PAGE

3

Priests, which the author of Joan of Arc1 has so triumphantly celebrated. He did not live to see the sending of the Liberales of Spain to the gallies, and the liberating the Afrancesa does from prison, for which our romantic Laureat, who sees so much farther into futurity than the Edinburgh Reviewers, thanks God. He did not live to read that Sonnet to the King which Mr. Wordsworth has written, in imitation of Milton's Sonnet to Cromwell. There is a species of literary prostitution which has sprung up and spread wide in these days, more nauseous and despicable than any recorded in Juvenal. It proves, however, one thing, that is, the force which knowledge and opinion have acquired, and which makes it worth while for power to court and pervert those faculties which were intended to enlighten and reform the world, in order to plunge it into a darkness that may be felt; and slavery, that can only cease by putting a stop to the propagation of the species.' Hazlitt used a part of this passage as a note to his essay On Good-Nature.' See post, p. 105 note.

72. Mr. Burke, etc. See his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, Part 111. Sect. xv. Which describe pleasant motions. "It has been conjectured that the pleasure

derived from visible form, might be always resolved into the absence of every thing disagreeable to the touch or difficult in motion.' Note by Hazlitt in The Examiner.

"He hath set his bow, etc. Ecclesiasticus, xliii. 11, 12.

Titian's Bath of Diana.' Diana and Actaeon, now the property of the Earl of Ellesmere, in Bridgewater House. Hazlitt described this picture at length in his Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England (The Marquis of Stafford's Gallery).

ON IMITATION

No. 30 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

73. The new Spurzheim principles. See Hazlitt's essays 'On Dreams' and 'On Dr. Spurzheim's Theory' in The Plain Speaker.

74. Note. Vanhuysum. Jan van Huysum (1682-1749).

75. Pansy freak'd with jet. Lycidas, 1. 144.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.'

Cowper's Task, The Timepiece, 11. 285-286. Cf. Table Talk (On the Pleasure of Painting'): 'There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know.' The original of the expression seems to be Dryden's There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad, which none but madmen know' (Spanish Friar, Act 11. Scene 1).

Titian's Schoolmaster. 6

For an account of this picture see Hazlitt's Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England (the Marquis of Stafford's Gallery).

ON GUSTO

No. 40 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

77. Albano's. Francesco Albani (1578-1660), a pupil of Ludovico Caracci.

1 See Southey's Carmen Triumphale.

2 See the Notes to Southey's Carmen Triumphale.

3 See ante, note to p. 45.

PAGE

78. To touch them. In The Examiner Hazlitt gives the following note to this passage: This may seem obscure. We will therefore avail ourselves of our privilege to explain as Members of Parliament do, when they let fall any thing too paradoxical, novel, or abstruse, to be immediately apprehended by the other side of the House. When the Widow Wadman 1 looked over my Uncle Toby's map of the Siege of Namur with him, and as he pointed out the approaches of his battalion in a transverse line across the plain to the gate of St. Nicholas, kept her hand constantly pressed against his, if my Uncle Toby had then "been an artist and could paint," (as Mr. Fox wished himself to be,2 that "he might draw Bonaparte's conduct to the King of Prussia in the blackest colours") my Uncle Toby would have drawn the hand of his fair enemy in the manner we have above described. We have heard a good story of this same Bonaparte playing off a very ludicrous parody of the Widow Wadman's stratagem upon as great a commander by sea as my Uncle Toby was by land. Now, when Sir Isaac Newton, who was sitting smoking with his mistress's hand in his, took her little finger and made use of it as a tobacco-pipe stopper, there was here a total absence of mind, or a great want of gusto.'

Mr.West. Benjamin West (1738-1820), historical painter, succeeded Sir J. Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy in 1792.

80. 'Or where Chineses, etc.

Paradise Lost, III. 438-439.

'Wild above rule,' etc. Ib. v. 297.

ON PEDANTRY

No. 32 of the Round Table series. See ante, p. 382, for a reference by Hazlitt to this essay.

PAGE

80. The pedantry of Parson Adams. See Joseph Andrews, Book III. Chap. v. Scotch Pedagogue. Roderick Random, Chap. xiv.

Seeing ourselves, etc. Burns, To a Louse, st. 8.

81. Monsieur Jourdain. In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Note.

Not to admire anything.'

"Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,

Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum.'-Horace, Ep. 1. vi. 1. 82. In the Library, etc. At his father's house at Wem. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, i. 33. The Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, etc., was published in eight volumes folio, 1656.

