In order to show how great was the advance made by M. Taine's work over its predecessors, let us take a classic English writer at random and compare the treatment given him by M. Taine with that given in the text-book already mentioned. Suppose we open to the discussion of Addison. In the latter work we are told that he was born in 1672 and died in 1719; that he was a son of Lancelot Addison, a clergyman of some reputation for learning; that Addison studied at the Charter House, where he formed a friendship with Richard Steele; that he afterwards entered Oxford; that he wrote various short poems and one long one, of which six whole lines are given as a specimen. We are told, also, that Addison held, in succession, certain political offices; that he contributed one-sixth of the papers found in Steele's "Tatler," more than one-half of those in the "Spectator," and one-third of those in the "Guardian"; that he published a drama called "Cato," which, the book informs us, is "cold, solemn, and pompous, written with scrupulous regard for the classical unities." We learn, further, that Addison married a countess, and died at the early age of forty-seven; that he had a quarrel with Pope; that his papers published in the "Tatler," the "Spectator," and the "Guardian" are marked by "fertility of invention and singular felicity of treatment"; that their variety is wonderful, and that everything is treated "with singular appropriateness and unforced energy"; that "there is a singular harmony between the language and the thought" (whatever that may mean); that Addison's delineations of the characters of men are wonderfully delicate; that he possessed humor in its highest and most delicate perfection; that his hymns breathe a fervent and tender spirit of piety. Contrary to the usage of its author, the text-book gives the whole sixteen lines of Addison's most famous hymn--the longest illustrative quotation in the whole four hundred pages--one blessed little oasis in a vast desert of dry biographical minutiæ and the abstract generalities of criticism. In the eight pages devoted to Addison there are not more than ten lines of real criticism; and these consist, for the most part, of what, to the ordinary reader, are meaningless adjectives or high-sounding epithets. Yet this is one of the very best chapters in the book. It is certainly a fair specimen of the barren method generally prevalent before the appearance of M. Taine's work.