Footnotes:
[1] Dramatic Essays, VIII, 415.
[2] “On Living to One’s Self,” in Table Talk.
[3] “On Reading Old Books,” pp. 344-45.
[4] “On Criticism,” in Table Talk.
[5] Life of Holcroft, Works, II, 171, n.
[6] “On the Pleasure of Painting,” in Table Talk.
[7] W. C. Hazlitt: Lamb and Hazlitt (1900), p. 44. The letter in which these phrases are to be found is dated 1793 by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, but the present writer has given a detailed statement of his reasons for believing that it was written in 1803. See Nation, October 19, 1911.
[8] XI, 26.
[9] Table Talk, “On the Indian Jugglers.”
[10] Round Table.
[11] “On Respectable People,” in Plain Speaker.
[12] “On Paradox and Commonplace,” in Table Talk.
[13] Hazlitt’s Table Talk was included by Stevenson in a youthful Catalogus Librorum Carissimorum. It is interesting that at the same time that Carlyle was composing Sartor Resartus, Hazlitt should have penned this bit of savage satire. “It has been often made a subject of dispute, What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may, perhaps, be given that he is the only animal that dresses.... Swift has taken a good bird’s-eye view of man’s nature, by abstracting the habitual notions of size, and looking at it in great or in little: would that some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a cruel action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency, at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a ‘damned spot’ to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!” Aphorisms on Man, LXIV. Works, XII, 227.
[14] Round Table, “On Pedantry.”
[15] “Knowledge of the World,” XII, 307.
[16] “On Prejudice,” XII, 396.
[17] Table Talk, “On the Past and Future.”
[18] Table Talk, “Why Distant Objects Please.”
[19] “Love of Power,” XI, 268.
[20] Life of Napoleon, chap. 34.
[21] “What is the People?” in Political Essays, III, 292.
[22] He tells of an experience in crossing the Alps which he intends should be symbolic of his whole life. From a great distance he thought he perceived Mont Blanc, but as the driver insisted that it was only a cloud, “I supposed that I had taken a sudden fancy for a reality. I began in secret to take myself to task, and to lecture myself for my proneness to build theories on the foundation of my conjectures and wishes. On turning round occasionally, however, I observed that this cloud remained in the same place, and I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favoring my first suggestion; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place. We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the afternoon when we had reached the other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this same cloud rising like a canopy over the point where it had hovered, ‘in shape and station proudly eminent,’ he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc.” Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy. Works, IX, 296.
[23] Andrew Lang’s Life of Lockhart, I, 63. 128-130.
[24] John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, was killed in a duel arising from his retaliatory attacks on Lockhart and the Blackwood School of Criticism. See London Magazine, II, 509, 666; III, 76, and “Statement” prefatory to number for February, 1821.
[25] April, 1817.
[26] January, 1818.
[27] “I have been reading Frederick Schlegel.... He is like Hazlitt, in English, who talks pimples—a red and white corruption rising up (in little imitations of mountains upon maps), but containing nothing, and discharging nothing, except their own humours.” Byron’s Letters, Jan. 28, 1821 (ed. Prothero, V, 191).
[28] Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke’s Recollections of Writers, 147.
[29] Joseph Cottle: Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 465.
[30] Haydon’s Correspondence and Table Talk, II, 32.
[31] Plain Speaker.
[32] Characteristics, CCCVII.
[33] “Characteristics,” in Carlyle’s Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (Chapman and Hall, 1898), III, 32.
[34] “Letter of Elia to Robert Southey,” Lamb’s Works, ed. Lucas, I, 233.
[35] “On Criticism,” in Table Talk.
[36] Life of Pope, Johnson’s Lives, ed. Birkbeck Hill, IV, 248.
[37] Boswell’s Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 89.
[38] Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, I, 170.
[39] See an essay by John Foster on “Poetical Criticism,” in Critical Essays, ed. Bohn, I, 144.
[40] Gibbon’s Journal, October 3, 1762. Miscellaneous Works, ed. 1814, V, 263.
[41] Review of Mrs. Hemans’s Poems, Edinburgh Review, October, 1829. Jeffrey’s Works, III, 296.
