of one we love better than the virtues of any other woman; that we like
her refusals, better than all other favours; that we like her love of
others, better than any one else’s love of us?
LXV. If a man were refused by a woman a thousand times, and he really
loved her, he would still think that at the bottom of her heart she
preferred him to every one else. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider
that all passion is a species of madness; and that the feeling in the
mind towards the beloved object is the most amiable and delightful thing
in the world. Our love to her is heavenly, and so (the heart whispers
us) must hers be to us—though it were buried at the bottom of the sea;
nay, from the tomb our self-love would revive it! We never can persuade
ourselves that a mistress cares nothing about us, till we no longer care
about her. No! It is certain that there is nothing truly deserving of
love but love, and
‘In spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,’
we still believe in the justice of the blind God!
LXVI. It would be easy to forget a misplaced attachment, but that we do
not like to acknowledge ourselves in the wrong.
LXVII. A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.
LXVIII. The grand scenes of Nature are more adapted for occasional
visits than for constant residence. They are the temples of the Goddess,
not fit dwellings for her worshippers. Familiarity breeds contempt or
indifference; and it is better to connect this feeling with the petty
and trivial than with the lofty and sublime. Besides, it is unnecessary
to run the risk in the latter case. One chief advantage of the great and
magnificent objects of Nature is, that they stamp their image on the
mind for ever; the blow need not be repeated to have the desired effect.
We take them with us wherever we go; we have but to think of them and
they appear; and at the distance of half a life or of the circumference
of the globe, we unlock the springs of memory, and the tall mountain
shoots into the sky, the lake expands its bosom, and the cataract rushes
from the pine-clad rock. The bold majestic outline is all that there is
to discover in such situations, and this we can always remember. In more
cultivated and artificial scenes we may observe a thousand hedge-row
beauties with curious eye, or pluck the tender flower beneath our feet,
while Skiddaw hovers round our heads, and the echoes of Helvellyn
thunder in our hearts.
LXIX. I should always choose to live within reach of a fine prospect,
rather than to see one from my windows. A number of romantic, distant
objects staring in upon one (uncalled-for) tantalise the imagination,
and tempt the truant feet; whereas, at home, I wish to feel satisfied
where I am, and sheltered from the world.
LXX. Mr. Martin’s picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise has this capital
defect, that there is no _repose_ in it. You see two insignificant naked
figures, and a preposterous architectural landscape, like a range of
buildings overlooking them. They might as well be represented sleeping
on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple with the world and all the
glories thereof spread out before them. They ought to have been painted
imparadised in one another’s arms, shut up in measureless content, with
Eden’s choicest bowers closing round them, and Nature stooping to clothe
them with vernal bowers. Nothing could be too retired, too voluptuous,
too sacred from day’s garish eye: instead of which, you have a gaudy
panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row of clouds, of
rocks, and mountains piled one upon the other, as if the imagination
already bent its idle gaze over that wide world, which was so soon to be
their place of exile, and the aching restless spirit of the artist was
occupied in building a stately prison for our first parents, instead of
decking their bridal bed, and wrapping them in a short-lived dream of
bliss!
LXXI. The mind tires of variety, but becomes reconciled to uniformity.
Change produces a restless habit, a love of farther change: the
recurrence of the same objects conduces to repose, and to content. My
Uncle Toby’s bowling-green bounded his harmless ambition; Bonaparte, not
contented with France and Europe for a pleasure-ground, wanted to have
Russia for an ice-house; and Alexander, at the farthest side of India,
wept for new worlds to conquer. If we let our thoughts wander abroad,
there is no end to fantastic projects, to the craving after novelty, to
fickleness, and disappointment: if we confine them at home, Peace may
find them there. Mr. Horne Tooke used to contend that all tendency to
excess was voluntary in the mind: the wants of Nature kept within a
certain limit. Even if a person adhered to a regular number of cups of
tea or glasses of wine, he did not feel tempted to exceed this number:
but if he once went beyond his usual allowance, the desire to transgress
increased with its indulgence, and the artificial appetite was
proportioned to the artificial stimulus. It has been remarked that in
the tropical climates, where there is no difference of seasons, time
passes away on smoother and swifter pinions, ‘the earth spins round on
its soft axle,’ unnoticed, unregretted: and life wears out soonest and
best in sequestered privacy, within the round of a few, simple, unenvied
enjoyments.
LXXII. The retailing of a set of anecdotes is not conversation. A story
admits of no answer: a remark or an opinion naturally calls forth
another, and leads to as many different views of a subject as there are
minds in company. An officer in a Scotch marching regiment has always a
number of very edifying anecdotes to communicate: but unless you are of
the same mess or the same clan, you are necessarily _sent to Coventry_.
Prosing, mechanical narrations of this kind are tedious, as well as
tinctured with egotism: if they are set off with a brilliant manner,
with mimicry, and action, they become theatrical: the speaker is a kind
of _Mr. Matthews at home_, and the audience are more or less delighted
and amused with the exhibition; but there is an end of society, and you
no more think of interrupting a confirmed story-teller, than you would
of interrupting a favourite actor on the stage.
LXXIII. The Queen’s trial gave a deathblow to the hopes of all
reflecting persons with respect to the springs and issues of public
spirit and opinion. It was the only question I ever knew that excited a
thorough popular feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the
nation; it took possession of every house or cottage in the kingdom;
man, woman, and child took part in it, as if it had been their own
concern. Business was laid aside for it: people forgot their pleasures,
even their meals were neglected, nothing was thought of but the fate of
the Queen’s trial. The arrival of the _Times Newspaper_ was looked upon
as an event in every village, the Mails hardly travelled fast enough;
and he who had the latest intelligence in his pocket was considered as
the happiest of mortals. It kept the town in a ferment for several
weeks: it agitated the country to the remotest corner. It spread like
wildfire over the kingdom; the public mind was electrical. So it should
be on other occasions; it was only so on this. An individual may be
oppressed, a nation may be trampled upon, mankind may be threatened with
annihilation of their rights, and the threat enforced; and not a finger
is raised, not a heart sinks, not a pulse beats quicker in the public or
private quarrel, a momentary burst of vain indignation is heard, dies
away, and is forgotten. Truth has no echo, but folly and imposture have
a thousand reverberations in the hollowness of the human heart. At the
very time when all England went mad about the poor Queen, a man of the
name of Bruce was sent to Botany Bay for having spoken to another who
was convicted of sedition; and no notice was taken of it. We have seen
what has been done in Spain, and Earth does not roll its billows over
the heads of tyrants, to bury them in a common grave. What was it then
in the Queen’s cause that stirred this mighty ‘coil and pudder’ in the
breast? Was it the love of truth, of justice, of liberty? No such thing!
Her case was at best doubtful, and she had only suffered the loss of
privileges peculiar to herself. But she was a Queen, she was a woman,
and _a thorn in the King’s side_. There was the cant of loyalty, the
cant of gallantry, and the cant of freedom mixed altogether in
delightful and inextricable confusion. She was a Queen—all the loyal and
well-bred bowed to the name; she was a wife—all the women took the
alarm; she was at variance with the lawful sovereign—all the free and
independent Electors of Westminster and London were up in arms. ‘The
Queen’s name was a tower of strength,’ which these persons had hitherto
wanted, and were glad to catch at. Though a daughter of the Duke of
Brunswick, though a grand-daughter of George III., yet because she was
separated from her husband, she must be hand-and-glove with the people,
the wretched, helpless, doating, credulous, meddlesome people, who are
always ready to lick the hands, not just then raised to shed their blood
or rivet on their chains. There was here an idol to pull down and an
idol to set up. There was an imperial title and meretricious
frontispiece to the spurious volume of Liberty. There was the
mock-majesty of an empty throne behind the real one, and the
impertinence of mankind was interested to thrust the unwelcome claimant
into it. City patriots stood a chance of becoming liege men, and true to
a Queen—of their own choosing. The spirit of faction was half merged in
the spirit of servility. There was a rag-fair of royalty—every one
carried his own paints and patches into the presence of the new Lady of
Loretto—there was a sense of homage due, of services and countenance
bestowed on Majesty. This popular farce had all the charm of _private
theatricals_. The Court of St. James’s was nothing to the _make-believe_
Court at Kew. The king was a sort of _state-fixture_; but the
Queen-Consort, the favourite of the rabble, was herself one of them. The
presence-doors were flung open, and every blackguard and blockhead
rushed in. What an opportunity to see, to hear, to touch a Queen! To
gratify the itch of loyalty by coming in contact with the person of the
Sovereign was a privilege reserved for a few; but to receive this favour
at the Queen’s hands was a distinction common to all. All the trades of
London came to kiss the Queen’s hand: Presbyterian parsons knelt to kiss
the hand of their royal mistress; the daughters of country curates and
of city knights sipped loyalty from the back of her Majesty’s hand.
Radicals and reformers contended who should be first in paying homage to
the Queen; there was a race for precedence, quarrelling and pulling of
caps between the wives of distinguished orators and caricaturists, at
the very footsteps of the throne; while Mr. Alderman Wood,
‘A gentle Husher, Vanity by name.’
strove to keep the peace, and vindicate the character of civic dames for
courtly manners. Mr. Place, Mr. Hone, Mr. Thelwall, Sir Richard
Phillips, kissed her Majesty’s hand; Mr. Cobbett alone was not
invited,—it was thought he might _bite_. What a pity that it was before
Mr. Irving’s time, or he might have thrown in the casting-weight of his
perfect mind and body, and _ousted_ both the King and Bergami! In the
midst of all this, his Majesty went to the play, bowed to the boxes, the
pit, the gallery, and to the _actors_, and you would suppose in four
days’ time, that a whisper had never been uttered to imply that the King
not only was not the most graceful man in his dominions, but the best of
monarchs and of husbands. The Queen and her _pic-nic_ parties were no
more thought of. What a scene for history to laugh at!
