Chapter XXXV: Letter XVII

‘_Green upland swells_,’ _etc._ Coleridge, _Ode on the Departing
Year_, VII. 5–6.

‘_Glittered green_,’ _etc._ _Ib._ VII. 4.

187. ‘_Beyond Hyde Park_,’ _etc._ In Sir George Etherege’s _The Man of
Mode_ (Act V. Scene 2) Harriet says to Dorimant: ‘I know all
beyond Hyde Park is a desert to you, and that no gallantry can
draw you farther.’

188. ‘_The mind in its own place._’ _Paradise Lost_, I. 254.

_I once took a party_, _etc._ Hazlitt went with Charles and Mary
Lamb to Oxford in August, 1810. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the
Conversation of Authors’ in _The Plain Speaker_, and _Memoirs of
William Hazlitt_, _l._ 172.

‘_With glistering spires_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 550.

_At Blenheim._ Lamb refers to this visit to Blenheim in a letter
to Hazlitt, August 9, 1810. _Letters_, ed. Ainger, I. 251.

189. _Dr. Johnson remarked._ See Boswell’s _Life_, ed. G. B. Hill, III.
352.

ESSAY XX. ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS

Some variations from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of _Table Talk_.

190. ‘_They live and move_,’ _etc._ _Acts_, xvii. 28.

_The Queen_, _etc._ Queen Caroline returned to England in June
1820, and died on August 7, 1821. During that time her case was
of course the chief topic of conversation in London. George IV.
was crowned on July 19, 1821.

‘_That of an hour’s age_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Scene 3.

_The Two-penny Post-Bag._ Moore’s, published in 1813.

_The Westminster Election._ Two memorable elections took place in
Westminster in 1819 and 1820. In the first Hobhouse was defeated
by George Lamb; in the second he was successful.

_Have nothing farther to say._ In the MS. this sentence is
followed by ‘They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide,
gaping for fresh _tidings_.’

_The Bridge Street Association._ The Constitutional Association
or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’
founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious
publications, and for defending the country from the fatal
influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an
ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition
by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See
an article in _The Edinburgh Review_ for June, 1822. (Vol.
XXXVII. p. 110).

_Mr. Cobbett’s Letter._ Cobbett’s Letter ‘To Mr. James Cropper, a
Quaker Merchant of Liverpool, on his letter to Mr. Wilberforce
relating to East India and West India Sugar,’ appeared in the
_Weekly Register_ on July 21, 1821 (Vol. XL. p. 1.)

191. ‘_Any six of these men in buckram._’ See Henry IV. Part I., Act
II. Scene 4.

Note. This note is not in the MS., but the words ‘Draper’ and
‘Radical Tobacco’ are jotted down in the text.

_As Trim blew up the army_, _etc._ _Tristram Shandy_, III. 20.

Note. ‘_Dream on, blest pair_,’ _etc._

‘Sleep on,
Blest pair! and O! yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.’
_Paradise Lost_, IV. 773–5.

192. _Beaumont in his verses to Ben Jonson._ First published in 1647.

_The S—._ The Southampton Coffee House in Southampton Buildings,
at the corner of Chancery Lane. See _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_
I. 291–300.

_M—._ George Mounsey, of Mounsey and Gray, Solicitors in Staple
Inn.

_Signor Friscobaldo._ In Dekker’s _The Honest Whore_. Cf.
_Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_
(vol. V. pp. 335 _et seq._).

_The clerk of St. Andrews._ Webster is said to have been clerk of
the parish of St. Andrews, Holborn.

‘_Within the red-leaved tables of the heart._’ Heywood’s _A Woman
Killed with Kindness_, Act II. Scene 3.

‘_Writ in water._’ A phrase used by Shakespeare (‘their virtues we
write in water,’ _Henry VIII._, Act IV. Scene 2) and other
Elizabethan dramatists, and now chiefly remembered in connection
with Keats’s epitaph on himself: ‘Here lies one whose name was
writ in water.’

193. ‘_Wit-skirmishes._’ ‘They never meet but there’s a skirmish of wit
between them.’ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act I. Scene 1.

‘_Brave sublunary things._’ [translunary.] Drayton, _Elegy to
Henry Reynolds, Esq._

‘_Nothing but vanity, chaotic vanity._’ Cf. ‘O heavy lightness!
serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos!’ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act I.
Scene 1.

_The Globe._ In Fleet Street, formerly frequented by Goldsmith.

_The Rainbow._ No. 15 Fleet Street. The tavern still exists.

_The Mitre._ Johnson’s Mitre, usually supposed to be the one in
Mitre Court, Fleet Street. The older Mitre Tavern of Elizabethan
days was further west on the site of Messrs. Hoares’ Bank.

