MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS
[The identification of quotations has been omitted for this essay in order to allow students an opportunity to try it for themselves.]
The third and fourth paragraphs of this essay had appeared in a letter of Hazlitt’s to the Examiner (Works, III, 152). The entire essay was first published in the third number of the Liberal (see note to p. 244).
[P. 277.] W—m. Wem.
[P. 281.] Murillo (1617-1682) and Velasquez (1599-1660) are the two greatest Spanish painters.
nothing—like what he has done. In the essay “On Depth and Superficiality” (“Plain Speaker”), Hazlitt characterizes Coleridge as “a great but useless thinker.”
[P. 282.] Adam Smith (1723-1790), founder of the science of political economy, author of “The Wealth of Nations” (1776).
huge folios. In the essay “On Pedantry” (“Round Table”) Hazlitt writes: “In the library of the family where we were brought up, stood the Fratres Poloni; and we can never forget or describe the feeling with which not only their appearance, but the names of the authors on the outside inspired us. Pripscovius, we remember, was one of the easiest to pronounce. The gravity of the contents seemed in proportion to the weight of the volumes; the importance of the subjects increased with our ignorance of them.”
[P. 283], n. Hazlitt’s father was the author of “Discourses for the Use of Families on the Advantages of a Free Enquiry and on the Study of the Scriptures” (1790) and of “Sermons for the Use of Families” in two volumes (1808).
[P. 284.] Mary Wolstonecraft (1759-1797), author of the “Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792).
Mackintosh, Sir James (1765-1832), wrote “Vindiciæ Gallicæ, a Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers against the Accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke.” Hazlitt writes of Mackintosh in the “Spirit of the Age” as “one of the ablest and most accomplished men of the age, both as a writer, a speaker, and a converser,” and comparing him with Coleridge, he remarks, “They have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversation; but in the mind of the one we see nothing but fixtures, in the other every thing is fluid.”
Tom Wedgwood (1771-1805) was an associate of some of the literary men of his day.
[P. 285.] Holcroft, Thomas (1745-1809), actor, dramatist, novelist, a member of Godwin’s group of radicals. His chief writings are “The Road to Ruin” (1792), “Anna St. Ives” (1792), and “Hugh Trevor” (1794-97). Holcroft’s “Memoirs,” written by himself, were edited and completed by Hazlitt and published in 1816 (Works, II).
[P. 286.] Hume, David (1711-1776), historian and sceptic philosopher, described by Hazlitt as “one of the subtlest and most metaphysical of all metaphysicians.” His chief writings are “A Treatise on Human Nature, being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects” (1739-40), “Philosophical Essays” (1748), “Four Dissertations” (1757).
[P. 287.] Essay on Vision. Hazlitt calls this “the greatest by far of all his works and the most complete example of elaborate analytical reasoning and particular induction joined together that perhaps ever existed.” (Works, XI, 108).
Tom Paine (1737-1809), an influential revolutionary writer, author of “Common Sense” (1776), a pamphlet advocating American independence, “Rights of Man” (1791), a reply to Burke’s “Reflections on the French Revolution,” and “The Age of Reason” (1795). He also took an active part in both the American and French revolutions.
prefer the unknown to the known. Cf. the first essay “On the Conversation of Authors”: “Coleridge withholds his tribute of applause from every person, in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding. He would be thought to look farther into a millstone than any body else. He would have others see with his eyes, and take their opinions from him on trust, in spite of their senses. The more obscure and defective the indications of merit, the greater his sagacity and candour in being the first to point them out. He looks upon what he nicknames a man of genius, but as the breath of his nostrils, and the clay in the potter’s hands. If any such inert, unconscious mass, under the fostering care of the modern Prometheus, is kindled into life,—begins to see, speak, and move, so as to attract the notice of other people,—our jealous patroniser of latent worth in that case throws aside, scorns, and hates his own handy-work; and deserts his intellectual offspring from the moment they can go alone and shift for themselves.”
a discovery on the same subject. Hazlitt’s first publication, “On the Principles of Human Action.”
[P. 288.] I sat down to the task, etc. Cf. “On Application to Study” (“Plain Speaker”): “If what I write at present is worth nothing, at least it costs me nothing. But it cost me a great deal twenty years ago. I have added little to my stock since then, and taken little from it. I ‘unfold the book and volume of the brain,’ and transcribe the characters I see there as mechanically as any one might copy the letters in a sampler. I do not say they came there mechanically—I transfer them to the paper mechanically.” See also p. [345].
[P. 289.] which ... he has somewhere told himself. “Biographia Literaria,” ch. 10.
that other Vision of Judgment. Byron’s.
