Chapter XX: Preface

The volume here presented to the public is an attempt to improve upon the plan of the Elegant Extracts in Verse by the late Dr. Knox. From the length of time which had elapsed since the first appearance of that work, a similar undertaking admitted of considerable improvement, although the size of the volume has been compressed by means of a more severe selection of matter. At least, a third of the former popular and in many respects valuable work was devoted to articles either entirely worthless, or recommended only by considerations foreign to the reader of poetry. The object and indeed ambition of the present compiler has been to offer to the public a BODY OF ENGLISH POETRY, from Chaucer to Burns, such as might at once satisfy individual curiosity and justify our national pride. We have reason to boast of the genius of our country for poetry and of the trophies earned in that way; and it is well to have a collection of such examples of excellence inwoven together as may serve to nourish our own taste and love for the sublime or beautiful, and also to silence the objections of foreigners, who are too ready to treat us as behindhand with themselves in all that relates to the arts of refinement and elegance. If in some respects we are so, it behoves us the more to cultivate and cherish the superiority we can lay claim to in others. Poetry is one of those departments in which we possess a decided and as it were natural pre-eminence: and therefore no pains should be spared in selecting and setting off to advantage the different proofs and vouchers of it.

All that could be done for this object, has been attempted in the present instance. I have brought together in one view (to the best of my judgment) the most admired smaller pieces of poetry, and the most striking passages in larger works, which could not themselves be given entire. I have availed myself of the plan chalked out by my predecessor, but in the hope of improving upon it. To possess a work of this kind ought to be like holding the contents of a library in one’s hand without any of the refuse or ‘baser matter.’ If it had not been thought that the former work admitted of considerable improvement in the choice of subjects, inasmuch as inferior and indifferent productions not rarely occupied the place of sterling excellence, the present publication would not have been hazarded. Another difference is that I have followed the order of time, instead of the division of the subjects. By this method, the progress of poetry is better seen and understood; and besides, the real subjects of poetry are so much alike or run so much into one another, as not easily to come under any precise classification.

The great deficiency which I have to lament is the small portion of Shakespear’s poetry, which has been introduced into the work; but this arose unavoidably from the plan of it, which did not extend to dramatic poetry as a general species. The extracts from the best parts of Chaucer, which are given at some length, will, it is hoped, be acceptable to the lover both of poetry and history. The quotations from Spenser do not occupy a much larger space than in the Elegant Extracts; but entire passages are given, instead of a numberless quantity of shreds and patches. The essence of Spenser’s poetry was a continuous, endless flow of indescribable beauties, like the galaxy or milky way:—Dr. Knox has ‘taken him and cut him out in little stars,’ which was repugnant to the genius of his writings. I have made it my aim to exhibit the characteristic and striking features of English poetry and English genius; and with this view have endeavoured to give such specimens from each author as showed his peculiar powers of mind and the peculiar style in which he excelled, and have omitted those which were not only less remarkable in themselves, but were common to him with others, or in which others surpassed him, who were therefore the proper models in that particular way. _Cuique tribuitur suum._ In a word, it has been proposed to retain those passages and pieces with which the reader of taste and feeling would be most pleased in the perusal of the original works, and to which he would wish oftenest to turn again—and which consequently may be conceived to conduce most beneficially to form the taste and amuse the fancy of those who have not leisure or industry to make themselves masters of the whole range of English poetry. By leaving out a great deal of uninteresting and common-place poetry, room has been obtained for nearly all that was emphatically excellent. The reader, it is presumed, may here revel and find no end of delight, in the racy vigour and manly characteristic humour, or simple pathos of Chaucer’s Muse, in the gorgeous voluptuousness and romantic tenderness of Spenser, in the severe, studied beauty and awful majesty of Milton, in the elegance and refinement and harmony of Pope, in the strength and satire and sounding rhythm of Dryden, in the sportive gaiety and graces of Suckling, Dorset, Gay, and Prior, in Butler’s wit, in Thomson’s rural scenes, in Cowper’s terse simplicity, in Burns’s laughing eye and feeling heart (among standard and established reputations)—and in the polished tenderness of Campbell, the buoyant heart-felt levity of Moore, the striking, careless, picturesque beauties of Scott, the thoughtful humanity of Wordsworth, and Byron’s glowing rage (among those whose reputation seems less solid and towering, because we are too near them to perceive its height or measure its duration). Others might be mentioned to lengthen out the list of poetic names

‘That on the steady breeze of honour sail
In long possession, calm and beautiful:’—

but from all together enough has been gleaned to make a ‘perpetual feast of nectar’d sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.’ Such at least has been my ardent wish; and if this volume is not pregnant with matter both ‘rich and rare,’ it has been the fault of the compiler, and not of the poverty or niggardliness of the ENGLISH MUSE.

W. H.

A CRITICAL LIST
OF
AUTHORS CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME

CHAUCER is in the first class of poetry (the _natural_) and one of the first. He describes the common but individual objects of nature and the strongest and most universal, because spontaneous workings of the heart. In invention he has not much to boast, for the materials are chiefly borrowed (except in some of his comic tales); but the masterly execution is his own. He is remarkable for the degree and variety of the qualities he possesses—excelling equally in the comic and serious. He has little fancy, but he has great wit, great humour, strong manly sense, great power of description, perfect knowledge of character, occasional sublimity, as in parts of the _Knight’s Tale_, and the deepest pathos, as in the story of _Griselda_, _Custance_, _The Flower and the Leaf_, &c. In humour and spirit, _The Wife of Bath_ is unequalled.

SPENSER excels in the two qualities in which Chaucer is most deficient—invention and fancy. The invention shown in his allegorical personages is endless, as the fancy shown in his description of them is gorgeous and delightful. He is the poet of romance. He describes things as in a splendid and voluptuous dream. He has displayed no comic talent, except in his _Shepherd’s Calendar_. He has little attempt at character, an occasional visionary sublimity, and a pensive tenderness approaching to the finest pathos. Nearly all that is excellent in the _Faery Queen_ is contained in the three first Books. His style is sometimes ambiguous and affected; but his versification is to the last degree flowing and harmonious.

Sir PHILIP SIDNEY is an affected writer, but with great power of thought and description. His poetry, of which he did not write much, has the faults of his prose without its recommendations.

DRAYTON has chiefly tried his strength in description and learned narrative. The plan of the _Poly-Olbion_ (a local or geographical account of Great Britain) is original, but not very happy. The descriptions of places are often striking and curious, but become tedious by uniformity. There is some fancy in the poem, but little general interest. His Heroic Epistles have considerable tenderness and dignity; and, in the structure of the verse, have served as a model to succeeding writers.

DANIEL is chiefly remarkable for simplicity of style, and natural tenderness. In some of his occasional pieces (as the _Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland_) there is a vast philosophic gravity and stateliness of sentiment.

Sir JOHN SUCKLING is one of the most piquant and attractive of the Minor poets. He has fancy, wit, humour, descriptive talent, the highest elegance, perfect ease, a familiar style and a pleasing versification. He has combined all these in his _Ballad on a Wedding_, which is a masterpiece of sportive gaiety and good humour. His genius was confined entirely to the light and agreeable.

GEORGE WITHER is a poet of comparatively little power; though he has left one or two exquisitely affecting passages, having a personal reference to his own misfortunes.

WALLER belonged to the same class as Suckling—the sportive, the sparkling, the polished, with fancy, wit, elegance of style, and easiness of versification at his command. Poetry was the plaything of his idle hours—the mistress, to whom he addressed his verses, was his real Muse. His lines on the _Death of Oliver Cromwell_ are however serious, and even sublime.

