The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 02 (of 12)

LIBER AMORIS

The facts relating to the episode in Hazlitt’s life which is the subject of this book are referred to in the General Introduction to the present edition (see vol. i. pp. xviii, xix), but it may be useful to give here a brief summary of them, and to refer shortly to the few later books which throw further light upon the matter.

Before the autumn of 1819 Hazlitt and his wife had ceased to live together, and in 1820 Hazlitt went to lodge in the house of a tailor named Walker, at No. 9 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, where, on August 16, he first saw the heroine of this book, Sarah Walker, the elder of his landlord’s two unmarried daughters. Some time in the same year (1820), or in the following year, Mrs. Hazlitt agreed, or rather, as we must assume (since she afterwards took the Oath of Calumny), decided to take proceedings for divorce under the Scottish law, for which purpose it was necessary for both parties to go to Scotland. Hazlitt accordingly started for Edinburgh early in 1822, and reached Scotland in February, after having been detained for a time at Stamford, where he began ‘a book of our conversations (I mean mine and the statue’s), which I call Liber Amoris.’ Mrs. Hazlitt did not arrive in Edinburgh till April 21, and the business of the divorce was not finally settled till July. Hazlitt spent the greater part of the time between March and July either in Edinburgh or at Renton Inn, Berwickshire, whence he addressed several of his letters to his friend, P. G. Patmore, and where he wrote some of the essays which subsequently appeared in vol. ii. of Table Talk. In May he delivered two lectures at Glasgow, one (May 6) on Milton and Shakespeare, the other (May 13) on Thomson and Burns. From Glasgow he seems to have gone for a short trip to the Highlands with his friend Sheridan Knowles, to whom he afterwards addressed the concluding letters of Liber Amoris. Towards the end of May he paid a hurried visit to London, returning to Scotland early in June. The book itself was published anonymously by John Hunt in 1823, the copyright being purchased from Hazlitt by C. H. Reynell for £100.

It is unnecessary to refer to the many merely critical comments on the book and its story, and it remains only to mention the works which may be regarded as additional and authoritative sources of information. P. G. Patmore devoted to the subject one chapter (vol. iii. pp. 171–188) of his lengthy recollections of Hazlitt in My Friends and Acquaintance (3 vols., 1854), and published extracts from some of the letters he had received from Hazlitt. Further extracts from the same correspondence and extracts from the journal kept by Mrs. Hazlitt in Scotland appeared in Mr W. C. Hazlitt’s Memoirs of William Hazlitt (2 vols., 1867). All these letters (with a few trifling exceptions) and the whole of Mrs. Hazlitt’s journal were printed from the original MSS. in Mr Le Gallienne’s edition of Liber Amoris, published in 1894 (see Bibliographical Note, ante, p. 284). This edition contains also a transcript of the original MS. of Liber Amoris (Part 1.) (believed to be in the handwriting of Patmore with additions written by Hazlitt), and (besides Mr Le Gallienne’s introduction) an unsigned essay by Mr W. C. Hazlitt, entitled ‘Hazlitt from another point of view.’ B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall), who visited Hazlitt at Southampton Buildings, referred to the subject in his Recollections of Men of Letters (see Bryan Waller Procter, An Autobiographical Fragment, 1877, pp. 180–82). Finally, in Lamb and Hazlitt (1900), Mr W. C. Hazlitt published for the first time a MS. which contains Hazlitt’s comment on the experiences of Patmore (recorded in the form of a Diary), from March 4 to March 16, 1822, during which time he appears to have been (at Hazlitt’s request) a lodger at No. 9 Southampton Buildings. This MS. is entirely in Hazlitt’s handwriting.

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288.

‘with looks,’ etc. Il Penseroso, l. 38.

290.

‘But I will come again, my love,’ etc. Burns’s song, ‘O, my luve is like a red, red rose.’

 

‘Pensive nun,’ etc. Il Penseroso, l. 31.

