NOTES

FUGITIVE WRITINGS

ON ABSTRACT IDEAS

This essay was first published along with the second edition (1836) of An Essay on the Principles of Human Action. See Bibliographical Note, vol. VII. p. 384. The source of the essay does not appear to be known, but it very likely formed the substance of one of the Lectures which Hazlitt delivered at the Russell Institution. See ante, pp. 25, et seq. and notes. The title of one of these Lectures (III.) was ‘On Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, and on the Nature of Abstraction.’ It has not been thought necessary to give references to all the numerous passages quoted from Locke and other philosophers discussed by Hazlitt. In many cases he himself gives a sufficient reference in the text.

PAGE

1.

It is by Mr. Locke ... denied, etc. See An Essay concerning Human Understanding, II. xi. 10.

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

6.

The Bishop of Worcester. Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), who published three pamphlets in reply to Locke’s Essay. For an account of the controversy see Locke’s Works (Bohn), II. 339 et seq.

7.

‘General ideas,’ etc. Condillac, La Logique, chap. V.

8.

‘To speak,’ etc. Ibid.

9.

‘It is agreed on all hands,’ etc. All the passages quoted from Berkeley are from the Introduction to A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).

12.

‘Abstract ideas,’ etc. Locke’s Essay, IV. vii. 9.

ON THE WRITINGS OF HOBBES

This and the four succeeding papers were first published in Literary Remains, where the author’s son says of them (vol. I. p. 115): ‘The following Essays form part of a series of Lectures delivered with very great effect by my father at the Russell Institution, in 1813. I found them with other papers in an old hamper which many years ago he stuffed confusedly full of MSS. and odd volumes of books, and left in the care of some lodging-house people, by whom it was thrown into a cellar, so damp that even the covers of some of the books were fast mouldering when I first looked over the collection. The injury to the MSS. may be imagined. Some of the Lectures, indeed, to my deep regret, are altogether missing, burnt, probably, by the ignorant people of the house; and I have had the greatest difficulty in preparing those which remain for the press. They are, however, most valuable.’ The course, consisting of ten Lectures, was delivered in 1812, not 1813. The syllabus will be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s 564Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1. 192 et seq. The first lecture was ‘On the Writings of Hobbes, showing that he was the father of the modern system of philosophy.’

27.

‘They were made fierce,’ etc. Advancement of Learning, I. iv. 6.

28.

‘Four champions fierce,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 898.

29.

It has been generally supposed, etc. Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke a Great Plagiarist,’ post, p. 284.

32.

‘Discourse of Human Nature.’ This work, though circulated in MS. as early as 1640, was not published till 1650, the year before the publication of Leviathan.

45.

‘This difference of quickness,’ etc. Leviathan, part I. chap. VIII.

Harris, the author of Hermes, etc. Cf. vol. VIII. (The English Comic Writers) p. 19, where the same passages are quoted from Locke, Hobbes, and Harris.

46.

‘Though the effect of folly,’ etc. Leviathan, part I. chap. VIII.

‘The foolish daughters of Pelias’ [Peleus], etc. Ibid. part II. chap. XXX.

The same allusion in Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 113).

48.

‘Soft collar of social esteem.’ Ibid. II. 90.

‘Order of thoughts,’ etc. Leviathan, part I. chap. III.

‘Stood all astonied,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, VII. VI. 28.

50.

Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the American theologian and metaphysician, published his work On the Freedom of the Will in 1754.

ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY

Lectures VII. and VIII. were ‘On the Writers on Liberty and Necessity, and on Materialism.’

Gassendi. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), the French philosopher and mathematician, with whom Hobbes had been intimate at Paris.

53.

Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration, etc. In the Ethica, published in Opera Posthuma (1677).

Marsennus. Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), the friend and disciple of Descartes.

54.

Bishop Bramhall. John Bramhall (1594–1663), successively Bishop of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh, whose controversy with Hobbes arose in 1655.

57.

Tripos. ‘Hobbes’s Tripos’ (1684) contained, among other things, the essay ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ (1654).

58.

‘With all these means,’ etc. Henry IV. Part II. Act III. Sc. 1.

60.

‘Fixed fate,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 560.

Dr. Priestley. Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated appeared in 1777. His controversy with Horsley lasted from 1783 till 1790, during which time many letters to Dr. Horsley were published.

71.

‘Something far more deeply interfused,’ etc. Borrowed from Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 96 et seq.

73.

‘Ille igitur,’ etc. Cicero, De Fato, XIX. 43.

ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

This appears to have been Lecture II. of the course. Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke a Great Plagiarist,’ post, p. 284.

79.

‘Discourse of reason.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2

81.

‘Without form and void.’ Genesis i. 2. 565

81.

The mind alone is formative. Kant. Cf. post, p. 176.

82.

The natural fool, etc. Cf. ante, p. 41.

84.

‘Peace to all such.’ Pope, Prologue to the Satires, 193.

85.

The Vicar’s profession of faith. See Émile, Livre IV.

‘Light of Nature pursued.’ A work abridged by Hazlitt himself. See vol. IV. of the present edition.

88.

‘Fluttering its pennons vain,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 933–4.

89.

‘The latter end,’ etc. Cf. The Tempest, Act II. Sc. 1.

100.

‘The fundamental principle,’ etc. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, part IV. sect. IV.

108.

The ‘Essay on Vision.’ Published in 1709.

110.

‘Reason pandering will.’ Cf. ‘And reason panders will.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

118.

Dr. Clarke’s celebrated work. Samuel Clarke’s (1675–1729) Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, etc., one of the Boyle lectures delivered in 1704 and 1705.

ON TOOKE’S DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY

Lecture IX. was ‘On the Theory of Language; as treated by Horne Tooke, by the author of Hermes, and Lord Monboddo.’ Cf. vol. IV. (The Spirit of the Age), p. 231, and notes.

119.

‘Mere [very] midsummer madness.’ Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 4.

123.

M. Portalis. Jean Étienne Marie Portalis (1745–1807), one of the compilers of the Code Napoléon.

‘Of the little sneering,’ etc. Junius, Letter LIV.

‘Undoes creation,’ etc. Gay, Verses to be placed under the Picture of Sir R. Blackmore.

‘Rebelling angels,’ etc. Marvell, On Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost.

‘Holds us a while,’ etc. Ibid.

125.

‘That honour consists.’ etc. Jonathan Wild, Book I. Chap. 13.

128.

A celebrated German philosopher. Kant.

131.

‘So from the root,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 1, where much of this paragraph is repeated.

132.

‘Has oft been chased,’ etc. Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, l. 5–8.

ON SELF-LOVE

Lecture IV. of the series. Cf. the essay on ‘Self-Love and Benevolence (A Dialogue)’ printed in vol. XII. pp. 95 et seq., and An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (vol. VII. pp. 383, et seq.), from which a great part of the present Lecture is taken.

133.

‘Wise saws and modern instances.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

136.

‘Mutual interest,’ etc. Jonathan Wild, Book I. Chap. 4.

139.

Shaftesbury or Hutcheson. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), author of the Characteristics (1711), and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), a supporter of Shaftesbury’s ethics.

140.

‘Pity is only,’ etc. See Hobbes’s Human Nature, Chap. IX. Sect. 10.

147.

‘The jealous God,’ etc. ‘Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.’ Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 75–6. 566

158.

‘Thrills in each nerve,’ etc. Cf. ‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.’ Pope, An Essay on Man, l. 218.

159.

‘The hair-breadth scapes,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

160.

Junius has remarked, etc. In his letter to George III. (Dec. 19, 1769).

MADAME DE STAËL’S ACCOUNT OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE

Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne, published in London in 1813, had been reviewed, possibly by Hazlitt, in The Morning Chronicle for Nov. 13, 1813, and the four papers here reprinted and signed ‘An English Metaphysician’ are ostensibly a continuation of that review, though they contain very little about German philosophy and nothing at all about German literature. They are, in fact, merely fragments in letter form of the course of lectures which Hazlitt had recently delivered at the Russell Institution. See ante, pp. 25 et seq. and notes. Hazlitt was a regular contributor to The Morning Chronicle during 1813 and 1814. Some of his contributions on politics, the stage, and the fine arts will be found in vols. III., VIII. and IX. of the present edition; and he gives an account of his relations with James Perry, the editor, in the essay ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (see vol. VI. p. 289). None of the Chronicle papers included in the present volume have been republished before.

162.

The article in The Edinburgh Review. Vol. XXII. p. 198. The review was by Jeffrey.

164.

‘They were made fierce,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 27.

165.

‘Four champions fierce,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 28.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

167.

‘A justly decried author.’ Locke, Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester (Works, Bohn, II. 401).

‘Fame is no plant,’ etc. Lycidas, 78–82.

168.

‘Harsh and crabbed.’ Comus, 476.

Willich. Elements of the Critical Philosophy, etc., Translated by A. F. M. Willich, M.D., appeared in 1798. The Critique of Pure Reason had appeared in 1781.

171.

‘And all this,’ etc. Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Act II. Sc. 1.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

174.

‘A dark closet,’ etc. Cf. Locke’s Essay, II. xi. 17.

‘Drossy and divisible.’ Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, I. 319.

175.

Mrs. Salmon’s ... wax figures. An old established exhibition in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar. See The Spectator, No. 28.

176.

‘Without form and void.’ Genesis i. 2.

179.

‘Thrills in each nerve,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 158.

‘Jove’s light’nings,’ etc. The Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

At the end of this letter it was announced that ‘Another Letter on the Principles of Human Action will conclude this series.’ The promised Letter, however, does not seem to have been published.

181.567

‘Peace to all such.’ Cf. ante, note to p. 84.

Note. For Fearn’s book, see Table Talk, vol. VI. pp. 63–5; 260–2 and notes.

183.

‘So from the root,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 1.

186.

‘Had oft been chased,’ etc. The Hind and the Panther, I. 5–8.

FINE ARTS.—BRITISH INSTITUTION

Hazlitt used a portion of this notice in the essay on ‘Fine Arts’ which he afterwards (1824) contributed to The Encyclopædia Britannica. See vol. IX., pp. 406–7. The British Institution was founded in 1805 at 52 Pall Mall and continued till 1866. The winter exhibition was of the works of living artists. A second notice, in The Morning Chronicle for Feb. 10, is probably by Hazlitt. It contains very brief comments on the less notable pictures, and is not reprinted here.

188.

Mr. Bird’s Picture of Job. The painter was Edward Bird (1772–1819), elected a Royal Academician in 1815.

189.

Mr. Allston’s large picture. This picture by the ‘American Titian,’ Washington Allston (1779–1843), gained a prize of 200 guineas from the British Institution and is now at Philadelphia.

190.

Mr. Hilton’s Picture. By William Hilton (1786–1839), Royal Academician (1818).

Mr. West’s Picture. For Benjamin West (1738–1820), who succeeded Reynolds (1792) as President of the Royal Academy, see vol. IX. (Essays on the Fine Arts), pp. 318 et seq.

