The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 11 (of 12)

ON ABSTRACT IDEAS

This essay was first published along with the second edition (1836) of An Essay on the Principles of Human Action. See Bibliographical Note, vol. VII. p. 384. The source of the essay does not appear to be known, but it very likely formed the substance of one of the Lectures which Hazlitt delivered at the Russell Institution. See ante, pp. 25, et seq. and notes. The title of one of these Lectures (III.) was ‘On Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, and on the Nature of Abstraction.’ It has not been thought necessary to give references to all the numerous passages quoted from Locke and other philosophers discussed by Hazlitt. In many cases he himself gives a sufficient reference in the text.

PAGE

 

1.

It is by Mr. Locke ... denied, etc. See An Essay concerning Human Understanding, II. xi. 10.

 

‘From the root,’ etc. Paradise Lost, V. 479–481.

6.

The Bishop of Worcester. Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), who published three pamphlets in reply to Locke’s Essay. For an account of the controversy see Locke’s Works (Bohn), II. 339 et seq.

7.

‘General ideas,’ etc. Condillac, La Logique, chap. V.

8.

‘To speak,’ etc. Ibid.

9.

‘It is agreed on all hands,’ etc. All the passages quoted from Berkeley are from the Introduction to A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).

12.

‘Abstract ideas,’ etc. Locke’s Essay, IV. vii. 9.

ON THE WRITINGS OF HOBBES

This and the four succeeding papers were first published in Literary Remains, where the author’s son says of them (vol. I. p. 115): ‘The following Essays form part of a series of Lectures delivered with very great effect by my father at the Russell Institution, in 1813. I found them with other papers in an old hamper which many years ago he stuffed confusedly full of MSS. and odd volumes of books, and left in the care of some lodging-house people, by whom it was thrown into a cellar, so damp that even the covers of some of the books were fast mouldering when I first looked over the collection. The injury to the MSS. may be imagined. Some of the Lectures, indeed, to my deep regret, are altogether missing, burnt, probably, by the ignorant people of the house; and I have had the greatest difficulty in preparing those which remain for the press. They are, however, most valuable.’ The course, consisting of ten Lectures, was delivered in 1812, not 1813. The syllabus will be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1. 192 et seq. The first lecture was ‘On the Writings of Hobbes, showing that he was the father of the modern system of philosophy.’

27.

‘They were made fierce,’ etc. Advancement of Learning, I. iv. 6.

28.

‘Four champions fierce,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 898.

29.

It has been generally supposed, etc. Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke a Great Plagiarist,’ post, p. 284.

32.

‘Discourse of Human Nature.’ This work, though circulated in MS. as early as 1640, was not published till 1650, the year before the publication of Leviathan.

45.

‘This difference of quickness,’ etc. Leviathan, part I. chap. VIII.

 

Harris, the author of Hermes, etc. Cf. vol. VIII. (The English Comic Writers) p. 19, where the same passages are quoted from Locke, Hobbes, and Harris.

46.

‘Though the effect of folly,’ etc. Leviathan, part I. chap. VIII.

 

‘The foolish daughters of Pelias’ [Peleus], etc. Ibid. part II. chap. XXX.

 

The same allusion in Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 113).

48.

‘Soft collar of social esteem.’ Ibid. II. 90.

 

‘Order of thoughts,’ etc. Leviathan, part I. chap. III.

 

‘Stood all astonied,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, VII. VI. 28.

50.

Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the American theologian and metaphysician, published his work On the Freedom of the Will in 1754.

ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY

Lectures VII. and VIII. were ‘On the Writers on Liberty and Necessity, and on Materialism.’

 

Gassendi. Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), the French philosopher and mathematician, with whom Hobbes had been intimate at Paris.

53.

Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration, etc. In the Ethica, published in Opera Posthuma (1677).

 

Marsennus. Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), the friend and disciple of Descartes.

54.

Bishop Bramhall. John Bramhall (1594–1663), successively Bishop of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh, whose controversy with Hobbes arose in 1655.

57.

Tripos. ‘Hobbes’s Tripos’ (1684) contained, among other things, the essay ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ (1654).

58.

‘With all these means,’ etc. Henry IV. Part II. Act III. Sc. 1.

60.

‘Fixed fate,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 560.

