style, though ponderous and wearisome, is as transparent as the smarter snipsnap of Macaulay.-LESLIE STEPHEN. CARLYLE'S COMPARISON OF DR. JOHNSON AND DAVID HUME. Samuel Johnson and David Hume, as was observed, were children of the same year. Through life they were spectators of the same life-movement; often inhabitants of the same city. Greater contrast in all things between two great men could not be. Hume, well-born, competently provided for, whole in body and mind, of his own determination forces a way into Literature. Johnson, poor, moonstruck, diseased, forlorn, is forced into it "with the bayonet of necessity at his back." And what a part did they severally play there! As Johnson became the father of all succeeding Tories, so was Hume the father of all succeeding Whigs, for his own Jacobitism was but an accident, as worthy to be named Prejudice as any of Johnson's. Again, if Johnson's culture was exclusively English, Hume's, in Scotland, became European; for which reason, too, we find his influence spread deeply over all quarters of Europe, traceable deeply in all speculationFrench, German, as well as domestic; while Johnson's name, out of England, is hardly anywhere to be met with. In spiritual stature they are almost equal-both great among the greatest, yet how unlike in likeness! Hume has the widest, methodizing, comprehensive eye; Johnson the keenest for perspicacity and minute detail; so had, perhaps chiefly, their education ordered it. Neither of the two rose into Poetry, yet both to some approximation thereof: Hume to something of an Epic clearness and method, as in his delineation of the Commonwealth Wars; Johnson to many a deep Lyric tone of plaintiveness, and impetuous, graceful power, scattered over his fugitive compositions. Both, rather to the general surprise, had a certain rugged Humor shining through their earnestness-the indication, indeed, that they were earnest men and had subdued their wild world into a kind of temporary home and safe dwelling. Both were, by principle and habit, Stoics; yet Johnson with the greater merit, for he alone had very much to triumph over; further, he alone ennobled his Stoicism into Devotion. To Johnson Life was as a Prison, to be endured with heroic faith; to Hume it was little more than a foolish Bartholomew - Fair show-booth, with the foolish crowdings and elbowings of which it was not worth while to quarrel-the whole would break up and be at liberty so soon. Both realized the highest task of Manhood-that of living like men; each died, not unfitly, in his way: Hume as one with factitious, half-false gayety, taking leave of what was itself wholly but a Lie; Johnson as one with awe-struck yet resolute and piously expectant heart, taking leave of a Reality to enter a Reality still higher. Johnson had the harder problem of it, from first to last; whether, with some hesitation, we can admit that he was intrinsically the better-gifted may remain undecided. These two men now rest-the one in Westminster Abbey here, the other in the Calton Hill church-yard of Edinburgh. Through life they did not meet; as contrasts "like in unlike" love each other, so might they two have loved and communed kindly had not the terrestrial dross and darkness that was in them withstood! They were the two half-men of their time; whoso should combine the intrepid candor and decisive scientific clearness of Hume, with the Reverence, the Love, and devout Humility of Johnson, were the whole man of a new time. [See "Characteristics of the Age:" Scepticism of Hume.] BOOKS OF REFERENCE. Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Macaulay's "Life of Johnson." Walpole's "Men of the Reign of "The Cumberland Memoirs." Hazlitt's "On the Periodical Essayists."' ture." OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774). PORTRAITS OF GOLDSMITH. THE following lines were written by Mrs. Piozzi (Dr. Johnson's friend) after having seen Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Goldsmith: "From our Goldsmith's anomalous character, who Can withhold his contempt, and his reverence too? From a heart in which meanness had made her abode, May best be compared to those anamorphoses PERSONAL APPEARANCE. The general cast of Goldsmith's figure and physiognomy was not engaging, and the impression made by his writings on the mind of a stranger was not confirmed by the external graces of their author. In stature he was somewhat under the middle size; his body was strongly built, and his limbs-as one of his biographers expresses it-were more sturdy than elegant. His forehead was low, and more prominent than is usual; his complexion pallid; his face almost round, and pitted with the small-pox. His first appearance was, therefore, by no means captivating; yet the general lineaments of his countenance bore the |