Chapter XLIX: Part III: § iv

Footnote 317:

Vol. ii. p. 417 _sq._

Footnote 318:

III. § xxv.

Footnote 319:

IV. § xix. i. 160, ed. cit.

Footnote 320:

In the mood in which he did that eccentric frontispiece to the
Maitland Club _Sir Bevis of Hampton_ (Edinburgh, 1838) at the
_abgeschmackt_-ness of which the late excellent Prof. Kölbing
shuddered when he edited _Arthur and Merlin_ (Leipzig, 1890, p. ix.) A
picture of _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ in the Royal Academy for 1902
seems to have been actually constructed on Mr Burke’s suggestions. For
a very witty and crushing jest on _The Sublime and Beautiful_, _v.
inf._, Bk. viii. ch. 3.

Footnote 321:

This was not the opinion of some person who has annotated the copy of
the _Essay on Taste_ (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1780: the first appeared in
1758) which belongs to the University of Edinburgh, as “wonderfully
profound.” Other annotators, however, both of this and the _Essay on
Genius_ (1774)—for the University authorities of the past appear to
have been somewhat indifferent to the fashion in which students used
books—do not agree with him. In plain truth both pieces are rather
trying examples of that “saying an infinite deal of nothing” which is
so common in philosophical inquiries. “Facility in the conception of
an object, if it be moderate, gives us pleasure” (_Taste_, p. 29);
“The rudest rocks and mountains ... acquire beauty when skilfully
imitated in painting;” “Where refinement is wanting, taste must be
coarse and vulgar” (p. 115). “Perfect criticism requires therefore”
(p. 174) “the greatest philosophical acuteness united with the most
exquisite perfection of taste.” “The different works of men of genius
sometimes differ very much in the degree of their perfection”
(_Genius_, p. 236). “Both in genius for the arts and in genius for
science Imagination is assisted by Memory.” Certainly “here be
truths,” but a continued course of reading things like them begins
before long to inspire a considerable longing for falsehoods. Gerard,
however, though habitually dull, is less absurd than Alison, whom he
undoubtedly supplied with his principle of Association.

Footnote 322:

Ed. cit. See a little farther on a similarly uncritical criticism on
the _trahuntque siccas machinæ carinas_ of Horace.

Footnote 323:

Ibid.

Footnote 324:

The mother of Gwendolen Harleth was wiser. “Oh! my dear, any nose,”
said she, “will do to be miserable with!” and if so, why not to be
predatory? The only possible answer of course caps the absurdity. The
conventional Bandit is an Italian; the conventional Italian has an
aquiline nose: therefore, &c.

Footnote 325:

Had all æstheticians approached their subject in the spirit of our
English historian of it, much of what I have said would be quite
inapplicable. “The æsthetic theorist,” says Mr Bosanquet in his
_Preface_ (_History of Æsthetic_: London, 1892), “desires to
understand the artist, not in order to interfere with the latter, but
in order to satisfy an intellectual interest of his own.” With such an
attitude I have no quarrel: nor, I should think, need those who take
it have any quarrel with mine. I may add that from this point onwards
I shall take the liberty of a perpetual silent reference to Mr
Bosanquet’s treatment of subjects and parts of subjects which seem to
me to lie outside of my own plan. I purposely abstained from reading
his book until two-thirds of my own were published, and more than
two-thirds more of the remainder were written. And I have been amused
and pleased, though not surprised, to find that if we had planned the
two books together from the first, we could hardly have covered the
ground more completely and with less confusion. I cannot, however,
help observing that Mr Bosanquet, like almost all æstheticians I know,
except Signor Croce, though he does not neglect literature, at least
devotes most attention to the plastic arts. This is perhaps a little
significant.

Footnote 326:

The Germans, I believe, have definitely ticketed these explorers as
“The Antiquarians.”

Footnote 327:

For this see in the last vol. under Dryden, Addison, Johnson, L.
Racine, Voltaire, La Harpe, &c.: in the present the Zürichers and
Chateaubriand.

Footnote 328:

I may once more refer to Mr Nichol Smith’s valuable edition of the
Prefaces to most of these. Mrs Montagu’s famous _Essay on the Writings
and Genius of Shakespeare_ (London, 1769, and often reprinted) may
expect a separate mention. It is well intentioned but rather feeble,
much of it being pure _tu quoque_ to Voltaire, and sometimes extremely
unjust on Corneille, and even Æschylus. It is not quite ignorant; but
once more _non tali auxilio!_

Footnote 329:

See vol. ii. p. 416.

Footnote 330:

See the _Ode to the Queen_, 1706. Prior inserts a tenth line, and
makes the seamless coat an awkwardly cobbled thing of quatrain,
quatrain, couplet.

Footnote 331:

See vol. ii. p. 481.

Footnote 332:

To this context perhaps best belongs Thomas Hayward’s _British
Muse_,[333] an anthology on the lines of Poole and Bysshe, published
in 1738 and dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. [Sidenote: _T.
Hayward._] The book has a preface of some length (which is said to be,
like the dedication, the work not of the compiler but of Oldys[334]
himself), criticising its predecessors (including Gildon) rather
severely, and showing knowledge of English criticism generally; but
the point of chief interest about the book is its own interest in, and
extensive draughts from, Elizabethan Drama. Not merely “the divine and
incomparable” Shakespeare, not merely the still popular sock and
buskin of Ben Jonson and of Beaumont and Fletcher, but almost all the
others, from Massinger and Middleton down to Goffe and Gomersall,
receive attention, although, as he tells us, they were so hard to get
that you had to give between three or four pounds for a volume
containing some ten plays of Massinger. This is noteworthy; but that
his zeal was not according to full knowledge is curiously shown by the
contempt with which he speaks, not merely of Bodenham’s _Belvedere_,
but of Allot’s _England’s Parnassus_, alleging “the little merit of
the obsolete poets from which they were extracted.” Now it should be
unnecessary to say that Allot drew, almost as largely as his early
date permitted him, on “the divine and incomparable” himself, on
Spenser, and on others only inferior to these. But this carping at
forerunners is too common. If Oldys could write thus, what must have
been the ignorance of others?

Footnote 333:

3 vols., London.

Footnote 334:

It thus connects the book with _The Muses’ Library_.

Footnote 335:

Even before, at, or about the date of the _Reliques_ themselves, a
good deal was being done—_e.g._, Capell’s well-known _Prolusions_,
which gave as early as 1760 the real _Nut-Browne Maid_, Sackville’s
_Induction, Edward III._, and Davies’ _Nosce Teipsum_, and the
_Miscellaneous Pieces_ of 1764, supplying Marston’s _Poems_ and _The
Troublesome Reign of King John._

Footnote 336:

The most remarkable recent authority on this matter is of course M.
Texte, who has appeared already and will appear again in his own
place.

Footnote 337:

I hold (though as probable rather than certain) that Richardson and
Fielding knew _Marianne_ and _Le Paysan Parvenu_: but Marivaux frankly
wrote _Le Spectateur Français_.

Footnote 338:

Vol. ii. p. 545. Once more Tiraboschi must be reserved as a great
early example of the historical treatment of a national literature.

Footnote 339:

I include of course the Galician and Portuguese ballad-books.

Footnote 340:

It was explained, and in manner I think not open to any but wilful
misunderstanding, that among the branches of so-called, and not
unjustly so-called, Criticism which were excluded from this History
was the greater part of merely commentatorial “scholarship”—the
editing and interpretative part of the scholarship of the Renaissance
and the succeeding centuries. We were able, now and then, to admit
critics of the class when, like Politian in part of his work earlier,
or Bentley later, they came actually within our range. But classical
scholarship has lain more and more out of our path as the eighteenth
century proceeded, and it was not till far into the nineteenth, and
then but for a moment, that the two converged. The greatest results of
this convergence in England were given by Professors Sellar and
Nettleship, the former in his admirable series of works on the Roman
Poets, the latter in the essays referred to above, and by Mr Pater in
his dealing with Plato and other Greeks. Professor Munro, the greatest
light of the younger University, touched literature rather less than
pure scholarship, and may perhaps be thought to have been least
infallible when he touched the former nearest. I had fully perceived
the necessity for this exclusion before the appearance of Dr Sandys'
admirable _History of Classical Scholarship_; but that book, though it
has not, at the time I write, reached our present period or even that
of our last volume, will serve to do what I cannot do as much better
than I could have done it on this count as Mr Bosanquet’s on the
other.

Footnote 341:

_Les définitions ne se posent pas à priori, si ce n’est peut-être en
mathématique. En histoire, c’est de l'étude patiente de la réalité
qu’elles se dégagent insensiblement._ Compare Mme. de Stael, _sup._,
p. 108.

