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

ESSAY XVIII. ON MILTON’S SONNETS

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

 

‘Some fee-grief,’ etc.

‘Or is it a fee-grief

Due to some single breast?’

Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘To the height,’ etc. Paradise Lost, l. 24.

 

‘Most musical,’ etc. Il Penseroso, 62.

175.

‘Very tolerable,’ etc. ‘To babble and to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘The divine,’ etc. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Book II. Ep. i. 69.

 

‘From you have I been absent,’ etc. Shakespeare, Sonnet XCVIII.

 

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

176.

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

176.

‘Oh Virtue,’ etc. Quoted by Wordsworth in The Excursion, Book III. 775–7.

 

‘The poet blind and bold.’ ‘When I beheld the Poet, blind, yet bold.’ Andrew Marvell, On Paradise Lost, I.

 

‘Such recantation,’ etc. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book III. 778.

 

‘No longer to Kings,’ etc. Southey, Vision of Judgment, IX.

177.

‘On evil days,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VII. 26.

 

‘Cyriac, this three years’ day,’ etc. Sonnet No. XXII.

 

Those to Cromwell, to Fairfax and to the younger Vane. Nos. XV., XVI., and XVII.

 

On the late Massacre in Piedmont. No. XVIII.

179.

Those to Mr. Henry Lawes, etc. Nos. XIII. and XX.

 

On his deceased Wife. No. XXIII.

180.

To suppose that Milton only shone, etc. Dr. Johnson in his famous Life of Milton says: ‘Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace,’ etc.; and to Hannah More he said (Boswell, ed. G. B. Hill, IV. 305): ‘Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.’

 

His Letters to Donatus. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Milton’s letters to Charles Diodati.

 

‘Severe in youthful virtue unreproved.’

‘and his grave rebuke

Severe in youthful beauty, added grace

Invincible.’

Paradise Lost, IV, 844–6.

ESSAY XIX. ON GOING A JOURNEY

Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822, vol. IV. p. 73) under the heading ‘Table Talk, No. 1.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of Table Talk gives some variations between the printed text of this essay and the original MS.

181.

‘The fields his study,’ etc. Bloomfield, The Farmer’s Boy, Spring, 31.

 

‘A friend in my retreat,’ etc. Cowper, Retirement, 741–2.

 

‘May plume her feathers,’ etc. Comus, 378–80.

182.

‘Sunken wrack,’ etc. ‘With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries,’ Henry V., Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Leave, oh, leave me,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 71.

 

‘The very stuff of conscience.’ Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Out upon such half-faced fellowship.’ Henry IV., Part I. Act I. Scene 3.

183.

‘Give it an understanding,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Scene 2.

 

My old friend C—. Coleridge. Cf. the essay on ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’

 

‘He talked far above singing.’ ‘I did hear you talk far above singing.’ Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, Act V. Scene 5.

 

‘That fine madness,’ etc.

‘For that fine madness still he did retain,

Which rightly should possess a Poet’s brain.’

Drayton, Censure of Poets.

 

‘Here be woods as green,’ etc. John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess, Act I. Scene 3.

184.

L—. Lamb.

184.

‘Take one’s ease at one’s inn.’ ‘Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?’ Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Scene 3.

 

‘The cups that cheer,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, IV. 39–40.

185.

Procul, etc. Aeneid, VI. 258.

 

‘Unhoused free condition,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Lord of one’s-self,’ etc. ‘Lord of yourself, uncumber’d with a wife.’ Dryden, Epistle to John Driden, 18.

 

Gribelin’s engravings, etc. Simon Gribelin’s (1661–1733) engravings of the cartoons were published in 1707.

186.

Paul and Virginia. Bernardin de St. Pierre’s famous romance (1788).

 

At Bridgewater. In the course of his visit to Coleridge who lived at Nether Stowey. See ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets.’

 

Madame D’Arblay’s Camilla. Published in 1796.

 

The letter I chose, etc. La Nouvelle Héloïse, Part IV. Letter XVII.

