Signed ‘A. Z.’ in the Magazine.

434.

‘Buys golden opinions.’ Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

 

‘The learned pate,’ etc. Timon of Athens, Act IV. Sc. 3.

435.

Otway, etc. Otway, according to the familiar but probably untrue account first given by T. Cibber in The Lives of the Poets, was choked by the first mouthful of a roll which he bought with money given to him by a gentleman in a coffee-house.

 

‘For a song.’ The story of Lord Burghley’s ungenerous treatment of Spenser was first recorded by Fuller.

 

‘The time gives evidence of it.’ Cf. ‘This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

436.

‘What can ennoble sots,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Man, IV. 215–6.

 

‘All honourable men.’ Julius Cæsar, Act III. Sc. 2.

437.

‘Lives and fortunes men.’ For the old formula of ‘lives and fortunes’ see Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, II. 18 and note.)

ON FASHION

437.

‘Born of nothing,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 421.

 

‘His garment,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, III. xii. 8.

 

‘The great vulgar and the small.’ Cowley, Horace’s Odes, III. 1.

439.

‘The sign of an inward,’ etc. Misquoted from the Catechism.

440.

‘And are, when unadorned,’ etc. Thomson, The Seasons, Autumn, 206.

 

‘The city madam’ [woman], etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

 

‘The age is grown so picked,’ etc. Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.

441.

The story in Peregrine Pickle. Chap, lxxxvii.

 

‘Lisping and ambling,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 1.

442.

‘In a high or low degree.’ Cf. Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, 1. 137.

 

‘And thin partitions,’ etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 1. 164.

 

‘Kings are naturally,’ etc. Burke, Speech on Economical Reform (Works, Bohn, II. 106).

ON NICKNAMES

442.

‘Hæ nugæ,’ etc. Cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, 451–2.

443.

‘The priest,’ etc. The Beggar’s Opera, Act I. Sc. 1.

 

‘As infidels,’ etc. Hazlitt alludes to a note in the ‘Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin,’ denouncing Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey. See vol. X. (Contributions to the Edinburgh Review), p. 139.

444.

‘Sound them,’ etc. Julius Cæsar, Act I. Sc. 2.

 

An eminent character. Probably Stoddart, late editor of The Times. See post, p. 448.

 

‘Hath Britain all the sun,’ etc. Cymbeline, Act III. Sc. 4.

445.

‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

 

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

446.

‘Leave the will puzzled,’ etc. Ibid., II. 103.

 

‘Bring but a Scotsman,’ etc. Burns, The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer, etc. Postscript, St. 4.

447.

‘As rage,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act I. Sc. 3.

 

‘A nickname is the heaviest stone,’ etc. Cf. ‘It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature.’ Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia, IV. 23. See also vol. III. (Political Essays), p. 261.

 

As Canning pelted a noble lord, etc. Canning ridiculed Henry Addington (afterwards Lord Sidmouth) under the title of the ‘Doctor.’ His father was well known as a ‘mad’ doctor.

448.

‘With so small a web,’ etc. Othello, Act II. Sc. 1.

 

‘A starling,’ etc. 1 Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 3.

449.

Stat nominis umbra. Lucan, Pharsalia, I. 135.

THOUGHTS ON TASTE

450.

‘He had found a few pearls,’ etc. Œuvres, L. 58. July 19, 1776.

 

‘Rich as the oozy bottom,’ etc. Henry V., Act I. Sc. 2.

 

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

451.

‘Damns [condemns] him,’ etc. Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 3.

 

‘Lay their choppy fingers,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.

452.

‘Have built high towers,’ etc. Paradise Lost, I. 749.

 

‘Majestic though in ruin.’ Paradise Lost, II. 305.

 

Innocence ‘likest heaven.’ ‘O innocence deserving Paradise.’ Ibid., V. 445–6.

 

‘In tones,’ etc. Paradise Regained, IV. 255.

