The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 03 (of 12)

PAGE

 

2.

‘There is wisdom,’ etc. Proverbs xv. 22.

 

The late administration. Pitt’s second ministry. Pitt died on Jan. 23, 1806, and Fox became Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of ‘All the Talents.’

3.

Mr. Addington. Henry Addington (1757–1844), created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805, was Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer during the peace negotiations.

 

Came home to the bosoms, etc. Bacon, Dedication to the Essays (1625).

5.

‘The unconquerable will,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 106–9.

 

‘The still small voice,’ etc. 1 Kings xix. 12.

6.

It certainly had this good effect. ‘The peace of Amiens,’ said Coleridge, ‘deserved the name of peace, for it gave us unanimity at home, and reconciled Englishmen with each other’ (The Friend, section I. Essay 6).

7.

The incautious surrender of Malta. By the treaty of Amiens (1802) Malta was restored to the Knights of St. John. By the first Peace of Paris (1814) it was given to England.

 

One to whose authority, etc. Few people at the time recognised the importance of Malta to Great Britain. Lord Nelson himself spoke slightingly of it, and so did Pitt. See Parl. Hist. XXXVI., passim, for the discussions in Parliament. Coleridge, in The Friend (see especially Essays 3, 4, 5, and 6 of ‘The Third Landing-Place’), while defending the retention of Malta, admitted that Nelson was right in denying that Malta was the key of Egypt (Bohn’s ed., p. 382).

8.

‘Against infection,’ etc. Richard II., Act II. Scene 1.

10.

‘Another Iliad of woes.’ Burke’s Regicide Peace (Select Works, ed. Payne, p. 116). Cf. ‘From hence those tears, that Ilium of our woe.’ Dryden’s The Medal, l. 67.

12.

The partition of Poland. In 1795. Suwarroff, the Russian general, stormed Ismael on Dec. 11, 1790, and Warsaw on Nov. 4, 1794. ‘Thirty thousand persons, of whom one half were inhabitants of the town, perished in the assault of Ismael’ (Alison, History of Europe, X. 455). At Warsaw ‘about twelve thousand citizens, of every age and sex, were put to the sword’ (ib., III. 526).

14.

Had not Austria, etc. Precipitated, he means, by the subsidising policy of Pitt. The battle of Austerlitz (Dec. 2, 1805) completely crushed Austria.

 

The character of Mr. Pitt, etc. Hazlitt repeated this ‘character’ down to ‘And in its liquid texture,’ etc. (p. 18), in his Political Essays (see ante, pp. 346–350) and in The Round Table (see Vol. I. pp. 125–128).

15.

The fog and haze. A phrase of Burke’s (Reflections on the Revolution in France, Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 55).

 

Note. When Mr. Fox last summer. On June 21, 1805. See Hansard’s Parl. Debates, V. 542.

16.

Described by Hobbes. Behemoth (Works, ed. Molesworth, VI. 240).

18.

‘Not matchless,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 341–2.

 

‘And in its liquid texture,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VI. 348–9.

 

Note. Hazlitt printed this essay of Coleridge’s in Political Essays (see ante, pp. 350–356) under the title of ‘Pitt and Buonaparte.’

20.

‘Some happier island,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Man, I. 106–8.

21.

‘Virtue is not their habit,’ etc. Burke’s Regicide Peace (ed. Payne, p. 105).

22.

‘Lay the fault upon themselves,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Dull as her lakes,’ etc. Goldsmith’s The Traveller, l. 312.

23.

‘When, stript,’ etc. Goldsmith’s The Traveller, ll. 355–60.

 

‘They think there is nothing real,’ etc. ‘They think there is nothing worth pursuit, but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two-foot rule; which they can tell upon two fingers.’ Burke’s Regicide Peace (ed. Payne, p. 105).

POLITICAL ESSAYS

The title-page contained a motto from Twelfth Night (Act I. Scene 5): ‘Come, draw the curtain, shew the picture,’

 

29. John Hunt (1780?–1848), an elder brother of Leigh Hunt, was with him the joint founder of The Examiner in 1808. The two brothers were at first joint proprietors, John being printer and manager and Leigh Hunt editor. John Hunt was twice in prison, for two years (1813–5) for a libel on the Prince Regent, and again for one year (1821–2) for a libel on the House of Commons. For an account of his services to journalism see Fox Bourne’s English Newspapers (I. 335–51).

32.

‘In contempt of the choice of the people.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 17). In his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791) Burke defends and elaborates the constitutional doctrines of the Reflections.

33.

‘The envy of less happier lands.’ Richard II., Act II. Scene 1.

 

Sworn brother to the Pope. Because the sworn enemy of Hazlitt’s hero, Napoleon, who abolished the Inquisition in Spain in 1808. Ferdinand VII. restored it in 1814.

 

Arbuthnot. John Arbuthnot (1667–1735), whose famous pamphlet The History of John Bull (as it was afterwards called) appeared in 1712.

 

Flocci, etc. These words are the beginning of a rule in the old Latin grammars which brings together a number of words meaning ‘of no account.’ See Letters of Charles Lamb (ed. Ainger), I. 62.

34.

‘One fate attends,’ etc. Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, Stanza 51.

 

‘At one fell swoop.’ Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘That painted sepulchre,’ etc. ‘Whited sepulchres,’ etc. St. Matthew xxiii. 27.

 

‘Bogs, dens,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 621–2.

35.

‘Awhile they stood abashed.’

‘abashed the Devil stood,

And felt how awful goodness is.’

Paradise Lost, IV. 846–7.

 

‘Never can true reconcilement,’ etc. Ib., IV. 98.

36.

Lord Castlereagh. Robert Stewart (1769–1822), who became Viscount Castlereagh in 1796, and second Marquis of Londonderry in 1821, was Irish Chief Secretary during the Rebellion and the passing of the Act of Union (1798–1801), War Secretary (1807–1809), and Foreign Secretary from 1812 till his death. After the death of Pitt he may be regarded as the chief representative of Great Britain in the struggle against Napoleon. That accounts for Hazlitt’s hatred, but he was for many reasons (some of which appear in the Political Essays) the best hated minister of his time.

 

Benjamin Constant (1767–1830), the French Liberal politician, was banished from France in 1802 for denouncing the despotic acts of Napoleon. He returned to France after the restoration of the Bourbons and advocated constitutional freedom.

 

‘That Harlot old,’ etc. Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, Stanza 52.

 

Douce humanité. A phrase used by Burke in speaking of the revolution party in France. A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 140).

37.

‘At this day,’ etc. Wordsworth’s The Excursion, Book IV.

 

‘Tickling commodities.’ King John, Act II. Scene 1.

 

The case of the Income-Tax. The ministry’s five per cent property tax (as it was called) was rejected by the House of Commons on March 19, 1816, by 238 votes to 201. See Walpole’s History of England, I. 408–10.

 

‘A feeling disputation.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act III. Scene 1.

38.

Mr. Robson brought forward, etc. On March 4, 1802. The bill was for £19 odd. On March 8, Addington admitted that it had not been paid. See Parl. Hist. XXXVI. 346–50.

 

The Great Vulgar and the Small. Cowley, Horace, Odes, III. 1.

39.

Never is, etc. Pope’s Essay on Man, I. 93. In Hazlitt’s composite portrait of ‘a Reformer,’ there seems to be a good deal of Godwin.

 

Mr. Place. Francis Place (1771–1854), the radical tailor. John Cam Hobhouse (1786–1869), Byron’s friend, was defeated at Westminster by George Lamb in February 1819. For Place’s Report to the Westminster electors, presented to a public meeting, Feb. 9, 1819, see Wallas, Life of Francis Place, 134–9.

40.

One of these virtuosos. The description seems to fit Hazlitt’s conception of Godwin. See Spirit of the Age.

 

Nicolas Gimcracks of Reform. See Hazlitt’s Table Talk (‘On will making’), where the will of ‘a certain virtuoso,’ Nicholas Gimcrack, is quoted from The Tatler (No. 216).

 

‘Pleased with a feather,’ etc. Pope’s Essay on Man, II. 276.

 

‘The giant-mass.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act I. Scene 3.

 

Another, more bold, etc. Cobbett, no doubt.

41.

Dance the hays. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V. Scene 1.

 

‘Perpetual circle,’ etc.

‘——that in quaternion run

Perpetual circle, multiform, and mix

And nourish all things,’ etc.

Paradise Lost, V. 181–3.

 

Going with Sancho, etc. Don Quixote, Second Part, Book II., chaps, xx. and xxi.

 

‘The best of kings.’ See vol. I., note to p. 305.

 

42. Epicuri de grege porcus. Horace, Epistles, I. iv. 16.

 

‘When a great wheel,’ etc. King Lear, Act II. Scene 4.

 

A Theophilanthropist. The name of a sect established by Thomas Paine in Paris in 1797.

 

‘Wiser in his generation,’ etc. St. Luke xvi. 8.

42.

‘Servile slaves.’ The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto vii. St. 33.

43.

‘Screw their courage,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 7.

44.

‘Are subdued,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

 

Holland House. Best described by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review (July 1841—Essays, Lord Holland). The third Lord Holland (1773–1840) was a consistent champion of Buonaparte, which makes it strange that Hazlitt should have written and republished this sneer at Holland House.

 

My Lord Erskine. Thomas Erskine (1750–1823), the great Whig advocate, Lord Chancellor in the ‘Talents’ Ministry (1806–7). He had recently been decorated by the Regent with the Knighthood of the Thistle.

 

‘Untaught knaves,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I. Act I. Scene 3.

 

Ultima ratio regum. It was a maxim of Richelieu’s that ‘le canon est l’ultima ratio des rois.’

 

‘Strange that such difference,’ etc. John Byrom, On the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini.

 

‘Nearly are allied,’ etc. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 163–4.

 

The ********* and ********* Reviews. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews.

46.

‘Letting I dare not,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 7.

 

‘But ’tis the fall,’ etc. Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, I. 143 et seq.

47.

‘And such other gambol faculties,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II. Act II. Scene 4.

 

The Marquess Wellesley’s opening speech. On April 9, 1813. Richard Colley Wellesley (1760–1842), the eldest brother of the Duke of Wellington, created Marquess Wellesley in 1799 for his services in India, had been Foreign Secretary from 1809 to 1812, but had failed to form a ministry after the assassination of Percival, and was now out of office.

 

‘All hail him,’ etc. Pope, The Dunciad, ii. 267–8.

 

Note. The passage in the text is not quite accurately quoted from The Morning Chronicle (April 14, 1813). John Wilson Croker (1780–1857) was Secretary to the Admiralty for twenty-two years (1809–30).

 

‘Strange that such difference,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 44.

 

‘Fillip the ears,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II. Act I. Scene 2.

 

48. Mr. Southey, Poet Laureat. From The Morning Chronicle, Sept. 18, 1813. See Lockhart’s Life of Scott (vol. III. p. 88) and Southey’s Preface to vol. III. of the collected edition of his Poems (1837) for particulars as to Southey’s laureateship. He made it a condition of his acceptance of the post that he should not be required to write the old formal odes, but that he should be free to choose his own time for celebrating any great public event.

 

Mr. Croker, to whom, etc. Southey’s Life of Nelson, dedicated to Croker, was published in 1813, with a motto from Canning’s Ulm and Trafalgar (1806).

 

Lord Liverpool. Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770–1828), after 1796 known by courtesy as Lord Hawkesbury, and raised to the peerage with that title in 1803, succeeded his father as Earl of Liverpool in 1808, and was Prime Minister for fifteen years (1812–27). The second Marquis of Hertford (1743–1822) was Lord Chamberlain from 1812 to 1821.

 

49. Mr. Southey’s New-Year’s Ode. This paper is reprinted from The Morning Chronicle, Jan. 8, 1814.

 

‘Poets succeed best in fiction.’ The reply of Edmund Waller to Charles II., who had complained of the inferiority of the poet’s verses on the Restoration as compared with his panegyric on Cromwell.

 

Duke’s Place. Situated within the priory of Holy Trinity without Aldgate, belonging to the Duke of Norfolk. ‘A new church in the priory precinct, dedicated to St. James, was consecrated January 2, 1622–23, and became one of the most notorious places in London for those irregular marriages which, under the name of Fleet marriages, were the cause of so much scandal in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and until they were put an end to by the Act of 1753,’ Wheatley and Cunningham’s London Past and Present, i. 532.

 

Academy of compliments. See note to vol. I. p. 235.

50.

‘Age after age,’ etc. Stanza 8.

 

The Lady’s Magazine. ‘The Lady’s Magazine or entertaining Companion for the fair sex’ (1770–1818).

 

‘Open thy gates, O Hanover,’ etc. Stanza 16.

51.

Like Virgil. Georgics, i. 80.

