Chapter XXXII: Introduction: To an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses (19)

LIX. The style of conversation in request in courts proceeds much upon the same principle. It is low, and it is little. I have known a few persons who have had access to the Presence (and who might be supposed to catch what they could of the tone of royalty at second-hand, bating the dignity—God knows there was nothing of that!) and I should say they were the _highest finishers_ in this respect I ever met with. No circumstance escaped them, they worked out all the details (whether to the purpose or not) like a fac-simile, they mimicked every thing, explained every thing; the story was not _told_, but acted over again. It is true, there were no _grandes pensées_, there was a complete truce with all thought and reflection; but they were everlasting dealers in matters of fact, and there was no end of their minute prolixity—one must suppose this mode pleased their betters, or was copied from them. Dogberry’s declaration—‘Were I as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all upon your worship’—is not so much a blunder of the clown’s, as a sarcasm of the poet’s. Are we to account for the effect (as before) from supposing that their overstrained attention to great things makes them seek for a change in little ones?—Or that their idea of themselves as raised above every one else is confirmed by dwelling on the meanest and most insignificant objects?—Or is it that from their ignorance and seclusion from the world, every thing is alike new and wonderful to them? Or that dreading the insincerity of those about them, they exact an extraordinary degree of trifling accuracy, and require every one to tell a story, as if he was giving evidence on oath before a court of justice? West said that the late King used to get him up into a corner, and fairly put his hands before him so that he could not get away, till he had got every particular out of him relating to the affairs of the Royal Academy. This weakness in the mind of kings has been well insisted on by Peter Pindar. It is of course like one of the spots in the sun.

LX. I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.

LXI. Happy are they that can say with Timon—‘I am Misanthropos, and hate mankind!’ They can never be at a loss for subjects to exercise their spleen upon: their sources of satisfaction must hold out while the world stands. Those who do not pity others, assuredly need not envy them: if they take pleasure in the distresses of their fellow-creatures, they have their wish. Let them cast an eye on that long disease, human life, on that villainous compound, human nature, and glut their malice. There is madness, there is idiotcy, there is sickness, old age, and death; there is the cripple, the blind, and the deaf; there is the deformed in body, the weak in mind, the prisoner and the gaoler, the beggar and the dwarf; there is poverty, labour, pain, ignominy; there is riches, pride, griping avarice, bloated luxury; there is the agony of suffering or the lassitude of _ennui_; there is the sickness of the heart from hope delayed, and the worse and more intolerable sickness from hope attained; there is the gout, the stone, the plague, cold, fever, thirst, and nakedness, shipwreck, famine, fire and the sword, all are instruments of human fate, and pamper the dignity of human nature: there are the racking pains of jealousy, remorse, and anguish, the lingering ones of disappointment, sorrow, and regret; there is the consciousness of unmerited, hopeless obscurity, and ‘the cruel sunshine thrown by fortune on a fool;’ there is unrequited love, and—marriage; there is the coquet slighting others and slighted in her turn, the jilt, the antiquated prude, the brutal husband, and the common-place wife; there are vows of celibacy and lost character; there is the cabal, the idle gossiping, the churlishness and dulness of the country, the heartlessness and profligacy of great cities; there are the listless days, the sleepless nights, the having too much or too little to do; years spent in vain in a pursuit, or, if successful, the having to leave it at last; there are the jealousies of different professions among themselves or of each other, lawyers, divines, physicians, artists; the contempt of the more thriving for the less fortunate, and the hatred and heart-burnings with which it is repaid; there is hypocrisy, oppression, falsehood, treachery, cowardice, selfishness, meanness; the luck of fools, the respectability of knaves; the cant of piety, loyalty, and humanity; the lamentations of West-India planters over the ingratitude of their negro slaves, and Louis XVIII. resigning to God and the Mother of all Saints the credit of the success of his arms; there are sects and parties, kings and their subjects, queens and common-council men, speeches in Parliament, plays and actors _damned_, or successful for a time and then laid on the shelf, and heard of no more; quacks at all corners, mountebanks in the pulpit, and drones in the state, peace and war, treaties of offence and defence, conspiracies, revolutions, Holy Alliances, the sudden death of Lord Castlereagh, and the oratory of his successor Mr. Canning, hid for the present like the moon ‘in its vacant interlunar cave;’ and Ferdinand and his paper-kites, and the Cortes, unconscious of the rebel maxim, ‘Catch a king and kill a king’; and Slop raving at the bloodthirsty victims of courtly assassins, and whetting mild daggers for patriot throats; and Mr. Croker’s _cheat-the-gallows face_ in the _Quarterly_, and Lord Wellington’s _heart_ in the cause of Spanish liberty, and a beloved Monarch retired amid all this to shady solitude ‘to play with Wisdom.’ A good hater may here find wherewithal to feed the largest spleen and swell it, even to bursting!

