The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)

by William Hazlitt

THE ROUND TABLE

ON THE LOVE OF LIFE

This essay formed No. 3 of the Round Table series, the first two having been contributed by Leigh Hunt. To numbers 2, 3, 4 the following motto was prefixed: ‘Sociali fœdere mensa. Milton. A Table in a social compact joined.’

PAGE [1]. That sage. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Bacon’s lines—

‘What then remains, but that we still should cry

For being born, or being born, to die?’

ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION

This essay formed the greater part of No. 7 of the Round Table series. The first three paragraphs are from one of Hazlitt’s ‘Common Places’ in The Morning Chronicle, September 25, 1813.

PAGE [4]. ‘A discipline of humanity.’ Bacon’s Essays, Of Marriage and Single Life. ‘Still green with bays,’ etc. Pope’s Essay on Criticism, 181–188. [5]. A celebrated political writer. Probably Cobbett, of whom Hazlitt says in another place: ‘He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring excess.’ (Table Talk, Character of Cobbett.) [6]. ‘The world is too much with us,’ etc. Misquoted from Wordsworth’s Sonnet. Falstaff’s reasoning about honour. See 1 Henry IV. Act V. Scene 1. ‘They that are whole,’ etc. St. Matthew, ix. 12. In The Examiner this essay concluded with the following passage: ‘We do not think a classical education proper for women. It may pervert their minds, but it cannot elevate them. It has been asked, Why a woman should not learn the dead languages as well as the modern ones? For this plain reason, that the one are still spoken, and have immediate associations connected with them, and the other not. A woman may have a lover who is a Frenchman, or an Italian, or a Spaniard; and it is well to be provided against every contingency in that way. But what possible interest can she feel in those old-fashioned persons, the Greeks and Romans, or in what was done two thousand years ago? A modern widow would doubtless prefer Signor Tramezzani[^[88]] to Æneas, and Mr. Conway would be a formidable rival to Paris. No young lady in our days, in conceiving an idea of Apollo, can go a step beyond the image of her favourite poet: nor do we wonder that our old friend, the Prince Regent, passes for a perfect Adonis in the circles of beauty and fashion. Women in general have no ideas, except personal ones. They are mere egotists. They have no passion for truth, nor any love of what is purely ideal. They hate to think, and they hate every one who seems to think of anything but themselves. Everything is to them a perfect nonentity which does not touch their senses, their vanity, or their interest. Their poetry, their criticism, their politics, their morality, and their divinity, are downright affectation. That line in Milton is very striking—

“He for God only, she for God in him.”[^[89]]

ON THE TATLER

This essay formed No. 10 of the Round Table series. The substance of it was repeated by Hazlitt in his volume of Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819). (See the Lecture on ‘The Periodical Essayists.’)

PAGE [7]. ‘The disastrous strokes which his youth suffered.’ ‘Some distressful stroke that my youth suffered.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 3. He dwells with a secret satisfaction. The Tatler, No. 107. The club at the ‘Trumpet.’ The Tatler, No. 132. The cavalcade of the justice, etc. The Tatler, No. 86. The upholsterer and his companions. See The Tatler, Nos. 155, 160, and 178. A burlesque copy of verses. The Tatler, No. 238. The verses are by Swift. [8]. Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield. See p. 157. Betterton is frequently mentioned in The Tatler. See especially No. 167. Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock. See The Tatler, No. 88, and p. 157 of this volume. ‘The first sprightly runnings.’ Dryden’s Aurengzebe, Act IV. Scene 1. [9]. The Court of Honour. Addison, in The Tatler, No. 250, created the Court of Honour. He and Steele together wrote the later papers (Nos. 253, 256, 259, 262, 265) in which the proceedings of the Court are recorded. The Personification of Musical Instruments. The Spectator, Nos. 153 and 157. Note. This note is by Leigh Hunt. The authorship of the anonymous paper (The Spectator, No. 95) is uncertain. The account of the two sisters. The Tatler, No. 151. The married lady. The Tatler, No. 104.

ON MODERN COMEDY

This essay did not form one of the Round Table series, but was published in The Examiner for August 20, 1815, under the heading ‘Theatrical Examiner.’ It was substantially repeated in the Lectures on the English Comic Writers (Lecture VIII., ‘on the Comic Writers of the Last Century’), and was republished verbatim in the posthumous volume entitled Criticisms and Dramatic Essays on the English Stage (1851). The essay is practically a reprint of the first of two letters which Hazlitt wrote to The Morning Chronicle (September 25 and October 15, 1813). The second of these letters has not been republished.

PAGE [10]. ‘Where it must live, or have no life at all.’ Othello, Act. II. Scene 4. [11]. ‘See ourselves as others see us.’ Burns, ‘To a Louse.’ Wart. He means Shadow. See 2 Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2. [12]. Lovelace, etc. Nearly all these characters are discussed in the English Comic Writers. Sparkish is in Wycherley’s Country Wife, Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s Relapse, Millamant in Congreve’s Way of the World, Sir Sampson Legend in Congreve’s Love for Love. We cannot expect, etc. This paragraph appeared originally in The Morning Chronicle, October 15, 1813. [13]. ‘That sevenfold fence.’ ‘The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep the battery from my heart.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14. This passage is taken by Hazlitt from his own Reply to Malthus (1807). ‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.’ Foote’s Minor, Act II. Aristotle. In the Poetics. ‘Warm hearts of flesh and blood,’ etc. Quoted, with omissions and variations, from a passage in Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 101). [14]. ‘Men’s minds are parcel of their fortunes.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Scene 13.

ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO

Republished with a few variations from The Examiner of July 24, 1814. Hazlitt afterwards published the original article in A View of the English Stage (1818), and borrowed from it in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (See ante, pp. 206–7).

PAGE [14]. A contemporary critic. This was Hazlitt himself who made this criticism of Kean in an article in The Morning Chronicle (May 9, 1814), reprinted in A View of the English Stage. ‘Hedged in with the divinity of kings.’ From Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5. [15]. Play the dog, etc. 3 Henry VI., Act V. Scene 6. [16]. ‘His cue is villainous melancholy,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Scene 2.

ON THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY

This essay was one of a series called Common-places (No. III.) and appeared in The Examiner on November 27, 1814, before the Round Table series commenced. It was not, therefore, addressed, as it purports to be, ‘to the editor of the “Round Table.”’ The greater part of it was repeated in the Lectures on the English Poets (1818) at the end of Lecture V. on Thomson and Cowper.

PAGE [17]. Rousseau in his ‘Confessions.’ Partie I. Livre III. [18]. The minstrel. See Beattie’s Minstrel, Book I. st. 9. [20]. ‘A farewell sweet.’

‘If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,

Extend his evening beam,’ etc.

Paradise Lost, II. 492.

ON POSTHUMOUS FAME

This essay is not one of the Round Table series. It appeared in The Examiner on May 22, 1814.

PAGE [22]. ‘Blessings be with them’ etc. Wordsworth’s Personal Talk, stanza 4. ‘Nor sometimes forget,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 33 et seq. Note. A part of the passage here referred to (from The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy) is quoted by Hazlitt in his Lectures on the English Poets (on Shakspeare and Milton). [23]. ‘Famous poets’ wit.’ See The Faerie Queene, Verses addressed by the author, No. 2. ‘Have not the poems of Homer,’ etc. The Advancement of Learning, First Book, VIII. 6. ‘Because on Earth,’ etc. See Dante’s Inferno, Canto iv. Cf. ‘On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’ The Faerie Queene, Book IV. Canto ii. st. 32. ‘Every variety of untried being.’

‘Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!’

Addison’s Cato, Act V. Scene 1.

ON HOGARTH’S ‘MARRIAGE À LA MODE’

This essay (from The Examiner, June 5, 1814) and the next one (June 19, 1814) continuing the same subject, were (in substance) republished in the English Comic Writers (see the Lecture VII. on the works of Hogarth) and also in Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England, etc. (1824).

PAGE [25]. The late collection. In 1814. ‘Of amber-lidded snuff-box.’ Pope’s Rape of the Lock, IV. 123.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED

[28]. What Fielding says. See Tom Jones, Book IV. Chap. i. [30]. ‘All the mutually reflected charities.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 40). ‘Frequent and full,’ etc. See Paradise Lost, III. 795–797. [31]. Note. The ‘Reflector.’ For 1811. The essay is included in Poems, Plays and Miscellaneous Essays of Charles Lamb (ed. Ainger).

ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS

No. 15 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [31]. ‘At last he rose,’ etc. Lycidas, 192–193. Dr. Johnson. See his Life of Milton (Works, Oxford ed., vii. 119). ‘Most musical, most melancholy.’ Il Penseroso, l. 62. ‘With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.’ Lycidas, l. 189. [32]. ‘Together both,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 25 et seq. ‘Oh fountain Arethuse,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 85 et seq. [33]. ‘Like one that had been led astray,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 69–70. ‘Next Camus,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 103 et seq. Has been found fault with. By Dr. Johnson in his Life of Milton (Works, Oxford ed., vii. 120). Camoens, who, in his ‘Lusiad.’ See The Lusiads, Canto ii. stanzas 56 et seq. [34]. ‘The muses in a ring,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 47–48. ‘Have sight of Proteus,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us.’ ‘Return, Alphaeus,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 132 et seq. [35]. Dr. Johnson. Johnson does not seem to have been offended by the dolphins in particular. The picture by Barry. ‘The triumph of the Thames,’ number 4 of the six pictures painted by James Barry (1741–1806) for the Society of Arts. Johnson’s friend, Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814) figures as one of the renowned dead. ‘Here’s flowers for you’ etc. Winter’s Tale, Act. IV. Scene 4. [36]. Dr. Johnson’s ‘general remark,’ etc. See his Life of Milton (Works, Oxford ed., vii. 119, 131), and Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), iv. 305.

ON MILTON’S VERSIFICATION

No. 16 of the Round Table series. Hazlitt drew largely on this essay for his lecture on Shakspeare and Milton. See Lectures on the English Poets.

PAGE [37]. ‘Makes Ossa like a wart.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1. ‘Sad task, yet argument,’ etc. Quoted, with omissions, from Paradise Lost, IX. 13–45.

ON MANNER

This essay is compounded of two papers in the Round Table series, Nos. 17 and [18].| Hazlitt, however, omitted the greater part of No. 18, at the beginning of which he discussed Dryden’s version of The Flower and the Leaf. No. 18 was published in Winterslow (1839) under the title of Matter and Manner.

