PAGE 136. What was said of Virgil. Addison, in his Essay on Virgil's Georgics, says:'He breaks the clods and tosses the dung about with an air of gracefulness.' Cf. also 'Hence mighty Virgil's said, of old, 145. Dr. Johnson's Irene. Butler, Satire upon Plagiaries, 87 et seq. Produced at Drury Lane in 1749. ESSAY XV. ON PARADOX AND COMMON-PLACE 146, Putting in one scale, etc. 147.Apprehensive, forgetive. Cowper, The Task, iv. 484-6. 148. The powers that be.' Romans, XIII. 1. Holy Oil. The coronation of George iv. (July 19, 1821) was imminent. 'He never is, etc. A variation of Pope's well-known line, Essay on Man, The author of the Prometheus Unbound, etc. The passage which follows on Shelley led to a quarrel between Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt (11. 305 et seq.), where two letters from Hunt to Hazlitt and one from Hunt to Shelley are published; and Four Generations of a Literary Family (1. 130-135), where a long letter from Hazlitt to Hunt is published for the first time. The quarrel was made up, but Hazlitt never cared for Shelley's poetry. See his article in The Edinburgh Review (July 1824) on Shelley's Posthumous Poems. 'And in its liquid texture, etc. Paradise Lost, vi. 348-9. 149. Seas of pearl, etc. Cf. 'Lutes, laurels, seas of milk, and ships of amber.' Otway, Venice Preserved, Act v. Scene 2. Coleridge more than once quoted the line as an example of fanciful delirium. See Biographia Literaria (chap. iv.) and Crabb Robinson's Diary (Nov. 15, 1810). Play round the head, etc. Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart.' Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 254. 150. At the horizon. Their humanity is at their horizon.' Burke, A Letter to a Noble Lord (Works, Bohn, v. 142). • While you are talking of marrying, etc. The Beggar's Opera, Act 11. Scene 2. 151. The present poet-laureate. Southey. "Poets (as it has been said)' etc. Hazlitt quotes from his own review of Coleridge's Literary Life in The Edinburgh Review for August, 1817 (Vol. XXVIII. pp. 514-5). "Such seething brains.' Cf. 'Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,' etc. A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Scene 1. 152. Note. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal crew, etc. The reference is of course to Southey and Wordsworth. See many passages in Political Essays. Note. Like Cacus's oxen. Note. Rout on rout, etc. Note. Note. Æneid, VIII. 209 et seq. Paradise Lost, 11. 995-6. Deliverance for mankind.' Southey's Carmen Triumphale. 'The Camomil, etc. The camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it grows.' Henry IV., Part I. Act ш. Scene 4. PAGE 153. Note. Troja fuit. Et Thebae steterunt, altaque Troja fuit.' Propertius, Elegies, 11. 8. 154. Like Mr. Cobbett's Gold against Paper. The first of Cobbett's articles on 'Paper against Gold' appeared in the Political Register on Sept. 1, 1810. The articles were afterwards collected and published in separate form. Lord Bacon's axiom. Advancement of Learning, Book 1. v. I. "But of this be sure, etc. Paradise Lost, 1. 158-9. 155. 'Ambling and lisping, etc. "You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures.' Hamlet, Act 1. Scene 1. 156. Edgar's exaggerations to Gloster. King Lear, Act iv. Scene 6. Mr. Montgomery. James Montgomery (1771-1854), while editor of The Sheffield Iris, suffered two terms of imprisonment (1795-1796), but not in connection with the Duke of Richmond's Letter on Reform, which was originally published in 1783. Spain, as Ferdinand, etc. In March 1820, in consequence of a revolution in Spain, Ferdinand VII. was forced to accept the constitution of 1812, and the suppression of the Inquisition, but in October of the same year, as the result of French intervention, absolutism was restored. This essay would appear to have been written between these two dates. ESSAY XVI. ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 'Thin partitions, etc. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part 1. 164. 