The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 06 (of 12)

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2.

An Advertisement, etc. The advertisement to the Paris edition of Table Talk was as follows:—

 

‘The work here offered to the public is a selection from the four volumes of Table Talk, printed in London. Should it meet with success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same description, which will include all that the author wishes to preserve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps serve to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or mode of treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had written or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had occasion to speak of it with a friend, the conversation generally took a much wider range, and branched off into a number of indirect and collateral questions, which were not strictly connected with the original view of the subject, but which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon human life in general. It therefore occurred to me as possible to combine the advantages of these two styles, the literary and the conversational; or after stating and enforcing some leading idea, to follow it up by such observations and reflections as would probably suggest themselves in discussing the same question in company with others. This seemed to me to promise a greater variety and richness, and perhaps a greater sincerity, than could be attained by a more precise and scholastic method. The same consideration had an influence on the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style which I have used. How far the plan was feasible, or how far I have succeeded in the execution of it must be left to others to decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains of thought; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by the careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous inquirer my style will be complained of as too light and desultory. To all this I can only answer that I have done not what I wished, but the best I could do; and I heartily wish it had been better.’

5.

‘There is a pleasure,’ etc. Cf. vol. I. note to p. 76.

 

‘No juggling here.’ Cf. ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling, and such knavery.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act II. Scene 3.

 

‘Study with joy,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, III. 227–8.

6.

‘More tedious,’ etc. King John, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘My mind to me,’ etc. The first line of the well-known poem attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (d. 1607).

6.

Note. See The Sorrows of Young Werther (Novels and Tales, Bohn, p. 254).

7.

‘Pure in the last recesses of the mind.’ Dryden’s translation of the Second Satire of Persius, l. 133. According to Frances Reynolds (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 272), the lines were quoted by Johnson at the end of an eloquent eulogium of Mrs. Thrale.

 

‘Palpable to feeling,’ etc. Cf. ‘If ’tis not gross in sense ... ’tis probable and palpable to thinking.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

8.

‘Light thickened.’

‘Light thickens; and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood.’

Macbeth, Act III. Scene 2.

 

Wilson. Richard Wilson (1714–1782). See Conversations of Northcote, ante, pp. 380, 438, 458.

 

It was not so Claude, etc. Claude finally settled in Rome in 1627 and remained there till his death in 1682.

 

The first head, etc. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, l. 108 note. The picture, which seems to have been painted near Manchester in 1803, is still in the possession of Hazlitt’s family.

9.

With Sir Joshua. Cf. the second of Hazlitt’s Essays on Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, ante, pp. 131 et seq.

 

‘As in a glass darkly‘, etc. I Corinthians, xiii. 12.

10.

‘Sees into the life of things.’ Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

 

Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow. Jan Steen (1626–1679), and Gerard Dow (1613–1675).

 

‘Mist,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 435–6.

 

Richardson. The Essays of Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), which originally appeared in 1715 and 1719, were published in two volumes in 1725, and in one volume, edited by his son, in 1773. See pp. 297–8 of the one volume edition. Vasari tells this story of Michael Angelo and the Pope.

11.

‘That you might almost say,’ etc.

‘—— so distinctly wrought

That one might almost say, her body thought.’

John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, Second Anniversary, 245–6.

12.

Old Abraham Tucker. See vol. iv. pp. 371–385.

 

‘The source,’ &c. See Northcote’s Life of Reynolds, II. 286.

 

A picture of my father. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1806. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. III.

 

Gribelin’s etchings. In the second (1714) and subsequent editions of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics.

 

‘Riches fineless.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘Ever in the haunch of winter sings.’ Henry IV., Part II. Act IV. Scene 4.

13.

‘I also am a painter.’ See Vasari’s Lives (ed. Blashfield and Hopkins), III. 32, note 28.

 

Mr. Skeffington. Sir Lumley St. George Skeffington (1771–1850), author of The Sleeping Beauty and other plays, and a friend of the Regent’s, succeeded his father as baronet in 1815.

 

The battle of Austerlitz. December 2, 1805.

 

He himself is gone to rest. Hazlitt’s father died on July 16, 1820.

13.

‘Whate’er Lorraine,’ etc. Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, Canto I. Stanza 38.

 

Lord Radnor’s park. For a fuller account of the collections here referred to, see the volume in the present edition containing Hazlitt’s Fine Art Criticisms.

14.

‘Bosomed high,’ etc. L’Allegro, 78.

 

‘Hands that the rod,’ etc. Gray, Elegy, 47.

 

‘A forked mountain,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14.

 

‘Signifying nothing.’ Macbeth, Act V. Scene 5,

15.

When I went to the Louvre. In 1802. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 84 et seq.

 

Titian’s Mistress. The picture so called is in the Louvre. It is in fact a portrait of Alphonso of Ferrara and Laura Dianti.

 

The Transfiguration, etc. On the fall of Napoleon, Raphael’s Transfiguration, and Domenichino’s Communion of St. Jerome were restored to Rome; Titian’s St. Peter Martyr to Venice, and his Hippolito de Medici to Florence. The St. Peter Martyr was destroyed by fire in 1867. Hazlitt’s copy of ‘A young Nobleman with a glove’ is still in the possession of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.

16.

‘If thou hast not seen,’ etc. Cf. ‘Wast ever in court, shepherd?—No, truly.—Then thou art damned.’ As You Like It, Act III., Scene 2.

 

The Elgin marbles. See Vol. i. p. 143 and note.

 

‘Hard money.’ Specie opposed to paper currency. Cf. ‘Your mother has a hundred pounds in hard money’ etc. Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘Number numberless.’ Paradise Regained, III. 310 [numbers].

