The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)

THE ROUND TABLE

ON THE LOVE OF LIFE

This essay formed No. 3 of the Round Table series, the first two having been contributed by Leigh Hunt. To numbers 2, 3, 4 the following motto was prefixed: ‘Sociali fœdere mensa. Milton. A Table in a social compact joined.’

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1.

That sage. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Bacon’s lines—

‘What then remains, but that we still should cry

For being born, or being born, to die?’

 

which are taken from an epigram in the Greek Anthology.

2.

‘The school-boy,’ says Addison. See The Spectator, No. 93.

 

‘Hope and fantastic expectations,’ etc. Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Dying, Chap. i. § 3, par. 4.

 

‘An ounce of sweet,’ etc. ‘A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre.’ The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto iii. 30. This line formed the motto of Leigh Hunt’s Indicator.

3.

‘And that must end us,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 145–151. In The Examiner Hazlitt publishes the following passage as a note to this quotation: ‘Many persons have wondered how Bonaparte was able to survive the shock of that tremendous height of power from which he fell. But it was that very height which still rivetted his backward gaze, and made it impossible for him to take his eye from it, more than from a hideous spectre. The sun of Austerlitz still rose upon his imagination, and could not set. The huge fabric of glory which he had raised, still “mocked his eyes with air.”^[87] He who had felt his existence so intensely could not consent to lose it!’

4.

‘Are made desperate,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Excursion, Book VI. The following note is appended to this essay in The Examiner: ‘It is proper to notice that an extract from this article formerly appeared in another publication. A series of Criticisms on the principal English Poets will shortly be commenced, and till concluded, will appear alternately with the other subjects of the Round Table.’ The publication referred to was The Morning Chronicle for September 4, 1813, where, under the heading ‘Common Places,’ the substance of the paragraph beginning ‘The love of life is, in general, the effect,’ and the following paragraph will be found. The plan for criticisms of the English Poets was not adhered to. Hazlitt shortly afterwards (1818) delivered a course of Lectures on the English Poets which was published in the same year.

This essay formed the greater part of No. 7 of the Round Table series. The first three paragraphs are from one of Hazlitt’s ‘Common Places’ in The Morning Chronicle, September 25, 1813.

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4.

‘A discipline of humanity.’ Bacon’s Essays, Of Marriage and Single Life.

 

‘Still green with bays,’ etc. Pope’s Essay on Criticism, 181–188.

5.

A celebrated political writer. Probably Cobbett, of whom Hazlitt says in another place: ‘He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring excess.’ (Table Talk, Character of Cobbett.)

6.

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

 

Falstaff’s reasoning about honour. See 1 Henry IV. Act V. Scene 1.

 

‘They that are whole,’ etc. St. Matthew, ix. 12.

 

In The Examiner this essay concluded with the following passage: ‘We do not think a classical education proper for women. It may pervert their minds, but it cannot elevate them. It has been asked, Why a woman should not learn the dead languages as well as the modern ones? For this plain reason, that the one are still spoken, and have immediate associations connected with them, and the other not. A woman may have a lover who is a Frenchman, or an Italian, or a Spaniard; and it is well to be provided against every contingency in that way. But what possible interest can she feel in those old-fashioned persons, the Greeks and Romans, or in what was done two thousand years ago? A modern widow would doubtless prefer Signor Tramezzani^[88] to Æneas, and Mr. Conway would be a formidable rival to Paris. No young lady in our days, in conceiving an idea of Apollo, can go a step beyond the image of her favourite poet: nor do we wonder that our old friend, the Prince Regent, passes for a perfect Adonis in the circles of beauty and fashion. Women in general have no ideas, except personal ones. They are mere egotists. They have no passion for truth, nor any love of what is purely ideal. They hate to think, and they hate every one who seems to think of anything but themselves. Everything is to them a perfect nonentity which does not touch their senses, their vanity, or their interest. Their poetry, their criticism, their politics, their morality, and their divinity, are downright affectation. That line in Milton is very striking—

“He for God only, she for God in him.”^[89]

 

