_They hiss the Beggar’s Opera in America._ _The Times_ of Dec.
10, 1817, quotes from New York papers dated Oct. 27 an
account of the refusal of a New York audience to hear _The
Beggar’s Opera_.
474. _The Vampyre._ By James Robinson Planché (1796-1880), adapted
from ‘Le Vampire.’
_The celebrated story._ ‘The Vampyre,’ by John William Polidori
(1795-1821), was published in 1819. Byron had intended
to write a story on the same subject. See _Letters and
Journals_, ed. Prothero, III. 446-453, and IV. 286 and 296.
‘_See how the moon_,’ _etc._ _The Merchant of Venice_, Act V.
Sc. 1.
475. ‘_The Diamond Ring._’ Adapted by Theodore Hook from _He would
be a Soldier_ (1786), and produced Aug. 12, 1820.
476. ‘_Misery_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 1.
‘_A load_,’ _etc._ _Henry VIII._, Act III. Sc. 2.
‘_Palsied eld._’ _Measure for Measure_, Act III. Sc. 1.
477. ‘_At last he rose_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, 192-3.
‘_As broad_,’ _etc._ Misquoted from _Macbeth_, Act III. Sc. 4.
‘_In act_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 1.
‘_The immediate jewel_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._, Act III. Sc. 3.
‘_Solid pudding_,’ _etc._ Pope, _The Dunciad_, I. 54.
‘_Tenth_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Essay on Man_, I. 246.
_The Calendar of Nature._ Hazlitt seems to refer to Leigh
Hunt’s _The Months_, originally published in the _Literary
Pocket Book_, 1819-20, and there described as a ‘Calendar of
the Seasons.’
‘_Bound our brows withal._’ ‘To grace thy brows withal.’
_Richard III._, Act V. Sc. 5.
_In January_, _etc._ It will be noticed that Hazlitt does not
give an accurate account of the dates and subjects of his
articles.
478. ‘_Being at Illminster_,’ _etc._ Possibly on a visit to John
Hunt, who had retired to the neighbourhood of Taunton. Mr.
W. C. Hazlitt mentions (_Memoirs_, I. xviii.) a report
that Hazlitt contributed for a short time to the _Taunton
Courier_.
Note. ‘_Or mouth_,’ _etc._ _Endymion_, II. 405-6.
Note. ‘_Beautified._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.
Note. ‘_Oh Scotland_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘O Jephthah, judge of
Israel,’ etc. _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.
479. _An able article written for us._ No. X., published in the
October (not September) number.
_No Table-Talk._ The _Table-Talks_ were of course the work of
Hazlitt himself.
_The Lion’s Head._ The name given to two or three editorial
paragraphs prefixed to _The London Magazine_. In the number
for November, 1820, the editor announced for the next number
‘a _chef d’œuvre_ of a _Table Talk_—the best yet, we think.’
This was No. V. ‘On the Pleasure of Painting.’
‘_Has not left her peer._’ _Lycidas_, 9.
‘_Constrain his genius_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘That Love will not submit
to be controlled by mastery.’ Wordsworth, _The Excursion_,
VI. 163-4.
‘_With mighty wings_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 20-22.
480. _Encyclopædia Metropolitana._ The publication of this work
began in 1817. Coleridge drew up the scheme, and contributed
the ‘Preliminary Treatise on Method.’
Note. Hazlitt refers to _The Fancy: a Selection from the
Poetical Remains of the late Peter Corcoran, of Gray’s Inn,
Student at Law_, a ‘jeu d’esprit’ by John Hamilton Reynolds,
reviewed in _The London Magazine_, July 1820.
‘_The up-turned eyes_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Sc.
2.
481. _Barnaby Brittle._ Founded on Moliere’s _George Dandin_, and
produced at Covent Garden in 1791.
_Disjecta membra poetæ._ ‘Disjecti membra poëtæ.’ Horace,
_Satires_, I. 4-62.
‘_Outlasts a thousand storms_,’ _etc._ Beaumont and Fletcher’s
_Philaster_, Act V. Sc. 3.
482. _Paulo majora canamus._ Virgil, _Eclogues_, IV. 1.
‘_The lily drooping_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘Than is the lilie upon his
stalke grene.’ _The Canterbury Tales_, The Knighte’s Tale,
1036.
‘_The flowers_,’ _etc._ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Sc. 4.
Note. See Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 409
n.
483. _Macready’s Zanga._ Macready first appeared as Zanga in Young’s
_Revenge_ on October 30, 1820.
‘_A wife_,’ _etc._ _The Revenge_, Act IV. Sc. 1.
_Wallace._ By C. E. Walker, November 14, 1820.
484. _The Deaf Lover._ By Frederick Pilon (1750-1788), originally
produced in 1780 and revived at Covent Garden in 1819.
‘_But in Adam’s ear_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VIII. 1-2.
APPENDIX
I
(_See introductory note on p. 487_)
ON MODERN COMEDY
_To the EDITOR of the MORNING CHRONICLE._
SIR,—I believe it seldom happens that we confess ourselves to be in
the dark on any subject, till we are pretty well persuaded that no
one else is able to dispel the gloom in which we are involved.
Convinced, that where our own sagacity has failed, all further
search must be vain, we resign ourselves implicitly to all the
self-complacency of conscious ignorance, and are very little obliged
to any one, who comes to disturb our intellectual repose. Something
of this kind appears to have happened to your Correspondent on the
subject of the Drama. Indeed, Sir, I should have been very cautious
of attempting to remove the heap of doubts and difficulties which
seemed to oppress him, but that I thought so obvious a truth as the
connection between the manners of the age and comedy could not
startle ‘the plainest understanding;’ but the moment this obvious
truth is pointed out to him, he complains that he is ‘dazzled with
excess of light,’[79] and puts a ready moveable screen of common
places before him to keep it out. And then, Sir, I observe, that to
fortify himself in his scruples, and lest he should be forced to
give up his sceptical solution of sceptical doubts, he has
confounded characters with you, Sir, by a dextrous ventriloquism
puts his sentiments into your mouth, and has contrived to get the
balance into his own hands, and ‘smiles delighted with the eternal
poise.’[80]
After complimenting the writer of a former article, by saying that
‘_his_ powers have not languished in the dense atmosphere of logic
and criticism,’ (a compliment which I am ready to return with equal
sincerity), your Correspondent proceeds—‘We confess it did not occur
to us, that it is because so many excellent comedies have been
written that so few are written at present. To our plain
understanding, on the first statement of this circumstance, a
conclusion directly the reverse would have presented itself. We
should have been inclined to apply in this instance the analogy
which we find to hold in almost every other, that relative
perfection is only the result of repeated efforts, and that, as in
the case of an individual artist, till his powers are impaired by
age, every successive attempt is in general an improvement on the
preceding, so in the art itself what has once been well done,
usually leads to something better.’—On this passage I might observe,
first, that I am always apt to distrust these modest pretensions to
plain understanding. They signify nothing more than that an opinion
is contrary to our own, and that we will not take the trouble to
examine it. And besides, we all of us refine as much and as well as
we are able; only we are not willing that others should refine more
than we do. Secondly, Sir, the analogy to which your Correspondent
appeals in support of his hypothesis, that the arts are uniformly
progressive, totally fails; it applies to science, and not to art.
