the Abbey, and is frightened by the Mohawks, but conquers his apprehension so far as to go to the theatre when "The Distressed Mother" is acted. The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler, and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wimble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law discussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir Roger is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms at sixty. The club breaks up, and the Spectator resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be said to form a plot; yet they are related with such truth, such grace, such wit, such humor, such pathos, such knowledge of the human heart, such knowledge of the ways of the world, that they charm us on the hundredth perusal. We have not the least doubt that, if Addison had written a novel, on an extensive plan, it would have been superior to any that we possess. As it is, he is entitled to be considered, not only as the greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerunner of the great English novelists.

We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is the Spectator. About three-sevenths of the work are his; and it is no exaggeration to say that his worst essay is as good as the best essay of any of his coadjutors. His best essays approach near to absolute perfection; nor is their excellence more wonderful than their variety. Ilis invention never seems to flag; nor is he ever under the necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. IIe regales us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held that there was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively and ingenious as Lucian's "Auction of Lives ;"() on the Tuesday an Eastern apo

(') Lucian lived in the second century after Christ. Macaulay, in a letter written from India in the year 1835, says: "I am now deep in Aristophanes and Lucian. Of Aristophanes I think as I always thought; but Lucian has agreeably surprised At school I read some of his 'Dialogues of the Dead' when I was thirteen; and, to my shame, I never, to the best of my belief, read a line of him since. I am

me.

logue, as richly colored as the "Tales of Scheherezade;" on the Wednesday, a character described with the skill of La Bruyère;(') on the Thursday, a scene from common life, equal to the best chapters in "The Vicar of Wakefield;;" on the Friday, some sly Horatian pleasantry on fashionable follies, on hoops, patches, or puppet-shows; and on the Saturday a religious meditation, which will bear a comparison with the finest passages in Massillon.

It is dangerous to select where there is so much that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, however, to say that any person who wishes to form a just notion of the extent and variety of Addison's powers will do well to read at one sitting the following papers, the two "Visits to the Abbey," the "Visit to the Exchange," the "Journal of the Retired Citizen," the "Vision of Mirza," the "Transmigrations of Pug the Monkey," and the "Death of Sir Roger De Coverley."()

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of them must be regarded as creditable to him, when the character of the school in which he had been trained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he was before his own. No essays in the Spectator were more censured and derided than those in which he raised his voice against the contempt with which our fine old ballads were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the same gold which, burnished and polished, gives lus

charmed with him. His style seems to me to be superior to that of any extant writer who lived later than the age of Demosthenes and Theophrastus. He has a most peculiar and delicious vein of humor. It is not the humor of Aristophanes, it is not that of Plato; and yet it is akin to both; not quite equal, I admit, to either, but still exceedingly charming. I hardly know where to find an instance of a writer, in the decline of a literature, who has shown an invention so rich and a taste so pure."

(') Jean de La Bruyère lived in the seventeenth century. He was a tutor of the Dauphin under Fénélon.

(2) These papers are respectively numbered 26, 329, 69, 317, 159, 343, 517.

tre to the "Eneid" and the "Odes of Horace," is mingled with the rude dross of " Chevy Chace."

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator should have been such as no similar work has ever obtained. The number of copies daily distributed was at first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and had risen to near four thousand when the stamp-tax was imposed. That tax was fatal to a crowd of journals.(') The Spectator, however, stood its ground, doubled its price, and, though its circulation fell off, still yielded a large revenue both to the State and to the authors. For particular papers, the demand was immense; of some, it is said, twenty thousand copies were required. But this was not all. To have the Spectator served up every morning with the Bohea and rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority were content to wait till essays. enough had appeared to form a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume were immediately taken off, and new editions were called for. It must be remembered that the population of England was then hardly a third of what it now is. The number of Englishmen who were in the habit of reading was probably not a sixth of what it now is. A shop-keeper or a farmer who found any pleasure in literature was a rarity. Nay, there were doubtless more than one knight of the shire whose country-seat did not contain ten books, receipt-books and books on farriery included. In these circumstances, the sale of the Spectator must be considered as indicating a popularity quite as great as that of the most successful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our own time.

(') The newspaper stamp-tax, imposed in 1713, amounted to a half-penny on half a sheet, and a penny on a whole sheet. The tax was gradually increased, until Pitt, in the great French war, raised it to fourpence. It was abolished in 1855.

HORACE WALPOLE'S WRITINGS.

[Essay on Horace Walpole's Writings.]

WHAT is the charm, the irresistible charm, of Walpole's writings? It consists, we think, in the art of amusing without exciting. He never convinces the reason, or fills the imagination, or touches the heart; but he keeps the mind of the reader constantly attentive and constantly entertained. He had a strange ingenuity peculiarly his own, an ingenuity which appeared in all that he did-in his building, in his gardening, in his upholstery, in the matter and in the manner of his writings. If we were to adopt the classification-not a very accurate classification-which Akenside has given of the pleasures of the imagination,(') we should say that with the Sublime and the Beautiful Walpole had nothing to do, but that the third province-the Odd-was his peculiar domain. The motto which he prefixed to his "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors" might have been inscribed with perfect propriety over the door of every room in his house, and on the title-page of every one of his books: "Dove diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete pigliate tante coglionerie ?"(") In his villa, every apartment is a museum; every piece of furniture is a curiosity; there is something strange in the form of the shovel; there is a long story belonging to the bell-rope. We wander among a profusion of rareties, of trifling intrinsic value, but so quaint in fashion, or connected

(') Akenside, born at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1721, was only twenty-two years old when he wrote his "Pleasures of the Imagination." He took the book to Dodsley, the publisher, and asked for it £120. Dodsley carried the work to Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a niggardly offer, for this was no every-day writer."

(2) "Where, in the name of goodness, Mr. Ludovic, have you got together all this rubbish ?"

with such remarkable names and events, that they may well detain our attention for a moment. A moment is enough. Some new relic, some new unique, some new carved work, some new enamel, is forthcoming in an instant. One cabinet of trinkets is no sooner closed than another is opened. It is the same with Walpole's writings. It is not in their utility, it is not in their beauty, that their attraction lies. They are to the works of great historians and poets what Strawberry Hill is to the Museum of Sir Hans Sloane(') or to the Gallery of Florence. Walpole is constantly showing us things, not of very great value indeed, yet things which we are pleased to see, and which we can see nowhere else. They are baubles; but they are made curiosities either by his grotesque workmanship or by some association belonging to them. His style is one of those peculiar styles by which every body is attracted, and which nobody can safely venture to imitate. IIe is a mannerist whose manner has become perfectly easy to him. His affectation is so habitual and so universal that it can hardly be called affectation. The affectation is the essence of the man. It pervades all his thoughts and all his expressions. If it were taken away, nothing would be left. He coins new words, distorts the senses of old words, and twists sentences into forms which make grammarians stare. But all this he does, not only with an air of ease, but as if he could not help doing it. His wit was, in its essential properties, of the same kind with that of Cowley and Donne.(3) Like theirs, it consisted in an exqui

(1) Sir Hans Sloane, the eminent physician and naturalist, died at Chelsea in 1753. His natural-history collection and library of books and manuscripts formed the nucleus of the British Museum.

(2) Johnson's criticism upon the school of Cowley and Donne, whom he, oddly enough, called the metaphysical poets, is quite admirable in its kind. He sums up their defects and their merits in two weighty sentences: "The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased." "Yet great labor, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost; if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were farfetched, they were often worth the carrying."