due to you.

_Swift_.--Addison, I think our dispute is decided before the judge has
heard the cause.

_Addison_.--I own it is in your favour, but--

_Mercury_.--Don't be discouraged, friend Addison. Apollo perhaps would
have given a different judgment. I am a wit, and a rogue, and a foe to
all dignity. Swift and I naturally like one another. He worships me
more than Jupiter, and I honour him more than Homer; but yet, I assure
you, I have a great value for you. Sir Roger de Coverley, Will
Honeycomb, Will Wimble, the Country Gentleman in the Freeholder, and
twenty more characters, drawn with the finest strokes of unaffected wit
and humour in your admirable writings, have obtained for you a high place
in the class of my authors, though not quite so high a one as the Dean of
St. Patrick's. Perhaps you might have got before him if the decency of
your nature and the cautiousness of your judgment would have given you
leave. But, allowing that in the force and spirit of his wit he has
really the advantage, how much does he yield to you in all the elegant
graces, in the fine touches of delicate sentiment, in developing the
secret springs of the soul, in showing the mild lights and shades of a
character, in distinctly marking each line, and every soft gradation of
tints, which would escape the common eye? Who ever painted like you the
beautiful parts of human nature, and brought them out from under the
shade even of the greatest simplicity, or the most ridiculous weaknesses;
so that we are forced to admire and feel that we venerate, even while we
are laughing? Swift was able to do nothing that approaches to this. He
could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand;
but there was all his power, and, if I am to speak as a god, a worthless