MILTON was one of the four great English poets, who must certainly take precedence over all others, I mean himself, Spenser, Chaucer, and Shakespear. His subject is not common or _natural_ indeed, but it is of preternatural grandeur and unavoidable interest. He is altogether a serious poet; and in this differs from Chaucer and Shakespear, and resembles Spenser. He has sublimity in the highest degree: beauty in an equal degree; pathos in a degree next to the highest; perfect character in the conception of Satan, of Adam and Eve; fancy, learning, vividness of description, stateliness, decorum. He seems on a par with his subjects in _Paradise Lost_; to raise it, and to be raised with it. His style is elaborate and powerful, and his versification, with occasional harshness and affectation, superior in harmony and variety to all other blank verse. It has the effect of a piece of fine music. His smaller pieces, _Lycidas_, _L’Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, the Sonnets, &c., display proportionable excellence, from their beauty, sweetness, and elegance.

COWLEY is a writer of great sense, ingenuity, and learning; but as a poet, his fancy is quaint, far-fetched, and mechanical, and he has no other distinguishing quality whatever. To these objections his Anacreontics are a delightful exception. They are the perfection of that sort of gay, unpremeditated, lyrical effusion. They breathe the very spirit of love and wine. Most of his other pieces should be read for instruction, not for pleasure.

MARVELL is a writer almost forgotten: but undeservedly so. His poetical reputation seems to have sunk with his political party. His satires were coarse, quaint, and virulent; but his other productions are full of a lively, tender, and elegant fancy. His verses leave an echo on the ear, and find one in the heart. See those entitled BERMUDAS, TO HIS COY MISTRESS, ON THE DEATH OF A FAWN, &c.

BUTLER (the author of _Hudibras_) has undoubtedly more wit than any other writer in the language. He has little besides to recommend him, if we except strong sense, and a laudable contempt of absurdity and hypocrisy. He has little story, little character, and no great humour in his singular poem. The invention of the fable seems borrowed from Don Quixote. He has however prodigious merit in his style, and in the fabrication of his rhymes.

Sir JOHN DENHAM’S fame rests chiefly on his _Cooper’s Hill_. This poem is a mixture of the descriptive and didactic, and has given birth to many poems on the same plan since. His _forte_ is strong, sound sense, and easy, unaffected, manly verse.

DRYDEN stands nearly at the head of the second class of English poets, _viz._ the _artificial_, or those who describe the mixed modes of artificial life, and convey general precepts and abstract ideas. He had invention in the plan of his Satires, very little fancy, not much wit, no humour, immense strength of character, elegance, masterly ease, indignant contempt approaching to the sublime, not a particle of tenderness, but eloquent declamation, the perfection of uncorrupted English style, and of sounding, vehement, varied versification. The _Alexander’s Feast_, his _Fables_ and _Satires_, are his standard and lasting works.

ROCHESTER, as a wit, is first-rate: but his fancy is keen and caustic, not light and pleasing, like Suckling or Waller. His verses cut and sparkle like diamonds.

ROSCOMMON excelled chiefly as a translator; but his translation of _Horace’s Art of Poetry_ is so _unique_ a specimen of fidelity and felicity, that it has been adopted into this collection.

POMFRET left one popular poem behind him, THE CHOICE; the attraction of which may be supposed to lie rather in the subject than in the peculiar merit of the execution.

Lord DORSET, for the playful ease and elegance of his verses, is not surpassed by any of the poets of that class.

J. PHILIPS‘s SPLENDID SHILLING makes the fame of this poet—it is a lucky thought happily executed.

HALIFAX (of whom two short poems are here retained) was the least of the Minor poets—one of ‘the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.’

The praise of PARNELL‘s poetry is, that it was moral, amiable, with a tendency towards the pensive; and it was his fortune to be the friend of poets.

PRIOR is not a very moral poet, but the most arch, piquant, and equivocal of those that have been admitted into this collection. He is a graceful narrator, a polished wit, full of the delicacies of style amidst gross allusions.

POPE is at the head of the second class of poets, viz. the describers of artificial life and manners. His works are a delightful, never-failing fund of good sense and refined taste. He had high invention and fancy of the comic kind, as in the _Rape of the Lock_; wit, as in the _Dunciad_ and _Satires_; no humour; some beautiful descriptions, as in the _Windsor Forest_; some exquisite delineations of character (those of Addison and Villiers are master-pieces); he is a model of elegance everywhere, but more particularly in his eulogies and friendly epistles; his ease is the effect of labour; he has no pretensions to sublimity, but sometimes displays an indignant moral feeling akin to it; his pathos is playful and tender, as in his Epistles to _Arbuthnot_ and _Jervas_, or rises into power by the help of rhetoric, as in the _Eloisa_, and _Elegy on the Death of an Unfortunate Lady_; his style is polished and almost faultless in its kind; his versification tires by uniform smoothness and harmony. He has been called ‘the most sensible of poets:’ but the proofs of his sense are to be looked for in his single observations and hints, as in the _Essay on Criticism_ and _Moral Epistles_, and not in the larger didactic reasonings of the _Essay on Man_, which is full of verbiage and bombast.

If good sense has been made the characteristic of Pope, good-nature might be made (with at least equal truth) the characteristic of GAY. He was a satirist without gall. He had a delightful placid vein of invention, fancy, wit, humour, description, ease and elegance, a happy style, and a versification which seemed to cost him nothing. His _Beggar’s Opera_ indeed has stings in it, but it appears to have left the writer’s mind without any.

The _Grave_ of BLAIR is a serious and somewhat gloomy poem, but pregnant with striking reflections and fine fancy.

SWIFT‘s poetry is not at all equal to his prose. He was actuated by the spleen in both. He has however sense, wit, humour, ease, and even elegance when he pleases, in his poetical effusions. But he trifled with the Muse. He has written more agreeable nonsense than any man. His _Verses on his own Death_ are affecting and beautiful.

AMBROSE PHILIPS‘s _Pastorals_ were ridiculed by Pope, and their merit is of an humble kind. They may be said rather to mimic nature than to imitate it. They talk about rural objects, but do not paint them. His verses descriptive of a NORTHERN WINTER are better.

THOMSON is the best and most original of our descriptive poets. He had nature; but, through indolence or affectation, too often embellished it with the gaudy ornaments of art. Where he gave way to his genuine impulses, he was excellent. He had invention in the choice of his subject (_The Seasons_), some fancy, wit and humour of a most voluptuous kind; in the _Castle of Indolence_, great descriptive power. His elegance is tawdriness; his ease slovenliness; he sometimes rises into sublimity, as in his account of the _Torrid_ and _Frozen Zones_; he has occasional pathos too, as in his _Traveller Lost in the Snow_; his style is barbarous, and his ear heavy and bad.

COLLINS, of all our Minor poets, that is, those who have attempted only short pieces, is probably the one who has shown the most of the highest qualities of poetry, and who excites the most intense interest in the bosom of the reader. He soars into the regions of imagination, and occupies the highest peaks of Parnassus. His fancy is glowing, vivid, but at the same time hasty and obscure. Gray’s sublimity was borrowed and mechanical, compared to Collins’s, who has the true inspiration, the _vivida vis_ of the poet. He heats and melts objects in the fervour of his genius, as in a furnace. See his _Odes to Fear_, _On the Poetical Character_, and _To Evening_. The _Ode on the Passions_ is the most popular, but the most artificial of his principal ones. His qualities were fancy, sublimity of conception, and no mean degree of pathos, as in the _Eclogues_, and the _Dirge in Cymbeline_.

