From "The Spirit of the Age." Characterizations of Wordsworth also occur
in the lecture "On the Living Poets" and in the Essay "On Genius and
Common Sense" in "Table Talk."
P. 191. _lowliness is young ambition's ladder_. "Julius Caesar," ii, 1, 22.
_no figures_. Cf. "Julius Caesar," ii, 1, 231: " Thou hast no figures nor
no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men."
_skyey influences_. "Measure for Measure," iii, 1, 9.
P. 192. _nihil humani_. Terence: "Heautontimoroumenos." i, 1, 25.
_the cloud-capt towers_. "Tempest," iv, 1, 151.
P. 193. _the judge's robe_. Cf. "Measure for Measure," ii, 2, 59;
"No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe."
_Pindar and Alcaeus_. Greek lyric poets.
_a sense of joy_. Wordsworth's "To My Sister."
P. 194. _Beneath the hills_. Cf. Wordsworth's "Excursion," VI, 531:
"Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills
The generations are prepared...."
P. 195. _To him the meanest flower_. "Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality."
P. 196. _Grasmere_ was the residence of Wordsworth between 1799 and 1813.
_Cole-Orton_ was the residence of Wordsworth's friend, Sir George
Beaumont, to whom he dedicated the 1815 edition of his poems: "Some of the
best pieces were composed under the shade of your own groves, upon the
classic ground of Cole-Orton."
P. 197. _Calm contemplation_. Cf. "Laodamia": "Calm pleasures there abide,
majestic pains."
_Fall blunted_ "from each indurated heart." Goldsmith's "Traveler," 232.
_and fit audience_. Wordsworth quotes this line from "Paradise Lost," VII,
31, in "The Recluse," 776:
"'Fit audience let me find though few!'
So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard--
In holiest mood."
P. 198. _The Excursion_. Hazlitt wrote a review of this poem for the
Examiner which not only aroused Wordsworth's resentment but led to one of
his disagreements with Lamb. The review appears in the "Round Table."
_toujours perdrix_, "always partridges," alluding to a story of a French
king, who, on being reproved by his confessor for faithlessness to his
wife, punished the offender by causing him to be fed on nothing but his
favorite dish, which was partridge. See Notes and Queries, Series IV, Vol.
III, p. 336.
_In his person_. In 1803, while on a visit to the Lake Country, Hazlitt
had painted a portrait of Wordsworth. "He has painted Wordsworth," writes
Southey, "but so dismally, though Wordsworth's face is his idea of
physiognomical perfection, that one of his friends, on seeing it,
exclaimed, 'At the gallows--deeply affected by his deserved fate--yet
determined to die like a man;' and if you saw the picture, you would
admire the criticism." "Life and Correspondence," II, 238.
_His manner of reading_. See p. 295.
_a man of no mark_. 1 "Henry IV," iii, 2, 45.
P. 199. _He finds fault with Dryden's description._ Hazlitt adopted this
criticism in his lecture "On Pope and Dryden."
P. 200. _Titian_ (c. 1477-1576), the great Venetian painter.
_Chaucer_. Wordsworth's modernizations of Chaucer are "The Prioress's
Tale," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," and a part of "Troilus and
Cressida."
_a tragedy_. "The Borderers" was written in 1795-96 but not published till
1842. The quotation which follows is from Act iii, 1, 405, and should
read:
"Action is transitory--a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle--this way or that--
'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed;
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity."
Wordsworth quoted these lines after the dedication to "The White Doe of
Rylstone" and later added a note: "This and the five lines that follow
were either read or recited by me more than thirty years since, to the
late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted some expressions in them (imperfectly
remembered) in a work of his published several years ago."
P. 201. _Let observation_. Cf. De Quincey's "Rhetoric" (Works, ed. Masson,
X, 128): "We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson,
published immediately after his death, in which, among other instances of
desperate tautology, the author quotes the well-known lines from the
Doctor's imitation of Juvenal--'Let observation,' etc., and contends with
some reason that this is saying in effect,--_'Let observation with
extensive observation observe mankind extensively.'_" Coleridge somewhere
makes the same remark.
_Drawcansir_. A character in "The Rehearsal" by the Duke of Buckingham.
"Let petty kings the names of Parties know:
Where'er I am, I slay both friend and foe." v, 1.
_Walton's Angler_. In the fifth lecture of the "English Poets" Hazlitt
writes: "Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem,
Walton's Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic
interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the
description of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of
the author's mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory
Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the
river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk with him along
the dusty roadside, or repose on the banks of a river under a shady tree;
and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls 'the
patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.' We accompany them to
their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare; while
Maud, the pretty milkmaid, at her mother's desire, sings the classical
ditties of the poet Marlow; 'Come live with me, and be my love.'"
_Paley_, William (1743-1805), a noted theologian. Cf. "On the Clerical
Character" in "Political Essays" (Works, III, 276): "This same shuffling
divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards employed the whole of his
life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, in tampering with religion,
morality, and politics,--in trimming between his convenience and his
conscience,--in crawling between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole
both. His celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated
and popular for no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingenious and
amusing apology for existing abuses of any description, by which any thing
is to be got. It is a very elaborate and consolatory elucidation of the
text, _that men should not quarrel with their bread and butter_. It is not
an attempt to show what is right, but to palliate and find out plausible
excuses for what is wrong. It is a work without the least value, except as
a convenient commonplace book or _vade mecum_, for tyro politicians and
young divines, to smooth their progress in the Church or the State. This
work is a text-book in the University: its morality is the acknowledged
morality of the House of Commons." See also Coleridge's opinion of Paley
on p. 288.
_Bewick_, Thomas (1753-1828), a well-known wood-engraver.
_Waterloo_, Antoine (1609?-1676?), a French engraver, painter, and etcher.
_Rembrandt_, Harmans van Rijn (1606-1669.), Dutch painter, whose mastery
of light and shade was the object of Hazlitt's special admiration.
P. 202. _He hates conchology_, etc. See the lecture "On the Living
Poets": "He hates all science and all art; he hates chemistry, he hates
conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir Isaac Newton; he hates wisdom;
he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which he says are unintelligible, and
yet he would be thought to understand them; he hates prose; he hates all
poetry but his own; he hates the dialogues in Shakespeare; he hates music,
dancing, and painting; he hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates
Raphael, he hates Titian; he hates Vandyke; he hates the antique; he hates
the Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of Medicis."
_Where one for sense_. Butler's "Hudibras," II, 29.
P. 203. _take the good_. Plautus's "Rudens," iv, 7.