Chapter XVII: Introduction: William Hazlitt (15)

The paradox with which I set out is, I hope, less startling than it was; the reader will, by this time, have been let into my secret. Much about the same time, or I believe rather earlier, I took a particular satisfaction in reading Chubb's Tracts, and I often think I will get them again to wade through. There is a high gusto of polemical divinity in them; and you fancy that you hear a club of shoemakers at Salisbury, debating a disputable text from one of St. Paul's Epistles in a workmanlike style, with equal shrewdness and pertinacity. I cannot say much for my metaphysical studies, into which I launched shortly after with great ardour, so as to make a toil of a pleasure. I was presently entangled in the briars and thorns of subtle distinctions,--of "fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute," though I cannot add that "in their wandering mazes I found no end;" for I did arrive at some very satisfactory and potent conclusions; nor will I go so far, however ungrateful the subject might seem, as to exclaim with Marlowe's Faustus--"Would I had never seen Wittenberg, never read book"--that is, never studied such authors as Hartley, Hume, Berkeley, etc. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding is, however, a work from which I never derived either pleasure or profit; and Hobbes, dry and powerful as he is, I did not read till long afterwards. I read a few poets, which did not much hit my taste,--for I would have the reader understand, I am deficient in the faculty of imagination; but I fell early upon French romances and philosophy, and devoured them tooth-and-nail. Many a dainty repast have I made of the New Eloise;--the description of the kiss; the excursion on the water; the letter of St. Preux, recalling the time of their first loves; and the account of Julia's death; these I read over and over again with unspeakable delight and wonder. Some years after, when I met with this work again, I found I had lost nearly my whole relish for it (except some few parts) and was, I remember, very much mortified with the change in my taste, which I sought to attribute to the smallness and gilt edges of the edition I had bought, and its being perfumed with rose-leaves. Nothing could exceed the gravity, the solemnity with which I carried home and read the Dedication to the Social Contract, with some other pieces of the same author, which I had picked up at a stall in a coarse leathern cover. Of the Confessions I have spoken elsewhere, and may repeat what I have said--"Sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleasant the balm of their recollection!" Their beauties are not "scattered like stray-gifts o'er the earth," but sown thick on the page, rich and rare. I wish I had never read the Emilius, or read it with less implicit faith. I had no occasion to pamper my natural aversion to affectation or pretence, by romantic and artificial means. I had better have formed myself on the model of Sir Fopling Flutter. There is a class of persons whose virtues and most shining qualities sink in, and are concealed by, an absorbent ground of modesty and reserve; and such a one I do, without vanity, profess myself.[149] Now these are the very persons who are likely to attach themselves to the character of Emilius, and of whom it is sure to be the bane. This dull, phlegmatic, retiring humour is not in a fair way to be corrected, but confirmed and rendered desperate, by being in that work held up as an object of imitation, as an example of simplicity and magnanimity--by coming upon us with all the recommendations of novelty, surprise, and superiority to the prejudices of the world--by being stuck upon a pedestal, made amiable, dazzling, a _leurre de dupe_! The reliance on solid worth which it inculcates, the preference of sober truth to gaudy tinsel, hangs like a mill-stone round the neck of the imagination--"a load to sink a navy"--impedes our progress, and blocks up every prospect in life. A man, to get on, to be successful, conspicuous, applauded, should not retire upon the centre of his conscious resources, but be always at the circumference of appearances. He must envelop himself in a halo of mystery--he must ride in an equipage of opinion--he must walk with a train of self-conceit following him--he must not strip himself to a buff-jerkin, to the doublet and hose of his real merits, but must surround himself with a _cortege_ of prejudices, like the signs of the Zodiac--he must seem any thing but what he is, and then he may pass for any thing he pleases. The world love to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive every thing but the plain, downright, simple honest truth--such as we see it chalked out in the character of Emilius.--To return from this digression, which is a little out of place here.

Books have in a great measure lost their power over me; nor can I revive the same interest in them as formerly. I perceive when a thing is good, rather than feel it. It is true,

Marcian Colonna is a dainty book;

and the reading of Mr. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes lately made me regret that I was not young again. The beautiful and tender images there conjured up, "come like shadows--so depart." The "tiger-moth's wings," which he has spread over his rich poetic blazonry, just flit across my fancy; the gorgeous twilight window which he has painted over again in his verse, to me "blushes" almost in vain "with blood of queens and kings." I know how I should have felt at one time in reading such passages; and that is all. The sharp luscious flavour, the fine _aroma_ is fled, and nothing but the stalk, the bran, the husk of literature is left. If any one were to ask me what I read now, I might answer with my Lord Hamlet in the play--"Words, words, words."--"What is the matter?"--"_Nothing!_"--They have scarce a meaning. But it was not always so. There was a time when to my thinking, every word was a flower or a pearl, like those which dropped from the mouth of the little peasant-girl in the Fairy tale, or like those that fall from the great preacher in the Caledonian Chapel! I drank of the stream of knowledge that tempted, but did not mock my lips, as of the river of life, freely. How eagerly I slaked my thirst of German sentiment, "as the hart that panteth for the water-springs;" how I bathed and revelled, and added my floods of tears to Goethe's Sorrows of Werter, and to Schiller's Robbers--

Giving my stock of more to that which had too much!

