[1] _Dramatic Essays_, VIII, 415.
[2] "On Living to One's Self," in _Table Talk_.
[3] "On Reading Old Books," pp. 344-45.
[4] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.
[5] _Life of Holcroft_, Works, II, 171, n.
[6] "On the Pleasure of Painting," in _Table Talk_.
[7] W. C. Hazlitt: _Lamb and Hazlitt_ (1900), p. 44. The letter in which
these phrases are to be found is dated 1793 by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, but the
present writer has given a detailed statement of his reasons for believing
that it was written in 1803. See _Nation_, October 19, 1911.
[8] XI, 26.
[9] _Table Talk_, "On the Indian Jugglers."
[10] _Round Table_.
[11] "On Respectable People," in _Plain Speaker_.
[12] "On Paradox and Commonplace," in _Table Talk_.
[13] Hazlitt's _Table Talk_ was included by Stevenson in a youthful
_Catalogus Librorum Carissimorum_. It is interesting that at the same time
that Carlyle was composing _Sartor Resartus_, Hazlitt should have penned
this bit of savage satire. "It has been often made a subject of dispute,
What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may,
perhaps, be given that _he is the only animal that dresses_.... Swift has
taken a good bird's-eye view of man's nature, by abstracting the habitual
notions of size, and looking at it in _great_ or in _little_: would that
some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by
stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by
dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body
alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks
out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of
gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a cruel
action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has
only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its
seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency,
at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and
accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a 'damned
spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we
dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as
assuredly as in _san Benitos_.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to
be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel
in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of
dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round:
the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of
sentiment!" _Aphorisms on Man_, LXIV. Works, XII, 227.
[14] _Round Table_, "On Pedantry."
[15] "Knowledge of the World," XII, 307.
[16] "On Prejudice," XII, 396.
[17] _Table Talk_, "On the Past and Future."
[18] _Table Talk_, "Why Distant Objects Please."
[19] "Love of Power," XI, 268.
[20] _Life of Napoleon_, chap. 34.
[21] "What is the People?" in _Political Essays_, III, 292.
[22] He tells of an experience in crossing the Alps which he intends
should be symbolic of his whole life. From a great distance he thought he
perceived Mont Blanc, but as the driver insisted that it was only a cloud,
"I supposed that I had taken a sudden fancy for a reality. I began in
secret to take myself to task, and to lecture myself for my proneness to
build theories on the foundation of my conjectures and wishes. On turning
round occasionally, however, I observed that this cloud remained in the
same place, and I noticed the circumstance to our guide, as favoring my
first suggestion; for clouds do not usually remain long in the same place.
We disputed the point for half a day, and it was not till the afternoon
when we had reached the other side of the lake of Neufchatel, that this
same cloud rising like a canopy over the point where it had hovered, 'in
shape and station proudly eminent,' he acknowledged it to be Mont Blanc."
_Notes of a Journey Through France and Italy._ Works, IX, 296.
[23] Andrew Lang's _Life of Lockhart_, I, 63. 128-130.
[24] John Scott, the editor of the _London Magazine_, was killed in a duel
arising from his retaliatory attacks on Lockhart and the Blackwood School
of Criticism. See _London Magazine_, II, 509, 666; III, 76, and
"Statement" prefatory to number for February, 1821.
[25] April, 1817.
[26] January, 1818.
[27] "I have been reading Frederick Schlegel.... He is like Hazlitt, in
English, who _talks pimples_--a red and white corruption rising up (in
little imitations of mountains upon maps), but containing nothing, and
discharging nothing, except their own humours." Byron's _Letters_, Jan.
28, 1821 (ed. Prothero, V, 191).
[28] Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke's _Recollections of Writers_, 147.
[29] Joseph Cottle: _Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_, 465.
[30] Haydon's _Correspondence and Table Talk_, II, 32.
[31] _Plain Speaker_.
[32] _Characteristics_, CCCVII.
[33] "Characteristics," in Carlyle's _Critical and Miscellaneous Essays_
(Chapman and Hall, 1898), III, 32.
[34] "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey," Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, I, 233.
[35] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.