 

‘And France,’ etc. Stanza 18.

 

Very nearly succeeded. In The Morning Chronicle appeared the following paragraph: ‘As Mr. Southey’s Ode by no means satisfied the poetical appetite which it had excited in us, we turned after reading it, to Spenser’s fine Canto on Mutability, and afterwards to some lines written by one who did not join the song of the avengers twice. Mr. Southey, by the new form of publishing his Ode, having prevented us from gratifying our readers with it as a public entertainment, we shall try to make amends by these lines of Milton, which, we believe, have not yet been quoted in The Times.’ [Here follow ll. 113–131 of Lycidas].

 

Dottrell-Catching. From The Morning Chronicle, Jan. 27, 1814.

 

‘Spunge, you are dry again.’ Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 2.

 

A celebrated writer. This appears to have been Edward Sterling (Vetus). See p. 99.

52.

Struldbruggs. Gulliver’s Travels (Voyage to Laputa), Part III. Chap. x.

 

Eiconoclastes Satyrane. ‘Satyrane’s Letters’ was the name given to Coleridge’s letters from Germany, published in The Friend in 1809, and republished in Biographia Literaria. Hazlitt concluded his letter to The Morning Chronicle with a quotation from Wordsworth (Ode, Intimations of Immortality, Stanza 10)—

‘What though the radiance which was once so bright,’ etc.

 

The Bourbons and Bonaparte. From The Morning Chronicle, Dec. 6, 1813.

53.

The virtuous Moreau. Jean Victor Moreau (1761–1813), banished by Napoleon in 1804, returned to Europe in 1813 and joined the allies. He died in Sept. 1813 of a wound received from a French cannon-ball at the battle of Dresden. For Hazlitt’s opinion of Moreau see his Life of Napoleon, chap. xlix.

54.

‘Bid him prepare,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Scene 4.

 

‘Reverbs,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘Flows on to the Propontic,’ etc.

‘——Like to the Pontic sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont!’

Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘The deserter of Smorgonne.’ At Smorgoni Buonaparte left his army on Dec. 5, 1812, during the retreat from Moscow.

 

Sir Humphrey Davy. Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), the great natural philosopher, knighted in 1812.

55.

Like Hellenore, etc. See The Faerie Queene, Book III. Cantos ix. and x.

56.

‘This is the very coinage,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4.

 

No such army. In The Morning Chronicle there is the following note to this passage: ‘One is here reminded of the pathetic exhortation addressed to honest Sly, in the Taming of the Shrew [Induction, Scene 2]:—

“Why, Sir, you know no house,

Nor no such men as you have reckon’d up,

As Stephen Sly, and Old John Naps of Greece,

And Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernel,

And twenty more such names and men as these,

Which never were, nor no man ever saw.”

 

The difference in the two cases is, that poor Sly was persuaded out of his senses by other people, and that our paragraph writer would persuade his readers out of theirs.’

 

‘To the very echo.’ Macbeth, Act V. Scene 3.

57.

Darkness that might be felt. Exodus, x. 21.

 

‘Impaling fire.’ ‘Impaled with circling fire.’ Paradise Lost, II. 647.

 

Vetus. From The Morning Chronicle, Nov. 19, 1813. ‘Vetus’ was the signature of Edward Sterling (1773–1847), who became a regular member of The Times staff, and earned for it the nickname of ‘The Thunderer.’ Some of the Letters of Vetus were republished in 1812. See Carlyle’s Life of John Sterling, who was Edward Sterling’s son.

58.

‘A cry of hell-hounds,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 654.

 

On the Courier and Times newspapers. From The Morning Chronicle, Jan. 21, 1814.

59.

Formally signified from the throne. See the Prince Regent’s speech on opening Parliament Nov. 4, 1813, and Lord Liverpool’s speech on the Address (Hansard, xxvii. 5, 22).

 

Lord Castlereagh. Castlereagh represented England informally at the Congress of Châtillon (February and March, 1814) where he opposed the restoration of the Bourbons by the arms of the allies.

60.

‘What, stab men in the dark.’ ‘Kill men i’ the dark.’ Othello, Act V. Scene 1.

 

The Editor of ‘The Times.’ Hazlitt’s brother-in-law, John (afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773–1856) was editor from 1812 to 1817.

61.

‘Of heroic sentiment,’ etc. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

 

The treaty of Pilnitz. A declaration signed by the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia in August, 1791, the object of which was to secure the safety of Louis XVI. after his imprisonment by the Revolution government. Fox described the treaty, or rather the declaration, as ‘an act of hostile aggression,’ and Hazlitt hated it because it ‘gave its sanction to the invasion of France, and commenced the war of the Revolution (Life of Napoleon, Chap. v.).

 

The French ‘petit maitre.’ Roderick Random, Chap, xliii.

 

Don Quixote. Book III. Chap. xv.

62.

‘That we might spill our blood,’ etc. ‘The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind.’ Burke’s Regicide Peace (Select Works, ed. Payne, p. 67).

 

‘The meanest peasant,’ etc. A phrase of Vetus’s. See p. 75.

 

Carl John. Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte (1764–1844), the son of a lawyer.

 

He was elected heir to the crown of Sweden and succeeded to the throne as Charles XIV. in 1818. Hazlitt of course hated ‘this man’ (as he contemptuously calls him) as a traitor to his idol Buonaparte. See Life of Napoleon (Chap. xliii, especially). Bernadotte had married an early love of Buonaparte’s, and ‘thy little son’ (Oscar) was the Emperor’s god-son. Sweden joined the alliance against Napoleon in April, 1812.

 

‘Monarchize,’ etc. Richard II., Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘The flame of sacred vehemence,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act III. Scene 2.

63.

General Blucher’s manifesto. Hazlitt probably refers to a manifesto addressed by Blücher to the Army of Silesia on Jan. 3, 1814, in which he says, ‘Now you are going to pass the Rhine to force peace from the enemy who cannot console himself for having lost, in two campaigns, the conquest which he had made during nineteen years.’

 

Favourably interpreted. In The Morning Chronicle the article proceeded as follows:—‘The classical pen of The Courier not long ago charged us with spoiling one of the finest passages in Shakespeare. We should be sorry if the charge were true, because we have really more respect for this great English genius than for a whole legion of “gentlemen and men of honour,” of the old or the new stamp, by tradition or by patent. We have not indeed read the extracts in The Courier from Mr. Coleridge’s Lectures at Bristol, and wanting that new light, may perhaps be blind idolaters.

 

‘There are, however, one or two passages in the play of Coriolanus besides the fine one which we are said to have marred, which we thought conveyed a great deal of meaning. The first is the speech of Aufidius [Act V. Scene 3], which seems to us a transcript of what must pass in Buonaparte’s mind, in reading the hyperboles of The Times and The Courier—

“I’m glad thou set’st thy mercy and thy honour

At difference in thee: out of this I’ll work

Myself a former fortune.”

 

The second [Act III. Scene 2] we leave for their own application.

“Away, my disposition, and possess me

Some harlot’s spirit: the smiles of knaves

Tent in my cheeks, and school-boys’ tears take up

The glasses of my sight: a beggar’s tongue

Make motion through my lips.—I will not do it,

Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,

And by my body’s action, teach my mind

A most inherent baseness.”

 

‘It is said that there is no reason why we should not propose to the French people (there was a time when we would not suffer them to chuse for themselves) the restoration of the Bourbons. Why no, except that it is a great piece of impudence to hint to them as a modest proposal, and in the way of free choice, what we have been endeavouring to impose upon them so long as a matter of necessity. The question is, whether we are to enforce the adoption of this free boon by the same process as before. The Times say, “We have given a native Prince to Holland and to Spain. Why then not to France?” Does the writer still persist that there is no difference between the two cases?

 

‘We have made these remarks, not with a view to irritate or recriminate, but to resist irritation and recrimination, by which we can at this moment gain nothing that we ought to gain. There is one ground of peace, just, honourable, attainable, secure, and permanent, which is laid down in the Declaration of the Allies, and by his Majesty’s Ministers—there is another, recommended by The Times and Courier, and pursued by the Cossacks, namely, the desolation and degradation of France—which is neither safe, nor just, nor practicable, nor desirable. If the Allies, for any contingent advantage, or to gratify any old grudge, for any fancies or for any prejudices, throw away their present opportunities of making peace, and of making it permanent by the very act of having made it in the spirit of moderation and justice—if they forego their present imposing attitude, of having repelled invasion and maintained their own independence, for the chance of retorting aggression on others, and insulting that national independence which they profess to consider as inviolable, by dictating to France her form of government under pretence of offering her peace, then we say, they will richly deserve to reap all the natural consequences of their mistaken policy. On their heads and on those of their advisers be the responsibility.’

 

Illustrations of Vetus. The Morning Chronicle, Dec. 2, 1813.

 

‘Those nauseous harlequins,’ etc. Dryden, Epilogue to Sir G. Etherege’s ‘The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter’ (1676).

64.

Don Adriano de Armado. In Love’s Labour’s Lost. ‘Will you hear this letter with attention? As we would hear an oracle.’ Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘I am Sir Oracle.’ Merchant of Venice, Act I. Scene 1.

 

The hero of Cervantes. Don Quixote, Part I. Book II. Chap. xi.

 

To ‘hitch it,’ etc.

‘Whoe’er offends at some unlucky time

Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.’

Pope, Imitations of Horace, Satire I. Book II.

 

His last letter. The Times, Nov. 23, 1813.

65.

Bobadil. Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour (first produced 1598).

 

67. Illustrations of Vetus (continued). The Morning Chronicle, Dec. 10, 1813.

 

‘He is indeed,’ etc. The Man of Mode; or Sir Fopling Flutter, Act I.

 

‘Fools aspiring to be knaves.’ Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, i. 165.

70.

Still true to the war—and himself. In The Morning Chronicle Hazlitt quotes, ‘Oh, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,’ etc., from Shakespeare’s Sonnets (No. 116).

68.

Peachum. See The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1.

71.

The treaty of 1763. The Peace of Paris, by which England kept her conquests in America. France recognised the independence of the States in 1778.

 

‘With centric,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VIII. 83.

72.

‘I will have ransom,’ etc. Henry V., Act IV. Scene 4.

 

‘The fierce extremes.’ Paradise Lost, II. 599.

 

73. Illustrations of Vetus (continued). The Morning Chronicle, Dec. 16, 1813.

 

‘Madmen’s epistles,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act V. Scene 1.

 

‘Events ... in Holland.’ The Dutch had revolted from Napoleon, and declared for the Prince of Orange, who landed in Holland (from England) on Nov. 27, 1813.

 

Spenser’s Allegory. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto v.

 

‘Made of penetrable stuff.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘Leer malign.’ Paradise Lost, IV. 503.

74.

Vattel. Eméric de Vattel (1714–1767), whose Droits des Gens was published in 1758, and was frequently translated.

 

‘Think, there’s livers out of England,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 4.

 

Anacharsis Cloots. For Jean Baptiste Cloots, who assumed the name of Anacharsis, see Burke’s Regicide Peace (ed. Payne), pp. 296 et seq.

 

75. Lord Castlereagh’s Speech. On Nov. 17, 1813. See Hansard’s Parl. Debates, XXVII. 132 et seq.

 

‘Why so,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

 

Note. Cursory Strictures on the Charge of Chief-Justice Eyre. See the essay on Godwin in Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age.

76.

‘To knot and gender in.’ Othello, Act IV. Scene 2.

 

‘Mere midsummer madness.’ Twelfth Night, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘For in this lowest deep,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 76.

 

The Sun and the Star. ‘The Sun,’ a Tory evening paper founded in 1802 by George Rose. ‘The Star,’ the first London evening paper, founded in 1788 by Peter Stuart.

77.

Political E. O. tables. See vol. i., note to p. 145.

 

‘Struggled to get free.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 3.

78.

Doctor Pedro Positive. See Don Quixote, Part II. Book III. Chaps, xlvii. and xlix.

 

But we deny. The rest of the essay from this point appeared first in The Morning Chronicle for Dec. 18, 1813.

79.

‘Like a devilish engine,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 17.

 

‘So small a drop,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act IV. Scene 2.

80.

‘The stone which the builders rejected,’ etc. Psalms cxviii. 22.

81.

‘This large discourse of reason,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 4.

82.

The murdered D’Enghien. The Duc d’Enghien, eldest son of the Prince de Condé, was executed on March 21, 1804, to avenge Pichegru’s plot against the life of Buonaparte.

85.

‘His yoke,’ etc. St. Matthew xi. 30.

 

Illustrations of Vetus. From The Morning Chronicle, Jan. 3, 1814.

 

‘Take him,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘Our occupation,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘Aggravate his voice,’ etc. Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I. Scene 2.