I read and assented with all my soul to Coleridge's fine Sonnet, beginning--

Schiller! that hour I would have wish'd to die,
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent,
From the dark dungeon of the tow'r time rent,
That fearful voice, a famish'd father's cry!

I believe I may date my insight into the mysteries of poetry from the commencement of my acquaintance with the authors of the Lyrical Ballads; at least, my discrimination of the higher sorts--not my predilection for such writers as Goldsmith or Pope: nor do I imagine they will say I got my liking for the Novelists, or the comic writers,--for the characters of Valentine, Tattle, or Miss Prue, from them. If so, I must have got from them what they never had themselves. In points where poetic diction and conception are concerned, I may be at a loss, and liable to be imposed upon: but in forming an estimate of passages relating to common life and manners, I cannot think I am a plagiarist from any man. I there "know my cue without a prompter." I may say of such studies--_Intus et in cute_. I am just able to admire those literal touches of observation and description, which persons of loftier pretensions overlook and despise. I think I comprehend something of the characteristic part of Shakspeare; and in him indeed all is characteristic, even the nonsense and poetry. I believe it was the celebrated Sir Humphry Davy who used to say, that Shakspeare was rather a metaphysician than a poet. At any rate, it was not ill said. I wish that I had sooner known the dramatic writers contemporary with Shakspeare; for in looking them over about a year ago, I almost revived my old passion for reading, and my old delight in books, though they were very nearly new to me. The Periodical Essayists I read long ago. The Spectator I liked extremely: but the Tatler took my fancy most. I read the others soon after, the Rambler, the Adventurer, the World, the Connoisseur: I was not sorry to get to the end of them, and have no desire to go regularly through them again. I consider myself a thorough adept in Richardson. I like the longest of his novels best, and think no part of them tedious; nor should I ask to have any thing better to do than to read them from beginning to end, to take them up when I chose, and lay them down when I was tired, in some old family mansion in the country, till every word and syllable relating to the bright Clarissa, the divine Clementina, the beautiful Pamela, "with every trick and line of their sweet favour," were once more "graven in my heart's table."[150] I have a sneaking kindness for Mackenzie's Julia de Roubigne--for the deserted mansion, and straggling gilliflowers on the mouldering garden-wall; and still more for his Man of Feeling; not that it is better, nor so good; but at the time I read it, I sometimes thought of the heroine, Miss Walton, and of Miss ---- together, and "that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!"--One of the poets that I have always read with most pleasure, and can wander about in for ever with a sort of voluptuous indolence, is Spenser; and I like Chaucer even better. The only writer among the Italians I can pretend to any knowledge of, is Boccacio, and of him I cannot express half my admiration. His story of the Hawk I could read and think of from day to day, just as I would look at a picture of Titian's!--

I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a neighbouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the plot of his Recruiting Officer) and bringing home with me, "at one proud swoop," a copy of Milton's Paradise Lost, and another of Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution--both which I have still; and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the pleasure with which I clipped into them as I returned with my double prize. I was set up for one while. That time is past "with all its giddy raptures:" but I am still anxious to preserve its memory, "embalmed with odours."--With respect to the first of these works, I would be permitted to remark here in passing, that it is a sufficient answer to the German criticism which has since been started against the character of Satan (_viz._ that it is not one of disgusting deformity, or pure, defecated malice) to say that Milton has there drawn, not the abstract principle of evil, not a devil incarnate, but a fallen angel. This is the Scriptural account, and the poet has followed it. We may safely retain such passages as that well-known one--

----His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness; nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd; and the excess
Of glory obscur'd--

