FOOTNOTES:

[58] The article on The Fine Arts in the Encyclopædia Britannica is signed “W. H.”

[59] Mrs. Hazlitt the first, it would appear, undertook to verify her husband’s quotations for him. His favorite metaphor, “Like the tide which flows on to the Propontic, and knows no ebb,” must have passed many times under her eye. Any reference to Othello himself, in the great scene of Act III., would have shown four lines for William Hazlitt’s explicit one.

[60] Some of Hazlitt’s comments on women are full of unconscious humor. In Great and Little Things he admits being snubbed by the fair, and adds with grandiloquence: “I took a pride in my disgrace, and concluded that I had elsewhere my inheritance!”

[61] In the National Portrait Gallery, London.

[62] Blackwood’s, in the charming fashion of the time, repeatedly refers to Hazlitt’s “pimples”; and Byron credited and supplemented the allegation. Hazlitt himself says somewhere “that to lay a thing to a person’s charge from which he is perfectly free, shows spirit and invention!” The calumny is not worth mention, except as a fair specimen of the journalistic methods against which literary men had to contend some eighty years ago.

[63] Lamb had been his groomsman twenty-two years before, at the Church of St. Andrew, Holborn, “and like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony; anything awful makes me laugh!” as he confessed in a letter to Southey in 1815.

[64] Orrery had seen this same bitter indignation overwhelm Swift at times, “so that it is scarcely possible for human features to carry in them more terror and austerity.”

[65] At 19 York Street, Westminster. The house, with its tablet “To the Prince of Poets” set by Hazlitt himself, was destroyed in 1877.

[66] A snappy unpublished letter to Hunt, sold among the Hazlitt papers at Sotheby, Wilkinson and Hodge’s, in the late autumn of 1893, complains bitterly of kind Basil Montagu, who had once put off a proffered visit from Hazlitt, on the ground that a party of other guests was expected. The deterred one was naturally wroth. “Yet after this, I am not to look at him a little in abstracto! This is what has soured me and made me sick of friendship and acquaintanceship.” Hazlitt confounded cause and effect. He was unwelcome in general gatherings where his genius was unappreciated; and we may be sure Montagu was sorry for it when, in the interests of concord, he held up so deprecating and inhospitable a hand. But among those who nursed Hazlitt in his last illness, Basil Montagu was not the least loyal.

[67] The Fight appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1822. It was itself antedated by The Fancy of John Hamilton Reynolds, Keats’s friend and Hood’s brother-in-law, which was printed in 1820. The jolly iambics are as inspired as the essay. “P. C.” is, of course, Pugilistic Club.

“Oh, it is life! to see a proud

And dauntless man step, full of hopes,

Up to the P. C. stakes and ropes,

Throw in his hat, and with a spring

Get gallantly within the ring;

Eye the wide crown, and walk awhile

Taking all cheerings with a smile;

To see him strip; his well-trained form,

White, glowing, muscular, and warm,

All beautiful in conscious power,

Relaxed and quiet, till the hour;

His glossy and transparent frame,

In radiant plight to strive for fame!

To look upon the clean shap’d limb

In silk and flannel clothèd trim;

While round the waist the kerchief tied

Makes the flesh glow in richer pride.

’Tis more than life to watch him hold

His hand forth, tremulous yet bold,

Over his second’s, and to clasp

His rival’s in a quiet grasp;

To watch the noble attitude

He takes, the crowd in breathless mood;

And then to see, with adamant start,

The muscles set, and the great heart

Hurl a courageous splendid light

Into the eye, and then—the Fight!”

But this is general: Hazlitt is specific. His particular Fight was the great one between Neate of Bristol and Tom Hickman the Gasman, Neate being the victor. On May 20, 1823, Neate met Spring of Hertfordshire (so translated out of his natural patronymic of Winter), in a contest for the championship, and Neate himself went under. This latter battle was mock-heroically celebrated by Maginn in Blackwood’s, and Hood’s casual meteorological simile heaped up honors on the winner:

“The Spring! I shrink and shudder at her name.

For why? I find her breath a bitter blighter,

And suffer from her blows as if they came

From Spring the fighter!”

So that literature may be said to have set close to the ropes in those days, from first to last.

[68] Lamb, in “A Letter to R. Southey, Esq.”

[69] The man of Martial’s epigram had other “views.” The capital translation is Dr. Goldwin Smith’s:

“Vacerra lauds no living poet’s lays,

But for departed genius keeps his praise.

I, alas, live; nor deem it worth my while

To die, that I may win Vacerra’s smile.”

[70] This was the spirit of Henry Fielding on his last voyage, hoisted aboard among the watermen at Redcliffe, and hearing his emaciated body made the subject of jeers and laughter. “No man who knew me,” he writes in his journal, “will think I conceived any personal resentment at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of man which I have often contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts.” It is a fine passage, and a strong heart, not given to boasting, penned it. Poor Hazlitt could not bear even an unintentional slight without imputing diabolical malice to the offender. Yet it was certainly true that, in his saner hours, he could suffer personal discomfort in public without flinching, and deplore the habit which imposed it, rather than the act.

