Chapter XXXV: Act V: Scene 1

245. _Like Dorothea._ _Don Quixote_, Part I., Book IV., Chap. xxviii.

_As Lord Peter_, _etc._ It was Martin who ‘at one twitch brought
off a large handful of points; and, with a second pull, stripped
away ten dozen yards of fringe,’ and Jack, who, ‘stripping down
a parcel of gold lace a little too hastily,’ ‘rent the main body
of his coat from top to bottom.’ _A Tale of a Tub_, Sect. VI.

‘_Over-laboured lassitude_.’ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution
in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 120).

_Mr. Constable._ Archibald Constable (1774–1827) was publisher of
the _Edinburgh Review_, of _Marmion_, and of _Waverley_, and the
greater number of the novels.

246. ‘_The embryo fry_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘An eyrie of children, little
eyases, that cry out on the top of question,’ etc. _Hamlet_, Act
II. Scene 2.

‘_Comes like a satyr_,’ _etc._

‘A satyr that comes staring from the woods,
Must not at first speak like an orator.’

Earl of Roscommon, Translation of Horace’s _Ars Poetica_, ll.
281–2. Cf. _Ars Poetica_, ll. 244 _et seq._

246. ‘_A holy water sprinkle_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, Book III.,
Canto xii. Stanza 13.

‘_More lively_,’ _etc._ ‘It’s spritely, waking, audible, and full
of vent.’ _Coriolanus_, Act IV. Scene 5.

‘_Their habits as they lived._’ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 4.

‘_Give her hand to another_,’ _etc._ _Old Mortality_, Chap.
xxxviii.

248. ‘_Her head to the east._’ ‘Na, na! Not that way, the feet to the
east.’ _Guy Mannering_, Chap. XV.

‘_Thick-coming._’ ‘Thick-coming fancies.’ _Macbeth_, Act V. Scene
3.

Note. _Perhaps the finest scene._ _Guy Mannering_, Chap. li.

249. ‘_Consummation_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.

Note. _Ivanhoe_, Chap. xxiii.

250. _Flints and dungs._ Hazlitt refers to a passage at the beginning
of Chap. xliii. of _Ivanhoe_.

‘_Calls backing his friends._’ ‘Call you that backing of your
friends?’ _Henry IV._, Part I., Act II. Scene 4.

_Mr. Mac-Adam._ John Loudon McAdam (1756–1836), whose services in
the improvement of highways had been recognised and rewarded by
Parliament in 1823.

‘_Sixty years since._’ ‘’Tis sixty years since,’ the second title
of _Waverley_.

_Mr. Peel’s Police-Bill._ Peel succeeded in establishing the
Metropolitan Police in 1829.

251. _Every living author ... but himself_. Many of the mottoes were of
course written by Scott himself, though that does not affect
Hazlitt’s argument.

‘_If there were a writer_,’ _etc._ This concluding paragraph did
not appear in the _New Monthly Magazine_.

‘_Born for the universe_,’ _etc._ Goldsmith, _Retaliation_, 31–2.

‘Winked and shut his apprehension up.’
Prologue to _Antonio’s Revenge_ (_History of Antonio and
Mellida_, Part II.). By John Marston.

252. _A gang of desperadoes._ Hazlitt seems to refer to the founders of
_The Quarterly Review_.

_The lowest panders of a venal press._ The writers in _Blackwood’s
Magazine_, presumably.

‘_Who would not grieve_,’ _etc._

‘Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?’
Pope, _Prologue to the Satires_, 213–4.

253. ‘_As if a man_,’ _etc._ _Coriolanus_, Act V. Scene 3.

‘_Cloud-capt._’ _The Tempest._ Act IV. Scene 1.

‘_Golden mean._’ The English form of Horace’s ‘auream
mediocritatem.’ Odes, II. 10–5.

‘_Prouder than_,’ _etc._

‘and make him fall
His crest that prouder than blue Iris bends.’
_Troilus and Cressida_, Act I. Scene 3.

Note. Byron died at Mesolonghi on April 19, 1824.