 

‘Casual fruition,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 766–7.

17.

W—. Richard Wilson.

18.

A friend of mine. Northcote, presumably, whose Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds had been praised in The Edinburgh Review (vol. xxiii. pp. 263 et seq.)

 

A friend had bought, etc. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt suggests that this was Haydon.

19.

Richardson, in his Essays. A Discourse on the Science of a Connoisseur (Essays, 1773, pp. 327 et seq.)

20.

‘Guido Reni,’ etc. Richardson, Essays, 1773, pp. 217–8.

21.

Gandy. William Gandy (died 1729). See Hazlitt’s Conversations of James Northcote, ante, p. 345. A short Memoir of Gandy forms the Appendix to Northcote’s Life of Reynolds.

 

Poor Dan. Stringer. Cf. ante, pp. 345–6.

 

‘Swallowing the tailor’s news.’ King John, Act IV., Scene 2.

 

‘Bastards of his genius,’ etc. Cf. Vol. iv. p. 209.

ESSAY III. ON THE PAST AND FUTURE.

22.

When Sterne in the Sentimental Journey. A Sentimental Journey, ‘Character. Versailles.’

23.

‘The thoughts of which,’ etc. Cf. ‘Yet loss of thee would never from my heart.’ Paradise Lost, IX. 912.

 

‘What though the radiance,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 179 et seq.

 

‘Retrace its footsteps,’ etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 329–333.

 

‘And see how dark,’ etc. Wordsworth, Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening.

23.

‘In our heart’s tables.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘All the life of life was flown.’

‘In weary being now I pine,

For a’ the life of life is dead,’

Burns, Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn, Stanza 6.

Cf. also ‘Till youth and genial years are flown,

And all the life of life is gone,’

 

from Thomson’s song addressed to Fortune and beginning—

‘For ever, Fortune, wilt thou prove,’ etc.

 

Norman Court. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, II. 14–15. and W. Hazlitt the younger’s Preface to the 1850 edition of Winterslow.

25.

‘Running through the story,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 3.

 

‘Beguiled them,’ etc. Ib.

 

Posthæc meminisse juvabit. Virgil, Æneid, I. 203.

26.

‘Calm contemplation,’ etc. Wordsworth, Laodamia, 72.

27.

‘Catch glimpses,’ etc. Wordsworth, Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us.’

 

‘I also was an Arcadian.’ This saying, or its Latin equivalent, ‘et ego in Arcadia,’ often quoted by Hazlitt in connection with Poussin’s picture, has been much discussed in Notes and Queries. See 4th Ser., I. 509, 561, etc. Goethe adopted it as a motto for his Travels in Italy.

 

‘Que peu de chose,’ etc. Cf. ‘Je vous exhorte à jouir, autant que vous pourrez, de la vie qui est peu de chose,’ etc. Voltaire, Letter to Madame du Deffand, Oct. 13, 1759.

 

Respice finem. A tag, quoted in The Comedy of Errors, Act IV. Scene 4. See Notes and Queries, 5th Series, VI. 313, where the line ‘si quid agas prudenter agas, et respice finem’ is quoted from the fable ‘De accipitre et columbis’ in Fabulae Variorum Auctorum (Francof. 1560), p. 503.

 

‘The high endeavour,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, V. 901.

 

‘Oh God! methinks,’ etc. Henry VI., Part III. Act II. Scene 5.

29.

‘The tear forgot,’ etc. Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Stanza 5.

30.

Recorded by Spence. Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men. Collected from the Conversation of Mr. Pope, etc. (edit. 1820), pp. 116–7.

ESSAY IV. ON GENIUS AND COMMON SENSE.

33.

Mr. Burke, by whom, etc. Cf. Conversations of James Northcote, ante, p. 366.

 

Windham in one of his Speeches. Speech on the Conduct of the Duke of York, March 14, 1809. Speeches, III. 205.

34.

One of the persons, etc. No doubt John Thelwall (1764–1834), who was acquitted in December, 1794, and retired to Brecon in 1798. Hazlitt afterwards became acquainted with him. Among his Poems (1801) is an epic entitled ‘Edwin of Northumbria.’

35.

Note. ‘Sound it,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

36.

‘Make assurance,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘Shuts the gates,’ etc. Gray, Elegy, Stanza 17.

 

Mr. Burke said. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 102).

37.

Come home to the business, etc. Bacon, Dedication to the Essays.

 

Ultima ratio regum. See vol. III., note to p. 44.

 

‘There’s the rub,’ etc. ‘There’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

37.

‘A compost heap.’ Cf. ‘A new accession to the loaded compost heap of corrupt influence.’ Burke, Speech on Economical Reform (Works, Bohn, II. 109).

39.

‘What! man,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

The passage in the same play. Ib., Act I. Scene 6.

40.

The Judgment of Solomon. In the Louvre Gallery.

 

‘Sure trailing.’ Cf.

‘And I do think, or else this brain of mine

Hunts not the trail of policy so sure

As it hath used to do.’

Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘As if his will,’ etc. Hazlitt quotes from one of his own notices of Kean’s Richard (Morning Chronicle, Feb. 15, 1814).

 

Painter in his fight with Oliver. Edward Painter (1784–1852) was defeated by Tom Oliver (1782–1864) in May 1814, but defeated him in July 1820.

41.

The figure of Elymas. In one of the Cartoons.

ESSAY V. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED.

42.

‘As one, in suffering,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘Knew all qualities,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘A pipe for the Muse’s finger,’ etc. Cf. ‘That they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

43.

