the music proceeded from a consort of flageolots and bird-calls which were planted behind the scenes. But to return to the sparrows; there have been so many flights of them let loose in this opera, that it is feared the house will never get rid of them; and that in other plays they make their entrance in very improper scenes, so as to be seen flying in a lady's bed-chamber, or perching upon a king's throne; besides the inconveniences which the heads of the audience may sometimes suffer from them.” Writing of English translations of Italian operas, and maliciously remarking on the blunders of the translators, he says:— I remember an Italian verse that ran thus word for word- And turned my rage into pity; which the English for rhyme sake translated— And into pity turned my rage. It By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian, fell upon the word rage in the English, and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. oftentimes happened likewise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant words in the sentence. I have known the word and pursued through the whole gamut, have been entertained with many a melodious the, and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon them, for, and from, to the eternal honour of our English particles." This exquisitely-worded criticism is somewhat malicious towards the poor singers and their audience; the satire was no doubt wholesome, and the arch satirist could plead the sanction of good sense, but there is not much amiability in the spirit of such ridicule. His ridicule of the Tory squires is by no means so delicate. He had carefully studied the character, with the sharp insight of inveterate dislike, and exposes all the weak points of their rusticity with unmerciful exaggeration. One of his first contributions to the 'Tatler' is an account of a visit paid him in his own apartment by Sir Harry Quickset, Sir Giles Wheelbarrow, Knight, Thomas Rentfree, Esquire, Justice of the Quorum, Andrew Windmill, Esquire, and Mr Nicholas Doubt, of the Inner Temple, Sir Harry's grandson. He had been forewarned of his distinguished company by a letter from Sir Harry's steward:: "The hour of nine was come this morning, and I had no sooner set chairs, by the steward's letter, and fixed my tea-equipage, but I heard a knock at my door, which was opened, but no one entered; after which followed a long silence, which was broke at last by, 'Sir, I beg your pardon, I think I know better;' and another voice, Nay, good Sir Giles.' I looked out from my window, and saw the good company all with their hats off, and arms spread, offering the door to each other. But they are now got to my chamber-door, and I saw my old friend Sir Harry enter. I met him with all the respect due to so reverend a vegetable; for, you are to know, that is my sense of a person who remains idle in the same place for half a century. I got him with great success into his chair by the fire, without throwing down any of my cups. I had the misfortune, as they stood cheek by jowl, to desire the squire to sit down before the justice of the quorum, to the no small satisfaction of the former, and resentment of the latter." [On the squire's refusing to take tea, the steward proposed an adjournment to some public-house.] "We all stood up in an instant, and Sir Harry filed off from the left, very discreetly, countermarching behind the chairs towards the door. After him, Sir Giles in the same manner. The simple squire made a sudden start to follow; but the justice of the quorum whipped between upon the stand of the stairs. A maid going up with coals, made us halt, and put us into such confusion that we stood all in a heap, without any visible possibility of recovering our order. We were fixed in this perplexity for some time, until we heard a very loud noise in the street; and Sir Harry asking what it was, I, to make them move, said 'it was fire.' Upon this, all ran down as fast as they could, without order or ceremony, into the street, where we drew up in very good order, and filed off down Steer Lane; the impertinent templar driving us before him as in a string, and pointing to his acquaintance who passed by.” Another of his rustic characters in the 'Tatler' is Tom Bellfrey, the fox-hunter, who gives an imitation of a fox-chase in a London drawing-room, and "calls all the neighbouring parishes into the square. The most frequently quoted of these caricatures is the Tory Fox-hunter," drawn with unsparing skill in the 'Freeholder.' Upon this character Dr Nathan Drake remarks: "The character of the Tory Fox-hunter is, it must be confessed, in every respect less amiable and respectable than that of Sir Roger de Coverley; we neither love nor esteem him; for, instead of the sweet and benevolent temper of the knight, we are here presented with a vulgar, rough, and totally uneducated squire, whose credulity and absurd prejudices are not softened down or relieved by those mild and tender feelings which so greatly endear to us almost every incident in the life of Sir Roger." Yet Addison's share in the character of Sir Roger is really a caricature of rusticity, not one whit better-natured than the Foxhunter. We shall notice more fully, in treating of Steele, that "the sweet and benevolent temper,' ""the mild and tender feelings," are Steele's contributions to the character of the knight. This is not the only instance where Addison has profited by his alliance with Steele. His character of Will Wimble is a sharp and considerably overcharged satire on the younger sons of the aristocracy. While he professes deep compassion that "so good a heart and such busy hands were wholly employed in trifles," he exposes those trifling occupations with anything but a loving hand. Will "generally lives with his elder brother as superintendent of his game; extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man ;' "is a good-natured, officious fellow;" "carries a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the country." This is said to be "the case of many a younger brother of a great family, who had rather see their children starve like gentlemen, than thrive in a trade or profession that is beneath their quality." To profess compassion after drawing such a picture is to add keenness to the sting. Of his satires on society, very short examples must suffice. Any of his papers will illustrate the poignancy of the strokes, and the exceeding delicacy and ingenuity of the expression. Perhaps the most characteristic examples of this vein of his satire are seen in his delicate application of caustic to the foibles of women. was animated by nothing like Steele's chivalrous gallantry towards the sex. Take the following on the female passion for china, his contribution to Steele's short-lived 'Lover:' He "There are no inclinations in women which more surprise me than their passions for chalk and china. The first of these maladies wears out in a little time; but when a woman is visited with the second, it generally takes possession of her for life. China vessels are playthings for women of all ages. An old lady of fourscore shall be as busy in cleaning an Indian mandarin, as her great-granddaughter is in dressing her baby. "The common way of purchasing such trifles, if I may believe my female informers, is by exchanging old suits of clothes for this brittle ware. The