NOTES CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW

Hazlitt was a regular, though not a frequent contributor to The Edinburgh Review from 1814 until 1830, the year of his death. How he came to be introduced so early to Jeffrey’s notice is not known. Possibly the introduction came through Longman & Co., who had published Hazlitt’s Reply to Malthus (1807), and who had been the London publishers of the Review since its foundation in 1802. Hazlitt at any rate was proud of the connection, and had a high regard for Jeffrey, whom he called ‘the prince of critics and the king of men.’ See vol. II., Liber Amoris, p. 314 and note, and cf. also vol. IV. The Spirit of the Age, pp. 310–318. In The Atlas for June 21, 1829, there is a short article, ‘Mr. Jeffrey’s Resignation of the Editorship of The Edinburgh Review,’ which is not unlike Hazlitt, but cannot be confidently attributed to him.

In the text of the present volume are printed all Hazlitt’s contributions to The Edinburgh Review as to the authorship of which there is no reasonable doubt. In the following notes two articles are included, Hazlitt’s authorship of which, though probable, cannot be regarded as certain. In addition to these, the following have been attributed to him: (1) Wat Tyler and Mr. Southey (1817, vol. XXVIII. p. 151); (2) The History of Painting in Italy (1819, vol. XXXII. p. 320); (3) Byron’s Sardanapalus (1822, vol. XXXVI. p. 413); and (4) an article or articles on the Scotch Novels. See Ireland’s List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, p. 75, a letter from Mr. Ireland in Notes and Queries, 5th Series, XI. 165, and Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s ‘Chronological Catalogue’ of Hazlitt’s writings published in the Memoirs of William Hazlitt, vol. I. pp. xxiv-xxx. It is almost certain that Hazlitt wrote none of these reviews, and they have therefore been excluded from the present edition. The first (Wat Tyler and Mr. Southey) is included in Lord Cockburn’s list of Jeffrey’s contributions to the Edinburgh (Life of Francis Jeffrey, 1874 ed. p. 407). This list, it must be admitted, is not thoroughly trustworthy, but the internal evidence against Hazlitt’s authorship is very strong. It is incredible that Hazlitt could have written a long article like this on such a subject (cf. Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 192 et seq.) without betraying his identity by a single phrase. The second of these articles, a review of Stendhal’s History of Painting in Italy, Mr. Ireland attributes to Hazlitt on merely internal evidence. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt does not include it in his Catalogue. That Hazlitt was acquainted with Stendhal and was fond of writing on Art are reasons why he might have wished to review the book, but they tell strongly against his having written this particular article, which is very dull indeed, and shows not a single trace of Hazlitt’s manner from beginning to end. The review of Byron’s Sardanapalus has been attributed to Hazlitt on the strength, no doubt, of a letter which he himself wrote to P. G. Patmore on March 30, 1822. In this letter he says, ‘My Sardanapalus is to be in [i.e. in the Edinburgh]. In my judgment Myrrha is most like S. W. [Sarah Walker], only I am not like 404Sardanapalus.’ See Mr. Le Gallienne’s edition of Liber Amoris (1894) p. 212. Whatever the explanation may be, the review of Sardanapalus which did appear in the Edinburgh was written by Jeffrey himself and is included in his Contributions to the Edinburgh Review (1844), vol. II. p. 333. There is no evidence that Hazlitt wrote any of the numerous reviews of the Scotch Novels. According to Patmore (My Friends and Acquaintance, III. 155–157), Hazlitt was anxious to review Bulwer in The Edinburgh Review, and proposed the matter, first to Jeffrey, and, on his retirement, to Napier, personally in London. The subject, however, was, in Patmore’s phrase, ‘interdicted.’

DUNLOP’S HISTORY OF FICTION

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5.

Dunlop’s History of Fiction. John Colin Dunlop’s (d. 1842) The History of Fiction: being a Critical Account of the most celebrated Prose Fictions, from the earliest Greek Romances to the novels of the Present Age, was published in 3 vols., 1814.

7.

Νείατον ἐς κενεῶνα. Iliad, V. 857.

‘Romulus,’ etc. Horace, Epistles, II. i. 5–6.

8.

Bossu. René Le Bossu (1631–1680), author of a Traité du poème épique (1675), referred to in Tristram Shandy, III. 12. Dryden calls him ‘the best of modern critics’ (Preface to Troilus and Cressida).

9.

Bandello. Matteo Bandello (1480–1562), whose Tales appeared in four volumes, 1554–1573.

Ariosto. Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), whose Orlando Furioso (from which the ‘contrivance’ referred to by Hazlitt was borrowed) was published in 1516–1532.

11.

Middleton. Conyers Middleton (1683–1750). See his Letter from Rome, 1729.

Bayes. See the Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, Act I. Sc. 1.

13.

Quidlibet audendi, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 10.

15.

Bell of Antermony. John Bell (1691–1780), whose Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to various parts of Asia was published in 1763.

16.

Mr. Cumberland’s novels. Richard Cumberland (1732–1811), author of The West Indian (1771), published two novels, Arundel (1789) and Henry (1795).

Marianne. By Claude Prosper Jolyot de Marivaux (1688–1763), published between 1731 and 1741.

18.

Warburton. Warburton’s argument is summarised by Dunlop (chap. ii.) from The Divine Legation of Moses.

19.

Bayes’s most expeditious recipe, etc. The Rehearsal, Act I. Sc. 1.

20.

Mr. Southey’s translation. Southey’s translation of Amadis of Gaul was published in four vols. 1803.

M. de St. Palaye. Jean-Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte-Palaye (1697–1781), author of Mémoires sur l’Ancienne Chevalerie, 1759–1781.

24.

Mr. Ellis. Scott’s friend, George Ellis (1753–1815) published his Specimens of early English Metrical Romances in three vols. in 1805.

D’Urfé. Thomas D’Urfey (1653–1723), the dramatist and song-writer.

Betsy Thoughtless. Eliza Haywood’s (1693?–1756) The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, published in 1751. See Dunlop’s History of Fiction, chap. xiv.

STANDARD NOVELS AND ROMANCES

This is ostensibly a review of Madame D’Arblay’s The Wanderer, published in 1814. Nearly the whole of it was incorporated by Hazlitt in his Lecture on the 405English Novelists. Cf. vol. VIII. pp. 106 et seq. and notes. In his Essay ‘A Farewell to Essay-Writing,’ Hazlitt says that this review was the result of a discussion at Lamb’s, ‘sharply seasoned and well sustained till midnight.’ Though the review cannot be considered as harsh towards Madame D’Arblay, it led to Hazlitt being dropped out of Admiral Burney’s whist parties. See Crabb Robinson’s Diary, chap. xiii. This fact perhaps partly accounts for Hazlitt’s contemptuous reference to the Burneys in his Essay ‘On the Aristocracy of Letters,’ where, after praising Madame D’Arblay, he says, ‘The rest have done nothing, that I know of, but keep up the name.’ See vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 209.

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25.

Crebillon. Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1707–1777), son of the dramatist.

The celebrated French philosopher. Hazlitt was perhaps thinking of Diderot’s well-known eulogy of Richardson (Œuvres, V. 212–227).

39.

The Story of Le Febre. See Tristram Shandy, Book VI. chap. vi. et seq.

SISMONDI’S LITERATURE OF THE SOUTH.

Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842) published his Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen-Age in 16 vols, between 1807 and 1818; his Littérature du midi de l’Europe (here reviewed and afterwards—in 1823—translated by Thomas Roscoe) in 4 vols. in 1813; and his Histoire des Français in 31 vols., 1821–1844. Roscoe’s translation forms two volumes of Bohn’s Standard Library. The translations in the present review are presumably by Hazlitt himself.

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45.

Metastasio. Pietro Antonio Bonaventura Trapassi (1698–1782), poet and librettist.

Alfieri. Vittorio, Count Alfieri (1749–1803), the dramatist and poet.

Goldoni. Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), the comic dramatist.

46.

Professor Boutterwek. Friedrich Bouterwek (1765–1828), author of Geschichte der neuern Poesie und Beredsamkeit (1801–1819).

Millot’s History of the Troubadours. Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours (1774), by Claude François Xavier Millot (1726–1785).

Tiraboschi. Girolamo Tiraboschi (1731–1794), author of Storia della Letteratura Italiana (1772–1782).

Velasquez. Louis Joseph Velasquez de Velasco (1722–1772), author of several works on Spanish poetry and antiquities.

‘Rose like an exhalation.’ Paradise Lost, I. 711.

56.

Preserved by Cervantes, etc. Don Quixote, Part I., Book I., chap. vi.

61.

Dante. Cf. Lectures on the English Poets, vol. V. pp. 17, 18, and notes.

62.

That withering inscription. At the beginning of Canto III. of the Inferno.

The Story of Geneura. It is clear from the note that Hazlitt is referring to the story of Francesca of Rimini in Canto V. of the Inferno. Paolo and Francesca read together the story of Lancelot and Guinevere.

Note. ‘And all that day we read no more!’ Inferno, Canto V.

63.

‘Because on earth,’ etc. Hazlitt is fond of quoting these lines, which, however, do not appear to be Dante’s. Possibly the explanation is to be found in a letter from Lamb to Bernard Barton (Feb. 17, 1823), where he says: ‘I once quoted two lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, and quoted in a book, as proof of the stupendous power of that poet; but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been searched for the purpose. I must have dreamed them, for I am quite 406certain I did not forge them knowingly. What a misfortune to have a lying memory!’

‘I am the tomb,’ etc. Inferno, Canto XI.

As when Satan is compared, etc. Hazlitt seems to be confusing Dante with Milton. See Paradise Lost, IV. 196.

‘Instinct with life.’ Cf. ‘Instinct with spirit.’ Paradise Lost, vi. 752.

Count Ugolino. Inferno, Canto XXXIII. Lamb shared Hazlitt’s dislike of Reynolds’s picture. See Works (ed. E. V. Lucas), I. 75 and 149. Patmore (My Friends and Acquaintance, II. 252) compares Hazlitt with Ugolino.

‘By the sole strength,’ etc. See Paradiso, Canto I.

65.