PAGE [42]. Says Lord Chesterfield. ‘Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than what they say.’ Letters to his Son, No. cxxx. Than his sentiments. In The Examiner appears the following note on this passage: ‘We find persons who write what may be called an impracticable style; and their ideas are just as impracticable. They have as little tact of what is going on in the world as of the habitual meaning of words. Other writers betray their natural disposition by affectation, dryness, or levity of style. Style is the adaptation of words to things. Dr. Johnson had no style, that is, no scale of words answering to the differences of his subject. He always translated his ideas into the highest and most imposing form of expression, or more properly, into Latin words with English terminations. Goldsmith said to him, “If you had to write a fable, and to introduce little fishes speaking, you would make them talk like great whales.” It is a satire on this kind of taste that the most ignorant pretenders are in general what is generally understood by the finest writers. Women generally write a good style, because they express themselves according to the impression which things make upon them, without the affectation of authorship. They have besides more sense of propriety than men.’ For the story of Goldsmith see Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), ii. 231. [43]. One of the most pleasant, etc. It is evident from a passage in Table Talk (on Coffee-House Politicians) that this friend is Leigh Hunt, and that ‘another friend’ is Lamb. ‘As dry as the remainder biscuit,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7. ‘Learning is often,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act IV. Scene 3. [44]. Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough. Letters to his Son, No. clxviii.

‘Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright’

“To church was mine husband borne on the morrow

With neighbours that for him maden sorrow,

And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho:

As help me God, when that I saw him go

After the bier, methought he had a pair

Of legs and feet, so clean and fair,

That all my heart I gave unto his hold.”

ON THE TENDENCY OF SECTS

No. 19 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [49]. Note 1. The Freedom of the Will of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was published in 1754. Edwards was, of course, an American, as Flower reminded Hazlitt in his letter referred to below (49, note 2). ‘Hid from ages.’ Colossians, i. 26. Note 2. Benjamin Flower, in a reply which he wrote to this essay (The Examiner, October 8, 1815), pointed out the ‘phenomenon’ of a Quaker poet ‘appeared about thirty years since, Mr. Scott of Amwell, whose volume of poetry obtained the marked approbation of our acknowledged best critics.’ Johnson said of John Scott of Amwell’s (1730–1783) Elegies, ‘they are very well; but such as twenty people might write’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, ii. 351). Another correspondent, signing himself ‘B. B.,’ wrote a letter to The Examiner (September 24, 1815), protesting against Hazlitt’s sketch of Quakerism. This was no doubt Bernard Barton (1784–1849), another Quaker poet, and afterwards the friend of Lamb. [50]. ‘There is some soul of goodness,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Scene 1. ‘Evil communications,’ etc. 1 Corinthians, xv. 33.

ON JOHN BUNCLE

No. 20 of the Round Table series.

The Life of John Buncle, Esq., by Thomas (not John) Amory (1691?-1788), was published in two volumes, 1756–1766. A new edition in three volumes was published in 1825, very likely on Hazlitt’s recommendation. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, ii. 198. A quotation from the present essay faces the title-page of the new edition (vol. i.). A volume containing the most readable parts of the book, and happily entitled ‘The Spirit of Buncle,’ was published in 1823. The book was a great favourite of Lamb’s as well as of Hazlitt’s.

PAGE [52]. Botargos. ‘Hard roes of mullet called botargos.’ Urquhart’s Rabelais, I. xxi. [53]. ‘Man was made to mourn.’

‘Who breathes, must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn.’

Prior, Solomon on the Vanity of the World, III. 240.

‘I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.’

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Scene 1.

ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM

No. 22 of the Round Table series. Leigh Hunt discussed this article in No. 24 of the series, republished in the 1817 edition of the Round Table, and entitled ‘On the Poetical Character.’ On the subject of Methodism Hunt had already spoken his mind in a series of articles in The Examiner, which he republished in 1809 under the title of An Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism.

PAGE [58]. ‘To sinner it or saint it.’ Pope’s Moral Essays, Ep. II. l. 15. ‘The whole need not a physician.’ St. Matthew, ix. 12. ‘Conceit in weakest,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. [59]. Mawworm. In Isaac Bickerstaffe’s Hypocrite, altered from Colley Cibber’s Nonjuror, which was itself ‘a comedy threshed out of Molière’s Tartuffe.’ See the Lecture on the Comic Writers of the Last Century in English Comic Writers. For Oxberry’s acting of the part see A View of the English Stage. ‘With sound of bell,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7. ‘Round fat oily men of God,’ etc. Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, stanza 69. ‘That burning and shining light.’ St. John, v. 35. Note. ‘And filled up all the mighty void of sense.’ Pope’s Essay on Criticism, l. 210. [60]. ‘The vice,’ etc. Hebrews, xii. 1. ‘The Society for the Suppression of Vice.’ Founded in 1802. Sydney Smith criticised its methods in one of his Edinburgh Review articles (Jan. 1809). Hazlitt refers to it again. See ante, p. 139. ‘And sweet religion,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. ‘Numbers without number.’ Paradise Lost, III. 346. [61]. ‘Dissolves them,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 165–166.

ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

No. 26 of the Round Table series. The essay was in substance republished in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. See ante, pp. 244–248, and the notes thereon.

