Chapter XXV: Act V: Scene 1

_The Editor of ‘The Times.’_ Hazlitt’s brother-in-law, John
(afterwards Sir John) Stoddart (1773–1856) was editor from 1812
to 1817.

61. _‘Of heroic sentiment,’ etc._ Burke’s _Reflections on the
Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 89).

_The treaty of Pilnitz._ A declaration signed by the Emperor of
Austria and the King of Prussia in August, 1791, the object of
which was to secure the safety of Louis XVI. after his
imprisonment by the Revolution government. Fox described the
treaty, or rather the declaration, as ‘an act of hostile
aggression,’ and Hazlitt hated it because it ‘gave its sanction
to the invasion of France, and commenced the war of the
Revolution (_Life of Napoleon_, Chap. v.).

_The French ‘petit maitre.’_ _Roderick Random_, Chap, xliii.

_Don Quixote._ Book III. Chap. xv.

62. _‘That we might spill our blood,’ etc._ ‘The blood of man should
never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed
for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country,
for our kind.’ Burke’s _Regicide Peace_ (_Select Works_, ed.
Payne, p. 67).

_‘The meanest peasant,’ etc._ A phrase of Vetus’s. See p. 75.

_Carl John._ Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte (1764–1844), the son
of a lawyer.

He was elected heir to the crown of Sweden and succeeded to the
throne as Charles XIV. in 1818. Hazlitt of course hated ‘this
man’ (as he contemptuously calls him) as a traitor to his idol
Buonaparte. See _Life of Napoleon_ (Chap. xliii, especially).
Bernadotte had married an early love of Buonaparte’s, and ‘thy
little son’ (Oscar) was the Emperor’s god-son. Sweden joined the
alliance against Napoleon in April, 1812.

_‘Monarchize,’ etc._ _Richard II._, Act III. Scene 2.

_‘The flame of sacred vehemence,’ etc._ _Julius Caesar_, Act III.
Scene 2.

63. _General Blucher’s manifesto._ Hazlitt probably refers to a
manifesto addressed by Blücher to the Army of Silesia on Jan. 3,
1814, in which he says, ‘Now you are going to pass the Rhine to
force peace from the enemy who cannot console himself for having
lost, in two campaigns, the conquest which he had made during
nineteen years.’

_Favourably interpreted._ In _The Morning Chronicle_ the article
proceeded as follows:—‘The classical pen of _The Courier_ not
long ago charged us with spoiling one of the finest passages in
Shakespeare. We should be sorry if the charge were true, because
we have really more respect for this great English genius than
for a whole legion of “gentlemen and men of honour,” of the old
or the new stamp, by tradition or by patent. We have not indeed
read the extracts in _The Courier_ from Mr. Coleridge’s Lectures
at Bristol, and wanting that new light, may perhaps be blind
idolaters.

‘There are, however, one or two passages in the play of
_Coriolanus_ besides the fine one which we are said to have
marred, which we thought conveyed a great deal of meaning. The
first is the speech of _Aufidius_ [Act V. Scene 3], which seems
to us a transcript of what must pass in Buonaparte’s mind, in
reading the hyperboles of _The Times_ and _The Courier_—

“I’m glad thou set’st thy mercy and thy honour
At difference in thee: out of this I’ll work
Myself a former fortune.”

The second [Act III. Scene 2] we leave for their own application.

“Away, my disposition, and possess me
Some harlot’s spirit: the smiles of knaves
Tent in my cheeks, and school-boys’ tears take up
The glasses of my sight: a beggar’s tongue
Make motion through my lips.—I will not do it,
Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth,
And by my body’s action, teach my mind
A most inherent baseness.”

‘It is said that there is no reason why we should not _propose_ to
the French people (there was a time when we would not suffer
them to chuse for themselves) the restoration of the Bourbons.
Why no, except that it is a great piece of impudence to hint to
them as a modest proposal, and in the way of free choice, what
we have been endeavouring to impose upon them so long as a
matter of necessity. The question is, whether we are to enforce
the adoption of this free boon by the same process as before.
_The Times_ say, “We have given a native Prince to Holland and
to Spain. Why then not to France?” Does the writer still persist
that there is no difference between the two cases?

‘We have made these remarks, not with a view to irritate or
recriminate, but to resist irritation and recrimination, by
which we can at this moment gain nothing that we ought to gain.
There is one ground of peace, just, honourable, attainable,
secure, and permanent, which is laid down in the Declaration of
the Allies, and by his Majesty’s Ministers—there is another,
recommended by _The Times_ and _Courier_, and pursued by the
Cossacks, namely, the desolation and degradation of France—which
is neither safe, nor just, nor practicable, nor desirable. If
the Allies, for any contingent advantage, or to gratify any old
grudge, for any fancies or for any prejudices, throw away their
present opportunities of making peace, and of making it
permanent by the very act of having made it in the spirit of
moderation and justice—if they forego their present imposing
attitude, of having repelled invasion and maintained their own
independence, for the chance of retorting aggression on others,
and insulting that national independence which they profess to
consider as inviolable, by dictating to France her form of
government under pretence of offering her peace, then we say,
they will richly deserve to reap all the natural consequences of
their mistaken policy. On their heads and on those of their
advisers be the responsibility.’

ILLUSTRATIONS OF VETUS. _The Morning Chronicle_, Dec. 2, 1813.

_‘Those nauseous harlequins,’ etc._ Dryden, Epilogue to Sir G.
Etherege’s ‘The Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter’ (1676).

64. _Don Adriano de Armado._ In _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. ‘Will you hear
this letter with attention? As we would hear an oracle.’ Act I.
Scene 1.

‘_I am Sir Oracle._’ _Merchant of Venice_, Act I. Scene 1.

_The hero of Cervantes._ _Don Quixote_, Part I. Book II. Chap. xi.

_To ‘hitch it,’ etc._

‘Whoe’er offends at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.’
Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Satire I. Book II.

_His last letter._ _The Times_, Nov. 23, 1813.

65. _Bobadil._ Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in his Humour_ (first produced
1598).

67. ILLUSTRATIONS OF VETUS (_continued_). _The Morning Chronicle_,
Dec. 10, 1813.

_‘He is indeed,’ etc._ _The Man of Mode; or Sir Fopling Flutter_,