 

‘Green upland swells,’ etc. Coleridge, Ode on the Departing Year, VII. 5–6.

 

‘Glittered green,’ etc. Ib. VII. 4.

187.

‘Beyond Hyde Park,’ etc. In Sir George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (Act V. Scene 2) Harriet says to Dorimant: ‘I know all beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you, and that no gallantry can draw you farther.’

188.

‘The mind in its own place.’ Paradise Lost, I. 254.

 

I once took a party, etc. Hazlitt went with Charles and Mary Lamb to Oxford in August, 1810. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Conversation of Authors’ in The Plain Speaker, and Memoirs of William Hazlitt, l. 172.

 

‘With glistering spires,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 550.

 

At Blenheim. Lamb refers to this visit to Blenheim in a letter to Hazlitt, August 9, 1810. Letters, ed. Ainger, I. 251.

189.

Dr. Johnson remarked. See Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, III. 352.

ESSAY XX. ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS

Some variations from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Table Talk.

190.

‘They live and move,’ etc. Acts, xvii. 28.

 

The Queen, etc. Queen Caroline returned to England in June 1820, and died on August 7, 1821. During that time her case was of course the chief topic of conversation in London. George IV. was crowned on July 19, 1821.

 

‘That of an hour’s age,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

The Two-penny Post-Bag. Moore’s, published in 1813.

 

The Westminster Election. Two memorable elections took place in Westminster in 1819 and 1820. In the first Hobhouse was defeated by George Lamb; in the second he was successful.

 

Have nothing farther to say. In the MS. this sentence is followed by ‘They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.’

 

The Bridge Street Association. The Constitutional Association or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’ founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See an article in The Edinburgh Review for June, 1822. (Vol. XXXVII. p. 110).

 

Mr. Cobbett’s Letter. Cobbett’s Letter ‘To Mr. James Cropper, a Quaker Merchant of Liverpool, on his letter to Mr. Wilberforce relating to East India and West India Sugar,’ appeared in the Weekly Register on July 21, 1821 (Vol. XL. p. 1.)

191.

‘Any six of these men in buckram.’ See Henry IV. Part I., Act II. Scene 4.

 

Note. This note is not in the MS., but the words ‘Draper’ and ‘Radical Tobacco’ are jotted down in the text.

 

As Trim blew up the army, etc. Tristram Shandy, III. 20.

 

Note. ‘Dream on, blest pair,’ etc.

‘Sleep on,

Blest pair! and O! yet happiest, if ye seek

No happier state, and know to know no more.’

Paradise Lost, IV. 773–5.

192.

Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson. First published in 1647.

 

The S—. The Southampton Coffee House in Southampton Buildings, at the corner of Chancery Lane. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt I. 291–300.

 

M—. George Mounsey, of Mounsey and Gray, Solicitors in Staple Inn.

 

Signor Friscobaldo. In Dekker’s The Honest Whore. Cf. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (vol. V. pp. 335 et seq.).

 

The clerk of St. Andrews. Webster is said to have been clerk of the parish of St. Andrews, Holborn.

 

‘Within the red-leaved tables of the heart.’ Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Act II. Scene 3.

 

‘Writ in water.’ A phrase used by Shakespeare (‘their virtues we write in water,’ Henry VIII., Act IV. Scene 2) and other Elizabethan dramatists, and now chiefly remembered in connection with Keats’s epitaph on himself: ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’

193.

‘Wit-skirmishes.’ ‘They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit between them.’ Much Ado About Nothing, Act I. Scene 1.

 

‘Brave sublunary things.’ [translunary.] Drayton, Elegy to Henry Reynolds, Esq.

 

‘Nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity.’ Cf. ‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos!’ Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Scene 1.

 

The Globe. In Fleet Street, formerly frequented by Goldsmith.

 

The Rainbow. No. 15 Fleet Street. The tavern still exists.

