NOTES

469

TABLE TALK

PAGE

2.

An Advertisement, etc. The advertisement to the Paris edition of Table Talk was as follows:—

‘The work here offered to the public is a selection from the four volumes of Table Talk, printed in London. Should it meet with success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same description, which will include all that the author wishes to preserve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps serve to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or mode of treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had written or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had occasion to speak of it with a friend, the conversation generally took a much wider range, and branched off into a number of indirect and collateral questions, which were not strictly connected with the original view of the subject, but which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon human life in general. It therefore occurred to me as possible to combine the advantages of these two styles, the literary and the conversational; or after stating and enforcing some leading idea, to follow it up by such observations and reflections as would probably suggest themselves in discussing the same question in company with others. This seemed to me to promise a greater variety and richness, and perhaps a greater sincerity, than could be attained by a more precise and scholastic method. The same consideration had an influence on the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style which I have used. How far the plan was feasible, or how far I have succeeded in the execution of it must be left to others to decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains of thought; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by the careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous inquirer my style will be complained of as too light and desultory. To all this I can only answer that I have done not what I wished, but the best I could do; and I heartily wish it had been better.’

ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

This and the following essay are from The London Magazine for December 1820 (Vol. II. pp. 597–607), No. V. of a series entitled Table Talk.

5.

‘There is a pleasure,’ etc. Cf. vol. I. note to p. 76.

‘No juggling here.’ Cf. ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Scene 3.

‘Study with joy,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, III. 227–8.

6.

‘More tedious,’ etc. King John, Act III. Scene 4.

‘My mind to me,’ etc. The first line of the well-known poem attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (d. 1607). 470

6.

Note. See The Sorrows of Young Werther (Novels and Tales, Bohn, p. 254).

7.

‘Pure in the last recesses of the mind.’ Dryden’s translation of the Second Satire of Persius, l. 133. According to Frances Reynolds (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 272), the lines were quoted by Johnson at the end of an eloquent eulogium of Mrs. Thrale.

‘Palpable to feeling,’ etc. Cf. ‘If ’tis not gross in sense ... ’tis probable and palpable to thinking.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

8.

‘Light thickened.’ ‘Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 2.

Wilson. Richard Wilson (1714–1782). See Conversations of Northcote, ante, pp. 380, 438, 458.

It was not so Claude, etc. Claude finally settled in Rome in 1627 and remained there till his death in 1682.

The first head, etc. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, l. 108 note. The picture, which seems to have been painted near Manchester in 1803, is still in the possession of Hazlitt’s family.

9.

With Sir Joshua. Cf. the second of Hazlitt’s Essays on Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, ante, pp. 131 et seq.

‘As in a glass darkly‘, etc. I Corinthians, xiii. 12.

10.

‘Sees into the life of things.’ Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow. Jan Steen (1626–1679), and Gerard Dow (1613–1675).

‘Mist,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 435–6.

Richardson. The Essays of Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), which originally appeared in 1715 and 1719, were published in two volumes in 1725, and in one volume, edited by his son, in 1773. See pp. 297–8 of the one volume edition. Vasari tells this story of Michael Angelo and the Pope.

11.

‘That you might almost say,’ etc. ‘—— so distinctly wrought That one might almost say, her body thought.’ John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, Second Anniversary, 245–6.

12.

Old Abraham Tucker. See vol. iv. pp. 371–385.

‘The source,’ &c. See Northcote’s Life of Reynolds, II. 286.

A picture of my father. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1806. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. III.

Gribelin’s etchings. In the second (1714) and subsequent editions of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics.

‘Riches fineless.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

‘Ever in the haunch of winter sings.’ Henry IV., Part II. Act IV. Scene 4.

13.

‘I also am a painter.’ See Vasari’s Lives (ed. Blashfield and Hopkins), III. 32, note 28.

Mr. Skeffington. Sir Lumley St. George Skeffington (1771–1850), author of The Sleeping Beauty and other plays, and a friend of the Regent’s, succeeded his father as baronet in 1815.

The battle of Austerlitz. December 2, 1805.

He himself is gone to rest. Hazlitt’s father died on July 16, 1820.

471

ESSAY III. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

13.

‘Whate’er Lorraine,’ etc. Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, Canto I. Stanza 38.

Lord Radnor’s park. For a fuller account of the collections here referred to, see the volume in the present edition containing Hazlitt’s Fine Art Criticisms.

14.

‘Bosomed high,’ etc. L’Allegro, 78.

‘Hands that the rod,’ etc. Gray, Elegy, 47.

‘A forked mountain,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14.

‘Signifying nothing.’ Macbeth, Act V. Scene 5,

15.

When I went to the Louvre. In 1802. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 84 et seq.

Titian’s Mistress. The picture so called is in the Louvre. It is in fact a portrait of Alphonso of Ferrara and Laura Dianti.

The Transfiguration, etc. On the fall of Napoleon, Raphael’s Transfiguration, and Domenichino’s Communion of St. Jerome were restored to Rome; Titian’s St. Peter Martyr to Venice, and his Hippolito de Medici to Florence. The St. Peter Martyr was destroyed by fire in 1867. Hazlitt’s copy of ‘A young Nobleman with a glove’ is still in the possession of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.

16.

‘If thou hast not seen,’ etc. Cf. ‘Wast ever in court, shepherd?—No, truly.—Then thou art damned.’ As You Like It, Act III., Scene 2.

The Elgin marbles. See Vol. i. p. 143 and note.

‘Hard money.’ Specie opposed to paper currency. Cf. ‘Your mother has a hundred pounds in hard money’ etc. Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘Number numberless.’ Paradise Regained, III. 310 [numbers].

‘Casual fruition,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 766–7.

17.

W—. Richard Wilson.

18.

A friend of mine. Northcote, presumably, whose Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds had been praised in The Edinburgh Review (vol. xxiii. pp. 263 et seq.)

A friend had bought, etc. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt suggests that this was Haydon.

19.

Richardson, in his Essays. A Discourse on the Science of a Connoisseur (Essays, 1773, pp. 327 et seq.)

20.

‘Guido Reni,’ etc. Richardson, Essays, 1773, pp. 217–8.

21.

Gandy. William Gandy (died 1729). See Hazlitt’s Conversations of James Northcote, ante, p. 345. A short Memoir of Gandy forms the Appendix to Northcote’s Life of Reynolds.

Poor Dan. Stringer. Cf. ante, pp. 345–6.

‘Swallowing the tailor’s news.’ King John, Act IV., Scene 2.

‘Bastards of his genius,’ etc. Cf. Vol. iv. p. 209.

ESSAY III. ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

22.

When Sterne in the Sentimental Journey. A Sentimental Journey, ‘Character. Versailles.’

23.

‘The thoughts of which,’ etc. Cf. ‘Yet loss of thee would never from my heart.’ Paradise Lost, IX. 912.

‘What though the radiance,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 179 et seq.

‘Retrace its footsteps,’ etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 329–333.

‘And see how dark,’ etc. Wordsworth, Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening. 472

23.

‘In our heart’s tables.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I. Scene 1.

‘All the life of life was flown.’ ‘In weary being now I pine, For a’ the life of life is dead,’ Burns, Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn, Stanza 6. Cf. also ‘Till youth and genial years are flown, And all the life of life is gone,’

from Thomson’s song addressed to Fortune and beginning— ‘For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove,’ etc.

Norman Court. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, II. 14–15. and W. Hazlitt the younger’s Preface to the 1850 edition of Winterslow.

25.

‘Running through the story,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

‘Beguiled them,’ etc. Ib.

Posthæc meminisse juvabit. Virgil, Æneid, I. 203.

26.

‘Calm contemplation,’ etc. Wordsworth, Laodamia, 72.

27.

‘Catch glimpses,’ etc. Wordsworth, Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us.’

‘I also was an Arcadian.’ This saying, or its Latin equivalent, ‘et ego in Arcadia,’ often quoted by Hazlitt in connection with Poussin’s picture, has been much discussed in Notes and Queries. See 4th Ser., I. 509, 561, etc. Goethe adopted it as a motto for his Travels in Italy.

‘Que peu de chose,’ etc. Cf. ‘Je vous exhorte à jouir, autant que vous pourrez, de la vie qui est peu de chose,’ etc. Voltaire, Letter to Madame du Deffand, Oct. 13, 1759.

Respice finem. A tag, quoted in The Comedy of Errors, Act IV. Scene 4. See Notes and Queries, 5th Series, VI. 313, where the line ‘si quid agas prudenter agas, et respice finem’ is quoted from the fable ‘De accipitre et columbis’ in Fabulae Variorum Auctorum (Francof. 1560), p. 503.

‘The high endeavour,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, V. 901.

‘Oh God! methinks,’ etc. Henry VI., Part III. Act II. Scene 5.

29.

‘The tear forgot,’ etc. Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Stanza 5.

30.

Recorded by Spence. Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men. Collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope, etc. (edit. 1820), pp. 116–7.

ESSAY IV. ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

33.

Mr. Burke, by whom, etc. Cf. Conversations of James Northcote, ante, p. 366.

Windham in one of his Speeches. Speech on the Conduct of the Duke of York, March 14, 1809. Speeches, III. 205.

34.

One of the persons, etc. No doubt John Thelwall (1764–1834), who was acquitted in December, 1794, and retired to Brecon in 1798. Hazlitt afterwards became acquainted with him. Among his Poems (1801) is an epic entitled ‘Edwin of Northumbria.’

35.

Note. ‘Sound it,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

36.

‘Make assurance,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 1.

‘Shuts the gates,’ etc. Gray, Elegy, Stanza 17.

Mr. Burke said. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 102).

37.

Come home to the business, etc. Bacon, Dedication to the Essays.

Ultima ratio regum. See vol. III., note to p. 44.

‘There’s the rub,’ etc. ‘There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1. 473

37.

‘A compost heap.’ Cf. ‘A new accession to the loaded compost heap of corrupt influence.’ Burke, Speech on Economical Reform (Works, Bohn, II. 109).

39.

‘What! man,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

The passage in the same play. Ib., Act I. Scene 6.

40.

The Judgment of Solomon. In the Louvre Gallery.

‘Sure trailing.’ Cf. ‘And I do think, or else this brain of mine Hunts not the trail of policy so sure As it hath used to do.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

‘As if his will,’ etc. Hazlitt quotes from one of his own notices of Kean’s Richard (Morning Chronicle, Feb. 15, 1814).

Painter in his fight with Oliver. Edward Painter (1784–1852) was defeated by Tom Oliver (1782–1864) in May 1814, but defeated him in July 1820.

41.

The figure of Elymas. In one of the Cartoons.

ESSAY V. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

42.

‘As one, in suffering,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

‘Knew all qualities,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

‘A pipe for the Muse’s finger,’ etc. Cf. ‘That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

43.

‘To descry new lands,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 290–1.

‘Fierce extremes,’ etc. Ib. II. 599.

‘Of the earth, earthy.’ I Corinthians, XV. 47.