‘Pure religion,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘O Friend! I know not which way I must look,’ etc.

Society for the suppression of vice. Cf. vol. I. (The Round Table), p. 60 and note.

Mr. Turner’s grand landscape. Now in the National Gallery and (wrongly) known as ‘Apuleia in search of Apuleius.’ The confusion seems to have arisen from a misreading by Turner of a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XIV. 517 et seq.) which the picture was designed to illustrate.

Lord Egremont’s picture. An engraving by Woollett of Claude’s ‘Jacob and Laban’ was in the possession of Lord Egremont at Petworth, and it is probably to this that Hazlitt refers. It was at Petworth that Turner painted the landscape in question.

191.

‘Mercury and Herse.’ Exhibited in 1811.

The Favourite Lamb. By William Collins (1788–1847).

THE STAGE

Nearly the whole of this paper was incorporated into the essay on Richard III. in Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. See vol. I. pp. 300–303 and notes.

192.

‘As tenderly be led,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Bustle in.’ Richard III., Act I. Sc. 1.

THE FINE ARTS. THE LOUVRE

195.

Blücher. The fighting at Laon had taken place on March 9 and 10. Blücher entered Paris on March 31.

‘Away to Heav’n,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘Nay, if you mouth,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1. 568

196.

‘Pigeon-liver’d,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Scrawls,’ etc. Pope, Prologue to the Satires, 19–20.

The treaty of Pilnitz. See vol. III. (Political Essays), p. 61 and note.

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

‘Tell me your company,’ etc. The proverb is quoted in Don Quixote, Part II. chap. 23.

‘Stands the statue,’ etc. Thomson, The Seasons, Summer, 1347. The Venus de Medici was restored to Florence after the fall of Napoleon.

There is the Apollo, etc. This enumeration of the treasures collected at the Louvre by Napoleon makes Hazlitt’s authorship of the essay quite certain. Cf. vol. VI. (Table Talk), pp. 15–16 and notes, and vol. VIII. (The English Comic Writers), p. 149, where the present passage is repeated almost verbatim. See also Notes of a Journey, etc., vol. IX. p. 107.

197.

‘There is old Proteus,’ etc. Misquoted from Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us,’ etc.

‘What’s Hecuba to them,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

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

‘We look up,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Breath can make them,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 54.

Wittgenstein, etc. Louis Adolphe Pierre Wittgenstein (1769–1843); Ferdinand, Baron Wintzingerode (1770–1818), two well-known Russian generals.

‘But once put out their light,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

Poet who celebrated the fall, etc. Coleridge, presumably.

‘Time-hallowed laws.’ Hazlitt elsewhere attributes this phrase to Wordsworth. See vol. III., note to p. 175.

WILSON’S LANDSCAPES AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

Part of this article was incorporated in the Encyclopædia Britannica article on ‘Fine Arts’ (see vol. IX. pp. 392–394), and a further part was included in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of the same essay in Essays on the Fine Arts (1873). Many of Wilson’s landscapes were exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1903. In this and in the later notices of exhibitions the catalogue numbers have been omitted, and in a few cases it has been necessary to substitute a semicolon for a comma, in order to distinguish between different pictures.

199.

‘A buoy,’ etc. King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

200.

‘Resembling a goose-pye,’ Swift, Vanburgh’s House, l. 104.

201.

Note. ‘Silly shepherds,’ etc. Cf. Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, The Hymn, St. viii.

202.

‘While universal Pan,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 266–8.

Note. Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter. See vol. I. (The Round Table), note to p. 162.

ON GAINSBOROUGH’S PICTURES

This article, like the last, was used for the Encyclopædia essay (vol. IX. pp. 395–6) and was partly reproduced in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Essays on the Fine Arts, 1873 (notes to p. 244).

202.

A Portrait of a Youth. The famous ‘Blue Boy’ belonging to the Duke of Westminster, painted in 1779. 569

203.

Portrait of Garrick. Painted in 1776, and now at the Stratford-on-Avon Museum.

‘Distilled books,’ etc. Bacon, Essays (‘Of Studies’).

‘I to Hercules.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

Cottage Children. ‘Rustic Children,’ now in the National Gallery.

205.

Note. Two Spanish Beggar Boys. In the Dulwich Gallery. See vol. IX. p. 25.

MR. KEMBLE’S PENRUDDOCK

This theatrical notice is clearly Hazlitt’s, though he omitted it from A View of the English Stage. Cf. vol. I. (Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays), p. 237, where the same words are used, with trifling variations, in criticism of Kemble’s Hamlet. Cf. also vol. VIII. p. 376.

205.

Penruddock. In Richard Cumberland’s The Wheel of Fortune (1795).

206.

‘Is whispering nothing,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act I. Sc. 2.

207.

‘There is no variableness,’ etc. St. James i. 17.

‘Splenetic [splenetive] and rash.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘The fiery soul,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, l. 156–8.

‘You shall relish,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

INTRODUCTION TO AN ACCOUNT OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES

Hazlitt contributed to The Champion six papers on the ‘Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds.’ The first two of these (Oct. 30 and Nov. 6. 1814) were used in the author’s Encyclopædia Britannica essay on ‘Fine Arts.’ See vol. IX. of the present edition, pp. 377 et seq., and the notes, where the omitted portions of the two articles are supplied. The last four (viz. the present essay and the three succeeding ones) are here reprinted for the first time. Hazlitt afterwards dealt with the same subject in the two essays entitled ‘On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses’ (vol. VI. Table Talk, pp. 122–145).

208.

Note. For Richardson see vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 10 and note. Charles Antoine Coypel (1694–1752) was Director of the Academy from 1747. His Discourses on Art were republished in 1883 by H. Jouin (Conférences de l’Académie royale de peinture).

ON GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY

211.

If Raphael, for instance, had only copied, etc. See Reynolds’s Twelfth Discourse.

212.

‘Sole sitting,’ etc. Wordsworth, Poems on the Naming of Places, IV.

‘Beauty, rendered still more beautiful.’ Cf. ‘——And he would gaze till it became Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain The beauty, still more beauteous.’ Wordsworth, Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, 35–37.

‘Thrice happy fields,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, III. 569–570.

213.

‘The tender mercies.’ ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.’ Proverbs xii. 10.

‘Wandering through dry places,’ etc. Cf. S. Matthew xii. 43. 570

213.

Note. Claude’s Liber Veritatis, now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, is not a collection of original sketches, but a record of his pictures with inscriptions showing for whom they were painted.

215.

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

ON THE IMITATION OF NATURE

221.

‘Blinking Sam.’ See Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes, etc. (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, I. 313).

ON THE IDEAL

223.

‘Might ascend,’ etc. Henry V. Prologue.

224.

‘Obscurity her curtain,’ etc. From a poem To the Honourable and Reverend F. C. in Dodsley’s Collection of Poems, vol. VI. (1758), p. 138. The poem (anonymously published) was written by Sneyd Davies (1709–1769), and was addressed to Frederick Cornwallis, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. See The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. I. p. 174, and Nichols’s Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. I.

226.

‘Whose end,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

228.

We have heard it observed, etc. By Coleridge, probably. See vol. IV. p. 217.

CHARLEMAGNE: OU L’ÉGLISE DÉLIVRÉE

230.

The brother of Buonaparte. Lucien Buonaparte (1775–1840), Prince of Canino. The present review of his Charlemagne, etc. is signed ‘W. H.’

231.

Henriade. Voltaire’s epic (1723).

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

235.

The true Florimel, etc. The Faerie Queene, III. viii.

236.

Another epic poem. La Cirnéide (1819).

LUCIEN BUONAPARTE’S COLLECTION, ETC.

This article is signed ‘W. H.’

237.

‘Vile durance.’ Kenrick’s Falstaff’s Wedding (1766), Act I. Sc. 2.

‘The mistress or the saint.’ Cf. Goldsmith, The Traveller, 152.

Jocunda. The portrait of Mona Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

239.

‘Laborious foolery.’ Hazlitt seems to be quoting from himself. See his Letter ‘On Modern Comedy’ (1813), vol. VIII. p. 554.

240.

‘Come, then, the colours,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 17–20.

Watteau. Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).

Guerin. Pierre Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833). The picture referred to is now in the Louvre.

241.

The Deluge by Girodet. This picture of Anne Louis Girodet’s (1767–1824) is in the Louvre.

242.

Lefebre. Hazlitt presumably refers to Robert Le Fèvre’s (1756–1830) portrait of Napoleon now in the Gallery at Versailles.

571

BRITISH INSTITUTION

These three notices of the Exhibition at the British Institution are signed ‘W. H.’

243.

C. L. Eastlake. Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), elected President of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1850; Director of the National Gallery from 1855.

‘Antique Roman.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

A hint from a high quarter. Hazlitt presumably refers to the fact that Canning had not been in office since his quarrel with Castlereagh in 1809.

244.

‘A great book is a great evil.’ A saying of Voltaire’s. Cf. vol. V. (Lectures on the English Poets), p. 114.

‘It is place,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 3.

245.

G. Hayter. George (afterwards Sir George) Hayter (1792–1871). His ‘Ezra’ gained a prize of £200.

Mr. Harlowe’s Hubert and Arthur. By George Henry Harlow (1787–1819), a pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

‘Deep scars,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 601.

Miss Geddes. Margaret Sarah Geddes (1793–1872), better known as Mrs. Carpenter, and a portrait-painter.

Chalon. Alfred Edward Chalon (1781–1860).

Burnetts, etc. James M. Burnet (1788–1816) and John Burnet (1784–1868); Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (1787–1855); Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777–1843); John Glover (1767–1849). Both the Nasmyths, Alexander (1758–1840) and Peter (1787–1831), were represented at the Exhibition.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

246.

W. Collins. William Collins (1788–1847).

247.

Bone. Robert Trewick Bone (1790–1840).

H. Howard. Henry Howard (1769–1847).

H. Singleton. Henry Singleton (1766–1839).

P. H. Rogers. Philip Hutchins Rogers (1794–1853).

J. Wilson. John Wilson (1774–1855).

248.

The ablest landscape painter, etc. Turner. Cf. vol. I. (The Round Table), p. 76 note.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

248.

B. Barker. Benjamin Barker (1776–1838).

Ab. Cooper. Abraham Cooper (1787–1868).

W. Westall. William Westall (1781–1850).

249.

J. Stark. James Stark (1794–1859).

P. Dewint. Peter De Wint (1784–1849).

A. Sauerweide. Alexander Sauerweid (1782–1844).

‘War is a game,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, V. 187–8.

ON MR. WILKIE’S PICTURES

This essay is signed ‘W. H.’

249.

Archbishop Herring’s letters. Cf. vol. V. (Lectures on the English Poets), p. 141 and note.

250.

The highest authority on art. From this point the rest of the essay was incorporated in the Lecture on Hogarth. See vol. VIII. pp. 139–141. 572

251.