LXII. Happiness, like mocking, is catching. At least, none but those who are happy in themselves, can make others so. No wit, no understanding, neither riches nor beauty, can communicate this feeling—the happy alone can make happy. Love and Joy are twins, or born of each other.

LXIII. No one knows when he is safe from ridicule.

LXIV. Is it a misfortune or a happiness that we so often like the faults of one we love better than the virtues of any other woman; that we like her refusals, better than all other favours; that we like her love of others, better than any one else’s love of us?

LXV. If a man were refused by a woman a thousand times, and he really loved her, he would still think that at the bottom of her heart she preferred him to every one else. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider that all passion is a species of madness; and that the feeling in the mind towards the beloved object is the most amiable and delightful thing in the world. Our love to her is heavenly, and so (the heart whispers us) must hers be to us—though it were buried at the bottom of the sea; nay, from the tomb our self-love would revive it! We never can persuade ourselves that a mistress cares nothing about us, till we no longer care about her. No! It is certain that there is nothing truly deserving of love but love, and

‘In spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,’

we still believe in the justice of the blind God!

LXVI. It would be easy to forget a misplaced attachment, but that we do not like to acknowledge ourselves in the wrong.

LXVII. A great mind is one that can forget or look beyond itself.

LXVIII. The grand scenes of Nature are more adapted for occasional visits than for constant residence. They are the temples of the Goddess, not fit dwellings for her worshippers. Familiarity breeds contempt or indifference; and it is better to connect this feeling with the petty and trivial than with the lofty and sublime. Besides, it is unnecessary to run the risk in the latter case. One chief advantage of the great and magnificent objects of Nature is, that they stamp their image on the mind for ever; the blow need not be repeated to have the desired effect. We take them with us wherever we go; we have but to think of them and they appear; and at the distance of half a life or of the circumference of the globe, we unlock the springs of memory, and the tall mountain shoots into the sky, the lake expands its bosom, and the cataract rushes from the pine-clad rock. The bold majestic outline is all that there is to discover in such situations, and this we can always remember. In more cultivated and artificial scenes we may observe a thousand hedge-row beauties with curious eye, or pluck the tender flower beneath our feet, while Skiddaw hovers round our heads, and the echoes of Helvellyn thunder in our hearts.

LXIX. I should always choose to live within reach of a fine prospect, rather than to see one from my windows. A number of romantic, distant objects staring in upon one (uncalled-for) tantalise the imagination, and tempt the truant feet; whereas, at home, I wish to feel satisfied where I am, and sheltered from the world.

LXX. Mr. Martin’s picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise has this capital defect, that there is no _repose_ in it. You see two insignificant naked figures, and a preposterous architectural landscape, like a range of buildings overlooking them. They might as well be represented sleeping on the top of the pinnacle of the Temple with the world and all the glories thereof spread out before them. They ought to have been painted imparadised in one another’s arms, shut up in measureless content, with Eden’s choicest bowers closing round them, and Nature stooping to clothe them with vernal bowers. Nothing could be too retired, too voluptuous, too sacred from day’s garish eye: instead of which, you have a gaudy panoramic view, a glittering barren waste, a triple row of clouds, of rocks, and mountains piled one upon the other, as if the imagination already bent its idle gaze over that wide world, which was so soon to be their place of exile, and the aching restless spirit of the artist was occupied in building a stately prison for our first parents, instead of decking their bridal bed, and wrapping them in a short-lived dream of bliss!