Farther, your Correspondent observes, ‘That the production of many
good comedies should render us more severe towards bad ones, and bad
poets more averse from exposing themselves, would appear much more
likely than that exactly the reverse of all this should happen. We
naturally expect from a landlord, who at the commencement of a
repast regales us with elegant wines, that he will not place homely
ale or insipid porter before us towards the end of it. It was
D’Alembert, we believe, who suggested as a great improvement in
modern literature, that all our books should be collected together
every fifty years, for the purpose of making a bonfire of them,’ &c.
All this may be very true, but I really do not see what it has to do
with the question.
‘For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.’[81]
I am afraid he will think I am at cross-purposes with his theories,
but it is really because they appear to me at cross-purposes with
facts. For instance, the bad poets do not in the present case seem
very backward to expose themselves; but what is it that hinders the
good ones (rising like so many Phœnixes out of the ashes of their
predecessors) from claiming the admiration that is due to them?
Surely, if every succeeding writer improved upon the last, and ‘what
was once well done always led to something better,’ the managers
would not damp the rising flame. The progress of comedy among us
appears to have been just the reverse of what your Correspondent
would have anticipated; namely, from elegant wines to insipid
porter, and our critic (if I mistake him not), would make the matter
still worse by diluting this insipid stuff with water, in order that
it may become still more tasteless, and according to him, more
elegant and refined. Our elder comic writers provided choice wines,
strong liquors and rich viands of all kinds for the entertainment of
the public, while our author, seated at the full banquet, like
Christopher Sly at the Duke’s table, calls out incessantly for ‘a
pot of the smallest ale.’[82] As to the project of D’Alembert, I
have no great objection to it. Only I would propose as a compromise
that we should let our present stock remain on hand, and that
nothing but reviews and newspaper criticisms should be written for
the next fifty years, by which means I shall keep possession of
Jonson, Farquhar, Wycherley, Congreve, and Smollett, and in the mean
time your correspondent may take a surfeit of Mr. Tobin’s _Honey
Moon, The Duenna_ (for whom I have a great respect), and Madame de
Stael. I cannot, however, agree with him in the building up of his
chronological ladder of taste. Congreve did not improve upon
Wycherley, because he was not indebted to him, and Sheridan was
indebted to Congreve without improving upon him. Your Correspondent,
Sir, writes very well about these authors, but as if he had not read
them. As to the hardship of which he complains, that our fathers
should have laughed for themselves and for us too, it is but the
common course of nature. It is not a misfortune peculiar to
ourselves. Even Madame de Stael is forced to go a hundred and fifty
years back, for an author to insult the English with, on their want
of comic genius, and of the knowledge of those traits peculiar to
the refinements of French manners, but which _yet paint human nature
in every country_. I agree with your Correspondent in his first
letter, that though we cannot write good Comedies, we can assign
good reasons why they are not written; and I think we have, between
us, made out the reason of the present want of dramatic writers,
though I doubt if we should, both of us together, make even half a
Menander. But he will have all the advantages on his side, and be as
merry as he is wise. Why, after he has laughed folly out of
countenance, is he determined to laugh at her as much as ever, and
to make good sense or absurdity equally subservient to his spleen?
He is bent on laughing at all events—at every thing or nothing; and
if he does not find things ridiculous, he will make them so. The
fantastic resolution of _Biron_, ‘to laugh a twelvemonth in an
hospital,’[83] does not exceed the preposterous ambition of your
Correspondent, to extract the soul of mirth out of the schools of
philosophy. We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If he or
I were to put ourselves into the stage, to go from Salisbury to
London, I dare say we should not meet with the same number of odd
accidents or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befel _Parson
Adams_; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the
conveniences of modern travelling, do we complain of the want of
adventures? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach:
our limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may
grow drowsy; but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or any
very sad accident, at out journey’s end. But your Correspondent sees
nothing in the progress of modern manners and characters but a
vague, abstract progression from grossness to refinement, marked on
a graduated scale of human perfectibility. This sweeping distinction
appears to him to explain satisfactorily the whole difference
between all sorts of manners, and all kinds and degrees of dramatic
excellence. These two words stand him instead of other ideas on the
texture of society, or the nature of the dramatic art. He is not,
however, quite consistent on this subject, for in one place he says,
that ‘the stock of folly in the world is in no danger of being
diminished,’ and in the next sentence, that there is a progression
in society, an age of grossness and an age of refinement, and he
only wonders that the progress of the stage does not keep pace with
it. Now the reason why I do not share his wonder is, that though I
think the quantity of dull, dry, serious, incorrigible folly in the
world is in no danger of being diminished, yet I think the stock of
lively, dramatic, entertaining, laughable folly is, and necessarily
must be, diminished by the progress of that _mechanical_ refinement
which consists in throwing our follies, as it were, into a common
stock, and moulding them in the same general form. Our peculiarities
have become insipid sameness; our eccentricity servile imitation;
our wit, wisdom at second-hand; our prejudices indifference; our
feelings not our own; our distinguishing characteristic the want of
all character. We are become a nation of authors and readers, and
even this distinction is confounded by the mediation of the
reviewers. We all follow the same profession, which is criticism,
each individual is every thing but himself, not one but all
mankind’s epitome, and the gradations of vice and virtue, of sense
and folly, of refinement and grossness of character, seem lost in a
kind of intellectual _hermaphroditism_. But on this _tabula rasa_,
according to your Correspondent, the most lively and sparkling hues
of comedy may be laid. His present reasoning gives a very different
turn to the question he at first proposed. He appears to have set
out with a theory of his own about the production of comic
excellence, in which it was entirely regulated by the state of the
market, and to have supposed that as long as authors continued to
write plays, and managers to accept them, that is, so long as the
thing answered in the way of trade, Comedy would go on pretty much
as it had hitherto done, to the end of the world. But finding that
this was not exactly the case, he takes his stand near the avenues
leading to the manager’s door, and happening to see a young man of
worth and talents, with great knowledge of the world, and of the
refinements of polished society, come out with his piece in his
hand, and a face of disappointment, he is no longer at a loss for
the secret of the decline of Comedy among us, and proceeds
cautiously to hint his discovery to the world. But it being
suggested to him that the change of manners, produced partly by the
stage itself, and the total disappearance of the characters which
before formed the very life and soul of Comedy, might have something
to do with the decline of the Stage, he will not hear a word of it,
but says, that this circumstance, so far from shewing why our modern
Comedies _are not so good_ as the old ones, proves that they _ought
to be better_; that the more we are become like one another, or like
nothing, the less distinction of character we have, the greater