LXXIV. A crowd was collected under the Horse-Guards, and on enquiry I
found it was to see the Duke of York come out. ‘What went they forth for
to see?’ They were some of the lowest and most wretched of the people,
and it was perhaps the sense of contrast,—a sense of which the great and
mighty have always availed themselves liberally, to cherish the
enthusiasm of their admirers. It was also curiosity to see a name, a
sound that they had so often heard, reduced to an object of sight; a
metaphysical and political abstraction actually coming out of a door
with a ruddy face and a frock-coat. It was, in the first place, the
Commander-in-Chief, and the commander of the troops at Dunkirk, the
author of the love-letters to Mrs. Clarke and of army-circulars, the son
of the King, and presumptive heir to the Crown;—there were all these
contradictions embodied in the same person. ‘Oh, the wonderful works of
nature,’ as the _Recruit_ in the play says on looking at the guinea
which has just enlisted him: so we may say on looking at a king or a
king’s brother. I once pointed out the Duke of York to a Scotchman. ‘Is
that his Grace—I mean his Royal Highness?’ said the native of the North,
out of breath to acknowledge the title, and pay with his tongue the
instinctive adulation which his heart felt!
LXXV. When Effie Deans becomes a fine lady, do we not look back with
regret to the time when she was the poor faded lily of St. Leonards, the
outcast and condemned prisoner? So, should the cause of liberty and
mankind ever become triumphant, instead of militant, may we not heave a
sigh of regret over the past, and think that poor suffering human
nature, with all its wrongs and insults, trodden into the earth like a
vile weed, was a more interesting topic for reflection? We need not be
much alarmed for the event, even if this should be so; for the way to
Utopia is not ‘the primrose path of dalliance;’ and at the rate we have
hitherto gone on, it must be many thousand years off!
LXXVI. Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and
idols—it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of
truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to
them.
LXXVII. The Devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was
always something to fear and to hate. He supplied the antagonist powers
of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm
without him. Mr. Irving may perhaps bring him into fashion again.
LXXVIII. Perhaps the evils arising from excessive inequality in a state
would be sufficiently obviated if property were divided equally among
the surviving children. But it is said it would be impossible to make a
law for this purpose, under any circumstances or with any
qualifications, because the least interference with the disposal of
property would be striking at its existence and at the very root of all
property. And yet this objection is urged in those very countries, where
the law of primogeniture (intended to keep it in disproportionate
masses, and setting aside the will of the testator altogether) is
established as an essential part of the law of the land. So blind is
reason, where passion or prejudice intervenes!
LXXIX. Kings, who set up for Gods upon earth, should be treated as
madmen, which one half of them, or as idiots, which the other half,
really are.
LXXX. Tyrants are at all times mad with the lust of power.
LXXXI. Reformers are naturally speculative people; and speculative
people are effeminate and inactive. They brood over ideas, till
realities become almost indifferent to them. They talk when they should
act, and are distracted with nice doubts and distinctions, while the
enemy is thundering at the gates, and the bomb-shells are bursting at
their feet. They hold up a paper Constitution as their shield, which the
sword pierces through, and drinks their heart’s blood! They are cowards,
too, at bottom; and dare not strike a decisive blow, lest it should be
retaliated. While they merely prate of moderation and the public good,
they think, if the worst comes to the worst, there may still be a chance
of retreat for them, hoping to screen themselves behind their
imbecility. They are not like their opponents, whose all is at stake,
and who are urged on by instinctive fury and habitual cunning to defend
it: the common good is too remote a speculation to call forth any
violent passions or personal sacrifices; and if it should be lost, it is
as fine a topic as ever to harangue and lament about. Patriots are, by
the constitution of their minds, poets; and an Elegy on the fall of
Liberty is as interesting to hear or to recite as an Ode on its most
triumphant success. They who let off Ferdinand the other day, confiding
in the promises of a traitor and in the liberality of a despot, were
greater hypocrites to themselves than he was.
LXXXII. In the late quarrel about Liberty, upwards of five millions of
men have been killed, and _one king_.
LXXXIII. The people (properly speaking) are not a herd of slaves just
let loose, or else goaded on, like blind drudges, to execute the behests
of their besotted taskmasters; but the band of free citizens, taught to
know their rights, and prepared to exercise them.
LXXXIV. The people are the slaves of ignorance and custom; the friends
of the people are the dupes of reason and humanity. Power stops at
nothing but its own purposes.
LXXXV. The Author of Waverley observes—‘In truth, the Scottish peasantry
are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which once
distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law
was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining
it; and I have known many in the lowest stations who have denied
themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life,
in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their surviving
friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it; nor could their
faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally necessitous, to
turn to the use and maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted
upon the interment of the dead.’—‘Antiquary,’ vol. IV. p. 48. If I were
to attempt an explanation of the peculiar delight and pride which the
Scotch are thus supposed to take in funeral ceremonies, I should say,
that as inhabitants of wild and barren districts, they are more familiar
with the face of nature than with the face of man; and easily turn to it
as their place of rest and final home. There is little difference, in
their imaginations, between treading the green mountain turf, and being
laid beneath it. The world itself is but a living tomb to them. Their
mode of subsistence is cold, hard, comfortless, bare of luxuries and of
enjoyments, torpid, inured to privations and self-denial; and death
seems to be its consummation and triumph, rather than its unwelcome end.
Their life was a sort of struggle for a dreary existence; so that it
relapses into the grave with joy and a feeling of exultation. The grey
rock out of which their tomb is cut is a citadel against all assaults of
the flesh and the spirit; the kindred earth that wraps the
weather-beaten, worn-out body, is a soft and warm resting-place from the
hardships it has had to encounter. It is no wonder, therefore, that the
Scotch prepare for the due celebration of this event with the foresight
characteristic of them, and that their friends consign them to the earth
with becoming fortitude and costly ceremony. ‘Man,’ says Sir Thomas
Brown, though in quite a different spirit, ‘man is a noble animal,
splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave; solemnising nativities and
deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, even in
the INFAMY of his nature.—_See his_ URN BURIAL.
LXXXVI. In the Heart of Midlothian vol. IV. p. 13, we meet with the
following reflections: ‘Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotchman to
conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation,
they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same
country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the
inhabitants of a rude and wild than of a well-cultivated and fertile
country: their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of
residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more
accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other’s
welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely
extended; and, in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always
honourable, even when a little too exclusively strained, have more
influence on men’s feelings and actions.’ Thus far our author, but
without making much progress in the question he has started. ‘_Via_
Goodman Dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while’—I might say, but
I do not choose, to say so, to the Great Unknown. There is an
enumeration of particulars, slightly and collaterally connected with the
subject, but, as ‘Douce David Deans’ would say, ‘they do not touch the
root of the matter.’ In fact, then, the mind more easily forms a strong
and abstracted attachment to the soil (in which it was bred) in remote
and barren regions, where few artificial objects or pursuits fritter
away attention, or divert it from its devotion to the naked charms of
nature—(perhaps the privations, dangers, and loneliness incident to such
situations also enhance the value and deepen the interest we take in
them)—and again, in a rude and scattered population, where there is a
dearth and craving after general society, we naturally become more
closely and permanently attached to those few persons with whom
neighbourhood, or kindred, or a common cause, or similar habits or
language, bring us into contact. Two Englishmen meeting in the wilds of
Arabia would instantly become friends, though they had never seen one
another before, from the want of all other society and sympathy. So it
is in the ruder and earlier stages of civilisation. This is what
attaches the Highlander to his hill and to his clan. This is what
attaches Scotchmen to their country and to one another. A Londoner, in
his fondness for London, is distracted between the play-houses, the
opera, the shops, the coffee-houses, the crowded streets, &c. An
inhabitant of Edinburgh has none of these diversities to reconcile: he
has but one idea in his head or in his mouth,—that of the Calton Hill;
an idea which is easily embraced, and which he never quits his hold of,
till something more substantial offers,—a situation as porter in a
warehouse, or as pimp to a great man.
NOTES
FUGITIVE WRITINGS
ON ABSTRACT IDEAS
This essay was first published along with the second edition (1836) of
_An Essay on the Principles of Human Action_. See Bibliographical Note,
vol. VII. p. 384. The source of the essay does not appear to be known,
but it very likely formed the substance of one of the Lectures which
Hazlitt delivered at the Russell Institution. See _ante_, pp. 25, _et
seq._ and notes. The title of one of these Lectures (III.) was ‘On
Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, and on the Nature of
Abstraction.’ It has not been thought necessary to give references to
all the numerous passages quoted from Locke and other philosophers
discussed by Hazlitt. In many cases he himself gives a sufficient
reference in the text.
PAGE
1. _It is by Mr. Locke ... denied_, _etc._ See _An Essay concerning
Human Understanding_, II. xi. 10.
‘_From the root_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 479–481.