LXXI. The mind tires of variety, but becomes reconciled to uniformity. Change produces a restless habit, a love of farther change: the recurrence of the same objects conduces to repose, and to content. My Uncle Toby’s bowling-green bounded his harmless ambition; Bonaparte, not contented with France and Europe for a pleasure-ground, wanted to have Russia for an ice-house; and Alexander, at the farthest side of India, wept for new worlds to conquer. If we let our thoughts wander abroad, there is no end to fantastic projects, to the craving after novelty, to fickleness, and disappointment: if we confine them at home, Peace may find them there. Mr. Horne Tooke used to contend that all tendency to excess was voluntary in the mind: the wants of Nature kept within a certain limit. Even if a person adhered to a regular number of cups of tea or glasses of wine, he did not feel tempted to exceed this number: but if he once went beyond his usual allowance, the desire to transgress increased with its indulgence, and the artificial appetite was proportioned to the artificial stimulus. It has been remarked that in the tropical climates, where there is no difference of seasons, time passes away on smoother and swifter pinions, ‘the earth spins round on its soft axle,’ unnoticed, unregretted: and life wears out soonest and best in sequestered privacy, within the round of a few, simple, unenvied enjoyments.

LXXII. The retailing of a set of anecdotes is not conversation. A story admits of no answer: a remark or an opinion naturally calls forth another, and leads to as many different views of a subject as there are minds in company. An officer in a Scotch marching regiment has always a number of very edifying anecdotes to communicate: but unless you are of the same mess or the same clan, you are necessarily _sent to Coventry_. Prosing, mechanical narrations of this kind are tedious, as well as tinctured with egotism: if they are set off with a brilliant manner, with mimicry, and action, they become theatrical: the speaker is a kind of _Mr. Matthews at home_, and the audience are more or less delighted and amused with the exhibition; but there is an end of society, and you no more think of interrupting a confirmed story-teller, than you would of interrupting a favourite actor on the stage.

LXXIII. The Queen’s trial gave a deathblow to the hopes of all reflecting persons with respect to the springs and issues of public spirit and opinion. It was the only question I ever knew that excited a thorough popular feeling. It struck its roots into the heart of the nation; it took possession of every house or cottage in the kingdom; man, woman, and child took part in it, as if it had been their own concern. Business was laid aside for it: people forgot their pleasures, even their meals were neglected, nothing was thought of but the fate of the Queen’s trial. The arrival of the _Times Newspaper_ was looked upon as an event in every village, the Mails hardly travelled fast enough; and he who had the latest intelligence in his pocket was considered as the happiest of mortals. It kept the town in a ferment for several weeks: it agitated the country to the remotest corner. It spread like wildfire over the kingdom; the public mind was electrical. So it should be on other occasions; it was only so on this. An individual may be oppressed, a nation may be trampled upon, mankind may be threatened with annihilation of their rights, and the threat enforced; and not a finger is raised, not a heart sinks, not a pulse beats quicker in the public or private quarrel, a momentary burst of vain indignation is heard, dies away, and is forgotten. Truth has no echo, but folly and imposture have a thousand reverberations in the hollowness of the human heart. At the very time when all England went mad about the poor Queen, a man of the name of Bruce was sent to Botany Bay for having spoken to another who was convicted of sedition; and no notice was taken of it. We have seen what has been done in Spain, and Earth does not roll its billows over the heads of tyrants, to bury them in a common grave. What was it then in the Queen’s cause that stirred this mighty ‘coil and pudder’ in the breast? Was it the love of truth, of justice, of liberty? No such thing! Her case was at best doubtful, and she had only suffered the loss of privileges peculiar to herself. But she was a Queen, she was a woman, and _a thorn in the King’s side_. There was the cant of loyalty, the cant of gallantry, and the cant of freedom mixed altogether in delightful and inextricable confusion. She was a Queen—all the loyal and well-bred bowed to the name; she was a wife—all the women took the alarm; she was at variance with the lawful sovereign—all the free and independent Electors of Westminster and London were up in arms. ‘The Queen’s name was a tower of strength,’ which these persons had hitherto wanted, and were glad to catch at. Though a daughter of the Duke of Brunswick, though a grand-daughter of George III., yet because she was separated from her husband, she must be hand-and-glove with the people, the wretched, helpless, doating, credulous, meddlesome people, who are always ready to lick the hands, not just then raised to shed their blood or rivet on their chains. There was here an idol to pull down and an idol to set up. There was an imperial title and meretricious frontispiece to the spurious volume of Liberty. There was the mock-majesty of an empty throne behind the real one, and the impertinence of mankind was interested to thrust the unwelcome claimant into it. City patriots stood a chance of becoming liege men, and true to a Queen—of their own choosing. The spirit of faction was half merged in the spirit of servility. There was a rag-fair of royalty—every one carried his own paints and patches into the presence of the new Lady of Loretto—there was a sense of homage due, of services and countenance bestowed on Majesty. This popular farce had all the charm of _private theatricals_. The Court of St. James’s was nothing to the _make-believe_ Court at Kew. The king was a sort of _state-fixture_; but the Queen-Consort, the favourite of the rabble, was herself one of them. The presence-doors were flung open, and every blackguard and blockhead rushed in. What an opportunity to see, to hear, to touch a Queen! To gratify the itch of loyalty by coming in contact with the person of the Sovereign was a privilege reserved for a few; but to receive this favour at the Queen’s hands was a distinction common to all. All the trades of London came to kiss the Queen’s hand: Presbyterian parsons knelt to kiss the hand of their royal mistress; the daughters of country curates and of city knights sipped loyalty from the back of her Majesty’s hand. Radicals and reformers contended who should be first in paying homage to the Queen; there was a race for precedence, quarrelling and pulling of caps between the wives of distinguished orators and caricaturists, at the very footsteps of the throne; while Mr. Alderman Wood,

