ON THE CONVERSATION OF LORDS
Published in Sketches and Essays.
PAGE [38]. ‘An infinite deal of nothing.’ The Merchant of Venice, Act I. Sc. 1. [39]. ‘The wish,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act IV. Sc. 5. [40]. ‘Bestow his tediousness.’ Cf. Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc. 5. [41]. ‘Treatise on Horsemanship.’ The Duke of Newcastle (1592–1676), husband of Lamb’s favourite (see ante, note to p. 37), wrote two works on horsemanship, (i) La Methode et Invention Nouvelle de dresser les Chevaux (Antwerp, 1657), and (ii) A New Method and Extraordinary Invention to Dress Horses, etc. (1667). Hazlitt probably refers to the first, which was published in English with 43 plates in vol. I. of A General System of Horsemanship (1743). ‘A question,’ etc. 1 Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 4. ‘The act’ [art], etc. Henry V., Act I. Sc. 1. [42]. ‘The feast of reason,’ etc. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Satire I. l. 128. ‘Catch glimpses,’ etc. Cf. Wordsworth’s sonnet ‘The world is too much with us,’ etc. [43]. ‘Face to face,’ etc. Cf. 1 Corinthians xiii. 12. ‘With jealous leer malign.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 503. ‘Best can feel them,’ etc. ‘He best can paint them who shall feel them most.’ Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 366. The Roxburgh Club. Founded in 1812 to celebrate the sale of the third Duke of Roxburgh’s great library. ‘With sparkling eyes,’ etc. Cf. Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II. Hymn 65. [44]. ‘Pure in the last recesses,’ etc. Cf. Dryden, Translations from Persius, Sat. II. l. 133. ‘Or write,’ etc. Cf. Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, I. 137. [45]. ‘Held on their way,’ etc. See vol. IV. (Reply to Malthus), note to p. 42. ‘The labour’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 3. [46]. ‘From every work,’ etc. The Faerie Queen, I. iv. 20. Otium cum dignitate. Cicero, Pro P. Sestio, c. 45. N——. Probably Northcote. A celebrated critic. ? Jeffrey, whom Hazlitt had visited at Craigcrook. [47]. ‘That there are powers,’ etc. Wordsworth, Expostulation and Reply, 21–24. [50]. ‘A man’s mind,’ etc. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, III. 13. The Letter to Sir William Wyndham. Published by Mallet in 1753. Lord Bolingbroke had, it seems, etc. This cannot be true, though Chatham’s admiration of Bolingbroke’s eloquence is well known. ‘As if a man,’ etc. Coriolanus, v. 3.