Such is the order of nature and providence; and we should be sorry to see any fantastic improvements on it. Women are what they were meant to be; and we wish for no alteration in their bodies or their minds. They are the creatures of the circumstances in which they are placed, of sense, of sympathy and habit. They are exquisitely susceptible of the passive impressions of things: but to form an idea of pure understanding or imagination, to feel an interest in the true and the good beyond themselves, requires an effort of which they are incapable. They want principle, except that which consists in an adherence to established custom; and this is the reason of the severe laws which have been set up as a barrier against every infringement of decorum and propriety in women. It has been observed by an ingenious writer of the present day, that women want imagination. This requires explanation. They have less of that imagination which depends on intensity of passion, on the accumulation of ideas and feelings round one object, on bringing all nature and all art to bear on a particular purpose, on continuity and comprehension of mind; but for the same reason, they have more fancy, that is greater flexibility of mind, and can more readily vary and separate their ideas at pleasure. The reason of that greater presence of mind which has been remarked in women is, that they are less in the habit of speculating on what is best to be done, and the first suggestion is decisive. The writer of this article confesses that he never met with any woman who could reason, and with but one reasonable woman. There is no instance of a woman having been a great mathematician or metaphysician or poet or painter: but they can dance and sing and act and write novels and fall in love, which last quality alone makes more than angels of them. Women are no judges of the characters of men, except as men. They have no real respect for men, or they never respect them for those qualities, for which they are respected by men. They in fact regard all such qualities as interfering with their own pretensions, and creating a jurisdiction different from their own. Women naturally wish to have their favourites all to themselves, and flatter their weaknesses to make them more dependent on their own good opinion, which, they think, is all that they want. We have, indeed, seen instances of men, equally respectable and amiable, equally admired by the women and esteemed by the men, but who have been ruined by an excess of virtues and accomplishments.’ Leigh Hunt replied to these remarks in the following number of the Round Table series (February 19, 1815), where he makes interesting reference to Hazlitt’s appearance and powers.

ON THE TATLER

This essay formed No. 10 of the Round Table series. The substance of it was repeated by Hazlitt in his volume of Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819). (See the Lecture on ‘The Periodical Essayists.’)

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7.

‘The disastrous strokes which his youth suffered.’ ‘Some distressful stroke that my youth suffered.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

 

He dwells with a secret satisfaction. The Tatler, No. 107.

 

The club at the ‘Trumpet.’ The Tatler, No. 132.

 

The cavalcade of the justice, etc. The Tatler, No. 86.

 

The upholsterer and his companions. See The Tatler, Nos. 155, 160, and 178.

 

A burlesque copy of verses. The Tatler, No. 238. The verses are by Swift.

8.

Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield. See p. 157. Betterton is frequently mentioned in The Tatler. See especially No. 167.

 

Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock. See The Tatler, No. 88, and p. 157 of this volume.

 

‘The first sprightly runnings.’ Dryden’s Aurengzebe, Act IV. Scene 1.

9.

The Court of Honour. Addison, in The Tatler, No. 250, created the Court of Honour. He and Steele together wrote the later papers (Nos. 253, 256, 259, 262, 265) in which the proceedings of the Court are recorded.

 

The Personification of Musical Instruments. The Spectator, Nos. 153 and 157.

 

Note. This note is by Leigh Hunt. The authorship of the anonymous paper (The Spectator, No. 95) is uncertain.

 

The account of the two sisters. The Tatler, No. 151.

 

The married lady. The Tatler, No. 104.

9.

The lover and his mistress. The Tatler, No. 94.

 

The bridegroom. The Tatler, No. 82.

 

Mr. Eustace and his wife. The Tatler, No. 172.

 

The fine dream. The Tatler, No. 117.

 

Mandeville’s sarcasm. Bernard Mandeville (d. 1733), author of The Fable of the Bees.

 

Westminster Abbey. The Spectator, No. 26.

 

Royal Exchange. The Spectator, No. 69.

 

The best criticism. The Spectator, No. 226.

10.

Note. An original copy of the ‘Tatler.’ The octavo edition of 1710–11.