 

He is not the first enthusiast, etc. Hazlitt refers to the well-known story of Ixion.

86.

That of Parolles. In The Morning Chronicle Hazlitt appends a note in which he applies the reference: ‘Vetus does not relish our quotations from the Poets. The following is, however, so applicable, that we insert it: Parolles, “What the devil should move me to the recovery of this drum, not being ignorant of the possibility. Tongue, I will put you into a butter-woman’s mouth, and buy myself another of Bajazet’s mule, if you prattle me into these perils.” All’s Well that Ends Well,’ Act IV. Scene 1.

 

Dr. Parr’s Spital Sermon. Preached before the Lord Mayor on Easter Monday, 1800, and published with notes in 1801. It consisted chiefly of an attack on Godwin’s Political Justice. See the essay on Godwin in Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age, and, for Sir James Mackintosh’s Lectures, the essay on Mackintosh.

 

‘One of these patriots,’ etc. These three paragraphs are far beside the mark if they were aimed at Hazlitt, who cared little for Godwin’s social philosophy.

87.

‘Scrub.’ Farquhar’s The Beaux-Stratagem.

 

Note. ‘In heaven,’ etc. St. Matthew, xxii. 30.

88.

‘Confound the ignorant,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

89.

‘The latter end,’ etc. ‘The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.’ Tempest, Act II. Scene 1.

 

90. Illustrations of Vetus (concluded). From The Morning Chronicle, Jan. 5, 1814.

 

‘What do you read,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

90.

Don Quixote’s books. See Don Quixote, Book I. chap. i.

91.

Patriotism in modern times, etc. This passage, down to ‘broad and firm basis,’ had already been republished by Hazlitt. See vol. i. (Round Table) pp. 67–8.

92.

It was said, etc. By Rousseau, Emile, Liv. iv. p. 279 (édit. Garnier).

 

‘A painted sepulchre,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 34.

Note 2.

Canning’s Jaggernaut Speech. In the debate on Foreign Treaties, Nov. 17, 1813. See Hansard’s Parl. Debates, XXVII. 144–152.

 

93. Tempora mollia fandi. Æneid, iv. 293.

 

‘Smoothing,’ etc. ‘Smoothing the raven down of darkness till it smiled.’ Comus, 251–2.

 

‘Airs from heaven,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 4.

 

‘Thrust us,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II. Act II. Scene 1.

95.

That profound politician. Malthus. See ante, pp. 356 et seq.

96.

‘What appetite he may.’ Henry VIII., Act III. Scene 2.

 

On the late war. Published in The Champion, April 3, 1814.

97.

‘The great statesman,’ etc. Pitt.

 

‘Their pound of carrion-flesh,’ ‘’tis theirs,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘’Tis an indifferent piece of work,’ etc. Taming of the Shrew, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘Fierce as a comet,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 708.

 

‘Bear fardels.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘Was not,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2.

98.

‘The pilot,’ etc. Canning’s verses, ‘The Pilot that weathered the storm,’ were composed for the first (1802) of the birth-day dinners in honour of Pitt.

 

Our great war-minister. He means Pitt.

 

99. Odia in longum, etc. Tacitus, Agricola, I. 69.

 

If Titus, etc. See Suetonius, VIII. 8.

 

‘Full circle home.’ King Lear, Act V. Scene 3.

 

‘The child and champion of Jacobinism.’ This phrase occurred in Coleridge’s report of Pitt’s speech of Feb. 17, 1800. See Essays on his own Times (II. 294). Mrs. Coleridge, the editor of that work, says in a note (III. 1010): ‘It is remarkable that the striking expression, applied to Buonaparte—“the child and the champion of Jacobinism”—which was continually repeated afterwards, does not occur in the speech as reported in The Times, though it reappears in the later edition of it in the collection of Pitt’s speeches.’ The words occur in Hansard. See Parl. Debates, XXXIV. 1443.

 

Mr. Whitebread. Samuel Whitbread (1758–1815), the famous Whig member.

 

101. Prince Maurice’s Parrot. Published originally in The Examiner, July 10, 1814, and later in The Champion, Sept. 18, 1814.

 

Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Périgord, Prince of Benevento, was the representative of France at the Congress of Vienna (1814). Castlereagh was the representative of England.

102.

‘With so little web,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Scene 1.

103.

The Prince of Benevento. Napoleon created Talleyrand a Prince of the Empire under this title in 1806.

 

The ex-Bishop of Autun. Talleyrand was appointed Bishop of Autun by Louis XVI. in 1789.

 

His friend. Croker.

 

Whether the Friends, etc. From The Champion, Oct. 23, 1814.

 

An excellent article. By Leigh Hunt in The Examiner, Oct. 16, 1814.

105.

‘Vows made in pain,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 97.

 

‘Why so,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘The right divine,’ etc. Pope’s Dunciad, IV. 188.

106.

‘All power,’ etc. St. Matthew xxviii. 18.

 

‘The milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

 

The Crown Prince of Sweden. Bernadotte.

 

‘All hail hereafter.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

108.

The dexterous prince, etc. Talleyrand.

 

The act of Mr. Fox’s administration. March 25, 1807.

109.

‘A very currish performance,’ etc. Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV. Scene 4.

 

Mr. Pye’s. Henry James Pye (1745–1813), Southey’s predecessor in the laureateship.

110.

Mr. Croker was wrong, etc. See ante, p. 48.

 

Once a Jacobin, etc. ‘This charitable adage was at one time fashionable in the ministerial circles; and Mr. Pitt himself, in one of his most powerful speeches, gave it every advantage, that is derivable from stately diction.’ Coleridge, Essays on his own Times, II. 542. Coleridge refers to Pitt’s speech of Feb. 17, 1800. See ante, note to p. 99.

 

Old Sarum. See post, note to p. 157.

 

‘The friendship,’ etc. Carmen Nuptiale, Proem, Stanza 9.

 

‘Glassy essence.’ Measure for Measure, Act II. Scene 2.

111.

Joseph Fox or Joseph Lancaster. Joseph Fox, a Quaker and trustee of the Lancastrian Society. Southey was a vehement supporter of Lancaster’s rival, Bell.

 

‘Practice of Piety.’ ‘The Practice of Piety, directing a Christian how to walk that he may please God,’ by Lewis Bayly, Bishop of Bangor, was published early in the seventeenth century, and became enormously popular.

112.

Geo. Fox. George Fox (1624–1690), the founder of the Society of Friends.

 

‘Bear thou,’ etc. Carmen Nuptiale, The Dream, Stanza 50.

113.

‘Yea in this now,’ etc. Ib., Proem, Stanzas 9 and 10.

 

As to Spenser. Spenser received a pension of £50 a year from the Crown in 1590–1, but was not formally poet-laureate. William Whitehead (1715–1785) was laureate from 1757.

114.

‘Look to thy sire,’ etc. Carmen Nuptiale, The Dream, Stanza 32.

 

The Lay of the Laureate, etc. (concluded). From The Examiner, July 14, 1816.

 

‘Hamlet, thou hast,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 4.

115.

‘Proudly I raised,’ etc. Carmen Nuptiale, Proem, Stanza 11.

 

‘This lovely pair,’ etc. Ib., The Dream, Stanzas 73–7.

116.

‘Old, old Master Shallow.’ Henry IV., Part II., Act III. Scene 2.

 

Snug’s the word. Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘The wars,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto ix. Stanza 56.

117.

‘Brunswick’s fated line.’ Carmen Nuptiale, The Dream, Stanza 30.

 

‘Re-risen cause of evil.’ Ib., Proem, Stanza 14.

 

‘Speed thou the work,’ etc. Ib., The Dream, Stanza 81.

118.

The massacres of Nismes. In July 1815, after the restoration of the Bourbons.

119.

‘Quite chopfallen.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

 

As Christopher Sly says. Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Scene 2.

 

The death of Porlier. General Porlier revolted against Ferdinand of Spain, but, being captured, was put to death in Nov. 1815.

120.

‘Que peut inspirer,’ etc. Athalie, Act III. Scene 3.

 

Note 1. See Vol. I., note to p. 214.

Note 2.

One of them, Leigh Hunt. The other, Charles Lamb. ‘A celebrated General,’ the Duke of Wellington. George Garrard (1760–1826) and Peter Turnerelli (1774–1839) exhibited busts at the Royal Academy.

121.

‘Two of the fearfullest wild-fowl living.’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III. Scene 1.

 

A British Lion, etc. Carmen Nuptiale, The Dream, Stanza 19–21.

 

A new View of Society, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 6., Aug. 4, 1816.

 

For an account of Robert Owen (1771–1858) and his schemes see Leslie Stephen’s English Utilitarians, II. 119–124.

122.

‘Old, old,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 116.

 

My Lord Shallow. Lord Castlereagh, presumably.

 

‘Applaud him,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Scene 3.

 

‘Chaunting remnants,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘No, no,’ etc. Ib. Act IV. Scene 5.

 

‘Like a cloud over the Caspian.’ Paradise Lost, II. 714–716.

 

‘Thy bones,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

123.

Lubber-land. A name given in the 16th century to the imaginary Land of Cockaigne. See Ellis, Specimens of the Early English Poets, I. 95.

 

‘Durham’s golden stalls.’ ‘Though placed in golden Durham’s second stall.’ Cowper, Truth, 120.

 

There was one head. Hazlitt refers to George III.

 

‘Thus repelled,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

124.

‘An old saw.’ As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

 

‘If to do,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act I. Scene 2.

 

Two of our most loyal booksellers. John Murray (1778–1843), publisher of the Quarterly, and John Hatchard (1769–1849) bookseller to the Queen.

 

Mr. Wilberforce. For William Wilberforce (1759–1833) see Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age.

 

‘To pull an old house about their ears.’ Cf. ‘Let them pull all about mine ears.’ Coriolanus, Act III. Scene 2.

125.

The Lord-Chancellor. Eldon.

126.

‘The good and wise.’ Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, Proem, Stanza 9.

 

Dr. Parr, etc. See ante, p. 86.

 

In The Examiner for Sept. 1, 1816 (Literary Notices, No. 10) were published two letters referring to this article of Hazlitt’s, one, signed ‘Z’ defending Owen, the other, signed ‘A. C.,’ denying that the improvements claimed by Owen had actually taken place at New Lanark. The letters are followed by two columns of editorial comment which may or may not be the work of Hazlitt.

127.

The Speech of Charles C. Western, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 7. August 11, 1816.

 

Charles Callis Western (1767–1844), an Essex landowner and member for the county. For his long services in Parliament and as a pamphleteer on behalf of the agricultural interest and of prison reform, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Western in 1833, after having been defeated at the first election after the passing of the Reform Bill. Henry Peter Brougham (1778–1868) was at this time (1816) member for Winchelsea. See Hazlitt’s sketch of him in The Spirit of the Age, and the notes thereon. He was Lord-Chancellor from 1830–1834.

 

The tale of Slaukenbergius. Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV.

 

‘Aye, there’s the rub.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

Lord Camden. The son of Lord-Chancellor Camden. In 1780 he was appointed one of the tellers of the exchequer, a post which he held for sixty years. In 1808 the emoluments of the office amounted to £23,000 per annum. In 1812 Camden relinquished the income, and so before his death in 1840 had sacrificed a quarter of a million.

128.

Mr. Horner. Francis Horner (1778–1817), one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, and one of the chief hopes of the Whigs in Parliament.

 

130. Note. The Friend, Section 1. Essay 7, ‘On the vulgar Errors respecting Taxes and Taxation.’

 

131. Note. ‘The road had done,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Scene 1.

132.

Walcheren. Seven thousand men died during the disastrous expedition to Walcheren.

 

Speeches in Parliament, etc. (concluded). The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 8, Aug. 18, 1816.

 

‘Come, let us,’ etc. Swift’s Polite Conversation, Dialogue 1.

 

‘Relieve the killing languor,’ etc. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II 120).

 

‘If the poor,’ etc. Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795), Works, Bohn, V. 84.

133.

Like the dagger. Burke’s dagger scene occurred during a debate on the Alien Bill, Dec. 28, 1792. See Parl. Hist., XXX. 189.

134.

As the vapours, etc. See p. 231.

136.

‘They toil not,’ etc. St. Matthew, vi. 28.

 

Like Lord Peter, in the ‘Tale of a Tub.’ See Section 4.

 

138. A Lay-Sermon, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 11, Sept. 8, 1816. Cf. Hazlitt’s sketch of Coleridge in The Spirit of the Age.

 

‘Function,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 3.

 

‘Or in Franciscan’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 480.

 

‘Omne ignotum,’ etc. Tacitus, Agricola, Chap. XXX.

 

Cock-Lane Ghost. For ‘the story of a Ghost in Cock-Lane, which, in the year 1762, had gained very general credit in London,’ see Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I. 406–8, and Lang’s Cock-Lane and Common Sense.