'From all this world's, etc. From worldly cares himselfe he did esloyne.' The Faerie Queene, Book 1. Canto iv. st. 20. In The Examiner Hazlitt published the following note: 'Mr. Wordsworth has on a late occasion humorously applied this line of Spenser to persons holding sinecure places under government. He seems to intend adding to the list of such places that of Poet Laureate. This we think a decided improvement on the system.' The reference is to Wordsworth's sonnet, Occasioned by the Battle of Waterloo,' beginning 'The bard whose soul is meek as dawning day.' 83. Mitigated authors, etc. "It was this opinion which mitigated kings into companions, and raised private men to be fellows with kings. Without force, or opposition, it subdued the fierceness of pride and power; it obliged sovereigns to submit to the soft collar of social esteem,' etc. Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne, ii. 90). The Spectator. See The Spectator, No. 131.

1 Tristram Shandy, IX. 26.

2 In the Life of Napoleon Hazlitt refers to this saying, which he calls 'quackery.'

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

No. 33 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

84. A poetical enthusiast. Wordsworth presumably.

"A clerk ther was, etc. Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 11. 285 et seq. 85. Chemist, statesman,' etc. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, 1. 550. "Tongues in the trees, etc. As You Like It, Act 11. Scene 1. 86. Vestris was so far right, etc. Vestris (1729-1808), Le Dieu de la danse,' said that Europe contained only three great men, himself, Voltaire, and Frederick of Prussia.

We do not see, etc. Johnson and Wordsworth were of the opposite opinion. See Boswell's Life, ed. G. B. Hill, iv. 114, and Rogers's Table-Talk, p. 234.

87. In Froissart's Chronicles. Book iv. chapter 14 (Panthéon Litteraire). The man was not a monk at all.

88. The sovereign'st thing on earth. 1 Henry IV., Act 1. Scene 3. Uneasy and insecure. In The Examiner the following note is appended: 'It has been found necessary to cement them with blood. "Plus de belles paroles, messieurs, je veux du sang," is the language of all absolute sovereigns to their subjects, when the film drops from their eyes which leads mankind to suppose themselves the property of tyrants. If men are to be treated like slaves, it is best that they should think themselves born to be so. Plus de belles paroles. The French Revolution was the necessary consequence of our English Revolution and of the Reformation. A crusade once more to re-establish the infallibility of the Pope all over the Continent would be a logical inference from the late crusade to restore divine right.'

ON THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU

No. 36 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

89. Note. In The Examiner this note was continued as follows: 'He was the founder of Jacobinism, which disclaims the division of the species into two classes, the one the property of the others. It was of the disciples of his school, where principle is converted into passion, that Mr. Burke said and said truly,-"Once a Jacobin, and always a Jacobin!" The adept in this school does not so much consider the political injury as the personal insult. This is the way to put the case, to set the true revolutionary leaven, the self-love which is at the bottom of every heart, at work, and this was the way in which Rousseau put it. It then becomes a question between man and man, which there is but one way of deciding.'

90. Va Zanetto,' etc. Part 11. liv. 7.

Louise Eleonore,' etc.

Part 1. liv. 2.

91. As fast, etc. Othello, Act v. Scene 2.

There are, indeed, impressions, etc. A quotation from Rousseau's Confessions. See Hazlitt's essay entitled 'My first Acquaintance with Poets.'

92. Ah, voila de la pervenche!' Confessions, Part 1. liv. 6.

Mr. Wordsworth's discovery. The reference appears to be to Wordsworth's poem, 'The Sparrow's Nest.'

ON DIFFERENT SORTS OF FAME

No. 37 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

93. Fitzosborne's Letters, by William Melmoth the younger (1710-1799), were published in two vols. in 1742-1747. Hazlitt's quotation seems to be

merely a summary of a passage in Letter x. (p. 35, edit. 1748) which is itself quoted from Wollaston's Religion of Nature Delineated.

Note. Burns. See his autobiographical letter to Dr. John Moore, 2nd August 1787. (Works, ed. Chambers and Wallace, i. 20).

94. Bitter bad judges. Beggar's Opera, Act 1. Scene 1.

'Makes ambition virtue. Othello, Act 111. Scene 3.

Dr. Johnson. See his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 108).

Fame is the spur, etc. Lycidas, 11. 70-77.

Pluck its fruits, unripe and crude. Lycidas, 1. 3.