157. A feather will turn, etc. Cf. The weight of a hair will turn the scales between their avoirdupois' (Henry IV., Part II. Act 11. Scene 4), and Go to, sir; you weigh equally; a feather will turn the scale' (Measure for Measure, Act Iv. Scene 2). 'Great Vulgar and the Small. Cowley, Horace, Odes, III. 1. 159. Have eyes and see them.' 'Eyes have they, but they see not.' Psalms, cxv. 5. Lovers of low company. Kings are naturally lovers of low company.' 160. I like it,' etc. The reference seems to be to Evelina, Letter XXI. Note. Dip it in the ocean, etc. The Sentimental Journey, The Wig, Paris. 161. Milaine with the foot of fire. See Hazlitt's Dramatic Essays. "Swallows total grist,' etc. Cowper, The Task, vi. 108. Emery's Yorkshireman. The character of Tyke in Morton's The School for 162. A stamp, etc. A stamp exclusive and professional.' Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini, 111. 32. "Gabble most brutishly. PAGE 162. His speech bewrayeth him. Servum pecus imitatorum. xix. 19. St. Matthew, xxvi. 73. O imitatores, servum pecus.' Horace, Epistles, 1. 'An author, etc. Young, Epistles to Mr. Pope, 11. 15-16. 163. Odi profanum vulgus, etc. Horace, Odes, III. 1. Vice by losing, etc. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Select Works, ed. Payne), 11. 89. 164. Making mops and mows.' The Tempest, Act IV. Scene 1. "Go thou, etc. St. Luke, x. 37. Eastward Hoe. Published in 1605. The authors were sent to prison for this comedy. 165. Millamant. In Congreve's The Way of the World (1700). Worn in their newest gloss. Macbeth, Act 1. Scene 7. And all was conscience, etc. Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 150. 166. Note. New Way to pay Old Debts. Massinger's famous Comedy, published in 1633. 167. Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam. Hazlitt refers to the eighth plate of The Rake's Progress. Cf. his Essay On the Works of Hogarth,' vol. viii. p. 143. Cuckold's Point. Not on the coast of Essex, but near Deptford in Kent. It was the meeting-place for the riotous mobs who afterwards marched to the Horn-Fair at Charlton on Oct. 18. See Brand's Popular Antiquities, 11. 194. 168. The proverbs about the mistress's eye. The mistress's eye feeds the capon.' 'The master's eye makes the horse fat.' See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1882). ESSAY XVII. ON A LANDSCAPE OF NICOLAS POUSSIN 'Table Talk, No. XI.,' from The London Magazine, August 1821 (vol, iv. p. 176). And blind Orion, etc. Keats, Endymion, 11. 198. A hunter of shadows, etc. Cf. "The huge Orion, of portentous size, Swift through the gloom a giant-hunter flies.' Pope, Homer's Odyssey, X1, 703-4. And having lost an eye, etc. For offering violence to Merope, Orion was blinded by her father Oenopion with the assistance of Dionysus. 'Grey dawn, etc. Paradise Lost, VII. 373-4. 169. Shadowy sets off. 170 'Full-orbed the moon, and, with more pleasing light, Shadowy sets off the face of things.' Paradise Lost, v. 42-3. Denote a foregone conclusion. Othello, Act ш. Scene 3. "Take up the isles,' etc. Isaiah, xl. 15. "So potent art. The Tempest, Act v. Scene 1. More than natural. Hamlet, Act 11. Scene 2. "Gives to airy nothing,' etc. Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Scene 1. Note. His Life lately published. Mrs. Graham's (Lady Callcott's) Memoirs of the Life of Nicholas Poussin (1820). See pp. 35-6. Note. Mr. West. Benjamin West (1738-1820) succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy in 1792. PAGE 171. His Plague of Athens. The Plague at Ashdod, in the Louvre. A repetition of this picture, formerly in the Colonna Palace at Rome, was presented to the National Gallery in 1838. His picture of the Deluge. In the Louvre. 'O'er-informed. And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.' Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part 1. 158. "The very stones, etc. Macbeth, Act 11. Scene 1. A picture of Aurora. Cephalus and Aurora' now in the National Gallery. 