 

Dr. Priestley. Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated appeared in 1777. His controversy with Horsley lasted from 1783 till 1790, during which time many letters to Dr. Horsley were published.

71.

‘Something far more deeply interfused,’ etc. Borrowed from Wordsworth’s Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 96 et seq.

73.

‘Ille igitur,’ etc. Cicero, De Fato, XIX. 43.

ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

This appears to have been Lecture II. of the course. Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke a Great Plagiarist,’ post, p. 284.

79.

‘Discourse of reason.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2

81.

‘Without form and void.’ Genesis i. 2.

81.

The mind alone is formative. Kant. Cf. post, p. 176.

82.

The natural fool, etc. Cf. ante, p. 41.

84.

‘Peace to all such.’ Pope, Prologue to the Satires, 193.

85.

The Vicar’s profession of faith. See Émile, Livre IV.

 

‘Light of Nature pursued.’ A work abridged by Hazlitt himself. See vol. IV. of the present edition.

88.

‘Fluttering its pennons vain,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, II. 933–4.

89.

‘The latter end,’ etc. Cf. The Tempest, Act II. Sc. 1.

100.

‘The fundamental principle,’ etc. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, part IV. sect. IV.

108.

The ‘Essay on Vision.’ Published in 1709.

110.

‘Reason pandering will.’ Cf. ‘And reason panders will.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

118.

Dr. Clarke’s celebrated work. Samuel Clarke’s (1675–1729) Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, etc., one of the Boyle lectures delivered in 1704 and 1705.

ON TOOKE’S DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY

Lecture IX. was ‘On the Theory of Language; as treated by Horne Tooke, by the author of Hermes, and Lord Monboddo.’ Cf. vol. IV. (The Spirit of the Age), p. 231, and notes.

119.

‘Mere [very] midsummer madness.’ Twelfth Night, Act III. Sc. 4.

123.

M. Portalis. Jean Étienne Marie Portalis (1745–1807), one of the compilers of the Code Napoléon.

 

‘Of the little sneering,’ etc. Junius, Letter LIV.

 

‘Undoes creation,’ etc. Gay, Verses to be placed under the Picture of Sir R. Blackmore.

 

‘Rebelling angels,’ etc. Marvell, On Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost.

 

‘Holds us a while,’ etc. Ibid.

125.

‘That honour consists.’ etc. Jonathan Wild, Book I. Chap. 13.

128.

A celebrated German philosopher. Kant.

131.

‘So from the root,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 1, where much of this paragraph is repeated.

132.

‘Has oft been chased,’ etc. Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, l. 5–8.

ON SELF-LOVE

Lecture IV. of the series. Cf. the essay on ‘Self-Love and Benevolence (A Dialogue)’ printed in vol. XII. pp. 95 et seq., and An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (vol. VII. pp. 383, et seq.), from which a great part of the present Lecture is taken.

133.

‘Wise saws and modern instances.’ As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

136.

‘Mutual interest,’ etc. Jonathan Wild, Book I. Chap. 4.

139.

Shaftesbury or Hutcheson. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), author of the Characteristics (1711), and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), a supporter of Shaftesbury’s ethics.

140.

‘Pity is only,’ etc. See Hobbes’s Human Nature, Chap. IX. Sect. 10.

147.

‘The jealous God,’ etc.

‘Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,

Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.’

Pope, Eloisa to Abelard, 75–6.

158.

‘Thrills in each nerve,’ etc. Cf.

‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.’

Pope, An Essay on Man, l. 218.

159.

‘The hair-breadth scapes,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

160.

Junius has remarked, etc. In his letter to George III. (Dec. 19, 1769).

MADAME DE STAËL’S ACCOUNT OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE

Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne, published in London in 1813, had been reviewed, possibly by Hazlitt, in The Morning Chronicle for Nov. 13, 1813, and the four papers here reprinted and signed ‘An English Metaphysician’ are ostensibly a continuation of that review, though they contain very little about German philosophy and nothing at all about German literature. They are, in fact, merely fragments in letter form of the course of lectures which Hazlitt had recently delivered at the Russell Institution. See ante, pp. 25 et seq. and notes. Hazlitt was a regular contributor to The Morning Chronicle during 1813 and 1814. Some of his contributions on politics, the stage, and the fine arts will be found in vols. III., VIII. and IX. of the present edition; and he gives an account of his relations with James Perry, the editor, in the essay ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (see vol. VI. p. 289). None of the Chronicle papers included in the present volume have been republished before.