95. Hogarth's Distressed Poet.' The map of the gold-mines of Peru was substituted in the impression of 1740 for a print of Pope thrashing Curll in the original impression of 1736.

A man of genius and eloquence. Coleridge presumably.

96. Elphinstone. James Elphinston (1721-1809), who superintended an Edinburgh edition of The Rambler, in which he gave English translations of most of the mottoes. This, however, was far from being his only literary enterprise, and it is strange that Hazlitt should know nothing more of him.' He published many translations, one of which, A Specimen of the Translations of Epigrams of Martial (1778), achieved notoriety from its extreme badness. In his later life he devoted himself to the invention of a kind of phonetic spelling, which he explained in Propriety ascertained in her Picture, or English Speech and Spelling under Mutual Guides (1787), and other works. Yorick and the Frenchman. Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The Passport.

CHARACTER OF JOHN BULL

No. 39 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

97. A respectable publication. Edinburgh Review, xxvi. p. 96 (Feb. 1816). The passage quoted is from a review by Hazlitt himself of Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Literature.

ON GOOD NATURE

No. 41 of the Round Table series.

PAGE

100. Says Froissart. This well-known saying is wrongly attributed to Froissart. See Notes and Queries for 1863 and subsequent years.

102. An Englishman, who would be thought a profound one.

P. 116.

Wordsworth. See

103. Forge the seal of the realm, etc. The allusion seems to be to the events of the spring of 1804 when Lord Eldon, during the king's illness, affixed the great seal to a commission giving the royal assent to certain bills. Macbeth, Act 11. Scene 4.

104. Good digestion wait on appetite.

Without control. In The Examiner Hazlitt appended as a note: Henry VIII.

PAGE

was a good-natured monarch. He cut off his wives' heads with as little ceremony as if they had been eels. This character ought, as Mr. Cobbett says, to be hooted off the stage, as a disgrace to human nature. Shakspeare represented kings as they were in his time.'

104. Mr. Vansittart. Nicholas Vansittart (1766-1851), created Baron Bexley in 1823, was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1812 till 1822.

Everything by starts and nothing long. Absalom and Achitophel, Part 1. 1. 548. 105. Note. This note is part of the note on Burke, which in The Examiner appeared at the foot of the essay 'On Beauty.' See ante, p. 71.

ON THE CHARACTER OF MILTON'S EVE

No. 42 of the Round Table series, with occasional passages from No. 43, on Shakspeare's female characters, the substance of which was published in Characters of Shakespear's Plays (Cymbeline, Othello, and Winter's Tale).

PAGE

105. As the vine curls her tendrils. 106. Two of far nobler shape, etc. 107. That day I oft remember, etc.

Paradise Lost, IV. 307. Paradise Lost, Iv. 288-311. Paradise Lost, IV. 449-465. "So spake our general mother, etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 492-501. "So much the more, etc. Paradise Lost, v. 8-20. 108. When Adam thus to Eve,' etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 610-611. To whom thus Eve, etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 634. To whom our general ancestor, etc. 'Methought close at mine ear, etc. "So talked the spirited sly snake. So cheered he his fair spouse,' etc. 109. Under his forming hands,' etc.

Paradise Lost, IV. 659-660.
Paradise Lost, v. 35-47.
Paradise Lost, IX. 613.

Paradise Lost, v. 129-135.
Paradise Lost, VIII. 470-477.

In shadier bower,' etc. Paradise Lost, IV. 705-719. 'Meanwhile at table Eve, etc. Paradise Lost, v. 443-450. 110. Yet not more sweet, etc. Southey's Carmen Nuptiale, Proem, stanza 18. O unexpected stroke, etc. Paradise Lost, XI. 268-285. III. This most afflicts me, etc.

Paradise Lost, XI. 315-333.

OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WORDSWORTH'S POEM

"THE EXCURSION'

This essay is composed of two papers by Hazlitt which appeared in The Examiner on August 21 and August 28, 1814.

PAGE

112. 'Without form and void. Genesis, i. 2.

6

113. The bare trees and mountains bare. Wordsworth, To my Sister.'

'Exchange the shepherd's flock.' Excursion, Book vi.

114. The sad historian of the pensive vale! Goldsmith's The Deserted Village,

1. 136.

Our system is not fashioned, etc. Excursion, Book vi. Such as the meeting soul may pierce.'__ L'Allegro, l. 138. "In that fair clime, etc. Excursion, Book Iv.