[The annotations have not necessarily been introduced at the first occurrence of any name, and no cross-references have been supplied in the notes to names which occur in the text more than once. Such information as the notes supply can be found with the help of the index.—References, where no other indication is given, will be understood to be to the work under discussion. The Shakespeare references are to the one-volume Globe edition.]

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

This lecture forms the introduction to the series on the “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.” Hazlitt might have derived hints for it from Schlegel, who speaks of the zeal for the study of the ancients, the extensive communication with other lands, the interest in the literature of Italy and Spain, the progress in experimental philosophy represented by Bacon, and contrasts the achievements of that age, in a vein which must have captured Hazlitt’s sympathy, with “the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks with such contempt on all preceding ages.” The Elizabethans, he goes on to say, “possessed a fullness of healthy vigour, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with petulance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact, well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown. The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility vied with each other in the splendour of dress and number of retinue, and every great lord had a sort of small court of his own. The distinction of ranks was as yet strongly marked: a state of things ardently to be desired by the dramatic poet.” “Lectures on Dramatic Literature,” ed. Bohn, p. 349.P. 1. Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618), the celebrated courtier, explorer, and man of letters.

Drake, Sir Francis (1545-1595), the famous sailor, hero of the Armada.

Coke, Sir Edward (1552-1634), the great jurist, whose “Institutes,” better known as Coke upon Littleton, became a famous legal text-book.

Hooker, Richard (1553-1600), theologian, author of the “Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” (1593), a defense of the Anglican Church against the Puritans and notable also as a masterpiece of English prose.

P. 2. mere oblivion. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 165.

poor, poor dumb names [mouths]. “Julius CÆsar,” iii, 2, 229.

Marston, John (1575-1634). In the third lecture on the “Age of Elizabeth,” Hazlitt calls him “a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him.” Works, V, 224. His chief tragedy is “Antonio and Mellida.”

Middleton, Thomas (1570?-1627), and Rowley, William (1585?-1642?). In the second lecture on the “Age of Elizabeth,” Hazlitt associates these two names. “Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman Never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and naÏvetÉ equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton’s style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries.... He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement of the story. It is like the rough draft of a tragedy with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to the whole.... The author’s power is in the subject, not over it; or he is in possession of excellent materials which he husbands very ill.” Works, V, 214-5. For characters of other dramatists see notes to p. 326.How lov’d. Pope’s “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.”

P. 3. draw the curtain of time. Cf. “we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.” “Twelfth Night,” i, 5, 251.

within reasonable bounds. At this point Hazlitt digresses to reprove the age for its affectation of superiority over other ages and the passage, not being relevant, has been omitted.

less than smallest dwarfs. “Paradise Lost,” I, 779.

desiring this man’s art. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, XXIX.

in shape and gesture. “Paradise Lost,” I, 590.

Mr. Wordsworth says. See Sonnet entitled “London, 1802.”

P. 4. drew after him. “Paradise Lost,” II, 692.

Otway, Thomas (1652-1685), author of “Venice Preserved,” the most popular post-Shakespearian tragedy of the English stage. Hazlitt notes in this play a “power of rivetting breathless attention, and stirring the deepest yearnings of affection.... The awful suspense of the situations, the conflict of duties and passions, the intimate bonds that unite the characters together, and that are violently rent asunder like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march of the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes over all, give to this production of Otway’s Muse a charm and power that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and have made it a proud and inseparable adjunct of the English stage.” Works, V, 354-5.

Jonson’s learned sock. Milton’s “L’Allegro.”

P. 6. The translation of the Bible. The first important 16th century translation of the Bible is William Tyndale’s version of the New Testament (1525) and of the Pentateuch (1530). The complete translations are those of Miles Coverdale (1535), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva or Breeches Bible (1557), the Bishop’s Bible (1568), and the Rheims-Douay Bible—the New Testament (1582) and the Old Testament (1609-1610). Finally came the Authorized Version in 1611.

P. 8. penetrable stuff. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 36.

his washing, etc. St. John, xiii.

above all art, etc. Cf. Pope’s “Epistle to the Earl of Oxford”: “Above all Pain, all Passion, and all Pride.”

My peace. St. John, xiv, 27.

they should love. Ibid., xv, 12.

Woman, behold. Ibid., xix, 26.

his treatment of the woman. Ibid., viii, 1-12.the woman who poured precious ointment. St. Matthew, xxvi, 6-13; St. Mark, xiv, 3-9.

his discourse with the disciples. St. Luke, xxiv, 13-31.

his Sermon on the Mount. St. Matthew, v-vii.

parable of the Good Samaritan and of the Prodigal Son. St. Luke, x, 25-37; xv, 11-32.

P. 9. Who is our neighbour. Ibid., x, 29.

to the Jews, etc. I Corinthians, i, 23.

P. 10. Soft as sinews. “Hamlet,” iii, 3. 71.

The best of men. Dekker, “The Honest Whore,” Part I, v, 2, sub fin.

P. 11. Tasso by Fairfax. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), an Italian poet whose great epic, the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” was finished in 1574. The English translation by Edward Fairfax was published in 1600 as “Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem.”

Ariosto by Harrington. Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), whose romantic epic, “Orlando Furioso,” was first published in 1516, and translated by Sir John Harrington in 1591.

Homer and Hesiod by Chapman. George Chapman (1559?-1634), poet and dramatist, published a complete translation of the “Iliad” in 1611, of the “Odyssey” in 1614, of Homer’s “Battle of Frogs and Mice” in 1624, and of “The Georgicks of Hesiod” in 1618.

Virgil. A complete English translation of the “Æneid” was made by Gavin Douglas, a Scottish poet (1474?-1522), and first printed in London in 1553. There was a translation of the second and fourth books into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, published in 1557, but the one most in use was by Thomas Phaer (1510?-1560), which appeared incompletely in 1558 and 1562 and was completed by Thomas Twyne in 1583.

Ovid. There were a number of translators of Ovid during this period, chief of whom was Arthur Golding, whose version of the “Metamorphoses” appeared in 1565 and 1567. “The Heroides” were translated by George Turberville in 1567.

Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch. The chief work of Plutarch, a Greek writer of the first century, is the “Parallel Lives,” which was translated into French by Jacques Amyot in 1559. Sir Thomas North’s translation of Amyot’s version in 1579 was the most popular and influential of all Elizabethan translations.

P. 12. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313-1375), Italian poet and novelist. Among the English his best known work is the “Decameron,” a collection of a hundred prose tales. Versions of some of these stories appeared in various Elizabethan collections, such as the “Tragical Tales” translated by George Turberville in 1587. The first complete translation was published in 1620 and reprinted in the Tudor Translations in 1909.

Petrarch (1304-1374), Italian humanist and poet, whose sonnets were widely imitated by French and Italian poets during the Renaissance.

Dante (1265-1321). The author of the “Divine Comedy” was not very well known to Elizabethan readers. There was no English translation of his poem attempted till that of Rogers in 1782, and no version worthy of the name was produced till H. F. Cary’s in 1814.

Aretine. The name of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), an Italian satirist who called himself “the scourge of princes,” was well known in England, but there was no translation of his works.

Machiavel. Nicolo Machiavelli (1468-1527), a Florentine statesman, whose name had an odious association because of the supposedly diabolical policy of government set forth in his “Prince.” But this work was not translated till 1640. His “Art of War” had been rendered into English in 1560 and his “Florentine History” in 1595.

Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529). “Il Cortegiano,” setting forth the idea of a gentleman, was translated as “The Courtier” by Thomas Hoby in 1561 and was very influential in English life.

Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-1585), the chief French lyric poet of the sixteenth century, whose sonnets had considerable vogue in England.

Du Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste (1544-1590), author of “La Semaine, ou la CrÉation du Monde” (1578), “La Seconde Semaine” (1584), translated as the “Divine Weeks and Works” (1592 ff.) by Joshua Sylvester.

P. 13. Fortunate fields. “Paradise Lost,” III, 568.

Prospero’s Enchanted Island. Eden’s “History of Travayle,” 1577, is now given as the probable source of Setebos, etc.

Right well I wote. “FaËrie Queene,” II, Introduction, 1-3.

P. 14. Lear is founded. Shakespeare’s actual sources were probably Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain” (c. 1130) and Holinshed’s “Chronicle.”

Othello on an Italian novel, from the “Hecatommithi” of Giraldi Cinthio (1565).

Hamlet on a Danish, Macbeth on a Scottish tradition. The story of Hamlet is first found in Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish chronicler of the tenth century. Shakespeare probably drew it from the “Histoires Tragiques” of Belleforest. “Macbeth” was based on Holinshed’s “Chronicle of Scottish History.”

P. 15. those bodiless creations. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 138.

Your face. “Macbeth,” i, 5, 63.

Tyrrell and Forrest, persons hired by Richard III to murder the young princes in the Tower. See “Richard III,” iv, 2-3.

thick and slab. “Macbeth,” iv, 1, 32.

snatched a [wild and] fearful joy. Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.”

P. 16. Fletcher the poet. John Fletcher the dramatist died of the plague in 1625.

The course of true love. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” i, 1, 34.

The age of chivalry was not then quite gone. Cf. Burke: “Reflections on the French Revolution” (ed. Bohn, II, 348): “But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”

fell a martyr. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), poet, soldier, and statesman, received his mortal wound in the thigh at the battle of Zutphen because, in emulation of Sir William Pelham, he threw off his greaves before entering the fight.

the gentle Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518?-1547), was distinguished as an innovator in English poetry as well as for his knightly prowess.

who prized black eyes. “Sessions of the Poets,” verse 20.

Like strength reposing. “’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.” Keats’s “Sleep and Poetry,” 237.

P. 17. they heard the tumult. “I behold the tumult and am still.” Cowper’s “Task,” IV, 99.

descriptions of hunting and other athletic games. See “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” iv, 1, 107 ff., and “Two Noble Kinsmen,” iii.

An ingenious and agreeable writer. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), author of “Shakespeare and his Times” (1817). In describing the life of the country squire Drake remarks: “The luxury of eating and of good cooking were well understood in the days of Elizabeth, and the table of the country-squire frequently groaned beneath the burden of its dishes; at Christmas and at Easter especially, the hall became the scene of great festivity.” Chap. V. (ed. 1838, p. 37).

Return from Parnassus. Hazlitt gives an account of this play in the “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,” Lecture V.

P. 18. it snowed. “Canterbury Tales,” Prologue, 345.as Mr. Lamb observes, in a note to Marston’s “What You Will” in the “Specimens of Dramatic Literature” (ed. Lucas, 1, 44): “The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people.” Cf. Schlegel’s remark in the first note.

in act. “Othello,” i, I, 62.

description of a mad-house. “Honest Whore,” Part 1, v. 2.

A Mad World, My Masters, the title of a comedy by Middleton.

P. 19. Music and painting are not our forte. Cf. Hazlitt’s review of the “Life of Reynolds” (X, 186-87): “Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind’s eye: they felt them at their heart’s core, and there only. They did not translate their perceptions into the language of sense: they did not embody them in visible images, but in breathing words. They were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and the result, than the appearance of things, however imposing or expressive, at any given moment of time.... We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to them, as the ear is to sounds; that the sense of immediate delight is fixed deeper in the beauty of the object; that the greater life and animation of character gives a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the face, making finer subjects for history and portrait; and that the circumstances in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are more favourable to the study of nature and of the human form.”

like birdlime. “Othello,” ii, 1, 126.

P. 20. Materiam superabat opus. Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” II, 5.

Pan is a God. Lyly’s “Midas,” iv, 1.

SPENSER

This is the latter half of the lecture on Chaucer and Spenser from the “English Poets.”

P. 21. Spenser flourished, etc. Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599), served as secretary to Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland in 1577, and went again in 1580 as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, the Queen’s new deputy to Ireland. He was driven out by a revolt of the Irish in 1598. “A View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and IrenÆus ... in 1596” was first printed in 1633.

description of the bog of Allan. “FaËrie Queene,” II, ix, 16.

Treatment he received from Burleigh. Hazlitt refers to this treatment specifically in the essay “On Respectable People” (XI, 435): “Spenser, kept waiting for the hundred pounds which Burleigh grudged him ‘for a song,’ might feel the mortification of his situation; but the statesman never felt any diminution of his sovereign’s favour in consequence of it.” The facts, as they are recorded in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” are as follows: “The queen gave proof of her appreciation by bestowing a pension on the poet. According to an anecdote, partly reported by Manningham, the diarist (Diary, p. 43), and told at length by Fuller, Lord Burghley, in his capacity of treasurer, protested against the largeness of the sum which the queen suggested, and was directed by her to give the poet what was reasonable. He received the formal grant of £50 a year in February 1590-1.” Cf. Spenser’s lines in “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,” 895 ff.

Though much later than Chaucer. The rest of this paragraph and most of the points elaborated in this lecture appeared in Hazlitt’s review of Sismondi’s “Literature of the South” in 1815 (X, 73 ff.).

Spenser’s poetry is all fairyland. In a lecture delivered in February, 1818, three years after Hazlitt’s remarks had appeared in the Edinburgh Review, Coleridge spoke as follows: “You will take especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative absence of all particular space or time in the Faery Queene. It is in the domains neither of history or geography; it is ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles; it is truly in the land of Faery, that is, of mental space. The poet has placed you in a dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there.” Works, IV, 250.

P. 22. clap on high. “FaËrie Queene,” III, xii, 23.

In green vine leaves. I, iv, 22.

Upon the top. I, vii, 32.

P. 23. In reading the FaËrie Queene, etc. See III, ix, 10; I, vii; II, vi, 5; III, xii.

and mask. “L’Allegro.”

And more to lull. I, i, 41.honey-heavy dew of slumber. “Julius CÆsar,” ii, 1, 230.

Eftsoons they heard. II, xii, 70.

P. 25. House of Pride. I, iv, 4.

Cave of Mammon. II, vii, 28.

Cave of Despair. I, ix, 33.

the account of Memory. II, ix, 54.

description of Belphoebe. II, iii, 21.

story of Florimel. III, vii, 12.

Gardens of Adonis. III, vi, 29.

Bower of Bliss. II, xii, 42.

Mask of Cupid. III, xii.

Colin Clout’s Vision. VI, x, 10-27.

P. 26. Poussin, Nicolas (1594-1665), French painter. See Hazlitt’s delightful essay in “Table Talk” “On a Landscape by Nicholas Poussin.”

And eke. III, ix, 20.

the cold icicles. III, viii, 35.

That was Arion. IV, xi, 23-24.

Procession of the Passions. I, iv, 16 ff.

P. 28. Yet not more sweet. Southey’s “Carmen Nuptiale: Lay of the Laureate.” In the “Character of Milton’s Eve” in the “Round Table,” Hazlitt remarks that Spenser “has an eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not of the purest kind.”

P. 30. Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640), Flemish painter. See the paper on “The Pictures at Oxford and Blenheim” (Works, IX, 71): “Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some of our countryman Spenser’s splendid and voluptuous allegories. If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, (perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen mythology and Scripture history), he ought to go and study the principles of his design at Blenheim.”

the account of Satyrane. I, vi, 24.

by the help. III, x, 47.

the change of Malbecco. III, x, 56-60.

P. 31, n. That all with one consent. “Troilus and Cressida,” iii, 3, 176.

P. 32. High over hills. III, x, 55.

Pope who used to ask. Pope is also quoted in Spence’s “Anecdotes” (Section viii, 1743-4) as saying that “there is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one’s old age, as it did in one’s youth. I read the ‘FaËrie Queene,’ when I was about twelve, with infinite delight, and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a year or two ago.” Waller-Glover.

the account of Talus. V, i, 12.

episode of Pastorella. VI, ix, 12.

P. 33. in many a winding bout. “L’Allegro.”

SHAKSPEARE

This selection is from the “Lectures on the English Poets.” At the beginning of his lecture on Shakespeare and Milton, Hazlitt maintains that the arts reach their perfection in the early periods and are not continually progressive like the sciences—an idea which he frequently comes back to in his writings, notably in the “Round Table” paper, “Why the Arts are not Progressive.”

P. 34. the fault, etc. Cf. “Julius CÆsar,” i, 2, 140.

Shakspeare as they would be. Hazlitt may have had in mind Dr. Johnson’s comment in his preface to Shakespeare’s works: “the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effect would probably be such as he had assigned; he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials to which it cannot be exposed.” (Nichol Smith: “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” p. 117.)

P. 35. its generic quality. Coleridge applied the epithet “myriad-minded” to Shakespeare. See also Schlegel’s “Lectures on the Drama.” ed. Bohn, p. 363: “Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps the diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness ... his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being classed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception; no, this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings, though existing only in the imagination, nevertheless possess such truth and consistency, that even with such misshapen abortions as Caliban, he extorts the assenting conviction, that were there such beings they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the region of fancy, which lies beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us into with the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard-of.”

a mind reflecting ages past. “These words occur in the first lines of a laudatory poem on Shakespeare printed in the second folio (1632). The poem is signed ‘J. M. S.’ and was attributed by Coleridge to ‘John Milton, Student.’ See his ‘Lectures on Shakespeare’ (ed. T. Ashe), pp. 129-130.” Waller-Glover, IV, 411.

P. 36. All corners, etc. “Cymbeline.” iii. 4, 39.

nodded to him. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” iii, I, 177.

his so potent art. “Tempest,” v, i, 50.

When he conceived of a character, etc. Cf. Maurice Morgann, “On the Character of Falstaff”: “But it was not enough for Shakespeare to have formed his characters with the most perfect truth and coherence; it was further necessary that he should possess a wonderful facility of compressing, as it were, his own spirit into these images, and of giving alternate animation to the forms. This was not to be done from without; he must have felt every varied situation, and have spoken thro’ the organ he had formed. Such an intuitive comprehension of things and such a facility must unite to produce a Shakespeare.” (Nichol Smith: “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” p. 247, n.)

subject to the same skyey influences. Cf. “Measure for Measure,” iii, I, 9: “servile to all the skyey influences.”

his frequent haunts. Cf. “Comus,” 314: “my daily walks and ancient neighborhood.”