162.

The article in The Edinburgh Review. Vol. XXII. p. 198. The review was by Jeffrey.

164.

‘They were made fierce,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 27.

165.

‘Four champions fierce,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 28.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

167.

‘A justly decried author.’ Locke, Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester (Works, Bohn, II. 401).

 

‘Fame is no plant,’ etc. Lycidas, 78–82.

168.

‘Harsh and crabbed.’ Comus, 476.

 

Willich. Elements of the Critical Philosophy, etc., Translated by A. F. M. Willich, M.D., appeared in 1798. The Critique of Pure Reason had appeared in 1781.

171.

‘And all this,’ etc. Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, Act II. Sc. 1.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

174.

‘A dark closet,’ etc. Cf. Locke’s Essay, II. xi. 17.

 

‘Drossy and divisible.’ Dryden, The Hind and the Panther, I. 319.

175.

Mrs. Salmon’s ... wax figures. An old established exhibition in Fleet Street, near Temple Bar. See The Spectator, No. 28.

176.

‘Without form and void.’ Genesis i. 2.

179.

‘Thrills in each nerve,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 158.

 

‘Jove’s light’nings,’ etc. The Tempest, Act I. Sc. 2.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

At the end of this letter it was announced that ‘Another Letter on the Principles of Human Action will conclude this series.’ The promised Letter, however, does not seem to have been published.

181.

‘Peace to all such.’ Cf. ante, note to p. 84.

 

Note. For Fearn’s book, see Table Talk, vol. VI. pp. 63–5; 260–2 and notes.

183.

‘So from the root,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 1.

186.

‘Had oft been chased,’ etc. The Hind and the Panther, I. 5–8.

FINE ARTS.—BRITISH INSTITUTION

Hazlitt used a portion of this notice in the essay on ‘Fine Arts’ which he afterwards (1824) contributed to The Encyclopædia Britannica. See vol. IX., pp. 406–7. The British Institution was founded in 1805 at 52 Pall Mall and continued till 1866. The winter exhibition was of the works of living artists. A second notice, in The Morning Chronicle for Feb. 10, is probably by Hazlitt. It contains very brief comments on the less notable pictures, and is not reprinted here.

188.

Mr. Bird’s Picture of Job. The painter was Edward Bird (1772–1819), elected a Royal Academician in 1815.

189.

Mr. Allston’s large picture. This picture by the ‘American Titian,’ Washington Allston (1779–1843), gained a prize of 200 guineas from the British Institution and is now at Philadelphia.

190.

Mr. Hilton’s Picture. By William Hilton (1786–1839), Royal Academician (1818).

 

Mr. West’s Picture. For Benjamin West (1738–1820), who succeeded Reynolds (1792) as President of the Royal Academy, see vol. IX. (Essays on the Fine Arts), pp. 318 et seq.

 

‘Pure religion,’ etc. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘O Friend! I know not which way I must look,’ etc.

 

Society for the suppression of vice. Cf. vol. I. (The Round Table), p. 60 and note.

 

Mr. Turner’s grand landscape. Now in the National Gallery and (wrongly) known as ‘Apuleia in search of Apuleius.’ The confusion seems to have arisen from a misreading by Turner of a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XIV. 517 et seq.) which the picture was designed to illustrate.

 

Lord Egremont’s picture. An engraving by Woollett of Claude’s ‘Jacob and Laban’ was in the possession of Lord Egremont at Petworth, and it is probably to this that Hazlitt refers. It was at Petworth that Turner painted the landscape in question.

191.

‘Mercury and Herse.’ Exhibited in 1811.

 

The Favourite Lamb. By William Collins (1788–1847).

THE STAGE

Nearly the whole of this paper was incorporated into the essay on Richard III. in Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. See vol. I. pp. 300–303 and notes.

192.

‘As tenderly be led,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

 

‘Bustle in.’ Richard III., Act I. Sc. 1.

THE FINE ARTS. THE LOUVRE

195.

Blücher. The fighting at Laon had taken place on March 9 and 10. Blücher entered Paris on March 31.

 

‘Away to Heav’n,’ etc. Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 1.