194. _G—._ George Kirkpatrick.

Note. _A complete Master Stephen._ In Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in
his Humour_.

195. _Misconceiving what they say._ In the top-margin of the MS. the
following words are jotted down: ‘Bostock, unruffled, Paine,
Knight, Hope.’ It would seem that Hazlitt had in his mind
Richard Payne Knight (see _The Round Table_, vol. I. p. 143),
and possibly the physician John Bostock the younger and Thomas
Hope the author of _Anastasius_.

‘_So shall their anticipation_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.

_The Mourning Bride._ Congreve’s tragedy which contains (Act II.
Scene 3) the famous description of a temple which Johnson
thought ‘the finest poetical passage he had ever read’
(Boswell’s _Life_, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 85).

_No Michael Cassio._

‘a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine.’
_Othello_, Act I. Scene 1.

195. _R—._ Roger Kirkpatrick.

_Old S—._ Sarratt, the chess-player. See p. 196 note.

_M—._ Mounsey.

_H— and A—._ Hume and Ayrton. Joseph Hume of the Pipe Office, not
the Radical M.P. (See ‘Lamb’s Letters,’ ed. W. C. Hazlitt, I.
361, note 1), and William Ayrton, twice Director of the Music at
the King’s Theatre (where he produced _Don Giovanni_), better
known as a regular attendant at Lamb’s Wednesday Evenings.
Instead of this sentence the ms. reads:—‘H— and A— taking their
friendly stroll in the Park of a morning like a couple of old
post-horses put out to grass. Him of Cockayne who went to
Margate by water to save charges, and another of that ilk who
went by land for the better display of his person.’ Lamb
describes his voyage to Margate in ‘The Old Margate Hoy.’

196. _M— B—._ Lamb’s friend Martin Burney, the son of Admiral Burney.

_M—df—rd._ William Mudford, editor of _The Courier_ (see _ante_,
p. 111), wrote _The Contemplatist_, or Series _of Essays upon
Morals and Literature_. (1811).

‘_As is the ribbed sea-sand._’ Coleridge says that for the lines
in _The Ancient Mariner_ (Part IV. Stanza 1)

‘And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand,’

he was indebted to Wordsworth.

‘_For Kais is fled_,’ _etc._ Hazlitt seems to be recalling an
opera entitled ‘Kais; or Love in the Deserts’ (1808 Drury Lane)
by Isaac Brandon, founded on Isaac Disraeli’s romance, ‘Mejnoun
and Leila.’

_The death of Buonaparte._ May 5, 1821.

_Dr. L—._ Dr. Whittle.

198. _Mr. Canning’s pension._ Cf. _Political Essays_, Vol. III. note to
p. 301.

199. _M—._ Mounsey.

_Mrs. Battle._ _Essays of Elia_, ed. Ainger, p. 49. The essay had
recently (Feb. 1821) appeared in _The London Magazine_.

_Tobin._ John Tobin (1770–1804), author of _The Honey-Moon_ (see
Vol V. p. 345).

_The Cider-Cellar._ No. 20 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.

_The London Institution._ Now in Finsbury Circus, established in
1806 in Old Jewry. Porson was the first librarian and died there
in 1808.

200. _W—._ Charles Jeremiah Wells (1799?–1879) a solicitor, shortly
after the date of this essay produced _Stories after Nature_
(1822) and the dramatic poem _Joseph and his Brethren_ (1824).
This last was long afterwards warmly praised by D. G. Rossetti
and Mr. Swinburne (_Fortnightly Review_, Feb. 1875), and was
republished in 1876 by Mr. Buxton Forman. Wells in 1830 placed a
memorial to Hazlitt in St. Anne’s, Soho. See Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s
_Four Generations of a Literary Family_, l. 159–162.

_That of Killigrew’s country-cousin._ _Memoirs of Count Grammont_,
chap. 9.

_The Chevalier Hamilton’s assignation._ _Ib._ chap. 9.

_Jacob Hall’s prowess._ _Ib._ chap. 6.

_Miss Stuart’s garters._ _Ib._ chap. 8.

_Miss Churchill is first introduced._ _Ib._ chap. 10.

‘_Fear and niceness_,’ _etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Scene 4.

201. _Mr. H— and Mr. A—._ Hume and Ayrton.

_Such a one_, _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act III. Scene 1.

202. _Variety is indispensable._ In the MS. opposite this sentence is
written ‘Jacky Taylor.—Mr. Tomkins the penman.’

‘_Yet so as with a difference._’ Cf. ‘You must wear your rue with
a difference,’ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 5.