 

The author of the ‘Friend,’ etc. Coleridge may have said this to Hazlitt himself. He described Pope’s writings as ‘a conjunction disjunctive of epigrams’ (Biographia Literaria, chap. I.). For his views on French Tragedy, see ibid., Satyrane’s Letters, Letter II.

 

The author of the ‘Excursion,’ etc. See The Excursion, II. 484. Cf. vol. I. (The Round Table), p. 116 and note.

 

Note. Non satis est, etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 99.

453.

‘Not to admire,’ etc. ‘Not to admire is all the art I know,’ quoted by Pope from Creech’s translation of Horace. See Imitations of Horace, Book I. Epistle vi. I.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

454.

‘Hope told a flattering tale.’ An anonymous song sung to Paisiello’s famous air, ‘Nel cor più non mi sento,’ from La Molinara.

455.

‘Pierceable.’ ‘Not perceable with any power of any starr’ (The Faerie Queene, I. I. 7) is quoted elsewhere by Hazlitt.

 

‘The drops,’ etc. As You Like It, Act. II. Sc. 7.

456.

‘Swept and garnished.’ S. Matthew xii. 44.

 

‘Knowledge at each entrance,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 50.

 

Note. Mr. Allston. See ante, note to p. 189.

 

Note. ‘A temple,’ etc. Cf. 2 Corinthians, v. 1.

457.

‘Nor seem’d’ [appeared], ‘etc. Paradise Lost, I. 592–4.

 

Better than nothing. At this point in the Magazine there is a footnote by the editor, protesting against the view that Rogers’s Human Life is ‘nothing,’ and the Lyrical Ballads only ‘something.’ He adds ‘Who told this lively writer that Mr. Southey ever preferred the Excursion to Paradise Lost?’

 

The preference given, etc. A review of Human Life by Jeffrey in The Edinburgh Review (XXXI. 325) contains a contemptuous reference to ‘a Lakish ditty.’

457.

‘Carnation,’ etc. Henry V., Act II. Sc. 3.

458.

I know an admirer of Don Quixote, etc. This was Lamb. See vol. VII. (The Plain Speaker), p. 36.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

This conclusion of ‘Thoughts on Taste’ does not appear to have been published in the Edinburgh Magazine, or, so far as the editors have been able to discover, in any Magazine. In the Edinburgh Magazine the second essay is described as ‘a conclusion of some thoughts on the same subject, in our Number for October 1818.’ This third essay is reprinted from Sketches and Essays, where it was perhaps printed from a MS. or proof.

460.

Mr. Pratt. Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749–1814), whose ‘Sympathy, a Poem,’ was published anonymously in 1788.

 

‘That come’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

461.

‘And fit audience find,’ etc. Paradise Lost, VII. 31.

[HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE]

(1) Two letters from Hazlitt under the heading ‘Historical Illustrations of Shakespeare’ appeared in the number for January 1819 (vol. IV. p. 39) and ran as follows: ‘Mr. Editor, I daresay you will agree with me in thinking, that whatever throws light on the dramatic productions of Shakespeare, deserves to be made public. I have already, in the volume called Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays,^[81] shewn, by a reference to the passages in North’s translation of Plutarch, his obligations to the historian in his Coriolanus, and the noble way in which he availed himself of the lights of antiquity in composing that piece. I shall, with your permission, pursue the subject in the present and some future articles. The parallel is even more striking between the celebrated trial-scene in Henry VIII., and the following narrative of that event, as it actually took place, which is to be found in Cavendish’s Negociations of Cardinal Wolsey,’ [a long quotation from that work follows, and Hazlitt concludes]: ‘In another article I shall give some remarks on this subject, and the passages in Holingshed on which Macbeth is, in a great measure, founded. I am, Sir, your humble servant, W. Hazlitt. London, Nov. 13, 1818.’ Another letter on the same subject appeared in September 1819 (vol. V. p. 262): ‘Mr. Editor, The following passage in North’s translation of Plutarch will be found to have been closely copied in the scene between Brutus and his wife in Julius Cæsar’ [a long quotation from Plutarch—see Temple Classics edition, vol. IX. pp. 256–258—follows, and Hazlitt continues]: Again, the following curious account, extracted from Magellan’s Voyage to the South Seas, may throw light on the origin of the Tempest, and the character of Caliban. The mention of the god Setebos seems decisive of the identity of the source from which he borrowed.’ The letter concludes with an extract from Magellan’s Voyage.