‘A gentle Husher, Vanity by name.’

strove to keep the peace, and vindicate the character of civic dames for courtly manners. Mr. Place, Mr. Hone, Mr. Thelwall, Sir Richard Phillips, kissed her Majesty’s hand; Mr. Cobbett alone was not invited,—it was thought he might _bite_. What a pity that it was before Mr. Irving’s time, or he might have thrown in the casting-weight of his perfect mind and body, and _ousted_ both the King and Bergami! In the midst of all this, his Majesty went to the play, bowed to the boxes, the pit, the gallery, and to the _actors_, and you would suppose in four days’ time, that a whisper had never been uttered to imply that the King not only was not the most graceful man in his dominions, but the best of monarchs and of husbands. The Queen and her _pic-nic_ parties were no more thought of. What a scene for history to laugh at!

LXXIV. A crowd was collected under the Horse-Guards, and on enquiry I found it was to see the Duke of York come out. ‘What went they forth for to see?’ They were some of the lowest and most wretched of the people, and it was perhaps the sense of contrast,—a sense of which the great and mighty have always availed themselves liberally, to cherish the enthusiasm of their admirers. It was also curiosity to see a name, a sound that they had so often heard, reduced to an object of sight; a metaphysical and political abstraction actually coming out of a door with a ruddy face and a frock-coat. It was, in the first place, the Commander-in-Chief, and the commander of the troops at Dunkirk, the author of the love-letters to Mrs. Clarke and of army-circulars, the son of the King, and presumptive heir to the Crown;—there were all these contradictions embodied in the same person. ‘Oh, the wonderful works of nature,’ as the _Recruit_ in the play says on looking at the guinea which has just enlisted him: so we may say on looking at a king or a king’s brother. I once pointed out the Duke of York to a Scotchman. ‘Is that his Grace—I mean his Royal Highness?’ said the native of the North, out of breath to acknowledge the title, and pay with his tongue the instinctive adulation which his heart felt!

LXXV. When Effie Deans becomes a fine lady, do we not look back with regret to the time when she was the poor faded lily of St. Leonards, the outcast and condemned prisoner? So, should the cause of liberty and mankind ever become triumphant, instead of militant, may we not heave a sigh of regret over the past, and think that poor suffering human nature, with all its wrongs and insults, trodden into the earth like a vile weed, was a more interesting topic for reflection? We need not be much alarmed for the event, even if this should be so; for the way to Utopia is not ‘the primrose path of dalliance;’ and at the rate we have hitherto gone on, it must be many thousand years off!