discrimination must it require to bring it out; that the less
ridiculous our manners become, the more scope do they afford for art
and ingenuity in discovering our weak sides and shades of infirmity;
and that the greatest sameness and monotony must in the end produce
the most exquisite variety. For a plain man, this is very well. It
is on the same principle, that some writers have contended that
Scotland is more fertile than England, the excellence of the crop
being in proportion to the barrenness of the soil. What a pity it
is, that so ingenious a theory should not have the facts on its
side; and that the perfection of satire should not be found to keep
pace with the want of materials. It is rather too much to assume on
a mere hypothesis, that the present manners are equally favourable
to the production of the highest comic excellence, till they do
produce it. Even in France, where encouragement is given to the
noblest and most successful exertions of genius by the sure prospect
of profit to yourself or your descendants, every time your piece is
acted in any corner of the empire, to the latest posterity, we find
the best critics going back to the grossness and illiberality of the
age of Louis XIV. for the production of the best comedies; which is
rather extraordinary, considering the infinitely refined state of
manners in France, and the infinite encouragement given to dramatic
talent. But has it never occurred to your Correspondent, as a
solution of this difficulty, that there is a difference between
refinement and imbecility, between general knowledge and personal
elegance, between metaphysical subtlety and stage-effect? Does he
think all manners, all kinds of folly, and all shades of character
equally fit for dramatic representation? Does he not perceive that
there is a point where minuteness of distinction becomes laborious
foolery, and where the slenderness of the materials must baffle the
skill and destroy the exertions of the artist? He insists, indeed,
on pulling off the mask of folly, by some ingenious device, though
she has been stripped of it long ago; and forced to compose her
features into a decent appearance of gravity; and he next proceeds
to apply a microscope of a new construction, to detect the freckles
on her face and inequalities in her skin, in order to communicate
his amusing discoveries to the audience, as some philosophical
lecturer does the result of his chemical experiments on the
decomposition of substances to the admiring circle. There is no end
of this. Your Correspondent confesses that ‘we are drilled into a
sort of stupid decorum and apparent uniformity,’ but this he
converts into an advantage. His penetrating eye is infinitely
delighted with the picturesque appearance of so many imperceptible
deviations from a right line, and mathematical inclinations from the
perpendicular. The picture of the Flamborough Family, painted with
each an orange in his hand, must have been a masterpiece of nice
discrimination and graceful inflection. Upon this principle of going
to work the wrong way, and of making something out of nothing, we
must reverse all our rules of taste and common sense. No Comedy can
be perfect till the _dramatis personæ_ might be reversed without
creating much confusion: or the ingredients of character ought to be
so blended and poured repeatedly from one vessel into another that
the difference would be perceptible only to the finest palate. Thus,
if Molière had lived in the present day, he would not have drawn his
Avare, his Tartuffe and his Misanthrope with those strong touches
and violent contrasts which he has done, but with those delicate
traits which are common to human nature in general, that is, his
Miser without avarice, his Hypocrite without design, and his
Misanthrope without disgust at the vices of mankind. Or instead of
the heroines of his _School for Women_ (_Alithea_ and _Miss Peggy_,
which Wycherley has contrived to make the English understand) we
should have had two sentimental young ladies brought up much in the
same way, with nice shades of difference, which we should have been
hardly able to distinguish, subscribing to the same circulating
library, reading the same novels and poems, one preferring Gertrude
of Wyoming to The Lady of the Lake, and the other The Lady of the
Lake to Gertrude of Wyoming, differing in their opinions on points
of taste or systems of mineralogy, and delivering dissertations on
the arts with Corinna of Italy.
Considering the difficulty of the task which by our author’s own
account is thus imposed upon modern writers, may we not suppose this
very difficulty to have operated to deter them from the pursuit of
dramatic excellence. But I suspect that your Correspondent has taken
up his complaint of the deficiency of refined Comedy too hastily,
and that he need not despair of finding some modelled upon his
favourite principles. Guided by his theory he should have sought
them out in their remote obscurity, and have obtruded them on the
public eye. He might have formed a new era of criticism, and have
claimed the same merit as Voltaire, when he discovered that the
English had one good Tragedy, Cato. Your Correspondent, availing
himself of the idea that frivolity, taste, and elegance are the
same, might have shewn how much superior _The Heiress_ of Burgoyne
was to _The Confederacy_, or _The Way of the World_, and _The Basil_
of _Miss Bailey_, to _Romeo and Juliet_. He would have found ample
scope in the blooming desert for endless discoveries—of beauties of
the most shadowy kind, of fancies ‘wan that hang the pensive
head,’[84] of evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of
delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce
supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of all thought, and an
artificial dearth of sense, spirit, wit and character! I can assure
your Correspondent, there has been no want of Comedies to his taste;
but the taste of the public was not so far advanced. It was found
necessary to appeal to something more palpable: and so, in this
interval of want of characters in real life, the actors amuse
themselves with taking off one another.
But your Correspondent will have it that there are different degrees
of refinement in wit and pleasantry, and he seems to suppose that
the best of our old Comedies are no better than the coarse jests of
a set of country clowns—a sort of _comedies bourgeoises_, compared
with the admirable productions which might and ought to be written.
Even our modern dramatists, he suspects, are not so familiar with
high life as they ought to be. ‘They have not seen the Court, and if
they have not seen the Court their manner must be damnable.’[85]
Leaving him to settle this last point with the poetical Lords and
Ladies of the present day, I am afraid he has himself fallen into
the very error he complains of, and would degrade genteel Comedy
from a high Court Lady into a literary prostitute. What does he mean
by refinement? Does he find none in _Millamant_, and her morning
dreams, in _Sir Roger de Coverly_ and his widow? Did not Congreve,
Wycherley, and Suckling approach tolerably near ‘the ring of mimic
Statesmen, and their merry King?’[86] Does he suppose that their
fine ladies were mere rustics, because they did not compose
metaphysical treatises, or their fine gentlemen inexperienced tyros,
because they had not been initiated into the infinitely refined
society of Paris and of Baron Grimm? Is there no distinction between
an Angelica, and a Miss Prue, a Valentine, a Tattle, and a Ben?
Where in the annals of modern literature will he find anything more
refined, more deliberate, more abstracted in vice than the Nobleman
in Amelia? Are not the compliments which Pope paid to his
friends,[87] to St. John, Murray, and Cornbury, equal in taste and
elegance to those which passed between the French philosophers and
their patrons?—Are there no traits in Sterne?—Is not Richardson
minute enough?—Must we part with Sophia Western and Clarissa for the
loves of the plants and the triangles?—The beauty of these writers
in general was, that they gave every kind and gradation of
character, and they did this, because their portraits were taken
from life. They were true to nature, full of meaning, perfectly
understood and executed in every part. Their coarseness was not mere
vulgarity, their refinement was not a mere negation of precision.
They refined _upon_ characters, instead of refining them _away_.