ON THE PRESENT STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY ELOQUENCE

Many of Hazlitt’s numerous contributions to The London Magazine have been included in former volumes of the present edition. Of those printed in this volume, the essay ‘On the Spirit of Partisanship’ was reprinted in Sketches and Essays (1839), that ‘On Consistency of Opinion’ in Winterslow (1850). The remaining five are now republished for the first time.

Some interesting particulars about The London Magazine will be found in Mr. Bertram Dobell’s Sidelights on Charles Lamb (1903).

The essay ‘On the Present State of Parliamentary Eloquence’ is signed ‘T.’ and is No. IV. of the series entitled ‘Table Talk.’ Cf. the Bibliographical and Critical Notes to The Eloquence of the British Senate, vol. III. p. 389, to which this essay may be regarded as supplementary. Hazlitt had been a parliamentary reporter on The Morning Chronicle in 1813. The exact period does not seem to be ascertainable, but the present essay shows that he heard Plunket’s great speech on Catholic Emancipation (Feb. 25, 1813), and Sir James Mackintosh’s maiden speech (Dec. 14, 1813). With regard to Plunket’s speech there is a tradition that Hazlitt was so fascinated by it that he omitted to take any notes of it. See Memoirs, etc. (1867), I. 196. Most of the speakers here described are referred to more than once by Hazlitt elsewhere.

464.

‘Such a one,’ etc. The Letters of the younger Pliny, I. 20.

465.

‘Domestic treason,’ etc. Cf. Macbeth, Act III. Sc. 2.

466.

‘Make a wanton.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 2.

468.

‘Plays round the head,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Man, IV. 254.

469.

‘Kindle them,’ etc. Comus, 794–5.

470.

‘Ample scope,’ etc. Cf. Gray, The Bard, 51.

471.

‘Would lengthen [stretch] out,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.

472.

‘Grove nods to grove,’ etc. Pope, Moral Essays, IV. 117–8.

 

Roubilliac. Louis François Roubiliac (1695–1762), many of whose monuments are in Westminster Abbey. His remark quoted by Hazlitt was made to Reynolds. See Northcote’s Life of Sir J. Reynolds, p. 44.

 

Note 1. ‘It is a custom,’ etc. Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

 

Note 2. Mr. Phillips. Hazlitt presumably refers to Charles Phillips (1787?–1859), a florid Irish barrister, called to the English bar in 1821.

 

Note 3. ‘Like Juno’s swans,’ etc. As You Like It, Act I. Sc. 3.

473.

Mr. Banks. Henry Bankes (1757–1834), M.P. for Corfe Castle (1780–1826).

 

Mr. Charles Yorke. Charles Philip Yorke (1764–1834), who had been conspicuous in the stormy privilege debates of 1810. He was at this time M.P. for Liskeard.

 

Mr. Secretary Peele. Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), then Chief Secretary for Ireland and a strong opponent of Catholic Emancipation.

 

‘Without o’erflowing, full.’ Sir John Denham, Cooper’s Hill, 192.

 

It was but indifferently reported, etc. As to Hazlitt’s own difficulty in reporting it, see ante, introductory note to the essay.

474.

‘Come then, expressive silence,’ etc. Thomson, A Hymn, 118.

 

Note 2. ‘That speech,’ etc. This famous saying is usually credited to Talleyrand, but Voltaire had said much the same thing (Dialogues, XIV. Le Chapon et la Poularde).

 

Note 2. Isabey. Jean Baptiste Isabey’s (1767–1855) picture of The Congress of Vienna is at Windsor Castle.