DYER‘s _Grongar Hill_ is a beautiful moral and descriptive effusion, with much elegance, and perfect ease of style and versification.

SHENSTONE was a writer inclined to feebleness and affectation: but when he could divest himself of sickly pretensions, he produces occasional excellence of a high degree. His SCHOOL-MISTRESS is the perfection of _naïve_ description, and of that mixture of pathos and humour, than which nothing is more delightful or rare.

MALLET was a poet of small merit—but every one has read his _Edwin and Emma_, and no one ever forgot it.

AKENSIDE is a poet of considerable power, but of little taste or feeling. His thoughts, like his style, are stately and imposing, but turgid and gaudy. In his verse, ‘_less_ is meant than meets the ear.’ He has some merit in the invention of the subject (the _Pleasures of Imagination_) his poem being the first of a series of similar ones on the faculties of the mind, as the _Pleasures of Memory_, _of Hope_, &c.

YOUNG is a poet who has been much over-rated from the popularity of his subject, and the glitter and lofty pretensions of his style. I wished to have made more extracts from the _Night Thoughts_, but was constantly repelled by the tinsel of expression, the false ornaments, and laboured conceits. Of all writers who have gained a great name, he is the most meretricious and objectionable. His is false wit, false fancy, false sublimity, and mock-tenderness. At least, it appears so to me.

GRAY was an author of great pretensions, but of great merit. He has an air of sublimity, if not the reality. He aims at the highest things; and if he fails, it is only by a hair’s-breadth. His pathos is injured, like his sublimity, by too great an ambition after the ornaments and machinery of poetry. His craving after foreign help perhaps shows the want of the internal impulse. His _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, which is the most simple, is the best of his productions.

CHURCHILL is a fine rough satirist. He had sense, wit, eloquence, and honesty.

GOLDSMITH, both in verse and prose, was one of the most delightful writers in the language. His verse flows like a limpid stream. His ease is quite unconscious. Every thing in him is spontaneous, unstudied, unaffected, yet elegant, harmonious, graceful, nearly faultless. Without the point or refinement of Pope, he has more natural tenderness, a greater suavity of manner, a more genial spirit. Goldsmith never rises into sublimity, and seldom sinks into insipidity, or stumbles upon coarseness. His _Traveller_ contains masterly national sketches. The _Deserted Village_ is sometimes spun out into a mawkish sentimentality; but the characters of the _Village Schoolmaster_, and the _Village Clergyman_, redeem a hundred faults. His _Retaliation_ is a poem of exquisite spirit, humour, and freedom of style.

ARMSTRONG‘s _Art of Preserving Health_ displays a fine natural vein of sense and poetry on a most unpromising subject.

CHATTERTON‘s _Remains_ show great premature power, but are chiefly interesting from his fate. He discovered great boldness of spirit and versatility of talent; yet probably, if he had lived, would not have increased his reputation for genius.

THOMAS WARTON was a man of taste and genius. His SONNETS I cannot help preferring to any in the language.

COWPER is the last of the English poets in the first division of this collection, but though last, not least. He is, after Thomson, the best of our descriptive poets—more minute and graphical, but with less warmth of feeling and natural enthusiasm than the author of THE SEASONS. He has also fine manly sense, a pensive and interesting turn of thought, tenderness occasionally running into the most touching pathos, and a patriotic or religious zeal mounting almost into sublimity. He had great simplicity with terseness of style: his versification is neither strikingly faulty nor excellent. His occasional copies of verses have great elegance; and his _John Gilpin_ is one of the most humorous pieces in the language.

BURNS concludes the series of the ILLUSTRIOUS DEAD; and one might be tempted to write an elegy rather than a criticism on him. In _naïveté_, in spirit, in characteristic humour, in vivid description of natural objects and of the natural feelings of the heart, he has left behind him no superior.

Of the living poets I wish to speak freely, but candidly.

ROGERS is an elegant and highly polished writer, but without much originality or power. He seems to have paid the chief attention to his style—_Materiam superabat opus_. He writes, however, with an admiration of the muse, and with an interest in humanity.

CAMPBELL has equal elegance, equal elaborateness, with more power and scope both of thought and fancy. His _Pleasures of Hope_ is too artificial and antithetical; but his _Gertrude of Wyoming_ strikes at the heart of nature, and has passages of extreme interest, with an air of tenderness and sweetness over the whole, like the breath of flowers. Some of his shorter effusions have great force and animation, and a patriotic fire.

BLOOMFIELD‘s excellence is confined to a minute and often interesting description of individual objects in nature, in which he is surpassed perhaps by no one.

CRABBE is a writer of great power, but of a perverse and morbid taste. He gives the very objects and feelings he treats of, whether in morals or rural scenery, but he gives none but the most uninteresting or the most painful. His poems are a sort of funeral dirge over human life, but without pity, without hope. He has neither smiles nor tears for his readers.

COLERIDGE has shewn great wildness of conception in his _Ancient Mariner_, sublimity of imagery in his _Ode to the Departing Year_, grotesqueness of fancy in his _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_, and tenderness of sentiment in his _Genevieve_. He has however produced nothing equal to his powers.

Mr. WORDSWORTH‘s characteristic is one, and may be expressed in one word;—a power of raising the smallest things in nature into sublimity by the force of sentiment. He attaches the deepest and loftiest feelings to the meanest and most superficial objects. His peculiarity is his combination of simplicity of subject with profundity and power of execution. He has no fancy, no wit, no humour, little descriptive power, no dramatic power, great occasional elegance, with continual rusticity and boldness of allusion; but he is sublime without the Muse’s aid, pathetic in the contemplation of his own and man’s nature; add to this, that his style is natural and severe, and his versification sonorous and expressive.

Mr. SOUTHEY‘s talent in poetry lies chiefly in fancy and the invention of his subject. Some of his oriental descriptions, characters, and fables, are wonderfully striking and impressive, but there is an air of extravagance in them, and his versification is abrupt, affected, and repulsive. In his early poetry there is a vein of patriotic fervour, and mild and beautiful moral reflection.

Sir WALTER SCOTT is the most popular of our living poets. His excellence is romantic narrative and picturesque description. He has great bustle, great rapidity of action and flow of versification, with a sufficient distinctness of character, and command of the ornaments of style. He has neither lofty imagination, nor depth or intensity of feeling; _vividness of mind_ is apparently his chief and pervading excellence.

Mr. C. LAMB has produced no poems equal to his prose writings: but I could not resist the temptation of transferring into this collection his _Farewell to Tobacco_, and some of the sketches in his _John Woodvil_; the first of which is rarely surpassed in quaint wit, and the last in pure feeling.

MONTGOMERY is an amiable and pleasing versifier, who puts his heart and fancy into whatever he composes.

Lord BYRON‘s distinguishing quality is intensity of conception and expression. He _wills_ to be sublime or pathetic. He has great wildness of invention, brilliant and elegant fancy, caustic wit, but no humour. Gray’s description of the poetical character—‘Thoughts that glow, and words that burn,’—applies to him more than to any of his contemporaries.

THOMAS MOORE is the greatest wit now living. His light, ironical pieces are unrivalled for point and facility of execution. His fancy is delightful and brilliant, and his songs have gone to the heart of a nation.

LEIGH HUNT has shewn great wit in his _Feast of the Poets_, elegance in his occasional verses, and power of description and pathos in his _Story of Rimini_. The whole of the third canto of that poem is as chaste as it is classical.

