LECTURE VII. ON THE WORKS OF HOGARTH—ON THE GRAND AND FAMILIAR STYLE OF PAINTING
A great part of this lecture is taken from two papers in The Examiner, republished in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 25-31, and notes thereon.
[133]. Hogarth. William Hogarth (1697-1764). ‘Instinct in every part.’ Cf. ‘Instinct through all proportions low and high.’ Paradise Lost, XI. 562. ‘Other pictures we see, Hogarth’s we read.’ ‘Other pictures we look at,—his prints we read.’ Lamb’s Essay on the Genius and Character of Hogarth, referred to below, p. 138. Not long ago. In 1814.
LECTURE VIII. ON THE COMIC WRITERS OF THE LAST CENTURY
Much of the early part of this Lecture is taken from a paper in The Examiner (Aug. 20, 1815), republished in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 10-14, and notes.
PAGE [150]. ‘Where it must live,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 4. ‘To see ourselves,’ etc. Burns, To a Louse. [151]. ‘Present no mark to the foeman.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Sc. 2. Wars should be Shadow. [152]. The authority of Sterne, etc. See Tristram Shandy, I. 21. l. 22. In the third edition a passage is interpolated from Hazlitt’s letter to The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 15, 1813. ‘The ring,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, III. 309-10. Angelica, etc. All these characters are in Congreve’s Love for Love. The compliments which Pope paid to his friends. Cf. the essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen,’ where some of these compliments are quoted. [153]. The loves of the plants and the triangles. Erasmus Darwin’s poem ‘The Loves of the Plants’(1789) was the subject of Canning’s famous parody ‘The Loves of the Triangles’ in The Anti-Jacobin. Berinthias and Alitheas. Berinthia in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse; Alithea in Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Beppo, etc. Lord Byron’s Beppo (1818), Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), Scott’s Lady of the Lake (1810). Madame De Staël’s Corinne appeared in 1807. l. 17. In the third edition a long passage from Hazlitt’s letter to The Morning Chronicle is here inserted. ‘That sevenfold fence.’ See note to vol. I. p. 13, and cf. A Reply to Malthus, vol. IV. p. 101. [154]. ‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.’ Foote’s The Minor, Act II. ‘Almost afraid to know itself.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3. Mr. Farren. William Farren (1786-1861). Lord Ogleby in Colman and Garrick’s The Clandestine Marriage was one of his best parts. Note. See vol. I. p. 313. [155]. Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier’s (1650-1726) Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage appeared in March 1697-8. Mrs. Centlivre. Susannah Centlivre (1667?-1723). The Busy Body appeared in 1709, The Wonder in 1714. [156]. The scene near the end. The Wonder, Act V. Sc. 2. ‘Roast me these Violantes.’ Ibid. Act II. Sc. 1. [156]. In the third edition the following account of The Busy Body, taken from Oxberry’s The New English Drama (Vol. VI.) is inserted: ‘“The Busy Body” is a comedy that has now held possession of the stage above a hundred years (the best test of excellence); and the merit that has enabled it to do so, consists in the ingenuity of the contrivance, the liveliness of the plot, and the striking effect of the situations. Mrs. Centlivre, in this and her other plays, could do nothing without a stratagem; but she could do everything with one. She delights in putting her dramatis personæ continually at their wit’s end, and in helping them off with a new evasion; and the subtlety of her resources is in proportion to the criticalness of the situation and the shortness of the notice for resorting to an expedient. Twenty times, in seeing or reading one of her plays, your pulse beats quick, and you become restless and apprehensive for the event; but with a fine theatrical sleight of hand, she lets you off, undoes the knot of the difficulty, and you breathe freely again, and have a hearty laugh into the bargain. In short, with her knowledge of chambermaids’ tricks, and insight into the intricate foldings of lovers’ hearts, she plays with the events of comedy, as a juggler shuffles about a pack of cards, to serve his own purposes, and to the surprise of the spectator. This is one of the most delightful employments of the dramatic art. It costs nothing—but a voluntary tax on the inventive powers of the author; and it produces, when successfully done, profit and praise to one party, and pleasure to all. To show the extent and importance of theatrical amusements (which some grave persons would decry altogether, and which no one can extol too highly), a friend of ours,[[49]] whose name will be as well known to posterity as it is to his contemporaries, was not long ago mentioning, that one of the earliest and most memorable impressions ever made on his mind, was the seeing “Venice Preserved” acted in a country town when he was only nine years old. But he added, that an elderly lady who took him to see it, lamented, notwithstanding the wonder and delight he had experienced, that instead of “Venice Preserved,” they had not gone to see “The Busy Body,” which had been acted the night before. This was fifty years ago, since which, and for fifty years before that, it has been acted a thousand times in town and country, giving delight to the old, the young, and middle-aged, passing the time carelessly, and affording matter for agreeable reflection afterwards, making us think ourselves, and wish to be thought, the men equal to Sir George Airy in grace and spirit, the women to Miranda and Isabinda in love and beauty, and all of us superior to Marplot in wit. Among the scenes that might be mentioned in this comedy, as striking instances of happy stage effect, are Miranda’s contrivance to escape from Sir George, by making him turn his back upon her to hear her confession of love, and the ludicrous attitude in which he is left waiting for the rest of her speech after the lady has vanished; his offer of the hundred pounds to her guardian to make love to her in his presence, and when she receives him in dumb show, his answering for both; his situation concealed behind the chimney-screen; his supposed metamorphosis into a monkey, and his deliverance from thence in that character by the interference of Marplot; Mrs. Patch’s sudden conversion of the mysterious love letter into a charm for the toothache, and the whole of Marplot’s meddling and blunders. The last character is taken from Dryden and the Duchess of Newcastle; and is, indeed, the only attempt at character in the play. It is amusing and superficial. We see little of the puzzled perplexity of his brain, but his actions are absurd enough. He whiffles about the stage with considerable volubility, and makes a very lively automaton. Sir George Airy sets out for a scene or two in a spirited manner, but afterwards the character evaporates in the name; and he becomes as commonplace as his friend Charles, who merely laments over his misfortunes, or gets out of them by following the suggestions of his valet or his valet’s mistress. Miranda is the heroine of the piece, and has a right to be so; for she is a beauty and an heiress. Her friend has less to recommend her; but who can refuse to fall in love with her name? What volumes of sighs, what a world of love, is breathed in the very sound alone—the letters that form the charming name of Isabinda.’ [157]. ‘The one cries Mum,’ etc. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act 5. Sc. 2. Note. See first edition (1714), pp. 35-6. [158]. ‘‘Some soul of goodness,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 1. His Funeral. Produced in 1701. ‘All the milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5. The Conscious Lovers. 1722. Hazlitt refers to Act III. Sc. 1. Parson Adams against me. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. chap. II. Addison’s Drummer. 1715. ‘An Hour after Marriage.’ Three Hours after Marriage (1717), the joint production of Gay, Pope, and Arbuthnot. ‘An alligator stuff’d.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1. Gay’s What-d’ye-call-it. 1715. ‘Polly.’ Published in 1728. The representation was forbidden by the Court. Last line but one. In the third edition Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Beggar’s Opera’ (see vol. I. pp. 65-6) is here introduced. [159]. The Mock Doctor. 1732. Tom Thumb. Afterwards called The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1730; additional Act, 1731). Lord Grizzle. In Tom Thumb. ‘‘Like those hanging locks,’ etc. Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, Act I. Sc. 2. ‘Fell of hair,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5. ‘Hey for Doctor’s Commons.’ Tragedy of Tragedies, etc., Act II. Sc. 5. ‘From the sublime,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 23. Lubin Log. In James Kenney’s farce, Love, Law, and Physic, produced 1812. See ante, p. 192. The Widow’s Choice. Allingham’s Who Wins, or The Widow’s Choice, 1808. ‘Is high fantastical.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1. [160]. The hero of the Dunciad. Cibber was substituted for Theobald as the King of Dulness in consequence of his famous letter to Pope, published in 1742. ‘By merit raised,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 5-6. His Apology for his own Life. Published in 1740. Cf. The Round Table, vol. I. pp. 156-7. His account of his waiting, etc. An Apology, etc., 2nd ed. 1740, chap. III. pp. 59-60. Mr. Burke’s celebrated apostrophe. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89). Kynaston, etc. See vol. I. notes to pp. 156-7. [161]. His Careless Husband. 1704. His Double Gallant. 1707. The play was revived in 1817 and noticed by Hazlitt. See ante, pp. 359-362. ‘In hidden mazes,’ etc. Misquoted from L’Allegro, 141-2. [162]. His Nonjuror. 1717. Isaac Bickerstaff’s The Hypocrite was produced in 1768. Love’s Last Shift. Colley Cibber’s first play, produced in 1694. For Southerne’s remark to Cibber, see An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, p. 173. l. 34. In the third edition a great part of Hazlitt’s article on The Hypocrite (see A View of the English Stage, ante, p. 245) is inserted here. The passage is also in Oxberry’s New English Drama, vol. I. Love in a Riddle. 1729.
