ornament to truth; Johnson gives it
force and energy. Addison makes virtue amiable; Johnson represents it as
an awful duty: Addison insinuates himself with an air of modesty;
Johnson commands like a dictator; but a dictator in his splendid robes,
not labouring at the plough: Addison is the Jupiter of Virgil, with
placid serenity talking to Venus,

"Vultu, quo coelum tempestatesque serenat."

Johnson is Jupiter Tonans: he darts his lightning and rolls his thunder,
in the cause of virtue and piety. The language seems to fall short of
his ideas; he pours along, familiarizing the terms of philosophy, with
bold inversions, and sonorous periods; but we may apply to him, what
Pope has said of Homer: "It is the sentiment that swells and fills out
the diction, which rises with it, and forms itself about it: like glass
in the furnace, which grows to a greater magnitude, as the breath within
is more powerful, and the heat more intense."

It is not the design of this comparison to decide between these two
eminent writers. In matters of taste every reader will choose for
himself. Johnson is always profound, and, of course, gives the fatigue
of thinking. Addison charms, while he instructs; and writing, as he
always does, a pure, an elegant, and idiomatic style, he may be
pronounced the safest model for imitation.

The essays written by Johnson in the Adventurer, may be called a
continuation of the Rambler. The Idler, in order to be consistent with
the assumed character, is written with abated vigour, in a style of ease
and unlaboured elegance. It is the Odyssey, after the Iliad. Intense
thinking would not become the Idler. The first number presents a well-drawn
portrait of an Idler, and from that character no deviation could
be made. Accordingly, Johnson forgets his austere manner, and plays us
into sense. He still continues his lectures on human life, but he
adverts to common occurrences, and is often content with the topic of
the day. An advertisement in the beginning of the first volume informs
us, that twelve entire essays were a contribution from different hands.
One of these, No. 33, is the journal of a senior fellow, at Cambridge,
but, as Johnson, being himself an original thinker, always revolted from
servile imitation, he has printed the piece with an apology, importing,
that the journal of a citizen, in the Spectator, almost precluded the
attempt of any subsequent writer. This account of the Idler may be
closed, after