PAGE [64]. ‘Age cannot wither,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Scene 2. ‘’Tis a good piece of work,’ etc. The Taming of the Shrew, Act I. Scene 2. ‘Would, cousin Silence,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2. The dialogue on the death of old Double occurs earlier in the same scene. ‘The most fearful wild-fowl living.’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1. At the end of this essay in The Examiner Hazlitt added the following ‘Note Extraordinary’: ‘We had just concluded our ramble with Puck and Bottom, and were beginning to indulge in some less airy recreations, when in came the last week’s Cobbett,[^[93]] and with one blow overset our Round Table, and marred all our good things. If while Mr. C. and his lady are sitting in their garden at Botley, like Adam and Eve in Paradise, the delight of one another, the envy of their neighbours, and the admiration of the rest of the world, suddenly a large fat hog from the wilds of Hampshire should bolt right through the hedge, and with snorting menaces and foaming tusks, proceed to lay waste the flower-pots and root up the potatoes, such as the surprise and indignation of so economical a couple would be on this occasion, was the consternation at our Table when Mr. Cobbett himself made his appearance among us, vowing vengeance against Milton and Shakespear, Sir Hugh Evans and Justice Shallow, and all the delights of human life. We were not prepared for such an onset. More barbarous than Mr. Wordsworth’s calling Voltaire dull,[^[94]] or than Voltaire’s calling Cato the only English tragedy;[^[95]] more barbarous than Mr. Locke’s admiration of Sir Richard Blackmore; more barbarous than the declaration of a German Elector—afterwards made into an English king—that he hated poets and painters; more barbarous than the Duke of Wellington’s letter to Lord Castlereagh,[^[96]] or than the Catalogue Raisonné of the Flemish Masters published in the Morning Chronicle,[^[97]] or than the Latin style of the second Greek scholar[^[98]] of the age, or the English style of the first:—more barbarous than any or all of these is Mr. Cobbett’s attack on our two great poets. As to Milton, except the fine egotism of the situation of Adam and Eve, which Mr. Cobbett has applied to himself, there is not much in him to touch our politician: but we cannot understand his attack upon Shakespear, which is cutting his own throat. If Mr. Cobbett is for getting rid of his kings and queens, his fops and his courtiers, if he is for pelting Sir Hugh and Falstaff off the stage, yet what will he say to Jack Cade and First and Second Mob? If we are to scout the Roman rabble, where will the Register find English readers? Has the author never found himself out in Shakespear? He may depend upon it he is there, for all the people that ever lived are there! Has he never been struck with the valour of Ancient Pistol, who “would not swagger in any shew of resistance to a Barbary-hen”?[^[99]] Can he not, upon occasion, “aggravate his voice”[^[100]] like Bottom in the play? In absolute insensibility, he is a fool to Master Barnardine; and there is enough of gross animal instinct in Calyban to make a whole herd of Cobbetts. Mr. Cobbett admires Bonaparte; and yet there is nothing finer in any of his addresses to the French people than what Coriolanus says to the Romans when they banish him. He abuses the Allies in good set terms; yet one speech of Constance describes them and their magnanimity better than all the columns of the Political Register. Mr. Cobbett’s address to the people of England[^[101]] on the alarm of an invasion, which was stuck on all the church-doors in Great Britain, was not more eloquent than Henry V.’s address to his soldiers before the battle of Agincourt; nor do we think Mr. Cobbett was ever a better specimen of the common English character than the two soldiers in the same play. After all, there is something so droll in his falling foul of Shakespear for want of delicacy, with his desperate lounges and bear-garden dexterity, snorting, fuming, and grunting, that we cannot help laughing at the affair, now that our surprise is over; as we suppose Mr. Cobbett does, if he can only keep him out of his premises by hallooing and hooting or dry blows, to see his old friend, Grill,[^[102]] trudging along the highroad in search of his acorns and pig-nuts.’

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

One of Hazlitt’s ‘Theatrical Examiners,’ and published in The Examiner on June 18, 1815.

PAGE [65]. The Beggar’s Opera was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on January 29, 1728. ‘Happy alchemy of mind,’ etc. Cf. Boswell (Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, iii. 65): ‘I have ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry, which can separate good qualities from evil in the same person.’ ‘O’erstepping the modesty of nature.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2. ‘Woman is like,’ etc. Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Taken from Tibullus. Hazlitt probably means Catullus and refers to the lines (Carm. 62)

‘Ut flos in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis,’ etc.

ON PATRIOTISM—A FRAGMENT

This fragment is taken from one of the ‘Illustrations of Vetus’ which appeared originally in The Morning Chronicle and were republished in Political Essays.

PAGE [67]. ‘The love of mankind‘, etc. Rousseau’s Emile, Liv. IV. p. 279 (edit. Garnier): a favourite quotation of Hazlitt’s.

ON BEAUTY

No. 29 of the Round Table series, and signed in The Examiner—‘An Amateur.’

PAGE [68]. Three Papers, etc. Reynolds’s papers in the Idler are Nos. 76, 79, and 82. It is to the last, On the true idea of Beauty, that Hazlitt particularly refers.

ON IMITATION

No. 30 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [73]. The new Spurzheim principles. See Hazlitt’s essays ‘On Dreams’ and ‘On Dr. Spurzheim’s Theory’ in The Plain Speaker. [74]. Note. Vanhuysum. Jan van Huysum (1682–1749). [75]. Pansy freak’d with jet. Lycidas, l. 144. [76]. ‘A pleasure in art,’ etc.

‘There is a pleasure in poetic pains,

Which only poets know.’

Cowper’s Task, The Timepiece, ll. 285–286.

ON GUSTO

No. 40 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [77]. Albano’s. Francesco Albani (1578–1660), a pupil of Ludovico Caracci.

ON PEDANTRY

No. 32 of the Round Table series. See ante, p. 382, for a reference by Hazlitt to this essay.