The late Mr. SHELLEY (for he is dead since the commencement of this publication) was chiefly distinguished by a fervour of philosophic speculation, which he clad in the garb of fancy, and in words of Tyrian die. He had spirit and genius, but his eagerness to give effect and produce conviction often defeated his object, and bewildered himself and his readers.

Lord THURLOW has written some very unaccountable, but some occasionally good and feeling poetry.

Mr. KEATS is also dead. He gave the greatest promise of genius of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty, originality, and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted was manly strength and fortitude to reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and expression. Some of his shorter and later pieces are, however, as free from faults as they are full of beauties.

Mr. MILMAN is a writer of classical taste and attainments rather than of original genius. _Poeta nascitur—non fit._

Of BOWLES‘s sonnets it is recommendation enough to say, that they were the favourites of Mr. Coleridge’s youthful mind.

It only remains to speak of Mr. BARRY CORNWALL, who, both in the drama, and in his other poems, has shewn brilliancy and tenderness of fancy, and a fidelity to truth and nature, in conceiving the finer movements of the mind equal to the felicity of his execution in expressing them.

Some additions have been made in the Miscellaneous part of the volume, from the Lyrical effusions of the elder Dramatists, whose beauty, it is presumed, can never decay, whose sweetness can never cloy!

NOTES

LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS

I. ON POETRY IN GENERAL

Any differences between the text quoted by Hazlitt and the texts used for the purposes of these notes which seem worth pointing out are indicated in square brackets.

For Sergeant Talfourd’s impressions of these lectures, and other matters of interest connected with their delivery, the reader may be referred to the _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, vol. i., pp. 236 _et seq._

PAGE

1. _Spreads its sweet leaves._ _Romeo and Juliet_, I. 1.

2. _The stuff of which our life is made._ Cf. _The Tempest_, IV. 1.

_Mere oblivion._ _As You Like It_, II. 7.

_Man’s life is poor as beast’s._ _King Lear_, II. 4. [‘Man’s life’s as
cheap as beast’s.’]

_There is warrant for it._ Cf. _Richard III._, I. 4, and _Macbeth_,
II. 3.

_Such seething brains_ and _the lunatic_. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_,
V. 1.

3. _Angelica and Medoro._ Characters in Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_
(1516).

_Plato banished the poets._ _The Republic_, Book X.

_Ecstasy is very cunning in._ _Hamlet_, III. 4.

_According to Lord Bacon._ An adaptation of a passage in the
_Advancement of Learning_, Book II., Chap. xiii. (ed. Joseph Devey,
_Bohn_, p. 97).

4. _Our eyes are made the fools._ _Macbeth_, II. 1.

_That if it would but apprehend._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, V. 1.

_The flame o’ the taper._ _Cymbeline_, II. 2.

_For they are old._ Cf. _King Lear_, II. 4.

5. _Nothing but his unkind daughters._ _King Lear_, III. 4. [‘Could
have subdued nature to such a lowness.’]

_The little dogs._ _King Lear_, III. 6.

_So I am._ _King Lear_, IV. 7.

_O now for ever._ _Othello_, III. 3.

6. _Never, Iago._ _Othello_, III. 3.

_But there where I have garner’d._ _Othello_, IV. 2.

_Moore._ Edward Moore (1712–1757), author of _The Gamester_ (1753).

_Lillo._ George Lillo (1693–1739), author of _The London Merchant, or
the History of George Barnwell_ (1731).

7. _As Mr. Burke observes._ _Sublime and Beautiful_, Part I. § 15.

_Masterless passion._ _Merchant of Venice_, IV. 1.

[‘for affection,
Mistress of passion, sways it to the mood.’]

_Satisfaction to the thought._ Cf. _Othello_, III. 3.

8. _Now night descending._ _Dunciad_, I. 89, 90.

8. _Throw him on the steep._ _Ode to Fear._

[‘ridgy steep
Of some loose hanging rock to sleep.’]

_Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend._ _King Lear_, I. 4. [‘More
hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child.’]

_Both at the first and now._ _Hamlet_, III. 2.

9. _Doctor Chalmers’s Discoveries._ Thomas Chalmers, D.D. (1780–1847),
who sought in his _A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation,
viewed in connection with Modern Astronomy_ (1817), to reconcile
science with current conceptions of Christianity. See _The Spirit of
the Age_, vol. III. p. 228 and note.

10. _Bandit fierce._ _Comus_, l. 426.

_Our fell of hair._ _Macbeth_, V. 5.

_Macbeth ... for the sake of the music._ Probably Purcell’s. It was
written for D’Avenant’s version and produced in 1672 (Genest). Cf.
_The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 138 and note.

_Between the acting._ _Julius Caesar_, II. 1. [‘The Genius and the
mortal instruments.’]

11. _Thoughts that voluntary move._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 37, 38.

_The words of Mercury._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 11. [‘The words of
Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.’]

_So from the ground._ _Faery Queene_, I. vi. [‘With doubled Eccho.’]

12. _The secret soul of harmony._ _L’Allegro_, l. 144. [‘The hidden
soul of harmony.’]

_The golden cadences of poetry._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, IV. 2.

_Sailing with supreme dominion._ Gray’s _Progress of Poesy_, III. 3.

13. _Sounding always._ Prologue to the _Canterbury Tales_, l. 275.

_Addison’s Campaign._ 1705. Addison wrote it on Marlborough’s victory
of Blenheim. For its description as a ‘Gazette in Rhyme,’ see Dr.
Joseph Warton’s (1722–1800) _An Essay on the Writings and Genius of
Pope_ (1756–82).

14. _Married to immortal verse._ _L’Allegro_, l. 137.

_Dipped in dews of Castalie._ Cf. T. Heywood’s,

‘And Jonson, though his learned pen
Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben.’

_The most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies._ Sophocles’s
_Philoctetes_.

_As I walked about._ Defoe’s _Robinson Crusoe_, Part I. p. 125, ed. G.
A. Aitken.

15. _Give an echo._ _Twelfth Night_, II. 4.

_Our poesy._ _Timon of Athens_, I. 1. [‘Which oozes.’]

16. _All plumed like ostriches._ Adapted from the First Part of _King
Henry IV._, IV. 1. [‘As full of spirit as the month of May.’]

_If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth._ Cf. _Psalms_,
cxxxix. 9–11.

18. _Pope Anastasius the Sixth._ _Inferno_, XI.

_Count Ugolino._ _Inferno_, XXXIII. Neither was Lamb satisfied with
the conception. See his paper on ‘The Reynolds Gallery’ in _The
Examiner_, June 6, 1813.

_The lamentation of Selma._ Colma’s lament in the _Songs of Selma_.

II. ON CHAUCER AND SPENSER.

The Chaucer and Spenser references throughout are to Skeat’s _Student’s Chaucer_, and to the _Globe_ Edition of _Spenser_ (Morris and Hales).

19. _Chaucer._ Modern authorities date Chaucer’s birth from 1340. It
is no longer held as true that he had an university education. The
story of his plot against the king, his flight and his imprisonment,
is also legendary.

20. _Close pent up_, and the next quotation. _King Lear_, III. 2.

_Flowery tenderness._ _Measure for Measure_, III. 1.

_And as the new abashed nightingale._ _Troilus and Criseyde_, III.
177.

_Thus passeth yere by yere._ ll. 1033–9 [‘fairer of hem two’].

21. _That stondeth at a gap._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1639–42.

_Have ye not seen._ ‘The Tale of the Man of Law,’ 645–51.

