"He hints a fault, and hesitates dislike."

But this was not owing to malice, but to the bashful good nature which
distinguished him. It is true, too, that he hints a beauty, and hesitates
in his expressions of love. He says himself the finest things, and then
blushes as if detected in a crime; or he praises an obvious and colossal
merit in another, and then starts at the sound himself had made. His
encomiums resemble the evening talk of lovers, being low, sweet, and
trembling. Were we to speak of Addison phrenologically, we should say
that, next to veneration, wit, and ideality, his principal faculties were
caution and secretiveness. He was cautious to the brink of cowardice. We
fancy him in a considerable fright in the storm on the Ligurian Gulf,
amidst the exhalations of the unhealthy Campagna, and while the
avalanches of the Alps--"the thunderbolts of snow"--were falling around
him. We know that he walked about behind the scenes perspiring with
agitation while the fate of "Cato" was still undecided. Had it failed,
Addison never could, as Dr Johnson, when asked how he felt after "Irene"
was damned, have replied, "Like the Monument." We know, too, that he
sought to soothe the fury and stroke down the angry bristles of John
Dennis. To call the author of the "Campaign" a coward were going too far;
but he felt, we believe, more of a martial glow while writing it in
his Haymarket garret than had he mingled in the fray. And as to his
secretiveness, his still, deep, scarce-rippling stream of humour, his
habit, commemorated by Swift, when he found any man invincibly wrong, of
flattering his opinions by acquiescence, and sinking him yet deeper in
absurdity; even the fact that no word is found more frequently in his
writings than "secret" ("secret joy," "secret satisfaction," "secret
solace," are phrases constantly occurring,) prove that, whatever else
he had possessed of the female character, the title of the play, "A