 

‘Nay, if you mouth,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

196.

‘Pigeon-liver’d,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

 

‘Scrawls,’ etc. Pope, Prologue to the Satires, 19–20.

 

The treaty of Pilnitz. See vol. III. (Political Essays), p. 61 and note.

 

‘This present ignorant time.’ Cf. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5.

 

‘Tell me your company,’ etc. The proverb is quoted in Don Quixote, Part II. chap. 23.

 

‘Stands the statue,’ etc. Thomson, The Seasons, Summer, 1347. The Venus de Medici was restored to Florence after the fall of Napoleon.

 

There is the Apollo, etc. This enumeration of the treasures collected at the Louvre by Napoleon makes Hazlitt’s authorship of the essay quite certain. Cf. vol. VI. (Table Talk), pp. 15–16 and notes, and vol. VIII. (The English Comic Writers), p. 149, where the present passage is repeated almost verbatim. See also Notes of a Journey, etc., vol. IX. p. 107.

197.

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

 

‘What’s Hecuba to them,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

 

‘Real feelings,’ etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 101).

 

‘We look up,’ etc. Ibid.

 

‘Breath can make them,’ etc. Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 54.

 

Wittgenstein, etc. Louis Adolphe Pierre Wittgenstein (1769–1843); Ferdinand, Baron Wintzingerode (1770–1818), two well-known Russian generals.

 

‘But once put out their light,’ etc. Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

 

Poet who celebrated the fall, etc. Coleridge, presumably.

 

‘Time-hallowed laws.’ Hazlitt elsewhere attributes this phrase to Wordsworth. See vol. III., note to p. 175.

WILSON’S LANDSCAPES AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

Part of this article was incorporated in the Encyclopædia Britannica article on ‘Fine Arts’ (see vol. IX. pp. 392–394), and a further part was included in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of the same essay in Essays on the Fine Arts (1873). Many of Wilson’s landscapes were exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1903. In this and in the later notices of exhibitions the catalogue numbers have been omitted, and in a few cases it has been necessary to substitute a semicolon for a comma, in order to distinguish between different pictures.

199.

‘A buoy,’ etc. King Lear, Act IV. Sc. 6.

200.

‘Resembling a goose-pye,’ Swift, Vanburgh’s House, l. 104.

201.

Note. ‘Silly shepherds,’ etc. Cf. Milton, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, The Hymn, St. viii.

202.

‘While universal Pan,’ etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 266–8.

 

Note. Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter. See vol. I. (The Round Table), note to p. 162.

ON GAINSBOROUGH’S PICTURES

This article, like the last, was used for the Encyclopædia essay (vol. IX. pp. 395–6) and was partly reproduced in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Essays on the Fine Arts, 1873 (notes to p. 244).

202.

A Portrait of a Youth. The famous ‘Blue Boy’ belonging to the Duke of Westminster, painted in 1779.

203.

Portrait of Garrick. Painted in 1776, and now at the Stratford-on-Avon Museum.

 

‘Distilled books,’ etc. Bacon, Essays (‘Of Studies’).

 

‘I to Hercules.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 2.

 

Cottage Children. ‘Rustic Children,’ now in the National Gallery.

205.

Note. Two Spanish Beggar Boys. In the Dulwich Gallery. See vol. IX. p. 25.

MR. KEMBLE’S PENRUDDOCK

This theatrical notice is clearly Hazlitt’s, though he omitted it from A View of the English Stage. Cf. vol. I. (Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays), p. 237, where the same words are used, with trifling variations, in criticism of Kemble’s Hamlet. Cf. also vol. VIII. p. 376.

205.

Penruddock. In Richard Cumberland’s The Wheel of Fortune (1795).

206.

‘Is whispering nothing,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act I. Sc. 2.

207.

‘There is no variableness,’ etc. St. James i. 17.

 

‘Splenetic [splenetive] and rash.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

 

‘The fiery soul,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, l. 156–8.