‘To shew vice [virtue],’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘The very error,’ etc. Cf. ‘It is the very error of the moon.’ Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

252.

‘Your lungs begin to crow,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

[CHARACTER OF MR. WORDSWORTH’S NEW POEM, THE EXCURSION]

Under this heading Hazlitt contributed to The Examiner three papers which he afterwards partly republished with omissions and variations in two essays in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 111–125. These omissions and variations are given below.

At the beginning of the first essay as published in The Round Table add from the first (August 21, 1814) of The Examiner articles the following passage:—

‘In power of intellect, in lofty conception, in the depth of feeling, at once simple and sublime, which pervades every part of it and which gives to every object an almost preternatural and preterhuman interest, this work has seldom been surpassed. If the subject of the Poem had been equal to the genius of the Poet, if the skill with which he has chosen his materials had accorded with the power exerted over them, if the objects (whether persons or things) which he makes use of as the vehicle of his feelings had been such as immediately and irresistibly to convey them in all their force and depth to others, then the production before us would indeed have “proved a monument,” as he himself wishes it, worthy of the author and of his country. Whether, as it is, this most original and powerful performance may not rather remain like one of those stupendous but half-finished structures, which have been suffered to moulder into decay, because the cost and labour attending them exceeded their use or beauty, we feel it would be rather presumptuous in us to determine.’

At the end of the first paragraph on p. 112 add the following note:—

‘Every one wishes to get rid of the booths and bridges in the Park,^[68] in order to have a view of the ground and water again. Our Poet looks at the more lasting and serious works of men as baby-houses and toys, and from the greater elevation of his mind regards them much in the same light as we do the Regent’s Fair and Mr. Vansittart’s “permanent erections.”’

For ‘He sees all things in himself’ (p. 112, l. 28) read ‘He sees all things in his own mind; he contemplates effects in their causes, and passions in their principles.’

To the words ‘our very constitution’ (p. 113, l. 8) Hazlitt in The Examiner appends, as a note, ‘“God knew Adam in the elements of his chaos, and saw him in the great obscurity of nothing.” Sir Thomas Browne.’

For ‘The general and the permanent’ (p. 113, l. 12) read ‘The common and the permanent.’

The words ‘interlocutions between Lucius and Caius’ (p. 113, l. 19) are not between quotation marks in the magazine.

The Examiner for Aug. 28, 1814 contained a second essay on the same subject, republished in The Round Table, except that the opening paragraph was somewhat curtailed. In place of the paragraph in The Round Table ‘We could have wished,’ etc. (vol. I. p. 113) read:—

‘We could have wished that Mr. Wordsworth had given to his work 573the form of a philosophical poem altogether, with only occasional digressions or allusions to particular instances. There is in his general sentiments and reflections on human life a depth, an originality, a truth, a beauty, and grandeur both of conception and expression, which place him decidedly at the head of the poets of the present day, or rather which place him in a totally distinct class of excellence. But he has chosen to encumber himself with a load of narrative and description which, instead of assisting, hinders the progress and effect of the general reasoning. Almost all this part of the work, which Mr. Wordsworth has inwoven with the text, would have come in better in plain prose as notes at the end. Indeed, there is something evidently inconsistent, upon his own principles, in the construction of the poem. For he professes, in these ambiguous illustrations, to avoid all that is striking or extraordinary—all that can raise the imagination or affect the passions—all that is not every way common and necessarily included in the natural workings of the passions in all minds and in all circumstances. Then why introduce particular illustrations at all which add nothing to the force of the general truth, which hang as a dead weight upon the imagination, which degrade the thought and weaken the sentiment, and the connection of which with the general principle it is more difficult to find out than to understand the general principle itself? It is only by an extreme process of abstraction that it is often possible to trace the operation of the general law in the particular illustration, yet it is to supply the defect of abstraction that the illustration is given. Mr. Wordsworth indeed says finely, and perhaps as truly as finely,’ etc.

Instead of saying that Wordsworth’s powers of description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of his classical predecessor, Akenside (p. 114), Hazlitt, in The Examiner, made the very different statement that ‘his powers of description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of thought and sentiment.’

To the quotation on page 116, ‘Poor gentleman,’ etc. Hazlitt adds, as a note, ‘Love in a Wood.’

After the words ‘any thing but dull’ (p. 116, l. 22) add, from The Examiner, ‘Rasselas indeed is dull; but then it is privileged dulness.’

After ‘natural exercise of others’ (p. 117, l. 7) add ‘The intellectual and the moral faculties of man are different; the ideas of things and the feelings of pleasure and pain connected with them.’ There are a few other trifling verbal alterations in this paragraph. The note on the word ‘solitary’ on p. 117 is not in The Examiner.

A third essay on the same subject was published in The Examiner for October 2, 1814. This was reprinted with a few omissions and additions in The Round Table (see vol. I. pp. 120–125).

The opening paragraph in The Round Table is condensed from the following:—

‘Poetry may be properly divided into two classes; the poetry of imagination and the poetry of sentiment. The one consists in the power of calling up images of the most pleasing or striking kind; the other depends on the strength of the interest which it excites in given objects. The one may be said to arise out of the faculties of memory and invention, conversant with the world of external nature; the other from the fund of our moral sensibility. In the combination of these different excellences the perfection of poetry consists; the greatest poets of our own or other countries have been equally distinguished for richness of invention and depth of feeling. By the greatest poets of our own country, we mean Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, who evidently possessed both kinds of 574imagination, the intellectual and moral, in the highest degree. Young and Cowley might be cited as the most brilliant instances of the separation of feeling from fancy, of men who were dazzled by the exuberance of their own thoughts and whose genius was sacrificed to their want of taste. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, whose powers of feeling are of the highest order, is certainly deficient in fanciful invention: his writings exhibit all the internal power, without the external form of poetry. He has none of the pomp and decoration and scenic effect of poetry: no gorgeous palaces nor solemn temples awe the imagination: no cities rise with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned^[69]: we meet with no knights pricked forth on airy steeds: no hair-breadth scapes and perilous accidents^[70] by flood or field. Either from the predominant habit of his mind, not requiring the stimulus of outward impressions, or from the want of an imagination teeming with various forms, he takes the common every-day events and objects of nature, or rather seeks those that are the most simple and barren of effect; but he adds to them a weight of interest from the resources of his own mind, which makes the most insignificant things serious and even formidable. All other interests are absorbed in the deeper interest of his own thoughts, and find the same level. His mind magnifies the littleness of his subject, and raises its meanness; lends it his strength, and clothes it with borrowed grandeur. With him a molehill, covered with wild thyme, assumes the importance of “the great vision of the guarded mount”^[71]: a puddle is filled with preternatural faces, and agitated with the fiercest storms of passion; and to his mind, as he himself informs us, and as we can easily believe, “——The meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”’^[72]

After the words ‘among these northern Arcadians’ (vol. I. p. 121) Hazlitt quotes ll. 411–439 of Book V. of The Excursion.

The short paragraph on p. 122 reads in The Examiner:—

‘We think it is pushing our love or admiration of natural objects a good deal too far, to make it a set-off against a story like the preceding, which carries that concentration of self-interest and callousness to the feelings of others to its utmost pitch, which is the general character of those who are cut off by their mountains and valleys from an intercourse with mankind, even more than of the country people.’

In The Examiner, after the words ‘the beautiful poem of Hart Leap Well,’ the essay concludes as follows:—

‘We conceive that about as many fine things have passed through Mr. Wordsworth’s mind as, with five or six exceptions, through any human mind whatever. The conclusion of the passage we refer to is admirable, and comes in like some dying close in music:—[The Excursion, Book VII., ll. 976–1007].

‘If Mr. Wordsworth does not always write in this manner, it is his own fault. He can as often as he pleases. It is not in our power to add to, or take away from, the pretensions of a poem like the present, but if our opinion or wishes could have any weight, we would take our leave of it by saying—Esto perpetua!’

The first two of these Examiner articles are referred to by Lamb in a letter 575to Wordsworth of Sept. 19, 1814. See Letters, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I. 434–5. It is significant of Hazlitt’s increasing bitterness (caused mainly, no doubt, by the final downfall of Napoleon) that the passages omitted from The Round Table are for the most part of a highly eulogistic character.

ON ROCHEFOUCAULT’S MAXIMS

This paper is signed ‘W. H.’ in The Examiner.

254.

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

The Practice of Piety. See vol. III. (Political Essays), note to p. 111.

Grove’s Ethics. Henry Grove’s (1684–1738) A System of Moral Philosophy (1749).

De l’Esprit. Helvétius’s famous book (1758).

Note. Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening.

256.

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

257.

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

ON THE PREDOMINANT PRINCIPLES, Etc.

This essay, the title of which has been taken from the Index to The Examiner, is No. IX. of the Round Table series. It was republished in Winterslow under the title of ‘Mind and Motive.’

259.

‘Friends now fast sworn,’ etc. Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 4.

260.

‘The servile slave.’ The Faerie Queene, II. vii. 33.

261.

‘The toys of desperation.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

262.

A fine observation, etc. Aristotle, Metaphysics, A I. 980 a, 21.

THE LOVE OF POWER, Etc.

No. XIII. of the Round Table series, republished in Winterslow along with the former essay as ‘Mind and Motive.’

265.

‘But for an utmost end,’ etc. Hobbes, Human Nature, VII. 5, 6 (Works, ed. Molesworth, IV. 33).

266.

‘He courted a statue,’ etc. Don Quixote, Part I. Book II. Chap. 13.

267.

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

‘I also was an Arcadian.’ Cf. vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 27 and note.

268.

‘Sithence no fairy lights,’ etc. Sneyd Davies, To the Honourable and Reverend F. C. See ante, note to p. 224.

Happy are they, etc. Hazlitt seems to have been fond of this passage. See vol. IV. (Reply to Malthus), p. 104, and vol. III. (Political Essays), note to p. 266.

ESSAY ON MANNERS

This essay, No. XVIII. of the Round Table series, was republished in Winterslow. Part of it Hazlitt himself used in the essay ‘On Manner’ in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 44–7 and notes.

269.

The Flower and Leaf. This poem is not now regarded as Chaucer’s. Cf. vol. V. (Lectures on the English Poets), p. 27 and note. 576

271.

‘The painted birds,’ etc. Dryden, The Flower and the Leaf, etc., ll. 46–53, 102–152.

272.

Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough, etc. The rest of the essay from this point is in vol. I. (see pp. 44–7 and notes).

KEAN’S BAJAZET, Etc.

This theatrical notice is proved to be Hazlitt’s by the passage (p. 276) beginning ‘Happy age, when the utmost stretch of a morning’s study,’ etc., which is repeated in the Lecture ‘On Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.’ See vol. VIII. p. 70. Rowe’s Tamerlane was first produced in 1702.

274.

Miss Stephens’s reappearance in Polly. Cf. vol. VIII. pp. 193–5.

275.

‘Full of sound,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 5.