‘To descry new lands,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 290–1.

 

‘Fierce extremes,’ etc. Ib. II. 599.

 

‘Of the earth, earthy.’ I Corinthians, XV. 47.

 

‘Darkness that may be felt.’ Exodus, X. 21.

 

‘Palpable obscure.’ Paradise Lost, II. 406.

44.

‘Look abroad into universality.’ Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I.

 

‘Content with riches fineless.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘Poor as Winter.’ Ib.

 

‘Self-involved, not dark.’ Cf. ‘Pensive, not sad; in thought involved, not dark.’ Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, Canto I. Stanza 57.

 

‘Enjoys bright day.’ Comus, 382.

 

‘Kept the noiseless tenour of his way.’ Gray’s Elegy, Stanza 19.

 

‘Finds tongues,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘The meanest flow’r,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality.

45.

‘Yet I’ll remember thee,’ etc. Burns, Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.

 

Sir Joshua Reynolds, in endeavouring, etc. Cf. the essays ‘On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, ante, pp. 122 et seq.

46.

The admirable Crichton. James Crichton (1560–1585?).

 

Jedediah Buxton. For Jedidiah Buxton (1707–1772) see Gentleman’s Magazine, June 1754.

 

Note. ‘The force of dulness,’ etc. Cf. ‘The force of Nature could no further go.’ Dryden, Under Mr. Milton’s Picture.

49.

Mediocribus esse, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 372–3.

 

I find from Adam Smith. Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. i.

 

Those nonsensical stories about Lopez de Vega. See Lord Holland’s Some Account of the life and writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio (1806), pp. 75–82.

50.

Why does Mr. Kean, etc. See the volume containing Hazlitt’s theatrical criticisms.

58.

This essay was afterwards republished in the second edition of The Spirit of the Age. See vol. IV. pp. 334–343, and notes thereto.

ESSAY VII. ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA

59.

Major C—. John Cartwright (1740–1824), major in the Nottinghamshire Militia, and author of a large number of tracts, chiefly on parliamentary reform.

60.

Like the story of the Cosmogony. The Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xiv.

 

Nihil humani, etc. Terence, Heautontimorumenos, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘A fee-grief’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

61.

As Cicero says of study. ‘Haec studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant,’ etc. Cicero, Pro Archia, VII. 16.

 

As Sancho, etc. Don Quixote, Second Part, Book II. chap. xxxi.

 

Dulce ridentem, etc. Horace, Odes, I. xxii., 23–4.

 

‘Rings the world,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, III. 129–130.

62.

Abernethy. John Abernethy (1764–1831), whose chief work, An Essay on the Constitutional Origin of Local Diseases, appeared in 1806.

63.

Alderman Wood. Sir Matthew Wood (1768–1843), lord mayor 1815–16, and member for the city from 1817 till his death, had recently (1820) made himself notorious as a champion of Queen Caroline.

 

A conceited fellow about town, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to Wirgmann, the goldsmith, of whom Crabb Robinson gives an amusing account in his Diary (1872 ed.) Vol. I. pp. 310–311.

 

A friend of mine. John Fearn (1768–1837), of whom Hazlitt gives some account in the following page. The essay referred to was An Essay on Consciousness (2nd ed. 4to, 1812). Hazlitt quotes a long passage from the Essay in Why Distant Objects Please. See ante, pp. 260–2.

64.

‘Poor, unfledged,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

65.

As Goldsmith said. See Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), III. 252.

 

Yet his Treatise on Human Nature, etc. ‘Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press,’ etc. The Life of David Hume, Esq. Written by Himself.

 

A celebrated lyrical writer. Wordsworth.

 

The motto in the title-page.

‘For why? Because the good old rule

Sufficeth them: the simple plan,

That they should take, who have the power,

And they should keep who can.’

Wordsworth, Rob Roy’s Grave.

 

Note 1. The Excursion was published in a 4to volume in 1814.

 

Note 2. Talk we of one Master Launcelot. Merchant of Venice, Act II. Scene 2.

66.

Mr. Owen. See Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 121 et seq.

 

‘Nor Alps,’ etc. John Dennis, Ode on the Battle of Aghrim, St. 3. See The Art of Sinking in Poetry (Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, X. 382). ‘Apennines’ should be ‘Pyrenæaus.’

67.

Letter to Mr. William Smith. See Political Essays, vol. III. 210–232.

 

‘That he puts his hand,’ etc. See The Fudge Family in Paris, Letter II. note 2.

 

‘I love to talk,’ etc. Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 517–8.

 

‘A collusion,’ etc. ‘’Tis true indeed: the collusion holds in the exchange.’ Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV. Scene 2.

68.

Why must a man, etc. Hazlitt is referring to Wordsworth. Cf. The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 276 and note.

 

‘Virtue extant.’ Henry IV. Part I., Act II. Scene 4.

 

‘Men were brutes without them.’ Cf.

‘O woman! lovely woman! Nature made thee

To temper man: we had been brutes without you.’

Otway, Venice Preserved, Act I. Scene 1.

 

Moody in the Country Girl. Garrick’s Country Girl, altered from Wycherley’s Country Wife, was produced in 1766.

 

M—. Lamb’s friend, Thomas Manning (1772–1840).

 

L. H. Leigh Hunt.

69.

‘Stand accountant,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Scene 1.

 

‘Its palaces,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, I. 643–4.

 

‘With them conversing,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 639–40.

ESSAY VIII. ON THE IGNORANCE OF THE LEARNED

First published in the Scots’ Magazine (New Series), July 1818, vol. III. pp. 55 et seq. Hazlitt refers to this essay in A Letter to William Gifford (vol. I., p. 382).