6. _The Bishop of Worcester._ Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), who
published three pamphlets in reply to Locke’s _Essay_. For an
account of the controversy see Locke’s _Works_ (Bohn), II. 339
_et seq._
7. ‘_General ideas_,’ _etc._ Condillac, _La Logique_, chap. V.
8. ‘_To speak_,’ _etc. Ibid._
9. ‘_It is agreed on all hands_,’ _etc._ All the passages quoted
from Berkeley are from the Introduction to _A Treatise
concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_ (1710).
12. ‘_Abstract ideas_,’ _etc._ Locke’s _Essay_, IV. vii. 9.
ON THE WRITINGS OF HOBBES
This and the four succeeding papers were first published in _Literary
Remains_, where the author’s son says of them (vol. I. p. 115): ‘The
following Essays form part of a series of Lectures delivered with very
great effect by my father at the Russell Institution, in 1813. I found
them with other papers in an old hamper which many years ago he stuffed
confusedly full of MSS. and odd volumes of books, and left in the _care_
of some lodging-house people, by whom it was thrown into a cellar, so
damp that even the covers of some of the books were fast mouldering when
I first looked over the collection. The injury to the MSS. may be
imagined. Some of the Lectures, indeed, to my deep regret, are
altogether missing, burnt, probably, by the ignorant people of the
house; and I have had the greatest difficulty in preparing those which
remain for the press. They are, however, most valuable.’ The course,
consisting of ten Lectures, was delivered in 1812, not 1813. The
syllabus will be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s _Memoirs of William
Hazlitt_, 1. 192 et seq. The first lecture was ‘On the Writings of
Hobbes, showing that he was the father of the modern system of
philosophy.’
27. ‘_They were made fierce_,’ _etc._ _Advancement of Learning_, I.
iv. 6.
28. ‘_Four champions fierce_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, II. 898.
29. _It has been generally supposed_, _etc._ Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke
a Great Plagiarist,’ _post_, p. 284.
32. ‘_Discourse of Human Nature._’ This work, though circulated in
MS. as early as 1640, was not published till 1650, the year
before the publication of _Leviathan_.
45. ‘_This difference of quickness_,’ _etc._ _Leviathan_, part I.
chap. VIII.
_Harris, the author of Hermes_, _etc._ Cf. vol. VIII. (_The
English Comic Writers_) p. 19, where the same passages are
quoted from Locke, Hobbes, and Harris.
46. ‘_Though the effect of folly_,’ _etc._ _Leviathan_, part I. chap.
VIII.
‘_The foolish daughters of Pelias_’ [Peleus], _etc. Ibid._ part
II. chap. XXX.
_The same allusion in Burke._ _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 113).
48. ‘_Soft collar of social esteem._’ _Ibid._ II. 90.
‘_Order of thoughts_,’ _etc._ _Leviathan_, part I. chap. III.
‘_Stood all astonied_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, VII. VI. 28.
50. _Jonathan Edwards._ Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the American
theologian and metaphysician, published his work _On the
Freedom of the Will_ in 1754.
ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY
Lectures VII. and VIII. were ‘On the Writers on Liberty and Necessity,
and on Materialism.’
_Gassendi._ Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), the French philosopher
and mathematician, with whom Hobbes had been intimate at Paris.
53. _Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration_, _etc._ In the
_Ethica_, published in _Opera Posthuma_ (1677).
_Marsennus._ Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), the friend and disciple
of Descartes.
54. _Bishop Bramhall._ John Bramhall (1594–1663), successively Bishop
of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh, whose controversy with
Hobbes arose in 1655.
57. _Tripos._ ‘Hobbes’s Tripos’ (1684) contained, among other things,
the essay ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ (1654).
58. ‘_With all these means_,’ _etc._ _Henry IV._ Part II. Act III.
Sc. 1.
60. ‘_Fixed fate_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 560.
_Dr. Priestley._ Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) _The Doctrine of
Philosophical Necessity Illustrated_ appeared in 1777. His
controversy with Horsley lasted from 1783 till 1790, during
which time many letters to Dr. Horsley were published.
71. ‘_Something far more deeply interfused_,’ _etc._ Borrowed from
Wordsworth’s _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_,
96 _et seq._
73. ‘_Ille igitur_,’ _etc._ Cicero, _De Fato_, XIX. 43.
ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
This appears to have been Lecture II. of the course. Cf. the essay ‘Mr.
Locke a Great Plagiarist,’ _post_, p. 284.
79. ‘_Discourse of reason._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2
81. ‘_Without form and void._’ _Genesis_ i. 2.
81. _The mind alone is formative._ Kant. Cf. _post_, p. 176.
82. _The natural fool, etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 41.
84. ‘_Peace to all such._’ Pope, _Prologue to the Satires_, 193.
85. _The Vicar’s profession of faith._ See _Émile_, Livre IV.
‘_Light of Nature pursued._’ A work abridged by Hazlitt himself.
See vol. IV. of the present edition.
88. ‘_Fluttering its pennons vain_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, II.
933–4.
89. ‘_The latter end_,’ _etc._ Cf. _The Tempest_, Act II. Sc. 1.
100. ‘_The fundamental principle_,’ _etc._ Hume, _A Treatise of Human
Nature_, part IV. sect. IV.
108. _The ‘Essay on Vision.’_ Published in 1709.
110. ‘_Reason pandering will._’ Cf. ‘And reason panders will.’
_Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 4.
118. _Dr. Clarke’s celebrated work._ Samuel Clarke’s (1675–1729)
_Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, etc._,
one of the Boyle lectures delivered in 1704 and 1705.
ON TOOKE’S DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY
Lecture IX. was ‘On the Theory of Language; as treated by Horne Tooke,
by the author of _Hermes_, and Lord Monboddo.’ Cf. vol. IV. (_The Spirit
of the Age_), p. 231, and notes.
119. ‘_Mere_ [very] _midsummer madness_.’ _Twelfth Night_, Act III.
Sc. 4.
123. _M. Portalis._ Jean Étienne Marie Portalis (1745–1807), one of
the compilers of the _Code Napoléon_.
‘_Of the little sneering_,’ _etc._ Junius, Letter LIV.
‘_Undoes creation_,’ _etc._ Gay, _Verses to be placed under the
Picture of Sir R. Blackmore_.
‘_Rebelling angels_,’ _etc._ Marvell, _On Mr. Milton’s Paradise
Lost_.
‘_Holds us a while_,’ _etc. Ibid._
125. ‘_That honour consists._’ _etc._ _Jonathan Wild_, Book I. Chap.
13.
128. _A celebrated German philosopher._ Kant.
131. ‘_So from the root_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 1, where much of this
paragraph is repeated.
132. ‘_Has oft been chased_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _The Hind and the
Panther_, l. 5–8.
ON SELF-LOVE
Lecture IV. of the series. Cf. the essay on ‘Self-Love and Benevolence
(A Dialogue)’ printed in vol. XII. pp. 95 _et seq._, and _An Essay on
the Principles of Human Action_ (vol. VII. pp. 383, _et seq._), from
which a great part of the present Lecture is taken.
133. ‘_Wise saws and modern instances._’ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc.
7.
136. ‘_Mutual interest_,’ _etc._ _Jonathan Wild_, Book I. Chap. 4.
139. _Shaftesbury or Hutcheson._ Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of
Shaftesbury (1671–1713), author of the _Characteristics_
(1711), and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), a supporter of
Shaftesbury’s ethics.
140. ‘_Pity is only_,’ _etc._ See Hobbes’s _Human Nature_, Chap. IX.
Sect. 10.
147. ‘_The jealous God_,’ _etc._
‘Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.’
Pope, _Eloisa to Abelard_, 75–6.
158. ‘_Thrills in each nerve_,’ _etc._ Cf.
‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.’
Pope, _An Essay on Man_, l. 218.
159. ‘_The hair-breadth scapes_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.
160. _Junius has remarked, etc._ In his letter to George III. (Dec.
19, 1769).
MADAME DE STAËL’S ACCOUNT OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
Madame de Staël’s _De l’Allemagne_, published in London in 1813, had
been reviewed, possibly by Hazlitt, in _The Morning Chronicle_ for Nov.
13, 1813, and the four papers here reprinted and signed ‘An English
Metaphysician’ are ostensibly a continuation of that review, though they
contain very little about German philosophy and nothing at all about
German literature. They are, in fact, merely fragments in letter form of
the course of lectures which Hazlitt had recently delivered at the
Russell Institution. See _ante_, pp. 25 _et seq._ and notes. Hazlitt was
a regular contributor to _The Morning Chronicle_ during 1813 and 1814.
Some of his contributions on politics, the stage, and the fine arts will
be found in vols. III., VIII. and IX. of the present edition; and he
gives an account of his relations with James Perry, the editor, in the
essay ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (see vol. VI. p. 289). None of the
_Chronicle_ papers included in the present volume have been republished
before.
162. _The article in The Edinburgh Review._ Vol. XXII. p. 198. The
review was by Jeffrey.
164. ‘_They were made fierce_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 27.
165. ‘_Four champions fierce_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 28.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
167. ‘_A justly decried author._’ Locke, _Third Letter to the Bishop
of Worcester_ (_Works_, Bohn, II. 401).
‘_Fame is no plant_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, 78–82.
168. ‘_Harsh and crabbed._’ _Comus_, 476.
_Willich. Elements of the Critical Philosophy, etc., Translated
by A. F. M. Willich, M.D._, appeared in 1798. _The Critique of
Pure Reason_ had appeared in 1781.