254. ‘_Silly sooth_,’ _etc._ _Twelfth Night_, Act II. Scene 4.

255. ‘_Denotes a foregone conclusion._’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.

255. ‘_In cell monastic._’ ‘To live in a nook merely monastic.’ _As You
Like It_, Act III. Scene 2.

256. ‘_Thoughts that breathe_,’ _etc._ Gray, _The Progress of Poesy_,
l. 110.

257. ‘_Poor men’s cottages_,’ _etc._ _The Merchant of Venice_, Act I.
Scene 2.

‘_Reasons high_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 558–9.

‘_Till contemplation_,’ _etc._ Dyer, _Grongar Hill_, l. 26.

‘_This bank and shoal of time._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 7.

258. _Published in the Liberal._ Byron’s fragment _Heaven and Earth: A
Mystery_, was published in the second number of _The Liberal:
Verse and Prose from the South_, the ill-fated quarterly review
established by Shelley, Byron, and Leigh Hunt in Italy. Byron
and Hunt found themselves unable to work together, especially
after Shelley’s death in July, 1822, and the review only lived
through four numbers (1822–3).

‘_It is his aversion._’

‘A drowsy frowzy poem, call’d the “Excursion,”
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.’
_Don Juan_, Canto III. Stanza 94.

‘_Born in a garret_,’ _etc._

‘The Tolbooth felt defrauded of his charms,
If Jeffrey died, except within her arms:
Nay last not least, on that portentous morn,
The sixteenth story, where himself was born,
His patrimonial garret, fell to ground.’
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers._

‘_Letter to the Editor_,’ _etc._ Byron’s letter to William
Roberts, Editor of the _British Review_, was published in No. 1
of _The Liberal_. See Byron’s _Letters and Journals_ (ed.
Prothero), Vol. IV., Appendix vii.

259. Long’s. ‘I saw Byron for the last time in 1815, after I returned
from France. He dined, or lunched, with me at Long’s, in Bond
Street.’ Lockhart’s _Life of Scott_, III. 336.

_The controversy about Pope._ See Byron’s _Letters and Journals_
(ed. Prothero), Vol. V. Appendix iii. Byron wrote two letters to
John Murray ‘on the Rev. W. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life
and Writings of Pope,’ the first of which was published in 1821,
the second not till 1835. Hazlitt himself wrote a paper in the
_New Scots Magazine_ (Feb. 1818) ‘on the question whether Pope
was a poet.’

_From the sublime_, _etc._ ‘Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un
pas,’ was a saying of Napoleon’s. Paine, in _The Age of Reason_,
(Part II.) had already expressed the same thought less
concisely.

_Scrub in the Farce._ Scrub, in Farquhar’s _Beaux’ Stratagem_, is
quoted for the variety of his occupations in the household of
Squire Sullen. See Act III. Scene 3.

‘_Very tolerable_,’ _etc._ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act III.
Scene 3.

260. ‘_A chartered libertine._’ _Henry V._, Act I. Scene 1.

‘_Like proud seas under him._’ _Two Noble Kinsmen_, Act II. Scene
1.

_It is a ludicrous circumstance_, _etc._ Scott acknowledged the
obligation in a letter to John Murray (Dec. 17, 1821), in which
he says: ‘I accept with feelings of great obligation, the
flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very
grand and tremendous drama of “Cain.” I may be partial to it,
and you will allow I have cause; but I do not think that his
Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings,’
etc., Lockhart, v. 150. In a letter to Rose (Dec. 18, 1821),
after comparing Byron’s devil with Milton’s he says: ‘I think,
however, the work will not escape censure, for it is scarce
possible to make the devil speak as the devil without giving
offence,’ and adds, ‘I question whether our noble friend has
brought up his friend sufficiently cleanly.’ _Familiar Letters
of Sir Walter Scott_, II. 127.

261. ‘_Furthest from them is best._’ Paradise Lost, I. 247.

_The first Vision of Judgment._ Southey’s, published in 1821, and
dedicated to the King.