for the theory, which is opposed to them, "falls flat upon the grunsel edge, and shames its worshippers." Let us hear no more then of this monkish cant, and bigotted outcry for the restoration of the horns and tail of the devil!--Again, as to the other work, Burke's Reflections, I took a particular pride and pleasure in it, and read it to myself and others for months afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour of this author. To understand an adversary is some praise: to admire him is more. I thought I did both: I knew I did one. From the first time I ever cast my eyes on anything of Burke's (which was an extract from his Letter to a Noble Lord in a three-times a week paper, The St. James's Chronicle, in 1796), I said to myself, "This is true eloquence: this is a man pouring out his mind on paper." All other style seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. Dr. Johnson's was walking on stilts; and even Junius's (who was at that time a favourite with me) with all his terseness, shrunk up into little antithetic points and well-trimmed sentences. But Burke's style was forked and playful as the lightning, crested like the serpent. He delivered plain things on a plain ground; but when he rose, there was no end of his flights and circumgyrations--and in this very Letter, "he, like an eagle in a dove-cot, fluttered _his_ Volscians," (the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale[151]) "in Corioli." I did not care for his doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof against their contagion; but I admired the author, and was considered as not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though I thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing--a masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I conceived, too, that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. I remember Coleridge assuring me, as a poetical and political set-off to my sceptical admiration, that Wordsworth had written an Essay on Marriage, which, for manly thought and nervous expression, he deemed incomparably superior. As I had not, at that time, seen any specimens of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could not express my doubts on the subject. If there are greater prose-writers than Burke, they either lie out of my course of study, or are beyond my sphere of comprehension. I am too old to be a convert to a new mythology of genius. The niches are occupied, the tables are full. If such is still my admiration of this man's misapplied powers, what must it have been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after year, to write a single Essay, nay, a single page or sentence; when I regarded the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of one who was dumb and a changeling; and when, to be able to convey the slightest conception of my meaning to others in words, was the height of an almost hopeless ambition! But I never measured others' excellences by my own defects: though a sense of my own incapacity, and of the steep, impassable ascent from me to them, made me regard them with greater awe and fondness. I have thus run through most of my early studies and favourite authors, some of whom I have since criticised more at large. Whether those observations will survive me, I neither know nor do I much care: but to the works themselves, "worthy of all acceptation," and to the feelings they have always excited in me since I could distinguish a meaning in language, nothing shall ever prevent me from looking back with gratitude and triumph. To have lived in the cultivation of an intimacy with such works, and to have familiarly relished such names, is not to have lived quite in vain.

There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet whom I have frequently had a great desire to read, from some circumstance relating to them. Among these is Lord Clarendon's History of the Grand Rebellion, after which I have a hankering, from hearing it spoken of by good judges--from my interest in the events, and knowledge of the characters from other sources, and from having seen fine portraits of most of them. I like to read a well-penned character, and Clarendon is said to have been a master in this way. I should like to read Froissart's Chronicles, Hollinshed and Stowe, and Fuller's Worthies. I intend, whenever I can, to read Beaumont and Fletcher all through. There are fifty-two of their plays, and I have only read a dozen or fourteen of them. A Wife for a Month, and Thierry and Theodoret, are, I am told, delicious, and I can believe it. I should like to read the speeches in Thucydides, and Guicciardini's History of Florence, and Don Quixote in the original. I have often thought of reading the Loves of Persiles and Sigismunda, and the Galatea of the same author. But I somehow reserve them like "another Yarrow." I should also like to read the last new novel (if I could be sure it was so) of the author of Waverley:--no one would be more glad than I to find it the best!--

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Dramatic Essays_, VIII, 415.

[2] "On Living to One's Self," in _Table Talk_.

[3] "On Reading Old Books," pp. 344-45.

[4] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.

[5] _Life of Holcroft_, Works, II, 171, n.

[6] "On the Pleasure of Painting," in _Table Talk_.

[7] W. C. Hazlitt: _Lamb and Hazlitt_ (1900), p. 44. The letter in which these phrases are to be found is dated 1793 by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, but the present writer has given a detailed statement of his reasons for believing that it was written in 1803. See _Nation_, October 19, 1911.

[8] XI, 26.

[9] _Table Talk_, "On the Indian Jugglers."

[10] _Round Table_.

[11] "On Respectable People," in _Plain Speaker_.

[12] "On Paradox and Commonplace," in _Table Talk_.

[13] Hazlitt's _Table Talk_ was included by Stevenson in a youthful _Catalogus Librorum Carissimorum_. It is interesting that at the same time that Carlyle was composing _Sartor Resartus_, Hazlitt should have penned this bit of savage satire. "It has been often made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that _he is the only animal that dresses_.... Swift has taken a good bird's-eye view of man's nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in _great_ or in _little_: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a 'damned spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in _san Benitos_.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!" _Aphorisms on Man_, LXIV. Works, XII, 227.

[14] _Round Table_, "On Pedantry."

[15] "Knowledge of the World," XII, 307.

[16] "On Prejudice," XII, 396.

[17] _Table Talk_, "On the Past and Future."

[18] _Table Talk_, "Why Distant Objects Please."

[19] "Love of Power," XI, 268.

[20] _Life of Napoleon_, chap. 34.

[21] "What is the People?" in _Political Essays_, III, 292.