[42] Blackwood’s Magazine, II, 670-79.
[43] I, 281 (March, 1820).
[44] Spirit of the Age, “William Godwin.”
[45] Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 35.
[46] Mr. Saintsbury has applied this phrase to Hazlitt himself, but we prefer to transfer the honor.
[47] “Savoir bien lire un livre en le jugeant chemin faisant, et sans cesser de le goûter, c’est presque tout l’art du critique.” Chateaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire, I, 234.
[48] Portraits Contemporains, “Sonnet d’Hazlitt,” II, 515.
[49] Age of Elizabeth, “On Miscellaneous Poems,” V, 301.
[50] “Thoughts on Taste,” XI, 460.
[51] Conversations of Northcote, VI, 457.
[52] Cf. Herford: Age of Wordsworth, p. 51.
[53] “On the Conduct of Life,” XII, 427.
[54] Patmore: My Friends and Acquaintances, III, 122.
[55] “On the Conduct of Life,” XII, 428. See also the paper “On the Study of the Classics,” in the Round Table.
[57] See Wordsworth’s sonnet, “Great men have been among us.”
[58] “On Criticism,” in Table Talk.
[59] “He is the most illuminating and the most thoughtful of all Rousseau’s early English critics.... His essay ‘On the Character of Rousseau’ was not surpassed, or approached, as a study of the great writer until the appearance of Lord Morley’s monograph nearly sixty years afterwards.” E. Gosse: Fortnightly Review, July, 1912, p. 30.
[60] In the review of Schlegel’s Lectures on the Drama, Works, X, 78.
[61] See the paper on “John Buncle,” in the Round Table.
[62] Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 21.
[63] “On the Pleasure of Painting,” in Table Talk.
[64] Dramatic Essays, VIII, 415.
[65] “On Shakespeare and Milton,” p. 44.
[66] “The Periodical Press,” X, 203.
[67] “On Criticism,” in Table Talk.
[68] Cf. “On Reading Old Books,” pp. 338-9, where this charge is curiously echoed by Hazlitt himself.
[69] Ibid., p. 337.
[70] Ibid., p. 340.
[71] “On Shakespeare and Milton,” p. 109.
[72] “The English Novelists,” VIII, 109.
[73] “Thoughts on Taste,” XI, 463.
[74] “On Criticism,” in Table Talk.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Characters of Shakespeare, “Lear.”
[77] “On Poetry in General,” p. 258.
[78] “On Poetry in General,” p. 266.
[79] Hazlitt defends himself on the ground that “the word has these three distinct meanings in the English language, that is, it signifies the composition produced, the state of mind or faculty producing it, and, in certain cases, the subject-matter proper to call forth that state of mind.” Letter to Gifford, I, 396.
[80] “On Poetry in General,” pp. 268-9.
[81] Ibid., p. 268.
[82] Those interested in the perennial discussion of the relation of poetry to verse or metre would do well to read the recent interesting contribution to the subject by Professor Mackail in his Lectures on Poetry (Longmans, 1912).
[83] “On the Causes of Popular Opinion,” XII, 320.
[84] Coleridge: Table Talk, Aug. 6, 1832.
[85] Edinburgh Review, Feb., 1816. The nature of Hazlitt’s debt to Coleridge, Lamb and Schlegel is to some extent illustrated in the notes to the present text.
[86] “Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers,” in Plain Speaker.
[87] Moore’s Letters and Journals, May 21, 1821, III, 235.
[88] Shakespeare’s Mädchen und Frauen.
[89] Review of Schlegel’s Lectures, Works, X, III.
[90] “Poetry,” XII, 339.
[91] Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, “Antony and Cleopatra.”
[92] Lowell: Old English Dramatists.
[93] Lecture on the Age of Elizabeth, “On Beaumont and Fletcher,” V, 269.
[94] Conversation of Northcote, VI, 393.
[95] Essays in English Literature, Second Series. 159-161.
[96] There seems to be no reason for doubting Hazlitt’s authorship of the article in the Examiner. See Works, XI, 580.