Footnote 342:

It may be barely necessary to remind the reader once more that the
_period_ of this accomplishment by no means synchronises in all cases.
The “Dissolving of Neo-Classicism” takes in Germany scarcely more than
fifty years at farthest—from 1725 to 1775 or thereabouts; in England
about another quarter of a century, or till 1800 in round numbers; in
France a good century—from 1730 to 1830. In Italy the solitary figure
of Vico anticipates even the earliest of these dates, and originates
vast alterations in what calls itself criticism; but they do not take
effect for the time. The general state, both here and in Spain, is
stationary.

Footnote 343:

Père André probably seemed, to himself or others, to do this.

Footnote 344:

This is where Hurd is so valuable.

Footnote 345:

It is doubtful whether Hurd would have accepted it; it is certain that
Lessing would not: and Diderot never quite reached the point of view
at which it presented itself.

Footnote 346:

Lessing’s attempt to confute the French _ex ore Aristotelis_ is
extraordinarily effective _ad homines_, and most valuable now and then
intrinsically. But it has the drawback of ignoring the fact that,
though much in Shakespeare is justified by Aristotle, much can only be
justified without him, and some must be justified in his teeth.

Footnote 347:

See Index to vol. i.

Footnote 348:

With, once more, the great exception and anticipation of Vico.

Footnote 349:

It is widely usual in editions of Wordsworth to print these together
and consecutively. They are so short, and accessible in so many
different shapes that it seems superfluous to give page-references to
any particular edition. The _Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns_
(1816) (which Mr Rhys has included in the _Literary Pamphlets_ noticed
elsewhere) is less purely literary, but has important passages,
especially that on _Tam o’ Shanter_.

Footnote 350:

I have had to insert “almost” since this chapter was first written, as
a salute to my friend Professor Raleigh. The regular Wordsworthian is,
of course, not an “impartial observer” at all. And I have generally
found that the best of such observers, even if they do not agree with
me, are disposed to admit that W. W. said more than he meant, and even
to some extent what he did _not_ mean.

Footnote 351:

That on the death of West.

Footnote 352:

I have used, and refer to, the Bohn edition of Coleridge’s Prose
Works.

Footnote 353:

1800-1817.

Footnote 354:

In practice, though not always in theory: for his famous explanation
of his _Christabel_ metre is admitted, even by an authority who takes
such different views of prosody from mine as Mr Robert Bridges, to be
quite wrong.

Footnote 355:

I have, since this was written, endeavoured to do something of the
kind for a practical purpose (to which nothing is sacred) in my _Loci
Critici_ (London and Boston, Mass., 1903), pp. 303-365.

Footnote 356:

Or, as he puts it in one of the great critical phrases of the world,
“to produce that willing _suspension of disbelief for the moment_
which constitutes poetic faith.” It derives of course from Aristotle,
but the advance on the original is immense.

Footnote 357:

“And from all other species having this object in common with it, it
is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole as
is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.”
This is the dialect of “Cimmerian Lodge” with a vengeance! An attempt
to expound it will be found in the abstract of the _Lectures_ of 1811
given by J. P. Collier: but it sheds little light. And simpler
Estesian definitions elsewhere—“Prose is words in good order: poetry
the best words in the best order,” &c.—labour likewise under the
common curse that _Poetry_ escapes them. What better words in what
better order than the Lord’s Prayer? Is that poetry?

Footnote 358:

The extraordinary critical genius of Coleridge can hardly be better
shown than by his gloss here on the Petronian enigma, _Præcipitandus
est liber spiritus_, to which we have referred so often. The poet—the
image is not Coleridge’s, but I think it very fairly illustrates his
view—_rides_ the reader’s own genius, and both together attain the
goal.

Footnote 359:

This (chap. xvi., not long after the beginning (p. 157, ed. Bohn)) is
the reference cited above, i. 419, note. It is very slight, and merely
concerns Dante’s jealousy for his mother tongue.

Footnote 360:

These terms are used with no offensive intention, but in strict
reference to the matter of the poems.

Footnote 361:

Chap. xx. _sub fin._, p. 201, ed. cit.

Footnote 362:

Except, once more, to my friend Mr Raleigh.

Footnote 363:

Chap. xxi. Personality, partisanship, haphazard, garbling, caricature
in selection of instances, are the chief faults that Coleridge finds
with both _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_. The reply is dignified in tone
and not unjust; but, like other things of the same kind, it
illustrates certain permanent weaknesses of human nature. All the
faults, I think, which Coleridge finds with “Blue and Yellow” and
“Buff” reviewing might be found with his own critique of Maturin’s
_Bertram_, printed in this very volume. All these faults certainly
found by every generation of authors with their critics, even when
these authors happen to have been copious and constant writers of
criticism themselves. Always is the author tempted, like Mr Baxter, to
cry, “Ah, but _I_ was in the right, and these men are dreadfully in
the wrong”; always does he think, like the Archbishop of Granada, that
the incriminated part of his sermon is exactly the best part; always,
when he bewails the absence of the just and impartial critics of other
times, does he forget the wise ejaculation of Mr Rigmarole, “Pretty
much like our own, I fancy!” (There is no mental reservation in these
remarks.)

Footnote 364:

Four-and-thirty closely printed pages in the Bohn ed.

Footnote 365:

Vol. i. p. 436.

Footnote 366:

Yet there are curious lapses even here. Take the extreme example,
_Alice Fell_, of whom even her author was half-ashamed as mean and
homely. How about “fierce career,” and “smitten with a startling
sound,” and the inversion of “Proud creature was she”?

Footnote 367:

My friend Prof. Raleigh, in his brilliant and (for that word hath
something derogated) really critical study of Wordsworth (London,
1903), is of a different opinion: but I hold my own. And I do not
enter into controversy on the point, because I have nothing to add to
the text, written before Prof. Raleigh’s book appeared.

Footnote 368:

I am well acquainted with the glosses on this famous phrase.

Footnote 369:

“Concluding” in strictness they are not; for Coleridge, in one of his
whims, chose to transfer _Satyrane’s Letters_ from _The Friend_ to be
a sort of _coda_ to the _Biographia_, tipped it with the rather
brutish sting of the _Critique on Bertram_, and attempted _Versöhnung_
with a mystical peroration. But the thing really and logically ends
with the words “Betty Foy,” _sub fin._, chap. xxi.

Footnote 370:

He somewhere sighs for Southey’s command of terse crisp sentences, and
compares his own to “Surinam toads with young ones sprouting and
hanging about them as they go.”

Footnote 371:

An agreeable American critic, Miss Agnes Repplier, once remarked that
Coleridge must have been “a very beatable child.” This beatability
continued till his death: you can only worship him in the spirit of
the Portuguese sailor towards his saints.

Footnote 372:

Mrs General Baynes of the Honourable Mrs Boldero in _The Adventures of
Philip_, chap. xx.

Footnote 373:

Mr Dykes Campbell (whose threading of the maze and piecing of the ends
of Coleridgiana is a standing marvel) thought, or seemed to think,
that the Introduction grew into the _Biographia_ itself.

Footnote 374:

_Satyrane’s Letters_ themselves contain a good deal of criticism in
and out of the interview with Klopstock (p. 270 _sq._, ed. cit.),
where the credit is claimed by some for Wordsworth. The _Critique on
Bertram_ opens well on the “Don Juan” story, but the rest of it is not
_muy hermosa cosa_, combining, as it does, that snarling and carping
tone, against which Coleridge is always and justly protesting, with
more than a suspicion of personal spite. For _Bertram_ had been
preferred to _Zapolya_.

Footnote 375:

The usually known reprint of the 2nd ed. of 1818 is very different
from the original, published in the extraordinary fashion described by
Coleridge himself in the _Biographia_, during 1809-10, and collected
in volume form thereafter. This latter is perhaps the better worth
reading. It is at any rate a confirmation of the at first sight
immoral maxim that you should always buy a book you want, whether you
can afford it or not. Twenty years ago it was not common but
comparatively cheap; now, alas! it is both uncommon and very dear.

Footnote 376:

The editor of these, the late Mr Thomas Ashe (author of a poem far too
little read—_The Sorrows of Hypsipyle_), took much pains with them;
and if he could have kept back a few flings, would have deserved
unqualified thanks. “Never mind God’s will” may be noble counsel, or
an unlucky advice to run worse than your head against worse than a
stone wall. But it is certainly out of place in very brief and rare
notes on a classical author.

Footnote 377:

The question—a puzzle like other _Quæstiones Estesianæ_—about the
exact numbers and dates of Coleridge’s Shakespearian courses is not
for us. It is enough to say that our extant materials (consisting, in
regard to some lectures, of notes and reports from several different
sources) chiefly, if not wholly, concern two courses delivered in
London (1811-12 and 1818), and one at Bristol, 1813-14. Of the Royal
Institution Lectures of 1806-7, on which he relied (throwing them even
farther back) to prove his priority to Schlegel, nothing at all,
unluckily, is preserved. Indeed Mr Dykes Campbell insisted, and seems
to have almost proved, that none at all were delivered till Jan. 1808.
And of these we have only Crabb Robinson’s brief references.

