MR. WORDSWORTH
From “The Spirit of the Age.” Characterizations of Wordsworth also occur in the lecture “On the Living Poets” and in the Essay “On Genius and Common Sense” in “Table Talk.”
[P. 191.] lowliness is young ambition’s ladder. “Julius Cæsar,” ii, 1, 22.
no figures. Cf. “Julius Cæsar,” ii, 1, 231: “ Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men.”
skyey influences. “Measure for Measure,” iii, 1, 9.
[P. 192.] nihil humani. Terence: “Heautontimoroumenos.” i, 1, 25.
the cloud-capt towers. “Tempest,” iv, 1, 151.
[P. 193.] the judge’s robe. Cf. “Measure for Measure,” ii, 2, 59;
“No ceremony that to great ones ’longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe.”
Pindar and Alcæus. Greek lyric poets.
a sense of joy. Wordsworth’s “To My Sister.”
[P. 194.] Beneath the hills. Cf. Wordsworth’s “Excursion,” VI, 531:
“Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills
The generations are prepared....”
[P. 195.] To him the meanest flower. “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.”
[P. 196.] Grasmere was the residence of Wordsworth between 1799 and 1813.
Cole-Orton was the residence of Wordsworth’s friend, Sir George Beaumont, to whom he dedicated the 1815 edition of his poems: “Some of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your own groves, upon the classic ground of Cole-Orton.”
[P. 197.] Calm contemplation. Cf. “Laodamia”: “Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains.”
Fall blunted “from each indurated heart.” Goldsmith’s “Traveler,” 232.
and fit audience. Wordsworth quotes this line from “Paradise Lost,” VII, 31, in “The Recluse,” 776:
“‘Fit audience let me find though few!’
So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard—
In holiest mood.”
[P. 198.] The Excursion. Hazlitt wrote a review of this poem for the Examiner which not only aroused Wordsworth’s resentment but led to one of his disagreements with Lamb. The review appears in the “Round Table.”
toujours perdrix, “always partridges,” alluding to a story of a French king, who, on being reproved by his confessor for faithlessness to his wife, punished the offender by causing him to be fed on nothing but his favorite dish, which was partridge. See Notes and Queries, Series IV, Vol. III, p. 336.
In his person. In 1803, while on a visit to the Lake Country, Hazlitt had painted a portrait of Wordsworth. “He has painted Wordsworth,” writes Southey, “but so dismally, though Wordsworth’s face is his idea of physiognomical perfection, that one of his friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, ‘At the gallows—deeply affected by his deserved fate—yet determined to die like a man;’ and if you saw the picture, you would admire the criticism.” “Life and Correspondence,” II, 238.
His manner of reading. See p. [295].
a man of no mark. 1 “Henry IV,” iii, 2, 45.
[P. 199.] He finds fault with Dryden’s description. Hazlitt adopted this criticism in his lecture “On Pope and Dryden.”
[P. 200.] Titian (c. 1477-1576), the great Venetian painter.
Chaucer. Wordsworth’s modernizations of Chaucer are “The Prioress’s Tale,” “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,” and a part of “Troilus and Cressida.”
a tragedy. “The Borderers” was written in 1795-96 but not published till 1842. The quotation which follows is from Act iii, 1, 405, and should read:
“Action is transitory—a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle—this way or that—
’Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed;
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.”
Wordsworth quoted these lines after the dedication to “The White Doe of Rylstone” and later added a note: “This and the five lines that follow were either read or recited by me more than thirty years since, to the late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted some expressions in them (imperfectly remembered) in a work of his published several years ago.”
[P. 201.] Let observation. Cf. De Quincey’s “Rhetoric” (Works, ed. Masson, X, 128): “We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson, published immediately after his death, in which, among other instances of desperate tautology, the author quotes the well-known lines from the Doctor’s imitation of Juvenal—‘Let observation,’ etc., and contends with some reason that this is saying in effect,—‘Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively.’” Coleridge somewhere makes the same remark.
Drawcansir. A character in “The Rehearsal” by the Duke of Buckingham.
“Let petty kings the names of Parties know:
Where’er I am, I slay both friend and foe.” v, 1.
Walton’s Angler. In the fifth lecture of the “English Poets” Hazlitt writes: “Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton’s Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the description of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the author’s mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius’s Piscatory Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose on the banks of a river under a shady tree; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls ‘the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.’ We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare; while Maud, the pretty milkmaid, at her mother’s desire, sings the classical ditties of the poet Marlow; ‘Come live with me, and be my love.’”
Paley, William (1743-1805), a noted theologian. Cf. “On the Clerical Character” in “Political Essays” (Works, III, 276): “This same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards employed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, in tampering with religion, morality, and politics,—in trimming between his convenience and his conscience,—in crawling between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated and popular for no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingenious and amusing apology for existing abuses of any description, by which any thing is to be got. It is a very elaborate and consolatory elucidation of the text, that men should not quarrel with their bread and butter. It is not an attempt to show what is right, but to palliate and find out plausible excuses for what is wrong. It is a work without the least value, except as a convenient commonplace book or vade mecum, for tyro politicians and young divines, to smooth their progress in the Church or the State. This work is a text-book in the University: its morality is the acknowledged morality of the House of Commons.” See also Coleridge’s opinion of Paley on p. [288].
Bewick, Thomas (1753-1828), a well-known wood-engraver.
Waterloo, Antoine (1609?-1676?), a French engraver, painter, and etcher.
Rembrandt, Harmans van Rijn (1606-1669.), Dutch painter, whose mastery of light and shade was the object of Hazlitt’s special admiration.
[P. 202.] He hates conchology, etc. See the lecture “On the Living Poets”: “He hates all science and all art; he hates chemistry, he hates conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir Isaac Newton; he hates wisdom; he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which he says are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them; he hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the dialogues in Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates Titian; he hates Vandyke; he hates the antique; he hates the Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of Medicis.”
Where one for sense. Butler’s “Hudibras,” II, 29.
[P. 203.] take the good. Plautus’s “Rudens,” iv, 7.