The Sonnet of Petrarch. No. CCLI. See Sismondi, chap. X.

68.

The story of the two holiday lovers. The Decameron, 4th Day, Novel VII.

69.

Pulci. Luigi Pulci (1432–?1484), author of Il Morgante Maggiore (1481).

Boyardo. Matteo Maria Boiardo (1434–1494), whose Orlando Innamorato was published in 1486. Francesco Berni’s (1490?–1536) version appeared in 1541.

71.

‘Giace l’alta Cartago.’ Jerusalem Delivered, Canto XV. St. 20.

The speech of Satan. Ibid. Canto IV.

72.

‘I rather envied,’ etc. Montaigne, Essays, Book II., chap. xii.

73.

‘Like the swift Alpine torrent,’ etc. From the final chorus of Il Torrismondo.

74.

Chaucer and Spenser. Much of what follows was repeated by Hazlitt in his lecture on Chaucer and Spenser. See vol. V., pp. 19–44, and notes.

75.

Rousseau’s description of the Elisée. La Nouvelle Héloïse, Partie IV., Lettre XI.

76.

In looking back, etc. These two concluding paragraphs were lifted into Hazlitt’s lecture on Shakspeare and Milton. See vol. V. pp. 44–46, and notes.

SCHLEGEL ON THE DRAMA.

August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s (1767–1845) ‘Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature’ were delivered in Vienna in 1808. Hazlitt reviews the English translation, published in 1815, by John Black (1783–1855), who afterwards became editor of The Morning Chronicle.

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79.

The admirable translator. Schlegel had translated Shakespeare (9 vols. 1797–1810), and Calderon (Spanish Theatre, 2 vols., 1803–1809).

Madame de Staël. Schlegel lived for many years at Madame de Staël’s house at Coppet.

81.

Florimel. The Faerie Queene, Book III., Canto VII.

82.

‘There was magic in the web.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 4.

Schlegel somewhere compares, etc. Lectures XXV.

‘So withered,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Metaphysical aid.’ Ibid., Act I. Sc. 5.

83.

‘That she moved with grace,’ etc. Possibly Hazlitt was thinking of the scene in the Iliad (III. 150, et seq.), where at the Scaean Gate the Trojan elders see Helen for the first time.

‘Upon her eyelids,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II., Canto III., St. 25.

‘All plumed,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I., Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘For they are old,’ etc. King Lear, Act II. Sc. 4.

85.

‘Antres vast,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

Orlando’s enchanted sword, etc. In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

86.

‘New-lighted,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘The evidence of things seen.’ Hebrews, xi. 1. 407

86.

‘Broods,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 21–22.

‘The ignorant present time.’ Macbeth, Act. I. Sc. 5.

88.

Jones. Sir William Jones (1746–1794), the Orientalist.

98.

‘Tu y seras, ma fille.’ Racine, Iphigénie, Act II. Sc. 3.

‘The dry chips,’ etc. Cowley, Ode, Of Wit.

100.

‘Tries conclusions infinite.’ Cf. ‘She hath pursued conclusions infinite Of easy ways to die.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Sc. 2.

106.

The infant Joaz. Athalie, Act II. Sc. 9.

The speech of Phædra. Phèdre, Act IV. Sc. 6.

107.

Mr. Schlegel speaks highly, etc. See Lecture XXI. For Hazlitt on Molière cf. vol. VIII. pp. 28–9 (English Comic Writers), where much of this passage is repeated.

108.

Extremes meet, etc. Hazlitt quoted this paragraph in The Round Table (vol. I. pp. 97–8).

111.

‘Not a jot,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Light thickens.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Why stands Macbeth,’ etc. Ibid., Act IV. Sc. 1.

116.

‘Ethereal mould,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 139 and V. 285.

‘Stronger Shakespear,’ etc. Collins, Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer, 64.

117.

The scene between Surly and Sir Epicure Mammon. The Alchemist, Act II. Sc. 1.

118.

‘A man walking upon stilts,’ etc. Lecture XXVIII.

119.

‘By a singular vicissitude,’ etc. Madame de Staël’s De l’ Allemagne, chap. xxii.

LEIGH HUNT’S ‘RIMINI’

The Edinburgh Review for June, 1816 (vol. XXVI. pp. 476–491) contained a notice of Leigh Hunt’s The Story of Rimini. Lord Cockburn includes this review in his List of Lord Jeffrey’s articles in the Edinburgh (see Life of Francis Jeffrey); Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Memoirs, I. pp. xxv. and 225) attributes it to Hazlitt; and Mr. Ireland, in his Bibliography of Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, marks it as doubtful. The Blackwood set regarded or professed to regard Hazlitt as the author, as appears from a passage in Lockhart’s attack on Hunt in the first number (October 1817) of Blackwood’s Magazine: ‘The very culpable manner in which his [Hunt’s] chief poem was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review (we believe it is no secret, at his own impatient and feverish request, by his partner in the Round Table), was matter of concern to more readers than ourselves.... Mr. Jeffrey does ill when he delegates his important functions into such hands as those of Mr. Hazlitt.’ Lockhart, however, knew nothing about Hunt or Hazlitt, and his ‘no secret’ (which afforded an opportunity for a hit at Jeffrey) does not throw any light on the question. Hunt denied the insinuation. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 225. The review does not read like Hazlitt, but, from a letter which he afterwards addressed to Leigh Hunt, it would seem that at the least he had some hand in it. The letter is dated April 21, 1821 (see Four Generations of a Literary Family, I. 133), and contains an account of Hazlitt’s grievances against Leigh Hunt. In course of it, he says: ‘For instance, I praised you in the Edinburgh Review.’ There does not seem to be any praise of Hunt to which this passage can refer except this review, which is possibly the result of some rather free handling of Hazlitt’s MS. by Jeffrey.

The review is given below. The long extracts from the poem are roughly 408indicated by the first and last line, though in a few cases some of the intermediate lines are omitted in the review.

The Story of Rimini, a Poem. By Leigh Hunt. pp. 111. London, Murray, 1816.

‘There is a great deal of genuine poetry in this little volume; and poetry, too, of a very peculiar and original character. It reminds us, in many respects, of that pure and glorious style that prevailed among us before French models and French rules of criticism were known in this country, and to which we are delighted to see there is now so general a disposition to recur. Yet its more immediate prototypes, perhaps, are to be looked for rather in Italy than in England: at least, if it be copied from any thing English, it is from something much older than Shakespeare; and it unquestionably bears a still stronger resemblance to Chaucer than to his immediate followers in Italy. The same fresh, lively and artless pictures of external objects,—the same profusion of gorgeous but redundant and needless description,—the same familiarity and even homeliness of diction,—and, above all, the same simplicity and directness in representing actions and passions in colours true to nature, but without any apparent attention to their effect, or any ostentation, or even visible impression as to their moral operation or tendency. The great distinction between the modern poets and their predecessors, is, that the latter painted more from the eye and less from the mind than the former. They described things and actions as they saw them, without expressing, or at any rate without dwelling on the deep-seated emotions from which the objects derived their interest, or the actions their character. The moderns, on the contrary, have brought these most prominently forward, and explained and enlarged upon them perhaps at excessive length. Mr. Hunt, in the piece before us, has followed the antient school; and though he has necessarily gone something beyond the naked notices that would have suited the age of Chaucer, he has kept himself far more to the delineation of visible, physical realities, than any other modern poet on such a subject.

‘Though he has chosen, however, to write in this style, and has done so very successfully, we are not by any means of opinion, that he either writes or appears to write it as naturally as those by whom it was first adopted; on the contrary, we think there is a good deal of affectation in his homeliness, directness, and rambling descriptions. He visibly gives himself airs of familiarity, and mixes up flippant, and even cant phrases, with passages that bear, upon the whole, the marks of considerable labour and study. In general, however, he is very successful in his attempts at facility, and has unquestionably produced a little poem of great grace and spirit, and, in many passages and many particulars, of infinite beauty and delicacy.

‘In the subject he has selected, he has ventured indeed upon sacred ground; but he has not profaned it. The passage in Dante, on which the story of Rimini is founded, remains unimpaired by the English version, and has even received a new interest from it. The undertaking must be allowed to have been one of great nicety. An imitation of the manner of Dante was an impossibility. That extraordinary author collects all his force into a single blow: His sentiments derive an obscure grandeur from their being only half expressed; and therefore, a detailed narrative of this kind, a description of particular circumstances done upon this ponderous principle, an enumeration of incidents leading to a catastrophe, with all the pith and conclusiveness of the catastrophe itself, would be intolerable. Mr. Hunt has arrived at his end by varying his means; and the effect of his poem coincides with that of the original passage, mainly, because the spirit in which it is written is quite different. With the personages in Dante, all is over before the 409reader is introduced to them; their doom is fixed;—and his style is as peremptory and irrevocable as their fate. But the lovers, whose memory the muse of the Italian poet had consecrated in the other world, are here restored to earth, with the graces and the sentiments that became them in their lifetime. Mr. Hunt, in accompanying them to its fatal close, has mingled every tint of many-coloured life in the tissue of their story—blending tears with smiles, the dancing of the spirits with sad forebodings, the intoxication of hope with bitter disappointment, youth with age, life and death together. He has united something of the voluptuous pathos of Boccacio with Ariosto’s laughing graces. His court dresses, and gala processions he has borrowed from Watteau. His sunshine and his flowers are his own! He himself has explained the design of his poem in the Preface. [A long passage from the Preface is quoted.]

‘The poem opens with the following passage of superb description:—

[“The sun is up, and ’tis a morn of May,” to

“And pilgrims, chanting in the morning sun.”]

‘Such is the manner in which the business of the day is ushered in. The rest of the first canto is taken up in describing the preparations for receiving the bridegroom, the processions of knights that precede his expected arrival; the dresses, &c.—There is something in all this part of the poem which gives back the sensation of the scene and the occasion;—a glancing eye, a busy ear, great bustle and gaiety, and, where it is required, great grace of description. Perhaps the subject is too long dwelt upon; and there is, occasionally, a repetition of nearly the same images and expressions. The reader may take the following as fair specimens:

[“And hark! the approaching trumpets, with a start,” to

“The shift, the tossing, and the fiery tramping.”]

