THE PERIODICAL PRESS
This essay is referred to by Brougham, who, on August 18, 1837, wrote to Macvey Napier (then editor of the Edinburgh Review): ‘I wish the Newspaper Press had not been flattered so much; at any rate its glaring faults should have been pointed out. This was done, and very ill done, in 1823, when it had hardly any sins to answer for.’ (Selections from the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 199).
PAGE [204]. ‘We are [I am] nothing, if not critical. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1. The words were used by Hazlitt as the motto to A View of the English Stage. Terra plena, etc. Æneid, I. 460. ‘Large discourse,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 4. [205]. ‘The pomp of elder days.’ Thomas Warton’s Sonnet, ‘Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon.’ [206]. ‘Cabin’d,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4. [207]. The Children of the Mist. In The Legend of Montrose. ‘A chemist,’ etc. Absalom and Achitophel, I. 550. [208]. Sir Thomas Lawrence. President of the Royal Academy from 1820 till his death in 1830. ‘Though he should have,’ etc. Adapted from 1 Corinthians, xiii. 1. ‘The toe of the scholar,’ etc. Varied from Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1. [209]. ‘Take the good,’ etc. Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 106. [210]. ‘Make the age to come her own.’ Cowley, The Motto, l. 2. Mille ornatus habet, etc. ‘Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.’ From the first of the Sulpicia poems which are in Book IV. of the Elegies of Tibullus, but the authorship of which is not certainly known. ‘Now this,’ etc. Spenser, Muiopotmos, St. 22. ‘To beguile the time,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5. [211]. ‘Squeak and gibber.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1. The St. James’s Chronicle. Started in 1760 as a tri-weekly, independent Whig evening paper. It was for a time edited by James Mill. 212 note. Mrs. Radcliffe, the novelist, was married in 1787 to William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of law, described by Sir Walter Scott (Lives of the Novelists) as ‘afterwards proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle.’ [213]. The Morning Chronicle. Founded June 28, 1769. The early notable editors were William Woodfall (1746–1803), James Perry (1756–1821), who was editor from 1789 to 1817, and John Black (1783–1855). For Perry cf. vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 292. Porson. Richard Porson (1759–1808) was Perry’s brother-in-law. Jekyll. Joseph Jekyll (d. 1837) contributed many of his jokes to The Morning Chronicle. [214]. The Marquis Marialva. Gil Blas, Livre VII. chap x. [215]. Lord Nugent. Presumably Robert, Earl Nugent (1702–1788), who retired from parliamentary life in 1784. It is odd that Hazlitt should refer to so well-known a man as a Lord Nugent. The Times Newspaper. John Walter (1739–1812) in 1785 started The Daily Universal Register, the name of which was changed on Jan. 1, 1788 to The Times or Daily Universal Register, and on March 18, 1788 to The Times. A steam-engine. See vol. III. Political Essays, p. 158.