475.

‘In many a winding bout,’ etc. L’Allegro, 139–140.

 

‘But ’tis the fall,’ etc. Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, I. 144–5.

476.

‘Out upon such half-faced fellowship.’ 1 Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 3.

 

Summum jus, etc. Cicero, De Officiis, I. 10.

477.

‘The punto,’ etc. Cf. The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 3, and Act II. Sc. 1; and Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Sc. 4.

 

‘No further seek,’ etc. Misquoted from Gray’s Elegy, 125–6.

478.

‘Hear him’s that now rise,’ etc. Cf. Burke, Speech on American Taxation, 1774 (Works, Bohn, I. 429).

 

‘Swinging slow,’ etc. Il Penseroso, 76.

 

‘Mother-wit,’ etc. Cf. Dryden, Alexander’s Feast, 166.

 

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

479.

‘What’s serious,’ etc. Cf. ante, p. 342.

 

‘A windy fan,’ etc. Cf. The Faerie Queene, III. xii. 8.

480.

‘Trifles,’ etc. Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

 

‘To make the worse,’ etc. Paradise Lost, Book II. 113–4.

 

‘Takes the rose,’ etc. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 4.

 

‘In the extremity of an oath.’ Probably an adaptation of a common Shakesperian expression.

[MR. CRABBE]

To The London Magazine for May 1821, Hazlitt contributed an essay on Crabbe, under the heading ‘Living Authors, No. V.’ The greater part of this essay was republished in The Spirit of the Age (see vol. IV. pp. 348 et seq.), but some passages were omitted which are here supplied.

In the Magazine the first paragraph (which differs to some extent from the opening of the Spirit of the Age essay) runs as follows:

‘The object of Mr. Crabbe’s writings seems to be, to show what an unpoetical world we live in: or rather, perhaps, the very reverse of this conclusion might be drawn from them; for it might be said, that if this is poetry, there is nothing but poetry in the world. Our author’s style might be cited as an answer to Audrey’s inquiry, “Is poetry a true thing?” If the most feigning poetry is the truest, Mr. Crabbe is of all poets the least poetical. There are here no ornaments, no flights of fancy, no illusions of sentiment, no tinsel of words. His song is one sad reality, one unraised, unvaried note of unavailing woe. Literal fidelity serves him in the place of invention; he assumes importance by a number of petty details; he rivets attention by being prolix. He not only deals in incessant matters of fact, but in matters of fact of the most familiar, the least animating, and most unpleasant kind; but he relies for the effect of novelty on the microscopic minuteness with which he dissects the most trivial objects—and, for the interest he excites on the unshrinking determination with which he handles the most painful. His poetry has an official and professional air. He is called out to cases of difficult births, of fractured limbs, or breaches of the peace; and makes out a parish register of accidents and offences. He takes the most trite, the most gross and obvious, and revolting part of nature, for the subject of his elaborate descriptions; but it is nature still, and Nature is a great and mighty goddess. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”^[82] It is well for the reverend author that it is so. Individuality is, in his theory, the only definition of poetry. Whatever is, he hitches into rhyme. Whoever makes an exact image of any thing on the earth below, however deformed or insignificant, according to him, must succeed and he has succeeded. Mr. Crabbe is one of the most popular and admired of our living writers. That he is so, can be accounted for on no other principle than the strong ties that bind us to the world about us and our involuntary yearnings after whatever in any manner powerfully and directly reminds us of it. His Muse is not one of the daughters of Memory, but the old toothless mumbling dame herself, doling out the gossip and scandal of the neighbourhood, recounting, totidem verbis et literis, what happens in every place in the kingdom every hour in the year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels. But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a village oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us acquainted with persons and things just as they happened, and giving us a local interest in all she knows and tells. The springs of Helicon are, in general, supposed to be a living stream, bubbling and sparkling, and making sweet music as it flows; but Mr. Crabbe’s fountain of the Muses is a stagnant pool, dull, motionless, choked up with weeds and corruption; it reflects no light from heaven, it emits no cheerful sound:—his Pegasus has not floating wings, but feet, cloven feet that scorn the low ground they tread upon;—no flowers of love, of hope, or joy spring here, or they bloom only to wither in a moment; our poet’s verse does not put a spirit of youth in every thing, but a spirit of fear, despondency and decay; it is not an electric spark to kindle and expand, but acts like the torpedo touch to deaden and contract: it lends no rainbow tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the heart; it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view the current of life runs slow, dull, cold, dispirited, half-underground, muddy, and clogged with all creeping things. The world is one vast infirmary; the hill of Parnassus is a penitentiary; to read him is a penance; yet we read on! Mr. Crabbe is a fascinating writer. He contrives to “turn diseases to commodities,” and makes a virtue of necessity. He puts us out of conceit with this world, which perhaps a severe divine should do; yet does not, as a charitable divine ought, point to another. His morbid feelings droop and cling to the earth; grovel, where they should soar; and throw a dead weight on every aspiration of the soul after the good or beautiful. By degrees, we submit and are reconciled to our fate, like patients to a physician, or prisoners in the condemned cell. We can only explain this by saying, as we said before, that Mr. Crabbe gives us one part of nature, the mean, the little, the disgusting, the distressing; that he does this thoroughly, with the hand of a master; and we forgive all the rest!’—