 

The Mitre. Johnson’s Mitre, usually supposed to be the one in Mitre Court, Fleet Street. The older Mitre Tavern of Elizabethan days was further west on the site of Messrs. Hoares’ Bank.

194.

G—. George Kirkpatrick.

 

Note. A complete Master Stephen. In Ben Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour.

195.

Misconceiving what they say. In the top-margin of the MS. the following words are jotted down: ‘Bostock, unruffled, Paine, Knight, Hope.’ It would seem that Hazlitt had in his mind Richard Payne Knight (see The Round Table, vol. I. p. 143), and possibly the physician John Bostock the younger and Thomas Hope the author of Anastasius.

 

‘So shall their anticipation,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

The Mourning Bride. Congreve’s tragedy which contains (Act II. Scene 3) the famous description of a temple which Johnson thought ‘the finest poetical passage he had ever read’ (Boswell’s Life, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 85).

 

No Michael Cassio.

‘a great arithmetician,

One Michael Cassio, a Florentine.’

Othello, Act I. Scene 1.

195.

R—. Roger Kirkpatrick.

 

Old S—. Sarratt, the chess-player. See p. 196 note.

 

M—. Mounsey.

 

H— and A—. Hume and Ayrton. Joseph Hume of the Pipe Office, not the Radical M.P. (See ‘Lamb’s Letters,’ ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I. 361, note 1), and William Ayrton, twice Director of the Music at the King’s Theatre (where he produced Don Giovanni), better known as a regular attendant at Lamb’s Wednesday Evenings. Instead of this sentence the ms. reads:—‘H— and A— taking their friendly stroll in the Park of a morning like a couple of old post-horses put out to grass. Him of Cockayne who went to Margate by water to save charges, and another of that ilk who went by land for the better display of his person.’ Lamb describes his voyage to Margate in ‘The Old Margate Hoy.’

196.

M— B—. Lamb’s friend Martin Burney, the son of Admiral Burney.

 

M—df—rd. William Mudford, editor of The Courier (see ante, p. 111), wrote The Contemplatist, or Series of Essays upon Morals and Literature. (1811).

 

‘As is the ribbed sea-sand.’ Coleridge says that for the lines in The Ancient Mariner (Part IV. Stanza 1)

‘And thou art long, and lank, and brown,

As is the ribbed sea-sand,’

 

he was indebted to Wordsworth.

 

‘For Kais is fled,’ etc. Hazlitt seems to be recalling an opera entitled ‘Kais; or Love in the Deserts’ (1808 Drury Lane) by Isaac Brandon, founded on Isaac Disraeli’s romance, ‘Mejnoun and Leila.’

 

The death of Buonaparte. May 5, 1821.

 

Dr. L—. Dr. Whittle.

198.

Mr. Canning’s pension. Cf. Political Essays, Vol. III. note to p. 301.

199.

M—. Mounsey.

 

Mrs. Battle. Essays of Elia, ed. Ainger, p. 49. The essay had recently (Feb. 1821) appeared in The London Magazine.

 

Tobin. John Tobin (1770–1804), author of The Honey-Moon (see Vol V. p. 345).

 

The Cider-Cellar. No. 20 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.

 

The London Institution. Now in Finsbury Circus, established in 1806 in Old Jewry. Porson was the first librarian and died there in 1808.

200.

W—. Charles Jeremiah Wells (1799?–1879) a solicitor, shortly after the date of this essay produced Stories after Nature (1822) and the dramatic poem Joseph and his Brethren (1824). This last was long afterwards warmly praised by D. G. Rossetti and Mr. Swinburne (Fortnightly Review, Feb. 1875), and was republished in 1876 by Mr. Buxton Forman. Wells in 1830 placed a memorial to Hazlitt in St. Anne’s, Soho. See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Four Generations of a Literary Family, l. 159–162.

 

That of Killigrew’s country-cousin. Memoirs of Count Grammont, chap. 9.

 

The Chevalier Hamilton’s assignation. Ib. chap. 9.

 

Jacob Hall’s prowess. Ib. chap. 6.

