ON READING OLD BOOKS
This essay was first published in the London Magazine for February, 1821, and republished in the “Plain Speaker.”
[P. 333.] I hate to read new books. It would take too long to recall all the passages in which Hazlitt voices his sentimental attachment to the writers with whom he first became acquainted. “The greatest pleasure in life,” he says in one essay, “is that of reading when we are young,” and at the conclusion of his lectures on the “Age of Elizabeth” he remarks: “Were I to live much longer than I have any chance of doing, the books which I read when I was young, I can never forget.” Patmore’s statement concerning Hazlitt’s later reading may be exaggerated, but it is interesting in this connection: “I do not believe Hazlitt ever read the half of any work that he reviewed—not even the Scotch novels, of which he read more than of any other modern productions, and has written better perhaps, than any other of their critics. I am certain that of many works that he has reviewed, and of many writers whose general pretensions he has estimated better than anybody else has done, he never read one tithe.” “My Friends and Acquaintances,” III, 122.
Tales of my Landlord. Scott’s.
Lady Morgan (1783?-1859), a writer of Irish stories, of which the best-known is “The Wild Irish Girl” (1806). She is also the author of certain miscellaneous productions, among which is a “Life of Salvator Rosa” reviewed by Hazlitt for the Edinburgh Review, July, 1824. Works, X, 276-310.
Anastatius, an Eastern romance by Thomas Hope (1770-1831).
Delphine (1802), a novel by Madame De Staël (1766-1817), the celebrated French bluestocking.
in their newest gloss. “Macbeth,” i, 7, 34.
Andrew Millar (1707-1768), the publisher of Thomson’s and Fielding’s works.
Thurloe’s State Papers. “A Collection of State Papers” (1742) by John Thurloe (1616-1668), Secretary of State under Cromwell.
Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648-1723), a portrait painter of German birth whose work and reputation belong to England.
[P. 335.] for thoughts. Cf. “Hamlet,” iv, 5, 175: “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.”
Fortunatus’s Wishing Cap, in Dekker’s play of “Old Fortunatus.”
Bruscambille. “Tristram Shandy,” Bk. III, ch. 35.
the masquerade. “Tom Jones,” Bk. XIII, ch. 7.
the disputes. Bk. III, ch. 3.
the escape of Molly. Bk. IV, ch. 8.
Sophia and her muff. Bk. V, ch. 4.
her aunt’s lecture. Bk. VII, ch. 3.
the puppets dallying. “Hamlet,” iii, 2, 257.
[P. 336.] ignorance was bliss. Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton.”
Ballantyne press. The printing firm of John and James Ballantyne in Edinburgh with which Scott was associated, and in whose financial ruin he was so disastrously involved.
Minerva Press. The sponsor of popular romances.
[P. 337.] Mrs. Radcliffe, Anne (1764-1823), a very popular writer of novels in which romance, sentiment, and terror are combined in cunning proportions. Her chief novels are “The Romance of the Forest” (1791), “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794) and “The Italian” (1797). Hazlitt writes of her in the lecture “On the English Novelists.”
sweet in the mouth. Revelation, x, 9.
gay creatures. “Comus,” 299.
Tom Jones discovers Square. Bk. V, ch. 5.
where Parson Adams. “Joseph Andrews,” Bk. IV, ch. 14.
[P. 338.] Chubb’s Tracts. Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), a tallow-chandler who devoted his leisure hours to the deistic controversy. His “Tracts and Posthumous Works” were published in six volumes in 1754.
fate, free-will. “Paradise Lost,” II, 560.
Would I had never seen. Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” Scene 19.
[P. 339.] New Eloise. “Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloise” (1760), a novel by the great French sentimentalist, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who was the most powerful personal force in the revolutionary movement of the eighteenth century and whose writings have left a deep impression on the political and educational systems of the nineteenth. His other important works are “The Social Contract” and “Émile” (1762) and the “Confessions” (1782). Hazlitt has a “Character of Rousseau” in the “Round Table” (see p. [xliv], n.).
scattered like stray-gifts. Wordsworth’s “Stray Pleasures.”
Sir Fopling Flutter, in Sir George Etherege’s comedy “The Man of Mode” (1676).
P. 339, n. a friend. Charles Lamb.
[P. 340.] leurre de dupe, a decoy. The expression occurs in the fourth book of Rousseau’s “Confessions.”
a load to sink a navy. “Henry VIII,” iii, 2, 383.