Bridge-Street Junto. “The Constitutional Association or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’ founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See an article in the Edinburgh Review for June, 1822.” Waller-Glover, VI, 487.
[P. 290.] at Tewkesbury. In the essay “On Going a Journey,” Hazlitt refers to this episode as occurring at Bridgewater: “I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn in Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame D’Arblay’s Camilla.”
Paul and Virginia (1788), a sentimental novel by Bernardin St. Pierre (1737-1814).
[P. 291.] Camilla (1796), a novel by Fanny Burney (1752-1840).
a friend of the poet’s. “This is a mistake. Wordsworth paid £23 a year for Alfoxden. The agreement is given in Mrs. Henry Sandford’s ‘Thomas Poole and His Friends,’ I, 225.” Waller-Glover.
[P. 292.] In the outset of life. Alongside of this paragraph should be read the essay “On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth,” Works, XII, 150.
[P. 294.] Chantrey, Sir Francis (1781-1842). His bust of Wordsworth is now at Cole-Orton.
Haydon, Benjamin Robert (1786-1846), a celebrated English painter who was intimate with many literary men. In the picture referred to Haydon also introduced a portrait of Hazlitt.
Monk Lewis. Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) wrote among other things a sensational novel, “The Monk” (1795), which gained him his nickname. “The Castle Spectre” was originally produced at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1797.
[P. 295.] Tom Poole (1765-1837), friend and patron of Coleridge.
[P. 296.] Sir Walter Scott’s, etc. Probably a reference to the banquet given to George IV by the Magistrates of Edinburgh and attended by Scott, August 24, 1822.
Blackwood, William (1776-1834), the Edinburgh publisher.
Gaspar Poussin (1613-1675). His real name was Dughet, but he changed it out of respect to his brother-in-law, Nicholas Poussin.
Domenichino or Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), a painter of Bologna.
[P. 297.] Death of Abel (1758), an idyllic-pastoral poem by Solomon Gessner (1730-1788), a German poet of the Swiss school who enjoyed a wide popularity in the eighteenth century.
[P. 298.] since the days of Henry II. As Henry II lived in the twelfth century, and as neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth ever refer to the language of Henry II as their standard, the statement in the text may probably be considered as a blunder of Hazlitt’s.
He spoke with contempt of Gray and with intolerance of Pope. Cf. “Biographia Literaria,” ch. 2: “I felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth’s conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray’s celebrated Elegy. I had long before detected the defects in The Bard; but the Elegy I had considered as proof against all fair attacks; and to this day I can not read either without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception of the faults in certain passages, has been more than repaid to me by the additional delight with which I read the remainder.” In his “Table Talk,” October 23, 1833, Coleridge says again: “I think there is something very majestic in Gray’s Installation Ode; but as to the Bard and the rest of his lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and artificial.” Of Pope and his followers he writes (“Biographia Literaria,” ch. 1): “I was not blind to the merits of this school, yet, as from inexperience of the world, and consequent want of sympathy with the general subjects of these poems, they gave me little pleasure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth withheld from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and substance, and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong epigrammatic couplets, as its form; that even when the subject was addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man; nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in that astonishing product of matchless talent and ingenuity, Pope’s Translation of the Iliad; still a point was looked for at the end of each second line, and the whole was, as it were, a sorites, or, if I may exchange a logical for a grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunctive, of epigrams. Meantime, the matter and diction seemed to me characterized not so much by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated into the language of poetry.”
he thought little of Junius as a writer. Cf. Coleridge’s “Table Talk,” July 3, 1833: “The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. When he gets out of his aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of the English.”
dislike for Dr. Johnson. Cf. “Table Talk,” July 4, 1833: “Dr. Johnson’s fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.... As to Burke’s testimony to Johnson’s powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than in writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life.”
opinion of Burke. Cf. “Table Talk,” April 8, 1833: “Burke was indeed a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically as he seems to have done.... He would have been more influential if he had less surpassed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds, in all respects.”
He liked Richardson, but not Fielding. On this subject Coleridge evidently changed his mind. Cf. “Table Talk,” July 5, 1834: “What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the Œdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots ever planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson is like emerging from a sickroom heated by stoves into an open lawn on a breezy day in May.”
Caleb Williams, the chief novel of William Godwin.
P. 298, n. He had no idea of pictures. See p. [212].
Buffamalco. Cristofani Buonamico (1262-1351), also known as Buffalmacco, a painter of Florence.
[P. 300.] Elliston, Robert William (1774-1813), actor and later manager of the Drury Lane Theatre.
still continues. See p. [224] and n.