 

Miss Stuart’s garters. Ib. chap. 8.

 

Miss Churchill is first introduced. Ib. chap. 10.

 

‘Fear and niceness,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Scene 4.

201.

Mr. H— and Mr. A—. Hume and Ayrton.

 

Such a one, etc. As You Like It, Act III. Scene 1.

202.

Variety is indispensable. In the MS. opposite this sentence is written ‘Jacky Taylor.—Mr. Tomkins the penman.’

 

‘Yet so as with a difference.’ Cf. ‘You must wear your rue with a difference,’ Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

 

Randall’s. ‘The Hole in the Wall’ in Chancery Lane, kept by Jack Randall, the pugilist. See Hazlitt’s essay ‘The Fight,’ and ‘On Londoners and Country People’ in The Plain Speaker (vol. VII. p. 66).

 

Long’s. No. 16 New Bond Street, rebuilt and enlarged in 1888.

 

H—’s conversation. Leigh Hunt’s. Cf. a passage in The Round Table, vol. I. p. 43.

 

He is nearly the best. ‘Nearly’ was added in proof.

 

‘Or like a gate of steel,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Scene 3.

203.

B— C—’s. Barry Cornwall’s.

 

A young literary bookseller. John Martin, perhaps, of the firm of Rodwell and Martin, Holles Street, Cavendish Square. See Keats’s Complete Works, ed. H. Buxton Forman (1901), Vol. IV. p. 34 note.

 

A ‘Circean herd.’ Cf. Comus, 152–3 and Paradise Lost, IX. 522.

ESSAY XXI. ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS

205.

‘Ha! here’s three of us,’ etc. King Lear, Act III. Scene 4.

 

Stat nominis umbra. ‘Stat magni nominis umbra.’ Lucan, Pharsalia, I. 135.

 

— House. Holland House. Cf. Political Essays (vol. III. p. 44).

 

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

 

‘O that mine enemy,’ etc. Job, xxxi. 35.

 

Note. Lord H—. The third Lord Holland.

 

Note. Sir J— M—. Sir James Mackintosh.

 

Note. ‘The first row of the rubric.’ Cf. ‘The first row of the pious chanson will show you more.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

206.

A third makes the indecency pass, etc. The reference is clearly to Richard Payne Knight whose first publication (1786) was An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus lately existing in Isernia, etc., and who in 1816 gave evidence before a select committee of the House of Commons against the national acquisition of the Elgin Marbles.

207.

‘Cannot command it,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘Monster’d.’ ‘To hear my nothings monster’d.’ Coriolanus, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Ducks to the learned fool.’ Timon of Athens, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘He that is but able,’ etc. Satire upon the Abuse of Human Learning, 67–70.

208.

‘’Twas mine,’ etc. Cf. ‘’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands.’ Othello, Act III. Scene 3.

 

The Cider-cellar. See ante, p. 199.

 

The Hole in the Wall. In Chancery Lane. See ante, note to p. 202.

209.

The B— family. The Burneys.

 

‘In numbers numberless.’ Paradise Regained, III. 310.

 

The founder of it. Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814), the friend of Johnson and author of A History of Music (4 vols. 1776–1789).

 

Madame D—. Frances Burney (1752–1840), Madame D’Arblay, Dr. Burney’s daughter, author of Evelina and Cecilia.

 

The rest have done nothing, etc. ‘The rest’ include Dr. Burney’s two sons, Charles Burney the younger (1757–1817), the Greek scholar, referred to by Hazlitt more than once, especially in connection with his Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton (1790), and James Burney (1750–1821), familiar to readers of Lamb’s Letters as Captain and Admiral Burney, author of A Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean (5 vols. 1803–1817), part of which is famous as The Buccaneers of America; Sarah Harriet Burney (1770–1844), Dr. Burney’s youngest daughter, author of Clarentine (1796) and other novels and tales; and Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s friend, the son of Admiral Burney.

209.