 

‘A penny for his thoughts.’ An old saying embalmed in John Heywood’s Proverbs and Swift’s Polite Conversation (Introduction).

139.

‘Secret Tattle.’ Congreve’s Love for Love.

 

‘Yet virgin of Proserpina from Jove,’ Paradise Lost, IX. 396.

 

The Friend, etc. The Friend; a literary, moral, and political weekly Paper, excluding personal and party politics and the events of the day (1809–1810), was re-issued in one volume in 1812, and with additions and alterations (rather a rifacimento than a new edition), in 1818. The articles in the Courier and the Watchman and the Conciones ad Populum were posthumously republished in Essays on his own Times (3 vols. 1850), edited by his daughter Sara.

 

Barmecide. Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, The Barber’s Story of his Sixth Brother.

 

‘He never is,’ etc. Altered from Pope’s Essay on Man, I. 96.

 

Marplot. Mrs. Centlivre’s (1667?–1723), Busy Body (1709).

 

‘Sublime piety’ of Jordano Bruno. See The Friend, Essays Introductory, Essay 16.

140.

Damns a tragedy, etc. See Satyrane’s Letters (Biographia Literaria, Bohn, p. 258).

 

The late Mr. Howard. John Howard (1726–1790), the prison reformer.

 

Voltaire dull. The Friend, The First Landing-Place, Essay 1. Cf. The Round Table, Vol. I. p. 116.

 

‘Ample scope’ etc. Gray’s The Bard.

141.

‘That wantons,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene 6.

141.

‘Or like,’ etc. Burns’s Tam O’ Shanter.

 

‘Like to a man,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 3.

142.

‘Less than arch-angel’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 593–4.

 

The ——. The poet-laureate (Southey) presumably.

 

‘To stand himself’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1.

 

When his six Irish friends, etc. See The Round Table, Vol. i. p. 54.

 

143. The Statesman’s Manual, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 21, Dec. 29, 1816.

 

Here is the true Simon Pure. Mrs. Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718).

 

‘And tis a kind of good deed,’ etc. Henry VIII., Act III. Scene 2.

144.

‘Still harping on my daughter.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

146.

The impertinent barber, etc. The Thousand and One Nights, The Story told by the Tailor.

 

‘And the time that Solomon reigned’ etc. See I Kings xi. 42–3, and xii. 1–20.

 

Note. In The Examiner this note continued: ‘Hypocrisy does not relate to the degree of success with which a man imposes on himself, but on the motives which make him attempt it. The greatest hypocrites are those who can impose most successfully on themselves, that is, conceal from their own minds their sinister motives for judging, or suppress their real, under-opinions. We think it a piece of hypocrisy for a man to insinuate, after reading this part of the Bible, that that Manual of the Statesman is favourable to the doctrine of Divine Right.’

147.

‘Imposture,’ etc. Quoted from Coleridge’s Statesman’s Manual.

148.

Burs and kecksies. Henry V., Act V. Scene 2.

 

A Colquhoun. Patrick Colquhoun (1745–1820), London Police magistrate and social reformer, author of A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis (1795).

 

‘Oh thou particular fellow.’ Henry VI., Part II. Act IV. Scene 2.

 

‘Secret Tattle.’ See ante, note to p. 139.

149.

We well remember, etc. See Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets,’ from which it appears that it was Coleridge himself who made the remark about Thomson. The ‘solitary ale-house’ was at the Valley of Rocks near Lynton.

 

Mr. Southey’s ‘Tract on the Madras System.’ An article of Southey’s in the Quarterly Review for October 1811, reprinted as ‘Origin, Nature, and Object of the New System of Education.’ Hazlitt has in mind a note of Coleridge’s in the Lay Sermon (Bell’s edition, p. 328), where he says, ‘See Mr. Southey’s tract on the new or Madras system of education: especially towards the conclusion, where with exquisite humour as well as with his usual poignancy of wit he has detailed Joseph Lancaster’s disciplinarian inventions,’ etc. For an account of the Madras system of education and of the warfare between Joseph Lancaster (1770–1838) and Andrew Bell (1753–1832), and between their respective followers, see Leslie Stephen’s The English Utilitarians, II. 17 et seq.

 

The late African expedition. Lord Exmouth’s successful bombardment of Algiers in August 1816.

 

152. Mr. Coleridge’s Lay-Sermon. This letter is the germ of the well-known essay entitled ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets,’ which Hazlitt afterwards contributed to the third number of Leigh Hunt’s short-lived review The Liberal: Verse and Prose from the South. The present letter (except the two last paragraphs) was repeated in the essay which was first republished in Literary Remains (1836).

152.

‘Il y a des impressions,’ etc. A favourite quotation from Rousseau’s Confessions.

 

His text. St. John vi. 15.

 

‘Rose like a steam,’ etc. Comus, l. 556.

 

‘Of one crying,’ etc. St. Matthew iii. 3–4.

153.

‘Such were the notes,’ etc. Pope’s Epistle to Robert, Earl of Oxford, l. 1.

 

‘Like to that sanguine flower,’ etc. Lycidas, l. 106.

 

Like Timon. Timon of Athens, Act III. Scene 6.

 

Note.—‘The Correspondent; consisting of letters, moral, political, and literary, between eminent writers in France and England.’ The English articles were arranged by Dr. Stoddart.

154.

Bonaparte and Müller. This fragment appeared in The Examiner on Dec. 15, 1816. Johannes von Müller (1752–1809) was introduced to Napoleon after the battle of Jena (1806). His collected works appeared in 27 vols. (1800–1817).

 

155. Illustrations of the Times Newspaper. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 19, Dec. 15, 1816.

 

‘Out of these convertites,’ etc. As You Like It, Act V. Scene 4.

 

‘All honourable men.’ Julius Caesar, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘But all is conscience,’ etc. Chaucer, Prologue, 150.

156.

The Recruiting Officer. Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer, Act I. Scene 1.

 

Miss Lucy Lockitt. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II.

157.

Here comes one of them. Wordsworth. Hazlitt perhaps refers to a conversation with Wordsworth at Alfoxden, though that must have been in 1798, not 1800.

 

A Sonnet to the King. The Sonnet (entitled ‘November 1813’) beginning ‘Now that all hearts are glad,’ etc.

 

‘Such recantation,’ etc. The Excursion, Book III.

 

‘Proud Glaramara,’ etc. Wordsworth, To Joanna.

 

Sir Robert Wilson’s gallant conduct. In assisting Lavalette to escape from Paris on Jan. 10, 1816. Wilson and two others, Captain Hutchinson and Mr. Bruce, were tried in Paris and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.

 

Joan of Arc. Published in 1796. The first edition contained in Book II. some lines by Coleridge which were afterwards published, with additions, as The Destiny of Nations in Sibylline Leaves (1817). Southey refers to the poem (Preface, 1837) as ‘crudely conceived, rashly prefaced, and prematurely hurried into the world.’ The Examiner in 1816 published a selection of ‘Specimens of Early Jacobin Poetry,’ entitled ‘Acanthologia.’ One of these (Aug. 25, 1816) was the ‘Inscription for a Monument at Old Sarum,’ with a motto from the Quarterly Review, ‘A Reformer is worse than a housebreaker.’

 

Fire, Famine and Slaughter. First published in The Morning Post (Jan. 8, 1798) and republished in Sibylline Leaves (1817) with an apologetic preface. Gale and Fenner, publishers of the Statesman’s Manual, carried on business in Paternoster Row.

 

‘Whose grief,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

158.

The editor of ‘The Times.’ Dr. Stoddart.

 

King Cambyses’ vein. Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 4.

 

‘Horrors on horror’s head accumulating.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

Mr. Koenig’s new press. The steam printing-press of Frederick Koenig was adopted by The Times in 1814, the number for Nov. 29 containing the announcement that ‘our journal of this day presents to the public the practical result of the greatest improvement connected with printing since the discovery of the art itself,’ See Fox Bourne’s English Newspapers, I. 356.

158.

Dr. Slop’s curse. This name was frequently applied to Stoddart after he had become editor of The New Times. In 1820 William Hone published a burlesque on The New Times, entitled ‘A Slap at Slop.’

 

The roasting of Protestants. At Nismes. See ante, p. 118.

 

Lord Castlereagh’s Letter to Mon Prince. A letter from Castlereagh, dated Vienna, 11th October 1814, addressed to Prince Hardenberg, the representative of Prussia at the Vienna Congress, in which Castlereagh states that he can raise no objection to the incorporation of Saxony with the Prussian monarchy. The letter provoked much comment in the press during the following year and was referred to in the House of Commons (April 10, 1815).

159.

Like Perillus’s bull. The bronze bull made for Phalaris by Perillus, who was himself its first victim:—

‘Thus Phalaris Perillus taught to low,

And made him season first the brazen cow.

A rightful doom, the laws of nature cry,

’Tis, the artificers of death should die.’

Dryden, Ovid’s Art of Love, I. 737–40.

 

‘His most sweet voice.’ Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 3.

 

Mr. Walter. John Walter the Second (1776–1847), son of the founder of The Times, who died in 1812.

 

‘Thy stone,’ etc. Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day, 66–7.

 

‘Once a Jacobin always a Jacobin.’ Coleridge contributed an article under this heading to The Morning Post (Essays on his own Times, II. 542), in which he stated that Pitt in one of his most powerful speeches (Feb. 17, 1800) had given the adage ‘every advantage that is derivable from stately diction.’ According to Coleridge’s own report (Essay on his own Times, II. 295) Pitt said: ‘The mind once tainted with Jacobinism can never be wholly free from the taint; I know no means of purification; when it does not break out on the surface, it still lurks in the vitals; no antidote can approach the subtlety of the venom, no length of quarantine secure us against the obstinacy of the pestilence.’ See ante, note to p. 110.

160.

‘What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba.’ For this and the two succeeding quotations see Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

That unfortunate Miss Bailey. George Colman the Younger’s Love Laughs at Locksmiths, Act II.

 

‘Society became,’ etc. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book III.

161.

Proof against conviction. In The Examiner this paragraph was succeeded by the following passage:—‘What a pity he is not a poet or a man of genius! (Your dull fellows ought to be honest; for every body ought to be something.) He might then instead of wholesome truths have given us agreeable lies; for plain facts, pompous fictions; he might have strewed the flowers of poetry on the rotten carcase of corruption, and have made the ugly face of war look amiable at a distance. He might have trumped up a romantic episode about the Duchess d’Angouleme,^[68] as Mr. Burke did about her wretched mother, or have seen visions on the mountain tops like Mr. Wordsworth, or have dreamt a dream more in the manner of Spenser than The Laureat’s Lay. There might then have been something like an observation, a thought, a trope, a jest, a lucky epithet, a well written sentence, in all the long, dreary, heavy columns of The Times newspaper. But as our author cannot soar, he grovels; and no one ever sunk so low. He is a perfect Grub-street. His want of eloquence renders him abusive; he has no power over words, or he would not call names at the rate he does. He throws dirt and rubbish at the heads of his adversaries, because he can get nothing else to throw. Do you think he would go on for ever with that round of slang-phrases, dreadful to the ear, and petrific even to behold; monstrous, prodigious, unutterable, without argument, without sense or decency, calculated only to stupify or disgust, with which he piles up the columns of The Times newspaper, if he had any resources either of imagination or understanding? It is the want of power equal to his will, that inflames his malice and inflates his style; he makes up for what he wants in strength, by coarseness; for what he wants in variety, by repetition; for what he wants in sallies of wit, by systematic dulness; for what he wants in reason, by brutal outrage. And then, did any mortal ever read such a style? The flowers of Billingsgate, arranged according to the rules of Lindley Murray’s English Exercises, with all the ridiculous pedantry of subjunctive moods and adverbial expletives:

“In many a winding bout

Of linked dulness long drawn-out.”^[69]

 