[36] Life of Pope, Johnson's Lives, ed. Birkbeck Hill, IV, 248.
[37] Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, II, 89.
[38] _Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope_, I, 170.
[39] See an essay by John Foster on "Poetical Criticism," in _Critical
Essays_, ed. Bohn, I, 144.
[40] Gibbon's Journal, October 3, 1762. Miscellaneous Works, ed. 1814, V,
263.
[41] Review of Mrs. Hemans's Poems, _Edinburgh Review_, October, 1829.
Jeffrey's Works, III, 296.
[42] _Blackwood's Magazine_, II, 670-79.
[43] I, 281 (March, 1820).
[44] _Spirit of the Age_, "William Godwin."
[45] Works, ed. Shedd, IV, 35.
[46] Mr. Saintsbury has applied this phrase to Hazlitt himself, but we
prefer to transfer the honor.
[47] "Savoir bien lire un livre en le jugeant chemin faisant, et sans
cesser de le gouter, c'est presque tout l'art du critique." _Chateaubriand
et son Groupe Litteraire_, I, 234.
[48] _Portraits Contemporains_, "Sonnet d'Hazlitt," II, 515.
[49] _Age of Elizabeth_, "On Miscellaneous Poems," V, 301.
[50] "Thoughts on Taste," XI, 460.
[51] _Conversations of Northcote_, VI, 457.
[52] Cf. Herford: _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 51.
[53] "On the Conduct of Life," XII, 427.
[54] Patmore: _My Friends and Acquaintances_, III, 122.
[55] "On the Conduct of Life," XII, 428. See also the paper "On the Study
of the Classics," in the _Round Table_.
[56] See a note to p. 329.
[57] See Wordsworth's sonnet, "Great men have been among us."
[58] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.
[59] "He is the most illuminating and the most thoughtful of all
Rousseau's early English critics.... His essay 'On the Character of
Rousseau' was not surpassed, or approached, as a study of the great writer
until the appearance of Lord Morley's monograph nearly sixty years
afterwards." E. Gosse: _Fortnightly Review_, July, 1912, p. 30.
[60] In the review of Schlegel's _Lectures on the Drama_, Works, X, 78.
[61] See the paper on "John Buncle," in the _Round Table_.
[62] _Correspondence of Macvey Napier_, p. 21.
[63] "On the Pleasure of Painting," in _Table Talk_.
[64] _Dramatic Essays_, VIII, 415.
[65] "On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 44.
[66] "The Periodical Press," X, 203.
[67] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.
[68] Cf. "On Reading Old Books," pp. 338-9, where this charge is curiously
echoed by Hazlitt himself.
[69] Ibid., p. 337.
[70] Ibid., p. 340.
[71] "On Shakespeare and Milton," p. 109.
[72] "The English Novelists," VIII, 109.
[73] "Thoughts on Taste," XI, 463.
[74] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.
[75] Ibid.
[76] _Characters of Shakespeare_, "Lear."
[77] "On Poetry in General," p. 258.
[78] "On Poetry in General," p. 266.
[79] Hazlitt defends himself on the ground that "the word has these three
_distinct_ meanings in the English language, that is, it signifies the
composition produced, the state of mind or faculty producing it, and, in
certain cases, the subject-matter proper to call forth that state of
mind." _Letter to Gifford_, I, 396.
[80] "On Poetry in General," pp. 268-9.
[81] Ibid., p. 268.
[82] Those interested in the perennial discussion of the relation of
poetry to verse or metre would do well to read the recent interesting
contribution to the subject by Professor Mackail in his _Lectures on
Poetry_ (Longmans, 1912).
[83] "On the Causes of Popular Opinion," XII, 320.
[84] Coleridge: _Table Talk_, Aug. 6, 1832.
[85] _Edinburgh Review_, Feb., 1816. The nature of Hazlitt's debt to
Coleridge, Lamb and Schlegel is to some extent illustrated in the notes to
the present text.
[86] "Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers," in _Plain Speaker_.
[87] Moore's _Letters and Journals_, May 21, 1821, III, 235.
[88] _Shakespeare's Maedchen und Frauen_.
[89] Review of Schlegel's Lectures, Works, X, III.