Their refinement consisted in working out the parts, not in leaving
a vague outline. They painted human nature as it was, and as they
saw it with individual character and circumstances, not human nature
in general, abstracted from time, place and circumstance. Strength
and refinement are so far from being incompatible, that they assist
each other, as the hardest bodies admit of the finest touches and
the brightest polish. But there are some minds that never understand
any thing, but by a negation of its opposite. There is a strength
without refinement, which is grossness, as there is a refinement
without strength or effect, which is insipidity. Neither are
grossness and refinement of manners inconsistent with each other in
the same period. The grossness of one class adds to the refinement
of another, by circumscribing it, by rendering the feeling more
pointed and exquisite, by irritating our self-love, &c. There can be
no great refinement of character where there is no distinction of
persons. The character of a gentleman is a _relative term_. The
diffusion of knowledge, of artificial and intellectual equality,
tends to level this distinction, and to confound that nice
perception and high sense of honour, which arises from
conspicuousness of situation, and a perpetual attention to personal
propriety and the claims of personal respect. Your Correspondent, I
think, mistakes refinement of individual character for general
knowledge and intellectual subtlety, with which it has little more
to do than with the dexterity of a rope-dancer or juggler. The age
of chivalry is gone with the improvements in the art of war, which
superseded personal courage, and the character of a gentleman must
disappear with those refinements in intellect which render the
advantages of rank and situation common almost to any one. The
bag-wig and sword followed the helmet and the spear, when these
outward insignia no longer implied a real superiority, and were a
distinction without a difference. Even the grossness of a state of
mixed and various manners receives a degree of refinement from
contrast and opposition, by being defined and implicated with
circumstances. The _Upholsterer_ in _The Tatler_ is not a mere
vulgar politician. His intense feeling of interest and curiosity
about what does not at all concern him, displays itself in the
smallest things, assumes the most eccentric forms, and the
peculiarity of his absurdity masks itself under various shifts and
evasions, which the same folly, when it becomes epidemic and
universal as it has since done, would not have occasion to resort
to. In general it is only in a state of mere barbarism or
indiscriminate refinement that we are to look for extreme grossness
or complete insipidity. Our modern dramatists indeed have happily
contrived to unite both extremes. _Omne tulit punctum._[88] On a
soft ground of sentiment they have daubed in the gross absurdities
of modern manners void of character, have blended metaphysical
waiting maids with jockey noblemen, and the humours of the four in
hand club, and fill up the piece by some vile and illiberal
caricature of particular individuals known on the town.
To return once more to your Correspondent, who condemns all this as
much as I do. He is for refining Comedy into a pure intellectual
abstraction, the shadow of a shade. Will he forgive me if I suggest,
as an addition to his theory, that the drama in general might be
constructed on the same abstruse and philosophical principles. As he
imagines that the finest Comedies may be formed without individual
character, so the deepest Tragedies might be composed without real
passion. The slightest and most ridiculous distresses might be
improved by the help of art and metaphysical aid, into the most
affecting scenes. A young man might naturally be introduced as the
hero of a philosophic drama, who had lost the gold medal for a prize
poem; or a young lady, whose verses had been severely criticized in
the reviews. Nothing could come amiss to this rage for speculative
refinement; or the actors might be supposed to come forward, not in
any character, but as a sort of Chorus, reciting speeches on the
general miseries of human life, or reading alternately a passage out
of Seneca’s Morals or Voltaire’s Candide. This might by some be
thought a great improvement on English Tragedy, or even on the
French.
In fact, Sir, the whole of our author’s reasoning proceeds on a
total misconception of the nature of the Drama itself. It confounds
philosophy with poetry, laboured analysis with intuitive perception,
general truth with individual observation. He makes the comic muse a
dealer in riddles, and an expounder of hieroglyphics, and a taste
for dramatic excellence, a species of the second sight. He would
have the Drama to be the most remote, and it is the most substantial
and real of all things. It represents not only looks, but motion and
speech. The painter gives only the former, looks without action or
speech, and the mere writer only the latter, words without looks or
action. Its business and its use is to express the thoughts and
character in the most striking and instantaneous manner, in the
manner most like reality. It conveys them in all their truth and
subtlety, but in all their force and with all possible effect. It
brings them into action, obtrudes them on the sight, embodies them
in habits, in gestures, in dress, in circumstances, and in speech.
It renders every thing overt and ostensible, and presents human
nature not in its elementary principles or by general reflections,
but exhibits its essential quality in all their variety of
combination, and furnishes subjects for perpetual reflection.
But the instant we begin to refine and generalise beyond a certain
point, we are reduced to abstraction, and compelled to see things,
not as individuals, or as connected with action and circumstances,
but as universal truths, applicable in a degree to all things, and
in their extent to none, which therefore it would be absurd to
predicate of individuals, or to represent to the senses. The habit,
too, of detaching these abstract species and fragments of nature,
destroys the power of combining them in complex characters, in every
degree of force and variety. The concrete and the abstract cannot
co-exist in the same mind. We accordingly find, that to genuine
comedy succeed satire and novels, the one dealing in general
character and description, and the other making out particulars by
the assistance of narrative and comment. Afterwards come traits, and
collections of anecdotes, bon mots, topics, and quotations, &c.
which are applicable to any one, and are just as good told of one
person as another. Thus the trio in the Memoirs of M. Grimm,
attributed to three celebrated characters, on the death of a fourth,
might have the names reversed, and would lose nothing of its effect.
In general these traits, which are so much admired, are a sort of
systematic libels on human nature, which make up, by their malice
and _acuteness_, for their want of wit and sense.
I have already taken notice of the quotation from Madame de Stael,
with which your Correspondent concludes. I can only oppose to it the
authority of Sterne and Sir Richard Steele, who thought that the
excellence of the English in comedy was in a great measure owing to
the originality and variety of character among them [See Sentimental
Journey, and Tatler, No. .][89] With respect to that extreme
refinement of taste which the fair Author arrogates to the French,
they are neither entirely without it, nor have they so much as they
think. The two most refined things in the world are the story of the
Falcon in Boccacio, and the character of Griselda in Chaucer, of
neither of which the French would have the smallest conception,
because they do not depend on traits, or minute circumstances, or
turns of expression, but in infinite simplicity and truth, and an
everlasting sentiment. We might retort upon Mad. de Stael what she
sometimes says in her own defence, That we understand all in other
writers that is worth understanding. As to Moliere, he is quite out
of the present question; he lived long before the era of French
philosophy and refinement, and is besides almost an English author,
quite a _barbare_, in all in which he excels. He was unquestionably
one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever lived, a man of
infinite wit, gaiety, and invention, full of life and laughter, the
very soul of mirth and whim. But it cannot be denied, that his plays
are in general mere farces, without real nature or refined
character, totally void of probability. They could not be carried on
a moment without a perfect collusion between the parties, to wink at
impossibilities, by contradicting and acting in defiance of all
common sense. For instance, take the _Medecin malgre lui_, in which
a common wood-cutter voluntarily takes upon himself, and supports
through a long play, the character of a learned physician, without
exciting the least suspicion, but which is, notwithstanding the
absurdity of the plot, one of the most laughable and truly comic
things that can be imagined. The rest of his lighter pieces are of
the same description—mere gratuitous fictions and exaggerations of
nature. As to his serious Comedies, as the _Tartuffe_ and
_Misanthrope_, nothing can be more objectionable, and the chief
objection to them is that nothing is more hard than to read them
through. They have all the improbability and extravagance of the
rest, united with all the tedious common-place prosing of French
declamation. What can exceed the absurdity of the _Misanthrope_, who
leaves his mistress after every proof of her attachment and
constancy, merely because she will not submit to the _technical
formality_ of going to live with him in a desert? The characters
which she gives of her friends in the beginning of the play are very
admirable satires, but not Comedy. The same remarks apply in a
greater degree to the _Tartuffe_. The long speeches and reasonings
in this Play may be very good logic, or rhetoric, or philosophy, or
any thing but Comedy. They are dull pompous casuistry. The
improbability is monstrous. This play is indeed invaluable, as a
lasting monument of the credulity of the French to all verbal
professions of virtue or wisdom, and its existence can only be
accounted for from that astonishing and tyrannical predominance
which words exercise over things in the mind of every Frenchman.