[22] He tells of an experience in crossing the Alps which he intends should be symbolic of his whole life. From a great distance he thought he perceived Mont Blanc, but as the driver insisted that it was only a cloud, "I supposed that I had taken a sudden fancy for a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to lecture myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, however, I observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favoring my first suggestion; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place. We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the afternoon when we had reached the other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a canopy over the point where it had hovered, 'in shape and station proudly eminent,' he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc." _Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy._ Works, IX, 296.

[23] Andrew Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, I, 63. 128-130.

[24] John Scott, the editor of the _London Magazine_, was killed in a duel arising from his retaliatory attacks on Lockhart and the Blackwood School of Criticism. See _London Magazine_, II, 509, 666; III, 76, and "Statement" prefatory to number for February, 1821.

[25] April, 1817.

[26] January, 1818.

[27] "I have been reading Frederick Schlegel.... He is like Hazlitt, in English, who _talks pimples_--a red and white corruption rising up (in little imitations of mountains upon maps), but containing nothing, and discharging nothing, except their own humours." Byron's _Letters_, Jan. 28, 1821 (ed. Prothero, V, 191).

[28] Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke's _Recollections of Writers_, 147.

[29] Joseph Cottle: _Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 465.

[30] Haydon's _Correspondence and Table Talk_, II, 32.

[31] _Plain Speaker_.

[32] _Characteristics_, CCCVII.

[33] "Characteristics," in Carlyle's _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_ (Chapman and Hall, 1898), III, 32.

[34] "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey," Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, I, 233.

[35] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.

[36] Life of Pope, Johnson's Lives, ed. Birkbeck Hill, IV, 248.

[37] Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 89.

[38] _Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_, I, 170.

[39] See an essay by John Foster on "Poetical Criticism," in _Critical Essays_, ed. Bohn, I, 144.

[40] Gibbon's Journal, October 3, 1762. Miscellaneous Works, ed. 1814, V, 263.

[41] Review of Mrs. Hemans's Poems, _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1829. Jeffrey's Works, III, 296.

[42] _Blackwood's Magazine_, II, 670-79.

[43] I, 281 (March, 1820).

[44] _Spirit of the Age_, "William Godwin."

[45] Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 35.

[46] Mr. Saintsbury has applied this phrase to Hazlitt himself, but we prefer to transfer the honor.

[47] "Savoir bien lire un livre en le jugeant chemin faisant, et sans cesser de le gouter, c'est presque tout l'art du critique." _Chateaubriand et son Groupe Litteraire_, I, 234.

[48] _Portraits Contemporains_, "Sonnet d'Hazlitt," II, 515.

[49] _Age of Elizabeth_, "On Miscellaneous Poems," V, 301.

[50] "Thoughts on Taste," XI, 460.

[51] _Conversations of Northcote_, VI, 457.

[52] Cf. Herford: _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 51.

[53] "On the Conduct of Life," XII, 427.

[54] Patmore: _My Friends and Acquaintances_, III, 122.

[55] "On the Conduct of Life," XII, 428. See also the paper "On the Study of the Classics," in the _Round Table_.

[56] See a note to p. 329.

[57] See Wordsworth's sonnet, "Great men have been among us."

[58] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.

[59] "He is the most illuminating and the most thoughtful of all Rousseau's early English critics.... His essay 'On the Character of Rousseau' was not surpassed, or approached, as a study of the great writer until the appearance of Lord Morley's monograph nearly sixty years afterwards." E. Gosse: _Fortnightly Review_, July, 1912, p. 30.

[60] In the review of Schlegel's _Lectures on the Drama_, Works, X, 78.

[61] See the paper on "John Buncle," in the _Round Table_.

[62] _Correspondence of Macvey Napier_, p. 21.

[63] "On the Pleasure of Painting," in _Table Talk_.

[64] _Dramatic Essays_, VIII, 415.

[65] "On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 44.

[66] "The Periodical Press," X, 203.

[67] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.

[68] Cf. "On Reading Old Books," pp. 338-9, where this charge is curiously echoed by Hazlitt himself.

[69] Ibid., p. 337.

[70] Ibid., p. 340.

[71] "On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 109.

[72] "The English Novelists," VIII, 109.

[73] "Thoughts on Taste," XI, 463.

[74] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.

[75] Ibid.

[76] _Characters of Shakespeare_, "Lear."

[77] "On Poetry in General," p. 258.

[78] "On Poetry in General," p. 266.

[79] Hazlitt defends himself on the ground that "the word has these three _distinct_ meanings in the English language, that is, it signifies the composition produced, the state of mind or faculty producing it, and, in certain cases, the subject-matter proper to call forth that state of mind." _Letter to Gifford_, I, 396.

[80] "On Poetry in General," pp. 268-9.

[81] Ibid., p. 268.

[82] Those interested in the perennial discussion of the relation of poetry to verse or metre would do well to read the recent interesting contribution to the subject by Professor Mackail in his _Lectures on Poetry_ (Longmans, 1912).