_Randall’s._ ‘The Hole in the Wall’ in Chancery Lane, kept by Jack
Randall, the pugilist. See Hazlitt’s essay ‘The Fight,’ and ‘On
Londoners and Country People’ in _The Plain Speaker_ (vol. VII.
p. 66).

_Long’s._ No. 16 New Bond Street, rebuilt and enlarged in 1888.

_H—’s conversation._ Leigh Hunt’s. Cf. a passage in _The Round
Table_, vol. I. p. 43.

_He is nearly the best._ ‘Nearly’ was added in proof.

‘_Or like a gate of steel_,’ _etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act
III. Scene 3.

203. _B— C—’s._ Barry Cornwall’s.

_A young literary bookseller._ John Martin, perhaps, of the firm
of Rodwell and Martin, Holles Street, Cavendish Square. See
Keats’s _Complete Works_, ed. H. Buxton Forman (1901), Vol. IV.
p. 34 note.

_A ‘Circean herd.’_ Cf. _Comus_, 152–3 and _Paradise Lost_, IX.
522.

ESSAY XXI. ON THE ARISTOCRACY OF LETTERS

205. _‘Ha! here’s three of us,’ etc. King Lear_, Act III. Scene 4.

_Stat nominis umbra._ ‘Stat magni nominis umbra.’ Lucan,
_Pharsalia_, I. 135.

_— House._ Holland House. Cf. _Political Essays_ (vol. III. p.
44).

‘_Continents have most_,’ _etc._ Hobbes, _Human Nature_ (_Works_,
ed. Molesworth), IV. 50.

‘_O that mine enemy_,’ _etc._ _Job_, xxxi. 35.

Note. _Lord H—._ The third Lord Holland.

Note. _Sir J— M—._ Sir James Mackintosh.

Note. ‘_The first row of the rubric._’ Cf. ‘The first row of the
pious chanson will show you more.’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Scene 2.

206. _A third makes the indecency pass_, _etc._ The reference is
clearly to Richard Payne Knight whose first publication (1786)
was _An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus lately
existing in Isernia, etc._, and who in 1816 gave evidence before
a select committee of the House of Commons against the national
acquisition of the Elgin Marbles.

207. ‘_Cannot command it_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 2.

‘_Monster’d._’ ‘To hear my nothings monster’d.’ _Coriolanus_, Act
II. Scene 2.

‘_Ducks to the learned fool._’ _Timon of Athens_, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘_He that is but able_,’ _etc._ _Satire upon the Abuse of Human
Learning_, 67–70.

208. ‘_’Twas mine_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been
slave to thousands.’ _Othello_, Act III. Scene 3.

_The Cider-cellar._ See _ante_, p. 199.

_The Hole in the Wall._ In Chancery Lane. See _ante_, note to p.
202.

209. _The B— family._ The Burneys.

‘_In numbers numberless._’ _Paradise Regained_, III. 310.

_The founder of it._ Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814), the friend of
Johnson and author of _A History of Music_ (4 vols. 1776–1789).

_Madame D—._ Frances Burney (1752–1840), Madame D’Arblay, Dr.
Burney’s daughter, author of _Evelina_ and _Cecilia_.

_The rest have done nothing_, _etc._ ‘The rest’ include Dr.
Burney’s two sons, Charles Burney the younger (1757–1817), the
Greek scholar, referred to by Hazlitt more than once, especially
in connection with his _Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton_
(1790), and James Burney (1750–1821), familiar to readers of
Lamb’s _Letters_ as Captain and Admiral Burney, author of _A
Chronological History of the Discoveries in the South Sea or
Pacific Ocean_ (5 vols. 1803–1817), part of which is famous as
_The Buccaneers of America_; Sarah Harriet Burney (1770–1844),
Dr. Burney’s youngest daughter, author of _Clarentine_ (1796)
and other novels and tales; and Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s
friend, the son of Admiral Burney.

209. _The most celebrated author_, _etc._ Sir Walter Scott, created a
baronet by George IV. in 1820.

_Lord Byron complains._ See the Preface to _Marino Faliero_
(1820).

‘_Let but a lord_,’ _etc._ Pope, _An Essay on Criticism_, 420–1.

210. _Decorum, which Milton declares_, _etc._ On Education, _Works_,
1738, I. 140.

‘_Bears a charmed reputation_,’ _etc._

‘I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.’
_Macbeth_, Act V. Scene 8.

‘_Leave no rubs_,’ _etc._ ‘To leave no rubs nor botches in the
work.’ _Ib._ Act III. Scene 1.

