ality and consequence in his author and his author's beauties. He had none of that true and refreshing spirit of criticism which pours down a fresh radiance on the withering beauties of antiquity, and discloses new graces wherever its illuminating resplendences are thrown, and which, like the skilful varnisher of some ancient painting, renews and renovates, in the subject, its brilliancy and richness of colouring, without altering the character of its loveliness, or impairing the symmetry of its proportions.

"With the power of wit, both were almost equally gifted; and the precise nature and description of that wit was in both pretty nearly the same. It was not that delicately gentle and refined species which distinguished Addison, and which gave an almost evanescent air to the humour of his pages-but that coarse and forcible strength of wit, or rather humour, which it is impossible to withstand, and which breaks upon an adversary as a torrent impetuous and overwhelming-absolutely stunning and confounding with its vehemence, its energy, and its force. Those who wish to see this species of wit in its highest perfection, cannot be better referred than to the controversial writings of Warburton, or of Dr Bentley, from whom Warburton adopted his style in controversy. It was this overflowing and vigorous possession of wit, which rendered Johnson so powerful in conversation, and enabled Warburton in controversy to defy the hosts of enemies who assailed him. Of those enemies, many were more exactly learned as to the point in question than himselfmany equally sound reasoners-and, what is of no small advantage in reasoning, had a much better cause to defend; but they were all in the end worsted, defeated, and put to flight, by the auxiliary sallies of his wit, which came forth in volleys as unexpected as they were irresistible. That this species of wit should frequently

be coupled with scurrility, was what might readily be anticipated-it was totally destitute of delicacy, and had no refinement or polish. It perhaps cannot better be described, than by comparing it with the wit of Addison, to which it was, in all its shapes, totally dissimilar. The one was a weapon infinitely more powerful-though the other required much more of dexterity and science in its application. The former was much more the instrument of a barbarian-the latter of a civilized combatant. The one was more fitted for the lighter skirmishes of intellectual warfare, and softened courtliness of social intercourse-the other more adapted for those contests, where no quarter is given, and no indulgence is expected. In the one, wit was so highly polished as frequently to lose its effect-in the other, it was often so coarse and personal, as to defeat its very purpose. In the one, it is the arch smile of contemptuous scornin the other, the loud horse-laugh of ferocious defiance. The one was more fitted for the castigation of manners -the other better adapted for the concussion of minds. The wit of the former was, like the missile of the Israelite, often overcoming from the skill with which it was thrown-and that of the latter, the ponderous stone of Ajax laid hold of with extraordinary strength, and propelled with extraordinary fury. In short, the wit of Addison, when compared with that of Warburton and Johnson, was what the polished sharpness of the rapier is to the ponderous weight of the battle-axe, or as the innocuous brilliancy of the lightning to the overpowering crash of the thunderbolt.

"In poetical genius and capability, it would perhaps be unfair to compare them. What Warburton has written in verse, was merely the first juvenile trying of his pen, and therefore hardly could hope to rival the mature and laboured poetical compositions of Johnson; yet we may doubt whether, if Warburton had written

more of poetry, he would have written better, or ever risen above mediocrity in the efforts of poetical talent. Of those higher qualifications of imagination and sensibility, which every true poet must possess, he was, as well as Johnson, utterly destitute; but he had not, like Johnson, a mind stored with a rich fund of poetical images, or a nice perception of harmony in sound, or melody in versification. His translations are merely the productions of a school-boy, and such productions as many a school-boy would be ashamed to own. seems to have possessed no ear attuned to the harmony of numbers-no fondness for the music of rhyme, or the march of periods. In this department of genius, therefore, he was utterly inferior to Johnson, who, if he did not possess the fine eye and highest exaltation of a poet, could clothe every subject he descanted upon with sonorous grandeur of verse, and gorgeous accompaniments of fancy.

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"In the beauty of style, and the ornaments of language, Johnson, it is well known, was most immeasurably superior. His writings have given an increase of correctness and purity, a transfusion of dignity and strength to our language, which is unexampled in the annals of literature, and which corrected, in their influence on our dialect, the diffused tameness of Addison, and the colloquialism of Swift. Whatever nearer approaches have been made to perfection in our language, have all been established on the foundation of his writings; and, perhaps, it would not be exceeding the bounds of justice to affirm, that more is due to him in the refinement of the English tongue, than to any man in any language or in any country, with the single exception of Cicero. If his own style itself is not the best model in our language, it is from it certainly that the best model must be formed; and whoever shall in the end attain that summit of perfection, it will be from the copious

fountain of Johnson that his materials must be supplied. Of the graces and elegancies of diction, Warburton, on the contrary, had no conception,-his thoughts were turned out in the dress which lay nearest to his hand; and often their multiplicity was too great to allow him time to find for each a proper and suitable covering of expression. To harmony in the structure of cadences, or splendour in the finishing of sentences, he was utterly void of pretension, and was, moreover, totally destitute of the power of selection or choice of words. Yet he cannot justly be accused of neglect or contempt of the beauties of style, for no one altered more incessantly, or altered to less purpose, than Warburton. In one of his letters he acknowledges, that there are many thousand corrections and alterations merely of language in the second edition of his Julian; and, to my own knowledge, there are no less than 20,000 verbal corrections in the several editions of his Divine Legation, almost every one of which has no other effect than to render that worse which before was bad. He compared himself, in his alterations, to the bear who licks into form its shapeless offspring; but, with little felicity of comparison, for his alterations, though they always bring down and reduce to tameness the original nervous force of the expression, have seldom the effect of adding to its elegance or removing its infirmities. Very different, in this respect, was Johnson's character in writing, who is, like Shakspeare, hardly ever known to have altered or corrected his productions after publication; and whose mastery of diction was such, that it immediately brought, at his command, the best and most appropriate language which his subject required. The answering powers of his expression were always exactly proportioned to the demand of his thought: there is never any incongruity of this kind perceptible in his writings; what he thought strongly, he could express forcibly

and well; and what he had once written became fixed, and fixed, because it was impossible for alteration to improve, or correction to amend it. The greatest fault, perhaps, in his style, is the want of flexibility-the want of variety adapted for every varying occasion; it was too uniform to alter-it was too stiff to bend-its natural tone was too high to admit of a graceful descent— the same was the expression, and the same the pompousness of language, whether he descanted as a moralist, or complained as an advertiser; whether he weighed in his balance the intellects of Shakspeare and Milton, or denounced, with threats of punishment, against the person or persons, unknown, who had pirated a paper of his Idler. In Warburton's diction, which was uniformly faulty, it is needless to expatiate on any particular faults; we may, however, mention, that it was overrun with foreign idioms, and exotic phraseology, and that it particularly abounds in Gallicisms, which almost disgrace every sentence. In both, the style doubtless took its tincture from the peculiar complexion of their minds; and while in the one it swelled into majestic elegance and dignified strength, in the other it broke out into uncouth harshness and uncultivated force.

"In extent of learning, in profundity and depth of erudition, Warburton may justly claim the superiority. Nothing more illustrates the different characters of these great men, than the different manner in which their reading was applied. In Johnson, acquired learning became immediately transmuted into mind-it immediately was consubstantiated with its receiver; it did not remain dormant, like a dull and inert mass in the intellect, unaltered and unalterable, but entered, if I may use the expression, into the very core and marrow of the mind, and became a quality and adjunct of the digestive power; it was instantaneously concocted into intellectual chyle-his mind had more the quality of a