171. ‘_And all this_,’ _etc._ Ben Jonson, _The Alchemist_, Act II. Sc.
1.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
174. _‘A dark closet_,’ _etc._ Cf. Locke’s _Essay_, II. xi. 17.
‘_Drossy and divisible._’ Dryden, _The Hind and the Panther_, I.
319.
175. _Mrs. Salmon’s ... wax figures._ An old established exhibition in
Fleet Street, near Temple Bar. See _The Spectator_, No. 28.
176. ‘_Without form and void._’ _Genesis_ i. 2.
179. ‘_Thrills in each nerve_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 158.
‘_Jove’s light’nings_,’ _etc._ _The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
At the end of this letter it was announced that ‘Another Letter on the
_Principles of Human Action_ will conclude this series.’ The promised
Letter, however, does not seem to have been published.
181. ‘_Peace to all such._’ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 84.
Note. For Fearn’s book, see _Table Talk_, vol. VI. pp. 63–5;
260–2 and notes.
183. ‘_So from the root_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 1.
186. ‘_Had oft been chased_,’ _etc._ _The Hind and the Panther_, I.
5–8.
FINE ARTS.—BRITISH INSTITUTION
Hazlitt used a portion of this notice in the essay on ‘Fine Arts’ which
he afterwards (1824) contributed to _The Encyclopædia Britannica_. See
vol. IX., pp. 406–7. The British Institution was founded in 1805 at 52
Pall Mall and continued till 1866. The winter exhibition was of the
works of living artists. A second notice, in _The Morning Chronicle_ for
Feb. 10, is probably by Hazlitt. It contains very brief comments on the
less notable pictures, and is not reprinted here.
188. _Mr. Bird’s Picture of Job._ The painter was Edward Bird
(1772–1819), elected a Royal Academician in 1815.
189. _Mr. Allston’s large picture._ This picture by the ‘American
Titian,’ Washington Allston (1779–1843), gained a prize of
200 guineas from the British Institution and is now at
Philadelphia.
190. _Mr. Hilton’s Picture._ By William Hilton (1786–1839), Royal
Academician (1818).
_Mr. West’s Picture._ For Benjamin West (1738–1820), who
succeeded Reynolds (1792) as President of the Royal Academy,
see vol. IX. (_Essays on the Fine Arts_), pp. 318 _et seq._
‘_Pure religion_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘O Friend! I know
not which way I must look,’ etc.
_Society for the suppression of vice._ Cf. vol. I. (_The Round
Table_), p. 60 and note.
_Mr. Turner’s grand landscape._ Now in the National Gallery and
(wrongly) known as ‘Apuleia in search of Apuleius.’ The
confusion seems to have arisen from a misreading by Turner of a
story in Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ (XIV. 517 _et seq._) which the
picture was designed to illustrate.
_Lord Egremont’s picture._ An engraving by Woollett of Claude’s
‘Jacob and Laban’ was in the possession of Lord Egremont at
Petworth, and it is probably to this that Hazlitt refers. It
was at Petworth that Turner painted the landscape in question.
191. ‘_Mercury and Herse._’ Exhibited in 1811.
_The Favourite Lamb._ By William Collins (1788–1847).
THE STAGE
Nearly the whole of this paper was incorporated into the essay on
_Richard III._ in _Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays_. See vol. I. pp.
300–303 and notes.
192. ‘_As tenderly be led_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.
‘_Bustle in._’ _Richard III._, Act I. Sc. 1.
THE FINE ARTS. THE LOUVRE
195. _Blücher._ The fighting at Laon had taken place on March 9 and
10. Blücher entered Paris on March 31.
‘_Away to Heav’n_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 1.
‘_Nay, if you mouth_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.
196. ‘_Pigeon-liver’d_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.
‘_Scrawls_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Prologue to the Satires_, 19–20.
_The treaty of Pilnitz._ See vol. III. (_Political Essays_), p.
61 and note.
‘_This present ignorant time._’ Cf. _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.
‘_Tell me your company_,’ _etc._ The proverb is quoted in _Don
Quixote_, Part II. chap. 23.
‘_Stands the statue_,’ _etc._ Thomson, _The Seasons_, _Summer_,
1347. The Venus de Medici was restored to Florence after the
fall of Napoleon.
_There is the Apollo_, _etc._ This enumeration of the treasures
collected at the Louvre by Napoleon makes Hazlitt’s authorship
of the essay quite certain. Cf. vol. VI. (_Table Talk_),
pp. 15–16 and notes, and vol. VIII. (_The English Comic
Writers_), p. 149, where the present passage is repeated almost
_verbatim_. See also _Notes of a Journey_, _etc._, vol. IX. p.
107.
197. ‘_There is old Proteus_,’ _etc._ Misquoted from Wordsworth’s
Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us,’ etc.
‘_What’s Hecuba to them_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.
‘_Real feelings_,’ _etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution
in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 101).
‘_We look up_,’ _etc. Ibid._
‘_Breath can make them_,’ _etc._ Goldsmith, _The Deserted
Village_, 54.
_Wittgenstein_, _etc._ Louis Adolphe Pierre Wittgenstein
(1769–1843); Ferdinand, Baron Wintzingerode (1770–1818), two
well-known Russian generals.
‘_But once put out their light_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act V. Sc. 2.
_Poet who celebrated the fall_, _etc._ Coleridge, presumably.
‘_Time-hallowed laws._’ Hazlitt elsewhere attributes this phrase
to Wordsworth. See vol. III., note to p. 175.
WILSON’S LANDSCAPES AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION
Part of this article was incorporated in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_
article on ‘Fine Arts’ (see vol. IX. pp. 392–394), and a further part
was included in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of the same essay in _Essays
on the Fine Arts_ (1873). Many of Wilson’s landscapes were exhibited at
the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1903. In this and in the
later notices of exhibitions the catalogue numbers have been omitted,
and in a few cases it has been necessary to substitute a semicolon for a
comma, in order to distinguish between different pictures.
199. ‘_A buoy_,’ _etc._ _King Lear_, Act IV. Sc. 6.
200. ‘_Resembling a goose-pye_,’ Swift, _Vanburgh’s House_, l. 104.
201. Note. ‘_Silly shepherds_,’ _etc._ Cf. Milton, _On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity_, The Hymn, St. viii.
202. ‘_While universal Pan_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 266–8.
Note. _Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter._ See vol. I. (_The
Round Table_), note to p. 162.
ON GAINSBOROUGH’S PICTURES
This article, like the last, was used for the _Encyclopædia_ essay (vol.
IX. pp. 395–6) and was partly reproduced in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition
of _Essays on the Fine Arts_, 1873 (notes to p. 244).
202. _A Portrait of a Youth._ The famous ‘Blue Boy’ belonging to the
Duke of Westminster, painted in 1779.
203. _Portrait of Garrick._ Painted in 1776, and now at the
Stratford-on-Avon Museum.
‘_Distilled books_,’ _etc._ Bacon, _Essays_ (‘Of Studies’).
‘_I to Hercules._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2.
_Cottage Children._ ‘Rustic Children,’ now in the National
Gallery.
205. Note. _Two Spanish Beggar Boys._ In the Dulwich Gallery. See vol.
IX. p. 25.
MR. KEMBLE’S PENRUDDOCK
This theatrical notice is clearly Hazlitt’s, though he omitted it from
_A View of the English Stage_. Cf. vol. I. (_Characters of Shakespeare’s
Plays_), p. 237, where the same words are used, with trifling
variations, in criticism of Kemble’s _Hamlet_. Cf. also vol. VIII. p.
376.
205. _Penruddock._ In Richard Cumberland’s _The Wheel of Fortune_
(1795).
206. ‘_Is whispering nothing_,’ _etc._ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act I. Sc.
2.
207. ‘_There is no variableness_,’ _etc._ _St. James_ i. 17.
‘_Splenetic_ [splenetive] _and rash_.’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.
‘_The fiery soul_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, l.
156–8.
‘_You shall relish_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Othello_, Act II. Sc. 1.
INTRODUCTION TO AN ACCOUNT OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES
Hazlitt contributed to _The Champion_ six papers on the ‘Character of
Sir Joshua Reynolds.’ The first two of these (Oct. 30 and Nov. 6. 1814)
were used in the author’s _Encyclopædia Britannica_ essay on ‘Fine
Arts.’ See vol. IX. of the present edition, pp. 377 _et seq._, and the
notes, where the omitted portions of the two articles are supplied. The
last four (viz. the present essay and the three succeeding ones) are
here reprinted for the first time. Hazlitt afterwards dealt with the
same subject in the two essays entitled ‘On Certain Inconsistencies in
Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses’ (vol. VI. _Table Talk_, pp. 122–145).
208. Note. For Richardson see vol. VI. (_Table Talk_), p. 10 and note.
Charles Antoine Coypel (1694–1752) was Director of the Academy
from 1747. His Discourses on Art were republished in 1883 by H.
Jouin (_Conférences de l’Académie royale de peinture_).
ON GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY
211. _If Raphael, for instance, had only copied_, _etc._ See
Reynolds’s Twelfth Discourse.
212. ‘_Sole sitting_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _Poems on the Naming of
Places_, IV.
‘_Beauty, rendered still more beautiful._’ Cf.
‘——And he would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous.’
Wordsworth, _Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree_, 35–37.
‘_Thrice happy fields_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, III.
569–570.
213. ‘_The tender mercies._’ ‘The tender mercies of the wicked are
cruel.’ _Proverbs_ xii. 10.