‘Darkness that may be felt.’ Exodus, X. 21.

‘Palpable obscure.’ Paradise Lost, II. 406.

44.

‘Look abroad into universality.’ Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I.

‘Content with riches fineless.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

‘Poor as Winter.’ Ib.

‘Self-involved, not dark.’ Cf. ‘Pensive, not sad; in thought involved, not dark.’ Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, Canto I. Stanza 57.

‘Enjoys bright day.’ Comus, 382.

‘Kept the noiseless tenour of his way.’ Gray’s Elegy, Stanza 19.

‘Finds tongues,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 1.

‘The meanest flow’r,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality.

45.

‘Yet I’ll remember thee,’ etc. Burns, Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring, etc. Cf. the essays ‘On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, ante, pp. 122 et seq.

46.

The admirable Crichton. James Crichton (1560–1585?).

Jedediah Buxton. For Jedidiah Buxton (1707–1772) see Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1754.

Note. ‘The force of dulness,’ etc. Cf. ‘The force of Nature could no further go.’ Dryden, Under Mr. Milton’s Picture.

49.

Mediocribus esse, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 372–3.

I find from Adam Smith. Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. i.

Those nonsensical stories about Lopez de Vega. See Lord Holland’s Some Account of the life and writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1806), pp. 75–82.

50.

Why does Mr. Kean, etc. See the volume containing Hazlitt’s theatrical criticisms.

474

ESSAY VI. CHARACTER OF COBBETT

58.

This essay was afterwards republished in the second edition of The Spirit of the Age. See vol. IV. pp. 334–343, and notes thereto.

ESSAY VII. ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA

59.

Major C—. John Cartwright (1740–1824), major in the Nottinghamshire Militia, and author of a large number of tracts, chiefly on parliamentary reform.

60.

Like the story of the Cosmogony. The Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xiv.

Nihil humani, etc. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, Act I. Scene 1.

‘A fee-grief’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

61.

As Cicero says of study. ‘Haec studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant,’ etc. Cicero, Pro Archia, VII. 16.

As Sancho, etc. Don Quixote, Second Part, Book II. chap. xxxi.

Dulce ridentem, etc. Horace, Odes, I. xxii., 23–4.

‘Rings the world,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, III. 129–130.

62.

Abernethy. John Abernethy (1764–1831), whose chief work, An Essay on the Constitutional Origin of Local Diseases, appeared in 1806.

63.

Alderman Wood. Sir Matthew Wood (1768–1843), lord mayor 1815–16, and member for the city from 1817 till his death, had recently (1820) made himself notorious as a champion of Queen Caroline.

A conceited fellow about town, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to Wirgmann, the goldsmith, of whom Crabb Robinson gives an amusing account in his Diary (1872 ed.) Vol. I. pp. 310–311.

A friend of mine. John Fearn (1768–1837), of whom Hazlitt gives some account in the following page. The essay referred to was An Essay on Consciousness (2nd ed. 4to, 1812). Hazlitt quotes a long passage from the Essay in Why Distant Objects Please. See ante, pp. 260–2.

64.

‘Poor, unfledged,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

65.

As Goldsmith said. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), III. 252.

Yet his Treatise on Human Nature, etc. ‘Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press,’ etc. The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by Himself.

A celebrated lyrical writer. Wordsworth.

The motto in the title-page. ‘For why? Because the good old rule Sufficeth them: the simple plan, That they should take, who have the power, And they should keep who can.’ Wordsworth, Rob Roy’s Grave.

Note 1. The Excursion was published in a 4to volume in 1814.

Note 2. Talk we of one Master Launcelot. Merchant of Venice, Act II. Scene 2.

66.

Mr. Owen. See Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 121 et seq.

‘Nor Alps,’ etc. John Dennis, Ode on the Battle of Aghrim, St. 3. See The Art of Sinking in Poetry (Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, X. 382). ‘Apennines’ should be ‘Pyrenæaus.’

67.

Letter to Mr. William Smith. See Political Essays, vol. III. 210–232.

‘That he puts his hand,’ etc. See The Fudge Family in Paris, Letter II. note 2.

‘I love to talk,’ etc. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 517–8.

‘A collusion,’ etc. ‘’Tis true indeed: the collusion holds in the exchange.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Scene 2. 475

68.

Why must a man, etc. Hazlitt is referring to Wordsworth. Cf. The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 276 and note.

‘Virtue extant.’ Henry IV. Part I., Act II. Scene 4.

‘Men were brutes without them.’ Cf. ‘O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee To temper man: we had been brutes without you.’ Otway, Venice Preserved, Act I. Scene 1.

Moody in the Country Girl. Garrick’s Country Girl, altered from Wycherley’s Country Wife, was produced in 1766.

M—. Lamb’s friend, Thomas Manning (1772–1840).

L. H. Leigh Hunt.

69.

‘Stand accountant,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Scene 1.

‘Its palaces,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, I. 643–4.

‘With them conversing,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 639–40.

ESSAY VIII. ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED

First published in the Scots’ Magazine (New Series), July 1818, vol. III. pp. 55 et seq. Hazlitt refers to this essay in A Letter to William Gifford (vol. I., p. 382).

70.

‘For the more languages,’ etc. Satire upon the Abuse of Human Learning, 57–68.

‘Spectacles.’ Dryden says of Shakespeare, ‘he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature.’ Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Essays, ed. Ker, I. 80).

71.

‘Leave me to my repose.’ ‘Leave me, leave me to repose,’ the refrain of the Prophetess in Gray’s The Vegtam’s Kivitha. The line is quoted by Burke in A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 112).

‘Take up his bed and walk.’ St. Matthew, ix. 6.

‘Enfeebles all internal strength of thought.’ Goldsmith, The Traveller, 270.

‘Sweats in the eye of Phœbus.’ Henry V., Act IV. Scene 1.

72.

‘Th’ enthusiast Fancy,’ etc. ‘The truant fancy was a wanderer ever.’ Lamb, Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects, I. 1.

The least respectable character. Hazlitt is probably referring to Canning.

73.

A person of this class. Charles Burney, D.D. (1757–1817), whose Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton appeared in 1790.

Dr. —. Hazlitt refers to Charles Burney (see last note) and Dr. Parr. Cf. a similar passage in The Examiner, vol. I. p. 425.

74.

‘The mighty world of eye and ear.’ Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 105–6.

‘Knowledge quite shut out.’ ‘And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.’ Paradise Lost, III. 50.

‘Of the colouring of Titian,’ etc. Tristram Shandy, III. 12.

The Elgin marbles. See The Round Table, vol. I. p. 143 and note.

‘Knows no touch of it.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

‘The art and practique,’ etc. Henry V., Act I. Scene 1.

‘Has no skill in surgery.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act V. Scene 1.

76.

Baxter. Cf. the essay ‘On People of Sense’ in the Plain Speaker, vol. VII. p. 243.

‘Wink and shut,’ etc. Prologue to Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (History of Antonio and Mellida, Part II.).

Laud, etc. William Laud (1573–1645), and John Whitgift (1530?–1604), Archbishops of Canterbury; George Bull (1634–1710), Bishop of St. David’s, author of Defensio Fidei Nicenae (1685) and other theological works; Daniel Waterland (1683–1740), whose works were edited in eleven 476vols. in 1823–1828, was not a bishop; Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), whose Old and New Testament connected ... to the Time of Christ first appeared in two folio volumes 1716–1718; Isaac de Beausobre (1659–1738), the Huguenot writer; Augustine Calmet (1672–1757); Samuel, Baron von Puffendorf (1632–1694) and Eméric de Vattel (1714–1767), the jurists; Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609); Jerome Cardan (1501–1576), and Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649).

76.

‘Gone to the vault of all the Capulets.’ See vol. I. note to p. 150.

ESSAY IX. THE INDIAN JUGGLERS

79.

Note. It was at Truro that Opie, who had already acquired some practice as a portrait painter, met with John Wolcot (1738–1819).

80.

I was at that time employed, etc. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. xvi.

‘In argument,’ etc. The Deserted Village, 211–2.

81.

‘To allow for the wind.’ Ivanhoe, chap. xiii.

‘Human face divine.’ Paradise Lost, III. 44.

82.

H—s and H—s. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of Table Talk prints ‘Haydons and H—s.’

‘In tones and gestures hit.’ ‘In tones and numbers hit.’ Paradise Regained, IV. 255.

To snatch this grace, etc. An unacknowledged quotation from Pope, Essay on Criticism, 153.

‘Commercing with the skies.’ Il Penseroso, 39.

83.

‘Thrills in each nerve,’ etc. Cf. ‘a sudden horror chill Ran through each nerve, and thrilled in ev’ry vein.’ Addison, Milton’s Style Imitated, 123–4.

‘Half flying, half on foot.’ ‘Half on foot, half flying.’ Paradise Lost, II. 941–2.

I know an individual. Leigh Hunt, no doubt. Hazlitt’s son dedicated the third edition of Table Talk ‘to Leigh Hunt, whom the author alike admired and esteemed; the “Rochester without the vice, the modern Surrey,” whom he celebrates in one of these Essays.’

84.

Nugæ canoræ. Horace, Ars Poetica, 322.

Themistocles said. See North’s Plutarch (ed. Rouse, Temple Classics, II. 3). Hazlitt probably read the story in Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I.

85.

Napier’s bones. Hazlitt refers, apparently, to John Napier (1550–1617), the inventor of logarithms.

‘He dies,’ etc. ‘Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive, If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5.

John Hunter. John Hunter (1728–1793).

Sir Humphry Davy. Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829).

86.

‘Great scholar’s memory,’ etc. Cf. ‘Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

87.

‘Care mounted,’ etc. ‘Post equitem sedet atra cura.’ Horace, Odes, III. l. 40.

‘In the instant.’ ‘And I feel now The future in the instant.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5. 477

87.

‘Domestic treason,’ etc. Ib. Act III. Scene 2.

88.

Rosemary Branch. A much frequented tavern at Peckham.

Copenhagen-house. A tavern and tea-garden ‘in the fields north of the metropolis, between Maiden-lane, the old road to Highgate on the west, and the very ancient north road, or bridle-way, called Hogbush-lane, on the east.’ See Hone’s Every Day Book (I. 858 et seq.), where an interesting account of the house is given, and the greater part of Hazlitt’s account of Cavanagh is reproduced.

89.

The Fleet or King’s Bench. The Fleet Prison in Farringdon Street and the King’s Bench Prison in Southwark, where there were open ground racket courts.

‘Who enters here.’ Hazlitt may have been recalling the lines in The Dunciad, (IV. 518–9): ‘Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends, Sire, Ancestors, Himself,’ etc.

Sutton. Charles Manners Sutton, first Viscount Canterbury (1780–1845), was elected Speaker on June 2, 1817.

‘Let no rude hand,’ etc. ‘May no rude hand deface it, And its forlorn hic jacet.’ Wordsworth, Ellen Irwin, 55–6.

ESSAY X. ON LIVING TO ONE’S-SELF

90.