‘After all, the future husband does not appear, but his younger brother, Paulo, who comes as his proxy to take the bride to Rimini; and it is to the mistaken impression thus made on her mind that all the subsequent distress is owing. His person, his dress, the gallantry of Paulo’s demeanour, are very vividly described, and the effect of his appearance on the surrounding multitude.

[“And on a milk-white courser, like the air,” to

“These catch the extrinsic and the common eye.”]

‘The Second Canto gives an account of the bride’s journey to Rimini, in the company of her husband’s brother, which abounds in picturesque descriptions. Mr. Hunt has here taken occasion to enter somewhat learnedly into the geography of his subject; and describes the road between Ravenna and Rimini, with the accuracy of a topographer, and the liveliness of a poet. There is, however, no impertinent minuteness of detail; but only those circumstances are dwelt upon, which fall in with the general interest of the story, and would be likely to strike forcibly upon the imagination in such an interval of anxiety and suspense. We have only room for the concluding lines.

[“Various the trees and passing foliage here,” to

“Night and a maiden silence wrap the plains.”]

‘We have detained our readers longer than we intended, from that which forms the most interesting part of the poem, the Third Canto, of which the subject is the fatal passion between Paulo and Francesca. We shall be ample in our extracts from this part of the poem, because we have no other way of giving an idea of its characteristic qualities. Mr. Hunt, as we have already intimated, does not belong to any of the modern schools of poetry; and therefore we cannot convey our idea 410of his manner of writing, by reference to any of the more conspicuous models. His poetry is not like Mr. Wordsworth’s, which is metaphysical; nor like Mr. Coleridge’s, which is fantastical; nor like Mr. Southey’s, which is monastical. But it is something which we have already endeavoured to sketch by its general features, and shall now enable the reader to study in detail in the following extracts.

‘The first disappointment of the warm-hearted bride, and the portraits of the rival brothers, are sketched with equal skill and delicacy.

[“Enough of this. Yet how shall I disclose,” to

“And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow.”]

‘Paulo’s growing passion for Francesca is described with equal delicacy and insight into the sophistry of the human heart. He is represented as first concealing his attachment from himself; then struggling with it; then yielding to it.

[“Till ’twas the food and habit day by day,” to

“’Twas but the taste of what was natural.”]

‘But we hasten on to the principal event and the catastrophe of the poem. The scene of the fatal meeting between the lovers is laid in the gardens of the palace, which are here described with the utmost elegance and beauty.

[“So now you walked beside an odorous bed,” to

“A summer-house so fine in such a nest of green.”]

‘Such is the landscape:—now for the figures.

[“All the green garden, flower-bed, shade and plot,” to

“To ask the good King Arthur for assistance.”]

‘We cannot give the whole extract of the story,—only she becomes more deeply engaged as she comes to the love scenes.—What follows, we think is very exquisitely written.

[“Ready she sat with one hand to turn o’er,” to

“Desperate the joy.—That day they read no more.”]

‘We do not think the execution of the fourth and last Canto quite equal to that of the third: Yet there are passages in it of the greatest beauty; and an air of melancholy breathes from the whole with irresistible softness and effect.

‘The feelings of Francesca, arising from the consciousness of her melancholy situation and broken vows, are thus finely represented.

[“And oh, the morrow, how it used to rise!” to

“That Heaven would take her, if it pleased, away.”]

‘From the distress and agitation of her mind, she afterwards betrays the secret of her infidelity to her husband in her sleep. This leads to a rencounter between the two brothers, which is fatal to Paulo, who runs voluntarily upon his brother’s sword; and partly from the shock of the news, partly from previous grief preying on her mind and body, Francesca dies the same day. Her death is profoundly affecting, and leaves an impression on the imagination, icy, cold, and monumental. The squire of Paulo is admitted to the side of her sad couch, to tell the dismal story—and repeats, in the Prince’s own words, how he had been forced to fight with his brother—

[“——And that although,” to

“The gentle sufferer was at peace in death.”]

411‘The bodies of the two lovers are sent back, by order of the husband, to Ravenna, to be buried in one tomb. We shall close our extracts with the account of the arrival of this mournful procession, so different in every respect from the former one.

[“The days were then at close of autumn—still,” to

“Young hearts betrothed used to go there to pray.”]

‘We have given these extracts at length, that our readers might judge of the story of Rimini, less on our authority, than its own merits; and we have few remarks to add to those which we ventured to make at the beginning. The diction of this little poem is among its chief beauties—and yet its greatest blemishes are faults in diction.—It is very English throughout—but often very affectedly negligent, and so extremely familiar as to be absolutely low and vulgar. What, for example, can be said for such lines as

“She had stout notions on the marrying score,” or

“He kept no reckoning with his sweets and sours;—” or

“And better still—in my idea at least,” or

“The two divinest things this world has got.”

‘We see no sort of beauty either in such absurd and unusual phrases as “a clipsome waist,”—“a scattery light,” or “flings of sunshine,”—nor any charm in such comparatives as “martialler,” or “tastefuller,” or “franklier,” or in such words as “whisks,” and “swaling,” and “freaks and snatches,” and an hundred others in the same taste. We think the author rather heretical too on the subject of versification—though we have much less objection to his theory than to his practice. But we cannot spare him a line more on the present occasion—and must put off the rest of our admonitions till we meet him again.’

COLERIDGE’S ‘CHRISTABEL’

In the Edinburgh Review for September, 1816 (vol. XXVII. pp. 58–67), appeared a review of Coleridge’s Christabel, as to the authorship of which there has been a good deal of discussion. Coleridge himself believed that it was written by Hazlitt. (See post, note to p. 155.) Hazlitt never acknowledged the authorship, and there is indeed no external evidence upon the subject. Mr. Dykes Campbell (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 225, note 1) regards the ascription of the review to Hazlitt as being ‘probably, though not certainly, correct.’ Neither Mr. Ireland nor Mr. W. C. Hazlitt ascribes it to Hazlitt. Quite recently the question of Hazlitt’s authorship, determined one way or the other by a consideration of the internal evidence, has been the subject of a controversy in Notes and Queries (9th Series, A. 388, 429: XI. 170, 269), to which reference should be made. Mr. Andrew Lang in his Life of J. G. Lockhart (vol. I. pp. 139–142) refers to the review at some length as a kind of set-off against Lockhart’s early indiscretions in Blackwood. Without discussing the authorship of the review, he is indignant with Jeffrey for having admitted it into the Edinburgh. The present editors are disposed to think that the review is substantially the work of Hazlitt, though, as in the case of the review of Rimini, it may be conjectured that Jeffrey used his editorial pen pretty freely. Since absolute certainty is not at present attainable, the review, instead of being printed in the text, is given below.

Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep. By S. T. Coleridge, Esq. London. Murray, 1816.

‘The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick, carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,—who, it seems, has somewhere 412praised Christabel, “as a wild and singularly original and beautiful poem.” Great as the noble bard’s merits undoubtedly are in poetry, some of his latest publications dispose us to distrust his authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a view to being repaid with interest. Mr. Coleridge, however, must be judged by his own merits.

‘It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true profound is surely known by one quality—its being wholly bottomless; insomuch, that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme—or in the insane, until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions—forth steps Mr. Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to redeem his character after so long a silence, (“his poetic powers having been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended animation,” p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words—

“’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,

And the owls have awaken’d the crowing cock;

Tu—whit!——Tu—whoo!

And hark, again! the crowing cock,

How drowsily it crew.

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;

From her kennel beneath the rock

She makes answer to the clock,

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;

Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,

Sixteen short howls, not over loud:

Some say she sees my lady’s shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?

The night is chilly, but not dark.” Pp. 3,4.

‘It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye, when he called the poem “wild” and “original”: but how he discovered it to be “beautiful,” is not quite so easy for us to imagine.

‘Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden transitions—opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly, here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely, upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,

“The lovely Lady Christabel,

Whom her father loves so well”—

And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night before, had dreams about her lover, which “made her moan and leap.” While kneeling, 413in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on account of her beauty and her fair attire—

“I guess, ’twas frightful there to see

A lady so richly clad as she—

Beautiful exceedingly!”

Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length, that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths, that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained there she cannot tell—

“Nor do I know how long it is,

For I have lain in fits, I wis;”

—although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time. The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however, in the poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the moat, and Lady C. “took the key that fitted well,” and opened a little door, “all in the middle of the gate.” Lady G. then sinks down “belike through pain”; but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she then walks on “as she were not in pain.” Then they cross the court—but we must give this in the poet’s words, for he seems so pleased with them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines—

“So free from danger, free from fear,

They crossed the court—right glad they were.”

‘Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G. will not indulge her Ladyship, saying, she is too much tired to speak. We now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a person to be slightly passed by—

“Outside her kennel, the mastiff old

Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.

The mastiff old did not awake,

Yet she an angry moan did make!

And what can ail the mastiff bitch?

Never till now she uttered yell

Beneath the eye of Christabel.

Perhaps it is the owlet’s scritch:

For what can ail the mastiff bitch?”

‘Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and take off their shoes, and tread softly all the way up stairs, as Christabel observes that her father is a bad sleeper. At last, however, they do arrive at the bed-room, and 414comfort themselves with a dram of some home-made liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by Lady C.’s mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old lady will take her part, she answers, that this is out of the question, in as much as she happened to die in childbed of her. The mention of the old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic couplet.—Christabel says,

“O mother dear, that thou wert here!

I would, said Geraldine, she were!”

‘A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine and the old gentlewoman’s ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to her, she again has recourse to the bottle—and with excellent effect, as appears by these lines.

“Again the wild-flower wine she drank;

Her fair large eyes ’gan glitter bright,

And from the floor whereon she sank,

The lofty Lady stood upright:

She was most beautiful to see,

Like a Lady of a far countrée.”

—From which, we may gather among other points, the exceeding great beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no matter where. The effects of the cordial speedily begin to appear; as no one, we imagine, will doubt, that to its influence must be ascribed the following speech—

“And thus the lofty lady spake—

All they, who live in the upper sky,

Do love you, holy Christabel!