The most celebrated author, etc. Sir Walter Scott, created a baronet by George IV. in 1820.

 

Lord Byron complains. See the Preface to Marino Faliero (1820).

 

‘Let but a lord,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 420–1.

210.

Decorum, which Milton declares, etc. On Education, Works, 1738, I. 140.

 

‘Bears a charmed reputation,’ etc.

‘I bear a charmed life, which must not yield

To one of woman born.’

Macbeth, Act V. Scene 8.

 

‘Leave no rubs,’ etc. ‘To leave no rubs nor botches in the work.’ Ib. Act III. Scene 1.

 

That strange letter about Pope. Byron wrote two Letters to * * * *—* * * * * * [John Murray], on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope, the first of which (referred to by Hazlitt) was published in 1821. The second did not appear till 1835. Both letters and a full account of the whole controversy are given in Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), V. Appendix iii.

 

Why did he pronounce, etc. ‘These two writers [Pope and Cowper], for Cowper is no poet, come into comparison in one great work, the translation of Homer.’ Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), V. 557.

 

‘Finding out a borrowed line,’ etc. See The Spirit of the Age, vol. IV. p. 346 and note.

 

A rich merchant, etc. Hazlitt perhaps refers to ‘Anastasius’ Hope, Rogers, Byron, and Burns.

 

‘What should such fellows,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Scene 1.

 

‘Coining our hearts,’ etc.

‘By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,

And drop my blood for drachmas,’ etc.

Julius Caesar, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘Sent back like hallowmas,’ etc. ‘Sent back like Hallowmas or short’st of day.’ Richard II., Act V. Scene 1.

211.

‘With wine of Attic taste,’

‘What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,

Of Attic taste, with wine,’ etc.

Milton, Sonnet XX. (to Mr. Lawrence).

 

Poor Keats. See ante, p. 99.

 

‘The fairest flowers,’ etc.

‘the fairest flowers o’ the season

Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors.’

Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Scene 4.

 

‘Rue for remembrance,’ etc. ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance: pray you, love, remember: and there’s pansies, that’s for thoughts.’ Hamlet, Act IV. Scene 5.

211.

‘Nor could the Muse,’ etc.

‘nor could the Muse defend

Her son.’

Paradise Lost, VII. 37.

 

M—’s shop. The shop of John Murray, publisher of The Quarterly Review.

 

T—. Mr. W. Hazlitt, the younger, in his edition of Table Talk, filled up this blank with the name of Tom Hill (1760–1840), a well-known figure in the literary society of the time. The Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica (1815) was chiefly based on his collection of poets.

213.

—, the responsible conductor, etc. Mr. W. Hazlitt, the younger, filled this blank with the name of John Britton (1771–1857), the antiquary and topographer, author or part author of many topographical works, of which The Beauties of England and Wales (1801–1816) and Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain (1805–1814) are the best known.

 

Learned lumber. ‘With loads of learned lumber in his head.’ Pope, Essay on Criticism, 613.

 

Jack T. of the Sun. John Taylor (1757–1832), proprietor of the Sun, author of Monsieur Tonson. In 1832 he published Records of my Life (2 vols.).

 

‘The Sun of our table.’ ‘This bottle’s the sun of our table.’ Sheridan, The Duenna, Act III. Scene 5.

 

Peter Pindar. Dr. John Wolcot (1738–1819), the Satirist.

 

Mr. Tomkins the penman. Thomas Tomkins (1743–1816), caligrapher.

 

Sir Joshua’s picture of him. Bequeathed by Tomkins to the City of London.

ESSAY XXII. ON CRITICISM

214.

De omni scibile, etc. The origin of this saying seems obscure. See Notes and Queries, 7th Ser. IX. 500 and Larousse, Fleurs Latines, 94.

 

We may sometimes see articles of this sort. Hazlitt had himself suffered from this form of reviewing. See notes to Reply to Malthus, vol. IV. p. 399.

215.

‘As when a well-graced actor,’ etc. Richard II., Act V. Scene 2.