[71] If Hazlitt conveyed some of his best mannerisms from Coleridge, not always transmuting them, surely the balance may be said to be even when one discovers later in Hartley Coleridge such an easy inherited use of Hazlitt’s “flail of gold” as is exemplified in this summary of Roger Ascham’s career. “There was a primitive honesty, a kindly innocence about this good old scholar, which gave a personal interest to the homeliest details of his life. He had the rare felicity of passing through the worst of times without persecution and without dishonor. He lived with princes and princesses, prelates and diplomatists, without offence as without ambition. Though he enjoyed the smiles of royalty, his heart was none the worse, and his fortunes little the better.”

[72] The quotation is from Coleridge, and it was applied by him to Dryden. Hazlitt himself unconsciously expanded and spoiled it in his essay on Burke. “The wheels of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness of the material, but from the rapidity of their motion.”

[73] The Rev. H. R. Haweis has another characterization of these breathing and burning pages: “long and tiresome essays by Hazlitt.” So they are, sure enough, if only you be endowed to think so! Hazlitt himself gives the diverting fact for what it is worth, that “three chimney-sweeps meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they laughed at one another till they were ready to drop down.”

MONSIEUR HENRI

A Foot-note to French History. By Louise Imogen Guiney. With Portrait and Map. Small 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00.

A fascinating career, truly, and here most exquisitely chronicled. The little book, in its ardor of appreciation, vivacity of portraiture, and grace and spontaneity of style, is a masterpiece of concise narration, and by those who read it once will be sought with unfailing delight again and again.—Boston Beacon.

Miss Guiney writes with a love for her subject which makes her fine discrimination all the finer, and shows an insight into history all the more admirable for the research which it has compelled. This tiny volume gives evidence of as thorough study as would fit out a post-octavo, as some authors understand the writing of history.—Evangelist, N. Y.

Miss Guiney has written La Rochejaquelein’s life on a small scale, but with spirit and enthusiasm, and her little book is very interesting.—N. Y. Tribune.

A spirited, vivid, and felicitously phrased account of that dramatic side-issue of the French Revolution, the Vendée War. . . . Miss Guiney’s literary touch is always admirable and, not infrequently, inspired.—Hartford Courant.

————
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, receipt of the price.

By CONSTANCE F. WOOLSON.

————

————

One of the most remarkable qualities of Miss Woolson’s work was its intense picturesqueness. Few writers have shown equal beauty in expressing the poetry of landscape.—Springfield Republican.

Characterization is Miss Woolson’s forte. Her men and women are original, breathing, and finely contrasted creations.—Chicago Tribune.

Delightful touches justify those who see many points of analogy between Miss Woolson and George Eliot.—N. Y. Times.

Miss Woolson’s power of describing natural scenery and strange, out-of-the-way phases of American life is undoubted. One cannot well help being fascinated by her stories.—Churchman, N. Y.

Miss Woolson is one of the few novelists of the day who know how to make conversation, how to individualize the speakers, how to exclude rabid realism without falling into literary formality.—N. Y. Tribune.

————
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price.

HARPER’S AMERICAN ESSAYISTS.

With Portraits. 16mo, Cloth, $1 00 each.
————

LITERARY AND SOCIAL SILHOUETTES. By Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen.

STUDIES OF THE STAGE. By Brander Matthews.

AMERICANISMS AND BRITICISMS, with Other Essays on Other Isms. By Brander Matthews.

AS WE GO. By Charles Dudley Warner. With Illustrations.

AS WE WERE SAYING. By Charles Dudley Warner. With Illustrations.

FROM THE EASY CHAIR. By George William Curtis.

FROM THE EASY CHAIR. Second Series. By George William Curtis.

FROM THE EASY CHAIR. Third Series. By George William Curtis.

CRITICISM AND FICTION. By William Dean Howells.

FROM THE BOOKS OF LAURENCE HUTTON.

CONCERNING ALL OF US. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

THE WORK OF JOHN RUSKIN. By Charles Waldstein.

PICTURE AND TEXT. By Henry James. With Illustrations.

————
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, receipt of the price.

By GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

————

ORATIONS AND ADDRESSES. Three Volumes. 8vo, Cloth, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, $3 50 each.

FROM THE EASY CHAIR. With Portrait. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental $1 00.

FROM THE EASY CHAIR. Second Series. With Portrait. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00.

FROM THE EASY CHAIR. Third Series. With Portrait. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00.

PRUE AND I. Illustrated Edition. 8vo, Illuminated Silk, $3 50. Also 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1 50.

LOTUS-EATING. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1 50.

NILE NOTES OF A HOWADJI. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1 50.

THE HOWADJI IN SYRIA. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1 50.

THE POTIPHAR PAPERS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1 50.

TRUMPS. A Novel. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, $1 50.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Illustrated. 32mo, Cloth, Ornamental, 50 cents.

WENDELL PHILLIPS. A Eulogy. 8vo, Paper, 25 cents.

————
Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.

For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent by the publishers, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the Price.

Transcriber’s Note:

Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.

Repeated headings were removed.

Page 56, “Llansaintfraed” changed to “Llansantffraed” (brother’s parish of Llansantffraed)

Page 171, Footnote 37, “Farquhare” and “Farqhare” retained as printed from the matriculation entry.