And you love them—and for their sake

And for the good which me befel,

Even I in my degree will try,

Fair maiden, to requite you well.”

‘Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to undress, and lie down; which she does “in her loveliness”; but being curious, she leans “on her elbow,” and looks towards the fair devotee,—where she sees something which the poet does not think fit to tell us very explicitly.

“Her silken robe, and inner vest,

Dropt to her feet, and full in view,

Behold! her bosom and half her side——

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

And she is to sleep by Christabel.”

‘She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a double-bedded room, she turns in to Lady Christabel, taking only “two paces and a stride.” She then clasps her tight in her arms, and mutters a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet manufactured by shaking words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.

“But vainly thou warrest,

For this is alone in

Thy power to declare,

That in the dim forest

Thou heard’st a low moaning,

And found’st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:

And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,

To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.”

415‘The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a strange dream—and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, “Sure I have sinn’d”—“Now heaven be praised if all be well!” Being still perplexed with the remembrance of her “too lively” dream—she then dresses herself, and modestly prays to be forgiven for “her sins unknown.” The two companions now go to the Baron’s parlour, and Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr. Bracy, the poet, recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and her eyes grow small, like a serpent’s,—or at least so they seem to her friend; who begs her father to “send away that woman.” Upon this the Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense, though no hint of such a kind is given; but, on the contrary, she is painted to the last moment as full of innocence and purity.—Nevertheless,

“His heart was cleft with pain and rage,

His cheeks they quiver’d, his eyes were wild,

Dishonour’d thus in his old age;

Dishonour’d by his only child;

And all his hospitality

To th’ insulted daughter of his friend

By more than woman’s jealousy,

Brought thus to a disgraceful end——”

‘Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows incontinently, what is termed “The conclusion of Part the Second.” And as we are pretty confident that Mr. Coleridge holds this passage in the highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of “that wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,” excepting always the two passages touching the “toothless mastiff Bitch;” we shall extract it for the amazement of our readers—premising our own frank avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of it.

“A little child, a limber elf,

Singing, dancing to itself,

A fairy thing with red round cheeks,

That always finds and never seeks;

Makes such a vision to the sight

As fills a father’s eyes with light;

And pleasures flow in so thick and fast

Upon his heart, that he at last

Must needs express his love’s excess

With words of unmeant bitterness.

Perhaps ’tis pretty to force together

Thoughts so all unlike each other;

To mutter and mock a broken charm,

To dally with wrong that does no harm.

Perhaps ’tis tender too, and pretty,

At each wild word to feel within

A sweet recoil of love and pity.

416And what if in a world of sin

(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)

Such giddiness of heart and brain

Comes seldom save from rage and pain,

So talks as it’s most used to do.”

‘Here endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the “singular” poem itself; for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, “embodied in verse,” the “three parts yet to come;”—though he trusts he shall be able to do so “in the course of the present year.”

‘One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr. Coleridge terms it, “the Christabel”—happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great irregularity in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is “founded on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not the syllables.” We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre “on a new principle!” but we utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us any principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or three specimens, to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry and shuffling. Let our “wild, and singularly original and beautiful” author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of feet.

“Ah wel-a-day!”—

“For this is alone in”—

“And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity”—

“I pray you drink this cordial wine”—

“Sir Leoline”—

“And found a bright lady surpassingly fair”—

“Tu—whit!——Tu—whoo!”

‘Kubla Khan is given to the public, it seems, “at the request of a poet of great and deserved celebrity;”—but whether Lord Byron the praiser of “the Christabel,” or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not informed. As far as Mr. Coleridge’s “own opinions are concerned,” it is published, “not upon the ground of any poetic merits,” but “as a PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!” In these opinions of the candid author, we entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances attending its composition. Had the question regarded “Paradise Lost,” or “Dryden’s Ode” we could not have had a more particular account of the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and the summer season. Mr. Coleridge was in bad health;—the particular disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and whoever would see the place which gave birth to the “psychological curiosity,” may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne, which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair, (whether after dinner or not he omits to state), “at the moment that he was reading a sentence in Purchas’s Pilgrims,” relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of the anodyne, and the sentence together, 417were prodigious: They produced the “curiosity” now before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr. Coleridge “has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines.” On awaking, he “instantly and eagerly” wrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says “unfortunately”) called out by a “person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour;” and when he returned, the vision was gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary effects, we should inevitably have been lulled by them into forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of inaction.

“A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid

And on her dulcimer she play’d,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ’twould win

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread:

For he on honey-dew hath fed.” &c. &c.

‘There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite—and in particular a fine description of a wood, “ancient as the hills;” and “folding sunny spots of greenery!” But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.

‘Persons in this poet’s unhappy condition, generally feel the want of sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr. Coleridge appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title of his third poem, “The Pains of Sleep;” and, in truth, from its composition—which is mere raving, without any thing more affecting than a number of incoherent words, expressive of extravagance and incongruity.—We need give no specimen of it.

‘Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it, without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them, if we except the White Doe of Mr. Wordsworth and some of the laureate odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the thing now before us, is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains, except, perhaps, the following lines 418in p. 32, and even these are not very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original—

“Alas! they had been friends in youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;

And constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny; and youth is vain;

And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain.”

‘With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense, were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn. Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv’ling, extolled as the work of a “wild and original” genius, simply because Mr. Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest? And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal and well affected.’

COLERIDGE’S LAY SERMON

The authorship of this review has also been the subject of controversy. See the authorities cited on p. 411. Mr. Dykes Campbell, in the note there quoted, says that, as in the case of Christabel, the ascription of the review to Hazlitt is ‘probably, though not certainly correct.’ The editors regarded the internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship as so overwhelmingly strong, especially after a comparison of the article with Hazlitt’s review of the same work in The Examiner (see Political Essays, III. 143–152), that they decided to include it in the text. It has not been thought necessary to give references to all Hazlitt’s quotations from the Lay Sermon. References, when they are given, are to the edition in Bohn’s Standard Library.

PAGE

120.

‘Fancies and Good-nights.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Sc. 2.

Odd ends of verse, etc. Hudibras, I. iii. 1011–2.

‘Chase his fancy’s rolling speed.’ Cf. On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 29.

121.

‘Babbles of green fields.’ Henry V., Act II. Sc. 3.

‘Alarmists by trade.’ A Lay Sermon, p. 309.

‘A gentle Husher,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto IV. Stanza 13.

Joanna Southcote. Joanna Southcott (1750–1814), the fanatic and impostor, whose prophesies had recently caused a good deal of excitement.

122.

‘Thick-coming fancies.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 3.

123.

The ‘Friend.’ Published in numbers at irregular intervals between June 1809 and March 1810. Coleridge published a recast—‘a complete Rifacimento’—of The Friend in 1818.

‘Like the swan’s down feather,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Sc. 2. 419

124.

‘They are not sought for,’ etc. These words are quoted by Coleridge from Ecclesiasticus, xxxviii. 33–34. See A Lay Sermon, 308–309.

126.

‘Twice ten degrees,’ etc. Paradise Lost, X. 669–670.

‘With jealous leer malign.’ Ibid., IV. 503.

127.

‘Fraught with potential infidelity.’ A Lay Sermon, p. 329.

131.

The Watchman. The Watchman ran from March to May, 1796. Coleridge gives an account of his tour to procure subscribers. See Biographia Literaria, Chap. X. The Conciones ad Populum, originally published in 1795, were reprinted in Essays on his own Times (1850).

One of Goldsmith’s Essays. See A Lay Sermon, p. 319 note.

As Gulliver did, etc. See A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Chap. V.

132.

‘As Alps o’er Alps arise.’ Pope, An Essay on Criticism, II. 232.

134.

‘High enthroned,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 58.

135.

‘It is by means,’ etc. See Hobbes, Leviathan, Part I. Chap. IV. 5, 15.

COLERIDGE’S LITERARY LIFE

This review, though claimed for Jeffrey by Lord Cockburn, and marked doubtful by Mr. Ireland, is certainly Hazlitt’s. Nearly the whole of the long passage on Burke (pp. 150–154 of the present volume), after doing duty in The Champion (Oct. 5, 1817), was published by Hazlitt in Political Essays as the first of two ‘Characters of Mr. Burke’ which appeared in that volume. See vol. III. pp. 250–253.

PAGE

135.

‘It will be found,’ etc. Chap. I.

‘At school,’ etc. Ibid.

138.

Bowles’s Sonnets. William Lisle Bowles’s (1762–1850) famous Fourteen Sonnets written chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Journey appeared anonymously in 1789. More sonnets were added in later editions. The sonnets of Thomas Warton (1728–1790) are frequently quoted by Hazlitt, and were eulogised by him in his Lectures on the English Poets (see vol. V. pp. 120–1). See Chap. I. of Biographia Literaria for Coleridge’s praise of Bowles.

138.

Jacob Behmen. Jakob Boehme (1575–1624), the mystic.

The Morning Post. Coleridge’s contributions to The Morning Post (chiefly during 1800) were reprinted in Essays on his own Times (1850).

139.

‘It is not, however,’ etc. Note at the end of Chap. III.

The Cannings, the Giffords, and the Freres. William Gifford (1756–1826) was the editor of the Anti-Jacobin (1797–8), and George Canning (1770–1827) and John Hookham Frere (1769–1846) were the chief contributors. See an article in The Athenæum for May 31, 1890, on ‘Coleridge and The Anti-Jacobin.’

140.

‘Publicly,’ etc. Biographia Literaria, Chap. III.

142.

‘Full of wise saws,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘It has been hinted,’ etc. Biographia Literaria, Chap. IV.

143.

Mr. C. thinks fit, etc. Chap. V.

144.

A series of citations. Hazlitt probably refers to an article in The Examiner for March 31, 1816, which consists to a large extent of quotations from Hobbes’s Leviathan, and which is referred to in a later volume of the present edition; but he was never tired of proclaiming the greatness and originality of Hobbes. Cf. the essay or lecture ‘On the writings of Hobbes,’ published in Literary Remains. 420

145.

‘Sound book-learnedness.’ A Lay Sermon (Bohn), p. 327.

