“Into the hall he gose.” (Vol. III. p. 67.)
We should have expected a note here on the “hall he-goose.” Not to speak
of the point of the joke, such as it is, a goose that could eat up a
man’s rib could only be matched by one that could swallow such a
note,--or write it!
We have made but a small florilegium from Mr. Hazlitt’s remarkable
volumes. His editorial method seems to have been to print as the Lord
would, till his eye was caught by some word he did not understand, and
then to make the reader comfortable by a note showing that the editor is
as much in the dark as he. We are profoundly thankful for the omission
of a glossary. It would have been a nursery and seminary of blunder. To
expose pretentious charlatanry is sometimes the unpleasant duty of a
reviewer. It is a duty we never seek, and should not have assumed in
this case but for the impertinence with which Mr. Hazlitt has treated
dead and living scholars, the latchets of whose shoes he is not worthy
to unloose, and to express their gratitude to whom is, or ought to be, a
pleasure to all honest lovers of their mother-tongue. If he who has most
to learn be the happiest man, Mr. Hazlitt is indeed to be envied; but we
hope he will learn a great deal before he lays his prentice hands on
Warton’s “History of English Poetry,” a classic in its own way. If he
does not learn before, he will be likely to learn after, and in no
agreeable fashion.