P. 37. coheres semblably together. Cf. 2 “Henry IV,” v, i, 72: “to see the semblable coherence.”

It has been ingeniously remarked, by Coleridge, “Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton,” p. 116: “The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to instil that energy into the mind, which compels the imagination to produce the picture.... Here, by introducing a single happy epithet, ‘crying,’ a complete picture is presented to the mind, and in the production of such pictures the power of genius consists.”

me and thy crying self. “Tempest,” i, 2, 132.

What! man. “Macbeth,” iv, 3, 208.

Rosencrans. The early editions consistently misspell this name Rosencraus.

Man delights not me. “Hamlet,” ii, 2, 321.a combination and a form. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 60.

P. 39. There is a willow, etc. See “Hamlet,” iv, 7, 167:

“There is a willow grows aslant a brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.”

Now this is an instance, etc. Hazlitt elsewhere ascribes this observation to Lamb. See p. 83, n.

He’s speaking now. “Antony and Cleopatra,” i, 5, 24.

It is my birthday. Ibid., iii, 13, 185.

P. 41. nigh sphered in heaven. Collins’s “Ode on the Poetical Character.”

to make society. “Macbeth,” iii, 1, 42.

P. 42. with a little act. “Othello,” iii, 3, 328.

P. 43. while rage. “Troilus and Cressida,” i, 3, 52.

in their untroubled elements, etc. Cf. Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” VI, 763-766:

“That glorious star
In its untroubled element will shine
As now it shines, when we are laid in earth
And safe from all our sorrows.”

Satan’s address to the sun. “Paradise Lost,” IV, 31.

Oh that I were. “Richard II,” iv, 1, 260.

P. 44. His form. “Paradise Lost,” I, 591-594.

P. 45. With what measure. Mark, iv, 24; Luke, vi, 38.

It glances. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” v, 1, 13.

puts a girdle. Ibid., ii, 1, 175.

I ask. “Troilus and Cressida,” i, 3, 227.

No man. Ibid., iii, 3, 15.

P. 46. Rouse yourself. Ibid., iii, 3, 222.

In Shakspeare, any other word, etc. In the essay “On Application to Study,” in the “Plain Speaker,” Hazlitt gives further illustrations of this point.

P. 47. Light thickens. “Macbeth,” iii, 2, 50.

the business of the state. “Othello,” iv, 2, 166.

Of ditties highly penned. 1 “Henry IV,” iii, 1, 209.

And so. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” ii, 7, 31.

The universality of his genius, etc. Cf. “On Gusto,” “Round Table”: “The infinite quality of dramatic invention in Shakspeare takes from his gusto. The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He never insists on anything as much as he might, except a quibble.”

P. 48. He wrote for the great vulgar, etc. The same remark had been made by both Pope and Johnson. See Nichol Smith’s “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” pp, 49 and 141.

the great vulgar and the small. Cowley’s “Translation of Horace’s Ode III, i.”

his delights. “Antony and Cleopatra,” v, 2, 88.

P. 49. His tragedies are better than his comedies. Hazlitt is here deliberately opposing the view of Dr. Johnson expressed in the latter’s preface to Shakespeare: “In tragedy he often writes with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour, what no labour can improve. In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comick, but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. In his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire.” (Nichol Smith’s “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” p. 121.) In the second lecture of the “English Comic Writers,” Hazlitt recurs to this opinion of Johnson’s with the following comment: “For my own part, I so far consider this preference given to the comic genius of the poet as erroneous and unfounded, that I should say that he is the only tragic poet in the world in the highest sense, as being on a par with, and the same as Nature, in her greatest heights and depths of action and suffering. There is but one who durst walk within that mighty circle, treading the utmost bound of nature and passion, showing us the dread abyss of woe in all its ghastly shapes and colours, and laying open all the faculties of the human soul to act, to think, and suffer, in direst extremities; whereas I think, on the other hand, that in comedy, though his talents there too were as wonderful as they were delightful, yet that there were some before him, others on a level with him, and many close behind him.... There is not only nothing so good (in my judgment) as Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth, but there is nothing like Hamlet, or Lear, or Othello, or Macbeth. There is nothing, I believe, in the majestic Corneille, equal to the stern pride of Coriolanus, or which gives such an idea of the crumbling in pieces of the Roman grandeur, ‘like an unsubstantial pageant faded,’ as the Antony and Cleopatra. But to match the best serious comedies, such as MoliÈre’s Misanthrope and his Tartuffe, we must go to Shakspeare’s tragic characters, the Timon of Athens or honest Iago, where we shall more than succeed. He put his strength into his tragedies and played with comedy. He was greatest in what was greatest; and his forte was not trifling, according to the opinion here combated, even though he might do that as well as any one else, unless he could do it better than anybody else.” See also p. 99.

CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE’S PLAYS

CYMBELINE

P. 51. Dr. Johnson is of opinion. “It may be observed that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. When he found himself near the end of his work, and in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. He therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented.” (Nichol Smith: “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” p. 123.)

It is the peculiar excellence, etc. Cf. Coleridge’s Works, IV, 75-76: “In Shakespeare all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet, yet dignified feeling of all that continuates society, a sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic process, but in that sane equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are representative of all past experience,—not of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even up to the first mother that lived. Shakespeare saw that the want of prominence which Pope notices for sarcasm, was the blessed beauty of the woman’s character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency, but from the exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being constituting one living total of head and heart. He has drawn it indeed in all its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, fortitude,—shown in all of them as following the heart, which gives its results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees all things in and by the light of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggerations of love alone.”

P. 52. Cibber, in speaking. See “Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber” (1740), I, iv.

My lord. i, 6, 112.

P. 53. What cheer. iii, 4, 41. The six quotations following are in the same scene.P. 54. My dear lord. iii, 6, 14.

And when with wild wood-leaves. iv, 2, 389.

P. 55. With fairest flowers. iv, 2, 218.

Cytherea, how bravely. ii, 2, 14.

Me of my lawful pleasure. ii, 5, 9.

P. 56. whose love-suit. iii, 4, 136.

the ancient critic. Aristophanes of Byzantium, who lived in the third century before the Christian era.

the principle of analogy. This point is enforced by Hazlitt in connection with “Lear,” “The Tempest,” “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “As You Like It.” Coleridge had previously remarked, “A unity of feeling and character pervades every drama of Shakespeare” (Works IV, 61), and Schlegel had written in the same manner concerning “Romeo and Juliet”: “The sweetest and the bitterest love and hatred, festive rejoicings and dark forebodings, tender embraces and sepulchral horrors, the fulness of life and self-annihilation, are here all brought close to each other; and yet these contrasts are so blended into a unity of impression, that the echo which the whole leaves behind in the mind resembles a single but endless sigh.” (ed. Bohn, p. 401).

P. 57. Out of your proof. iii, 3, 27.

P. 58. The game’s afoot. “The game is up,” iii, 3, 107.

Under the shade. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 111.

P. 59. See, boys. “Stoop, boys,” iii, 3, 2.

Nay, Cadwell. iv, 2, 255.

Stick to your journal course. iv, 2, 10.

Your highness. i, 5, 23.

MACBETH

P. 60. The poet’s eye. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” v, 1, 12.

your only tragedy-maker. An adaptation of “your only jig-maker,” “Hamlet,” iii, 2, 132.

the air smells wooingly, the temple-haunting martlet. i, 6, 4-6.

blasted heath. i, 3, 77.

air-drawn dagger. iii, 4, 62.

the gracious Duncan. iii, 1, 66.

P. 61. blood-boultered Banquo. iv, 1, 123.

What are these. i, 3, 39.

bends up. i, 7, 80.P. 62. The deed. Cf. ii, 2, 11: “The attempt and not the deed confounds us.”

preter[super]natural solicitings. i, 3, 130.

Bring forth. i, 7, 73.

P. 63. Screw his courage. i, 7, 60.

lost so poorly. Cf. ii, 2, 71: “Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts.”

a little water. ii, 2, 68.

the sides of his intent. i, 7, 26.

for their future days and nights. Cf. i, 5, 70: “To all our days and nights to come.” The next five quotations are from the same scene.

P. 64. Mrs. Siddons. Sarah Siddons (1775-1831), “The Tragic Muse,” the most celebrated actress in the history of the English stage. Hazlitt wrote this passage for the Examiner (June 16, 1816) immediately after seeing a performance of the part by Mrs. Siddons. See Works, VIII, 312-373.

P. 65. There is no art. i, 4, 11.

How goes the night. ii, 1, 1.

P. 66. Light thickens. iii, 2, 50.

Now spurs. iii, 3, 6.

P. 67. So fair and foul a day. i, 3, 38.

such welcome and unwelcome news together. Cf. iv, 3, 138: “such welcome and unwelcome things at once.”

Men’s lives are. Cf. iv, 3, 171:

“and good men’s lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.”

Look like the innocent flower. i, 5, 66.

to him and all, “to all and him.” iii, 4, 91.

Avaunt and quit my sight. iii, 4, 93.

himself again. Cf. iii, 4, 107: “being gone, I am a man again.”

he may sleep. iv, 1, 86.

Then be thou jocund. iii, 2, 40.

Had he not resembled. ii, 2, 13.

should be women. i, 3. 45.

in deeper consequence. i, 3, 126.

Why stands. iv, 1, 125.

P. 68. He is as distinct a being, etc. Cf. Pope (Nichol Smith’s “Eighteenth Century Essays,” p. 48): “Every single character in Shakespeare is as much an individual as those in life itself; it is impossible to find any two alike; and such as from their relation or affinity appear most to be twins, will upon comparison be found remarkably distinct.” Beattie also had commented on “that wonderfully penetrating and plastic faculty, which is capable of representing every species of character, not as our ordinary poets do, by a high shoulder, a wry mouth, or gigantic stature, but by hitting off, with a delicate hand, the distinguishing feature, and that in such a manner as makes it easily known from all others whatsoever, however similar to a superficial eye.” (Quoted in Drake’s “Memorials of Shakespeare,” 1828, p. 255.) Richard Cumberland had developed a parallel between Macbeth and Richard III in the Observer, Nos. 55-58, but it is to the suggestion of Thomas Whateley that Hazlitt is chiefly indebted. Both Richard III and Macbeth, says Whateley, “are soldiers, both usurpers; both attain the throne by the same means, by treason and murder; and both lose it too in the same manner, in battle against the person claiming it as lawful heir. Perfidy, violence, and tyranny are common to both; and these only, their obvious qualities, would have been attributed indiscriminately to both by an ordinary dramatic writer. But Shakespeare, in conformity to the truth of history as far as it led him, and by improving upon the fables which have been blended with it, has ascribed opposite principles and motives to the same designs and actions, and various effects to the operation of the same events upon different tempers. Richard and Macbeth, as represented by him, agree in nothing but their fortunes.” (See the Variorum edition of “Richard III,” p. 549.) Hazlitt makes similar discriminations between the characters of Iago and Richard III, between Henry VI and Richard II, and between Ariel and Puck.

the milk of human kindness. i, 5, 18.

himself alone. Cf. 3 “Henry VI,” v, 6, 83: “I am myself alone.”

P. 69. For Banquo’s issue. iii, 1, 65.

Duncan is in his grave. iii, 2, 22.

direness is rendered familiar. v, 5, 14.

troubled with thick coming fancies. v, 3, 38.

P. 70. subject to all. “Measure for Measure,” iii, 1, 9.

My way of life. v, 3, 22.

P. 71. Lillo, George (1693-1739), author of several “bourgeois” tragedies of which the best known is “George Barnwell” (1731).

Specimens of Early English Dramatic Poets by Charles Lamb, 1808. (Works, ed. Lucas, IV, 144.)

IAGO

P. 73. What a full fortune and Here is her father’s house. i, 1, 66-74

P. 74. I cannot believe. i, 1, 254.

And yet how nature. iii, 3, 227.

milk of human kindness. “Macbeth,” i, 5, 18.

relish of salvation. “Hamlet,” iii, 3, 92.

Oh, you are well tuned. ii, 1, 202.

P. 75. My noble lord. iii, 3, 92.

O grace. iii, 3, 373.

P. 76. How is it. iv, 1, 60.

Zanga, in the “Revenge” (1721), a tragedy by Edward Young (1683-1765).

HAMLET

P. 76. This goodly frame and Man delighted not. ii, 2, 310-321.

P. 77. too much i’ th’ sun. i, 2, 67.

the pangs. iii, 1, 72.

P. 78. There is no attempt to force an interest. Professor Saintsbury (“History of Criticism,” III, 258) calls this utterance an apex of Shakespearian criticism. Hazlitt makes a similar comment in the character of “Troilus and Cressida”: “He has no prejudice for or against his characters: he saw both sides of a question; at once an actor and a spectator in the scene.” Dr. Johnson had observed this attitude in Shakespeare, but he had seen in it a violation of the demands of poetic justice: “he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer’s duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place.” (Nichol Smith’s “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” p. 123.)

outward pageant. Cf. i, 2, 86: “the trappings and the suits of woe.”

we have that within. i, 2, 85.

P. 79. He kneels. Cf. iii, 3, 73: “Now might I do it pat, now he is praying.”

P. 80. How all occasions. iv, 4, 32.

P. 81. that noble and liberal casuist. Doubtless suggested by Lamb’s description of the old English dramatists as “those noble and liberal casuists.” (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 46.)

The Whole Duty of Man, a popular treatise of morals (1659).

Academy of Compliments, or the Whole Duty of Courtship, being the nearest or most exact way of wooing a Maid or Widow, by the way of Dialogue or Complimental Expressions (1655, 1669).

The neglect of punctilious exactness, etc. The entire passage follows pretty closely the interpretation of Lamb: “Among the distinguishing features of that wonderful character, one of the most interesting (yet painful) is that soreness of mind which makes him treat the intrusions of Polonius with harshness, and that asperity which he puts on in his interviews with Ophelia. These tokens of an unhinged mind (if they be not mixed in the latter case with a profound artifice of love, to alienate Ophelia by affected discourtesies, so to prepare her mind for the breaking off of that loving intercourse, which can no longer find a place amidst business so serious as that which he has to do) are parts of his character, which to reconcile with our admiration of Hamlet, the most patient consideration of his situation is no more than necessary; they are what we forgive afterwards, and explain by the whole of his character, but at the time they are harsh and unpleasant.... [His behavior toward Ophelia] is not alienation, it is a distraction purely, and so it always makes itself to be felt by that object: it is not anger, but grief assuming the appearance of anger,—love awkwardly counterfeiting hate, as sweet countenances when they try to frown.” “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare.” (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 103-104)

He may be said to be amenable, etc. Cf. Coleridge (Works, IV, 145): “His thoughts, and the images of his fancy, are far more vivid than his actual perceptions, and his very perceptions, instantly passing through the medium of his contemplations, acquire, as they pass, a form and a colour not naturally their own. Hence we see a great, an almost enormous, intellectual activity, and a proportionate aversion to real action, consequent upon it, with all its symptoms and accompanying qualities.”

P. 82. his father’s spirit. i, 2, 255.

I loved Ophelia. v, 1, 292.

Sweets to the sweet. v, 1, 266.

P. 83. There is a willow. See p. 39.

our author’s plays acted. See pp. 70, 87.

P. 84. Kemble, John Philip (1757-1823), younger brother to Mrs. Siddons and noted as the leader of the stately school in tragedy. Hazlitt often contrasted his manner with that of Kean: “We wish we had never seen Mr. Kean. He has destroyed the Kemble religion; and it is the religion in which we were brought up.” Works, VIII, 345.

a wave o’ th’ sea. “Winter’s Tale,” iv, 4, 141.

Kean, Edmund (1787-1833), the great English tragic actor whom Hazlitt was instrumental in discovering for the London public. Shylock and Othello were his most successful roles. For accounts of his various performances, see “A View of the English Stage” (Works, VIII). Most of the points in this essay are reproduced from the notice of Kean’s Hamlet (VIII, 185-189).

ROMEO AND JULIET

This extract is the opening paragraph of the sketch.

P. 84. a great critic, A. W. Schlegel. The passage alluded to by Hazlitt appears in Coleridge’s Works (IV, 60-61) in what is little more than a free translation: “Read ‘Romeo and Juliet’;—all is youth and spring;—youth with its follies, its virtues, its precipitancies;—spring with its odors, its flowers, and its transiency; it is one and the same feeling that commences, goes through, and ends the play. The old men, the Capulets and the Montagues, are not common old men; they have an eagerness, a heartiness, a vehemence, the effect of spring; with Romeo, his change of passion, his sudden marriage, and his rash death, are all the effects of youth;—whilst in Juliet love has all that is tender and melancholy in the nightingale, all that is voluptuous in the rose, with whatever is sweet in the freshness of the spring; but it ends with a long deep sigh like the last breeze of the Italian evening.”

P. 85. fancies wan. Cf. “Lycidas,” “cowslips wan.”

MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

These extracts are the second and last paragraphs of the essay.

P. 85. Lord, what fools. iii, 2, 115.

P. 86. human mortals. ii, 1, 101.

gorgons and hydras. “Paradise Lost,” II, 628.

a celebrated person, Sir Humphry Davy; see p. 342. Cf. Coleridge (Works, IV, 66): “Shakespeare was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher.”

P. 87. Poetry and the stage. Cf. Lamb, “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare” (ed. Lucas, I, 110): “Spirits and fairies cannot be represented, they cannot even be painted,—they can only be believed. But the elaborate and anxious provision of scenery, which the luxury of the age demands, in these cases works a quite contrary effect to what is intended. That which in comedy, or plays of familiar life, adds so much to the life of the imitation, in plays which appeal to the higher faculties, positively destroys the illusion which it is introduced to aid.”

