[P. 189.] Dr. Johnson observed, in his “Life of Pope” (ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 230): “In their similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed; the ship-race, compared with the chariot-race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo running after Daphne is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and a dog.”
a person. Conjecturally Joseph Fawcett. In the essay “On Criticism” (“Table Talk”) Hazlitt says: “The person of the most refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to Shenstone’s Pastoral Ballad, from Butler’s Analogy down to Humphrey Clinker.”
P. 189, n. the comparison of the British Constitution. “Letter to a Noble Lord,” Works, ed. Bohn, V, 137.
MR. WORDSWORTH
From “The Spirit of the Age.” Characterizations of Wordsworth also occur in the lecture “On the Living Poets” and in the Essay “On Genius and Common Sense” in “Table Talk.”
[P. 191.] lowliness is young ambition’s ladder. “Julius Cæsar,” ii, 1, 22.
no figures. Cf. “Julius Cæsar,” ii, 1, 231: “ Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men.”
skyey influences. “Measure for Measure,” iii, 1, 9.
[P. 192.] nihil humani. Terence: “Heautontimoroumenos.” i, 1, 25.
the cloud-capt towers. “Tempest,” iv, 1, 151.