[83] "On the Causes of Popular Opinion," XII, 320.

[84] Coleridge: _Table Talk_, Aug. 6, 1832.

[85] _Edinburgh Review_, Feb., 1816. The nature of Hazlitt's debt to Coleridge, Lamb and Schlegel is to some extent illustrated in the notes to the present text.

[86] "Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers," in _Plain Speaker_.

[87] Moore's _Letters and Journals_, May 21, 1821, III, 235.

[88] _Shakespeare's Maedchen und Frauen_.

[89] Review of Schlegel's Lectures, Works, X, III.

[90] "Poetry," XII, 339.

[91] _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_, "Antony and Cleopatra."

[92] Lowell: _Old English Dramatists_.

[93] _Lecture on the Age of Elizabeth_, "On Beaumont and Fletcher," V, 269.

[94] _Conversation of Northcote_, VI, 393.

[95] _Essays in English Literature_, Second Series. 159-161.

[96] There seems to be no reason for doubting Hazlitt's authorship of the article in the _Examiner_. See Works, XI, 580.

[97] "William Gifford," in _Spirit of the Age_.

[98] _Select British Poets_. See Works, V, 378.

[99] "Shelley's Posthumous Poems," Works, X, 256 ff.

[100] Hazlitt's syntax is often abbreviated, elliptical, and unregardful of book rules. Constructions like the following are not uncommon in his prose: "As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe.... As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr. Liston's face." _Lectures on the English Poets_, "On Swift, Young," etc., V, 119, 120.

[101] _Spirit of the Age_, "William Cobbett."

[102] See pp. 210-213.

[103] "On the Living Poets," in _Lectures on the English Poets_, V, 167.

[104] This is the form of the passage as published in the _Literary Remains_ (1836). That Hazlitt did not attain effects like this offhand, is evident from the comparative feebleness of the original sound of the passage in the _Monthly Magazine_: "That we should thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and dwindle imperceptibly into nothing, is not surprising, when even in our prime the strongest impressions leave so little traces of themselves behind, and the last object is driven out by the succeeding one." "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth," Works, XII, 160.

[105] This passage also shows alterations from the first form. Cf. XII, 152.

[106] _Lectures on the English Poets_. "On Swift, Young, etc.," V, 104. See also the paper in _Table Talk_ on "Familiar Style."

[107] "I grant thus much, that it is in vain to seek for the word we want, or endeavour to get at it second-hand, or as a paraphrase on some other word--it must come of itself, or arise out of an immediate impression or lively intuition of the subject; that is, the proper word must be suggested immediately by the thoughts, but it need not be presented as soon as called for.... Proper expressions rise to the surface from the heat and fermentation of the mind, like bubbles on an agitated stream. It is this which produces a clear and sparkling style." "On Application to Study," in _Plain Speaker_.

[108] _Spirit of the Age_. "Mr. Cobbett."

[109] Ibid., "William Godwin."

[110] "On the Living Poets," _Lectures on English Poets_, V, 144.

[111] _Lectures on the Comic Writers_, "On Wycherley, Congreve, etc.," VIII, 70.

[112] _Spirit of the Age_, "Mr. T. Moore," IV, 353.

[113] _Table Talk_, "On Patronage and Puffing."

[114] "L'espece d'entrain qui accompagne et suit ces frequents articles improvises de verve et lances a toute vapeur. On s'y met tout entier: on s'en exagere la valeur dans le moment meme, on en mesure l'importance au bruit, et si cela mene a mieux faire, il n'y a pas grand mal apres tout." _Portraits Contemporains_, II, 515.

[115] "'Range and keenness of appreciation' do not by themselves give taste, but merely romantic gusto or perceptiveness. In order that gusto may be elevated to taste it needs to be disciplined and selective. To this end it must come under the control of an entirely different order of intuitions, of what I have called the 'back pull toward the centre.' The romantic one sidedness that is already so manifest in Hazlitt's conception of taste has, I maintain, gone to seed in Professor Saintsbury." Irving Babbitt, in _Nation_, May 16, 1912.

[116] T. N. Talfourd: _Edinburgh Review_, Nov., 1820.

[117] _My Literary Passions_, 120.

[118] _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1837.

[119] Thackeray's Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 350-51.

[120] Robertson: _Essays Toward a Critical Method_, 81.

[121] Saintsbury's _History of Criticism_ and John Davidson's _Sentences and Paragraphs_, 113.

[122] In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place of the translations of the Bible: and this dumb art arose in the silence of the written oracles.

[123] See _A Voyage to the Straits of Magellan_, 1594.

[124] Taken from Tasso.

[125] This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser sometimes took with language.

[126]
"That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o'er-dusted."

_Troilus and Cressida._

[127] In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance of the poet's exact observation of nature:--

"There is a willow growing o'er a brook,
That shews its hoary leaves i' th' glassy stream."