Hazlitt’s interpretation of Falstaff is worth comparing with that of Maurice Morgann in “An Essay on the Dramatic Character of Sir John Falstaff,” although Hazlitt does not allude to Morgann’s essay and is supposed to have had no knowledge of it. “To me then it appears that the leading quality in Falstaff’s character, and that from which all the rest take their colour, is a high degree of wit and humour, accompanied with great natural vigour and alacrity of mind.... He seems, by nature, to have had a mind free of malice or any evil principle; but he never took the trouble of acquiring any good one. He found himself esteemed and beloved with all his faults; nay for his faults, which were all connected with humour, and for the most part grew out of it. As he had, possibly, no vices but such as he thought might be openly confessed, so he appeared more dissolute thro’ ostentation. To the character of wit and humour, to which all his other qualities seem to have conformed themselves, he appears to have added a very necessary support, that of the profession of a Soldier.... Laughter and approbation attend his greatest excesses; and being governed visibly by no settled bad principle or ill design, fun and humour account for and cover all. By degrees, however, and thro’ indulgence, he acquires bad habits, becomes an humourist, grows enormously corpulent, and falls into the infirmities of age; yet never quits, all the time, one single levity or vice of youth, or loses any of that cheerfulness of mind which had enabled him to pass thro’ this course with ease to himself and delight to others; and thus, at last, mixing youth and age, enterprize and corpulency, wit and folly, poverty and expence, title and buffoonery, innocence as to purpose, and wickedness as to practice; neither incurring hatred by bad principle, or contempt by cowardice, yet involved in circumstances productive of imputation in both; a butt and a wit, a humourist and a man of humour, a touchstone and a laughing stock, a jester and a jest, has Sir John Falstaff, taken at that period of life in which we see him, become the most perfect comic character that perhaps ever was exhibited.” (Nichol Smith’s “Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare,” 226-7.)

P. 88. we behold. Cf. Colossians, ii, 9; “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

lards the lean earth. 1 “Henry IV,” ii, 2, 116.

into thin air. “Tempest,” iv, 1, 150.

three fingers deep. Cf. 1 “Henry IV,” iv, 2, 80: “three fingers on the ribs.”

P. 89. it snows. Chaucer’s Prologue to the “Canterbury Tales,” 345.

ascends me. 2 “Henry IV,” iv, 3, 105.

a tun of man. 1 “Henry IV,” ii, 4, 493.

P. 91. open, palpable. Cf. 1 “Henry IV,” ii, 4, 248: “These lies are like their father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.”

By the lord. Ibid., i, 2, 44.

But Hal. Ibid., i, 2, 91.

P. 92. who grew. Cf. ii, 4, 243: “eleven buckram men grown out of two.”

Harry, I do not. ii, 4, 439.

P. 94. What is the gross sum. 2 “Henry IV,” ii, 1, 91.

P. 95. Would I were with him. “Henry V,” ii, 3, 6.

turning his vices. Cf. 2 “Henry IV,” i, 2, 277: “I will turn diseases to commodity.”

their legs. Ibid., ii, 4, 265.

a man made after supper. Ibid., iii, 2, 332.

Would, Cousin Silence. Ibid., iii, 2, 225.

I did not think. Ibid., v, 3, 40.

in some authority. Ibid., v, 3, 117.

You have here. Ibid., v, 3, 6.

TWELFTH NIGHT

P. 96. It aims at the ludicrous. Cf. Hazlitt’s remark in the Characters on “Much Ado About Nothing”: “Perhaps that middle point of comedy was never more nicely hit in which the ludicrous blends with the tender, and our follies, turning round against themselves in support of our affections, retain nothing but their humanity.”

P. 97. William Congreve (1670-1729), William Wycherley (1640-1716), Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), the chief masters of Restoration Comedy.

P. 98. high fantastical. i, 1, 15.

Wherefore are these things hid. i, 3, 133.

rouse the night-owl. ii, 3, 60.

Dost thou think. ii, 3, 123.

P. 99. We cannot agree with Dr. Johnson. See p. 49 and n.

What’s her history. ii, 4, 12.

Oh it came o’er. i, 1, 5.

P. 100. They give a very echo. ii, 4, 21.

Blame not this haste. iv, 3, 22.

The essay concludes with the quotation of one of the songs and Malvolio’s reading of the letter.

MILTON

P. 101. Blind Thamyris. “Paradise Lost,” III, 35.

P. 102. with darkness. VII, 27.

piling up every stone. XI, 324.

For after I had from my first years. “The Reason of Church Government,” Book II, Introduction.

P. 103. The noble heart. “FaËrie Queene,” I, v, 1.

P. 104. makes Ossa like a wart. “Hamlet,” v, 1, 306.

Him followed Rimmon. “Paradise Lost,” I, 467.

As when a vulture. III, 431.

P. 105. the pilot. I, 204.

It has been indeed objected to Milton. Cf. Coleridge (Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 304): “Milton is not a picturesque, but a musical, poet”; also Coleridge’s “Table Talk,” August 7, 1832: “It is very remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art; while every other page breathes his love and taste for music.... Adam bending over the sleeping Eve, in Paradise Lost, and Dalilah approaching Samson, in the Agonistes, are the only two proper pictures I remember in Milton.”

Like a steam. “Comus,” 556.

P. 106. He soon saw. “Paradise Lost,” III, 621.

P. 107. With Atlantean shoulders. II, 306.

Lay floating. I, 296.

Dr. Johnson condemns the Paradise Lost. See the conclusion of his “Life of Milton.”

P. 108. His hand was known. “Paradise Lost,” I, 732.

But chief the spacious hall. I, 762.

P. 109. Round he surveys. III, 555.

Such as the meeting soul. “L’Allegro.”

the hidden soul. Ibid.

P. 110. as Pope justly observes. “First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace,” 102.

P. 111. As when Heaven’s fire. “Paradise Lost,” I, 612.

All is not lost. I, 206.

that intellectual being. II, 147.

being swallowed up. II, 149.

P. 112. Fallen cherub. I, 157.

rising aloft. I, 225.

the mystic German critics. Cf. p. 344.

P. 113. Is this the region. “Paradise Lost,” I, 242.

P. 114. Salmasius. At the request of Charles II, Claude de Saumaise (Claudius Salmasius), professor at Leyden, had written a vindication of Charles I, “Defensio pro Carolo I” (1649), to which Milton replied with the “Defensio pro Populo Anglicano” (1651). The controversy between the two is noted for the virulency of the personal invective.

with hideous ruin. “Paradise Lost,” I, 46.

retreated in a silent valley. II, 547.

a noted political writer. Dr. Stoddart, editor of the Times and brother-in-law of Hazlitt, whom the critic bitterly hated, and Napoleon are here referred to. Cf. “Political Essays,” III, 158-159.

P. 115. Longinus preferred the Iliad. “Whereas in the Iliad, which was written when his genius was in its prime, the whole structure of the poem is founded on action and struggle, in the Odyssey he generally prefers the narrative style, which is proper to old age. Hence Homer in his Odyssey may be compared to the setting sun; he is still as great as ever, but he has lost his fervent heat. The strain is now pitched in a lower key than in the ‘Tale of Troy Divine’: we begin to miss that high and equable sublimity which never flags or sinks, that continuous current of moving incidents, those rapid transitions, that force of eloquence, that opulence of imagery which is ever true to Nature. Like the sea when it retires upon itself and leaves its shores waste and bare, henceforth the tide of sublimity begins to ebb, and draws us away into the dim region of myth and legend. In saying this I am not forgetting the fine storm-pieces in the Odyssey, the story of the Cyclops, and other striking passages. It is Homer grown old I am discussing, but still it is Homer.” On the Sublime, IX, trans. Havell.

no kind of traffic. Cf. “Tempest,” ii, 1, 148.

The generations were prepared. Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” VI, 554.

the unapparent deep. “Paradise Lost,” VII, 103.

P. 116. know to know no more. Cowper’s “Truth,” 327.

They toiled not. Matthew, vi, 28.

In them the burthen. Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey.”

such as angels weep. “Paradise Lost,” I, 620.

P. 117. In either hand. XII, 637.

POPE

This selection begins with the second paragraph of the fourth lecture on the “English Poets.”

P. 118. The question whether Pope was a poet. Hazlitt had written a paper in answer to this question in the Edinburgh Magazine for February, 1818 (Works, XII, 430-432), from which the following paragraphs down to “Such at least is the best account” are copied. The question had been previously answered by Dr. Johnson with the same common sense as by Hazlitt: “It is surely superfluous to answer the question that has once been asked, Whether Pope was a poet? otherwise than by asking in return, If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? To circumscribe poetry by a definition will only shew the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall exclude Pope will not easily be made.” (“Life of Pope,” ed. B. Hill, III, 251). In their edition of Pope (II, 140), Elwin and Courthope express the opinion that the doubt which both Johnson and Hazlitt felt called upon to refute “was never maintained by a single person of reputation.” Yet there is something very close to such a doubt implied in the utterances of Coleridge: “If we consider great exquisiteness of language and sweetness of metre alone, it is impossible to deny to Pope the character of a delightful writer; but whether he was a poet, must depend upon our definition of the word.... This, I must say, that poetry, as distinguished from other modes of composition, does not rest in metre, and that it is not poetry, if it make no appeal to our passions or our imagination.” (Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 56.) Pope’s verse was made the occasion of a long-winded controversy as to the relative value of the natural and artificial in poetry, lasting from 1819 to 1825, with William Bowles and Lord Byron as the principal combatants. Hazlitt contributed an article to the London Magazine for June, 1821, “Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles” (Works, XII, 486-508), in which he pointed out the fallacies in Byron’s position and censured the clerical priggishness of Bowles in treating of Pope’s life. The chief points in the discussion are best summed up in Prothero’s edition of Byron’s “Letters and Journals,” Vol. V, Appendix III.

If indeed by a great poet we mean. Cf. Introduction, p. 1.

P. 120. the pale reflex. “Romeo and Juliet,” iii, 5, 20.

P. 121. Martha Blount (1690-1762), the object of Pope’s sentimental attachment throughout his life.

In Fortune’s ray. “Troilus and Cressida,” i, 3, 47.

the gnarled oak ... the soft myrtle. “FaËrie Qu.,” II, ii, 116-117.

calm contemplation. Thomson’s “Autumn,” 1275.

P. 122. More subtle web. “FaËrie Queene,” II, xii, 77.

P. 123. from her fair head. “Rape of the Lock,” III, 154.

Now meet thy fate. Ibid., V, 87-96.

P. 124. Lutrin. The “Lutrin” was a mock-heroic poem (1674-1683) of the French poet and critic, Nicolas Boileau Despreaux (1636-1711), the literary dictator of the age of Louis XIV.

’Tis with our judgments. “Essay on Criticism,” I, 9.

Still green with bays. Ibid., I, 181.

P. 125. the writer’s despair. Cf. Ibid., II, 278:

“No longer now that Golden Age appears,
When Patriarch-wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev’n that can boast:
Our sons their fathers’ failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is shall Dryden be.” with theirs should sail, “attendant sail.” “Essay on Man,” IV, 383-6.

P. 126. There died. “Eloisa to Abelard,” 40.

P. 127. If ever chance. Ibid., 347.

Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). “The Essay plainly appears the fabric of a poet: what Bolingbroke supplied could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and embellishments must be all Pope’s.” Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, II, 264.

P. 128. he spins, “draweth out.” “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” v, 1, 18.

the very words. Cf. “Macbeth,” i, 3, 88: “the selfsame tune and words.”

Now night descending. “Dunciad,” I, 89.

Virtue may choose. “Epilogue to the Satires,” Dialogue I, 137.

P. 129. character of Chartres. “Moral Essays, Epistle III.”

his compliments. See p. 322.

Where Murray. “Imitations of Horace, Epistle VI,” 52. William Murray (1705-1793), Chief Justice of England, created Lord Mansfield in 1776.

Why rail. “Epilogue to Satires,” Dialogue II, 138.

Despise low joys. “Epistle to Mr. Murray,” 60.

P. 130. character of Addison. “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” 193-214.

Buckingham. George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham (1628-1687), statesman, wit, and poet.

Alas! how changed. “Moral Essays,” III, 305.

Arbuthnot, John (1667-1735), physician and man of letters, whom Thackeray introduced in attendance at the death-bed of Francis Esmond. “He had a very notable share in the immortal History of John Bull, and the inimitable and praiseworthy Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus.... Arbuthnot’s style is distinguished from that of his contemporaries, even by a greater degree of terseness and conciseness. He leaves out every superfluous word; is sparing of connecting particles, and introductory phrases; uses always the simplest forms of construction; and is more a master of the idiomatic peculiarities and internal resources of the language than almost any other writer.” “English Poets,” Lecture VI.

Charles Jervas (1675-1739) gave Pope lessons in painting. He is also known as a translator of “Don Quixote.”

Why did I write. “Epistle to Arbuthnot,” 125.P. 131. Oh, lasting as those colours. “Epistle to Mr. Jervas,” 63.

who have eyes. Psalms, cxv, 5; cxxxv, 16, etc.

It will never do. Hazlitt was fond of mimicking this phrase with which Jeffrey so unfortunately opened his well-known review of Wordsworth’s “Excursion.”

I lisp’d in numbers. “Epistle to Arbuthnot,” 128.

Et quum conabar scribere. Cf. Ovid’s “Tristia,” IV, x, 26: “Et, quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.”

PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS

The fifth lecture on the “Comic Writers.”

P. 133. the proper study. Pope’s “Essay on Man,” II, 2.

comes home. Bacon’s dedication of the Essays.

Quicquid agunt homines. “Whatever things men do form the mixed substance of our book.” Juvenal’s “Satires,” I, 85. With occasional exceptions, this appears as the motto of the first 78 number of the Tatler.

holds the mirror. “Hamlet,” iii, 2, 24.

the act and practic. Cf. “Henry V,” i, 1, 51: “So that the art and practic part of life Must be the mistress to this theoric.”

P. 134. the web of our life. “All’s Well That Ends Well,” iv, 3, 83.

Quid sit pulchrum. “It tells us what is fair, what foul, what is useful, what not, more amply and better than Chrysippus and Crantor.” Horace’s “Epistles,” I, ii, 3-4.

Montaigne, Michel (1533-1592). “Essays,” Books I and II, 1580; Book III, 1588.

P. 135. not one of the angles. Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” Bk. III, Ch. 12.

P. 136. pour out. “Imitation of Horace, Satire I,” 51.

P. 136, n. more wise Charron. See Pope’s “Moral Essays,” I, 87. Pierre Charron (1541-1603), a friend of Montaigne, author of “De la Sagesse” (1601).

P. 137. Pereant isti. Ælius Donatus: St. Jerome’s Commentary on the Eucharist, ch. 1. Mr. Carr’s translation of the sentence is “Confound the fellows who have said our good things before us.” (Camelot Hazlitt.)

P. 138. Charles Cotton’s (1630-1687) translation of Montaigne was published in 1685. It was dedicated to George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633-1695), who spoke of the essays as “the book in the world I am best entertained with.”

Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667). “Several Discourses by way of Essays in Prose and Verse” appeared in the edition of his works in 1668.

Sir William Temple (1628-1699). His essays, entitled “Miscellanea,” were published in 1680 and 1692.

Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713), author of “Characteristics” (1711).

P. 139. the perfect spy. “Macbeth,” iii, 1, 130.

The Tatler ran from April 12, 1709, to June 2, 1711. This paragraph and the larger portion of the next are substantially reproduced from the paper “On the Tatler” in the “Round Table.”

Isaac Bickerstaff. Under the disguise of this name Swift had perpetrated an amusing hoax on an almanac-maker of the name of Partridge, and in launching his new periodical Steele availed himself of the notoriety of Bickerstaff’s name and feigned his identity with that personage.

P. 140. the disastrous stroke. Cf. “Othello,” i, 3, 157: “some distressful stroke that my youth suffered.”

the recollection of one of his mistresses. Tatler, No. 107.

the club at the Trumpet. 132.

the cavalcade. 86.

the upholsterer. 155, 160, 178.

If he walks out, etc. 238.

P. 141. Charles Lillie, perfumer, at the corner of Beaufort Buildings in the Strand, was agent for the sale of the Tatler and Spectator and is several times mentioned in those periodicals.

Betterton, Thomas (1635?-1710), Anne Oldfield (1683-1730), Will [Richard] Estcourt (1668-1712), were popular actors of the day.

Tom Durfey (1653-1723) was a dramatist and song writer.

Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), and Marshal Turenne (1611-1675).

The Spectator ran from March 1, 1711, to December 6, 1712, with an additional series from June 18 to December 20, 1714.

the first sprightly runnings. Dryden’s “Aurengzebe,” iv, 1.

P. 142. Addison, Joseph (1672-1719).

the whiteness of her hand. Cf. Spectator. No. 113. “She certainly has the finest hand of any woman in the world.”

the havoc he makes. Spectator, 116, by Budgell.his speech from the bench and his unwillingness. 122.

his gentle reproof. 130.

his doubts. 117.

P. 143. his account of the family pictures. 109, by Steele.

his choice of a chaplain. 106.

his falling asleep at church and his reproof of John Williams, i.e., John Matthews. 112.

I once thought I knew. Cf. “On the Conversation of Authors,” where A—— (William Ayrton) is introduced as “the Will Honeycomb of our set.”

The Court of Honour. Addison created the court in Tatler, 250. Its proceedings are recorded by himself and Steele in Nos. 253, 256, 259, 262, 265.

Personification of Musical Instruments. Tatler, 153, 157.

the picture of the family. Tatler, 95, of unknown authorship.

P. 144. the account of the two sisters. 151.

the married lady. 104.

the lover and his mistress. 94.

the bridegroom. 82.

Mr. Eustace and his wife. 172.

the fine dream. 117.

Mandeville, Bernard (d. 1733), author of the satirical “Fable of the Bees.”

reflections on cheerfulness. Spectator, 381, 387, 393.

those in Westminster Abbey. 26.

Royal Exchange. 69.

P. 145. the best criticism. 226.

Mr. Fuseli, Henry (1741-1825), painter and art critic.

an original copy. Probably the octavo edition of 1711.

The Guardian ran from March 12, 1713, to October 1, 1713.

The Rambler ran from March 20, 1749-50, to March 14, 1752.

Dr. Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784).

P. 146. give us pause. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 68.

P. 147. All his periods, etc. See the “Character of Burke” and the preface to “The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays.”

P. 148. the elephant. “Paradise Lost,” IV, 345.

If he were to write. Boswell’s “Johnson,” ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 231.

P. 149. Rasselas, an Oriental tale, published in 1759.

abused Milton and patronised Lauder. See Boswell’s “Johnson,” I, 228-231.P. 150. Boswell, James (1740-1795), made his literary reputation by his “Life of Johnson.”

the king of good fellows. Burns’s “Auld Rab Morris.”

inventory of all he said. Cf. Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist,” iii, 2: “And ta’en an inventory of what they are.”

Goldsmith asked. Boswell’s “Johnson,” II, 260.

If that fellow Burke. II, 450.

What, is it you. I, 250.

