THE PLAIN SPEAKER

ESSAY I. ON THE PROSE STYLE OF POETS

PAGE

1. Do you read, etc. See vol. viii. p. 319 (A View of the English Stage).

5. Feathered, two-legged things.

Unpleasing flats and sharps. Cf. 4 ‘Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.’ Romeo and Juliet, III. 5.

His Muse has been silent. Waverley was published in 1814, the Lord of the Isles in 1815; other novels followed, and, with the exception of Harold the Dauntless, published in 1817, Sir Walter’s work was confined to novels until the issue of Halidon Hill in 1822. Scott publicly acknowledged his authorship of the Waverley Novels on Feb. 23, 1827.

6. The translation of Ossian’s poems. James Macpherson’s (1736–1796) so-called translations were published in 1761–1763.

Shaftesbury’s Characteristics. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times (1711), a collection of the works of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713) third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, says Sidgwick, was ‘the first to make psychological experience the basis of ethics.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt’s attention was drawn to this work in Baskerville’s edition, which his father is represented as reading in the oil painting executed in 1804.

Foregone conclusion. Othello, III. 3.

Horne Tooke. John Horne Tooke (1736–1812) was elected Member for Old Sarum in 1801, after unsuccessfully contesting Westminster in 1790 and 1797.

The Portraits of Kneller, Richardson, and others. Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648–1723), painter of the Kit-Cat Club Portraits, and Jonathan Richardson (c. 1665–1745), who, after Kneller’s death, was considered the head of his profession.

7. He murmurs by the running brooks. Wordsworth’s ‘A Poet’s Epitaph.’

Charles Fox. Charles James Fox (1749–1806).

Lord Stormont. David Murray (1727–1796), diplomatist and statesman, second Earl of Mansfield (1793) and eldest son of David, sixth Viscount Stormont, who died in 1748.

8. To come trippingly off the tongue. Hamlet, III. 2.

Invita MinervÂ. ‘Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva,’ Horace, De Arte Poet., 385.

9. Like Goldsmith ... a Noble Lord. Prior, in his Life of Goldsmith, II. pp. 66–68, refers to this as a ‘ludicrous story’ which has ‘long been told.’ He describes it as ‘wholly a fabrication.’

10. Treads the primrose path. Hamlet, I. 3.

The highest [brightest] heaven of invention. King Henry V. Prologue.

He is nothing if not fanciful [critical]. Othello, II. 1.

Bristol-stones. Brilliant crystals of colourless quartz, found on St. Vincent’s Rocks near Bristol, go by the name of Bristol Diamonds.

On the unstedfast footing of a spear. 1 King Henry IV., I. 3.

11. To make us heirs. Wordsworth’s ‘Personal Talk,’ Poems of Sentiment XIII. [by heavenly lays].

Like beauty making beautiful old rime. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, 106.

Letter to a Noble Lord. Published 1796.

12. Buttress, frieze ... pendant bed. Macbeth, I. 6.

At one fell swoop. Macbeth, IV. 4.

Sharp and sweet. Cf. ‘As sweet as sharp.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, IV. 4.

13. From Windsor’s heights. Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. [‘Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey’].

The so much admired description. Speech on the motion made for papers relative to the directions for charging the Nabob of Arcot’s private debts to Europeans on the Revenues of the Carnatick, February 28th, 1785.

The Abbe Sieyes ... ‘pigeon-holes.’ Burke’s A Letter to a Noble Lord, p. 142 (Works, Bohn, V.).

The comparison of the Duke of Bedford. A Letter to a Noble Lord, (Ib.) p. 129.

That sea-beast. Paradise Lost, I. 200–2.

Put his hook in the nostrils. The Book of Job, xli. 1–2.

The death of Lord Castlereagh. Robert Stewart (1769–1822), Viscount Castlereagh 1796, and second Marquis of Londonderry 1821. See vol. III., Political Essays, note to p. 36. He committed suicide in a fit of insanity.

14. Mr. Montgomery. James Montgomery (1771–1854) began the Sheffield Iris in 1794, and edited it until 1825.

15. Poets have been said to succeed best in fiction. The reply of Edmund Waller to Charles II., who had complained of the inferiority of the poet’s verses on the Restoration as compared with his panegyric on Cromwell.

Forlorn way obscure. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 615. ‘In confused march forlorn.’

16. Old Fuller, and Burton, and Latimer. Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) of the Worthies (1662); Robert Burton (1577–1640) of the Anatomy of Melancholy (1621); and Hugh Latimer (1491–1555), Bishop, and writer of The Ploughers (1549).

The poet-laureat. Robert Southey (1774–1843) was made poet-laureate in 1813.

Extravagant and erring spirit. Hamlet, I. 1.

Stoops to earth. Cf. ‘But stoop’d to Truth, and moraliz’d his song.’ Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, l. 341.

The words of Mercury. Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 2.

16. Wat Tyler. Published 1817.

The Author of Rimini, and Editor of the Examiner. Leigh Hunt’s poem, The Story of Rimini, was published in 1816. The first number of The Examiner, a Sunday Paper on Politics, Domestic Economy and Theatricals, appeared on Jan. 3, 1808.

17. His effusions in the Indicator. This paper lasted from Oct. 13, 1819 to March 21, 1821. A second series lasted from March 28, 1821 to Oct. 13, 1821.

From The New Monthly Magazine, ‘Table Talk, VI.,’ ‘Dreaming,’ No. 27, Vol. 7, 1823.

17. Dr. Spurzheim. J. G. Spurzheim, phrenologist (1776–1832). See The Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, founded on an Anatomical and Physiological Examination of the Nervous System in general, and of the Brain in particular, 1815. See also the Essay on p. 137, et seq., ante, ‘On Dr. Spurzheim’s Theory.’

18. Imparted in dreadful secresy. Hamlet, I. 2.

21. That which was now a horse. Antony and Cleopatra, IV. 14.

22. Heat-oppressed brain. Macbeth, II. 1.

24. Bishop Atterbury. Francis Atterbury (1662–1732), Bishop of Rochester, Jacobite and controversialist, and correspondent of Pope and Swift. See also vol. VIII. Lectures on the English Comic Writers, p. 14.

Intus et in cute. Persius, Sat. III. 30.

The New Eloise. Rousseau’s Nouvelle HÉloÏse (1760), SixiÈme Partie, Lettre XII.

ESSAY III. ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS

From The London Magazine, ‘Table Talk, III.,’ Sep. 20, 1820, signed ‘T., Winterslow Hut,’ vol. 2. The footnote which follows was not reprinted from the Magazine. The Essay was also published as ‘Table Talk, V.’ The New Monthly Magazine, No. 24, Vol. 5, 1822. See the Essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen.’

‘Of all persons spouters at Debating Societies are the most intolerable and troublesome as acquaintance. They have a constant desire to hear themselves talk, and never know what any one else wishes to hear. They talk incessantly, and say nothing. They are loud, offensive, and common-place. They try to get the ear of the company as they get the ear of the Chair, which, having got, they will not let go. They bait some unpretending individual (as if it was a case-hardened antagonist) with gross and vapid assurance, and turn a drawing-room into a bear-garden. They have all the prolixity and unwieldiness of authorship, without any of the solidity, and have all the ambition of orators to shine, without the ability, the excuse, or the inclination on the part of others to attend to them. I know one of this class in particular who has no more business in any party of ladies and gentlemen, with his splay-foot manners and long train of awkward speeches, than the Dragon of Wantley.’

25. And of his port. Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 69.

He is one that cannot make a good leg. The Return from Parnassus, II. 6. See vol. V., Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 284.

Tull’s Husbandry. New Horse-hoing Husbandry, or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation; wherein is shewn a sort of Vineyard Culture into the Corn Fields, in order to increase their Product, and diminish the Common Expense by Instruments described in the Cuts. By Jethro Tull (1733). The Fourth edition contained an Introduction by William Cobbett. See also vol. VI., Table Talk, p. 102 and note.

The Philosopher of Botley. William Cobbett (1762–1835), who settled at Botley, Hampshire, in the early years of the nineteenth century.

26. Dilworth’s Spelling Book. ? Thomas Dilworth’s A New Guide to the English Tongue, an eighteenth century book.

Fearn’s Treatise on Contingent Remainders. Charles Fearne’s (1742–1794) An Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises (1772). a book which made him an authority.

Etherial mould, sky-tinctured. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 139, and V. 285.

Breathe in other air less pure. Paradise Lost, XI. 284.

Confined and cabin’d in. Macbeth, III. 4; ‘cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.’

Verily we have our reward. S. Matthew, vi. 2.

27. Should go about to cozen fortune. Merchant of Venice, II. 9.

Because we are scholars [virtuous]. Twelfth Night, II. 3.

27. The wretched slave. King Henry V., IV. 1.

28. Tell his tale. Milton’s L’Allegro.

Stocks and stones. ‘You blocks, you stones, etc.’ Julius CÆsar, I. 1.

29. Miss ——. The reference is probably to Fanny Burney (1752–1840), and her novels Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782).

Whose is the superscription? S. Matthew, xxii. 20.

G—— C——. Probably Godwin and Coleridge.

32. The fear of being silent strikes us dumb [‘makes us mute’]. Cowper, Conversation, 352.

33. Grimm’s Memoirs. Colburn published in 1813 an abridgment in 4 vols. of the MÉmoires historiques, littÉraires et anecdotiques of Frederic Melchior, Baron de Grimm (1723–1807). They are full of entertaining information concerning eighteenth century French writers. See Vol. I. The Round Table, p. 131 et seq.

We had good talk, sir. Boswell’s Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 66.

I once knew a very ingenious man. Probably Sir John Stoddart, Hazlitt’s brother-in-law. He was a friend of the Bourbons. See vol. III. Political Essays, p. 169 et seq.

Sterne ... Yorick. A Sentimental Journey: The Passport, Versailles.

34. Villainous, and shews a pitiful ambition. Hamlet, III. 2.

When Greek meets Greek. ‘When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war.’ Nathaniel Lee’s (1655–1692) Alexander the Great, IV. 2.

C——. Coleridge.

ESSAY IV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

35. L——‘s. Lamb’s. See the chapter entitled ‘Lamb’s Wednesdays’ in the Memoirs of W. Hazlitt, Vol. I. p. 271 et seq.

The Small-coal man’s musical parties. Thomas Britton (1654–1714), a dealer in small coal and a collector of every musical book he could meet with. He was frightened to death by a ventriloquist.

John Buncle. See Vol. I. The Round Table, p. 51 et seq., and Lamb’s Essay on ‘Imperfect Sympathies.’

36. And, in our flowing cups.

The cartoons at Hampton Court. See Hazlitt’s essay on ‘The Pictures at Hampton Court.’

A list of persons. See the essay entitled ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen.’

36. C——. Coleridge, here and throughout the essay.

37. Ned P——. Edward Phillips, secretary to Charles Abbott, Speaker of the House of Commons. See Lamb’s Letters, ed. Hazlitt, I. pp. 76, 419, etc.

Captain ——. Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750–1821), brother of Fanny Burney and author of the famous Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean (1803–1817), 5 vols. He sailed with Captain Cook in two of his voyages.

Jem White, the author of Falstaff’s Letters. Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends, now first made public by a Gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine MSS. which have been in the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred years (1796). See Lamb’s Letters, ed. Hazlitt, I. 10, 90, etc. and The Lambs, 1897, pp. 24–6.

Turning like the latter end of a lover’s lute. Letters of Sir John Falstaff, etc. (see above), in a letter from ‘Davy to Shallow.’ Said of Master Abram, who dies of love for sweet Anne Page. See Lamb’s review of the Letters in The Examiner, Sep. 5, 1819, and Leigh Hunt’s reprint of it in The Indicator, Jan. 24, 1821. Lamb was suspected of having had a share in his friend and schoolmate’s book.

A——. William Ayrton (1777–1858), musical critic and editor of Charles Knight’s Musical Library.

Mrs. R——. Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb’s ‘sage woman.’

M. B. Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s friend, the son of Admiral Burney.

The author of ‘the Road to Ruin.’ Thomas Holcroft. See Vol. II. p. 121 et seq.

The Critique of Pure Reason. Immanuel Kant’s work was published in 1781.

Mitre-court. In the Temple, where the Lambs resided for eight years at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

38. The Biographia Literaria. Coleridge’s book was published in 1817.

Like Angels’ visits. ‘Like those of angels, short and far between.’ Blair’s The Grave, 582. Cf. Vol. V. Lectures on the English Poets, p. 150.

Mr. Douce of the Museum. Francis Douce (d. 1834), antiquarian, Shakespearian scholar, and keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum.

L. H—— ... tropical blood. Leigh Hunt’s father, Isaac Hunt, was a Barbadian.

Aliquando sufflaminandus erat. Probably quoted from Ben Jonson’s Discoveries, LXIV., De Shakespeare Nostrati. See Vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 336.

39. Mr. Northcote. James Northcote (1746–1831).

40. Hear a sound so fine. James Sheridan Knowles’s Virginius (1820), V. 2.

41. Fuseli. Heinrich Fuessly or Henry Fuseli, portrait-painter and art critic (1741–1825). Cf. Vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, p. 233.