172. Leaping like wanton kids,' etc. The Faerie Queene, Book 1. Canto vi. Stanza 14. His picture of the shepherds. In the Louvre, a picture often referred to by Hazlitt. The valleys low, etc. 'Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use.' "Within the book and volume,' etc. Hamlet, Act 1. Scene 5. "The sober certainty,' etc. Comus, 263. "He who knows of these delights,' etc. "He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, is not unwise.' Milton, Sonnet (No. xx.) To Mr. Lawrence. 173. Old Genius, etc. The Faerie Queene, Book 1. Canto vi. Stanzas 31 and 32. 174. Pictures are scattered, etc. 'Thus pleasure is spread through the earth The collections at Blenheim, etc. Wordsworth, Stray Pleasures. See the volume containing Hazlitt's art Since the Louvre is stripped, etc. The art treasures which Napoleon had pillaged from the various countries of Europe, especially from Italy, were restored in 1815. The hunter of greatness, etc. Cf. ante, p. 168. Napoleon died on May 5, 1821. ESSAY XVIII. ON MILTON'S SONNETS Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822), vol. iv. p. 238, under the title of Table Talk, No. III.' "Some fee-grief, etc. To the height, etc. 'Most musical, etc. 175. Very tolerable,' etc. 'Or is it a fee-grief Due to some single breast?' Paradise Lost, 1. 24. Il Penseroso, 62. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3. To babble and to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured. Much Ado About Nothing, Act 111. Scene 3. "The divine, etc. Pope, Imitations of Horace, Book 11. Ep. i. 69. " From you have I been absent,' etc. Shakespeare, Sonnet xcvIII. Warton's Sonnets. The poems of Thomas Warton (1728-1790) were first collected in 1777, and more fully in 1791. 176. Said to be sacred to Liberty. The sonnets of which Hazlitt speaks formed part of the Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty,' published in the Poems of 1807. PAGE 176. Oh Virtue, etc. Quoted by Wordsworth in The Excursion, Book m. 775-7. 'The poet blind and bold. 'When I beheld the Poet, blind, yet bold.' Andrew Marvell, On Paradise Lost, 1. 177. 'Such recantation, etc. Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book 111. 778. 'No longer to Kings,' etc. Southey, Vision of Judgment, IX. 'On evil days, etc. Paradise Lost, vII. 26. Cyriac, this three years' day,' etc. Sonnet No. XXII. Those to Cromwell, to Fairfax and to the younger Vane. Nos. XV., XVI., and XVII. On the late Massacre in Piedmont. No. XVIII. 179. Those to Mr. Henry Lawes, etc. On his deceased Wife. No. xxIII. Nos. XIII. and xx. 180. To suppose that Milton only shone, etc. Dr. Johnson in his famous Life of Milton says Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace,' etc.; and to Hannah More he said (Boswell, ed. G. B. Hill, 1v. 305): 'Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.' His Letters to Donatus. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Milton's letters to Charles 'Severe in youthful virtue unreproved. 'and his grave rebuke Severe in youthful beauty, added grace Invincible. Paradise Lost, IV, 844-6. ESSAY XIX. ON GOING A JOURNEY Published in The New Monthly Magazine (1822, vol. iv. p. 73) under the heading Table Talk, No. 1.' Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his edition of Table Talk gives some variations between the printed text of this essay and the original ms. 'A friend in my retreat,' etc. 181. The fields his study,' etc. Bloomfield, The Farmer's Boy, Spring, 31. May plume her feathers, etc. 182. Sunken wrack, etc. With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.' Henry V., Act 1. Scene 2. Leave, oh, leave me,' etc. See ante, note to p. 71. The very stuff of conscience. Othello, Act 1. Scene 2. Out upon such half-faced fellowship. Henry IV., Part I. Act 1. Scene 3. 183. Give it an understanding, etc. Hamlet, Act 1. Scene 2. My old friend C. Coleridge. Cf. the essay on 'My First Acquaintance with Poets.' 'He talked far above singing.' 'I did hear you talk far above singing. Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, Act v. Scene 5. 'That fine madness,' etc. For that fine madness still he did retain, Which rightly should possess a Poet's brain.' Drayton, Censure of Poets. 'Here be woods as green,' etc. John Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, Act 1. Scene 3. 184. L. Lamb. |