imperfections which his interpretation turns into something more sweet than virtue, and throws a delightful gleam of love and laughter upon the eccentricities and characteristic follies of individual nature. That he sees everything is one of the conditions of his genial forgiveness of everything that is not mean or base or cruel. With these he makes no terms. They are not within the range of his treatment. _Non ragionam di lor._ He passes by to the genial rural circle where all is honest, simple, and true; or to town, where in the coffee-houses themselves a kind soul will find humors enough to keep him cheerful without harm to any of his fellow-creatures--even the post-writers whom he jocularly recommends to a supplementary Chelsea as having killed more men in the wars than any general ever did, or the “needy persons” hungry for news, whom he promises to keep supplied with good and wholesome sentiments. He was at the same time the first of his kind. Thackeray associates Congreve--one does not exactly know why--with this nobler name: but at once makes it clear that there could be no comparison between them, since the world of the comedy-writer was an entirely fictitious world, altogether unlike the human nature of the essayist. Of the humorists we may venture to say that Addison is the first, as well as the most refined and complete. Swift draws a heavier shaft, which lacerates and kills, and Pope sends his needle-pointed arrows, all touched with poisonous venom, to the most vulnerable points; but Addison has no heart to slay. He transfixes the veil of folly with light, shining, irresistible darts, and pins it aloft in triumph, but he lets the fool go free--perhaps lets you see even, by some reflection from his swift-flying polished spear, a gleam of human meaning in the poor wretch’s face which touches your heart. Even when he diverts himself with Tom Folio or Ned Softly, instead of plunging these bores into a bottomless gulf of contempt, he plays with them as one might with a child, a twinkle of soft fun in his eye, drawing out their simple absurdities. That habit of his which Swift describes to Stella, as one which she herself shared, of seeming to consent to follies which it is not worth while contradicting, and which Pope venomously characterizes as “assents with evil leer,” lures him, and us along with him, into byways of human nature which the impatient critic closes with a kick, and in which there is much amusement and little harm. Molière’s _Trissotin_ is a social conspirator meaning to build advancement upon his bad verses; but Addison’s poetaster is only an exposition of harmless vanity, humored by the gently malicious, but kind and patient, listener, who amid his laughter finds a certain pleasure in pleasing the victim too. There is sympathy even in the dissection, a conjunction of feelings which is of the very nature of the true humorist. These, no doubt, are of a very different caliber from that creation which still