‘Remote, unfriended,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 1.

Winterslow. Hazlitt’s wife inherited some cottages at Winterslow, a small village six or seven miles from Salisbury on the Andover road, and in one of these cottages a part of their early married life was spent. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 168 et seq., where an account is given of a visit paid to Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt by Charles and Mary Lamb. After 1819 (see Memoirs II. 16) Hazlitt began to frequent Winterslow Hut or the Pheasant Inn, where many of his essays (collected under the title of ‘Winterslow’) were written.

‘While Heavn’s chancel-vault,’ etc. Cf. ‘When the chill rain begins at shut of eve In dull November, and their chancel vault, The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.’ Keats, Hyperion, II. 36–8.

91.

He hears the tumult, etc. ‘I behold The tumult and am still.’ Cowper, The Task, IV. 99–100.

‘The man whose eye,’ etc. Wordsworth, Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, etc. (‘Poems written in youth’) ll. 55–9.

92.

‘To see the children,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 170–1.

Nicholson. William Nicholson (1753–1815).

‘Never ending, still beginning.’ Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, l. 102.

‘The witchery of the soft blue sky.’ Wordsworth, Peter Bell, l. 265.

93.

Goldsmith, etc. Hazlitt had probably read the story in Northcote’s Life of Reynolds, where the scene is laid at Antwerp. The incident really occurred 478at Lisle, while Goldsmith was on his way to Paris with the Hornecks. We have Miss Horneck’s authority for believing that the story, as told by Northcote, and here repeated by Hazlitt, is much exaggerated. See Prior’s Life of Goldsmith, II. 290–1; Forster’s Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, II. 217; and Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I. 414 and note.

93.

‘Whose top to climb,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

Exclaimed Cromwell. Speech XVIII., Feb. 4, 1658. See Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.

94.

‘The insolence of office,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

‘After the heart-aches,’ etc. Ibid.

‘A mouse,’ etc. Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Act IV. Scene 1.

Says Rousseau. La Nouvelle Héloïse, V. Lettre III. (édit. Firmin-Didot, p. 529 note).

‘Some demon,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, IV. 16.

95.

Canaletti. Antonio Canal (1697–1768), the Venetian painter, or Bernardo Bellotto (1724?–1780), his nephew.

‘Virgined it e’er since.’ Coriolanus, Act V. Scene 3.

The Clandestine Marriage. By George Colman the elder, and Garrick; first produced in 1766.

96.

‘The baby of a girl.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

‘With what a waving air,’ etc. B. W. Procter’s (Barry Cornwall’s) Mirandola, Act I. Scene 3. Hazlitt quoted the lines in Liber Amoris (see vol. II. p. 334), and it is clear that here as in many other parts of Table Talk he is referring to the story recorded in that book.

‘The fly that sips treacle,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Scene 2.

‘For either,’ etc. Paradise Lost, X. 898–908.

97.

The madman in Don Quixote. ‘He loved and was abhorred; he adored, and was scorned; he courted a savage; he solicited a statue; he pursued the wind; he called aloud to the desert,’ etc. Don Quixote (trans. Jarvis), Part I. Book II. chap. xiii.

‘I have not loved the world,’ etc. Byron, Childe Harold, Canto III, Stanzas 113 and 114.

Note. Gray says the same thing about Shenstone in a letter to Norton Nicholls, June 24, 1769 (Works, ed. Gosse, III. 344–5) quoted by Johnson in his Life of Shenstone. As to Gray’s dislike to having his portrait prefixed to his works, see his letter to Horace Walpole, January 1753 (Works, ed. Gosse, II. 233 et seq.), where he says: ‘This I know, if you suffer my head to be printed, you will infallibly put me out of mine’; and again—‘I do assure you, if I had received such a book, with such a frontispiece, without any warning, I believe it would have given me a palsy.’

98.

The man in the Hartz mountains. Hazlitt refers to the well-known mirage of the Brocken.

‘Listening its fears.’ ‘Listening their fear, I could not say “Amen.”’ Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2.

‘Still, small voice.’ 1 Kings, xix. 12.

After the Quarterly Review came out. The review of Characters of Shakespear’s Plays appeared in the Quarterly for Jan. 1818 (vol. XVIII. p. 458). Taylor and Hessey were the publishers of the Characters.

The Cockney School. The phrase seems to have been first used in an article by Lockhart entitled ‘On the Cockney School of Poetry,’ which appeared in the first number (Oct. 1817) of the new series of Blackwood’s Magazine. That article dealt almost exclusively with Leigh Hunt, but the expression became 479popular, and was afterwards applied, not only by Blackwood’s Magazine, but by The Quarterly Review, to Keats, Lamb, Shelley, and Hazlitt among others. See Lang’s Life of Lockhart, I. 146 et seq., and Mrs. Oliphant’s William Blackwood and his Sons, I. 132 et seq. and 164–7, where a letter from Lockhart and Wilson to John Murray is printed, in which the writers refer to ‘that happy name which you and all the reviews are now borrowing.’ The attacks on Keats referred to by Hazlitt appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine for Aug. 1818 (the 4th of the ‘Cockney School’ Series), and in The Quarterly Review for April 1818, published in September. It is not known who wrote the Blackwood article; the review in the Quarterly was by Croker. Much has been written as to the effect of these attacks on Keats’s health and happiness, but it is obviously impossible to come to any definite conclusion. Keats died in Rome on the 23rd Feb. 1821.

98.

‘A bud bit,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 1.

‘A huge-sized monster,’ etc. ‘A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 3.

100.

The celebrated Bub Doddington. The Diary of George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), created Lord Melcombe in 1761, was posthumously published in 1784.

My soul, turn from them. Hazlitt quotes elsewhere the line (165) from Goldsmith’s The Traveller. ‘My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey.’

‘Far from the madding strife.’ ‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.’ Gray’s Elegy, l. 73.

Bolingbroke’s Reflections on Exile. Written in 1716, published in 1752.

101.

Note. See Plutarch, Morals (of Banishment), and Virgil, Georgics, I. 6.

ESSAY XI. ON THOUGHT AND ACTION

Abraham Tucker. For Tucker, see vol. IV. pp. 371–385 and notes.

102.

Louvet. The Girondin, Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray (1760–1797), author of Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas.

Note. Cf. Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon (ed. 1894), III. 298.

Tull’s Husbandry. An edition of Jethro Tull’s (1674–1741) Horse-hoing Husbandry (1733) was brought out by Cobbett in 1822.

‘Tut! will you baulk a man,’ etc. ‘Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour?’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Scene 3.

‘No figures,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act II. Scene 1.

104.

Chapter of Accidents. Apparently Lord Chesterfield (Letter, Feb. 16, 1753) was the first person who is known to have used this phrase. Southey in The Doctor (chap. cxviii.) attributes to John Wilkes the saying, similar to Hazlitt’s, that ‘the chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book.’

And — — for love! Possibly Hazlitt refers to himself.

105.

‘Measure with a two-foot rule,’ etc. Burke, Regicide Peace (ed. Payne), p. 105.

Quicquid agit, etc. See note to vol. II. p. 331.

‘Curtailing him,’ etc. Cf. ‘I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,’ etc. Richard III., Act I. Scene 1. 480

107.

Arbela. The city which gives its name to the battle in which Alexander finally defeated Darius (B.C. 331).

109.

‘To be wise,’ etc. Cf. ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.’ Coriolanus, Act V. Scene 3.

Any more than St. Augustine was, etc. The allusion is to an incident which took place at the house of Boileau, when La Fontaine, Racine, and Boileau’s brother were present. The latter had been holding forth on the merits of St. Augustine, when La Fontaine, who had been listening half asleep, said: ‘Was he as witty as Rabelais?’ Boileau’s brother replied, ‘Be careful, M. la Fontaine, one of your stockings is wrong side out.’

‘All tranquillity and smiles.’ Cowper, The Task, IV. 49.

110.

Abraham Cowley has left, etc. ‘A Vision, concerning his late pretended Highness, Cromwell the Wicked,’ etc. (1661).

‘Sharp and sweet.’ ‘And be as sharp as sweet.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Scene 4.

111.

William Mudford (1782–1848), at this time editor of The Courier, afterwards a well-known contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, published in 1817, An Historical Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands in 1815, under the Duke of Wellington and Prince Blucher, in which he was assisted by the Duke.

Nor does Horace seem to give, etc. See Odes, II. 7, where he tells us that he left his shield ingloriously behind him at Philippi, and Epod. I. where he describes himself as ‘imbellis ac firmus parum.’

‘From every work,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto iv. Stanza 20.

‘Better be lord,’ etc. ‘And to be lord of those that riches have Than them to have my selfe, and be their servile sclave.’ Ib. Book II. Canto vii. Stanza 33.

112.

Sir William —. Sir William Curtis (1752–1829), a staunch Tory and friend of George IV., Lord Mayor (1795–1796) and Member for the City (1790–1817 and 1820–1826).

Alderman —. Robert Waithman (1764–1833), perhaps, Curtis’s radical opponent for the representation of the City.

Note. ‘Dish of skimmed milk.’ ‘O, I could divide myself, and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skim milk with so honourable an action.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 3.

113.

The cave of Mammon. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto vii.

The founder of Guy’s Hospital. Thomas Guy (1645–1724), bookseller in Cornhill, is said to have begun by importing English Bibles printed in Holland. The bulk of his fortune was made by successful dealings in South Sea stock. The residue of his estate, devoted to the founding of the hospital, amounted to £200,000.

ESSAY XII. ON WILL-MAKING

116.

A will of one of the Thellussons. The famous will of Peter Thellusson (1737–1797), who directed the income of his property to be accumulated during the lives of all his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, living at the time of his death. The will was upheld, but an Act, commonly called the Thellusson Act (39 and 40 George III. c. 98) was passed to prevent the repetition of such accumulations. 481

117.

I have heard of a singular instance, etc. In Notes and Queries (1st Series, X. 531) a correspondent, signing himself ‘W. M. T.’, states that in a volume of Hazlitt’s Works in his possession the Essay ‘On Will-making’ has a marginal note in the handwriting of Wordsworth. The note is as follows:—‘This story must have come from me. It is exaggerated here. The person was a school-fellow of mine, and I had the particulars of his will from a brother of one his executors. He did not bequeath large estates, etc., but very considerable sums of money to different relatives and friends; without being possessed of a sixpence, or having reason to believe that he was. W. Wordsworth.’

118.

Diamond cut Diamond. As old at any rate as Ford. See The Lover’s Melancholy, Act I. Scene 3.

Ben Jonson’s Volpone. First acted in 1605.

The will of Nicholas Gimcrack. The Tatler, No. 216 (By Addison).

120.

‘Even from the tomb,’ etc. Gray’s Elegy, 91–2.

Memoirs of an Heiress. Frances Burney’s Cecilia, or The Memoirs of an Heiress (1782).

Dyot-Street. This name was restored in 1877. The street was named after Richard Dyot. Wheatley and Cunningham’s London Past and Present, I. 544.

