Chapter XXXVIII: Act II: Sc. 5

‘_From the sublime_,’ _etc._ See _ante_, note to p. 23.

_Lubin Log._ In James Kenney’s farce, _Love, Law, and Physic_,
produced 1812. See _ante_, p. 192.

_The Widow’s Choice._ Allingham’s _Who Wins, or The Widow’s
Choice_, 1808.

‘_Is high fantastical._’ _Twelfth Night_, Act I. Sc. 1.

160. _The hero of the Dunciad._ Cibber was substituted for Theobald
as the King of Dulness in consequence of his famous letter to
Pope, published in 1742.

‘_By merit raised_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 5-6.

_His Apology for his own Life._ Published in 1740. Cf. _The
Round Table_, vol. I. pp. 156-7.

_His account of his waiting_, _etc._ _An Apology_, _etc._, 2nd
ed. 1740, chap. III. pp. 59-60.

_Mr. Burke’s celebrated apostrophe._ _Reflections on the
Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 89).

_Kynaston_, _etc._ See vol. I. notes to pp. 156-7.

161. _His Careless Husband._ 1704.

_His Double Gallant._ 1707. The play was revived in 1817 and
noticed by Hazlitt. See _ante_, pp. 359-362.

‘_In hidden mazes_,’ _etc._ Misquoted from _L’Allegro_, 141-2.

162. _His Nonjuror._ 1717. Isaac Bickerstaff’s _The Hypocrite_ was
produced in 1768.

_Love’s Last Shift._ Colley Cibber’s first play, produced in
1694. For Southerne’s remark to Cibber, see _An Apology for
the Life of Colley Cibber_, p. 173.

l. 34. In the third edition a great part of Hazlitt’s article
on _The Hypocrite_ (see _A View of the English Stage_,
_ante_, p. 245) is inserted here. The passage is also in
Oxberry’s _New English Drama_, vol. I.

_Love in a Riddle._ 1729.

163. _The Suspicious Husband_, 1747, _The Jealous Wife_, 1761, _The
Clandestine Marriage_, 1766.

l. 15. In the third edition the following passage on _The
Jealous Wife_, taken from Oxberry’s _The New English Drama_
(Vol. I.) is here inserted:—