‘A load to sink a navy.’ Henry VIII. Act III. Sc. 2.

Ambition as the hunger of noble minds. See Tamerlane, Act II. Sc. 2.

276.

The Country Girl. Produced originally in 1766, an adaptation by Garrick of The Country Wife of Wycherley. Cf. vol. VIII. p. 76. Mrs. Mardyn, Mrs. Alsop, and the actors here referred to are dealt with by Hazlitt in A View of the English Stage.

DOCTRINE OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY

This paper, signed ‘W,’ is clearly Hazlitt’s. Cf. the Lecture on the same subject, ante, pp. 48–74. The essay is No. XXVII. of the Round Table series.

277.

‘For I had learnt,’ etc. Cf. Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 95–102.

278.

‘Threshold of Jove’s throne.’ Cf. ‘Before the starry threshold of Jove’s court,’ Comus, I.

279.

‘Praise and blame,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 56.

280.

‘A good favour,’ etc. Loosely quoted from Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc. 3.

282.

Marvell and his leg of mutton. Hazlitt refers to the story of Danby’s unsuccessful attempt to win over Marvell to the court. One version of the story is that in Danby’s presence Marvell summoned his servant and said to him, ‘Pray, what had I for dinner yesterday?’ ‘A shoulder of mutton.’ ‘And what do you allow me to-day?’ ‘The remainder hashed.’ Marvell then added to Danby, ‘And to-morrow, my lord, I shall have the sweet blade-bone broiled.’

‘Allemagne,’ etc. De l’Allemagne, Preface.

‘But there is matter,’ etc. Wordsworth, Hart-Leap Well, 95–6.

PARALLEL PASSAGES IN VARIOUS POETS

No. XXVIII. of the Round Table series, and signed ‘W.’ The long passages from Voltaire, etc. have been indicated by the first and last line.

282.

Zaire. 1732.

283.

‘Soft you,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Vanished [melted] into thin air.’ The Tempest, Act IV. Sc. 1.

Ducis. Jean François Ducis (1733–1816), who adapted some of Shakespeare’s plays for the stage. 577

283.

‘As flat,’ etc. Cf. ‘He has crushed his nose, Susannah says, as flat as a pancake to his face.’ Tristram Shandy, III. 27.

284.

Potter. Robert Potter’s (1721–1804) translation of Æschylus appeared in 1777.

‘When I had gazed,’ etc. Poems on the Naming of Places, II. 51 et seq.

We have once already attempted, etc. In three articles in The Examiner. Cf. ante, pp. 572–5, and vol. I. (The Round Table), pp. 111–125.

‘In my former days of bliss,’ etc. From ‘The Shepherd’s Hunting’ (1615).

THE DUKE D’ENGHIEN

In addition to the essays reprinted in the text from The Examiner of 1815 there are four letters signed ‘Peter Pickthank’ on the Duke D’Enghien, to which reference should be made. These appeared on September 24, October 8, November 19, and December 10, and were written in reply to a correspondent signing himself ‘Fair Play.’ The controversy arose out of an article (September 3) entitled ‘Chateaubriand, The Quack,’ which contained a casual reference to the Duke D’Enghien, ‘whom Buonaparte is accused of having murdered because he was not willing that he, the said Royal Duke, should assassinate him.’ ‘Fair Play’ seized on this passage and protested (September 10) against the implied defence of the Duke D’Enghien’s execution. ‘Peter Pickthank’ replied (September 24), and the correspondence was kept up till near the end of the year, ‘Fair Play’ contributing letters on October 1, October 29, and November 26. ‘Peter Pickthank’s’ letters contain many of Hazlitt’s stock quotations and personal allusions (to Dr. Stoddart, for example); they embody exactly his political opinions, and altogether the internal evidence of their having been written by him is very strong. Inasmuch, however, as there is not absolute certainty in the matter, and a considerable part of the letters would have been unintelligible without including ‘Fair Play’s’ letters as well, the editors have felt justified in omitting the whole correspondence. An editorial note at the end of ‘Peter Pickthank’s’ third letter (November 19) states that ‘this article has been delayed in order to soften some of the asperities.’

MR. LOCKE A GREAT PLAGIARIST

No. XXXI. of the Round Table series, and signed ‘W.H.’

285.

‘The very head,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘A justly exploded [decried] author.’ See ante, p. 167 and note.

Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation. Prefixed to the Supplement to the 4th and 5th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1816).

286.

‘Fame is no plant,’ etc. Lycidas 78–82.

287.

‘The greatest and as it were radical distinction,’ etc. Bacon, Aphorisms, LV.

‘That strain I heard was of a higher mood.’ Lycidas, 87.

288.

What is most remarkable, etc. This passage on wit will be found in an expanded form in Lectures on the English Comic Writers. See vol. VIII. pp. 18–21.

Three papers, which we propose to write. These papers do not appear to have been written.

289.

‘The laborious fooleries.’ See ante, note to p. 239.

290.

‘The tenth transmitter,’ etc. Cf. ‘No tenth transmitter of a foolish face.’ Savage, The Bastard, 8.

‘The mind alone is formative.’ See ante, p. 176.

578

[THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED]

In The Examiner for March 3, 1816 appeared the following note:—‘A correspondent who signs himself J.W. thinks we ought to bring proofs of Mr. Locke’s want of originality as the founder of a system. We recommend him, if he is curious on this subject, to read the first eighty pages of Hobbes’s Leviathan, if the name does not alarm him. After that, if he is not satisfied and repeats his request, perhaps we may attend to it.’ On March 31 (Round Table No. XXXIV.) Hazlitt brings forward his proofs in a long paper which consists chiefly of extracts from Locke, Hobbes and other philosophers. The essay begins as follows:—

‘We have been required to give proof of Mr. Locke’s want of originality as a metaphysical reasoner, and of the claims of Hobbes to be considered as the founder of the modern system of the philosophy of the human mind.

‘Here then it is. But at the same time we would observe, that we do not think ourselves bound to give this proof to those who have demanded it (somewhat impatiently) at our hands. It was sufficient for us to have stated our opinion on this subject, and to have referred the curious expressly to the sources from which they might satisfy themselves of the truth or hollowness of our assertion. To our readers in general we owe some apology for alluding to such subjects at all. But to the point.—We have said that the principles of the modern school of metaphysics are all to be found, pure, entire, connected, and explicitly stated, in the writings of Hobbes: that Mr. Locke borrowed the leading principle of that philosophy from Hobbes, without understanding or without admitting the system in general, concerning which he always seems to entertain two opinions: that succeeding writers have followed up Mr. Locke’s general principle into its legitimate consequences, and have arrived at exactly the same conclusions as Hobbes, but that being ignorant of the name and writings of Hobbes, they have with one accord and with great injustice attributed the merit of the original discovery of that system to Mr. Locke, as having made the first start, and having gone further in it than any one else before him.

‘The principles of the modern system, of which Mr. Locke is the reputed and Mr. Hobbes the real founder, are chiefly the following:—

1. That all our ideas are derived from external objects, by means of the senses alone, and are merely repetitions of our sensible impressions.

2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so the mind itself, with all its operations, is nothing but matter and motion.

3. That thoughts are single, or that we can have only one idea at a time; in other words, that there are no complex ideas in the mind.

4. That we have no general or abstract ideas.

5. That the only principle of connection between one idea and another is association, or their previous connection in sense.

6. That reason and understanding are resolvable entirely into the mechanism of language.

7. and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source of all our affections.

9. That the mind acts from necessity, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.

[The manner of stating and reasoning on this last point, viz. the moral and practical consequences of the doctrine of necessity is the only circumstance of importance, in which the modern philosophers differ from Hobbes.]

10. That there is no such thing as genius, or a difference in the natural capacities or dispositions of men, the mind being originally alike passive to all impressions, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances &c., &c.

579‘That these are the most striking positions of the moderns with respect to the human mind, is what every one, familiar with the writers since Locke, as Berkeley, Hartley, Hume, Priestley, Horne Tooke, Beddoes, among ourselves, and Helvetius, Condillac, Mirabaud, Condorcet &c., among the French, will readily allow: that most of them are to be found in the Essay on Human Understanding, mixed up in a state of inextricable confusion with common-place and common sense notions, now advanced, now retracted, the arguments on one side of the question now prevailing through an endless labyrinth of explanation, now those on the other, and now both opinions asserted and denied in the same sentence is what is equally well known to the readers of Locke and his commentators. That the same system came from the mind of Hobbes, not hesitating, stammering, puling, drivelling, ricketty, a sickly half birth, to be brought up by hand, to be nursed and dandled into common life and existence, but just the reverse of all this, full grown, completely proportioned and articulated, compact, stamped in all its lineaments, with the vigour and decision of the author’s mind, is what we have now to shew.’

The extracts follow, interspersed with brief comments by Hazlitt, and the essay concludes as follows:—

‘To what Mr. Hobbes has written on this subject [Liberty and Necessity] nothing has been added nor can be taken away. We agree to every word of it, and the more heartily, because it is the only one of all the points which have been stated on which we do. In speaking of the popular notions of liberty, in his controversy with a foolish Bishop of that day (Bramhall), he says, “In fine, that freedom which men commonly find in books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the churches, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets, and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will; but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems neither the Bishop nor they ever thought on.” Hobbes was as superior to Locke as a writer, as he was as a reasoner. He had great powers both of wit and imagination. In short he was a great man, not because he was a great metaphysician, but he was a great metaphysician because he was a great man.

‘It has been thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s metaphysical speculations have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy excited by the irreligious and despotical tendency of his other writings. But in this he has also been unfairly dealt with. Locke borrowed his fundamental ideas of government from him; and there is not a word directly levelled at religion in any of his works. At least, his aristocratical notions and his want of religion must have, in some measure, balanced one another; and Charles II. had his picture hanging in his bed-room, though the Bishops wished to have him burnt. The true reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was, that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately understood, without passing through the hands of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who, to quote some fine lines of Spenser,

——‘Stood all astonished like a sort of steers

’Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race

Unawares is chanced far straying from his peers;

So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.’^[73]

580

COLERIDGE’S ‘CHRISTABEL’

On June 2, 1816, The Examiner published a review of Coleridge’s Christabel, as to the authorship of which there has been some discussion. See Notes and Queries, 9th Ser. XI. pp. 171 and 271. Mr. Dykes Campbell (The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 606) is disposed to attribute the review to Hazlitt. As in the case of the Edinburgh Review notice of Christabel (see vol. X. of the present edition, pp. 411–418), Hazlitt’s authorship cannot be regarded as absolutely certain. The review is as follows:—

‘The fault of Mr. Coleridge is, that he comes to no conclusion. He is a man of that universality of genius, that his mind hangs suspended between poetry and prose, truth and falsehood, and an infinity of other things, and from an excess of capacity, he does little or nothing. Here are two unfinished poems, and a fragment. Christabel, which has been much read and admired in manuscript, is now for the first time confided to the public. The Vision of Kubla Khan still remains a profound secret; for only a few lines of it ever were written.^[74]

‘The poem of Christabel sets out in the following manner:

“’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.”