ON MODERN COMEDY

This essay did not form one of the Round Table series, but was published in The Examiner for August 20, 1815, under the heading ‘Theatrical Examiner.’ It was substantially repeated in the Lectures on the English Comic Writers (Lecture VIII., ‘on the Comic Writers of the Last Century’), and was republished verbatim in the posthumous volume entitled Criticisms and Dramatic Essays on the English Stage (1851). The essay is practically a reprint of the first of two letters which Hazlitt wrote to The Morning Chronicle (September 25 and October 15, 1813). The second of these letters has not been republished.

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10.

‘Where it must live, or have no life at all.’ Othello, Act. II. Scene 4.

11.

‘See ourselves as others see us.’ Burns, ‘To a Louse.’

 

Wart. He means Shadow. See 2 Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2.

12.

Lovelace, etc. Nearly all these characters are discussed in the English Comic Writers. Sparkish is in Wycherley’s Country Wife, Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh’s Relapse, Millamant in Congreve’s Way of the World, Sir Sampson Legend in Congreve’s Love for Love.

 

We cannot expect, etc. This paragraph appeared originally in The Morning Chronicle, October 15, 1813.

13.

‘That sevenfold fence.’ ‘The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep the battery from my heart.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14. This passage is taken by Hazlitt from his own Reply to Malthus (1807).

 

‘Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.’ Foote’s Minor, Act II.

 

Aristotle. In the Poetics.

 

‘Warm hearts of flesh and blood,’ etc. Quoted, with omissions and variations, from a passage in Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 101).

14.

‘Men’s minds are parcel of their fortunes.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act III. Scene 13.

ON MR. KEAN’S IAGO

Republished with a few variations from The Examiner of July 24, 1814. Hazlitt afterwards published the original article in A View of the English Stage (1818), and borrowed from it in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays (See ante, pp. 206–7).

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14.

A contemporary critic. This was Hazlitt himself who made this criticism of Kean in an article in The Morning Chronicle (May 9, 1814), reprinted in A View of the English Stage.

 

‘Hedged in with the divinity of kings.’ From Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

15.

Play the dog, etc. 3 Henry VI., Act V. Scene 6.

16.

‘His cue is villainous melancholy,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Scene 2.

This essay was one of a series called Common-places (No. III.) and appeared in The Examiner on November 27, 1814, before the Round Table series commenced. It was not, therefore, addressed, as it purports to be, ‘to the editor of the “Round Table.”’ The greater part of it was repeated in the Lectures on the English Poets (1818) at the end of Lecture V. on Thomson and Cowper.

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17.

Rousseau in his ‘Confessions.’ Partie I. Livre III.

18.

The minstrel. See Beattie’s Minstrel, Book I. st. 9.

20.

‘A farewell sweet.’

‘If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,

Extend his evening beam,’ etc.

Paradise Lost, II. 492.

 

‘To me the meanest flower,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Ode, Intimations of Immortality.

 

‘Nature did ne’er betray,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

21.

‘Or from the mountain’s sides.’ Collins’s Ode to Evening, stanzas 9 and 10.

ON POSTHUMOUS FAME

This essay is not one of the Round Table series. It appeared in The Examiner on May 22, 1814.

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22.

‘Blessings be with them’ etc. Wordsworth’s Personal Talk, stanza 4.

 

‘Nor sometimes forget,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 33 et seq.

 

Note. A part of the passage here referred to (from The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy) is quoted by Hazlitt in his Lectures on the English Poets (on Shakspeare and Milton).

23.

‘Famous poets’ wit.’ See The Faerie Queene, Verses addressed by the author, No. 2. ‘Have not the poems of Homer,’ etc. The Advancement of Learning, First Book, VIII. 6.

 

‘Because on Earth,’ etc. See Dante’s Inferno, Canto iv. Cf. ‘On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’ The Faerie Queene, Book IV. Canto ii. st. 32.

 

‘Every variety of untried being.’

‘Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!’

Addison’s Cato, Act V. Scene 1.

24.

Note. ‘Oh! for my sake,’ etc. Sonnet No. III. ‘Desiring this man’s art,’ etc. Sonnet No. 29.

ON HOGARTH’S ‘MARRIAGE À LA MODE’

This essay (from The Examiner, June 5, 1814) and the next one (June 19, 1814) continuing the same subject, were (in substance) republished in the English Comic Writers (see the Lecture VII. on the works of Hogarth) and also in Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England, etc. (1824).