The essay then proceeds as in The Spirit of the Age, with a few trifling variations, down to the words ‘inscribed to the Rutland family!’ (vol. IV. p. 351, last line), after which there is the following long passage, omitted from that work [the quotations are indicated in brackets]:

‘But enough of this; and to our task of quotation.’ The poem of The Village sets off nearly as follows:

‘“No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,” etc. [The Village, i. 49–62].

‘This plea, we would remark by the way, is more plausible than satisfactory. By associating pleasing ideas with the poor, we incline the rich to extend their good offices to them. The cottage twined round with real myrtles, or with the poet’s wreath, will invite the hand of kindly assistance sooner than Mr. Crabbe’s “ruin’d shed”; for though unusual, unexpected distress excites compassion, that which is uniform and remediless produces nothing but disgust and indifference. Repulsive objects (or those which are painted so) do not conciliate affection, or soften the heart.’

‘“Lo! where the heath with withering brake grown o’er,” etc. [The Village, i. 63–84].^[83]

‘This is a specimen of Mr. Crabbe’s taste in landscape-painting, of the power, the accuracy, and the hardness of his pencil. If this were merely a spot upon the canvas, which might act as a foil to more luxuriant and happier scenes, it would be well. But our valetudinarian “travels from Dan to Beersheba, and cries it is all barren.” Or if he lights “in a favouring hour” on some more favoured spot, where plenty smiles around, he then turns his hand to his human figures, and the balance of the account is still very much against Providence, and the blessings of the English Constitution. Let us see.

‘“But these are scenes where Nature’s niggard hand,” etc. [The Village, I. 131–153.]^[84]

‘Grant all this to be true; nay, let it be told, but not told in “mincing poetry.”^[85] Next comes the Workhouse, and this, it must be owned, is a master-piece of description, and the climax of the author’s inverted system of rural optimism.

‘“Thus groan the Old, till by disease opprest,” etc. [The Village, I. 226 to the end of Book I.]^[86]

‘To put our taste in poetry, and the fairness of our opinion of Mr. Crabbe’s in particular, to the test at once, we will confess, that we think the two lines we have marked in italics:

worth nearly all the rest of his verses put together, and an unanswerable condemnation of their general tendency and spirit. It is images, such as these, that the polished mirror of the poet’s mind ought chiefly to convey; that cast their soothing, startling reflection over the length of human life, and grace with their amiable innocence its closing scenes; while its less alluring and more sombre tints sink in, and are lost in an absorbent ground of unrelieved prose. Poetry should be the handmaid of the imagination, and the foster-nurse of pleasure and beauty: Mr. Crabbe’s Muse is a determined enemy to the imagination, and a spy on nature.