[90] "Poetry," XII, 339.
[91] _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_, "Antony and Cleopatra."
[92] Lowell: _Old English Dramatists_.
[93] _Lecture on the Age of Elizabeth_, "On Beaumont and Fletcher," V, 269.
[94] _Conversation of Northcote_, VI, 393.
[95] _Essays in English Literature_, Second Series. 159-161.
[96] There seems to be no reason for doubting Hazlitt's authorship of the
article in the _Examiner_. See Works, XI, 580.
[97] "William Gifford," in _Spirit of the Age_.
[98] _Select British Poets_. See Works, V, 378.
[99] "Shelley's Posthumous Poems," Works, X, 256 ff.
[100] Hazlitt's syntax is often abbreviated, elliptical, and unregardful
of book rules. Constructions like the following are not uncommon in his
prose: "As a novelist, his Vicar of Wakefield has charmed all Europe....
As a comic writer, his Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr.
Liston's face." _Lectures on the English Poets_, "On Swift, Young," etc.,
V, 119, 120.
[101] _Spirit of the Age_, "William Cobbett."
[102] See pp. 210-213.
[103] "On the Living Poets," in _Lectures on the English Poets_, V, 167.
[104] This is the form of the passage as published in the _Literary
Remains_ (1836). That Hazlitt did not attain effects like this offhand, is
evident from the comparative feebleness of the original sound of the
passage in the _Monthly Magazine_: "That we should thus in a manner
outlive ourselves, and dwindle imperceptibly into nothing, is not
surprising, when even in our prime the strongest impressions leave so
little traces of themselves behind, and the last object is driven out by
the succeeding one." "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth," Works, XII,
160.
[105] This passage also shows alterations from the first form. Cf. XII,
152.
[106] _Lectures on the English Poets_. "On Swift, Young, etc.," V, 104.
See also the paper in _Table Talk_ on "Familiar Style."
[107] "I grant thus much, that it is in vain to seek for the word we want,
or endeavour to get at it second-hand, or as a paraphrase on some other
word--it must come of itself, or arise out of an immediate impression or
lively intuition of the subject; that is, the proper word must be
suggested immediately by the thoughts, but it need not be presented as
soon as called for.... Proper expressions rise to the surface from the
heat and fermentation of the mind, like bubbles on an agitated stream. It
is this which produces a clear and sparkling style." "On Application to
Study," in _Plain Speaker_.
[108] _Spirit of the Age_. "Mr. Cobbett."
[109] Ibid., "William Godwin."
[110] "On the Living Poets," _Lectures on English Poets_, V, 144.
[111] _Lectures on the Comic Writers_, "On Wycherley, Congreve, etc.,"
VIII, 70.
[112] _Spirit of the Age_, "Mr. T. Moore," IV, 353.
[113] _Table Talk_, "On Patronage and Puffing."
[114] "L'espece d'entrain qui accompagne et suit ces frequents articles
improvises de verve et lances a toute vapeur. On s'y met tout entier: on
s'en exagere la valeur dans le moment meme, on en mesure l'importance au
bruit, et si cela mene a mieux faire, il n'y a pas grand mal apres tout."
_Portraits Contemporains_, II, 515.
[115] "'Range and keenness of appreciation' do not by themselves give
taste, but merely romantic gusto or perceptiveness. In order that gusto
may be elevated to taste it needs to be disciplined and selective. To this
end it must come under the control of an entirely different order of
intuitions, of what I have called the 'back pull toward the centre.' The
romantic one sidedness that is already so manifest in Hazlitt's conception
of taste has, I maintain, gone to seed in Professor Saintsbury." Irving
Babbitt, in _Nation_, May 16, 1912.
[116] T. N. Talfourd: _Edinburgh Review_, Nov., 1820.
[117] _My Literary Passions_, 120.
[118] _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1837.
[119] Thackeray's Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 350-51.
[120] Robertson: _Essays Toward a Critical Method_, 81.
[121] Saintsbury's _History of Criticism_ and John Davidson's _Sentences
and Paragraphs_, 113.
[122] In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the
place of the translations of the Bible: and this dumb art arose in the
silence of the written oracles.
