New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1853-11-09
EDITORIAL BooK-NoTES.


M...,i.x,s essay on his life and works Edited with
critical and explanatory notes, by George Washington
cr.su. In five volumes Vol l, limo PIP 500.
a oorrrsss or CoMraRArive PHu.oLoey with sketch
f the languages Of Europe arranged upon phioogc prn
cples and brief history of the Art Of Writing BY
Schcle de Vore Of the University Of Virginia. limo
PIP. 4si.
8 PsRu,I.S ANTIQUITIES By Mariana Kdward RiVere
Director Of the National Museum Lima and correspond
ing member Of various scientific societies In Europe anu
,America aud Jshn James Tsohudh Doctor III M
osophy, Medicine and Surgery, etc. ETC. ana memoer Oh
various societies of Natural History Geography ana Ag
rcn,ture Translated into English from the original
Spanish by Francis A. Hawks, DID 3D. d. smo PIP Soo
Among the permanently popular writers of
our language, there can scarcely be said to be
one who has so constantly and widely kept pos
session of the public favor as Addison. Shak-
speare alone is still more in every body hands
or rather, was, until the literature the science,
the politics and even the religion of the newspa
per superseded and is fast abolishing every thing
else. Except our previous exception, there has
becu no English wit so favored and fortunate as
Addison, unless it be dear Oliver Goldsmith
n man of far more decided genius and still more
made up of that (whatever it be) which without
ever snatchipg one into those highest regions Of
80uEnt anu VI Ihssous WuASA Oniy bhc ioW Soh
breathe, charms and even exalts the many, with
everything that is sweet and excellent, if it is
not sublime Thus Milton-the highest of all
authors since Homer-is comparatively unread
is too great for an universal popularity Dry
den, powerful as he is, is scarcely readable but
as the poet of subjects no longer pleasing, it, in
deed, poetry could at all remain the reading of
the unpoetical. Then Pope, though more vari-
ously pleasing than his great predecessor and
far stronger than Addison, is excellent again
chiefly in verse; while his prose, though elegant
in his essays and letters, most mordacious in his
satyres, is almost neglected. For time he
Justly came to be oftener in peoples mouths,
though probably schooner in their hands, than
the rival whom he found reigning in English let
tiers and whom he deposed but Addison has won
back his hold upon the numbers, and, inferior
as he is, has no doubt five readers to Pope's one
For Pope, though he must please better, must,
for that very reason, please fewer readers than
Addison.
When we speak of the latter, however, we
speak, in effect, of his Essays-the Spectators,
Tattlers, Guardians, etc which he contri-
buted 1t is these which make him one of the
aioSe lOfcu VI al tuOcc WIN uuNc SLcSautIy IN
terprated to mankind common things, and
treated delightfully."- subjects within the pitch of
most peoples thought, if not quite always of
every body's learning. To this kind of writing
he may be said to have first given excellence in
our language, and still to be its great master,
whom the best of his imitators have only ap-
preached. Ard as he thus carried to its most
perfect form particular branch of what is best
defined by the old title and the old perform
ances-that is to say, Polite Learning, (the
phrase and the thing have grown obsolete toge-
ther) he must certainly take rank among ge-
muses., although that is clearly not the general
characteristic of his performances As poet
he is little more than. an easy and elegant YER
sitter, except in the single instance of his inge-
NOUS epistle to Sir Godfrey Kneller, and that
his Latin poems are correct and pure As o
dramatist, he is cold in tragedy, and not witty
in comedy. AS traveller, he was better able
to describe ruins than to display people, to
i illustrate antiquities than to make known insti
buttons AS a translator, he could handle
Ovid; but the weight of Virgil was beyond his
lift. In short, though he has merit in all these
he discovers genius in none of them and must
take his place as second or even third-rate
writer. 1t is, then, only as an English Essayist
that he is great
Not, however, that he was without predeces-
sors and models Of this kind of writing, in other
tongues, and even in his own The wise yet
whimsical Montague had long ago written his
delightful book, one of those rich master pieces
that, while they charm and instruct common
minds, become the darling companions of great
ones, and are equally fit to soothe or to rouse
them Charron had produced his grave and
noble miscellany, entitled &c Of H'isdon''-
another treasury of the truths of practical life
and Bacon had given to the world, besides hi
-4pophfhegns, his grand and sweet ESSAYS
worthy, for their beauty, of the greatest o.
modern thinkers, scarcely less the wit Ito us,
that word in its old and higher sense) than the
philosopher, the orator, the statesman and the
jurist. There were, besides, Cowleys polished
Essays and old Howells Letters, which are
really little else but Essay-papers. We refer
only to English and French writer's of that sort
of Miscellany which we call Essays; but in
truth there were classical sources of imitation
for it; there were Italian; there were even
Spanish many Of the Ana makers were strictly
essayists, though generally literary ones, and
besides the Frenchmen already mentioned, the
Pensses of Pascal, the Characters of la Bruy-
ere, and many Of the Marines of Laroche-
foucault are either direct Essays or the pregnant
germs of such. Addison, then, was not the orr
ginator of this sort of composition; he even had
models and masters in it, yet it is still true that
he gave it new scope, new character spirit,
fecundity and grace, that it had never had
before.
His excellencies in it are too well known for
us to have need to repeat them; for even the
editor of a newspaper is bound to suppose his
readers to know something, while he himself is
assumed, of course, to be ignorant of nothing
Addison's characteristics as an English author
may be said to be Of all others, such
AS, though the pride of Middleton and Bland
An girls may read aud boys can understand
Our quotation brings US, however, to another
merit of Addison, which seems to be usually uu-
felt There is, we think, scarcely an Enplis5
prose writer SO fit for female fingers; and none
occurs to US to whom the sex owes more either
for direct influence over its mind and heart or
indirect in softening and refining the coarssr
being of the other gender.
Of H. OF Mr. Schele de Vere's book, we are in
condition to say little as yet having barely
had time to glance at his general plan and its