Footnote 378:

This perhaps should, and can very shortly, be demonstrated:—
Observation may be either broad and sweeping, or minute and
concentrated; Johnson specifies the former kind in the last half of
the first line. Observation may be directed to men, to things, &c.; it
is to mankind that he wishes it directed, and he says so in the first
half of the second. Further, as this is too abstract, he gives the
poetic and imaginative touch by filling in the waste atlas, with
“China” and “Peru,” with the porcelain and the pigtails, the llamas
and the gold associated with mankind in these countries. And in the
name of Logic, and Rhetoric and Poetry into the bargain, “What for
no?”

Footnote 379:

P. 73, ed. cit. Goethe, of course, was of the same opinion.

Footnote 380:

P. 89.

Footnote 381:

P. 138.

Footnote 382:

P. 139 _sq._

Footnote 383:

_E.g._, p. 152 _sq._

Footnote 384:

P. 207.

Footnote 385:

P. 213.

Footnote 386:

P. 441.

Footnote 387:

P. 412.

Footnote 388:

_E.g._, pp. 426, 427.

Footnote 389:

All men who write for the periodical press must almost necessarily
repeat themselves, and Hazlitt (whose work often comes to us directly
from the press itself) is not so very much less peccant in this kind
than Coleridge. Coleridge’s own method exposes the peccadillo
ruthlessly. The “Let Observation” criticism occurs several times: the
story about the Falls of Lanark and the man who, beginning with
“majestic,” spoilt it by “very pretty,” over and over again. Nor is
this repetition merely due to the chaotic state of his publications;
it seems to have been a congenital bias, as testified to in his
conversation quite early.

Footnote 390:

P. 15, _ed. cit._

Footnote 391:

_V. infra_ on _Letters_.

Footnote 392:

P. 38.

Footnote 393:

P. 45.

Footnote 394:

P. 74.

Footnote 395:

P. 97.

Footnote 396:

P. 158. These were, “When the professions fell off from the Church;
when literature fell off from the professions; and when the press fell
off from literature.”

Footnote 397:

P. 164 _sq._

Footnote 398:

P. 177.

Footnote 399:

P. 183.

Footnote 400:

P. 201.

Footnote 401:

P. 214.

Footnote 402:

P. 174, _v. inf._

Footnote 403:

Miscellanies, pp. 175-187 _ed. cit._

Footnote 404:

It is odd, but useful, to remember Coleridge’s fancy for stating
propositions algebraically. If his definition were true, _a_ = _b_ or
even (_a_ + _b_)^2 = _a_^2 + 2_ab_ + _b_^2 would be style at its very
acme (cf. Addison in _Spec._ 62 on Euclid and Wit).

Footnote 405:

London, 1895.

Footnote 406:

Pp. 4, 5, 30, 35, 59, 82, 88.

Footnote 407:

P. 118 _sq._

Footnote 408:

P. 121.

Footnote 409:

P. 123.

Footnote 410:

Pp. 127-130.

Footnote 411:

P. 147. Cf. _sup._, p. 223.

Footnote 412:

Coleridge quotes neither Quintilian nor Dante, and was probably not
thinking of either. But _we_ think of them.

Footnote 413:

P. 194.

Footnote 414:

_I.e._, “The faculty which makes many into one”—the creative
imagination. This form is much better than “es_em_plastic,” which
Coleridge adopts in the _Biographia_, for there one stumbles over the
second syllable, and supposes it to be the preposition ἐν.

Footnote 415:

P. 258.

Footnote 416:

Pp. 274, 275.

Footnote 417:

P. 293.

Footnote 418:

Ed. E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols., London, 1895.

Footnote 419:

i. 97, _ed. cit._

Footnote 420:

Miss Mary Evans, Miss Sarah Fricker, and an uncertainly
Christian-named Miss Brunton. _More in excelsis Coleridgeano_ he,
being engaged to No. 2 and desiring to marry No. 1, “hoped that he
might be cured” by the “exquisite beauty and uncommon accomplishments”
of No. 3. See a page or two (89) earlier.

Footnote 421:

P. 157.

Footnote 422:

P. 163.

Footnote 423:

P. 181.

Footnote 424:

P. 196.

Footnote 425:

P. 210. This was just after the as yet hollow healing of the first
great quarrel in 1796.

Footnote 426:

P. 384. These passages are most important as showing how _early_
Coleridge dissented from Wordsworth.

Footnote 427:

P. 549.

Footnote 428:

P. 557.

Footnote 429:

P. 663.

Footnote 430:

_V. infra_, chap. iii.

Footnote 431:

_Coleridge_ (“English Men of Letters,” London, 1884), p. 156.

Footnote 432:

Ibid., pp. 46, 47.

Footnote 433:

See _Life and Correspondence_, ii. 316 _sq._ especially, for
Coleridge’s magnificent “Spanish-Castlery” in connection.

Footnote 434:

6 vols., London, 1850.

Footnote 435:

4 vols., London, 1856. _The Letters to Caroline Bowles_ (London, 1881)
are even fuller proportionately: and _Omniana_, the _Wesley_, the
_Cowper_, _Espriella_, the _Colloquies_, with almost everything,
contribute.

Footnote 436:

But see a very curious glimpse of resipiscence in _Letters_, ii. 171
_sq._

Footnote 437:

The projected _Rhadamanthus_, a periodical on something like the lines
of the later _Retrospective Review_, was a real loss.

Footnote 438:

_Letters_, i. 69, and elsewhere, also, I think—_e.g., Life and Corr._,
iv. 106. Wynn was evidently a precisian of Bysshism. For other
noteworthy critical things in this collection, see i. 173 (Suggestion
of Hist. Novels); ii. 91 (Crabbe); 214 (Engl. Hexameters); iii. (the
various letters about English Hexameters); iv. 47, Sayers’ Poems. I
give but few here, because the _Letters_ have an index. I wish these
and my other references may prompt and help some one to examine, at
greater length than would be possible or proper here, the literary
opinions of the best-read man in England for some fifty years—
1790-1840.

Footnote 439:

It is unlucky that Guest’s _English Rhythms_ came too late in the
evening of his day for him to carry out his expressed purpose of
reviewing it. He evidently recognised its extraordinary value as a
_Thesaurus_: and his summary of the earlier part as “worthless” is of
course not deliberate or final, though it is a very natural expression
in reference to Guest’s astonishing heresies on Shakespearian and
Miltonic prosody. I know no one—not even Gray—who seems to have had,
before the whole range of English verse was known, juster notions on
the whole of English prosody. Even his wanderings after hexameters are
not fatal.

Footnote 440:

_The Doctor_ (1 vol., London, 1848), p. 18.

Footnote 441:

P. 34.

Footnote 442:

P. 42.

Footnote 443:

P. 65.

Footnote 444:

P. 86.

Footnote 445:

P. 99.

Footnote 446:

P. 194.

Footnote 447:

P. 245. It is curious, by the way, that Southey bewails the absence in
English of any synonym for the Spanish _desengaño_. That shows that
“disillusionment,” one of those strictly analogous and justifiable
neologisms which he rightly defends, had not then come into use.

Footnote 448:

P. 315.

Footnote 449:

P. 379.

Footnote 450:

P. 476.

Footnote 451:

P. 536.

Footnote 452:

P. 610.

Footnote 453:

Such an authority, for instance, as one of the reviewers of this poor
book, who decided that “no man of critical genius” would have
attempted to write it.

Footnote 454:

Some readers may like a few out of hundreds of possible references to
_Life and Corr._, which has no Index: i. 85 (Ariosto and Spenser); 122
(Construction); 316-318 (Chapelain, before and after reading); ii. 197
(Greek and Latin taste in poetry); 211, 212 (Modern Ballads); iii. 9
(Archaisms and Neologisms); 140 (the Epistles in _Marmion_); 145 _sq._
(Rhyme, &c.); 205 (the purple patch in _Kehama_); 213, 265 (Advice to
E. Elliott); 277 (blank verse); 295 (Spenser); iv. 301, 338 (very
interesting, on a prophesied return of “preciousness” and
“metaphysical” style in poetry); v. 245 (a never-carried-out plan of
continuing Warton); v. 99 (his own method of writing); vi. 93 (To
Bowles—reasons for not reviewing poetry).

Footnote 455:

The editions of Lamb in parts are now fortunately very numerous, and
there are even several of the whole, some of which have been begun
since the text was written. It is therefore superfluous to give pages,
especially as the individual articles are almost always short. But I
generally use the late R. H. Shepherd’s 1 vol. ed. of the _Works_
(London, 1875), and Canon Ainger’s of the _Letters_ (London, 1888).

