_the chimes at midnight_. 2 "Henry IV," iii, 2, 228.
P. 224. _cheese and pippins_. Ibid., v, 3.
_inns and courts of law_. "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," in
"Essays of Elia."
_a certain writer_. Hazlitt himself. It is known to everybody that the
friendship of Lamb for Hazlitt suffered certain strains, and various
attempts have been made to guess at the provocations. Mutual
recriminations in regard to literary borrowings have been thought to be
responsible for more than one breach. So Mr. Bertram Dobell, in his
"Sidelights on Lamb," 212-14, imagines that the mystery is solved in a
letter of Hazlitt's to the editor of the London Magazine (April 12, 1820)
charging Lamb with appropriating his ideas: "Do you keep the Past and
Future? You see Lamb argues the same view of the subject. That 'young
master' will anticipate all my discoveries if I don't mind." The
similarity of idea between Hazlitt's "Past and Future" and Lamb's "New
Year's Eve," and the appearance in Lamb's essay of the phrase "young
masters" makes it clear enough what Hazlitt is referring to, but that
either man should have taken the matter very seriously is hard to believe.
It is easier to look upon Hazlitt's expression as banter of the same kind
that Lamb allowed himself in connection with the essay on "Guy Faux"
alluded to in the present sketch. This subject had been proposed by Lamb,
as we are informed in "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen," and had
been written up by Hazlitt in the Examiner in 1821 (Works, XI, 317-334).
Two years later Lamb contributed a paper on the same subject to the London
Magazine, founded partly on an essay in the Reflector (1811), entitled "On
the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason." The essay in the London
Magazine (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, I, 236 ff.) opens with a facetious
thrust at Hazlitt: "A very ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is good
reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not unknown at Douay some
five-and-twenty years since (he will not obtrude himself at M--th again in
a hurry), about a twelvemonth back, set himself to prove the character of
the Powder Plot conspirators to have been that of heroic self-devotedness
and true Christian martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candour, he
actually gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper, not
particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. But,
admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and
incontrovertible. [Then follows a quotation from Hazlitt setting forth the
Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to
admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the
writer) at the simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of
Loyola for the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England at the
commencement of the nineteenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show
what we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same
subject, at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question."
This is the kind of resentment we would expect Lamb to show at the
appropriation of his ideas. That there were not wanting grounds for real
grievance against Hazlitt may be gathered from a letter to Wordsworth,
September 23, 1816 (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 491): "There was a cut at
me a few months back by the same hand.... It was a pretty compendium of
observation, which the author has collected in my disparagement, from some
hundred of social evenings which we had spent together,--however in spite
of all, there is something tough in my attachment to H---- which these
violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get no
conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but his." To
one of his quarrels with Lamb Hazlitt owes the finest compliment he ever
received, and happily it marks the termination of all differences between
them. It occurs in the well-known "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey" which
Lamb published in the London Magazine when Southey reproached him with his
friendship for Hazlitt (Works, I, 233): "I stood well with him for fifteen
years (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoke my full mind of him
to some, to whom his panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never
in thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened in my
admiration for him, I was the same to him (neither better nor worse)
though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust
me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some compliment, above my
deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for
which I rest his debtor; or, for any thing I know, or can guess to the
contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He is
welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can divert a
spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel with
the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be effected by
himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting against
much that he has written, and some things he chooses to do; judging him by
his conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by
his books, in those places where no clouding passion intervenes--I should
belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in
his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits
breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt
us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it
entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting
to find, such another companion."
_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_ was published in 1621. Its quaint prose
was often imitated by Lamb and had a direct effect on his style.
_Sir Thomas Browne_ (1605-1682), physician and essayist, author of
"Religio Medici" (1642), "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" (1646), and "Hydriotaphia
or Urn Burial" (1658).
_Fuller's Worthies_. The "History of the Worthies of England" (1662) is
the best known work of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an English divine and
writer on church history.
_does not make him despise Pope_. See p. 322.
_Parnell_, Thomas (1679-1717). In the sixth lecture on the "English Poets"
Hazlitt says: "Parnell, though a good-natured, easy man, and a friend to
poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an occasional
versifier."
_Gay_, John (1685-1732), is best known by his "Beggar's Opera" (1728) and
"Fables" (1727 and 1738). Hazlitt writes of Gay in the sixth lecture on
the "English Poets" and has a paper on "The Beggar's Opera" in the "Round
Table."
_His taste in French and German_. Cf. "On Old English Writers and
Speakers" in the "Plain Speaker": "Mr. Lamb has lately taken it into his
head to read St. Evremont, and works of that stamp. I neither praise nor
blame him for it. He observed, that St. Evremont was a writer half-way
between Montaigne and Voltaire, with a spice of the wit of the one and the
sense of the other. I said I was always of the opinion that there had been
a great many clever people in the world, both in France and England, but I
had been sometimes rebuked for it. Lamb took this as a slight reproach;
for he had been a little exclusive and national in his tastes."
P. 225. _His admiration of Hogarth_. See note to p. 158.
_Leonardo da Vinci_ (1452-1519). Italian painter, sculptor, architect.
_fine Titian head_. Hazlitt painted a portrait of Lamb in the costume of a
Venetian senator. This portrait now hangs in the National Gallery.
P. 226. _to have coined_. Cf. "Julius Caesar," iv, 3, 72: "I had rather
coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas."
_Mr. Waithman_, Robert (1764-1833), was Lord Mayor in 1823.
_Rosamond Gray_, a tale, was published in 1798 and "John Woodvill," a
tragedy, in 1802. The lines in the footnote are from the second act of
"John Woodvill."