NOTES
FREE THOUGHTS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS
PAGE [2]. ‘There is wisdom,’ etc. Proverbs xv. 22. The late administration. Pitt’s second ministry. Pitt died on Jan. 23, 1806, and Fox became Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of ‘All the Talents.’ [3]. Mr. Addington. Henry Addington (1757–1844), created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805, was Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer during the peace negotiations. Came home to the bosoms, etc. Bacon, Dedication to the Essays (1625). [5]. ‘The unconquerable will,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 106–9. ‘The still small voice,’ etc. 1 Kings xix. 12. [6]. It certainly had this good effect. ‘The peace of Amiens,’ said Coleridge, ‘deserved the name of peace, for it gave us unanimity at home, and reconciled Englishmen with each other’ (The Friend, section I. Essay 6). [7]. The incautious surrender of Malta. By the treaty of Amiens (1802) Malta was restored to the Knights of St. John. By the first Peace of Paris (1814) it was given to England. One to whose authority, etc. Few people at the time recognised the importance of Malta to Great Britain. Lord Nelson himself spoke slightingly of it, and so did Pitt. See Parl. Hist. XXXVI., passim, for the discussions in Parliament. Coleridge, in The Friend (see especially Essays 3, 4, 5, and 6 of ‘The Third Landing-Place’), while defending the retention of Malta, admitted that Nelson was right in denying that Malta was the key of Egypt (Bohn’s ed., p. 382). [8]. ‘Against infection,’ etc. Richard II., Act II. Scene 1. [10]. ‘Another Iliad of woes.’ Burke’s Regicide Peace (Select Works, ed. Payne, p. 116). Cf. ‘From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe.’ Dryden’s The Medal, l. 67. [12]. The partition of Poland. In 1795. Suwarroff, the Russian general, stormed Ismael on Dec. 11, 1790, and Warsaw on Nov. 4, 1794. ‘Thirty thousand persons, of whom one half were inhabitants of the town, perished in the assault of Ismael’ (Alison, History of Europe, X. 455). At Warsaw ‘about twelve thousand citizens, of every age and sex, were put to the sword’ (ib., III. 526). [14]. Had not Austria, etc. Precipitated, he means, by the subsidising policy of Pitt. The battle of Austerlitz (Dec. 2, 1805) completely crushed Austria. The character of Mr. Pitt, etc. Hazlitt repeated this ‘character’ down to ‘And in its liquid texture,’ etc. (p. 18), in his Political Essays (see ante, pp. 346–350) and in The Round Table (see Vol. I. pp. 125–128). [15]. The fog and haze. A phrase of Burke’s (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 55). Note. When Mr. Fox last summer. On June 21, 1805. See Hansard’s Parl. Debates, V. 542. [16]. Described by Hobbes. Behemoth (Works, ed. Molesworth, VI. 240). [18]. ‘Not matchless,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 341–2. ‘And in its liquid texture,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 348–9. Note. Hazlitt printed this essay of Coleridge’s in Political Essays (see ante, pp. 350–356) under the title of ‘Pitt and Buonaparte.’ [20]. ‘Some happier island,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, I. 106–8. [21]. ‘Virtue is not their habit,’ etc. Burke’s Regicide Peace (ed. Payne, p. 105). [22]. ‘Lay the fault upon themselves,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act I. Scene 2. ‘Dull as her lakes,’ etc. Goldsmith’s The Traveller, l. 312. [23]. ‘When, stript,’ etc. Goldsmith’s The Traveller, ll. 355–60. ‘They think there is nothing real,’ etc. ‘They think there is nothing worth pursuit, but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two-foot rule; which they can tell upon two fingers.’ Burke’s Regicide Peace (ed. Payne, p. 105).
POLITICAL ESSAYS
The title-page contained a motto from Twelfth Night (Act I. Scene 5): ‘Come, draw the curtain, shew the picture,’
29. John Hunt (1780?–1848), an elder brother of Leigh Hunt, was with him the joint founder of The Examiner in 1808. The two brothers were at first joint proprietors, John being printer and manager and Leigh Hunt editor. John Hunt was twice in prison, for two years (1813–5) for a libel on the Prince Regent, and again for one year (1821–2) for a libel on the House of Commons. For an account of his services to journalism see Fox Bourne’s English Newspapers (I. 335–51). [32]. ‘In contempt of the choice of the people.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 17). In his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) Burke defends and elaborates the constitutional doctrines of the Reflections. [33]. ‘The envy of less happier lands.’ Richard II., Act II. Scene 1. Sworn brother to the Pope. Because the sworn enemy of Hazlitt’s hero, Napoleon, who abolished the Inquisition in Spain in 1808. Ferdinand VII. restored it in 1814. Arbuthnot. John Arbuthnot (1667–1735), whose famous pamphlet The History of John Bull (as it was afterwards called) appeared in 1712. Flocci, etc. These words are the beginning of a rule in the old Latin grammars which brings together a number of words meaning ‘of no account.’ See Letters of Charles Lamb (ed. Ainger), I. 62. [34]. ‘One fate attends,’ etc. Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, Stanza 51. ‘At one fell swoop.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3. ‘That painted sepulchre,’ etc. ‘Whited sepulchres,’ etc. St. Matthew xxiii. 27. ‘Bogs, dens,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 621–2. [35]. ‘Awhile they stood abashed.’
‘abashed the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is.’
Paradise Lost, IV. 846–7.
‘——that in quaternion run