294.

Mr M——. Sarah Walker’s elder sister had married a man called Roscoe, who is referred to in the Liber Amoris as ‘Mr M——.’

300.

‘What is this world,’ etc. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (The Knightes Tale, ll. 2777–79).

301.

‘So shalt thou find me,’ etc. Byron’s Sardanapalus, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

Rosetta. In Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village, one of the most successful parts played by Catherine Stephens (1794–1882). See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

302.

Mr Macready. William Charles Macready (1793–1873) appears to have played Romeo at Covent Garden on Jan. 24, 1822.

303.

‘Oh! if I thought,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 2.

304.

C. P——, Esq. Peter George Patmore (1786–1855), journalist, and author of Imitations of Celebrated Authors, etc. (1826), Chatsworth, or the Romance of a Week (1844), The Mirror of the Months (1826), and other works. His recollections of Hazlitt in My Friends and Acquaintance (3 vols., 1854) are interesting and even valuable if allowance is made for some exaggeration. He was the father of Coventry Patmore. See B. Champney’s, Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore (1900), chap. ii.

 

Bees-Inn. Renton Inn, on the London Road, near Grant’s House in Berwickshire, forty-one miles from Edinburgh.

306.

‘Of such sweet breath composed.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘Answer me that, Master Brook.’

‘Think of that, Master Brook.’

Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III. Scene 5.

 

Letter III. From Edinburgh, March 30, 1822.

307.

Letter IV. From Edinburgh, April 21, 1822.

308.

‘To lip a chaste one,’ etc.

‘To lip a wanton in a secure couch,

And to suppose her chaste.’

Othello, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

Strike my forehead against the stars.

‘Quod si me lyricis vatibus inseris,

Sublimi feriam sidera vertice.’

Horace, Odes, I. 1. 35–36.

 

As Rousseau said. ‘Ce fut dans ce bosquet qu’assis avec elle sur un banc de gazon, sous un acacia tout chargé de fleurs, je trouvai, pour rendre les mouvements de mon cœur, un langage vraiment digne d’eux.’—Confessions, Liv. IX., p. 393 (édit. Garnier).

 

Letter V. From Edinburgh, April 7, 1822.

 

From Montrose. This is of course fiction, like Hazlitt’s statement in the advertisement that the author was a native of North Britain (see ante, p. 285).

309.

‘Treason domestic,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 2.

311.

Letter VII. From Edinburgh, June 20–21, 1822.

 

‘And carved on every tree,’ etc. As You Like It, Act III. Scene 2.

312.

Letter VIII. From Renton Inn, June 9, 1822.

314.

Its mighty heart, etc. Cf. ‘And all that mighty heart was lying still’ in Wordsworth’s Sonnet ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge.’

 

The Prince of Critics, etc. Francis Jeffrey (1773–1850) had lived at Craigcrook (on the north-eastern slope of Corstorphine Hill, not on ‘the far-off Pentland Hills’) since 1815. Hazlitt had already contributed several articles to the Edinburgh Review, and had met Jeffrey during his visit to Scotland.

314.

As I read of Amy and her love. Kenilworth had been published in the preceding year (1821).

315.

Letter IX. From Edinburgh, July 3, 1822.

316.

‘Made my wedded wife yestreen.’ Burns’s Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn, st. 10.

 

Like Lady Bellaston. Tom Jones, Book XV. Chap. ix.

 

The old song. Hazlitt refers perhaps to Richard Hewitt’s ‘Roslin Castle,’ beginning ‘’Twas in that season of the year,’ published in Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum (1787–1803), and praised by Burns.

317.

Letter X. From Renton Inn, June 18, 1822.

 

‘All below was not the fiend’s.’ King Lear, Act IV. Scene 6.

319.

Hysterica passio. Cf. King Lear, Act II. Scene 4.

 

Letter XI. From Edinburgh (?), June 25, 1822.

320.