‘_Wandering through dry places_,’ _etc._ Cf. S. _Matthew_ xii.
43.
213. Note. Claude’s _Liber Veritatis_, now in the possession of the
Duke of Devonshire, is not a collection of original sketches,
but a record of his pictures with inscriptions showing for whom
they were painted.
215. ‘_Human face divine._’ _Paradise Lost_, III. 44.
ON THE IMITATION OF NATURE
221. ‘_Blinking Sam._’ See Mrs. Piozzi’s _Anecdotes_, _etc._
(_Johnsonian Miscellanies_, ed. G. B. Hill, I. 313).
ON THE IDEAL
223. ‘_Might ascend_,’ _etc._ _Henry V._ Prologue.
224. ‘_Obscurity her curtain_,’ _etc._ From a poem _To the Honourable
and Reverend F. C._ in Dodsley’s _Collection of Poems_, vol.
VI. (1758), p. 138. The poem (anonymously published) was
written by Sneyd Davies (1709–1769), and was addressed to
Frederick Cornwallis, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. See
_The Gentleman’s Magazine_, vol. I. p. 174, and Nichols’s
_Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth
Century_, vol. I.
226. ‘_Whose end_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
228. _We have heard it observed_, _etc._ By Coleridge, probably. See
vol. IV. p. 217.
CHARLEMAGNE: OU L’ÉGLISE DÉLIVRÉE
230. _The brother of Buonaparte._ Lucien Buonaparte (1775–1840),
Prince of Canino. The present review of his _Charlemagne_,
_etc._ is signed ‘W. H.’
231. _Henriade._ Voltaire’s epic (1723).
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
235. _The true Florimel_, _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, III. viii.
236. _Another epic poem._ _La Cirnéide_ (1819).
LUCIEN BUONAPARTE’S COLLECTION, ETC.
This article is signed ‘W. H.’
237. ‘_Vile durance._’ Kenrick’s _Falstaff’s Wedding_ (1766), Act I.
Sc. 2.
‘_The mistress or the saint._’ Cf. Goldsmith, _The Traveller_,
152.
_Jocunda._ The portrait of Mona Lisa, wife of Francesco del
Giocondo.
239. ‘_Laborious foolery._’ Hazlitt seems to be quoting from himself.
See his Letter ‘On Modern Comedy’ (1813), vol. VIII. p. 554.
240. ‘_Come, then, the colours_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Moral Essays_, II.
17–20.
_Watteau._ Antoine Watteau (1684–1721).
_Guerin._ Pierre Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833). The picture
referred to is now in the Louvre.
241. _The Deluge by Girodet._ This picture of Anne Louis Girodet’s
(1767–1824) is in the Louvre.
242. _Lefebre._ Hazlitt presumably refers to Robert Le Fèvre’s
(1756–1830) portrait of Napoleon now in the Gallery at
Versailles.
BRITISH INSTITUTION
These three notices of the Exhibition at the British Institution are
signed ‘W. H.’
243. _C. L. Eastlake._ Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), elected
President of the Royal Academy and knighted in 1850; Director
of the National Gallery from 1855.
‘_Antique Roman._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 2.
_A hint from a high quarter._ Hazlitt presumably refers to the
fact that Canning had not been in office since his quarrel with
Castlereagh in 1809.
244. ‘_A great book is a great evil._’ A saying of Voltaire’s. Cf.
vol. V. (_Lectures on the English Poets_), p. 114.
‘_It is place_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Sc. 3.
245. _G. Hayter._ George (afterwards Sir George) Hayter (1792–1871).
His ‘Ezra’ gained a prize of £200.
_Mr. Harlowe’s Hubert and Arthur._ By George Henry Harlow
(1787–1819), a pupil of Sir Thomas Lawrence.
‘_Deep scars_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 601.
_Miss Geddes._ Margaret Sarah Geddes (1793–1872), better known as
Mrs. Carpenter, and a portrait-painter.
_Chalon._ Alfred Edward Chalon (1781–1860).
_Burnetts_, _etc._ James M. Burnet (1788–1816) and John Burnet
(1784–1868); Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding (1787–1855);
Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777–1843); John Glover
(1767–1849). Both the Nasmyths, Alexander (1758–1840) and Peter
(1787–1831), were represented at the Exhibition.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
246. _W. Collins._ William Collins (1788–1847).
247. _Bone._ Robert Trewick Bone (1790–1840).
_H. Howard._ Henry Howard (1769–1847).
_H. Singleton._ Henry Singleton (1766–1839).
_P. H. Rogers._ Philip Hutchins Rogers (1794–1853).
_J. Wilson._ John Wilson (1774–1855).
248. _The ablest landscape painter_, _etc._ Turner. Cf. vol. I. (_The
Round Table_), p. 76 note.
THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED
248. _B. Barker._ Benjamin Barker (1776–1838).
_Ab. Cooper._ Abraham Cooper (1787–1868).
_W. Westall._ William Westall (1781–1850).
249. _J. Stark._ James Stark (1794–1859).
_P. Dewint._ Peter De Wint (1784–1849).
_A. Sauerweide._ Alexander Sauerweid (1782–1844).
‘_War is a game_,’ _etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, V. 187–8.
ON MR. WILKIE’S PICTURES
This essay is signed ‘W. H.’
249. _Archbishop Herring’s letters._ Cf. vol. V. (_Lectures on the
English Poets_), p. 141 and note.
250. _The highest authority on art._ From this point the rest of the
essay was incorporated in the Lecture on Hogarth. See vol.
VIII. pp. 139–141.
251. ‘_To shew vice_ [virtue],’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
‘_The very error_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘It is the very error of the
moon.’ _Othello_, Act V. Sc. 2.
252. ‘_Your lungs begin to crow_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II.
Sc. 7.
[CHARACTER OF MR. WORDSWORTH’S NEW POEM, THE EXCURSION]
Under this heading Hazlitt contributed to _The Examiner_ three papers
which he afterwards partly republished with omissions and variations in
two essays in _The Round Table_. See vol. I. pp. 111–125. These
omissions and variations are given below.
At the beginning of the first essay as published in _The Round
Table_ add from the first (August 21, 1814) of _The Examiner_
articles the following passage:—
‘In power of intellect, in lofty conception, in the depth of
feeling, at once simple and sublime, which pervades every part
of it and which gives to every object an almost preternatural
and preterhuman interest, this work has seldom been surpassed.
If the subject of the Poem had been equal to the genius of the
Poet, if the skill with which he has chosen his materials had
accorded with the power exerted over them, if the objects
(whether persons or things) which he makes use of as the
vehicle of his feelings had been such as immediately and
irresistibly to convey them in all their force and depth to
others, then the production before us would indeed have “proved
a monument,” as he himself wishes it, worthy of the author and
of his country. Whether, as it is, this most original and
powerful performance may not rather remain like one of those
stupendous but half-finished structures, which have been
suffered to moulder into decay, because the cost and labour
attending them exceeded their use or beauty, we feel it would
be rather presumptuous in us to determine.’
At the end of the first paragraph on p. 112 add the following
note:—
‘Every one wishes to get rid of the booths and bridges in the
Park,[68] in order to have a view of the ground and water
again. Our Poet looks at the more lasting and serious works of
men as baby-houses and toys, and from the greater elevation of
his mind regards them much in the same light as we do the
Regent’s Fair and Mr. Vansittart’s “permanent erections.”’
For ‘He sees all things in himself’ (p. 112, l. 28) read ‘He sees
all things in his own mind; he contemplates effects in their
causes, and passions in their principles.’
To the words ‘our very constitution’ (p. 113, l. 8) Hazlitt in
_The Examiner_ appends, as a note, ‘“God knew Adam in the
elements of his chaos, and saw him in the great obscurity of
nothing.” _Sir Thomas Browne._’
For ‘The general and the permanent’ (p. 113, l. 12) read ‘The
common and the permanent.’
The words ‘interlocutions between Lucius and Caius’ (p. 113, l.
19) are not between quotation marks in the magazine.
_The Examiner_ for Aug. 28, 1814 contained a second essay on the
same subject, republished in _The Round Table_, except that the
opening paragraph was somewhat curtailed. In place of the
paragraph in _The Round Table_ ‘We could have wished,’ etc.
(vol. I. p. 113) read:—
‘We could have wished that Mr. Wordsworth had given to his work
the form of a philosophical poem altogether, with only
occasional digressions or allusions to particular instances.
There is in his general sentiments and reflections on human
life a depth, an originality, a truth, a beauty, and grandeur
both of conception and expression, which place him decidedly
at the head of the poets of the present day, or rather which
place him in a totally distinct class of excellence. But he
has chosen to encumber himself with a load of narrative and
description which, instead of assisting, hinders the progress
and effect of the general reasoning. Almost all this part of
the work, which Mr. Wordsworth has inwoven with the text,
would have come in better in plain prose as notes at the end.
Indeed, there is something evidently inconsistent, upon his
own principles, in the construction of the poem. For he
professes, in these ambiguous illustrations, to avoid all
that is striking or extraordinary—all that can raise the
imagination or affect the passions—all that is not every way
common and necessarily included in the natural workings of
the passions in all minds and in all circumstances. Then why
introduce particular illustrations at all which add nothing
to the force of the general truth, which hang as a dead
weight upon the imagination, which degrade the thought and
weaken the sentiment, and the connection of which with the
general principle it is more difficult to find out than to
understand the general principle itself? It is only by an
extreme process of abstraction that it is often possible to
trace the operation of the general law in the particular
illustration, yet it is to supply the defect of abstraction
that the illustration is given. Mr. Wordsworth indeed says
finely, and perhaps as truly as finely,’ etc.