[97] “William Gifford,” in Spirit of the Age.
[98] Select British Poets. See Works, V, 378.
[99] “Shelley’s Posthumous Poems,” Works, X, 256 ff.
[100] Hazlitt’s syntax is often abbreviated, elliptical, and unregardful of book rules. Constructions like the following are not uncommon in his prose: “As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe.... As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr. Liston’s face.” Lectures on the English Poets, “On Swift, Young,” etc., V, 119, 120.
[101] Spirit of the Age, “William Cobbett.”
[103] “On the Living Poets,” in Lectures on the English Poets, V, 167.
[104] This is the form of the passage as published in the Literary Remains (1836). That Hazlitt did not attain effects like this offhand, is evident from the comparative feebleness of the original sound of the passage in the Monthly Magazine: “That we should thus in a manner outlive ourselves, and dwindle imperceptibly into nothing, is not surprising, when even in our prime the strongest impressions leave so little traces of themselves behind, and the last object is driven out by the succeeding one.” “On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth,” Works, XII, 160.
[105] This passage also shows alterations from the first form. Cf. XII, 152.
[106] Lectures on the English Poets. “On Swift, Young, etc.,” V, 104. See also the paper in Table Talk on “Familiar Style.”
[107] “I grant thus much, that it is in vain to seek for the word we want, or endeavour to get at it second-hand, or as a paraphrase on some other word—it must come of itself, or arise out of an immediate impression or lively intuition of the subject; that is, the proper word must be suggested immediately by the thoughts, but it need not be presented as soon as called for.... Proper expressions rise to the surface from the heat and fermentation of the mind, like bubbles on an agitated stream. It is this which produces a clear and sparkling style.” “On Application to Study,” in Plain Speaker.
[108] Spirit of the Age. “Mr. Cobbett.”
[109] Ibid., “William Godwin.”
[110] “On the Living Poets,” Lectures on English Poets, V, 144.
[111] Lectures on the Comic Writers, “On Wycherley, Congreve, etc.,” VIII, 70.
[112] Spirit of the Age, “Mr. T. Moore,” IV, 353.
[113] Table Talk, “On Patronage and Puffing.”
[114] “L’espèce d’entrain qui accompagne et suit ces fréquents articles improvisés de verve et lancés à toute vapeur. On s’y met tout entier: on s’en exagère la valeur dans le moment même, on en mesure l’importance au bruit, et si cela mène à mieux faire, il n’y a pas grand mal après tout.” Portraits Contemporains, II, 515.
[115] “‘Range and keenness of appreciation’ do not by themselves give taste, but merely romantic gusto or perceptiveness. In order that gusto may be elevated to taste it needs to be disciplined and selective. To this end it must come under the control of an entirely different order of intuitions, of what I have called the ‘back pull toward the centre.’ The romantic one sidedness that is already so manifest in Hazlitt’s conception of taste has, I maintain, gone to seed in Professor Saintsbury.” Irving Babbitt, in Nation, May 16, 1912.
[116] T. N. Talfourd: Edinburgh Review, Nov., 1820.
[117] My Literary Passions, 120.
[118] Edinburgh Review, January, 1837.
[119] Thackeray’s Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 350-51.
[120] Robertson: Essays Toward a Critical Method, 81.
[121] Saintsbury’s History of Criticism and John Davidson’s Sentences and Paragraphs, 113.
[122] In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place of the translations of the Bible: and this dumb art arose in the silence of the written oracles.
[123] See A Voyage to the Straits of Magellan, 1594.
[124] Taken from Tasso.
[125] This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser sometimes took with language.
“That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Tho’ they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o’er-dusted.”
Troilus and Cressida.
[127] In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance of the poet’s exact observation of nature:—
“There is a willow growing o’er a brook,
That shews its hoary leaves i’ th’ glassy stream.”
The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a whitish colour, and the reflection would therefore be “hoary.”
[128] Why Pope should say in reference to him, “Or more wise Charron,” is not easy to determine.
