ON THE TATLER
This essay formed No. 10 of the Round Table series. The substance of it was repeated by Hazlitt in his volume of Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819). (See the Lecture on ‘The Periodical Essayists.’)
PAGE [7]. ‘The disastrous strokes which his youth suffered.’ ‘Some distressful stroke that my youth suffered.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 3. He dwells with a secret satisfaction. The Tatler, No. 107. The club at the ‘Trumpet.’ The Tatler, No. 132. The cavalcade of the justice, etc. The Tatler, No. 86. The upholsterer and his companions. See The Tatler, Nos. 155, 160, and 178. A burlesque copy of verses. The Tatler, No. 238. The verses are by Swift. [8]. Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield. See p. 157. Betterton is frequently mentioned in The Tatler. See especially No. 167. Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock. See The Tatler, No. 88, and p. 157 of this volume. ‘The first sprightly runnings.’ Dryden’s Aurengzebe, Act IV. Scene 1. [9]. The Court of Honour. Addison, in The Tatler, No. 250, created the Court of Honour. He and Steele together wrote the later papers (Nos. 253, 256, 259, 262, 265) in which the proceedings of the Court are recorded. The Personification of Musical Instruments. The Spectator, Nos. 153 and 157. Note. This note is by Leigh Hunt. The authorship of the anonymous paper (The Spectator, No. 95) is uncertain. The account of the two sisters. The Tatler, No. 151. The married lady. The Tatler, No. 104.
ON MODERN COMEDY
This essay did not form one of the Round Table series, but was published in The Examiner for August 20, 1815, under the heading ‘Theatrical Examiner.’ It was substantially repeated in the Lectures on the English Comic Writers (Lecture VIII., ‘on the Comic Writers of the Last Century’), and was republished verbatim in the posthumous volume entitled Criticisms and Dramatic Essays on the English Stage (1851). The essay is practically a reprint of the first of two letters which Hazlitt wrote to The Morning Chronicle (September 25 and October 15, 1813). The second of these letters has not been republished.
PAGE [10]. ‘Where it must live, or have no life at all.’ Othello, Act. II. Scene 4. [11]. ‘See ourselves as others see us.’ Burns, ‘To a Louse.’ Wart. He means Shadow. See 2 Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2. [12]. Lovelace, etc. Nearly all these characters are discussed in the English Comic Writers. Sparkish is in Wycherley’s Country Wife, Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s Relapse, Millamant in Congreve’s Way of the World, Sir Sampson Legend in Congreve’s Love for Love. We cannot expect, etc. This paragraph appeared originally in The Morning Chronicle, October 15, 1813. [13]. ‘That sevenfold fence.’ ‘The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep the battery from my heart.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14. This passage is taken by Hazlitt from his own Reply to Malthus (1807). ‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.’ Foote’s Minor, Act II. Aristotle. In the Poetics. ‘Warm hearts of flesh and blood,’ etc. Quoted, with omissions and variations, from a passage in Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 101). [14]. ‘Men’s minds are parcel of their fortunes.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Scene 13.
ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO
Republished with a few variations from The Examiner of July 24, 1814. Hazlitt afterwards published the original article in A View of the English Stage (1818), and borrowed from it in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (See ante, pp. 206–7).
PAGE [14]. A contemporary critic. This was Hazlitt himself who made this criticism of Kean in an article in The Morning Chronicle (May 9, 1814), reprinted in A View of the English Stage. ‘Hedged in with the divinity of kings.’ From Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5. [15]. Play the dog, etc. 3 Henry VI., Act V. Scene 6. [16]. ‘His cue is villainous melancholy,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Scene 2.