Footnote 456:

_Table Talk_, pp. 313, 314, _ed. cit. inf._

Footnote 457:

_Winterslow_, p. 463, _ed. cit. inf._

Footnote 458:

Now, alas! become, between pen and press, the _late_ Master.

Footnote 459:

_Letters_, ed. Ainger, i. 162 _sq._, with the most amusing additional
letter in the Appendix, p. 328 _sq._, on the wrath of Wordsworth and
Coleridge.

Footnote 460:

Ibid., i. 189, 190.

Footnote 461:

P. 207.

Footnote 462:

P. 286 _sq._

Footnote 463:

P. 290.

Footnote 464:

Ibid., ii. 105.

Footnote 465:

Even as the exquisite figure of Mrs Blake, sitting on the bedside,
faces the sketches of gnashing fiends.

Footnote 466:

P. 138.

Footnote 467:

P. 278.

Footnote 468:

There may be people who do not know this, and those who know it
already need not read it. A college cook (I think of Brasenose) was
particularly famous for that most excellent dish the _fondue_, but
would never tell his recipe. At last some Arthur Pendennis (of the
other shop) got round him to this extent: “Why, sir,” said he, “you
see I takes the eggs, and the butter, and the cheese, you know, and
the other things; _and then I just fondoos ’em_.”

Footnote 469:

There is no complete ed. of Hunt, and there could not well be one. I
shall refer here to the 7 vols. of Messrs. Smith & Elder’s cheap and
uniform reprint of a good deal, and to the pretty American pocket
issue of the _Italian Poets_.

Footnote 470:

At the beginning of the Essay on Restoration Drama.

Footnote 471:

Italian.

Footnote 472:

Of course it is not all unfavourable: Leigh Hunt is far too much of a
critic and a lover of poetry for that. But he is constantly put off
and put out by Dante’s “bigotry,” his “uncharitableness,” the
“barbarous pedantries” of his age, and the like.

Footnote 473:

New ed., _ut sup._: London, 1883.

Footnote 474:

This is good, but not so good: and elsewhere—though critical matter
will be found in all Hunt’s collected books and in all his uncollected
periodical work, from the _Examiner_, “whose very name is Hunt,” and
the _Indicator_, and the _Reflector_, to the _Tatler_, and the _London
Journal_—we shall never find him better and seldom so good.

Footnote 475:

P. 51, _ed. cit._

Footnote 476:

It is curious what power that dead sorceress has had on almost all her
poets.

Footnote 477:

P. 250, _ed. cit._

Footnote 478:

Preference only, of course: the exceptions are numerous, but not
enough to destroy the rule.

Footnote 479:

References will be made here throughout to the reprints of Hazlitt’s
literary work in the Bohn Library, 7 vols. This is to _The English
Comic Writers_, p. 33. The newer and completer edition of Messrs
Waller & Glover had but begun when the text was written.

Footnote 480:

Ibid., p. 170 _sq._, and p. 176 _sq._

Footnote 481:

He is, however, dangerously near requiring it with regard to Scott
(see the end of the article on him in _The Spirit of his Age_), and
whenever he speaks of the Duke of Wellington.

Footnote 482:

_English Poets_, ed. cit., pp. 92-95.

Footnote 483:

Pp. 18-25.

Footnote 484:

This favourite word of his has been adopted by all competent critics
as best describing his own manner.

Footnote 485:

Pp. 19, 20.

Footnote 486:

The last page of _The English Poets_.

Footnote 487:

It is curious that the critic’s blunder had been anticipated, though
not excused, by the author’s. Richardson of course _meant_ to make
Lovelace what Hazlitt sees in him: only he failed.

Footnote 488:

In the paper on Sir Philip’s _Sonnets_, noted above.

Footnote 489:

Lect. vi., p. 201 _sq._

Footnote 490:

But not as unique as odd.

Footnote 491:

P. 181.

Footnote 492:

Pp. 115, 126. The elaborate characters of Bacon, &c., in this course
should be compared with those of Pope, and others earlier.

Footnote 493:

P. 64, ed. cit.

Footnote 494:

P. 75.

Footnote 495:

P. 108.

Footnote 496:

P. 77.

Footnote 497:

P. 139.

Footnote 498:

P. 185.

Footnote 499:

P. 278. These passages may remind some of the story of one of George
Sand’s old lovers pausing before a photograph of her in a shop-window,
and saying to his companion, “Et je l’ai connue _belle_!”

Footnote 500:

P. 344.

Footnote 501:

The usual dog-metaphors are no triviality in regard to Hazlitt when he
is in this mood. Every one who knows dogs must have noticed the way in
which they often snarl, as if they could not help it; the growl and
gnash are forced from them.

Footnote 502:

P. 441.

Footnote 503:

P. 449.

Footnote 504:

The end-note of this piece coincides curiously with a remark once made
to me by a person unusually well acquainted with France but, I feel
sure, quite unaware that he was echoing Hazlitt. “The Frenchman has a
certain routine of phrases into which his ideas run habitually as into
a mould; and you cannot get him out of them.”

Footnote 505:

P. 56.

Footnote 506:

P. 203.

Footnote 507:

Yet Hazlitt cannot resist a renewed fling at Sidney.

Footnote 508:

P. 351.

Footnote 509:

P. 150, ed. cit. I wish that some one, in these excerpting days, would
extract and print together _all_ Hazlitt’s passages on Burke, Scott,
and Coleridge.

Footnote 510:

P. 246.

Footnote 511:

P. 248.

Footnote 512:

P. 317.

Footnote 513:

P. 431.

Footnote 514:

“We have more faith in a well-written romance than in common history.”

Footnote 515:

In 1845, reviewing Horne’s very rashly entitled _New Spirit of the
Age_. The review will be found in the 13th vol. (1886) of the ordinary
ed. of Thackeray’s _Works_.

Footnote 516:

P. 173.

Footnote 517:

“Its strength is in its wings” is, in idea, of course, as old as
Plato. But the nearest expression of it, the “la lyre est un
instrument _ailé_” of Joubert, though by a man more than thirty years
Hazlitt’s senior, was never, I think, published till ten years after
Hazlitt’s death.

Footnote 518:

Below Hazlitt (who as well as Lamb praised him, though the former
_more suo_ fell foul of him as well) may be best placed, in the note
which is as much as he deserves, that much-written-of “curiosity of
literature,” the poisoner, connoisseur, and coxcomb, Wainewright.
“Janus,” however, was too much occupied with pictures, plays,
bric-à-brac, Montepulciano, veal-pies in red earthenware dishes, the
prize-ring, and other fancies or fopperies, to busy himself directly
with literature, save, perhaps, in the curious paper “Janus
Weatherbound,” which seems to have been _his_ “farewell to
essay-writing.” It is, however, fair to say that, odious as he was in
ways not merely moral, he had something of “a taste” here also. His
quotations, which are numerous, are singularly well selected; he
admired not merely Fouqué but Shelley long before it was the fashion
to do so; and you may pick out of the works, rather probably than
certainly his (_Essays and Criticisms_, by T. G. Wainewright, ed. W.
C. Hazlitt: London, 1880), stray literary notes not without value.

Footnote 519:

I use for Blake Gilchrist’s _Life and Works_ (2nd ed., 2 vol., London,
1880), Mr Swinburne’s _William Blake_ (London, 1868), Mr Rossetti’s
Aldine _Poetical Works_ (London, 1874), and Messrs Ellis and Yeats’s
great Blakian Thesaurus (3 vols., London, 1893).

Footnote 520:

_V. sup._, ii. 391 note.

Footnote 521:

Letter to the _Monthly Magazine_ of July 1, 1806. “O Englishmen! know
that every man ought to be a judge of pictures, and every man is so
who has not been connoisseured out of his senses.” The whole letter is
given by Mr Swinburne, pp. 62, 63, _op. cit._

Footnote 522:

In _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. Compare with this Vico’s famous
doctrine that “the criterion on truth is to have _made_ it.”

Footnote 523:

Facsimiled in Ellis and Yeats, vol. iii. Printed as _Sibylline Leaves_
in Gilchrist, ii. 178, 180.

Footnote 524:

See in particular his admirable review of Godwin’s _Chaucer_, and his
just condemnation of the absurd practice—simply wallowed in since by
biographers and historians—of bolstering out a book with what the
subject _might have_ seen, done, thought, or suffered.

Footnote 525:

The two qualities lauded above—knowledge and judgment—are specially
noteworthy here, when we compare the article, not merely with the less
fully informed work of Hurd, Percy, and Warton (not to say Ritson),
but with more recent compositions by persons who had the originals
easily at disposal.

Footnote 526:

They will also be found printed together in the two vols. of
_Biographies_, of which they form the larger part.

Footnote 527:

_Periodical Criticism_, vol. ii.