‘Before we proceed, we shall just mark a few of those quaintnesses of expression, by which our descriptive poet has endeavoured to vary his style from common prose, and so far has succeeded. Speaking of Quarle he says:

‘To compare small things with great, this last touch of minute description is not unlike that in Theseus’s description of his hounds:

‘As an instance of the curiosa felicitas in descriptive allusion (among many others) take the following. Our author, referring to the names of the genteeler couples, written in the parish register, thus “morals” on the circumstance:

‘“How fair these names, how much unlike they look,” etc. [The Parish Register, II. 283–300.]

‘The Library and the Newspaper, in the same volume, are heavy and common-place. Mr. Crabbe merely sermonises in his didactic poetry. He must pierce below the surface to get at his genuine vein. He is properly himself only in the petty and the painful. The Birth of Flattery is a homely, incondite lay. The author is no more like Spenser than he is like Pope. The ballad of Sir Eustace Grey is a production of great power and genius. The poet, in treating of the wanderings of a maniac, has given a loose to his conception of imaginary and preternatural evils. But they are of a sort that chill, rather than melt the mind; they repel instead of haunting it. They might be said to be square, portable horrors, physical, external, not shadowy, not malleable; they do not arise out of any passion in the mind of the sufferer, nor touch the reader with involuntary sympathy. Beds of ice, seas of fire, shaking bogs, and fields of snow, are disagreeable matters of fact; and though their contact has a powerful effect on the senses, we soon shake them off in fancy. Let any one compare this fictitious legend with the unadorned, unvarnished tale of Peter Grimes, and he will see in what Mr. Crabbe’s characteristic strength lies. He is a most potent copyist of actual nature, though not otherwise a great poet. In the case of Sir Eustace, he cannot conjure up any phantoms from a disordered imagination; but he makes honest Peter, the fisherman of the Borough, see visions in the mud where he had drowned his ’prentice boys, that are as ghastly and bewitching as any mermaid. We cannot resist giving the scene of this striking story, which is in our author’s exclusive manner. “Within that circle none durst walk but he.”^[93]

‘“Thus by himself compell’d to live each day,” etc. [The Borough, Letter XXII. 171–204.]’

The last paragraph, following this quotation, is the same as in The Spirit of the Age (vol. IV. pp. 352–3).

483.

Matthews. Charles Mathews (1776–1835), the comedian, whose famous ‘At Homes’ Hazlitt refers to.

 

‘Sea, earth, and air.’ Cf. ‘And shot my being through earth, sea, and air.’ Coleridge, France, An Ode, 103.

 

He bestrides his art, etc. Haydon was pleased with these words which he quoted in a letter to a friend extracted in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s Four Generations of a Literary Family (I. 234). Haydon wrongly refers to Hazlitt’s article as having appeared in The New Monthly Magazine. See also Haydon’s Life, etc. (ed. T. Taylor, I. 418), where, speaking of this picture, Haydon says ‘Except the Christ’s head and the St. John sleeping it was the worst picture ever escaped my pencil.’

 

‘Ample room,’ etc. Gray, The Bard, 51.

484.

‘A hand,’ etc. Donne, The Storm, 3–4.

485.

The celebrated Madonna, etc. See vol. IX. p. 67.

POPE, LORD BYRON, AND MR. BOWLES

For Byron’s Letters to Murray ‘On the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope’ and a full account of the controversy see Byron’s Letters and Journals (ed. Prothero), V. Appendix iii. Cf. a passage in Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Aristocracy of Letters,’ vol. VI. (Table Talk), pp. 210, 223, and notes.

487.

Jem Belcher. James Belcher (1781–1811), who defeated Andrew Gamble in 1800.

 

In the Preface to his Tragedy. Marino Faliero.

 

‘A tale of bawdry.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

488.

‘Our sweet voices.’ Coriolanus, Act II. Sc. 3.

489.