Marcian Calonna is a dainty book. Lamb’s “Sonnet to the Author of Poems Published under the Name of Barry Cornwall.”
[P. 341.] Keats. Hazlitt shared the popular conception of Keats as an effeminate poet. He concludes the essay “On Effeminacy of Character” in “Table Talk” with a reference to Keats: “I cannot help thinking that the fault of Mr. Keats’s poems was a deficiency in masculine energy of style. He had beauty, tenderness, delicacy, in an uncommon degree, but there was a want of strength and substance. His Endymion is a very delightful description of the illusions of a youthful imagination, given up to airy dreams—we have flowers, clouds, rainbows, moonlight, all sweet sounds and smells, and Oreads and Dryads flitting by—but there is nothing tangible in it, nothing marked or palpable—we have none of the hardy spirit or rigid forms of antiquity. He painted his own thoughts and character; and did not transport himself into the fabulous and heroic ages. There is a want of action, of character, and so far, of imagination, but there is exquisite fancy. All is soft and fleshy, without bone or muscle. We see in him the youth, without the manhood of poetry. His genius breathed ‘vernal delight and joy.’—‘Like Maia’s son he stood and shook his plumes,’ with fragrance filled. His mind was redolent of spring. He had not the fierceness of summer, nor the richness of autumn, and winter he seemed not to have known, till he felt the icy hand of death!” Again in the introduction to the “Select British Poets” (Works, V, 378), he says that Keats “gave the greatest promise of genius of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty, originality, and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted was manly strength and fortitude to reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and expression. Some of his shorter and later pieces are, however, as free from faults as they are full of beauties.”
Come like shadows. “Macbeth,” iv, 1, 111.
Tiger-moth’s wings and Blushes with blood. Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes.”
Words, words. “Hamlet,” ii, 2, 194.
the great preacher. Edward Irving.
as the hart. Psalms, xlii, 1.
Giving my stock [sum]. “As You Like It,” ii, 1, 48.
[P. 342.] Valentine, Tattle and Prue, characters in Congreve’s “Love for Love” (1695).
know my cue. Cf. “Othello,” i, 2, 83.
Intus et in cute. See p. [163].
Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the celebrated chemist.
[P. 343.] with every trick and line [line and trick]. “All’s Well That Ends Well,” i, 1, 107.
the divine Clementina, in Richardson’s “Sir Charles Grandison.”
that ligament. Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy.” Bk. VI, ch. 10.
story of the hawk. “Decameron,” Fifth Day, ninth story.
at one proud [fell] swoop. “Macbeth,” iv, 3, 219.
[P. 344.] with all its giddy [dizzy] raptures. Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” 85.
embalmed with odours. “Paradise Lost,” II, 843.
the German criticism. See p. [112].
His form. “Paradise Lost,” I, 591.
Falls flat. Ibid., I, 460.
[P. 345.] For Dr. Johnson’s and Junius’s style. See pp. [147-9], [186], [190].
he, like an eagle. “Coriolanus,” v, 6, 115.
An Essay on Marriage. “No such essay by Wordsworth is at present known to exist. It would seem either that ‘Marriage’ is a misprint for some other word, or that Hazlitt was mistaken in the subject of the essay referred to by Coleridge. Hazlitt is probably recalling a conversation with Coleridge in Shropshire at the beginning of 1798 (cf. ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’), at which time A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (1793) was the only notable prose work which Wordsworth had published.” Waller-Glover.
P. 345, n. Is this the present earl? “James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839), succeeded his father in August, 1789.” Waller-Glover.
[P. 346.] worthy of all acceptation. 1 Timothy, i, 15.
Clarendon. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), English statesman and author of the “History of the Rebellion” (1704-1707).
Froissart, Jean (1338-1410), the chronicler of the Hundred Years’ War.
Holinshed, Ralph (d. 1580?), author of “Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande” (1578).
Stowe, John (1525?-1605), author of “Englysh Chronicles” (1561).
Thucydides (460? b.c.-399?), the historian of the Peloponnesian War.
Guicciardini, Francesco (1483-1540), Italian statesman and author of a “History of Italy from 1494 to 1532.”
[P. 347.] The Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, the last work of Cervantes (translated into English in 1619) and Galatea, his first work (1585).
another Yarrow. Cf. Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Revisited.”