LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS

These Lectures were delivered at the Surrey Institution, in Blackfriars Road, in 1818, after the completion of the course on the English Poets (see vol. V.). Some particulars as to their delivery will be found in Talfourd’s edition of Lamb’s Letters (see Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s reprint, Bohn, i. 38 et seq.), and in Patmore’s My Friends and Acquaintance. See also Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Four Generations of a Literary Family (vol. I. pp. 121-2), where the opinions of Beckford and Thackeray are referred to. In the third edition of the Lectures (see Bibliographical Note) several passages ‘collected by the author, apparently with a view to a reprint of the volume,’ were interpolated. Two of these passages are taken from a long letter (published in full in the Appendix to these notes) which Hazlitt contributed to The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 15, 1813. The rest are taken from prefatory notices which he contributed to William Oxberry’s The New English Drama (20 vols. 1818-1825), and are printed in the following notes.

LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY

PAGE

8.

The Tale of Slaukenbergius. Tristram Shandy, vol. IV.

9.

‘There is something in the misfortunes,’ etc. Rochefoucault, Maximes et RÉflexions Morales, CCXLI.

‘They were talking,’ etc. Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem, Act III. Sc. 1.

Lord Foppington. In The Relapse of Vanbrugh. See post, p. 82.

10.

Aretine laughed himself to death, etc. The story is that while laughing at the jest Aretine fell from a stool and was killed.

Sir Thomas More jested, etc. More bade the executioner stay till he had put aside his beard, ‘for that,’ he said, ‘had never committed treason.’

Rabelais and Wycherley. ‘When Rabelais,’ says Bacon (Apophthegms), ‘the great jester of France, lay on his death-bed, and they gave him the extreme unction, a familiar friend came to him afterwards, and asked him how he did? Rabelais answered, “Even going my journey, they have greased my boots already.”’ But his last words, uttered ‘avec un Éclat de rire,’ were: ‘Tirez le rideau, la farce est jouÉe.’ It is said that Wycherley, on the night before he died, made his young wife promise that she would never marry an old man again. See a letter from Pope to Blount, Jan. 21, 1715-6 (Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, VI. 366). Pope, after telling the story, adds: ‘I cannot help remarking that sickness, which often destroys both wit and wisdom, yet seldom has power to remove that talent which we call humour.’

The dialogue between Aimwell and Gibbet. The Beaux’ Stratagem, Act III. Sc. 2.

Mr. Emery’s Robert Tyke. In Thomas Morton’s School of Reform (1805). Cf. post, p. 391.

11.

The Liar. By Samuel Foote (1762).

The Busy Body. By Susannah Centlivre (1709).

The history of hobby-horses. See Tristram Shandy, vol. I. especially chaps. XXIV. and XXV.

‘Ever lifted leg.’ Cf. ‘A better never lifted leg.’ Tam o’ Shanter, 80.

12.

Malvolio’s punishment, etc. Twelfth Night, Act IV. Sc. 2.

Christopher’s Sly’s drunken transformation. The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Sc. 2.

Parson Adams’s fall, etc. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. 7, Book IV. Chap. 14, and Book II. Chap. 12.

Baltimore House. In what is now Russell Square.

14.

The author of the Ancient Mariner. Cf. a passage in the essay ‘On Dreams’ (Plain Speaker, vol. VII. pp. 23-24).

Bishop Atterbury. See Pope’s Works (ed. Elwin and Courthope), IX. 21-4. As Mr. Austin Dobson, however, points out, it is not clear that the Arabian Nights are referred to. Atterbury speaks of ‘Petit de la Croix’ as ‘the pretended author’ of the tales, from which it would appear that the tales he found so hard to read were not the Arabian Nights, but the Contes Persans of Petit de la Croix, a translation of which Ambrose Philips had published in 1709.

‘Favours secret,’ etc. Burns, Tam o’ Shanter, 48.

‘The soldiers,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

Horner, etc. Horner, in Wycherley’s The Country Wife; Millamant, in Congreve’s The Way of the World; Tattle and Miss Prue, in Congreve’s Love for Love; Archer and Cherry, in Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem; Mrs. Amlet, in Vanbrugh’s The Confederacy (see Act III. Sc. 1); Valentine and Angelica, in Love for Love; Miss Peggy, in Garrick’s The Country Girl, adapted from The Country Wife; Anne Page, in The Merry Wives of Windsor (See Act III. Sc. 1).

15.

‘The age of comedy,’ etc. An adaptation of Burke’s famous ‘But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.’ (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89.)

‘Accept a miracle,’ etc. By the poet Young. See Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 378.

16.

‘The sun had long since,’ etc. Hudibras, Part II., Canto II. 29-38.

‘By this the northern waggoner,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I., Canto II. St. 1.

‘At last,’ etc. Ibid. Book I., Canto V. St. 2.

17.

‘But now a sport,’ etc. Hudibras, Part I., Canto I. 675-688.

Mr. Sheridan’s description, etc. In his speech on the Definitive Treaty of Peace, May 14, 1802.

‘The sarcastic reply of Porson.’ According to Rogers (Dyce, Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, p. 330), the ‘not till then’ was the comment of Byron on a remark of Porson’s (Porsoniana) that ‘Madoc will be read, when Homer and Virgil are forgotten.’

18.

‘Compound for sins,’ etc. Hudibras, Part I., Canto I., 215-216.

‘There’s but the twinkling,’ etc. Ibid. Part II., Canto III., 957-964.

‘Now night descending,’ etc. The Dunciad, I. 89-90.

19.

Harris. James Harris (1709-1780), author of Hermes, or a Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar (1751).

20.

‘A foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Comes in such,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘Soul-killing lies,’ etc. Lamb, John Woodvil, Act II.

21.

‘The instance might be painful,’ etc. Letters of Junius, Letter XLIX.

‘And ever,’ etc. L’Allegro, 135-6.

The reply of the author, etc. This was Richard Owen Cambridge (1717-1802), contributor to Edward Moore’s The World (1753-1756).

‘Full of sound and fury,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘For thin partitions,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 164.

Mr. Curran. Curran had died on October 14, 1817.

22.

HÆret lateri, etc. Æneid, IV. 73.

The Duke of Buckingham’s saying. ‘And give me leave to tell your lordships, by the way, that statutes are not like women, for they are not one jot the worse for being old.’ Speech on the Dissolution of Parliament, 1676. The speech was included by Hazlitt in his Eloquence of the British Senate. See vol. III. p. 399.

Mr. Addison, indeed, etc. The Spectator, No. 61.

Mandrake. In Farquhar’s The Twin Rivals, Act II. Sc. 2.

Sir Hugh Evans. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 1.

23.

‘From the sublime,’ etc. ‘Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.’ Attributed to Napoleon. Thomas Paine had, however, said the same thing in his Age of Reason, Part II.

24.

Mr. Canning’s Court Parodies, etc. In the Anti-Jacobin (1797-1798). Southey was the victim of two of the best known of these parodies, the Inscription for the door of the Cell in Newgate where Mrs. Brownrigg, the Prentice-cide, was confined previous to her execution, and The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.

The Rejected Addresses. By James and Horace Smith, published in 1812. The parody of Crabbe was by James Smith.

Lear and the Fool. The references in this paragraph are to King Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘’Tis with our judgments,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 9-10.

25.

‘He is the cause,’ etc. Cf. ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act I. Sc. 2.

‘That perilous stuff,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Imitate humanity,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

26.

Barrow’s celebrated description. See Isaac Barrow’s (1630-77) sermon ‘Against Foolish Talking and Jesting.’

27.

‘Who did essay,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto VI., St. 7.

28.

Barnaby Brittle. See post, note to p. 481.

29.

The strictures of Rousseau. Lettre À M. D’Alembert. Petits Chefs-d’oeuvre (ed. Firmin-Didot), pp. 405 et seq.

An exquisite ... defence. See La Critique de l’École des Femmes, Sc. 6.

‘An equal want,’ etc. ‘But equally a want of books and men.’ Wordsworth, Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty, XV., Sonnet beginning ‘Great men have been among us; hands that penned,’ etc.

LECTURE II. ON SHAKSPEARE AND BEN JONSON

30.

Dr. Johnson thought, etc. See his Preface to Shakespeare (Works, Oxford, 1825, vol. V. p. 113).

‘Smit with the love of sacred song.’ Paradise Lost, III. 29.

31.

There is but one, etc. Hazlitt is recalling Dryden’s line, ‘within that circle none must walk but he.’ (Prologue to The Tempest.)

‘Not to speak it profanely.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Like an unsubstantial pageant faded.’ The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.

32.

‘He is the leviathan,’ etc. Hazlitt adapts a passage of Burke’s: ‘The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the Crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty.’ A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 129).

‘A consummation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

The description of Queen Mab. In Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘The shade of melancholy boughs.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘Give a very echo,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘Oh! it came,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 1.

33.

‘Covers a multitude of sins.’ I. Peter, iv. 8.

The ligament, etc. Cf. ‘And that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.’ Tristram Shandy, VI. 10.

The Society for the Suppression of Vice. Cf. The Round Table, vol. I. p, 60 and note.

‘He has been merry,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Heard the chimes at midnight.’ Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2.

34.

‘Come on, come on, etc. Ibid.

35.

‘One touch of nature,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘It is apprehensive, etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act IV. Sc. 3.

36.

‘Go to church,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 3.

Tattle and Sparkish. In Congreve’s Love for Love and Wycherley’s The Country Wife respectively.

‘All beyond Hyde Park,’ etc. Sir George Etherege’s The Man of Mode, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Lay waste a country gentleman.’ Hazlitt uses this expression elsewhere. See his character of Cobbett in The Spirit of the Age (vol. IV. p. 334), where he says that Cobbett ‘lays waste a city orator or Member of Parliament.’

Lord Foppington. In Vanbrugh’s The Relapse.

‘The Prince of coxcombs,’ etc.

‘Fashion. Now, by all that’s great and powerful, thou art the prince of coxcombs.

Lord Foppington. Sir—I am proud of being at the head of so prevailing a party.’

The Relapse, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘Manners damnable,’ etc. See the dialogue between Touchstone and Corin in As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2.

37.

‘Airy nothing.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Love’s golden shaft,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘There the mind,’ etc. ‘Therein the patient must minister to himself.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Of solitude,’ etc. Cf. ‘Of solitude and melancholy born.’ Beattie, The Minstrel, Canto I. St. 56.

38.