‘_None but itself_,’ _etc._ From _The Double Falsehood_, produced
in 1727, and written or adapted by Lewis Theobald. The line is
quoted by Burke (_Regicide Peace_, ed. Payne, p. 40).

‘_The tenth transmitter_,’ _etc._ Richard Savage’s _The Bastard_,
l. 8.

_Lord Byron’s preposterous liberalism._ Hazlitt probably refers
specially to Byron’s relations with Leigh Hunt and _The
Liberal_. See _ante_, note to p. 258.

262. ‘_Nothing can cover_,’ _etc._ Beaumont and Fletcher, or Fletcher
and Massinger, _The False One_, Act II. Scene 1.

MR. SOUTHEY. Cf. _Political Essays_, Vol. III. pp. 48–51, 192–232.

263. ‘_Where he must live_,’ _etc._. _Othello_, Act IV. Scene 2.

‘_Whatever is, is right._’ Pope, _Essay on Man_, IV. 394.

_Old Sarum._ The allusion is to Southey’s early radical
inscription for Old Sarum.

‘_His generous ardour_,’ _etc._ ‘A generous friendship no cold
medium knows.’

Pope, Homer’s _Iliad_, IX. 725.

264. ‘_The words of truth and soberness._’ _Acts_, xxvi. 25.

‘_We relish Mr. Southey_,’ _etc._ ‘You may relish him more in the
soldier than in the scholar.’ _Othello_, Act II. Scene 1.

‘_He is nothing_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘For I am nothing, if not critical.’
_Ibid._

265. _Teres et rotundus._ ‘Fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque
rotundus.’

Horace, _Sat._ II. 7, 86.

‘_Does he not dedicate_,’ _etc._ See _ante_, note to p. 261.

_His own Glendoveer._ _Curse of Kehama_, vi. 2.

266. ‘_Or if a composer_,’ _etc._ Perhaps Hazlitt refers to William
Sotheby (1757–1833), author of _Orestes_ (1802) and _Saul_
(1807), or to Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868), afterwards Dean of
St. Paul’s, who had published _Samor_ (1818), _The Fall of
Jerusalem_ (1820), and _The Martyr of Antioch_ (1822), and was a
constant contributor to _The Quarterly Review_. ‘A translator of
an old Latin author’ is presumably Gifford.

‘_Far from the sun_,’ _etc._ Gray, _The Progress of Poesy_, l. 83.

267. ‘_Because he is virtuous_,’ _etc._ _Twelfth Night_, Act II. Scene
3.

_The Book of the Church._ Southey’s _The Book of the Church_,
published in 2 vols. 1824.

‘_A little leaven_,’ _etc._ _Galatians_, V. 9.

‘_There hangs_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act III. Scene 5.

_Once a philanthropist_, _etc._ Cf. ‘Once a Jacobin, always a
Jacobin.’ See vol. III. pp. 110, 159.

268. ‘_Like the high leaves_,’ _etc._ Southey’s _The Holly Tree_,
Stanza 5.

‘_Full of wise saws_,’ _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Scene 7.

269. _Mandeville’s description of Addison._ Cf. _The Round Table_, vol.
I. p. 9.

‘_And follows so_,’ _etc._ _Henry V._, Act IV. Scene 1.

270. MR. WORDSWORTH. Hazlitt had met Wordsworth at Alfoxden in 1798
(see the essay ‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’), and in the
Lake District in 1803, when he painted a portrait of the poet
which proved unsatisfactory and was destroyed. In a letter to
Hazlitt’s son (May 23, 1831), Wordsworth says that he does not
recollect having met Hazlitt on more than one occasion after
their meeting at the Lakes. Some of the opinions which Hazlitt
attributes to Wordsworth appear to be recollections of the
poet’s conversation. Hazlitt reviewed _The Excursion_ in _The
Examiner_ (see _The Round Table_, vol. I. pp. 111–125), and
spoke of him in his Lecture ‘On the Living Poets’ (see _English
Poets_, vol. V. 161–4).

270. ‘_Lowliness_,’ _etc._ _Julius Caesar_, Act II. Scene 1.