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25.

The late collection. In 1814.

 

‘Of amber-lidded snuff-box.’ Pope’s Rape of the Lock, IV. 123.

26.

‘A person, and a smooth dispose,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

 

‘Vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 89).

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED

28.

What Fielding says. See Tom Jones, Book IV. Chap. i.

30.

‘All the mutually reflected charities.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 40).

 

‘Frequent and full,’ etc. See Paradise Lost, III. 795–797.

31.

Note. The ‘Reflector.’ For 1811. The essay is included in Poems, Plays and Miscellaneous Essays of Charles Lamb (ed. Ainger).

ON MILTON’S LYCIDAS

No. 15 of the Round Table series.

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31.

‘At last he rose,’ etc. Lycidas, 192–193.

 

Dr. Johnson. See his Life of Milton (Works, Oxford ed., vii. 119).

 

‘Most musical, most melancholy.’ Il Penseroso, l. 62.

 

‘With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.’ Lycidas, l. 189.

32.

‘Together both,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 25 et seq.

 

‘Oh fountain Arethuse,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 85 et seq.

33.

‘Like one that had been led astray,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 69–70.

 

‘Next Camus,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 103 et seq.

 

Has been found fault with. By Dr. Johnson in his Life of Milton (Works, Oxford ed., vii. 120).

 

Camoens, who, in his ‘Lusiad.’ See The Lusiads, Canto ii. stanzas 56 et seq.

34.

‘The muses in a ring,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 47–48.

 

‘Have sight of Proteus,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us.’

 

‘Return, Alphaeus,’ etc. Lycidas, ll. 132 et seq.

35.

Dr. Johnson. Johnson does not seem to have been offended by the dolphins in particular.

 

The picture by Barry. ‘The triumph of the Thames,’ number 4 of the six pictures painted by James Barry (1741–1806) for the Society of Arts. Johnson’s friend, Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814) figures as one of the renowned dead.

 

‘Here’s flowers for you’ etc. Winter’s Tale, Act. IV. Scene 4.

36.

Dr. Johnson’s ‘general remark,’ etc. See his Life of Milton (Works, Oxford ed., vii. 119, 131), and Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), iv. 305.

ON MILTON’S VERSIFICATION

No. 16 of the Round Table series. Hazlitt drew largely on this essay for his lecture on Shakspeare and Milton. See Lectures on the English Poets.

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37.

‘Makes Ossa like a wart.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

 

‘Sad task, yet argument,’ etc. Quoted, with omissions, from Paradise Lost, IX. 13–45.

37.

‘Him followed Rimmon,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 467–469.

 

‘As when a vulture,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 431–439.

38.

It has been said, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to Coleridge. See his Lectures on Shakspeare (Bell’s ed., p. 526).

 

‘He soon saw within ken,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 621–634.

39.

Dr. Johnson. Hazlitt somewhat exaggerates Johnson’s strictures on Milton. See The Rambler, Nos. 86, 88, and 90.

 

‘His hand was known,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 732–747.

 

‘But chief the spacious hall,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 762–788. In The Examiner Hazlitt has a note to the words ‘brush’d with the hiss of rustling wings,’ pointing out that it was one of Dr. Johnson’s speculations, that all imitative sound is merely fanciful. He refers probably to The Rambler, No. 94.

40.

‘Round he surveys,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 555–567.

 

‘In many a winding bout,’ etc. L’Allegro, ll. 139–140.

41.

‘The hidden soul of harmony.’ L’Allegro, l. 144.

 

Note. Hazlitt quoted these couplets again in his Lectures on the English Poets. See Lecture IV. on Dryden and Pope.

ON MANNER

This essay is compounded of two papers in the Round Table series, Nos. 17 and 18.| Hazlitt, however, omitted the greater part of No. 18, at the beginning of which he discussed Dryden’s version of The Flower and the Leaf. No. 18 was published in Winterslow (1839) under the title of Matter and Manner.

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42.

Says Lord Chesterfield. ‘Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than what they say.’ Letters to his Son, No. cxxx.