‘Colman, the elder, was the translator of Terence: and the
“Jealous Wife” is a classical play. The plot is regular, the
characters well supported, and the moral the best in the
world. The dialogue has more sense than wit. The ludicrous
arises from the skilful development of the characters, and
the absurdities they commit in their own persons, rather
than from the smart reflections which are made upon them
by others. Thus nothing can be more ridiculous or more
instructive than the scenes of which Mrs. Oakly is the
heroine, yet they are all serious and unconscious: she
exposes herself to our contempt and ridicule by the part she
acts, by the airs she gives herself, and the fantastic
behaviour in the situations in which she is placed. In other
words, the character is pure comedy, not satire. Congreve’s
comedies for the most part are satires, in which, from an
exuberance of wit, the different speakers play off the
sharp-pointed raillery on one another’s foibles, real or
supposed. The best and most genuine kind of comedy, because
the most dramatic, is that of character or humour, in which
the persons introduced upon the stage are left to betray
their own folly by their words and actions. The progressive
winding up of the story of the present comedy is excellently
managed. The jealousy and hysteric violence of Mrs. Oakly
increase every moment, as the pretext for them becomes more
and more frivolous. The attention is kept alive by our doubts
about Oakly’s wavering (but in the end triumphant) firmness;
and the arch insinuations and well-concerted home-thrusts of
the Major heighten the comic interest of the scene. There is
only one circumstance on which this veteran bachelor’s
freedom of speech might have thrown a little more light,
namely, that the married lady’s jealousy is in truth only a
pretence for the exercise of her domineering spirit in
general; so that we are left at last in some uncertainty as
to the turn which this humour may take, and as to the future
repose of her husband, though the affair of Miss Russet is
satisfactorily cleared up. The under-plot of the two lovers
is very ingeniously fitted into the principal one, and is not
without interest in itself. Charles Oakly is a spirited,
well-meaning, thoughtless young fellow, and Harriet Russet
is an amiable romantic girl, in that very common, but
always romantic situation—in love. Her persecution from the
addresses of Lord Trinket and Sir Harry Beagle fans the
gentle flame which had been kindled just a year before in her
breast, produces the adventures and cross-purposes of the
plot, and at last reconciles her to, and throws her into the
arms of her lover, in spite of her resentment for his
misconduct and apparent want of delicacy. The figure which
Lord Trinket and Lady Freelove make in the piece is as odious
and contemptible as it is possible for people in that class
of life (and for no others) to make. The insolence, the
meanness, the affectation, the hollowness, the want of
humanity, sincerity, principle, and delicacy, are such as can
only be found where artificial rank and station in society
supersede not merely a regard to propriety of conduct, but
the necessity even of an attention to appearances. The
morality of the stage has (we are ready to hope) told in that
direction as well as others, has, in some measure suppressed
the suffocating pretensions and flaunting affectation of vice
and folly in “persons of honour,” and, as it were, humanised
rank and file. The pictures drawn of the finished depravity
of such characters in high life, in the old comedies and
novels, can hardly have been thrown away upon the persons
themselves, any more than upon the world at large. Little
Terence O’Cutler, the delicious _protégé_ of Lord Trinket and
Lady Freelove, is a fit instrument for them to use, and
follows in the train of such principals as naturally and
assuredly as their shadow. Sir Harry Beagle is a coarse, but
striking character of a thorough-bred fox-hunting country
squire. He has but one idea in his head, but one sentiment
in his heart—and that is his stud. This idea haunts his
imagination, tinges or imbues every other object, and
accounts for his whole phraseology, appearance, costume,
and conduct. Sir Harry’s ruling passion is varied very
ingeniously, and often turned to a very ludicrous account.
There is a necessary monotony in the humour, which arises
from a want of more than one idea, but the obviousness of the
jest almost makes up for the recurrence of it; if the means
of exciting mirth are mechanical, the effect is sure; and to
say that a hearty laugh is cheaply purchased, is not a
serious objection against it. When an author is terribly
conscious of plagiarism, he seldom confesses it; when the
obligation does not press his conscience, he sometimes does.
Colman, in the advertisement to the first edition of the
“Jealous Wife,” apologises for the freedom which he has used
in borrowing from “Tom Jones.” In reading this modest excuse,
though we have seen the play several times, we could not
imagine what part of the plot was taken from Fielding. We did
not suspect that Miss Russet was Sophia Western, and that old
Russet and Sir Harry Beagle between them somehow represented
Squire Western and young Blifil. But so it is! The outline of
the plot and some of the characters are certainly the same,
but the filling up destroys the likeness. There is all in the
novel that there is in the play, but there is so much in the
novel that is not in the play, that the total impression is
quite different, and loses even an appearance of resemblance.
In the same manner, though a profile or a shade of a face
is exactly the same as the original, we with difficulty
recognise it from the absence of so many other particulars.
Colman might have kept his own secret, and no one would have
been the wiser for it.’

163. _The elder Colman’s translation of Terence._ Published in 1765.

_Bickerstaff’s plays._ _Love in a Village_, 1763, _The Maid of
the Mill_, 1765, and _The Hypocrite_ are the best known.

_Mrs. Cowley’s comedy_, _etc._ Hannah Cowley’s (1743?-1809)
_The Belle’s Stratagem_ appeared in 1780, _Who’s the Dupe?_
in 1779.

164. _Goldsmith’s Good-natured Man_, 1768; _She Stoops to Conquer_,
1773.