‘We wonder that Mr. Murray, who has an eye for things, should suffer this “mastiff bitch” to come into his shop. Is she a sort of Cerberus to fright away the critics? But—gentlemen, she is toothless.

‘There is a dishonesty as well as affectation in all this. The secret of this pretended contempt for the opinion of the public, is that it is a sorry subterfuge for our self-love. The poet, uncertain of the approbation of his readers, thinks he shews his superiority to it by shocking their feelings at the outset, as a clown, who is at a loss how to behave himself, begins by affronting the company. This is what is called throwing a crust to the critics. If the beauties of Christabel should not be sufficiently admired, Mr. Coleridge may lay it all to two lines which he had too much manliness to omit in complaisance to the bad taste of his contemporaries.

‘We the rather wonder at this bold proceeding in the author, as his courage has cooled in the course of the publication, and he has omitted, from mere delicacy, a line which is absolutely necessary to the understanding the whole story. The Lady Christabel, wandering in the forest by moonlight, meets a lady in apparently great distress, to whom she offers her assistance and protection, and takes her home with her to her own chamber. This woman,

581——“beautiful to see,

Like a lady of a far countree,”

is a witch. Who she is else, what her business is with Christabel, upon what motives, to what end her sorceries are to work, does not appear at present; but this much we know, that she is a witch, and that Christabel’s dread of her arises from her discovering this circumstance, which is told in a single line, which line, from an exquisite refinement in efficiency,^[75] is here omitted. When the unknown lady gets to Christabel’s chamber, and is going to undress, it is said—

“Then drawing in her breath aloud

Like one that shuddered, she unbound

The cincture from beneath her breast:

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!”

‘The manuscript runs thus, or nearly thus:—

“Behold her bosom and half her side—

Hideous, deformed, and pale of hue.”

‘This line is necessary to make common sense of the first and second part. “It is the keystone that makes up the arch.”^[76] For that reason Mr. Coleridge left it out. Now this is a greater physiological curiosity than even the fragment of Kubla Khan.

‘In parts of Christabel there is a great deal of beauty, both of thought, imagery, and versification; but the effect of the general story is dim, obscure, and visionary. It is more like a dream than a reality. The mind, in reading it, is spell-bound. The sorceress seems to act without power—Christabel to yield without resistance. The faculties are thrown into a state of metaphysical suspense and theoretical imbecility. The poet, like the witch in Spenser, is evidently

“Busied about some wicked gin.”^[77]

But we do not foresee what he will make of it. There is something disgusting at the bottom of his subject, which is but ill glossed over by a veil of Della Cruscan sentiment and fine writing—like moon-beams playing on a charnel-house, or flowers strewed on a dead body. Mr. Coleridge’s style is essentially superficial, pretty, ornamental, and he has forced it into the service of a story which is petrific. In the midst of moonlight, and fluttering ringlets, and flitting clouds, and enchanted echoes, and airy abstractions of all sorts, there is one genuine outburst of humanity, worthy of the author, when no dream oppresses him, no spell binds him. We give the passage entire:—’

[Here follow ll. 403–430 of Christabel, beginning ‘But when he heard the lady’s tale.’]

‘Why does not Mr. Coleridge always write in this manner, that we might always read him? The description of the Dream of Bracy the bard, is also very beautiful and full of power.

‘The conclusion of the second part of Christabel, about “the little limber elf,” is to us absolutely incomprehensible. Kubla Khan, we think, only shews that 582Mr. Coleridge can write better nonsense verses than any man in England. It is not a poem, but a musical composition.

“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.”

‘We could repeat these lines to ourselves not the less often for not knowing the meaning of them.’

In a sketch of Coleridge which appeared in The Examiner for Oct. 21, 1821, Leigh Hunt quotes the lines from Kubla Khan (‘A damsel with a dulcimer,’ etc.) and says: ‘We could repeat such verses ... down a green glade, a whole summer’s morning’; but in spite of this and a few other verbal similarities, a comparison of the sketch with the review does not support the theory that the latter was written by Leigh Hunt. Possibly he wrote a few lines here and there, but the review as a whole is far more suggestive of Hazlitt.

SHAKESPEAR’S FEMALE CHARACTERS

No. XLIII. of the Round Table series. It is partly reproduced in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. See especially the essays on Cymbeline and Othello (vol. I. 179 et seq. and 200 et seq. and notes).

290.

Miss Peggy. See ante, p. 276.

291.

‘Calls true love,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 2.

295.

‘Books, dreams,’ etc. Personal Talk, ll. 33 et seq.

Tate. Nahum Tate’s King Lear was brought out in 1681.

‘And her heart beats,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 2.

296.

‘Sir, the fairest flowers,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF THE GOOD OLD TIMES

Three papers appeared in The Examiner for April 6, April 13, and April 20, 1817, under the heading of ‘Sketches of the History of the Good Old Times before the French Revolution, when Kings and Priests did what they pleased, by the grace of God.’ In these essays a French anti-Bourbon book, the title of which is not given, is made the text for a most unflattering review of the characters of a number of kings, from Hugh Capet to Louis XVI. The subject would naturally attract Hazlitt, and indeed it may be said that the essays are almost certainly his. As, however, the internal evidence, though very strong, does not prove his authorship to be absolutely certain, it has been thought better not to include the essays in the present edition.

MISS O’NEILL’S WIDOW CHEERLY

This and the five succeeding theatrical papers from The Examiner of 1817 have been inserted in the text because the internal evidence seems to leave no room for doubt that they were written by Hazlitt. It is clear from A View of the English Stage that he was writing theatrical notices for The Examiner during the whole of the period in question (Jan.–May, 1817).

297.

The best actress ... with one great exception, etc. For this comparison of Miss O’Neill with Mrs. Siddons, cf. vol. VIII. p. 198, and for Miss O’Neill’s failure in comedy, ibid. p. 291. 583

297.

The Soldier’s Daughter. By Andrew Cherry, produced in 1804.

298.

‘The insipid levelling morality,’ etc. See Lamb’s footnote to Middleton and Rowley’s A Fair Quarrel. Hazlitt quotes the passage elsewhere.

PENELOPE AND THE DANSOMANIE

299.

‘Like to see the unmerited fall,’ etc. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 164).

300.

The Gentleman who is understood, etc. William Ayrton (1777–1858), who was musical director at the King’s Theatre in 1817 and again in 1821.

Of the Dansomanie, etc. A comparison of this passage with a reference to the ‘Dansomanie’ in vol. VIII. p. 437 is conclusive as to Hazlitt’s authorship of this notice.

‘Such were the joys,’ etc. Bickerstaffe, Love in a Village, Act II. Sc. 1.

‘Roll on,’ etc. Ossian, The Songs of Selma.

The notice concludes with a long quotation from Colley Cibber, introduced by the following paragraph: ‘As the present season may be considered as a sort of revival of the Opera, the following particulars of its first introduction into this country may not be unacceptable to the reader. They are taken from Colley Cibber’s Memoirs of himself, p. 316.’

OROONOKO

This tragedy by Thomas Southerne (1660–1746) was produced in 1696. See post, note to p. 303 (on Imogine), for conclusive proof of Hazlitt’s authorship of this notice.

301.

The success of his Richard II. This passage, though the conclusion drawn by Hazlitt is somewhat different, may be compared with his notice of Kean’s Richard II. (vol. VIII. p. 223).

‘The melting mood.’ Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

302.

‘The devil has not,’ etc. Cf. Macbeth, Act V. Sc 3.

303.

Imogine. In Maturin’s Bertram. Cf. the notice of that play in A View of the English Stage (vol. VIII. p. 307). In one of Hazlitt’s theatrical papers in The London Magazine (ibid. p. 391), he says of Miss Somerville’s (Mrs. Bunn’s) voice that ‘it resembles the deep murmur of a hive of bees in spring-tide, and the words drop like honey from her lips.’

‘The music of her honey-vows.’ Cf. ‘That suck’d the honey of his music vows.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘He often has beguiled us,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

Gray, the poet, etc. See a letter to Horace Walpole, September, 1737 (Letters, ed. Tovey, i. 8).

THE PANNEL AND THE RAVENS

A comparison of this paper with A View of the English Stage and the other dramatic essays in vol. VIII., makes it perfectly clear that Hazlitt is the writer.

304.

The Pannel. By John Philip Kemble, produced at Drury Lane in 1788.

‘Balsam of fierabras.’ Described by Don Quixote. See Don Quixote, I. I. 2. 584

304.

The howling of the rabble. The Regent had been attacked on his return to St. James’s Palace after opening Parliament on March 28, 1817.

The wax figures at Mrs. Salmon’s. See ante, p. 175.

‘Circe and the Sirens three.’ Comus, 253.

Miss Stephens. Hazlitt had noticed her first appearance. See vol. VIII. p. 192.

Mr. Fawcett. John Fawcett (1768–1837) was manager of Covent Garden theatre.

Till Miss O’Neill is tired, etc. See vol. VIII. note to p. 308.

‘The ravens are hoarse,’ etc. Cf. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

Toujours perdrix. See vol. IV. (The Spirit of The Age), p. 275 and note.

Mr. Canning. Cf. post, p. 336 note.

The Ravens, etc. See vol. VIII. note to p. 353.

The Maid and Magpie, etc. See vol. VIII. pp. 244 and 279.

‘And choughs,’ etc. Cf. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

The Maid of Palisseau. The Magpie, or the Maid of Palaiseau, a version attributed to T. J. Dibdin of La Pie Voleuse, produced at Dury Lane, Sept. 12, 1815.

Reminded us of her mother’s. Mrs. Alsop was daughter of Mrs. Jordan.

JOHN GILPIN

305.

‘And when he next,’ etc. John Gilpin, St. 63.

306.

‘The turnpike men,’ etc. Ibid. St. 29 and 30.

‘First, last, and midst.’ Cf. Paradise Lost, V. 165. Quoted by Hazlitt more than once.

‘That ligament,’ etc. Hazlitt elsewhere quotes this passage from Tristram Shandy (Book VI. Chap. 10).

307.

Mrs. Hill. ‘From Belfast,’ her first appearance.

DON GIOVANNI AND KEAN’S EUSTACE DE ST. PIERRE

With this notice compare Hazlitt’s article on Don Juan in A View of the English Stage, vol. VIII. pp. 362–366.

307.

Spenser’s description of Belphebe. In his former notice Hazlitt had compared Madame Fodor with Spenser’s Belphebe. See vol. VIII. p. 364 and note.

308.

The Surrender of Calais. By George Colman, Junior, originally produced at the Haymarket in 1791, and described by Genest as ‘a jumble of Tragedy, Comedy, and Opera.’

‘A clout upon that head,’ etc. Hamlet, Act. II. Sc. 2.