 

Much as Peter Pounce, etc. Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. 13.

 

‘Assumes the rod,’ etc.

‘Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.’

Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 39–41.

216.

The most admired of our Reviews. The Edinburgh Review.

 

The Monthly Review. Founded by Ralph Griffiths in 1749. The Review ran through three series and came to an end in 1845.

 

‘Sole sovereign sway,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘Outdoing termagant,’ etc. ‘I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.’ Hamlet, Act III. Scene 2.

 

‘And of their port,’ etc. ‘And of his port as meke as is a mayde.’ Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 69.

216.

Drawcansir work. See the Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, Act V. Scene 1., where Drawcansir says:

‘Others may boast a single man to kill:

But I the blood of thousands daily kill,’ etc.

 

Tristram Shandy. Tristram Shandy was violently attacked by Griffiths in The Monthly Review.

 

Note. Rev. Dr. Kippis. Andrew Kippis (1724–1795), Nonconformist divine and editor of the 2nd edition of Biographia Britannica (5 vols. 1778–1793).

 

The Monthly Review for Feb. 1751 (Vol. IV. p. 309), in its ‘Monthly Catalogue’ contained the following notice: ‘An Elegy wrote in a country churchyard. 4to. Dodsley, 6^d. Seven pages. The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its want of quantity.’ A full review followed in June, 1753 (Vol. VIII. p. 477).

217.

Dryden’s Prefaces. Dryden’s principal essays on literary subjects have recently been edited by Prof. Ker (2 vols. 1900). See also Prof. Saintsbury’s History of Criticism, vol. II. pp. 371–391.

 

Note. For Dryden’s comparison between Ovid and Virgil, see his Dedication of the Aeneid (1697—Essays, ed. Ker, II. 154 et seq.), and for his character of Shakespeare An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668—ib. I. 79–80). Cf. Lectures on the English Poets, vol. V. p. 82, note.

218.

Dryden had no other way, etc. Dryden’s Opera The State of Innocence, founded upon Paradise Lost, was published in 1674.

 

‘Graces snatched,’ etc. Pope, Essay on Criticism, 155.

219.

‘Looks commercing with the skies.’ Il Penseroso, 39.

 

‘The limbs and flourishes,’ etc.

‘Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,’ etc.

Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

As Lord Byron asserts, etc. In his Letter to John Murray, referred to above (p. 210, note), Byron says: ‘The poet is always ranked according to his execution, and not according to his branch of art.’ (Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, V. 553).

220.

Mrs. Dickons. Maria Dickons (1770?–1833) made her first appearance in London in 1793. She sang at the Drury Lane oratorios in 1813 and 1815, and retired in 1820. Like Miss Stephens (see A View of the English Stage) she played Polly in The Beggar’s Opera.

 

Madame Catalani. Angelica Catalani (1779–1849), the most famous prima donna of her time. She was in England in 1821 and sang ‘God Save the King’ on the 16th of July, shortly before the King’s coronation.

 

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

 

‘The very milk of human kindness.’ ‘It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness.’ Macbeth, Act I. Scene 5.

 

‘Beauty out of favour,’ etc. Hazlitt refers to Gifford’s lines on Mrs. Robinson. See A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I. p. 378 and note.

221.

Like Justice Woodcock. In Bickerstaffe’s Love in a Village (1762).

 

Rifle the flowers, etc. See A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I.

 

The Great Cat Rodilardus. In Rabelais, Pantagruel, IV. 67.

 

‘Demure-looking,’ etc. ‘The grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green-eyed philosophers.’ Burke, Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 142.)

221.

Note. Tom Jones, Book VI. chap. 14.

222.

What silenced the masked battery, etc. It is now well known that Sir Walter Scott strongly disapproved of Lockhart’s connection with Blackwood’s Magazine long before the attacks of John Scott in The London Magazine for 1820 and 1821. See Mr. Lang’s Life of Lockhart (vol. I. chap, ix.), for an account of the whole matter.