In the third edition the following account of _She Stoops to
Conquer_ from Oxberry’s _The New English Drama_ (Vol. IV.) is
here inserted:—

‘It, however, bears the stamp of the author’s genius, which was
an indefinable mixture of the original and imitative. His
plot, characters, and incidents are all apparently new; and
yet, when you come to look into them, they are all old,
with little variation or disguise: that is, the author
sedulously avoided the beaten, vulgar path, and sought for
singularity, but found it rather in the unhackneyed and
eccentric inventions of those who had gone before him, than
in his own stores. The “Vicar of Wakefield,” which abounds
more than any of his works in delightful and original traits,
is still very much borrowed, in its general tone and outline,
from Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews.” Again, the characters and
adventures of Tony Lumpkin, and the ridiculous conduct of his
mother, in the present comedy, are a counterpart (even to the
incident of the theft of the jewels) of those of the Widow
Blackacre and her booby son in Wycherley’s “Plain Dealer.”

‘This sort of plagiarism, which gives us a repetition of new
and striking pictures of human life, is much to be preferred
to the dull routine of trite, vapid, every-day common-places;
but it is more dangerous, as the stealing of pictures
or family plate, where the property can be immediately
identified, is more liable to detection than the stealing of
bank-notes, or the current coin of the realm. Dr. Johnson’s
sarcasm against some writer, that his “singularity was not
his excellence,” cannot be applied to Goldsmith’s writings in
general; but we are not sure whether it might not in severity
be applied to “She Stoops to Conquer.” The incidents and
characters are many of them exceedingly amusing; but they are
so, a little at the expense of probability and _bienseance_.
Tony Lumpkin is a very essential and unquestionably comic
personage; but certainly his absurdities or his humours fail
of none of their effect for want of being carried far enough.
He is in his own sex what a hoyden is in the other. He is
that vulgar nickname, a _hobbety-hoy_, dramatised; forward
and sheepish, mischievous and idle, cunning and stupid, with
the vices of the man and the follies of the boy; fond of low
company, and giving himself all the airs of consequence of
the young squire. His vacant delight in playing at cup and
ball, and his impenetrable confusion and obstinate gravity in
spelling the letter, drew fresh beauties from Mr. Liston’s
face. Young Marlow’s bashfulness in the scenes with his
mistress is, when well acted, irresistibly ludicrous; but
still nothing can quite overcome our incredulity as to the
existence of such a character in the present day, and in the
rank of life, and with the education which Marlow is supposed
to have had. It is a highly amusing caricature, a ridiculous
fancy, but no more. One of the finest and most delicate
touches of character is in the transition from the modest
gentleman’s manner with his mistress, to the easy and
agreeable tone of familiarity with the supposed chambermaid,
which was not total and abrupt, but exactly such in kind
and degree as such a character of natural reserve and
constitutional timidity would undergo from the change of
circumstances. Of the other characters in the piece, the most
amusing are Tony Lumpkin’s associates at the Three Pigeons;
and of these we profess the greatest partiality for the
important showman who declares that “his bear dances to none
but the genteelest of tunes, ‘Water parted from the Sea,’
or the minuet in ‘Ariadne’!”[50] This is certainly the
“high-fantastical”[51] of low comedy.’

164. _Murphy’s plays_, _etc._ Arthur Murphy’s (1730-1805) _All in
the Wrong_, 1761, and _Know Your Own Mind_, 1778.

_Both his principal pieces_, _etc._ There seems to be some
inaccuracy here. Colman’s _Jealous Wife_ was produced in
February 1761, Murphy’s _All in the Wrong_ in June of the
same year. _The School for Scandal_, however, appeared a
month later than Murphy’s _Know Your Own Mind_, viz., in May
1777.

_The School for Scandal_, 1777, _The Rivals_, 1775, _The
Duenna_, 1775, and _The Critic_, 1779.

_Cumberland._ Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), the dramatist,
whose _West Indian_ (1771) and _The Wheel of Fortune_ (1795)
are referred to below, p. 166.

‘_Dragged the struggling_,’ _etc._ Goldsmith, _The Traveller_,
l. 190.