In short, Sir, I conceive, that neither M. de Stael nor your
Correspondent has hit upon the true theory of refinement. To suppose
that we can go on refining for ever with vivacity and effect,
embodying vague abstractions, and particularising flimsy
generalities,—‘shewing the very body of the age, its form and
pressure,’[90] though it has neither form nor pressure left,—seems
to me the height of speculative absurdity. That undefined ‘frivolous
space,’ beyond which Madame de Stael regards as ‘the region of taste
and elegance,’ is, indeed, nothing but the very Limbo of Vanity, the
land of chiromancy and occult conceit, and paradise of fools, where,
according to your correspondent,
‘None yet, but store hereafter from the earth
Shall, like aerial vapours, upward rise
Of all things transitory and vain.’[91]
I am, Sir, your humble servant, H.
APPENDIX
II
(_See note to p. 217._)
ON MR KEAN’S IAGO
MR. EXAMINER,—I was not at all aware that in the remarks which I
offered on Mr. Kean’s _Iago_ my opinions would clash with those
already expressed by the respectable writer of the Theatrical
Examiner: for I did not mean to object to ‘the gay and careless air
which Mr. Kean threw over his representation of that arch villain,’
but to its being nothing but carelessness and gaiety; and I thought
it perfectly consistent with a high degree of admiration of this
extraordinary actor, to suppose that he might have carried an
ingenious and original idea of the character to a paradoxical
extreme. In some respects, your Correspondent seems to have mistaken
what I have said; for he observes that I have entered into an
analysis to shew, ‘that _Iago_ is a malignant being, who hates his
fellow-creatures, and doats on mischief and crime as the best means
of annoying the objects of his hate.’ Now this is the very reverse
of what I intended to shew; for so far from thinking that _Iago_ is
‘a ruffian or a savage, who pursues wickedness for its own sake,’ I
am ready to allow that he is a pleasant amusing sort of gentleman,
but with an over-activity of mind that is dangerous to himself and
others; that so far from hating his fellow-creatures, he is
perfectly regardless of them, except as they may afford him food for
the exercise of his spleen, and that ‘he doats on mischief and
crime,’ not ‘as the best means of annoying the objects of his hate,’
but as necessary to keep himself in that strong state of excitement
which his natural constitution requires, or, to express it
proverbially, in _perpetual hot water_. Iago is a man who will not
suffer himself or any one else to be at rest; he has an insatiable
craving after action, and action of the most violent kind. His
conduct and motives require some explanation; but they cannot be
accounted for from his interest or his passions,—his love of
himself, or hatred of those who are the objects of his persecution:
these are both of them only the occasional pretext for his cruelty,
and are in fact both of them subservient to his love of power and
mischievous irritability. I repeat, that I consider this sort of
unprincipled self-will as a very different thing from common
malignity; but I conceive it also just as remote from indifference
or levity. In one word, the malice of _Iago_ is not _personal_, but
_intellectual_. Mr. Kean very properly got rid of the brutal
ferocity which had been considered as the principle of the
character, and then left it without any principle at all. He has
mistaken the want of moral feeling, which is inseparable from the
part, for constitutional ease and general indifference, which are
just as incompatible with it. Mr. Kean’s idea seems to have been,
that the most perfect callousness ought to accompany the utmost
degree of inhumanity; and so far as relates to callousness to moral
considerations, this is true; but that is not the question. If our
Ancient had no other object, or principle of action but his
indifference to the feelings of others, he gives himself a great
deal of trouble to no purpose. If he has nothing else to set him in
motion, he had much better remain quiet than be broken on the rack.
Mere carelessness and gaiety, then, do not account for the
character. But Mr. Kean acted it with nearly the same easy air with
which Mr. Braham sings a song in an opera, or with which a comic
actor delivers a side-speech in an after-piece.
But the character of _Iago_, says your Correspondent, has nothing to
do with the manner of acting it. We are to look to the business of
the play. Is this then so very pleasant, or is the part which _Iago_
undertakes and executes the perfection of easy comedy? I should
conceive quite the contrary. The rest of what your Correspondent
says on this subject is ‘ingenious, but not convincing.’ It amounts
to this, that _Iago_ is a hypocrite, and that a hypocrite should
always be gay. This must depend upon circumstances. _Tartuffe_ was a
hypocrite, yet he was not gay: _Joseph Surface_ was a hypocrite, but
grave and plausible: _Blifil_ was a hypocrite, but cold, formal and
reserved. The hypocrite is naturally grave, that is, thoughtful, and
dissatisfied with things as they are, plotting doubtful schemes for
his own advancement and the ruin of others, studying far-fetched
evasions, double-minded and double-faced.—Now all this is an effort,
and one that is often attended with disagreeable consequences; and
it seems more in character that a man whose invention is thus kept
on the rack, and his feelings under painful restraint, should rather
strive to hide the wrinkle rising on his brow, and the malice at his
heart, under an honest concern for his friend, or the serene and
regulated smile of steady virtue, than that he should wear the
light-hearted look and easy gaiety of thoughtless constitutional
good humour. The presumption therefore is not in favour of the
lively, laughing, comic mien of hypocrisy. Gravity is its most
obvious resource, and, with submission, it is quite as effectual a
one. But it seems, that if _Iago_ had worn this tremendous mask,
‘the gay and idle world would have had nothing to do with him.’ Why,
indeed, if he had only intended to figure at a carnival or a
ridotto, to dance with the women or drink with the men, this
objection might be very true. But _Iago_ has a different scene to
act in, and has other thoughts in his contemplation. One would
suppose that _Othello_ contained no other adventures than those
which are to be met with in _Anstey’s Bath Guide_,[92] or in one of
_Miss Burney’s_ novels. The smooth smiling surface of the world of
fashion is not the element he delights to move in: he is the busy
meddling fiend ‘who rides in the whirlwind, and directs the
storm,’[93] triumphing over the scattered wrecks, and listening to
the shrieks of death. I cannot help thinking that Mr. Kean’s _Iago_
must be wrong, for it seems to have abstracted your Correspondent
entirely from the subject of the play. Indeed it is one great proof
of Mr. Kean’s powers, but which at the same time blinds the audience
to his defects, that they think of little else in any play but of
the part he acts. ‘What! a gallant Venetian turned into a musty
philosopher! Go away, and beg the reversion of Diogenes’ tub! Go
away, the coxcomb _Roderigo_ will think you mighty dull, and will
answer your requests for money with a yawn; the cheerful spirited
_Cassio_ will choose some pleasanter companion to sing with him over
his cups; the fiery _Othello_ will fear lest his philosophic Ancient
will be less valorously incautious in the day of battle, and that he
will not storm a fort with the usual uncalculating intrepidity.’