70.

‘For the more languages,’ etc. Satire upon the Abuse of Human Learning, 57–68.

 

‘Spectacles.’ Dryden says of Shakespeare, ‘he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature.’ Essay of Dramatic Poesy (Essays, ed. Ker, I. 80).

71.

‘Leave me to my repose.’ ‘Leave me, leave me to repose,’ the refrain of the Prophetess in Gray’s The Vegtam’s Kivitha. The line is quoted by Burke in A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 112).

 

‘Take up his bed and walk.’ St. Matthew, ix. 6.

 

‘Enfeebles all internal strength of thought.’ Goldsmith, The Traveller, 270.

 

‘Sweats in the eye of Phœbus.’ Henry V., Act IV. Scene 1.

72.

‘Th’ enthusiast Fancy,’ etc. ‘The truant fancy was a wanderer ever.’ Lamb, Fancy Employed on Divine Subjects, I. 1.

 

The least respectable character. Hazlitt is probably referring to Canning.

73.

A person of this class. Charles Burney, D.D. (1757–1817), whose Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton appeared in 1790.

 

Dr. —. Hazlitt refers to Charles Burney (see last note) and Dr. Parr. Cf. a similar passage in The Examiner, vol. I. p. 425.

74.

‘The mighty world of eye and ear.’ Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 105–6.

 

‘Knowledge quite shut out.’ ‘And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out.’ Paradise Lost, III. 50.

 

‘Of the colouring of Titian,’ etc. Tristram Shandy, III. 12.

 

The Elgin marbles. See The Round Table, vol. I. p. 143 and note.

 

‘Knows no touch of it.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘The art and practique,’ etc. Henry V., Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘Has no skill in surgery.’ Henry IV., Part I., Act V. Scene 1.

76.

Baxter. Cf. the essay ‘On People of Sense’ in the Plain Speaker, vol. VII. p. 243.

 

‘Wink and shut,’ etc. Prologue to Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge (History of Antonio and Mellida, Part II.).

 

Laud, etc. William Laud (1573–1645), and John Whitgift (1530?–1604), Archbishops of Canterbury; George Bull (1634–1710), Bishop of St. David’s, author of Defensio Fidei Nicenae (1685) and other theological works; Daniel Waterland (1683–1740), whose works were edited in eleven vols. in 1823–1828, was not a bishop; Humphrey Prideaux (1648–1724), whose Old and New Testament connected ... to the Time of Christ first appeared in two folio volumes 1716–1718; Isaac de Beausobre (1659–1738), the Huguenot writer; Augustine Calmet (1672–1757); Samuel, Baron von Puffendorf (1632–1694) and Eméric de Vattel (1714–1767), the jurists; Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609); Jerome Cardan (1501–1576), and Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649).

76.

‘Gone to the vault of all the Capulets.’ See vol. I. note to p. 150.

ESSAY IX. THE INDIAN JUGGLERS

79.

Note. It was at Truro that Opie, who had already acquired some practice as a portrait painter, met with John Wolcot (1738–1819).

80.

I was at that time employed, etc. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. xvi.

 

‘In argument,’ etc. The Deserted Village, 211–2.

81.

‘To allow for the wind.’ Ivanhoe, chap. xiii.

 

‘Human face divine.’ Paradise Lost, III. 44.

82.

H—s and H—s. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of Table Talk prints ‘Haydons and H—s.’

 

‘In tones and gestures hit.’ ‘In tones and numbers hit.’ Paradise Regained, IV. 255.

 

To snatch this grace, etc. An unacknowledged quotation from Pope, Essay on Criticism, 153.

 

‘Commercing with the skies.’ Il Penseroso, 39.

83.

‘Thrills in each nerve,’ etc. Cf.

‘a sudden horror chill

Ran through each nerve, and thrilled in ev’ry vein.’

Addison, Milton’s Style Imitated, 123–4.

 

‘Half flying, half on foot.’ ‘Half on foot, half flying.’ Paradise Lost, II. 941–2.

 

I know an individual. Leigh Hunt, no doubt. Hazlitt’s son dedicated the third edition of Table Talk ‘to Leigh Hunt, whom the author alike admired and esteemed; the “Rochester without the vice, the modern Surrey,” whom he celebrates in one of these Essays.’

84.

Nugæ canoræ. Horace, Ars Poetica, 322.

 

Themistocles said. See North’s Plutarch (ed. Rouse, Temple Classics, II. 3). Hazlitt probably read the story in Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book I.

85.

Napier’s bones. Hazlitt refers, apparently, to John Napier (1550–1617), the inventor of logarithms.

 

‘He dies,’ etc.

‘Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive,

If you will lead these graces to the grave

And leave the world no copy.’

Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5.

 

John Hunter. John Hunter (1728–1793).

 

Sir Humphry Davy. Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829).

86.

‘Great scholar’s memory,’ etc. Cf. ‘Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

87.

‘Care mounted,’ etc. ‘Post equitem sedet atra cura.’ Horace, Odes, III. l. 40.

 

‘In the instant.’

‘And I feel now

The future in the instant.’

Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

87.

‘Domestic treason,’ etc. Ib. Act III. Scene 2.

88.

Rosemary Branch. A much frequented tavern at Peckham.

 

Copenhagen-house. A tavern and tea-garden ‘in the fields north of the metropolis, between Maiden-lane, the old road to Highgate on the west, and the very ancient north road, or bridle-way, called Hogbush-lane, on the east.’ See Hone’s Every Day Book (I. 858 et seq.), where an interesting account of the house is given, and the greater part of Hazlitt’s account of Cavanagh is reproduced.