PAGE [80]. The pedantry of Parson Adams. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. v. Scotch Pedagogue. Roderick Random, Chap. xiv. Seeing ourselves, etc. Burns, To a Louse, st. 8. [81]. Monsieur Jourdain. In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Note. ‘Not to admire anything.’

‘Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,

Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum.’—Horace, Ep. I. vi. I.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

No. 33 the Round Table series.

PAGE [84]. A poetical enthusiast. Wordsworth presumably. ‘A clerk ther was,’ etc. Canterbury Tales, Prologue, ll. 285 et seq. [85]. ‘Chemist, statesman,’ etc. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, l. 550. ‘Tongues in the trees,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 1. [86]. Vestris was so far right, etc. Vestris (1729–1808), ‘Le Dieu de la danse,’ said that Europe contained only three great men, himself, Voltaire, and Frederick of Prussia. We do not see, etc. Johnson and Wordsworth were of the opposite opinion. See Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, iv. 114, and Rogers’s Table-Talk, p. 234. [87]. In Froissart’s ‘Chronicles.’ Book IV. chapter 14 (Panthéon Litteraire). The man was not a monk at all. [88]. ‘The sovereign’st thing on earth.’ 1 Henry IV., Act I. Scene 3. Uneasy and insecure. In The Examiner the following note is appended: ‘It has been found necessary to cement them with blood. “Plus de belles paroles, messieurs, je veux du sang,” is the language of all absolute sovereigns to their subjects, when the film drops from their eyes which leads mankind to suppose themselves the property of tyrants. If men are to be treated like slaves, it is best that they should think themselves born to be so. Plus de belles paroles. The French Revolution was the necessary consequence of our English Revolution and of the Reformation. A crusade once more to re-establish the infallibility of the Pope all over the Continent would be a logical inference from the late crusade to restore divine right.’

ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU

No. 36 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [89]. Note. In The Examiner this note was continued as follows: ‘He was the founder of Jacobinism, which disclaims the division of the species into two classes, the one the property of the others. It was of the disciples of his school, where principle is converted into passion, that Mr. Burke said and said truly,—“Once a Jacobin, and always a Jacobin!” The adept in this school does not so much consider the political injury as the personal insult. This is the way to put the case, to set the true revolutionary leaven, the self-love which is at the bottom of every heart, at work, and this was the way in which Rousseau put it. It then becomes a question between man and man, which there is but one way of deciding.’ [90]. ‘Va Zanetto,’ etc. Part II. liv. 7. ‘Louise Eleonore,’ etc. Part I. liv. 2. [91]. ‘As fast,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Scene 2. There are, indeed, impressions, etc. A quotation from Rousseau’s Confessions. See Hazlitt’s essay entitled ‘My first Acquaintance with Poets.’ [92]. ‘Ah, voila de la pervenche!’ Confessions, Part I. liv. 6. Mr. Wordsworth’s discovery. The reference appears to be to Wordsworth’s poem, ‘The Sparrow’s Nest.’

ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME

No. 37 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [93]. Fitzosborne’s Letters, by William Melmoth the younger (1710–1799), were published in two vols. in 1742–1747. Hazlitt’s quotation seems to be merely a summary of a passage in Letter X. (p. 35, edit. 1748) which is itself quoted from Wollaston’s Religion of Nature Delineated. Note. Burns. See his autobiographical letter to Dr. John Moore, 2nd August 1787. (Works, ed. Chambers and Wallace, i. 20). [94]. ‘Bitter bad judges.’ Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1. ‘Makes ambition virtue.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3. Dr. Johnson. See his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 108). ‘Fame is the spur,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 70–77. Pluck its fruits, unripe and crude. Lycidas, l. 3. [95]. Hogarth’s ‘Distressed Poet.’ The map of the gold-mines of Peru was substituted in the impression of 1740 for a print of Pope thrashing Curll in the original impression of 1736. A man of genius and eloquence. Coleridge presumably. [96]. Elphinstone. James Elphinston (1721–1809), who superintended an Edinburgh edition of The Rambler, in which he gave English translations of most of the mottoes. This, however, was far from being his only literary enterprise, and it is strange that Hazlitt should ‘know nothing more of him.’ He published many translations, one of which, A Specimen of the Translations of Epigrams of Martial (1778), achieved notoriety from its extreme badness. In his later life he devoted himself to the invention of a kind of phonetic spelling, which he explained in Propriety ascertained in her Picture, or English Speech and Spelling under Mutual Guides (1787), and other works. Yorick and the Frenchman. Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. The Passport.

CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL

No. 39 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [97]. A respectable publication. Edinburgh Review, xxvi. p. 96 (Feb. 1816). The passage quoted is from a review by Hazlitt himself of Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Literature.

ON GOOD NATURE

No. 41 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [100]. Says Froissart. This well-known saying is wrongly attributed to Froissart. See Notes and Queries for 1863 and subsequent years. [102]. An Englishman, who would be thought a profound one. Wordsworth. See p. 116. [103]. Forge the seal of the realm, etc. The allusion seems to be to the events of the spring of 1804 when Lord Eldon, during the king’s illness, affixed the great seal to a commission giving the royal assent to certain bills. [104]. Good digestion wait on appetite. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4. Without control. In The Examiner Hazlitt appended as a note: ‘Henry VIII. was a good-natured monarch. He cut off his wives’ heads with as little ceremony as if they had been eels. This character ought, as Mr. Cobbett says, to be hooted off the stage, as a disgrace to human nature. Shakspeare represented kings as they were in his time.’ [104]. Mr. Vansittart. Nicholas Vansittart (1766–1851), created Baron Bexley in 1823, was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1812 till 1822. Everything by starts and nothing long. Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. l. 548. [105]. Note. This note is part of the note on Burke, which in The Examiner appeared at the foot of the essay ‘On Beauty.’ See ante, p. 71.

ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON’S EVE

No. 42 of the Round Table series, with occasional passages from No. 43, on Shakspeare’s female characters, the substance of which was published in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (Cymbeline, Othello, and Winter’s Tale).

PAGE [105]. ‘As the vine curls her tendrils.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 307. [106]. ‘Two of far nobler shape,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 288–311. [107]. ‘That day I oft remember,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 449–465. ‘So spake our general mother,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 492–501. ‘So much the more,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 8–20. [108]. ‘When Adam thus to Eve,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 610–611. ‘To whom thus Eve,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 634. ‘To whom our general ancestor,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 659–660. ‘Methought close at mine ear,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 35–47. ‘So talked the spirited sly snake.’ Paradise Lost, IX. 613. ‘So cheered he his fair spouse,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 129–135. [109]. ‘Under his forming hands,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VIII. 470–477. ‘In shadier bower,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 705–719. ‘Meanwhile at table Eve,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 443–450. [110]. ‘Yet not more sweet,’ etc. Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, Proem, stanza 18. ‘O unexpected stroke,’ etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 268–285. [111]. ‘This most afflicts me,’ etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 315–333.

OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH’S POEM ‘THE EXCURSION’

This essay is composed of two papers by Hazlitt which appeared in The Examiner on August 21 and August 28, 1814.

PAGE [112]. ‘Without form and void.’ Genesis, i. 2. [113]. ‘The bare trees and mountains bare.’ Wordsworth, ‘To my Sister.’ ‘Exchange the shepherd’s flock.’ Excursion, Book VI. [114]. ‘The sad historian of the pensive vale.’ Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, l. 136. ‘Our system is not fashioned,’ etc. Excursion, Book VI. ‘Such as the meeting soul may pierce.’ L’Allegro, l. 138. ‘In that fair clime,’ etc. Excursion, Book IV.

‘Him I mean

Who penned, to ridicule confiding faith,

This sorry Legend.’

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

From The Examiner, October 2, 1814.

PAGE [120]. ‘With glistering spires,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 550. ‘The great vision of the guarded mount.’ Lycidas, l. 161. [121]. ‘A sudden illness,’ etc. Excursion, Book VI. [123]. Aristotle observed. In The Poetics. Bells or Lancaster’s. Andrew Bell (1753–1832) founder of the Madras system of education, and Joseph Lancaster (1770–1838). For an account of these two rival reformers of education see Leslie Stephen’s The English Utilitarians, II. 17–19. Guzman d’Alfarache. Hazlitt discussed this novel by Mateo Aleman, published in 1599, in his English Comic Writers (Lecture on the English Novelists). A discipline of humanity. Bacon’s Essays, ‘Of Marriage and Single Life.’ [124]. The Whig and Jacobite friends. Excursion, Book VI. Sir Alfred Irthing. Excursion, Book VII. ‘Have proved a monument.’ From the sonnet in which Wordsworth dedicated The Excursion to Lord Lonsdale.

CHARACTER OF THE LATE MR. PITT

This ‘character’ originally appeared in Free Thoughts on Public Affairs, etc. (1806). It must have been a favourite with the author, for he afterwards reprinted it in The Eloquence of the British Senate, etc. (1807), in The Round Table (1817), and in Political Essays (1819). It also appeared in the posthumous Winterslow (1839). See note on p. 383, ante.

PAGE [127]. ‘They had learned the trick,’ etc. Hobbes’s Behemoth (Works, ed. Molesworth, vi. 240). [128]. ‘Not matchless,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 341–2. And in its liquid texture, etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 148–149.

ON RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY

From The Examiner, October 9, 1814, ‘Common-places,’ No. 1.

PAGE [129]. ‘But ’tis not so above.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 3. ‘Compelled to give in evidence,’ etc. Ibid. [130]. ‘Open and apparent shame.’ 1 Henry IV., Act II. Scene 4. [131]. Elymas the sorcerer. See Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England (the Pictures at Hampton Court) where Hazlitt describes this cartoon.

ON THE LITERARY CHARACTER

Reprinted with some omissions from a letter which appeared in The Morning Chronicle for October 28, 1813, entitled ‘Baron Grimm and the Edinburgh Reviewers.’