It is as if the celebrated pastry-cook in Cornhill^[70] should get cart-loads of mud to do up in twelfth cakes, with cuts of kings, queens, and bishops, for his Christmas customers. All that is low in understanding, vulgar and sordid in principle in city politics, is seen exuding from the formal jaws of The Times newspaper, as we see the filth, and slime, and garbage, and offal of this great city pouring into the Thames, from the sewers and conduit-pipes of the scavenger’s company. It is a patent water-closet for the dirty uses of legitimacy: a leaden cistern for obsolete prejudices and upstart sophistry “to knot and gender in.”^[71] Is this an exaggerated account? No. We have not words to do justice to the subject. The Times newspaper is a phenomenon without any parallel in history: it is the triumph of the reign of George III. It is supposed to be the organ of the Stock Exchange politics; and, to be sure, there is a wonderful sympathy between them. Neither Burke nor Junius would have done so well. There is nothing in the pages of The Times that can lose in loftiness or elegance by repetition in the money-market, or draw off the attention of the bulls and bears from their ledgers, or their soups and venison. The vulgarity of the Editor’s style might even receive a romantic tincture from the Hebraism of its pronunciation, and its monotony would be agreeably relieved by the discordant gabble of that disinterested congregation of stock-jobbing Jews and Gentiles. The secret of the composition of The Times is this. The city wants a bugbear to suit their interest, and the Editor of the city paper creates a bugbear out of his malice. He nicknames this bugbear, but as he does not believe in it, he repeats his nickname ten or a dozen times every day, till by so doing he begins to believe it. They begin to believe it too; and the echo and buz of the Stock Exchange gives him courage to go on. He then tries other and more odious nicknames, which he and others believe, not because they are true, but because they are odious, and gratify the malice of the writer, and answer the readers’ ends. Thus the city and the city Editor go on hand in hand, creating a bugbear out of nothing, and swelling it into a monster, heaping all sorts of vices and deformities upon it, and believing them all, in proportion as they are incredible and contradictory—if they are disproved, repeating them the louder—making the disgust, fear and hatred, which their bugbear inspires, a proof of its existence, and determined more and more to indulge their disgust, fear and hatred, in proportion as their passions and prejudices have no other foundation than their own spite and credulity—drowning reason in passion—overcoming common sense, by shocking common decency—believing in the chimeras of their own brain, from their very hideousness, as children put faith in apparitions, in proportion to their dread of them—ringing everlastingly in each other’s ears, what they each wish to believe; and believing that there is some reason for the everlasting din and noise they make, because they make it—creating a war-bugbear, because they wanted something to go to war with, requiring the same wanton and unprincipled sacrifices of the blood and treasure of their country to be made to this phantom of their own making, as to the direst necessity; and persisting in the justice and wisdom of their measures, from the very miseries which these helpmates of the Bourbons have brought upon the world—to gratify the mercantile avarice of the Stock Exchange and the literary vanity of its tool, the Editor of The Times. The interest of the Stock Exchange, and the philosophy of the Editor of The Times, no longer, however, draw the same way and we suspect they will soon dissolve partnership. Such writers do their country best service in the end; “kept like an apple in the jaw of an ape, first mouthed, and last swallowed: it is but squeezing them, and spunge, you shall be dry again.”^[72]

 

161. Illustrations, etc. On Modern Lawyers and Poets. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 20, Dec. 22, 1816.

 

Facilis, etc. Æneid, VI. 126 et seq.

 

‘Let no man,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act II. Scene 9.

 

162 Sam Sharpset. In Thomas Morton’s (1764?–1838) The Slave, acted at Covent Garden, Nov. 12, 1816.

 

‘The Devil,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Britain’s warriors,’ etc.

‘Of Britain’s Court ... a proud assemblage there,

Her Statesmen, and her Warriors, and her Fair.’

Southey, Carmen Nuptiale, The Dream, Stanza 16.

163.

‘Ours is an honest employment,’ etc. Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Scene 1.

 

If he finds it in his retainer. In The Examiner Hazlitt adds in a parenthesis, ‘See the State Trials for 1794.’ Edward Law (1750–1818), created Lord Ellenborough and Lord Chief Justice of England in 1802, was one of the counsel for the Crown against Hardy and Horne Tooke in 1794.

 

‘Look on both indifferently.’ Julius Caesar, Act I. Scene 2.

164.

Garrow. See note to Vol. II. p. 186.

165.

‘The lodged hatred.’ Merchant of Venice, Act I. Scene 4.

 

Marshal Ney. Ney was shot on Dec. 7, 1815.

 

The declaration of the 25th of March. Hazlitt refers to the Declaration of the Allied Powers (Vienna, 13th March, 1815) which proclaimed that Buonaparte by returning from Elba, had ‘placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations.’

165.

‘With famine,’ etc. Henry V., Act I. Chorus.

166.

‘My soul,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, 165.

 

‘Carnage was the daughter of Humanity.’ See note to Vol. I. 214.

 

Pantisocracy’s equal hills. Pantisocracy, defined by Southey as ‘the equal government of all,’ was to have been carried into practice in America by Southey, and Coleridge, and others, but Southey abandoned the scheme. See Mrs. Sandford’s Thomas Poole and his Friends.

 

The spirit of poetry, etc. Hazlitt published this paragraph in The Round Table. See Vol. I. pp. 151–3, and notes.

 

‘Constrained by mastery.’

‘That Love will not submit to be controlled

By mastery.’

Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book VI.

 

‘Heaven’s own tinct.’ Cymbeline, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Being so majestical,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 1.

168.

‘No figures nor no fantasies.’ Julius Caesar, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘No trivial fond records.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘The bare earth,’ etc.

‘To the bare trees, and mountains bare,

And grass in the green field.’

Wordsworth, To my Sister.

 

169. ‘The Times’ Newspaper, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 22, Jan. 12. 1817.

 

‘Doubtless the pleasure,’ etc. Butler’s Hudibras, Canto iii.

 

We some time ago, etc. See ante, pp. 121–7.

 

What we said about Coriolanus. Hazlitt refers to a theatrical criticism of his own which appeared in The Examiner on Dec. 15, 1816, and was reprinted in A View of the English Stage, and also (with a few variations) in Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. See Vol. I. of the present edition, pp. 214 et seq.

 

‘Bore through its castle walls.’ Richard II., Act III. Scene 2.

 

In the year 1792. Burke’s pensions were granted in 1794. Paine’s trial took place in Dec. 1792, after he had escaped to Paris.

170.

‘Oh, name him not,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act II. Scene 1.

171.

‘Empty praise or solid pudding.’ Pope’s Dunciad, I. 52.

 

Companions of Ulysses. ‘He [Buonaparte] dispersed the Compagnons du Lys, as Ulysses slew the suitors.’ Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon, Chap. liii.

172. Note 1.

James Madison. President of the United States during the war with England, 1812–1814.

 

Tom Jones. Book I. Chaps, x.–xiii.

 

175. Omne tulit punctum. Horace, Ars Poetica, 343.

 

The last of these props, etc. Stoddart left The Times at the beginning of 1817. The following passage in The Examiner is omitted from the essay as republished: ‘It was to force this living image of kingly power, this wretched mockery of divine right, this spurious offspring of the foul blatant Beast, back on the French that has been the cause, the end and origin, of all this mischief: and it was for having kept it in check for so many years by his valour and genius, for having put a hook in its nostrils, and made it lower its grisly crest, and cease its horrid roar, and retire to its obscure, obscene den, that Buonaparte was nicknamed by the two celebrated persons above-mentioned ‘the enemy of the human race’; and if instead of packing off Louis the Desired from Hartwell, we had sent over that idol of eastern temples the Boa Constrictor from Piccadilly, on the same proud errand, decorated with the symbols of the Universe and of Ancient Wisdom, instead of Lilies and San Benitos, we can see no possible reason why John Bull and the French people might not have been equally satisfied: nor what should have hindered Mr. Southey from adapting one of Wesley’s hymns to the occasion, or Mr. Wordsworth from mouthing out some deep no-meaning about “royal fortitude,” and “time-hallowed laws,” or Mr. Coleridge from proving that the Serpent was the more ancient and sacred symbol of the two.’

 

‘In contempt of the will of the people.’ Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 17).

 

176. Odia in longum, etc. Tacitus, Annals, I. 69.

 

Three poets. Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge.

 

177. Interesting Facts, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 23, Feb. 2, 1817.

 

‘Come draw the curtain,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘The dark blanket.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘Pah! and smells so.’ Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

 

‘That harlot old,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 36.

 

‘Sweet thunder.’ Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV. Scene 1.

178.

‘She has changed,’ etc. Henry VI., Part II., Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘Dressed in a robe,’ etc. ‘A fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Stand now,’ etc. Hazlitt quotes sundry scriptural denunciations of Babylon. See Isaiah, chap, xlvii., and Revelations, chap. xvii.

 

‘The uses of legitimacy.’ Cf. ‘Sweet are the uses of adversity.’ As You Like It, Act II. Scene 1.

179.

Lord William Bentinck. Lord William Cavendish Bentinck (1774–1839), afterwards Governor-General of India, went in 1811 to Sicily as envoy and commander-in-chief of the British forces. In 1814 he commanded an expedition against Genoa.

180.

Sir Robert Wilson. Sir Robert Thomas Wilson (1777–1849), who, after a stormy life, was appointed Governor of Gibraltar, was at this time with the Austrian army in Italy.

 

‘How little knew’st thou,’ etc. Rowe’s The Fair Penitent, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘You have in part redeemed your errors,’ etc. The reference is probably to Wilson’s share in the escape of Lavalette. See ante, p. 157.

 

The immortal Congress. Bentinck had issued a declaration at Genoa promising independence to that city and the support of England in effecting the unity of Italy, but the declaration was disavowed by Castlereagh at the Vienna Congress.

181.

The Duke of Levis. François, Duc de Levis (1720–87), created Marshal of France in 1783 and Duc in 1784, fought against England in the American War.

 

183. Interesting Facts, etc. (concluded). The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 24, Feb. 9, 1817.

186.

We are glad the Duke is not an Englishman. In The Examiner Hazlitt wrote, ‘Is not the Duke an Irishman?’

192.

The fool in Lear. See Act II. Scene 4.

 

Berthier. Louis Alexandre Berthier (1753–1815), one of Napoleon’s marshals, who committed suicide or was murdered at Bamberg, in Bavaria, on June 1, 1815.

192.

‘A master-leaver, and a fugitive.’ Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 9.

 

Wat Tyler; a Dramatic Poem, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 25, March 9, 1817.

 

Wat Tyler; a Drama, which Southey had written ‘in the course of three mornings in 1794,’ was surreptitiously published in 1817, with a Preface suitable to recent circumstances, and an injunction to restrain the publication was refused by Lord Eldon on the ground of the mischievous tendency of the work. Southey defended himself from the charge of inconsistency in A Letter to William Smith, M.P. See ante, pp. 210–232. He himself published the Drama in the 1837 edition of his Poems, in order, as he says, ‘that it may not be supposed I think it any reproach to have written it, or that I am more ashamed of having been a republican, than of having been a boy.’

 

‘So was it,’ etc. Wordsworth’s ‘My heart leaps up.’

 

193. The Article on Parliamentary Reform. Republished in Essays, Moral and Political, I. 327 et seq.

 

‘Fierce extremes.’ Paradise Lost, II. 599.

 

‘Present ignorant thought.’ Cf.—

‘Thy letters have transported me beyond

This ignorant present.’

Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘Discourse of reason,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2 and Act IV. Scene 4.

 

The woman that deliberates is lost. Addison’s Cato, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘His poor virtue,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act II. Scene 4.

194.

John Ball. John Ball, the preacher of social equality, was executed in 1381 for his share in Tyler’s rebellion. See Burke’s account of ‘that reverend patriarch of sedition’ in An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (Works, Bohn, III. 88), and William Morris’s A Dream of John Ball (1888) for the view of a modern disciple.

 

‘A sort of squint.’ Cf. A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I. p. 379.

 

Morceau I. Wat Tyler, Act I.

 

‘Privileg’d r——s.’ ‘Ruffians’ in the 1837 edition.

195.

Morceau II. Act I.

196.

Morceau III. Act I.

 

Morceau IV. Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘When Adam delv’d,’ etc. The text of John Ball’s famous sermon. ‘Of this sapient maxim, however,’ says Burke, ‘I do not give him for the inventor. It seems to have been handed down by tradition, and had certainly become proverbial.’

197.

Morceau V. Act II. Scene 1.

198.

Morceau VI. Act II. Scene 3.

199.

Morceau VII. Act III. Scene 1.

200.

Morceau the Last. Act III. Scene 2.

 

The Courier, etc. From The Examiner, March 30, 1817.

 

‘Doth not the appetite alter,’ etc. Much Ado about Nothing, Act II. Scene 3.

 

In the Courier. Coleridge wrote two letters in The Courier (March 17, 18, 1817) and two letters for the Westminster Review (which were not printed there) vindicating Southey from the charge of apostacy. All these letters were reprinted in Essays on his own Times, pp. 939–962. See J. D. Campbell’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 230.

201.

‘Somewhat smacks.’ Merchant of Venice, Act II. Scene 2.

 

The Editor of this Paper. Leigh Hunt.

203.

‘The Man of Humanity.’ The reference is to Canning’s and Frere’s well-known parody of Southey, ‘The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.’

 

‘This, this,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘That the law,’ etc. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV.

204.

His Irish pension. Southey was for a short time (1800–1) private secretary to Isaac Corry, the Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer.

205.

His Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc was published in 1796, the Sonnets, etc., in 1797 and 1801, Letters written during a short residence in Spain and Portugal in 1797, the Annual Anthology in 1799–1800.

 

The Fall of Robespierre. The Fall of Robespierre: An Historic Drama. By S. T. Coleridge, of Jesus College, Cambridge. Published at Cambridge in 1794. Southey wrote Acts II. and III.

 

All that Mr. Coleridge ever did in poetry. The Ancient Mariner appeared in Lyrical Ballads (1798); Christabel, written at various times between 1797 and 1800, was not published till 1816, though Wordsworth had at first intended to include it in the Lyrical Ballads of 1800; The Three Graves, written between 1797 and 1809, was published in Sibylline Leaves (1817); a volume of Poems appeared in 1796 (2nd edit. 1797); and Remorse, A Tragedy in Five Acts, written in 1797, was published in 1813.

206.

With a single exception. Hazlitt presumably refers to Scott.

 

‘Their lofty,’ etc. Coleridge, Essays on his own Times, iii. 948.

 

‘Left behind by him,’ etc. Ib. p. 945.

 

‘Tuning his mystic harp,’ etc.

‘Coleridge and Southey, Lloyd and Lamb and Co.,

Tune all your mystic harps to praise Lepaux.’

Canning’s The New Morality in The Anti-Jacobin.

 

‘Quiring to the young-eyed cherubins.’ Merchant of Venice, Act V. Scene 1.

207.

‘Every moment brings,’ etc. Wat Tyler, Act II. Scene 2.

208.

‘Is not poetry, etc. As You Like It, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘Constant chastity,’ etc. Spenser, Epithalamion, 191–3.

209.

‘Through the allegiance,’ etc. Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto iii. St. 1.

 

‘Rapes and ravishments.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘Exaggerated evils.’ Coleridge says that the speeches in Wat Tyler were intended ‘as exaggerated truths characteristic of heated minds.’

 

‘Horrible shadows,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘Within the book,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

 

Herodias’s daughter. St. Matthew xiv. 6–8.

 

‘No speculation,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

210.

‘Come, let me clutch thee.’ Ib. Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘Tickling commodity.’ ‘That smooth-faced gentleman, tickling Commodity. King John, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘The chief dread,’ etc. This phrase is from the second of Coleridge’s Courier articles on Wat Tyler.

 

A Letter to William Smith, etc. The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 27, May 4, 1817. Southey’s Letter was included in his Essays Moral and Political (vol. II. pp. 3–31), to which reference should be made.

 

Mr. Burke’s celebrated ‘Letter,’ etc. ‘A letter from the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, to a noble Lord on the attacks made upon him and his pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the present session of Parliament. 1796.’ (Works, Bohn, V. 110–151.)

210.

The Abbé Sieyes’s pigeon-holes. Burke’s Letter, p. 142.

211.

‘A swan-like end.’ Merchant of Venice, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘The ruling passion,’ etc. Varied from Pope’s Moral Essays, i. 178–9.

 

‘There is,’ etc. St. Matthew v. 48.

212.

‘As fortune,’ etc. Measure for Measure, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘I, Robert Shallow,’ etc. ‘He shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire.’ The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act I. Scene 1.

 

Spencean. The ‘Spencean Philanthropists,’ who took their name from Thomas Spence (1750–1814), advocated a form of land-nationalisation, and included among them the Spa-fields rioters. See Harriet Martineau’s History of the Peace (Bell), I. 81–88. ‘Ex-Spencean’ appears to be a pun of Sir Francis Burdett’s. The word was applied by him to the ministers ‘who had got possession of the purse of the people.’ Debate in the House of Commons, Feb. 24, 1817.

 

‘To know my deed,’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Blind with the pin and web.’ Winter’s Tale, Act I. Scene 2.

213.

‘Dost thou think,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act II. Scene 3.

 

Mr. Alderman Smith. Mr. Alderman Joshua Jonathan Smith, when sitting in Quarter Sessions to hear an application for a licence to hold meetings, said: ‘The object of the Act is to put down all political debate whatever.’ See The Examiner, April 27, 1817.

 

Mr. Wynne. Charles Watkin Williams Wynn (1775–1850), who allowed Southey £160 per annum from 1796 to 1807. He sat for Montgomeryshire from 1799 till his death, and successively held sundry subordinate offices. His elder brother and he were known as Bubble and Squeak, and when he was proposed for the Speakership in 1817, Canning feared that members might be tempted to call him ‘Mr. Squeaker.’

 

Mr. Canning’s want of regularity. During the Debate on the Address, Jan. 29, 1817.

214.

‘In the third tier,’ etc. See ante, p. 150.

 

The person who published ‘Wat Tyler.’ The publishers were Sherwood, Neely and Jones.

215.

‘Upon his brow,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Scene 2.

217.

‘Found him poor,’ etc. Goldsmith’s Deserted Village, l. 414.

 

‘Be to her faults,’ etc. Prior’s An English Padlock.

218.

‘What’s here,’ etc. Timon of Athens, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

A Letter to William Smith, Esq., etc. (continued). The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 27, May 11, 1817.

 

‘What word,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IX. 1144.

 

‘Mark you his absolute John.’ ‘Mark you his absolute “shall”?’ Coriolanus, Act III. Scene 1.

 

The Commander-in-Chief. The Duke of York retired in 1809 in consequence of the disclosures made in the House of Commons. Mrs. Clarke made use of her influence with the Duke to obtain promotion for officers who paid her for her assistance. The Duke was re-instated in 1811.

 

‘The reading rabble.’ Hazlitt is probably referring to Coleridge’s contemptuous passage on ‘The Reading Public.’ See ante, pp. 149–150.

 

Roderic Random. See Chap. xxxiv.

 

An exalted Personage. The Prince Regent.

219.

‘As pure as sin with baptism.’ Henry V., Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘The collusion,’ etc. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Scene 2.

 

Mr. Gifford. See Vol. I. p. 456.

 

‘The lovely Marcia,’ etc. Addison’s Cato, Act I. Scene 4.

220.

The Inscription at Chepstow Castle. This Inscription of Southey’s in honour of the regicide Henry Martin was parodied by Canning and Frere in the Anti-Jacobin in the famous ‘Inscription for the door of the cell at Newgate, where Mrs. Brownrigg, the ‘Prentice-cide was confined previous to her execution.’

221.

Irritabile genus vatum. Horace, Epistles, ii. 2, 102.

 

The last Quarterly. See Southey’s Essays, Moral and Political, Essay VII. He defines Sir Richard Phillips as ‘Knight and Ex-Sheriff, Buonapartist, Member of the Society for Abolishing War, Pythagorean, and Spencean Philanthropist.’

 

‘Why man,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act I. Scene 2.

 

Has overlaid the posthumous birth of the young Shiloh. The reference is to Joanna Southcott. See post, note to p. 297.

224.

Like Mr. Cobbett. Cobbett had been in Newgate for two years (1810–1812) and fined £1000 for an article on military flogging, and had recently (March, 1817) been obliged to leave England from the fear of a second imprisonment.

 

A Letter to William Smith, Esq., etc. (concluded). The Examiner, Literary Notices, No. 28, May 18, 1817.

 

225. The Monthly. Established in 1796 by Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) Phillips, the vegetarian publisher. See Vol. II. p. 177.

 

‘The hour when I escap’d,’ etc. Beattie, The Minstrel, Stanza 40.

 

Doctors Price and Priestley. Richard Price (1723–1791), whose sermon on Nov. 4, 1789 is so violently attacked by Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) were Unitarians, ‘hot men’ as Burke called them. They figure together in a note of Boswell’s (Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, IV. 238).

 

226. Don Giovanni. Don Juan had been given at the King’s Theatre on April 12, 1817. See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

 

‘Damn you,’ etc. The Rivals, Act II. Scene 1.

227.

‘For a man,’ etc. This line from Hamlet (Act V. Scene 2) formed the motto to The Spirit of the Age.

 

‘Children and champions,’ etc. See ante, p. 99.

 

‘A consummation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘O fool, fool, fool.’ Twelfth Night, Act IV. Scene 2.

228.

Half Luddite. The Luddites, bands of workmen who destroyed machinery, chiefly in the Midlands, had shown their greatest activity in the preceding year, 1816.

229.

In his speech from the Throne. On Jan. 28, 1817, Regent said that the Estimates ‘had been formed upon a full consideration of all the present circumstances of the country, with an anxious desire to make every reduction in our Establishments which the safety of the Empire and sound policy allow.’ A disorderly crowd attended him back to St. James’s Palace after the opening of Parliament, and the windows of his carriage were broken.

231.

‘O what delicate wooden spoons,’ etc. Don Quixote, Part II. Chap, lxvii.

 

But Lord Castlereagh, etc. Croker’s salary was raised from £3000 to £4000 in March 1816, the vote being passed by a majority of only 29 (March 20).

 

Flocci, etc. See ante, note to p. 33.

232.

‘The high leaves,’ etc. See Southey’s The Holly Tree, Stanza 5.

 

Some evenings ago. June 23, 1817, when Castlereagh proposed the first reading of a Bill for further suspending the Habeas Corpus Act.

232.

Castles and Oliver. Violent debates took place in Parliament during 1817 and 1818 in connection with the employment of Castle and Oliver by the Government. See Hansard, Parl. Debates, XXXVI. and XXXVIII., and Walpole’s History of England, I. Chap. v. Castle was the chief witness against the Spa-Fields rioters. Oliver supplied continuous reports of the progress of insurrection in the two following years, 1817 and 1818.

233.

Lingo in the play. O’Keefe’s Agreeable Surprise (1798).

 

Mr. Wynne. See ante, note to p. 213.

 

Lord Lascelles’s hat. Henry Lascelles (1767–1841), a Yorkshire member, succeeded to the Earldom of Harewood in 1820.

 

That preux chevalier. Dr. Stoddart left The Times early in 1817 and entered into an arrangement with the proprietor of The Day, in accordance with which that paper became known as The Day and New Times. See Fox Bourne’s English Newspapers, I. 359–60.

 

‘The age of chivalry,’ etc. Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

234.

There is no imputation, etc. This was a remark of Mr. Lee Keck in course of the debate.

 

Fielding’s hero. See Jonathan Wild, chap. xiii.

 

On the Spy-System (continued). From The Morning Chronicle, July 15, 1817.

 

The debate. On July 11, 1817.

 

Genoa. It was part of Brougham’s charge against the Government that they had taken no effective steps on behalf of British merchants of Genoa, who were treated by the Chamber of Commerce at Genoa with every species of oppression and violence, and in particular had been assessed for the professed purpose of buying a frigate for the King of Sardinia.

235.

‘Petty tyrant.’ Cf. ‘The little tyrant of his fields withstood.’ Gray’s Elegy, l. 58.

 

Spanish America. Brougham accused ministers of failing to observe neutrality ‘in the great and interesting struggle of the people of South America to rescue themselves from the most odious tyranny that ever disgraced the history of the world.’

237.

Mr. Finnerty. Peter Finnerty (1766?–1822) was imprisoned for two years from Oct. 1797 for his account of the trial and execution of William Orr. He afterwards became parliamentary reporter on The Morning Chronicle. In Feb. 1811 he was imprisoned for eighteen months for a libel charging Castlereagh with cruelty in Ireland.

 

Mr. Judkin Fitzgerald. For a sketch of Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, High Sheriff of Tipperary, see Lecky’s History of Ireland (Cabinet edition, IV. 277 et seq.). A verdict against him of £500 damages for illegal acts committed in order to suppress the rebellion in Ireland led to the case being brought before Parliament and to the passing of a wider Act of Indemnity.

 

‘And struts,’ etc. ‘Will sneaks a scriv’ner, an exceeding knave.’ Pope, Moral Essays, I. 154.

 

‘Innocent of the knowledge,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 2.

 

238. On the Treatment of State Prisoners. From The Morning Chronicle, July 17, 1817.

 

Mr. Hiley Addington. See the debate in the House of Commons on July 2, 1817. Hiley Addington was a brother of Lord Sidmouth, of whom it was said,

‘When his periods hobble vilely

What “hear hims” burst from brother Hiley!’

238.

Thomas Evans, imprisoned on suspicion under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, was Librarian to the Society of Spencean Philanthropists.

 

Note. Mother Brownrigg. Elizabeth Brownrigg, a midwife, who was executed in 1767 for the murder of her apprentice, Mary Clifford. See ante, note to p. 220.

 

Note. ‘Comfit-makers wives’ oaths’ Henry IV., Part I., Act III. Scene 1.

239.

‘As a lamb’ etc. Isaiah liii. 7.

 

‘Poor, poor dumb mouths.’ Julius Caesar, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘Camels in their war,’ etc. Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 1.