89.

The Fleet or King’s Bench. The Fleet Prison in Farringdon Street and the King’s Bench Prison in Southwark, where there were open ground racket courts.

 

‘Who enters here.’ Hazlitt may have been recalling the lines in The Dunciad, (IV. 518–9):

‘Which whoso tastes, forgets his former friends,

Sire, Ancestors, Himself,’ etc.

 

Sutton. Charles Manners Sutton, first Viscount Canterbury (1780–1845), was elected Speaker on June 2, 1817.

 

‘Let no rude hand,’ etc.

‘May no rude hand deface it,

And its forlorn hic jacet.’

Wordsworth, Ellen Irwin, 55–6.

ESSAY X. ON LIVING TO ONE’S-SELF

90.

‘Remote, unfriended,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 1.

 

Winterslow. Hazlitt’s wife inherited some cottages at Winterslow, a small village six or seven miles from Salisbury on the Andover road, and in one of these cottages a part of their early married life was spent. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 168 et seq., where an account is given of a visit paid to Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt by Charles and Mary Lamb. After 1819 (see Memoirs II. 16) Hazlitt began to frequent Winterslow Hut or the Pheasant Inn, where many of his essays (collected under the title of ‘Winterslow’) were written.

 

‘While Heavn’s chancel-vault,’ etc. Cf.

‘When the chill rain begins at shut of eve

In dull November, and their chancel vault,

The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.’

Keats, Hyperion, II. 36–8.

91.

He hears the tumult, etc.

‘I behold

The tumult and am still.’

Cowper, The Task, IV. 99–100.

 

‘The man whose eye,’ etc. Wordsworth, Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, etc. (‘Poems written in youth’) ll. 55–9.

92.

‘To see the children,’ etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 170–1.

 

Nicholson. William Nicholson (1753–1815).

 

‘Never ending, still beginning.’ Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, l. 102.

 

‘The witchery of the soft blue sky.’ Wordsworth, Peter Bell, l. 265.

93.

Goldsmith, etc. Hazlitt had probably read the story in Northcote’s Life of Reynolds, where the scene is laid at Antwerp. The incident really occurred at Lisle, while Goldsmith was on his way to Paris with the Hornecks. We have Miss Horneck’s authority for believing that the story, as told by Northcote, and here repeated by Hazlitt, is much exaggerated. See Prior’s Life of Goldsmith, II. 290–1; Forster’s Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, II. 217; and Boswell’s Life of Johnson (ed. G. B. Hill), I. 414 and note.

93.

‘Whose top to climb,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 3.

 

Exclaimed Cromwell. Speech XVIII., Feb. 4, 1658. See Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches.

94.

‘The insolence of office,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘After the heart-aches,’ etc. Ibid.

 

‘A mouse,’ etc. Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

Says Rousseau. La Nouvelle Héloïse, V. Lettre III. (édit. Firmin-Didot, p. 529 note).

 

‘Some demon,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, IV. 16.

95.

Canaletti. Antonio Canal (1697–1768), the Venetian painter, or Bernardo Bellotto (1724?–1780), his nephew.

 

‘Virgined it e’er since.’ Coriolanus, Act V. Scene 3.

 

The Clandestine Marriage. By George Colman the elder, and Garrick; first produced in 1766.

96.

‘The baby of a girl.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘With what a waving air,’ etc. B. W. Procter’s (Barry Cornwall’s) Mirandola, Act I. Scene 3. Hazlitt quoted the lines in Liber Amoris (see vol. II. p. 334), and it is clear that here as in many other parts of Table Talk he is referring to the story recorded in that book.

 

‘The fly that sips treacle,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘For either,’ etc. Paradise Lost, X. 898–908.

97.

The madman in Don Quixote. ‘He loved and was abhorred; he adored, and was scorned; he courted a savage; he solicited a statue; he pursued the wind; he called aloud to the desert,’ etc. Don Quixote (trans. Jarvis), Part I. Book II. chap. xiii.

 

‘I have not loved the world,’ etc. Byron, Childe Harold, Canto III, Stanzas 113 and 114.

 

Note. Gray says the same thing about Shenstone in a letter to Norton Nicholls, June 24, 1769 (Works, ed. Gosse, III. 344–5) quoted by Johnson in his Life of Shenstone. As to Gray’s dislike to having his portrait prefixed to his works, see his letter to Horace Walpole, January 1753 (Works, ed. Gosse, II. 233 et seq.), where he says: ‘This I know, if you suffer my head to be printed, you will infallibly put me out of mine’; and again—‘I do assure you, if I had received such a book, with such a frontispiece, without any warning, I believe it would have given me a palsy.’

98.

The man in the Hartz mountains. Hazlitt refers to the well-known mirage of the Brocken.

 

‘Listening its fears.’ ‘Listening their fear, I could not say “Amen.”’ Macbeth, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Still, small voice.’ 1 Kings, xix. 12.

 

After the Quarterly Review came out. The review of Characters of Shakespear’s Plays appeared in the Quarterly for Jan. 1818 (vol. XVIII. p. 458). Taylor and Hessey were the publishers of the Characters.