P. 151. with some unidead girls. I, 251.

Now, I think. II, 362.

his quitting the society. I, 201.

his dining with Wilkes. III, 64.

his sitting with the young ladies. II, 120.

his carrying the unfortunate victim. IV, 321.

an act which realises the parable. Talfourd, who heard this lecture, reports that on Hazlitt’s allusion to this incident “a titter arose from some who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite: he paused for an instant, and then added, in his sturdiest and most impressive manner—‘an act which realizes the parable of the Good Samaritan’—at which his moral, and his delicate hearers shrank, rebuked, into deep silence.”

where they. Gray’s “Elegy.”

P. 152. The Adventurer ran from November 7, 1752, to March 9, 1754. John Hawkesworth (1715-1773) was its chief contributor.

The World ran from January 4, 1753, to December 30, 1756.

The Connoisseur ran from January 31, 1754, to September 30, 1756.

one good idea. The paper referred to is No. 176 of The World, by Edward Moore, the dramatist.

Citizen of the World, in two volumes, 1762.

go about to cozen. Cf. “Merchant of Venice,” ii, 9, 37: “To cozen fortune and be honorable Without the stamp of merit.”

Persian Letters. “Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispahan” (1735), by Lord Lyttleton.

P. 153. The bonzes. “Citizen of the World,” Letter X.

Edinburgh. We are positive. Ibid., Letter V.

Beau Tibbs. Letters XXIX, LIV, LV, LXXXI.

Lounger ran from February 5, 1785, to January 6, 1786, The Mirror from January 23, 1779, to May 27, 1780. The chief contributor to both was Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), author of the celebrated sentimental novels: “The Man of Feeling” (1771), “The Man of the World” (1773), “Julia de RoubignÉ” (1777).

the story of La Roche. Mirror, 42, 43, 44.

the story of Le Fevre. “Tristram Shandy,” Bk. VI, ch. 6.

P. 154. author of Rosamond Gray. Charles Lamb.

THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS

From the sixth lecture on the “Comic Writers.” Most of the matter had appeared in the Edinburgh Review for February, 1815, as a review of Madame D’Arblay’s “Wanderer.” (See Works, X, 25-44.) In “A Farewell to Essay-Writing” (Works, XII, 327) Hazlitt harks back to his days with Charles and Mary Lamb: “I will not compare our hashed mutton with Amelia’s; but it put us in mind of it, and led to a discussion, sharply seasoned and well sustained, till midnight, the result of which appeared some years after in the Edinburgh Review.”

P. 155. Be mine to read. To Richard West, April, 1742.

Marivaux, Pierre (1688-1763), and Crebillon, Claude Prosper (1707-1777), French novelists.

something more divine. Cf. p. 254.

P. 156. Fielding ... says. “Joseph Andrews,” Bk. III, ch. 1.

description somewhere given. “Reflections on the French Revolution,” ed. Bohn, II, 351-352.

P. 157. Echard. John Eachard (1636-1697), author of “The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired into.” (1670.)

worthy of all acceptation. 1 Timothy, i, 15.

the lecture. “Joseph Andrews,” Bk. IV, ch. 3.

Blackstone, Sir William (1723-1780), author of “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1765-69).

De Lolme, John. Louis (1740?-1807), author of “The Constitution of England” (1771).

Cervantes, Miguel (1547-1616), Spanish novelist whose most famous work is “Don Quixote.”

Le Sage, Alain RenÉ (1668-1747), French novelist, author of “Gil Blas.”

Fielding, Henry (1707-1754). His most important novels are “Joseph Andrews” (1742), “Tom Jones” (1749), “Amelia” (1751), “Jonathan Wild” (1743).Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771), wrote “Roderick Random” (1748), “Peregrine Pickle” (1751), “Ferdinand Count Fathom” (1753), “Launcelot Greaves” (1762), “Humphrey Clinker” (1771).

Richardson, Samuel (1689-1761), wrote “Pamela” (1740), “Clarissa Harlowe” (1747-48), “Sir Richard Grandison” (1753).

Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768), wrote “Tristram Shandy” (1759-67), “A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy” (1768).

P. 158. in these several writers. A few paragraphs are here omitted treating of “Don Quixote,” “Lazarillo de Tormes” (1553), “Guzman d’Alfarache” by Mateo Aleman (1599), and “Gil Blas.”

They are thoroughly English. In the review of Walpole’s Letters (Works, X, 168), Hazlitt says: “There is nothing of a tea inspiration in any of his [Fielding’s] novels. They are assuredly the finest thing of the kind in the language; and we are Englishmen enough to consider them the best in any language. They are indubitably the most English of all the works of Englishmen.”

Hogarth, William (1697-1764), painter and engraver of moral and satirical subjects. His two most famous series of paintings are “The Rake’s Progress” and “Marriage À la Mode.” Lamb in his “Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth” observes: “Other pictures we look at,—his prints we read.” Hazlitt, sharing this view, includes an account of Hogarth in the seventh lecture of the “Comic Writers,” which opens as follows: “If the quantity of amusement, or of matter for more serious reflection which their works have afforded, is that by which we are to judge of precedence among the intellectual benefactors of mankind, there are, perhaps, few persons who can put in a stronger claim to our gratitude than Hogarth. It is not hazarding too much to assert, that he was one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived.”

P. 159. the gratitude of the elder Blifil. Bk. I, ch. 13.

the Latin dialogues, etc. Bk. II, chs. 3-4.

P. 160. honesty of Black George. Bk. VI, ch. 13.

I was never so handsome. Bk. XVII, ch. 4.

the adventure with the highwayman. Bk. VII, ch. 9.

Sophia and her muff. Bk. V, ch. 4.

coquetry of her cousin. Bk. XVI, ch. 9.

the modest overtures. Bk. XV, ch. 11.

the story of Tom Jones. Cf. Coleridge’s “Table Talk,” July 5, 1834: “I think the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned.”account of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert [Hebbers]. Bk. I, chs. 7-9.

P. 161. the story of the miniature picture. Bk. XI, ch. 6.

the hashed mutton. Bk. X, ch. 6.

the masquerade. Bk. X, ch. 2.

the interview. Bk. X, chs. 2, 8.

P. 162. His declaring. Bk. III, ch. 3.

his consoling himself. Bk. III, ch. 2.

the night-adventures. Bk. IV, ch. 14.

that with the huntsman. Bk. III, ch. 6.

Wilson’s account. Bk. III, ch. 3.

P. 163. Roderick Random’s carroty locks. ch. 13.

Strap’s ignorance. ch. 14.

intus et in cute. Persius’ “Satires,” III, 30.

P. 164. scene on ship-board. ch. 24.

profligate French friar. chs. 42-43.

P. 165. the Count’s address. ch. 27.

the robber-scene. chs. 20-21.

the Parisian swindler. ch. 24.

the seduction. ch. 34.

P. 166. the long description. The allusions to Miss Byron’s dress in Vol. VII, Letter III, can scarcely be called a long description.

P. 167. Dr. Johnson seems to have preferred. Cf. Boswell’s “Johnson,” ed. Hill, II, 174: “Sir, there is more knowledge of the heart in one letter of Richardson’s, than in all Tom Jones.”

P. 168. reproaches to her “lumpish heart”. “Pamela,” ed. Dobson and Phelps, I, 268.

its lightness. I, 276.

the joy. II, 7-25.

the artifice of the stuff-gown. I, 51.

the meeting with Lady Davers. II, 145 ff.

the trial-scene with her husband. IV, 122 ff.

P. 169. her long dying-scene. “Clarissa Harlowe,” ed. Dobson and Phelps, Vol. VIII, Letter 29.

the closing of the coffin-lid. VIII, Letter 50.

the heart-breaking reflections. VI, Letter 29.

Books are a real world. Wordsworth’s “Personal Talk.”

Lovelace’s reception and description of Hickman. VI, Letter 80.

the scene at the glove-shop. VII, Letter 70.

Belton, so pert. I, Letter 31.

his systematically preferring. Cf. “Why the Heroes of Romances are Insipid” (Works, XII, 62): “There is not a single thing that Sir Charles Grandison does or says all through the book from liking to any person or object but himself, and with a view to answer to a certain standard of perfection for which he pragmatically sets up. He is always thinking of himself, and trying to show that he is the wisest, happiest, and most virtuous person in the whole world. He is (or would be thought) a code of Christian ethics; a compilation and abstract of all gentlemanly accomplishments. There is nothing, I conceive, that excites so little sympathy as this inordinate egotism; or so much disgust as this everlasting self-complacency. Yet this self-admiration, brought forward on every occasion as the incentive to every action and reflected from all around him, is the burden and pivot of the story.”

P. 170. a dull fellow. Boswell’s “Johnson,” ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 222.

the tale of Maria. Bk. IX, ch. 24.

the apostrophe to the recording angel. Bk. VI, ch. 8.

the story of Le Fevre. Bk. VI, ch. 6.

The rest of the lecture treats of Fanny Burney, Anne Radcliffe, Elizabeth Inchbald, William Godwin, and Sir Walter Scott.

CHARACTER OF MR. BURKE

First published in the “Eloquence of the British Senate” and republished in “Political Essays.”

P. 172. The following speech. Hazlitt refers to the speech On the Economic Reform (February 11, 1780). See Burke’s Works, ed. Bohn, II, 55-126.

P. 174. the elephant to make them sport. “Paradise Lost” IV, 345.

native and endued. “Hamlet,” iv, 7, 180.

Lord Chatham. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), the great English statesman.

P. 176. a new creation. Goldsmith’s “Traveler,” 296.

P. 178. All the great changes. Cf. Morley’s “Life of Burke,” ch. 8: “All really profound speculation about society comes in time to touch the heart of every other object of speculation, not by directly contributing new truths or directly corroborating old ones, but by setting men to consider the consequences to life of different opinions on these abstract subjects, and their relations to the great paramount interests of society, however those interests may happen at the time to be conceived. Burke’s book marks a turning-point in literary history, because it was the signal for that reaction over the whole field of thought, into which the Revolution drove many of the finest minds of the next generation, by showing the supposed consequences of pure individualistic rationalism.”

P. 179. Alas! Leviathan. Cowper’s “Task,” II, 322.

the corner stone. Psalms, cxvii, 22.

to the Jews. 1 Corinthians, i, 23.

P. 183. the consequences of his writings. In this view Hazlitt has the full support of Lord Morley.

P. 184. How charming. Milton’s “Comus,” 476.

He was one of the severest writers we have. The description of Burke’s style which follows should be compared with that given on pp. 344-5 and with the splendid passage in the “Plain Speaker” essay “On the Prose Style of Poets,” beginning: “It has always appeared to me that the most perfect prose-style, the most powerful, the most dazzling, the most daring, that which went the nearest to the verge of poetry, and yet never fell over, was Burke’s. It has the solidity, and sparkling effect of the diamond; all other fine writing is like French paste or Bristol-stones in the comparison. Burke’s style is airy, flighty, adventurous, but it never loses sight of the subject; nay, is always in contact with, and derives its increased or varying impulse from it. It may be said to pass yawning gulfs ‘on the unsteadfast footing of a spear:’ still it has an actual resting-place and tangible support under it—it is not suspended on nothing. It differs from poetry, as I conceive, like the chamois from the eagle: it climbs to an almost equal height, touches upon a cloud, overlooks a precipice, is picturesque, sublime—but all the while, instead of soaring through the air, it stands upon a rocky cliff, clambers up by abrupt and intricate ways, and browzes on the roughest bark, or crops the tender flower.”

P. 186. the set or formal style. See pp. 147-8.

P. 187. Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770), a criticism of the ministerial policy of the English government under George III.

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), a severe arraignment of the principles which inspired the revolution and a prophetic warning of its consequences.

Letter to the Duke of Bedford. A Letter from the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, to a Noble Lord, on the attacks made upon him and his pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the present session of Parliament. (1706.)

Regicide Peace. Three Letters addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament, on the proposals for peace with the regicide Directory of France. (1796.)

P. 188. Fox, Charles James (1749-1806), the famous Whig statesman who was frequently the opponent of Burke and of the younger Pitt.

P. 189. Dr. Johnson observed, in his “Life of Pope” (ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 230): “In their similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed; the ship-race, compared with the chariot-race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo running after Daphne is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and a dog.”

a person. Conjecturally Joseph Fawcett. In the essay “On Criticism” (“Table Talk”) Hazlitt says: “The person of the most refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to Shenstone’s Pastoral Ballad, from Butler’s Analogy down to Humphrey Clinker.”

P. 189, n. the comparison of the British Constitution. “Letter to a Noble Lord,” Works, ed. Bohn, V, 137.

MR. WORDSWORTH

From “The Spirit of the Age.” Characterizations of Wordsworth also occur in the lecture “On the Living Poets” and in the Essay “On Genius and Common Sense” in “Table Talk.”

P. 191. lowliness is young ambition’s ladder. “Julius CÆsar,” ii, 1, 22.

no figures. Cf. “Julius CÆsar,” ii, 1, 231: “ Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men.”

skyey influences. “Measure for Measure,” iii, 1, 9.P. 192. nihil humani. Terence: “Heautontimoroumenos.” i, 1, 25.

the cloud-capt towers. “Tempest,” iv, 1, 151.

P. 193. the judge’s robe. Cf. “Measure for Measure,” ii, 2, 59;

“No ceremony that to great ones ’longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe.”

Pindar and AlcÆus. Greek lyric poets.

a sense of joy. Wordsworth’s “To My Sister.”

P. 194. Beneath the hills. Cf. Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” VI, 531:

“Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills
The generations are prepared....”

P. 195. To him the meanest flower. “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.”

P. 196. Grasmere was the residence of Wordsworth between 1799 and 1813.

Cole-Orton was the residence of Wordsworth’s friend, Sir George Beaumont, to whom he dedicated the 1815 edition of his poems: “Some of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your own groves, upon the classic ground of Cole-Orton.”

P. 197. Calm contemplation. Cf. “Laodamia”: “Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains.”

Fall blunted “from each indurated heart.” Goldsmith’s “Traveler,” 232.

and fit audience. Wordsworth quotes this line from “Paradise Lost,” VII, 31, in “The Recluse,” 776:

“‘Fit audience let me find though few!’
So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard—
In holiest mood.”

P. 198. The Excursion. Hazlitt wrote a review of this poem for the Examiner which not only aroused Wordsworth’s resentment but led to one of his disagreements with Lamb. The review appears in the “Round Table.”

toujours perdrix, “always partridges,” alluding to a story of a French king, who, on being reproved by his confessor for faithlessness to his wife, punished the offender by causing him to be fed on nothing but his favorite dish, which was partridge. See Notes and Queries, Series IV, Vol. III, p. 336.

In his person. In 1803, while on a visit to the Lake Country, Hazlitt had painted a portrait of Wordsworth. “He has painted Wordsworth,” writes Southey, “but so dismally, though Wordsworth’s face is his idea of physiognomical perfection, that one of his friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, ‘At the gallows—deeply affected by his deserved fate—yet determined to die like a man;’ and if you saw the picture, you would admire the criticism.” “Life and Correspondence,” II, 238.

His manner of reading. See p. 295.

a man of no mark. 1 “Henry IV,” iii, 2, 45.

P. 199. He finds fault with Dryden’s description. Hazlitt adopted this criticism in his lecture “On Pope and Dryden.”

P. 200. Titian (c. 1477-1576), the great Venetian painter.

Chaucer. Wordsworth’s modernizations of Chaucer are “The Prioress’s Tale,” “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,” and a part of “Troilus and Cressida.”

a tragedy. “The Borderers” was written in 1795-96 but not published till 1842. The quotation which follows is from Act iii, 1, 405, and should read:

“Action is transitory—a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle—this way or that—
’Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed;
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.”

Wordsworth quoted these lines after the dedication to “The White Doe of Rylstone” and later added a note: “This and the five lines that follow were either read or recited by me more than thirty years since, to the late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted some expressions in them (imperfectly remembered) in a work of his published several years ago.”

P. 201. Let observation. Cf. De Quincey’s “Rhetoric” (Works, ed. Masson, X, 128): “We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson, published immediately after his death, in which, among other instances of desperate tautology, the author quotes the well-known lines from the Doctor’s imitation of Juvenal—‘Let observation,’ etc., and contends with some reason that this is saying in effect,—‘Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively.’” Coleridge somewhere makes the same remark.

Drawcansir. A character in “The Rehearsal” by the Duke of Buckingham.

“Let petty kings the names of Parties know:
Where’er I am, I slay both friend and foe.”v, 1.

Walton’s Angler. In the fifth lecture of the “English Poets” Hazlitt writes: “Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton’s Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the description of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the author’s mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius’s Piscatory Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose on the banks of a river under a shady tree; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls ‘the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.’ We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare; while Maud, the pretty milkmaid, at her mother’s desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; ‘Come live with me, and be my love.’”

Paley, William (1743-1805), a noted theologian. Cf. “On the Clerical Character” in “Political Essays” (Works, III, 276): “This same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards employed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, in tampering with religion, morality, and politics,—in trimming between his convenience and his conscience,—in crawling between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated and popular for no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingenious and amusing apology for existing abuses of any description, by which any thing is to be got. It is a very elaborate and consolatory elucidation of the text, that men should not quarrel with their bread and butter. It is not an attempt to show what is right, but to palliate and find out plausible excuses for what is wrong. It is a work without the least value, except as a convenient commonplace book or vade mecum, for tyro politicians and young divines, to smooth their progress in the Church or the State. This work is a text-book in the University: its morality is the acknowledged morality of the House of Commons.” See also Coleridge’s opinion of Paley on p. 288.

Bewick, Thomas (1753-1828), a well-known wood-engraver.

Waterloo, Antoine (1609?-1676?), a French engraver, painter, and etcher.

Rembrandt, Harmans van Rijn (1606-1669.), Dutch painter, whose mastery of light and shade was the object of Hazlitt’s special admiration.

P. 202. He hates conchology, etc. See the lecture “On the Living Poets”: “He hates all science and all art; he hates chemistry, he hates conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir Isaac Newton; he hates wisdom; he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which he says are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them; he hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the dialogues in Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates Titian; he hates Vandyke; he hates the antique; he hates the Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of Medicis.”

Where one for sense. Butler’s “Hudibras,” II, 29.