‘The foxes,’ etc. St. Matthew, viii. 20.

Lord Camelford. Thomas Pitt, second Lord Camelford (1775–1804), killed in a duel. The war rendered it impossible for his body to be taken to Switzerland.

Sir Francis Bourgeois. Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois (1756–1811), the painter, bequeathed a large number of pictures to Dulwich College.

Note. Kellerman. François Christophe, Duke of Valmy (1735–1820).

Note. As the basil-tree grew, etc. Boccaccio, The Decameron, Fourth Day, Novel 5.

ESSAY XIII. ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES

Cf. six papers which Hazlitt contributed to The Champion (Oct. 30, Nov. 6, Nov. 27, Dec. 4, Dec. 25, 1814, and Jan. 8, 1815) on Reynolds as a painter and a critic.

123.

‘You take my house,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Scene 1.

124.

‘Ascending the brightest heaven of invention.’ Henry V., Prologue. Carlo Maratti. 1625–1713.

128.

‘It loses some colour.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 1.

130.

‘Not once perceive,’ etc. Comus, 74–5.

Note. Boucher. François Boucher (1703–1770).

ESSAY XIV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

131.

Two papers in the Idler. Nos. 76 and 82.

133.

Denner’s style. Balthasar Denner (1685–1749), the German painter, whose too minute detail is often referred to by Hazlitt.

134.

‘Of late reformed,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

‘What word,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IX. 1144. 482

136.

What was said of Virgil. Addison, in his Essay on Virgil’s Georgics, says:—‘He breaks the clods and tosses the dung about with an air of gracefulness.’ Cf. also ‘Hence mighty Virgil’s said, of old, From dung to have extracted gold,’ etc. Butler, Satire upon Plagiaries, 87 et seq.

145.

Dr. Johnson’s Irene. Produced at Drury Lane in 1749.

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.

152.

Note. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal crew, etc. The reference is of course to Southey and Wordsworth. See many passages in Political Essays.

Note. Like Cacus’s oxen. Æneid, VIII. 209 et seq.

Note. ‘Rout on rout,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 995–6.

Note. ‘Deliverance for mankind.’ Southey’s Carmen Triumphale.

Note. ‘The Camomil,’ etc. ‘The camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 4. 483

153.

Note. Troja fuit. ‘Et Thebae steterunt, altaque Troja fuit.’ Propertius, Elegies, II. 8.

154.

Like Mr. Cobbett’s ‘Gold against Paper.’ The first of Cobbett’s articles on ‘Paper against Gold’ appeared in the Political Register on Sept. 1, 1810. The articles were afterwards collected and published in separate form.

Lord Bacon’s axiom. Advancement of Learning, Book I. V. 1.

‘But of this be sure,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 158–9.

155.

‘Ambling and lisping,’ etc. ‘You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

156.

Edgar’s exaggerations to Gloster. King Lear, Act IV. Scene 6.

Mr. Montgomery. James Montgomery (1771–1854), while editor of The Sheffield Iris, suffered two terms of imprisonment (1795–1796), but not in connection with the Duke of Richmond’s Letter on Reform, which was originally published in 1783.

Spain, as Ferdinand, etc. In March 1820, in consequence of a revolution in Spain, Ferdinand VII. was forced to accept the constitution of 1812, and the suppression of the Inquisition, but in October of the same year, as the result of French intervention, absolutism was restored. This essay would appear to have been written between these two dates.

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. 484

162.

‘His speech bewrayeth him.’ St. Matthew, xxvi. 73.

Servum pecus imitatorum. ‘O imitatores, servum pecus.’ Horace, Epistles, I. xix. 19.

‘An author,’ etc. Young, Epistles to Mr. Pope, II. 15–16.

163.

Odi profanum vulgus, etc. Horace, Odes, III. 1.

Vice by losing, etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne), II. 89.

164.

‘Making mops and mows.’ The Tempest, Act IV. Scene 1.

‘Go thou,’ etc. St. Luke, x. 37.

Eastward Hoe. Published in 1605. The authors were sent to prison for this comedy.

165.

Millamant. In Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700).

‘Worn in their newest gloss.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 7.

‘And all was conscience,’ etc. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 150.

166.

Note. New Way to pay Old Debts. Massinger’s famous Comedy, published in 1633.

167.

Hogarth’s Merveilleuses in Bedlam. Hazlitt refers to the eighth plate of The Rake’s Progress. Cf. his Essay ‘On the Works of Hogarth,’ vol. viii. p. 143.

Cuckold’s Point. Not on the coast of Essex, but near Deptford in Kent. It was the meeting-place for the riotous mobs who afterwards marched to the Horn-Fair at Charlton on Oct. 18. See Brand’s Popular Antiquities, II. 194.

168.

The proverbs about the mistress’s eye. ‘The mistress’s eye feeds the capon.’ ‘The master’s eye makes the horse fat.’ See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1882).

ESSAY XVII. ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN

‘Table Talk, No. XI.,’ from The London Magazine, August 1821 (vol. IV. p. 176).

‘And blind Orion,’ etc. Keats, Endymion, II. 198.

‘A hunter of shadows,’ etc. Cf. ‘The huge Orion, of portentous size, Swift through the gloom a giant-hunter flies.’ Pope, Homer’s Odyssey, XI. 703–4.

And having lost an eye, etc. For offering violence to Merope, Orion was blinded by her father Oenopion with the assistance of Dionysus.

‘Grey dawn,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VII. 373–4.

169.

‘Shadowy sets off.’ ‘Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing light, Shadowy sets off the face of things.’ Paradise Lost, V. 42–3.

‘Denote a foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

‘Take up the isles,’ etc. Isaiah, xl. 15.

‘So potent art.’ The Tempest, Act V. Scene 1.

170.

‘More than natural.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

‘Gives to airy nothing,’ etc. Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.

Note. His Life lately published. Mrs. Graham’s (Lady Callcott’s) Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin (1820). See pp. 35–6.

Note. Mr. West. Benjamin West (1738–1820) succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy in 1792. 485

171.

His Plague of Athens. The Plague at Ashdod, in the Louvre. A repetition of this picture, formerly in the Colonna Palace at Rome, was presented to the National Gallery in 1838.

His picture of the Deluge. In the Louvre.

‘O’er-informed.’ ‘And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.’ Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 158.

‘The very stones,’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Scene 1.

A picture of Aurora. ‘Cephalus and Aurora’ now in the National Gallery.

172.

‘Leaping like wanton kids,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto vi. Stanza 14.

His picture of the shepherds. In the Louvre, a picture often referred to by Hazlitt.

‘The valleys low,’ etc. ‘Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use.’ Lycidas, 136.

‘Within the book and volume,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

‘The sober certainty,’ etc. Comus, 263.

‘He who knows of these delights,’ etc. ‘He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise.’ Milton, Sonnet (No. XX.) To Mr. Lawrence.

173.

‘Old Genius,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book III. Canto vi. Stanzas 31 and 32.

174.

Pictures are scattered, etc. ‘Thus pleasure is spread through the earth In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.’ Wordsworth, Stray Pleasures.

The collections at Blenheim, etc. See the volume containing Hazlitt’s art criticisms.

Since the Louvre is stripped, etc. The art treasures which Napoleon had pillaged from the various countries of Europe, especially from Italy, were restored in 1815.

The hunter of greatness, etc. Cf. ante, p. 168. Napoleon died on May 5, 1821.

ESSAY XVIII. ON MILTON’S SONNETS

Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822), vol. IV. p. 238, under the title of ‘Table Talk, No. III.’

‘Some fee-grief,’ etc. ‘Or is it a fee-grief Due to some single breast?’ Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘To the height,’ etc. Paradise Lost, l. 24.

‘Most musical,’ etc. Il Penseroso, 62.

175.

‘Very tolerable,’ etc. ‘To babble and to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Scene 3.

‘The divine,’ etc. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Book II. Ep. i. 69.

‘From you have I been absent,’ etc. Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVIII.

Warton’s Sonnets. The poems of Thomas Warton (1728–1790) were first collected in 1777, and more fully in 1791.

176.

Said to be sacred to Liberty. The sonnets of which Hazlitt speaks formed part of the ‘Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty,’ published in the Poems of 1807. 486

176.

‘Oh Virtue,’ etc. Quoted by Wordsworth in The Excursion, Book III. 775–7.

‘The poet blind and bold.’ ‘When I beheld the Poet, blind, yet bold.’ Andrew Marvell, On Paradise Lost, I.

‘Such recantation,’ etc. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book III. 778.

‘No longer to Kings,’ etc. Southey, Vision of Judgment, IX.

177.

‘On evil days,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VII. 26.

‘Cyriac, this three years’ day,’ etc. Sonnet No. XXII.

Those to Cromwell, to Fairfax and to the younger Vane. Nos. XV., XVI., and XVII.

On the late Massacre in Piedmont. No. XVIII.

179.

Those to Mr. Henry Lawes, etc. Nos. XIII. and XX.

On his deceased Wife. No. XXIII.

180.

To suppose that Milton only shone, etc. Dr. Johnson in his famous Life of Milton says: ‘Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace,’ etc.; and to Hannah More he said (Boswell, ed. G. B. Hill, IV. 305): ‘Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.’

His Letters to Donatus. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Milton’s letters to Charles Diodati.

‘Severe in youthful virtue unreproved.’ ‘and his grave rebuke Severe in youthful beauty, added grace Invincible.’ Paradise Lost, IV, 844–6.

ESSAY XIX. ON GOING A JOURNEY

Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822, vol. IV. p. 73) under the heading ‘Table Talk, No. 1.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of Table Talk gives some variations between the printed text of this essay and the original MS.

181.

‘The fields his study,’ etc. Bloomfield, The Farmer’s Boy, Spring, 31.

‘A friend in my retreat,’ etc. Cowper, Retirement, 741–2.

‘May plume her feathers,’ etc. Comus, 378–80.

182.

‘Sunken wrack,’ etc. ‘With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries,’ Henry V., Act I. Scene 2.

‘Leave, oh, leave me,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 71.

‘The very stuff of conscience.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

‘Out upon such half-faced fellowship.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act I. Scene 3.

183.

‘Give it an understanding,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2.

My old friend C—. Coleridge. Cf. the essay on ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’

‘He talked far above singing.’ ‘I did hear you talk far above singing.’ Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, Act V. Scene 5.

‘That fine madness,’ etc. ‘For that fine madness still he did retain, Which rightly should possess a Poet’s brain.’ Drayton, Censure of Poets.

‘Here be woods as green,’ etc. John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess, Act I. Scene 3.

184.

L—. Lamb. 487

184.

‘Take one’s ease at one’s inn.’ ‘Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?’ Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Scene 3.

‘The cups that cheer,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, IV. 39–40.

185.

Procul, etc. Aeneid, VI. 258.

‘Unhoused free condition,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

‘Lord of one’s-self,’ etc. ‘Lord of yourself, uncumber’d with a wife.’ Dryden, Epistle to John Driden, 18.