165. _Miss Farren._ Elizabeth Farren (1759?-1829), Countess of
Derby. She played Lady Teazle on the occasion of her last
appearance, April 8, 1797.

_Matthew Bramble and his sister._ In _Humphry Clinker_.

‘_He had damnable iteration in him._’ _Henry IV._, Part I., Act
I. Sc. 2.

165, l. 36. In the third edition Hazlitt’s description of _The
Rivals_, from Oxberry’s _The New English Drama_ (Vol. I.) is
inserted here:—

‘The “Rivals” is one of the most agreeable comedies we have.
In the elegance and brilliancy of the dialogue, in a
certain animation of moral sentiment, and in the masterly
_dénouement_ of the fable, the “School for Scandal” is
superior; but the “Rivals” has more life and action in it,
and abounds in a greater number of whimsical characters,
unexpected incidents, and absurd contrasts of situation.
The effect of the “School for Scandal” is something like
reading a collection of epigrams, that of the “Rivals” is
more like reading a novel. In the first you are always at
the toilette or in the drawing-room; in the last you pass
into the open air, and take a turn in King’s Mead. The
interest is kept alive in the one play by smart repartees,
in the other by startling rencontres: in the one we laugh
at the satirical descriptions of the speakers, in the other
the situation of their persons on the stage is irresistibly
ludicrous. Thus the interviews between Lucy and Sir Lucius
O’Trigger, between Acres and his friend Jack, who is at
once his confidant and his rival; between Mrs. Malaprop and
the lover of her niece as Captain Absolute, and between the
young lady and the same person as the pretended Ensign
Beverley, tell from the mere _double entendre_ of the
scene, and from the ignorance of the parties of one
another’s persons and designs. There is no source of
dramatic effect more complete than this species of
practical satire (in which our author seems to have been an
adept), where one character in the piece is made a fool of
and turned into ridicule to his face, by the very person
whom he is trying to over-reach.

‘There is scarcely a more delightful play than the “Rivals”
when it is well acted, or one that goes off more
indifferently when it is not. The humour is of so broad and
farcical a kind, that if not thoroughly entered into and
carried off by the tone and manner of the performers, it
fails of effect from its obtrusiveness, and becomes flat from
eccentricity. The absurdities brought forward are of that
artificial, affected, and preposterous description, that we
in some measure require to have the evidence of our senses to
see the persons themselves “jetting under the advance plumes
of their folly,”[52] before we can entirely believe in their
existence, or derive pleasure from their exposure. If the
extravagance of the poet’s conception is not supported by the
downright reality of the representation, our credulity is
staggered and falls to the ground.

‘For instance, Acres should be as odd a compound in external
appearance as he is of the author’s brain. He must look like
a very notable mixture of the lively coxcomb and the
blundering blockhead, to reconcile us to his continued
impertinence and senseless flippancy. Acres is a mere
conventional character, a gay, fluttering automaton,
constructed upon mechanical principles, and pushed, as it
were, by the logic of wit and a strict keeping in the pursuit
of the ridiculous, into follies and fopperies which his
natural thoughtlessness would never have dreamt of. Acres
does not say or do what such a half-witted young gentleman
would say or do of his own head, but what he might be led to
do or say with such a prompter as Sheridan at his elbow to
tutor him in absurdity—to make a butt of him first, and laugh
at him afterwards. Thus his presence of mind in persisting in
his allegorical swearing, “Odds triggers and flints,”[53] in
the duel scene, when he is trembling all over with cowardice,
is quite out of character, but it keeps up the preconcerted
jest. In proportion, therefore, as the author has overdone
the part, it calls for a greater effort of animal spirits,
and a peculiar aptitude of genius in the actor to go through
with it, to humour the extravagance, and to seem to take a
real and cordial delight in caricaturing himself. Dodd[54]
was the only actor we remember who realised this ideal
combination of volatility and phlegm, of slowness of
understanding with levity of purpose, of vacancy of thought
and vivacity of gesture. Acres’ affected phrases and apish
manners used to sit upon this inimitable actor with the same
sort of bumpkin grace and conscious self-complacency as the
new cut of his clothes. In general, this character is made
little of on the stage; and when left to shift for itself,
seems as vapid as it is forced.

