are such leading characteristics in those brilliant works,
through a whole series of dramatic categories from the
comedy to the puppet-show. The constant tendency, he
humorously described, is a recommendation to "Eat and drink,
and go to the deuce, when your time comes, if deuce there
be; and he confessed that he regarded these witty banquets
without love as he would contemplate the ruins of Sallust's
house at Pompeii, with all its ghastly relics of festivity.
The foppish depreciation of his own literary productions
with which Congreve met the compliments of Voltaire, Mr.
Thackeray rather commended than otherwise, but not for a
reason which would have pleased the great man. He really did
think his productions worthless, if weighed against one
kindly line of Steele or Addison.

"Addison is evidently Mr. Thackeray's favorite of the
'humorists' he has brought before the public. If Swift was
the most wretched of mankind, Addison appeared to him as the
most amiable. He admired the serene, calm character, who
could walk so majestically among his fellow-creatures, and
viewing with love all below him, could raise his eyes with
adoration to the blue sky above. He admitted that Addison
was not profound, and that his writings betray no appearance
of suffering--which probably he never knew prior to his
unlucky marriage--but at the same time he expatiated on the
kindliness of his wisdom and the genuine character of his
piety. The foible of drinking he did not attempt to conceal,
but observed that we should have liked Addison less had he
been without it, as we should have liked Sir Roger de
Coverley less without his vanities. Greatly he admired the
gentle spirit of Addison's sarcasm, as distinguished from
the merciless onslaught of Swift, remarking, that in his
mild court only minor cases were tried. Nor were words of
commendation the only means by which Mr. Thackeray indicated
his predilection for Addison. Of Swift he scarcely read a
line; Congreve he illustrated, not by extracts from the
comedies in which he lives for posterity, but by those minor
poems which, though admired by his cotemporaries, are now
little regarded; but he read several extracts from the
_Spectator_, and also Addison's well known hymn, as a
specimen of his deep fee