 

‘Pilloried on infamy’s high stage.’ Cowper, Hope, 556.

223.

The controversy about Pope. The controversy on the question as to whether or not Pope was a poet began with the publication of Bowles’s edition of Pope’s Works (10 vols. 1806) and had recently reached an acute stage in consequence of Byron’s letter to John Murray. See Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Prothero, V. 522–592, where a full account is given of the whole controversy. Hazlitt had contributed to The Edinburgh Magazine (Feb. 1818) an essay ‘On the question whether Pope was a poet’ reproduced with a few alterations in his lecture on Dryden and Pope (see vol. V. pp. 69 et seq.), and to The London Magazine (June, 1821) a long essay (republished for the first time in the present edition) entitled ‘Pope, Lord Byron, and Mr. Bowles.’

224.

‘Crib and cabin in,’ ‘Now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined.’ Macbeth, Act III. Scene 4.

 

‘Lack-lustre eye.’ As You Like It, Act II. Scene 7.

 

The late Joseph Fawcett. Hazlitt frequently refers to this early friend. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, I. 75–79. Fawcett was well known as a Sunday evening lecturer at the old Jewry, and published some volumes of Sermons and Poems. He died in 1804, and it was at one time reported that Hazlitt intended to write his life.

 

‘I have heard my mother Circe,’ etc. Comus, ll. 252 et seq.

 

‘Heard others read their own.’ Hazlitt no doubt refers to Wordsworth and Coleridge.

225.

He was not exceptious. Hazlitt elsewhere complains of Lamb for being what he here describes as ‘exceptious.’ See The Plain Speaker, ‘On the Conversation of Authors.’

 

‘That had I all knowledge,’ etc. See I Corinthians, xiii. 1 and 2.

 

The Occult School. Hazlitt clearly refers to Coleridge. See The Plain Speaker, (‘On the Conversation of Authors’), where he says: ‘C— [Coleridge] withholds his tribute of applause from every person in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding,’ etc.

226.

‘An ounce of sour,’ etc. ‘A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre,’ The Faerie Queene, Book I. Canto III. Stanza 30.

 

Caviare to the multitude. ‘’Twas caviare to the general.’ Hamlet, Act II. Scene 2.

 

Verbal critics, etc. Such as Gifford. Cf. A Letter to William Gifford, vol. I. p. 368.

 

Note. See Ib. note to p. 368.

ESSAY XXII. ON GREAT AND LITTLE THINGS

Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822), vol. IV. p. 127, under the title of ‘Table Talk No. II.’

 

‘These little things,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Traveller, l. 42.

227.

‘Some trick not worth an egg.’ Coriolanus, Act IV. Scene 4. Paper in the Tatler. No. 79 (by Steele).

229.

‘Anon as patient,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Scene 1.

 

The swaggering of Pistol. See especially the Second Part of Henry IV.

 

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

230.

Si Pergama dextra, etc. Aeneid, II. 291–2.

230.

Note. That is, shortly before Napoleon’s death on May 5, 1821.

232.

The maxim, which the wise man, etc. ‘For, as the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King Gorboduc, “That that is is,”’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act IV. Scene 2.

 

When L—’s farce, etc. Lamb’s farce Mr. H— was performed at Drury Lane on December 10, 1806.

 

Gentleman Lewis. William Thomas Lewis (1748?–1811), ‘Gentleman Lewis,’ belonged to ‘the other House,’ Covent Garden.

 

The Prologue. Spoken by Elliston who would have tried the farce again.

 

The Travellers. By Andrew Cherry (1762–1812), first produced at Drury Lane on January 22, 1806.

 

‘Wit-skirmishes.’ See ante, note to p. 193.

233.

‘Subject to all the skyey influences.’ ‘Servile to all the skyey influences.’ Measure for Measure, Act III. Scene 1,

234.

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

 

Will Wimble. See The Spectator, No. 108 (by Addison).

 

Some poets compose and sing their own verses. Moore, for example.

235.