‘Mrs. Malaprop is another portrait of the same overcharged
description. The chief drollery of this extraordinary
personage consists of her unaccountable and systematic
misapplication of hard words. How she should know the words,
and not their meaning, is a little odd. In reading the play
we are amused with such a series of ridiculous blunders,
just as we are with a series of puns or cross-readings.
But to keep up the farce upon the stage, besides “a nice
derangement of epitaphs,”[55] the imagination must have the
assistance of a stately array of grave pretensions, and a
most formidable establishment of countenance, with all the
vulgar self-sufficiency of pride and ignorance, before it
can give full credit to this learned tissue of technical
absurdity.

‘As to Miss Lydia Languish, she is not easily done to the life.
She is a delightful compound of extravagance and _naïveté_.
She is fond and froward, practical and chimerical, hot and
cold in a breath. She is that kind of fruit which drops into
the mouth before it is ripe. She must have a husband, but she
will not have one without an elopement. This young lady is at
an age and of a disposition to throw herself into the arms
of the first handsome young fellow she meets; but she
repents and grows sullen, like a spoiled child, when she
finds that nobody hinders her. She should have all the
physiognomical marks of a true boarding-school, novel-reading
Miss about her, and some others into the bargain. Sir
Anthony’s description hardly comes up to the truth. She
should have large, rolling eyes; pouting, disdainful lips; a
pale, clear complexion; an oval chin, an arching neck, and a
profusion of dark ringlets falling down upon it, or she will
never answer to our ideas of the charming sentimental hoyden,
who is the heroine of the play.

‘Faulkland is a refined study of a very common disagreeable
character, actuated by an unceasing spirit of contradiction,
who perversely seizes every idle pretext for making himself
and others miserable; or querulous enthusiast, determined on
disappointment, and enamoured with suspicion. He is without
excuse; nor is it without some difficulty that we endure his
self-tormenting follies, through our partiality for Julia,
the amiable, unresisting victim of his gloomy caprice.

‘Sir Anthony Absolute and his son are the most sterling
characters of the play. The tetchy, positive, impatient,
overbearing, but warm and generous character of the one, and
the gallant, determined spirit, adroit address, and dry
humour of the other, are admirably set off against each
other. The two scenes in which they contend about the
proposed match, in the first of which the indignant lover is
as choleric and rash as the old gentleman is furious and
obstinate, and in the latter of which the son affects such a
cool indifference and dutiful submission to his father, from
having found out that it is the mistress of his choice whom
he is to be compelled to marry, are masterpieces both of wit,
humour, and character. Sir Anthony Absolute is an evident
copy after Smollett’s kind-hearted, high-spirited Matthew
Bramble, as Mrs. Malaprop is after the redoubted linguist,
Mrs. Tabitha Bramble; and, indeed the whole tone, as well as
the local scenery of the “Rivals,” reminds the reader of
“Humphry Clinker.” Sheridan had a right to borrow; and he
made use of this privilege, not sparingly, both in this and
in his other plays. His Acres, as well in the general
character as in particular scenes, is a _mannered_ imitation
of Sir Andrew Ague-cheek.

‘Fag, Lucy, and Sir Lucius O’Trigger, though subordinate agents
in the plot of the “Rivals,” are not the less amusing on that
account. Fag wears his master’s wit, as he does his lace, at
second-hand; Lucy is an edifying specimen of simplicity in a
chambermaid, and Sir Lucius is an honest fortune-hunting
Hibernian, who means well to himself, and no harm to anybody
else. They are also traditional characters, common to the
stage; but they are drawn with all the life and spirit of
originals.