_Swiche sorrow he maketh._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1277–80.

22. _Babbling gossip of the air._ _Twelfth Night_, I. 5.

_There was also a nonne._ ‘The Prologue,’ 118–129 [‘Entuned in hir
nose ful semely’]; 137–155 [‘And held after the newe world the
space’]; 165–178; 189–207.

24. _Lawyer Dowling._ Book VIII., Chap. viii.

_No wher so besy a man._ ‘The Prologue,’ 321–2.

_Whose hous it snewed._ _Ibid._ 345.

_Who rode upon a rouncie._ _Ibid._ 390.

_Whose studie was but litel of the Bible._ _Ibid._ 438.

_All whose parish._ _Ibid._ 449–52.

_Whose parish was wide._ _Ibid._ 491.

_A slendre colerike man._ _Ibid._ 587.

_Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men._ Cf. Wm.
Blake’s _Descriptive Catalogue_, III. ‘As Newton numbered the stars,
and as Linnaeus numbered the plants, so Chaucer numbered the classes
of men.’

_A Sompnoure._ _Ibid._ 623–41. [‘Children were aferd,’ ‘oynons, and
eek lekes,’ ‘A fewe termes hadde he’]; 663–669.

25. _Ther maist thou se._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 2128–2151; 2155–2178;
2185–6.

27. _The Flower and the Leaf._ Most modern scholars regard the
evidence which attributes this poem to Chaucer as insufficient. The
same few words of Hazlitt’s were originally used in _The Round Table_,
‘Why the Arts are not Progressive?’ vol. I. p. 162.

28. _Griselda._ ‘The Clerkes Tale.’ See _The Round Table_, vol. I. p.
162.

_The faith of Constance._ ‘The Tale of the Man of Law.’

29. _Oh Alma redemptoris mater._ ‘The Prioress’s Tale.’

_Whan that Arcite._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1355–71. [‘His hewe falwe.’]

_Alas the wo!_ ll. 2771–9.

30. _The three temples_, ll. 1918–2092.

_Dryden’s version_, _i.e._ his ‘Palamon and Arcite.’

_Why shulde I not._ ‘The Knightes Tale,’ 1967–9, 1972–80. [‘In which
ther dwelleth.’]

_The statue of Mars._ _Ibid._ 2041–2, 2047–8.

_That heaves no sigh._ ‘Heave thou no sigh, nor shed a tear,’ Prior:
_Answer to Chloe_.

_Let me not like a worm._ ‘The Clerkes Tale,’ l. 880.

31. _Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable._ _Ibid._ 197–245.
[‘Sette his yë’]; 274–94 [‘Hir threshold goon’].

32. _All conscience and tender heart._ ‘The Prologue,’ 150.

_From grave to gay._ Pope, _Essay on Man_, Ep. IV. 380.

33. _The Cock and the Fox._ ‘The Nonne Preestes Tale of the Cok and
Hen.’

_January and May._ ‘The Marchantes Tale.’

_The story of the three thieves._ ‘The Pardoners Tale.’

_Mr. West._ Benjamin West (1738–1820). See the article on this picture
by Hazlitt in _The Edinburgh Magazine_, Dec. 1817, where the same
extract is quoted.

34. _Ne Deth, alas._ ‘The Marchantes Tale,’ 727–38.

34. _Occleve._ Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (b. 1368), who expressed his
grief at his ‘master dear’ Chaucer’s death in his version of _De
Regimine Principum_.

‘_Ancient Gower_’ John Gower (1330–1408), who wrote _Confessio
Amantis_ (1392–3), and to whom Chaucer dedicated (‘O moral Gower’) his
_Troilus and Criseyde_. See _Pericles_, I.

_Lydgate._ John Lydgate (_c._ 1370–c. 1440), poet and imitator of
Chaucer.

_Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville._ Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), courtier
and poet; Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (c. 1518–1547), who shares with
Wyatt the honour of introducing the sonnet into English verse; Thomas
Sackville, Earl of Dorset (c. 1536–1608), part author of the earliest
tragedy in English, _Ferrex and Porrex_, acted 1561–2.

_Sir John Davies_ (1569–1626), poet and statesman. Spenser was sent to
Ireland in 1580 as private secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton,
Lord Deputy of Ireland. Davies was sent to Ireland as
Solicitor-General in 1603, four years after Spenser’s death.

_The bog of Allan._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book II. Canto IX.

_An ably written paper._ ‘A View of the Present State of Ireland,’
registered 1598, printed 1633.

_An obscure inn._ In King Street, Westminster, Jan. 13, 1599.

_The treatment he received from Burleigh._ It has been suggested that
the disfavour with which Spenser was regarded by Burleigh—a disfavour
that stood in the way of his preferment—was because of Spenser’s
friendship with Essex, and Leicester’s patronage of him.

35. _Clap on high._ _The Faerie Queene_, III. XII. 23.

_In green vine leaves._ I. IV. 22.

_Upon the top of all his lofty crest._ I. VII. 32.

_In reading the Faery Queen._ The incidents mentioned will be found in
Books III. 9, I. 7, II. 6, and III. 12, respectively.

36. _And mask, and antique pageantry._ _L’Allegro_, 128.

_And more to lull him._ I. I. 41.

_The honey-heavy dew of slumber._ _Julius Caesar_, II. 1.

_Eftsoones they heard._ II. XII. 70–1. [‘To read what manner.’]

_The whiles some one did chaunt._ _Ibid._ 74–8. [‘Bare to ready
spoyl.’]

38. _The House of Pride._ I. IV.

_The Cave of Mammon._ II. VII. 28–50.

_The Cave of Despair._ I. IX. 33–35.

_The wars he well remember’d._ II. IX. 56.

_The description of Belphœbe._ II. III. 21.

_Florimel and the Witch’s son._ III. VII. 12.

_The gardens of Adonis._ III. VI. 29.

_The Bower of Bliss._ II. XII. 42.

_Poussin’s pictures._ Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). See Hazlitt’s
_Table Talk_, vol. VI. p. 168, _et seq._

_And eke that stranger knight._ III. IX. 20.

_Her hair was sprinkled with flowers._ II. III. 30.

_The cold icicles._ III. VIII. 35. [‘Ivory breast.’].

_That was Arion crowned._ IV. XI. line 3, stanza 23, and line 1,
stanza 24.

39. _And by his side rode loathsome Gluttony._ I. IV. 21–2. [‘In shape
and life.’]

_And next to him rode lustfull Lechery._ _Ibid._ 24–6.

40. _Yet not more sweet._ Carmen Nuptiale, _The Lay of the Laureate_
(1816), xviii. 4–6.

_The first was Fancy._ III. XII. 7–13, 22–3. [‘Next after her.’]

42. _The account of Satyrane._ I. VI. 24.

_Go seek some other play-fellows._ Stanza 28. [‘Go find.’]

42. _By the help of his fayre horns._ III. X. 47.

_The change of Malbecco into Jealousy._ III. X. 56–60.

_That house’s form._ II. VII. 28–9, 23.

_That all with one consent._ _Troilus and Cressida_, III. 3.

43. _High over hill._ III. X. 55.

_Pope, who used to ask._ In view of this remark, it may be of interest
to quote the following passage from Spence’s _Anecdotes_ (pp. 296–7,
1820; Section viii., 1743–4): ‘There is something in Spenser that
pleases one as strongly in one’s old age, as it did in one’s youth. I
read the _Faerie Queene_, when I was about twelve, with infinite
delight, and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a
year or two ago.’