‘Wander down,’ etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 282–284.

‘Towards the close,’ etc. Chap. X.

150.

‘As our very sign-boards,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Let the scholar,’ etc. Ibid.

It is not without reluctance, etc. The greater part of this character of Burke, down to the foot of p. 154, was repeated in Political Essays. See vol. III. pp. 250 et seq., and notes.

155.

Any account of it at all. At this point in The Edinburgh Review a long note, signed F. J., is appended, in which Jeffrey replies to what he describes as ‘averments of a personal and injurious nature’ against the Edinburgh Review. A great part of the note relates to Coleridge’s attack on Jeffrey in Chap. III. of the Biographia Literaria (see Bohn’s edition, p. 25 note), but part of it concerns Hazlitt. Coleridge had said (Chap. xxiv.): ‘In the Edinburgh Review it [Christabel] was assailed with a malignity and a personal hatred that ought to have injured only the work in which such a tirade was suffered to appear: and this review was generally attributed (whether rightly or no I know not) to a man, who both in my presence and in my absence has repeatedly pronounced it the finest poem in the language.’ Jeffrey refers to this passage, and states that when he visited Coleridge at Keswick, there was some talk about the poem. ‘We spoke,’ he says, ‘of Christabel, and I advised him to publish it; but I did not say it was either the finest poem of the kind, or a fine poem at all; and I am sure of this, for the best of all reasons, that at this time, and indeed till after it was published, I never saw or heard more than four or five lines of it, which my friend Mr. Scott once repeated to me. That eminent person, indeed, spoke favourably of it; and I rather think I told Mr. C. that I had heard him say, that it was to it he was indebted for the first idea of that romantic narrative in irregular verse, which he afterwards exemplified in his Lay of the Last Minstrel, and other works. In these circumstances, I felt a natural curiosity to see this great original; and I can sincerely say, that no admirer of Mr. C. could be more disappointed or astonished than I was, when it did make its appearance. I did not review it.’ With regard to A Lay Sermon, Coleridge had said (Biographia Literaria, chap. xxiv.): ‘A long delay occurred between its first annunciation and its appearance; it was reviewed, therefore, by anticipation with a malignity so avowedly and exclusively personal as is, I believe, unprecedented even in the present contempt of all common humanity that disgraces and endangers the liberty of the press. After its appearance, the author of this lampoon was chosen to review it in the Edinburgh Review: and under the single condition, that he should have written what he himself really thought, and have criticised the work as he would have done had its author been indifferent to him, I should have chosen that man myself, both from the vigour and the originality of his mind, and from his particular acuteness in speculative reasoning, before all others. I remembered Catullus’s lines [lxxiii.]: “Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri, Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium. Omnia sunt ingrata: nihil fecisse benigne est: Immo, etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis. Ut mihi, quem nemo gravius nec acerbius urget Quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.”

But I can truly say, that the grief with which I read this rhapsody of 421predetermined insult had the rhapsodist himself for its whole and sole object: and that the indignant contempt which it excited in me, was as exclusively confined to his employer and suborner.’ Coleridge here refers to the first of the two reviews of A Lay Sermon, contributed by Hazlitt to The Examiner in 1816. See Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 138–142. Jeffrey’s reply is as follows: ‘As to the review of the Lay Sermon, I have only to say, in one word, that I never employed or suborned any body to abuse or extol it or any other publication. I do not so much as know or conjecture what Mr. C. alludes to as a malignant lampoon or review by anticipation, which he says had previously appeared somewhere else. I never saw nor heard of any such publication. Nay, I was not even aware of the existence of the Lay Sermon itself, when a review of it was offered me by a gentleman in whose judgment and talents I had great confidence, but whom I certainly never suspected, and do not suspect at this moment, of having any personal or partial feelings of any kind towards its author. I therefore accepted his offer, and printed his review, with some retrenchments and verbal alterations, just as I was setting off, in a great hurry, for London, on professional business, in January last.’

156.

‘The dew of Castalie.’ Cf. ‘With verses, dipt in deaw of Castalie.’ Spenser, The Ruines of Time, l. 431.

‘Sky-tinctured.’ Paradise Lost, V. 285.

‘Thoughts that voluntary move,’ etc. Ibid., III. 37–38.

157.

‘The golden cadences of poesy.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Sc. 2.

‘Poets [lovers and madmen] have such seething brains.’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

With Plato. The Republic, Book X.

158.

‘Pleasurable poetic fervour.’ Hazlitt probably had in his mind chap. xviii. of the Biographia Literaria. The words suggest that conception of poetry which was expressed by Wordsworth in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (especially in the extended 1802 form), and which was frequently repeated by Coleridge. See, in addition to the Biographia Literaria, Lectures on Shakespere, etc. (Bohn’s ed.), p. 49.

158.

Note.—Maturin’s Bertram was attacked in The Courier, ‘the pen being either wielded or guided by Coleridge,’ but the attack in Biographia Literaria was a different one. See Dykes Campbell’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 223 note 1.

LETTERS OF HORACE WALPOLE

A review of Letters from the Hon. Horace Walpole to George Montagu, Esq. From the year 1736 to 1770, published in 1818. This and other volumes of Walpole’s correspondence were reprinted in Peter Cunningham’s collected edition of Walpole’s Letters (9 vols., 1857–1859), where the passages quoted by Hazlitt may be found.

PAGE

159.

Princess Amelia. George II.’s daughter. See Walpole’s Letters, passim.

George Selwyn. George Augustus Selwyn (1719–1791), the wit, Walpole’s ‘oldest acquaintance and friend.’

Mr. Chute. John Chute (1703–1776), a great friend of Walpole’s. See especially a letter to Sir Horace Mann, 27 May, 1776.

160.

‘Of outward show,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VIII. 539.

Pam. The Knave of Clubs, and the best trump at one form of Loo. 422

161.

Balmerino. Arthur Elphinstone, sixth Lord Balmerino (1688–1746), beheaded for participation in the Rebellion of 1745.

‘Are kept in ponderous vases.’ Pope, The Rape of the Lock, V. 115.

163.

‘Have got the start,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 2.

Poor Bentley. Richard Bentley (1708–1782), son of the scholar.

‘High fantastical.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 1.

164.

Müntz. John Henry Müntz, a Swiss, who painted and copied paintings for Walpole.

‘That which he esteemed,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

Mr. Mason. William Mason (1724–1797), the poet and friend of Gray.

165.

The Mysterious Mother. Walpole’s tragedy (1768).

166.

‘Himself and the universe.’ Hazlitt elsewhere says of Wordsworth (vol. I. p. 113), ‘it is as if there were nothing but himself and the universe.’

‘Admit no discourse,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

168.

Lord Ferrers. Laurence Shirley (1720–1760), fourth Earl Ferrers, was hanged for the murder of his steward, John Johnson.

169.

‘Sleep no more,’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 2.

172.

Smithson. Sir Hugh Smithson (1715–1786), married in 1740 the heiress of the Percy estates, succeeded to the title of Earl of Northumberland in 1750, and was created Duke in 1766.

Pope. Hazlitt refers presumably to ‘Song, by a Person of Quality,’ beginning, ‘Flutt’ring spread thy purple pinions.’

‘Very chargeable.’ A New Way to Pay Old Debts, Act III. Sc. 2.

LIFE OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

Joseph Farington’s (1747–1821) Memoirs of the Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds was published in 1819. This review was republished in Criticisms on Art (1843–4), and in Essays on the Fine Arts (1873).

PAGE

172.

Dispute between their late President, etc. Relating to the election of Joseph Bonomi as professor of perspective. Reynolds resigned his membership of the Academy in Feb. 1790, but afterwards withdrew his resignation. Edmond Malone (1741–1812) published a Memoir of Reynolds in 1797.

173.

‘Pleased with a rattle,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, II. 276.

174.

Richardson. Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), author of A Theory of Painting (1715).

Hudson. Thomas Hudson (1701–1779), portrait-painter.

177.

The French materialists. See Helvétius, De l’Esprit, Discourse III.

178.

‘A greater general capacity,’ etc. See Johnson’s Life of Cowley.

180.

Hayman. See Vol. i. (The Round Table) note to p. 149.

Highmore. Ibid.

‘Darted contagious fire.’ Paradise Lost, IX. 1036.

181.

Gandy. See vol VI. (Table Talk), note to p. 21.

184.

In the days of Montesquieu. See his De l’ Esprit des Lois.

185.

‘Like flowers,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3.

186.

Says Schlegel. Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, I.

‘Like the forced pace,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Sc. 1.

‘With coy, reluctant,’ etc. ‘And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 311.

423Terrae filii. Cf. Persius, Satires, VI. 59.

‘The crown which Ariadne,’ etc. Cf. The Faerie Queene, Book VI. Canto X. St. 13.

‘Their affections,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

187.

In that part of the country. Winterslow presumably.

‘Returning with a choral song,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ruth, 53–54.

‘We also are not Arcadians!’ Hazlitt frequently quoted the old saying, attributed to Schidoni, ‘Et ego in Arcadia vixi.’ See, e.g. Table Talk, vol. VI. p. 168.

188.

‘The unbought grace of life.’ Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

190.

Leo. Leo X. (1475–1521), son of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Piranesi’s drawings. Giambattista Piranesi (1720–1778), engraver of architecture and ancient ruins.

Winckelman. Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), author of Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764).

191.

‘All eyes’ etc. Cf. Isaiah, xlv. 22–23, and Romans, xiv. 11.

‘Amazing brightness,’ etc. Otway, Venice Preserved, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘A present deity,’ etc. Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 35–36.

The Madona of Foligno. Raphael’s, in the Vatican.

The ceiling at Parma. Painted by Girolamo Mazzola, a pupil of Correggio.

192.

Leonardo’s Last Supper. This famous fresco, now almost entirely destroyed, was at the convent of S. Maria delle Grazie at Milan.

The institution of Academies, etc. Cf. vol I. The Round Table, p. 160 and note, and vol. IX. p. 311 et seq.

195.

‘The cat and canary-bird,’ etc. See ante, p. 193.

‘Leaving the thing,’ etc. Philippians, iii. 13.