Gribelin’s engravings, etc. Simon Gribelin’s (1661–1733) engravings of the cartoons were published in 1707.

186.

Paul and Virginia. Bernardin de St. Pierre’s famous romance (1788).

At Bridgewater. In the course of his visit to Coleridge who lived at Nether Stowey. See ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’

Madame D’Arblay’s Camilla. Published in 1796.

The letter I chose, etc. La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part IV. Letter XVII.

‘Green upland swells,’ etc. Coleridge, Ode on the Departing Year, VII. 5–6.

‘Glittered green,’ etc. Ib. VII. 4.

187.

‘Beyond Hyde Park,’ etc. In Sir George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (Act V. Scene 2) Harriet says to Dorimant: ‘I know all beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you, and that no gallantry can draw you farther.’

188.

‘The mind in its own place.’ Paradise Lost, I. 254.

I once took a party, etc. Hazlitt went with Charles and Mary Lamb to Oxford in August, 1810. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Conversation of Authors’ in The Plain Speaker, and Memoirs of William Hazlitt, l. 172.

‘With glistering spires,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 550.

At Blenheim. Lamb refers to this visit to Blenheim in a letter to Hazlitt, August 9, 1810. Letters, ed. Ainger, I. 251.

189.

Dr. Johnson remarked. See Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, III. 352.

ESSAY XX. ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS

Some variations from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Table Talk.

190.

‘They live and move,’ etc. Acts, xvii. 28.

The Queen, etc. Queen Caroline returned to England in June 1820, and died on August 7, 1821. During that time her case was of course the chief topic of conversation in London. George IV. was crowned on July 19, 1821.

‘That of an hour’s age,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

The Two-penny Post-Bag. Moore’s, published in 1813.

The Westminster Election. Two memorable elections took place in Westminster in 1819 and 1820. In the first Hobhouse was defeated by George Lamb; in the second he was successful.

Have nothing farther to say. In the MS. this sentence is followed by ‘They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.’

The Bridge Street Association. The Constitutional Association or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’ founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See an article in The Edinburgh Review for June, 1822. (Vol. XXXVII. p. 110).

Mr. Cobbett’s Letter. Cobbett’s Letter ‘To Mr. James Cropper, a Quaker 488Merchant of Liverpool, on his letter to Mr. Wilberforce relating to East India and West India Sugar,’ appeared in the Weekly Register on July 21, 1821 (Vol. XL. p. 1.)

191.

‘Any six of these men in buckram.’ See Henry IV. Part I., Act II. Scene 4.

Note. This note is not in the MS., but the words ‘Draper’ and ‘Radical Tobacco’ are jotted down in the text.

As Trim blew up the army, etc. Tristram Shandy, III. 20.

Note. ‘Dream on, blest pair,’ etc. ‘Sleep on, Blest pair! and O! yet happiest, if ye seek No happier state, and know to know no more.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 773–5.

192.

Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson. First published in 1647.

The S—. The Southampton Coffee House in Southampton Buildings, at the corner of Chancery Lane. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt I. 291–300.

M—. George Mounsey, of Mounsey and Gray, Solicitors in Staple Inn.

Signor Friscobaldo. In Dekker’s The Honest Whore. Cf. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (vol. V. pp. 335 et seq.).

The clerk of St. Andrews. Webster is said to have been clerk of the parish of St. Andrews, Holborn.

‘Within the red-leaved tables of the heart.’ Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Act II. Scene 3.

‘Writ in water.’ A phrase used by Shakespeare (‘their virtues we write in water,’ Henry VIII., Act IV. Scene 2) and other Elizabethan dramatists, and now chiefly remembered in connection with Keats’s epitaph on himself: ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’

193.

‘Wit-skirmishes.’ ‘They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act I. Scene 1.

‘Brave sublunary things.’ [translunary.] Drayton, Elegy to Henry Reynolds, Esq.

‘Nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity.’ Cf. ‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos!’ Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 1.

The Globe. In Fleet Street, formerly frequented by Goldsmith.

The Rainbow. No. 15 Fleet Street. The tavern still exists.

The Mitre. Johnson’s Mitre, usually supposed to be the one in Mitre Court, Fleet Street. The older Mitre Tavern of Elizabethan days was further west on the site of Messrs. Hoares’ Bank.

194.

G—. George Kirkpatrick.

Note. A complete Master Stephen. In Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour.

195.

Misconceiving what they say. In the top-margin of the MS. the following words are jotted down: ‘Bostock, unruffled, Paine, Knight, Hope.’ It would seem that Hazlitt had in his mind Richard Payne Knight (see The Round Table, vol. I. p. 143), and possibly the physician John Bostock the younger and Thomas Hope the author of Anastasius.

‘So shall their anticipation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

The Mourning Bride. Congreve’s tragedy which contains (Act II. Scene 3) the famous description of a temple which Johnson thought ‘the finest poetical passage he had ever read’ (Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 85).

No Michael Cassio. ‘a great arithmetician, One Michael Cassio, a Florentine.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 1. 489

195.

R—. Roger Kirkpatrick.

Old S—. Sarratt, the chess-player. See p. 196 note.

M—. Mounsey.

H— and A—. Hume and Ayrton. Joseph Hume of the Pipe Office, not the Radical M.P. (See ‘Lamb’s Letters,’ ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I. 361, note 1), and William Ayrton, twice Director of the Music at the King’s Theatre (where he produced Don Giovanni), better known as a regular attendant at Lamb’s Wednesday Evenings. Instead of this sentence the ms. reads:—‘H— and A— taking their friendly stroll in the Park of a morning like a couple of old post-horses put out to grass. Him of Cockayne who went to Margate by water to save charges, and another of that ilk who went by land for the better display of his person.’ Lamb describes his voyage to Margate in ‘The Old Margate Hoy.’

196.

M— B—. Lamb’s friend Martin Burney, the son of Admiral Burney.

M—df—rd. William Mudford, editor of The Courier (see ante, p. 111), wrote The Contemplatist, or Series of Essays upon Morals and Literature. (1811).

‘As is the ribbed sea-sand.’ Coleridge says that for the lines in The Ancient Mariner (Part IV. Stanza 1) ‘And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand,’

he was indebted to Wordsworth.

‘For Kais is fled,’ etc. Hazlitt seems to be recalling an opera entitled ‘Kais; or Love in the Deserts’ (1808 Drury Lane) by Isaac Brandon, founded on Isaac Disraeli’s romance, ‘Mejnoun and Leila.’

The death of Buonaparte. May 5, 1821.

Dr. L—. Dr. Whittle.

198.

Mr. Canning’s pension. Cf. Political Essays, Vol. III. note to p. 301.

199.

M—. Mounsey.

Mrs. Battle. Essays of Elia, ed. Ainger, p. 49. The essay had recently (Feb. 1821) appeared in The London Magazine.

Tobin. John Tobin (1770–1804), author of The Honey-Moon (see Vol V. p. 345).

The Cider-Cellar. No. 20 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.

The London Institution. Now in Finsbury Circus, established in 1806 in Old Jewry. Porson was the first librarian and died there in 1808.

200.

W—. Charles Jeremiah Wells (1799?–1879) a solicitor, shortly after the date of this essay produced Stories after Nature (1822) and the dramatic poem Joseph and his Brethren (1824). This last was long afterwards warmly praised by D. G. Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne (Fortnightly Review, Feb. 1875), and was republished in 1876 by Mr. Buxton Forman. Wells in 1830 placed a memorial to Hazlitt in St. Anne’s, Soho. See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Four Generations of a Literary Family, l. 159–162.

That of Killigrew’s country-cousin. Memoirs of Count Grammont, chap. 9.

The Chevalier Hamilton’s assignation. Ib. chap. 9.

Jacob Hall’s prowess. Ib. chap. 6.

Miss Stuart’s garters. Ib. chap. 8.

Miss Churchill is first introduced. Ib. chap. 10.

‘Fear and niceness,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 4.

201.

Mr. H— and Mr. A—. Hume and Ayrton.

Such a one, etc. As You Like It, Act III. Scene 1. 490

202.

Variety is indispensable. In the MS. opposite this sentence is written ‘Jacky Taylor.—Mr. Tomkins the penman.’

‘Yet so as with a difference.’ Cf. ‘You must wear your rue with a difference,’ Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

Randall’s. ‘The Hole in the Wall’ in Chancery Lane, kept by Jack Randall, the pugilist. See Hazlitt’s essay ‘The Fight,’ and ‘On Londoners and Country People’ in The Plain Speaker (vol. VII. p. 66).

Long’s. No. 16 New Bond Street, rebuilt and enlarged in 1888.

H—’s conversation. Leigh Hunt’s. Cf. a passage in The Round Table, vol. I. p. 43.

He is nearly the best. ‘Nearly’ was added in proof.

‘Or like a gate of steel,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 3.

203.

B— C—’s. Barry Cornwall’s.

A young literary bookseller. John Martin, perhaps, of the firm of Rodwell and Martin, Holles Street, Cavendish Square. See Keats’s Complete Works, ed. H. Buxton Forman (1901), Vol. IV. p. 34 note.

A ‘Circean herd.’ Cf. Comus, 152–3 and Paradise Lost, IX. 522.

ESSAY XXI. ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS

205.

‘Ha! here’s three of us,’ etc. King Lear, Act III. Scene 4.

Stat nominis umbra. ‘Stat magni nominis umbra.’ Lucan, Pharsalia, I. 135.

— House. Holland House. Cf. Political Essays (vol. III. p. 44).

‘Continents have most,’ etc. Hobbes, Human Nature (Works, ed. Molesworth), IV. 50.

‘O that mine enemy,’ etc. Job, xxxi. 35.

Note. Lord H—. The third Lord Holland.

Note. Sir J— M—. Sir James Mackintosh.

Note. ‘The first row of the rubric.’ Cf. ‘The first row of the pious chanson will show you more.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

206.

A third makes the indecency pass, etc. The reference is clearly to Richard Payne Knight whose first publication (1786) was An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus lately existing in Isernia, etc., and who in 1816 gave evidence before a select committee of the House of Commons against the national acquisition of the Elgin Marbles.

207.

‘Cannot command it,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

‘Monster’d.’ ‘To hear my nothings monster’d.’ Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 2.

‘Ducks to the learned fool.’ Timon of Athens, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘He that is but able,’ etc. Satire upon the Abuse of Human Learning, 67–70.

208.

‘’Twas mine,’ etc. Cf. ‘’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

The Cider-cellar. See ante, p. 199.

The Hole in the Wall. In Chancery Lane. See ante, note to p. 202.

209.

The B— family. The Burneys.

‘In numbers numberless.’ Paradise Regained, III. 310.

The founder of it. Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814), the friend of Johnson and author of A History of Music (4 vols. 1776–1789).

Madame D—. Frances Burney (1752–1840), Madame D’Arblay, Dr. Burney’s daughter, author of Evelina and Cecilia.

