Chapter XXXIII: Letter XXI

_Janus Weathercock, Esq._ One of the pseudonyms of the notorious
poisoner Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794–1852). He and
Hazlitt were in 1820 fellow-contributors to _The London
Magazine_. For the matters referred to in this paragraph of the
text, see Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays, especially the essay
reprinted from _The London Magazine_ for July 1820. For an
account of Wainewright see the introduction to Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt’s selection of Wainewright’s _Essays and Criticisms_
(1880). The article to which Hazlitt replies had appeared in
_The London Magazine_ for June 1820 (vol. I. p. 630) under the
title of ‘Janus’s Jumble.’

Note. ‘_Dip it in the ocean_,’ _etc._ _The Sentimental Journey_,
The Wig, Paris.

161. _Milaine ‘with the foot of fire.’_ See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

‘_Swallows total grist_,’ _etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, VI. 108.

_Emery’s Yorkshireman._ The character of Tyke in Morton’s _The
School for Reform_. Cf. Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

162. ‘_A stamp_,’ _etc._ ‘A stamp exclusive and professional.’ Leigh
Hunt, _The Story of Rimini_, III. 32.

‘_Gabble most brutishly._’

‘But wouldst gabble like
A thing most brutish.’
_The Tempest_, Act I. Scene 2.

162. ‘_His speech bewrayeth him._’ _St. Matthew_, xxvi. 73.

_Servum pecus imitatorum._ ‘O imitatores, servum pecus.’ Horace,
_Epistles_, I. xix. 19.

‘_An author_,’ _etc._ Young, _Epistles to Mr. Pope_, II. 15–16.

163. _Odi profanum vulgus_, _etc._ Horace, _Odes_, III. 1.

_Vice by losing_, _etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne), II. 89.

164. ‘_Making mops and mows._’ _The Tempest_, Act IV. Scene 1.

‘_Go thou_,’ _etc._ _St. Luke_, x. 37.

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

165. _Millamant._ In Congreve’s _The Way of the World_ (1700).

‘_Worn in their newest gloss._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 7.

‘_And all was conscience_,’ _etc._ Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_,
Prologue, 150.

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

167. _Hogarth’s_ Merveilleuses _in Bedlam_. Hazlitt refers to the
eighth plate of _The Rake’s Progress_. Cf. his Essay ‘On the
Works of Hogarth,’ vol. viii. p. 143.

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

168. _The proverbs about the mistress’s eye._ ‘The mistress’s eye feeds
the capon.’ ‘The master’s eye makes the horse fat.’ See Mr. W.
C. Hazlitt’s _English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases_ (1882).

ESSAY XVII. ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN

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

‘_And blind Orion_,’ _etc._ Keats, _Endymion_, II. 198.

‘_A hunter of shadows_,’ _etc._ Cf.

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

_And having lost an eye_, _etc._ For offering violence to Merope,
Orion was blinded by her father Oenopion with the assistance of
Dionysus.

‘_Grey dawn_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VII. 373–4.

169. ‘_Shadowy sets off._’

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

‘_Denote a foregone conclusion._’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.

‘_Take up the isles_,’ _etc._ _Isaiah_, xl. 15.

‘_So potent art._’ _The Tempest_, Act V. Scene 1.

170. ‘_More than natural._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.

‘_Gives to airy nothing_,’ _etc._ _Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act
V. Scene 1.

Note. _His Life lately published._ Mrs. Graham’s (Lady Callcott’s)
_Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin_ (1820). See pp. 35–6.

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

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

_His picture of the Deluge._ In the Louvre.

‘_O’er-informed._’ ‘And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.’
Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I. 158.

‘_The very stones_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act II. Scene 1.

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

172. ‘_Leaping like wanton kids_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book I.
Canto vi. Stanza 14.

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

‘_The valleys low_,’ _etc._ ‘Ye valleys low, where the mild
whispers use.’ _Lycidas_, 136.

‘_Within the book and volume_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Scene 5.

‘_The sober certainty_,’ _etc._ _Comus_, 263.

‘_He who knows of these delights_,’ _etc._

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

173. ‘_Old Genius_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book III. Canto vi.
Stanzas 31 and 32.

174. _Pictures are scattered_, _etc._

‘Thus pleasure is spread through the earth
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.’
Wordsworth, _Stray Pleasures_.

_The collections at Blenheim_, _etc._ See the volume containing
Hazlitt’s art criticisms.

_Since the Louvre is stripped_, _etc._ The art treasures which
Napoleon had pillaged from the various countries of Europe,
especially from Italy, were restored in 1815.

_The hunter of greatness_, _etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 168. Napoleon
died on May 5, 1821.

ESSAY XVIII. ON MILTON’S SONNETS

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

‘_Some fee-grief_,’ _etc._

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

‘_To the height_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, l. 24.

‘_Most musical_,’ _etc._ _Il Penseroso_, 62.

175. ‘_Very tolerable_,’ _etc._ ‘To babble and to talk is most
tolerable and not to be endured.’ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act
III. Scene 3.

‘_The divine_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Book II. Ep.
i. 69.

‘_From you have I been absent_,’ _etc._ Shakespeare, Sonnet
XCVIII.

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

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

176. ‘_Oh Virtue_,’ _etc._ Quoted by Wordsworth in _The Excursion_,