[129] As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give his chapter entitled One Man’s Profit is Another’s Loss, in which he has nearly anticipated Mandeville’s celebrated paradox of private vices being public benefits:—
“Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who furnished out funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods: and if he got an estate, it must be by the death of a great many people: but I think it a sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit can be made, but at the expense of some other person, and that every kind of gain is by that rule liable to be condemned. The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth, and the farmer by the dearness of corn; the architect by the ruin of buildings, the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits; nay, even the honour and functions of divines is owing to our mortality and vices. No physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best friends, said the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his country; and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every one but examine his own heart, and he will find, that his private wishes spring and grow up at the expense of some other person. Upon which consideration this thought came into my head, that nature does not hereby deviate from her general policy; for the naturalists hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of any one thing, is the decay and corruption of another:
Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit,
Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante. i.e.
For what from its own confines chang’d doth pass,
Is straight the death of what before it was.”
Vol. I, Chap. XXI.
[130] No. 125.
[131] The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive, such as “proud submission and dignified obedience,” are, I think, first to be found in the Tatler.
[132] It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe was also an Englishman. His other works, such as the Life of Colonel Jack, &c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind more like that of things than words.
[133] This character was written in a fit of extravagant candour, at a time when I thought I could do justice, or more than justice, to an enemy, without betraying a cause.
[134] For instance: he produced less effect on the mob that compose the English House of Commons than Chatham or Fox, or even Pitt.
[135] As in the comparison of the British Constitution to the “proud keep of Windsor,” etc., the most splendid passage in his works.
[136] Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished—
“And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean!”
[137] The description of the sports in the forest:
“To see the sun to bed and to arise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,” etc.
[138] Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where the Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother’s arrival.
[139] This essay was written just before Lord Byron’s death.
“Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain.”
Don Juan, Canto XI.
[141] This censure applies to the first cantos of Don Juan much more than to the last. It has been called a Tristram Shandy in rhyme: it is rather a poem written about itself.
[142] Burke’s writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the reason: poetry produces its effects by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of our own poetry, which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction.
[143] My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons. The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.
[144] He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting to establish the future immortality of man, “without” (as he said) “knowing what Death was or what Life was”—and the tone in which he pronounced these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.
[145] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.
[146] See Newgate Calendar for 1758.
[147] B—— at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Fleet-street.
[148] Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His “Essays” and his “Advancement of Learning” are works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no positive discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers.
[149] Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that “Modest merit never can succeed!”
[150] During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte’s levee. Instead of the usual question, “Where have you served, Sir?” the First Consul immediately addressed him, “I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson’s Romance!” Here was a Consul. The young man’s uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of Richardson’s Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte.
[151] He is there called “Citizen Lauderdale.” Is this the present earl?
[The annotations have not necessarily been introduced at the first occurrence of any name, and no cross-references have been supplied in the notes to names which occur in the text more than once. Such information as the notes supply can be found with the help of the index.—References, where no other indication is given, will be understood to be to the work under discussion. The Shakespeare references are to the one-volume Globe edition.]
This lecture forms the introduction to the series on the “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.” Hazlitt might have derived hints for it from Schlegel, who speaks of the zeal for the study of the ancients, the extensive communication with other lands, the interest in the literature of Italy and Spain, the progress in experimental philosophy represented by Bacon, and contrasts the achievements of that age, in a vein which must have captured Hazlitt’s sympathy, with “the pretensions of modern enlightenment, as it is called, which looks with such contempt on all preceding ages.” The Elizabethans, he goes on to say, “possessed a fullness of healthy vigour, which showed itself always with boldness, and sometimes also with petulance. The spirit of chivalry was not yet wholly extinct, and a queen, who was far more jealous in exacting homage to her sex than to her throne, and who, with her determination, wisdom, and magnanimity, was in fact, well qualified to inspire the minds of her subjects with an ardent enthusiasm, inflamed that spirit to the noblest love of glory and renown. The feudal independence also still survived in some measure; the nobility vied with each other in the splendour of dress and number of retinue, and every great lord had a sort of small court of his own. The distinction of ranks was as yet strongly marked: a state of things ardently to be desired by the dramatic poet.” “Lectures on Dramatic Literature,” ed. Bohn, p. 349.