[123] See _A Voyage to the Straits of Magellan_, 1594.
[124] Taken from Tasso.
[125] This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which
Spenser sometimes took with language.
[126]
"That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
Tho' they are made and moulded of things past,
And give to Dust, that is a little gilt,
More laud than gold o'er-dusted."
_Troilus and Cressida._
[127] In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance of
the poet's exact observation of nature:--
"There is a willow growing o'er a brook,
That shews its hoary leaves i' th' glassy stream."
The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a whitish
colour, and the reflection would therefore be "hoary."
[128] Why Pope should say in reference to him, "Or _more wise_ Charron,"
is not easy to determine.
[129] As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give his
chapter entitled _One Man's Profit is Another's Loss_, in which he has
nearly anticipated Mandeville's celebrated paradox of private vices being
public benefits:--
"Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who furnished out
funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods: and if he got an
estate, it must be by the death of a great many people: but I think it a
sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit can be made, but at the
expense of some other person, and that every kind of gain is by that rule
liable to be condemned. The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth,
and the farmer by the dearness of corn; the architect by the ruin of
buildings, the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits; nay, even
the honour and functions of divines is owing to our mortality and vices.
No physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best friends, said
the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his country; and
so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every one but examine his own
heart, and he will find, that his private wishes spring and grow up at the
expense of some other person. Upon which consideration this thought came
into my head, that nature does not hereby deviate from her general policy;
for the naturalists hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of any
one thing, is the decay and corruption of another:
_Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit,
Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante._ i.e.
For what from its own confines chang'd doth pass,
Is straight the death of what before it was."
_Vol._ I, _Chap._ XXI.
[130] No. 125.
[131] The antithetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond
of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive,
such as "proud submission and dignified obedience," are, I think, first to
be found in the Tatler.
[132] It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe was
also an Englishman. His other works, such as the Life of Colonel Jack,
&c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind more like
that of things than words.
[133] This character was written in a fit of extravagant candour, at a
time when I thought I could do justice, or more than justice, to an enemy,
without betraying a cause.
[134] For instance: he produced less effect on the mob that compose the
English House of Commons than Chatham or Fox, or even Pitt.
[135] As in the comparison of the British Constitution to the "proud keep
of Windsor," etc., the most splendid passage in his works.
[136] Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful
sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was
called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more
characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed
are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows,
discharging its waters and still replenished--
"And so by many winding nooks it strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean!"
[137] The description of the sports in the forest:
"To see the sun to bed and to arise,
Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes," etc.
[138] Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where the
Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother's
arrival.
[139] This essay was written just before Lord Byron's death.
[140]
"Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero
My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain."
_Don Juan_, Canto XI.
[141] This censure applies to the first cantos of DON JUAN much more than
to the last. It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme: it is rather a
poem written about itself.
[142] Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of
the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural,
but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the
one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the
understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the
reason: poetry produces its effects by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is
a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad
prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not to
the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the
forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of
our own poetry, which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme,
and in the studied use of poetic diction.
[143] My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used
to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons.
The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease,
half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have
never seen them equalled.
[144] He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting to
establish the future immortality of man, "without" (as he said) "knowing
what Death was or what Life was"--and the tone in which he pronounced
these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.
[145] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I
had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of
the cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular,
where Death is seen in the air brandishing his scythe, and the great and
mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the
wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so
broad and fine a moral as this at any time.
[146] See Newgate Calendar for 1758.
[147] B---- at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Fleet-street.
[148] Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he
should come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation
together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it
to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over
it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren
soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His
"Essays" and his "Advancement of Learning" are works of vast depth and
scope of observation. The last, though it contains no positive
discoveries, is a noble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all
future inquirers.
[149] Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a
friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write,
returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and
classical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that
"Modest merit never can succeed!"
[150] During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of
Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual
question, "Where have you served, Sir?" the First Consul immediately
addressed him, "I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero
of Richardson's Romance!" Here was a Consul. The young man's uncle, who
was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together
at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of
the hero of Richardson's Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking
Buonaparte.
[151] He is there called "Citizen Lauderdale." Is this the present earl?