Footnote 528:

In connection with Sir Walter, one may pay a note of tribute to the
extreme and now too little known critical ability of his “discoverer,”
J. L. Adolphus, whose _Letters to Heber on the Authorship of Waverley_
would come in well as an excursus-subject. Examining, as he did,
certain known works of an at least hypothetically unknown writer, he
was bound to give that attention to the _work itself_, which was the
great thing necessary; and he gave it with remarkable ability,
craftsmanship, and knowledge of literature.

Footnote 529:

Those who will not take the trouble to search the _Specimens_
themselves will find copious and admirably selected examples in
Jeffrey’s article on the book (_Essays_, 1 vol. ed., p. 359 _sq._),
one of the best reviews he ever wrote, but for some superfluous,
unjust, and, in the context (_v._ above), specially ungenerous flings
at Southey.

Footnote 530:

This may be found not merely in the edd. of the _Works_, but in Prof.
Vaughan’s interesting selection of _Literary Criticism_ (London,
1896).

Footnote 531:

It is with some misgiving, and after more than one change of mind,
that I place Shelley’s great poetical twin (or rather tally) in a note
only here. I have already more than once referred (ii. 280, 412) to
Keats’s perhaps one-sided but very vigorous and remarkable
verse-formulation of the protest against Neo-classicism; the two
prefaces (especially the final one) to _Endymion_ have been generally
recognised by the competent as perhaps the most astonishingly just
judgments which any poet has ever passed on himself: and the _Letters_
are full of critical or quasi-critical passages of the highest
interest. I myself have a sheaf of them duly noted; and some persons
of distinction whom I know would admit them to the very Golden Book of
Criticism. I hope, however, that my own judgment is not too much
sicklied o’er with crotchet in holding that Keats’s criticism of
himself and others is somewhat too spontaneous and automatic, somewhat
too much of a mere other phase of his creation, to deserve the name of
criticism properly so-called. He speaks of Shakespeare admirably,
because he has the same quintessentially English cast of poetry that
Shakespeare had. When he speaks of poetry in the abstract, as he does
admirably and often, it is this poetry speaking of herself, and
therefore speaking truly but not critically. Even in the wonderful
remark (vol. v. p. 111., ed. Forman, Glasgow, 1901) on himself and
Byron, “He describes what he sees: I describe what I imagine” (where
he repeats Philostratus without in the least knowing it), the thing is
not criticism: it is self-speaking. And beyond this he seldom goes,
and is seldomer happy in his rare excursions. He might have become a
critic, as he might have become almost anything good; but I do not
think he was one.

Footnote 532:

My copy is the eight-volume ed. of 1874-76: but the titles of the
various pieces will enable them to be found in others.

Footnote 533:

See the opening of “Southey and Porson.” It is, of course, not
improved by the presence of the Landorian irony, which is an uncertain
quality, too often inclining either to horse-play or to peevishness:
but this is not fatal.

Footnote 534:

See “Landor and Delille.”

Footnote 535:

_V. sup._, p. 66 _sq._

Footnote 536:

_V. sup._, ii. 491.

Footnote 537:

From 1801, when his edition appeared, till well into the ’Twenties.
Mr. Rhys (_op. cit. sup._) has given some of Bowles’s rejoinders to
Byron, with Byron’s own _Letter_, mentioned below, and some references
to the battle in his _Introduction_.

Footnote 538:

They will be found usefully rearranged by himself in the extract of
his answer to Byron given by Mr Rhys (Appendix to vol. ii., _op.
cit._)

Footnote 539:

i. 262 _sq._

Footnote 540:

1821. To be found, outside the edd. of the author, in Mr Rhys’ book,
ii. 162 _sq._

Footnote 541:

It has been suggested to me that Byron ought to have the benefit, as
well as the disadvantage, of my description of Keats’s critical
utterances on the other side, as a phase of his creation. There is
something in this: but Byron seems to me less _genuine_ even on this
showing.

Footnote 542:

The _Censura_, extending to 10 vols., but oftenest found incomplete,
appeared in 1805-9. The _British Bibliographer_, _Restituta_, &c.,
came later.

Footnote 543:

First Series, 14 vols., 1820-26; Second, 2 vols., 1827-28. Its
contributors included Hartley Coleridge, Talfourd (one of the persons
whom I regretfully exclude here), and (in his earliest work) Thomas
Wright.

Footnote 544:

Southern afterwards came in contact with Borrow at Madrid. See _The
Bible in Spain_ and Dr Knapp’s _Life_.

Footnote 545:

There is none in the dates, but the title-page is different, the
former vignette of a gateway (Trinity? “I cannot tell, I am an Oxford
man”) disappearing, and being replaced by the editors’ names.

Footnote 546:

A so-called “_Third_ Series” (in 2 vols., 1854) can hardly be
considered as really forming part of the original, from which it is
separated by a thirty years’ interval.

Footnote 547:

It is the only adequate thing on him that I know.

Footnote 548:

Specially good are, in vol. iv., the dramatic papers; in v., one on
_Witchcraft_; in vi., those on Coryat and Sir T. Urquhart; in vii., on
Donne and Ariosto; in ix., on Chaucer (continued later); in x., on
_Minor French Poetry_ (Dorat); in xii., on _Latin Plays at Cambridge_,
and one of singular and wide-reaching merit on the _Roman Comique_; in
xv., an interesting tracing of Scott’s quotations in the novels; in
xvi., an admirable paper on Shadwell. But there is practically nothing
negligible: and good taste, good manners, good temper, and good
learning abound throughout.

Footnote 549:

_V. sup._, ii. 534.

Footnote 550:

His best _literary_ skit, “Bozzy and Piozzi,” deals with the _Tour_,
not the _Life_.

Footnote 551:

The earlier _Rolliad_ is partly, but less, literary. For more on most
of these I may refer to an essay of mine, _Twenty Years of Political
Satire_, which originally appeared in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, and it
reprinted in _Essays in English Literature_, 2nd series, London, 1895.

Footnote 552:

I do not think it necessary to give Gifford’s prose or periodical
criticism a separate place. It is by no means easily separable as
such; and if separated I fancy there would be very little to say for
it, and that what would have to be said against it is better summed up
in the words of no less a political sympathiser and personal friend
than Scott. A “cankered carle” cannot be a good critic, any more than
a mildewed grape can give good wine. But Gifford was not quite so bad
as he has seemed to some; and his editorial work, especially on
Jonson, deserves almost the highest praise.

Footnote 553:

I know, of course, that even Coleridge spoke unadvisedly about these
immortal flowers. But he had got a “philosophical” craze at the
moment: and he did not call them “stuff.”

Footnote 554:

_Contributions to the Edinburgh Review_, London, pp. 36-63 of this the
one vol. ed., 1853. The “Beauty” itself requires very little notice.
It is an ingenious variation upon Alison, whose book it reviews,
praises, and supports, with some unfairness to Gerard. But it
abstains, almost comically and not uninstructively to an impartial
thinker on æsthetics, from any definite literary applications.

Footnote 555:

He makes indeed an awkward slip by linking Machiavel as a contemporary
with Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, and Galileo; but it is only
recently, if even recently, that literary history has been carefully
attended to, and Coleridge himself makes slips quite as bad.

Footnote 556:

How much of this was got from his author herself I leave to others to
decide. A comparison with what has been said of her _supra_ may be
“for thoughts.”

Footnote 557:

A fuller development of view about Jeffrey as a critic may be found in
the present writer’s _Essays in English Literature_, First Series, pp.
100-134. Articles of his own specially worth examining are, besides
the “Staël,” “Cowper,” “Ford,” “Keats,” and “Campbell’s _Specimens_,”
those on _W. Meister_ (very curious and interesting), Richardson,
Scott, and Byron (very numerous and full of piquancies), Crabbe,
Wordsworth of course (though with as much wisdom as good feeling he
kept much of the most offensive matter both on Wordsworth and Southey
out), and Burns. In regard to the latter I cannot help thinking that
he played the _Advocatus Diaboli_ better than either Mr Arnold, Mr
Shairp, or my late friend Mr Henley.

Footnote 558:

The popularity, in late years, of the singularly uncritical words
“sympathetic” and “unsympathetic” in describing Criticism, would of
itself point to this necessity. It would seem impossible for a large
number of persons to “like” otherwise than “grossly” in Dryden’s
sense, or to imagine that any one else can like delicately, with
discrimination, in the old sense “nicely.” A “sympathetic” notice or
criticism is one which pours unmixed cataracts of what the cooks call
oiled butter all over the patient: a notice that questions this part
of him, rejects that, but gives due value to the gold and the silver
and the precious stones, while discarding the hay and the stubble, is
“unsympathetic.” Many years (many lustres even, alas!) ago, an old
friend and colleague of mine, since distinguished in his own country
as a critic, M. Paul Stapfer, complained that Englishmen, and still
more Englishwomen, had only two critical categories—the “dry” and the
“pretty.” These were unsatisfactory enough, but I think they were
better than “sympathetic” and “unsympathetic” as now often used.