_The account of Talus, the Iron Man._ V. I. 12.

_The ... Episode of Pastorella._ VI. IX. 12.

44. _In many a winding bout._ _L’Allegro_, 139–140.

III. ON SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON

The references are to the _Globe_ Edition of Shakespeare, and Masson’s three-volume edition of Milton’s _Poetical Works_. See _The Round Table_, ‘On Milton’s Versification,’ vol. i. pp. 36 _et seq._, for passages used again for the purposes of this lecture. See also _ibid._ ‘Why the Arts are not Progressive?’ pp. 160 _et seq._, and notes to those two Essays.

PAGE

46. _The human face divine._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 44.

_And made a sunshine in the shady place._ _Faerie Queene_, I. III. 4.

_The fault has been more in their_ [is not in our] _stars._ Cf.
_Julius Caesar_, I. 2.

47. _A mind reflecting ages past._ See vol. IV. notes to p. 213.

_All corners of the earth._ _Cymbeline_, III. iv.

_Nodded to him._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, III. 1.

_His so potent art._ _Tempest_, V. 1.

48. _Subject_ [servile] _to the same_ [all] _skyey influences_.
_Measure for Measure_, III. 1.

_His frequent haunts_ [‘my daily walks’]. _Comus_, 314.

_Coheres semblably together._. Cf. _2 Henry IV._, V. 1.

_Me and thy crying self._ _The Tempest_, I. 2.

_What, man! ne’er pull your hat._ _Macbeth_, IV. 3.

_Man delights not me_, and the following quotation. Adapted from
_Hamlet_, II. 2. Rosencraus should be Rosencrantz.

_A combination and a form._ _Hamlet_, III. 4.

49. _My lord, as I was reading_ [sewing], _Hamlet_, II. 1. [‘His
stockings foul’d ... so piteous in purport ... loosed out of hell.’]

_There is a willow_ [‘grows aslant’]. _Hamlet_, IV. 7.

50. _He’s speaking now._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, I. 5.

_It is my birth-day._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, III. 13.

51. _Nigh sphered in Heaven._ Collins’s _Ode on the Poetical
Character_, 66.

_To make society the sweeter welcome._ _Macbeth_, III. 1.

52. _With a little act upon the blood_ [burn] _like the mines of
sulphur._ _Othello_, III. 3. [‘Syrups of the world.’].

_While rage with rage._ _Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3.

_In their untroubled element._

‘That glorious star
In its untroubled element will shine,
As now it shines, when we are laid in earth
And safe from all our sorrows.’

Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, VI. 763–66.

52. _Satan’s address to the sun._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 31 _et seq._

53. _O that I were a mockery king of snow_ [standing before] _the sun
of Bolingbroke._ _Richard II._, IV. 1.

_His form had not yet lost._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 591–4.

_A modern school of poetry._ The Lake School.

_With what measure they mete._ _St. Mark_, iv. 24; _St. Luke_, vi. 38.

_It glances from heaven to earth._ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, V. 1.

_Puts a girdle._ _Ibid._ II. 1.

54. _I ask that I might waken reverence_ [‘and bid the cheek’].
_Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3.

_No man is the lord of anything_, and the following quotation. _Ibid._
III. 3.

55. _In Shakespeare._ Cf. ‘On application to study,’ _The Plain
Speaker_.

_Light thickens._ _Macbeth_, III. 2.

_His whole course of love._ _Othello_, I. 3.

_The business of the State._ _Ibid._ IV. 2.

_Of ditties highly penned._ _1 King Henry IV._, III. 1.

_And so by many winding nooks._ _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. 7.

56. _Great vulgar and the small._ Cowley’s _Translation of Horace’s
Ode_, III. 1.

_His delights_ [were] _dolphin-like._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, V. 2.

57. _Blind Thamyris._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 35–6.

_With darkness._ _Ibid._ VII. 27.

_Piling up every stone._ _Ibid._ XI. 324–5.

_For after ... I had from my first years._ _The Reason of Church
Government_, Book II.

58. _The noble heart._ _Faerie Queene_, I. V. 1.

_Makes Ossa like a wart._ _Hamlet_, V. 1.

59. _Him followed Rimmon._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 467–9.

_As when a vulture._ _Ibid._ III. 431–9.

_The great vision._ _Lycidas_, 161.

_The Pilot._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 204.

_The wandering moon._ _Il Penseroso_, 67–70.

60. _Like a steam._ _Comus_, 556.

_He soon saw within ken._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 621–44.

61. _With Atlantean shoulders._ _Ibid._ II. 306–7.

_Lay floating many a rood._ _Ibid._ I. 196.

_That sea beast, Leviathan._ _Ibid._ I. 200–202.

_What a force of imagination._ Cf. _Notes and Queries_, 4th Series,
xi. 174, where J. H. T. Oakley points out that Milton is simply
translating a well-known Greek phrase for the ocean.

_His hand was known._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 732–47.

62. _But chief the spacious hall._ _Ibid._ I. 762–88.

_Round he surveys._ _Ibid._ III. 555–67.

63. _Such as the meeting soul._ _L’Allegro_, 138–140.

_The hidden soul._ _Ibid._ 144.

_God the Father turns a school-divine._ Pope, 1st Epistle, _Hor._ Book
II. 102.

_As when heaven’s fire._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 612–13.

64. _All is not lost._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 106–9.

_That intellectual being._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 147–8.

_Being swallowed up._ _Ibid._ II. 149–50.

_Fallen cherub._ _Ibid._ I. 157–8.

_Rising aloft_ [‘he steers his flight aloft’]. _Ibid._ I. 225–6.

65. _Is this the region._ _Ibid._ I. 242–63.

66. _His philippics against Salmasius._ In 1651 Milton replied in his
_Defensio pro Populo Anglicano_ to _Defensio Regia pro Carolo I._
(1649) by Claudius Salmasius or Claude de Saumaise (1588–1658), a
professor at Leyden. The latter work had been undertaken at the
request of Charles II. by Salmasius, who was regarded as the leading
European scholar of his day.

_With hideous ruin._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 46.

_Retreated in a silent valley._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 547–50.

_A noted political writer of the present day._ See _Political Essays_,
vol. III. pp. 155, _et seq._ ‘Illustrations of the Times Newspaper,’
and notes thereto. Dr. Stoddart and Napoleon the Great are the persons
alluded to. See also Hone’s ‘Buonapartephobia, or the Origin of Dr.
Slop’s Name,’ which had reached a tenth edition in 1820.

_Longinus._ _On the Sublime_, IX.

67. _No kind of traffic._ Adapted from _The Tempest_, II. 1.

_The generations were prepared._ Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, VI.
554–57.

_The unapparent deep._ _Paradise Lost_, VII. 103.

_Know to know no more._ Cf. Cowper, _Truth_, 327.

_They toiled not._ _St. Matthew_, VI. 28, 29.

_In them the burthen._ Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed a few miles above
Tintern Abbey,’ 38–41.

_Such as angels weep._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 620.

68. _In either hand._ _Paradise Lost_, XII. 637–47.

IV. ON DRYDEN AND POPE

The references throughout are to the _Globe_ Editions of Pope and Dryden.

69–71. _The question, whether Pope was a poet._ In a slightly
different form these paragraphs appeared in _The Edinburgh Magazine_,
Feb. 1818.

70. _The pale reflex of Cynthia’s brow._ _Romeo and Juliet_, III. 5.

71. _Martha Blount_ (1690–1762). She was Pope’s life-long friend, to
whom he dedicated several poems, and to whom he bequeathed most of his
property.