Curran. John Philpot Curran (1750–1817), the Irish advocate.

Mrs. Inchbald. Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), novelist, dramatist and actress.

Mary Woolstonecroft. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759–1797), of the Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).

From noon to dewy eve. Paradise Lost, I. 743.

A Table Talk. See note on source of this essay, above.

Peter Pindar. John Wolcot, ‘Peter Pindar’ (1738–1819), physician, satirist and poet.

Mrs. M——. Mrs. Montagu, Basil Montagu’s third wife, the widow of Thomas Skepper and mother (by Skepper) of Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter. She married Montagu about 1806.

42. H—t’s. Hunt’s.

N——‘s. Northcote’s.

H—y—dn’s. Haydon’s.

A Doctor Tronchin. Theodore Tronchin (1709–1781), Genevan physician and friend of Rousseau.

Sir Fopling Flutter. In Sir George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode.

For wit is like a rest. Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben Jonson, printed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Comedies (1647) [the best gamesters].

L—— once came down. To Winterslow. See Vol. VI. Table Talk, notes to pp. 90 and 188.

Like the most capricious poet [honest] Ovid. As You Like It, III. 3.

Walked gowned. Lamb’s Sonnet, written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819.

The person I mean. Undoubtedly George Dyer. See Lamb’s description of him in ‘Oxford in the Vacation’ (Essays of Elia).

ESSAY V. ON REASON AND IMAGINATION

44. This breathing world. King Richard III., I. 1.

45. In the world’s volume. Cymbeline, III. 4. ‘Seems as of it.’

There are more things. Hamlet I. 5.

46. The shadows in Plato’s cave. The Republic, Book VII.

As mice in an air-pump. Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. p. 142). Cf. also Young, Love of Fame, V. 177, and The Spectator, No. 21.

All the mighty world of eye and ear. Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey.

The Last Moments of Mr. Fox. Circumstantial details of the Long Illness and last moments of the Rt. Hon. Charles James Fox, together with some strictures on his Public and Private Life, 1806. The remark about Burke’s style does not seem to have been made by Lord Holland.

Lord Holland. Henry Richard Vassall Fox, third Lord Holland (1773–1840).

Words that glow. ‘Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’ Gray’s Progress of Poesy, 110.

48. Granville Sharp. The abolitionist (1735–1813), whose Memoirs by Prince Hoare were published in 1810.

49. Mr. Bentham. See Vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, pp. 189, et seq.

Paley’s Moral Philosophy. William Paley’s (1743–1805) Moral and Political Philosophy was published in 1785.

Tucker’s Light of Nature. Abraham Tucker’s (1705–1774) The Light of Nature Pursued (7 vols., 1768–1778) was abridged by Hazlitt. See Vol. IV. of the present edition, pp. 371–385.

50. The tyrant’s plea. Paradise Lost, IV. 393.

Casts its shadow before. Campbell’s Lochiel’s Warning.

51. The classical administration of Mr. Canning. The oratory of George Canning (1770–1827) was noted for its classical turn.

Ex uno omnes. Cf. ‘ab uno disce omnes,’ Virgil’s Æneid, II. 65–6.

What can we reason. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. I. 18.

52. A breath can mar [make] them. Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, 54.

His Social Contract. Published 1762.

54. ‘Duchess of Malfy.’ Webster’s tragedy (1623).

Give the mind pause. Cf. ‘Give us pause.’ Hamlet, III. 1.

One touch of nature. Troilus and Cressida, III. 3.

Thou hast no speculation. Macbeth, III. 4.

55. Both at the first and now. Hamlet, III. 2.

To feel what others are. Gray, Ode to Adversity.

From The New Monthly Magazine, No. 35, Vol. VIII., 1823, ‘Table Talk, X.’

55. Wilson the Painter. Richard Wilson (1714–1782), ‘The English Claude.’

56. Morland. George Morland (1763–1804), painter of country scenes and humble life.

Invita MinervÂ. See ante, note to p. 8.

The labour we delight in. Macbeth, II. 1.

Denner. Balthasar Denner, a German portrait painter (1685–1749).

To him a kingdom was. Cf. ‘My mind to me a kingdom is,’ by Sir Edward Dyer.

A lucid mirror. Cowper, The Task, I. 701–2.

Begun in gladness. Wordsworth’s Resolution and Independence, St. 8.

57. The Children in the Fiery Furnace. Daniel, iii. 6.

TerrÆ filii. Cf. Persius, Sat. VI. 59, ‘TerrÆ est jam filius.’

Highest [brightest] Heaven of invention. King Henry V. Prologue.

58. Nice customs curtesy. King Henry V. V. 2.

A jest’s prosperity. Love’s Labour’s Lost, V. 2.

59. The random, blindfold blows.

Had drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again.

The sounding cataract. Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey.

60. Propulsive force. Cf.

Grows with our growth. Pope’s Essay on Man, Epis. II. 136.

61. The Prince of Painters. The title is generally given to Parrhasius, the Greek painter (c. 400 B.C.), but Hazlitt refers to Raphael.

Salvator. Salvator Rosa, Neapolitan painter, musician and poet (1615–1673).

Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses. Published 1771, etc.

The Rev. W. Shepherd. His Life of Poggio Bracciolini was published at Liverpool in 1802.

62. Unfold the book. Hamlet, I. 5.

Spiritus precipitandus est. See Vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 309.

Mr. Cobbett. See Vol. IV., The Spirit of the Age, pp. 334 et seq.

63. Perseverance, dear my lord. Troilus and Cressida, III. 3.

64. Ned Softly, in the Tatler. See No. 163, April 25, 1710.

65. Never ending, still beginning. Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 102. Also cf. ‘Still ending and beginning still,’ Cowper’s The Task, III. 627.

Physician, heal thyself. S. Luke, iv. 23.

66. Dr. Burney. Charles Burney the elder (1726–1814), historian of music.

From The New Monthly Magazine, No. 32, vol. VIII. 1823, ‘Table Talk, VII.’

66. Mr. Blackwood ... Cockney. See Vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 98.

67. Beyond Hyde Park. Etherege’s The Man of Mode, V. 2.

68. He is owner of all he surveys. ‘I am monarch of all I survey.’ Cowper’s Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.

69. A barker in Monmouth Street. A shop-tout or sham auctioneer. See vol. VI. Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, note to p. 459.

A slop-seller in Radcliffe Highway. It will be remembered that the Marrs kept a lace and pelisse warehouse, 29 Ratcliffe Highway. See De Quincey’s Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts.

Pennant. Some Account of London, 1790. 4to. A well-known and much appreciated topographical account that passed through several editions in the early years of last century.

Where Hicke’s Hall formerly stood. Hicks’s Hall, formerly in St. John Street, Clerkenwell. The milestones on the Great North Road were measured from here.

70. Cider-Cellar. The tavern at 20, Maiden Lane, a favourite resort of Porson’s, who furnished the Latin motto over the door, ‘Honos erit huic quoque homo.’

Shorter excursions tries. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 737–8.

White-conduit House. For this (Pentonville) and Bagnigge Wells (King’s Cross) see Vol. IV. note to p. 108.

Rosemary Branch. At Peckham. See Vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 88.

Catch the breezy air. Wordsworth, ‘Lines written in Early Spring’ (Lyrical Ballads, 1798).

There’s nought so sweet on earth. One of Moore’s ‘Irish Melodies.’

Brahams. John Abraham, tenor singer (1774–1856). ‘He was,’ said Sir Walter Scott, ‘a beast of an actor, but an angel of a singer.’ He began life by selling lead pencils in London streets as a boy, made an enormous fortune as the greatest tenor singer of his day, and squandered it in building St. James’s Theatre and buying the Colosseum in Regent’s Park (See Vol. VI. Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, note to p. 429).

Durusets. J. B. Duruset, singer (See the Literary Gazette of June 26 and July 3, 1824).

71. An hour by St. Dunstan’s clock. Cf. ‘We rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.’ 1 King Henry IV. V. 4.

Copenhagen-house. A tavern and tea-garden in North London between Maiden Lane and Hogbush Lane. See Vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 86–89.

72. For how should the soul of Socrates. The Road to Ruin, Act III. 2.

Hole in the Wall. In Chancery Lane, kept by Randall the pugilist. See Vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 202.

The poet Jago. Richard Jago (1715–1781), author of Edge Hill.

Anthony Collins. The deist (1676–1729), author of a Discourse of Freethinking (1713).

73. Mr. Dunster ... the fishmonger in the Poultry. See Memoirs of W. Hazlitt. II. 310. His real name was, apparently, Fisher, of Duke Street, St. James’s.

74. The Story of the King of Bohemia. Tristram Shandy, viii. 19.

76. See Round Table, Vol. II. p. 116. See Vol. I. pp. 122, et seq.

This bottle’s the sun of our table. R. B. Sheridan’s The Duenna, III. 5. 76. Bannister, King. John Bannister (1760–1836), Thomas King (1730–1805).

Mr. Justice Shallow. 2 King Henry IV., III. 2.

77. A species alone. ‘The Phoenix Pindar is a vast species alone.’ Cowley, The Praise of Pindar.

ESSAY VIII. ON THE SPIRIT OF OBLIGATIONS

From The New Monthly Magazine, ‘Table Talk, XI.,’ No. 37, Vol. X. 1824.

78. Nihil humani. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I. 1.

80. Make mouths at the invisible event. Hamlet, IV. 4.

Born for their use, etc. Young’s The Revenge, V. 2.

81. Wise saws. As You Like It, II. 7.

82. Mr. Wilberforce. William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the parliamentary leader of the anti-slavery cause. See Vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, pp. 331, et seq.

83. If to their share. Pope, The Rape of the Lock, II., 17–18.

A Howard. John Howard (1726–1790), prison philanthropist.

A Sir Hudson Lowe. 1769–1844. As jailor of Napoleon in St. Helena he endured much obloquy.

Charity covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter, iv. 8.

The meanest peasant on the bleakest mountain. Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. The Bourbonnois.

Talma. FranÇois Joseph Talma (1763–1826), one of the greatest of French tragic actors.

84. Mr. Justice Fielding. William, eldest son of the novelist (1748–1820). He was magistrate for Westminster.

Colonel Bath. In Amelia.

Administer to a mind diseased. Macbeth, V. 3.

85. A little lower than the angels. Psalms viii. 5.

And when I think that his immortal wings. Heaven and Earth, Part I. Scene 1.

The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure. ? Northcote’s.

86. Enter [Open] Sessami. The words that opened the cave door in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

87. The late Mr. Sheridan. Richard Brinsley Sheridan died in 1816.

Coin his smile for drachmas. ‘I had rather coin my heart, and drop my blood for drachmas.’ Julius CÆsar, IV. 3.

ESSAY IX. ON THE OLD AGE OF ARTISTS

From The New Monthly Magazine, No. 33, Vol. VIII., 1823, ‘Table Talk, VIII.’

88. Mr. Nollekens. Joseph Nollekens, died in 1823.

‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’ Burns, ‘Is there for honest poverty.’

89. Chantry. Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey (1781–1841). The wealth he accumulated by means of his art was given to the Royal Academy for the purchase of works of art executed in Great Britain.

Have wrought himself to stone. Cf. ‘I have not yet forgot myself to stone.’ Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 24.

As when a vulture on Imaus bred. Paradise Lost, III. 431.

89. Bernini. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), painter, sculptor and architect. He was called the Michael Angelo of his times.

Roubilliac. Louis Francis Roubilliac, French sculptor (d. 1762). He executed the statue of Sir Isaac Newton, Trinity College, Cambridge. The monument to the Duke of Argyle, in Westminster Abbey, is his.

Day. Alexander Day, miniature painter and picture-dealer (1772–1841).

Barry. James T. Barry, painter and art critic (1741–1806), who was patronised by Burke.

And by the force of blear illusion.

See also ‘blear illusion,’ Comus, 155, and vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, p. 214, where the same combination occurs.

90. Flaxman. John Flaxman (1755–1826), sculptor and designer.

Cosway. Richard Cosway (d. 1821), the miniaturist.

Bears a charmed life. Macbeth, V. 7.

Exhibition at Somerset-house. The Royal Academy’s rooms were there. See vol. VI. Conversations of James Northcote, note to p. 435.

91. His life spins round on its soft axle.

Age cannot wither. Antony and Cleopatra, II. 2.

92. Captain Englefield and his crew. ‘Captain Englefield and his crew escaping from the wreck of the Centaur’ was Northcote’s first ‘historical’ picture.

One Jeffrey ... artist. ? James Jeffreys (1757–1784), who obtained the gold medal for the best historical picture in 1774, and whose ‘Destruction of the Spanish Batteries before Gibraltar’ was engraved by Woollett.

93. His story of Isabella. The Decameron, Fourth Day, Fifth Novel.

West (the late President of the Royal Academy). Benjamin West, who was elected P.R.A. on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1792. He died in 1820.

94. Of no mark or likelihood. 1 King Henry IV., III. 2.

95. Loutherbourg. Philip James Loutherbourg (1740–1812), landscape painter.

Blake. William Blake, poet and artist (1759–1827).

