Phenix Gazette

Addison and Johnson.—As an essayist, Dr. Johnson yields to Addison. The wisdom of the former steps into our system invested with all the formality of her primitive magnificence; that of the latter comes cheerfully into our familiar habits and appears amongst us like Apollo in his exile from Heaven, a conscious divinity in a garb of plainness. Johnson is fond of pomp, ceremony and procession; he is the doge of Venice, proceeding with accumulated finery to celebrate his nuptials with the Adriatic: while Addison with more power and less state, comes amongst us like Peter the Great, and thinks nothing that belongs to life or manners too minute for observation, too trifling for use, or too significant for description. His humour also is more easy, more exuberant and more natural. Not that Johnson is quite destitute of the quality, but what he has is of the grand and epic cast. It would have enabled him to have given a tolerable correct idea of the language and character of the knight of La Mancha himself, but would have deserted him totally in attempting to convey the most remote similitude of his incomparable squire. Instances occur, however, in the lucubrations of Johnson, of strong original observation, of commanding powerful combinations and of no less sublime morality, such as we in vain hope to find in the nearer pages of Addison.
Anon—Life of Dr. Johnson.