Instead of saying that Wordsworth’s powers of description and
fancy seem to be little inferior to those of his classical
predecessor, Akenside (p. 114), Hazlitt, in _The Examiner_,
made the very different statement that ‘his powers of
description and fancy seem to be little inferior to those of
thought and sentiment.’
To the quotation on page 116, ‘Poor gentleman,’ etc. Hazlitt
adds, as a note, ‘Love in a Wood.’
After the words ‘any thing but dull’ (p. 116, l. 22) add, from
_The Examiner_, ‘_Rasselas_ indeed is dull; but then it is
privileged dulness.’
After ‘natural exercise of others’ (p. 117, l. 7) add ‘The
intellectual and the moral faculties of man are different; the
ideas of things and the feelings of pleasure and pain connected
with them.’ There are a few other trifling verbal alterations
in this paragraph. The note on the word ‘solitary’ on p. 117 is
not in _The Examiner_.
A third essay on the same subject was published in _The Examiner_
for October 2, 1814. This was reprinted with a few omissions
and additions in _The Round Table_ (see vol. I. pp. 120–125).
The opening paragraph in _The Round Table_ is condensed from the
following:—
‘Poetry may be properly divided into two classes; the poetry of
imagination and the poetry of sentiment. The one consists in
the power of calling up images of the most pleasing or striking
kind; the other depends on the strength of the interest which
it excites in given objects. The one may be said to arise out
of the faculties of memory and invention, conversant with the
world of external nature; the other from the fund of our moral
sensibility. In the combination of these different excellences
the perfection of poetry consists; the greatest poets of our
own or other countries have been equally distinguished for
richness of invention and depth of feeling. By the greatest
poets of our own country, we mean Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare
and Milton, who evidently possessed both kinds of imagination,
the intellectual and moral, in the highest degree. Young and
Cowley might be cited as the most brilliant instances of the
separation of feeling from fancy, of men who were dazzled by
the exuberance of their own thoughts and whose genius was
sacrificed to their want of taste. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other
hand, whose powers of feeling are of the highest order, is
certainly deficient in fanciful invention: his writings exhibit
all the internal power, without the external form of poetry. He
has none of the pomp and decoration and scenic effect of
poetry: no gorgeous palaces nor solemn temples awe the
imagination: no cities rise with glistering spires and
pinnacles adorned[69]: we meet with no knights pricked forth on
airy steeds: no hair-breadth scapes and perilous accidents[70]
by flood or field. Either from the predominant habit of his
mind, not requiring the stimulus of outward impressions, or
from the want of an imagination teeming with various forms, he
takes the common every-day events and objects of nature, or
rather seeks those that are the most simple and barren of
effect; but he adds to them a weight of interest from the
resources of his own mind, which makes the most insignificant
things serious and even formidable. All other interests are
absorbed in the deeper interest of his own thoughts, and find
the same level. His mind magnifies the littleness of his
subject, and raises its meanness; lends it his strength, and
clothes it with borrowed grandeur. With him a molehill, covered
with wild thyme, assumes the importance of “the great vision of
the guarded mount”[71]: a puddle is filled with preternatural
faces, and agitated with the fiercest storms of passion; and to
his mind, as he himself informs us, and as we can easily
believe,
“——The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”’[72]
After the words ‘among these northern Arcadians’ (vol. I. p. 121)
Hazlitt quotes ll. 411–439 of Book V. of _The Excursion_.
The short paragraph on p. 122 reads in _The Examiner_:—
‘We think it is pushing our love or admiration of natural
objects a good deal too far, to make it a set-off against a
story like the preceding, which carries that concentration
of self-interest and callousness to the feelings of others
to its utmost pitch, which is the general character of
those who are cut off by their mountains and valleys from
an intercourse with mankind, even more than of the country
people.’
In _The Examiner_, after the words ‘the beautiful poem of _Hart
Leap Well_,’ the essay concludes as follows:—
‘We conceive that about as many fine things have passed through
Mr. Wordsworth’s mind as, with five or six exceptions, through
any human mind whatever. The conclusion of the passage we refer
to is admirable, and comes in like some dying close in
music:—[_The Excursion_, Book VII., ll. 976–1007].
‘If Mr. Wordsworth does not always write in this manner, it is
his own fault. He can as often as he pleases. It is not in our
power to add to, or take away from, the pretensions of a poem
like the present, but if our opinion or wishes could have any
weight, we would take our leave of it by saying—_Esto_
perpetua!’
The first two of these _Examiner_ articles are referred to by
Lamb in a letter to Wordsworth of Sept. 19, 1814. See
_Letters_, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I. 434–5. It is significant of
Hazlitt’s increasing bitterness (caused mainly, no doubt, by
the final downfall of Napoleon) that the passages omitted from
_The Round Table_ are for the most part of a highly eulogistic
character.
ON ROCHEFOUCAULT’S MAXIMS
This paper is signed ‘W. H.’ in _The Examiner_.
254. ‘_The web of our life_,’ _etc._ _All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act
IV. Sc. 3.
_The Practice of Piety._ See vol. III. (_Political Essays_), note
to p. 111.
_Grove’s Ethics._ Henry Grove’s (1684–1738) _A System of Moral
Philosophy_ (1749).
_De l’Esprit._ Helvétius’s famous book (1758).
Note. _Lines written while sailing in a boat at evening._
256. ‘_Make assurance_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Sc. 1.
257. ‘_Gets the start_,’ _etc._ _Julius Cæsar_, Act I. Sc. 2.
ON THE PREDOMINANT PRINCIPLES, ETC.
This essay, the title of which has been taken from the Index to _The
Examiner_, is No. IX. of the _Round Table_ series. It was republished in
_Winterslow_ under the title of ‘Mind and Motive.’
259. ‘_Friends now fast sworn_,’ _etc._ _Coriolanus_, Act IV. Sc. 4.
260. ‘_The servile slave._’ _The Faerie Queene_, II. vii. 33.
261. ‘_The toys of desperation._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 4.
262. _A fine observation_, _etc._ Aristotle, _Metaphysics_, A I. 980
a, 21.
THE LOVE OF POWER, ETC.
No. XIII. of the _Round Table_ series, republished in _Winterslow_ along
with the former essay as ‘Mind and Motive.’
265. ‘_But for an utmost end_,’ _etc._ Hobbes, _Human Nature_, VII. 5,
6 (_Works_, ed. Molesworth, IV. 33).
266. ‘_He courted a statue_,’ _etc._ _Don Quixote_, Part I. Book II.
Chap. 13.
267. ‘_Catch glimpses_,’ _etc._ Cf. Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘The world is
too much with us,’ etc.
‘_I also was an Arcadian._’ Cf. vol. VI. (_Table Talk_), p. 27
and note.
268. ‘_Sithence no fairy lights_,’ _etc._ Sneyd Davies, _To the
Honourable and Reverend F. C._ See _ante_, note to p. 224.
_Happy are they_, _etc._ Hazlitt seems to have been fond of this
passage. See vol. IV. (_Reply to Malthus_), p. 104, and vol.
III. (_Political Essays_), note to p. 266.
ESSAY ON MANNERS
This essay, No. XVIII. of the _Round Table_ series, was republished in
_Winterslow_. Part of it Hazlitt himself used in the essay ‘On Manner’
in _The Round Table_. See vol. I. pp. 44–7 and notes.
269. _The Flower and Leaf._ This poem is not now regarded as
Chaucer’s. Cf. vol. V. (_Lectures on the English Poets_), p. 27
and note.
271. ‘_The painted birds_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _The Flower and the Leaf_,
_etc._, ll. 46–53, 102–152.
272. _Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough_,
_etc._ The rest of the essay from this point is in vol. I. (see
pp. 44–7 and notes).
KEAN’S BAJAZET, ETC.
This theatrical notice is proved to be Hazlitt’s by the passage (p. 276)
beginning ‘Happy age, when the utmost stretch of a morning’s study,’
etc., which is repeated in the Lecture ‘On Wycherley, Congreve,
Vanbrugh, and Farquhar.’ See vol. VIII. p. 70. Rowe’s _Tamerlane_ was
first produced in 1702.
274. _Miss Stephens’s reappearance in Polly._ Cf. vol. VIII. pp.
193–5.
275. ‘_Full of sound_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act V. Sc. 5.
‘_A load to sink a navy._’ _Henry VIII._ Act III. Sc. 2.
_Ambition as the hunger of noble minds._ See _Tamerlane_, Act II.
Sc. 2.
276. _The Country Girl._ Produced originally in 1766, an adaptation by
Garrick of _The Country Wife_ of Wycherley. Cf. vol. VIII. p.
76. Mrs. Mardyn, Mrs. Alsop, and the actors here referred to
are dealt with by Hazlitt in _A View of the English Stage_.
DOCTRINE OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY
This paper, signed ‘W,’ is clearly Hazlitt’s. Cf. the Lecture on the
same subject, _ante_, pp. 48–74. The essay is No. XXVII. of the _Round
Table_ series.
277. ‘_For I had learnt_,’ _etc._ Cf. Wordsworth, _Lines composed a
few miles above Tintern Abbey_, 95–102.