P. 1. Raleigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618), the celebrated courtier, explorer, and man of letters.
Drake, Sir Francis (1545-1595), the famous sailor, hero of the Armada.
Coke, Sir Edward (1552-1634), the great jurist, whose “Institutes,” better known as Coke upon Littleton, became a famous legal text-book.
Hooker, Richard (1553-1600), theologian, author of the “Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” (1593), a defense of the Anglican Church against the Puritans and notable also as a masterpiece of English prose.
P. 2. mere oblivion. “As You Like It,” ii, 7, 165.
poor, poor dumb names [mouths]. “Julius Cæsar,” iii, 2, 229.
Marston, John (1575-1634). In the third lecture on the “Age of Elizabeth,” Hazlitt calls him “a writer of great merit, who rose to tragedy from the ground of comedy, and whose forte was not sympathy, either with the stronger or softer emotions, but an impatient scorn and bitter indignation against the vices and follies of men, which vented itself either in comic irony or in lofty invective. He was properly a satirist. He was not a favourite with his contemporaries, nor they with him.” Works, V, 224. His chief tragedy is “Antonio and Mellida.”
Middleton, Thomas (1570?-1627), and Rowley, William (1585?-1642?). In the second lecture on the “Age of Elizabeth,” Hazlitt associates these two names. “Rowley appears to have excelled in describing a certain amiable quietness of disposition and disinterested tone of morality, carried almost to a paradoxical excess, as in his Fair Quarrel, and in the comedy of A Woman Never Vexed, which is written, in many parts, with a pleasing simplicity and naïveté equal to the novelty of the conception. Middleton’s style was not marked by any peculiar quality of his own, but was made up, in equal proportions, of the faults and excellences common to his contemporaries.... He is lamentably deficient in the plot and denouement of the story. It is like the rough draft of a tragedy with a number of fine things thrown in, and the best made use of first; but it tends to no fixed goal, and the interest decreases, instead of increasing, as we read on, for want of previous arrangement and an eye to the whole.... The author’s power is in the subject, not over it; or he is in possession of excellent materials which he husbands very ill.” Works, V, 214-5. For characters of other dramatists see notes to p. 326.
How lov’d. Pope’s “Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.”
P. 3. draw the curtain of time. Cf. “we will draw the curtain and show you the picture.” “Twelfth Night,” i, 5, 251.
within reasonable bounds. At this point Hazlitt digresses to reprove the age for its affectation of superiority over other ages and the passage, not being relevant, has been omitted.
less than smallest dwarfs. “Paradise Lost,” I, 779.
desiring this man’s art. Shakespeare’s Sonnets, XXIX.
in shape and gesture. “Paradise Lost,” I, 590.
Mr. Wordsworth says. See Sonnet entitled “London, 1802.”
P. 4. drew after him. “Paradise Lost,” II, 692.
Otway, Thomas (1652-1685), author of “Venice Preserved,” the most popular post-Shakespearian tragedy of the English stage. Hazlitt notes in this play a “power of rivetting breathless attention, and stirring the deepest yearnings of affection.... The awful suspense of the situations, the conflict of duties and passions, the intimate bonds that unite the characters together, and that are violently rent asunder like the parting of soul and body, the solemn march of the tragical events to the fatal catastrophe that winds up and closes over all, give to this production of Otway’s Muse a charm and power that bind it like a spell on the public mind, and have made it a proud and inseparable adjunct of the English stage.” Works, V, 354-5.
Jonson’s learned sock. Milton’s “L’Allegro.”
P. 6. The translation of the Bible. The first important 16th century translation of the Bible is William Tyndale’s version of the New Testament (1525) and of the Pentateuch (1530). The complete translations are those of Miles Coverdale (1535), the Great Bible (1539), the Geneva or Breeches Bible (1557), the Bishop’s Bible (1568), and the Rheims-Douay Bible—the New Testament (1582) and the Old Testament (1609-1610). Finally came the Authorized Version in 1611.