LXXVI. Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols—it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.

LXXVII. The Devil was a great loss in the preternatural world. He was always something to fear and to hate. He supplied the antagonist powers of the imagination, and the arch of true religion hardly stands firm without him. Mr. Irving may perhaps bring him into fashion again.

LXXVIII. Perhaps the evils arising from excessive inequality in a state would be sufficiently obviated if property were divided equally among the surviving children. But it is said it would be impossible to make a law for this purpose, under any circumstances or with any qualifications, because the least interference with the disposal of property would be striking at its existence and at the very root of all property. And yet this objection is urged in those very countries, where the law of primogeniture (intended to keep it in disproportionate masses, and setting aside the will of the testator altogether) is established as an essential part of the law of the land. So blind is reason, where passion or prejudice intervenes!

LXXIX. Kings, who set up for Gods upon earth, should be treated as madmen, which one half of them, or as idiots, which the other half, really are.

LXXX. Tyrants are at all times mad with the lust of power.

LXXXI. Reformers are naturally speculative people; and speculative people are effeminate and inactive. They brood over ideas, till realities become almost indifferent to them. They talk when they should act, and are distracted with nice doubts and distinctions, while the enemy is thundering at the gates, and the bomb-shells are bursting at their feet. They hold up a paper Constitution as their shield, which the sword pierces through, and drinks their heart’s blood! They are cowards, too, at bottom; and dare not strike a decisive blow, lest it should be retaliated. While they merely prate of moderation and the public good, they think, if the worst comes to the worst, there may still be a chance of retreat for them, hoping to screen themselves behind their imbecility. They are not like their opponents, whose all is at stake, and who are urged on by instinctive fury and habitual cunning to defend it: the common good is too remote a speculation to call forth any violent passions or personal sacrifices; and if it should be lost, it is as fine a topic as ever to harangue and lament about. Patriots are, by the constitution of their minds, poets; and an Elegy on the fall of Liberty is as interesting to hear or to recite as an Ode on its most triumphant success. They who let off Ferdinand the other day, confiding in the promises of a traitor and in the liberality of a despot, were greater hypocrites to themselves than he was.

LXXXII. In the late quarrel about Liberty, upwards of five millions of men have been killed, and _one king_.

LXXXIII. The people (properly speaking) are not a herd of slaves just let loose, or else goaded on, like blind drudges, to execute the behests of their besotted taskmasters; but the band of free citizens, taught to know their rights, and prepared to exercise them.

LXXXIV. The people are the slaves of ignorance and custom; the friends of the people are the dupes of reason and humanity. Power stops at nothing but its own purposes.

LXXXV. The Author of Waverley observes—‘In truth, the Scottish peasantry are still infected with that rage for funeral ceremonial, which once distinguished the grandees of the kingdom so much, that a sumptuary law was made by the Parliament of Scotland for the purpose of restraining it; and I have known many in the lowest stations who have denied themselves not merely the comforts, but almost the necessaries of life, in order to save such a sum of money as might enable their surviving friends to bury them like Christians, as they termed it; nor could their faithful executors be prevailed upon, though equally necessitous, to turn to the use and maintenance of the living the money vainly wasted upon the interment of the dead.’—‘Antiquary,’ vol. IV. p. 48. If I were to attempt an explanation of the peculiar delight and pride which the Scotch are thus supposed to take in funeral ceremonies, I should say, that as inhabitants of wild and barren districts, they are more familiar with the face of nature than with the face of man; and easily turn to it as their place of rest and final home. There is little difference, in their imaginations, between treading the green mountain turf, and being laid beneath it. The world itself is but a living tomb to them. Their mode of subsistence is cold, hard, comfortless, bare of luxuries and of enjoyments, torpid, inured to privations and self-denial; and death seems to be its consummation and triumph, rather than its unwelcome end. Their life was a sort of struggle for a dreary existence; so that it relapses into the grave with joy and a feeling of exultation. The grey rock out of which their tomb is cut is a citadel against all assaults of the flesh and the spirit; the kindred earth that wraps the weather-beaten, worn-out body, is a soft and warm resting-place from the hardships it has had to encounter. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Scotch prepare for the due celebration of this event with the foresight characteristic of them, and that their friends consign them to the earth with becoming fortitude and costly ceremony. ‘Man,’ says Sir Thomas Brown, though in quite a different spirit, ‘man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave; solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery, even in the INFAMY of his nature.—_See his_ URN BURIAL.