Sharp. William Sharp, engraver (1740–1824). He was a follower of Mesmer, Swedenborg and Joanna Southcott.

Varley. John Varley, landscape-painter (1778–1842).

96. Mr. Cipriani. Giambattista Cipriani, a painter of Florentine birth and one of the original members of the Royal Academy (1727–1785).

Shall look upon his like again. Hamlet, I. 2.

97. Present no mark to the foe-man [enemy]. 2 King Henry IV., III. 4.

Defy augury. Hamlet, V. 2.

ESSAY X. ON ENVY (A DIALOGUE)

Teniers. David Teniers, the younger (1610–1694). See vol. VIII. Lectures on the English Comic Writers, pp. 139 and 141 and notes.

Wilkie. Sir David Wilkie (1785–1841).

98. Hoppner. John Hoppner (1759–1810), portrait and landscape painter, who excelled in portraits of women and children.

——. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt suggests that Godwin is meant.

99. Turner. J. M. W. Turner, the greatest English landscape painter (1775–1851).

The wisest, meanest of mankind. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. IV. 281, applied to Bacon.

W***. Wellington.

100. Lord Castlereagh. See ante, note to p. 13.

To throw a cruel sunshine on a fool. Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health, Book IV.

The Miss Hornecks. See vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 93.

Mr. C——. Croker.

101. Note. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811), the dramatist, described by Goldsmith as ‘the Terence of England.’

102. Incredulus odi. Horace, De Arte Poet., 188.

103. Acis and Galatea. A serenata by John Gay (1688–1732), produced at the Haymarket with Handel’s music, 1732. See the 1st chorus in part II.

104. Mr. Croley. George Croly (1780–1860), author of the romance of Salathiel (1829), and numerous other works.

105. The Royal Society of Authors. Probably the Royal Society for the advancement of General Literature, founded 1823. Croly was on the council.

Sir Andrew Wylie. John Galt’s (1779–1839) novel, Sir Andrew Wylie of that Ilk, was published in 1822.

107. Galled his kibe. Hamlet, V. 1.

Sir Peter Lely. Pieter Van der Faes (1618–1680), whose father changed the family name to Lely; painter (of Westphalian birth) of the Beauties of the Court of Charles II.

ESSAY XI. ON SITTING FOR ONE’S PICTURE

From The New Monthly Magazine, No. 35, Vol. VIII., 1823, ‘Table Talk, IX.’

107. The beggar in the street. The Author himself painted a small portrait in oils of a poor old woman whom he met near Manchester in 1803. [W. C. H.]

108. When he sat to me. In 1804, when the sitter was in his 67th year, and Unitarian Minister at Wem in Shropshire.... The picture is still in a fair state of preservation. [W. C. H.]

109. The late Mr. Opie. John Opie (1761–1807), historical painter.

Invisible or dimly seen. Paradise Lost, V. 157.

111. The Bunburys. See vol. VI. Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, note to p. 454.

Happy alchemy of mind. Cf. vol. V. Lectures on the English Poets, note to p. 107.

Vandyke married a daughter of Earl Gower. He married, about 1639, Maria Ruthven, granddaughter of the first Earl of Gowrie. See Conversations of James Northcote, R.A., with James Ward, p. 92, where Northcote is reported as wroth with Hazlitt for having given the Earl’s name as Cowper. The change from Cowper to Gower, as given in the present text, is because of an erratum-direction to that effect behind the ‘Contents of the First Volume,’ in the original edition.

A painter of the name of Astley ... Lady ——. John Astley, portrait-painter (?1730–1787), married Lady Daniell. See Redgrave’s Dictionary.

112. Had Petrarch gained his Laura, etc.

112. St. Preux. In Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle HÉloÏse (1760).

113. Till the sense aches at it. Othello, IV. 2.

Amorous toys of light-winged Cupid.

Canova. Antonio Canova (1757–1822), Venetian sculptor.

114. The world forgetting. Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, 208.

Or stock-dove plain amid the forest deep. Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, I. 4.

Think of its crimes. Thomson, An Hymn on Solitude.

115. Lord Keppel. Augustus Viscount Keppel (1725–1786), one of the English Admirals. He and his second in command, Sir Hugh Palliser, were court-martialled for permitting the French fleet to escape after an indecisive battle off Ushant, 27th July 1778. Both were acquitted.

Mr. C——r ... made the House stare. See Hansard, N. S., IX., 1211, June 25, 1823, for Croker’s remarks.

116. To lie like Whitfield. Whitfield was buried in 1770. When the coffin was opened in 1784, the body was found to be perfect. See L. Tyerman’s Life, II. 602–3. Possibly it is to this that Hazlitt refers.

Warm, kneaded motion to a clog.

ESSAY XII. WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS

117. Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1672–1751), statesman, writer and friend of Pope.

Sir William Temple. Diplomatist and essayist (1628–1700).

Sees not itself. Julius CÆsar, I. 2.

A phoenix gazed by all. Paradise Lost, V. 272.

118. Materiam superabat opus. Ovid, Met., II. 5.

Our poesy is a gum which issues [oozes]. Timon of Athens, I. 1.

119. Invita MinervÂ. See ante, note to p. 8.

120. The glory, the intuition, the amenity. Lamb’s ‘Lines on the Celebrated Picture by Leonardo da Vinci, called “The Virgin of the Rocks.”’

Through happiness or pains. Pope’s Epistle to Mr. Jervas, l. 68.

I write this at Winterslow. See vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 90.

My mind to me a kingdom is. From Sir Edward Dyer’s lyric in Byrd’s Psalms and Sonnets (1588).

That character of Millimant. See vol. VIII. Lectures on the English Comic Writers, pp. 73–4.

Signior Orlando Friscobaldo. In Dekker’s The Honest Whore, Part II. See vol. V. Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, pp. 335, et seq.

122. Webster or Deckar. John Webster (? d. 1625) and Thomas Dekker (c. 1570–c. 1637). See vol. v. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.

Schlegel. In his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. See vol. I. Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, note to p. 171.

The Descent of Liberty. Leigh Hunt’s Mask, with a dedication from Surrey Jail was published in 1815.

122. When the mighty fell. Napoleon.

123. Cried out upon in the top of the compass. Cf. Hamlet, III. 2.

and II. 2.

Mr. Jerdan recommends the volume of Characteristics. See vol. III. of the present edition for Hazlitt’s Characteristics, and particulars of their publication. The book was favourably reviewed in the Literary Gazette for July 12, 1823.

The Story of Rimini. Published in 1816, and savagely reviewed in Blackwood’s Magazine, May 1818.

An Adonis of fifty. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 358.

Return, Alpheus. Lycidas, 132–3.

Look abroad into universality. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I.

124. A. P. E. Alexander Pope, Esquire.

They take in vain. Exodus, XX. 7.

It is all one as we should love. All’s Well that Ends Well, I. 1.

125. Fast-anchored in the deep abyss of time [space]. Cowper, Retirement, l. 84.

The face of heaven so bright. See Romeo and Juliet, II. 2, 20–2.

Bartlemy-Fair. A famous fair was held at West Smithfield, 1133–1855 about the time of the festival of St. Bartholomew, August 24.

The high endeavour and the glad success. Cowper, The Task, V. 901.

126. Bis repetita crambe. ‘Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros,’ Juvenal, VII. 154.

Annibal Caracci. Annibale Caracci (1560–1609), painter of the Farnese Gallery, in Rome.

127. ‘Love for Love.’ Congreve’s comedy, 1695.

Miss Mellon. Harriet Mellon (1775–1837), later, Duchess of St. Alban’s. She began on the stage as a child in boys’ parts, was introduced by Sheridan to London, where she played ‘Lydia Languish’ in The Rivals, at Drury Lane, January 1795, and became a popular hoyden. Mr. Coutts, the banker, fell in love with her, and married her soon after the death of his wife in 1814, and when he died in 1822 his wealth passed to her. In 1827 she married William, Duke of St. Alban’s, whose age was 27. After providing handsomely for him, she left the bulk of her property to Mr. Coutts’ granddaughter, Miss Angela Burdett.

Bob Palmer. (1757–?1805.)

Bannister. John Bannister (1760–1836).

ESSAY XIII. ON THE PLEASURE OF HATING

Lines to a Spider. Probably those in The Liberal (Byron, Shelley and Hunt’s Quarterly), vol. II. 177.

128. The milk of human kindness. Macbeth, I. 5.

As Mr. Burke observes. Sublime and Beautiful, Part I. § 15. Last line but one, matter, ? a slip for ‘nature.’

129. We subscribe to new editions of Fox’s Book of Martyrs. A folio edition was published by subscription by Thomas Kelly, London, 1811.

Off, you lendings! Lear, III. 4.

Panopticons. Jeremy Bentham’s name for his method of prison supervision. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 197.

129. Mr. Owen’s impassable Parallelograms. Cf. vol. III. Political Essays, pp. 121–7.

Mr. Irving ... Caledonian Chapel. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, p. 222, et seq.

’Tis pretty, though a plague. All’s Well that Ends Well, I. I.

Upon this bank and shoal of time. Macbeth, I. 7.

130. Outdo [o’er doing] termagant. Hamlet, III. 2.

A most. ? A misprint for ‘almost.’

That which was luscious as locusts. Othello, I. 3.

131. Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq. See the Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esq., in The London Magazine, Oct. 1823.

That I myself have celebrated. See ante, the Essay ‘On the Conversation of Authors.’

132. H—— ? Joseph Hume of the Pipe Office, not the Radical M.P. (See Lamb’s Letters, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I. 361, note 1).

Carve them as a dish fit for the Gods. Julius CÆsar, II. I.

L—— H—— Leigh Hunt.

John Scott. ? John Scott (1783–1821), Editor of The London Magazine, who died from a wound received in a duel from Christie, Lockhart’s friend.

Mrs. —— Montagu.

B—— ? Burney.

Sans intermission, for hours by the dial. As You Like It, II. 7.

Fellows of no mark. 1 King Henry IV., III. 2.

——‘s ? Hume.

133. Mr. Washington Irvine a very fine writer. Cf. vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age.

Mr. Liston. John Liston (1776–1846).

134. Gone into the wastes of time. ‘But thou among the wastes of time must go.’ Shakespeare’s Sonnets, XII.

Mr. Moore’s Loves of the Angels. Of Mr. Moore’s poem, published on Jan. 1, 1823, five editions were exhausted in one year.

Sitting in my window. Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, V. 5.

The wine of poetry is drank.

135. Play [sport] with Amaryllis in the shade. Lycidas, 68.

Fonthill. The residence of ‘Vathek’ Beckford.

To every good work reprobate. Epistle to Titus, i. 16.

136. Of whom the world was not worthy. Epistle to the Hebrews, xi. 38.

This was some time a mystery. ‘This was some time a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.’ Hamlet, III. 1.

The rose plucked from the forehead of a virtuous love.

137. Note. The Sentinel. See vol. VI. Conversations of James Northcote, p. 518, and footnote.

Daddy Ratton. In Scott’s Heart of Midlothian.

137. Drs. Gall and Spurzheim. See ante, Essay On Dreams.

138. A book where men may read strange matters. Macbeth, I. 5.

Draws the curtain. Twelfth Night, I. 5.

139. Whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Othello. I. 3.

140. Here be truths ... dashed and brewed with lies. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 114. Cf. also a similar passage in Addison (The Spectator, 580).

With other matters of like pith and moment. Cf. ‘enterprizes of great pith and moment.’ Hamlet, III. I.

If these things are done in the green tree. S. Luke, xxiii. 31.

141. The Alchemist. By Ben Jonson, 1610.

144. Malebranche. Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), whose De la Recherche de la VÉritÉ was published in 1674.

146. Gaubius Gobbo. ‘Good Launcelot Gobbo,’ Merchant of Venice, II. 2.

147. There needs no ghost to tell us that. Hamlet, I. 5.

149. The Wonderful Magazine. The Wonderful Magazine, or Marvellous Chronicle, or New Weekly Entertainer, a journal of the latter half of the eighteenth century, with varying titles.

King Ferdinand. Possibly the reference is to the Cortes having let Ferdinand leave Cadiz (whither they had carried him) during the siege by the French on Oct. 1, 1813, in order to make terms with the French.

153. It follows, as the night the day. Hamlet, I. 3.

155. So as with a difference. Hamlet, IV. 5.

156. Note. Dr. Combe of Edinburgh. The phrenological Combes were George (1788–1858), W.S. and moral philosopher, and his brother, Andrew (1797–1847), doctor of medicine.

Fancy in himself. ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.’ 2 King Henry IV., I. 2.

157. Note. Squandering glances. As You Like It, II. 7.

ESSAY XV. ON EGOTISM

158. King Cambyses’ vein. 1 King Henry IV., II. 4.

Vain and self-conceit. ‘Self and vain conceit,’ King Richard II., III. 2.

Getting the start of the majestic world. Julius CÆsar, I. 2.

160. Mr. —— Mill. See post, note to p. 183.

The present Lord Chancellor. John Scott, Lord Eldon (1751–1838), who had no love for literature or art.

Madame Catalani. Angelica Catalani (1779–1849) the popular Italian singer. She made £10,000 in four months in London.

161. The late Chancellor (Erskine). Thomas Erskine, 1750–1823.

162. Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas. Juvenal, VIII. 83.

163. Wisdom is justified of her children. S. Matthew, xi. 19.

Throw our bread upon the waters. Eccles., xi. 1.

When Goldsmith was talking one day. See Boswell’s Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 231.

Hervey’s Meditations. The Rev. James Hervey’s (1714–1758) Meditations and Contemplations were highly esteemed in their day.

164. Westall. Richard Westall (1765–1836).

Angelica Kauffman. Maria Anna Angelica Kauffmann (1741–1807), a Swiss painter of (chiefly) female characters, many of which were engraved by Bartolozzi.

165. Arkwright. Sir Richard Arkwright (1732–1792).

166. A cell of ignorance. Cymbeline, III. 3.

The only great man in modern times. Napoleon, of course. He died on May 5, 1821, of cancer in the stomach.

Mandeville. Bernard Mandeville (1670?–1733) author of The Fable of the Bees (1714).

167. Forget the things that are behind. Philippians, iii. 13.

168. Nothing is but what is not. Macbeth, I. 3.

Goldsmith was ever jealous of beauty in the other sex. See ante, p. 100.

Through listening [wond’ring] senates. Pope’s Moral Essays, I. 184–5.

ESSAY XVI. HOT AND COLD

169. Hot, cold, moist, and dry. Paradise Lost, II. 298.

Neat-handed Phyllises. L’Allegro, 86.

Native and endued into that element. Hamlet, IV. 7.

172. Whose name signifies love.

To be supped upon. Cf. Hamlet, IV. III. 18.

173. Here all is conscience. Chaucer, Prologue, 150.

The quills upon the fretful porcupine. Hamlet, I. 5.

So drossy and divisible are they. Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, I. 319.

Voltaire’s traveller. See Histoire des Voyages de Scarmentado.

174. Note. Mr. Scarlett. Probably James Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger, who practised in the Northern Circuit and Lancashire Sessions till 1807. Hazlitt received a complimentary letter from Scarlett on the publication of Principles of Human Action. (See Four Generations of a Literary Family, I. 92–3, and Memoirs, I. 112, and post, note to Principles of Human Action).

Sterne asks why a sword. Tristram Shandy, Bk. IX. chap. 33.

Note. Mr. Shepherd. See ante, note to p. 61.

175. The sovereign’st thing on earth. 1 King Henry IV., I. 3.

Makes the odds all even. Measure for Measure, III. I.

Hacquet’s Travels in Carpathia. Balthasar Hacquet’s (1740–1815) book was published in 1790–6 at NÜrnberg.

176. Dull, cold winter does inhabit here. ‘But dead-cold winter must inhabit here.’ The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act II. 1.

Long purples. Hamlet, IV. 7.

Take the good the Gods provide them. Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 105.

Appliances and means to boot. 2 King Henry IV., III. 1.

‘A man,’ says Yorick, ‘finds an apple.’ Tristram Shandy, III. 34.

ESSAY XVII. THE NEW SCHOOL OF REFORM

180. Good haters. Mrs. Piozzi, in her Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, I. 204), writes: ‘Dear Bathurst (said he to me one day) was a man to my very heart’s content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig; he was a very good hater.’ See also vol. I. The Round Table, p. 103.

181. Right-hand defections. Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, vol. I. chap. XII.

A consummation. ‘Devoutly to be wished.’ Hamlet, III. 1.

What more felicity can fall to creature? Spenser’s Muiopotmos, or the Fate of the Butterflie, 27.

183. Good oeillades. Cf. Merry Wives, I. 3, ‘judicious oeillades,’ and King Lear, IV. 5, ‘strange oeillades.’

Mr. Hobhouse. John Cam Hobhouse (1786–1869), Byron’s friend.

One of them has a place at the India House. James Mill (1773–1836), who, in spite of his radical opinions, was appointed Assistant-Examiner of Indian Correspondence in 1819.

Their attacks on the Edinburgh Review. The Westminster Review, financed by Bentham and edited by Bowring, was founded in January 1824. Its first numbers contained a series of assaults on the Edinburgh (Cf. post, p. 381); Redgauntlet was damned in the third number (July 1824, vol. II. p. 179); and the article on Moore’s Life of Sheridan appeared in the number for October, 1825, vol. IV. pp. 371–407. The allusion to Sheridan as an unsuccessful adventurer will be found on p. 404.

184. A discipline of humanity. Bacon’s Essays, Of Marriage and Civil Life.

The treatment of Mr. Buckingham. James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855) established at Calcutta in 1818 a paper called The Calcutta Journal, which censured the abuses of the Indian Government, and was suppressed by John Adams, temporary Governor-General, in April, 1823.

Mr. Hall. Robert Hall, the celebrated Baptist preacher (1764–1831). His removal from Leicester, where he had served as pastor of the Baptist congregation for twenty years, to Bristol, took place in 1826, when he succeeded Dr. Ryland as head of the Baptist College at Bristol and pastor of Broadmead Chapel.

185. Sir Richard Blackmore. Court physician to William and Anne. He died in 1729, after having written six epics in sixty books.

186. Sir Robert Peel ... calico printing. 1750–1830. He carried on a cotton factory at Bury with great success, and devoted much time to the improvement of machinery.

Elements of Political Economy, by James Mill. James Mill’s work was published in 1821.

Principles of Political Economy. By John Ramsay M’Culloch (1789–1864). Published 1820.

Strange! that such difference there should be. John Byrom, On the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini.

Mr. M——. ? James Mill (1773–1836).

Mr. P. Is Thomas Love Peacock is meant? He was the author of Rhododaphne (1818), the poem possibly referred to as Rhodope in Hazlitt’s note to p. 187. Peacock attacked poetry in his Four Ages of Poetry, contributed to Ollier’s Literary Pocket Book in 1820, and was answered by Shelley in his Defence of Poetry. Though Peacock has not been associated with Utilitarianism, yet his place at the India-House, where he was a fellow-clerk of James Mill’s, may have lent colour to the assumption that he was ‘one of them.’

Mr. Pl——. Francis Place, radical reformer (1771–1854).

The Last Man. Thomas Campbell’s poem The Last Man was printed in the New Monthly Magazine, vol. 8, No. 33, 1823. Perhaps Hazlitt had its title in mind.

188. Thereafter as it happens. 2 King Henry IV., III. 2. ‘Thereafter as they be.’

Primrose paths. Hamlet, I. 3.

The Hypocrite. Bickerstaff’s comedy (1768), based, through The Nonjuror (1717), on MoliÈre’s Tartuffe (1664).

192. Swear, with Lord Peter. The Tale of a Tub, Section IV.

Its quality is not strained. Merchant of Venice, IV. 1.

193. Dignum (the singer). Charles Dignum (1765?–1827), of Drury Lane.

Suett. Richard Suett (d. 1805), a comic actor, very popular at Drury Lane.

‘No Song, No Supper.’ A musical entertainment of Hoare’s (1790), with music by Storace. See a letter from Hazlitt to his father (Memoirs, I. 17–18), from which it appears that it was at Liverpool in 1790 (not 1792) that he saw this piece.

The false Florimel. The Faerie Queen, Bk. III. canto 8.

The grinding law of necessity. The reference here and elsewhere is to Malthus. See vol. IV. A Reply to Malthus and The Spirit of the Age.

194. Opens all the cells where memory slept. Cowper, The Task, VI. 11–12.

Who enters there. Dante’s Inferno, III. 1. 9.

ESSAY XVIII. ON THE QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY TO
SUCCESS IN LIFE

From The London Magazine, vol. I., June 1820, ‘Table Talk, 1.’

195. The race is not to the swift. Eccles. ix. 11.

A Minister of State. Probably Castlereagh, who led the House of Commons until, upon his father’s death in April 1821, he became Lord Londonderry.

196. Aspiring to be Gods. Pope’s Essay on Man, I. 127–8.

Appliances and means to boot. 2 King Henry IV., III. 1.

Some trick not worth an egg. Coriolanus, IV. 4.

There’s but the twinkling of a star. Butler’s Hudibras, Part II. Canto III. 956.

197. Constrained by mastery. Cf. Wordsworth, The Excursion, VI.

198. George Psalmanazar. The literary impostor (1679–1763). He was a native of France and pretended to be a Formosan. To keep up the imposition he invented an alphabet and a Formosan grammar.

Enquiry concerning Political Justice. Godwin’s book (1793).

Diversions of Purley. John Horne Tooke’s book was published in 1786–1805. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, p. 231.

Interminable babble. ‘Intarissable babil’ in the Magazine.

Tongue with a garnish of brains. Goldsmith, Retaliation, 6.

Wimbledon. Where Horne Tooke lived.

With a nostrum in his mouth. See Alexander Stephens’s Memoirs of John Horne Tooke, Esq., vol. II. p. 445, ‘While yet in perfect possession of his senses, and uncertain of his impending fate, although conscious it could not be long protracted, the patient eagerly inquired’ [of Sir Francis Burdett] ‘concerning the effect produced on the House of Commons by the motion relative to the punishment of soldiers?...

‘As he had once more been relieved by cordials, notwithstanding he was told it was now in vain, the member for Westminster prepared to administer one with his own hand. Having knelt for this purpose, the dying man opened his eyes for the last time, and seeing who it was that presented the potion, he swallowed it with avidity.’

The late Professor Porson. Richard Porson (1759–1808), Greek scholar and critic.

198. The Member for Old Sarum. See ante, note to p. 6.

The man of perhaps the greatest ability now living. Coleridge. Cf. The Spirit of the Age.

199. Duns Scotus to Jacob Behmen. John Duns, the ‘subtle doctor’; Jacob Boehmen (1575–1624), German mystic.

Discoursed in eloquent music. Hamlet, III. 2.

Ten thousand great ideas. Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, I. lix.

Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius. Erasmus, Adagiorum Chiliades, ‘Munus aptum.’

Though he had all knowledge. 1 Corinthians, xiii. 1, 2.

200. You cannot gather grapes of thorns. S. Matthew, vii. 16.

Respice finem. See vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 27.

To get the start of the majestic world. Julius CÆsar, I. 2.

201. Mens divinior. Horace, Sat. I. IV. 43.

202. Vox faucibus hÆsit. Vergil, Æneid, II. 774.

With a confident brow. 2 King Henry IV., II. 1.

Too deep for his hearers. Goldsmith’s Retaliation, 35.

A soul as fair. Thomson, Castle of Indolence, II. 33.

Fell flat, and shamed their worshippers. Paradise Lost, I. 461.

How he cuts up in the caul. Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 145).

203. Sterne’s description of Mr. Hammond Shandy. Tristram Shandy, III. 10.

On that point. The Magazine adds ‘Petulant set his mark.’ Congreve, The Way of the World, V. 3.

For women, born to be controll’d. Waller: Of Love, 13–16:

Scrub in the farce. In Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem.

204. Doubtless, the pleasure is as great. Butler’s Hudibras, Part II. Canto III. 1.

The art of being well deceived. See vol. I. The Round Table, p. 84.

A writer whom I know very well. Himself.

Sup at the Shakespeare. The noted theatrical tavern in the Piazza, Covent Garden. See Timbs’ History of Clubs and Club-Life in London, ed. 1886, p. 427.

205. His next answer to Vetus. See vol. III. Political Essays, p. 57 and note.

The graceful ornaments, etc. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 164).

‘Don’t you remember,’ says Gray. Letter to Richard West, May 27, 1742.

A man of genius a coxcomb in dress. Cf. vol. I. The Round Table, p. 95.

Prince Prettyman. In the Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal (1671).

206. Nihil humani. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, I. 1.

The flattery that soothes the dull cold ear of death. Gray’s Elegy, 11.

207. Lady Mary Wortley Montague. (c. 1690–1762), the correspondent of Pope and Addison.

A. P. E. Alexander Pope, Esquire.

Ere we have shuffled off that mortal coil. Hamlet, III. 1.

The real story of David Ritchie. David Ritchie, a dwarf, of Manor, Peeblesshire, was the original of Elshender, the Black Dwarf, in Scott’s novel so called. See The Life and Anecdotes of the Black Dwarf, or David Ritchie, commonly called Bowed Davie, by William Chambers, Edinburgh, 1820.

207. Note. Sir John Suckling, 1609–42. The two lines quoted are part of The Session of the Poets (20).

So Mr. Gifford dedicated these verses to Mr. Hoppner. Hoppner became R.A. in 1795, and Gifford dedicated the Second Edition of his Baviad and MÆviad to him in 1797.

208. Quite chop-fallen. Hamlet, V. 1.

Such a poor [bare] forked animal. King Lear, III. 4.

They did it for his good. See No. XXXVII. of the Quarterly Review, April 1818, published in September.

209. These are the doctrines, etc.

Embalms and spices. Timon of Athens, IV. 3.

The spital and the lazar-house. ‘The spital-house and ulcerous sores would cast the gorge at.’ Timon of Athens, IV. 3.

ESSAY XIX. ON THE LOOK OF A GENTLEMAN

From The London Magazine, vol. III. Jan. 1821, ‘Table Talk VI.,’ signed T.

Causa latet, res ipsa [vis est] notissima. Ovid. Met. IV. 287.

210. Familiarity of regard. ‘Quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control.’ Twelfth Night, II. 5.

Nice conduct.

‘The Clandestine Marriage.’ By Colman the Elder and Garrick (1766). This comedy is about to be revived at the Haymarket Theatre (March 17, 1903).

Wound up for the day. The Clandestine Marriage, Act II. Scene 1.

Sir Joseph Banks. The celebrated naturalist (1743–1820). He accompanied Cook in his first circumnavigation of the world.

211. Sir Charles B—nb—ry. See vol. VI. Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, note to p. 454.

Lady Sarah L—nn—x. Ibid.

How tall his person is. Hudibras, Part I. Canto iii., 83–4.

The old one-eyed Duke of Queensberry. William Douglas, 3rd Earl of March and 4th Duke of Queensberry (1724–1810).

The late Admiral Byron. The Hon. John Byron, the poet’s grandfather (1723–1768).

N——. Northcote.

Subdued to the very quality. Othello, I. 3.

212. Dress makes the man. ‘Worth makes the man,’ etc. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. IV. 203.

Wycherley. William Wycherley (1640–1715). He was a man of fashion as well as a writer of comedies.

Lord Hinchinbroke. Sir Edward Mont- (or Mount-) agu, first Viscount Hinchinbroke and first Earl of Sandwich (1625–1672).

Note. The Duchess of Cleveland. ‘Her graceless grace’ of the Court of Charles II.

213. Alcibiades threw away a flute. See Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades.

213. Ferdinand in the Tempest. Act III. 1.

214. Sergeant Atkinson. In Fielding’s Amelia, Book V. chap. 2.

Lord C——. Castlereagh.

Hatching vain empires. Paradise Lost, II. 378.

Voluminous and vast. Paradise Lost, II. 652.

215. Marquis Wellesley. Richard Cowley, Marquis Wellesley (1760–1842). Governor-General of India. He was made a Knight of the Garter and Foreign Minister on his return from Madrid whither he went as Ambassador in 1809.

Stores of ladies. Milton’s L’Allegro, 120.

Lord Erskine. Thomas Erskine (1750–1823), Advocate and Lord Chancellor.

Lord Stanhope. Charles, Earl Stanhope (1753–1816). He was a strenuous supporter of republican ideals and a man of many inventions.

The Orson of debate. The bear-suckled hero of the fifteenth century romance, Valentine and Orson, otherwise the Wild Man of France.

A Satyr that comes staring from the woods. Earl of Roscommon, translation of Horace’s Ars Poetica, 281–2. Cf. Ars Poetica, 244, et seq.

Lord Eldon. See ante, note to p. 158.

216. Gave him good oeillades. See ante, note to p. 183.

Foote’s Farce of Taste. 1752.

218. All tranquillity and smiles. Cowper, The Task, IV. 49.

219. Of mimic statesmen. Pope, Moral Essays, iii. 309–10.

God Almighty’s gentleman. Dryden’s Absolom and Achitophel, Part I. 645.

G—— D——. George Dyer (1755–1841), miscellaneous writer. See Lamb’s Amicus Redivivus, Elia, ed. Ainger, p. 281.

ESSAY XX. ON READING OLD BOOKS

From The London Magazine, Feb. 1821, vol. III. p. 128, ‘Table Talk, VII.,’ signed T.

220. Lady Morgan. (1783?–1859) A writer of Irish stories and of other miscellaneous work in the early years of the nineteenth century. Before her marriage in 1811 her works bore her maiden name, Sydney Owenson. Her story, The Wild Irish Girl, a national tale, published in 1806, passed through seven editions in two years.

Anastasius. Thomas Hope’s (1770–1831) Eastern romance published 1819, and warmly praised by the Edinburgh Review.

Delphine. Madame de StaËl’s novel was published in 1802.

In their newest gloss. Macbeth, I. 7.

Andrew Millar. Thomson’s and Fielding’s publisher (1707–1768). ‘I respect Millar, sir,’ said Dr. Johnson; ‘he has raised the price of literature’ (Boswell’s Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, I. 287). He was succeeded by his partner, Thomas Cadell the elder.

Thurloe’s State Papers. A Collection of State Papers (seven vols. folio, 1742) by John Thurloe (1616–1668). He was Secretary of State during the Protectorate.

Sir William Temple’s Essays. Published as Miscellanea in 1680 and 1692. He was the first writer, says Dr. Johnson, who gave cadence to English prose.

221. For thoughts and for remembrance. Hamlet, IV. 5.

Bruscambille. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Book III. chap. 35.

The Memoirs of Lady Vane. In Peregrine Pickle.

The adventures at the masquerade. Tom Jones, Book xiii. chap. 7.

221. The disputes between Thwackum and Square. Ibid. Book iii. chap. 3.

The escape of Molly Seagrim. Ibid. Book iv. chap. 8.

The incident of Sophia and her muff. Ibid. Book v. chap. 4.

Her Aunt’s lecture. Ibid. Book vii. chap. 3.

222. The puppets dallying. Hamlet, III. 2.

Ignorance was bliss. Gray On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 10.

The Minerva press. A publishing house in Leadenhall Street, which issued, in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, popular highly-coloured romances.

Cooke’s pocket-edition. See vols. I.-IV. of Cooke’s Select Edition of British Novels (1792). Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says Hazlitt became acquainted with this book through his father being an original subscriber to the series.

Mrs. Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest. Ann Radcliffe’s (1764–1823) book was published in 1791.

Sweet in the mouth. Revelation, x. 9.

Gay creatures. Comus, 299.

223. Tom Jones discovers Square behind the blanket. Book V. chap. 5.

Parson Adams ... Mrs. Slip-Slop. Book IV. chap. 14.

Chubb’s Tracts. Thomas Chubb’s (1679–1747) Tracts and Posthumous Works were published in six vols. 8vo., 1754. He was a deist.

Fate, free-will, etc. Paradise Lost, II. 560.

224. Note. A friend, who had some lottery puffs. Charles Lamb. See vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 291.

Would I had never seen Wittenberg. Dr. Faustus, Scene 19.

Hartley, Hume, Berkeley. David Hartley (1705–1757) whose Observations on Man were published in 1749; David Hume (1711–1776); George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (1685–1753).

Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding. 1690.

Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) of the Leviathan (1651).

The Social Contract. Published 1762.

I have spoken elsewhere. See vol. I. The Round Table, ‘On the Character of Rousseau.’

Scattered like stray gifts. Wordsworth, Stray Pleasures.

The Emilius. Published 1762.

Sir Fopling Flutter. In Sir George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode (1676).

225. Leurre de dupe! An expression of Rousseau’s, Confessions, Liv. IV.

A load to sink a navy. King Henry VIII., III. 2.

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book. Lamb’s Sonnet to the author of poems published under the name of Barry Cornwall.

Mr. Keats’s Eve of Saint Agnes. Published 1820.

Come like shadows. Macbeth, IV. i.

Tiger-moth’s wings. Keats, Eve of Saint Agnes.

Blushes ... with blood of queens and kings. Ibid.

Words, words, words. Hamlet, II. 2.

The great preacher in the Caledonian Chapel. Irving. See ante, p. 129.

226. As the hart that panteth for the water-springs [brooks]. Psalm xlii. 1.

GoËthe’s Sorrows of Werter. Finished in 1774. Cf. vol. V. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 362.

Schiller’s Robbers. 1781. See Ibid.

Giving my stock [sum] of more. As You Like It, II. 1.

Valentine Tattle or Miss Prue. Characters in Congreve’s Love for Love (1695). Valentine was Betterton’s great part, and F. Reynolds declared that the love scene between Jack Bannister as Tattle and Mrs. Jordan as Miss Prue was ‘probably never surpassed in rich natural comedy.’

226. Know my cue.

Intus et in cute. See ante, note to p. 24.

The celebrated Sir Humphrey Davy. Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), natural philosopher.

227. The divine Clementina. In Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753).

With every trick and line. ‘line and trick.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, I. 1.

Graven [draw ...] in my heart’s table. Ibid.

Mackenzie. Henry Mackenzie’s (1745–1831) Julia de RoubignÉ was published in 1777, six years after the Man of Feeling.

Miss ——. Probably the lady of Liber Amoris.

That ligament, fine as it was. Tristram Shandy, Book VI. chap. 10 (The Story of Le Fever).

His story of the Hawk. Boccaccio’s Decameron, 5th day, 9th story. See vol. V. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, note to p. 347.

Farquhar ... Recruiting Officer. 1706.

At one proud [fell] swoop. Macbeth, IV. 3.

Embalmed with odours. Paradise Lost, II. 843.

His form had not yet lost. Ibid. I. 591.

228. Falls flat upon the grunsel edge. Ibid. I. 460.

He, like an eagle. Coriolanus, V. 6.

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.

Note. Is this the present Earl? James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale (1759–1839), succeeded his father in August 1789.

229. Worthy of all acceptation. 1 Timothy, i. 15.

Clarendon’s History of the Grand Rebellion. 1704–7.

Hollingshed. Ralph Holinshed’s Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande, 1577, and later issues.

Stowe. John Stow’s (1525?–1605) Englysh Chronicles, 1561, and later issues, and A Survay of London, 1598, and later issues.

Fuller’s Worthies. Thomas Fuller’s (1608–1661) The History of the Worthies of England, 1662.

‘A Wife for a Month.’ 1623.

‘Thierry and Theodoret.’ 1621.

Guicciardini. Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), author of a History of Italy from 1494 to 1532.

The Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda. Cervantes’ last work, the dedication of which was written four days before his death. A translation from the French was printed in London in 1619, and from the Spanish in 1854.

Galatea. Cervantes’ first work, a pastoral romance, printed at Alcala in 1585.

Another Yarrow. Wordsworth’s Yarrow Unvisited.

From The London Magazine, March 1821, vol. III. p. 291, ‘Table Talk, VII.,’ signed T.

As the flesh and fortune shall serve. Measure for Measure, II. 1.

And feels the ruling passion. Pope’s Moral Essays, Ep. I. 262.

Mr. Nicholson. William Nicholson (1753–1815). He is often referred to in Hazlitt’s Life of Holcroft. See vol. II. p. 91, etc.

Hot, cold, moist, and dry. See ante, note to p. 169.

It is not in our stars. Julius CÆsar, I. 2. ‘That we are underlings.’

231. To beguile the time. Macbeth, I. 5.

The child’s the father of the man. Wordsworth’s ‘My heart leaps up.’

232. Fairfax and the starry Vere. Marvell’s ‘Appleton House.’

He saw the Chief-Justice Jeffries. See Evelyn’s Diary (ed. Bray, 1859), vol. II., p. 199.

233. An old hair-brained uncle. Loftus, brother of Mrs. Hazlitt, wife of the Rev. W. Hazlitt.

Mark or likelihood. 1 King Henry IV., III. 2.

Instinct, Hal, instinct. A misquotation from 1 King Henry IV., II. 4.

Beneath the hills. Wordsworth’s Excursion, Book VI. [‘Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills.’]

234. Like that ensanguined [sanguine] flower. Lycidas, 106.

As the flies of a summer. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, Ed. Payne, II. 112).

Most women have no character [characters]. Pope’s Moral Essay, Ep. II. 2.

Mary Wolstonecraft. See ante, note to p. 41.

Not to speak it profanely. Hamlet, III. 2.

235. Fideliter didicisse. Ovid, Ex Ponto Epist., Lib. II. Ep. 9, 47.

237. Fiery quality. King Lear, II. 4.

The shot of accident. Othello, IV. 1.

Quip, or crank. Milton’s L’Allegro, 27.

238. Have his nothings monstered. Coriolanus, II. 2.

Teres et rotundus. ‘Fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus.’ Horace, Sat. II. 7, 86.

A friendly man will show himself friendly. Proverbs, xviii. 24. ‘A man that hath friends must show,’ etc.

Richardson. Jonathan Richardson (c. 1665–1745), author and portrait-painter, whose works on painting fired the early enthusiasm of Sir Joshua Reynolds.

239. ‘The Honey-Moon.’ Tobin’s comedy, 1805.

240. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Jeremiah, xiii. 23.

Villainous low. The Tempest, IV. 1.

Panopticon. See ante, note to p. 129.

241. The author of the year 2500. Louis SÉbastien Mercier (1740–1814). See Vol. II. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, p. 107 and note.

Servum pecus imitatorum. ‘O imitatores, servum pecus,’ etc. Horace, Ep. I. 19, 19.

From The London Magazine, April 1821, vol. III. p. 368, ‘Table Talk, IX.,’ signed T.

242. Cabbala. The oral law of the Jews.

The demure, grave-looking. ‘The grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed philosophers.’ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 142).

243. Baxter. Richard Baxter, the Nonconformist Divine (1615–1691). See vol VI. Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, p. 364.

244. Torn to tatters, to very rags. Hamlet, III. 2.

The pillar’d firmament. Comus, 598.

Note. The Spanish Inquisition. See vol. III. Political Essays, note to p. 33, and vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 156.

246. Mr. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Published in 1820. Shelley was drowned in 1822 (See footnote).

Gorgons and Hydras. Paradise Lost, II. 628.

With eye severe. As You Like It, II. 7.

When he banished the poets. The Republic, Book X.

Full of wise saws. As You Like It, II. 7.

247. Chrestomathic School. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 190.

Princes’ palaces. ‘Poor men’s cottages, princes’ palaces.’ Merchant of Venice, I. 2.

The tailors at Laputa. Gulliver’s Travels, A Voyage to Laputa, chapter 2.

249. What can we reason. Pope’s Essay on Man, I. 18.

When [where] thieves break through. S. Matthew, vi. 19.

Dyot-street, Bloomsbury-square. See vol. VI. Table Talk, Note to p. 120.

An aerie of children. Hamlet, II. 2.

A Panopticon. See ante, note to p. 129.

So work the honey-bees. King Henry V., I. 2.

Shedding [casting] a dim, religious light. Il Penseroso, 160.

Their speech bewrayeth them. S. Matthew, xxvi. 73.

250. Mankind act from calculation. Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislation, chap. xiv. § 28. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, p. 196 and note.

251. So runs [says] the bond. Merchant of Venice, IV. 1.

The author of St. Leon. Godwin’s Tale of the Sixteenth Century appeared in 1799.

The author of the Political Justice. Godwin.

Norma loquendi. Horace, De Arte Poet., 72.

252. Astolpho’s voyage. Orlando Furioso, Book XVIII.

Highest [brightest] Heaven of invention. King Henry V., Prologue.

ESSAY XXIII. ON ANTIQUITY

From The London Magazine, May 1821, Vol. III. p. 527, ‘Table Talk X.,’ signed T.

Auld Robin Gray. Believed at first to be a ‘relique.’ Lady Ann Barnard (1750–1825) acknowledged the authorship to Sir Walter Scott in 1823.

253. Lively, audible and full of vent. ‘Waking, audible and full of vent.’ Coriolanus, IV. 5.

Amadis de Gaul. A prose romance of knightly adventures of Portuguese origin (Vasco de Lobeira, d. 1403).

The seven Champions of Christendom. By Richard Johnson (1573–1659?). Published 1596–97. It was one of the books of Thomas Holcroft’s boyhood.

254. The dark rearward. Cf. ‘In the dark backward and abysm of time.’ The Tempest, I. 2.

The wars of old Assaracus. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II. IX. 56.

Triple bob-majors. A term in church-bell ringing.

Chaos and old night. Paradise Lost, I. 543.

Cimabue, Giotto, and Ghirlandaio. Giovanni Cimabue (1240–c. 1302), the first great artist of the Florentine School; Giotto di Bondone (c. 1266–1336), Cimabue’s pupil, one of the greatest of the early Italian painters; and Domenico Curradi, nicknamed Il Ghirlandajo (the garland-maker) (1449–1494).

255. The Chronicle of Brute. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto X.

The Ghost of one of the old kings of Ormus. Fulke Greville’s Alaham.

The Chiron of Achilles. Iliad, XVI. 143, and XIX. 390.

The priest in Homer. Iliad, I. 8, et seq.

Why proffer’st thou light. Troilus and Criseyde, Book III. 1461–2.

The Travels of Anacharsis. The Scythian who travelled far and wide in quest of knowledge, in the times of Solon.

Coryate’s Crudities. Hastily gobled up in Five Moneths Travells in France, etc. (1611), by Thomas Coryate (? 1577–1617).

256. When we become men. 1 Corinthians, xiii. 11.

The first time of my seeing Mrs. Siddons act. See vol. I. The Round Table, note to p. 156; Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, p. 189 and note; and Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

257. Mr. Burke’s Refections. These were published in 1790, not 1791.

Lord John Russell’s Letter. See The Times, August 5, 1820. It was an appeal to Wilberforce to use his great influence in averting the crisis caused by the appearance of the Queen.

260. Grim-visaged, comfortless despair. Gray’s Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. See also vol. VI. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, note to p. 296.

261. The glory hereafter to be revealed. Romans, viii. 18.

ESSAY XXIV. ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING
AND SPEAKING

From The London Magazine, July 1820, Vol. II. p. 22, ‘Table Talk II.,’ signed T.

262. ‘Some minds,’ etc. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book II., xxii. 4.

263. F——. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt states this was George Fletcher, who, with his brother Joseph, came up from Nottingham about 1826, and became a contributor to periodical literature.

Wart his caliver. 2 King Henry IV., III. 2.

Hear him but reason in divinity. King Henry V., I. 1. [‘Is still’]

264. Moved the very stones of Rome. Julius CÆsar, III. 2.

Fraught of aspic’s tongues. Othello, III. 3.

Wielded at will the fierce democracy. Paradise Regained, IV. 269.

Roared you in the ears of the groundlings. Cf. ‘to split the ears of the groundlings,’ Hamlet, III. 2; and Midsummer Night’s Dream, I. 2.

264. Create a soul. Milton’s Comus, 561.

265. Bottom! thou art translated! Midsummer Night’s Dream, III. 1.

Windham. William Windham (1750–1810). Secretary of State for War under Pitt, and again after Pitt’s death.

Mr. Coleridge’s Conciones ad Populum. Two addresses against Pitt, 1795, republished in Essays on his Own Times.

Mr. Thelwal’s Tribune. The Tribune ... consisting chiefly of the political lectures of J. Thelwall, taken in shorthand by W. Ramsay, and revised by the lecturer, 3 vols. 1795–6. Thelwall (1764–1834) was a lecturer on elocution as well as a reformer.

The self-same words. Macbeth, I. 3.

Those brave sublunary [translunary] things. Drayton, Elegy to Henry Reynolds, Esq.

Fire and air. Antony and Cleopatra, V. 2; and King Henry V., III. 7.

Sound and fury. Macbeth, V. 5.

266. A Commonplace, etc. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 103).

With good emphasis and discretion. Cf. ‘with good accent and good discretion,’ Hamlet, II. 2.

By most admired disorder. Macbeth, III. 4.

Lay the flattering unction. Hamlet, III. 4.

Hear a cat mew.

Not harsh and crabbed. Comus, 477.

267. A robusteous, periwig-pated fellow. Hamlet, III. 2.

Gives us pause. Hamlet, III. I.

268. He repeated the famous lines in Milton. Though these words are referred to admiringly by Burke in The Sublime and Beautiful he does not seem to have quoted them in the House of Commons. Is not Hazlitt thinking of the occasion upon which Brougham used the quotation with immense effect at the Queen’s trial, 1820? (See Greville’s Memoirs, 1899 edit., I. 40.)

What seem’d its head. Paradise Lost, II. 672.

Fell still-born. Cf. vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 65 and note.

Lord Liverpool. Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool (1770–1828), Premier of England 1812–1827.

Mr. William Ward. ? William Ward, financier (1787–1849), who was returned to Parliament as a Tory in 1826 for the city of London.

Native to [‘and endued unto’] that element. Hamlet, IV. 7.

Subdued to the [‘even to the very’] quality. Othello, I. 3.

The late Lord Chatham (1708–1778). He began life as a cornet of dragoons (See p. 269).

That Roan shall be my throne. 1 King Henry IV., II. 3.

269. He spoke [taught] as one having authority. S. Matthew, vii. 29.

270. A few termes coude [hadde] he. The Prologue, 639. But the lines are told of the Somnour not the Monk.

Will halt for it. Hamlet, II. 2.

271. Mr. Place of Charing Cross. Francis Place (1771–1854) the radical tailor.

Trampled under the hoofs. Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.

Sir Francis Burdett (1770–1844). He was the most popular politician of his day.

271. Dr. Johnson had a wish. See Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, (II. 138–9).

Sir William Curtis. The ‘father’ of the corporation of London, for which city he was M.P. for thirty-three years. He made his money in the Greenland fisheries, and then became a member of the banking firm of Robarts, Curtis and Co. (1752–1829).

The Speaker (Onslow). Arthur Onslow (1691–1768) was elected Speaker of the House of Commons in 1728 and re-elected in 1735, 1741, 1747 and 1754. He retired in 1761 with the reputation of being the firmest and most dignified holder of his office and authority.

272. Give his own little Senate laws. Pope’s Prologue to Mr. Addison’s Cato and also Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 209.

They look only at the stop-watch. Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Book III. chap. 12.

Hit the house between wind and water. See vol. IV., The Spirit of the Age, 227.

273. Servile ministers. King Lear, III. 2.

Jack Davies. See vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 89.

Note. Making the worse appear the better reason. Paradise Lost, II. 113.

274. An indifferent History of James II. Charles James Fox’s A History of the early Part of the Reign of James the Second was published by Lord Holland in 1808.

A colleague of Lord Grenville. Fox was Foreign Secretary in the ‘Broad-bottomed’ or ‘All the Talents’ ministry, formed by Lord Grenville on the death of Pitt in 1806.

Like proud seas under him. Two Noble Kinsmen, II. 1.

It was in the Louvre. In 1802. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 91, and vol. III. of the present edition, The Eloquence of the British Senate, p. 421.

Guercino. Gianfrancesco Barbieri or Guercino da Cento, because of his squint (1590–1666), of Bologna.

Domenichino. Domenicho Zampieri (1581–1641), also of Bologna.

275. Does he wind into a subject like a serpent? Boswell’s Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill (II. 260).

Letter to a Noble Lord. Burke died two years after the publication of his Letter, his only important further writing being the Letters on a Regicide Peace, 1796.

Note. Tom Paine. Thomas Paine (1737–1809) the deist.

276. The Leviathan. A Letter to a Noble Lord (Bohn, V. 129).

The AbbÉ Sieyes’s pigeon-holes. Ibid., p. 142.

The proud keep of Windsor. Ibid., p. 137.

Shut the gates of genius [mercy] on mankind. Gray’s Elegy, 17.

To leave no rubs or botches. Macbeth, III. 1.

277. Learn to write slow. Cf.

Byron’s ‘Advice to the Messrs. H—— and H—— to preach slow,’ 8. And also

The phrase of Ancient Pistol. 2 King Henry IV., and King Henry V.

278. Fancies and good nights. 2 King Henry IV., III. 2.

Dull as the lake that slumbers. Goldsmith, The Traveller, 312.

‘Made fierce with dark keeping.’ Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book I., iv. 7.

279. Became his glittering bride. Wordsworth, The Excursion, III. 735–6.

Dilettanti Society. An association founded in 1734 to promote the study of antique art in England.

Note. Stentor. Iliad. V. 783.

Note. Political House that Jack Built. A squib of William Hone’s, published in 1819.

Note. Mr. C. Wynne. Charles Watkin Williams Wynne (1775–1850). He was proposed for Speaker June 2, 1817, but Manners-Sutton was preferred to him. Canning said that the only objection to him was that ‘one would be sometimes tempted to say Mr. Squeaker,’ alluding to his voice. See vol. III. Political Essays, note to p. 213.

ESSAY XXV. ON A PORTRAIT OF AN ENGLISH LADY,
BY VANDYKE

280. Where all is conscience. Chaucer’s Prologue, 150.

Last recesses of the mind. Dryden, Translation of Second Satire of Persius, line 133.

282. This hand of yours requires. Othello, III. 4. [‘Sweating devil.’]

283. Qualified ... very craftily. Othello, II. 3.

Mind’s eye. Hamlet, I. 2.

284. Trod the primrose path. Hamlet, I. 3.

285. Stupidly good. Paradise Lost, IX. 465.

An eye to threaten and command. Hamlet, III. 4.

287. Leave stings. Cf.

290. While by the power. Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey.

Come then, the colours and the ground prepare. Pope, Moral Essays, Ep. II.

292. The whole gallery at Fonthill. ‘Vathek’ Beckford’s place. See the volume of Hazlitt’s writings on art.

The taste of the great in pictures. The rest of the essay from this point appeared in Hazlitt’s Commonplaces, taken from The Examiner, 1823.

Note. Day’s garish eye. Il Penseroso, 141.

293. Mr. Holwell Carr. William Holwell Carr (1758–1830), art connoisseur. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1797–1820 as an honorary exhibitor.

Sir George Beaumont. Sir George Howard Beaumont, Bart. (1753–1827), amateur painter and patron of artists.

Bosoms and businesses of men. Bacon, Dedication to Essays.

Trifles light as air. Othello, III. 3.

Tintoret. Jacopo Robusti or Tintoretto (from his father’s trade, dyeing), (1518–1594), one of Ruskin’s ‘five supreme painters.’

ESSAY XXVI. ON NOVELTY AND FAMILIARITY

From The New Monthly Magazine, vol. XIII., No. 50, 1825, with additions.

294. Custom hath made it in him. Hamlet, V. 1.

295. Give us pause. Hamlet, III. 1.

297. Send the hearers weeping. King Richard II., V. 1.

298. They best can paint them. Pope’s Eloisa and Abelard.

Talma. FranÇois Joseph Talma (1763–1826). See ante, p. 83.

299. ‘The Gamester.’ By Edward Moore (1753).

300. Die of an encore in operatic pain. ‘Die of a rose in aromatic pain.’ Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. I. 200.

L. ... M. These blanks are filled in ‘Liston’ and ‘Mathews’ by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.

Lamb’s wool. A beverage of apple juice and spiced ale.

Rosinante and Dapple. Don Quixote’s steed and Sancho Panza’s donkey.

There is no living with them. Martial, Epigrams, Bk. XII. Ep. 70. See Addison’s Spectator, No. 68.

The late Mr. Kemble ... Richard III. Macbeth and King Richard III., an answer to [Whately’s] Remarks on some of the Characters of Shakespeare (1817). See vol. I. Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, note to p. 171. Kemble died in 1823.

301. The silver-voiced Anna. Cf. J. P. Kemble’s Fugitive Pieces, York, 1780, the ‘Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Inchbald’s Husband,’ lines 14, 15,

Tamerlane. Rowe’s tragedy (1702). Mrs. Siddons acted in it at Drury Lane, Feb. 3, 1797.

Alexander the Great. The second title of Lee’s tragedy, The Rival Queens (1678).

302. Hope travels through [‘when we die’]. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. II. 273.

The dregs of life. Dryden, Aureng-zebe, IV. 1.

Compacted of imagination. Midsummer Night’s Dream, V. 1. ‘Of imagination all compact.’

Reason panders will. Hamlet, III. 4.

303. Dallied with the innocence of love. Twelfth Night, II. 4.

The story of Federigo Alberigi. Boccaccio, Decameron (Fifth Day, Novel IX.).

Those notable discoveries that Pope was a poet. See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 259; vol. V. Lectures on the English Poets, pp. 69–71; and vol. VI. Table Talk, notes to pp. 210 and 223. See also Hazlitt’s Essay ‘On the Question whether Pope was a Poet’ in The New Scots Magazine, February 1818.

Her Simple Story. Elizabeth Inchbald’s (1753–1821) A Simple Story was published in 1791. Cf. a letter of Hazlitt’s to Miss Stoddart, Memoirs of W. Hazlitt, I. 153.

304. Simple movement of her finger. Les Confessions, Partie I. Liv. II.

The letter in the New Eloise. PremiÈre Partie, Lettre XXIII.

Glassy essence. Measure for Measure, II. 2.

Love’s golden rigol. 2 King Henry IV., IV. 4.

And bade the lovely scenes. Collins, Ode on the Passions, 32.

305. Mr. Kean stamped himself the first night in Shylock. See vol. I. Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, note to p. 298.

Mrs. Siddons did not succeed the first time. See vol. I. The Round Table, note to p. 156.

306. Old Dr. Chauncey. Charles Chauncey, M.D., F.S.A. (1706–1777).

Goodman’s Fields ... Richard. See vol. I. Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, note to p. 298.

Queen Katherine. In Shakespeare’s King Henry VIII.

Belvidera. In Otway’s Venice Preserved (1682).

306. Jane Shore. In N. Rowe’s tragedy (1713).

Calista. In N. Rowe’s The Fair Penitent (1703).

The Mourning Bride. Congreve’s tragedy (1697).

When I first came from Bath. Mrs. Siddons was a member of the Cheltenham Company when she was recommended to the notice of Garrick, and then obtained an engagement at Drury Lane (1775).

Lord Byron says. See Medwin, Conversations of Lord Byron, 1824 (p. 106).

Sir Isaac Newton was not twenty. He seems to have been twenty-four. See Voltaire’s Lettres sur les Anglais.

Harvey ... at eighteen. The first lectures in which he set forth his views were delivered in 1616, in his 38th year.

Berkeley ... Essay on Vision. Bishop Berkeley’s Essay towards a New Theory of Vision was published in 1709. He was born in 1685.

Hartley’s great principle. David Hartley’s (1705–1757) great work, Observations on Man (1749), was begun when he was about twenty-five.

Hume ... Treatise on Human Nature. David Hume’s (1711–1776) Treatise was published in 1739.

Galileo. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was appointed mathematical professor at Pisa when he was twenty-four.

Leibnitz. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646–1716). He was refused a Doctor’s Degree at Leipzig in his twentieth year on the ground of his youth.

Euler. Leonard Euler (1707–1783), of Basel. At the age of nineteen he was second in a competition projected by the Paris Academy for the best treatise on the masting of ships.

307. With heedless haste. ‘With wanton heed and giddy cunning.’ L’Allegro, 141.

308. Like the sweet south. Twelfth Night, I. 1.

Like poppies spread [‘the snow falls’]. Burns, Tam o’ Shanter.

Mandeville. Bernard Mandeville (1670?–1733), author of The Fable of the Bees (1714).

310. Defoe’s romance: i.e., Robinson Crusoe.

Round which, with tendrils. Wordsworth, Personal Talk, III.

ESSAY XXVII. ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS

From The New Monthly Magazine, vol. XIII., No. 49, 1825, with additions.

311. Marmontel. Jean FranÇois Marmontel (1723–1799), author of the Contes Moraux (1761).

Crebillon. Prosper Jolyot de CrÉbillon (1674–1762), dramatic poet.

Marivaux. Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688–1763), author of Marianne (1731–1741), a romance and many comedies. Voltaire said he knew all the bye-paths of the human heart, but not the highway.

La Harpe. Jean FranÇois de la Harpe (1739–1803), whose works have acted as a standard of literary criticism.

To this obscure and wild. Paradise Lost, XI. 284.

On that fair fountain. Hamlet, III. 4.

Note. A splendid edition of Goldsmith. Washington Irving edited a 4–volume edition of The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith in 1825 (Paris).

312. The proper study of the French. ‘The proper study of mankind is man,’ Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. II.

St. Evremont. Charles Marguetel de Saint-Denis Seigneur de Saint-Evremond (1613–1703), one of the most brilliant of French satirists. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

312. Note. What’s he that wishes for more men from England. King Henry V., IV. 3.

313. Marlowe’s. Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (1604).

Captain Medwin or his Lordship must have made a mistake. See Conversations of Lord Byron, p. 105.

Jonson’s ‘Every Man in his Humour.’ Acted 1596.

Massinger’s ‘A new Way to Pay old Debts.’ (1633.)

Ford’s ... ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.’ Printed 1633.

Grows with our growth. Pope’s Essay on Man, Epistle II. 136.

314. Mr. Shee. Sir Martin Archer Shee (1770–1850), portrait painter from the age of 16 onwards. He was knighted upon being made President of the Royal Academy in 1830.

Burnt the Memoirs. Moore sold the Byron Memoirs to Murray, November 1821, and in May 1824 rebought and burned them.

Note. Tales of the Crusaders, i.e. The Betrothed and the Talisman, published in 1825.

315. Leave all and follow it. Cf. S. Matthew, xix. 21.

De omne scibile et quibusdam aliis. See vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 214.

316. Selden’s notes on Drayton’s Poly-Olbion. ‘The learned John Selden’ edited Drayton’s work in the folio of 1613–22.

Stowe. See ante, note to p. 229.

Holinshed. See ante, note to p. 229.

Camden. William Camden (1551–1623), whose Britannia was published in 1586.

Saxo-Grammaticus. The greatest of the early Danish chroniclers (fl. end of 12th century).

Dugdale. Sir William Dugdale (1605–1686), antiquarian, whose Monasticon Anglicanum was published 1655–1673.

Job Orton, (1717–1783). His reputation rests on his Letters rather than on his preaching.

317. Caryl’s ‘Commentaries upon Job.’ Probably the folio edition of 1676–7 of An Exposition with Practical Observations on the Book of Job. By Joseph Caryl, 2 vols.; the 1648–1666 quarto edition was in 12 vols.

The Cabbala. See ante, note to p. 242.

Warton. Thomas Warton (1728–1790), author of The History of English Poetry (1774–1781). The same sonnet is quoted in vol. V. Lectures on the English Poets, p. 120.

318. Della-Cruscan. See vol. V. Lectures on the English Poets, note to p. 148.

Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains. Wordsworth’s Laodamia.

Earth destroys those raptures. Ibid.

319. Even to the crack of doom. Macbeth, IV. 1.

Poor Peter Peebles. The litigious drunkard in Redgauntlet.

The last and almost worst of them. Redgauntlet was published in 1824.

Nanty Ewart. Captain of the smuggler’s brig in Redgauntlet.

And her whose foot. Redgauntlet, Book II. chap. viii.

Old true-penny. Cf. ‘Art thou there, true-penny?’ etc. Hamlet, I. 5.

The catch that blind Willie and his wife, etc. Redgauntlet, Letter X.

320. Elysian beauty, melancholy grace. Wordsworth’s Laodamia.

At the birth of nature. Paradise Lost, VII. 102.

Pawing to get free. Paradise Lost, VII. 464.

Whose body nature was. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. I. 268 [‘and God the soul’]

Pym, Hampden, Sydney. John Pym (b. 1584), one of the ‘five members’; John Hampden (1594–1643), the opponent of ship-money; and Algernon Sidney (1622–1682), executed for his share in the Rye-house Plot.

321. Mr. Southey’s Book of the Church. Published 1824.

Pure well of English undefiled. ‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled’ The Faerie Queene, IV. ii. 32.

Baxter. See ante, note to p. 243.

Calamy’s Non-Conformist’s Memorial. See vol. III. Political Essays, note to p. 265.

Note. The author of Virginius. James Sheridan Knowles (1784–1862). Macready produced Virginius, his best play, in 1820, at Covent Garden, after it had appeared in the provinces.

322. Mr. Irvine. Edward Irving.

Prick-eared. Cf. ‘prick-eared cur of Iceland,’ King Henry V., II. 1. The word was commonly applied to Roundheads because of the tight black skull-cap drawn over the head, which left the ears exposed.

Sir J. Suckling. (1609–1641.)

Wycherley, Congreve, Rochester, and Waller. See vol. V. Lectures on the English Poets and Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.

323. Mr. Tracey’s ‘Ideologie.’ Antoine Louis Claude Comte Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836), whose ÉlÉmens d’ IdÉologie was published in 1817–1818.

ESSAY XXVIII. MADAME PASTA AND MADEMOISELLE MARS

From the New Monthly Magazine, vol. XIII. No. 49, 1825.

324. Mademoiselle Mars. Anne FranÇoise Boutet-Monvel (1779–1847), the clever impersonator of MoliÈre’s heroines at the ThÉÂtre FranÇais. Her father, Moutet, was an actor, and her mother, Mars, an actress.

Madame Pasta. Giuditta Pasta, a Jewish opera-singer of Milanese birth (1798–1865). Her greatest triumphs were in Paris and London between 1825 and 1833.

325. Nina. An Italian opera, produced at Naples, May 1787, and played at the King’s Theatre, London, May 26, 1825, with Pasta as ‘Nina.’

326. Shepherdess. The Winter’s Tale, IV. 3.

327. Though that their art be nature. ‘Though that his joy be joy, etc.’ Othello, I. 1.

328. Schiller’s Robbers. 1781.

Klopstock’s Messiah. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s (1724–1803) poem was published in 1748–1773.

329. Those noble outlines ... at Hampton Court. The Cartoons of Raphael.

Chantry. See ante, note to p. 89.

Guiderius and Arviragus. Cymbeline, III. 6, and IV. 2.

330. Note. Valeria. A comedy of Scribe’s, produced in 1822 with Mlle. Mars in the title-rÔle.

331. Girodet. Anne Louis Girodet-De-Roussy-Trioson, French historical painter and writer (1767–1824), a pupil of David.

Monsieur Chateaubriand. FranÇois RenÉ, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), of noble Breton extraction, Royalist and writer of perfect prose.

333. Merrimee. J. F. L. MÉrimÉe. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 87, 89. See also vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 319.

334. Foregone conclusion. Othello, III. 3.

336. The still small voice is wanting. 1 Kings xix. 12.

337. Four lagging winters. King Richard II., I. 3. [‘End in a word.’]

Come home to the bosoms. Bacon, Dedication to Essays.

The perilous stuff. Macbeth, V. 3.

Give sorrow words. Macbeth, IV. 3.

338. Gabble most brutishly. The Tempest, I. 2.

339. Sailing with supreme dominion. Gray, Progress of Poesy, III. 3.

David Ritchie. See ante, note to p. 207.

The Maid and the Magpye. See vol. VIII. A View of the English Stage, p. 244.

Mrs. Inchbald’s ‘Nature and Art.’ Published 1796.

340. O’er informing power. Cf. ‘And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.’ Dryden, Absolom and Achitophel, I. 158.

341. Globose. Cf. Paradise Lost, V. 753 and VII. 357.

A Dukedom to a beggarly denier. King Richard III., I. 2.

The little dogs and all. King Lear, III. 6.

Chronicle of the line of Brute. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Book II. canto X.

342. Lay my head to the East. ‘Na, na! Not that way, the feet to the east.’ Guy Mannering, chap. XV.

Nothing but his unkind daughters. King Lear, III. 4.

By making Madge Wildfire ascribe. The Heart of Midlothian, ? vol. II. chap. v. and vi.