P. 8. penetrable stuff. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 36.
his washing, etc. St. John, xiii.
above all art, etc. Cf. Pope’s “Epistle to the Earl of Oxford”: “Above all Pain, all Passion, and all Pride.”
My peace. St. John, xiv, 27.
they should love. Ibid., xv, 12.
Woman, behold. Ibid., xix, 26.
his treatment of the woman. Ibid., viii, 1-12.
the woman who poured precious ointment. St. Matthew, xxvi, 6-13; St. Mark, xiv, 3-9.
his discourse with the disciples. St. Luke, xxiv, 13-31.
his Sermon on the Mount. St. Matthew, v-vii.
parable of the Good Samaritan and of the Prodigal Son. St. Luke, x, 25-37; xv, 11-32.
P. 9. Who is our neighbour. Ibid., x, 29.
to the Jews, etc. I Corinthians, i, 23.
P. 10. Soft as sinews. “Hamlet,” iii, 3. 71.
The best of men. Dekker, “The Honest Whore,” Part I, v, 2, sub fin.
P. 11. Tasso by Fairfax. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595), an Italian poet whose great epic, the “Gerusalemme Liberata,” was finished in 1574. The English translation by Edward Fairfax was published in 1600 as “Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem.”
Ariosto by Harrington. Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533), whose romantic epic, “Orlando Furioso,” was first published in 1516, and translated by Sir John Harrington in 1591.
Homer and Hesiod by Chapman. George Chapman (1559?-1634), poet and dramatist, published a complete translation of the “Iliad” in 1611, of the “Odyssey” in 1614, of Homer’s “Battle of Frogs and Mice” in 1624, and of “The Georgicks of Hesiod” in 1618.
Virgil. A complete English translation of the “Æneid” was made by Gavin Douglas, a Scottish poet (1474?-1522), and first printed in London in 1553. There was a translation of the second and fourth books into blank verse by the Earl of Surrey, published in 1557, but the one most in use was by Thomas Phaer (1510?-1560), which appeared incompletely in 1558 and 1562 and was completed by Thomas Twyne in 1583.
Ovid. There were a number of translators of Ovid during this period, chief of whom was Arthur Golding, whose version of the “Metamorphoses” appeared in 1565 and 1567. “The Heroides” were translated by George Turberville in 1567.
Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch. The chief work of Plutarch, a Greek writer of the first century, is the “Parallel Lives,” which was translated into French by Jacques Amyot in 1559. Sir Thomas North’s translation of Amyot’s version in 1579 was the most popular and influential of all Elizabethan translations.
P. 12. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313-1375), Italian poet and novelist. Among the English his best known work is the “Decameron,” a collection of a hundred prose tales. Versions of some of these stories appeared in various Elizabethan collections, such as the “Tragical Tales” translated by George Turberville in 1587. The first complete translation was published in 1620 and reprinted in the Tudor Translations in 1909.
Petrarch (1304-1374), Italian humanist and poet, whose sonnets were widely imitated by French and Italian poets during the Renaissance.
Dante (1265-1321). The author of the “Divine Comedy” was not very well known to Elizabethan readers. There was no English translation of his poem attempted till that of Rogers in 1782, and no version worthy of the name was produced till H. F. Cary’s in 1814.
Aretine. The name of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), an Italian satirist who called himself “the scourge of princes,” was well known in England, but there was no translation of his works.
Machiavel. Nicolo Machiavelli (1468-1527), a Florentine statesman, whose name had an odious association because of the supposedly diabolical policy of government set forth in his “Prince.” But this work was not translated till 1640. His “Art of War” had been rendered into English in 1560 and his “Florentine History” in 1595.
Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529). “Il Cortegiano,” setting forth the idea of a gentleman, was translated as “The Courtier” by Thomas Hoby in 1561 and was very influential in English life.
Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-1585), the chief French lyric poet of the sixteenth century, whose sonnets had considerable vogue in England.
Du Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste (1544-1590), author of “La Semaine, ou la Création du Monde” (1578), “La Seconde Semaine” (1584), translated as the “Divine Weeks and Works” (1592 ff.) by Joshua Sylvester.