LXXXVI. In the Heart of Midlothian vol. IV. p. 13, we meet with the following reflections: ‘Perhaps one ought to be actually a Scotchman to conceive how ardently, under all distinctions of rank and situation, they feel their mutual connection with each other as natives of the same country. There are, I believe, more associations common to the inhabitants of a rude and wild than of a well-cultivated and fertile country: their ancestors have more seldom changed their place of residence; their mutual recollection of remarkable objects is more accurate; the high and the low are more interested in each other’s welfare; the feelings of kindred and relationship are more widely extended; and, in a word, the bonds of patriotic affection, always honourable, even when a little too exclusively strained, have more influence on men’s feelings and actions.’ Thus far our author, but without making much progress in the question he has started. ‘_Via_ Goodman Dull! thou hast spoken no word all this while’—I might say, but I do not choose, to say so, to the Great Unknown. There is an enumeration of particulars, slightly and collaterally connected with the subject, but, as ‘Douce David Deans’ would say, ‘they do not touch the root of the matter.’ In fact, then, the mind more easily forms a strong and abstracted attachment to the soil (in which it was bred) in remote and barren regions, where few artificial objects or pursuits fritter away attention, or divert it from its devotion to the naked charms of nature—(perhaps the privations, dangers, and loneliness incident to such situations also enhance the value and deepen the interest we take in them)—and again, in a rude and scattered population, where there is a dearth and craving after general society, we naturally become more closely and permanently attached to those few persons with whom neighbourhood, or kindred, or a common cause, or similar habits or language, bring us into contact. Two Englishmen meeting in the wilds of Arabia would instantly become friends, though they had never seen one another before, from the want of all other society and sympathy. So it is in the ruder and earlier stages of civilisation. This is what attaches the Highlander to his hill and to his clan. This is what attaches Scotchmen to their country and to one another. A Londoner, in his fondness for London, is distracted between the play-houses, the opera, the shops, the coffee-houses, the crowded streets, &c. An inhabitant of Edinburgh has none of these diversities to reconcile: he has but one idea in his head or in his mouth,—that of the Calton Hill; an idea which is easily embraced, and which he never quits his hold of, till something more substantial offers,—a situation as porter in a warehouse, or as pimp to a great man.

NOTES

FUGITIVE WRITINGS

ON ABSTRACT IDEAS

This essay was first published along with the second edition (1836) of _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action_. See Bibliographical Note, vol. VII. p. 384. The source of the essay does not appear to be known, but it very likely formed the substance of one of the Lectures which Hazlitt delivered at the Russell Institution. See _ante_, pp. 25, _et seq._ and notes. The title of one of these Lectures (III.) was ‘On Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, and on the Nature of Abstraction.’ It has not been thought necessary to give references to all the numerous passages quoted from Locke and other philosophers discussed by Hazlitt. In many cases he himself gives a sufficient reference in the text.

PAGE

1. _It is by Mr. Locke ... denied_, _etc._ See _An Essay concerning
Human Understanding_, II. xi. 10.

‘_From the root_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, V. 479–481.

6. _The Bishop of Worcester._ Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), who
published three pamphlets in reply to Locke’s _Essay_. For an
account of the controversy see Locke’s _Works_ (Bohn), II. 339
_et seq._

7. ‘_General ideas_,’ _etc._ Condillac, _La Logique_, chap. V.

8. ‘_To speak_,’ _etc. Ibid._

9. ‘_It is agreed on all hands_,’ _etc._ All the passages quoted
from Berkeley are from the Introduction to _A Treatise
concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_ (1710).