Footnote 559:

P. 5, in the convenient 1-vol. reprint of Messrs Ward and Lock
(London: n. d.)

Footnote 560:

On the same page, ed. cit.

Footnote 561:

Who loved the Vulgate.

Footnote 562:

I decline to sully these pages with it: let it go to its own place,
buckled neck and heels with Rapin’s on Nausicaa.

Footnote 563:

We could abandon Owen Felltham to him with more equanimity if he did
not describe, as “vile English, or properly no English,” such words as
“nested,” “parallel” as a verb, and “uncurtain,” all excellent English
of the best brand and vintage, formed on the strictest and most
idiomatic patents of analogy. There is still far too much criticastry
and pedanticulism (here’s for them!) of this kind about, and men like
Hallam are very mainly responsible for it. Even “obnubilate,” to which
he also objects, is a perfectly good word, on all-fours with
“compensate,” which he himself uses in the same context, though less
usual. A sovereign of just weight, fineness, and stamp is none the
worse for having been little circulated: nor is a word.

Footnote 564:

I can only think of one important blunder that he makes _as a
historian_—the statement that Opitz “took Holland for his Parnassus.”
Now Ronsard (_v. sup._, ii. 362) was not exactly a Dutchman.

Footnote 565:

His _Critiques et Études Littéraires_ (2 vols., Paris, 1857) contain
many things upon which I should like to dwell, especially his
discussion, in the _Globe_, of the _État de la Poésie Française_ in
1825. It is as good an expression of the views of the earlier, cooler,
and more erudite Eclectic-Romantics as could be wished.

Footnote 566:

To be found in his _Essais Historiques et Littéraires_: Paris, 1862.
The _Essais Philosophiques et Littéraires_ (Paris, 1875) may also be
consulted: but, as the double titles may warn the wary, there is not
much pure literature in either.

Footnote 567:

See the later _Conversations_, _passim_.

Footnote 568:

This, with Quintus Smyrnæus as make-weight, is a sort of wreckage or
recovery from the lectures which were howled down at the Collége de
France by anti-Imperialist students. It is the largest of its author’s
classical studies: not perhaps the most interesting. The French
professorial method, possibly in direct tradition from the time when
authors were really (and in some cases almost merely) _read_ to
students, seems to include a very large amount of simple abstract and
“argument.” (“Priam conducts the young princess to the Palace: he
honours her,” &c.) This is, from our point of view, rather surplusage,
and at any rate more important on Quintus Smyrnæus than on Virgil. But
we may note a reference (p. 73) to Mr Arnold’s _Preface_, then pretty
new, which is an interesting thing.

Footnote 569:

There is naturally not much criticism here except the remark—in itself
involving one of the few great commandments of criticism and one of
the most frequently neglected—“il n’avait pas assez _lu_.”

Footnote 570:

In the case of a man who wrote so much and so often on the same things
as Sainte-Beuve, an exhaustive general index would be a great
assistance. There is a whole volume of _Table_ to the _Causeries_,
properly so called, the _Portraits de Femmes_, and the _Portraits
Littéraires_; while the _Premiers Lundis_ contains a succinct but very
useful synopsis-index of all the works and substantive pieces, and
_Port-Royal_ has an elaborate index of its own. But my copies of the
_Portraits Contemporains_ (5 vols.) and the _Chateaubriand_ (2), as
well as the 13 of the _Nouveaux Lundis_, are indexless.

Footnote 571:

Sainte-Beuve _could_ be dull, and his Senate speeches are most painful
proofs of it. We know that the Senators who talked him inaudible had
other reasons for their rudeness: but he almost provoked it apart from
those reasons.

Footnote 572:

I know Balzac’s criticism, which is extensive, pretty well: but I
shall do no such despite to his genius as to allow him to appear here
in a character where he showed no genius at all.

Footnote 573:

Paris, 1828, and since.

Footnote 574:

This, however (5 vols., 1832-39), was probably the first collection
that definitely announced its author to the world at large.

Footnote 575:

The first reissue (1844 ?) was only in two.

Footnote 576:

This is a crucial example. Sainte-Beuve had a just reverence for the
powers of this Abdiel-Michael of aristocracy. He even seems a little
daunted and dazzled by their sombre splendour. But he does not bring
out their literary _quality_ as he would have done later.

Footnote 577:

I believe this charming book—made accessible for a time by the
Brussels reprint of 1868—is again very rare. I once had the pleasure
of introducing it to the late Lord Houghton, who told me afterwards
that he had bought it “and dressed it up all in moons and stars.”

Footnote 578:

Vigny (in a passage which Sainte-Beuve himself quotes with singular
blindness or singular boldness) puts the thing finally: _Il ne faut
disséquer que les morts: cette manière de chercher à ouvrir le cerveau
d’un vivant est fausse et mauvaise_ (A. de. V.'s _Journal_, quoted in
_Port. Contemp._, final ed., ii. 79).

Footnote 579:

And, after all, let us remember that, on the testimony of the
Goncourts (_Journal_, ii. 123), who have left some of the most
offensive things against Sainte-Beuve, the critic, as late as 1863,
rebuked Taine for belittling Hugo, in these memorable words, “Ne
parlez pas d’Hugo. Vous ne le connaissez pas. Mais l'œuvre d’Hugo est
magnifique!”

Footnote 580:

See for instance the opening (1832) of the “Lamartine” (i. 276).

Footnote 581:

_E.g._, to Crabbe, pp. 328-330; to Wordsworth and Coleridge, pp.
337-345. Sainte-Beuve, it is hardly necessary to say, was English of
the quarter-blood.

Footnote 582:

The not quite “single speech” Ulric of that unforgettable piece, “Ils
ont dit, L’amour passe et sa flamme est rapide.”

Footnote 583:

This contains the admirable, if in more than one sense generous,
judgment of Schlegel (Wilhelm), that he _a eu l'œil à toutes les
grandes choses littéraires, s’il n’a pas toujour rendu justice aux
moyennes_. Omit _grandes_ in the first clause; substitute it for
_moyennes_ and prefix _pleine_ to _justice_ in the second; and the
thing becomes a fair verdict on Sainte-Beuve himself.

Footnote 584:

One of Sainte-Beuve’s defects (“for the man was mortal”) was an
insufficient appreciation of the grotesque and the out-of-the-way.

Footnote 585:

He himself put it earlier—at 1840 or thereabouts. No doubt, as I have
said above, the essays of the ’Forties as a whole do show a great
advance. But I hardly recognise the full Sainte-Beuve before, say, the
“Daunou” and the “Leopardi” of 1844.

Footnote 586:

The definitive edition was published in 1867-71 (the author died
midway in 1869), in 7 vols.—6 of text, the first 5 of which average
600 pp. each, 1 of elaborate index, by that admirable student of the
older French literature, M. de Montaiglon. The original dates of
publication were 1840-60.

Footnote 587:

Unless we group with it Hazlitt’s, which is, in this instance, for
thoughts. Your pure man of letters often has a morbid love of mere
_force_.

Footnote 588:

The touch of we do not quite know what personal soreness breaks in
whenever “René” is mentioned, even much later than this.

Footnote 589:

I fear that terrible charge, “il n'était pas gentilhomme,” is a little
borne out by his intromitting with Chateaubriand’s annotated copy of
the _Essai sur les Révolutions_, which he uses to fix anti-religious
and anti-monarchical opinions on the writer. You have no business, at
any rate till centuries have passed, with a man’s private comment on
his published writings. It is mere eavesdropping once removed.

Footnote 590:

i. 91.

Footnote 591:

i. 132.

Footnote 592:

_Ch. et s. G._, i. 233, 234.

Footnote 593:

ii. 37.

Footnote 594:

ii. 91.

Footnote 595:

Ibid., 97.

Footnote 596:

Ibid., 114.

Footnote 597:

Ibid., 340.

Footnote 598:

The _Constitutionnel_ first, then the _Moniteur_. Here, as elsewhere,
I do not burden the text with details which are in all the
biographical dictionaries.

Footnote 599:

I wonder whether Mr Arnold got “Stagirius” from Sainte-Beuve, or
direct from Saint-Marc Girardin, who seems to have extracted him
originally from the Golden-mouth? So, too, did _Sohrab and Rustum_
come from the “Firdousi” article? These interesting suggestions of
suggestion—as interesting as the ordinary plagiarism and
parallel-passage inquiries of bad and dull critics, are dull and bad—
occur with Sainte-Beuve more often than with almost any man.

Footnote 600:

The adventure was kept up, so far as I remember, for four subsequent
years with equal punctuality. The Chapel, in Criticism of Our Lady of
the Broken Lances has never seen such a paladin.