 

Than his sentiments. In The Examiner appears the following note on this passage: ‘We find persons who write what may be called an impracticable style; and their ideas are just as impracticable. They have as little tact of what is going on in the world as of the habitual meaning of words. Other writers betray their natural disposition by affectation, dryness, or levity of style. Style is the adaptation of words to things. Dr. Johnson had no style, that is, no scale of words answering to the differences of his subject. He always translated his ideas into the highest and most imposing form of expression, or more properly, into Latin words with English terminations. Goldsmith said to him, “If you had to write a fable, and to introduce little fishes speaking, you would make them talk like great whales.” It is a satire on this kind of taste that the most ignorant pretenders are in general what is generally understood by the finest writers. Women generally write a good style, because they express themselves according to the impression which things make upon them, without the affectation of authorship. They have besides more sense of propriety than men.’ For the story of Goldsmith see Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), ii. 231.

43.

One of the most pleasant, etc. It is evident from a passage in Table Talk (on Coffee-House Politicians) that this friend is Leigh Hunt, and that ‘another friend’ is Lamb.

 

‘As dry as the remainder biscuit,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

 

‘Learning is often,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act IV. Scene 3.

44.

Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough. Letters to his Son, No. clxviii.

45.

Note 1. It appears from a MS. note in a copy of the 1817 edition that Hazlitt here refers to Lord Castlereagh.

 

The greatest man, etc. Napoleon. Cf. Table Talk (on Great and Little Things) and Life of Napoleon, Chap. lvii.

 

Note 2. A sonnet to the King. This must be the sonnet beginning—

‘Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright’

 

to which Hazlitt referred again in Political Essays (‘Illustrations of The Times Newspaper’). Wordsworth’s attack on a set of gipsies was in the poem entitled ‘Gipsies’ (1807).

 

‘In a wise passiveness.’ Expostulation and Reply (1798).

 

In the ‘Excursion’. Book VIII.

 

‘They are a grotesque ornament,’ etc. ‘Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 164).

 

This is enough. In The Examiner Hazlitt adds: ‘We really have a very great contempt for any one who differs from us on this point.’

46.

The Story of the glass-man. The Barber’s story of his Fifth Brother.

 

That manner is everything. ‘Sheer impudence answers almost the same purpose. “Those impenetrable whiskers have confronted flames.” Many persons, by looking big and talking loud, make their way through the world without any one good quality. We have here said nothing of mere personal qualifications, which are another set-off against sterling merit. Fielding was of opinion that “the more solid pretensions of virtue and understanding vanish before perfect beauty.” “A certain lady of a manor” (says Don Quixote^[90] in defence of his attachment to Dulcinea, which however was quite of the Platonic kind), “had cast the eyes of affection on a certain squat, brawny lay-brother of a neighbouring monastery, to whom she was lavish of her favours. The head of the order remonstrated with her on this preference shown to one whom he represented as a very low, ignorant fellow, and set forth the superior pretensions of himself, and his more learned brethren. The lady having heard him to an end made answer: All that you have said may be very true; but know, that in those points which I admire, Brother Chrysostom is as great a philosopher, nay greater than Aristotle himself!” So the Wife of Bath:^[91]—

“To church was mine husband borne on the morrow

With neighbours that for him maden sorrow,

And Jenkin our clerk was one of tho:

As help me God, when that I saw him go

After the bier, methought he had a pair

Of legs and feet, so clean and fair,

That all my heart I gave unto his hold.”

 

“All which, though we most potently believe, yet we hold it not honesty to have it thus set down.”’^[92]—Note by Hazlitt in The Examiner, September 3, 1815.

 

Note. Sir Roger de Coverley. The Spectator, No. 130.

47.

The successful experiment. See Peregrine Pickle, Chap, lxxxvii.

No. 19 of the Round Table series.

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49.

Note 1. The Freedom of the Will of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was published in 1754. Edwards was, of course, an American, as Flower reminded Hazlitt in his letter referred to below (49, note 2).

 

‘Hid from ages.’ Colossians, i. 26.