The rest have done nothing, etc. ‘The rest’ include Dr. Burney’s two sons, Charles Burney the younger (1757–1817), the Greek scholar, referred to 491by Hazlitt more than once, especially in connection with his Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton (1790), and James Burney (1750–1821), familiar to readers of Lamb’s Letters as Captain and Admiral Burney, author of A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean (5 vols. 1803–1817), part of which is famous as The Buccaneers of America; Sarah Harriet Burney (1770–1844), Dr. Burney’s youngest daughter, author of Clarentine (1796) and other novels and tales; and Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s friend, the son of Admiral Burney.

209.

The most celebrated author, etc. Sir Walter Scott, created a baronet by George IV. in 1820.

Lord Byron complains. See the Preface to Marino Faliero (1820).

‘Let but a lord,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 420–1.

210.

Decorum, which Milton declares, etc. On Education, Works, 1738, I. 140.

‘Bears a charmed reputation,’ etc. ‘I bear a charmed life, which must not yield To one of woman born.’ Macbeth, Act V. Scene 8.

‘Leave no rubs,’ etc. ‘To leave no rubs nor botches in the work.’ Ib. Act III. Scene 1.

That strange letter about Pope. Byron wrote two Letters to * * * *—* * * * * * [John Murray], on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, the first of which (referred to by Hazlitt) was published in 1821. The second did not appear till 1835. Both letters and a full account of the whole controversy are given in Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), V. Appendix iii.

Why did he pronounce, etc. ‘These two writers [Pope and Cowper], for Cowper is no poet, come into comparison in one great work, the translation of Homer.’ Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), V. 557.

‘Finding out a borrowed line,’ etc. See The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 346 and note.

A rich merchant, etc. Hazlitt perhaps refers to ‘Anastasius’ Hope, Rogers, Byron, and Burns.

‘What should such fellows,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

‘Coining our hearts,’ etc. ‘By heaven, I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘Sent back like hallowmas,’ etc. ‘Sent back like Hallowmas or short’st of day.’ Richard II., Act V. Scene 1.

211.

‘With wine of Attic taste,’ ‘What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine,’ etc. Milton, Sonnet XX. (to Mr. Lawrence).

Poor Keats. See ante, p. 99.

‘The fairest flowers,’ etc. ‘the fairest flowers o’ the season Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors.’ Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Scene 4.

‘Rue for remembrance,’ etc. ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance: 492pray you, love, remember: and there’s pansies, that’s for thoughts.’ Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

211.

‘Nor could the Muse,’ etc. ‘nor could the Muse defend Her son.’ Paradise Lost, VII. 37.

M—’s shop. The shop of John Murray, publisher of The Quarterly Review.

T—. Mr. W. Hazlitt, the younger, in his edition of Table Talk, filled up this blank with the name of Tom Hill (1760–1840), a well-known figure in the literary society of the time. The Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica (1815) was chiefly based on his collection of poets.

213.

—, the responsible conductor, etc. Mr. W. Hazlitt, the younger, filled this blank with the name of John Britton (1771–1857), the antiquary and topographer, author or part author of many topographical works, of which The Beauties of England and Wales (1801–1816) and Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (1805–1814) are the best known.

Learned lumber. ‘With loads of learned lumber in his head.’ Pope, Essay on Criticism, 613.

Jack T. of the Sun. John Taylor (1757–1832), proprietor of the Sun, author of Monsieur Tonson. In 1832 he published Records of my Life (2 vols.).

‘The Sun of our table.’ ‘This bottle’s the sun of our table.’ Sheridan, The Duenna, Act III. Scene 5.

Peter Pindar. Dr. John Wolcot (1738–1819), the Satirist.

Mr. Tomkins the penman. Thomas Tomkins (1743–1816), caligrapher.

Sir Joshua’s picture of him. Bequeathed by Tomkins to the City of London.

ESSAY XXII. ON CRITICISM

214.

De omni scibile, etc. The origin of this saying seems obscure. See Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. IX. 500 and Larousse, Fleurs Latines, 94.

We may sometimes see articles of this sort. Hazlitt had himself suffered from this form of reviewing. See notes to Reply to Malthus, vol. IV. p. 399.

215.

‘As when a well-graced actor,’ etc. Richard II., Act V. Scene 2.

Much as Peter Pounce, etc. Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. 13.

‘Assumes the rod,’ etc. ‘Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres.’ Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 39–41.

216.

The most admired of our Reviews. The Edinburgh Review.

The Monthly Review. Founded by Ralph Griffiths in 1749. The Review ran through three series and came to an end in 1845.

‘Sole sovereign sway,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

‘Outdoing termagant,’ etc. ‘I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

‘And of their port,’ etc. ‘And of his port as meke as is a mayde.’ Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 69. 493

216.

Drawcansir work. See the Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, Act V. Scene 1., where Drawcansir says: ‘Others may boast a single man to kill: But I the blood of thousands daily kill,’ etc.

Tristram Shandy. Tristram Shandy was violently attacked by Griffiths in The Monthly Review.

Note. Rev. Dr. Kippis. Andrew Kippis (1724–1795), Nonconformist divine and editor of the 2nd edition of Biographia Britannica (5 vols. 1778–1793).

The Monthly Review for Feb. 1751 (Vol. IV. p. 309), in its ‘Monthly Catalogue’ contained the following notice: ‘An Elegy wrote in a country churchyard. 4to. Dodsley, 6^d. Seven pages. The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity.’ A full review followed in June, 1753 (Vol. VIII. p. 477).

217.

Dryden’s Prefaces. Dryden’s principal essays on literary subjects have recently been edited by Prof. Ker (2 vols. 1900). See also Prof. Saintsbury’s History of Criticism, vol. II. pp. 371–391.

Note. For Dryden’s comparison between Ovid and Virgil, see his Dedication of the Aeneid (1697—Essays, ed. Ker, II. 154 et seq.), and for his character of Shakespeare An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668—ib. I. 79–80). Cf. Lectures on the English Poets, vol. V. p. 82, note.

218.

Dryden had no other way, etc. Dryden’s Opera The State of Innocence, founded upon Paradise Lost, was published in 1674.

‘Graces snatched,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 155.

219.

‘Looks commercing with the skies.’ Il Penseroso, 39.

‘The limbs and flourishes,’ etc. ‘Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

As Lord Byron asserts, etc. In his Letter to John Murray, referred to above (p. 210, note), Byron says: ‘The poet is always ranked according to his execution, and not according to his branch of art.’ (Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, V. 553).

220.

Mrs. Dickons. Maria Dickons (1770?–1833) made her first appearance in London in 1793. She sang at the Drury Lane oratorios in 1813 and 1815, and retired in 1820. Like Miss Stephens (see A View of the English Stage) she played Polly in The Beggar’s Opera.

Madame Catalani. Angelica Catalani (1779–1849), the most famous prima donna of her time. She was in England in 1821 and sang ‘God Save the King’ on the 16th of July, shortly before the King’s coronation.

‘Such sweet thunder.’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV. Scene 1.

‘The very milk of human kindness.’ ‘It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

‘Beauty out of favour,’ etc. Hazlitt refers to Gifford’s lines on Mrs. Robinson. See A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I. p. 378 and note.

221.

Like Justice Woodcock. In Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village (1762).

Rifle the flowers, etc. See A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I.

The Great Cat Rodilardus. In Rabelais, Pantagruel, IV. 67.

‘Demure-looking,’ etc. ‘The grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed philosophers.’ Burke, Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 142.) 494

221.

Note. Tom Jones, Book VI. chap. 14.

222.

What silenced the masked battery, etc. It is now well known that Sir Walter Scott strongly disapproved of Lockhart’s connection with Blackwood’s Magazine long before the attacks of John Scott in The London Magazine for 1820 and 1821. See Mr. Lang’s Life of Lockhart (vol. I. chap, ix.), for an account of the whole matter.

‘Pilloried on infamy’s high stage.’ Cowper, Hope, 556.

223.

The controversy about Pope. The controversy on the question as to whether or not Pope was a poet began with the publication of Bowles’s edition of Pope’s Works (10 vols. 1806) and had recently reached an acute stage in consequence of Byron’s letter to John Murray. See Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, V. 522–592, where a full account is given of the whole controversy. Hazlitt had contributed to The Edinburgh Magazine (Feb. 1818) an essay ‘On the question whether Pope was a poet’ reproduced with a few alterations in his lecture on Dryden and Pope (see vol. V. pp. 69 et seq.), and to The London Magazine (June, 1821) a long essay (republished for the first time in the present edition) entitled ‘Pope, Lord Byron, and Mr. Bowles.’

224.

‘Crib and cabin in,’ ‘Now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

‘Lack-lustre eye.’ As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

The late Joseph Fawcett. Hazlitt frequently refers to this early friend. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 75–79. Fawcett was well known as a Sunday evening lecturer at the old Jewry, and published some volumes of Sermons and Poems. He died in 1804, and it was at one time reported that Hazlitt intended to write his life.

‘I have heard my mother Circe,’ etc. Comus, ll. 252 et seq.

‘Heard others read their own.’ Hazlitt no doubt refers to Wordsworth and Coleridge.

225.

He was not exceptious. Hazlitt elsewhere complains of Lamb for being what he here describes as ‘exceptious.’ See The Plain Speaker, ‘On the Conversation of Authors.’

‘That had I all knowledge,’ etc. See I Corinthians, xiii. 1 and 2.

The Occult School. Hazlitt clearly refers to Coleridge. See The Plain Speaker, (‘On the Conversation of Authors’), where he says: ‘C— [Coleridge] withholds his tribute of applause from every person in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding,’ etc.

226.

‘An ounce of sour,’ etc. ‘A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre,’ The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto III. Stanza 30.

Caviare to the multitude. ‘’Twas caviare to the general.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

Verbal critics, etc. Such as Gifford. Cf. A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I. p. 368.

Note. See Ib. note to p. 368.

ESSAY XXII. ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS

Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822), vol. IV. p. 127, under the title of ‘Table Talk No. II.’

‘These little things,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 42.

227.

‘Some trick not worth an egg.’ Coriolanus, Act IV. Scene 4. Paper in the Tatler. No. 79 (by Steele). 495

229.

‘Anon as patient,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

The swaggering of Pistol. See especially the Second Part of Henry IV.

King Cambyses’ vein. Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 4.

230.

Si Pergama dextra, etc. Aeneid, II. 291–2.

230.

Note. That is, shortly before Napoleon’s death on May 5, 1821.

232.

The maxim, which the wise man, etc. ‘For, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, “That that is is,”’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act IV. Scene 2.

When L—’s farce, etc. Lamb’s farce Mr. H— was performed at Drury Lane on December 10, 1806.

Gentleman Lewis. William Thomas Lewis (1748?–1811), ‘Gentleman Lewis,’ belonged to ‘the other House,’ Covent Garden.

The Prologue. Spoken by Elliston who would have tried the farce again.

The Travellers. By Andrew Cherry (1762–1812), first produced at Drury Lane on January 22, 1806.