12. ‘_Abstract ideas_,’ _etc._ Locke’s _Essay_, IV. vii. 9.

ON THE WRITINGS OF HOBBES

This and the four succeeding papers were first published in _Literary Remains_, where the author’s son says of them (vol. I. p. 115): ‘The following Essays form part of a series of Lectures delivered with very great effect by my father at the Russell Institution, in 1813. I found them with other papers in an old hamper which many years ago he stuffed confusedly full of MSS. and odd volumes of books, and left in the _care_ of some lodging-house people, by whom it was thrown into a cellar, so damp that even the covers of some of the books were fast mouldering when I first looked over the collection. The injury to the MSS. may be imagined. Some of the Lectures, indeed, to my deep regret, are altogether missing, burnt, probably, by the ignorant people of the house; and I have had the greatest difficulty in preparing those which remain for the press. They are, however, most valuable.’ The course, consisting of ten Lectures, was delivered in 1812, not 1813. The syllabus will be found in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s _Memoirs of William Hazlitt_, 1. 192 et seq. The first lecture was ‘On the Writings of Hobbes, showing that he was the father of the modern system of philosophy.’

27. ‘_They were made fierce_,’ _etc._ _Advancement of Learning_, I.
iv. 6.

28. ‘_Four champions fierce_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, II. 898.

29. _It has been generally supposed_, _etc._ Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke
a Great Plagiarist,’ _post_, p. 284.

32. ‘_Discourse of Human Nature._’ This work, though circulated in
MS. as early as 1640, was not published till 1650, the year
before the publication of _Leviathan_.

45. ‘_This difference of quickness_,’ _etc._ _Leviathan_, part I.
chap. VIII.

_Harris, the author of Hermes_, _etc._ Cf. vol. VIII. (_The
English Comic Writers_) p. 19, where the same passages are
quoted from Locke, Hobbes, and Harris.

46. ‘_Though the effect of folly_,’ _etc._ _Leviathan_, part I. chap.
VIII.

‘_The foolish daughters of Pelias_’ [Peleus], _etc. Ibid._ part
II. chap. XXX.

_The same allusion in Burke._ _Reflections on the Revolution in
France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 113).

48. ‘_Soft collar of social esteem._’ _Ibid._ II. 90.

‘_Order of thoughts_,’ _etc._ _Leviathan_, part I. chap. III.

‘_Stood all astonied_,’ _etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, VII. VI. 28.

50. _Jonathan Edwards._ Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the American
theologian and metaphysician, published his work _On the
Freedom of the Will_ in 1754.

ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY

Lectures VII. and VIII. were ‘On the Writers on Liberty and Necessity, and on Materialism.’

_Gassendi._ Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), the French philosopher
and mathematician, with whom Hobbes had been intimate at Paris.

53. _Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration_, _etc._ In the
_Ethica_, published in _Opera Posthuma_ (1677).

_Marsennus._ Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), the friend and disciple
of Descartes.

54. _Bishop Bramhall._ John Bramhall (1594–1663), successively Bishop
of Derry and Archbishop of Armagh, whose controversy with
Hobbes arose in 1655.

57. _Tripos._ ‘Hobbes’s Tripos’ (1684) contained, among other things,
the essay ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ (1654).

58. ‘_With all these means_,’ _etc._ _Henry IV._ Part II. Act III.
Sc. 1.

60. ‘_Fixed fate_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 560.

_Dr. Priestley._ Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) _The Doctrine of
Philosophical Necessity Illustrated_ appeared in 1777. His
controversy with Horsley lasted from 1783 till 1790, during
which time many letters to Dr. Horsley were published.

71. ‘_Something far more deeply interfused_,’ _etc._ Borrowed from
Wordsworth’s _Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey_,
96 _et seq._

73. ‘_Ille igitur_,’ _etc._ Cicero, _De Fato_, XIX. 43.

ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

This appears to have been Lecture II. of the course. Cf. the essay ‘Mr. Locke a Great Plagiarist,’ _post_, p. 284.

79. ‘_Discourse of reason._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2

81. ‘_Without form and void._’ _Genesis_ i. 2.

81. _The mind alone is formative._ Kant. Cf. _post_, p. 176.