P. 203. take the good. Plautus’s “Rudens,” iv, 7.

MR. COLERIDGE

From the “Spirit of the Age.”

P. 205. and thank. Cf. “Comus,” 176: “In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan.”

a mind reflecting. See p. 35 and n.

dark rearward. Cf. “Tempest,” i, 2, 50: “In the dark backward and abysm of time.”

P. 206. That which was. “Antony and Cleopatra,” iv, 14, 9.

quick, forgetive. 2 “Henry IV,” iv, 3, 107.

what in him is weak. Cf. “Paradise Lost,” I, 22: “What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support.”

P. 207. and by the force. Cf. “Macbeth,” iii, 5, 28: “As by the strength of their illusion Shalt draw him on to his confusion.”

rich strond. “FaËrie Queene,” III, iv, 18, 29, 34.

goes sounding. “Hazlitt seems to have had a hazy recollection of two passages in Chaucer’s Prologue. In his essay on ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets,’ he says, ‘the scholar in Chaucer is described as going “sounding on his way,”’ and in his Lectures on the English Poets he says, ‘the merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way “sounding always the increase of his winning.”’ The scholar is not described as ‘sounding on his way,’ but Chaucer says of him, ‘Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,’ while the merchant, though ‘souninge alway th’ encrees of his winning,’ is not described as going on his way. Wordsworth has a line (‘Excursion,’ Book III), ‘Went sounding on a dim and perilous way,’ but it seems clear that Hazlitt thought he was quoting Chaucer.” Waller-Glover, IV, 412.P. 208. his own nothings. “Coriolanus,” ii, 2, 81.

letting contemplation. Cf. Dyer’s “Grongar Hill,” 26: “till contemplation have its fill.”

Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray’s “Progress of Poesy.”

He lisped. Pope’s “Prologue to the Satires,” 128.

Ode on Chatterton. “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” written by Coleridge in 1790, at the age of eighteen.

P. 209. gained several prizes. “At Cambridge Coleridge won the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode in 1792.” Waller-Glover.

At Christ’s Hospital, a London school which Leigh Hunt and Lamb attended about the same time as Coleridge. The former has left a record of its life in his “Autobiography,” and Lamb has written of it, with special reference to Coleridge, in his “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital” and “Christ’s Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago.”

Struggling in vain. “Excursion,” VI, 557.

P. 210. Hartley, David (1705-1757), author of “Observations on Man” (1749), and identified chiefly with the theory of association. Cf. Coleridge’s “Religious Musings,” 368: “and he of mortal kind Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.”

Dr. Priestley, Joseph (1733-1804), scientist and philosopher of the materialistic school, author of “The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated” (1777). “See! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage.” “Religious Musings,” 371.

Bishop Berkeley’s fairy-world. George Berkeley (1685-1753), idealistic philosopher. Cf. p. 287.

Malebranche, Nicholas (1638-1715), author of “De la Recherche de la VÉritÉ” (1674).

Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688), author of “The True Intellectual System of the Universe” (1678).

Lord Brook’s hieroglyphical theories. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628), friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney.

Bishop Butler’s Sermons. Joseph Butler (1692-1752), author of “Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel” (1726), and “The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature” (1736).

Duchess of Newcastle. Margaret Cavendish (1624?-1674), published about a dozen folio volumes of philosophical fancies, poems, and plays. In “Mackery End in Hertfordshire” Lamb refers to her as “the thrice noble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle.”

Clarke, Samuel (1675-1729), English theologian of latitudinarian principles.

South, Robert (1634-1716), controversial writer and preacher.

Tillotson, John (1630-1694), a popular theological writer of rationalistic tendency.

Leibnitz’s Pre-established Harmony. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), a German philosopher, represented the world as consisting of an infinite number of independent substances or monads related to each other in such a way (by the pre-established harmony) as to form one universe. Cf. Coleridge’s “Destiny of Nations,” 38 ff.:

“Others boldlier think
That as one body seems the aggregate
Of atoms numberless, each organized;
So by a strange and dim similitude
Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds
Are an all-conscious spirit, which informs
With absolute ubiquity of thought
(His own eternal self-affirming act!)
All his involved Monads, that yet seem
With various province and apt agency
Each to pursue its own self-centering end.”

P. 210, n. And so by many. “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” ii, 7, 30.

P. 211. hortus siccus [dry garden] of Dissent. Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution,” Works, ed. Bohn, II, 287.

John Huss (1373?-1415), Bohemian reformer and martyr.

Jerome of Prague, a follower of Huss who was burnt for heresy in 1416.

Socinus. Fausto Paulo Sozzini (1539-1604), an Italian theologian who sought to simplify the doctrine of the Trinity.

John Zisca (1370?-1424), a leader of the extreme Hussite party.

Neal’s History. Daniel Neal (1648-1743) published his “History of the Puritans” 1732-38.

Calamy, Edmund (1671-1732) published an “Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and Fellows of Colleges, and Schoolmasters who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration of 1660” (1702 and 1713).

Spinoza, Baruch (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher of Jewish parentage, the chief representative of Pantheism, “the doctrine of one infinite substance, of which all finite existences are modes or limitations.”

When he saw. Cf. Coleridge’s “Remorse,” iv, 2, 100:

“When we saw nought but beauty; when we heard
The voice of that Almighty One who loved us
In every gale that breathed, and wave that murmur’d!”

Proclus (410-485) and Plotinus (204-270), philosophers of the Neo-Platonic school. In “Biographia Literaria” (chap. 9) Coleridge refers to his “early study of Plato and of Plotinus, with the commentaries and the ‘Theologia Platonica’ of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho.”

Duns Scotus (1265 or 1275-1308) and Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274), two great theologians of the Catholic Church.

Jacob Behmen or BÖhme (1575-1624), a German religious mystic who exerted considerable influence on English religious thought in the eighteenth century. In the “Biographia Literaria” (chap. 9) Coleridge writes: “A meek and shy quietist, his intellectual powers were never stimulated into feverous energy by crowds of proselytes, or by the ambition of proselyting. Jacob Behmen was an enthusiast in the strictest sense, as not merely distinguished, but as contradistinguished from a fanatic.... The writings of these Mystics acted in no slight degree to prevent my mind from being imprisoned within the outline of any single dogmatic system.”

Swedenborg, Emanuel (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist and mystic from whom have sprung some of the modern theosophical cults.

Religious Musings, published in his “Poems on Various Subjects” (1796).

the glad prose of Jeremy Taylor. Cf. “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,” Lecture VII: “In his writings, the frail stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of eternity. His Holy Living and Dying is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. He introduces touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life; condescends to men of low estate; and his pious page blushes with modesty and beauty. His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rainbow; it floats like the bubble through the air; it is like innumerable dew-drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they glitter. He does not dig his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne on the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon objects is like an Aurora Borealis, playing betwixt heaven and earth.... In a word, his writings are more like fine poetry than any other prose whatever; they are a choral song in praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe.”

Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850), published “Fourteen Sonnets” in 1789, and a second edition containing twenty-one in the same year. In the first chapter of the “Biographia Literaria,” Coleridge credits the sonnets of Bowles with saving him from a premature absorption in metaphysics and theology and with introducing him to the excellences of the new school of poetry. In his enthusiasm he went about making proselytes for Bowles and “as my school finances did not permit me to purchase copies, I made, within less than a year and a half, more than forty transcriptions, as the best presents I could offer to those, who had in any way won my regard. And with almost equal delight did I receive the three or four following publications of the same author.” Coleridge also addressed a “Sonnet to Bowles,” opening

“My heart hath thanked thee, Bowles! for those soft strains,
That on the still air floating tremblingly,
Wak’d in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy!”

P. 212. John Bull. Croker’s John Bull was a scurrilous newspaper edited by Theodore Hook, the first number of which appeared December 17, 1820.

Mr. Croker, John Wilson (1780-1857), politician and man of letters, one of Hazlitt’s pet aversions, and the same who comes in for such a severe chastisement in Macaulay’s review of his edition of Boswell’s “Johnson.”

Junius, the mysterious author of a famous series of political letters which appeared in the London Public Advertiser from January 21, 1769, to January 21, 1772, collected as the “Letters of Junius” in 1772. The name of Sir Philip Francis is the one most persistently associated with the composition of these letters.

Godwin, William (1756-1836), leader of the philosophical radicals in England and a believer in the perfectibility of man, wrote “An Enquiry concerning Political Justice” (1793), “Caleb Williams” (1794), and other novels and miscellaneous works. Godwin was the husband of Mary Wolstonecraft, and the father-in-law of Shelley. Hazlitt wrote a sketch of him in the “Spirit of the Age” and reviewed his last novel, “Cloudesley,” in the Edinburgh Review. Coleridge has a Sonnet to William Godwin:

“Nor will I not thy holy guidance bless,
And hymn thee, Godwin! with an ardent lay;
For that thy voice, in Passion’s stormy day
When wild I roam’d the bleak Heath of Distress,
Bade the bright form of Justice meet my way—
And told me that her name was Happiness.”

Sorrows of Werter, a sentimental novel of Goethe’s, the work by which he was most generally known to English readers in Hazlitt’s day.

laugh’d with Rabelais. Cf. Pope’s “Dunciad,” I, 22: “Or laugh and shake in Rab’lais easy chair.”

spoke with rapture of Raphael. Coleridge had visited Italy in 1806 on his return from a stay in Malta, and had devoted his time there to a study of Italian art. See p. 298 n.

Giotto (d. 1337), Ghirlandaio, whose real name was Domenico Bigardi (1449-1494), and Massaccio (1402-1429) were early Florentine painters.

wandered into Germany. Coleridge’s visit to Germany and his introduction to the leading German philosophers dates back to 1798-99.

Kantean philosophy. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the leader of modern philosophy. “The writings of the illustrious sage of KÖnigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and disciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add—(paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen)—the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of Pure Reason; and Critique of the Judgment; of the Metaphysical Elements of Natural Philosophy; and of his Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason, took possession of me as with a giant’s hand. After fifteen years’ familiarity with them, I still read these and all his other productions with undiminished delight and increasing admiration.” “Biographia Literaria,” chap. IX.

Fichte, J. Gottlieb (1762-1814). “Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, or Lore of Ultimate Science, was to add the key-stone of the arch” of Kant’s system. Ibid.

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (1775-1829). “In Schelling’s Natur-Philosophie, and the System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, I first found a genial coincidence with much that I had toiled out for myself, and a powerful assistance in what I had yet to do.... Many of the most striking resemblances, indeed all the main and fundamental ideas, were born and matured in my mind before I had ever seen a single page of the German Philosopher; and I might indeed affirm with truth, before the most important works of Schelling had been written, or at least made public. Nor is this coincidence at all to be wondered at. We had studied in the same school; been disciplined by the same preparatory philosophy, namely, the writings of Kant; we had both equal obligations to the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Giordano Bruno; and Schelling has lately, and, as of recent acquisition, avowed that same affectionate reverence for the labors of Behmen, and other mystics, which I had formed at a much earlier period.” Ibid.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim (1729-1781), German dramatist and critic.

sang for joy. Coleridge had in 1789 composed some stanzas “On the Destruction of the Bastille,” but these were not published till 1834.

would have floated his bark. Coleridge and Southey with some other friends had in 1794 formed a plan for an ideal colony, the Pantisocracy, on the banks of the Susquehanna.

In Philharmonia’s. Cf. Coleridge’s “Monody on the Death of Chatterton,” 140: “O’er peaceful Freedom’s undivided dale.”

P. 213. Frailty. Cf. “Hamlet,” i, 2, 146: “thy name is woman.”

writing paragraphs. Coleridge was connected with the staff of the Courier as a sort of assistant-editor for five months in 1811. His contributions during this period appeared as the “Essays on His Own Times” in 1850.

poet-laureate and stamp-distributor are references respectively to Southey and Wordsworth.

bourne from whence. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 79.

tantalized by useless resources. Compare this with Coleridge’s own lines of bitter self-reproach addressed “To a Gentleman”:

“Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain.”

P. 214. one splendid passage. The lines beginning “Alas! they had been friends in youth” (408-426). The same passage had been singled out for praise by Hazlitt in his lecture “On the Living Poets” and in the review of “Christabel” which had appeared in the Examiner of June 2, 1816. The authorship of this review has been disputed but should on internal evidence, despite its failure in appreciation, be ascribed to Hazlitt. See Works, XI, 580-582.Translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein, made by Coleridge in 1799-1800.

Remorse. This tragedy was played at the Drury Lane Theatre with considerable popular success in 1813. It was a recast of an early play entitled “Osorio,” composed in 1797.

P. 215. The Friend; a literary, moral, and political weekly paper, excluding personal and party politics and the events of the day (1809-1810), was reissued in one volume in 1812, and with additions and alterations (rather a rifacimento than a new edition) in 1818.

The sketch in the Spirit of the Age concludes with a contrast between Coleridge and William Godwin.

MR. SOUTHEY

This selection forms the conclusion of a sketch of Southey in the “Spirit of the Age.” It illustrates, even more strikingly than the “Character of Burke,” Hazlitt’s power of dissociating his judgments from his prejudices, inasmuch as there had been exchanges of rancorous personalities between the two men.

P. 216. Like the high leaves. Southey’s “The Holly Tree.”

of any poet. In an essay in the “Plain Speaker” “On the Prose Style of Poets,” Hazlitt elaborates his theory that poets turned out inferior prose. “I have but an indifferent opinion of the prose-style of poets: not that it is not sometimes good, nay, excellent; but it is never the better, and generally the worse from the habit of writing verse.”

full of wise saws. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 156.

P. 217. historian and prose-translator. Southey wrote the “History of Brazil,” the “History of the Peninsular War,” the “Book of the Church,” and lives of Wesley, Cowper, and Nelson. He translated from the Spanish the romances of “Amadis of Gaul,” “Palmerin of England,” and “The Cid.”

P. 219. Pindaric or Shandean, i.e., whimsical. Pindaric should of course be understood as a reference to Peter Pindar, the name under which John Wolcot (1738-1819) wrote his coarse and whimsical satires. Hazlitt mentions him at the end of his lectures “On the Comic Writers”: “The bard in whom the nation and the king delighted, is old and blind, but still merry and wise:—remembering how he has made the world laugh in his time, and not repenting of the mirth he has given; with an involuntary smile lighted up at the mad pranks of his Muse, and the lucky hits of his pen.” Shandean is derived from Sterne’s novel, “Tristram Shandy.”

And follows so. “Henry V,” iv, 1, 293.

his political inconsistency. This is the subject of Hazlitt’s attacks on Southey. See “Political Essays” (Works, III, 109-120, 192-232).

ELIA

The last essay in the “Spirit of the Age” is entitled “Elia and Geoffrey Crayon.” An edition published at Paris by Galignani in 1825 omits the account of Washington Irving, and this text, as it is in all respects unexceptionable, has been here adopted for the sake of coherence. In a letter to Bernard Barton, February 10, 1825, Lamb refers to Hazlitt’s sketch: “He has laid too many colours on my likeness, but I have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over-measure to ‘Elia’ as Gentlemen think proper to bestow.”

P. 221. shuffle off. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 67.

The self-applauding bird. Cowper’s “Truth,” 58.

P. 222. New-born gauds and give to dust. “Troilus and Cressida,” iii, 3, 176-79.

do not in broad rumor lie, and the two following quotations are free renderings of “Lycidas,” 78-82.

Mr. Lamb rather affects. Hazlitt had Lamb in his eye when he described the Occult School in the essay “On Criticism” (“Table Talk”): “There is another race of critics who might be designated as the Occult School—verÈ adepti. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold—and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Brown to the Rambler by Dr. Johnson, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy to all the writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius as misers do of hid treasure—it is of no value unless they have it all to themselves. They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting any eyes but their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguing with, bed-ridden hags, a ‘stud of night-mares.’ This is not envy or affectation, but a natural proneness to singularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way. They must come at their pleasures with difficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule and opposition. They despise those qualities in a work which are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly of taste, and are shocked at the prostitution of intellect implied in popular productions. In like manner, they would chuse a friend or recommend a mistress for gross defects; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress’s voice only for the ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in their judgment cloying and insipid—

‘An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!’

Nothing goes down with them but what is caviare to the multitude. They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they smack of genius, and would be worth any money, were it only for the rarity of the thing!”

P. 223. fine fretwork. “Essays of Elia,” “The South-Sea House.”

the chimes at midnight. 2 “Henry IV,” iii, 2, 228.

P. 224. cheese and pippins. Ibid., v, 3.

inns and courts of law. “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,” in “Essays of Elia.”

a certain writer. Hazlitt himself. It is known to everybody that the friendship of Lamb for Hazlitt suffered certain strains, and various attempts have been made to guess at the provocations. Mutual recriminations in regard to literary borrowings have been thought to be responsible for more than one breach. So Mr. Bertram Dobell, in his “Sidelights on Lamb,” 212-14, imagines that the mystery is solved in a letter of Hazlitt’s to the editor of the London Magazine (April 12, 1820) charging Lamb with appropriating his ideas: “Do you keep the Past and Future? You see Lamb argues the same view of the subject. That ‘young master’ will anticipate all my discoveries if I don’t mind.” The similarity of idea between Hazlitt’s “Past and Future” and Lamb’s “New Year’s Eve,” and the appearance in Lamb’s essay of the phrase “young masters” makes it clear enough what Hazlitt is referring to, but that either man should have taken the matter very seriously is hard to believe. It is easier to look upon Hazlitt’s expression as banter of the same kind that Lamb allowed himself in connection with the essay on “Guy Faux” alluded to in the present sketch. This subject had been proposed by Lamb, as we are informed in “Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen,” and had been written up by Hazlitt in the Examiner in 1821 (Works, XI, 317-334). Two years later Lamb contributed a paper on the same subject to the London Magazine, founded partly on an essay in the Reflector (1811), entitled “On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason.” The essay in the London Magazine (Lamb’s Works, ed. Lucas, I, 236 ff.) opens with a facetious thrust at Hazlitt: “A very ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is good reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not unknown at Douay some five-and-twenty years since (he will not obtrude himself at M—th again in a hurry), about a twelvemonth back, set himself to prove the character of the Powder Plot conspirators to have been that of heroic self-devotedness and true Christian martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candour, he actually gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper, not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. But, admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and incontrovertible. [Then follows a quotation from Hazlitt setting forth the Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of the nineteenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show what we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same subject, at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question.” This is the kind of resentment we would expect Lamb to show at the appropriation of his ideas. That there were not wanting grounds for real grievance against Hazlitt may be gathered from a letter to Wordsworth, September 23, 1816 (Lamb’s Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 491): “There was a cut at me a few months back by the same hand.... It was a pretty compendium of observation, which the author has collected in my disparagement, from some hundred of social evenings which we had spent together,—however in spite of all, there is something tough in my attachment to H—— which these violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get no conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but his.” To one of his quarrels with Lamb Hazlitt owes the finest compliment he ever received, and happily it marks the termination of all differences between them. It occurs in the well-known “Letter of Elia to Robert Southey” which Lamb published in the London Magazine when Southey reproached him with his friendship for Hazlitt (Works, I, 233): “I stood well with him for fifteen years (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoke my full mind of him to some, to whom his panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened in my admiration for him, I was the same to him (neither better nor worse) though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for which I rest his debtor; or, for any thing I know, or can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel with the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting against much that he has written, and some things he chooses to do; judging him by his conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those places where no clouding passion intervenes—I should belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion.”

Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy was published in 1621. Its quaint prose was often imitated by Lamb and had a direct effect on his style.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), physician and essayist, author of “Religio Medici” (1642), “Pseudodoxia Epidemica” (1646), and “Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial” (1658).

Fuller’s Worthies. The “History of the Worthies of England” (1662) is the best known work of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an English divine and writer on church history.

does not make him despise Pope. See p. 322.

Parnell, Thomas (1679-1717). In the sixth lecture on the “English Poets” Hazlitt says: “Parnell, though a good-natured, easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an occasional versifier.”

Gay, John (1685-1732), is best known by his “Beggar’s Opera” (1728) and “Fables” (1727 and 1738). Hazlitt writes of Gay in the sixth lecture on the “English Poets” and has a paper on “The Beggar’s Opera” in the “Round Table.”

His taste in French and German. Cf. “On Old English Writers and Speakers” in the “Plain Speaker”: “Mr. Lamb has lately taken it into his head to read St. Evremont, and works of that stamp. I neither praise nor blame him for it. He observed, that St. Evremont was a writer half-way between Montaigne and Voltaire, with a spice of the wit of the one and the sense of the other. I said I was always of the opinion that there had been a great many clever people in the world, both in France and England, but I had been sometimes rebuked for it. Lamb took this as a slight reproach; for he had been a little exclusive and national in his tastes.”

P. 225. His admiration of Hogarth. See note to p. 158.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Italian painter, sculptor, architect.

fine Titian head. Hazlitt painted a portrait of Lamb in the costume of a Venetian senator. This portrait now hangs in the National Gallery.

P. 226. to have coined. Cf. “Julius CÆsar,” iv, 3, 72: “I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas.”

Mr. Waithman, Robert (1764-1833), was Lord Mayor in 1823.

Rosamond Gray, a tale, was published in 1798 and “John Woodvill,” a tragedy, in 1802. The lines in the footnote are from the second act of “John Woodvill.”

SIR WALTER SCOTT

This selection forms the latter half of the sketch of Scott in the “Spirit of the Age.” The following dialogue between Northcote and Hazlitt, “Conversations of Northcote,” XVI, represents Hazlitt’s feelings for Scott: “N. ‘You don’t know him, do you? He’d be a pattern to you. Oh! he has a very fine manner. You would learn to rub off some of your asperities. But you admire him, I believe.’ H. ‘Yes; on this side of idolatry and Toryism.’ N. ‘That is your prejudice.’ H. ‘Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a devoted enthusiast notwithstanding. There are two things I admire in Sir Walter, his capacity and his simplicity; which indeed I am apt to think are much the same.’”

P. 227. more lively. Cf. “Coriolanus,” iv, 5, 237; “it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent.”

their habits. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 135.

P. 228. Baron of Bradwardine and the others mentioned in this sentence appear in “Waverley.”

Paul Veronese (1528-1588), a painter of the Venetian school.

Balfour of Burley and the others in this sentence appear in “Old Mortality.” The quotation is from chapter 38.

Meg Merilees to Dominie Sampson, in “Guy Mannering.”

P. 229. her head to the east. Cf. “Guy Mannering,” chap. 15; “Na, na! not that way, the feet to the east.”

Rob Roy to Die Vernon, in “Rob Roy.”

thick coming. Cf. “Macbeth,” v, 3, 38: “thick-coming fancies.”

Earl of Glenallan, in “The Antiquary.”

Black Dwarf to Grace Armstrong, in the “Black Dwarf.”

Children of the Mist, in “Legend of Montrose.”

Amy (Robsart) and Varney, in “Kenilworth.”

George of Douglas, in “The Abbot.”

P. 229, n. the finest scene. “Guy Mannering,” chap. 51.

P. 231. a consummation. “Hamlet,” iii, 1, 63.

by referring to the authentic history. At this point Hazlitt reproduces in a footnote one of Scott’s historical quotations in “Ivanhoe.”

flints and dungs. See “Ivanhoe,” chap. 43.

P. 232. calls backing. 1 “Henry IV,” ii, 4, 165.

Mr. MacAdam, John Loudon (1756-1836).

Sixty years since. The sub-title of “Waverley” was “’Tis Sixty Years Since.”

Wickliff, John (c. 1320-1384), an important English forerunner of the Protestant Reformation, the first translator of the Bible into English.

Luther, Martin (1483-1546), led the first successful revolt against the authority of the Catholic Church.

Hampden, John (c. 1595-1643), an English patriot who by his refusal to pay ship-money precipitated the rebellion against Charles I which ended in the beheading of that monarch.

Sidney, Algernon (1622-1683), an English patriot who fought on the side of Parliament against Charles I, and who, in the reign of Charles II, was tried for treason by Jeffreys, the hanging judge, and condemned to execution without proof. Sidney is the author of “Discourses Concerning Government” in which he vindicates the right of resistance to the misrule of kings.

Somers, John (1651-1716), took an important part in bringing about the bloodless Revolution which drove James II from England in 1688.

P. 233. Red Reiver, in “The Black Dwarf.”

Claverhouse, in “Old Mortality.”

Tristan the Hermit and Petit AndrÉ, in “Quentin Durward.”

but himself. Though Scott composed many of his own mottoes, he never quoted his own previous verse but pretended to be using an Old Play or an Old Poem.

P. 234. born for the universe. Goldsmith’s “Retaliation,” 31.

winked and shut. Marston’s “Antonio’s Revenge,” Prologue.

P. 235. Who would not grieve. Cf. Pope’s “Prologue to the Satires,” 213:

“Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?”

LORD BYRON

From the “Spirit of the Age.” Discussions of Byron’s poetry are also to be found in the review of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (Works, XI, 420-426) and in “Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles” (XI, 486-508).

P. 236. As if a man. “Coriolanus,” v, 3, 36.

cloud-capt. “Tempest,” iv, I, 152.

P. 237. prouder than. Cf. Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida,” i, 3, 380: “His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.”

silly sooth. “Twelfth Night,” ii, 4, 47.

P. 239. denotes a foregone conclusion. “Othello.” iii, 3, 428.

P. 240. in cell monastic. Cf. “As You Like It,” iii, 2, 441: “To live in a nook merely monastic.”

P. 241. thoughts that breathe. Gray’s “Progress of Poesy,” 110.

P. 242. Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature. In the paper on “Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles,” Hazlitt’s tone is more generous: “His Lordship likes the poetry, the imaginative part of art, and so do we.... He likes the sombre part of it, the thoughtful, the decayed, the ideal, the spectral shadow of human greatness, the departed spirit of human power. He sympathizes not with art as a display of ingenuity, as the triumph of vanity or luxury, as it is connected with the idiot, superficial, petty self-complacency of the individual and the moment (these are to him not ‘luscious as locusts, but bitter as coloquintida’); but he sympathizes with the triumphs of Time and Fate over the proudest works of man—with the crumbling monuments of human glory—with the dim vestiges and countless generations of men—with that which claims alliance with the grave, or kindred with the elements of nature.” Works, XI, 496.

poor men’s cottages. “Merchant of Venice,” i, 2, 14.

reasons high. “Paradise Lost,” II, 558.

P. 243. Till Contemplation. Dyer’s “Grongar Hill,” 26.

this bank. “Macbeth,” i, 7, 6.

P. 244. The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South, a quarterly published in Italy by Leigh Hunt and Byron, 1822-23, to which Hazlitt also contributed. In the second of its four numbers appeared Byron’s “Heaven and Earth: A Mystery.”

the deluge, in “Heaven and Earth.”

his aversion. See “Don Juan,” III, stanza 94:

“A drowsy frowzy poem, called the Excursion,
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.”

born in a garret. In the “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” Byron, speaking of Jeffrey, refers to “the sixteenth story, where himself was born.”

Letter to the Editor. The Letter to William Roberts, editor of the British Review, appeared in the first number of the Liberal.

Long’s, a restaurant in Bond Street.

P. 245. the controversy about Pope. See note to p. 118.

Scrub, in Farquhar’s “Beaux’ Stratagem.”

very tolerable. “Much Ado About Nothing,” iii, 3, 37.

P. 246. a chartered libertine. “Henry V,” i, 1, 48.

P. 247. Like proud seas. “Two Noble Kinsmen,” ii, 2, 23.

Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation? Scott wrote to Byron’s publisher, John Murray, December 17, 1821: “I accept with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of ‘Cain.’ I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not think that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings.”

Farthest from them. “Paradise Lost,” I, 247.

P. 248. the first Vision of Judgment, the one composed by Southey on the occasion of the death of George III, celebrating that monarch’s entry into heaven and provoking a spirited travesty from Byron.

None but itself. This line is quoted by Burke in the “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” from a play written or adapted by Lewis Theobald, “The Double Falsehood” (1727). Waller-Glover.

the tenth transmitter. Richard Savage’s “The Bastard.”

P. 250. Nothing can cover. Beaumont and Fletcher’s “The False One,” ii, 1.

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

This is the first of the “Lectures on the English Poets.”

P. 251. spreads its sweet leaves. “Romeo and Juliet,” i, 1, 158.

P. 252. the stuff. “Tempest,” iv, 1, 156.

mere oblivion. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 166.

man’s life “King Lear,” ii, 4, 270.

P. 253. There is warrant. “Richard III,” i, 4, 112.

such seething brains. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” v, 1, 4.

Angelica and Medoro. Characters in “Orlando Furioso.”

P. 254. which ecstacy is very cunning in. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 138.

Poetry, according to Lord Bacon. Cf. Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning,” Book II: “Because true Historie representeth Actions and Euents more ordinarie and lesse interchanged, therefore Poesie endueth them with more Rarenesse and more vnexpected and alternatiue Variations: So as it appeareth that Poesie serueth and conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation. And therefore it was euer thought to haue some participation of diuinesse, because it doth raise and erect the Minde, by submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the Mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bowe the Mind unto the Nature of things.”

P. 255. Our eyes are made the fools. “Macbeth,” ii, 1, 44.

That if it would. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” v, 1, 19.

The flame o’ th’ taper. “Cymbeline,” ii, 2, 19.

P. 256. for they are old. Cf. “Lear,” ii, 4, 194.

Nothing but his unkind daughters. Cf. “King Lear,” iii, 4, 72:

“Nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.”

P. 257. The little dogs. Ibid., iii, 6, 65.So I am. Ibid., iv, 7, 70.

O now, for ever. “Othello,” iii, 3, 347.

Never, Iago. Ibid., iii, 3, 453.

P. 258. But there. Ibid., iv, 2, 57.

To be discarded thence! The first edition at this point adds: “This is like that fine stroke of pathos in ‘Paradise Lost,’ where Milton makes Adam say to Eve,

‘Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart!’”

Impassioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part of our nature. Cf. “On People of Sense” in “Plain Speaker”: “Poetry acts by sympathy with nature, that is, with the natural impulses, customs, and imaginations of men, and is, on that account, always popular, delightful, and at the same time instructive. It is nature moralizing and idealizing for us; inasmuch as, by shewing us things as they are, it implicitly teaches us what they ought to be; and the grosser feelings, by passing through the strainers of this imaginary, wide-extended experience, acquire an involuntary tendency to higher objects. Shakspeare was, in this sense, not only one of the greatest poets, but one of the greatest moralists that we have. Those who read him are the happier, better, and wiser for it.”

Moore, Edward (1712-1757), author of “The Gamester” (1753).

P. 259. As Mr. Burke observes, in “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,” Part I, Section 15: “Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy.”

Masterless passion. Cf. “Merchant of Venice,” iv, 1, 51: “For affection, Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood,” etc.

P. 260. satisfaction to the thought. “Othello,” iii, 3, 97.

Now night descending. See p. 128.

Throw him. Collins’s “Ode to Fear.”Ingratitude. Cf. “King Lear,” i, 4, 281: “More hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child.”

P. 261. both at the first. “Hamlet,” iii, 2, 23.

P. 262. And visions. Hazlitt uses this quotation in his paper on “Wordsworth’s Excursion” in the “Round Table” with the change of poetic to prophetic. “This couplet occurs in a letter from Gray to Walpole (‘Letters,’ ed. Tovey I, 7-8). The lines are apparently a translation by Gray of Virgil, ‘Æneid,’ VI, 282-84.” Waller-Glover, XII, 504.

P. 263. Doctor Chalmers’s Discourses. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a celebrated divine and preacher of Scotland, published in 1817 “A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, Viewed in Connection with Modern Astronomy.”

bandit fierce. Milton’s “Comus,” 426.

our fell of hair. “Macbeth,” v, 5, 11.

Macbeth ... for the sake of the music. Some copies of the first edition misprint Macheath, the name of the leading character in Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera.” In writing “On Commonplace Critics,” in the “Round Table,” Hazlitt represents the commonplace critic as questioning whether any one of Shakespeare’s plays, “if brought out now for the first time, would succeed. He thinks that ‘Macbeth’ would be the most likely, from the music which has been introduced into it.” The reference is to the music written for D’Avenant’s version of the play, produced in 1672. According to Waller-Glover (I, 436), “this music, traditionally assigned to Matthew Locke, is now attributed to Purcell”; but Furness, in the Variorum edition of “Macbeth,” accepts the conclusion of Chappell in Grove’s “Dictionary of Music,” “that Purcell could not have been the composer of a work which appeared when he was in his fourteenth year,” especially as “the only reason that can be assigned why modern musicians should have doubted Locke’s authorship is that a manuscript of it exists in the handwriting of Henry Purcell.”

P. 264. Between the acting. “Julius CÆsar,” ii, 1, 63.

P. 265. Thoughts that voluntary move. “Paradise Lost,” III, 37.

the words of Mercury. Cf. “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” v, 2, 940: “The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.”

So from the ground. “FaËrie Queene,” I, vi, 13.

P. 266. the secret [hidden] soul. Milton’s “L’Allegro.”

P. 267. the golden cadences. “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” iv, 2, 126.

Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray’s “Progress of Poesy.”sounding always. See p. 207 and n.

except poets. Cf. “On the Prose Style of Poets” in the “Plain Speaker”: “What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of rhythmus and cadence in what they write without the help of metrical rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompaniment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is loose, disjointed, and without expressive pauses or rapid movements. The measured cadence and regular sing-song of rhyme or blank verse have destroyed, as it were, their natural ear for the mere characteristic harmony which ought to subsist between the sound and the sense. I should almost guess the Author of Waverley to be a writer of ambling verses from the desultory vacillation and want of firmness in the march of his style. There is neither momentum nor elasticity in it; I mean as to the score, or effect upon the ear. He has improved since in his other works: to be sure, he has had practice enough. Poets either get into this incoherent, undetermined, shuffling style, made up of ‘unpleasing flats and sharps,’ of unaccountable starts and pauses, of doubtful odds and ends, flirted about like straws in a gust of wind; or, to avoid it and steady themselves, mount into a sustained and measured prose (like the translation of Ossian’s Poems, or some parts of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics) which is more odious still, and as bad as being at sea in a calm.” Hazlitt’s views on this question are peculiar, though his examples are well chosen. The more common opinion is that voiced by Coleridge in his remarks “On Style”: “It is, indeed, worthy of remark that all our great poets have been good prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton; and this probably arose from their just sense of metre. For a true poet will never confound verse and prose; whereas it is almost characteristic of indifferent prose writers that they should be constantly slipping into scraps of metre.” Works, IV, 342.

P. 268. Addison’s Campaign (1705), written in honor of Marlborough’s victory at Blenheim, was described as “that gazette in rhyme” by Joseph Warton (1722-1800) in his “Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope,” I, 29.

Chaucer. Cf. A. W. Pollard’s “Chaucer,” p. 35: “To Boccaccio’s ‘Teseide’ and ‘Filostrato,’ he was indebted for something more than the groundwork of two of his most important poems; and he was also acquainted with three of his works in Latin prose. If, as is somewhat hardily maintained, he also knew the Decamerone, and took from it, in however improved a fashion, the idea of his Canterbury Pilgrimage and the plots of any or all of the four tales (besides that of Grisilde) to which resemblances have been traced in his own work, his obligations to Boccaccio become immense. Yet he never mentions his name, and it has been contended that he was himself unaware of the authorship of the poems and treatises to which he was so greatly indebted.”

Dryden. His translations from Boccaccio are “Sigismonda and Guiscardo,” “Theodore and Honoria,” “Cymon and Iphigenia.”

P. 269. married to immortal verse. “L’Allegro.”

John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of “Pilgrim’s Progress” (1678).

Daniel Defoe (c. 1659-1731), journalist and novelist. His masterpiece, “Robinson Crusoe,” appeared in 1719.

dipped in dews. Cf. T. Heywood’s “Ben Jonson, though his learned pen Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.”

Philoctetes. The story of the Greek hero who, on the voyage to the siege of Troy, was abandoned on an uninhabited island, is the subject of a play by Sophocles.

As I walked about. “Robinson Crusoe,” Part I, p. 125 (ed. G. A. Aitken).

P. 270. give an echo. “Twelfth Night,” ii, 4, 21.

P. 271. Our poesy. “Timon of Athens,” i, 1, 21.

P. 272. all plumed. Cf. 1 “Henry IV,” iv, 1, 98:

“All plumed like estridges that with the wind
Baited like eagles having lately bathed;
Glittering in golden coats, like images;
As full of spirits as the month of May,
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.”