_In Fortune’s ray._ _Troilus and Cressida_, I. 3.

_The gnarled oak ... the soft myrtle._ _Measure for Measure_, II. 2.

_Calm contemplation and poetic ease._ Thomson’s _Autumn_, 1275.

72. _More subtle web Arachne cannot spin._ _Faerie Queene_, II. XII.
77.

_Not with more glories._ _The Rape of the Lock_, II. 1–22.

73. _From her fair head._ _Ibid._ III. 154.

_Now meet thy fate._ _Ibid._ V. 87–96.

_The Lutrin of Boileau._ Boileau’s account of an ecclesiastical
dispute over a reading-desk was published in 1674–81. It was
translated into English by Nicholas Rowe in 1708. _The Rape of the
Lock_ was published in 1712–14.

_’Tis with our judgments._ _Essay on Criticism_, 9–10.

74. _Still green with bays._ _Ibid._ 181–92.

_His little bark with theirs should sail._ _Essay on Man_, IV. 383–6.
[‘My little bark attendant sail.’]

_But of the two, etc._ _Essay on Criticism_, See the _Round Table_,
vol. I. p. 41, for the first mention of these couplets by Hazlitt.

75. _There died the best of passions._ _Eloisa to Abelard_, 40.

76. _If ever chance._ _Ibid._ 347–8.

_He spins_ [‘draweth out’] _the thread of his verbosity_. _Love’s
Labour’s Lost_, V. 1.

_The very words._ _Macbeth_, I. 3.

_Now night descending._ _The Dunciad_, I. 89–90.

_Virtue may chuse._ _Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue I., 137–172.

77. _His character of Chartres._ _Moral Essays_, Epistle III.

_Where Murray._ _Imitations of Horace_, Epistle VI., To Mr. Murray,
52–3. William Murray (1704–1793) was created Baron Mansfield in 1756.

_Why rail they then._ _Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue II. 138–9.

_Despise low thoughts_ [joys]. _Imitations of Horace_, Epistle VI., To
Mr. Murray, 60–2.

78. _Character of Addison._ _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, 193–214.

_Alas! how changed._ _Moral Essays_, Epistle III. 305–8.

_Why did I write?_ _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, 125–146.

_Oh, lasting as those colours._ _Epistle to Mr. Jervas_, 63–78.

79. _Who have eyes, but they see not._ _Psalm_, CXV. 5, etc.

_I lisp’d in numbers._ _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, 128.

_Et quum conabar scribere, versus erat._ Ovid, _Trist._, IV. x. 25–26.

‘Sponte sua numeros carmen veniebat ad aptos;
Et quod tentabam dicere, versus erat.’

80. _Besides these jolly birds._ _The Hind and the Panther_, III.
991–1025. [‘Whose crops impure.’]

81. _The jolly God._ _Alexander’s Feast, or the power of music: A song
in honour of St. Cecilia’s Day_ 1697, 49–52. A few phrases from this
criticism were used in the Essay on Mr. Wordsworth, _The Spirit of the
Age_ (vol. IV. p. 276).

For _for, as piece_, read _for, as a piece_.

82. _The best character of Shakespeare._ Dryden’s _Essay of Dramatic
Poesy_, ed. Ker, I. 79–80.

_Tancred and Sigismunda._ _i.e._ Sigismonda and Guiscardo.

_Thou gladder of the mount._ _Palamon and Arcite_, III. 145.

83. _Donne._ John Donne (1573–1631), whose life was written by Izaak
Walton, and whom Ben Jonson described as ‘the first poet in the world
in some things,’ but who would not live ‘for not being understood.’

_Waller._ Edmund Waller’s (1605–1687) Saccharissa was Lady Dorothy
Sidney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester.

_Marvel._ Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), ‘poet, patriot, and friend of
Milton.’

_Harsh, as the words of Mercury._ [‘The words of Mercury are harsh
after the songs of Apollo.’] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 2.

_Rochester._ John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680).

_Denham._ Sir John Denham (1615–1669). His _Cooper’s Hill_ was
published in 1642.

_Wither’s._ George Wither (1588–1667). See Lamb’s Essay on the
Poetical Works of George Wither. _Poems, Plays, and Essays_, ed.
Ainger. The lines quoted by Hazlitt are from ‘The Shepheards’
Hunting,’ (1615). [‘To be pleasing ornaments.’ ‘Let me never taste of
gladnesse.’]

V. ON THOMSON AND COWPER

85. _Dr. Johnson makes it his praise._ ‘It is said by Lord Lyttelton,
in the Prologue to his posthumous play, that his works contained “no
line which, dying, he could wish to blot.“’ _Life of Thomson._

_Bub Doddington._ George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), one of Browning’s
‘persons of importance in their day.’ His Diary was published in 1784.

_Would he had blotted a thousand!_ Said by Ben Jonson of Shakespeare,
in his _Timber._

86. _Cannot be constrained by mastery._

‘Love will not submit to be controlled
By mastery.’
Wordsworth, _The Excursion_, VI.

_Come, gentle Spring!_ ‘Spring,’ 1–4.

_And see where surly Winter._ _Ibid._ 11–25.

88. _A man of genius._ Coleridge. See Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘My First
Acquaintance with the Poets.’

_A burnished fly._ _The Castle of Indolence_, I. 64. [‘In prime of
June.’]

_For whom the merry bells._ _Ibid._ I. 62.

_All was one full-swelling bed._ _Ibid._ I. 33.

_The stock-dove’s plaint._ _Ibid._ I. 4.

_The effects of the contagion._ ‘Summer,’ 1040–51.

_Of the frequent corse._ _Ibid._ 1048–9.

_Breath’d hot._ _Ibid._ 961–979.

89. _The inhuman rout._ ‘Autumn,’ 439–44.

_There through the prison._ ‘Winter,’ 799–809.

_Where pure Niemi’s fairy mountains rise._ _Ibid._ 875–6.

_The traveller lost in the snow._ _Ibid._ 925–35.

90. _Through the hush’d air._ _Ibid._ 229–64.

_Enfield’s Speaker._ _The Speaker_, or Miscellaneous Pieces selected
from the best English Writers, 1775, and often reprinted. By William
Enfield, LL.D., (1741–1797).

_Palemon and Lavinia._ ‘Autumn,’ 177–309.

_Damon and Musidora._ ‘Summer,’ 1267–1370.

_Celadon and Amelia._ _Ibid._ 1171–1222.

91. _Overrun with the spleen._ Cf. ‘The lad lay swallow’d up in
spleen.’—Swift’s _Cassinus and Peter_, a Tragical Elegy, 1731.

_Unbought grace._ Burke’s _Reflections on the French Revolution_:
Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89.

92. _His Vashti._ _The Task_, III. 715.

_Crazy Kate, etc._ _The Task_, I. 534, _et seq._

_Loud hissing urn._ _Ibid._ IV. 38.

_The night was winter._ _Ibid._ VI. 57–117.

94. _The first volume of Cowper’s poems._ This was published in 1782,
and contained _Table Talk_, _The Progress of Error_, _Truth_,
_Expostulation_, _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_, _Retirement_, etc.

_The proud and humble believer._ _Truth_, 58–70.

_Yon cottager._ _Truth_, 317–36.

_But if, unblamable in word and thought._ _Hope_, 622–34.

95. _Robert Bloomfield_ (1766–1823). _The Farmer’s Boy_ was written in
a London garret. It was published in 1800, and rapidly became popular.

96. _Thomson, in describing the same image._ _The Seasons_, ‘Spring,’
833–45.