‘Wit-skirmishes.’ See ante, note to p. 193.

233.

‘Subject to all the skyey influences.’ ‘Servile to all the skyey influences.’ Measure for Measure, Act III. Scene 1,

234.

‘Pleased with a feather,’ etc. ‘Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.’ Pope’s Essay on Man, II. 276.

Will Wimble. See The Spectator, No. 108 (by Addison).

Some poets compose and sing their own verses. Moore, for example.

235.

‘Misfortune,’ etc. ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.’ The Tempest, Act II. Scene 2.

‘Take care of the pence,’ etc. Quoted by Lord Chesterfield (Letters to his Son, Nov. 6, 1747, and Feb. 5, 1750) as the saying of ‘a very covetous sordid fellow,’ William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury 1695–1724.

But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, etc. An invocation to Sarah Walker. See Liber Amoris, vol. II.

236.

Madame V—. Madame Vestris (1797–1856), the famous actress, afterwards the wife of the younger Mathews.

A gallery equal to Cowley’s. See Cowley’s The Chronicle, A Ballad.

Mr. Davison. Thomas Davison, of Whitefriars, printer of the first edition of Table Talk.

236.

D’un pathétique, etc. ‘Nous nous écrivions d’un pathétique à faire fendre les rochers.’ Rousseau, Confessions, Liv. I.

‘Hunt the wind,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 97.

237.

The Death of Clorinda. From a picture of Lodovic Lana. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Table Talk, p. 331) says that the copy was made in 1802. It is still in his possession.

238.

They succeed best in fiction. Cf. Vol. III., note to p. 49.

Berenice’s locks and Ariadne’s crown. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt quotes: ‘We put on Berenice’s hair, And sit in Cassiopeia’s chair.’ Dixon’s Canidia, or The Witches. ‘Ariadne’s crowne and Cassiopeia’s chayre.’ Randolph’s Poems, 1640, p. 14.

Cf. also: ‘Not Berenice’s locks first rose so bright.’ Pope, Rape of the Lock, v. 129.

‘Anthony Codrus Urceus,’ etc. This paragraph is taken from a paper in the 496Round Table Series (No. 9, The Examiner, Feb. 26, 1815) which was republished in Winterslow (1839) under the title of ‘Mind and Motive.’

239.

The Story of Sir Isaac Newton. The story is familiar, but the dog’s name was ‘Diamond.’

240.

‘Like the fly on the wheel.’ Æsop’s Fables (No. 270).

241.

Mr. Bone’s enamels. Henry Bone (1755–1834), the celebrated painter on enamel, elected R.A. in 1811. He executed eighty-five ‘Portraits of Illustrious Englishmen’ copied from pictures in the royal and other collections.

Denner. See ante, p. 133.

243.

‘First row of the rubric.’ See ante, note to p. 205 note.

ESSAY XXIV. ON FAMILIAR STYLE

A few variations of the text from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Table Talk.

245.

His papers under the signature of Elia. In The London Magazine. The first, ‘Recollections of the South Sea House,’ appeared in August 1820.

Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist. The London Magazine, Feb. 1821.

‘A well of native English undefiled.’ ‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, On Fame’s eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’ Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book IV. Canto ii. Stanza 32.

Erasmus’s Colloquies. The Colloquia, which appeared in 1519.

246.

‘What do you read?’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

Sermo humi obrepens. Cf. ‘Nec sermones ego mallem Repentes per humum quam res componere gestas.’ Horace, Epistles, II. i. 250–1.

‘Ambition is more lowly.’ Cf. ‘My affections Are then most humble; I have no ambition To see a goodlier man.’ The Tempest, Act I. Scene 2.

‘Unconsidered trifles.’ A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘That strut,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Scene 5.

‘‘And on their pens,’ etc. Cf. ‘And on his crest Sat Horror plumed.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 988–9.

247.

‘Nature’s own sweet,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5.

248.

Cowper’s description. ‘’Twas transient in its nature, as in show ’Twas durable: as worthless as it seemed Intrinsically precious; to the foot Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold.’ The Task, V. 173–6.

497

ESSAY XXV. ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER

248.

‘The gossamer,’ etc. ‘the gossamer That idles in the wanton summer air.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 6.

‘Rolls o’er Elysian flowers,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 359.

249.

‘Die of a rose,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, I. 200.

‘Oh, leave me to my repose.’ See ante, note to p. 71.

‘They shall discourse,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

‘Bide the pelting,’ etc. King Lear, Act III. Scene 4.

‘They take no thought,’ etc. St. Matthew, vi. 34.

‘Get up to be hanged.’ Measure for Measure, Act IV. Scene 3.

250.

‘A cell of ignorance.’ Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

‘Oh! blindness,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, I. 85–6.

251.

‘And let us muse,’ etc. Wordsworth, Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening (published in the Lyrical Ballads, 1798), ll. 13–16.

But oh thou! Hazlitt apostrophises Coleridge. See the essay, ‘My first acquaintance with Poets.’

253.

‘A dish of skimmed milk.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 3.

‘A generous friendship,’ etc. Pope, Homer’s Iliad, IX. 725–6.

254.

‘Calm, peaceable writers.’ Dryden. An Essay of Dramatic Poesy. (Essays, ed. Ker, I. 31.)

255.

‘‘Vernal delight and joy.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 155.

‘‘Like Maia’s son,’ etc. Ib., V. 285–6.

ESSAY XXVI. WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE

‘Descry new lands,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 290–1.

Ethereal mould, sky-tinctured. Phrases borrowed without acknowledgment from Milton (Paradise Lost, II. 139, and V. 285).

‘But thou, oh Hope,’ etc. Collins, The Passions, 29–32.

256.

I lived within sight, etc. At Wem, in Shropshire, within sight of the Welsh hills. Cf. a passage in the first paragraph of ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’

‘Yarrow unvisited.’ Wordsworth’s three poems, Yarrow Unvisited, Yarrow Visited, and Yarrow Revisited, were published in 1807, 1814, and 1835 respectively.

‘Unmould their essence.’ Cf. ‘Unmoulding reason’s mintage.’ Comus, 529.

‘A mighty stream of tendency.’ Wordsworth, The Excursion, IX. 87.

‘A tide in the affairs of men.’ Julius Caesar, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘With sails and tackle torn.’ ‘Though shrouds and tackle torn.’ Paradise Lost, II. 1044.

‘Such tricks hath,’ etc. Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.

257.

‘Hangs upon the beatings,’ etc. Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 54.

‘Come thronging soft desires.’ ‘Come thronging soft and delicate desires.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act I. Scene 1.

‘Bring back the hour,’ etc. Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality.

‘That first garden of my innocence.’ ‘In that first garden of our simplenesse.’ Daniel, Hymen’s Triumph.

258.

‘Like the sweet south.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 1.

W—m. Wem. 498

258.

‘Thing of life.’ ‘She walks the waters like a thing of life,’ Byron, The Corsair, Canto I. Scene 3.

‘Like some gay creature,’ etc. Comus, 299.

Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it, etc. In an essay entitled ‘A nearer view of some of the shops,’ The Indicator (1850 edition), Part I. p. 81. The Indicator ran from Oct. 13, 1819, to March 21, 1821.

259.

After an interval of thirty years. See Introduction, vol. I. p. 9.

‘How silver-sweet,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 2.

Note. Wilkie’s Blind Fiddler. In the National Gallery.

260.

‘Like an exhalation,’ etc. ‘Rose like a steam of rich distilled perfumes,’ Comus, 556.

Mr. Fearn’s Essay. See ante, pp. 63–65.

263.

‘There’s sympathy.’ The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Scene 1.

—, the editor of a Scotch magazine. The reference here and three lines below seems to be to Lockhart, who was accused of being editor of Blackwood’s Magazine. See Mr. Lang’s Life of Lockhart, vol. I. chap. ix.

‘Those faultless monsters,’ etc. John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham, Essay on Poetry.

‘The web of our lives,’ etc. All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Scene 3.

ESSAY XXVII. ON CORPORATE BODIES

Many instances of variation between the MS. and the text of this essay are given by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of Table Talk. ‘The MS. and the printed copy’ (he says, p. 380) ‘scarcely correspond in two consecutive words.’

264.

‘Corporate bodies have no soul.’ ‘They [corporations] cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed nor excommunicate, for they have no souls.’ Sir Edward Coke, Case of Sutton’s Hospital, 10 Rep. 32.

‘Self-love and social.’ Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 396.

‘A pestilent fellow.’ Cf. ‘What a pestilent slave is this same!’ Romeo and Juliet, Act IV. Scene 5.

265.

The town-hall reels, etc. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that ‘it appears from a rough memorandum on the back of one of the leaves of the MS. that the Mayor’s Feast at Basingstoke was in the writer’s mind when he wrote this,’

‘The very stones prate.’ Macbeth, Act II. Scene 1.

‘Dressed in a little brief authority.’ Measure for Measure, Act II. Scene 2.

266.

‘Compunctious visitings,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

‘Motley’s his proper wear.’ ‘Motley’s the only wear.’ As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

‘Diseases are turned,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II. Act I. Scene 2.

Note. ‘Sacred pity,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

267.

‘Disembowel himself,’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 101).

268.

Hitherto, etc. Job, xxxviii. 11.

‘In spite of,’ etc. ‘And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite.’ Pope, Essay on Man, I. 293.

270.

The Barrys, etc. James Barry (1741–1806) quarrelled with his brother Academicians and was expelled in 1799; Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), to whom Hazlitt probably refers as ‘H—,’ also quarrelled with the Royal Academy, and was never made a member; Charles Cotton (1728–1798), coach-painter to George III., was by him nominated one of the foundation members of the Academy. 499

270.

‘Wipes out,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

‘The Raphael grace,’ etc. Cf. Tristram Shandy, III. 12.

‘Must live within,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

‘Dandled,’ etc. ‘I was not, like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator.’ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 124).

Sir Thomas Lawrence, etc. Lawrence had been commissioned to paint the members of the Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle, and had afterwards visited Rome. He returned to England in 1820.

Mr. Dawe. George Dawe (1781–1829) who went to Russia in 1819 and painted for the Emperor a great number of portraits. Lamb contributed an account of him to The Englishman’s Magazine (Sept. 1831) entitled Recollections of A Late Royal Academician.

Mr. Canning somewhere, etc. See his Speeches on the occasion of his reelection at Liverpool, March, 1820.

271.

‘All honourable men.’ Julius Caesar, Act III. Scene 2.

ESSAY XXVIII. WHETHER ACTORS OUGHT TO SIT IN THE BOXES

‘By his so potent art.’ The Tempest, Act V. Scene 1.

272.

‘Pile millions,’ etc. ‘Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

273.

Mr. Matthews, in his ‘At Home.’ Probably Hazlitt refers to ‘The Trip to Paris,’ by James Smith and John Poole, Mathews’s second At Home, produced in 1819.

