NOTES (continued 2)

Audrey’s question. As You Like It. Act III. Scene 3.

349.

‘Turns diseases,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act I. Scene 2.

Mr. Crabbe’s first poems, etc. Crabbe’s first poems were Inebriety (published anonymously in 1775), The Candidate (1780), and The Library (1781). It was The Village (1783) that Johnson read and approved. (See Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, IV. 175.) Crabbe’s patron was Burke, by whom he was no doubt introduced to Reynolds, and later to Johnson.

350.

He brings as a parallel instance, etc. In the Preface to the Tales (1812). See Works (1834, IV. 144).

‘In the worst inn’s worst room,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, III. 299.

351.

He sets out with professing, etc. Hazlitt refers to the opening lines of The Village.

The sad vicissitudes of things. This phrase occurs in a poem, Contemplation, by the Rev. Richard Gifford, which was quoted by Johnson. See Tour to the Hebrides (Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, V. 117–8). The phrase also occurs in Sterne’s Sermons (No. XVI.).

‘At one bound,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 181.

He does not weave the web, etc. An unacknowledged quotation from All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Scene 3.

The only leaf, etc. Crabbe resided for some time at Belvoir Castle as chaplain to the fourth Duke of Rutland. He dedicated The Borough to the fifth Duke, and Tales of the Hall to the Duchess.

352.

‘Thus by himself,’ etc. The Borough, Letter xxii., Peter Grimes.

353.

The episode of Phœbe Dawson. In The Parish Register (Part II.). The tale interested Fox on his death-bed. (See Works, 1834, II. 16, 180.)

The character of the Methodist parson, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to the story of Ruth (Tales of the Hall, Book V., Works, 1834, VI. 93).

Mr. T. Moore. Cf. Political Essays (Vol. III., pp. 311–321).

‘Or winglet,’ etc. Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming, Part II., Stanza 12.

‘No dainty flower,’ etc. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto vi., Stanzas 12 and 13.

354.

‘Wasteful and superfluous excess.’ ‘Wasteful and ridiculous excess.’ King John, Act IV. Scene 2.

355.

‘And spread,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 1.

‘Dying or ere they sicken.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3. 431

355.

‘A perpetual feast,’ etc. Milton, Comus, 478–9.

‘On the rack,’ etc. Cf. ‘That on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 2.

‘Looks so fair,’ etc. Othello, Act IV. Scene 2.

‘Another morn,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 310–1.

356.

‘Now, upon Syria’s,’ etc. Lalla Rookh, ‘Paradise and the Peri.’

Della Cruscan sentiment. See the essay on Gifford, ante, p. 309.

357.

‘A penitent tear.’ ‘——the tear that, warm and meek, Dew’d that repentant sinner’s cheek.’ ‘Paradise and the Peri.’

‘Joy, joy for ever,’ etc. Ibid.

‘May bestride the Gossamer,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 6.

‘In vain Mokanna,’ etc. Lalla Rookh, ‘The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.’

358.

‘Whose coming,’ etc. Ibid.

The ‘Twopenny Post-bag.’ Published in 1812.

‘Nests of spicery.’ Richard III., Act IV. Scene 4.

‘In the manner,’ etc. Moore, Horace, Ode XI. Lib. II. Freely translated by the Pr—ce R—g—t.

‘An Adonis of fifty.’ ‘This Adonis in loveliness was a corpulent man of fifty.’ These words occur in a paper in The Examiner (March 22, 1812), for which Leigh Hunt and his brother John were sent to prison.

Note 2. Moore’s Little Man and Little Soul was dedicated to Charles Abbot (1757–1829) the Speaker, afterwards Lord Colchester. Abbot, in his address to the Regent in July 1813, referred to a Bill for the removal of Roman Catholic disabilities which had been defeated.

359.

‘In choosing songs,’ etc. Moore, Satirical and Humorous Poems. Extracts from the Diary of a Politician.

The ‘Fudge Family.’ See Hazlitt’s Political Essays, Vol. III., pp. 311–321.

The ‘divine Fanny Bias.’ The ‘Fudge Family in Paris.’ Letter V.

The ‘mountains à la Russe.’ Ibid. Letter VIII.

Is Mr. Moore bound, etc. Moore had urged Byron not to become associated with Leigh Hunt in The Liberal. See Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, VI. 22. Hazlitt himself deals with this matter at some length in an essay in the Plain Speaker, entitled, ‘On the Jealousy and Spleen of Party.’ See also Memoirs of William Hazlitt, II., 69–73. ‘The Spirit of Monarchy’ was a paper contributed by Hazlitt to The Liberal; ‘Fables for the Holy Alliance,’ a skit of Moore’s, published in 1823.

360.

‘To be admired,’ etc. ‘Needs only to be seen to be admired.’ Cowper, Expostulation, 493.

361.

His Story of Rimini. Published in 1816. A savage review appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine for May 1818.

His Epistle to Lord Byron. Included in Foliage; or, Poems, Original and Translated (1818).

The Feast of the Poets. Published in 1814. See Vol. I., p. 377.

362.

Some allusion was made, etc. See ante, note to p. 358.

Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen’ (Literary Remains), for another account of Lamb. In a letter to Bernard Barton (Feb. 10, 1825) Lamb says: ‘The “Spirit of the Age” is by Hazlitt. The characters of Coleridge, etc., he had done better in former publications, the praise and abuse much stronger, etc., but the new ones are capitally done. Horne Tooke is a matchless portrait. My advice 432is to borrow it rather than buy it. I have it. He has laid too many colours on my likeness; but I have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over-measure to “Elia” as gentlemen think proper to bestow.’ In a letter to J. Taylor (Letters, ed. Ainger, II., 35) he explains how he came to take the name of ‘Elia.’

362.

‘The pale reflex,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Scene 5.

‘Native to,’ etc. ‘Though I am native here, and to the manner born.’ Hamlet Act I. Scene 4.

363.

‘Shuffle off,’ etc. Ibid., Act III. Scene 1.

‘The self-applauding bird,’ etc. Cowper, Truth, l. 58 et seq.

‘New-born gauds,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 3.

‘Give to dust,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Do not in broad,’ etc. ‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in the broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging love.’ Lycidas, 78–82.

364.

‘Fine fretwork,’ etc. Essays of Elia. The South-Sea House.

365.

‘The chimes at midnight.’ ‘We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Scene 2.

‘Cheese and pippins.’ Cf. Merry Wives of Windsor. Act I. Scene 2, and Henry IV., Part II., Act V. Scene 3.

A certain writer. Hazlitt himself, who contributed three papers on Guy Faux to The Examiner in 1821, reprinted for the first time in the present edition. Lamb wrote a paper on the same subject in The London Magazine for November 1823, Works, ed. R. H. Shepherd, vol. I. p. 345. See Hazlitt’s essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen’ (Literary Remains).

366.

‘To have coined,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘Civic honours.’ See Letters of Charles Lamb, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, II. 159, where, in a letter to Mrs. Hazlitt, Lamb describes his dinner at the Mansion House.

Mr. Waithman’s perusal. Robert Waithman (1764–1833), the political reformer, was Lord Mayor in 1823. See ante, note to p. 334.

Note. John Woodvil was published in 1802. The lines quoted are in Act II.

367.

Mr. Washington Irvine’s acquaintance, etc. Washington Irving (1783–1859), published in New York The History of New York, By Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), and came in 1815 to Europe, where he stayed for seventeen years. His Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, was published in America in 1819, and in London first in part by Miller, then by Murray in 1820; his Bracebridge Hall by Murray in 1822. These and his later books, Tales of a Traveller (1824), Tales of the Alhambra (1832), Life of Oliver Goldsmith (1849), Life of Mahomet (1850), Life of Washington (1855), and others are now included in fifteen volumes of Bohn’s Standard Library. For an account of their publication and of Murray’s lawsuit against Bohn, see Smiles’s Memoirs of John Murray, Vol. II. passim.

In his ‘mind’s eye.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2.

368.

Mr. Knowles. James Sheridan Knowles (1784–1862) whose Virginius was produced at Covent Garden in May 1820, had recently been a confidant of 433Hazlitt’s in the matter of Sarah Walker. See Vol. II. p. 328 (Liber Amoris).

368.

Mr. Knowles himself, etc. Knowles who had acted in the provinces as early as 1802, returned to the stage in 1832, when he played Master Walter in his own comedy of The Hunchback. He continued to act till 1843.

371.

Preface to An Abridgment, etc. The first four volumes of Abraham Tucker’s (1705–1774) The Light of Nature Pursued were published under the name of ‘Edward Search’ in 1768, the remaining three, edited by his daughter, appearing posthumously in 1778.

Clarissa. The eight volumes of Clarissa Harlowe were abridged by E. S. Dallas in 1868, the six volumes of Sir Charles Grandison by Mary Howitt in 1873.

Without suffering, etc. Apparently a kind of legal formula, as in Hall’s Chronicles (Henry V. 70 b.): ‘that we suffre harm or diminucion in person estate worship or goods.’

‘Not sicklied o’er,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

373.

John Buncle. See Vol. I. pp. 51–7 (The Round Table).

‘His unrivalled power of illustration.’ See the Preface to Paley’s Moral Philosophy.

377.

‘Petrific mace.’ ‘Death with his mace petrific.’ Paradise Lost, X. 294.

378.

Note. ‘Just such shard-born beetle things.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 2.

Note. Mr. Horne Tooke. Cf. ante, 231–241.

Note. Promontory of noses. Tristram Shandy, Slaukenbergius’s Tale.

Note. Andrew Paraeus’s. Ambrose Paraeus’s ‘Solution of noses’ is in Tristram Shandy, Book III. Chap, xxviii.

Note. ‘It is as absurd,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 240.

381.

Soame Jenyns’s argument. See Disquisition VII. (Works, 1790, III. 258 et seq.). The argument is controverted by Jenyns.

384.

Note. There is one argument, etc. ‘At sperat adolescens diu se victurum: quod sperare idem senex non potest. Insipienter sperat. Quid enim stultius, quam incerta pro certis habere, falsa pro veris! Senex, ne quod speret quidem, habet: at est eo meliore conditione, quam adolescens, quum id, quod ille sperat, his jam consecutus est. Ille vult diu vivere: his diu vixit.’ De Senectute, Cap. xix.

388.

Edward Baldwin. The name under which Godwin wrote various works published by his wife.

393.

David Booth. David Booth (1766–1846) published an Introduction to an Analytical Dictionary of the English Language in 1806. Only one volume of the Dictionary itself was published (1835).

434Printed by T. and A. Constable, (late) Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.

Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.