‘Though we have seen this,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Thunder, nothing but thunder.’ Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 2.

A new character, etc. Achmet in Barbarossa. See vol. VIII. p. 372.

CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY PEOPLE

The internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship of this paper is overwhelmingly strong. Some of the main points are referred to in the following notes. The essay was probably written at Winterslow.

309.

‘Here be truths.’ This is a saying, not of Dogberry, but of Pompey, in Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 1. 585

309.

‘Mountain foreigner.’ The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Retired from public haunts.’ Cf. ‘This our life exempt from public haunt,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 1.

Lord Foppington. In Vanbrugh’s The Relapse.

A philosophical poet, etc. Coleridge, probably.

‘Pelting villages.’ King Lear, Act II. Sc. 3.

‘A crew of patches,’ etc. A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, Act III. Sc. 2.

P—tt—n. Probably Pitton, a small village near Winterslow.

My friend C—— L——. Lamb, no doubt, who went with Hazlitt from Winterslow to Oxford in August, 1810. Cf. vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 188.

‘Fearing no colours.’ Twelfth Night, Act I. Sc. 5.

310.

They are feræ naturæ, etc. Cf. a sentence in vol. I. (The Round Table), p. 124: ‘They [country people] are taken out of a state of nature, without being put in possession of the refinements of art.’

311.

‘Be trampled in the mire,’ etc. A favourite quotation of Hazlitt’s from Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 93).

A mischievous wag, etc. Perhaps Lamb’s schoolfellow, Bobbie Allen, who visited Scotland and the Lakes with Dr. Stoddart in 1802. Lamb describes him in ‘Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago.’ See also Lamb’s Letters (ed. Ainger), I. 188.

‘The spinsters,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 4.

‘May I not take mine ease at mine inn?’ 1 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 3.

A few odd volumes of old plays and novels. It is known that Hazlitt was at the Hut at Winterslow during the summer and autumn of 1819, and that he had taken with him some volumes of the old dramatists in order to prepare for the course of lectures ‘On the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,’ delivered in the following year. See Barry Cornwall’s Autobiographical Fragment.

‘Fleet the golden time,’ etc. Cf. As You Like It, Act I. Sc. 1.

Note 1. Salisbury is only six miles from Winterslow.

312.

‘Giving to airy nothing,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

To elevate and surprise. Frequently quoted by Hazlitt from the Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, Act I. Sc. 1.

‘But I told him,’ etc. Henry V., Act II. Sc. 3.

313.

‘Sufficient to the day,’ etc. S. Matthew, vi. 34.

‘’Twould thin the land,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act III. Sc. 4.

314.

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

MR. MACREADY’S MACBETH

Macready played Macbeth for the first time on June 9, 1820. Cf. this with the notice of Kean’s Macbeth (vol. VIII. p. 204).

315.

‘Air-drawn dagger,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘Thick-coming fancies.’ Ibid. Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Docked and curtailed.’ Cf. ‘We know that they [bishops] hate to be dockt and clipt.’ Milton, Reformation in England, I.

‘Twa lang Scotch miles.’ Cf. ‘We think na on the lang Scots miles.’ Tam O’Shanter, 7.

‘Oh Hell-kite, all?’ Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 3.

David Rizzio. See vol. VIII. p. 459. 586

315.

The Lord of the Manor. A comic opera by General John Burgoyne (1722–1792), produced in 1780.

The Libertine. An opera attributed to Isaac Pocock, produced in 1817. See vol. VIII. p. 370.

Mr. Contrast. In The Lord of the Manor.

‘A speaking face.’ Hazlitt was perhaps thinking of the lines in Bombastes Furioso (Sc. 1): ‘——Fusbos, give place, You know you haven’t got a singing face.’

Moll Flagon. In The Lord of the Manor.

‘Let those laugh,’ etc. Cf. ‘Let those love now, who never lov’d before; Let those who always lov’d, now love the more.’ Parnell, Catullus, The Vigil of Venus.

317.

Mrs. Salmon. Eliza Salmon (1787–1849), a well-known concert and oratorio singer. The references in this paragraph to Miss Stephens and the quotations are conclusive evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship of the notice.

D’une pathétique, etc. Rousseau, Confessions, Liv. I.

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

‘With other notes,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 17.

The voice of Liberty, etc. The Revolution in Spain had broken out early in 1820, and on March 10 King Ferdinand had proclaimed the Liberal Constitution of 1812.

‘Had three ears again.’ Cf. ‘Had I three ears, I’d hear thee.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘Know the return of spring.’ The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Sc. 1.

GUY FAUX

See vol. IV. (The Spirit of the Age), p. 365 and note, and the essay ‘On Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen’ (republished in vol. XII. of the present edition), from which it appears that the subject was suggested to Hazlitt by Lamb. Lamb himself wrote an essay (not republished by him) on the same subject in The London Magazine for November 1823. This essay, in which a chaffing reference is made to Hazlitt’s three papers, was partly founded on an earlier essay ‘On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason,’ published in The Reflector, 1811. See The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, ed. E. V. Lucas, I. 236 and notes.

317.

Mr. Hogg’s Jacobite Relics. Published in 2 vols. in 1819. In the Introduction Hogg says, ‘And now, when the horrors of the Catholic religion have ceased to oppress the minds of men, there is but one way of thinking on the rights of the Stuarts throughout the realm.’

A Popish Priest. Guy Fawkes (1570–1606) was not a priest.

318.

Which Mr. Hogg treats, etc. Hazlitt seems to be referring to the general sense of the Introduction to The Jacobite Relics.

‘The best of cut-throats.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 4.

319.

Regulus. The stories of the self-sacrifice of Regulus and of Codrus, the last King of Athens, are familiar.

320.

‘The compunctious visitings of nature.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘The spirit is willing,’ etc. S. Matthew xxvi. 41. 587

320.

The keys of the House of Commons, etc. The allusion is to a passage in John Cam Hobhouse’s pamphlet, A Trifling Mistake, for which as a breach of privilege he was committed to Newgate in 1819.

Margaret Lambrun. This story is told as a ‘popular historical tradition’ by Miss Strickland in her Lives of the Queens of England.

321.

Sandt. Karl Ludwig Sand (1795–1820), who had assassinated Kotzebue the dramatist (March 23, 1819).

‘Well done,’ etc. S. Matthew, xxv. 21.

‘No dim doubts alloy.’ Lamb, Lines On the Celebrated Picture by Lionardo da Vinci, called the Virgin of the Rocks.

‘Quiring,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.

322.

‘This night,’ etc. Cf. S. Luke xxiii. 43.

‘Dross compared,’ etc. Cf. Romans viii. 18.

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

The Constitutional Association. See vol. VI. (Table Talk), note to p. 190.

The concealed Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine. This question of the editorship of Blackwood had recently (Feb. 16, 1821) led to the fatal duel between John Scott and Lockhart’s friend, Christie.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

323.

‘The infinite agitation of wit.’ Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I. iv. 5.

‘The soul of goodness,’ Henry V., Act IV. Sc. 1.

324.

‘According to knowledge,’ Romans x. 2.

‘A consummation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘A king is but a king [man],’ etc. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 90).

‘As the vine,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 307.

325.

‘Through the airy region,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2.

326.

Note. ‘As men should serve a cucumber,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Sc. 1.

327.

‘Bears a charmed life.’ Macbeth, Act V. Sc. 8.

‘All mortal consequences.’ Ibid. Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Set duty in one eye,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Set but a Scotsman,’ etc. Burns, The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer, etc., Postscript.

‘Happy warrior.’ See Wordsworth’s Character of a Happy Warrior (1807).

THE SAME SUBJECT CONCLUDED

328.

The Cid. Southey’s translation of the Chronicle of the Cid was published in 1808.

332.

Mr. Kean. An American lion was presented to Kean by Sir Edward Tucker. Barry Cornwall (Life of Edmund Kean, II. 135) says that ‘it amused the tragedian (who was fond of simple pleasures) to allure his acquaintance into the room, and set them face to face with the beast.’

‘Masterless passion,’ etc. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘The shot of accident,’ etc. Othello, Act IV. Sc. 1.

333.

Like Hotspur. 1 Henry IV., Act II. Sc. 4.

Regnault de St. Jean Angely. Michel Louis Étienne, Comte Regnaud de 588Saint Jean D’Angely (1762–1819), a well-known politician of the Revolution and under Buonaparte. The reference seems to be to his conduct in 1814 when in command of the National Guard at Paris.

333.

‘Be mine to read,’ etc. Gray, Letter to West (Letters, ed. Tovey, I. 97).

‘From worldly care,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, I. IV. 20.

CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING

This essay was included in the Paris edition (1825) and subsequent editions of The Spirit of the Age. See vol. IV. p. 186.

334.

‘The child,’ etc. Wordsworth, ‘My heart leaps up,’ etc.

‘Like as the sun-burnt Indians,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, III. XII. 8.

336.

‘Like the morn,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 310–311.

‘Scylla heard,’ etc. Cf. Comus, 257–259.

‘The nation’s Great Divan.’ Cf. ‘August divan of the British Senate.’ H. Walpole, Letters (1857), IV. 130.

337.

Reply to Sir John Coxe Hippesley. On March 11, 1813. Speeches, ed. Therry, III. 396.

338.

‘The worse the better reason.’ Paradise Lost, II. 113–4.

‘That makes these odds all even.’ Measure for Measure, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘He aggravates,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Quite chopfallen.’ Cf. Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

339.

‘The inimitable satire of Cervantes.’ See Canning’s Plymouth speech, October 1823.

340.

‘Pluck out the heart,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘The deliverance of mankind.’ Cf. Southey, Carmen Triumphale.

‘Of his port,’ etc. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 69.

‘Freezes his spirits up,’ etc. Cf. 2 Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 1.

341.

Described so well, etc. In his speech on receiving the freedom of Plymouth, October 1823.

‘The golden round,’ etc. Cf. Richard II., Act III. Sc. 2.

‘And to call evil good,’ etc. Isaiah v. 20.

‘Revered and ruptured Ogden.’ For this famous phrase, used during the debates on the Indemnity Bill, 1818, see Hansard, XXXVII. 1026, and Stapleton’s Political Life of Canning, I. 86.

Rejected Addresses. By James and Horace Smith, published in 1812.

‘Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin.’ Republished (1801) from The Anti-Jacobin.

342.

‘To turn what is serious,’ etc. Cf. ‘What should be great, you turn to farce.’ Prior, The Ladle, 139.

Note. See The Three Trials of William Hone (1818, First Trial, pp. 38–9), where a verse of Jekyll’s parody is quoted from The Spirit of the Journals.

Note. ‘A wit’s a feather,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Man, IV. 247–8.

THE DANDY SCHOOL

This essay, now republished for the first time, is attributed to Hazlitt by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Memoirs, etc., I. xxix) and by Ireland (List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, p. 76). The MS., in Hazlitt’s hand-writing, is still in existence.