PAGE [131]. A late number, etc. Edinburgh Review, vol. xxi. July 1813. The Correspondance of Friedrich Melchior, Baron Grimm (1723–1807) was published in 1812–14. The article in the Edinburgh is by Jeffrey. Hazlitt, in The Examiner, quotes from it at greater length, and proceeds: ‘These remarks, however shrewd and ingenious in themselves, are somewhat irrelevant to the literary and philosophical character of Mr. Grimm and his friends. There seems to have been an odd transposition of ideas in the writer’s mind; for the whole of his reasoning relates to the manners of fashionable life, or the tendency of mixed and agreeable society in general, to produce levity and insensibility, and does not at all apply to the peculiar defects of the literary character, or account for that hard-heartedness, which Mr. Burke attributes, by way of emphasis, to the thorough-bred metaphysician.[^[112]] The two characters are evidently distinct, and proceed from very different and even opposite causes, which ought not to have been confounded. It would have been a task worthy of the Edinburgh Reviewers to have pointed out the sources of each, and to have shewn how both appear to have united in the present instance with the natural levity of the French character, to produce that “faultless monster which the world ne’er saw” before.[^[113]] Much is undoubtedly to be given to accidental and local circumstances. Boswell’s Life of Johnson presents a very different picture of men and manners from Grimm’s Memoirs, though in the circle described by the former there were men who at least rivalled M. Grimm in literature, and in politeness and knowledge of mankind might vie with Baron d’Holbach. The profligacy of the French court, and the mummeries of the established religion might naturally produce an almost satiric license and impudence among the enlightened partisans of the new order of things, and lead them to regard all religion as a barefaced cheat, and every pretension to virtue as hypocrisy. The peculiar intelligible features of the philosophical and literary character are, however, stamped on every page of M. Grimm’s correspondence; and as they do not seem to have been very well distinguished by the Reviewer, I shall venture to throw out a few hints on the subject, in the hope that they may be taken up and embodied in an authentic form in some future supplementary volume.’

‘All fame is foreign, but of true desert;

Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart.’

Pope’s Essay on Man, IV. 254.

ON COMMON-PLACE CRITICS

No. 47 of the Round Table series.

PAGE [136]. Tout homme réfléchi, etc. See note to p. 117. ‘Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive.’ Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, Part I. l. 315. We have already. In a paper (by Leigh Hunt) On Commonplace People (Examiner, March 19, 1815). [138]. The music which has been since introduced, etc. The famous ‘Macbeth music’ written for D’Avenant’s version produced, according to Genest, in 1672. This music, traditionally assigned to Matthew Locke, is now attributed to Purcell. [139]. Mr. Westall’s drawings. Richard Westall (1765–1836). Horne Tooke’s account, etc. See The Diversions of Purley and Hazlitt’s essay on Horne Tooke in The Spirit of the Age. ‘For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.’ Pope’s Moral Essays, II. 114. The new Schools for all. For the famous educational schemes of Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster and for Bentham’s Panopticon, see Leslie Stephen’s English Utilitarians. The Penitentiary. Millbank Prison, formerly known as the Penitentiary, was the ultimate result of Bentham’s Panopticon scheme and was opened in 1816. The new Bedlam. The new Bedlam Hospital was opened in 1815. The new steamboats. The first steamboat had been launched on the Clyde in 1812. The gaslights. The Chartered Gas Company obtained its Act of Parliament in 1810. The Bible Society. The British and Foreign Bible Society was established in 1804. The Society for the Suppression of Vice. See ante, note to p. 60.

ON THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ OF THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

These two papers are taken (with considerable variations) from the two last of three ‘Literary Notices,’ dealing with the Catalogue, which Hazlitt contributed to The Examiner on Nov. 3, Nov. 10, and Nov. 17, 1816. The first of these ‘Literary Notices’ was never republished by Hazlitt. All three were republished in their Examiner form in the second volume of Criticisms on Art, etc. (2 vols., 1843–44), edited by the author’s son, who omitted from his edition of The Round Table the two essays in the present text. All three essays will be included in a later volume of the present edition.

PAGE [140]. Our former remarks. In The Examiner, Nov. 3, 1816. [141]. The Prince Regent’s new sewer. Presumably the Regent’s Canal, part of which was opened in 1814. [142]. ‘The scale by which,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VIII. 591. Mrs. Peachum’s coloured handkerchiefs. Beggar’s Opera, Act 1. [143]. ‘A name great above all names.’ Philippians, ii. 9.

‘A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole

And put it in his pocket!’

Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

[146]. ‘That a great man’s memory,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2. Their late President. Sir Joshua Reynolds. [147]. ‘Feel the future in the instant.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5. [148]. ‘Depend upon it,’ etc. This letter was not avowed by Burke, but was attributed to him by Barry himself and by Sir James Prior in his Life of Burke, (Bohn, p. 227). [149]. ‘Playing at will,’ etc.

‘——and played at will

Her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet,

Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.’

Paradise Lost, v. 294–296.

‘To that same ancient vault

Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie.’

Romeo and Juliet, Act IV. Scene 1.

ON POETICAL VERSATILITY

This fragment is taken from the third of a series of four ‘Illustrations of the Times Newspaper,’ which Hazlitt contributed to The Examiner under the heading of ‘Literary Notices.’ The first of these four papers (Dec. 1, 1816) has not been republished; the other three, dated respectively December 15, 1816, December 22, 1816, and January 12, 1817, were published in Political Essays.

PAGE [151]. ‘Heaven’s own tinct.’ Cymbeline, Act II. Scene 2. ‘Being so majestical,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 1. [152]. Poets, it has been said. See Political Essays (Mr. Southey’s New Year’s Ode). They do not like, etc. The reference is to Southey, Poet Laureate, and Wordsworth, distributor of stamps for the county of Westmoreland.

ON ACTORS AND ACTING

This essay and the next are based upon the last (No. 48) of the Round Table series, which appeared in The Examiner for Jan. 5, 1817. Hazlitt has, however, interpolated into both essays various passages from former theatrical criticisms. The paper in the Round Table appears to have been inspired by Colley Cibber’s Apology for his Life. A general reference may here be made to that work, to the volume in the present edition containing Hazlitt’s dramatic criticisms, and to Lamb’s and Leigh Hunt’s essays on the stage.

