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tortion, nor amaze by aggravation. He copies life with fo much fidelity, that he can be hardly faid to invent; yet his exhibitions have an air fo much original, that it is difficult to fuppofe them not merely the product of imagination.

As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confi dently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthufiaftick or fuperftitious: he appears neither weakly credulous, nor wantonly fceptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real intereft, the care of pleasing the Author of his being. Truth is fhewn fometimes as the phantom of a vifion; fometimes appears half-veiled in an allegory; fometimes attracts regard in the robes of fancy; and fometimes steps forth in the con-` fidence of reafon. She wears a thousand dreffes, and in all is pleafing.

Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.

His profe is the model of the middle style; on grave fubjects not formal, on light occafions not grovelling; pure without fcrupulofity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always eafy, without glowing words or pointed fenteces. Addifon never deviates from his track to fnatch a grace; he feeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour.

It was apparently his principal endeavour to avoid all harshness and severity of diction; he is therefore fometimes verbose in his tran fitions and connections, and fometimes defcends too much to the language of converfation; yet if his language had been lefs idiomatical, it might have loft fomewhat of its genuine Anglicifm. What he attempted, he performed; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetick; he is never rapid, and he never ftagnates. His fentences have neither ftudied amplitude, nor affected brevity: his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Who

Whoever wishes to attain an English ftyle, familiar but not coarfe, and elegant but not oftentatious, muft give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.

HUGHES.

HUGHES.

JOH

IN HUGHES, the fon of a citizen in London, and of Anne Burgess, of an ancient family in Wiltshire, was born at Marlborough, July 29, 1677. He was educated at a private school; and though his advances in literature are, in the Biographia, very oftentatiously difplayed, the name of his mafter is somewhat ungratefully concealed *,

At nineteen he drew the plan of a tragedy; and paraphrased, rather too profufely, the ode

*He was educated in a diffenting academy, of which the Rev. Mr. Thomas Rowe was tutor; and was a fellowstudent there with Dr. Ifaac Watts, Mr. Samuel Say, and other perfons of eminence. In the Hora Lyrica" of Dr. Watts is a poem to the memory of Mr. Rowe. H.

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of Horace which begins Integer Vitæ." To poetry he added the fcience of mufick, in which he seems to have attained confiderable fkill, together with the practice of defign, or rudiments of painting.

His ftudies did not withdraw him wholly from bufinefs, nor did bufinefs hinder him from study. He had a place in the office of ordnance; and was fecretary to several commiffions for purchafing lands neceffary to fccure the royal docks at Chatham and Portf mouth; yet found time to acquaint himself with modern languages.

1697 he published a poem on the Peace of Ryfwick: and in 1699 another piece, called The Court of Neptune, on the return of king William, which he addreffed to Mr. Montague, the general patron of the followers of the Muses. The fame year he produced a fong on the duke of Gloucefter's birth-day.

He did not confine himself to poetry, but cultivated other kinds of writing with great fuccefs; and about this time fhewed his knowledge of human nature by an Effay on

the

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