 

‘You shall relish,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

INTRODUCTION TO AN ACCOUNT OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES

Hazlitt contributed to The Champion six papers on the ‘Character of Sir Joshua Reynolds.’ The first two of these (Oct. 30 and Nov. 6. 1814) were used in the author’s Encyclopædia Britannica essay on ‘Fine Arts.’ See vol. IX. of the present edition, pp. 377 et seq., and the notes, where the omitted portions of the two articles are supplied. The last four (viz. the present essay and the three succeeding ones) are here reprinted for the first time. Hazlitt afterwards dealt with the same subject in the two essays entitled ‘On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses’ (vol. VI. Table Talk, pp. 122–145).

208.

Note. For Richardson see vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 10 and note. Charles Antoine Coypel (1694–1752) was Director of the Academy from 1747. His Discourses on Art were republished in 1883 by H. Jouin (Conférences de l’Académie royale de peinture).

ON GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY

211.

If Raphael, for instance, had only copied, etc. See Reynolds’s Twelfth Discourse.

212.

‘Sole sitting,’ etc. Wordsworth, Poems on the Naming of Places, IV.

 

‘Beauty, rendered still more beautiful.’ Cf.

‘——And he would gaze till it became

Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain

The beauty, still more beauteous.’

Wordsworth, Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree, 35–37.

 

‘Thrice happy fields,’ etc. Cf. Paradise Lost, III. 569–570.

213.

‘The tender mercies.’ ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.’ Proverbs xii. 10.

 

‘Wandering through dry places,’ etc. Cf. S. Matthew xii. 43.

213.

Note. Claude’s Liber Veritatis, now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, is not a collection of original sketches, but a record of his pictures with inscriptions showing for whom they were painted.

215.

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

ON THE IMITATION OF NATURE

221.

‘Blinking Sam.’ See Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes, etc. (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, I. 313).

ON THE IDEAL

223.

‘Might ascend,’ etc. Henry V. Prologue.

224.

‘Obscurity her curtain,’ etc. From a poem To the Honourable and Reverend F. C. in Dodsley’s Collection of Poems, vol. VI. (1758), p. 138. The poem (anonymously published) was written by Sneyd Davies (1709–1769), and was addressed to Frederick Cornwallis, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. See The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. I. p. 174, and Nichols’s Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. I.

226.

‘Whose end,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

228.

We have heard it observed, etc. By Coleridge, probably. See vol. IV. p. 217.

CHARLEMAGNE: OU L’ÉGLISE DÉLIVRÉE

230.

The brother of Buonaparte. Lucien Buonaparte (1775–1840), Prince of Canino. The present review of his Charlemagne, etc. is signed ‘W. H.’

231.

Henriade. Voltaire’s epic (1723).

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

235.

The true Florimel, etc. The Faerie Queene, III. viii.

236.

Another epic poem. La Cirnéide (1819).

LUCIEN BUONAPARTE’S COLLECTION, ETC.

237.

‘Vile durance.’ Kenrick’s Falstaff’s Wedding (1766), Act I. Sc. 2.

 

‘The mistress or the saint.’ Cf. Goldsmith, The Traveller, 152.

 

Jocunda. The portrait of Mona Lisa, wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

239.

‘Laborious foolery.’ Hazlitt seems to be quoting from himself. See his Letter ‘On Modern Comedy’ (1813), vol. VIII. p. 554.

240.

‘Come, then, the colours,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, II. 17–20.

 

Watteau. Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).

 

Guerin. Pierre Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833). The picture referred to is now in the Louvre.

241.

The Deluge by Girodet. This picture of Anne Louis Girodet’s (1767–1824) is in the Louvre.

242.

Lefebre. Hazlitt presumably refers to Robert Le Fèvre’s (1756–1830) portrait of Napoleon now in the Gallery at Versailles.

These three notices of the Exhibition at the British Institution are signed ‘W. H.’

243.

C. L. Eastlake. Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), elected President of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1850; Director of the National Gallery from 1855.

 

‘Antique Roman.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

 

A hint from a high quarter. Hazlitt presumably refers to the fact that Canning had not been in office since his quarrel with Castlereagh in 1809.

244.

‘A great book is a great evil.’ A saying of Voltaire’s. Cf. vol. V. (Lectures on the English Poets), p. 114.

 

‘It is place,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 3.

245.

G. Hayter. George (afterwards Sir George) Hayter (1792–1871). His ‘Ezra’ gained a prize of £200.

 

Mr. Harlowe’s Hubert and Arthur. By George Henry Harlow (1787–1819), a pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence.