Now, the coxcomb _Roderigo_ would probably have answered his demands
for money with a yawn, though he had been ever so facetious a
companion, if he had not thought him useful to his affairs. He
employs him as a man of business, as a dextrous, cunning, plotting
rogue, who is to betray his master and debauch his wife, an
occupation for which his good humour or apparent want of thought
would not particularly qualify him. An accomplice in knavery ought
always to be a solemn rogue, and withal a casuist, for he thus
becomes our better conscience, and gives a sanction to the roguery.
_Cassio_ does not invite _Iago_ to drink with him, but is prevailed
upon against his will to join him; and _Othello_ himself owes his
misfortunes, in the first instance, to his having repulsed the
applications of _Iago_ to be made his lieutenant. He himself affects
to be blunt and unmannerly in his conversation with _Desdemona_.
There is no appearance of any cordiality towards him in _Othello_,
nor of his having been a general favourite (for such persons are not
usually liked), nor of his having ever been employed but for his
understanding and discretion. He every where owes his success to his
intellectual superiority, and not to the pleasantness of his
manners. At no time does _Othello_ put implicit confidence in
_Iago’s_ personal character, but demands his proofs; or when he
founds his faith on his integrity, it is from the gravity of his
manner: ‘Therefore these stops of thine fright me the more,’
_etc._[94]
Your Correspondent appeals to the manners of women of the town, to
prove that ‘there is a fascination in an open manner.’ I do not see
what this has to do with _Iago_. Those who promise to give only
pleasure, do not of course put on a melancholy face, or ape the
tragic muse. The Sirens would not lull their victims by the
prophetic menaces of the Furies. _Iago_ did not profess to be the
harbinger of welcome news. The reference to Milton’s _Satan_ and
_Lovelace_ is equally misplaced. If _Iago_ had himself endeavoured
to seduce _Desdemona_, the cases would have been parallel.
_Lovelace_ had to seduce a virtuous woman to pleasure, by presenting
images of pleasure, by fascinating her senses, and by keeping out of
sight every appearance of danger or disaster. _Iago_, on the
contrary, shews to _Othello_ that he has ‘a monster in his
thought’;[95] and it is his object to make him believe this by dumb
show, by the knitting of his brows, by stops and starts, _etc._
before he is willing to commit himself by words. Milton’s devil also
could only succeed by raising up the most voluptuous and delightful
expectations in the mind of Eve, and by himself presenting an
example of the divine effects produced by eating of the tree of
knowledge. Gloom and gravity were here out of the question. Yet how
does Milton describe the behaviour of this arch-hypocrite, when he
is about to complete his purpose?
‘She scarce had said, though brief, when now more bold
The Tempter, but with shew of zeal and love
To man and indignation at his wrong,
New part puts on, and as to passion moved,
Fluctuates disturb’d yet comely and in act
Rais’d, as of some great matter to begin,
As when of old some orator renown’d
In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence
Flourish’d, since mute, to some great cause address’d,
Stood in himself collected, while each part,
Motion, each act, won audience ere the tongue;
Sometimes in height began, as no delay
Of preface brooking through his zeal of right;
So standing, moving, or to height upgrown,
The Tempter all-impassion’d thus began:’[96]
If this impassioned manner was justifiable here, where the serpent
had only to persuade Eve to her imagined good, how much more was it
proper in _Iago_, who had to tempt _Othello_ to his damnation? When
he hints to _Othello_ that his wife is unfaithful to him—when he
tells his proofs, at which _Othello_ swoons, when he advises him to
strangle her, and undertakes to dispatch _Cassio_ from his zeal in
‘wronged Othello’s service,’[97] should he do this with a smiling
face, or a face of indifference? If a man drinks or sings with me,
he may perhaps drink or sing much as Mr. Kean drinks or sings with
_Roderigo_ and _Cassio_: if he bids me good day, or wishes me a
pleasant journey, a frank and careless manner will well become him;
but if he assures me that I am on the edge of a precipice, or
waylaid by assassins, or that some tremendous evil has befallen me,
with the same fascinating gaiety of countenance and manner, I shall
be little disposed to credit either his sincerity or friendship or
common sense.
Your Correspondent accounts for the security and hilarity of _Iago_,
in such circumstances, from his sense of superiority and his
certainty of success. First, this is not the account given in the
text, which I should prefer to any other authority on the subject.
Secondly, if he was quite certain of the success of his experiment,
it was not worth the making, for the only provocation to it was the
danger and difficulty of the enterprise; and at any rate, whatever
were his feelings, the appearance of anxiety and earnestness was
necessary to the accomplishment of his purpose. ‘He should assume a
virtue, if he had it not.’[98] Besides, the success of his
experiment was not of that kind even which has been called
_negative_ success, but proved of a very tragical complexion both to
himself and others. I can recollect nothing more to add, without
repeating what I have before said, which I am afraid would be to no
purpose. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
W. H.
Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE
-----
Footnote 1:
A child that has hid itself out of the way in sport, is under a
great temptation to laugh at the unconsciousness of others as to
its situation. A person concealed from assassins, is in no danger
of betraying his situation by laughing.
Footnote 2:
His words are—‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand
consists quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused,
and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where
there is but the least difference, consists in a great measure the
exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be
observed in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be
given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a
great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the
clearest judgment or deepest reason. For wit lying mostly in the
assemblage of ideas, and putting them together with quickness and
variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity,
thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the
fancy; judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in
separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found
the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude,
and by affinity to take one thing for another.’ (_Essay_, vol. i.
p. 143.) This definition, such as it is, Mr. Locke took without
acknowledgment from Hobbes, who says in his Leviathan, ‘This
difference of quickness in imagining is caused by the difference
of men’s passions, that love and dislike some one thing, some
another, and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some
another, and are held to and observe differently the things that
pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of
thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on,
but either in what they be like one another, or in what they be
unlike, those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such
as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit,
by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that
observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called
distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing;
in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good
judgment; and particularly in matter of conversation and business,
wherein times, places, and persons are to be discerned, this
virtue is called discretion. The former, that is, fancy, without
the help of judgment, is not commended for a virtue; but the
latter, which is judgment or discretion, is commended for itself,
without the help of fancy.’ _Leviathan_, p. 32.
Footnote 3:
Unforced.
Footnote 4:
See his Lives of the British Poets, Vol. I.
Footnote 5:
‘And have not two saints power to use
A greater privilege than three Jews?’
* * * * *
‘Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud it deafens mortals’ ears,
As wise philosophers have thought,
And that’s the cause we hear it not.’
