‘Who breathes, must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn.’
Prior, Solomon on the Vanity of the World, III. 240.
‘I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.’
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Scene 1.
ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM
No. 22 of the Round Table series. Leigh Hunt discussed this article in No. 24 of the series, republished in the 1817 edition of the Round Table, and entitled ‘On the Poetical Character.’ On the subject of Methodism Hunt had already spoken his mind in a series of articles in The Examiner, which he republished in 1809 under the title of An Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism.
PAGE [58]. ‘To sinner it or saint it.’ Pope’s Moral Essays, Ep. II. l. 15. ‘The whole need not a physician.’ St. Matthew, ix. 12. ‘Conceit in weakest,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. [59]. Mawworm. In Isaac Bickerstaffe’s Hypocrite, altered from Colley Cibber’s Nonjuror, which was itself ‘a comedy threshed out of Molière’s Tartuffe.’ See the Lecture on the Comic Writers of the Last Century in English Comic Writers. For Oxberry’s acting of the part see A View of the English Stage. ‘With sound of bell,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7. ‘Round fat oily men of God,’ etc. Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, stanza 69. ‘That burning and shining light.’ St. John, v. 35. Note. ‘And filled up all the mighty void of sense.’ Pope’s Essay on Criticism, l. 210. [60]. ‘The vice,’ etc. Hebrews, xii. 1. ‘The Society for the Suppression of Vice.’ Founded in 1802. Sydney Smith criticised its methods in one of his Edinburgh Review articles (Jan. 1809). Hazlitt refers to it again. See ante, p. 139. ‘And sweet religion,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4. ‘Numbers without number.’ Paradise Lost, III. 346. [61]. ‘Dissolves them,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 165–166.
ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
No. 26 of the Round Table series. The essay was in substance republished in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. See ante, pp. 244–248, and the notes thereon.
PAGE [64]. ‘Age cannot wither,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Scene 2. ‘’Tis a good piece of work,’ etc. The Taming of the Shrew, Act I. Scene 2. ‘Would, cousin Silence,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2. The dialogue on the death of old Double occurs earlier in the same scene. ‘The most fearful wild-fowl living.’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1. At the end of this essay in The Examiner Hazlitt added the following ‘Note Extraordinary’: ‘We had just concluded our ramble with Puck and Bottom, and were beginning to indulge in some less airy recreations, when in came the last week’s Cobbett,[[93]] and with one blow overset our Round Table, and marred all our good things. If while Mr. C. and his lady are sitting in their garden at Botley, like Adam and Eve in Paradise, the delight of one another, the envy of their neighbours, and the admiration of the rest of the world, suddenly a large fat hog from the wilds of Hampshire should bolt right through the hedge, and with snorting menaces and foaming tusks, proceed to lay waste the flower-pots and root up the potatoes, such as the surprise and indignation of so economical a couple would be on this occasion, was the consternation at our Table when Mr. Cobbett himself made his appearance among us, vowing vengeance against Milton and Shakespear, Sir Hugh Evans and Justice Shallow, and all the delights of human life. We were not prepared for such an onset. More barbarous than Mr. Wordsworth’s calling Voltaire dull,[[94]] or than Voltaire’s calling Cato the only English tragedy;[[95]] more barbarous than Mr. Locke’s admiration of Sir Richard Blackmore; more barbarous than the declaration of a German Elector—afterwards made into an English king—that he hated poets and painters; more barbarous than the Duke of Wellington’s letter to Lord Castlereagh,[[96]] or than the Catalogue Raisonné of the Flemish Masters published in the Morning Chronicle,[[97]] or than the Latin style of the second Greek scholar[[98]] of the age, or the English style of the first:—more barbarous than any or all of these is Mr. Cobbett’s attack on our two great poets. As to Milton, except the fine egotism of the situation of Adam and Eve, which Mr. Cobbett has applied to himself, there is not much in him to touch our politician: but we cannot understand his attack upon Shakespear, which is cutting his own throat. If Mr. Cobbett is for getting rid of his kings and queens, his fops and his courtiers, if he is for pelting Sir Hugh and Falstaff off the stage, yet what will he say to Jack Cade and First and Second Mob? If we are to scout the Roman rabble, where will the Register find English readers? Has the author never found himself out in Shakespear? He may depend upon it he is there, for all the people that ever lived are there! Has he never been struck with the valour of Ancient Pistol, who “would not swagger in any shew of resistance to a Barbary-hen”?[[99]] Can he not, upon occasion, “aggravate his voice”[[100]] like Bottom in the play? In absolute insensibility, he is a fool to Master Barnardine; and there is enough of gross animal instinct in Calyban to make a whole herd of Cobbetts. Mr. Cobbett admires Bonaparte; and yet there is nothing finer in any of his addresses to the French people than what Coriolanus says to the Romans when they banish him. He abuses the Allies in good set terms; yet one speech of Constance describes them and their magnanimity better than all the columns of the Political Register. Mr. Cobbett’s address to the people of England[[101]] on the alarm of an invasion, which was stuck on all the church-doors in Great Britain, was not more eloquent than Henry V.’s address to his soldiers before the battle of Agincourt; nor do we think Mr. Cobbett was ever a better specimen of the common English character than the two soldiers in the same play. After all, there is something so droll in his falling foul of Shakespear for want of delicacy, with his desperate lounges and bear-garden dexterity, snorting, fuming, and grunting, that we cannot help laughing at the affair, now that our surprise is over; as we suppose Mr. Cobbett does, if he can only keep him out of his premises by hallooing and hooting or dry blows, to see his old friend, Grill,[[102]] trudging along the highroad in search of his acorns and pig-nuts.’