No. 32 of the Round Table series. See ante, p. 382, for a reference by Hazlitt to this essay.
PAGE [80]. The pedantry of Parson Adams. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. v. Scotch Pedagogue. Roderick Random, Chap. xiv. Seeing ourselves, etc. Burns, To a Louse, st. 8. [81]. Monsieur Jourdain. In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Note. ‘Not to admire anything.’
‘Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum.’—Horace, Ep. I. vi. I.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
No. 33 the Round Table series.
PAGE [84]. A poetical enthusiast. Wordsworth presumably. ‘A clerk ther was,’ etc. Canterbury Tales, Prologue, ll. 285 et seq. [85]. ‘Chemist, statesman,’ etc. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, l. 550. ‘Tongues in the trees,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 1. [86]. Vestris was so far right, etc. Vestris (1729–1808), ‘Le Dieu de la danse,’ said that Europe contained only three great men, himself, Voltaire, and Frederick of Prussia. We do not see, etc. Johnson and Wordsworth were of the opposite opinion. See Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, iv. 114, and Rogers’s Table-Talk, p. 234. [87]. In Froissart’s ‘Chronicles.’ Book IV. chapter 14 (Panthéon Litteraire). The man was not a monk at all. [88]. ‘The sovereign’st thing on earth.’ 1 Henry IV., Act I. Scene 3. Uneasy and insecure. In The Examiner the following note is appended: ‘It has been found necessary to cement them with blood. “Plus de belles paroles, messieurs, je veux du sang,” is the language of all absolute sovereigns to their subjects, when the film drops from their eyes which leads mankind to suppose themselves the property of tyrants. If men are to be treated like slaves, it is best that they should think themselves born to be so. Plus de belles paroles. The French Revolution was the necessary consequence of our English Revolution and of the Reformation. A crusade once more to re-establish the infallibility of the Pope all over the Continent would be a logical inference from the late crusade to restore divine right.’
ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU
No. 36 of the Round Table series.
PAGE [89]. Note. In The Examiner this note was continued as follows: ‘He was the founder of Jacobinism, which disclaims the division of the species into two classes, the one the property of the others. It was of the disciples of his school, where principle is converted into passion, that Mr. Burke said and said truly,—“Once a Jacobin, and always a Jacobin!” The adept in this school does not so much consider the political injury as the personal insult. This is the way to put the case, to set the true revolutionary leaven, the self-love which is at the bottom of every heart, at work, and this was the way in which Rousseau put it. It then becomes a question between man and man, which there is but one way of deciding.’ [90]. ‘Va Zanetto,’ etc. Part II. liv. 7. ‘Louise Eleonore,’ etc. Part I. liv. 2. [91]. ‘As fast,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Scene 2. There are, indeed, impressions, etc. A quotation from Rousseau’s Confessions. See Hazlitt’s essay entitled ‘My first Acquaintance with Poets.’ [92]. ‘Ah, voila de la pervenche!’ Confessions, Part I. liv. 6. Mr. Wordsworth’s discovery. The reference appears to be to Wordsworth’s poem, ‘The Sparrow’s Nest.’