P. 13. Fortunate fields. “Paradise Lost,” III, 568.
Prospero’s Enchanted Island. Eden’s “History of Travayle,” 1577, is now given as the probable source of Setebos, etc.
Right well I wote. “Faërie Queene,” II, Introduction, 1-3.
P. 14. Lear is founded. Shakespeare’s actual sources were probably Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “History of the Kings of Britain” (c. 1130) and Holinshed’s “Chronicle.”
Othello on an Italian novel, from the “Hecatommithi” of Giraldi Cinthio (1565).
Hamlet on a Danish, Macbeth on a Scottish tradition. The story of Hamlet is first found in Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish chronicler of the tenth century. Shakespeare probably drew it from the “Histoires Tragiques” of Belleforest. “Macbeth” was based on Holinshed’s “Chronicle of Scottish History.”
P. 15. those bodiless creations. “Hamlet,” iii, 4, 138.
Your face. “Macbeth,” i, 5, 63.
Tyrrell and Forrest, persons hired by Richard III to murder the young princes in the Tower. See “Richard III,” iv, 2-3.
thick and slab. “Macbeth,” iv, 1, 32.
snatched a [wild and] fearful joy. Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.”
P. 16. Fletcher the poet. John Fletcher the dramatist died of the plague in 1625.
The course of true love. “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” i, 1, 34.
The age of chivalry was not then quite gone. Cf. Burke: “Reflections on the French Revolution” (ed. Bohn, II, 348): “But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.”
fell a martyr. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), poet, soldier, and statesman, received his mortal wound in the thigh at the battle of Zutphen because, in emulation of Sir William Pelham, he threw off his greaves before entering the fight.
the gentle Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518?-1547), was distinguished as an innovator in English poetry as well as for his knightly prowess.
who prized black eyes. “Sessions of the Poets,” verse 20.
Like strength reposing. “’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.” Keats’s “Sleep and Poetry,” 237.
P. 17. they heard the tumult. “I behold the tumult and am still.” Cowper’s “Task,” IV, 99.
descriptions of hunting and other athletic games. See “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” iv, 1, 107 ff., and “Two Noble Kinsmen,” iii.
An ingenious and agreeable writer. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), author of “Shakespeare and his Times” (1817). In describing the life of the country squire Drake remarks: “The luxury of eating and of good cooking were well understood in the days of Elizabeth, and the table of the country-squire frequently groaned beneath the burden of its dishes; at Christmas and at Easter especially, the hall became the scene of great festivity.” Chap. V. (ed. 1838, p. 37).
Return from Parnassus. Hazlitt gives an account of this play in the “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,” Lecture V.
P. 18. it snowed. “Canterbury Tales,” Prologue, 345.
as Mr. Lamb observes, in a note to Marston’s “What You Will” in the “Specimens of Dramatic Literature” (ed. Lucas, 1, 44): “The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people.” Cf. Schlegel’s remark in the first note.
in act. “Othello,” i, I, 62.
description of a mad-house. “Honest Whore,” Part 1, v. 2.
A Mad World, My Masters, the title of a comedy by Middleton.
P. 19. Music and painting are not our forte. Cf. Hazlitt’s review of the “Life of Reynolds” (X, 186-87): “Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind’s eye: they felt them at their heart’s core, and there only. They did not translate their perceptions into the language of sense: they did not embody them in visible images, but in breathing words. They were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and the result, than the appearance of things, however imposing or expressive, at any given moment of time.... We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to them, as the ear is to sounds; that the sense of immediate delight is fixed deeper in the beauty of the object; that the greater life and animation of character gives a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the face, making finer subjects for history and portrait; and that the circumstances in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are more favourable to the study of nature and of the human form.”
like birdlime. “Othello,” ii, 1, 126.
P. 20. Materiam superabat opus. Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” II, 5.
Pan is a God. Lyly’s “Midas,” iv, 1.
This is the latter half of the lecture on Chaucer and Spenser from the “English Poets.”