‘_No figures_,’ _etc._

‘Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
Which busy care draws in the brains of men.’—_Ibid._

‘_Skyey influences._’ _Measure for Measure_, Act III. Scene 1.

‘_Nihil humani_,’ _etc._ Terence, _Heautontimorumenos_, Act I.
Scene 1.

271. _The Lyrical Ballads._ _Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems_,
published in 1798.

‘_The cloud-capt towers_,’ _etc._ _The Tempest_, Act IV. Scene 1.

‘_The judge’s robe_,’ _etc._ Quoted inaccurately from _Measure for
Measure_, Act II. Scene 2.

272. ‘_A sense of joy_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth, _To my Sister_.

‘_Beneath the hills_,’ _etc._ _The Excursion_, Book VI.

_Vain pomp and glory_, _etc._ _Henry VIII._, Act III. Scene 2.

273. ‘_To him_,’ _etc._ _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality._

274. _Cole-Orton._ The seat of Wordsworth’s friend, Sir George Howland
Beaumont, to whom he dedicated the 1815 edition of his Poems.
‘Some of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your
own groves, upon the classic ground of Coleorton.’

‘_Calm contemplation_,’ _etc._

‘Calm pleasures there abide—majestic pains.’
_Laodamia_, l. 72.

‘_Fall blunted_,’ _etc._

‘Fall blunted from each indurated heart.’
Goldsmith, _The Traveller_.

275. _Milton’s wish._ Wordsworth, in that part of _The Recluse_ which
he published at the beginning of _The Excursion_, quotes
Milton’s words (_Paradise Lost_, VII. 31)

‘——“fit audience let me find though few!”
So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard—
In holiest mood.’

_Toujours perdrix._ Attributed to the confessor of Henry IV. of
France, when the King illustrated the advantage of variety by
ordering every course to consist of partridge. See _Notes and
Queries_, 4th Ser. IV. 336–7.

‘_A man of no mark_,’ _etc._ ‘A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.’
_Henry IV._ Part I., Act III. Scene 2.

276. ‘_Flushed with a purple grace_,’ _etc._ _Alexander’s Feast_, III.
51–2. Byron, in his ‘Reply to Blackwood’s Magazine’ (_Letters
and Journals_, ed. Prothero, IV., Appendix IX. p. 484) says of
Southey and Wordsworth, ‘Are they not of those who called
Dryden’s _Ode_ “a drunken song”?’

_Dares to compare himself_, _etc._ Byron in the same essay refers
to Wordsworth’s postscripts to Lyrical Ballads, ‘where the two
great instances of the sublime are taken from himself and
Milton.’

Wordsworth’s ‘Selections from Chaucer Modernised,’ written in
1801, were published, _The Prioress’ Tale_ in 1820, _The Cuckoo
and the Nightingale_, and _Troilus and Cressida_ in 1841.

‘_Action is momentary_,’ _etc._ Quoted inaccurately from _The
Borderers_ (written 1795–6, published 1842), Act III. In a note
to _The White Doe of Rylstone_, to which these lines were added
as a kind of motto in 1837, Wordsworth writes: ‘This, and the
five lines that follow, were either read or recited by me, more
than thirty years since, to the late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted
some expressions in them (imperfectly remembered) in a work of
his published several years ago.’

277. _A great dislike to Gray._ Coleridge was induced ‘by Mr.
Wordsworth’s conversation ... to re-examine with impartial
strictness Gray’s celebrated Elegy.’ (_Biographia Literaria_,
Chap. II.)

‘_Let observation_,’ _etc._ De Quincey (_Works_ ed. Masson, X.
128) attributes this criticism to the author of ‘a little
biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson, published immediately after
his death.’ Coleridge makes the same criticism. _Lectures on
Shakspere and Milton_, 1811–12 (ed. Ashe, p. 72).

_Drawcansir._ In the Duke of Buckingham’s play, _The Rehearsal_
(1671).

‘Let petty Kings the names of parties know:
Where’er I come, I slay both friend and foe.’