The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a whitish colour, and the reflection would therefore be "hoary."

[128] Why Pope should say in reference to him, "Or _more wise_ Charron," is not easy to determine.

[129] As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give his chapter entitled _One Man's Profit is Another's Loss_, in which he has nearly anticipated Mandeville's celebrated paradox of private vices being public benefits:--

"Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who furnished out funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods: and if he got an estate, it must be by the death of a great many people: but I think it a sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit can be made, but at the expense of some other person, and that every kind of gain is by that rule liable to be condemned. The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth, and the farmer by the dearness of corn; the architect by the ruin of buildings, the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits; nay, even the honour and functions of divines is owing to our mortality and vices. No physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best friends, said the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his country; and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every one but examine his own heart, and he will find, that his private wishes spring and grow up at the expense of some other person. Upon which consideration this thought came into my head, that nature does not hereby deviate from her general policy; for the naturalists hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of any one thing, is the decay and corruption of another:

_Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit,
Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante._ i.e.

For what from its own confines chang'd doth pass,
Is straight the death of what before it was."

_Vol._ I, _Chap._ XXI.

[130] No. 125.

[131] The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive, such as "proud submission and dignified obedience," are, I think, first to be found in the Tatler.

[132] It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe was also an Englishman. His other works, such as the Life of Colonel Jack, &c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind more like that of things than words.

[133] This character was written in a fit of extravagant candour, at a time when I thought I could do justice, or more than justice, to an enemy, without betraying a cause.

[134] For instance: he produced less effect on the mob that compose the English House of Commons than Chatham or Fox, or even Pitt.

[135] As in the comparison of the British Constitution to the "proud keep of Windsor," etc., the most splendid passage in his works.

[136] Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished--

"And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean!"

[137] The description of the sports in the forest:

"To see the sun to bed and to arise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes," etc.

[138] Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where the Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother's arrival.

[139] This essay was written just before Lord Byron's death.

[140]
"Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain."

_Don Juan_, Canto XI.

[141] This censure applies to the first cantos of DON JUAN much more than to the last. It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme: it is rather a poem written about itself.

[142] Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the reason: poetry produces its effects by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of our own poetry, which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction.

[143] My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.

[144] He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting to establish the future immortality of man, "without" (as he said) "knowing what Death was or what Life was"--and the tone in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.

[145] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.

[146] See Newgate Calendar for 1758.

[147] B---- at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Fleet-street.

[148] Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His "Essays" and his "Advancement of Learning" are works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers.

[149] Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that "Modest merit never can succeed!"

[150] During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual question, "Where have you served, Sir?" the First Consul immediately addressed him, "I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson's Romance!" Here was a Consul. The young man's uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of Richardson's Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte.

[151] He is there called "Citizen Lauderdale." Is this the present earl?

NOTES

[The annotations have not necessarily been introduced at the first occurrence of any name, and no cross-references have been supplied in the notes to names which occur in the text more than once. Such information as the notes supply can be found with the help of the index.--References, where no other indication is given, will be understood to be to the work under discussion. The Shakespeare references are to the one-volume Globe edition.]

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH

This lecture forms the introduction to the series on the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth." Hazlitt might have derived hints for it from Schlegel, who speaks of the zeal for the study of the ancients, the extensive communication with other lands, the interest in the literature of Italy and Spain, the progress in experimental philosophy represented by Bacon, and contrasts the achievements of that age, in a vein which must have captured Hazlitt's sympathy, with "the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks with such contempt on all preceding ages." The Elizabethans, he goes on to say, "possessed a fullness of healthy vigour, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with petulance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact, well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown. The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility vied with each other in the splendour of dress and number of retinue, and every great lord had a sort of small court of his own. The distinction of ranks was as yet strongly marked: a state of things ardently to be desired by the dramatic poet." "Lectures on Dramatic Literature," ed. Bohn, p. 349.

P. 1. _Raleigh_, Sir Walter (1552-1618), the celebrated courtier, explorer, and man of letters.

_Drake_, Sir Francis (1545-1595), the famous sailor, hero of the Armada.

_Coke_, Sir Edward (1552-1634), the great jurist, whose "Institutes," better known as Coke upon Littleton, became a famous legal text-book.

_Hooker_, Richard (1553-1600), theologian, author of the "Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" (1593), a defense of the Anglican Church against the Puritans and notable also as a masterpiece of English prose.

P. 2. _mere oblivion_. "As You Like It," ii, 7, 165.

_poor, poor dumb names_ [mouths]. "Julius Caesar," iii, 2, 229.

_Marston_, John (1575-1634). In the third lecture on the "Age of Elizabeth," Hazlitt calls him "a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose _forte_ was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him." Works, V, 224. His chief tragedy is "Antonio and Mellida."