196.

The Catalogue Raisonnée. Cf. vol. I., The Round Table, pp. 140 et seq.

‘With jealous leer malign.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 503.

197.

Grampound. The borough was disfranchised for corrupt practices in 1821.

‘That is true history.’ This was said by Fuseli. See vol. VI. (Mr. Northcote’s Conversations), p. 340.

199.

Mr. West’s pictures. Benjamin West (1738–1820), president of the Royal Academy from 1792. Cf. vol. IX. pp. 318 et seq.

Barry. James Barry (1741–1806). Hazlitt refers to one of the pictures Barry painted for the Society of Arts in John Street, Adelphi.

200.

‘The bodiless creations,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4, ll. 136–137.

‘Like the baseless fabric,’ etc. The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.

Mr. Haydon. Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846). Mr. W. C. Hazlitt has given an account of his relations with Hazlitt. See Memoirs, I. 209–213, and Four Generations of a Literary Family, I. 234–236. At his house Hazlitt met Keats.

‘So from the root,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 479–481.

201.

His own Penitent Girl. Hazlitt seems to refer to a figure in the Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.

His Christ. Haydon’s picture, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, was first exhibited in 1820. At the private view, Haydon says (Tom Taylor’s Life, I. 371), ‘the room was full, Keats and Hazlitt were up in a corner, really rejoicing.’ Hazlitt is introduced into the picture ‘looking at the Saviour as an investigator.’ The picture is now in America. For Mrs. Siddons’s opinion of the picture see Life, I. 372.

Mr. Haydon is a devoted, etc. See his letter in The Examiner, March 17, 1816.

424

THE PERIODICAL PRESS

This essay is referred to by Brougham, who, on August 18, 1837, wrote to Macvey Napier (then editor of the Edinburgh Review): ‘I wish the Newspaper Press had not been flattered so much; at any rate its glaring faults should have been pointed out. This was done, and very ill done, in 1823, when it had hardly any sins to answer for.’ (Selections from the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 199).

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204.

‘We are [I am] nothing, if not critical. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1. The words were used by Hazlitt as the motto to A View of the English Stage.

Terra plena, etc. Æneid, I. 460.

‘Large discourse,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Sc. 4.

205.

‘The pomp of elder days.’ Thomas Warton’s Sonnet, ‘Written in a blank leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon.’

206.

‘Cabin’d,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

207.

The Children of the Mist. In The Legend of Montrose.

‘A chemist,’ etc. Absalom and Achitophel, I. 550.

208.

Sir Thomas Lawrence. President of the Royal Academy from 1820 till his death in 1830.

‘Though he should have,’ etc. Adapted from 1 Corinthians, xiii. 1.

‘The toe of the scholar,’ etc. Varied from Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

209.

‘Take the good,’ etc. Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 106.

210.

‘Make the age to come her own.’ Cowley, The Motto, l. 2.

Mille ornatus habet, etc. ‘Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet.’ From the first of the Sulpicia poems which are in Book IV. of the Elegies of Tibullus, but the authorship of which is not certainly known.

‘Now this,’ etc. Spenser, Muiopotmos, St. 22.

‘To beguile the time,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

211.

‘Squeak and gibber.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1.

The St. James’s Chronicle. Started in 1760 as a tri-weekly, independent Whig evening paper. It was for a time edited by James Mill.

212 note. Mrs. Radcliffe, the novelist, was married in 1787 to William Radcliffe, an Oxford graduate and a student of law, described by Sir Walter Scott (Lives of the Novelists) as ‘afterwards proprietor and editor of the English Chronicle.’

213.

The Morning Chronicle. Founded June 28, 1769. The early notable editors were William Woodfall (1746–1803), James Perry (1756–1821), who was editor from 1789 to 1817, and John Black (1783–1855). For Perry cf. vol. VI. Table Talk, p. 292.

Porson. Richard Porson (1759–1808) was Perry’s brother-in-law.

Jekyll. Joseph Jekyll (d. 1837) contributed many of his jokes to The Morning Chronicle.

214.

The Marquis Marialva. Gil Blas, Livre VII. chap x.

215.

Lord Nugent. Presumably Robert, Earl Nugent (1702–1788), who retired from parliamentary life in 1784. It is odd that Hazlitt should refer to so well-known a man as a Lord Nugent.

The Times Newspaper. John Walter (1739–1812) in 1785 started The Daily Universal Register, the name of which was changed on Jan. 1, 1788 to The Times or Daily Universal Register, and on March 18, 1788 to The Times.

A steam-engine. See vol. III. Political Essays, p. 158. 425

216.

‘Ever strong,’ etc. King John, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘Whiff and wind.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Aggravate its voice,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Sc. 2.

217.

Mr. Walter. John Walter the Second (1776–1847).

A writer in his employ. Hazlitt’s brother-in-law, Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart, who left The Times in 1817 and started The Day and New Times, called from 1818 onwards The New Times. Hazlitt frequently attacks him.

‘Champion’s Legitimacy,’ etc. Cf. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 1.

219.

The late queen. Queen Caroline, George IV.’s wife, who died in 1821, shortly after her trial.

The Courier. An evening paper bought in 1799 by Coleridge’s friend Daniel Stuart (1766–1846), under whose management it quickly gained a large circulation.

‘The force of dulness,’ etc. Cf. ‘The force of nature could no farther go.’ Dryden, Lines printed under the engraved portrait of Milton.

The ingenious editor. William Mudford (1782–1848) was editor for some years before 1828.

220.

The Sun. An evening paper started in 1792 by Pitt’s friend, George Rose.

The Traveller. Started about 1803 by Edward Quin (d. 1823). It was amalgamated with The Globe in 1823.

The Morning Post. Founded in 1772.

Cobbett. William Cobbett (1762–1835) who started The Weekly Political Register in 1802.

We once tried, etc. Jeffrey attacked Cobbett in the Edinburgh (July 1807, vol. X. p. 386).

The Examiner. Founded by John and Leigh Hunt in 1808. Hazlitt had of course been intimately associated with the paper.

The News. A Sunday paper started in 1805.

The Observer. Another Sunday paper first made successful by William Innell Clement (d. 1852), who afterwards bought The Morning Chronicle.

221.

The Weekly Literary Journals, Gazettes. Of which The Literary Gazette, founded in 1817 and edited for a long time by William Jerdan (1782–1869), was the chief. Others were The Literary Journal (founded by James Mill in 1803) and The Literary Chronicle.

‘Coming Reviews,’ etc. Cf. ‘And coming events cast their shadows before.’ Campbell, Lochiel’s Warnings, l. 56.

The Scotsman. Started in 1817 by Charles Maclaren (1782–1866), who was editor from 1820 to 1845.

The Gentleman’s Magazine. Founded in 1731 by Johnson’s first employer, Edward Cave (1691–1754).

Mr. Blackwood’s. Founded in April 1817 by William Blackwood (1776–1834) as The Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. With the seventh number (Oct. 1, 1817) the title was changed to ‘Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.’ The thousandth number appeared in February, 1899.

The European. Founded by James Perry in 1782.

The Lady’s. The Lady’s Magazine; or entertaining Companion for the fair sex, 1717–1818. A new series began in 1820.

The London. The London Magazine was started in January 1820, with John Scott (1723–1821) as editor, and for some years maintained a very high level of excellence. See Talfourd’s Final Memorials of Charles Lamb (II. 1–9), and Mr. Bertram Dobell’s Sidelights on Charles Lamb. Hazlitt was a regular contributor.

426The Monthly. The Monthly Magazine founded in 1796 by Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) Phillips (1767–1840).

The New Monthly. The New Monthly Magazine was started by Henry Colburn (d. 1855) in 1814, in opposition to Phillips’s magazine. A new series, edited by Thomas Campbell, began in 1821. Many of Hazlitt’s best-known essays were contributed to it. The working editor was Cyrus Redding (1785–1870).

The head of Memnon. Hazlitt might have seen a plate of this in The London Magazine for February, 1821.

Dr. Johnson’s dispute, etc. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I. 154.

222.

Elia. Lamb wrote many of his Elia essays in The London Magazine, chiefly between 1820 and 1823.

The author of Table Talk. Hazlitt himself.

The Confessions of an Opium-Eater. Published in The London Magazine for September and October, 1821.

Tales of Traditional Literature. A series of tales by Allan Cunningham (1784–1842), republished in 1822 as ‘Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry.’

Mr. Geoffrey Crayon. Washington Irving (1783–1859), whose Sketch Book, to which Hazlitt probably refers, appeared in New York, 1819–1820.

‘With a blush,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act I. Sc. 3.

223.

The Editor, we are afraid, etc. Talfourd, in his Final Memorials of Charles Lamb, gives a lively account of Campbell’s fastidious editorship of the New Monthly.

‘Lively’ [waking], etc. Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 5.

‘The sin,’ etc. Hebrews, xii. 1.

225.

The Anti-Jacobin. Cf. ante, p. 139 and note.

‘The manna,’ etc. Pulci’s Morgante Maggiore. See ante, p. 69.

‘The pelting,’ etc. King Lear, Act III. Sc. 4.

227.

A well-known paper. John Bull, Oct. 27, 1822. On the previous Tuesday (Oct. 22) young Las Cases ‘applied a horsewhip to the shoulders’ of Sir Hudson Lowe, with a view, as he said, to provoke a duel. Lowe obtained a warrant for the apprehension of Las Cases, who, however, retired to France. The radical papers made great fun of the incident. See The Examiner, Nov. 3, 1822.

A man of classical taste, etc. Hazlitt refers to Leigh Hunt and The Story of Rimini. See vol. I. (A Letter to William Gifford), pp. 376–378 and notes.

228.

A young poet. On Keats and his Critics see vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 98 and note, and vol. IV. (The Spirit of the Age), pp. 302–307 and notes.

Author of the Baviad, etc. William Gifford.

229.

Such a paper was detected, etc. This was John Bull, Theodore Hook’s weekly paper, which on August 18, 1822, accused Mr. Fyshe Palmer, member for Reading, of having said that ‘he should have a dinner at the Crown on the occasion, with a haunch of venison, and turtle, and lots of punch.’ The detection was quoted from The Times in John Bull, Sep. 15, 1822.

