ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME
No. 37 of the Round Table series.
PAGE [93]. Fitzosborne’s Letters, by William Melmoth the younger (1710–1799), were published in two vols. in 1742–1747. Hazlitt’s quotation seems to be merely a summary of a passage in Letter X. (p. 35, edit. 1748) which is itself quoted from Wollaston’s Religion of Nature Delineated. Note. Burns. See his autobiographical letter to Dr. John Moore, 2nd August 1787. (Works, ed. Chambers and Wallace, i. 20). [94]. ‘Bitter bad judges.’ Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1. ‘Makes ambition virtue.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3. Dr. Johnson. See his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 108). ‘Fame is the spur,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 70–77. Pluck its fruits, unripe and crude. Lycidas, l. 3. [95]. Hogarth’s ‘Distressed Poet.’ The map of the gold-mines of Peru was substituted in the impression of 1740 for a print of Pope thrashing Curll in the original impression of 1736. A man of genius and eloquence. Coleridge presumably. [96]. Elphinstone. James Elphinston (1721–1809), who superintended an Edinburgh edition of The Rambler, in which he gave English translations of most of the mottoes. This, however, was far from being his only literary enterprise, and it is strange that Hazlitt should ‘know nothing more of him.’ He published many translations, one of which, A Specimen of the Translations of Epigrams of Martial (1778), achieved notoriety from its extreme badness. In his later life he devoted himself to the invention of a kind of phonetic spelling, which he explained in Propriety ascertained in her Picture, or English Speech and Spelling under Mutual Guides (1787), and other works. Yorick and the Frenchman. Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. The Passport.
CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL
No. 39 of the Round Table series.
PAGE [97]. A respectable publication. Edinburgh Review, xxvi. p. 96 (Feb. 1816). The passage quoted is from a review by Hazlitt himself of Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Literature.
ON GOOD NATURE
No. 41 of the Round Table series.
PAGE [100]. Says Froissart. This well-known saying is wrongly attributed to Froissart. See Notes and Queries for 1863 and subsequent years. [102]. An Englishman, who would be thought a profound one. Wordsworth. See p. 116. [103]. Forge the seal of the realm, etc. The allusion seems to be to the events of the spring of 1804 when Lord Eldon, during the king’s illness, affixed the great seal to a commission giving the royal assent to certain bills. [104]. Good digestion wait on appetite. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4. Without control. In The Examiner Hazlitt appended as a note: ‘Henry VIII. was a good-natured monarch. He cut off his wives’ heads with as little ceremony as if they had been eels. This character ought, as Mr. Cobbett says, to be hooted off the stage, as a disgrace to human nature. Shakspeare represented kings as they were in his time.’ [104]. Mr. Vansittart. Nicholas Vansittart (1766–1851), created Baron Bexley in 1823, was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1812 till 1822. Everything by starts and nothing long. Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. l. 548. [105]. Note. This note is part of the note on Burke, which in The Examiner appeared at the foot of the essay ‘On Beauty.’ See ante, p. 71.