 

Note 2. Benjamin Flower, in a reply which he wrote to this essay (The Examiner, October 8, 1815), pointed out the ‘phenomenon’ of a Quaker poet ‘appeared about thirty years since, Mr. Scott of Amwell, whose volume of poetry obtained the marked approbation of our acknowledged best critics.’ Johnson said of John Scott of Amwell’s (1730–1783) Elegies, ‘they are very well; but such as twenty people might write’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, ii. 351). Another correspondent, signing himself ‘B. B.,’ wrote a letter to The Examiner (September 24, 1815), protesting against Hazlitt’s sketch of Quakerism. This was no doubt Bernard Barton (1784–1849), another Quaker poet, and afterwards the friend of Lamb.

50.

‘There is some soul of goodness,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘Evil communications,’ etc. 1 Corinthians, xv. 33.

ON JOHN BUNCLE

No. 20 of the Round Table series.

The Life of John Buncle, Esq., by Thomas (not John) Amory (1691?-1788), was published in two volumes, 1756–1766. A new edition in three volumes was published in 1825, very likely on Hazlitt’s recommendation. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, ii. 198. A quotation from the present essay faces the title-page of the new edition (vol. i.). A volume containing the most readable parts of the book, and happily entitled ‘The Spirit of Buncle,’ was published in 1823. The book was a great favourite of Lamb’s as well as of Hazlitt’s.

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52.

Botargos. ‘Hard roes of mullet called botargos.’ Urquhart’s Rabelais, I. xxi.

53.

‘Man was made to mourn.’

‘Who breathes, must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn.’

Prior, Solomon on the Vanity of the World, III. 240.

 

He danced the Hays.

‘I will play on the tabor to the worthies, and let them dance the hay.’

Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Scene 1.

 

A mistress and a saint in every grove. Goldsmith’s Traveller, 152.

 

‘Most dolphin-like.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Scene 2.

 

‘And there the antic sits,’ etc. Richard II., Act III. Scene 2.

56.

Philips’s. The Pastorals of Pope and Ambrose Philips (1675?-1749) appeared in Tonson’s Miscellany (1709).

 

Sannazarius. An English translation of the Piscatory Eclogues of Jacopo Sannazario was published in 1726.

 

‘What he beautifully calls,’ etc. See The Complete Angler, Part I. Chap. i.

 

‘We accompany them,’ etc. The Complete Angler, Part I. Chap. iv. The milkmaid sang ‘Come live with me, and be my love.’ That ‘smooth song’ (says Walton) ‘which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago.

 

And the milkmaid’s mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days.’

57.

Tottenham Cross. The subject of one of the prints.

 

Note. His friendship for Cotton. Charles Cotton (1630–1687), the translator of Montaigne (1685).

 

Note. Dr. Johnson said. See Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, i. 332).

ON THE CAUSES OF METHODISM

No. 22 of the Round Table series. Leigh Hunt discussed this article in No. 24 of the series, republished in the 1817 edition of the Round Table, and entitled ‘On the Poetical Character.’ On the subject of Methodism Hunt had already spoken his mind in a series of articles in The Examiner, which he republished in 1809 under the title of An Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism.

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58.

‘To sinner it or saint it.’ Pope’s Moral Essays, Ep. II. l. 15.

 

‘The whole need not a physician.’ St. Matthew, ix. 12.

 

‘Conceit in weakest,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4.

59.

Mawworm. In Isaac Bickerstaffe’s Hypocrite, altered from Colley Cibber’s Nonjuror, which was itself ‘a comedy threshed out of Molière’s Tartuffe.’ See the Lecture on the Comic Writers of the Last Century in English Comic Writers. For Oxberry’s acting of the part see A View of the English Stage.

 

‘With sound of bell,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

 

‘Round fat oily men of God,’ etc. Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, stanza 69.

 

‘That burning and shining light.’ St. John, v. 35.

 

Note. ‘And filled up all the mighty void of sense.’ Pope’s Essay on Criticism, l. 210.

60.

‘The vice,’ etc. Hebrews, xii. 1.

 

‘The Society for the Suppression of Vice.’ Founded in 1802. Sydney Smith criticised its methods in one of his Edinburgh Review articles (Jan. 1809). Hazlitt refers to it again. See ante, p. 139.