278. ‘_Threshold of Jove’s throne._’ Cf. ‘Before the starry threshold
of Jove’s court,’ _Comus_, I.
279. ‘_Praise and blame_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 56.
280. ‘_A good favour_,’ _etc._ Loosely quoted from _Much Ado About
Nothing_, Act III. Sc. 3.
282. _Marvell and his leg of mutton._ Hazlitt refers to the story of
Danby’s unsuccessful attempt to win over Marvell to the court.
One version of the story is that in Danby’s presence Marvell
summoned his servant and said to him, ‘Pray, what had I for
dinner yesterday?’ ‘A shoulder of mutton.’ ‘And what do you
allow me to-day?’ ‘The remainder hashed.’ Marvell then added to
Danby, ‘And to-morrow, my lord, I shall have the sweet
blade-bone broiled.’
‘_Allemagne_,’ _etc._ _De l’Allemagne_, Preface.
‘_But there is matter_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _Hart-Leap Well_,
95–6.
PARALLEL PASSAGES IN VARIOUS POETS
No. XXVIII. of the Round Table series, and signed ‘W.’ The long passages
from Voltaire, etc. have been indicated by the first and last line.
282. _Zaire._ 1732.
283. ‘_Soft you_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act V. Sc. 2.
‘_Vanished_ [melted] _into thin air_.’ _The Tempest_, Act IV. Sc.
1.
_Ducis._ Jean François Ducis (1733–1816), who adapted some of
Shakespeare’s plays for the stage.
283. _‘As flat,’ etc._ Cf. ‘He has crushed his nose, Susannah says, as
flat as a pancake to his face.’ _Tristram Shandy_, III. 27.
284. _Potter._ Robert Potter’s (1721–1804) translation of Æschylus
appeared in 1777.
_‘When I had gazed,’ etc._ _Poems on the Naming of Places_, II.
51 _et seq._
_We have once already attempted, etc._ In three articles in _The
Examiner_. Cf. _ante_, pp. 572–5, and vol. I. (_The Round
Table_), pp. 111–125.
_‘In my former days of bliss,’ etc._ From ‘The Shepherd’s
Hunting’ (1615).
_THE DUKE D’ENGHIEN_
In addition to the essays reprinted in the text from _The Examiner_ of
1815 there are four letters signed ‘Peter Pickthank’ on the Duke
D’Enghien, to which reference should be made. These appeared on
September 24, October 8, November 19, and December 10, and were written
in reply to a correspondent signing himself ‘Fair Play.’ The controversy
arose out of an article (September 3) entitled ‘Chateaubriand, The
Quack,’ which contained a casual reference to the Duke D’Enghien, ‘whom
Buonaparte is accused of having murdered because he was not willing that
he, the said Royal Duke, should assassinate him.’ ‘Fair Play’ seized on
this passage and protested (September 10) against the implied defence of
the Duke D’Enghien’s execution. ‘Peter Pickthank’ replied (September
24), and the correspondence was kept up till near the end of the year,
‘Fair Play’ contributing letters on October 1, October 29, and November
26. ‘Peter Pickthank’s’ letters contain many of Hazlitt’s stock
quotations and personal allusions (to Dr. Stoddart, for example); they
embody exactly his political opinions, and altogether the internal
evidence of their having been written by him is very strong. Inasmuch,
however, as there is not absolute certainty in the matter, and a
considerable part of the letters would have been unintelligible without
including ‘Fair Play’s’ letters as well, the editors have felt justified
in omitting the whole correspondence. An editorial note at the end of
‘Peter Pickthank’s’ third letter (November 19) states that ‘this article
has been delayed in order to soften some of the asperities.’
MR. LOCKE A GREAT PLAGIARIST
No. XXXI. of the Round Table series, and signed ‘W.H.’
285. _‘The very head,’ etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.
‘_A justly exploded_ [decried] _author_.’ See _ante_, p. 167 and
note.
_Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation._ Prefixed to the
Supplement to the 4th and 5th editions of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_ (1816).
286. _‘Fame is no plant,’ etc._ _Lycidas_ 78–82.
287. _‘The greatest and as it were radical distinction,’ etc._ Bacon,
_Aphorisms_, LV.
‘_That strain I heard was of a higher mood._’ _Lycidas_, 87.
288. _What is most remarkable, etc._ This passage on wit will be found
in an expanded form in _Lectures on the English Comic Writers_.
See vol. VIII. pp. 18–21.
_Three papers, which we propose to write._ These papers do not
appear to have been written.
289. ‘_The laborious fooleries._’ See _ante_, note to p. 239.
290. _‘The tenth transmitter,’ etc._ Cf. ‘No tenth transmitter of a
foolish face.’ Savage, _The Bastard_, 8.
‘_The mind alone is formative._’ See _ante_, p. 176.
[THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED]
In _The Examiner_ for March 3, 1816 appeared the following note:—‘A
correspondent who signs himself J.W. thinks we ought to bring proofs of
Mr. Locke’s want of originality as the founder of a system. We recommend
him, if he is curious on this subject, to read the first eighty pages of
Hobbes’s _Leviathan_, if the name does not alarm him. After that, if he
is not satisfied and repeats his request, perhaps we may attend to it.’
On March 31 (Round Table No. XXXIV.) Hazlitt brings forward his proofs
in a long paper which consists chiefly of extracts from Locke, Hobbes
and other philosophers. The essay begins as follows:—
‘We have been required to give proof of Mr. Locke’s want of originality
as a metaphysical reasoner, and of the claims of Hobbes to be considered
as the founder of the modern system of the philosophy of the human mind.
‘Here then it is. But at the same time we would observe, that we do not
think ourselves bound to give this proof to those who have demanded it
(somewhat impatiently) at our hands. It was sufficient for us to have
stated our opinion on this subject, and to have referred the curious
expressly to the sources from which they might satisfy themselves of the
truth or hollowness of our assertion. To our readers in general we owe
some apology for alluding to such subjects at all. But to the point.—We
have said that the principles of the modern school of metaphysics are
all to be found, pure, entire, connected, and explicitly stated, in the
writings of Hobbes: that Mr. Locke borrowed the leading principle of
that philosophy from Hobbes, without understanding or without admitting
the system in general, concerning which he always seems to entertain two
opinions: that succeeding writers have followed up Mr. Locke’s general
principle into its legitimate consequences, and have arrived at exactly
the same conclusions as Hobbes, but that being ignorant of the name and
writings of Hobbes, they have with one accord and with great injustice
attributed the merit of the original discovery of that system to Mr.
Locke, as having made the first start, and having gone further in it
than any one else before him.
‘The principles of the modern system, of which Mr. Locke is the reputed
and Mr. Hobbes the real founder, are chiefly the following:—
1. That all our ideas are derived from external objects, by means of the
senses alone, and are merely repetitions of our sensible impressions.
2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so the
mind itself, with all its operations, is nothing but matter and motion.
3. That thoughts are single, or that we can have only one idea at a
time; in other words, that there are no complex ideas in the mind.
4. That we have no general or abstract ideas.
5. That the only principle of connection between one idea and another is
_association_, or their previous connection in sense.
6. That reason and understanding are resolvable entirely into the
mechanism of language.
7. and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of
action, and self-interest the source of all our affections.
9. That the mind acts from necessity, and consequently is not a moral or
accountable agent.
[_The manner of stating and reasoning on this last point, viz. the moral
and practical consequences of the doctrine of necessity is the only
circumstance of importance, in which the modern philosophers differ from
Hobbes._]
10. That there is no such thing as genius, or a difference in the
natural capacities or dispositions of men, the mind being originally
alike passive to all impressions, and becoming whatever it is from
circumstances &c., &c.
‘That these are the most striking positions of the moderns with respect
to the human mind, is what every one, familiar with the writers since
Locke, as Berkeley, Hartley, Hume, Priestley, Horne Tooke, Beddoes,
among ourselves, and Helvetius, Condillac, Mirabaud, Condorcet &c.,
among the French, will readily allow: that most of them are to be found
in the _Essay on Human Understanding_, mixed up in a state of
inextricable confusion with common-place and common sense notions, now
advanced, now retracted, the arguments on one side of the question now
prevailing through an endless labyrinth of explanation, now those on the
other, and now both opinions asserted and denied in the same sentence is
what is equally well known to the readers of Locke and his commentators.
That the same system came from the mind of Hobbes, not hesitating,
stammering, puling, drivelling, ricketty, a sickly half birth, to be
brought up by hand, to be nursed and dandled into common life and
existence, but just the reverse of all this, full grown, completely
proportioned and articulated, compact, stamped in all its lineaments,
with the vigour and decision of the author’s mind, is what we have now
to shew.’
The extracts follow, interspersed with brief comments by Hazlitt, and
the essay concludes as follows:—
‘To what Mr. Hobbes has written on this subject [Liberty and Necessity]
nothing has been added nor can be taken away. We agree to every word of
it, and the more heartily, because it is the only one of all the points
which have been stated on which we do. In speaking of the popular
notions of liberty, in his controversy with a foolish Bishop of that day
(Bramhall), he says, “In fine, that freedom which men commonly find in
books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on
the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the churches, and the
doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the
markets, and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same
that I assent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will;
but whether he hath freedom to will, is a question which it seems
neither the Bishop nor they ever thought on.” Hobbes was as superior to
Locke as a writer, as he was as a reasoner. He had great powers both of
wit and imagination. In short he was a great man, not because he was a
great metaphysician, but he was a great metaphysician because he was a
great man.