‘This appears, indeed, to have been the peculiar _forte_ and
the great praise of our author’s genius, that he could
imitate with the spirit of an inventor. There is hardly a
character, we believe, or a marked situation in any of his
works, of which there are not distinct traces to be found in
his predecessors. But though the groundwork and texture of
his materials was little more than what he found already
existing in the models of acknowledged excellence, yet he
constantly varied or improved upon their suggestions with
masterly skill and ingenuity. He applied what he thus
borrowed, with a sparkling effect and rare felicity, to
different circumstances, and adapted it with peculiar
elegance to the prevailing taste of the age. He was the
farthest possible from a servile plagiarist. He wrote in
imitation of Congreve, Vanbrugh, or Wycherley, as those
persons would have written in continuation of themselves, had
they lived at the same time with him. There is no excellence
of former writers of which he has not availed himself, and
which he has not converted to his own purposes, with equal
spirit and success. He had great acuteness and knowledge of
the world; and if he did not create his own characters, he
compared them with their prototypes in nature, and understood
their bearings and qualities, before he undertook to make a
different use of them. He had wit, fancy, sentiment at
command, enabling him to place the thoughts of others in new
lights of his own, which reflected back an added lustre on
the originals: whatever he touched, he adorned with all the
ease, grace, and brilliancy of his style. If he ranks only as
a man of second-rate genius, he was assuredly a man of
first-rate talents. He was the most classical and the most
popular dramatic writer of his age. The works he has left
behind him will remain as monuments of his fame, for the
delight and instruction of posterity.

‘Mr. Sheridan not only excelled as a comic writer, but was also
an eminent orator, and a disinterested patriot. As a public
speaker, he was distinguished by acuteness of observation and
pointed wit, more than by impassioned eloquence, or powerful
and comprehensive reasoning. Considering him with reference
to his conversational talents, his merits as a comic writer,
and as a political character, he was perhaps the most
accomplished person of his time.

“Take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again.”[56]

165. ‘_Had I a heart_,’ _etc._ _The Duenna_, Act I. Sc. 5.

166. ‘_Half thy malice_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act III. Sc. 1.

_That on the Begum’s affairs._ June 3, 6, 10, 13, 1788.

_One who has all the ability_, _etc._ Hazlitt refers to Thomas
Moore, whose _Life of Sheridan_, however, did not appear till
1825.

_Macklin’s Man of the World._ Charles Macklin’s (1697?-1797)
_The Man of the World_, first produced in London in 1781. For
George Frederick Cooke’s (1756-1811) acting in the part of
Sir Pertinax Macsycophant see Leigh Hunt’s _Critical Essays
on the Performers of the London Theatres_ (1807), pp. 220-1.

_Mr. Holcroft._ See Hazlitt’s _Memoirs of the Life of Thomas
Holcroft_, vol. II. pp. 121-4 of the present edition.

l. 38. In the third edition the following account of _The West
Indian_ from Oxberry’s _The New English Drama_ (Vol. I.) is
interpolated:—

‘As to the “West Indian,” it is a play that from the time of
its first appearing has continued to hold possession of the
stage, with just enough merit to keep it there, and no
striking faults to drive it thence. It is above mediocrity.
There is an agreeable vein of good humour and animal spirits
running through it that does not suffer it to sink into
downright insipidity, nor ever excites any very high degree
of interest or delight. Wit there is none, and hardly an
attempt at humour, except in the character of Major O’
Flaherty, who would not be recognised as a genuine Irishman
but by virtue of his representative on the stage. His
blunders and conduct are not such as would proceed from the
good-natured unthinking impetuosity of such a person as O’
Flaherty is intended to be: but they are such as the author
might sit down and try to invent for him. It is not an Irish
character, but a character playing the Irishman; not a hasty,
warm-hearted, hair-brained fellow, stumbling on mistakes
by accident either in his words and actions, but a very
complaisant gentleman, looking out for them by design, to
humour the opinion which you entertain of him, and who is to
make himself a national butt for the audience to laugh at.
The “West Indian” himself (Belcour) is certainly the support
of the piece. There is something interesting in the idea of
seeing a young fellow of high animal spirits, a handsome
fortune, and considerable generosity of feeling, launched
from the other side of the world (with the additional impetus
that the distance would give him) to run the gauntlet of the
follies and vices of the town, to fall into scrapes only to
get out of them, and who is full of professions of attachment
to virtues which he does not practise, and of repentance for
offences which he has not committed. It is the same character
as Charles Surface in the “School for Scandal,” with an
infusion of the romantic from his transatlantic origin, and
an additional excuse for his extravagances in the tropical
temperature of his blood.

