him-but alas! the winds of heaven have long since swept away the last mouldering beam of that sacred abode, and before its domestic altar, the white-headed saint will never pray again. My grandfather had a little library; but it was a Puritan library. Shakspeare and Ben Jonson found no place among his books. I doubt whether, reader as he was, and immortal as are their works, he had ever heard of their names. There were no Homers nor Horaces among his volumes; for he knew no language but his mother tongue. His library consisted of Mr. Flavel's works, Bunyan's Grace Abounding, Alleine's Alarm, and Baxter's Call to the Unconverted. Nor was poetry wholly left out. He had Sternhold's and Hopkins's Psalms, and Dr. Watts's Lyric Poems, two books not to be named the same day. But there was one volume sweeter than all the rest, which stole many a weary hour from my life, and banished all care from my heart. I read it and was happy; I remembered it and was happy; I dreamt of it and was happy; and to this hour, delight and improvement seem stamped on every page. My grandfather always said it was the next book to the Bible; but I must own I was wicked enough to think it somewhat better. It was the Pilgrim's Progress from this world to that which is to come, delivered under the similitude of a dream. By JOHN BUNYAN. I should have no doubt of my final salvation, if I could tread the real path to Zion, in faith and obedience, as often and with as much delight, as I have trodden the allegorical one in fancy and imagination. Such were the scenes in which I grew up; so the foundations of my mind were laid. As Sancho boasted that all his family were old Christians, that is, Spaniards without any mixture of Moorish blood; so may I say that I am descended maternally and paternally from genuine Puritans. This is the true nobility of New England. I nursed Puritan milk, drew Puritanical air, read Puritanical books, received Puritanical doctrines, was formed amidst Puritanical manners, and, when I go to the grave, shall sleep in the recesses which inclose Puritanical dust, until the morning of the resurrection. Have I not then some reason to call myself THE PURITAN? But I see the shade of Arrogance pass before me, and I must stop For search, and you shall find humility THE PURITAN. No. 2. His pen is taken from a bird of light, Nicholas Noyes to Cotton Mather. THOUGH my grandfather's library was very small, and confined to a few books of a theological cast, yet I shall always remember with gratitude, that, in the town of Bundleborough, there was a social library, selected by the worthies of the place, in which my grandfather owned a share. Here I first met with the Spectator; and it was one of the first books which strongly arrested my attention. Criticism with me is a very simple affair. Whatever powerfully impresses my heart, and cleaves to my memory, I pronounce good, without stopping to inquire on what principles it pleases, or by what rules it is written. Addison is not merely the painter of manners; he draws his characters and observations often from the depths of the heart. Though some have seen fit to represent him as a secondary writer, tame and inefficient, compared with the great masters of our passions, yet I must conceive that he has some of the same witchery of genius, which is found in John Bunyan. I would not say that John Bunyan is equal to Addison, but I would say that Addison is sometimes equal to John Bunyan. I judge from youthful impressions; and I must say that the vision of Mirza, with its enchanted rock, its musical shepherd, its great valley and rolling flood, excited, in my mind, some of those mystic feelings with which I accompanied the harassed pilgrim, in his journey from this world to that which is to come. Every one must allow, I think, that some of his characters for satire, are drawn with the same spirit as that which formed a Talkative or By-ends. In short, Addison, playful and gentle as he is, sometimes takes the highest flights of genius; and has diversified his pictures of life with wonderful truth and boundless fertility of invention. It would be impossible to crown the urn of Shakspeare with a single flower which would not throw its fragrance around the tomb of Addison.* There cannot also be imagined a more agreeable mode of writing, than that which was adopted by him * That is, so far as describing life and manners is concerned. Addison, in his poetry or prose, has very little of that gilding fancy, that witchcraft of diction, which, in Shakspeare's creative garden, tips with silver all the fruit tree tops. and his associates. By whom the method of publishing in short papers was invented, I am not able to say; it lies, I believe, between Steele and Addison. But every wise man knows that the great secret of profiting mankind is, to gain their attention, to reach their understanding through their curiosity, their amusement, or their passions. In ancient times this was done by the drama, and sometimes by the voice of the popular orator. But the drama exaggerates, and a popular orator is not the production of every century. Those little papers, those short, lively representations, which Addison has invented or used, are like the invisible seeds, scattered by the summer winds; they fly everywhere, and bear fruit in the remotest corners of the earth. The Spectator is one of the books faithful to nature; but it certainly presents us nature in a local and peculiar dress. Its moral representations may be compared to the plates or pictures, which sometimes accompany the older editions. The persons have the shape, features, eyes, noses of other human beings, in all ages and all parts of the globe. But they are somewhat disguised, (at least to a modern reader,) by the hooped petticoats and flowing wigs of the age of queen Anne. The manners of old England and New England are different. We have here no titled aristocracy; no married woman enjoying a jointure; no fashionable coquette stipulating for pinmoney; no beaux rolling in chariots, or wearing a |