‘It has been thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s metaphysical
speculations have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy excited by
the irreligious and despotical tendency of his other writings. But in
this he has also been unfairly dealt with. Locke borrowed his
fundamental ideas of government from him; and there is not a word
directly levelled at religion in any of his works. At least, his
aristocratical notions and his want of religion must have, in some
measure, balanced one another; and Charles II. had his picture hanging
in his bed-room, though the Bishops wished to have him burnt. The true
reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was, that his
views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately
understood, without passing through the hands of several successive
generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another’s
meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence
arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who, to quote some
fine lines of Spenser,
——‘Stood all astonished like a sort of steers
’Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race
Unawares is chanced far straying from his peers;
So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.’[73]
_COLERIDGE’S ‘CHRISTABEL’_
On June 2, 1816, _The Examiner_ published a review of Coleridge’s
_Christabel_, as to the authorship of which there has been some
discussion. See _Notes and Queries_, 9th Ser. XI. pp. 171 and 271. Mr.
Dykes Campbell (_The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, p. 606)
is disposed to attribute the review to Hazlitt. As in the case of the
_Edinburgh Review_ notice of _Christabel_ (see vol. X. of the present
edition, pp. 411–418), Hazlitt’s authorship cannot be regarded as
absolutely certain. The review is as follows:—
‘The fault of Mr. Coleridge is, that he comes to no conclusion. He is a
man of that universality of genius, that his mind hangs suspended
between poetry and prose, truth and falsehood, and an infinity of other
things, and from an excess of capacity, he does little or nothing. Here
are two unfinished poems, and a fragment. _Christabel_, which has been
much read and admired in manuscript, is now for the first time confided
to the public. The _Vision of Kubla Khan_ still remains a profound
secret; for only a few lines of it ever were written.[74]
‘The poem of _Christabel_ sets out in the following manner:
“’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
And the owls have awaken’d the crowing cock;
Tu—whit! Tu—whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
From her kennel beneath the rock
She makes answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady’s shroud.”
‘We wonder that Mr. Murray, who has an eye for things, should suffer
this “mastiff bitch” to come into his shop. Is she a sort of Cerberus to
fright away the critics? But—gentlemen, she is toothless.
‘There is a dishonesty as well as affectation in all this. The secret of
this pretended contempt for the opinion of the public, is that it is a
sorry subterfuge for our self-love. The poet, uncertain of the
approbation of his readers, thinks he shews his superiority to it by
shocking their feelings at the outset, as a clown, who is at a loss how
to behave himself, begins by affronting the company. This is what is
called _throwing a crust to the critics_. If the beauties of
_Christabel_ should not be sufficiently admired, Mr. Coleridge may lay
it all to two lines which he had too much manliness to omit in
complaisance to the bad taste of his contemporaries.
‘We the rather wonder at this bold proceeding in the author, as his
courage has cooled in the course of the publication, and he has omitted,
from mere delicacy, a line which is absolutely necessary to the
understanding the whole story. The _Lady Christabel_, wandering in the
forest by moonlight, meets a lady in apparently great distress, to whom
she offers her assistance and protection, and takes her home with her to
her own chamber. This woman,
——“beautiful to see,
Like a lady of a far countree,”
is a witch. Who she is else, what her business is with _Christabel_,
upon what motives, to what end her sorceries are to work, does not
appear at present; but this much we know, that she is a witch, and that
_Christabel’s_ dread of her arises from her discovering this
circumstance, which is told in a single line, which line, from an
exquisite refinement in efficiency,[75] is here omitted. When the
unknown lady gets to _Christabel’s_ chamber, and is going to undress, it
is said—
“Then drawing in her breath aloud
Like one that shuddered, she unbound
The cincture from beneath her breast:
Her silken robe and inner vest
Dropt to her feet, and full in view
_Behold! her bosom and half her side_—
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
And she is to sleep by Christabel!”
‘The manuscript runs thus, or nearly thus:—
“Behold her bosom and half her side—
_Hideous, deformed, and pale of hue_.”
‘This line is necessary to make common sense of the first and second
part. “It is the keystone that makes up the arch.”[76] For that reason
Mr. Coleridge left it out. Now this is a greater physiological curiosity
than even the fragment of _Kubla Khan_.
‘In parts of _Christabel_ there is a great deal of beauty, both of
thought, imagery, and versification; but the effect of the general story
is dim, obscure, and visionary. It is more like a dream than a reality.
The mind, in reading it, is spell-bound. The sorceress seems to act
without power—Christabel to yield without resistance. The faculties are
thrown into a state of metaphysical suspense and theoretical imbecility.
The poet, like the witch in _Spenser_, is evidently
“Busied about some wicked gin.”[77]
But we do not foresee what he will make of it. There is something
disgusting at the bottom of his subject, which is but ill glossed over
by a veil of Della Cruscan sentiment and fine writing—like moon-beams
playing on a charnel-house, or flowers strewed on a dead body. Mr.
Coleridge’s style is essentially superficial, pretty, ornamental, and he
has forced it into the service of a story which is petrific. In the
midst of moonlight, and fluttering ringlets, and flitting clouds, and
enchanted echoes, and airy abstractions of all sorts, there is one
genuine outburst of humanity, worthy of the author, when no dream
oppresses him, no spell binds him. We give the passage entire:—’
[Here follow ll. 403–430 of _Christabel_, beginning ‘But when he heard
the lady’s tale.’]
‘Why does not Mr. Coleridge always write in this manner, that we might
always read him? The description of the Dream of Bracy the bard, is also
very beautiful and full of power.
‘The conclusion of the second part of _Christabel_, about “the little
limber elf,” is to us absolutely incomprehensible. _Kubla Khan_, we
think, only shews that Mr. Coleridge can write better _nonsense_ verses
than any man in England. It is not a poem, but a musical composition.
“A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she play’d,
Singing of Mount Abora.”
‘We could repeat these lines to ourselves not the less often for not
knowing the meaning of them.’
In a sketch of Coleridge which appeared in _The Examiner_ for Oct. 21,
1821, Leigh Hunt quotes the lines from _Kubla Khan_ (‘A damsel with a
dulcimer,’ etc.) and says: ‘We could repeat such verses ... down a green
glade, a whole summer’s morning’; but in spite of this and a few other
verbal similarities, a comparison of the sketch with the review does not
support the theory that the latter was written by Leigh Hunt. Possibly
he wrote a few lines here and there, but the review as a whole is far
more suggestive of Hazlitt.
SHAKESPEAR’S FEMALE CHARACTERS
No. XLIII. of the _Round Table_ series. It is partly reproduced in
_Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_. See especially the essays on
_Cymbeline_ and _Othello_ (vol. I. 179 _et seq._ and 200 _et seq._ and
notes).
290. _Miss Peggy._ See _ante_, p. 276.
291. ‘_Calls true love_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 2.
295. ‘_Books, dreams_,’ _etc._ _Personal Talk_, ll. 33 _et seq._
_Tate._ Nahum Tate’s _King Lear_ was brought out in 1681.
‘_And her heart beats_,’ _etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act III.
Sc. 2.
296. ‘_Sir, the fairest flowers_,’ _etc._ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act IV.
Sc. 4.
_SKETCHES OF THE HISTORY OF THE GOOD OLD TIMES_
Three papers appeared in _The Examiner_ for April 6, April 13, and April
20, 1817, under the heading of ‘Sketches of the History of the Good Old
Times before the French Revolution, when Kings and Priests did what they
pleased, by the grace of God.’ In these essays a French anti-Bourbon
book, the title of which is not given, is made the text for a most
unflattering review of the characters of a number of kings, from Hugh
Capet to Louis XVI. The subject would naturally attract Hazlitt, and
indeed it may be said that the essays are almost certainly his. As,
however, the internal evidence, though very strong, does not prove his
authorship to be absolutely certain, it has been thought better not to
include the essays in the present edition.
MISS O’NEILL’S WIDOW CHEERLY
This and the five succeeding theatrical papers from _The Examiner_ of
1817 have been inserted in the text because the internal evidence seems
to leave no room for doubt that they were written by Hazlitt. It is
clear from _A View of the English Stage_ that he was writing theatrical
notices for _The Examiner_ during the whole of the period in question
(Jan.–May, 1817).
297. _The best actress ... with one great exception_, _etc._ For this
comparison of Miss O’Neill with Mrs. Siddons, cf. vol. VIII. p.
198, and for Miss O’Neill’s failure in comedy, _ibid._ p. 291.
297. _The Soldier’s Daughter._ By Andrew Cherry, produced in 1804.
298. ‘_The insipid levelling morality_,’ _etc._ See Lamb’s footnote to
Middleton and Rowley’s _A Fair Quarrel_. Hazlitt quotes the
passage elsewhere.
PENELOPE AND THE DANSOMANIE
299. ‘_Like to see the unmerited fall_,’ _etc._ Cf. Burke,
_Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed.
Payne, II. 164).
300. _The Gentleman who is understood_, _etc._ William Ayrton
(1777–1858), who was musical director at the King’s Theatre in
1817 and again in 1821.
_Of the Dansomanie_, _etc._ A comparison of this passage with a
reference to the ‘Dansomanie’ in vol. VIII. p. 437 is
conclusive as to Hazlitt’s authorship of this notice.
‘_Such were the joys_,’ _etc._ Bickerstaffe, _Love in a Village_,