LANDOR’S IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS

Hazlitt here reviews the first two volumes of Walter Savage Landor’s (1775–1864) Imaginary Conversations, published in 1824. A second edition, ‘corrected and enlarged,’ appeared in 1826, and vol. III. completing the ‘first series,’ in 1828. 427Vols. IV. and V. constituting the ‘second series,’ were published in 1829. For an account of Hazlitt’s visit to Landor at Florence in 1825 see Forster’s Walter Savage Landor, a Biography, II. 201–211, where a subsequent letter from Hazlitt to Landor is quoted, in which he says: ‘I am much gratified that you are pleased with the Spirit of the Age. Somebody ought to like it, for I am sure there will be plenty to cry out against it. I hope you did not find any sad blunders in the second volume; but you can hardly suppose the depression of body and mind under which I wrote some of those articles.’ This review of the Imaginary Conversations seems to have been cut about a good deal by Jeffrey.

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231.

‘Great wits,’ etc. Absalom and Achitophel, I. 163.

233.

‘It travels in a road’ [strait], etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3.

235.

Dashed and brewed. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 114.

‘To every good word,’ etc. Epistle to Titus, I. 16.

238.

‘All in conscience,’ etc. Chaucer, Prologue, 150.

Note. Tâtar. Cf., e.g., ‘Persian and Copt and Tatar, in one bond Of erring faith conjoin’d.’ Roderick, the Last of the Goths, I. 18–19.

See also Notes and Queries, tenth Series, I. 11, 12.

242.

‘The fairest princess under sky.’ The Faerie Queene, Introductory Stanzas, IV.

‘Paint the lily,’ etc. King John, Act IV. Sc. 2.

243.

‘Famous poets’ verse.’ Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I. XI. 27, and III. IV. 1.

‘The spur,’ etc. Lycidas, 70.

Belvidera’s sorrows. In Otway’s Venice Preserved.

245.

Occasion and Furor. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto IV.

‘Cymocles,’ etc. Ibid., Book II. Canto VI.

The philosopher of Malmesbury. Hobbes.

250.

Horace’s ‘nine years.’ ‘Nonumque prematur in annum.’ Ars Poetica, 388.

‘Que, si sous Adam,’ etc. A line in Boileau’s tenth satire. See the Conversation between the Abbé Delille and Walter Landor.

General Mina. The second volume of Imaginary Conversations was dedicated to General Espoz y Mina (1784–1835), the Spanish patriot who opposed Napoleon, and, later, the tyranny of the restored Bourbons.

Balasteros. Francisco Ballasteros (1770–1832), the Spanish general, who had capitulated to the French invaders in 1823, and been banished for life.

251.

Caviare to the multitude [general]. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

254.

Articles in The Friend. See The Friend, February 8, 1810. Coleridge referred to this essay, and quoted passages from it in one of the articles he wrote in The Courier in 1811. See Essays on his own Times, III. 829 et seq. These articles are probably alluded to by Hazlitt when he speaks of ‘strong allusions ... in a celebrated journal.’

255.

‘Final hope,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 143.

‘To shut,’ etc. Cf. ‘She opened; but to shut excelled her power.’ Paradise Lost, II. 883–884.

Bolivar. Simon Bolivar (1783–1830), ‘the Liberator’ of South America. Landor dedicated to him the third volume of his Imaginary Conversations.

Gebir. Published anonymously in 1798. ‘Many parts of it,’ says Landor (Preface to 1831 edition), ‘were first composed in Latin; and I doubted in which language to complete it.’

‘Pleased they remember,’ etc. Cf. Gebir, I. 168–169.

Count Julian. Published anonymously in 1812.

428

SHELLEY’S POSTHUMOUS POEMS

The volume here reviewed was published in 1824 by John and Henry L. Hunt. Hazlitt had little sympathy with Shelley either as a man or a poet. The grounds of his distrust of him as a man are given more than once, most fully, perhaps, in the essay ‘On Paradox and Common-Place’ (Table Talk, VI. 148–150), which led to the quarrel between Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt in 1821. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 304–315, and Four Generations of a Literary Family, I. 130–135. As for Shelley’s poetry, P. G. Patmore suggests that Hazlitt knew little or nothing of it. ‘Though I have often,’ he says (My Friends and Acquaintance, III. 136), ‘heard him speak disparagingly of Shelley as a poet, I never heard him refer to a single line or passage of his published writings.’ Hazlitt met Shelley at Leigh Hunt’s, and the two discussed Monarchy and Republicanism until three in the morning.’ See Mary Shelley’s journal of 1817, quoted in Professor Dowden’s Life, II. 103.

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256.

‘Too fiery,’ etc. Cf. ‘You know the fiery quality of the duke.’ King Lear, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘Beyond the visible,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, VII. 22.

‘All air.’ Cf. ‘He is pure air and fire.’ Henry V., Act III. Sc. 7.

257.

‘So divinely wrought,’ etc. Cf. John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, Second Anniversary, 245–246.

‘And dallies,’ etc. Richard III., Act I. Sc. 3.

‘More subtle web,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII. St. 77.

259.

‘There the antics sit.’ Richard II., Act. III. Sc. 2.

‘Palsied eld.’ Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1.

260.

Mr. Shelley died, etc. When Shelley’s body was cast ashore near Via Reggio (July 18, 1822), a volume of Keats’s poems was found in one pocket, and a volume of Sophocles in the other.

Two out of four poets, patriots, and friends. The four poets were presumably Shelley, Keats, Byron and Leigh Hunt.

Keats died young, etc. Cf. vol. VI. (Table Talk) p. 99.

A third has since been added, etc. Byron died at Mesolonghi, April 19, 1824.

261.

Mrs. Shelley. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1797–1851) married to Shelley, Dec. 30, 1816.

Alastor. Originally published in 1816.

Translation of the May-day Night. Published in The Liberal.

Julian and Maddalo. This poem, first published in Posthumous Poems, had been sent to Leigh Hunt in 1819 for publication by Ollier.

264.

‘Made as flax.’ Cf. Judges, XV. 14.

267.

The Letter to a Friend in London. The Letter to Maria Gisborne presumably.

‘Toys of feathered cupid.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

269.

‘The sun is warm,’ etc. Stanzas written in dejection near Naples.

270.

Mr. Keats’s sounding lines. Endymion, Book I. 232 et seq.

‘Weakness and melancholy.’ Cf. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

271.

‘To elevate and surprise.’ The Duke of Buckingham’s Rehearsal, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Overstep the modesty.’ Hamlet, Act III., Sc. 2.

‘Good set terms.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

Lord Leveson Gower. Lord Francis Leveson Gower (1800–1857), son of the second Marquis of Stafford, inherited a large property from his uncle, Francis Henry Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater, assumed the name of Egerton, and in 1846 was created Earl of Ellesmere. His translation of Faust appeared in 1823.

275.

Note. See vol. V. pp. 202–203, and notes.

429

LADY MORGAN’S LIFE OF SALVATOR

This Life appeared in 1823. Sydney Owenson (1783?–1859), author of The Wild Irish Girl in (1806), and many other less known books, was the daughter of Robert Owenson, the actor, and in 1812 married Sir Thomas Charles Morgan, the physician and philosopher. Cf. The Spirit of the Age (vol. IV.), p. 308, and The Plain Speaker (vol. VII.), p. 220. This review was republished in Criticisms on Art (1843–4) and in Essays on the Fine Arts (1873).

PAGE

278.

The miracle in Virgil. Æneid, III. 37–40.

279.

‘Housing with wild men,’ etc. Coleridge, Zapolya, Act II. Sc. 1.

280.

‘Their mind,’ etc. Sir Edward Dyer’s poem, beginning ‘My mind to me a kingdom is.’

‘In measureless content.’ Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Unjust tribunals,’ etc. Samson Agonistes, 695.

282.

‘Pride, pomp,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

283.

The celebrated Lanfranco. Giovanni Lanfranco (1581–1647), the painter.

‘Skins and films,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

287.

‘Another moon,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 311.

291.

‘According to Lord Bacon,’ etc. Advancement of Learning, Bk. II. iv. p. 2.

‘Burke, in a like manner,’ etc. See A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, 1791 (Works, Bohn, II. p. 535, et seq.)

292.

‘Moralizes,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 1.

Bernini. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), the sculptor.

296.

Passeri. Giovanni Battista Passeri (1610?–1679), author of Vite de’Pittori, Scultori, e Architetri, etc. (1772).

Mrs. Radcliffe’s Italian. Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, 1797.

Thaddeus of Warsaw. By Jane Porter (1776–1850), published in 1803.

298.

‘Like a wounded snake,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Criticism (II.), 357.

300.

‘Where universal Pan,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 266–268.

301.

Massaniello. Tommaso Aniello—called Masaniello—(1623–1647), the fisherman leader of the Neapolitan revolt against the Spanish viceroy in 1647.

AMERICAN LITERATURE—DR. CHANNING

This review is stated to be Hazlitt’s in the volume of Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, p. 70 note. Jeffrey writes to Napier, Nov. 23, 1829 (Ibid. pp. 69–70): ‘Your American reviewer is not a first-rate man, a clever writer enough, but not deep or judicious, or even very fair. I have no notion who he is. If he is young he may come to good, but he should be trained to a more modest opinion of himself, and to take a little more pains, and go more patiently and thoroughly into his subject.’ Carlyle, on the other hand, writes, Jan. 27. 1830 (Ibid. p. 78): ‘I liked the last [number] very well; the review of Channing seemed to me especially good.’ It is very strange that Jeffrey should not have recognised Hazlitt’s manner. Procter (An Autobiographical Fragment, p. 261) quotes a letter from Jeffrey of May 12, 1826, in which he says, ‘Can you tell me anything of our ancient ally Hazlitt?’

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310.

Mr. Brown. Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810), one of the earliest of American writers, author of Wieland (1798), Ormond (1799), Arthur Mervyn (1800), Edgar Huntley (1801), Clara Howard (1801), and Jane Talbot (1804). 430The first four of these are mentioned by Peacock as amongst the books ‘which took the deepest root in Shelley’s mind, and had the strongest influence on the formation of his character.’