“Take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again.”[[56]]
A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE
In this work, published in 1818, Hazlitt collected the greater part of the theatrical criticisms which he had contributed successively to The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, The Examiner, and The Times. His first article in The Morning Chronicle appeared on October 18, 1813 (see ante, p. 192), and the last on May 27, 1814 (see ante, p. 195). In his essay, ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (Table Talk, vol. V. pp. 292, et seq.), Hazlitt gives an account of his theatrical criticisms in the Chronicle. He thought himself that they were the best articles in the series (see ante, p. 174), and they are at any rate of exceptional interest inasmuch as they deal for the most part with the first appearances of Edmund Kean in London. His first article in The Champion, then edited by John Scott, appeared on August 14, 1814 (see p. 196), and the last on January 8, 1815 (see p. 208). Early in 1815 he became the regular dramatic critic of The Examiner. Leigh Hunt, the editor, had intended to resume theatrical criticism after his release from prison in February, but his attention was diverted to politics by the return of Buonaparte from Elba. Hazlitt’s first article (except for two notices of Kean’s Iago, July 24 and August 7, 1814) appeared on March 19, 1815 (see p. 221), the last on June 8, 1817 (see p. 373). By far the greater part of Hazlitt’s articles in The Morning Chronicle, The Champion, and The Examiner were included by him in A View of the English Stage. Some passages, however, and, we think, some articles, he did omit (especially from The Examiner of 1817). In the following notes passages omitted from articles included in A View are printed in full; articles omitted from A View are shortly summarised, if it is pretty clear from internal evidence that they were written by Hazlitt. Owing to want of space these articles cannot be printed in the present volume, but those which are clearly Hazlitt’s will be found among fugitive writings in a later volume, together with some notices (deemed certainly his) from The Times. Hazlitt seems to have been the dramatic critic, or one of the dramatic critics, of The Times from the summer of 1817 till the spring of 1818, but only two of his articles (pp. 374, et seq.) were included in A View of the English Stage. These appeared in September 1817, near the beginning of his term of office. Hazlitt’s reason for including so few of his Times articles is not known. An examination of the dramatic notices in The Times during the period in question suggests (1) that there were at least two regular dramatic critics on the staff, (2) that Hazlitt chiefly confined himself to Shakespearian and other plays of established reputation, and (3) that he practically ceased to write at the end of 1817. The following may be mentioned among the more important articles, which may, with varying degrees of probability, be ascribed to Hazlitt:— School for Scandal (Munden as Sir Peter Teazle), September 8, 1817; Young’s Hamlet, September 9; As You Like It (Miss Brunton as Rosalind), September 20; Maywood’s Zanga, October 3; Cibber’s The Refusal, or The Ladies’ Philosophy, October 6; Kean’s Richard III., October 7; The Wonder, or A Woman Keeps a Secret, October 9; Venice Preserved, October 10; Kean’s Macbeth, October 21; Othello (Kean as Othello, Maywood as Iago), October 27; Venice Preserved (Miss O’Neill as Belvidera), December 2; The Honey Moon, December 3; Fisher’s Hamlet, December 11; Kean’s Macbeth, December 16; King John (Miss O’Neill as Constance), December 18.