Chapter XXIV: Act II: Scene 4

_The Marquess Wellesley’s opening speech._ On April 9, 1813.
Richard Colley Wellesley (1760–1842), the eldest brother of the
Duke of Wellington, created Marquess Wellesley in 1799 for his
services in India, had been Foreign Secretary from 1809 to 1812,
but had failed to form a ministry after the assassination of
Percival, and was now out of office.

_‘All hail him,’ etc._ Pope, _The Dunciad_, ii. 267–8.

Note. The passage in the text is not quite accurately quoted from
_The Morning Chronicle_ (April 14, 1813). John Wilson Croker
(1780–1857) was Secretary to the Admiralty for twenty-two years
(1809–30).

_‘Strange that such difference,’ etc._ See _ante_, note to p. 44.

_‘Fillip the ears,’ etc._ _Henry IV._, Part II. Act I. Scene 2.

48. MR. SOUTHEY, POET LAUREAT. From _The Morning Chronicle_, Sept.
18, 1813. See Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_ (vol. III. p. 88) and
Southey’s Preface to vol. III. of the collected edition of his
Poems (1837) for particulars as to Southey’s laureateship. He
made it a condition of his acceptance of the post that he should
not be required to write the old formal odes, but that he should
be free to choose his own time for celebrating any great public
event.

_Mr. Croker, to whom, etc._ Southey’s _Life of Nelson_, dedicated
to Croker, was published in 1813, with a motto from Canning’s
_Ulm and Trafalgar_ (1806).

_Lord Liverpool._ Robert Banks Jenkinson (1770–1828), after 1796
known by courtesy as Lord Hawkesbury, and raised to the peerage
with that title in 1803, succeeded his father as Earl of
Liverpool in 1808, and was Prime Minister for fifteen years
(1812–27). The second Marquis of Hertford (1743–1822) was Lord
Chamberlain from 1812 to 1821.

49. MR. SOUTHEY’S NEW-YEAR’S ODE. This paper is reprinted from
_The Morning Chronicle_, Jan. 8, 1814.

‘_Poets succeed best in fiction._’ The reply of Edmund Waller to
Charles II., who had complained of the inferiority of the poet’s
verses on the Restoration as compared with his panegyric on
Cromwell.

_Duke’s Place._ Situated within the priory of Holy Trinity without
Aldgate, belonging to the Duke of Norfolk. ‘A new church in the
priory precinct, dedicated to St. James, was consecrated January
2, 1622–23, and became one of the most notorious places in
London for those irregular marriages which, under the name of
Fleet marriages, were the cause of so much scandal in the latter
half of the seventeenth century, and until they were put an end
to by the Act of 1753,’ Wheatley and Cunningham’s _London Past
and Present_, i. 532.

_Academy of compliments._ See note to vol. I. p. 235.

50. _‘Age after age,’ etc._ Stanza 8.

_The Lady’s Magazine._ ‘The Lady’s Magazine or entertaining
Companion for the fair sex’ (1770–1818).

_‘Open thy gates, O Hanover,’ etc._ Stanza 16.

51. _Like Virgil._ _Georgics_, i. 80.

_‘And France,’ etc._ Stanza 18.

_Very nearly succeeded._ In _The Morning Chronicle_ appeared the
following paragraph: ‘As Mr. Southey’s Ode by no means satisfied
the poetical appetite which it had excited in us, we turned
after reading it, to Spenser’s fine Canto on Mutability, and
afterwards to some lines written by one who did not join the
song of the avengers _twice_. Mr. Southey, by the new form of
publishing his Ode, having prevented us from gratifying our
readers with it as _a public entertainment_, we shall try to
make amends by these lines of Milton, which, we believe, have
not yet been quoted in The Times.’ [Here follow ll. 113–131 of
_Lycidas_].

DOTTRELL-CATCHING. From _The Morning Chronicle_, Jan. 27, 1814.

‘_Spunge, you are dry again._’ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 2.

_A celebrated writer._ This appears to have been Edward Sterling
(Vetus). See p. 99.

52. _Struldbruggs._ _Gulliver’s Travels_ (Voyage to Laputa), Part III.
Chap. x.

_Eiconoclastes Satyrane._ ‘Satyrane’s Letters’ was the name given
to Coleridge’s letters from Germany, published in _The Friend_
in 1809, and republished in _Biographia Literaria_. Hazlitt
concluded his letter to _The Morning Chronicle_ with a quotation
from Wordsworth (_Ode, Intimations of Immortality_, Stanza 10)—

‘What though the radiance which was once so bright,’ etc.

THE BOURBONS AND BONAPARTE. From _The Morning Chronicle_, Dec. 6,
1813.

53. _The virtuous Moreau._ Jean Victor Moreau (1761–1813), banished by
Napoleon in 1804, returned to Europe in 1813 and joined the
allies. He died in Sept. 1813 of a wound received from a French
cannon-ball at the battle of Dresden. For Hazlitt’s opinion of
Moreau see his _Life of Napoleon_, chap. xlix.

54. _‘Bid him prepare,’ etc._ _Henry V._, Act IV. Scene 4.

_‘Reverbs,’ etc._ _King Lear_, Act I. Scene 1.

_‘Flows on to the Propontic,’ etc._

‘——Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont!’
_Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.

‘_The deserter of Smorgonne._’ At Smorgoni Buonaparte left his
army on Dec. 5, 1812, during the retreat from Moscow.

_Sir Humphrey Davy._ Sir Humphry Davy (1778–1829), the great
natural philosopher, knighted in 1812.

55. _Like Hellenore, etc._ See _The Faerie Queene_, Book III. Cantos
ix. and x.

56. _‘This is the very coinage,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4.

_No such army._ In _The Morning Chronicle_ there is the following
note to this passage: ‘One is here reminded of the pathetic
exhortation addressed to honest _Sly_, in the _Taming of the
Shrew_ [Induction, Scene 2]:—

“Why, Sir, you know no house,
Nor no such men as you have reckon’d up,
As Stephen Sly, and Old John Naps of Greece,
And Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernel,
And twenty more such names and men as these,
Which never were, nor no man ever saw.”

The difference in the two cases is, that poor _Sly_ was persuaded
out of his senses by other people, and that our paragraph writer
would persuade his readers out of theirs.’

‘_To the very echo._’ _Macbeth_, Act V. Scene 3.

57. _Darkness that might be felt._ _Exodus_, x. 21.

‘_Impaling fire._’ ‘Impaled with circling fire.’ _Paradise Lost_,
II. 647.

VETUS. From _The Morning Chronicle_, Nov. 19, 1813. ‘Vetus’ was
the signature of Edward Sterling (1773–1847), who became a
regular member of _The Times_ staff, and earned for it the
nickname of ‘The Thunderer.’ Some of the Letters of Vetus were
republished in 1812. See Carlyle’s _Life of John Sterling_, who
was Edward Sterling’s son.

58. _‘A cry of hell-hounds,’ etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 654.

ON THE COURIER AND TIMES NEWSPAPERS. From _The Morning Chronicle_,
Jan. 21, 1814.

59. _Formally signified from the throne._ See the Prince Regent’s
speech on opening Parliament Nov. 4, 1813, and Lord Liverpool’s
speech on the Address (_Hansard_, xxvii. 5, 22).

_Lord Castlereagh._ Castlereagh represented England informally at
the Congress of Châtillon (February and March, 1814) where he
opposed the restoration of the Bourbons by the arms of the
allies.

60. ‘_What, stab men in the dark._’ ‘Kill men i’ the dark.’ _Othello_,