_Middleton_, Thomas (1570?-1627), and _Rowley_, William (1585?-1642?). In the second lecture on the "Age of Elizabeth," Hazlitt associates these two names. "Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman Never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and _naivete_ equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton's style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries.... He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement of the story. It is like the rough draft of a tragedy with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to the whole.... The author's power is _in_ the subject, not _over_ it; or he is in possession of excellent materials which he husbands very ill." Works, V, 214-5. For characters of other dramatists see notes to p. 326.

_How lov'd_. Pope's "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady."

P. 3. _draw the curtain of time_. Cf. "we will draw the curtain and show you the picture." "Twelfth Night," i, 5, 251.

_within reasonable bounds_. At this point Hazlitt digresses to reprove the age for its affectation of superiority over other ages and the passage, not being relevant, has been omitted.

_less than smallest dwarfs_. "Paradise Lost," I, 779.

_desiring this man's art_. Shakespeare's Sonnets, XXIX.

_in shape and gesture_. "Paradise Lost," I, 590.

_Mr. Wordsworth says_. See Sonnet entitled "London, 1802."

P. 4. _drew after him_. "Paradise Lost," II, 692.

_Otway_, Thomas (1652-1685), author of "Venice Preserved," the most popular post-Shakespearian tragedy of the English stage. Hazlitt notes in this play a "power of rivetting breathless attention, and stirring the deepest yearnings of affection.... The awful suspense of the situations, the conflict of duties and passions, the intimate bonds that unite the characters together, and that are violently rent asunder like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march of the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes over all, give to this production of Otway's Muse a charm and power that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and have made it a proud and inseparable adjunct of the English stage." Works, V, 354-5.

_Jonson's learned sock_. Milton's "L'Allegro."

P. 6. _The translation of the Bible_. The first important 16th century translation of the Bible is William Tyndale's version of the New Testament (1525) and of the Pentateuch (1530). The complete translations are those of Miles Coverdale (1535), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva or Breeches Bible (1557), the Bishop's Bible (1568), and the Rheims-Douay Bible--the New Testament (1582) and the Old Testament (1609-1610). Finally came the Authorized Version in 1611.

P. 8. _penetrable stuff_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 36.

_his washing_, etc. St. John, xiii.

_above all art_, etc. Cf. Pope's "Epistle to the Earl of Oxford": "Above all Pain, all Passion, and all Pride."

_My peace_. St. John, xiv, 27.

_they should love_. Ibid., xv, 12.

_Woman, behold_. Ibid., xix, 26.

_his treatment of the woman_. Ibid., viii, 1-12.

_the woman who poured precious ointment_. St. Matthew, xxvi, 6-13; St. Mark, xiv, 3-9.

_his discourse with the disciples_. St. Luke, xxiv, 13-31.

_his Sermon on the Mount_. St. Matthew, v-vii.

_parable of the Good Samaritan and of the Prodigal Son_. St. Luke, x, 25-37; xv, 11-32.

P. 9. _Who is our neighbour_. Ibid., x, 29.

_to the Jews_, etc. I Corinthians, i, 23.

P. 10. _Soft as sinews_. "Hamlet," iii, 3. 71.

_The best of men_. Dekker, "The Honest Whore," Part I, v, 2, sub fin.

P. 11. _Tasso by Fairfax_. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), an Italian poet whose great epic, the "Gerusalemme Liberata," was finished in 1574. The English translation by Edward Fairfax was published in 1600 as "Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem."

_Ariosto by Harrington_. Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), whose romantic epic, "Orlando Furioso," was first published in 1516, and translated by Sir John Harrington in 1591.

_Homer and Hesiod by Chapman_. George Chapman (1559?-1634), poet and dramatist, published a complete translation of the "Iliad" in 1611, of the "Odyssey" in 1614, of Homer's "Battle of Frogs and Mice" in 1624, and of "The Georgicks of Hesiod" in 1618.

_Virgil_. A complete English translation of the "AEneid" was made by Gavin Douglas, a Scottish poet (1474?-1522), and first printed in London in 1553. There was a translation of the second and fourth books into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, published in 1557, but the one most in use was by Thomas Phaer (1510?-1560), which appeared incompletely in 1558 and 1562 and was completed by Thomas Twyne in 1583.

_Ovid_. There were a number of translators of Ovid during this period, chief of whom was Arthur Golding, whose version of the "Metamorphoses" appeared in 1565 and 1567. "The Heroides" were translated by George Turberville in 1567.

_Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch_. The chief work of Plutarch, a Greek writer of the first century, is the "Parallel Lives," which was translated into French by Jacques Amyot in 1559. Sir Thomas North's translation of Amyot's version in 1579 was the most popular and influential of all Elizabethan translations.