‘Misfortune,’ etc. ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.’ The Tempest, Act II. Scene 2.

 

‘Take care of the pence,’ etc. Quoted by Lord Chesterfield (Letters to his Son, Nov. 6, 1747, and Feb. 5, 1750) as the saying of ‘a very covetous sordid fellow,’ William Lowndes, Secretary of the Treasury 1695–1724.

 

But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, etc. An invocation to Sarah Walker. See Liber Amoris, vol. II.

236.

Madame V—. Madame Vestris (1797–1856), the famous actress, afterwards the wife of the younger Mathews.

 

A gallery equal to Cowley’s. See Cowley’s The Chronicle, A Ballad.

 

Mr. Davison. Thomas Davison, of Whitefriars, printer of the first edition of Table Talk.

236.

D’un pathétique, etc. ‘Nous nous écrivions d’un pathétique à faire fendre les rochers.’ Rousseau, Confessions, Liv. I.

 

‘Hunt the wind,’ etc. See ante, note to p. 97.

237.

The Death of Clorinda. From a picture of Lodovic Lana. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt (Table Talk, p. 331) says that the copy was made in 1802. It is still in his possession.

238.

They succeed best in fiction. Cf. Vol. III., note to p. 49.

 

Berenice’s locks and Ariadne’s crown. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt quotes:

‘We put on Berenice’s hair,

And sit in Cassiopeia’s chair.’

Dixon’s Canidia, or The Witches.

‘Ariadne’s crowne and Cassiopeia’s chayre.’

Randolph’s Poems, 1640, p. 14.

 

Cf. also:

‘Not Berenice’s locks first rose so bright.’

Pope, Rape of the Lock, v. 129.

 

‘Anthony Codrus Urceus,’ etc. This paragraph is taken from a paper in the Round Table Series (No. 9, The Examiner, Feb. 26, 1815) which was republished in Winterslow (1839) under the title of ‘Mind and Motive.’

239.

The Story of Sir Isaac Newton. The story is familiar, but the dog’s name was ‘Diamond.’

240.

‘Like the fly on the wheel.’ Æsop’s Fables (No. 270).

241.

Mr. Bone’s enamels. Henry Bone (1755–1834), the celebrated painter on enamel, elected R.A. in 1811. He executed eighty-five ‘Portraits of Illustrious Englishmen’ copied from pictures in the royal and other collections.

 

Denner. See ante, p. 133.

243.

‘First row of the rubric.’ See ante, note to p. 205 note.

ESSAY XXIV. ON FAMILIAR STYLE

A few variations of the text from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Table Talk.

245.

His papers under the signature of Elia. In The London Magazine. The first, ‘Recollections of the South Sea House,’ appeared in August 1820.

 

Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist. The London Magazine, Feb. 1821.

 

‘A well of native English undefiled.’

‘Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,

On Fame’s eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’

Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book IV. Canto ii. Stanza 32.

 

Erasmus’s Colloquies. The Colloquia, which appeared in 1519.

246.

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

 

Sermo humi obrepens. Cf.

‘Nec sermones ego mallem

Repentes per humum quam res componere gestas.’

Horace, Epistles, II. i. 250–1.

 

‘Ambition is more lowly.’ Cf.

‘My affections

Are then most humble; I have no ambition

To see a goodlier man.’

The Tempest, Act I. Scene 2.

 

‘Unconsidered trifles.’ A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Scene 3.

 

‘That strut,’ etc. Macbeth, Act V. Scene 5.

 

‘‘And on their pens,’ etc. Cf.

‘And on his crest

Sat Horror plumed.’

Paradise Lost, IV. 988–9.

247.

‘Nature’s own sweet,’ etc. Twelfth Night, Act I. Scene 5.

248.

Cowper’s description.

‘’Twas transient in its nature, as in show

’Twas durable: as worthless as it seemed

Intrinsically precious; to the foot

Treacherous and false; it smiled, and it was cold.’

The Task, V. 173–6.