If we fly. Psalms, cxxxix, 9.

P. 275. Pope Anastatius. “Inferno,” xi, 8.

Count Ugolino. Ibid., xxxiii.

Ossian. James Macpherson (1736-1796) published between 1760 and 1765 what he alleged to be a translation of the ancient Gaelic hero-bard, Oisin or Ossian. The poems fed the romantic appetite of the generation and were translated into practically every European language. In Germany especially the influence of “Ossian” wrought powerfully through the enthusiasm it aroused in the young Goethe and in Schiller. In England, the poems, immediately upon their appearance, gave rise to a long controversy as to their authenticity, Dr. Johnson being among the first to attack the belief in their antiquity. The truth seems to be that, though there really is a legendary hero answering to Ossian, no such poems as Macpherson attributed to him were ever transmitted. The whole work is to all intents the original creation of Macpherson himself. The supposed Gaelic originals, which were published by the Highland Society of London in 1807, have been proved by philologists to be spurious, to be nothing in fact but translations into bad Gaelic from Macpherson’s good English. This conclusion is further supported by the mass of borrowings from the Bible and the classics which have been found in “Ossian.” See J. C. Smart: “James Macpherson, An Episode in Literature” (1905).

P. 276. lamentation of Selma. Lament of Colma in “Songs of Selma,” Ossian, ed. William Sharp, p. 410.

Roll on. Cf. ibid., p. 417: “ye bring no joy on your course!”

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS

[The identification of quotations has been omitted for this essay in order to allow students an opportunity to try it for themselves.]

The third and fourth paragraphs of this essay had appeared in a letter of Hazlitt’s to the Examiner (Works, III, 152). The entire essay was first published in the third number of the Liberal (see note to p. 244).

P. 277. W—m. Wem.

P. 281. Murillo (1617-1682) and Velasquez (1599-1660) are the two greatest Spanish painters.

nothing—like what he has done. In the essay “On Depth and Superficiality” (“Plain Speaker”), Hazlitt characterizes Coleridge as “a great but useless thinker.”

P. 282. Adam Smith (1723-1790), founder of the science of political economy, author of “The Wealth of Nations” (1776).

huge folios. In the essay “On Pedantry” (“Round Table”) Hazlitt writes: “In the library of the family where we were brought up, stood the Fratres Poloni; and we can never forget or describe the feeling with which not only their appearance, but the names of the authors on the outside inspired us. Pripscovius, we remember, was one of the easiest to pronounce. The gravity of the contents seemed in proportion to the weight of the volumes; the importance of the subjects increased with our ignorance of them.”P. 283, n. Hazlitt’s father was the author of “Discourses for the Use of Families on the Advantages of a Free Enquiry and on the Study of the Scriptures” (1790) and of “Sermons for the Use of Families” in two volumes (1808).

P. 284. Mary Wolstonecraft (1759-1797), author of the “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792).

Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832), wrote “VindiciÆ GallicÆ, a Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers against the Accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke.” Hazlitt writes of Mackintosh in the “Spirit of the Age” as “one of the ablest and most accomplished men of the age, both as a writer, a speaker, and a converser,” and comparing him with Coleridge, he remarks, “They have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversation; but in the mind of the one we see nothing but fixtures, in the other every thing is fluid.”

Tom Wedgwood (1771-1805) was an associate of some of the literary men of his day.

P. 285. Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809), actor, dramatist, novelist, a member of Godwin’s group of radicals. His chief writings are “The Road to Ruin” (1792), “Anna St. Ives” (1792), and “Hugh Trevor” (1794-97). Holcroft’s “Memoirs,” written by himself, were edited and completed by Hazlitt and published in 1816 (Works, II).

P. 286. Hume, David (1711-1776), historian and sceptic philosopher, described by Hazlitt as “one of the subtlest and most metaphysical of all metaphysicians.” His chief writings are “A Treatise on Human Nature, being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects” (1739-40), “Philosophical Essays” (1748), “Four Dissertations” (1757).

P. 287. Essay on Vision. Hazlitt calls this “the greatest by far of all his works and the most complete example of elaborate analytical reasoning and particular induction joined together that perhaps ever existed.” (Works, XI, 108).

Tom Paine (1737-1809), an influential revolutionary writer, author of “Common Sense” (1776), a pamphlet advocating American independence, “Rights of Man” (1791), a reply to Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution,” and “The Age of Reason” (1795). He also took an active part in both the American and French revolutions.

prefer the unknown to the known. Cf. the first essay “On the Conversation of Authors”: “Coleridge withholds his tribute of applause from every person, in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding. He would be thought to look farther into a millstone than any body else. He would have others see with his eyes, and take their opinions from him on trust, in spite of their senses. The more obscure and defective the indications of merit, the greater his sagacity and candour in being the first to point them out. He looks upon what he nicknames a man of genius, but as the breath of his nostrils, and the clay in the potter’s hands. If any such inert, unconscious mass, under the fostering care of the modern Prometheus, is kindled into life,—begins to see, speak, and move, so as to attract the notice of other people,—our jealous patroniser of latent worth in that case throws aside, scorns, and hates his own handy-work; and deserts his intellectual offspring from the moment they can go alone and shift for themselves.”

a discovery on the same subject. Hazlitt’s first publication, “On the Principles of Human Action.”

P. 288. I sat down to the task, etc. Cf. “On Application to Study” (“Plain Speaker”): “If what I write at present is worth nothing, at least it costs me nothing. But it cost me a great deal twenty years ago. I have added little to my stock since then, and taken little from it. I ‘unfold the book and volume of the brain,’ and transcribe the characters I see there as mechanically as any one might copy the letters in a sampler. I do not say they came there mechanically—I transfer them to the paper mechanically.” See also p. 345.

P. 289. which ... he has somewhere told himself. “Biographia Literaria,” ch. 10.

that other Vision of Judgment. Byron’s.

Bridge-Street Junto. “The Constitutional Association or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’ founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See an article in the Edinburgh Review for June, 1822.” Waller-Glover, VI, 487.

P. 290. at Tewkesbury. In the essay “On Going a Journey,” Hazlitt refers to this episode as occurring at Bridgewater: “I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn in Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame D’Arblay’s Camilla.”

Paul and Virginia (1788), a sentimental novel by Bernardin St. Pierre (1737-1814).

P. 291. Camilla (1796), a novel by Fanny Burney (1752-1840).

a friend of the poet’s. “This is a mistake. Wordsworth paid £23 a year for Alfoxden. The agreement is given in Mrs. Henry Sandford’s ‘Thomas Poole and His Friends,’ I, 225.” Waller-Glover.

P. 292. In the outset of life. Alongside of this paragraph should be read the essay “On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth,” Works, XII, 150.

P. 294. Chantrey, Sir Francis (1781-1842). His bust of Wordsworth is now at Cole-Orton.

Haydon, Benjamin Robert (1786-1846), a celebrated English painter who was intimate with many literary men. In the picture referred to Haydon also introduced a portrait of Hazlitt.

Monk Lewis. Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) wrote among other things a sensational novel, “The Monk” (1795), which gained him his nickname. “The Castle Spectre” was originally produced at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1797.

P. 295. Tom Poole (1765-1837), friend and patron of Coleridge.

P. 296. Sir Walter Scott’s, etc. Probably a reference to the banquet given to George IV by the Magistrates of Edinburgh and attended by Scott, August 24, 1822.

Blackwood, William (1776-1834), the Edinburgh publisher.

Gaspar Poussin (1613-1675). His real name was Dughet, but he changed it out of respect to his brother-in-law, Nicholas Poussin.

Domenichino or Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), a painter of Bologna.

P. 297. Death of Abel (1758), an idyllic-pastoral poem by Solomon Gessner (1730-1788), a German poet of the Swiss school who enjoyed a wide popularity in the eighteenth century.

P. 298. since the days of Henry II. As Henry II lived in the twelfth century, and as neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth ever refer to the language of Henry II as their standard, the statement in the text may probably be considered as a blunder of Hazlitt’s.

He spoke with contempt of Gray and with intolerance of Pope. Cf. “Biographia Literaria,” ch. 2: “I felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth’s conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray’s celebrated Elegy. I had long before detected the defects in The Bard; but the Elegy I had considered as proof against all fair attacks; and to this day I can not read either without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception of the faults in certain passages, has been more than repaid to me by the additional delight with which I read the remainder.” In his “Table Talk,” October 23, 1833, Coleridge says again: “I think there is something very majestic in Gray’s Installation Ode; but as to the Bard and the rest of his lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and artificial.” Of Pope and his followers he writes (“Biographia Literaria,” ch. 1): “I was not blind to the merits of this school, yet, as from inexperience of the world, and consequent want of sympathy with the general subjects of these poems, they gave me little pleasure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth withheld from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and substance, and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong epigrammatic couplets, as its form; that even when the subject was addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man; nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in that astonishing product of matchless talent and ingenuity, Pope’s Translation of the Iliad; still a point was looked for at the end of each second line, and the whole was, as it were, a sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunctive, of epigrams. Meantime, the matter and diction seemed to me characterized not so much by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated into the language of poetry.”

he thought little of Junius as a writer. Cf. Coleridge’s “Table Talk,” July 3, 1833: “The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of his aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of the English.”

dislike for Dr. Johnson. Cf. “Table Talk,” July 4, 1833: “Dr. Johnson’s fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.... As to Burke’s testimony to Johnson’s powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than in writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life.”

opinion of Burke. Cf. “Table Talk,” April 8, 1833: “Burke was indeed a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically as he seems to have done.... He would have been more influential if he had less surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds, in all respects.”

He liked Richardson, but not Fielding. On this subject Coleridge evidently changed his mind. Cf. “Table Talk,” July 5, 1834: “What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson is like emerging from a sickroom heated by stoves into an open lawn on a breezy day in May.”

Caleb Williams, the chief novel of William Godwin.

P. 298, n. He had no idea of pictures. See p. 212.

Buffamalco. Cristofani Buonamico (1262-1351), also known as Buffalmacco, a painter of Florence.

P. 300. Elliston, Robert William (1774-1813), actor and later manager of the Drury Lane Theatre.

still continues. See p. 224 and n.

ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS

This is the title of Essays III and IV of the “Plain Speaker.” Our selection begins with the last paragraph of the first, which forms a fitting introduction to the account of one of Lamb’s celebrated Wednesday evenings. Lamb tells us that his sister was accustomed to read this essay with unmixed delight.

P. 301. When Greek meets Greek. Nathaniel Lee’s “Alexander the Great,” iv, 2.

C——. Coleridge.

P. 302. small-coal man. Thomas Britton (1654?-1714), a dealer in small coal, who on the floor of his hut above the coal-shop held weekly concerts of vocal and instrumental music, at which the greatest performers of the day, even Handel, were to be heard.

And, in our flowing cups. Cf. “Henry V,” iv, 3, 51:

“then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words ...
Be in their flowing cups freely remember’d.”P. 303. the cartoons. See Hazlitt’s account of Raphael’s cartoons in “The Pictures at Hampton Court” (Works, IX, 43).

Donne, John (1573-1631), poet and divine. Hazlitt in the “Lectures on the English Poets” confesses that he knows nothing of him save “some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad (see p. 318), and some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel.” V, 83.

P. 304. Ned P——. Edward Phillips. Lamb speaks of him as “that poor card-playing Phillips, that has felt himself for so many years the outcast of Fortune.” (Works, ed. Lucas, VII, 972.)

Captain ——. Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), brother of Fanny Burney the novelist, author of a “Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean” in five volumes (1803-1817). “The captain was himself a character, a fine, noble creature—gentle, with a rough exterior, as became the associate of Captain Cook in his voyages round the world, and the literary historian of all these acts of circumnavigation.” Crabb-Robinson’s Diary, 1810.

Jem White. James White (1775-1820), of whom Lamb has left us a sketch in the essay “On the Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”: “He carried away half the fun of the world when he died.” He wrote, it is supposed with some cooperation from Lamb, the “Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends” (1796), which were described by Lamb as “without exception the best imitations I ever saw.” (Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 2.) A review of this book by Lamb, consisting chiefly of specimens, appeared in the Examiner in 1819 (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 191 ff).

turning like the latter end. This phrase occurs in one of the extracts in Lamb’s review of Falstaff’s Letters just mentioned (p. 194).

A——. William Aryton (1777-1858), a musical critic and director of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. In the letter of Elia to Robert Southey (Lamb’s Works, I, 230) he is spoken of as “the last and steadiest left me of that little knot of whist-players, that used to assemble weekly, for so many years, at the Queen’s Gate.”

Mrs. R——-. Mrs. Reynolds, who had been Lamb’s schoolmistress.

M. B. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney. “Martin Burney is as odd as ever.... He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil’s ‘Æneid’ all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because ‘we did not know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.’ So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat wrong one—harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one—: may be, he has tired him out.” Lamb’s Works, VII, 855.

Author of the Road to Ruin. Thomas Holcroft.

P. 305. Critique of Pure Reason, by Kant.

Biographia Literaria. Coleridge’s account of his literary life, published in 1817.

Those days are over! The event here referred to may be Waterloo. Mr. Lucas thinks that Hazlitt’s share in Lamb’s gatherings “ceased after an unfortunate discussion of Fanny Burney’s Wanderer, which Hazlitt condemned in terms that her brother, the Admiral, could not forgive.” (Lamb’s Works, I, 482.) It is likely that Mr. Lucas has been led astray by the statement in Crabb-Robinson’s Diary to the effect that Hazlitt used to attend Captain Burney’s whist-parties “till he affronted the Captain by severe criticisms on the works of his sister,” presumably by his article in the Edinburgh Review in 1814. Hazlitt commemorates Lamb’s evenings in the “Pleasure of Hating” (“Plain Speaker”): “What is become of ‘that set of whist players,’ celebrated by Elia in his notable Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq. ... ‘that for so many years called Admiral Burney friend?’ They are scattered, like last year’s snow. Some of them are dead—or gone to live at a distance—or pass one another in the street like strangers; or if they stop to speak, do it as coolly and try to cut one another as soon as possible. Some of us have grown rich—others poor. Some have got places under Government—others a niche in the Quarterly Review. Some of us have dearly earned a name in the world; whilst others remain in their original privacy. We despise the one, and envy and are glad to mortify the other.”

Like angels’ visits. Cf. Blair’s “The Grave,” 582: “Like those of angels, short and far between.” Hazlitt was fond of pointing out this source for Campbell’s famous line “Like angels’ visits few and far between,” and of insisting that the alteration spoiled the sense. Thereby he is said to have incurred Campbell’s bitter hostility.

P. 306. Mr. Douce, Francis (1757-1834), Shakespearian scholar and keeper of the manuscripts in the British Museum.

L. H——. Leigh Hunt. There is a sketch of him in the “Spirit of the Age.”

aliquando sufflaminandus erat. “He sometimes had to be checked.” This is a quotation from Seneca which Ben Jonson in “Timber” (ed. Schelling, p. 23) had applied to Shakespeare.

P. 307. The Indicator. Leigh Hunt’s most successful series of essays, which began their run in 1819.

Mr. Northcote, James (1746-1831), the painter of whose talk Hazlitt has left an entertaining record in the “Conversations of James Northcote” (1830), a book which inspired Crabb-Robinson to say, “I do not believe that Boswell gives so much good talk in an equal quantity of his life of Johnson.”

P. 308. Sir Joshua’s. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the famous English painter.

P. 309. Horne Tooke (1736-1812), politician and author of a celebrated philological volume, “The Diversions of Purley” (1786, 1805). His portrait is included in the “Spirit of the Age”: “He was without a rival (almost) in private conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!)—no delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies in public.”

hear a sound so fine. J. S. Knowles’s “Virginius,” v, 2.

P. 310. silenced a learned professor. Cf. “Spirit of the Age”: “He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of the common copulative, Is.”

Curran, John Philpot (1750-1817), member of Parliament from Ireland, orator and wit.

P. 311. Mrs. Inchbald, Elizabeth (1753-1821), a well-known actress, dramatist, and novelist. In literature she is associated with the group of William Godwin, and her best-known works are “A Simple Story” and “Nature and Art.”

from noon to dewy eve. “Paradise Lost,” I, 743.

Mrs. M——. Mrs. Montagu, wife of Basil Montagu. In the “Pleasure of Hating” (“Plain Speaker”) there is another allusion to Mrs. Montagu “whose dark raven locks made a picturesque background to our discourse.”

H—t’s. Leigh Hunt’s.

N—’s. Northcote’s.

H—yd—n’s. Haydon’s.

Doctor Tronchin. Theodore Tronchin, a physician of Geneva, figures in Rousseau’s “Confessions.”

P. 312. Sir Fopling Flutter, a character in George Etherege’s comedy, “The Man of Mode.”

For wit is like a rest. “Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben Jonson.” For players read gamesters.

came down into the country. Charles and Mary Lamb with a few of their friends paid a visit to Hazlitt at Winterslow in 1810.

Like the most capricious poet. “As You Like It,” iii, 3, 8.

walked gowned. Lamb’s “Sonnet Written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819.”

P. 313. the person I mean. George Dyer (1755-1841), an amiable hack-writer and a friend of Lamb. He figures prominently in two of the Essays of Elia, “Oxford in the Vacation” and “Amicus Redivivus,” and in many of Lamb’s letters. “To G. D. a poem is a poem. His own as good as any bodie’s, and god bless him, any bodie’s as good as his own, for I do not think he has the most distant guess of the possibility of one poem being better than another. The Gods by denying him the very faculty itself of discrimination have effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom.” Letter to Wordsworth (Lamb’s Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 519).

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN

This, like the preceding essay, is a record of one of Lamb’s Wednesday evenings. It was originally published in the New Monthly Magazine for January, 1826, from which the present text is reproduced. It was republished by Hazlitt’s son in “Literary Remains” (1836) and “Winterslow” (1850).

P. 315. Come like shadows. “Macbeth,” iv, 1, 111.

B——. Lamb. The name is supplied in “Literary Remains.”

defence of Guy Faux. See p. 224 and n.

Never so sure. Pope’s “Moral Essays,” II, 51.A——. William Ayrton.