‘The language of this play is elegant but common-place: the
speakers seem in general more intent on adjusting their
periods than on settling their affairs. The sentiments aspire
to liberality. They are amiably mawkish, and as often as they
incline to paradox, have a rapid sort of petulance about
them, which excites neither our sympathy nor our esteem. The
plot is a good plot. It is well laid, decently distributed
through the course of five acts, and wound up at last to its
final catastrophe in a single sentence.’

_The Mayor of Garratt._ Samuel Foote’s (1720-1777), produced in
1764. John O’Keeffe’s (1747-1833) _The Agreeable Surprise_,
1781.

167. _Mother Cole_, _etc._ Mrs. Cole and Smirk are both in _The
Minor_ (1760). Hazlitt may have been thinking of Puff in
_Taste_ (1752).

_The acting of Dowton_, _etc._ See _A View of the English
Stage_, _ante_, p. 317, from which this passage is taken.

‘_‘Pigeon-livered_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

168. _Peter Pindar._ John Wolcot (1738-1819). _Sir Joseph Banks and
the Emperor of Morocco_ was published in 1788. The first of
his _Lyric Odes to the Royal Academicians_ appeared in
1782, and his _Ode upon Ode, or a Peep at St. James’s and
Instructions to a celebrated Laureat, being a Comic Account
of the Visit of the Sovereign to Whitbread’s Brewery_, in
1787.

‘_Faint picture_,’ _etc._ Adapted from _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

_Like his own expiring taper._ Hazlitt seems to refer to some
verses of Wolcot’s, entitled ‘To My Candle.’ See _Pindar’s
Works_ (1816), vol. II. p. 399.

A VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE

In this work, published in 1818, Hazlitt collected the greater part
of the theatrical criticisms which he had contributed successively
to _The Morning Chronicle_, _The Champion_, _The Examiner_, and _The
Times_. His first article in _The Morning Chronicle_ appeared on
October 18, 1813 (see _ante_, p. 192), and the last on May 27, 1814
(see _ante_, p. 195). In his essay, ‘On Patronage and Puffing’
(_Table Talk_, vol. V. pp. 292, _et seq._), Hazlitt gives an account
of his theatrical criticisms in the _Chronicle_. He thought himself
that they were the best articles in the series (see _ante_, p. 174),
and they are at any rate of exceptional interest inasmuch as they
deal for the most part with the first appearances of Edmund Kean in
London. His first article in _The Champion_, then edited by John
Scott, appeared on August 14, 1814 (see p. 196), and the last on
January 8, 1815 (see p. 208). Early in 1815 he became the regular
dramatic critic of _The Examiner_. Leigh Hunt, the editor, had
intended to resume theatrical criticism after his release from
prison in February, but his attention was diverted to politics by
the return of Buonaparte from Elba. Hazlitt’s first article (except
for two notices of Kean’s _Iago_, July 24 and August 7, 1814)
appeared on March 19, 1815 (see p. 221), the last on June 8, 1817
(see p. 373). By far the greater part of Hazlitt’s articles in _The
Morning Chronicle_, _The Champion_, and _The Examiner_ were included
by him in _A View of the English Stage_. Some passages, however,
and, we think, some articles, he did omit (especially from _The
Examiner_ of 1817). In the following notes passages omitted from
articles included in _A View_ are printed in full; articles omitted
from _A View_ are shortly summarised, if it is pretty clear from
internal evidence that they were written by Hazlitt. Owing to want
of space these articles cannot be printed in the present volume, but
those which are clearly Hazlitt’s will be found among fugitive
writings in a later volume, together with some notices (deemed
certainly his) from _The Times_. Hazlitt seems to have been the
dramatic critic, or one of the dramatic critics, of _The Times_ from
the summer of 1817 till the spring of 1818, but only two of his
articles (pp. 374, _et seq._) were included in _A View of the
English Stage_. These appeared in September 1817, near the beginning
of his term of office. Hazlitt’s reason for including so few of his
_Times_ articles is not known. An examination of the dramatic
notices in _The Times_ during the period in question suggests (1)
that there were at least two regular dramatic critics on the staff,
(2) that Hazlitt chiefly confined himself to Shakespearian and other
plays of established reputation, and (3) that he practically ceased
to write at the end of 1817. The following may be mentioned among
the more important articles, which may, with varying degrees of
probability, be ascribed to Hazlitt:— _School for Scandal_ (Munden
as Sir Peter Teazle), September 8, 1817; Young’s Hamlet, September
9; _As You Like It_ (Miss Brunton as Rosalind), September 20;
Maywood’s Zanga, October 3; Cibber’s _The Refusal, or The Ladies’
Philosophy_, October 6; Kean’s Richard III., October 7; _The Wonder,
or A Woman Keeps a Secret_, October 9; _Venice Preserved_, October
10; Kean’s Macbeth, October 21; _Othello_ (Kean as Othello, Maywood
as Iago), October 27; _Venice Preserved_ (Miss O’Neill as
Belvidera), December 2; _The Honey Moon_, December 3; Fisher’s
Hamlet, December 11; Kean’s Macbeth, December 16; _King John_ (Miss
O’Neill as Constance), December 18.

Reference should be made (1) to Mr. William Archer’s Introduction to
a Selection of Hazlitt’s _Dramatic Essays_ (ed. Archer and Lowe,
1895), and (2) to the companion-volume of Leigh Hunt’s _Dramatic
Essays_ (ed. Archer and Lowe, 1894).

PAGE

173. _Rochefoucault_, _etc._ _Maximes et Réflexions Morales_,
cccxii.

‘_The brief chronicles of the time._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘_Hold the mirror_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._ Act. III. Sc. 2.

‘_Imitate humanity_,’ _etc._ _Ibid._

_Zoffany’s pictures._ John Zoffany (1733-1810), a native of
Ratisbon, came to England in 1758, and soon became noted for
his pictures of Garrick and other actors in character.
Several of these are preserved at the Garrick Club.

_Colley Cibber’s Life._ Cf. _ante_, pp. 160-1.

174. _A perverse caricature._ Hazlitt refers to the character of
Marmozet in _Peregrine Pickle_ (1751). The quarrel between
Garrick and Smollett was afterwards made up.

_In different newspapers._ See _ante_, introductory note to p.
169.

‘_The secrets of the prison-house._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 5.

_The editor of which_, _etc._ Thomas Barnes was editor of _The
Times_ when Hazlitt was theatrical critic, but the reference
is probably to the proprietor, John Walter the Second.

_Too prolix on the subject of the Bourbons._ Hazlitt probably
refers to his brother-in-law, Dr., afterwards Sir John
Stoddart, who was dismissed from the editorship of _The
Times_ early in 1817, in consequence of the violence of his
writings on French affairs. Stoddart immediately started _The
Day and New Times_, the title of which was altered in 1818 to
_The New Times_.

‘_One who loved_, _etc._ _Othello_, Act V. Sc. 2.

175. ‘_‘Some quantity_,’ _etc._ A composite quotation from _Hamlet_,