Footnote 601:

The same applies to the protest, interesting as a _cri du cœur_ and a
statement of life-purpose, but mistaken, against Taxile Delord (xi.
400-403). The punishment too much dignifies the offence—and the
offender.

Footnote 602:

There is rhetoric enough in Gibbon, of course; but it is not the
rhetoric that the French love.

Footnote 603:

Sainte-Beuve’s fancy for Feydeau was a subject of wonder to friends of
his who were not in the least prudish. It waned, however, and the
signs of the waning are the subject of an anecdote, slightly too
Rabelaisian to quote here, but very amusing.

Footnote 604:

He himself has said truly and nobly of one of the few who _did_ escape
them—Gautier: “Jamais un sentiment mauvais, soit de hauteur soit de
jalousie mesquine, n’est entre dans [son] âme.” To be thus is to be
one of ten thousand: even to kick the bad thoughts out when they
present themselves is no common merit (_N. L._, vi. 325).

Footnote 605:

Rather tantalisingly as to the _number_ of fulfilments. But the papers
on the Greek Anthology in vol. vii. are exquisite in _quality_.

Footnote 606:

I do not forget either Mr Arnold or Mr Pater: but they look at
antiquity in a different way.

Footnote 607:

The _Lundis_ (though that is not their fault) have perhaps given a
rather terrible amount of “knowledge which is not knowledge” at second
hand or further. I have often smiled at seeing some honest, if not
consummate, first-hand study of a subject loftily pooh-poohed, by some
one who evidently knew nothing of it but what he had learnt from
Sainte-Beuve.

Footnote 608:

Longinus, c. xxxv. _sub. fin._

Footnote 609:

He was Professor of it for years; he was a constant contributor to the
_Deux Mondes_; he welcomed the new study of Old French, and took early
part in it. But if any reader wants any more from me on him I must
refer to “A Paradox on Quinet” in my _Miscellaneous Essays_ (London,
1892), p. 274 _sq._; on Michelet, to an article in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_.

Footnote 610:

Edd. so numerous that reference to particular ones would be very
little helpful: the original dates of important works will be
specified.

Footnote 611:

1864.

Footnote 612:

1827.

Footnote 613:

1828.

Footnote 614:

1834.

Footnote 615:

There is a very curious and interesting half-palinode,
half-explanation, as to “art-for-art” here, which is worth noting.

Footnote 616:

_V. sup._, i. 272, note.

Footnote 617:

Paris, 1894.

Footnote 618:

Paris, 1891.

Footnote 619:

Begun in 1844, finished in 1861, and often reprinted.

Footnote 620:

In his later days, too, the very disgust at being himself kept from
producing literature kept him from dealing with it, and threw him upon
the theatrical and artistic subjects in which he had indeed a great,
but only a secondary, interest.

Footnote 621:

There are some very noteworthy things in the early articles recovered
and reprinted posthumously in _Fusains et Eaux-Fortes_ (Paris: 1890).

Footnote 622:

Vol. i. p. 19.

Footnote 623:

But never, I think, _without_ date—a blessing for which one cannot be
too truly thankful to M. Du Camp or somebody else.

Footnote 624:

He seems to have _canonised_ himself: his godfathers and godmothers
had been contented to call him Marc.

Footnote 625:

The _Cours_, in 5 vols. (afterwards 4), (Paris, 1843 _sq._); the
_Essais_, in 2 (Paris, 1845).

Footnote 626:

It is fair to say that Sainte-Beuve’s references to him are not quite
trustworthy. There was probably some jealously.

Footnote 627:

As Claude Vignon in _Béatrix_.

Footnote 628:

Part of his collected work deals with Art. The rest—_Portraits
Littéraires_ (1836-49), _Nouveaux Portraits Littéraires_ (1854), and
_Études sur l'École Français_, (1855)—are out of print. The copies I
_possess_ consist of _Portraits Littéraires_, 2 vols. (Paris, 1854),
and _Nouveaux P. L._, 2 vols., 1855.

Footnote 629:

_P. L._, i. 112-181, and _N. P. L._, i. 193-353, consist of Hugo
articles.

Footnote 630:

See _N. P. L._, ii. 67 _sq._

Footnote 631:

Who has _P. L._, i. 81-112, and _N. P. L._, i. 45-193.

Footnote 632:

“Ce serait plus simple d'écrire en Grec.”

Footnote 633:

_P. L._, i. 325-367.

Footnote 634:

Paris, 1838.

Footnote 635:

2 vols., Paris, 1843.

Footnote 636:

Paris, 1845.

Footnote 637:

If any one is inclined—as some may be—to apply to this book Mérimée’s
own censure of Ticknor and other literary historians for putting
things in merely because they have read them, let me simply quote here
the names of Henri de Latouche, of Fiorentino, and of Ozanam, to which
I could add many others.

Footnote 638:

In the Introduction to _Lettres à une autre Inconnue_ (Paris, 1875),
p. xlv.

Footnote 639:

Third ed., Paris, 1876.

Footnote 640:

Ibid., 1874.

Footnote 641:

In the _Portraits_.

Footnote 642:

In the _Mélanges_.

Footnote 643:

Also in the _Portraits_, where the shorter paper on Nodier has some
excellent criticism.

Footnote 644:

Rather oddly pitchforked into the _Carmen_ volume; the others are in
the _Portraits_.

Footnote 645:

_Schriften_, ed. Roth, 8 vols. in 9: Berlin, 1821-42. The second part
of the eighth volume is wholly occupied by one of the best indices
that I know in any German book—a very special blessing in the case of
a writer like Hamann.

Footnote 646:

i. 509.

Footnote 647:

ii. 376-413.

Footnote 648:

iii. 81.

Footnote 649:

Who is mentioned in the same passage for his discourse on _Fables_.

Footnote 650:

He speaks, for instance (ii. 437, saying, of course, that he will
_not_ speak), of “our æsthetic” as “Bohemian glass”; of the “falsity
of its subtlety,” &c.

Footnote 651:

He describes himself in a letter to Reichardt, of June 1777 (v. 248),
as spending the livelong day in reading “the Greek Testament, some
classic, or _Shakespeare_.” Fifteen years earlier, in one of the
maddest-looking of his tract-groups (_Essais à Mosaïque_, vol. ii.),
written in French and giving itself out as written in England, “at
Bedlam,” “Tyburn Road,” &c., he had pronounced Falstaff “unique”: and
his quotations from _Hamlet_, at a time when the future author of
_Wilhelm Meister_ was scarcely breeched, are frequent.

Footnote 652:

9 vols.: Göttingen, 1844-47.

Footnote 653:

v. 93.

Footnote 654:

v. 331.

Footnote 655:

In vols. i. and ii.

Footnote 656:

ii. 383.

Footnote 657:

i. 283 _sq._ He is very interesting here to compare and contrast with
Goethe.

Footnote 658:

i.-xx. of the 60-vol. ed. (Stuttgart, 1827). I have in some cases
sought to compare, but have not been able continuously to work with,
the much better ed. of Suphan (32 vols.: Berlin, 1877-1887).

Footnote 659:

The phrase is De Quincey’s and a good one: but it does not occur in
his Essay on Herder, which is one of the most unsatisfactory things he
ever did.

Footnote 660:

_Einleitung_ to the _Fragmente_ (1767), ed. cit., i. 9.

Footnote 661:

I am not yet sure whether Vico exercised much influence on Herder in
this direction: but Herder certainly ranks next to Vico as a leader in
it, and had as much more immediate and wide-spreading influence as he
had less originality and force. Professor Flint, I may say, thinks the
actual connection of the two slight.

Footnote 662:

Ed. cit., vols. i. and ii.

Footnote 663:

The Germans had been creditably troubled about their prosodic souls
ever since Opitz (see the large concernment of this matter in
Borinski, _op. cit. sup._); and the middle of the eighteenth century
saw the strict iambic Alexandrines of Opitz himself and others
deserted, partly for the so-called “British” or Miltonic scansion
(decasyllables with certain licences of substitution), partly for
classical metres and unrhymed “Pindarics,” both of which had a great
reflex influence on ourselves.

Footnote 664:

1769. Ed. cit., vols. xiii., xiv.

Footnote 665:

_V. sup._ pp. 47, 48.

Footnote 666:

Vol. xv.

Footnote 667:

Vols. xv., xvi.

Footnote 668:

For this and the rest see ed. cit., vols. xvii.-xx.

Footnote 669:

See xviii. 65-99.

Footnote 670:

His Shakespearian passages are numerous; see especially xvii. 228
_sq._

Footnote 671:

There can be no doubt that, here as elsewhere, Herder was
administering a much-needed correction to the ridiculous Chauvinism of
Klopstock, who was wont to extol German language and literature over
all languages and literatures—past, present, and future, actual,
possible, and impossible.