‘In the crust of formality.’ Hazlitt elsewhere attributes this phrase to Milton.

To wanton in the idle summer air. Cf. ‘That idles in the wanton summer air.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 6.

39.

‘Does mad and fantastic execution,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act V. Sc. 5.

Schlegel observes, etc. In his Lectures on Dramatic Literature (No. XXVII.) the English version of which was reviewed by Hazlitt in The Edinburgh Review for Feb. 1816.

‘Lively, audible,’ etc. ‘Waking, audible, and full of vent.’ Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 5.

40.

Captain Otter. In The Silent Woman (1609).

‘Bless’d conditions.’ Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘If to be wise,’ etc. Cf. ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.’ Coriolanus, Act V. Sc. 3.

41.

‘The gayest,’ etc. Akenside, Pleasures of the Imagination, I. 30.

Aliquando sufflaminandus erat. See Ben Jonson’s Timber: or, Discoveries, LXIV., and note to The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 336.

Howel’s Letters. See the Familiar Letters of James Howell, 10th ed., 1737, pp. 323-4.

42.

Jamque opus, etc. Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV. 871.

Exegi monumentum, etc. Horace, Odes, III. 30, 1.

O fortunatam, etc. Cicero, De Suis Temporibus, quoted by Juvenal, Satire X. 122.

A detailed account. In Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (1817).

l. 23. In the third edition the following sentence is interpolated: ‘It has been observed of this author, that he painted not so much human nature as temporary manners; not the characters of men, but their humours; that is to say, peculiarities of phrase, modes of dress, gesture, etc., which becoming obsolete, and being in themselves altogether arbitrary and fantastical, have become unintelligible and uninteresting.’ Hazlitt probably refers to Schlegel. See Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (trans. John Black, ed. 1900, p. 464).

The meeting between Morose and Epicene. Act II. Sc. 3.

43.

O’er step, etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

The scene between Sir Amorous La Foole and Sir John Daw, etc. See The Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. 2, and Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 4.

Decorum ... which Milton says, etc. On Education (Works, 1738, 1. p. 140).

Truewit. In The Silent Woman.

Thus Peregrine, in Volpone, etc. Act II. Sc. 1. Volpone was first acted in 1605.

This play was Dryden’s favourite. Hazlitt refers to The Silent Woman, of which Dryden gives an ‘Examen’ in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Select Essays, ed. Ker, I. 83 et seq.).

Truewit says. The Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘Even though we should hold,’ etc. Cf. ‘All which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

The directions for making love. The Silent Woman, Act IV. Sc. 1.

44.

‘Hood an ass,’ etc. Volpone, Act I. Sc. 1.

Every Man in his Humour. First acted in 1598, this play held the stage until Hazlitt’s time. Cf. his notice of Kean’s Kitely in A View of the English Stage, post, p. 310. Dickens played the part of Bobadil in 1845.

‘As dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

His well-known proposal, etc. Every Man in his Humour, Act IV. Sc. 5.

45.

The scene in which Brainworm, etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 2.

Bartholomew Fair. Produced in 1614.

The Alchymist. Produced in 1610.

One glorious scene. Act II. Sc. 1.

48.

Beaumont and Fletcher. Cf. vol. V., p. 261 and note.

The Inconstant. Farquhar’s comedy (1703).

49.

Mrs. Jordan. Mrs. Jordan had died on May 24, 1817.

PAGE

‘The metaphysical poets,’ etc. Johnson, Life of Cowley in The Lives of the Poets.

The father of criticism. Aristotle. See the Poetics.

50.

‘Hitch into a rhyme.’ Pope, Imitations of Horace, Satires, Book II., Satire i. 78.

51.

‘And though reclaim’d,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, IV. 723-5.

Donne. John Donne (1573-1631).

‘Heaved pantingly forth.’ King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘Buried quick again.’ Hamlet’s words ‘Be buried quick with her, and so will I’ (Act V. Sc. 1), were perhaps in Hazlitt’s mind.

‘Little think’st thou,’ etc. Poems (‘Muses’ Library,’ I. 63).

52.

A lame and impotent conclusion. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Whoever comes,’ etc. Poems, i. 61.

‘I long to talk,’ etc. Ibid. I. 56.

53.

‘Here lies,’ etc. Ibid. I. 86.

To the pure, etc. Titus I. 15.

Bishop Hall’s Satires. The Satires of Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Bishop of Exeter (1627) and of Norwich (1641), were published in 1597 and 1598 under the title of Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes. For Pope’s admiration of him see Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, III. 423.

Sir John Davies (1569-1626). His Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dancing, appeared in 1596, his Nosce Teipsum, a poem on the immortality of the soul, in 1599.

Crashaw. Richard Crashaw (1612?-1649). The ‘celebrated Latin Epigram’ appeared in a volume of Latin poems and epigrams published in 1634. The line referred to by Hazlitt, ‘Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit,’ is the last of a four-line epigram. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. Croker, 1847, p. 598).

‘Seething brains.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

The contest between the Musician and the Nightingale. Musick’s Duel, a version from the Latin of the Roman Jesuit Strada, paraphrased also by Ford in The Lover’s Melancholy, Act. I. Sc. 1.

Davenant’s Gondibert. The Gondibert of Sir William D’Avenant (1606-1668), published in 1651.

54.

‘Yet on that wall,’ etc. Gondibert, Book II. Canto V. St. 33.

Marvel. Cf. Lectures on the English Poets, vol. V. p. 83.

‘And sat not as a meat,’ etc. The Character of Holland, 1. 30.

One whose praise, etc. Probably Lamb.

Shadwell. Thomas Shadwell (1642?-1692). The Libertine appeared in 1676.

Carew. Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?). The reference to him in Sir John Suckling’s Session of the Poets (1637) is as follows:—

‘Tom Carew was next, but he had a fault

That would not stand well with a laureat;

His Muse was hard bound, and th’ issue of’s brain

Was seldom brought forth but with trouble and pain.’

His masque. Performed in Feb. 1633-4.

55.

Milton’s name, etc. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, says: ‘Milton tried the metaphysick style only in his lines upon Hobson, the carrier.’

‘Aggregation of ideas.’ ‘Sublimity,’ says Johnson (Life of Cowley), ‘is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion.’

‘Inimitable on earth,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 508-9.

Suckling. Sir John Suckling (1609-1642). Johnson refers to him in his Life of Cowley as one of the ‘immediate successors’ of the metaphysical poets, but adds: ‘Suckling neither improved versification, nor abounded in conceits. The fashionable style remained chiefly with Cowley; Suckling could not reach it, and Milton disdained it.’

57.

Cowley. Cf. vol. V. p. 372.

‘The Phoenix Pindar,’ etc. The Praise of Pindar, l. 2.

‘Sailing with supreme dominion,’ etc. Gray, The Progress of Poesy, III. 3.

58.

He compares Bacon to Moses. ‘Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last.’ To the Royal Society.

60.

Cowley’s Essays. Published in 1668.

61.

Cutter of Coleman Street. The Guardian acted at Cambridge in 1641 and printed in 1650, afterwards re-written and produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields as ‘Cutter of Coleman Street’ in 1661.

62.

‘Call you this backing your friends?’ Henry IV., Part I., Act II. Sc. 4.

Butler’s Hudibras. The three Parts of Hudibras appeared in 1662, 1663, and 1678 respectively.

Dr. Campbell. Dr. George Campbell (1719-1796) published his Philosophy of Rhetoric in 1776.

‘Narrow his mind,’ etc. Goldsmith’s Retaliation, 31-2.

Dr. Zachary Grey. Zachary Grey’s (1688-1766) edition of Hudibras appeared in 1744.

63.

Note. (1) Part II., Canto II. 297-8; and II., I. 617-20; (2) II., I. 273-4; (3) I., II. 255-6; (4) I., II. 109-10; (5) I., II. 225-6; I., I. 241-252; and I., I. 375-8.

64.

Note. (1) Part II. Canto II. 831-2, and II. III. 107-8; (2) II. II. 421-2; (3) I. I. 59-60; (4) II. III. 809-10; (5) I. II. 1099-1102.

65.

‘Pilloried,’ etc. Cowper, Hope, 556.

‘As one grain of wheat,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 1.

Miscellanea were published in 1680 and 1692; Lord Shaftesbury’s (1671-1713) Moralists in 1709, and Characteristics in 1711.

94.

Note. Nam quodcumque, etc. Lucretius, III. 752-3.

95.

‘The perfect spy o’ th’ time.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 1.

The Tatler. The first number of the Tatler appeared on April 12, 1709, the last on January 2, 1711. The papers were re-issued in two forms, one in 8vo., one in 12mo., in 1710-11. Nearly the whole of this paragraph and the next is taken from an essay in The Examiner (March 5, 1815), reprinted in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 7-10, and the notes thereon.

96.

Note. No. 86, not No. 125, of The Tatler.

Mr. Lilly’s shop-windows. Charles Lillie, the perfumer’s at the corner of Beaufort Buildings in the Strand.

Will Estcourt or Tom D’urfey. Richard Estcourt (1668-1712), actor and dramatist, and Tom D’Urfey (1653-1723), the dramatist and song-writer, are constantly referred to in The Tatler.

97.

The Spectator. The Spectator ran from March I, 1711, to December 6, 1712, and from June 18, 1714, to December 20, 1714. The collected edition appeared in 8 vols., 1712-15.

‘The whiteness of her hand.’ ‘She has certainly the finest hand of any woman in the world.’ The Spectator, No. 113.

98.

‘He has a widow in his line of life.’ The Spectator, No. 130.

His falling asleep in church, etc. The Spectator, No. 112. John Williams should be ‘one John Matthews.’

99.

The Guardian. March 12, 1713, to October 1713. Of the 176 numbers Steele contributed 82, and Addison 53, papers.

100.

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

‘Give us pause.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

101.

‘The elephant,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 345-7.

102.

‘If he were to write,’ etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 231. Abused Milton and patronised Lauder. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I 228-31.

103.

‘The king of good fellows,’ etc. Burns, Auld Rob Morris, l. 2.

‘Inventory of all he said.’ Cf. ‘And ta’en an inventory of what they are.’ Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Does he wind, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 260.

‘If that fellow Burke,’ etc. Ibid. II. 450.

‘What, is it you,’ etc. Ibid. I. 250.

‘Now I think I am,’ etc. Ibid. II. 362.

His quitting the society, etc. Ibid. I. 201.

His dining with Wilkes. Ibid. III. 64 et seq.

His sitting with the young ladies. Ibid. II. 120.

His carrying the unfortunate victim, etc. Ibid. IV. 321.

104.

An act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan. Sergeant Talfourd, in his account of these Lectures, speaks of the insensibility of the bulk of the audience, and adds: ‘He [Hazlitt] once had a more edifying advantage over them. He was enumerating the humanities which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, and at the close of an agreeable catalogue mentioned as last and noblest “his carrying the poor victim of disease and dissipation on his back through Fleet Street,” at which a titter arose from some who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite: he paused for an instant, and then added, in his sturdiest and most impressive manner—“an act which realizes the parable of the Good Samaritan”—at which his moral, and his delicate hearers shrank, rebuked, into deep silence.’ Lamb’s Letters (ed. W. C. Hazlitt), I. 39-40.

104.

‘Where they,’ etc. Gray’s Elegy, The Epitaph.

The Adventurer. Nov. 7, 1752, to March 9, 1754. John Hawkesworth (1715-1773) was the chief contributor.

The World. Jan. 4, 1753, to Dec. 30, 1756.

The Connoisseur. Jan. 31, 1754, to Sept. 30, 1756.

One good idea, etc. Hazlitt refers to a paper by Edward Moore which appeared in The World (No. 176), not, as he says, in The Connoisseur.

Citizen of the World. Republished (from the Public Ledger and elsewhere) in 2 vols., 1762.

‘Go about to cozen,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 9.

The Persian Letters. Lord Lyttelton’s Letters from a Persian in England to his friend at Ispahan, 1735.

‘The bonzes,’ etc. The Citizen of the World, Letter X.

105.

‘Edinburgh. We are positive,’ etc. Ibid. Letter V.

Beau Tibbs. Ibid. Letters XXIX., LIV., LV., and LXXI.

The Lounger and The Mirror. The whole of this Lecture down to the end of the paragraph on p. 125 is taken with but few variations from an article in The Edinburgh Review for Feb. 1815, on ‘Standard Novels and Romances,’ ostensibly a review of Madame D’Arblay’s The Wanderer.

PAGE

106.

‘Be mine to read,’ etc. Gray, in a letter to Richard West, April 1742 (Letters, ed. Tovey, I. 97).

‘Something more divine in it.’ Hazlitt is perhaps recalling a passage in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (II. iv. 2): ‘So as poesy serveth and conferreth to delectation, magnanimity, and morality, ... it may seem deservedly to have some participation of divineness,’ etc.

107.

Fielding in speaking, etc. Joseph Andrews, Book III. chap. 1.

The description ... given by Mr. Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 92-3).

Echard ‘On the Contempt of the Clergy.’ John Eachard’s (1636?-1697) The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion enquired into, published in 1670 and frequently reprinted.

‘Worthy of all acceptation.’ 1 Timothy, 1. 15.

The Lecture which Lady Booby reads, etc. Joseph Andrews, Book IV. chap. 3.

Blackstone or De Lolme. Sir William Blackstone’s (1723-1780) Commentaries on the Laws of England appeared in 1765-9, John Louis De Lolme’s (1740?-1807) The Constitution of England, in French 1771, in English 1775.

108.

What I have said upon it, etc. In The Edinburgh Review. See ante, note to p. 106.

Don Quixote. Part I., 1605; Part II., 1615.

‘The long-forgotten order of chivalry.’ ‘The long-neglected and almost extinguished order of knight-errantry,’ Don Quixote (trans. Jarvis), Part I., Book IV. chap. 28.

‘Witch the world,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I., Act IV. Sc. 1.

109.

‘Oh, what delicate wooden spoons,’ etc. Don Quixote, Part II., Book IV. chap. 67.

The curate confidentially informing Don Quixote, etc. Ibid.

Our adventurer afterwards, etc. Ibid.

110.

‘Still prompts,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 3-4.

‘Singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles.’ Don Quixote, Part II., Book I. chap. 9.

Marcella. Ibid. Part I., Book I. chaps. 12 and 13.

His Galatea, etc. Galatea, 1585; Persiles and Sigismunda, 1616.

111.

Gusman D’Alfarache. By Mateo Aleman, published in 1599.

Lazarillo de Tormes. Attributed to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575), published in 1553.

Gil Blas. The Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane of Alain-RenÉ le Sage (1668-1747) appeared in 4 vols., 1715-1735.

112.

Smollett is more like Gil Blas. In the Preface to Roderick Random he admitted his obligation to Le Sage.

113.

Tom Jones. Published in 1749.

114.

‘I was never so handsome,’ etc. Tom Jones, Book XVII. chap. 4.

The story of Tom Jones, etc. Cf. the well-known dictum of Coleridge (Table Talk, July 5, 1834), ‘Upon my word, I think the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever planned.’

Amelia and Joseph Andrews. Published in 1751 and 1742 respectively.

Amelia, and the hashed mutton. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘A Farewell to Essay-writing,’ from which it appears that the article in the Edinburgh Review from which this lecture is taken was the result of a ‘sharply-seasoned and well-sustained’ discussion with Lamb, kept up till midnight.

115.

Roderick Random. Published in 1748, when Smollett was 27; Tom Jones was published in 1749, when Fielding was 42.

116.

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

117.

Peregrine Pickle ... and Launcelot Graves. 1751 and 1762 respectively.

Humphrey Clinker and Count Fathom. 1771 and 1753 respectively.

Richardson. The three novels of Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) appeared as follows: Pamela in 1740; Clarissa Harlowe in 1747-8; Sir Charles Grandison in 1753.

119.

Dr. Johnson ... when he said, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 174.

120.

‘Books are a real world,’ etc. Wordsworth, Personal Talk, St. 3.

Sterne. Laurence Sterne’s (1713-1768) Tristram Shandy appeared in 9 vols. 1759-1767, and A Sentimental Journey (2 vols.) in 1768.

121.

Goldsmith ... should call him, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), II. 222.

123.

‘Have kept the even tenor of their way.’ Gray’s Elegy, 76.

Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla. By Frances Burney, Madame D’Arblay (1752-1840), published respectively in 1778, 1782, and 1796.

Mrs. Radcliffe. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1822), author of The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), etc.

‘Enchantments drear.’ Il Penseroso, 119.

Mrs. Inchbald. Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821), novelist, dramatist, and actress. Her Nature and Art appeared in 1796, A Simple Story in 1791.

Miss Edgeworth. Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849). Castle Rackrent appeared in 1800.

Meadows. In The Wanderer.

Note. The Fool of Quality, by Henry Brooke (1766); David Simple, by Sarah Fielding (1744); and Sidney Biddulph, by Mrs. Sheridan (1761).

124.

It has been said of Shakspeare, etc. By Pope. See Hazlitt’s Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, vol. I. p. 171 and note.

‘There is nothing so true as habit.’ Windham, Speech on the Conduct of the Duke of York, Speeches, III. 205, March 14, 1809.

125.

‘Stand so [not] upon the order,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

The green silken threads, etc. Don Quixote, Part II. IV. Chap. 58.

The Wanderer. 1814.

‘The gossamer,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 6.

127.

The Castle of Otranto. By Horace Walpole (1764).

Quod sic mihi, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 188.

The Recess, by Sophia Lee (1785); The Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve, originally published in 1777 under the title of ‘The Champion of Virtue, a Gothic Story.’

‘Dismal treatises.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

The Monk, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, published in 1795 as ‘Ambrosio, or the Monk.’

‘All the luxury of woe.’ Moore, Juvenile Poems, stanzas headed ‘Anacreontic,’ beginning ‘Press the grape, and let it pour,’ etc.

128.

‘His chamber,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto ix. St. 50.

129.

‘Familiar in our mouths,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 3.

130.

The author of Caleb Williams. William Godwin (1756-1836). Caleb Williams appeared in 1794, St. Leon in 1799, Mandeville in 1817.

‘Action is momentary,’ etc. These lines are slightly misquoted from Wordsworth’s tragedy, The Borderer. See note to vol. IV., p. 276.

132.

Political Justice. An Inquiry concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness, 1793.

‘Where his treasure,’ etc. St. Matthew, vi. 21.

LECTURE VII. ON THE WORKS OF HOGARTH—ON THE GRAND AND FAMILIAR STYLE OF PAINTING

A great part of this lecture is taken from two papers in The Examiner, republished in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 25-31, and notes thereon.

133.

Hogarth. William Hogarth (1697-1764).

‘Instinct in every part.’ Cf. ‘Instinct through all proportions low and high.’ Paradise Lost, XI. 562.

‘Other pictures we see, Hogarth’s we read.’ ‘Other pictures we look at,—his prints we read.’ Lamb’s Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth, referred to below, p. 138.

Not long ago. In 1814.

134.

‘Of amber-lidded snuff-box,’ etc. Pope’s Rape of the Lock, IV. 123.

134.

‘A person, and a smooth dispose,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Vice loses half,’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

137.

‘All the mutually reflected charities.’ Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 40).

‘Frequent and full,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 795-7.

138.

Mr. Lamb’s Essay. Published in The Reflector (1811) and reprinted in Poems, Plays and Essays (ed. Ainger).

What distinguishes, etc. The remainder of the lecture from this point had not appeared in The Examiner or The Round Table.

139.

Mr. Wilkie. David Wilkie (1785-1841), Royal Academician 1811, knighted 1836.

Teniers. David Teniers, the younger (1610-1690).

‘To shew vice,’ etc. Adapted from Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

140.

‘The very error of the time.’ Cf. ‘The very error of the moon,’ Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Your lungs,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

Bagnigge Wells. Sadler’s Wells. Hazlitt refers to Hogarth’s ‘Evening,’ one of the four ‘Times of Day.’

142.

Parson Ford. Johnson’s cousin, Cornelius Ford. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), i. 49. The figure in Hogarth’s picture has also been identified with ‘Orator’ Henley.

143.

‘Die of a rose,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, 1, 200.

In the manner of Ackerman’s dresses for May. Moore, Horace, Ode XI., Lib. 2. Freely translated by the Pr—ce R—g—t.

144.

‘The Charming Betsy Careless.’ See the last of the series of ‘The Rake’s Progress,’ the scene in Bedlam. One of the lunatics has scratched the name on the bannisters.

‘Stray-gifts of love and beauty.’ Wordsworth, Stray Pleasures.

145.

Sir Joshua Reynolds. See Table-Talk, vol. VI. p. 131 et seq.

146.

‘Conformed to this world,’ etc. Romans, xii. 2.

‘Give to airy nothing,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘Ignorant present.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

Note. ‘Nay, nay,’ etc. ‘Na, na! not that way, not that way, the head to the east.’ Guy Mannering, chap. 55.

148.

It is many years since, etc. About 1798, at St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire. Cf. the essay ‘On Going a Journey’ in Table-Talk, vol. VI. p. 185.

‘How was I then uplifted.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Temples not made with hands,’ etc. 2 Corinthians, V. 1.

In the Louvre. In 1802, when the Louvre still contained the spoils of Buonaparte’s conquests. Cf. Table-Talk, vol. VI. pp. 15 et seq. and notes thereon.

‘All eyes shall see me,’ etc. Cf. Romans, xiv. 11.

149.

There ‘stood the statue,’ etc. ‘So stands the statue that enchants the world.’ Thomson, The Seasons, Summer, 1347. The statue is the Venus of Medici.

‘There was old Proteus,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us,’ adapted.

The stay, the guide, etc. An unacknowledged quotation from Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 109-110.

‘Smoothed the raven down,’ etc. Comus, 251.

LECTURE VIII. ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF THE LAST CENTURY

Much of the early part of this Lecture is taken from a paper in The Examiner (Aug. 20, 1815), republished in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 10-14, and notes.

PAGE

150.

‘Where it must live,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘To see ourselves,’ etc. Burns, To a Louse.

151.

‘Present no mark to the foeman.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Sc. 2. Wars should be Shadow.

152.

The authority of Sterne, etc. See Tristram Shandy, I. 21.

l. 22. In the third edition a passage is interpolated from Hazlitt’s letter to The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 15, 1813.

‘The ring,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, III. 309-10.

Angelica, etc. All these characters are in Congreve’s Love for Love.

The compliments which Pope paid to his friends. Cf. the essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen,’ where some of these compliments are quoted.

153.

The loves of the plants and the triangles. Erasmus Darwin’s poem ‘The Loves of the Plants’(1789) was the subject of Canning’s famous parody ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ in The Anti-Jacobin.

Berinthias and Alitheas. Berinthia in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse; Alithea in Wycherley’s The Country Wife.

Beppo, etc. Lord Byron’s Beppo (1818), Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), Scott’s Lady of the Lake (1810). Madame De StaËl’s Corinne appeared in 1807.

l. 17. In the third edition a long passage from Hazlitt’s letter to The Morning Chronicle is here inserted.

‘That sevenfold fence.’ See note to vol. I. p. 13, and cf. A Reply to Malthus, vol. IV. p. 101.

154.

‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.’ Foote’s The Minor, Act II.

‘Almost afraid to know itself.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3.

Mr. Farren. William Farren (1786-1861). Lord Ogleby in Colman and Garrick’s The Clandestine Marriage was one of his best parts.

Note. See vol. I. p. 313.

155.

Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier’s (1650-1726) Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage appeared in March 1697-8.

Mrs. Centlivre. Susannah Centlivre (1667?-1723). The Busy Body appeared in 1709, The Wonder in 1714.

156.

The scene near the end. The Wonder, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Roast me these Violantes.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1.

156.

In the third edition the following account of The Busy Body, taken from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. VI.) is inserted:

‘“The Busy Body” is a comedy that has now held possession of the stage above a hundred years (the best test of excellence); and the merit that has enabled it to do so, consists in the ingenuity of the contrivance, the liveliness of the plot, and the striking effect of the situations. Mrs. Centlivre, in this and her other plays, could do nothing without a stratagem; but she could do everything with one. She delights in putting her dramatis personÆ continually at their wit’s end, and in helping them off with a new evasion; and the subtlety of her resources is in proportion to the criticalness of the situation and the shortness of the notice for resorting to an expedient. Twenty times, in seeing or reading one of her plays, your pulse beats quick, and you become restless and apprehensive for the event; but with a fine theatrical sleight of hand, she lets you off, undoes the knot of the difficulty, and you breathe freely again, and have a hearty laugh into the bargain. In short, with her knowledge of chambermaids’ tricks, and insight into the intricate foldings of lovers’ hearts, she plays with the events of comedy, as a juggler shuffles about a pack of cards, to serve his own purposes, and to the surprise of the spectator. This is one of the most delightful employments of the dramatic art. It costs nothing—but a voluntary tax on the inventive powers of the author; and it produces, when successfully done, profit and praise to one party, and pleasure to all. To show the extent and importance of theatrical amusements (which some grave persons would decry altogether, and which no one can extol too highly), a friend of ours,^[49] whose name will be as well known to posterity as it is to his contemporaries, was not long ago mentioning, that one of the earliest and most memorable impressions ever made on his mind, was the seeing “Venice Preserved” acted in a country town when he was only nine years old. But he added, that an elderly lady who took him to see it, lamented, notwithstanding the wonder and delight he had experienced, that instead of “Venice Preserved,” they had not gone to see “The Busy Body,” which had been acted the night before. This was fifty years ago, since which, and for fifty years before that, it has been acted a thousand times in town and country, giving delight to the old, the young, and middle-aged, passing the time carelessly, and affording matter for agreeable reflection afterwards, making us think ourselves, and wish to be thought, the men equal to Sir George Airy in grace and spirit, the women to Miranda and Isabinda in love and beauty, and all of us superior to Marplot in wit. Among the scenes that might be mentioned in this comedy, as striking instances of happy stage effect, are Miranda’s contrivance to escape from Sir George, by making him turn his back upon her to hear her confession of love, and the ludicrous attitude in which he is left waiting for the rest of her speech after the lady has vanished; his offer of the hundred pounds to her guardian to make love to her in his presence, and when she receives him in dumb show, his answering for both; his situation concealed behind the chimney-screen; his supposed metamorphosis into a monkey, and his deliverance from thence in that character by the interference of Marplot; Mrs. Patch’s sudden conversion of the mysterious love letter into a charm for the toothache, and the whole of Marplot’s meddling and blunders. The last character is taken from Dryden and the Duchess of Newcastle; and is, indeed, the only attempt at character in the play. It is amusing and superficial. We see little of the puzzled perplexity of his brain, but his actions are absurd enough. He whiffles about the stage with considerable volubility, and makes a very lively automaton. Sir George Airy sets out for a scene or two in a spirited manner, but afterwards the character evaporates in the name; and he becomes as commonplace as his friend Charles, who merely laments over his misfortunes, or gets out of them by following the suggestions of his valet or his valet’s mistress. Miranda is the heroine of the piece, and has a right to be so; for she is a beauty and an heiress. Her friend has less to recommend her; but who can refuse to fall in love with her name? What volumes of sighs, what a world of love, is breathed in the very sound alone—the letters that form the charming name of Isabinda.’

157.

‘The one cries Mum,’ etc. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5. Sc. 2.

Note. See first edition (1714), pp. 35-6.

158.

‘‘Some soul of goodness,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 1.

His Funeral. Produced in 1701.

‘All the milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

The Conscious Lovers. 1722. Hazlitt refers to Act III. Sc. 1.

Parson Adams against me. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. chap. II.

Addison’s Drummer. 1715.

‘An Hour after Marriage.’ Three Hours after Marriage (1717), the joint production of Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot.

‘An alligator stuff’d.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1.

Gay’s What-d’ye-call-it. 1715.

‘Polly.’ Published in 1728. The representation was forbidden by the Court.

Last line but one. In the third edition Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Beggar’s Opera’ (see vol. I. pp. 65-6) is here introduced.

159.

The Mock Doctor. 1732.

Tom Thumb. Afterwards called The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730; additional Act, 1731).

Lord Grizzle. In Tom Thumb.

‘‘Like those hanging locks,’ etc. Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Fell of hair,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘Hey for Doctor’s Commons.’ Tragedy of Tragedies, etc., Act II. Sc. 5.

‘From the sublime,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 23.

Lubin Log. In James Kenney’s farce, Love, Law, and Physic, produced 1812. See ante, p. 192.

The Widow’s Choice. Allingham’s Who Wins, or The Widow’s Choice, 1808.

‘Is high fantastical.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1.

160.

The hero of the Dunciad. Cibber was substituted for Theobald as the King of Dulness in consequence of his famous letter to Pope, published in 1742.

‘By merit raised,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 5-6.

His Apology for his own Life. Published in 1740. Cf. The Round Table, vol. I. pp. 156-7.

His account of his waiting, etc. An Apology, etc., 2nd ed. 1740, chap. III. pp. 59-60.

Mr. Burke’s celebrated apostrophe. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

Kynaston, etc. See vol. I. notes to pp. 156-7.

161.

His Careless Husband. 1704.

His Double Gallant. 1707. The play was revived in 1817 and noticed by Hazlitt. See ante, pp. 359-362.

‘In hidden mazes,’ etc. Misquoted from L’Allegro, 141-2.

162.

His Nonjuror. 1717. Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Hypocrite was produced in 1768.

Love’s Last Shift. Colley Cibber’s first play, produced in 1694. For Southerne’s remark to Cibber, see An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, p. 173.

l. 34. In the third edition a great part of Hazlitt’s article on The Hypocrite (see A View of the English Stage, ante, p. 245) is inserted here. The passage is also in Oxberry’s New English Drama, vol. I.

Love in a Riddle. 1729.

163.

The Suspicious Husband, 1747, The Jealous Wife, 1761, The Clandestine Marriage, 1766.

l. 15. In the third edition the following passage on The Jealous Wife, taken from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is here inserted:—

‘Colman, the elder, was the translator of Terence: and the “Jealous Wife” is a classical play. The plot is regular, the characters well supported, and the moral the best in the world. The dialogue has more sense than wit. The ludicrous arises from the skilful development of the characters, and the absurdities they commit in their own persons, rather than from the smart reflections which are made upon them by others. Thus nothing can be more ridiculous or more instructive than the scenes of which Mrs. Oakly is the heroine, yet they are all serious and unconscious: she exposes herself to our contempt and ridicule by the part she acts, by the airs she gives herself, and the fantastic behaviour in the situations in which she is placed. In other words, the character is pure comedy, not satire. Congreve’s comedies for the most part are satires, in which, from an exuberance of wit, the different speakers play off the sharp-pointed raillery on one another’s foibles, real or supposed. The best and most genuine kind of comedy, because the most dramatic, is that of character or humour, in which the persons introduced upon the stage are left to betray their own folly by their words and actions. The progressive winding up of the story of the present comedy is excellently managed. The jealousy and hysteric violence of Mrs. Oakly increase every moment, as the pretext for them becomes more and more frivolous. The attention is kept alive by our doubts about Oakly’s wavering (but in the end triumphant) firmness; and the arch insinuations and well-concerted home-thrusts of the Major heighten the comic interest of the scene. There is only one circumstance on which this veteran bachelor’s freedom of speech might have thrown a little more light, namely, that the married lady’s jealousy is in truth only a pretence for the exercise of her domineering spirit in general; so that we are left at last in some uncertainty as to the turn which this humour may take, and as to the future repose of her husband, though the affair of Miss Russet is satisfactorily cleared up. The under-plot of the two lovers is very ingeniously fitted into the principal one, and is not without interest in itself. Charles Oakly is a spirited, well-meaning, thoughtless young fellow, and Harriet Russet is an amiable romantic girl, in that very common, but always romantic situation—in love. Her persecution from the addresses of Lord Trinket and Sir Harry Beagle fans the gentle flame which had been kindled just a year before in her breast, produces the adventures and cross-purposes of the plot, and at last reconciles her to, and throws her into the arms of her lover, in spite of her resentment for his misconduct and apparent want of delicacy. The figure which Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove make in the piece is as odious and contemptible as it is possible for people in that class of life (and for no others) to make. The insolence, the meanness, the affectation, the hollowness, the want of humanity, sincerity, principle, and delicacy, are such as can only be found where artificial rank and station in society supersede not merely a regard to propriety of conduct, but the necessity even of an attention to appearances. The morality of the stage has (we are ready to hope) told in that direction as well as others, has, in some measure suppressed the suffocating pretensions and flaunting affectation of vice and folly in “persons of honour,” and, as it were, humanised rank and file. The pictures drawn of the finished depravity of such characters in high life, in the old comedies and novels, can hardly have been thrown away upon the persons themselves, any more than upon the world at large. Little Terence O’Cutler, the delicious protÉgÉ of Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove, is a fit instrument for them to use, and follows in the train of such principals as naturally and assuredly as their shadow. Sir Harry Beagle is a coarse, but striking character of a thorough-bred fox-hunting country squire. He has but one idea in his head, but one sentiment in his heart—and that is his stud. This idea haunts his imagination, tinges or imbues every other object, and accounts for his whole phraseology, appearance, costume, and conduct. Sir Harry’s ruling passion is varied very ingeniously, and often turned to a very ludicrous account. There is a necessary monotony in the humour, which arises from a want of more than one idea, but the obviousness of the jest almost makes up for the recurrence of it; if the means of exciting mirth are mechanical, the effect is sure; and to say that a hearty laugh is cheaply purchased, is not a serious objection against it. When an author is terribly conscious of plagiarism, he seldom confesses it; when the obligation does not press his conscience, he sometimes does. Colman, in the advertisement to the first edition of the “Jealous Wife,” apologises for the freedom which he has used in borrowing from “Tom Jones.” In reading this modest excuse, though we have seen the play several times, we could not imagine what part of the plot was taken from Fielding. We did not suspect that Miss Russet was Sophia Western, and that old Russet and Sir Harry Beagle between them somehow represented Squire Western and young Blifil. But so it is! The outline of the plot and some of the characters are certainly the same, but the filling up destroys the likeness. There is all in the novel that there is in the play, but there is so much in the novel that is not in the play, that the total impression is quite different, and loses even an appearance of resemblance. In the same manner, though a profile or a shade of a face is exactly the same as the original, we with difficulty recognise it from the absence of so many other particulars. Colman might have kept his own secret, and no one would have been the wiser for it.’

163.

The elder Colman’s translation of Terence. Published in 1765.

Bickerstaff’s plays. Love in a Village, 1763, The Maid of the Mill, 1765, and The Hypocrite are the best known.

Mrs. Cowley’s comedy, etc. Hannah Cowley’s (1743?-1809) The Belle’s Stratagem appeared in 1780, Who’s the Dupe? in 1779.

164.

Goldsmith’s Good-natured Man, 1768; She Stoops to Conquer, 1773.

In the third edition the following account of She Stoops to Conquer from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. IV.) is here inserted:—

‘It, however, bears the stamp of the author’s genius, which was an indefinable mixture of the original and imitative. His plot, characters, and incidents are all apparently new; and yet, when you come to look into them, they are all old, with little variation or disguise: that is, the author sedulously avoided the beaten, vulgar path, and sought for singularity, but found it rather in the unhackneyed and eccentric inventions of those who had gone before him, than in his own stores. The “Vicar of Wakefield,” which abounds more than any of his works in delightful and original traits, is still very much borrowed, in its general tone and outline, from Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews.” Again, the characters and adventures of Tony Lumpkin, and the ridiculous conduct of his mother, in the present comedy, are a counterpart (even to the incident of the theft of the jewels) of those of the Widow Blackacre and her booby son in Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer.”

‘This sort of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of new and striking pictures of human life, is much to be preferred to the dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places; but it is more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures or family plate, where the property can be immediately identified, is more liable to detection than the stealing of bank-notes, or the current coin of the realm. Dr. Johnson’s sarcasm against some writer, that his “singularity was not his excellence,” cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s writings in general; but we are not sure whether it might not in severity be applied to “She Stoops to Conquer.” The incidents and characters are many of them exceedingly amusing; but they are so, a little at the expense of probability and bienseance. Tony Lumpkin is a very essential and unquestionably comic personage; but certainly his absurdities or his humours fail of none of their effect for want of being carried far enough. He is in his own sex what a hoyden is in the other. He is that vulgar nickname, a hobbety-hoy, dramatised; forward and sheepish, mischievous and idle, cunning and stupid, with the vices of the man and the follies of the boy; fond of low company, and giving himself all the airs of consequence of the young squire. His vacant delight in playing at cup and ball, and his impenetrable confusion and obstinate gravity in spelling the letter, drew fresh beauties from Mr. Liston’s face. Young Marlow’s bashfulness in the scenes with his mistress is, when well acted, irresistibly ludicrous; but still nothing can quite overcome our incredulity as to the existence of such a character in the present day, and in the rank of life, and with the education which Marlow is supposed to have had. It is a highly amusing caricature, a ridiculous fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate touches of character is in the transition from the modest gentleman’s manner with his mistress, to the easy and agreeable tone of familiarity with the supposed chambermaid, which was not total and abrupt, but exactly such in kind and degree as such a character of natural reserve and constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of circumstances. Of the other characters in the piece, the most amusing are Tony Lumpkin’s associates at the Three Pigeons; and of these we profess the greatest partiality for the important showman who declares that “his bear dances to none but the genteelest of tunes, ‘Water parted from the Sea,’ or the minuet in ‘Ariadne’!”^[50] This is certainly the “high-fantastical”^[51] of low comedy.’

164.

Murphy’s plays, etc. Arthur Murphy’s (1730-1805) All in the Wrong, 1761, and Know Your Own Mind, 1778.

Both his principal pieces, etc. There seems to be some inaccuracy here. Colman’s Jealous Wife was produced in February 1761, Murphy’s All in the Wrong in June of the same year. The School for Scandal, however, appeared a month later than Murphy’s Know Your Own Mind, viz., in May 1777.

The School for Scandal, 1777, The Rivals, 1775, The Duenna, 1775, and The Critic, 1779.

Cumberland. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), the dramatist, whose West Indian (1771) and The Wheel of Fortune (1795) are referred to below, p. 166.

‘Dragged the struggling,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 190.

165.

Miss Farren. Elizabeth Farren (1759?-1829), Countess of Derby. She played Lady Teazle on the occasion of her last appearance, April 8, 1797.

Matthew Bramble and his sister. In Humphry Clinker.

‘He had damnable iteration in him.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act I. Sc. 2.

165, l. 36. In the third edition Hazlitt’s description of The Rivals, from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. I.) is inserted here:—

‘The “Rivals” is one of the most agreeable comedies we have. In the elegance and brilliancy of the dialogue, in a certain animation of moral sentiment, and in the masterly dÉnouement of the fable, the “School for Scandal” is superior; but the “Rivals” has more life and action in it, and abounds in a greater number of whimsical characters, unexpected incidents, and absurd contrasts of situation. The effect of the “School for Scandal” is something like reading a collection of epigrams, that of the “Rivals” is more like reading a novel. In the first you are always at the toilette or in the drawing-room; in the last you pass into the open air, and take a turn in King’s Mead. The interest is kept alive in the one play by smart repartees, in the other by startling rencontres: in the one we laugh at the satirical descriptions of the speakers, in the other the situation of their persons on the stage is irresistibly ludicrous. Thus the interviews between Lucy and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, between Acres and his friend Jack, who is at once his confidant and his rival; between Mrs. Malaprop and the lover of her niece as Captain Absolute, and between the young lady and the same person as the pretended Ensign Beverley, tell from the mere double entendre of the scene, and from the ignorance of the parties of one another’s persons and designs. There is no source of dramatic effect more complete than this species of practical satire (in which our author seems to have been an adept), where one character in the piece is made a fool of and turned into ridicule to his face, by the very person whom he is trying to over-reach.

‘There is scarcely a more delightful play than the “Rivals” when it is well acted, or one that goes off more indifferently when it is not. The humour is of so broad and farcical a kind, that if not thoroughly entered into and carried off by the tone and manner of the performers, it fails of effect from its obtrusiveness, and becomes flat from eccentricity. The absurdities brought forward are of that artificial, affected, and preposterous description, that we in some measure require to have the evidence of our senses to see the persons themselves “jetting under the advance plumes of their folly,”^[52] before we can entirely believe in their existence, or derive pleasure from their exposure. If the extravagance of the poet’s conception is not supported by the downright reality of the representation, our credulity is staggered and falls to the ground.

‘For instance, Acres should be as odd a compound in external appearance as he is of the author’s brain. He must look like a very notable mixture of the lively coxcomb and the blundering blockhead, to reconcile us to his continued impertinence and senseless flippancy. Acres is a mere conventional character, a gay, fluttering automaton, constructed upon mechanical principles, and pushed, as it were, by the logic of wit and a strict keeping in the pursuit of the ridiculous, into follies and fopperies which his natural thoughtlessness would never have dreamt of. Acres does not say or do what such a half-witted young gentleman would say or do of his own head, but what he might be led to do or say with such a prompter as Sheridan at his elbow to tutor him in absurdity—to make a butt of him first, and laugh at him afterwards. Thus his presence of mind in persisting in his allegorical swearing, “Odds triggers and flints,”^[53] in the duel scene, when he is trembling all over with cowardice, is quite out of character, but it keeps up the preconcerted jest. In proportion, therefore, as the author has overdone the part, it calls for a greater effort of animal spirits, and a peculiar aptitude of genius in the actor to go through with it, to humour the extravagance, and to seem to take a real and cordial delight in caricaturing himself. Dodd^[54] was the only actor we remember who realised this ideal combination of volatility and phlegm, of slowness of understanding with levity of purpose, of vacancy of thought and vivacity of gesture. Acres’ affected phrases and apish manners used to sit upon this inimitable actor with the same sort of bumpkin grace and conscious self-complacency as the new cut of his clothes. In general, this character is made little of on the stage; and when left to shift for itself, seems as vapid as it is forced.

‘Mrs. Malaprop is another portrait of the same overcharged description. The chief drollery of this extraordinary personage consists of her unaccountable and systematic misapplication of hard words. How she should know the words, and not their meaning, is a little odd. In reading the play we are amused with such a series of ridiculous blunders, just as we are with a series of puns or cross-readings. But to keep up the farce upon the stage, besides “a nice derangement of epitaphs,”^[55] the imagination must have the assistance of a stately array of grave pretensions, and a most formidable establishment of countenance, with all the vulgar self-sufficiency of pride and ignorance, before it can give full credit to this learned tissue of technical absurdity.

‘As to Miss Lydia Languish, she is not easily done to the life. She is a delightful compound of extravagance and naÏvetÉ. She is fond and froward, practical and chimerical, hot and cold in a breath. She is that kind of fruit which drops into the mouth before it is ripe. She must have a husband, but she will not have one without an elopement. This young lady is at an age and of a disposition to throw herself into the arms of the first handsome young fellow she meets; but she repents and grows sullen, like a spoiled child, when she finds that nobody hinders her. She should have all the physiognomical marks of a true boarding-school, novel-reading Miss about her, and some others into the bargain. Sir Anthony’s description hardly comes up to the truth. She should have large, rolling eyes; pouting, disdainful lips; a pale, clear complexion; an oval chin, an arching neck, and a profusion of dark ringlets falling down upon it, or she will never answer to our ideas of the charming sentimental hoyden, who is the heroine of the play.

‘Faulkland is a refined study of a very common disagreeable character, actuated by an unceasing spirit of contradiction, who perversely seizes every idle pretext for making himself and others miserable; or querulous enthusiast, determined on disappointment, and enamoured with suspicion. He is without excuse; nor is it without some difficulty that we endure his self-tormenting follies, through our partiality for Julia, the amiable, unresisting victim of his gloomy caprice.

‘Sir Anthony Absolute and his son are the most sterling characters of the play. The tetchy, positive, impatient, overbearing, but warm and generous character of the one, and the gallant, determined spirit, adroit address, and dry humour of the other, are admirably set off against each other. The two scenes in which they contend about the proposed match, in the first of which the indignant lover is as choleric and rash as the old gentleman is furious and obstinate, and in the latter of which the son affects such a cool indifference and dutiful submission to his father, from having found out that it is the mistress of his choice whom he is to be compelled to marry, are masterpieces both of wit, humour, and character. Sir Anthony Absolute is an evident copy after Smollett’s kind-hearted, high-spirited Matthew Bramble, as Mrs. Malaprop is after the redoubted linguist, Mrs. Tabitha Bramble; and, indeed the whole tone, as well as the local scenery of the “Rivals,” reminds the reader of “Humphry Clinker.” Sheridan had a right to borrow; and he made use of this privilege, not sparingly, both in this and in his other plays. His Acres, as well in the general character as in particular scenes, is a mannered imitation of Sir Andrew Ague-cheek.

‘Fag, Lucy, and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, though subordinate agents in the plot of the “Rivals,” are not the less amusing on that account. Fag wears his master’s wit, as he does his lace, at second-hand; Lucy is an edifying specimen of simplicity in a chambermaid, and Sir Lucius is an honest fortune-hunting Hibernian, who means well to himself, and no harm to anybody else. They are also traditional characters, common to the stage; but they are drawn with all the life and spirit of originals.

‘This appears, indeed, to have been the peculiar forte and the great praise of our author’s genius, that he could imitate with the spirit of an inventor. There is hardly a character, we believe, or a marked situation in any of his works, of which there are not distinct traces to be found in his predecessors. But though the groundwork and texture of his materials was little more than what he found already existing in the models of acknowledged excellence, yet he constantly varied or improved upon their suggestions with masterly skill and ingenuity. He applied what he thus borrowed, with a sparkling effect and rare felicity, to different circumstances, and adapted it with peculiar elegance to the prevailing taste of the age. He was the farthest possible from a servile plagiarist. He wrote in imitation of Congreve, Vanbrugh, or Wycherley, as those persons would have written in continuation of themselves, had they lived at the same time with him. There is no excellence of former writers of which he has not availed himself, and which he has not converted to his own purposes, with equal spirit and success. He had great acuteness and knowledge of the world; and if he did not create his own characters, he compared them with their prototypes in nature, and understood their bearings and qualities, before he undertook to make a different use of them. He had wit, fancy, sentiment at command, enabling him to place the thoughts of others in new lights of his own, which reflected back an added lustre on the originals: whatever he touched, he adorned with all the ease, grace, and brilliancy of his style. If he ranks only as a man of second-rate genius, he was assuredly a man of first-rate talents. He was the most classical and the most popular dramatic writer of his age. The works he has left behind him will remain as monuments of his fame, for the delight and instruction of posterity.

‘Mr. Sheridan not only excelled as a comic writer, but was also an eminent orator, and a disinterested patriot. As a public speaker, he was distinguished by acuteness of observation and pointed wit, more than by impassioned eloquence, or powerful and comprehensive reasoning. Considering him with reference to his conversational talents, his merits as a comic writer, and as a political character, he was perhaps the most accomplished person of his time.

“Take him for all in all,

We shall not look upon his like again.”In this work, published in 1818, Hazlitt collected the greater part of the theatrical criticisms which he had contributed successively to The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, The Examiner, and The Times. His first article in The Morning Chronicle appeared on October 18, 1813 (see ante, p. 192), and the last on May 27, 1814 (see ante, p. 195). In his essay, ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (Table Talk, vol. V. pp. 292, et seq.), Hazlitt gives an account of his theatrical criticisms in the Chronicle. He thought himself that they were the best articles in the series (see ante, p. 174), and they are at any rate of exceptional interest inasmuch as they deal for the most part with the first appearances of Edmund Kean in London. His first article in The Champion, then edited by John Scott, appeared on August 14, 1814 (see p. 196), and the last on January 8, 1815 (see p. 208). Early in 1815 he became the regular dramatic critic of The Examiner. Leigh Hunt, the editor, had intended to resume theatrical criticism after his release from prison in February, but his attention was diverted to politics by the return of Buonaparte from Elba. Hazlitt’s first article (except for two notices of Kean’s Iago, July 24 and August 7, 1814) appeared on March 19, 1815 (see p. 221), the last on June 8, 1817 (see p. 373). By far the greater part of Hazlitt’s articles in The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, and The Examiner were included by him in A View of the English Stage. Some passages, however, and, we think, some articles, he did omit (especially from The Examiner of 1817). In the following notes passages omitted from articles included in A View are printed in full; articles omitted from A View are shortly summarised, if it is pretty clear from internal evidence that they were written by Hazlitt. Owing to want of space these articles cannot be printed in the present volume, but those which are clearly Hazlitt’s will be found among fugitive writings in a later volume, together with some notices (deemed certainly his) from The Times. Hazlitt seems to have been the dramatic critic, or one of the dramatic critics, of The Times from the summer of 1817 till the spring of 1818, but only two of his articles (pp. 374, et seq.) were included in A View of the English Stage. These appeared in September 1817, near the beginning of his term of office. Hazlitt’s reason for including so few of his Times articles is not known. An examination of the dramatic notices in The Times during the period in question suggests (1) that there were at least two regular dramatic critics on the staff, (2) that Hazlitt chiefly confined himself to Shakespearian and other plays of established reputation, and (3) that he practically ceased to write at the end of 1817. The following may be mentioned among the more important articles, which may, with varying degrees of probability, be ascribed to Hazlitt:— School for Scandal (Munden as Sir Peter Teazle), September 8, 1817; Young’s Hamlet, September 9; As You Like It (Miss Brunton as Rosalind), September 20; Maywood’s Zanga, October 3; Cibber’s The Refusal, or The Ladies’ Philosophy, October 6; Kean’s Richard III., October 7; The Wonder, or A Woman Keeps a Secret, October 9; Venice Preserved, October 10; Kean’s Macbeth, October 21; Othello (Kean as Othello, Maywood as Iago), October 27; Venice Preserved (Miss O’Neill as Belvidera), December 2; The Honey Moon, December 3; Fisher’s Hamlet, December 11; Kean’s Macbeth, December 16; King John (Miss O’Neill as Constance), December 18.

Reference should be made (1) to Mr. William Archer’s Introduction to a Selection of Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays (ed. Archer and Lowe, 1895), and (2) to the companion-volume of Leigh Hunt’s Dramatic Essays (ed. Archer and Lowe, 1894).

we had any influence with him, advise him to give one thorough reading to Shakspeare, without any regard to the promptbook, or to his own cue, or to the effect he is likely to produce on the pit or gallery. If he does this, not with a view to his profession, but as a study of human nature in general, he will, we trust, find his account in it, quite as much as in keeping company with “the great vulgar, or the small.”^[61] He will find there all that he wants, as well as all that he has:—sunshine and gloom, repose as well as energy, pleasure mixed up with pain, love and hatred, thought, feeling, and action, lofty imagination, with point and accuracy, general character with particular traits, and all that distinguishes the infinite variety of nature. He will then find that the interest of Macbeth does not end with the dagger scene, and that Hamlet is a fine character in the closet, and might be made so on the stage, by being understood. He may then hope to do justice to Shakspeare, and when he does this, he need not fear but that his fame will last.’

Mr. Kean’s Iago. Cf. ante, p. 190.

212.

‘Hedged in,’ etc. Adapted from Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 5.

In contempt of mankind. Hazlitt refers to a passage of Burke’s. See Political Essays, vol. III. p. 32 and note.

213.

‘Play the dog,’ etc. Henry VI., Part III., Act V. Sc. 6.

