No. 16 of the Round Table series. Hazlitt drew largely on this essay for his lecture on Shakspeare and Milton. See Lectures on the English Poets.
PAGE [37]. ‘Makes Ossa like a wart.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1. ‘Sad task, yet argument,’ etc. Quoted, with omissions, from Paradise Lost, IX. 13–45.
ON MANNER
This essay is compounded of two papers in the Round Table series, Nos. 17 and [18].| Hazlitt, however, omitted the greater part of No. 18, at the beginning of which he discussed Dryden’s version of The Flower and the Leaf. No. 18 was published in Winterslow (1839) under the title of Matter and Manner.
PAGE [42]. Says Lord Chesterfield. ‘Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than what they say.’ Letters to his Son, No. cxxx. Than his sentiments. In The Examiner appears the following note on this passage: ‘We find persons who write what may be called an impracticable style; and their ideas are just as impracticable. They have as little tact of what is going on in the world as of the habitual meaning of words. Other writers betray their natural disposition by affectation, dryness, or levity of style. Style is the adaptation of words to things. Dr. Johnson had no style, that is, no scale of words answering to the differences of his subject. He always translated his ideas into the highest and most imposing form of expression, or more properly, into Latin words with English terminations. Goldsmith said to him, “If you had to write a fable, and to introduce little fishes speaking, you would make them talk like great whales.” It is a satire on this kind of taste that the most ignorant pretenders are in general what is generally understood by the finest writers. Women generally write a good style, because they express themselves according to the impression which things make upon them, without the affectation of authorship. They have besides more sense of propriety than men.’ For the story of Goldsmith see Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), ii. 231. [43]. One of the most pleasant, etc. It is evident from a passage in Table Talk (on Coffee-House Politicians) that this friend is Leigh Hunt, and that ‘another friend’ is Lamb. ‘As dry as the remainder biscuit,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7. ‘Learning is often,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act IV. Scene 3. [44]. Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough. Letters to his Son, No. clxviii.
‘Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright’
“To church was mine husband borne on the morrow
With neighbours that for him maden sorrow,
And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho:
As help me God, when that I saw him go