343.

Vivian Grey. Disraeli’s first novel, published 1826–7. The dedication was as follows: ‘To the best and greatest of men I dedicate these volumes. 589He, for whom it is intended, will accept and appreciate the compliment: those, for whom it is not intended, will—do the same.’

344.

Long’s. A well-known hotel in Bond Street.

Almack’s. Assembly Rooms (now known as ‘Willis’s Rooms’), in King Street, St. James’s.

Mr. Martin’s bill, etc. Richard Martin’s (1754–1834) efforts on behalf of animals were bitterly opposed on all sides.

Mr. Croker, etc. ‘The Dulwich collection ... was quite as distant as Russell Square, though he did not profess to know exactly where Russell Square was.’ March 28, 1825. Hansard, New Series, XII. 1266.

345.

Sir Sedley Clarendels, etc. In Camilla.

Meadowses. In The Wanderer.

346.

‘The Court,’ etc. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Sc. 2.

Sayings and Doings. The first series appeared in 1824, the second in 1825 and the third in 1828.

348.

Mr. Vivacity Dull. A character in Vivian Grey, said to represent Horace Twiss.

ACTORS AND THE PUBLIC

This and the eleven following papers from The Examiner of 1828 have been included in the text mainly on account of the strong internal evidence they bear of Hazlitt’s authorship. One of the papers is signed ‘W. H.,’ the rest are unsigned. During the period covered by these essays other Theatrical Examiners appeared, signed ‘X’ or ‘Q.’ So far as the editors are aware, it has not been hitherto known that Hazlitt resumed regular theatrical criticism so late as 1828, but they feel that no reasonable doubt can exist with regard to his authorship of these twelve essays.

349.

Bate Dudley. Sir Henry Bate Dudley (1745–1824), the notorious clergyman and journalist discussed by Johnson and Boswell (Life, ed. G. B. Hill, IV. 296). He was for a time editor of The Morning Post.

‘Fall into misfortune.’ Cf. post, note to p. 533.

‘To tatters,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

350.

Who has praised Sir Walter, etc. The failure of Constable and of Ballantyne and Co., involving Scott’s financial ruin, had occurred in 1826.

A vulgar crim. con. In January 1825, a verdict of £800 was given against Kean in an action, Cox v. Kean, for criminal conversation. In consequence of this he was for a time ‘hooted from the stage.’

‘The spells,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

If an actor is indeed six feet high, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to Conway. See vol. VIII. p. 200, and post, p. 361.

351.

‘The fiery soul,’ etc. Dryden Absalom and Achitophel, 156–8.

‘The envy,’ etc. Richard II., Act II. Sc. 1.

Madame Catalani. Angelica Catalani had retired from the stage in 1827.

It was some time since we had seen Mr. Kean’s Shylock, etc. This paragraph makes Hazlitt’s authorship of this Theatrical Examiner quite certain. Cf. vol. VIII. p. 179.

FRENCH PLAYS

352.

Monsieur Perlet. Adrien Perlet (1795–1850), a well-known French comedian, who had made his first appearance in 1814.

‘Upturned eyes,’ etc. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 2. 590

352.

Madame Pasta. Cf. vol. VII. (The Plain Speaker), pp. 324 et seq.

‘A friend of ours,’ etc. See Patmore’s My Friends and Acquaintance (vol. III. pp. 32–5). According to Patmore, the following passage was intended by Hazlitt to form part of the Conversations with Northcote in The New Monthly Magazine, but was suppressed by the editor:—

‘He then asked me if I had seen anything of H——?^[78] I said, yes; and that he had vexed me; for I had shown him some fine heads from the Cartoons, done about a hundred years ago (which appeared to me to prove that since that period those noble remains have fallen into a state of considerable decay), and when I went out of the room for a moment, I found the prints thrown carelessly on the table, and that he had got out a volume of Tasso, which he was spouting, as I supposed, to let me understand that I knew nothing of art, and that he knew a great deal about poetry.

‘I said I never heard him speak with enthusiasm of any painter or work of merit, nor show any love of art, except as a puffing-machine for him to get up into to blow a trumpet in his own praise. Instead of falling down and worshipping such names as Raphael and Michael Angelo, he is only considering how he may, by storm or stratagem, place himself beside them, on the loftiest seats of Parnassus, as ignorant country squires affect to sit with judges on the bench. He told me he had had a letter from Wilkie, dated Rome, with three marks of admiration, and that he had dated his answer “Babylon the Great,” with four marks of admiration. Stuff! Why must he always “out-Herod Herod?”^[79] Why must the place where he is always have one note of admiration more than any other? He gave as his reasons, indeed, our river, our bridges, the Cartoons, and the Elgin Marbles—the two last of which, however, are not our own. H. should have been the boatswain of a man-of-war: he has no other ideas of glory than those which belong to a naval victory, or to vulgar noise and insolence; not at all as something in which the whole world may participate alike. I hate “this stamp exclusive and professional.”^[80] He added that Wilkie gave a poor account of Rome, and seemed, on the whole, disappointed. He (Haydon) should not be disappointed when he went, for his expectations were but moderate. “Ay,” said Northcote, “that is like the speech of a little, crooked, conceited painter of the name of Edwards, who went to Italy with Romney and Humphreys, and when they looked round the Vatican, he turned round to Romney and said, ‘Egad, George, we’re bit.’”

‘I said that when I heard stories of this kind, of even clever men who seemed to have no idea or to take no interest except in what they themselves could do, it almost inclined me to be of Peter Pindar’s opinion, who pretended to prefer taste to genius: “Give me,” said he, “one man of taste, and I will find you twenty men of genius.” N. replied, “It is a pity you should be of that opinion, for all your acquaintances are great geniuses; and yet, I fancy, they have no admiration for anybody but themselves.’”

352.

Sir William Curtis’s. Sir William Curtis (1752–1829), Lord Mayor of London (1795) and for long M.P. for the City.

353.

‘Our Cupid,’ etc. Cf. The Earl of Dorset’s song, Dorinda.

354.

The age of Louis XIV., etc. Cf. a passage in vol. IX. (Notes of a Journey, etc.), p. 150. 591

354.

‘New manners,’ etc. Thomas Warton, Sonnet ‘Written in a Blank Leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon.’

355.

‘Unmixed with baser matter.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.

A certain happy-spirited writer. Leigh Hunt, no doubt, whose recently published Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries had created some sensation.

FRENCH PLAYS (continued)

This article in The Examiner begins with a long editorial passage written in a chaffing spirit and praising the former notice of the French Plays.

356.

‘That soul of pleasure,’ etc. Cf. Pope, Moral Essays, III. 306.

357.

l. 15. Ariste. This should be Valère.

358.

There is a credulous and unqualified assent, etc. Cf. a passage in vol. VIII. (English Comic Writers), p. 29, where almost the same words are used.

‘To the woods,’ etc. Quoted elsewhere by Hazlitt.

THE THEATRES AND PASSION WEEK

This paper is signed ‘W. H.’

358.

‘Because thou art virtuous,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 3.

359.

‘Seizing [tear] their pleasures,’ etc. Marvell, To his Coy Mistress.

360.

Ranting Croly. The Rev. George Croly (1780–1860), a contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, and to Jerdan’s Literary Gazette.

‘Stretched upon the rack,’ etc. Cf. ‘Than on the torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstasy.’ Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘All the natural ills [shocks], etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘To jest,’ etc. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Sc. 2.

361.

‘What is set down for them.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

CHARLES KEAN

362.

Young Mr. Kean. Charles John Kean (1811?–1868), second son of Edmund Kean. He had made his first appearance at the opening of the Drury Lane season, October 1, 1827.

Lovers’ Vows. Mrs. Inchbald’s adaptation from Kotzebue (1798).

The Marquis of Douro. Arthur Richard (1807–1884), eldest son of the Duke of Wellington, afterwards second Duke.

363.

We do not presume, etc. This adaptation of a passage from Burke’s A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 114) is quoted elsewhere by Hazlitt.

The Dumb Savoyard. By Thompson, acted thirty-eight times.

364.

Mrs. W. West. Mrs. W. West (1790–1876) who first appeared (as Miss Cooke) in London in 1812. She married William West in 1815.

Meggy Macgilpin. Maggy Macgilpin in O’Keeffe’s Highland Reel (1788).

Keeley. Robert Keeley (1793–1869). His height was five feet two inches.

365.

‘A man made after supper,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Vice to be hated,’ etc. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, II. 217–18.

366.

Ecole des Veillards. By Casimir Delavigne (1823).

592

SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS

This notice is full of favourite quotations and of sentiments which Hazlitt had expressed elsewhere. See specially the Dramatic Essays in vol. VIII.

366.

‘Warbles,’ etc. L’ Allegro, 134.

‘Fierce extremes.’ Paradise Lost, II. 599.

The Invincibles. A musical farce, acted 34 times.

‘Our mind’s eye.’ Cf. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘Our heart’s core.’ Cf. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 2.

367.

‘Fancy’s midwife.’ Cf. ‘The fairies’ midwife.’ Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 4.

‘Gay creatures,’ etc. Comus, 299–301.

‘Tears,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 620.

368.

‘Mr. Kean’s Othello,’ etc. From The Times. See post, p. 406, and vol. VIII. p. 414 and notes.

‘With kindliest change.’ Paradise Lost, V. 336.

THE COMPANY AT THE OPERA

369.

Mr. Peake. Richard Brinsley Peake (1792–1847). The farce here noticed is called by Genest ‘Little Offerings.’

‘Crabbed age,’ etc. The Passionate Pilgrim, Stanza XII.

Miss Goward. Mary Ann Goward (1805?–1899), who afterwards became so well known as Mrs. Keeley. She married Keeley in 1829.

370.

Madame Caradori. Madame Caradori-Allan (1800–1865), who made her début at the Italian Opera in London in 1822.

Mademoiselle Sontag. Henriette Sontag (1806–1854). She married Count Rossi in 1828 and retired from the stage till near the end of her life.

371.

Brocard. Suzanne Brocard (1798–1855), whose first appearance at the Comédie Française was in 1817 and who retired in 1839.

372.

Lord Byron and his Contemporaries. Cf. ante, note to p. 355.

‘The mob,’ etc. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Book II. Ep. I. 108.

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA

373.

‘Vanity, chaotic Vanity.’ Hazlitt may have had in mind the lines in Romeo and Juliet (Act I. Sc. 1), ‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity! misshapen chaos!’

374.

‘Waste her sweetness,’ etc. Cf. Gray’s Elegy, 56.

Splenetic ‘[splenitive] and rash.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

Blanchard. William Blanchard (1769–1835), for long a member of the Covent Garden Company.

‘And when the date,’ etc. Butler, Hudibras, Part I. Canto 1. 285–6.

De Vere. By Robert Plumer Ward (1765–1846), published in 1827. It was supposed by some, though denied by the author, that De Vere was intended to represent Canning.

‘We have heard,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 2.

