THE BEGGAR’S OPERA
One of Hazlitt’s ‘Theatrical Examiners,’ and published in The Examiner on June 18, 1815.
PAGE [65]. The Beggar’s Opera was produced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on January 29, 1728. ‘Happy alchemy of mind,’ etc. Cf. Boswell (Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, iii. 65): ‘I have ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry, which can separate good qualities from evil in the same person.’ ‘O’erstepping the modesty of nature.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2. ‘Woman is like,’ etc. Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Taken from Tibullus. Hazlitt probably means Catullus and refers to the lines (Carm. 62)
‘Ut flos in saeptis secretus nascitur hortis,’ etc.
ON PATRIOTISM—A FRAGMENT
This fragment is taken from one of the ‘Illustrations of Vetus’ which appeared originally in The Morning Chronicle and were republished in Political Essays.
PAGE [67]. ‘The love of mankind‘, etc. Rousseau’s Emile, Liv. IV. p. 279 (edit. Garnier): a favourite quotation of Hazlitt’s.
ON BEAUTY
No. 29 of the Round Table series, and signed in The Examiner—‘An Amateur.’
PAGE [68]. Three Papers, etc. Reynolds’s papers in the Idler are Nos. 76, 79, and 82. It is to the last, On the true idea of Beauty, that Hazlitt particularly refers.