P. 21. Spenser flourished, etc. Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599), served as secretary to Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland in 1577, and went again in 1580 as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, the Queen’s new deputy to Ireland. He was driven out by a revolt of the Irish in 1598. “A View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Irenæus ... in 1596” was first printed in 1633.
description of the bog of Allan. “Faërie Queene,” II, ix, 16.
Treatment he received from Burleigh. Hazlitt refers to this treatment specifically in the essay “On Respectable People” (XI, 435): “Spenser, kept waiting for the hundred pounds which Burleigh grudged him ‘for a song,’ might feel the mortification of his situation; but the statesman never felt any diminution of his sovereign’s favour in consequence of it.” The facts, as they are recorded in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” are as follows: “The queen gave proof of her appreciation by bestowing a pension on the poet. According to an anecdote, partly reported by Manningham, the diarist (Diary, p. 43), and told at length by Fuller, Lord Burghley, in his capacity of treasurer, protested against the largeness of the sum which the queen suggested, and was directed by her to give the poet what was reasonable. He received the formal grant of £50 a year in February 1590-1.” Cf. Spenser’s lines in “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,” 895 ff.
Though much later than Chaucer. The rest of this paragraph and most of the points elaborated in this lecture appeared in Hazlitt’s review of Sismondi’s “Literature of the South” in 1815 (X, 73 ff.).
Spenser’s poetry is all fairyland. In a lecture delivered in February, 1818, three years after Hazlitt’s remarks had appeared in the Edinburgh Review, Coleridge spoke as follows: “You will take especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative absence of all particular space or time in the Faery Queene. It is in the domains neither of history or geography; it is ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles; it is truly in the land of Faery, that is, of mental space. The poet has placed you in a dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there.” Works, IV, 250.
P. 22. clap on high. “Faërie Queene,” III, xii, 23.
In green vine leaves. I, iv, 22.
Upon the top. I, vii, 32.
P. 23. In reading the Faërie Queene, etc. See III, ix, 10; I, vii; II, vi, 5; III, xii.
and mask. “L’Allegro.”
And more to lull. I, i, 41.
honey-heavy dew of slumber. “Julius Cæsar,” ii, 1, 230.
Eftsoons they heard. II, xii, 70.
P. 25. House of Pride. I, iv, 4.
Cave of Mammon. II, vii, 28.
Cave of Despair. I, ix, 33.
the account of Memory. II, ix, 54.
description of Belphœbe. II, iii, 21.
story of Florimel. III, vii, 12.
Gardens of Adonis. III, vi, 29.
Bower of Bliss. II, xii, 42.
Mask of Cupid. III, xii.
Colin Clout’s Vision. VI, x, 10-27.
P. 26. Poussin, Nicolas (1594-1665), French painter. See Hazlitt’s delightful essay in “Table Talk” “On a Landscape by Nicholas Poussin.”
And eke. III, ix, 20.
the cold icicles. III, viii, 35.
That was Arion. IV, xi, 23-24.
Procession of the Passions. I, iv, 16 ff.
P. 28. Yet not more sweet. Southey’s “Carmen Nuptiale: Lay of the Laureate.” In the “Character of Milton’s Eve” in the “Round Table,” Hazlitt remarks that Spenser “has an eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not of the purest kind.”
P. 30. Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640), Flemish painter. See the paper on “The Pictures at Oxford and Blenheim” (Works, IX, 71): “Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some of our countryman Spenser’s splendid and voluptuous allegories. If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, (perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen mythology and Scripture history), he ought to go and study the principles of his design at Blenheim.”
the account of Satyrane. I, vi, 24.
by the help. III, x, 47.
the change of Malbecco. III, x, 56-60.
P. 31, n. That all with one consent. “Troilus and Cressida,” iii, 3, 176.
P. 32. High over hills. III, x, 55.
Pope who used to ask. Pope is also quoted in Spence’s “Anecdotes” (Section viii, 1743-4) as saying that “there is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one’s old age, as it did in one’s youth. I read the ‘Faërie Queene,’ when I was about twelve, with infinite delight, and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a year or two ago.” Waller-Glover.
the account of Talus. V, i, 12.
episode of Pastorella. VI, ix, 12.
P. 33. in many a winding bout. “L’Allegro.”