 

The Cockney School. The phrase seems to have been first used in an article by Lockhart entitled ‘On the Cockney School of Poetry,’ which appeared in the first number (Oct. 1817) of the new series of Blackwood’s Magazine. That article dealt almost exclusively with Leigh Hunt, but the expression became popular, and was afterwards applied, not only by Blackwood’s Magazine, but by The Quarterly Review, to Keats, Lamb, Shelley, and Hazlitt among others. See Lang’s Life of Lockhart, I. 146 et seq., and Mrs. Oliphant’s William Blackwood and his Sons, I. 132 et seq. and 164–7, where a letter from Lockhart and Wilson to John Murray is printed, in which the writers refer to ‘that happy name which you and all the reviews are now borrowing.’ The attacks on Keats referred to by Hazlitt appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine for Aug. 1818 (the 4th of the ‘Cockney School’ Series), and in The Quarterly Review for April 1818, published in September. It is not known who wrote the Blackwood article; the review in the Quarterly was by Croker. Much has been written as to the effect of these attacks on Keats’s health and happiness, but it is obviously impossible to come to any definite conclusion. Keats died in Rome on the 23rd Feb. 1821.

98.

‘A bud bit,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘A huge-sized monster,’ etc. ‘A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.’ Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 3.

100.

The celebrated Bub Doddington. The Diary of George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), created Lord Melcombe in 1761, was posthumously published in 1784.

 

My soul, turn from them. Hazlitt quotes elsewhere the line (165) from Goldsmith’s The Traveller. ‘My soul, turn from them, turn we to survey.’

 

‘Far from the madding strife.’ ‘Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.’ Gray’s Elegy, l. 73.

 

Bolingbroke’s Reflections on Exile. Written in 1716, published in 1752.

101.

Note. See Plutarch, Morals (of Banishment), and Virgil, Georgics, I. 6.

ESSAY XI. ON THOUGHT AND ACTION

 

Abraham Tucker. For Tucker, see vol. IV. pp. 371–385 and notes.

102.

Louvet. The Girondin, Jean-Baptiste Louvet de Couvray (1760–1797), author of Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas.

 

Note. Cf. Hazlitt’s Life of Napoleon (ed. 1894), III. 298.

 

Tull’s Husbandry. An edition of Jethro Tull’s (1674–1741) Horse-hoing Husbandry (1733) was brought out by Cobbett in 1822.

 

‘Tut! will you baulk a man,’ etc. ‘Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour?’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Scene 3.

 

‘No figures,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act II. Scene 1.

104.

Chapter of Accidents. Apparently Lord Chesterfield (Letter, Feb. 16, 1753) was the first person who is known to have used this phrase. Southey in The Doctor (chap. cxviii.) attributes to John Wilkes the saying, similar to Hazlitt’s, that ‘the chapter of accidents is the longest chapter in the book.’

 

And — — for love! Possibly Hazlitt refers to himself.

105.

‘Measure with a two-foot rule,’ etc. Burke, Regicide Peace (ed. Payne), p. 105.

 

Quicquid agit, etc. See note to vol. II. p. 331.

 

‘Curtailing him,’ etc. Cf.

‘I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,’ etc.

Richard III., Act I. Scene 1.

107.

Arbela. The city which gives its name to the battle in which Alexander finally defeated Darius (B.C. 331).

109.

‘To be wise,’ etc. Cf. ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.’ Coriolanus, Act V. Scene 3.

 

Any more than St. Augustine was, etc. The allusion is to an incident which took place at the house of Boileau, when La Fontaine, Racine, and Boileau’s brother were present. The latter had been holding forth on the merits of St. Augustine, when La Fontaine, who had been listening half asleep, said: ‘Was he as witty as Rabelais?’ Boileau’s brother replied, ‘Be careful, M. la Fontaine, one of your stockings is wrong side out.’

 

‘All tranquillity and smiles.’ Cowper, The Task, IV. 49.

110.

Abraham Cowley has left, etc. ‘A Vision, concerning his late pretended Highness, Cromwell the Wicked,’ etc. (1661).

 

‘Sharp and sweet.’ ‘And be as sharp as sweet.’ All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Scene 4.

111.

William Mudford (1782–1848), at this time editor of The Courier, afterwards a well-known contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine, published in 1817, An Historical Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands in 1815, under the Duke of Wellington and Prince Blucher, in which he was assisted by the Duke.

 

Nor does Horace seem to give, etc. See Odes, II. 7, where he tells us that he left his shield ingloriously behind him at Philippi, and Epod. I. where he describes himself as ‘imbellis ac firmus parum.’

 

‘From every work,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto iv. Stanza 20.

 

‘Better be lord,’ etc.

‘And to be lord of those that riches have

Than them to have my selfe, and be their servile sclave.’

Ib. Book II. Canto vii. Stanza 33.

112.

Sir William —. Sir William Curtis (1752–1829), a staunch Tory and friend of George IV., Lord Mayor (1795–1796) and Member for the City (1790–1817 and 1820–1826).

 

Alderman —. Robert Waithman (1764–1833), perhaps, Curtis’s radical opponent for the representation of the City.

 

Note. ‘Dish of skimmed milk.’ ‘O, I could divide myself, and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skim milk with so honourable an action.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 3.

113.

The cave of Mammon. The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto vii.

 

The founder of Guy’s Hospital. Thomas Guy (1645–1724), bookseller in Cornhill, is said to have begun by importing English Bibles printed in Holland. The bulk of his fortune was made by successful dealings in South Sea stock. The residue of his estate, devoted to the founding of the hospital, amounted to £200,000.

ESSAY XII. ON WILL-MAKING

116.

A will of one of the Thellussons. The famous will of Peter Thellusson (1737–1797), who directed the income of his property to be accumulated during the lives of all his children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, living at the time of his death. The will was upheld, but an Act, commonly called the Thellusson Act (39 and 40 George III. c. 98) was passed to prevent the repetition of such accumulations.

117.