_That strange letter about Pope._ Byron wrote two Letters to
* * * *—* * * * * * [John Murray], _on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles’s
Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope_, the first of which
(referred to by Hazlitt) was published in 1821. The second did
not appear till 1835. Both letters and a full account of the
whole controversy are given in Byron’s _Letters and Journals_
(ed. Prothero), V. Appendix iii.

_Why did he pronounce_, _etc._ ‘These two writers [Pope and
Cowper], for Cowper is no poet, come into comparison in one
great work, the translation of Homer.’ Byron’s _Letters and
Journals_ (ed. Prothero), V. 557.

‘_Finding out a borrowed line_,’ _etc._ See _The Spirit of the
Age_, vol. IV. p. 346 and note.

_A rich merchant_, _etc._ Hazlitt perhaps refers to ‘Anastasius’
Hope, Rogers, Byron, and Burns.

‘_What should such fellows_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Scene 1.

‘_Coining our hearts_,’ _etc._

‘By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,
And drop my blood for drachmas,’ etc.
_Julius Caesar_, Act IV. Scene 3.

‘_Sent back like hallowmas_,’ _etc._ ‘Sent back like Hallowmas or
short’st of day.’ _Richard II._, Act V. Scene 1.

211. ‘_With wine of Attic taste_,’

‘What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,
Of Attic taste, with wine,’ etc.
Milton, Sonnet XX. (to Mr. Lawrence).

_Poor Keats._ See _ante_, p. 99.

‘_The fairest flowers_,’ _etc._

‘the fairest flowers o’ the season
Are our carnations and streak’d gillyvors.’
_Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Scene 4.

‘_Rue for remembrance_,’ _etc._ ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for
remembrance: pray you, love, remember: and there’s pansies,
that’s for thoughts.’ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Scene 5.

211. ‘_Nor could the Muse_,’ _etc._

‘nor could the Muse defend
Her son.’
_Paradise Lost_, VII. 37.

_M—’s shop._ The shop of John Murray, publisher of _The Quarterly
Review_.

_T—._ Mr. W. Hazlitt, the younger, in his edition of _Table Talk_,
filled up this blank with the name of Tom Hill (1760–1840), a
well-known figure in the literary society of the time. The
_Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica_ (1815) was chiefly based on his
collection of poets.

213. _—, the responsible conductor_, _etc._ Mr. W. Hazlitt, the
younger, filled this blank with the name of John Britton
(1771–1857), the antiquary and topographer, author or part
author of many topographical works, of which _The Beauties of
England and Wales_ (1801–1816) and _Architectural Antiquities of
Great Britain_ (1805–1814) are the best known.

_Learned lumber._ ‘With loads of learned lumber in his head.’
Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 613.

_Jack T. of the Sun._ John Taylor (1757–1832), proprietor of the
_Sun_, author of _Monsieur Tonson_. In 1832 he published
_Records of my Life_ (2 vols.).

‘_The Sun of our table._’ ‘This bottle’s the sun of our table.’
Sheridan, _The Duenna_, Act III. Scene 5.

_Peter Pindar._ Dr. John Wolcot (1738–1819), the Satirist.

_Mr. Tomkins the penman._ Thomas Tomkins (1743–1816), caligrapher.

_Sir Joshua’s picture of him._ Bequeathed by Tomkins to the City
of London.

ESSAY XXII. ON CRITICISM

214. _De omni scibile_, _etc._ The origin of this saying seems obscure.
See _Notes and Queries_, 7th Ser. IX. 500 and Larousse, _Fleurs
Latines_, 94.

_We may sometimes see articles of this sort._ Hazlitt had himself
suffered from this form of reviewing. See notes to _Reply to
Malthus_, vol. IV. p. 399.

215. ‘_As when a well-graced actor_,’ _etc._ _Richard II._, Act V.
Scene 2.

_Much as Peter Pounce_, _etc._ _Joseph Andrews_, Book III. Chap.
13.

‘_Assumes the rod_,’ _etc._

‘Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.’
Dryden, _Alexander’s Feast_, 39–41.

216. _The most admired of our Reviews._ _The Edinburgh Review._

_The Monthly Review._ Founded by Ralph Griffiths in 1749. The
Review ran through three series and came to an end in 1845.

‘_Sole sovereign sway_,’ _etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Scene 5.

‘_Outdoing termagant_,’ _etc._ ‘I would have such a fellow whipped
for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod.’ _Hamlet_, Act
III. Scene 2.

‘_And of their port_,’ _etc._ ‘And of his port as meke as is a
mayde.’ Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, 69.

216. _Drawcansir work._ See the Duke of Buckingham’s _The Rehearsal_,