 

‘And sweet religion,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘Numbers without number.’ Paradise Lost, III. 346.

61.

‘Dissolves them,’ etc. Il Penseroso, ll. 165–166.

ON THE MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

No. 26 of the Round Table series. The essay was in substance republished in Characters of Shakespear’s Plays. See ante, pp. 244–248, and the notes thereon.

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64.

‘Age cannot wither,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘’Tis a good piece of work,’ etc. The Taming of the Shrew, Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Would, cousin Silence,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act III. Scene 2. The dialogue on the death of old Double occurs earlier in the same scene.

 

‘The most fearful wild-fowl living.’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1.

 

At the end of this essay in The Examiner Hazlitt added the following ‘Note Extraordinary’: ‘We had just concluded our ramble with Puck and Bottom, and were beginning to indulge in some less airy recreations, when in came the last week’s Cobbett,^[93] and with one blow overset our Round Table, and marred all our good things. If while Mr. C. and his lady are sitting in their garden at Botley, like Adam and Eve in Paradise, the delight of one another, the envy of their neighbours, and the admiration of the rest of the world, suddenly a large fat hog from the wilds of Hampshire should bolt right through the hedge, and with snorting menaces and foaming tusks, proceed to lay waste the flower-pots and root up the potatoes, such as the surprise and indignation of so economical a couple would be on this occasion, was the consternation at our Table when Mr. Cobbett himself made his appearance among us, vowing vengeance against Milton and Shakespear, Sir Hugh Evans and Justice Shallow, and all the delights of human life. We were not prepared for such an onset. More barbarous than Mr. Wordsworth’s calling Voltaire dull,^[94] or than Voltaire’s calling Cato the only English tragedy;^[95] more barbarous than Mr. Locke’s admiration of Sir Richard Blackmore; more barbarous than the declaration of a German Elector—afterwards made into an English king—that he hated poets and painters; more barbarous than the Duke of Wellington’s letter to Lord Castlereagh,^[96] or than the Catalogue Raisonné of the Flemish Masters published in the Morning Chronicle,^[97] or than the Latin style of the second Greek scholar^[98] of the age, or the English style of the first:—more barbarous than any or all of these is Mr. Cobbett’s attack on our two great poets. As to Milton, except the fine egotism of the situation of Adam and Eve, which Mr. Cobbett has applied to himself, there is not much in him to touch our politician: but we cannot understand his attack upon Shakespear, which is cutting his own throat. If Mr. Cobbett is for getting rid of his kings and queens, his fops and his courtiers, if he is for pelting Sir Hugh and Falstaff off the stage, yet what will he say to Jack Cade and First and Second Mob? If we are to scout the Roman rabble, where will the Register find English readers? Has the author never found himself out in Shakespear? He may depend upon it he is there, for all the people that ever lived are there! Has he never been struck with the valour of Ancient Pistol, who “would not swagger in any shew of resistance to a Barbary-hen”?^[99] Can he not, upon occasion, “aggravate his voice”^[100] like Bottom in the play? In absolute insensibility, he is a fool to Master Barnardine; and there is enough of gross animal instinct in Calyban to make a whole herd of Cobbetts. Mr. Cobbett admires Bonaparte; and yet there is nothing finer in any of his addresses to the French people than what Coriolanus says to the Romans when they banish him. He abuses the Allies in good set terms; yet one speech of Constance describes them and their magnanimity better than all the columns of the Political Register. Mr. Cobbett’s address to the people of England^[101] on the alarm of an invasion, which was stuck on all the church-doors in Great Britain, was not more eloquent than Henry V.’s address to his soldiers before the battle of Agincourt; nor do we think Mr. Cobbett was ever a better specimen of the common English character than the two soldiers in the same play. After all, there is something so droll in his falling foul of Shakespear for want of delicacy, with his desperate lounges and bear-garden dexterity, snorting, fuming, and grunting, that we cannot help laughing at the affair, now that our surprise is over; as we suppose Mr. Cobbett does, if he can only keep him out of his premises by hallooing and hooting or dry blows, to see his old friend, Grill,^[102] trudging along the highroad in search of his acorns and pig-nuts.’