I have heard of a singular instance, etc. In Notes and Queries (1st Series, X. 531) a correspondent, signing himself ‘W. M. T.’, states that in a volume of Hazlitt’s Works in his possession the Essay ‘On Will-making’ has a marginal note in the handwriting of Wordsworth. The note is as follows:—‘This story must have come from me. It is exaggerated here. The person was a school-fellow of mine, and I had the particulars of his will from a brother of one his executors. He did not bequeath large estates, etc., but very considerable sums of money to different relatives and friends; without being possessed of a sixpence, or having reason to believe that he was. W. Wordsworth.’

118.

Diamond cut Diamond. As old at any rate as Ford. See The Lover’s Melancholy, Act I. Scene 3.

 

Ben Jonson’s Volpone. First acted in 1605.

 

The will of Nicholas Gimcrack. The Tatler, No. 216 (By Addison).

120.

‘Even from the tomb,’ etc. Gray’s Elegy, 91–2.

 

Memoirs of an Heiress. Frances Burney’s Cecilia, or The Memoirs of an Heiress (1782).

 

Dyot-Street. This name was restored in 1877. The street was named after Richard Dyot. Wheatley and Cunningham’s London Past and Present, I. 544.

 

‘The foxes,’ etc. St. Matthew, viii. 20.

 

Lord Camelford. Thomas Pitt, second Lord Camelford (1775–1804), killed in a duel. The war rendered it impossible for his body to be taken to Switzerland.

 

Sir Francis Bourgeois. Sir Peter Francis Bourgeois (1756–1811), the painter, bequeathed a large number of pictures to Dulwich College.

 

Note. Kellerman. François Christophe, Duke of Valmy (1735–1820).

 

Note. As the basil-tree grew, etc. Boccaccio, The Decameron, Fourth Day, Novel 5.

ESSAY XIII. ON CERTAIN INCONSISTENCIES IN SIR JOSHUA
REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES

Cf. six papers which Hazlitt contributed to The Champion (Oct. 30, Nov. 6, Nov. 27, Dec. 4, Dec. 25, 1814, and Jan. 8, 1815) on Reynolds as a painter and a critic.

123.

‘You take my house,’ etc. Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Scene 1.

124.

‘Ascending the brightest heaven of invention.’ Henry V., Prologue. Carlo Maratti. 1625–1713.

128.

‘It loses some colour.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 1.

130.

‘Not once perceive,’ etc. Comus, 74–5.

 

Note. Boucher. François Boucher (1703–1770).

ESSAY XIV. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

131.

Two papers in the Idler. Nos. 76 and 82.

133.

Denner’s style. Balthasar Denner (1685–1749), the German painter, whose too minute detail is often referred to by Hazlitt.

134.

‘Of late reformed,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

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

136.

What was said of Virgil. Addison, in his Essay on Virgil’s Georgics, says:—‘He breaks the clods and tosses the dung about with an air of gracefulness.’ Cf. also

‘Hence mighty Virgil’s said, of old,

From dung to have extracted gold,’ etc.

Butler, Satire upon Plagiaries, 87 et seq.

145.

Dr. Johnson’s Irene. Produced at Drury Lane in 1749.

ESSAY XV. ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE

146.

‘Putting in one scale,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, IV. 484–6.

147.

‘Apprehensive, forgetive.’ Henry IV. Part II. Act IV. Scene 3.

148.

‘The powers that be.’ Romans, XIII. 1.

 

Holy Oil. The coronation of George IV. (July 19, 1821) was imminent.

 

‘All trivial, fond records.’ Hamlet, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘He never is,’ etc. A variation of Pope’s well-known line, Essay on Man, I. 96.

 

The author of the Prometheus Unbound, etc. The passage which follows on Shelley led to a quarrel between Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt (II. 305 et seq.), where two letters from Hunt to Hazlitt and one from Hunt to Shelley are published; and Four Generations of a Literary Family (I. 130–135), where a long letter from Hazlitt to Hunt is published for the first time. The quarrel was made up, but Hazlitt never cared for Shelley’s poetry. See his article in The Edinburgh Review (July 1824) on Shelley’s Posthumous Poems.

 

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

149.

‘Seas of pearl,’ etc. Cf. ‘Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber.’ Otway, Venice Preserved, Act V. Scene 2. Coleridge more than once quoted the line as an example of fanciful delirium. See Biographia Literaria (chap. iv.) and Crabb Robinson’s Diary (Nov. 15, 1810).

 

Play round the head, etc. ‘Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart.’ Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 254.

150.

‘At the horizon.’ ‘Their humanity is at their horizon.’ Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 142).

 

‘While you are talking of marrying,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act II. Scene 2.

151.

The present poet-laureate. Southey.

 

‘Poets (as it has been said)’ etc. Hazlitt quotes from his own review of Coleridge’s Literary Life in The Edinburgh Review for August, 1817 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 514–5).

 

‘Such seething brains.’ Cf.

‘Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,’ etc.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.

152.

Note. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal crew, etc. The reference is of course to Southey and Wordsworth. See many passages in Political Essays.

 

Note. Like Cacus’s oxen. Æneid, VIII. 209 et seq.

 

Note. ‘Rout on rout,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 995–6.

 

Note. ‘Deliverance for mankind.’ Southey’s Carmen Triumphale.

 

Note. ‘The Camomil,’ etc. ‘The camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act II. Scene 4.

153.

Note. Troja fuit. ‘Et Thebae steterunt, altaque Troja fuit.’ Propertius, Elegies, II. 8.

154.

Like Mr. Cobbett’s ‘Gold against Paper.’ The first of Cobbett’s articles on ‘Paper against Gold’ appeared in the Political Register on Sept. 1, 1810. The articles were afterwards collected and published in separate form.