 

Sir Robert Filmer. Sir Robert Filmer (d. 1653), the absolutist, whose ‘Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings asserted,’ was published in 1680.

240.

‘Where is the madman,’ etc. See post, p. 285, where much of this matter is repeated.

 

The Opposition and the Courier. From The Morning Chronicle, July 19, 1817.

 

‘To acquaint us,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 1.

241.

As Mr. Canning formerly thought. Canning resigned from the Duke of Portland’s ministry in 1809, and did not join Lord Liverpool’s ministry till 1816. The Foreign Office was offered to him in 1812, but he refused to take it with the condition that Castlereagh should lead the House of Commons.

 

England in 1798, etc. From The Morning Chronicle, Aug. 2, 1817.

 

243. On the Effects of War and Taxes. From The Morning Chronicle, Aug. 13, 1817.

 

‘Great princes,’ etc. Cowper’s The Task, Book V.

 

Not even the Finance Committee. The Government had recently appointed a Select Committee to consider the receipts and expenditure for 1817, 1818, and 1819, and to report from time to time what reductions might be made in the expenditure.

 

244. Note. ‘And ever,’ etc. L’Allegro, l. 136.

246.

The Pavilion at Brighton. Begun by the Prince of Wales in 1784.

 

‘Minions of the moon,’ etc. Henry IV., Part I., Act I. Scene 2.

247.

‘If we made,’ etc. Henry IV., Part II., Act II. Scene 4.

 

‘The gout,’ etc. Measure for Measure, Act III. Scene 1.

249.

A writer, whose own fault, etc. Coleridge. See his Essay ‘On the Vulgar Errors respecting Taxes and Taxation.’ The Friend (Section I., Essay 7).

 

Mr. Southey in his late pamphlet. The Letter to William Smith. See Essays, Moral and Political, II. 28.

 

250. Character of Mr. Burke. Copied in The Champion, Oct. 5, 1817, from an article by Hazlitt in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. XXVIII. pp. 503–7, Aug. 1817, on ‘Coleridge’s Literary Life.’

252.

The word ‘abdication.’ Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 31–2).

253.

‘Never so sure,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 51–2.

 

254. On Court Influence. From No. 1 (Jan. 3, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf, ‘a Weekly Miscellany’ founded by John Hunt, and continued to No. 21 (May 23, 1818).

 

‘To be honest,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘But still the world,’ etc. Thomson, The Seasons (Autumn, l. 233).

255.

Doctors Parr and Burney. See Vol. I., note to p. 64.

256.

‘A certificate of merit.’ ‘At every step of my progress in life, (for in every step was I traversed and opposed), and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport.’ A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 125).

256.

‘Thou hast it now,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘Swept and garnished.’ St. Luke xi. 25.

 

257. Indignatio facit versus. Juvenal, Satires, i. 79.

 

William Burke. A kinsman, not the brother of Edmund. For his letters to James Barry, the painter, see Barry’s Works (1809).

 

‘And with it,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

258.

‘Escap’d,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 225.

 

‘Britain’s warriors,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 162.

259.

Not ‘gain but glory.’ ‘For gain, not glory winged his roving flight.’ Pope, Satires, V. 71.

 

‘In their Livery,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act V. Scene 2.

 

That sweet smile, etc. Henry VIII., Act III. Scene 2.

 

On Court Influence (concluded). From No. 2 (Jan. 10, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

260.

‘Pierces through,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘Whosoever shall stumble,’ etc. St. Matthew, xxi. 44.

 

For ‘scorn to point,’ etc. Othello, Act IV. Scene 2.

261.

‘A consummation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

A certain distinguished character. Castlereagh, who was regarded as mainly responsible for the disastrous Walcheren expedition in 1809. For his vindication of the Government spies, see ante pp. 232–8.

 

Reynolds. Thomas Reynolds (1771–1836) had long been notorious as an informer in the Irish rebellion. His name appeared on the grand jury which returned a true bill against Wilson and others for high treason in connection with the Spa Field riots, and the Government felt obliged to send him out of England on the Consular service. See Lecky’s History of Ireland, Chap. X.

 

The Attorney-General. Sir Samuel Shepherd (1760–1840) succeeded Garrow in 1817.

 

Mr. Coleridge. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria was published in 1817. For the passage referred to on Anti-Jacobin slanders, see note at the end of Chap. iii.

262.

His present friend and associate. Gifford. See Hazlitt’s Letter to William Gifford (vol. I. p. 401).

 

‘The cynosure,’ etc. L’Allegro, l. 80.

263.

Have lately made an attempt, etc. Hazlitt seems to refer to an article of Southey’s republished (Essays, Moral and Political, II. 35–107) under the title ‘On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection,’ and to Coleridge’s Statesman’s Manual.

 

In discharge of an old debt. See note to the Essay ‘On the Tendency of Sects’ in The Round Table (vol. I. p. 51) where, after showing in the Essay that ‘there is a natural tendency in sects to narrow the mind,’ he says, ‘we shall some time or other give the reverse of the picture.’

264.

‘Or if severe,’ etc.

‘—— or, if severe in aught,

The love he bore to learning was in fault.’

Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, ll. 205–6.

 

Dissenters are the safest partisans, etc. This passage is repeated from the last paragraph of the Essay ‘On the Tendency of Sects.’

 

The ‘hortus siccus’ of dissent. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 14).

 

Non ex quovis, etc. Erasmus, Adagiorum Chiliades, ‘Munus aptum.’

265.

But we have known some such, etc. Hazlitt seems to have had his father in his mind when he wrote this description. Cf. The Round Table (On Pedantry), vol. I. p. 82.

 

The Book of Martyrs. The name by which from the date (1563) of its publication John Foxe’s (1516–1587) Actes and Monuments was known. The martyrdoms of John Huss (1415) and Jerome of Prague (1416) are narrated therein. John Ziska, leader of the extreme Hussite party.

 

Neale’s History of the Puritans. Daniel Neal’s (1648–1743) History of the Puritans (1732–8).

 

Calamy’s Account, etc. Edmund Calamy’s (1671–1732) Account of the Ministers, Lecturers, Masters and Fellows of Colleges and Schoolmasters who were Ejected or Silenced after the Restoration in 1660, originally part of his ‘Abridgment’ (1702) of Richard Baxter’s posthumous ‘Narrative, etc. of his Life and Times,’ was separately published in the second edition of the ‘Abridgment’ (1713). The number of ‘two thousand’ ejected (given by Hazlitt) appeared on the title-page in Samuel Palmer’s edition of Calamy (1802).

266.

Silver-tongued Bates. William Bates (1625–1699) and John Howe (1630–1705), two of the ejected divines.

 

Lardner’s Credibility of the Gospel History. By Nathaniel Lardner (1684–1768), published 1727–1757.

 

The Fratres Poloni. See vol. II., note to p. 165. This work and probably the others referred to in this Essay formed part of the Library of Hazlitt’s father.

 

‘Glory to God,’ etc. St. Luke ii. 14.

 

‘Time-rent.’ Coleridge’s Sonnet to Schiller.

 

In The Yellow Dwarf Hazlitt concluded as follows:—‘Happy are they, who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things by the light of their own minds: who walk by faith and hope, not by knowledge; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been ‘hurt by the archers,’^[73] nor has the iron entered into their souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The evil thing comes not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them, like drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever about them.’ Cf. Hazlitt’s Reply to Malthus, vol. IV. p. 104.

 

On the Clerical Character. From No. 4 (Jan. 24, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf. This and the two following essays may be taken as a further attempt to discharge the ‘old debt’ referred to on p. 263.

 

‘Now mark,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, I. 725.

 

‘And in Franciscan,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 480.

268.

‘To counterfeiten chere,’ etc. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Prologue, ll. 139–141.

269.

‘The collusion,’ etc. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Scene 2.

270.

‘Eremites and friars,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 474–5.

 

271. On the Clerical Character (continued). From No. 5 (Jan. 31, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

272.

It is better to marry than burn. ‘But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.’ 1 Corinthians vii. 9.

 

‘Continents,’ says Hobbes, etc. Human Nature, (Works, ed. Molesworth, IV. 50).

273.

‘Where’s that palace,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘Pure in the last recesses of the mind.’ This line, which is perhaps quoted by Hazlitt more frequently than any other, is from Dryden’s translation from the Second Satire of Persius, l. 133.

 

‘While they,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

The Society for the Suppression of Vice. See The Round Table, vol. p. 1. 60.

275.

‘To be conformed,’ etc. Romans xii. 2.

 

‘Like little wanton boys,’ etc. Henry VIII., Act III. Scene 2.

 

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

276.

‘Who far,’ etc. Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther, i. 312–3.

 

Bishop Watson’s Life. Richard Watson (1737–1816), Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Llandaff. His life, written by himself, was published by his son in 1817.

 

Mosheim’s Institutiones Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ was published in 1726 (Eng. trans. 1765–8), Anthony Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses in 1691–2.

 

277. On the Clerical Character (concluded). From No. 6 (Feb. 7, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

 

‘One fate,’ etc. For this and the two following quotations from Southey, see his Lay of the Laureate, and ante, pp. 109 et seq.

278.

Launce. Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV. Scene 4.

279.

Sir John Oldcastle. ‘The good Lord Cobham,’ the original of Shakespeare’s Falstaff. He was hanged as a heretic in 1417.

 

‘Blind with double darkness.’ Hazlitt elsewhere quotes, ‘with double darkness bound,’ and possibly recalls a line (593) in Samson Agonistes, ‘But yield to double darkness nigh at hand.’

280.

Brandreth. Jeremiah Brandreth executed on Nov. 7, 1817 for an attempt at insurrection into which he had been trapped by Oliver the spy.

 

‘They will have them to shew,’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 121).

 

An eminent poet. Probably Southey, who in his letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P. said that the Government ‘must curb the seditious press, and keep it curbed. For this purpose, if the laws are not at present effectual, they should be made so.’

281.

Deprecated by Mr. Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 104–105), and Thoughts on French Affairs (Works, Bohn, III. 353).

 

‘At this day,’ etc. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book IV.

282.

By ‘the sufferance of supernal power.’ Paradise Lost, I. 241.

 

What is the People? From No. 10 (March 7, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

 

‘A vile jelly.’ King Lear, Act III. Scene 7.

284.

‘The unbought grace of life.’ Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 89).

 

Note. Cf. ante, pp. 174–175.

285.

Latter Lammas. I.e., never.

 

‘Miraturque,’ etc. Virgil, Georgics, II. 82.

 

Mr. Coke was Thomas William Coke (1752–1842), member for Norfolk (except for one short interval) from 1776 to 1832, and well-known for his zeal in the reform of agriculture. He was created Earl of Leicester of Holkham in 1837.

 

Note. Lord Balmerino was executed in 1746, and the famous Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, in 1747, for participation in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745.

287.

‘Gods to punish,’ etc. Coriolanus, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘Why, what a fool,’ etc. The Tempest, Act II. Scene 2.

288.

‘Because men,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, V. 192.

 

‘Cribbed,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘The right divine,’ etc. Pope’s Dunciad, IV. 188.

 

‘Broad and casing,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

289.

‘Like the rainbow’s,’ etc. Burns, Tam O’ Shanter. Hazlitt changes the order of the lines.

 

‘Enthroned in the hearts of Kings.’ Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘And levy,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 501–502.

 

‘Steeped in poverty,’ etc. Othello, Act IV. Scene 2.

 

290. Note. Captain James Burney’s (1750–1821) Buccaneers of America, a part of his Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, was published in 1816.

291.

Mr. C—— or Lord C——. Canning and Castlereagh.

 

‘Any faction,’ etc. Cf. An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (Works, Bohn, III. 45).

 

292. What is the People? (concluded). From No. II (March 14, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

293.

‘If they had not ploughed,’ etc. Judges, xiv. 18.

295.

When Mr. John Gifford, etc. John Gifford or John Richards Green (1758–1818) was editor of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine which succeeded the famous Anti-Jacobin or Weekly Examiner in 1798. The denunciation of Coleridge and his friends referred to in the text was made in a note to the poem of The New Morality in The Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin (1799). See Vol. I. note to p. 401, and the Athenaeum, May 31, 1900.

 

‘Make him a willow-cabin,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5.

 

He indeed assures us, etc. Southey’s Essays, Moral and Political, I. 420–421.

296.

Mr. Locke has observed. An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Book IV. Chap. xx.

297.

Like Orlando’s brother. As You Like It, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘Stying us.’ ‘And here you sty me in this hard rock.’ The Tempest, Act I. Scene 2.

 

Joanna Southcott. Joanna Southcott (1750–1814) had recently caused an extraordinary amount of excitement in the country by her promise to bring forth into the world the second Christ.

 

‘When the sky falls.’ ‘Si les nues tomboyent, esperoyt prendre les alouettes.’ Rabelais, Book I. Chap. xi.