PAGE [153]. ‘The abstracts,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2. [154]. George Barnwell. By George Lillo (1693–1739), produced at Drury Lane Theatre on June 22, 1731. The play was frequently revived, and was in some places acted annually as a moral lesson to apprentices. The Inconstant. Farquhar’s comedy (1702). Orinda should be Oriana. Mr. Liston. John Liston (1776?-1846),the comic actor, who made his first appearance in 1805 and retired in 1837.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

A large part of the first paragraph of this essay appeared originally in a notice of Kean’s Sir Giles Overreach (‘Theatrical Examiner,’ Jan. 14, 1816). See A View of the English Stage.

PAGE [156]. ‘Leaving the world no copy.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5. Colley Cibber’s account. See Chap. iv. of Cibber’s Apology. Miss O’Neill. Eliza O’Neill (1791–1872) made her last appearance on the stage on July 13, 1819, shortly before her marriage with Mr. Becher, who afterwards became a baronet. Hazlitt in an article on her retirement (see A View of the English Stage) said that ‘her excellence (unrivalled by any actress since Mrs. Siddons) consisted in truth of nature and force of passion.’ Mrs. Siddons. Sarah Siddons (1755–1831) appeared without success in London in 1775 and 1776, gained a great reputation in Manchester and Bath, and reappeared in London on October 10, 1782 in Garrick’s Isabella, a version of Southerne’s Fatal Marriage. After a long series of triumphs she made her farewell appearance on June 29, 1812, as Lady Macbeth. Hazlitt’s notices of her are confined to two of the occasional benefit performances which she gave before she finally retired in June 1819. See A View of the English Stage (June 15, 1816, and June 7, 1817).

‘——and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,’ etc.

Paradise Lost, II. 599 et seq.

WHY THE ARTS ARE NOT PROGRESSIVE: A FRAGMENT

In The Morning Chronicle for January 11 and 15, 1814, Hazlitt published two papers entitled ‘Fragments on Art. Why the Arts are not progressive?’ Later in the year he contributed two papers to The Champion (August 28, 1814, and September 11, 1814) under the heading ‘Fine Arts. Whether they are promoted by Academies and Public Institutions?’ and in a letter (October 2) replied to the criticisms of a correspondent. The present ‘Fragment’ is composed of (1) the first of the articles in The Morning Chronicle and part of the second, and (2) part of the second article in The Champion. Much of the matter of the present essay is embodied in Hazlitt’s article on the Fine Arts, contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica.

PAGE [160]. ‘It is often made a subject,’ etc. The first three paragraphs are taken from The Morning Chronicle, January 11, 1814. In The Champion for August 28, 1814, the first two paragraphs appear as a quotation from a ‘contemporary critic.’ Antæus. The story of Antæus the giant is referred to by Milton (Paradise Regained, IV. 563 et seq.). [161]. Nothing is more contrary, etc. This paragraph and part of the next are repeated at the beginning of the Lecture on Shakspeare and Milton in Lectures on the English Poets. [162]. Guido. Substituted for Claude Lorraine, upon whom, in The Morning Chronicle, Hazlitt has the following note: ‘In speaking thus of Claude, we yield rather to common opinion than to our own. However inferior the style of his best landscapes may be, there is something in the execution that redeems all defects. In taste and grace nothing can ever go beyond them. He might be called, if not the perfect, the faultless painter. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, that there would be another Raphael, before there was another Claude. In Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter (see his Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds), there is an account of Claude Lorraine, so full of feeling, so picturesque, so truly classical, so like Claude, that we cannot resist this opportunity of copying it out.’ The passage quoted from Northcote is the paragraph beginning, ‘Now tired with pomp and splendid shew.’ See Northcote’s Varieties on Art (The Dream of a Painter) in his Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds, etc. (1813–1815) p. xvi. ‘The human face divine.’ Paradise Lost, III. 44. ‘Circled Una’s angel face,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto iii. st. 4. Griselda. See The Canterbury Tales (The Clerk’s Tale). The Flower and the Leaf. This poem, a great favourite of Hazlitt’s, is not now attributed to Chaucer. [163]. The divine story of the Hawk. The Decameron (Fifth Day, Novel IX.). Hazlitt continually refers to the story. Isabella. The Decameron (Fourth Day, Novel V.). So Lear, etc. King Lear, Act II. Scene 4. Titian. The picture referred to is one of those which Hazlitt copied while he was studying in the Louvre in 1802. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 88. He frequently mentions it. Nicolas Poussin. ‘But, above all, who shall celebrate, in terms of fit praise, his picture of the shepherds in the Vale of Tempe going out in a fine morning of the spring, and coming to a tomb with this inscription:—Et ego in Arcadia vixi!’ (Table Talk, ‘On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin.’) In general, it must happen, etc. The two concluding paragraphs are taken from The Champion, September 11, 1814. Current with the world. The following passage in The Champion is here omitted: ‘Common sense, which has been sometimes appealed to as the criterion of taste, is nothing but the common capacity, applied to common facts and feelings; but it neither is nor pretends to be, the judge of anything else. To suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works of high art, is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce them.’ Count Castiglione. Baldassare Count Castiglione (1478–1529), whose famous Il Cortegiano was translated into English by Sir Thomas Hoby under the title of ‘The Courtyer’ (1561).