 

Lord Bacon’s axiom. Advancement of Learning, Book I. V. 1.

 

‘But of this be sure,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 158–9.

155.

‘Ambling and lisping,’ etc. ‘You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God’s creatures.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

156.

Edgar’s exaggerations to Gloster. King Lear, Act IV. Scene 6.

 

Mr. Montgomery. James Montgomery (1771–1854), while editor of The Sheffield Iris, suffered two terms of imprisonment (1795–1796), but not in connection with the Duke of Richmond’s Letter on Reform, which was originally published in 1783.

 

Spain, as Ferdinand, etc. In March 1820, in consequence of a revolution in Spain, Ferdinand VII. was forced to accept the constitution of 1812, and the suppression of the Inquisition, but in October of the same year, as the result of French intervention, absolutism was restored. This essay would appear to have been written between these two dates.

ESSAY XVI. ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION

 

‘Thin partitions,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 164.

157.

‘A feather will turn,’ etc. Cf. ‘The weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois’ (Henry IV., Part II. Act II. Scene 4), and ‘Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale’ (Measure for Measure, Act IV. Scene 2).

 

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

159.

‘Have eyes and see them.’ ‘Eyes have they, but they see not.’ Psalms, CXV. 5.

 

‘Lovers of low company.’ ‘Kings are naturally lovers of low company.’ Burke, Speech on Economical Reform (Works, Bohn, II. 106).

160.

‘I like it,’ etc. The reference seems to be to Evelina, Letter XXI.

 

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

 

Note. ‘Dip it in the ocean,’ etc. The Sentimental Journey, The Wig, Paris.

161.

Milaine ‘with the foot of fire.’ See Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

 

‘Swallows total grist,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, VI. 108.

 

Emery’s Yorkshireman. The character of Tyke in Morton’s The School for Reform. Cf. Hazlitt’s Dramatic Essays.

162.

‘A stamp,’ etc. ‘A stamp exclusive and professional.’ Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini, III. 32.

 

‘Gabble most brutishly.’

‘But wouldst gabble like

A thing most brutish.’

The Tempest, Act I. Scene 2.

162.

‘His speech bewrayeth him.’ St. Matthew, xxvi. 73.

 

Servum pecus imitatorum. ‘O imitatores, servum pecus.’ Horace, Epistles, I. xix. 19.

 

‘An author,’ etc. Young, Epistles to Mr. Pope, II. 15–16.

163.

Odi profanum vulgus, etc. Horace, Odes, III. 1.

 

Vice by losing, etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne), II. 89.

164.

‘Making mops and mows.’ The Tempest, Act IV. Scene 1.

 

‘Go thou,’ etc. St. Luke, x. 37.

 

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

165.

Millamant. In Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700).

 

‘Worn in their newest gloss.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 7.

 

‘And all was conscience,’ etc. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 150.

166.

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

167.

Hogarth’s Merveilleuses in Bedlam. Hazlitt refers to the eighth plate of The Rake’s Progress. Cf. his Essay ‘On the Works of Hogarth,’ vol. viii. p. 143.

 

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

168.

The proverbs about the mistress’s eye. ‘The mistress’s eye feeds the capon.’ ‘The master’s eye makes the horse fat.’ See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1882).

ESSAY XVII. ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN

 

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

 

‘And blind Orion,’ etc. Keats, Endymion, II. 198.

 

‘A hunter of shadows,’ etc. Cf.

‘The huge Orion, of portentous size,

Swift through the gloom a giant-hunter flies.’

Pope, Homer’s Odyssey, XI. 703–4.

 

And having lost an eye, etc. For offering violence to Merope, Orion was blinded by her father Oenopion with the assistance of Dionysus.

 

‘Grey dawn,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VII. 373–4.

169.

‘Shadowy sets off.’

‘Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing light,

Shadowy sets off the face of things.’

Paradise Lost, V. 42–3.

 

‘Denote a foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘Take up the isles,’ etc. Isaiah, xl. 15.

 

‘So potent art.’ The Tempest, Act V. Scene 1.

170.

‘More than natural.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Gives to airy nothing,’ etc. Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V. Scene 1.

 

Note. His Life lately published. Mrs. Graham’s (Lady Callcott’s) Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin (1820). See pp. 35–6.

 

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

171.

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

 

His picture of the Deluge. In the Louvre.

 

‘O’er-informed.’ ‘And o’er-inform’d the tenement of clay.’ Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part I. 158.

 

‘The very stones,’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Scene 1.

 

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

172.

‘Leaping like wanton kids,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto vi. Stanza 14.

 

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

 

‘The valleys low,’ etc. ‘Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use.’ Lycidas, 136.

 

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

 

‘The sober certainty,’ etc. Comus, 263.

 

‘He who knows of these delights,’ etc.

‘He who of those delights can judge, and spare

To interpose them oft, is not unwise.’

Milton, Sonnet (No. XX.) To Mr. Lawrence.

173.

‘Old Genius,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, Book III. Canto vi. Stanzas 31 and 32.

174.

Pictures are scattered, etc.

‘Thus pleasure is spread through the earth

In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.’

Wordsworth, Stray Pleasures.

 

The collections at Blenheim, etc. See the volume containing Hazlitt’s art criticisms.

 

Since the Louvre is stripped, etc. The art treasures which Napoleon had pillaged from the various countries of Europe, especially from Italy, were restored in 1815.

 

The hunter of greatness, etc. Cf. ante, p. 168. Napoleon died on May 5, 1821.