 

‘Deep scars,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 601.

 

Miss Geddes. Margaret Sarah Geddes (1793–1872), better known as Mrs. Carpenter, and a portrait-painter.

 

Chalon. Alfred Edward Chalon (1781–1860).

 

Burnetts, etc. James M. Burnet (1788–1816) and John Burnet (1784–1868); Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (1787–1855); Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777–1843); John Glover (1767–1849). Both the Nasmyths, Alexander (1758–1840) and Peter (1787–1831), were represented at the Exhibition.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

246.

W. Collins. William Collins (1788–1847).

247.

Bone. Robert Trewick Bone (1790–1840).

 

H. Howard. Henry Howard (1769–1847).

 

H. Singleton. Henry Singleton (1766–1839).

 

P. H. Rogers. Philip Hutchins Rogers (1794–1853).

 

J. Wilson. John Wilson (1774–1855).

248.

The ablest landscape painter, etc. Turner. Cf. vol. I. (The Round Table), p. 76 note.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

248.

B. Barker. Benjamin Barker (1776–1838).

 

Ab. Cooper. Abraham Cooper (1787–1868).

 

W. Westall. William Westall (1781–1850).

249.

J. Stark. James Stark (1794–1859).

 

P. Dewint. Peter De Wint (1784–1849).

 

A. Sauerweide. Alexander Sauerweid (1782–1844).

 

‘War is a game,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, V. 187–8.

ON MR. WILKIE’S PICTURES

This essay is signed ‘W. H.’

249.

Archbishop Herring’s letters. Cf. vol. V. (Lectures on the English Poets), p. 141 and note.

250.

The highest authority on art. From this point the rest of the essay was incorporated in the Lecture on Hogarth. See vol. VIII. pp. 139–141.

251.

‘To shew vice [virtue],’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

 

‘The very error,’ etc. Cf. ‘It is the very error of the moon.’ Othello, Act V. Sc. 2.

252.

‘Your lungs begin to crow,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

[CHARACTER OF MR. WORDSWORTH’S NEW POEM, THE EXCURSION]

Under this heading Hazlitt contributed to The Examiner three papers which he afterwards partly republished with omissions and variations in two essays in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 111–125. These omissions and variations are given below.

 

At the beginning of the first essay as published in The Round Table add from the first (August 21, 1814) of The Examiner articles the following passage:—

 

‘In power of intellect, in lofty conception, in the depth of feeling, at once simple and sublime, which pervades every part of it and which gives to every object an almost preternatural and preterhuman interest, this work has seldom been surpassed. If the subject of the Poem had been equal to the genius of the Poet, if the skill with which he has chosen his materials had accorded with the power exerted over them, if the objects (whether persons or things) which he makes use of as the vehicle of his feelings had been such as immediately and irresistibly to convey them in all their force and depth to others, then the production before us would indeed have “proved a monument,” as he himself wishes it, worthy of the author and of his country. Whether, as it is, this most original and powerful performance may not rather remain like one of those stupendous but half-finished structures, which have been suffered to moulder into decay, because the cost and labour attending them exceeded their use or beauty, we feel it would be rather presumptuous in us to determine.’

 

At the end of the first paragraph on p. 112 add the following note:—

 

‘Every one wishes to get rid of the booths and bridges in the Park,^[68] in order to have a view of the ground and water again. Our Poet looks at the more lasting and serious works of men as baby-houses and toys, and from the greater elevation of his mind regards them much in the same light as we do the Regent’s Fair and Mr. Vansittart’s “permanent erections.”’

 

For ‘He sees all things in himself’ (p. 112, l. 28) read ‘He sees all things in his own mind; he contemplates effects in their causes, and passions in their principles.’

 

To the words ‘our very constitution’ (p. 113, l. 8) Hazlitt in The Examiner appends, as a note, ‘“God knew Adam in the elements of his chaos, and saw him in the great obscurity of nothing.” Sir Thomas Browne.’

 

For ‘The general and the permanent’ (p. 113, l. 12) read ‘The common and the permanent.’

 

The words ‘interlocutions between Lucius and Caius’ (p. 113, l. 19) are not between quotation marks in the magazine.

