Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are common to all Addison’s Latin poems. Our favourite piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies; for in that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humour which many years later enlivened thousands of breakfast {332}tables. Swift boasted that he was never known to steal a hint: and He certainly owed as little to his predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the happiest touches in his Voyage to Lilliput from Addison’s verses. Let our readers judge. “The Emperor,” says Gulliver, “is taller by about the breadth of my nail than any of his court, wind: alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.” About thirty years before Gulliver’s Travels appeared, Addison wrote these lines: “Jamque acies inter médias sese arduus infert Pygmeadnm ductor, qui, inajestate verendus, Incessuque gravis, reliqius supereminet omnes Mole gigantea, mediumque exsurgit in ulnam.” The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and justly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, before his name had ever been heard by the wits who thronged the coffeehouses round Drnry-Lane theatre. In his twenty-second year, he ventured to appear before the public as a writer of English verse. He addressed some complimentary lines to Dryden, who, after many triumphs and many reverses, had at length reached a secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of that age. Dryden appears to have been much gratified by the young scholar’s praise; and an interchange of civilities and good offices followed. Addison was probably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was certainly presented by Congreve to Charles Montague, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader of the Whig party in the House of Commons.