Why have some of our fine writers interested more than others, who have not displayed inferior talents? Why is Addison still the first of our essayists? he has sometimes been excelled in criticisms more philosophical, in topics more interesting, and in diction more coloured. But there is a personal charm in the character he has assumed in his periodical Miscellanies, which is felt with such a gentle force, that we scarce advert to it. He has painted forth his little humours, his individual feelings, and eternised himself to his readers. Johnson and Hawkesworth we receive with respect, and we dismiss with awe; we come from their writings as from public lectures, and from Addison's as from private conversations. Montaigne preferred those of the ancients, who appear to write under a conviction of what they said; the eloquent Cicero declaims but coldly on liberty, while in the impetuous Brutus may be perceived a man who is resolved to purchase it with his life. We know little of Plutarch; yet a spirit of honesty and persuasion in his works expresses a philosophical character capable of imitating, as well as admiring, the virtues he records. Sterne perhaps derives a portion of his celebrity from the same influence; he interests us in his minutest motions, for he tells us all he feels. Richardson was sensible of the power with which these minute strokes of description enter the heart, and which are so many fastenings to which the imagination clings. He says, "If I give speeches and conversations, I ought to give them justly; for the humours and characters of persons cannot be known, unless I repeat _what_ they say, and their _manner_ of saying." I confess I am infinitely pleased when Sir William Temple acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to equal those of France; with his having had the honour to naturalise in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distribution of them, because "he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are the better." In a word, with his passionate attachment to his garden, where he desired his heart to be buried, of his desire to escape from great employments, and having passed five years without going to town, where, by the way, "he had a large house always ready to receive him." Dryden has interspersed many of these little particulars in his prosaic compositions, and I think that his character and dispositions may be more correctly acquired by uniting these scattered notices, than by any biographical account which can now be given of this man of genius.