‘O’er the stage,’ etc. ‘Dread o’er the scene, the ghost of Hamlet stalks; Othello rages; poor Monimia mourns; And Belvidera pours her soul in love.’ Thomson, The Seasons, Winter, 646–8.

‘No; let him pass,’ etc. ‘Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.’ King Lear, Act V. Scene 3.

Abel Drugger. In Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist, one of Garrick’s great parts.

274.

‘Sir, do you think,’ etc. ‘Dost thou think Alexander looked o’ this fashion i’ the earth?’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

‘With a bare bodkin.’ Ib., Act III. Scene 1.

‘Steal most guilty-like away.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

Omne ignotum, etc. Tacitus, Agricola, XXX.

‘A voice potential.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

‘Shuffled off,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

Aut Caesar, etc. The motto of Caesar Borgia.

‘That players may jet through.’ Adapted from Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

The top-tragedian. John Philip Kemble. 500

274.

Him with the falcon eye. Coriolanus, perhaps, one of Kemble’s most famous parts.

275.

‘The graves yawn,’ etc. A composite quotation from Much Ado About Nothing (Act V. Scene 3) and Macbeth (Act III. Scene 4).

The Copper Captain, etc. In Fletcher’s Rule a Wife and have a Wife; Bobadil, in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour; Ranger, in Hoadly’s The Suspicious Husband; Young Rapid, in Morton’s A Cure for the Heart-Ache; Lord Foppington, in Vanbrugh’s The Relapse.

‘My brain would have been,’ etc. ‘I declare, quoth my uncle Toby, mine are more like a smoke-jack!’ Tristram Shandy, vol. III. chap. 18.

‘Then sweet,’ etc. ‘Then sweet, now sad to mention.’ Paradise Lost, II. 820.

Mrs. Garrick. Mrs. Garrick died in 1822 at the age of 98.

276.

‘A little more than kin,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2.

277.

‘Instinct with fire.’ Paradise Lost, II. 937.

278.

Sterne’s stop-watch. Tristram Shandy, vol. III. chap. 12.

‘Cried out upon,’ etc. Cf. ‘An eyrie of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

Note. See The Spectator, No. 235. Mr. Smirke, afterwards Sir Robert Smirke (1781–1867) rebuilt Covent Garden Theatre (1809), and Benjamin Dean Wyatt (1775–1850?) rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre (1811). Hazlitt implies that at both theatres the galleries commanded an imperfect view of the stage. At Covent Garden this was one of the grievances which led to the O. P. riots of 1809.

279.

Grimaldi. Joseph Grimaldi (1779–1837).

ESSAY XXIX. ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY

280.

Petrarch complains, etc. In the sonnet lamenting the death of Laura, beginning ‘Gli occhi di ch’ io parlai si caldamente.’

‘To be honest,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

‘How now,’ etc. Henry VI. Part II., Act IV. Scene 2.

‘Stand all astonied,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book vii. Canto VI. Stanza 28.

281.

C—. Coleridge.

283.

Otium cum dignitate. Cicero, Pro Publio Sextio, XLV.

‘I am nothing,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Scene 1.

284.

In the —. The Quarterly Review.

‘This is the unkindest,’ etc. ‘This was the most unkindest cut of all!’ Julius Cæsar, Act III. Scene 2.

Prince Maurice’s Parrot, etc. These two papers were published in Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 101 and 305.

285.

A motto from Butler. ‘Yet he that is but able to express No sense at all in several languages, Will pass for learneder than he that’s known, etc. Butler, Satire upon the Abuse of Human Learning, ll. 65–7.

L—. Lamb.

L. H. Leigh Hunt.

A person of this over-weening turn. Probably Leigh Hunt, his friend S— being Shelley. 501

285.

Count Stendhal. Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842).

‘Germane to the matter.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 2.

My answers to Vetus. Contributed to The Morning Chronicle in 1813 and republished in Political Essays. See vol. III.

286.

Digito monstrari. Horace, Odes, IV. iii. 22.

Mr. Powell’s court. In St. Martin’s Street. Cf. ante, p. 88.

Mr. Knight’s performance of Filch. For reference to Edward Knight (‘Little Knight’) and for Hazlitt’s remark on Simmons’s Filch, see the volume containing dramatic criticisms. The article in The Examiner appeared on Nov. 6, 1815.

One Cavanagh. See ante, pp. 86–89.

A character of him. See Political Essays, vol. III. p, 325.

287.

‘Lively, audible,’ etc. ‘It’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent.’ Coriolanus, Act IV. Scene 5.

The conversation between Angelica and Foresight. Love for Love, Act II. Scene 3.

‘So shalt thou find me,’ etc. Sardanapalus, Act IV. Scene 1.

288.

Scholars should be sworn at Highgate. See Brand’s Popular Antiquities, II. 195. Part of the oath taken by the person sworn was ‘never to kiss the maid when he could kiss the mistress.’

‘Not pierceable,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto I. Stanza 7.

‘To succeed at the gaming-table,’ etc. The sentiment is Peachum’s. See The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1.

‘To have a good face,’ etc. ‘To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Scene 3.

ESSAY XXX. ON PATRONAGE AND PUFFING

289.

‘A gentle husher,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto iv. Stanza 13.

‘Puff direct.’ Sheridan, The Critic, Act I. Scene 2.

290.

Groundling. ‘To split the ears of the groundlings.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

291.

Parolles and his drum. All’s Well that Ends Well.

Another friend of mine. Lamb.

Even Lord Byron, etc. Byron was said to have written puffs of Warren’s Blacking. See W. F. Deacon’s volume of parodies, Warreniana (1824).

‘Deathless date.’ Cf. ‘Short is my date, but deathless my renown.’ Pope, Homer’s Iliad, IX. 535.

292.

When I formerly, etc. For the matters referred to in this and the two succeeding paragraphs, cf. the volume containing Hazlitt’s dramatic criticisms.

Poor Perry. James Perry (1756–1821), editor and proprietor of The Morning Chronicle. See Hazlitt’s A View of the English Stage for his article on Miss Stephens as Polly.

Mrs. Billington. Elizabeth Billington (1768–1818), the great singer.

‘Life knows no return of spring.’ The song (Act II. Scene 1) begins ‘Let us drink and sport to-day.’

‘My final hopes,’ etc. A characteristic reference to the fall of Napoleon.

293.

‘Hope, thou nurse,’ etc. Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village, Act I. Scene 1.

‘Bought golden opinions,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 7.

‘On such a day,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act I. Scene 3.

Note. Mr. M—. William Mudford. See ante, p. 111.

Note. ‘Liked you lean,’ etc. Cf. ‘Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.’ Julius Caesar, Act I. Scene 2. 502

294.

Master Betty’s acting. See The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 233.

‘Some gay creature,’ etc. Comus, 299.

‘And in my mind,’ etc. Home’s Douglas, Act IV. Scene 1.

Enfield’s Speaker. William Enfield’s The Speaker, or Miscellaneous Pieces selected from the best English Writers, originally published in 1774 and frequently reprinted.

Mrs. Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest. See English Comic Writers, vol. VIII. p. 125.

Coleridge returned from Italy. In August, 1806.

295.

Katterfelto. ‘And Katterfelto, with his hair on end At his own wonders, wondering for his bread.’ Cowper, The Task, IV. 86–87.

296.

‘It only is when,’ etc. ‘’Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting.’ Goldsmith, Retaliation, 102.

‘Do me your offices.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act II. Scene 1.

Mr. N—. Northcote.

297.

‘The first row of the rubric.’ See ante, note to p. 205 note.

298.

‘All the world’s a stage,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

‘Some followers of mine own.’ Richard III., Act III. Scene 7.

299.

‘Holloa, you pampered jades,’ etc. Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great, Part II., Act IV. Scene 4.

‘Cry him up,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 278.

Rari nantes, etc. Aeneid, I. 118.

300.

‘Aiery of children,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 278.

301.

Dr. Johnson was asked, etc. Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), IV. 116.

302.

Beechey. Sir William Beechey (1753–1839), portrait painter to Queen Charlotte.

Note. Sharp. Michael William Sharp (d. 1840) a pupil of Beechey.

ESSAY XXXI. ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHARACTER

303.

‘Speech,’ said a celebrated wit, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to Voltaire (Le Chapon et la Poularde), but the saying is older.

Lord Chesterfield advises us, etc. See note to vol. I. p. 42.

Note. Othello, Act III. Scene 4.

304.

A rude half-effaced outline, etc. The portrait of Donne by W. Marshall, taken from a painting in 1591, when Donne was 18.

The Duke of W—. The Duke of Wellington.

305.

C—’s face. Coleridge.

‘Create a soul,’ etc. Comus, 562.

A little, demure, etc. Sarah Walker, the heroine of Liber Amoris.

306.

I know a person. Hazlitt himself.

‘Compliments extern.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 1.

307.

‘If the French have a fault,’ etc. A Sentimental Journey, Character, Versailles.

309.

Service is no inheritance. ‘Service is no heritage.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I. Scene 3.

‘Subtle as the fox,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

310.

‘Bitter bad judges.’ The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1.

I never knew but one clever man, etc. Leigh Hunt? 503

310.

‘The way of woman’s will, etc.’ Cf. Samson Agonistes, 1011–13.

311.

Oh! thou, etc. Sarah Walker.

312.

The son, for instance, etc. Hazlitt is clearly speaking of his own experience.

‘Rembrandts,’ etc. ‘Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff.’ Goldsmith, Retaliation, 145.

‘Infinite agitation,’ etc. Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I., IV. 5.

314.

‘In the trade of war.’ Othello, I., 2.

‘So as with a difference.’ Cf. ante, note to p. 202.

‘Pure defecated evil.’ Burke, Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 141).

‘Whatever is, is right.’ Pope, Essay on Man, I., 294.

‘Amen stuck in his throat.’ Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2.

‘No malice in the case,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1.

Remorse. See Osorio, of which Remorse was a recast. Works, (ed. J. D. Campbell), p. 496.

315.

‘I count myself,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

316.

‘Who knew all qualities,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

ESSAY XXXII. ON THE PICTURESQUE AND IDEAL

318.

Mr. Northcote’s study of Gadshill. Cf. Conversations of Northcote, ante, p. 403.

‘Of no mark,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Scene 2.

319.

The Marriage of Cana. The Marriage at Cana in the Louvre.

Madame M—. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt fills this blank with the name of Mérimée. When Hazlitt went to Paris in 1802 he took with him a letter of introduction from Holcroft to Mérimée the painter, whose son Prosper was born in the following year, 1803.

320.

‘See how the moonlight,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act V. Scene 1.

321.

‘My bounty,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 2.

ESSAY XXXIII. ON THE FEAR OF DEATH

‘And our little life,’ etc. The Tempest, Act IV. Scene 1.

322.

When Bickerstaff wrote his essays. In The Tatler, 1709–11.

The firing at Bunker’s hill. June 17, 1775.

‘The gorge rises at.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

323.

‘The wars,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto IX. Stanza 56.

‘The present eye,’ etc. ‘The present eye praises the present object.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 3.