‘Most small faults.’ Cf. King Lear, Act I. Sc. 4.

 

‘Ends of verse,’ etc. Butler, Hudibras, I. iii. 1011–2.

490.

‘Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms.’ The Earl of Rochester, On a Parish Clerk with a bad voice.

492.

‘Full of wise saws,’ etc. As You Like It, Act II. Sc. 7.

494.

‘So perfumed,’ etc. Antony and Cleopatra, Act II. Sc. 2.

495.

‘Roaming the illimitable ocean wide.’ Cf. ‘Roaming the illimitable waters round.’ Wordsworth, The Female Vagrant, 175.

 

‘Ill at these numbers.’ Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

 

‘Damnable iteration in him.’ 1 Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 2.

 

‘Keeps distance due.’ Paradise Lost, III. 578.

496.

‘Luscious,’ etc. Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.

 

The grand-daughters of Mr. Coutts. The two Misses Burdett, presumably the daughters of Sir Francis Burdett and therefore grand-daughters of Thomas Coutts the banker, were presented at court on May 3, 1821, but Hazlitt’s meaning is a little obscure.

 

The Editor of the New Monthly Magazine. Campbell, the poet.

 

‘High arbiter,’ etc. Paradise Lost, II. 908–9.

 

‘All the art of art is flown.’ Cf. the note on ‘all the life of life was flown’ in vol. VI. (Table Talk), p. 24.

497.

‘The stones and tower,’ etc. Cf. Peter Bell, 856 et seq.

497.

‘Host of human life.’ Byron in his Letter speaks of having met Bowles at the house ‘of our venerable host of Human Life,’ i.e. Rogers, the Poet.

498.

‘Of amber-headed snuff-box,’ etc. Pope, The Rape of the Lock, IV. 123–4.

499.

‘Denote no foregone conclusion.’ Othello, Act III. Sc. 3.

 

‘How far,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act V. Sc. 1.

500.

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

501.

Almanach des gourmands. See The Edinburgh Review, XXXV. 53.

502.

‘Circumscription and confine,’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 2.

 

‘The poor man’s only music.’ Coleridge, Frost at Midnight, 29.

503.

‘The earth hath bubbles,’ etc. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 3.

 

‘Loud-hissing urn.’ Cowper, The Task, The Winter Evening, 38.

 

‘Enforc’d to seek,’ etc. The Faerie Queene, I. i. 7 and 8.

504.

‘A thing of life.’ ‘She walks the waters like a thing of life.’ Byron, The Corsair, I. iii.

 

‘Behold the lilies,’ etc. Cf. S. Matthew, vi. 28–9.

 

‘Daffodils,’ etc. A Winter’s Tale, Act IV. Sc. 4.

505.

‘Hail, adamantine steel,’ etc. Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden, Part I, II. 201–6.

 

‘Launched,’ etc. The Rape of the Lock, II. 4.

 

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

506.

‘Let me not,’ etc. The Canterbury Tales, The Clerke’s Tale, 880.

 

‘Pope was not assuredly,’ etc. The rest of the essay is quoted from a former paper ‘On the question whether Pope was a poet.’ See ante, pp. 431–2 and notes.

ON CONSISTENCY OF OPINION

Published with some omissions in Winterslow (1850).

508.

‘Servetur ad imum,’ etc. Horace, Ars Poetica, 126–7.

509.

‘It is the eye of childhood,’ etc. Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 2.

 

‘Where the treasure is,’ etc. S. Matthew vi. 21.

 

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

 

Mr. ——. Northcote, no doubt, who told Haydon that he was so delighted with the Catalogue that he ‘ordered a long candle and went to bed to read it in ecstasy.’ Life of Haydon (ed. T. Taylor), I. 376.

511.

‘Sots,’ etc. Pope, An Essay on Man, IV. 215.

 

‘I had rather hear,’ etc. Cf. 1 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 1.

 

‘Amaze the very faculties,’ etc. Hamlet, Act II. Sc. 2.

