[70] This was the spirit of Henry Fielding on his last voyage, hoisted aboard among the watermen at Redcliffe, and hearing his emaciated body made the subject of jeers and laughter. “No man who knew me,” he writes in his journal, “will think I conceived any personal resentment at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity in the nature of man which I have often contemplated with concern, and which leads the mind into a train of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts.” It is a fine passage, and a strong heart, not given to boasting, penned it. Poor Hazlitt could not bear even an unintentional slight without imputing diabolical malice to the offender. Yet it was certainly true that, in his saner hours, he could suffer personal discomfort in public without flinching, and deplore the habit which imposed it, rather than the act.
[71] If Hazlitt conveyed some of his best mannerisms from Coleridge, not always transmuting them, surely the balance may be said to be even when one discovers later in Hartley Coleridge such an easy inherited use of Hazlitt’s “flail of gold” as is exemplified in this summary of Roger Ascham’s career. “There was a primitive honesty, a kindly innocence about this good old scholar, which gave a personal interest to the homeliest details of his life. He had the rare felicity of passing through the worst of times without persecution and without dishonor. He lived with princes and princesses, prelates and diplomatists, without offence as without ambition. Though he enjoyed the smiles of royalty, his heart was none the worse, and his fortunes little the better.”
[72] The quotation is from Coleridge, and it was applied by him to Dryden. Hazlitt himself unconsciously expanded and spoiled it in his essay on Burke. “The wheels of his imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness of the material, but from the rapidity of their motion.”
[73] The Rev. H. R. Haweis has another characterization of these breathing and burning pages: “long and tiresome essays by Hazlitt.” So they are, sure enough, if only you be endowed to think so! Hazlitt himself gives the diverting fact for what it is worth, that “three chimney-sweeps meeting three Chinese in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, they laughed at one another till they were ready to drop down.”
MONSIEUR HENRI
A Foot-note to French History. By Louise Imogen Guiney. With Portrait and Map. Small 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 00.
A fascinating career, truly, and here most exquisitely chronicled. The little book, in its ardor of appreciation, vivacity of portraiture, and grace and spontaneity of style, is a masterpiece of concise narration, and by those who read it once will be sought with unfailing delight again and again.—Boston Beacon.
Miss Guiney writes with a love for her subject which makes her fine discrimination all the finer, and shows an insight into history all the more admirable for the research which it has compelled. This tiny volume gives evidence of as thorough study as would fit out a post-octavo, as some authors understand the writing of history.—Evangelist, N. Y.
Miss Guiney has written La Rochejaquelein’s life on a small scale, but with spirit and enthusiasm, and her little book is very interesting.—N. Y. Tribune.