 

The Examiner for Aug. 28, 1814 contained a second essay on the same subject, republished in The Round Table, except that the opening paragraph was somewhat curtailed. In place of the paragraph in The Round Table ‘We could have wished,’ etc. (vol. I. p. 113) read:—

 

‘We could have wished that Mr. Wordsworth had given to his work the form of a philosophical poem altogether, with only occasional digressions or allusions to particular instances. There is in his general sentiments and reflections on human life a depth, an originality, a truth, a beauty, and grandeur both of conception and expression, which place him decidedly at the head of the poets of the present day, or rather which place him in a totally distinct class of excellence. But he has chosen to encumber himself with a load of narrative and description which, instead of assisting, hinders the progress and effect of the general reasoning. Almost all this part of the work, which Mr. Wordsworth has inwoven with the text, would have come in better in plain prose as notes at the end. Indeed, there is something evidently inconsistent, upon his own principles, in the construction of the poem. For he professes, in these ambiguous illustrations, to avoid all that is striking or extraordinary—all that can raise the imagination or affect the passions—all that is not every way common and necessarily included in the natural workings of the passions in all minds and in all circumstances. Then why introduce particular illustrations at all which add nothing to the force of the general truth, which hang as a dead weight upon the imagination, which degrade the thought and weaken the sentiment, and the connection of which with the general principle it is more difficult to find out than to understand the general principle itself? It is only by an extreme process of abstraction that it is often possible to trace the operation of the general law in the particular illustration, yet it is to supply the defect of abstraction that the illustration is given. Mr. Wordsworth indeed says finely, and perhaps as truly as finely,’ etc.

 

Instead of saying that Wordsworth’s powers of description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of his classical predecessor, Akenside (p. 114), Hazlitt, in The Examiner, made the very different statement that ‘his powers of description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of thought and sentiment.’

 

To the quotation on page 116, ‘Poor gentleman,’ etc. Hazlitt adds, as a note, ‘Love in a Wood.’

 

After the words ‘any thing but dull’ (p. 116, l. 22) add, from The Examiner, ‘Rasselas indeed is dull; but then it is privileged dulness.’

 

After ‘natural exercise of others’ (p. 117, l. 7) add ‘The intellectual and the moral faculties of man are different; the ideas of things and the feelings of pleasure and pain connected with them.’ There are a few other trifling verbal alterations in this paragraph. The note on the word ‘solitary’ on p. 117 is not in The Examiner.

 

A third essay on the same subject was published in The Examiner for October 2, 1814. This was reprinted with a few omissions and additions in The Round Table (see vol. I. pp. 120–125).

 

The opening paragraph in The Round Table is condensed from the following:—

 

‘Poetry may be properly divided into two classes; the poetry of imagination and the poetry of sentiment. The one consists in the power of calling up images of the most pleasing or striking kind; the other depends on the strength of the interest which it excites in given objects. The one may be said to arise out of the faculties of memory and invention, conversant with the world of external nature; the other from the fund of our moral sensibility. In the combination of these different excellences the perfection of poetry consists; the greatest poets of our own or other countries have been equally distinguished for richness of invention and depth of feeling. By the greatest poets of our own country, we mean Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, who evidently possessed both kinds of imagination, the intellectual and moral, in the highest degree. Young and Cowley might be cited as the most brilliant instances of the separation of feeling from fancy, of men who were dazzled by the exuberance of their own thoughts and whose genius was sacrificed to their want of taste. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, whose powers of feeling are of the highest order, is certainly deficient in fanciful invention: his writings exhibit all the internal power, without the external form of poetry. He has none of the pomp and decoration and scenic effect of poetry: no gorgeous palaces nor solemn temples awe the imagination: no cities rise with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned^[69]: we meet with no knights pricked forth on airy steeds: no hair-breadth scapes and perilous accidents^[70] by flood or field. Either from the predominant habit of his mind, not requiring the stimulus of outward impressions, or from the want of an imagination teeming with various forms, he takes the common every-day events and objects of nature, or rather seeks those that are the most simple and barren of effect; but he adds to them a weight of interest from the resources of his own mind, which makes the most insignificant things serious and even formidable. All other interests are absorbed in the deeper interest of his own thoughts, and find the same level. His mind magnifies the littleness of his subject, and raises its meanness; lends it his strength, and clothes it with borrowed grandeur. With him a molehill, covered with wild thyme, assumes the importance of “the great vision of the guarded mount”^[71]: a puddle is filled with preternatural faces, and agitated with the fiercest storms of passion; and to his mind, as he himself informs us, and as we can easily believe,

“——The meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”’^[72]

 

After the words ‘among these northern Arcadians’ (vol. I. p. 121) Hazlitt quotes ll. 411–439 of Book V. of The Excursion.