214.

Plausibility of a confessor. The Examiner has the following note on this passage: ‘Iago is a Jesuit out of orders, and ought to wear black. Mr. Kean had on a red coat (certainly not “the costume of his crime,” which is hypocrisy), and conducted the whole affair with the easy intrepidity of a young volunteer officer, who undertakes to seduce a bar-maid at an inn.’

214.

‘His cue,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Sc. 2.

215.

‘Who has that heart so pure,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

216.

‘What a full fortune,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Here is her father’s house,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 1.

Ode to Indifference. By Mrs. Frances Greville, Fanny Burney’s godmother.

‘What is the reason,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

217.

‘I cannot believe,’ etc. Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1.

‘And yet how nature,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Nearly are allied,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 163-4.

‘Who knows all quantities [qualities], etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3. In The Examiner the following note is appended to this passage:—

‘If Desdemona really “saw her husband’s visage in his mind,”^[62] or fell in love with the abstract idea of “his virtues and his valiant parts,”^[63] she was the only woman on record, either before or since, who ever did so. Shakespeare’s want of penetration in supposing that those are the sort of things that gain the affections, might perhaps have drawn a smile from the ladies, if honest Iago had not checked it by suggesting a different explanation. It should seem by this, as if the rankness and gross impropriety of the personal connection, the difference in age, features, colour, constitution, instead of being the obstacle, had been the motive of the refinement of her choice, and had, by beginning at the wrong end, subdued her to the amiable qualities of her lord. Iago is indeed a most learned and irrefragable doctor on the subject of love, which he defines to be “merely a lust of the blood, and a permission of the will.”^[64] The idea that love has its source in moral or intellectual excellence, in good nature or good sense, or has any connection with sentiment or refinement of any kind, is one of those preposterous and wilful errors, which ought to be extirpated for the sake of those few persons who alone are likely to suffer by it, whose romantic generosity and delicacy ought not to be sacrificed to the baseness of their nature, but who treading securely the flowery path, marked out for them by poets and moralists, the licensed artificers of fraud and lies, are dashed to pieces down the precipice, and perish without help.’ In the following number of The Examiner (August 14, 1814) Leigh Hunt, then in Surrey Gaol, wrote a long reply to this characteristic passage. In the number for September 4, the dramatic critic of The Examiner replied to Hazlitt’s article on the character of Iago. A letter from Hazlitt by way of rejoinder appeared on September 11 (see Appendix to these notes). The critic replied (closing the controversy) on September 18.

218.

‘Oh gentle lady,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘The milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Least relish of salvation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Oh, you are well tuned now,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Though in the trade of war,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 2.

219.

‘My noble lord,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘It is not written in the bond.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1.

220.

‘Though I perchance,’ < html@files@59506@59506-h@59506-h-45.htm.html#Page_251" class="pginternal">251.

Fawcett. John Fawcett (1768-1837), for many years manager of Covent Garden.

Mrs. Gibbs. For an account of this actress, said to have been the wife of George Colman the younger, see Mrs. Baron Wilson’s Our Actresses, I. 83-90.

Mr. Blanchard. William Blanchard (1769-1835), one of the Covent Garden comedians. See Leigh Hunt’s Critical Essays, p. 122.

Mr. Farley. Charles Farley (1771-1859), actor, dramatist, and stage-manager.

last line. The Examiner continues: ‘Miss O’Neill has resumed her engagement at this house, and plays her usual characters to crowded audiences with even increased effect. We should attempt to describe her excellency in some of them, but that we feel ourselves unable to do her even tolerable justice.’

252.

Mrs. Alsop’s Rosalind. Covent Garden, October 18, 1815. Mrs. Alsop did not continue long on the stage. She was the daughter of Mrs. Jordan and Richard Daly, the Irish theatrical manager.

‘No more like,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

Her Nell. In The Devil to Pay.

The Will. By F. Reynolds, produced in 1797.

253.

John Du Bart. October 25, 1815. The piece, attributed to Pocock, seems to have been founded on an exploit of the French naval hero, Jean Barth (1651-1702).

That which took place in Hyde Park. Hazlitt refers to the extraordinary thanksgiving jubilee, which took place in London on August 1, 1814, and following days. Part of the programme consisted of a sham fight on the Serpentine.

254.

Mr. Bishop. Afterwards Sir Henry Rowley Bishop (1786-1855), the composer.

‘Guns, drums,’ etc. Pope, Satires, I. 26.

The Beggar’s Opera. October 28, 1815. Cf. ante, pp. 193-5.

Miss Nash. Miss Nash had played Polly at Bath, November 4, 1813, a performance described by Genest as ‘very good.’

255.

Mrs. Davenport. Mary Ann Davenport (1765?-1843) first appeared at Covent Garden in 1794.

256.

l. 15. The Examiner adds: ‘A new farce has been brought out at Drury-Lane in the course of the week, called Twenty per Cent. It has succeeded very well. A voluble lying knave of a servant in it by Mr. Harley, who plays this class of characters well, is its chief attraction. It is deficient in plot, but not without pleasantry. It is improbable, lively, and short.’ The farce was by T. Dibdin.

Miss O’Neill’s Elwina. Covent Garden, November 11. Hannah More’s Percy was produced in 1778.

l. 15. The Theatrical Examiner for November 12, 1815, on Kean’s Bajazet, and Mrs. Mardyn and Mrs. Alsop in The Country Girl, is clearly Hazlitt’s.

257.

There is one short word, etc. ‘Fudge.’ See The Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xi.

258.

l. 24. The Examiner continues: ‘Miss Stephens has appeared twice in Polly, and once in Rosetta. She looks better than she did last year, and, if possible, sings better. Of the new Farce at Drury-Lane [Who’s Who? or The Double Imposture], we have only room to add, that there is one good scene in it, in which Munden and Harley made a very grotesque contrast, with some tolerable equivoques; all the rest is a tissue of the most tedious and gross improbabilities. The author’s wit appeared to have been elicited and expended in the same moment.’

Where to Find a Friend. By Leigh, produced at Drury Lane November 23, 1815.

260.

Johnstone. John Henry Johnstone (1749-1828), a member of the Drury Lane company from 1803 to 1820. He began his career as a singer.

‘The milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. v.

261.

Cymon. Garrick’s play was produced in 1767.

‘Sweet Passion of Love,’ Act III. Sc. 2.

‘It is silly sooth,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘Now I am seventy-two.’ Cymon, Act II. Sc. 3.

‘Split the ears,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

262.

What’s a Man of Fashion? ‘An indifferent farce’ (according to Genest) by Reynolds.

263.

‘With pleased attention,’ etc. Collins, Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer, 59-63. Collins is referring to Fletcher.

‘Where did you rest last night?’ The Orphan, Act IV. Sc. 3.

‘A cubit from his stature.’ Cf. St. Matthew, vi. 27.

The Honey-Moon. By John Tobin (1805).

‘He still plays the dog.’ Cf. Henry VI., Part III. Act V. Sc. 6.

last line. The Examiner adds: ‘Mrs. Marden [Mardyn] played Miss Hoyden on Wednesday in the admirable comedy of the Trip to Scarborough. She seemed to consult her own genius in it less than the admonitions of some critics. There was accordingly less to find fault with, but we like her better when she takes her full swing.

‘If to her share some trifling errors fall,

Look in her face, and you’ll forget them all.’^[65]

Mr. Penley’s Lord Foppington had very considerable merit.

264.

The Merchant of Bruges. A version by Douglas Kinnaird, Byron’s friend, of Fletcher’s comedy, The Beggar’s Bush.

‘That every petty lord,’ etc. For this and the other passages quoted see The Beggar’s Bush, Act II. Sc. 3.

266.

l. 17. In The Examiner the article continued y Ripe,’ ‘I know a bank,’ etc.

Artaxerxes. Cf. ante, pp. 192-3.

321.

Exit by Mistake. ‘A pretty good comedy in 3 acts, by Jameson’ (Genest).

322.

John Dennis. Hazlitt probably refers to John Dennis’s ‘Remarks upon Cato.’ 1713.

The editor of a modern journal. Probably Hazlitt’s brother-in-law, Dr., afterwards Sir John Stoddart.

323.

The Beggar’s Opera. Cf. ante, pp. 193-5. Polly’s famous song, ‘Oh, ponder well! be not severe,’ etc. (Act I.), is said to have turned the tide in favour of the opera at its first representation, January 29, 1728.

324.

Schlegel’s work on the Drama. See Lecture IV. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (trans. John Black, ed. 1900), p. 64.

325.

Selon la coutume de notre pays. See vol. I. note to p. 100.

Cosi fan Tutti. Mozart’s Opera, 1788.

Dansomanie. By Étienne Nicolas MÉhul (1763-1817), produced in Paris, 1800.

326.

‘To draw three souls,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.

Mr. Naldi. Giuseppe Naldi (1770-1820), who first appeared in London in 1806.

Pandarus. In Troilus and Cressida.

Signor Begri. Presumably Pierre Ignace Begrey (1783-1863), who appeared in London, 1815-1822.

‘Floats upon the air,’ etc. Loosely quoted from Comus, 249-251.

‘And silence,’ etc. Ibid. 557-560.

327.

Madame Vestris. Lucia Elizabeth Bartolozzi (1797-1856), granddaughter of the engraver, and the wife, first (1813) of Armand Vestris, a dancer at the King’s Theatre, and second (1838), of Charles James Mathews. She first appeared in London in 1815, and retired in 1854. Mrs. Baron Wilson (Our Actresses, II. 184) describes her as ‘the fair Syren, who, for nearly a quarter of a century, has fascinated the whole kingdom by her talent and beauty.’

Miss L. Kelly. The younger sister of Frances Maria Kelly, born 1795.

328.

l. 13. In The Examiner the article concludes as follows: ‘Love in a Village is put off till Thursday next, and Mr. Incledon is to perform in Artaxerxes on Tuesday. Mr. Horn played the Seraskier in the Siege of Belgrade on Friday, and sung the songs, particularly ‘My heart with love is beating’ with great truth and effect. Mr. Russell’s Leopold was very lively. It is not necessary to say that Miss Kelly’s Lilla was good, for all that she does is so. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were present, and were very cordially greeted by the audience. After the play, God save the King was repeatedly called for, and at length sung, with an additional, occasional, and complimentary verse by Mr. Arnold:—

“Long may the Royal Line,

Proud Star of Brunswick shine;

While thus we sing,

Joy may thy Daughter share,

Blest by a Nation’s pray’r,

Blest be the Royal Pair;

God save the King.”