Footnote 6:
‘No Indian prince has to his palace
More followers than a thief to the gallows.’
Footnote 7:
‘And in his nose, like Indian king,
He (Bruin) wore for ornament a ring.’
Footnote 8:
‘Whose noise whets valour sharp, like beer
By thunder turned to vinegar.’
Footnote 9:
‘Replete with strange hermetic powder,
That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder.’
* * * * *
‘His tawny beard was th’ equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and die so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile:
The upper part thereof was whey,
The nether orange mixed with grey.
This hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns;
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government;
And tell with hieroglyphic spade
Its own grave and the state’s were made.’
* * * * *
‘This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age;
And therefore waited on him so,
As dwarfs upon knight errants do.’
Footnote 10:
‘And straight another with his flambeau,
Gave Ralpho o’er the eyes a damn’d blow.’
* * * * *
‘That deals in destiny’s dark counsels,
And sage opinions of the moon sells.’
Footnote 11:
‘The mighty Tottipottimoy
Sent to our elders an envoy.’
Footnote 12:
‘For Hebrew _roots_, although they’re found
To flourish most in barren ground.’
Footnote 13:
‘Those wholesale critics that in coffee-
Houses cry down all philosophy.’
Footnote 14:
‘This we among ourselves may speak,
But to the wicked or the weak
We must be cautious to declare
Perfection-truths, such as these are.’
Footnote 15:
The following are nearly all I can remember.—
‘Thus stopp’d their fury and the basting
Which towards Hudibras was hasting.’
It is said of the bear, in the fight with the dogs—
‘And setting his right foot before,
He raised himself to shew how tall
His person was above them all.’
* * * * *
‘At this the knight grew high in chafe,
And staring furiously on Ralph,
He trembled and look’d pale with ire,
Like ashes first, then red as fire.’
* * * * *
‘The knight himself did after ride,
Leading Crowdero by his side,
And tow’d him if he lagged behind,
Like boat against the tide and wind.’
* * * * *
‘And rais’d upon his desperate foot,
On stirrup-side he gazed about.’
* * * * *
‘And Hudibras, who used to ponder
On such sights with judicious wonder.’
* * * * *
The beginning of the account of the procession in Part II. is as
follows:—
‘Both thought it was the wisest course
To wave the fight and mount to horse,
And to secure by swift retreating,
Themselves from danger of worse beating:
Yet neither of them would disparage
By uttering of his mind his courage.
Which made ’em stoutly keep their ground,
With horror and disdain wind-bound.
And now the cause of all their fear
By slow degrees approach’d so near,
They might distinguish different noise
Of horns and pans, and dogs and boys,
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub.’
Footnote 16:
Love in a Tub, and She Would if She Could.
Footnote 17:
Why Pope should say in reference to him, ‘Or _more wise_ Charron,’
is not easy to determine.
Footnote 18:
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 function 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._ 1. _Chap._ xxi.
Footnote 19:
No. 125.
Footnote 20:
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.
Footnote 21:
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.
Footnote 22:
The Fool of Quality, David Simple, and Sidney Biddulph, written
about the middle of the last century, belong to the ancient
_regime_ of novel-writing. Of the Vicar of Wakefield I have
attempted a character elsewhere.
Footnote 23:
The Waiter drawing the cork, in the Rent-day, is another
exception, and quite Hogarthian.
Footnote 24:
When Meg Merrilies says in her dying moments—‘Nay, nay, lay my
head to the East,’ what was the East to her? Not a reality but an
idea of distant time and the land of her forefathers; the last,
the strongest, and the best that occurred to her in this world.
Her gipsy slang and dress were quaint and grotesque; her
attachment to the Kaim of Derncleugh and the wood of Warrock was
romantic; her worship of the East was _ideal_.
Footnote 25:
I have only to add, by way of explanation on this subject, the
following passage from the Characters of Shakspeare’s Plays:
‘There is a certain stage of society in which people become
conscious of their peculiarities and absurdities, affect to
disguise what they are, and set up pretensions to what they are
not. This gives rise to a corresponding style of comedy, the
object of which is to detect the disguises of self-love, and to
make reprisals on these preposterous assumptions of vanity, by
marking the contrast between the real and the affected character
as severely as possible, and denying to those, who would impose on
us for what they are not, even the merit which they have. This is
the comedy of artificial life, of wit and satire, such as we see
it in Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, &c. To this succeeds a state
of society from which the same sort of affectation and pretence
are banished by a greater knowledge of the world, or by their
successful exposure on the stage; and which by neutralizing the
materials of comic character, both natural and artificial, leaves
no comedy at all—but _the sentimental_. Such is our modern comedy.
There is a period in the progress of manners anterior to both
these, in which the foibles and follies of individuals are of
nature’s planting, not the growth of art or study; in which they
are therefore unconscious of them themselves, or care not who
knows them, if they can but have their whim out; and in which, as
there is no attempt at imposition, the spectators rather receive
pleasure from humouring the inclinations of the persons they laugh
at, than wish to give them pain by exposing their absurdity. This
may be called the comedy of nature, and it is the comedy which we
generally find in Shakspeare.’ P. 256.
Footnote 26:
See Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees.
Footnote 27:
This ingenious and popular writer is since dead.
Footnote 28:
See the Fudge Family, edited by Thomas Brown, jun.
Footnote 29:
The defects in the upper tones of Mr. Kean’s voice were hardly
perceptible in his performance of Shylock, and were at first
attributed to hoarseness.
Footnote 30:
For a fuller account of Mr. Kean’s Othello, see one of the last
articles in this volume.
Footnote 31:
An old gentleman, riding over Putney-bridge, turned round to his
servant, and said, ‘Do you like eggs, John?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ Here the
conversation ended. The same gentleman riding over the same bridge
that day year, again turned round, and said, ‘How?’ ‘Poached,
sir,’ was the answer.—This is the longest pause upon record, and
has something of a dramatic effect, though it could not be
transferred to the stage. Perhaps an actor might go so far, on the
principle of indefinite pauses, as to begin a sentence in one act,
and finish it in the next.
Footnote 32:
The Examiner.
Footnote 33:
It will be seen, that this severe censure of Munden is nearly
reversed in the sequel of these remarks, and on a better
acquaintance with this very able actor in characters more worthy
of his powers.
Footnote 34:
In the last edition of the works of a modern Poet, there is a
Sonnet to the King, complimenting him on ‘his royal fortitude.’
The story of the Female Vagrant, which very beautifully and
affectingly describes the miseries brought on the lower classes by
war, in bearing which the said ‘royal fortitude’ is so nobly
exercised, is very properly struck out of the collection.
Footnote 35:
The scene where the screen falls and discovers Lady Teazle, is
without a rival. Perhaps the discovery is delayed rather too long.
Footnote 36:
What Louis XVIII. said to his new National Guards.
Footnote 37:
It was about this time that Madame Lavalette assisted her husband
to escape from prison.
Footnote 38:
A Mr. Bibby, from the United States.