 

The short paragraph on p. 122 reads in The Examiner:—

 

‘We think it is pushing our love or admiration of natural objects a good deal too far, to make it a set-off against a story like the preceding, which carries that concentration of self-interest and callousness to the feelings of others to its utmost pitch, which is the general character of those who are cut off by their mountains and valleys from an intercourse with mankind, even more than of the country people.’

 

In The Examiner, after the words ‘the beautiful poem of Hart Leap Well,’ the essay concludes as follows:—

 

‘We conceive that about as many fine things have passed through Mr. Wordsworth’s mind as, with five or six exceptions, through any human mind whatever. The conclusion of the passage we refer to is admirable, and comes in like some dying close in music:—[The Excursion, Book VII., ll. 976–1007].

 

‘If Mr. Wordsworth does not always write in this manner, it is his own fault. He can as often as he pleases. It is not in our power to add to, or take away from, the pretensions of a poem like the present, but if our opinion or wishes could have any weight, we would take our leave of it by saying—Esto perpetua!’

 

The first two of these Examiner articles are referred to by Lamb in a letter to Wordsworth of Sept. 19, 1814. See Letters, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I. 434–5. It is significant of Hazlitt’s increasing bitterness (caused mainly, no doubt, by the final downfall of Napoleon) that the passages omitted from The Round Table are for the most part of a highly eulogistic character.

ON ROCHEFOUCAULT’S MAXIMS

This paper is signed ‘W. H.’ in The Examiner.

254.

‘The web of our life,’ etc. All’s Well that Ends Well, Act IV. Sc. 3.

 

The Practice of Piety. See vol. III. (Political Essays), note to p. 111.

 

Grove’s Ethics. Henry Grove’s (1684–1738) A System of Moral Philosophy (1749).

 

De l’Esprit. Helvétius’s famous book (1758).

 

Note. Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening.

256.

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

257.

‘Gets the start,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 2.

ON THE PREDOMINANT PRINCIPLES, Etc.

This essay, the title of which has been taken from the Index to The Examiner, is No. IX. of the Round Table series. It was republished in Winterslow under the title of ‘Mind and Motive.’

259.

‘Friends now fast sworn,’ etc. Coriolanus, Act IV. Sc. 4.

260.

‘The servile slave.’ The Faerie Queene, II. vii. 33.

261.

‘The toys of desperation.’ Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

262.

A fine observation, etc. Aristotle, Metaphysics, A I. 980 a, 21.

THE LOVE OF POWER, Etc.

No. XIII. of the Round Table series, republished in Winterslow along with the former essay as ‘Mind and Motive.’

265.

‘But for an utmost end,’ etc. Hobbes, Human Nature, VII. 5, 6 (Works, ed. Molesworth, IV. 33).

266.

‘He courted a statue,’ etc. Don Quixote, Part I. Book II. Chap. 13.

267.

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

 

‘I also was an Arcadian.’ Cf. vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 27 and note.

268.

‘Sithence no fairy lights,’ etc. Sneyd Davies, To the Honourable and Reverend F. C. See ante, note to p. 224.

 

Happy are they, etc. Hazlitt seems to have been fond of this passage. See vol. IV. (Reply to Malthus), p. 104, and vol. III. (Political Essays), note to p. 266.

ESSAY ON MANNERS

This essay, No. XVIII. of the Round Table series, was republished in Winterslow. Part of it Hazlitt himself used in the essay ‘On Manner’ in The Round Table. See vol. I. pp. 44–7 and notes.

269.

The Flower and Leaf. This poem is not now regarded as Chaucer’s. Cf. vol. V. (Lectures on the English Poets), p. 27 and note.

271.

‘The painted birds,’ etc. Dryden, The Flower and the Leaf, etc., ll. 46–53, 102–152.

272.

Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough, etc. The rest of the essay from this point is in vol. I. (see pp. 44–7 and notes).