potters of China have, it seems, their factors at this distance, who retail out their several manufactures for cast clothes and superannuated garments. I have known an old petticoat metamorphosed into a punch-bowl, and a pair of breeches into a teapot," &c. In this example the wit is not quite worthy of Addison, and the derision borders on coarseness. As an extreme contrast, take a passage from the exquisitely graceful paper on the Use of the Fan:' "Women are armed with fans, as men with swords, and sometimes do more execution with them. To the end therefore that ladies may be entire mistresses of the weapon which they bear, I have erected an academy for the training up of young women in the exercise of the fan, according to the most fashionable airs and motions that are now practised at Court. The ladies who carry fans under me are drawn up twice a-day in my great hall, where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the following words of command: : Handle your fans, By the right observation of these few plain words of command, a woman of a tolerable genius who will apply herself diligently to her exercise for the space of but one half-year, shall be able to give her fan all the graces that can possibly enter into that little modish machine. "The Fluttering of the Fan is the last, and indeed the masterpiece of the whole exercise; but if a lady does not misspend her time, she may make herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the summer for the teaching this part of the exercise, for as soon as ever I pronounce Futter your Fans, the place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of a tender constitution in any other. "There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the Flutter of a Fan: there is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan; insomuch, that if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes." Not content with satirising the ladies of his own generation, he carries his cynical raillery of the sex into imaginary generations before the Flood. In his papers on the loves of Shalum and Hilpah, the humour receives a satirical turn from the imputation of unworthy motives to Hilpah. Besides the redeeming graces of expression, two things may be urged in extenuation of the malicious or satirical basis of Addison's wit. First, his ridicule is not personal; it is aimed at what the author takes to be vice, folly, or bad taste, not at an actual offender. Secondly, "it is justly observed by Tickell that he employed wit on the side of virtue and religion." Melody. A good deal of Johnson's panegyric of Addison's style is really the picture of an ideal to which, in his opinion, Addison approaches; but many of the particulars are happy, and none more so than this-that "it was his principal endeavour to avoid all harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore sometimes verbose in his transitions and connections, and sometimes descends too much to the language of conversation." The melodious flow of the diction is a very striking quality of our author's style; and doubtless his endeavour after this beauty accounts for many of his sins against precision. In the Appendix to Bain's 'Rhetoric,' a passage is analysed with a view to this quality, and it is traced to the fewness of abrupt consonants or harsh combinations, the variety of the vowels, and "the rhythmical construction, or the alternation of long and short, emphatic and unemphatic sounds." Taste.-Elegance is the ruling quality of Addison's style. He sacrifices everything to the unctuous junction of syllables, and the harmonious combination of ideas. The pedantic scholarship of Taylor, the rough vigour and profusion of Barrow, are illustrative by extreme contrast. But we might go the round of our great writers without finding such another example of superficial smoothWe have remarked the studied refinement of Temple; but in Temple refinement is united with majesty and depth of feeling. Cowley's diction is studied, and his thoughts light and trivial; but as compared with Addison, his rhythm is often awkward and stumbling, his fancy exuberant, and his ridicule bare and undisguised. ness. The following is at once an illustration of his elegant treatment of a theme that might easily be made pedantic, and an example of the principles that guided his own composition: "Allegories, when well chosen, are like so many tracks of light in a discourse, that make everything about them clear and beautiful. A noble metaphor, when it is placed to an advantage, casts a kind of glory round it, and darts a lustre through a whole sentence. These different kinds of allusion are but so many different manners of similitude, and that they may please the imagination, the likeness ought to be very exact, or very agree able, as we love to see a picture where the resemblance is just, or the posture and air graceful. But we often find eminent writers very faulty in this respect; great scholars are apt to fetch their comparisons and allusions from the sciences in which they are most conversant, so that a man may see the compass of their learning in a treatise on the most indifferent subject. I have read a discourse upon love which none but a profound chymist could understand, and have heard many a sermon that should only have been preached before a congregation of Cartesians. On the contrary, your men of business usually have recourse to such instances as are too mean and familiar. They are for drawing the reader into a game of chess or tennis, or for leading him from shop to shop, in the cant of particular trades and employments. It is certain there may be found an infinite variety of very agreeable allusions in both these kinds; but for the generality, the most entertaining ones lie in the works of nature, which are obvious to all сараcities, and more delightful than what is to be found in arts and sciences.' SIR RICHARD STEELE, 1675-1729. "When Mr Addison was abroad," writes Thackeray, "and after he came home in rather a dismal way to wait upon Providence in his shabby lodging in the Haymarket, young Captain Steele was cutting a much smarter figure than that of his classical friend of Charterhouse Cloister and Maudlin Walk." Steele, born in Dublin, of English parents, was also a Charterhouse boy and an Oxonian, his college being Merton. A gay, impetuous youth, overflowing with wit and good-nature, and fond of company, he yet gained some celebrity as a scholar, and before he graduated had written a poem and a comedy. When he had to choose a profession he fixed upon the army; and his friends refusing to buy him a commission, he enlisted as a private in the Horse Guards. His wit making him a general favourite, he had, by the year 1701, been promoted to the rank of captain in the Fusiliers. He is said to have passed a dissipated and reckless life: he "probably wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy, in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern-fled from many a bailiff." But if this debauchery was as bad as has been represented, in the midst of it all he kept up his literary tastes. 1701 he published 'The Christian Hero,' a curious production for a dissipated officer, and an indication of the sinning and repenting character of the man. In the following year he produced a comedy, The Funeral, or, Grief à la Mode,' a satire on hired In |