Footnote 39:
‘’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing, or in judging ill.’
_Pope._
Footnote 40:
This young lady has since acted Beatrice in ‘Much Ado About
Nothing,’ with considerable applause.
Footnote 41:
So the old song joyously celebrates their arrival:—
‘The beggars are coming to town,
Some in rags, and some in jags, and some in velvet gowns,’
Footnote 42:
The story of the Heart of Midlothian was, we understand, got up at
the Surrey Theatre last year by Mr. Dibdin, in the most creditable
style. A Miss Taylor, we hear, made an inimitable Jenny Deans,
Miss Copeland was surprising as Madge Wildfire, Mrs. Dibdin as
Queen Caroline, was also said to be a complete piece of royal
wax-work, and Dumbydikes was done to the life. Would we had seen
them so done; but we can answer for these things positively on no
authority but our own. If they make as good a thing of Ivanhoe,
they will do more than the author has done.
Footnote 43:
Miss Baillie has much of the power and spirit of dramatic writing,
and not the less because, as a woman, she has been placed out of
the vortex of philosophical and political extravagances.
Footnote 44:
We have given this sentence in marks of quotation, and yet it is
our own. We should put a stop to the practices of ‘such petty
larceny rogues’—but that it is not worth while.
Footnote 45:
Generosity and simplicity are not the characteristic virtues of
poets. It has been disputed whether ‘an honest man is the noblest
work of God.’ But we think an honest poet is so.
Footnote 46:
‘Or mouth with slumbery pout.’ _Keats’s Endymion._
The phrase might be applied to Miss Stephens: though it is a vile
phrase, worse than Hamlet’s ‘beautified’ applied to Ophelia.
Indeed it has been remarked that Mr. Keats resembles Shakspeare in
the novelty and eccentricity of his combinations of style. If so,
it is the only thing in which he is like Shakspeare: and yet Mr.
Keats, whose misfortune and crime it is, like Milton, to have been
born in London, is a much better poet than Mr. Wilson, or his
Patroclus Mr. Lockart; nay, further, if Sir Walter Scott (the sly
Ulysses of the Auld Reekie school,) had written many of the
passages in Mr. Keats’s poems, they would have been quoted as the
most beautiful in his works. We do not here (on the banks of the
Thames) damn the Scotch novels in the lump, because the writer is
a _Sawney Scot_. But the sweet Edinburgh wits damn Mr. Keats’s
lines in the lump, because he is born in London. ‘Oh Scotland,
judge of England, what a treasure hast thou in one fair son, and
one fair son-in-law, neither of whom (by all accounts) thou lovest
passing well!’
Footnote 47:
The Fancy is not used here in the sense of Mr. Peter Corcoran, but
in a sense peculiar to Mr. Coleridge, and hitherto undefined by
him.
Footnote 48:
This expression is borrowed from Dr. Johnson. However, as Dr.
Johnson is not a German critic, Mr. C. need not be supposed to
acknowledge it.
Footnote 49:
This was Godwin, who saw _Venice Preserved_ at Norwich. See Kegan
Paul, _William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries_, I. 10.
Footnote 50:
_She Stoops to Conquer_, Act I.
Footnote 51:
_Twelfth Night_, Act I. Sc. 1.
Footnote 52:
Cf. _Twelfth Night_, Act II. Sc. 5.
Footnote 53:
_The Rivals_, Act V. Sc. 3.
Footnote 54:
James William Dodd (1740?-1796).
Footnote 55:
_The Rivals_, Act III. Sc. 3.
Footnote 56:
_Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2.
Footnote 57:
By Arthur Murphy (1756).
Footnote 58:
Elizabeth Pope (1744?-1797) wife of Alexander Pope the actor. She
made her first appearance in 1768 and became famous in a wide
range of parts.
Footnote 59:
Better known as Mrs. Barry. Ann Spranger Barry (1734-1801) first
appeared at Drury Lane in 1767-8, and soon acquired a great
reputation both in tragedy and comedy. She married Spranger Barry
the actor in 1768.
Footnote 60:
See _post_, note to p. 184.
Footnote 61:
Cowley, Horace, _Odes_, III. 1.
Footnote 62:
_Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.
Footnote 63:
‘His honours and his valiant parts.’ _Ibid._
Footnote 64:
_Ibid._
Footnote 65:
Pope, _The Rape of the Lock_, II. 17-18.
Footnote 66:
See Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_, Life of Edmund Smith.
Footnote 67:
_Macbeth_, Act V. Sc. 5.
Footnote 68:
William Dimond of Bath, the author of a great number of plays.
Footnote 69:
Cf. _ante_, pp. 411-12.
Footnote 70:
Cf. ‘In their trinal triplicities on bye.’ _The Faerie Queene_,
Book I. Canto I. St. 38.
Footnote 71:
Cf. ‘Their lips were four red roses on a stalk.’ _Richard III._,
Act IV. Sc. 3.
Footnote 72:
_A Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Sc. 4.
Footnote 73:
_L’Allegro_, 14 _et seq._
Footnote 74:
By Richard Lalor Shell.
Footnote 75:
Dr. John Stoddart, who had left _The Times_ early in 1817, and
started _The Day and New Times_, afterwards known as _The New
Times_.
Footnote 76:
Founded on Bickerstaffe’s _Love in the City_, and first produced
1781.
Footnote 77:
_Comus_, 476-7.
Footnote 78:
_Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
Footnote 79:
‘Blasted with excess of light.’ Gray, _The Progress of Poesy_,
III. 2, 7.
Footnote 80:
Cowper, _The Task_, IV. 486.
Footnote 81:
Pope, _Moral Essays_, II. 114.
Footnote 82:
_The Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, Sc. 2.
Footnote 83:
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act V. Sc. 2.
Footnote 84:
_L’Allegro_, 147.
Footnote 85:
_As You Like It_, Act III. Sc. 2.
Footnote 86:
Pope, _Moral Essays_, III., 309-10.
Footnote 87:
Cf. the essay ‘Of persons one would wish to have seen.’
Footnote 88:
Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 343.
Footnote 89:
Hazlitt has omitted the number. The reference is perhaps to No.
42.
Footnote 90:
_Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
Footnote 91:
_Paradise Lost_, III. 444-6.
Footnote 92:
Christopher Anstey’s (1724-1805) _New Bath Guide_ (1766).
Footnote 93:
Addison, _The Campaign_, 292.
Footnote 94:
Act III. Sc. 3.
Footnote 95:
_Ibid._
Footnote 96:
_Paradise Lost_, IX. 664-678.
Footnote 97:
Act III. Sc. 3.
Footnote 98:
_Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 4.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Pp. 28 & 159, changed “Medecin malgrè lui” to “Médecin malgré
lui”.
2. P. 135, changed “protegée” to “protégé”.
3. P. 143, changed “elégantes” to “élégantes”.
4. P. 151, changed “haute litérature” to “haute littérature”.
5. P. 166, changed “comedie larmoyante” to “comédie larmoyante”.
6. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
7. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as
printed.
8. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected
together at the end of the last chapter.
9. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.