[149] Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that “Modest merit never can succeed!”
[150] During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte’s levee. Instead of the usual question, “Where have you served, Sir?” the First Consul immediately addressed him, “I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson’s Romance!” Here was a Consul. The young man’s uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of Richardson’s Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte.
[151] He is there called “Citizen Lauderdale.” Is this the present earl?
NOTES
[The annotations have not necessarily been introduced at the first occurrence of any name, and no cross-references have been supplied in the notes to names which occur in the text more than once. Such information as the notes supply can be found with the help of the index.—References, where no other indication is given, will be understood to be to the work under discussion. The Shakespeare references are to the one-volume Globe edition.]
THE AGE OF ELIZABETH
This lecture forms the introduction to the series on the “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.” Hazlitt might have derived hints for it from Schlegel, who speaks of the zeal for the study of the ancients, the extensive communication with other lands, the interest in the literature of Italy and Spain, the progress in experimental philosophy represented by Bacon, and contrasts the achievements of that age, in a vein which must have captured Hazlitt’s sympathy, with “the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks with such contempt on all preceding ages.” The Elizabethans, he goes on to say, “possessed a fullness of healthy vigour, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with petulance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact, well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown. The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility vied with each other in the splendour of dress and number of retinue, and every great lord had a sort of small court of his own. The distinction of ranks was as yet strongly marked: a state of things ardently to be desired by the dramatic poet.” “Lectures on Dramatic Literature,” ed. Bohn, p. 349.
[P. 1.] Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618), the celebrated courtier, explorer, and man of letters.