512.

Mr. Wordsworth has hardly, etc. This passage, down to ‘Constitutional Association-monger’ (p. 513) was omitted from Winterslow.

 

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

 

Applied for an injunction, etc. A hit at Southey. See vol. III. (Political Essays), pp. 192 et seq. and notes.

 

One stroke of his prose-pen, etc. Hazlitt probably refers to Wordsworth’s Two Addresses to the Freeholders of Westmoreland, published in 1818.

 

‘The wreck of matter,’ etc. Addison, Cato, v. I.

514.

Contra audentior ito. Æneid, VI. 95.

 

‘Whose genius,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, The Garden, 255–6.

 

‘Like a worm,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 506.

 

‘There’s sympathy.’ The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act II. Sc. 1.

515.

‘Ancestral voices.’ Coleridge, Kubla Khan, 29.

515.

‘He looks up with awe,’ etc. Cf. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed Payne, II. 101).

 

‘I’ve heard of hearts unkind,’ etc. Wordsworth, Simon Lee, 93–6.

 

‘Every thing by turns,’ etc. Cf. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, I. 548.

 

A young student, etc. This passage, to the end of the paragraph, was omitted in Winterslow. It would seem from the last sentence that Sir John Stoddart is referred to.

 

‘Perpetual volley,’ etc. Cf. ‘Arrowy sleet, skin-piercing volley.’ Cowper, The Task, The Winter Morning Walk, 140–1.

516.

—— always sets himself, etc. The reference seems clearly to be to Northcote.

 

‘Though truth be truth,’ etc. Cf. Othello, Act I. Sc. 1.

517.

‘Pride elevates,’ etc. Cf. ‘Hope elevates, and joy brightens his crest.’ Paradise Lost, IX. 633–4.

 

‘From morn to noon,’ etc. Ibid. I. 742–4.

518.

‘In all things,’ etc. Cf. Burke’s Speech on Economical Reform (Feb. 11, 1780), Works, Bohn, II. 105.

 

‘To have done,’ etc. Troilus and Cressida, Act III. Sc. 3.

 

‘With one consent,’ etc. Ibid.

 

‘Like a fashionable host,’ Ibid.

519.

‘Noise,’ etc. Cf. Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

 

‘Tell me your company,’ etc. Cf. the well-known proverb quoted in Don Quixote, Part II. chap. xxiii.

520.

‘Linked [bound] each to each,’ etc. Wordsworth, ‘My heart leaps up,’ etc., 9.

ON THE SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP

Published in Sketches and Essays (1839).

521.

‘Ever strong,’ etc. King John, Act III. Sc. 1.

522.

‘In their generation,’ etc. Cf. S. Luke xvi. 8.

 

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

 

‘Stuff o’ the conscience.’ Othello, Act I. Sc. 2.

 

‘Turned to the stroke,’ etc. Cowper, The Task, The Time-Piece, 324–5.

523.

‘Though sun and moon,’ etc. Comus, 374–5.

 

‘To do a great right,’ etc. The Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Sc. 1.

524.

‘The very arm,’ etc. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, Act I. Sc. 5.

 

‘Entire affection scorneth [hateth],’ etc. The Faerie Queene, I. VIII. 40.

 

‘Our bane,’ etc. Addison, Cato, V. 1.

 

‘Screwed to the sticking place.’ Cf. Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 7.

 

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

525.

‘To grinning scorn.’

‘To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,

And grinning infamy.’

Gray, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 73–4.

526.

‘In peace,’ etc. Henry V., Act III. Sc. 1.

 

‘Those who are not for us,’ etc. Cf. S. Matthew, xii. 30.

527.

‘Letting our frail thoughts,’ etc. Cf. Lycidas, 153.

 

‘Nothing but vanity,’ etc. Cf. ante, note to p. 373.

530.

‘Our withers are unwrung.’ Hamlet, Act III. Sc. 2.

 

‘Green-eyed,’ etc. Cf. Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, V. 142).