P. 12. _Boccaccio_, Giovanni (1313-1375), Italian poet and novelist. Among the English his best known work is the "Decameron," a collection of a hundred prose tales. Versions of some of these stories appeared in various Elizabethan collections, such as the "Tragical Tales" translated by George Turberville in 1587. The first complete translation was published in 1620 and reprinted in the Tudor Translations in 1909.

_Petrarch_ (1304-1374), Italian humanist and poet, whose sonnets were widely imitated by French and Italian poets during the Renaissance.

_Dante_ (1265-1321). The author of the "Divine Comedy" was not very well known to Elizabethan readers. There was no English translation of his poem attempted till that of Rogers in 1782, and no version worthy of the name was produced till H. F. Cary's in 1814.

_Aretine_. The name of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), an Italian satirist who called himself "the scourge of princes," was well known in England, but there was no translation of his works.

_Machiavel_. Nicolo Machiavelli (1468-1527), a Florentine statesman, whose name had an odious association because of the supposedly diabolical policy of government set forth in his "Prince." But this work was not translated till 1640. His "Art of War" had been rendered into English in 1560 and his "Florentine History" in 1595.

_Castiglione_, Baldassare (1478-1529). "Il Cortegiano," setting forth the idea of a gentleman, was translated as "The Courtier" by Thomas Hoby in 1561 and was very influential in English life.

_Ronsard_, Pierre de (1524-1585), the chief French lyric poet of the sixteenth century, whose sonnets had considerable vogue in England.

_Du Bartas_, Guillaume de Saluste (1544-1590), author of "La Semaine, ou la Creation du Monde" (1578), "La Seconde Semaine" (1584), translated as the "Divine Weeks and Works" (1592 ff.) by Joshua Sylvester.

P. 13. _Fortunate fields_. "Paradise Lost," III, 568.

_Prospero's Enchanted Island_. Eden's "History of Travayle," 1577, is now given as the probable source of Setebos, etc.

_Right well I wote_. "Faerie Queene," II, Introduction, 1-3.

P. 14. _Lear is founded_. Shakespeare's actual sources were probably Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain" (c. 1130) and Holinshed's "Chronicle."

_Othello on an Italian novel_, from the "Hecatommithi" of Giraldi Cinthio (1565).

_Hamlet on a Danish, Macbeth on a Scottish tradition_. The story of Hamlet is first found in Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish chronicler of the tenth century. Shakespeare probably drew it from the "Histoires Tragiques" of Belleforest. "Macbeth" was based on Holinshed's "Chronicle of Scottish History."

P. 15. _those bodiless creations_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 138.

_Your face_. "Macbeth," i, 5, 63.

_Tyrrell and Forrest_, persons hired by Richard III to murder the young princes in the Tower. See "Richard III," iv, 2-3.

_thick and slab_. "Macbeth," iv, 1, 32.

_snatched a_ [wild and] _fearful joy_. Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College."

P. 16. _Fletcher the poet_. John Fletcher the dramatist died of the plague in 1625.

_The course of true love_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," i, 1, 34.

_The age of chivalry was not then quite gone._ Cf. Burke: "Reflections on the French Revolution" (ed. Bohn, II, 348): "But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

_fell a martyr_. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), poet, soldier, and statesman, received his mortal wound in the thigh at the battle of Zutphen because, in emulation of Sir William Pelham, he threw off his greaves before entering the fight.

_the gentle Surrey_. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518?-1547), was distinguished as an innovator in English poetry as well as for his knightly prowess.

_who prized black eyes_. "Sessions of the Poets," verse 20.

_Like strength reposing_. "'Tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm." Keats's "Sleep and Poetry," 237.

P. 17. _they heard the tumult_. "I behold the tumult and am still." Cowper's "Task," IV, 99.

_descriptions of hunting and other athletic games_. See "Midsummer Night's Dream," iv, 1, 107 ff., and "Two Noble Kinsmen," iii.

_An ingenious and agreeable writer_. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), author of "Shakespeare and his Times" (1817). In describing the life of the country squire Drake remarks: "The luxury of eating and of good cooking were well understood in the days of Elizabeth, and the table of the country-squire frequently groaned beneath the burden of its dishes; at Christmas and at Easter especially, the hall became the scene of great festivity." Chap. V. (ed. 1838, p. 37).

_Return from Parnassus_. Hazlitt gives an account of this play in the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," Lecture V.

P. 18. _it snowed_. "Canterbury Tales," Prologue, 345.

_as Mr. Lamb observes_, in a note to Marston's "What You Will" in the "Specimens of Dramatic Literature" (ed. Lucas, 1, 44): "The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people." Cf. Schlegel's remark in the first note.

_in act_. "Othello," i, I, 62.

_description of a mad-house_. "Honest Whore," Part 1, v. 2.

_A Mad World, My Masters_, the title of a comedy by Middleton.