298.

‘Hold a barren sceptre,’ etc. Macbeth, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘For the Son to tread,’ etc.

‘Look to thy sire, and in his steady way,

As in his Father’s he, learn thou to tread.’

Southey’s Carmen Nuptiale, The Dream, Stanza 32.

 

The two Ferdinands. Ferdinand I. of Naples and Ferdinand VII. of Spain.

299.

Poor Evans. See ante, p. 238.

300.

Mr. Cobbett himself, etc. See ante, p. 224.

301.

His Lisbon Job. Canning had gone to Lisbon in 1814, and had been appointed ambassador extraordinary, at a salary of £14,000, to receive the King of Portugal on his return from Brazil. The king did not return after all, and Canning’s appointment was represented by the Opposition as a job. A vote of censure was moved in the House of Commons on May 6, 1817, and defeated by a majority of 174.

301.

‘Duller,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘The dim suffusion,’ etc.

‘But thou

Revisit’st not these eyes, that roll in vain

To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;

So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs,

Or dim suffusion veiled.’

Paradise Lost, III. 22–26.

 

‘Making Ossa,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

302.

‘As gross,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

303.

‘A necessity,’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France. (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 114).

 

‘Too foolish fond and pitiful.’ Hazlitt seems to refer to Lear’s words to Cordelia (Act IV. Scene 7), ‘I am a very foolish fond old man.’

 

‘Did never wrong,’ etc. Hazlitt seems to have in mind the words, ‘Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause will he be satisfied.’ Julius Caesar, Act III. Scene 1.

 

304. Exit by Mistake. Produced at the Haymarket in July, 1816. See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

 

305. On the Royal Character. From No. 20 (May 16, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

306.

‘There’s a divinity,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

307.

Coates. Francis Cotes (1725–1770).

310.

One Englishman. He means Burke.

 

Master of Hoyle. Edmond Hoyle’s (1672–1769) Short Treatise on the Game of Whist was published in 1742.

 

The Jockey club. Founded in the middle of the eighteenth century.

311.

Cibber tells us. Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber, Chap. ii.

 

Jefferies. Jeffreys was appointed Lord Chief Justice in 1683, and is perhaps chiefly remembered for his famous circuit in the west of England in 1685 after the accession of James II., who made him Lord Chancellor.

 

The Fudge Family in Paris. From No. 17 (April 25, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf.

 

‘Set it down, my tables.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘A full solempne man.’ Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, l. 209.

312.

A merry Andrew. Gifford perhaps.

 

The more pitiful Jack-Pudding. It is plain from a note in The Yellow Dwarf that Hazlitt refers to Canning.

 

‘Immortal verse.’ L’Allegro, 137.

 

‘Tam knew,’ etc. Burns’s Tam O’ Shanter.

 

A late celebrated wit and orator. Probably Curran, who died in October 1817.

 

‘A certain little gentleman.’ Moore’s description of himself in the Preface to The Fudge Family in Paris.

 

Note. ‘I look down,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Scene 2.

313.

In the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ Chapter xi.

 

‘The damnable face-making.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘The flocci-nauci,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 33.

 

Dr. S——. Dr. Stoddart. See ante, note to p. 153.

 

And ‘find no dawn,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 24.

 

‘Blind mouth.’ Lycidas, 119.

 

‘His sweet voice.’ Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 3.

314.

Billingsgate slang. Billingsgate was notorious for its coarse language as early as Fuller. See Wheatley and Cunningham, London Past and Present, I. 183.

314.

‘With shame,’ etc. Richard II., Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘Like a rebel’s whore.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 2.

 

Brangle, etc. Cf.

‘And Noise and Norton, Brangling and Breval,

Dennis and Dissonance, and captious Art.’

Pope, The Dunciad, II. 238–9.

 

‘The pillar’d firmament,’ etc. Comus, ll. 598–9.

315.

‘The sad historian,’ etc. ‘The sad historian of the pensive plain.’ Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, l. 136.

 

‘As precious,’ etc. Julius Caesar, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘Return,’ etc. Letter IV.

 

E******. E—gl—d in the original.

 

317. Indignatio facit versus. See ante, note to p. 257.

318.

‘Yes—’twas a cause,’ etc. Letter XI.

319.

‘By the bye though,’ etc. Letter I.

 

‘Good Viscount S—dm—th,’ etc. Letter IX.

321.

‘They do not cut up,’ etc. Burke, Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 145).

 

Character of Lord Chatham. First published as one of the critical notices in The Eloquence of the British Senate.

 

‘A flame of sacred vehemence.’ Comus, l. 795.

323.

‘Flew an eagle flight,’ etc. Timon of Athens, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘Sailing with,’ etc. Gray, The Progress of Poesy, ll. 116–7.

 

‘Both end and use.’ Cf. ‘His actions’, passions’, being’s use and end.’ Pope, Essay on Man, I. 66.

 

‘Laps it,’ etc. Comus, l. 257.

 

325. Character of Mr. Burke. First published in The Eloquence of the British Senate.

 

The following speech. On presenting to the House of Commons (on the 11th February 1780) a plan for the better security of the independence of Parliament, and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments (Works, Bohn, II. 55).

326.

‘The elephant,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 345–7.

 

‘Native and endued,’ etc. Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 7.

 

328. Note. In The Eloquence of the British Senate this note proceeded: ‘and he produced less effect on the mob that compose the English Public than Paine or Joel Barlow, at least at the time.’ Joel Barlow (1755–1812), the American poet, was, like Paine, an active sympathiser with the French Revolution.

329.

‘Alas! Leviathan was not so tamed.’ Cowper, The Task, II. 322.

 

The corner stone, etc. Psalms, cxviii. 22.

 

To the Jews, etc. 1 Corinthians i. 23.

333.

‘How charming,’ etc. Comus, l. 476.

336.

Dr. Johnson observed. See his Life of Pope (Works, Oxford, 1825), VIII. 329.

 

Note. ‘Proud keep of Windsor.’ A letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 137).

337.

A person. Hazlitt’s early friend, Joseph Fawcett, perhaps. See Table Talk, On Criticism.

 

Character of Mr. Fox. From The Eloquence of the British Senate, where the ‘Character’ begins: ‘I have hitherto deferred giving any opinion on the talents of eminent speakers, till I could present the reader with something that might justify the encomiums passed upon them; as the following is one of the most memorable of Mr. Fox’s speeches, I shall prefix to it a sort of character, the best I can give, of this celebrated man.’ The speech referred to was on the War with France, delivered in 1794.

 

Note. ‘Craftily qualified.’ Othello, Act II. Scene 3.

339.

‘Whose sound,’ etc. King Lear, Act I. Scene 1.

 

That is an automaton. In The Eloquence of the British Senate Hazlitt has the following note to this passage: ‘I ought to beg pardon of the polite reader for thus rudely contrasting these two celebrated men and leaders of parties together. It has of late become more fashionable to consider them in the light of the United Friends. But as I am no sign-painter, I hope I may be excused for not adhering exactly to the costume of the times. This agreeable idea might however, if skilfully executed, be improved into a very appropriate sign for the tap-room of the house of commons. My Lord Howick the other day drew a pleasing picture of them shaking hands in Elysium. It must be owned that this is pretty and poetical. Happy, well assorted pair! Methinks I see you, bowing to one another, with repeated assurances of friendship and esteem, but half believed, just like—lord Grenville and lord Howick in the park! This was probably what his lordship had in his mind at the time: but as our young orators generally love to shew that they have read the classics, so perhaps his lordship was willing to shew that he had not forgot them. It is pleasing to see great men sweetening the cares of state with the flowers of poetical allusion; condescending to turn with a benign countenance from the serious realities of life, to the lighter scenes of fable and romance; still wandering, (as in their boyish days) with Dido and Æneas, and taking an imaginary trip from Downing Street to the Elysian Fields, and from the Elysian Fields back again! After all, I do not know that it would be any disgrace to Mr. Fox to associate with Mr. Pitt in the other world, if we recollect the company he kept in this. Lord H—— I believe, on the same occasion, quoted Dryden, and compared the late duke of Brunswick to Darius. Really, his lordship’s researches in poetry are astonishing; they are almost as extensive and profound as his knowledge of the affairs of Europe, or of the fate of battles! There is some excuse, however, for this last mentioned quotation, as though the passage quoted was by no means new in itself, yet the particular application of it must certainly have been very new to his lordship’s mind, and one which the public might not have been disposed to give him credit for without some positive evidence. To complete the solemnity of the scene, nothing more was wanting but for the whole house to have joined chorus in this affecting and well known specimen of elegiac sadness, particularly as it had been already set to music, one would suppose for this very purpose.’

 

Note 1. Hazlitt refers to an article on Fox by William Godwin published in The Morning Chronicle, Nov. 22, 1806.

 

Note 2. John Upton published an edition of The Faerie Queen in 1758.

340.

Lord Lansdown. Lord Shelburne, created Marquis of Lansdowne in 1784.

342.

‘Jutting frieze,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 6.

344.

‘With mighty wings,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 20–2.

345.

‘The dazzling fence of argument.’ Cf.

‘Enjoy your dear wit, and gay rhetoric,

That hath so well been taught her dazzling fence.’

Comus, ll. 790–1.

345.

‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God.’ Pope’s Essay on Man, IV. 248.

346.

What Burke said of him. In a speech on the Army Estimates (Feb. 9, 1790), in which he replied to Fox’s eulogy of the French Revolution. See Works, Bohn, III. 273–4.

 

Character of Mr. Pitt, 1806. See ante, pp. 14 et seq. and notes.

 

349. Note. The passage referred to is from Pitt’s Speech on the Regency, delivered on January 16, 1789.

 

350. Pitt and Buonaparte. This essay by Coleridge is reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, vol. II. pp. 319–329. The editor (Coleridge’s daughter Sara, the wife of Henry Nelson Coleridge), referring to the essay, says (I. lxxxv. note), ‘“The character of Pitt” is given to my Father on the repeated testimony of Mr. Stuart, which indeed was scarcely needed to confirm the strong internal evidence of both style and matter.’ See J. D. Campbell’s Samuel Taylor Coleridge, p. 108.

 

356. An Examination of Mr. Malthus’s Doctrines. From No. 14 (April 4, 1818) of The Yellow Dwarf. In these concluding papers Hazlitt repeats the substance of the more elaborate criticism which he had already published in 1807, under the title of A Reply to Malthus. See that work and Hazlitt’s sketch of Malthus in The Spirit of the Age (vol. IV. of the present edition).

359.

Major Torrens. Robert Torrens (1780–1864), who, after serving in the Royal Marines, retired on half-pay, and devoted himself to economical study.

361.

This will never do. Perhaps this is a reference to the famous opening words of the Edinburgh Review article on Wordsworth’s Excursion (xxiv. p. 1). The Edinburgh had defended Malthus.

 

On the Originality of Mr. Malthus’s Essay. This essay does not seem to have been published in The Yellow Dwarf.

 

367. On the Principle of Population, etc. From Hazlitt’s Reply to Malthus, Letter III. See vol. IV. of the present edition.

371.

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

373.

‘These three bear record,’ etc. Cf. 1 John v. 7.

 

‘’Tis as easy as lying,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

374.

‘To this end,’ etc. Malthus’s Essay, etc. (2nd Ed. 1803), pp. 538–540.

375.

Well answered by Mr. Cobbett. Cobbett addressed a letter ‘To Parson Malthus’ (Political Register, May 1819) beginning abruptly ‘Parson.’ ‘No assemblage of words,’ he says, ‘can give an appropriate designation of you; and therefore, as being the single word which best suits the character of such a man, I call you Parson,’ etc.

376.

In a separate work. See his Reply to Malthus in vol. IV. of the present edition.

 

381. Queries relating to the Essay on Population. No. 23 of The Round Table series in The Examiner (Oct. 29, 1815), which is in the form of a letter addressed to the President of the Round Table, and begins as follows:—‘Sir,—You some time ago inserted in your Paper [Round Table, No. 26, Feb. 15, 1815] a letter from A Mechanic, who seemed strangely puzzled by a learned friend of his, who thwarts him in all his notions, political, moral, domestic and economical, by interrogatories put to him out of Mr. Malthus’s Essay on Population. I do not know whether your Correspondent has got rid of his troublesome acquaintance; but if he has not, I think he will be able to do it by putting to him the following questions as to the merits of Mr. Malthus and his work, which I met with in the course of my reading this morning, and which it appears to me to be incumbent on the admirers of that gentleman to answer, Aye or No.’

383.

‘Sicklied over,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 1.

385.

‘Neither married,’ etc. St. Matthew xxii. 30.

 

‘Beware therefore,’ etc. Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, The Somnour’s Tale, ll. 2074 et seq.