They are old like him. Cf. King Lear, II. 4.

The earth hath bubbles. Macbeth, I. 3.

And enjoin’d silence.

And then they melted into thin air.

But cf. The Tempest, IV. 1.

343. The geese of Micklestane Muir. The Black Dwarf, chap. ii.

Five editions deep in Captain Medwin’s Conversations. Two editions of Captain Thomas Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron, noted during a Residence with his Lordship at Pisa in the years 1821 and 1822, appeared in 1824, and editions followed in Paris, New York and Germany.

There’s magic in the web. Othello, III. 4.

All appliances and means to boot. 2 King Henry IV., III. 1.

Sees Helen’s beauty. Midsummer Night’s Dream, V. 1.

’Tis common. Othello, III. 3.

344. Not a jot. Ibid.

344. By yon marble heaven. Othello, III. 3.

Like the Propontic. Ibid.

The dialogue between Hubert and Arthur. King John, IV. 1.

That between Brutus and Cassius. Julius CÆsar, I. 2.

Bertram. In Guy Mannering.

ESSAY XXX. ON DEPTH AND SUPERFICIALITY

347. A great but useless thinker. ? Coleridge.

Dr. Spurzheim. See ante, note to p. 17.

348. Spin round on its soft axle. ‘Spinning sleeps on her soft axle,’ Paradise Lost, VIII. 165.

350. Compunctious visitings of nature. Macbeth, I. 5.

The ‘wicked’ Lord Lyttleton. Thomas, Lord Lyttelton (1744–1779), renowned for his profligacy. He seems to have died three days after a nocturnal warning. See Chambers’s Book of Days, II. 625.

Mother Brownrigg. Elizabeth Brownrigg, who was executed in 1767 for whipping an apprentice to death. See vol. III. Political Essays, notes to pp. 220 and 238.

351. Credo quia impossibile est. A phrase of Tertullian’s.

353. Sweet oblivious antidote. Macbeth, V. 3.

354. Unquenchable fire. S. Mark, ix. 44.

Note. Search’s ‘Light of Nature Pursued.’ See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 371.

ESSAY XXXI. ON RESPECTABLE PEOPLE

362. Buys golden opinions. Macbeth, I. 7.

The learned pate ducks to the golden fool. Timon of Athens, IV. 3.

Otway was left to starve. Thomas Otway, one of the greatest of English tragedians, was choked by eating too ravenously bread bought after a long fast.

Spenser, kept waiting. See Fuller’s Worthies. The story is that Spenser petitioned Elizabeth thus:—

363. His favourite poet Butler. Samuel Butler (1612–1680). He was buried in St. Paul’s Churchyard, Covent Garden, at the expense of his friend William Longueville of the Temple.

The time gives evidence of it. See ante, note to p. 136.

Parson Adams drinking his ale. Joseph Andrews, Book I. 2.

Peter Pounce. In Joseph Andrews.

The character of Captain Blifil. Tom Jones, Book II. 9.

Pope somewhere exclaims. [‘Or slaves or cowards’]. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. IV. 215.

364. All honourable men. Julius CÆsar, III. 2.

365. It is michin-malico. Hamlet, III. 2.

With the Levite, that ‘he is not one of those.’ Cf. the story of the Pharisee, St. Luke, xviii. 2.

The snow-falls in the river. Burns’ Tam o’ Shanter. Cf. ante, note to P. 308.

The mighty dead. Thomson’s Seasons, Winter, 431.

366. So shall their anticipation. Hamlet, II. 2.

The gaze and shew [‘show and gaze’] of the time. Macbeth, V. 7.

Elysian beauty. Wordsworth’s Laodamia.

367. This, this is the unkindest cut of all. Julius CÆsar, III. 2.

Mr. Chantry. See ante, note to p. 89.

It will never do. See vol. III. Political Essays, note to p. 361.

Rash judgments. Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey (Lyrical Ballads, 1798).

368. But ’tis the fall. Pope, Epilogue to Satires, I. 143.

Madame Guyon. Jeanne Marie BouviÈres de la Mothe Guyon, the French Quietist (1648–1717).

Canova’s marble. See ante, note to p. 113.

Guido’s canvas. Guido Reni, of the school of Bologna (1575–1642).

Thomas Little. Thomas Moore’s (1779–1852) early erotic verses appeared (1801) as the ‘Poetical Works of the late Thomas Little.’

Now in glimmer. Coleridge’s Christabel, 169.

369. From Paraclete’s white walls. Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, 348.

Swan-like end. Merchant of Venice, III. 2.

’Tis my vice [‘It is my nature’s plague’] to spy into abuses. Othello, III. 3.

370. Can the Ethiopian change his skin? Jeremiah, xiii. 23.

Married to immortal verse. L’Allegro, 137.

Thoughts that glow [breathe]. Gray, The Progress of Poesy, III. 3.

But his soul is fair. Thomson, Castle of Indolence, II. 30.

371. Give us reason with his rhyme. See ante, note to p. 362.

His dear Charmettes. Where Rousseau’s happiest years were spent with Madame de Warens.

I care not, Fortune. Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, canto II. 3.

Books, dreams [dreams, books]. Wordsworth, Personal Talk, [will grow].

Note. Ah! voila de la pervenche. Rousseau’s Confessions, part I. book VI.

Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Published in 1777.

373. A witchery in the soft blue sky. Wordsworth’s Peter Bell, part I. 15.

Not by the sufferance of supernal power. Paradise Lost, I. 241.

Squeaked and gibbered in our streets. Hamlet, I. 1.

In his Treatise of Government. Published in 1689–1690.

374. Blackstone and De Lolme. Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780), whose Commentaries on the Laws of England were published in 1765–1769, and John Louis Delolme, a Genevan (1740–1806), whose work on The Constitution of England was published in French in 1771, and in English four years later.

The right divine of kings. Pope, The Dunciad, IV. 188.

Age of chivalry. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

Mr. Ricardo. David Ricardo (1772–1823), stockbroker and political economist.

With the laurel wreath. Southey was made poet-laureate in 1813.

374. Carnage as ‘God’s Daughter.’ See vol. I. Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, note to p. 214.

Written the Friend. Coleridge’s Series of Essays (1809–1810), ‘to aid in the formation of fixed principles in politics, morals and religion.’

Like a devilish engine. Paradise Lost, IV. 17.

With looks commercing. Il Penseroso, 39.

375. Doth part the flux. As You Like It, II. 1.

The powers that be. Romans, xiii. 1.

Chop-fallen. Hamlet, V. 1.

For the good of the country. Cf. ‘’Twas for the good of my country that I should be abroad.’ Farquhar, The Beaux’ Stratagem, III. 2.

376. The Bills of Mortality. Weekly burial reports, first supplied by parish clerks in 1592–3.

Mr. Theodore Hook will cry ‘Cockney.’ See vol. VI. Table Talk, note to p. 98.

One-eyed M——. Probably John Murray, who had lost the sight of one eye through an accident.

377. When they censure the age. The Beggar’s Opera, Air XII.

Done the State some service. Othello, V. 2.

378. Like poor Morgan. Roderick Random, chap. xxxiv.

Come betwixt the wind and their nobility. 1 King Henry IV., I. 3.

The Liberal. The quarterly review which lasted for four numbers (1822–3). See vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, the Essay on Lord Byron, and notes to pp. 258 and 359.

The John Bull. Theodore Hook’s Tory paper.

Mr. Jerdan. William Jerdan (1782–1869), editor of the Tory Sun (1813–17), and then identified for thirty-three years with the Literary Gazette.

The Examiner-Officer. ? a misprint for Examiner Office.

379. Mr. Shelley’s father. Hobhouse’s father, Sir Benjamin, was made a baronet in 1812. The Shelley baronets of Castle Goring, Sussex, were created in 1806.

Illustrations of Childe Harold. Historical Illustrations of the fourth canto of Childe Harold; containing Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome, and an Essay on Italian Literature (1818).

The member for Westminster. Hobhouse was elected in 1820 by a large majority.

The Essay on the Spirit of Monarchy. Hazlitt’s essay was published in the second number of The Liberal.

This gentleman wrote off to Lord Byron. See Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), VI. 167. Cf. vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, p. 359 and note.

His Vision of Judgment. Byron’s poem was published in No. 1 of The Liberal.

380. I had spoken against Lalla Rookh. Published in 1817. See vol. V. Lectures on English Poets, p. 152.

‘Fudge Family.’ Published in 1818.

Hulling on the flood. Paradise Lost, XI. 840.

Whistle me down the wind. Othello, III. 3.

Proved haggard. Ibid.

Tricksy. Cf. ‘My tricksy spirit.’ The Tempest, V. 1.

To view with scornful. Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 199–200.

381. The account of the ‘Characters of Shakespear’s Plays.’ See vol. I. Bibliographical Note on p. 166.

381. The Gods ... had made me poetical. As You Like It, III. 3.

Not a true thing. Ibid.

The first thing the Westminster Review did. See ante, note to p. 183. In the very first number (Jan. 1824), the article being written by James Mill, assisted by his son John Stuart Mill. See Sir Leslie Stephen’s The English Utilitarians, vol. III. p. 18.

382. As Mr. Place lost Mr. Hobhouse his first election. Hobhouse unsuccessfully contested Westminster as an advanced Liberal in 1818.

Note. But not till then. For this remark of Porson’s see vol. VII., Lectures on the English Comic Writers, p. 17.

AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN ACTION

Hazlitt had made the ‘discovery’ set forth in this essay and had begun to write the essay itself as early as 1798, when he had his memorable meeting with Coleridge. See the essay ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’ He did not, however, succeed in making himself understood by the poet, and when the book came to be published, its sale was slow and small, though Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Memoirs, I. 112) relates that according to a tradition in the family it won the admiration of Mr. Scarlett, afterwards Lord Abinger. Hazlitt himself was proud of the essay, and continually refers to it in his later writings. See especially A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I. pp. 403 et seq., where he explains the nature of the argument. Cf. also the essay on ‘Self-Love’ and the fragments of lectures on English Philosophy first published in Literary Remains. The variations made in the second edition from marginal notes in the author’s copy (see Bibliographical Note) are few and trifling.

395. An airy, notional good. Cf.

398. Note. Usher. James Usher’s (1720–1772) An Introduction to the Theory of the Human Mind, was published in 1771.

409. Note. ‘Eros, thou yet behold’st me,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14.

410. Note. Rousseau ... not a Frenchman. Rousseau was born at Geneva, whither his ancestors had removed from Paris as far back as 1529.

415. Note. Berkeley’s Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, published in 1709.

427. Junius has remarked, etc. In his letter to George III. (Dec. 19, 1769).

429. ‘Short-lived pleasure,’ etc. Cf.

Note. See Preface to The Lyrical Ballads (2nd edition, 1801), reprinted with variations in the succeeding editions of the poet’s works. (Poetical Works, ed. T. Hutchinson, p. 940.)

430. To add, etc. This sentence, which seems obscure, should perhaps begin ‘I may add that,’ etc.

The Essay on the Inequality of Mankind. Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inÉgalitÉ parmi les hommes, 1755.

‘Faithful remembrancer.’ Cowper, On the Receipt of My Mother’s Picture, 11.

‘His high endeavour,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, V. 901.

The System of Nature. Hazlitt wrongly attributes to Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud (1675–1760) the SystÈme de la Nature of Baron d’Holbach (1723–1789), published in 1770.

REMARKS ON THE SYSTEMS OF HARTLEY AND HELVETIUS

434. Hartley. David Hartley (1705–1757), whose Observations on Man, containing his famous principle of the Association of Ideas, appeared in 1749.

Helvetius. Claude Adrien HelvÉtius (1715–1771), whose famous work De L’Esprit appeared in 1758.

Note. Butler in the Preface to his Sermons. The Fifteen Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel were published in 1726.

441. As has been explained, etc. An imperfect sentence. Probably Hazlitt wrote, ‘This has been explained,’ etc.

443. Note. Sir Kenelm Digby’s (1603–1665) Observations upon Religio Medici were published in 1643, and were afterwards frequently reprinted in editions of that work.

446. Note. Published in 1780.

447. Mr. Mac-Intosh. Sir James Mackintosh’s lectures on ‘The Law of Nature and Nations’ were delivered at Lincoln’s Inn Hall in 1799.

450. ‘In subduing,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

453. ‘Sentir est penser.’ This well-known aphorism of the Sensational School is attributed to Destutt de Tracy. See ante, note to p. 323.

More drossy and divisible. Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, I. 319.

454. Note. Condillac. Etienne de Condillac (1715–1780), whose TraitÉ des Sensations appeared in 1754.

Note. The book De l’Esprit. See ante, note to p. 434.

Note. ‘Me voici,’ etc. Émile, Liv. IV. (Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard).

457. ‘Discourse of reason.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene II.

464. ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments.’ Published in 1759.

465. Don Quixote. See Part I., Book III., chaps. 25 and 26.

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23. Hence the peculiar horror of cannibalism from the stronger sympathy with our own sensations, and the greater violence that is done to it by the sacrilegious use of what once possessed human life and feeling.