_While yet the year._ [‘As yet the trembling year is unconfirm’d.’]
_The Seasons_, ‘Spring,’ 18.

97. _Burn’s Justice._ _Justice of the Peace_, by Richard Burn
(1709–1785), the first of many editions of which was issued in two
vols., 1755.

_Wears cruel garters._ _Twelfth Night_, II. 5. [‘Cross-gartered.’]

_A panopticon._ Jeremy Bentham’s name for his method of prison
supervision. See _The Spirit of the Age_, vol. III., note to p. 197.

_The latter end of his Commonwealth_ [does not] _forget_[s] _the
beginning_. _The Tempest_, II. 1.

98. _Mother Hubberd’s Tale._ _Prosopopoia, or Mother Hubberd’s Tale._

98. _The Oak and the Briar._ ‘Februarie,’ in _The Shepheard’s
Calender_.

_Browne._ William Browne (1591–?1643), pastoral poet. His chief work
was _Britannia’s Pastorals_ (1613–6).

_Withers._ See note to p. 83, _ante_. The family name is occasionally
spelt Withers though the poet is generally known as Wither.

_The shepherd boy piping._ Book I. chap. ii.

_Like Nicholas Poussin’s picture._ See Hazlitt’s Essay ‘On a Landscape
by Nicolas Poussin’ in _Table Talk_, vol. VI. p. 168, _et seq._

_Sannazarius’s Piscatory Eclogues._ Iacopo Sannazaro’s (1458–1530)
_Piscatory Eclogues_, translated by Rooke, appeared in England in
1726. See _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 56, ‘On John Buncle,’ for a
similar passage on Walton.

99. _A fair and happy milk-maid._ The quotation of the ‘Character’
from Sir Thomas Overbury’s _Wife_ was contributed to the notes to
Walton’s _Complete Angler_ by Sir Henry Ellis, editor of Bagster’s
edition, 1815. He took it from the twelfth edition, 1627, of Sir
Thomas Overbury’s book. The following passages may be added between
‘curfew’ and ‘her breath’ to make the note as quoted perfect:—‘In
milking a cow, and straining the teats through her fingers, it seems
that so sweet a milk press makes the milk the whiter or sweeter; for
never came almond glue or aromatic ointment of her palm to taint it.
The golden ears of corn fall and kiss her feet when she reaps them, as
if they wished to be bound and led prisoners by the same hand that
felled them.’

100. _Two quarto volumes._ John Horne Tooke’s _Diversions of Purley_
was published in two volumes, 4to, in 1786–1805. See _The Spirit of
the Age_, vol. IV. p. 231, on ‘The Late Mr. Horne Tooke.’

_The heart of his mystery._ _Hamlet_, III. 2.

_Rousseau in his Confessions ... a little spot of green._ Part I. Book
III. See _The Round Table_, ‘On the Love of the Country,’ and notes
thereto, vol. I. p. 17, _et seq._ The greater part of that letter was
used for the purposes of this lecture.

102. _Expatiates freely._ Pope’s _Essay on Man_, Epis. I. 5.

_Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances._ Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), author of _The
Romance of the Forest_ (1791), _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ (1794), and
other popular stories of sombre mystery and gloom.

103. _My heart leaps up._ Wordsworth.

[‘So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.’]

_Ah! voila de la pervenche._ _Confessions_, Part I. Book VI.

_That wandering voice._ Wordsworth. _To the Cuckoo._

VI. ON SWIFT, YOUNG, GRAY, COLLINS, ETC.

104. _Parnell._ Thomas Parnell (1679–1717). His poems were published
by Pope, and his life was written by Goldsmith.

_Arbuthnot._ John Arbuthnot (1667–1735), physician and writer. He had
the chief share in the _Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus_, which was
published amongst Pope’s works in 1741. His _History of John Bull_ was
published in 1712.

105. _Trim ... the old jack-boots._ _Tristram Shandy_, III. 20.

106. _Prior._ Matthew Prior (1664–1721), diplomatist and writer of
‘occasional’ verse. See Thackeray’s _English Humourists_.

_Sedley._ Sir Charles Sedley (1639–1701), Restoration courtier and
poet.

_Little Will._ An English Ballad on the taking of Namur by the King of
Great Britain, 1695.

107. _Gay._ John Gay (1685–1732), the author of _Fables_, _The
Beggar’s Opera_, so often quoted by Hazlitt, and _Black-eyed Susan_.
_Polly_ was intended as a sequel to _The Beggar’s Opera_, but it was
prohibited from being played, though permitted to be printed. See _The
Round Table_, _The Beggar’s Opera_, and notes thereto. That Essay was
used as part of the present lecture.

_Happy alchemy of mind._ See _The Round Table_, vol. i., p. 65. Cf.
also Lamb’s essay, ‘The Londoner,’ _Morning Post_, Feb. 1, 1802: ‘Thus
an art of extracting morality from the commonest incidents of a town
life, is attained by the same well-natured alchemy, with which the
Foresters of Arden,’ etc.

_O’erstepping_ [not] _the modesty of nature_. _Hamlet_, III. 2.

108. _Miss Hannah More’s laboured invectives._ _Thoughts on the
Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society_, 1788, and
_An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World_, 1790. Each
passed through several editions before the close of the century. Of
the first named, the third edition is stated to have been sold out in
four hours.

_Sir Richard Blackmore._ Court physician to William and Anne. He died
in 1729, after having written six epics in sixty books.

109. _Mr. Jekyll’s parody._ Joseph Jekyll (1754–1837), Master of
Chancery. The parody was published in the _Morning Chronicle_, Friday,
Aug. 19, 1809.

_A City Shower._ See _The Tatler_, No. 238.

110. _Mary the cookmaid ... Mrs. Harris._ ‘Mary the Cook-maid’s letter
to Dr. Sheridan,’ 1723, which begins thus:—

‘Well, if ever I saw such another man since my mother bound my head!
You a gentleman! marry come up! I wonder where you were bred.’

‘Mrs. Harris’s Petition,’ 1699, after the preliminaries—

‘Humbly sheweth,
That I went to warm myself in Lady Betty’s chamber, because I was
cold;
And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence,
besides farthings, in money and gold.’

_Rector of Laracor._ Swift was appointed to the vicarage of Laracor,
Trim, West Meath, Ireland, in 1700.

_Gulliver’s nurse._ In the Voyage to Brobdingnag.

_An eminent critic._ Jeffrey’s article on Scott’s _Swift_, _Edinburgh
Review_, No. 53, Sept. 1816, vol. xxvii. pp. 1 _et seq._

112. _Shews vice her own image._ [To shew virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image.] _Hamlet_, III. 2.

_Indignatio facit versus._ [Facit indignatio versum.] Juvenal, _Sat._
I. 79.

_As dry as the remainder biscuit._ _As You Like It_, II. 7.

_Reigned there and revelled._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 765.

_As riches fineless._ _Othello_, III. 3.

113. _Camacho’s wedding._ Part II. chap. xx.

_How Friar John ... lays about him._ _Gargantua_, Book I., chap.
xxvii.

_How Panurge whines in the storm._ _Pantagruel_, Book IV. chap. xix.,
_et seq._

_How Gargantua mewls._ _Gargantua_, Book I., chap. vii.

113. _The pieces of silver money in the Arabian Nights._ The Story of
the Barber’s Fourth Brother.

_Mortal consequences._ _Macbeth_, V. 3.

114. _The dull product of a scoffer’s pen._ Wordsworth’s _Excursion_,