Footnote 672:

Let me only add a reference to his own interesting sketch of German
criticism up to his time. _Ideen_, ii. 55, 56, ed. cit. xvi. 159 _sq._

Footnote 673:

I have used the ed. in 36 vols., Leipzig, 1839-40.

Footnote 674:

29-36 in ed. cit.

Footnote 675:

xxix. 129 _sq._

Footnote 676:

xxxiii. 255.

Footnote 677:

In same vol.

Footnote 678:

In the _Bibliothek der Weltlitteratur_ of Cotta (Stuttgart, n. d.),
which I use. Besides the texts more particularly noted above,
_Dichtung und Wahrheit_ is perhaps the chief place to be examined: but
nothing can be quite neglected. Readers confined to English may
profitably consult _Criticism, Reflections, and Maxims of Goethe_
(London, n. d.), ed. by W. B. Rönnfeldt, who thinks Goethe “probably
the greatest literary and art critic whom the world has seen.”

Footnote 679:

Goethe would probably not himself have refused this ascription, but
might, on the contrary, have welcomed it. He even wanted the
_Nibelungen_ in prose: and more than once, I think, adopts
translateableness as a _criterion_ of Poetry (_v. inf._ note, p. 368).
But this does not bridge, it only deepens, the gulf. Again, it may be,
and has been, urged that in the _Hamlet_ piece he was avowedly
speaking from the theatrical point of view in every direction. True
again: but if anybody, with such literature as _Hamlet_ before him,
can take this point of view, we know that his heart and his treasure
lie, not in the book, but on the boards.

Footnote 680:

_Allgemeine Begriffe und grosser Dünkel sind immer auf dem Wege
entsetzliches Unglück anzurichten._—_Spr. in Pro._, ed. cit., p. 109.

Footnote 681:

Ibid., p. 129.

Footnote 682:

_Gehöre uns an_, p. 128.

Footnote 683:

P. 177.

Footnote 684:

P. 216.

Footnote 685:

P. 143.

Footnote 686:

P. 178.

Footnote 687:

Pp. 165-169.

Footnote 688:

_Schönste_, which, with _Geist_, is a little difficult to translate
adequately. But it coincides interestingly with Lamb’s, “one of the
wisest and finest spirits breathing,” of Hazlitt.

Footnote 689:

We all laugh with Dickens when Lord Frederick Verisopht sums up
Shakespeare as “a clayver man.” Yet it may be doubted whether Goethe
had not in effect anticipated his lordship. It is almost always as the
“clever” _man_, not as the Prospero of the poetic moment, that he
considers Shakespeare.

Footnote 690:

_V. sup._ p. 167.

Footnote 691:

xxvii. and xxviii. The former is devoted to “German,” the latter (in
part) to “Foreign” literature. This last contains much of interest,
especially on French and English books of the last decade of Goethe’s
life, and on Folk-Verse.

Footnote 692:

Who probably meant “panoptic.” A work can be panoramic; an intellect
hardly.

Footnote 693:

xxvii. 25.

Footnote 694:

xxviii. 60.

Footnote 695:

I can give one very egregious example of this. The famous phrase,
“Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh,” has been seen from a very early period
to have an allegorical, as well as a literal, interpretation. Indeed,
in the Latin original (for the words are a translation, as genius
translates, of Lucan, ii. 273, _Pacem summa tenent_) the context is
perfectly unmistakable. I had myself fallen in love with _Ueber allen
Gipfeln_ when I got the _Gedichte_ as a school-prize in the year 1860,
and both the possible interpretations had struck me. Yet a very few
years ago, for giving the _poetical_ application, I was solemnly
warned by a reviewer that there was nothing disgraceful in my not
knowing German, but that to pretend to do so, and to give an
impossible meaning to well-known words, was quite intolerable.

Footnote 696:

_Gespräche mit Goethe_ (3 vols., Stuttgart), i. 50.

Footnote 697:

i. 66. It has been urged, not without justice, that this intense
_craftsmanship_ must fairly be taken into account in estimating his
criticism. He is always identifying himself with the worker rather
than the spectator-reader, thinking of the process rather than of the
result.

Footnote 698:

i. 70.

Footnote 699:

i. 102.

Footnote 700:

Or at least “opponents”—_Gegner_, i. 104, 105.

Footnote 701:

i. 116.

Footnote 702:

i. 118.

Footnote 703:

i. 120.

Footnote 704:

1824.

Footnote 705:

i. 166.

Footnote 706:

i. 121.

Footnote 707:

P. 125. Cf. what has been said above.

Footnote 708:

P. 134.

Footnote 709:

“Everything Pope said and thought of his friend was good and noble”—
_The English Humourists._

Footnote 710:

P. 182.

Footnote 711:

P. 184. And again, the _craftsman’s_ point of view must be allowed
for. Flemming “will not help the _poet of 1830_,” is what he means.

Footnote 712:

P. 193.

Footnote 713:

P. 219.

Footnote 714:

P. 233.

Footnote 715:

(_I.e._, the poetry of the horrible and the miserable) p. 245.

Footnote 716:

P. 9.

Footnote 717:

P. 26.

Footnote 718:

P. 33.

Footnote 719:

ii. 162.

Footnote 720:

P. 180.

Footnote 721:

Pp. 184, 194.

Footnote 722:

With reinforcements from Soret, the Genevese botanist and
mineralogist.

Footnote 723:

iii. 29, “Jenes ungestörte unschuldige, nachtwandlerische Schaffen.”

Footnote 724:

P. 86.

Footnote 725:

P. 99.

Footnote 726:

He had earlier said that Shakespeare and Molière did just the reverse.

Footnote 727:

P. 102.

Footnote 728:

P. 110.

Footnote 729:

P. 161.

Footnote 730:

I could make this point even clearer by putting together and enlarging
upon his Shakespearian criticism: but this would take too much room,
and it has been done in sample already. The English reader will find
the chief texts collected in the first sixty pages of Mr Ronnfeldt’s
book, cited above.

Footnote 731:

ii. 10 _sq._

Footnote 732:

P. 184 _sq._

Footnote 733:

I do not forget his reviews of _Don Juan_, _Manfred_, and _Cain_: nor
the rather astonishing attribution to _Don Juan_ itself of being the
first book to supply English with “a polished comic language.”

Footnote 734:

iii. 40.

Footnote 735:

Once more the sordid “business” view which we noticed in regard to
Flemming seems to have crept over him. He did, of course, admire the
_Nibelugen_, and the Ballads, and some other things. But his general
belittlement remains.

Footnote 736:

Vols. xii.-xv. of the Cotta ed.

Footnote 737:

_V. sup._, p. 368, and inf., p. 389.

Footnote 738:

_V. inf._, p. 396.

Footnote 739:

All these are in vol. xii. ed. cit.

Footnote 740:

“On the Ground of Pleasure in Tragic Objects,” and “On the Tragic
Art.” Vol. xiii.

Footnote 741:

“Über Anmuth und Würde,” “Über das Pathetische,” “Zerstreute
Betrachtungen,” and “Über die aesthetische Erziehung der Menschen.”
All these fall under our exclusion of pure æsthetic, after the
earliest examples in each country.

Footnote 742:

The adjectives do not give the force of their originals. Schiller
meant the poets who are not _self-conscious_ and those who are.

Footnote 743:

_V. inf._, p. 395.

Footnote 744:

In a note subjoined when the review was republished, eleven years
after its first appearance, after Bürger’s death, and after Schlegel’s
counter-blow.

Footnote 745:

Unfortunately the Bürger review is not the only one, of the small
handful given us, in which Schiller “harps and carps” in this evil
fashion. That on _Egmont_ is almost as bad.

Footnote 746:

Herr Boas, _op. cit. inf._, cites Gervinus as saying that his
investigations entirely confirmed the _Xenien_ estimates. I have not
verified the quotation, but I know enough of Gervinus (see on him
_inf._) to be certain that his judgment would have been equally
accommodating whatever these estimates had been.

Footnote 747:

The most convenient subject for such a study known to me is the
_Schiller und Goethe im Xenien-kampf_ of Eduard Boas (Stuttgart und
Tübingen, 2 vols., 1851), which gives the text with all necessary
apparatus, and a long account, with specimens, of the retorts of the
victims and the appurtenant literature generally. I exclude, of
course, from the remarks in the text the _Tabulæ Votivæ_, &c.

Footnote 748:

No doubt there are exceptions. Goethe’s best seem to me 278 (directed,
it is said, at F. Schlegel) and the rather ill-natured but clever
_Charade_ (282). Schiller was happy in 346 on Gottsched as Tantalus:
but any one could, and can, shoot Gottsched sitting.

Footnote 749:

4 vols. in the Cotta collection. This also contains Schiller’s
correspondence with Körner, which should be compared.

Footnote 750:

1795-96.

Footnote 751: