Dr. Beattie, who published an edition of Addison’s works in 1790, with a Life prefixed, says that he was once informed, but had forgotten on what authority, that Addison had collected three manuscript volumes of materials. He might have found this in Tickell’s Life. “It would have been impossible for Mr. Addison, who made little or no use of letters sent in by the numerous correspondents of the Spectator, to have executed his large share of this task in so exquisite a manner, if he had not ingrafted into it many pieces that had lain by him in little hints and minutes, which he from time to time collected, and ranged in order, and moulded into the form in which they now appear. Such are the essays upon wit, the pleasures of the imagination, the critique upon Milton, and some others.” The original delineation of Sir Roger de Coverley, for the management and keeping of which character Addison has been highly extolled, must unquestionably be ascribed to Steele. He drew the outlines; Addison principally worked up the portrait. Johnson not only takes a false view of the character, but in contradiction to every judgment but his own, represents the author as sinking under the weight of it. “The irregularities in Sir Roger’s conduct seem not so much the effects of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the pressure of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity, and that negligence which solitary grandeur naturally generates. The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design.” This seems to be a mistake from beginning to end. Addison had no more design to impute incipient madness to Sir Roger, than to his contrast, Sir Andrew Freeport. Habitual rusticity is not the prevailing feature in a man who visited the metropolis every season: a main beauty of the picture is, that Sir Roger is always a gentleman, although an odd one. Hear Lord Orford on the subject. “Natural humour was the primary talent of Addison. His character of Sir Roger de Coverley, though inferior, is only inferior to Shakspeare’s Falstaff.” But however prejudiced or mistaken Johnson might be in this particular instance, when he deals in generalities, he traces the peculiar merits of Addison’s manner with the touch of a master. “He copies with so much fidelity, that he can be hardly said to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air so much original, that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination.”