310.

Mr. Cooper. James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), whose most famous novel, The Last of the Mohicans, had appeared in 1826.

311.

An ample tribute of respect. See reviews in the Edinburgh of The Sketch Book (Aug. 1820), and Bracebridge Hall (Nov. 1822). Both were written by Jeffrey.

Frankenstein. Mrs. Shelley’s novel (1818).

‘Of Brownies,’ etc. ‘Of Brownies and of bogillis full this buke.’ Gawin Douglas, Aeneis, VI. Prol. 18.

They hoot the Beggar’s Opera, etc. Cf. vol. VIII. (Dramatic Essays), p. 473 and note.

312.

Our own unrivalled novelist. Sir Walter Scott.

313.

The historiographer of Brother Jonathan. Hazlitt refers to John Neal’s Brother Jonathan: or the New Englanders. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1825.

His Pilot. 1823.

‘To suffer,’ etc. The Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

314.

‘Line upon line,’ etc. Isaiah, xxviii. 10.

Franklin. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790).

Poor Robin. Poor Richard’s Almanac, begun by Franklin in 1732, and continued with great success for twenty-five years.

1754. This apparently should be 1764.

‘Metre-ballad-mongering.’ Cf. Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Sc. 1.

315.

Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), whose Freedom of the Will appeared in 1754. Cf. Hazlitt’s philosophical lectures in vol. XI.

‘An honest method.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

316.

Dr. Channing. William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), minister of a Congregational church in Boston from 1803. He had visited England in 1822. Hazlitt is here reviewing Sermons and Tracts: including Remarks on the Character and Writings of Milton, and of Fenelon; and an analysis of the Character of Napoleon Bonaparte, 1829.

320.

In answer to Fenelon. Channing’s ‘Remarks’ were upon a volume of Selections from Fénelon, published in Boston, 1829.

323.

Bishop Butler’s Sermons. 1726.

325.

‘Wise above what is written.’ Cf. 1 Corinthians, iv. 6.

‘With authority,’ etc. S. Matthew, vii. 29.

326.

‘As having something,’ etc. The Advancement of Learning, Book II. iv. 2.

327.

‘The father of lies.’ Cf. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Partition I. Sec. IV. Member i. Subsection 4.

328.

Fielding’s character of Mr. Abraham Adams. Joseph Andrews, Book III. chap. 5.

329.

‘No babies.’ ‘I am no baby.’ Titus Andronicus, Act V. Sc. 3.

FLAXMAN’S LECTURES ON SCULPTURE

A review of John Flaxman’s (1755–1826) Lectures on Sculpture (1829). The review was republished in Criticisms on Art (1843–4) and in Essays on the Fine Arts (1873). Flaxman had been professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy from 1810. In his Memoirs of William Hazlitt (II. 269) Mr. W. C. Hazlitt gives a number of marginal notes made by Hazlitt upon his copy of Flaxman’s Lectures probably with a view to this article.

PAGE431

335.

Torregiano. Pietro Torrigiano (c. 1470–1522), the Florentine sculptor who broke Michael Angelo’s nose. He came to England in 1509.

‘A city,’ etc. S. Matthew, V. 14.

336.

‘High and palmy.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Growing with its growth.’ Pope, Essay on Man, II. 136.

341.

Sir Anthony Carlisle. Sir Anthony Carlisle (1768–1840), the surgeon, studied for a time at the Royal Academy, and wrote an essay ‘On the Connection between Anatomy and the Fine Arts,’ to which Hazlitt probably refers.

344.

‘To make Gods,’ etc. Cf. Genesis, i. 26.

‘Hitherto,’ etc. Job, xxxviii. 11.

345.

‘The labour,’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 3.

348.

‘Shreds and patches.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘Upon her eyebrows,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto III. St. 25.

349.

‘By their own beauty,’ etc. Cf. ‘By our own spirits are we deified.’ Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence, 47.

350.

‘The scale,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, VIII. 591–592.

351.

Incendio del Borgo. Raphael’s fresco in the Vatican.

WILSON’S LIFE AND TIMES OF DANIEL DEFOE

Walter Wilson’s (1781–1847) Memoirs of the Life and Times of Daniel Defoe was published in 3 vols. in 1830.

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355.

Tutchin and Ridpath. John Tutchin (1661?–1707) and George Ridpath (d. 1726), two Whig contemporaries of Defoe, successive editors of The Observator.

Dispraise of the Beggars’ Opera. See Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, III. 595–596.

356.

‘Excellent iteration in him.’ Cf. Henry IV., Part I. Act I. Sc. 2.

As honest Hector Macintyre, etc. See The Antiquary, chap. XX.

‘Thinly scattered,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 1.

Rari nantes, etc. Æneid, I. 118.

356.

‘I remember my grandfather,’ etc. Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, I. 6, and Defoe’s Review, vii. Pref.

357.

Mr. Samuel Wesley. Samuel Wesley the elder (1662–1735), whose attack on the education of the Dissenters (1703) engaged him in a controversy.

Shortest Way with the Dissenters., 1702.

358.

Harley. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (1661–1724).

‘Heaven lies about us,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 66.

‘Poor Robinson Crusoe,’ etc. Robinson Crusoe, Section XV.

358.

True-born Englishman. 1701.

Review. 1704–1713.

Essays on Trade. Defoe wrote several tracts on the subject of trade.

360.

Legion Petition. ‘Legion’s Memorial’ to the House of Commons in reference to the Kentish Petition of 1701. A second Memorial appeared in the following year.

‘Heaping coals of fire,’ etc. Romans, xii. 20.

‘Stuff of the conscience.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘A foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

361.

Toland. John Toland (1670–1722), the deist.

362.

Note. See Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, I. 73 note. 432

363.

‘There goes a very honest gentleman,’ etc. According to Madame de La Fayette (Mémoires de la Cour de France), it was Louvois’ brother, the Archbishop of Rheims, who, on seeing James come from Mass, said: ‘Voilà un fort bon homme, il a quitté trois royaumes pour une messe.’

Dr. Sherlock. William Sherlock (1641?–1707), one of the non-jurors for a short time after the Revolution.

364.

An eloquent passage. See Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, I. 76–77 and Defoe’s Review, IV. 643–644.

The Exclusion Bill. Passed by the House of Commons and rejected by the House of Lords, 1680.

A very curious account. Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, I. 156 et seq.

366.

His Complete Tradesman. The Complete English Tradesman, 1727.

367.

‘To keep their seats firm.’ Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 97).

‘The fate of James,’ etc. Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, I. 162–163.

368.

‘Courage had been screwed,’ etc. Cf. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

An Address to the Dissenters. This pamphlet (1687) seems to have been Bishop Burnet’s. See Lee’s Life of Defoe and Notes and Queries, 4th Ser. IV. 253, 307.

The Marquis of Halifax. George Savile, Marquis of Halifax (1633–1695). The pamphlet referred to by Hazlitt appeared in 1686.

369.

An early Piece. Lee (Life of Defoe, I. 15) regards this piece (1683) and Speculum Crape-gownorum (1682) as spurious.

Lives of the Philipses. William Godwin’s Lives of Edward and John Philips, 1815.

Note. An Appeal to Honour and Justice. 1715.

370.

‘The Hortus Siccus of Dissent.’ Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 14).

Oldmixon. John Oldmixon (1673–1742), whose History of England during the Reign of the Royal House of Stuart was published in 3 vols. 1729–1739.

371.

‘Though that his joy,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

372.

‘Not pierceable‘, etc. Cf. ‘Not perceable with power of any starr.’ The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto I. St. 7.

373.

‘Speaking a word,’ etc. Cf. Proverbs, XV. 23.

374.

Sacheverell. Henry Sacheverell (1674–1724). The sermon referred to was preached before the University of Oxford on June 2, 1702. See Wilson’s Memoirs, etc. of Defoe, II. 27–28.

‘So should his anticipation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

375.

A Hymn to the Pillory. 1703.

‘See where on high,’ etc. ‘Earless on high stood unabash’d De Foe.’ The Dunciad, II. 147.

‘Dishonour, honourable.’ Cf. ‘Honour dishonourable.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 314.

‘Condemned to everlasting fame.’ ‘Damned to everlasting fame.’ Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 284.

‘Oh soul supreme,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle V. 23–24.

‘The fellow that was pilloried.’ See Swift’s A Letter from a Member of the House of Commons in Ireland, to a Member of the House of Commons in England, concerning the Sacramental Test (1709).

‘The superficial part of learning.’ Gay, in his Present State of Wit (1711), spoke of Defoe as a ‘fellow, who had excellent natural parts, but wanted a small foundation of learning.’

376.

‘Flying to others,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1. 433

376.

‘Why troublest thou,’ etc. Cf. ‘Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?’ S. Matthew, viii, 29.

377.

William Benson. William Benson (1682–1754). Defoe was prosecuted and imprisoned for his anti-Jacobite tracts of 1713, Reasons against the Succession of the House of Hanover, etc.

‘The force of dulness,’ etc. Cf. Dryden, Lines printed under the Engraved Portrait of Milton, 5.

378.

His History of that event. History of the Union of Great Britain, 1709.

Apology for the Massacre of Glencoe. In Defoe’s History of the Union, 4to. edition, pp. 68–73.

‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,’ etc. See Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, II. 457.

379.

His novels. Those referred to by Hazlitt are Moll Flanders, 1721; Roxana, 1724; Captain Singleton, 1720; Colonel Jack, 1722; and Memoirs of a Cavalier, 1720.

The Family Instructor. 1715–1718.

‘Meddling with the unclean thing.’ Cf. 2 Corinthians, VI. 17.

380.

‘All the fore-end of his time.’ Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 3.

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

‘Purple light.’ Cf. ‘The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.’ Gray, The Progress of Poesy, 41.

381.

What Mr. Lamb says, etc. See Lamb’s ‘Estimate of De Foe’s Secondary Novels,’ written for Wilson’s Life of Defoe (III. 636). The paper is reprinted in The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, I. 325–327.

382.

Imposed upon Lord Chatham. See Wilson’s Memoirs, etc., of Defoe, III. 509.