‘She’s gone,’ etc.

‘She’s gone; I am abused, and my relief

Must be to loathe her.’

Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

321.

Letter XII. This is merely a postscript to the former letter (XI.).

 

‘Love is not love,’ etc. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, No. CXVI.

325.

Letter XIII. July 8, 1822.

 

‘I have mistook,’ etc.

‘I do mistake my person all this while:

Upon my life, she finds, although I cannot,

Myself to be a marvellous proper man.’

Richard III, Act. I. Scene 2.

328.

Addressed to J. S. K——. Hazlitt’s friend, James Sheridan Knowles (1784–1862), the dramatist, who at this time lived at Glasgow. There is a reference to him in Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age, at the end of the essay on Elia and Geoffrey Crayon.

 

Smollett’s monument. Erected by James Smollett, the novelist’s cousin, whom Johnson and Boswell visited on their way from the Highlands. The Latin inscription for the monument was partly the work of Johnson (Boswell’s Life, etc., ed. G. B. Hill, v. 366–68).

 

Logan’s beautiful verses to the cuckoo. Published originally by John Logan (1748–1788) in a volume entitled ‘Poems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce’ (1770). It appeared again in 1781, with a few alterations, in ‘Poems, by the Rev. Mr Logan, one of the ministers of Leith.’ Some difference of opinion still exists as to the authorship, which is claimed by some for Michael Bruce (1746–1767), a fellow-student of Logan’s at Edinburgh University. See Notes and Queries, 9th Ser., vii. 466; viii. 70, 148, 312, 388, 527.

 

Note. The verses begin, ‘Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove.’ The stanza quoted by Hazlitt is the sixth.

329.

The Trossacs. Whatever the ‘blue ridges’ may have been which Hazlitt saw, they were certainly nowhere near the Trossachs.

 

‘Italiam, Italiam.’ Possibly from Filicaja’s Sonnet (LXXXVII.) to Italy, beginning ‘Italia, Italia, o tu cui feo la sorte,’ and translated by Byron in Childe Harold (Canto IV., St. 42).

330.

Heaved her name, etc. King Lear, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

How near am I, etc. Quoted, with omissions, from Middleton’s Women beware Women (Works, ed. Dyce, iv. 569–70).

331.

‘Quicquid agit,’ etc.

‘Illam quidquid agit, quoquo vestigia movit

Componit furtim subsequiturque decor.’

 

From the first of the Sulpicia poems (not the work of Tibullus) in the fourth book of the Elegies.

334.

‘See with what a waving air,’ etc. B. W. Procter’s (Barry Cornwall’s) Mirandola (Act I. Scene 3).

335.

‘What conjurations,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

336.

‘Nature and Art.’ By Mrs. Inchbald, published in 1796.

337.

‘Ugly all over with hypocrisy.’ See ante, note to p. 130.

340.

At once he took, etc.

‘Then took his Muse at once and dipt her

Full in the middle of the Scripture.’

Gay, ‘Verses to be placed under the Picture of Sir Richard Blackmore, England’s Arch-Poet, etc.’

341.

‘Drugged this posset.’ Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2.

342.

‘Bestow some of my tediousness upon you.’

 

‘Dogberry. But truly, for mine own part, if I were tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.

 

Leonato. All thy tediousness on me, ah?’

Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Scene 5.

343.

‘Of tears which sacred pity,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

347.

The False Florimel. The Faerie Queene, Book III. Canto viii.

 

The man in the Arabian Nights. See The History of Sidi Nouman.

350.

‘Turned all to favour and to prettiness.’ Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

356.

Heroes, according to Rousseau. Cf. ‘Le brave ne fait ses preuves qu’aux jours de bataille: le vrai héros fait les siennes tous les jours; et ses vertus, pour se montrer quelquefois en pompe, n’en sont pas d’un usage moins fréquent sous un extérieur plus modeste.’ Discours sur la vertu la plus nécessaire aux héros.