375.

Sir John Sylvester. Sir John Silvester (1745–1822), Recorder of London.

‘The thief,’ etc. Leviathan, Part I. Chap. 3.

A Race for Dinner. By G. H. B. Rodwell (1800–1852).

‘And Birnam wood,’ etc. Macbeth, Acts IV. and V.

The Poor Gentleman. By George Colman the Younger (1801). 593

375.

‘To advantage dressed.’ Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 297.

376.

Miss Ellen Tree. Ellen Tree (1805–1880), who married Charles Kean in 1842. She was a younger sister of Mrs. Bradshaw, the actress and singer.

377.

Miss Love. Emma Love, afterwards Mrs. Calcroft, had made her first appearance on the stage in 1817 at the English Opera House.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW AND L’AVARE

377.

‘The lungs of others,’ etc. Cf. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

378.

Mr. Wilkie failed, etc. See ante, p. 252.

‘Warble, warble.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 5.

379.

Mademoiselle Mars. For Mademoiselle Mars in ‘a sort of shadowy Catherine and Petruchio,’ see vol. IX. p. 151.

380.

Ninette à la cour. By Charles Simon Favart (1710–1792).

381.

Seraglio. An opera by Dimond, produced in 1827.

Charles the Second. By Howard Payne, produced in 1824.

MRS. SIDDONS

381.

Pie Voleuse. See ante, note to p. 304.

‘Born to converse,’ etc. Cf. Pope, Prologue to the Satires, 196.

The Fall of Nineveh. By John Martin (1789–1854). The painting was being exhibited in Bond Street.

382.

Abridged Paradise Lost. Mrs. Siddons published The Story of our First Parents selected from Milton’s Paradise Lost for the use of young persons, 1822.

A triumphant peroration, etc. Hazlitt no doubt refers to Scott’s Life of Napoleon, published in 1827.

‘The worst, the second fall of man.’ Cf. William Windham, Speeches, II. 47 (Nov. 4, 1801).

384.

‘Barren spectators.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

Mr. Stanfield’s landscape back-grounds. William Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867).

Veluti in speculum. Cf. ‘Inspicere tamquam in speculum in vitas omnium,’ etc. Terence, Adelphi, Act III. Sc. 3.

THE THREE QUARTERS, Etc.

384.

The new comedy. Ups and Downs, or the Ladder of Life was the title of the piece here noticed by Hazlitt. It was acted eight times.

The secretary of the Admiralty, etc. Croker. Cf. ante, p. 344.

385.

A nice distinction in Miss Burney. See her Cecilia.

Killing no Murder. A farce by Theodore Hook, produced in 1809.

386.

‘Like dew-drops,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘Fine by degrees,’ etc. Prior, Henry and Emma, 430.

‘They best can paint them,’ etc. Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 366.

Lord Porchester’s tragedy. Don Pedro, King of Castile, by Lord Porchester, afterwards 3rd Earl of Carnarvon (1800–1849) was produced at Drury Lane on March 10, 1828.

Lord Morpeth’s. Lord Morpeth, afterwards 7th Earl of Carlisle (1802–1864) published in 1828 The Last of the Greeks; or the Fall of Constantinople, a tragedy in verse. 594

386.

The Sphynx, etc. The Sphynx (1827) and The Athenæum (1828) were started, and The Argus (1828) was projected by James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855).

387.

‘Oh! dearest Ophelia,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

388.

‘He knows his cue,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act I. Sc. 2.

MR. KEAN

389.

We do not wonder, etc. Kean had played Richard III. at the Théâtre Français in May 1828.

Voltaire has borrowed, etc. Cf. ante, p. 282.

‘The poet’s eye,’ etc. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Sc. 1.

390.

‘Should be as a book,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

The Hetman Platoff. The Russian general, Matvei Ivanovich Platoff (1757–1818), Hetman of the Cossacks of the Don. See vol. IX. p. 465.

391.

‘Give us pause.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

Miss Smithson. Harriet Constance Smithson (1800–1854), who played frequently in France and married Hector Berlioz in 1833.

A series of elegant bas-reliefs, etc. Cf. vol. VIII. p. 456, where the same comparison is made.

392.

Little Bartolozzi. Miss Bartolozzi made her first appearance (at the Haymarket) on June 17, 1828. She was a sister of Madame Vestris.

MUNDEN’S SIR PETER TEAZLE

For Hazlitt’s connection with The Times as dramatic critic see vol. VIII. p. 512. The fifteen articles reprinted for the first time in the present volume have been included upon internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship. No reasonable doubt can be felt with regard to any of them.

392.

Past Ten O’clock. ‘A moderate farce’ by Dibdin, produced March 11, 1815. See Genest. In another account of Munden (vol. VIII. p. 270) Hazlitt had referred to his ‘broad shining face’ and ‘the alarming drop of his chin.’

YOUNG’S HAMLET

Cf. this paper with the account of Hamlet in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays, vol. I. p. 237.

394.

The Miller and his Men. A successful melodrama by Pocock, produced in 1813.

395.

‘The paragon of animals.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘Peaked or pined.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘Oh that this too, too solid flesh,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘The pretty Ophelia.’ Ibid. Act IV. Sc. 5.

DOWTON IN THE HYPOCRITE

Cf. the notice of The Hypocrite in A View of the English Stage, vol. VIII. pp. 245–7.

395.

‘Very craftily qualified.’ Othello, Act II. Sc. 3.

595

MISS BRUNTON’S ROSALIND

Cf. the notices of two other Rosalinds in A View, etc., vol. VIII. pp. 252 and 336.

397.

Miss Brunton. Elizabeth Brunton (1799–1860), who in 1823 married Frederick Henry Yates, the actor.

‘Good emphasis and discretion.’ Cf. ‘With good accent and good discretion,’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘The gods,’ etc. As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 3.

MAYWOOD’S ZANGA

Hazlitt had noticed Maywood’s Shylock. See A View, etc. vol. VIII. p. 374. In 1821 Maywood wrote to Hazlitt from New York introducing a Mr. Greenhow, who was entrusted to present to Hazlitt a morsel of George Cooke’s liver. See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Memoirs, etc., II. 1–2.

398.

‘From the sound,’ etc. Cf. Collins, Ode, The Passions, 19–20.

‘Distilling them,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘Too tame.’ Ibid., Act III. Sc. 2.

‘’Twas I that did it.’ The Revenge, Act V. Sc. 2.

‘Forced gait.’ 1 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1.

KEAN’S RICHARD III.

Cf. the essay on Richard III. in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (vol. I. pp. 298–303), where Hazlitt speaks of the ‘miserable medley acted for Richard III.’ and gives some of the omitted passages as being ‘peculiarly adapted for stage effect.’ Shakespeare’s Richard III. was revived at Covent Garden on March 12, 1821, Macready playing Richard and Mrs. Bunn Queen Margaret.

399.

‘Now is the winter,’ etc. Richard III., Act I. Sc. 1.

‘Even so!’ etc. Ibid.

400.

‘They do me wrong,’ etc. Ibid. Act I. Sc. 3.

‘His grace looks cheerfully,’ etc. Ibid. Act III. Sc. 4.

THE WONDER

Cf. A View, etc., vol. VIII. p. 332.

402.

‘Snatch a grace,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 155.

‘Catch ere she falls,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 20.

VENICE PRESERVED

Cf. the account of Kemble’s Pierre, vol. VIII. p. 378.

403.

‘The most replenished,’ etc. Richard III., Act IV. Sc. 3.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

403.

Borrowed from Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Cf. vol. III. p. 115.

404.

‘His singularity,’ etc. Johnson frequently denounced singularity. The instances are collected in Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 74–5.

596

KEAN’S MACBETH

405.

Except in the murder scene. Cf. vol. VIII. p. 207.

‘Proud and lion-hearted,’ etc. Cf. ‘Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.

KEAN’S OTHELLO

405.

This young debutante. Her name was Mrs. Robinson.

406.

Mr. Kean’s Othello, etc. This passage, to the end of the notice, was quoted more than once by Hazlitt. Cf. ante, p. 368 and vol. VIII. p. 414 and notes.

KEAN AND MISS O’NEILL

Cf. this with Hazlitt’s appreciation of Miss O’Neill in The London Magazine, vol. VIII. of the present edition, pp. 392 et seq.

407.

‘O’erstep the modesty,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

408.

‘As one in suffering all,’ etc. Ibid.

‘Abide the beating,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Sc. 4.

THE HONEY MOON

409.

‘What is set down for him.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

‘Plautus was too light,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘And near him,’ etc. Collins, Ode on the Poetical Character, 43–4.

‘Grew sharp as a pen.’ Henry V., Act II. Sc. 3.

410.

‘Go thou,’ etc. S. Luke x. 37.

MR. KEAN

410.

‘Not Fate itself could awe.’ Richard III. (Cibber’s version), Act V. Sc. 3.

KING JOHN

411.

‘To me,’ etc. King John, Act III. Sc. 1.

THE PRESS, Etc.

Hazlitt was a very frequent contributor to John Hunt’s ‘Weekly Miscellany,’ The Yellow Dwarf, which ran from Jan. 1 to May 23, 1818. Most of his contributions were included in Political Essays. See vol. III. pp. 254 et seq. Of those included in the present volume ‘The Opera’ was reprinted with some omissions and variations in Literary Remains, the rest are now republished for the first time, on the strength of what the editors regard as the conclusive internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship. All the essays are reprinted verbatim from the Magazine.

411.

M. Jollivet. Jean Baptiste Moïse, Comte Jollivet (1753–1818), a prominent French politician.

412.

‘Had’st thou believed,’ etc. Zapolya, Prelude, Sc. 1. 597

413.

Was one of the passages, etc. See the last chapter of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria.

‘Restored,’ etc. Carmen Triumphale, St. XVIII.

‘A full solemne man.’ Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 209.

414.

Odes on Hoffer, etc. Hazlitt refers to some of Wordsworth’s ‘Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.’

‘A dateless bargain,’ etc. Cf. Romeo and Juliet, Act V. Sc. 3.

‘Stretching out,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.

‘The same,’ etc. Hazlitt is no doubt quoting from Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, St. 52.

Mrs. Tofts. See Hogarth’s ‘Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism,’ where the well-known imposture of Mary Tofts (1701?–1763) is ridiculed.

415.

‘Charm these deaf adders,’ etc. Cf. Psalms, lviii. 4, 5.

‘Drops which sacred pity,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

‘Which knaves,’ etc. Butler, Hudibras, I. i. 35–6.

416.

‘The Gods,’ etc. Cf. As You Like It, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘A mingled [medley] air,’ etc. Wordsworth, Peter Bell, 304–5.

MR. COLERIDGE’S LECTURES

This course of Lectures began on Jan. 27, and ended on March 13, 1818. Hazlitt was lecturing on Poetry at the same time. For Coleridge’s prospectus see Lectures on Shakespeare (ed. Ashe), 170.