‘At the Haymarket, where the same Illustrious Personages appeared for the first time in public (since their marriage) the night before, the following stanza was introduced:—

‘“Great George! thy people’s voice

Now hails thy daughter’s choice

Till echoes ring:

This shout still rends the air,

May she prove blest as fair!

Long live the noble pair!

God save the King.”’

My Landlady’s Night-Gown. My Landlady’s Gown (August 10, 1816), by Walley Chamberlain Oulton (1770?-1820?).

‘Its own place.’ Paradise Lost, 1. 254.

329.

l. 4. In The Examiner Hazlitt proceeds: ‘A Miss Ives played a little plump chambermaid prettily enough. The Jealous Wife was acted at this Theatre on Monday. Mr. Meggett played Mr. Oakley but indifferently. He seemed to be at hawk and buzzard between insipid comedy and pompous tragedy. It was not the thing. Mr. Terry’s Major Oakley we like very much. Mrs. Glover, who played Mrs. Oakley, is really too big for this little theatre. The stage cannot contain her, and her violent airs. Miss Taylor was Miss Russet, and looked like a very nice, runaway school-girl. Barnard played her lover, and got through the part very well.’

Rosetta. In Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village.

Mr. Chatterley. William Symonds Chatterley (1787-1822). Justice Woodcock was his best character.

Castle of Andalusia. A comic opera by O’Keeffe, produced in 1782.

330.

l. 36. The article in The Examiner continues: ‘Haymarket-Theatre. The new farce in one act, called The Fair Deserter, succeeds very well here. It preserves the unities of time, place, and action, with the most perfect regularity. The merit of it is confined to the plot, and to the pretended changes of character by the changes of dress, which succeed one another with the rapidity and with something of the ingenuity of a pantomime. Mr. Duruset, a young officer of musical habits, wishes to release Miss MacAlpine from the power of her guardian, who is determined to marry her the next day. The young lady is kept under lock and key, and the difficulty is to get her out of the house. For this purpose Tokely, servant to Duruset, contrives to make the cook of the family drunk at an alehouse, where he leaves him, and carries off his official paraphernalia, his night-cap, apron, and long knife, in a bundle to his master. The old guardian (Watkinson) comes out with his lawyer from the house, and Tokely, presenting himself as the drunken cook, is let in. He, however, takes the key of the street door with him, which he shuts to, and as this intercepts the return of the old gentleman to his house, Tokely is forced to get out of the window by a ladder to fetch a blacksmith. He presently returns himself, in the character of the blacksmith, unlocks the door, but on the other’s refusing him a guinea for his trouble, locks it again, and walks off in spite of all remonstrances. The guardian is now compelled to ascend the ladder himself as wel te>Theatrical Examiner of February 2, 1817 in which are noticed John Philip Kemble’s farce The Pannel, revived at Drury Lane January 29, 1816 and a melodrama (attributed to Pocock) The Ravens, or the Force of Conscience, acted at Covent Garden January 24, 1817, is clearly Hazlitt’s. The article contains a comparison between the Drury Lane and Covent Garden companies.

Two New Ballets. From a Theatrical Examiner which begins with an account of Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro not at all in Hazlitt’s manner.

Like Virgil’s wood. Æneid, III. 37-40.

‘Whom lovely Venus,’ etc. L’Allegro, 14 et seq.

354.

‘When you do dance,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

Booth. Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), whose first important appearances in London are noticed in this and the two following articles. The last years of his life were spent in America.

‘What does he [do they] in the north.’ Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 4.

355.

‘A weak invention,’ etc. Cf. ‘A thing devised by the enemy.’ Richard III., Act V. Sc. 3.

Figaro. Holcroft’s The Follies of a Day; or, the Marriage of Figaro (1784).

356.

‘The fell opposite.’ Vaguely Shakesperian. Cf. Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 4, and Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘I know my price no less.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Give the world,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘My wit comes,’ etc. Misquoted from Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

357.

The O. P. rows. The old price riots at the new Covent Garden Theatre in 1809.

358.

Frightened to Death. A musical farce by Oulton.

359.

‘From which,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

l. 19. The Theatrical Examiner for the following week (March 9, 1817) contains a notice (possibly by Hazlitt) of The Heir of Vironi, or Honesty the Best Policy (Covent Garden, February 27), and of ‘Mr. Booth’s imitations of Mr. Kean.’ With this exception The Theatrical Examiners down to March 13 are by Leigh Hunt.

Cibber. Cf. ante, pp. 160-2.

360.

‘In hidden mazes,’ etc. Misquoted from L’Allegro, 141-2.

361.

‘Frontlet.’ King Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.

362.

The Inn-Keeper’s Daughter. By George Soane (1790-1860).

363.

‘Airs from heaven,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

364.

‘And when she spake,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, II. iii. 24.

365.

Signor Ambrogetti. Giuseppe Ambrogetti was in London 1817-1821.

‘Sense of amorous delight.’ ‘The spirit of love and amorous delight.’ Paradise Lost, VIII. 477.

Signor Crivelli, etc. Gaetano Crivelli (1774-1836), a tenor; Violante Camporese (b. 1785), a soprano; Carlo Angrisani (b. circa 1760), a bass.

366.

l. 6. The Theatrical Examiner concludes with an ‘Anecdote relating to the Overture of Don Giovanni’ and a reference to Elphi Bey, ‘a tedious and insipid’ romantic drama (Drury Lane, April 17).

Ex uno omnes. ‘Ab uno disce omnes.’ Æneid, II. 65-6.

367.

‘With all appliances,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II. Act III. Sc. 1.

‘The golden cadences,’ etc. ‘Golden cadence of poesy.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Sc. 2.

368.

l. 29. The Theatrical Examiner of May 4, 1817, clearly by Hazlitt, contains a notice of Johnny Gilpin (Drury Lane, April 28), and a brief reference to Mrs. Hill’s Lady Macbeth (April 29). Johnny Gilpin is described as ‘very poorly got up.’

369.

Holland. Charles Holland (1768-1849?) played at Drury Lane 1796-1820.

370.

l. 14. The Theatrical Examiner concludes as follows: ‘We have not room to say much of the new tragedy of The Apostate,^[74] for which we are not sorry, as we should have little good to say of it. The poetry does not rise to the merit of common-place, and the tragic situations are too violent, frequent, and improbable. It is full of a succession of self-inflicted horrors. Miss O’Neill played the heroine of the piece, whose affectation and meddling imbecility occasion all the mischief, and played it shockingly well. Mr. Young’s Malec was in his best and most imposing manner. The best things in The Apostate were the palpable hits at the Inquisition and Ferdinand the Beloved, which were taken loudly and tumultuously by the house, a circumstance which occasioned more horror in that wretched infatuated devoted tool of despotism, the Editor of The New Times,etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Was set down.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

450.

‘Aye, every inch a king.’ King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘When I do stare,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘Pray do not mock me.’ Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 6.

‘Which sacred pity, etc.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘False gallop.’ Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Honest sonsy,’ etc. Burns, Address to a Haggis, I.

451.

Artaxerxes. Cf. ante, pp. 192-3.

452.

‘Concords of sweet sounds.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.

453.

l. 15. In The London Magazine the article concludes with a notice (signed ‘X.’) of a new after-piece at Drury Lane, entitled The Lady and the Devil, and a flattering notice of Virginius at Covent Garden. Neither of these notices is written in Hazlitt’s manner, and it is evident from his later account of Knowles’s tragedy (see pp. 455, et seq.) that the notice of Virginius at any rate is the work of another hand. It would seem that after seeing Kean in King Lear Hazlitt retired for a time to Winterslow.

The only article, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to his third article, published in the March number (ante, pp. 403, et seq.), which was probably written while the theatres were closed in consequence of the deaths of the Duke of Kent (d. January 23, 1820) and George III. (d. January 29, 1820).

Mr. Weathercock. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794-1852), afterwards well known as a forger and murderer, was at this time a regular contributor to The London Magazine, chiefly under the pseudonym of Janus Weathercock. His contributions were for the most part on the Fine Arts, but in the number for June 1820 (Janus’s Jumble, chap, III.) he wrote some remarks on the theatres, in the course of which he chaffed ‘Mr. Drama’ (i.e. Hazlitt) on some of his theatrical criticisms, and especially on his article on the minor theatres published in March. To these remarks Hazlitt replies in the present essay. For Wainewright himself see the biographical introduction to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition (1880) of his contributions to The London Magazine, and Mr. Bertram Dobell’s Sidelights on Charles Lamb (1903).

454.

‘Odious in satin,’ etc. ‘Odious! in woollen! ’twould a saint provoke.’ Pope, Moral Essays, I. 246.

‘Like little wanton boys,’ etc. Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Inexpressive three.’ Cf. ‘Unexpressive she.’ As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Written in our heart’s tables.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I. Sc. 1.

455.

‘Entire affection scorneth [hateth],’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto VIII. St. 40.

‘A man’s mind,’ etc. ‘Men’s judgements are a parcel of their fortunes.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Sc. 13.

‘Diamond rings,’ etc. etc. Hazlitt quotes from Wainewright’s article.

‘We came,’ etc. A hasty adaptation, presumably, of the famous ‘Veni, vidi, vici.’

Virginius. James Sheridan Knowles’s (1784-1862) Virginius was produced at Covent Garden on May 17, 1820.

‘Strike his lofty head,’ etc. ‘Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.’ Horace, Odes, I. I. 36.

456.

The Virginius and the David Rizzio, etc. Another Virginius, with Kean in the title role, was produced at Drury Lane on May 29, 1820. David Rizzio, an opera by Colonel Hamilton, appeared at the same theatre on June 17.

A former article. See ante, note to p. 453.

‘I never saw you,’ etc. Virginius, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘The lie,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘To be sure she will,’ etc. Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘Let the forum wait for us!’ Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘The freeborn Roman maid.’ Varied slightly from phrases applied to Virginia in the play.

457.

‘Lest the courtiers,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Let the galled jade,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

458.

‘Why are those things hid,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 3.

Mr. Kean at his benefit. June 12, 1820. The play was Venice Preserved, followed by The Admirable Crichton.

Educated in the fourth form, etc. A gibe at Elliston, who was educated at St. Paul’s School.

Cast in the antique mould, etc. The reference is to Kemble.

note. ‘An honest man,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 248.

459.

‘In this expec

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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