Butler, Satire upon Plagiaries, 87 et seq.
ESSAY XV. ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE
[146]. ‘Putting in one scale,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, IV. 484–6. [147]. ‘Apprehensive, forgetive.’ Henry IV. Part II. Act IV. Scene 3. [148]. ‘The powers that be.’ Romans, XIII. 1. Holy Oil. The coronation of George IV. (July 19, 1821) was imminent. ‘All trivial, fond records.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5. ‘He never is,’ etc. A variation of Pope’s well-known line, Essay on Man, I. 96. The author of the Prometheus Unbound, etc. The passage which follows on Shelley led to a quarrel between Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt (II. 305 et seq.), where two letters from Hunt to Hazlitt and one from Hunt to Shelley are published; and Four Generations of a Literary Family (I. 130–135), where a long letter from Hazlitt to Hunt is published for the first time. The quarrel was made up, but Hazlitt never cared for Shelley’s poetry. See his article in The Edinburgh Review (July 1824) on Shelley’s Posthumous Poems. ‘And in its liquid texture,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 348–9. [149]. ‘Seas of pearl,’ etc. Cf. ‘Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber.’ Otway, Venice Preserved, Act V. Scene 2. Coleridge more than once quoted the line as an example of fanciful delirium. See Biographia Literaria (chap. iv.) and Crabb Robinson’s Diary (Nov. 15, 1810). Play round the head, etc. ‘Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart.’ Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 254. [150]. ‘At the horizon.’ ‘Their humanity is at their horizon.’ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 142). ‘While you are talking of marrying,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Scene 2. [151]. The present poet-laureate. Southey. ‘Poets (as it has been said)’ etc. Hazlitt quotes from his own review of Coleridge’s Literary Life in The Edinburgh Review for August, 1817 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 514–5). ‘Such seething brains.’ Cf.
‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,’ etc.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.
ESSAY XVI. ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION
‘Thin partitions,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 164. [157]. ‘A feather will turn,’ etc. Cf. ‘The weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois’ (Henry IV., Part II. Act II. Scene 4), and ‘Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale’ (Measure for Measure, Act IV. Scene 2). ‘Great Vulgar and the Small.’ Cowley, Horace, Odes, III. 1. [159]. ‘Have eyes and see them.’ ‘Eyes have they, but they see not.’ Psalms, CXV. 5. ‘Lovers of low company.’ ‘Kings are naturally lovers of low company.’ Burke, Speech on Economical Reform (Works, Bohn, II. 106). [160]. ‘I like it,’ etc. The reference seems to be to Evelina, Letter XXI. Janus Weathercock, Esq. One of the pseudonyms of the notorious poisoner Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794–1852). He and Hazlitt were in 1820 fellow-contributors to The London Magazine. For the matters referred to in this paragraph of the text, see Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays, especially the essay reprinted from The London Magazine for July 1820. For an account of Wainewright see the introduction to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s selection of Wainewright’s Essays and Criticisms (1880). The article to which Hazlitt replies had appeared in The London Magazine for June 1820 (vol. I. p. 630) under the title of ‘Janus’s Jumble.’ Note. ‘Dip it in the ocean,’ etc. The Sentimental Journey, The Wig, Paris. [161]. Milaine ‘with the foot of fire.’ See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays. ‘Swallows total grist,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, VI. 108. Emery’s Yorkshireman. The character of Tyke in Morton’s The School for Reform. Cf. Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays. [162]. ‘A stamp,’ etc. ‘A stamp exclusive and professional.’ Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini, III. 32. ‘Gabble most brutishly.’
‘But wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish.’
The Tempest, Act I. Scene 2.