of the serpent's skin; whereas I am afraid that the wig of Johnson is continually peeping out, even under the starched cap of Betty Broom.

If Johnson, however, be incapable of that wit, peculiar to Addison, which plays lightly round a subject, and strikes by delicate inuendo, or a happy naiveté, and as it were accidentally, without the apparent consciousness of any arch purpose in the writer himself; he has nevertheless a strain of humour of his own, marked with a good deal of shrewd observation and knowledge of the world, and evincing considerable skill in picturesque strokes of manners, and satyrical displays of foibles and absurdities. But it is a humour which partakes of a grave irony, little obvious to vulgar apprehension, and stiffened with the usual formalities of his style. The raillery of Addison amuses the tea-table; the sly sarcasm of Johnson is only relished in the college-room. Even where his delineations are truly humorous, and where he most descends to

playfulness, and laughs and shakes in his easy chair,' his style still hangs upon him like a drag-chain, encumbers his movements, and impedes the activity of his fancy. The ensuing paragraph is intended to be gay and easy; yet the measured arrangement of the sentences, and the solemn morality of the close, throw a gloom and heaviness over the ridicule of the satire.

"It is indeed the great business of her life to watch "the skillet on the fire, to see it simmer with the due "degree of heat, and to snatch it off in the moment of "projection: and the employment, to which she has "bred her daughters, was to turn rose-leaves in the “shade; to pick out the seeds of currants with a quill; "to gather fruit without bruising it, and to extract "bean-flower-water for the skin. Such was the task "with which every day, since I came hither, has begun "and ended; to which the early hours of life are sacri"ficed, and in which that time is passing away which 66 never shall return."

Addison would have conveyed the moral without appearing to moralize: and would not have talked of the 'moment of projection' when describing a pot boiling over. An allusion of sarcastic pleasantry is indeed meant, to the chemical crisis of operation in transmuting metals; but this is an instance of that solemn irony peculiar to Johnson, which is often too grave and recondite to catch the attention of common readers.

It may be amusing to make an experiment of a passage of Addison, by paraphrasing it in the manner of Johnson. I shall select one from The Spectator, No. XII. on the subject of ghost-stories.

"I seated myself by the candle that stood on a table " at one end of the room; and pretending to read a book

"that I took out of my pocket, heard several dreadful "stories of ghosts as pale as ashes that had stood at the "feet of a bed, or walked over a church-yard by moon-` 66 light; and of others that had been conjured into the "Red Sea for disturbing people's rest and drawing their "curtains at midnight; with many other old women's "fables of the like nature."

I venture to suppose that Dr. Johnson would have cast the passage somewhat as follows:

"I seated myself at one extremity of the apartment, where a taper had been placed upon a table; and fixing myself in the simulated perusal of a volume which I produced from my pocket, was thus enabled to listen with the more complete security from detection. I heard tales, in terrible succession, of ghosts with visages of cinereal paleness; who stood in solemn apparition at the foot of the couch of rest, or stalked by the pale effulgence of moonlight through the consecrated ground of the cemetery. I heard of others that had been condemned by the spell of the exorcist to the profundities of the Red Sea; there to expiate by the durance of ages the terrors with which they had disturbed the tranquillity of slumber, and the horrors which they had caused by drawing in nocturnal silence the curtains sacred to repose. I sate in apparent abstraction while I listened to these and similar wonders; the traditionary gossip of garrulous anility."

The Spectator, No. DLXV. affords an example of the power of natural simplicity to convey with lively distinctness the impression of sensible images:

"I was yesterday about sun-set walking in the open "fields, till the night insensibly fell upon me. I at first "amused myself with the richness and variety of colours