expresses himself, that many of his portraits are drawn from real life, and that the names only are changed. This is no doubt an advantage, now especially that it cannot be followed by any invidious effects. His great object seems to be the laying hold of such as are marked by amusing eccentricities, espeeially where these are united with genuine worth and goodness. Such, in a peculiar degree, afford scope for that delicate and good humoured satire in which he excels.

Of these characters, the most striking, and the most exquisitely drawn, is that of Sir Roger de Coverley. He is the old English country gentleman, full of goodness and simplicity, and without any of the roughness and coarseness, which were usually attendant on that mode of life. Every one is interested and delighted by this character. His harmless singularities, while they amuse, serve only to attach us the more strongly to him. Yet it may be difficult to say, how far morality is likely to derive advantage from the exhibition of such a portrait. It may certainly inspire a love of

goodness, but not, I suspect, much wish to imitate it. So mortifying to human pride is even the most delicate kind of ridicule, that though our regard may be no way lessened for the person who is the object of it, yet we would not, on any account, risk the becoming ourselves that object. This is a charac-, ter, therefore, which we love, without wishing to resemble.

JOHNSON.

About half a century after Johnson treading in the footsteps of Addison, undertook the Rambler, a work similar in design, though very differently executed. He possessed nothing of the wit, the ease, or the graces, of his predecessor. His familiar narratives representing common life and English manners, are therefore heavy and uninteresting. These subjects were not well suited to his genius, nor could they be well managed by so bulky and unwieldy a style. But he has succeeded admirably in those which require the delineation of foreign manners,

and of oriental splendour; as in Seged, Morad, Anningait and Ajut, to which we may add Rasselas. In these we find a richness of imagination, together with a pomp and magnificence of language, hardly to be paralleled.

The fictions of Johnson are of the second order, and have generally some maxim, which they are designed to inculcate. His great object seems to be to impress his readers with a deep persuasion of the vanity and wretchedness of human life. Here, perhaps, he has gone too far. Doubtless, the writer would be to blame, who should represent life as the scene of perpetual and unclouded gaity. And as this is the side of the picture which men in general love too much to contemplate, it may often be important to fix their eyes on its darker shades. Yet here also excess may be hurtful, and may tend to produce that habitual unhappiness, which is closely connected with the indulgence of discontent and malignant passions.

HAWKESWORLH.

The merits of Hawkesworth cannot, in a general view, be put in competition with those of his two predecessors. In the particular department, however, of which we are speaking, he is little inferior to either. The stories interspersed form the chief ornament of the Adventurer. They display, indeed, neither the wit of Addison, nor the magnificence of Johnson; but they excel both in exciting that interest which arises from a chain of well connected incidents. Hilario and Flavilla are superior, in this respect, to any thing we find, either in the Spectator or Rambler. This author shews also great knowledge of the town, though chiefly, it must be owned, of the most profligate and dissolute part of it. Hence many of the pictures which his work presents are not of a kind with which it is desirable that the youthful mind should become familiar. They may be taken, indeed, as warnings, and were probably so intended by the au

thor. Warnings, however, are better afforded by real, than by fictitious occurrences ; and when vices are thus minutely described, there is a danger of the principle of contagion beginning to operate.

With regard to the Mirror and Lounger, this department in those papers is chiefly distinguished by the contributions of Mr. Mackenzie. For particular reasons, however, I shall reserve, till a future occasion, my observations on the writings of this gentleman.

RICHARDSON.

From the little narratives interspersed in periodical productions, we now proceed to those on a greater scale, which constitute an entire work by themselves. Richardson, of course, stands foremost on this list. Before his time, there seems to have been nothing of any note, with the exception of a few indecent and scandalous chronicles. And as he was first in time, so he seems still to hold rather the first rank in the general estimation. His merit, however, is not equally acknow