P. 316. in his habit. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 135.

P. 317. And call up him. “Il Penseroso,” 109.

wished that mankind. Browne’s “Religio Medici,” Part 11, section 9.

Prologues spoken. See Prologue to Fulke Greville’s tragedy of “Alaham.”

P. 318. old edition. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt suggests that it is the edition of 1609 of which Lamb owned a copy. “Memoirs of Hazlitt,” I, 276.

Here lies. “An Epithalamion on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine.” Muses’ Library, I, 86.

By our first strange. “Elegy on his Mistress,” I, 139.

P. 320. lisped in numbers. Pope’s “Prologue to Satires,” 128.

His meeting with Petrarch. Chaucer was in Italy in 1372-3, but his meeting with Petrarch is only a matter of conjecture. He probably did not meet Boccaccio, the author of the “Decameron.”

Ugolino. See p. 275.

portrait of Ariosto. Hazlitt probably refers to the Portrait of a Poet in the National Gallery, now ascribed to Palma.

P. 321. the mighty dead. Thomson’s “Winter,” 432.

creature of the element. Cf. “Comus,” 299:

“Of some gay creatures of the element,
That in the colors of the rainbow live,
And play i’ the plighted clouds.”

That was Arion. “FaËrie Queene,” IV, ix, 23.

For Captain C., M. C., Miss D——, “Literary Remains” supplies Admiral Burney, Martin Burney, Miss Reynolds.

with lack-luster eye. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 21.

P. 322. his compliments. See p. 129.

P. 323. But why then publish. “Prologue to Satires,” 135.

Gay’s verses. “Mr. Pope’s Welcome from Greece” (ed. Muses’ Library, I, 207).

P. 324. E——. In “Literary Remains” the name supplied is Erasmus Phillips, probably a mistake for Edward Phillips.

nigh-sphered in heaven. Collins’s “Ode on the Poetical Character,” 66.

Garrick, David (1717-1779), the celebrated actor.

J. F——. According to “Literary Remains,” Barron Field (1786-1846), Lamb’s friend and correspondent.Handel, George Frederick (1685-1759), the musical composer, German by birth but naturalized in England.

P. 325. Wildair, in Farquhar’s comedy “Sir Harry Wildair.”

Abel Drugger, in Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist,” was one of Garrick’s famous parts.

P. 326. author of Mustapha. Fulke Greville.

Kit Marlowe (1564-1593), the most brilliant writer of tragedy before Shakespeare. He wrote “Tamburlaine the Great,” “The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus,” “The Jew of Malta,” and “Edward the Second.” In the “Age of Elizabeth” Hazlitt says of him, “There is a lust of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own energies.”

Webster, John, wrote during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. His chief plays are “The White Devil” and the “Duchess of Malfy.” Dekker, Thomas (c. 1570-1641). “The Shoemaker’s Holiday,” “The Honest Whore,” and “Old Fortunatus” are his best plays. In the third lecture of the “Age of Elizabeth” Hazlitt thus compares Webster and Dekker: “Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar, if he had the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. His White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps, come the nearest to Shakspeare of anything we have upon record; the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that can be thrown upon them, ‘by which they lose some colour,’ is, that they are too like Shakspeare, and often direct imitations of him, both in general conception and individual expression.... Deckar has, I think, more truth of character, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language. Deckar excels in giving expression to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much the same in all circumstances, the simple uncompounded elements of nature and passion:—Webster gives more scope to their various combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into dramatic play by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscillation from the impulse of unbridled passion, and carries both terror and pity to a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is content with the historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to suggest horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and for itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender or awful beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio; as Webster’s mind appears to have been cast more in the mould of Shakespeare’s, as well naturally as from studious emulation.”

Heywood, Thomas (d. c. 1650), a prolific dramatist who excelled in the homely vein. His best-known play is “The Woman Killed with Kindness.”

Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616), and Fletcher, John (1579-1625), composed their dramas in collaboration. In the “Age of Elizabeth” Hazlitt calls them lyric and descriptive poets of the first order, but as regards drama “the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakspeare. They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and passion; but they availed themselves too often of commonplace extravagances and theatrical trick.... The example of preceding or contemporary writers had given them facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of production, and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of the public for novelty and extraordinary effect. There wants something of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers. They do not wait nature’s time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, but try to anticipate her, and so far defeat themselves. They would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at last: they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that the impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, beauty dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers in the honeymoon. In the economy of nature’s gifts, they ‘misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the Gods amiss.’ Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike their roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the flowers!”

Jonson, Ben (1573-1637), was the originator of the “comedy of humors.” Hazlitt, in discussing him at length in the second lecture on the “Comic Writers,” confesses a disrelish for his style. “He was a great man in himself, but one cannot readily sympathise with him. His works, as the characteristic productions of an individual mind, or as records of the manners of a particular age, cannot be valued too highly; but they have little charm for the mere general reader. Schlegel observes, that whereas Shakspeare gives the springs of human nature, which are always the same, or sufficiently so to be interesting and intelligible; Jonson chiefly gives the humours of men, as connected with certain arbitrary and conventional modes of dress, action, and expression, which are intelligible only while they last, and not very interesting at any time. Shakspeare’s characters are men; Ben Jonson’s are more like machines, governed by mere routine, or by the convenience of the poet, whose property they are.... His portraits are caricatures by dint of their very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves; as his plots are improbable by an excess of consistency; for he goes thoroughstitch with whatever he takes in hand, makes one contrivance answer all purposes, and every obstacle give way to a predetermined theory.... Old Ben was of a scholastic turn and had dealt a little in the occult sciences and controversial divinity. He was a man of strong crabbed sense, retentive memory, acute observation, great fidelity of description and keeping in character, a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully true and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness of feeling, as well as directness of understanding: but with all this, he wanted, to my thinking, that genial spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which constitute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced, up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. And hence his overweening admiration of his own works, from the effort they had cost him, and the apprehension that they were not proportionably admired by others, who knew nothing of the pangs and throes of his Muse in child-bearing.” Works, VIII, 39-41. Of Ben Jonson’s tragedies Hazlitt held a higher opinion than of his comedies. “The richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have.... His tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history, looks like genius.... His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic.... The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked out the historian’s outline, so that the vices and passions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisonous atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more glowing colours.” Works, V, 262-3.

a vast species alone. Cowley’s “The Praise of Pindar.”

G——. Godwin, according to “Literary Remains.”

Drummond of Hawthornden. William Drummond (1585-1649), the poet who recorded his conversation with Ben Jonson on the occasion of a visit paid to him by the latter in 1618. “He has not done himself or Jonson any credit by his account of their conversation,” says Hazlitt in the “Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth.” Works, V, 299.

Eugene Aram was hanged in 1759 for a murder he had committed several years earlier.

Admirable Crichton. James Crichton (1560?-1582), a Scotchman of noble birth who, in a brief life, gained the reputation of universal genius and concerning whose powers many legends arose.

P. 327. H——. Hunt, according to “Literary Remains.”

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), the English philosopher. His chief work is “Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil” (1651). Hazlitt vindicated the superiority of Hobbes as a thinker at a time when his fame was overshadowed by other reputations. He calls him the founder of the modern material philosophy and maintains that “the true reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately understood, without passing through the hands of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred.” Works, XI, 25-48.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In writing “On the Tendency of Sects” in the “Round Table,” Hazlitt had alluded to Edwards as an Englishman and had spoken of his work on the Will as “written with as much power of logic, and more in the true spirit of philosophy, than any other metaphysical work in the language.”P. 327, n. Lord Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), statesman, scientist, and man of letters. His chief works are the “Essays” (1597), the “Advancement of Learning” (1604), “Novum Organum” (1620), “History of Henry VII” (1622).

P. 328. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), Scotch philosopher.

Duchess of Bolton. Lavinia Fenton (1708-1760), the original Polly in Gay’s “Beggar’s Opera,” married the Duke of Bolton in 1751.

P. 329. Raphael, Sanzio (1483-1520), the greatest of all the Italian painters.

Lucretia Borgia with calm golden locks. This sounds like a striking anticipation of Landor’s fine line, “Calm hair meandering in pellucid gold” in his poem “On Lucretia Borgia’s Hair.” Or had Hazlitt seen the poem before it was published?

Michael Angelo (1475-1564), poet, painter, architect, and sculptor, the most famous of the great Italian artists.

Correggio (1494-1534), Giorgione (1477-1510), Guido (1575-1642), Cimabue (1240-1302), Vandyke (1599-1641). The other painters are mentioned elsewhere in this volume.

whose names on earth. In his review of Sismondi’s “Literature of the South” (Works, X, 62) Hazlitt cites among the proofs of Dante’s poetic power “his description of the poets and great men of antiquity, whom he represents ‘serene and smiling,’ though in the shades of death, ‘because on earth their names in fame’s eternal records shine for aye.’” As these lines have not been located in Dante, they have been ascribed to the lying memory of Lamb, from whose lips Hazlitt learned them.

P. 330. Mrs. Hutchinson, Lucy (b. 1620), whose life of her Puritan husband, Colonel Hutchinson, had appeared in 1806, presumably shortly before the conversation recorded in this essay.

one in the room. Mary Lamb, the sister of the essayist.

Ninon de Lenclos (1615-1705), for a long time the leader of fashion in Paris and the patroness of poets.

Voltaire (1694-1778), the sceptical philosopher of the Enlightenment; Rabelais (1490-1553), the greatest French humorist, author of “Gargantua and Pantagruel”; MoliÈre (1622-1673), the master of French comedy; Racine (1639-1699), the master of French classic tragedy; La Fontaine (1621-1695), author of the “Fables”; La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680), celebrated for his book of cynical “Maxims” which Hazlitt imitated in his “Characteristics”; St. Evremont (1610-1703), a critic.P. 331. Your most exquisite reason. Cf. “Twelfth Night,” ii, 3, 155.

Oh, ever right. “Coriolanus,” ii, 1, 208.

H——. This speech is attributed to Lamb in “Literary Remains,” but wrongly so according to Waller and Glover “because, in the first place, the speech seems more characteristic of Hunt than of Lamb, and, secondly, because the volume of the New Monthly in which the essay appeared contains a list of errata in which two corrections (one of them relating to initials) are made in the essay and yet this ‘H——’ is left uncorrected.”

ON READING OLD BOOKS

This essay was first published in the London Magazine for February, 1821, and republished in the “Plain Speaker.”

P. 333. I hate to read new books. It would take too long to recall all the passages in which Hazlitt voices his sentimental attachment to the writers with whom he first became acquainted. “The greatest pleasure in life,” he says in one essay, “is that of reading when we are young,” and at the conclusion of his lectures on the “Age of Elizabeth” he remarks: “Were I to live much longer than I have any chance of doing, the books which I read when I was young, I can never forget.” Patmore’s statement concerning Hazlitt’s later reading may be exaggerated, but it is interesting in this connection: “I do not believe Hazlitt ever read the half of any work that he reviewed—not even the Scotch novels, of which he read more than of any other modern productions, and has written better perhaps, than any other of their critics. I am certain that of many works that he has reviewed, and of many writers whose general pretensions he has estimated better than anybody else has done, he never read one tithe.” “My Friends and Acquaintances,” III, 122.

Tales of my Landlord. Scott’s.

Lady Morgan (1783?-1859), a writer of Irish stories, of which the best-known is “The Wild Irish Girl” (1806). She is also the author of certain miscellaneous productions, among which is a “Life of Salvator Rosa” reviewed by Hazlitt for the Edinburgh Review, July, 1824. Works, X, 276-310.

Anastatius, an Eastern romance by Thomas Hope (1770-1831).

Delphine (1802), a novel by Madame De StaËl (1766-1817), the celebrated French bluestocking.in their newest gloss. “Macbeth,” i, 7, 34.

Andrew Millar (1707-1768), the publisher of Thomson’s and Fielding’s works.

Thurloe’s State Papers. “A Collection of State Papers” (1742) by John Thurloe (1616-1668), Secretary of State under Cromwell.

Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648-1723), a portrait painter of German birth whose work and reputation belong to England.

P. 335. for thoughts. Cf. “Hamlet,” iv, 5, 175: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”

Fortunatus’s Wishing Cap, in Dekker’s play of “Old Fortunatus.”

Bruscambille. “Tristram Shandy,” Bk. III, ch. 35.

the masquerade. “Tom Jones,” Bk. XIII, ch. 7.

the disputes. Bk. III, ch. 3.

the escape of Molly. Bk. IV, ch. 8.

Sophia and her muff. Bk. V, ch. 4.

her aunt’s lecture. Bk. VII, ch. 3.

the puppets dallying. “Hamlet,” iii, 2, 257.

P. 336. ignorance was bliss. Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton.”

Ballantyne press. The printing firm of John and James Ballantyne in Edinburgh with which Scott was associated, and in whose financial ruin he was so disastrously involved.

Minerva Press. The sponsor of popular romances.

P. 337. Mrs. Radcliffe, Anne (1764-1823), a very popular writer of novels in which romance, sentiment, and terror are combined in cunning proportions. Her chief novels are “The Romance of the Forest” (1791), “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794) and “The Italian” (1797). Hazlitt writes of her in the lecture “On the English Novelists.”

sweet in the mouth. Revelation, x, 9.

gay creatures. “Comus,” 299.

Tom Jones discovers Square. Bk. V, ch. 5.

where Parson Adams. “Joseph Andrews,” Bk. IV, ch. 14.

P. 338. Chubb’s Tracts. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), a tallow-chandler who devoted his leisure hours to the deistic controversy. His “Tracts and Posthumous Works” were published in six volumes in 1754.

fate, free-will. “Paradise Lost,” II, 560.

Would I had never seen. Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” Scene 19.

P. 339. New Eloise. “Julie, ou La Nouvelle HÉloise” (1760), a novel by the great French sentimentalist, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who was the most powerful personal force in the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century and whose writings have left a deep impression on the political and educational systems of the nineteenth. His other important works are “The Social Contract” and “Émile” (1762) and the “Confessions” (1782). Hazlitt has a “Character of Rousseau” in the “Round Table” (see p. xliv, n.).

scattered like stray-gifts. Wordsworth’s “Stray Pleasures.”

Sir Fopling Flutter, in Sir George Etherege’s comedy “The Man of Mode” (1676).

P. 339, n. a friend. Charles Lamb.

P. 340. leurre de dupe, a decoy. The expression occurs in the fourth book of Rousseau’s “Confessions.”

a load to sink a navy. “Henry VIII,” iii, 2, 383.

Marcian Calonna is a dainty book. Lamb’s “Sonnet to the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall.”

P. 341. Keats. Hazlitt shared the popular conception of Keats as an effeminate poet. He concludes the essay “On Effeminacy of Character” in “Table Talk” with a reference to Keats: “I cannot help thinking that the fault of Mr. Keats’s poems was a deficiency in masculine energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness, delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want of strength and substance. His Endymion is a very delightful description of the illusions of a youthful imagination, given up to airy dreams—we have flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting by—but there is nothing tangible in it, nothing marked or palpable—we have none of the hardy spirit or rigid forms of antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and character; and did not transport himself into the fabulous and heroic ages. There is a want of action, of character, and so far, of imagination, but there is exquisite fancy. All is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. We see in him the youth, without the manhood of poetry. His genius breathed ‘vernal delight and joy.’—‘Like Maia’s son he stood and shook his plumes,’ with fragrance filled. His mind was redolent of spring. He had not the fierceness of summer, nor the richness of autumn, and winter he seemed not to have known, till he felt the icy hand of death!” Again in the introduction to the “Select British Poets” (Works, V, 378), he says that Keats “gave the greatest promise of genius of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty, originality, and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted was manly strength and fortitude to reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and expression. Some of his shorter and later pieces are, however, as free from faults as they are full of beauties.”

Come like shadows. “Macbeth,” iv, 1, 111.

Tiger-moth’s wings and Blushes with blood. Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes.”

Words, words. “Hamlet,” ii, 2, 194.

the great preacher. Edward Irving.

as the hart. Psalms, xlii, 1.

Giving my stock [sum]. “As You Like It,” ii, 1, 48.

P. 342. Valentine, Tattle and Prue, characters in Congreve’s “Love for Love” (1695).

know my cue. Cf. “Othello,” i, 2, 83.

Intus et in cute. See p. 163.

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the celebrated chemist.

P. 343. with every trick and line [line and trick]. “All’s Well That Ends Well,” i, 1, 107.

the divine Clementina, in Richardson’s “Sir Charles Grandison.”

that ligament. Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy.” Bk. VI, ch. 10.

story of the hawk. “Decameron,” Fifth Day, ninth story.

at one proud [fell] swoop. “Macbeth,” iv, 3, 219.

P. 344. with all its giddy [dizzy] raptures. Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” 85.

embalmed with odours. “Paradise Lost,” II, 843.

the German criticism. See p. 112.

His form. “Paradise Lost,” I, 591.

Falls flat. Ibid., I, 460.

P. 345. For Dr. Johnson’s and Junius’s style. See pp. 147-9, 186, 190.

he, like an eagle. “Coriolanus,” v, 6, 115.

An Essay on Marriage. “No such essay by Wordsworth is at present known to exist. It would seem either that ‘Marriage’ is a misprint for some other word, or that Hazlitt was mistaken in the subject of the essay referred to by Coleridge. Hazlitt is probably recalling a conversation with Coleridge in Shropshire at the beginning of 1798 (cf. ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’), at which time A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793) was the only notable prose work which Wordsworth had published.” Waller-Glover.P. 345, n. Is this the present earl? “James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839), succeeded his father in August, 1789.” Waller-Glover.

P. 346. worthy of all acceptation. 1 Timothy, i, 15.

Clarendon. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), English statesman and author of the “History of the Rebellion” (1704-1707).

Froissart, Jean (1338-1410), the chronicler of the Hundred Years’ War.

Holinshed, Ralph (d. 1580?), author of “Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande” (1578).

Stowe, John (1525?-1605), author of “Englysh Chronicles” (1561).

Thucydides (460? b.c.-399?), the historian of the Peloponnesian War.

Guicciardini, Francesco (1483-1540), Italian statesman and author of a “History of Italy from 1494 to 1532.”

P. 347. The Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, the last work of Cervantes (translated into English in 1619) and Galatea, his first work (1585).

another Yarrow. Cf. Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Revisited.”

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