82. _The natural fool, etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 41.

84. ‘_Peace to all such._’ Pope, _Prologue to the Satires_, 193.

85. _The Vicar’s profession of faith._ See _Émile_, Livre IV.

‘_Light of Nature pursued._’ A work abridged by Hazlitt himself.
See vol. IV. of the present edition.

88. ‘_Fluttering its pennons vain_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, II.
933–4.

89. ‘_The latter end_,’ _etc._ Cf. _The Tempest_, Act II. Sc. 1.

100. ‘_The fundamental principle_,’ _etc._ Hume, _A Treatise of Human
Nature_, part IV. sect. IV.

108. _The ‘Essay on Vision.’_ Published in 1709.

110. ‘_Reason pandering will._’ Cf. ‘And reason panders will.’
_Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 4.

118. _Dr. Clarke’s celebrated work._ Samuel Clarke’s (1675–1729)
_Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God, etc._,
one of the Boyle lectures delivered in 1704 and 1705.

ON TOOKE’S DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY

Lecture IX. was ‘On the Theory of Language; as treated by Horne Tooke, by the author of _Hermes_, and Lord Monboddo.’ Cf. vol. IV. (_The Spirit of the Age_), p. 231, and notes.

119. ‘_Mere_ [very] _midsummer madness_.’ _Twelfth Night_, Act III.
Sc. 4.

123. _M. Portalis._ Jean Étienne Marie Portalis (1745–1807), one of
the compilers of the _Code Napoléon_.

‘_Of the little sneering_,’ _etc._ Junius, Letter LIV.

‘_Undoes creation_,’ _etc._ Gay, _Verses to be placed under the
Picture of Sir R. Blackmore_.

‘_Rebelling angels_,’ _etc._ Marvell, _On Mr. Milton’s Paradise
Lost_.

‘_Holds us a while_,’ _etc. Ibid._

125. ‘_That honour consists._’ _etc._ _Jonathan Wild_, Book I. Chap.
13.

128. _A celebrated German philosopher._ Kant.

131. ‘_So from the root_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 1, where much of this
paragraph is repeated.

132. ‘_Has oft been chased_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _The Hind and the
Panther_, l. 5–8.

ON SELF-LOVE

Lecture IV. of the series. Cf. the essay on ‘Self-Love and Benevolence (A Dialogue)’ printed in vol. XII. pp. 95 _et seq._, and _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action_ (vol. VII. pp. 383, _et seq._), from which a great part of the present Lecture is taken.

133. ‘_Wise saws and modern instances._’ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc.
7.

136. ‘_Mutual interest_,’ _etc._ _Jonathan Wild_, Book I. Chap. 4.

139. _Shaftesbury or Hutcheson._ Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of
Shaftesbury (1671–1713), author of the _Characteristics_
(1711), and Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), a supporter of
Shaftesbury’s ethics.

140. ‘_Pity is only_,’ _etc._ See Hobbes’s _Human Nature_, Chap. IX.
Sect. 10.

147. ‘_The jealous God_,’ _etc._

‘Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.’
Pope, _Eloisa to Abelard_, 75–6.

158. ‘_Thrills in each nerve_,’ _etc._ Cf.

‘Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.’
Pope, _An Essay on Man_, l. 218.

159. ‘_The hair-breadth scapes_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.

160. _Junius has remarked, etc._ In his letter to George III. (Dec.
19, 1769).

MADAME DE STAËL’S ACCOUNT OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE

Madame de Staël’s _De l’Allemagne_, published in London in 1813, had been reviewed, possibly by Hazlitt, in _The Morning Chronicle_ for Nov. 13, 1813, and the four papers here reprinted and signed ‘An English Metaphysician’ are ostensibly a continuation of that review, though they contain very little about German philosophy and nothing at all about German literature. They are, in fact, merely fragments in letter form of the course of lectures which Hazlitt had recently delivered at the Russell Institution. See _ante_, pp. 25 _et seq._ and notes. Hazlitt was a regular contributor to _The Morning Chronicle_ during 1813 and 1814. Some of his contributions on politics, the stage, and the fine arts will be found in vols. III., VIII. and IX. of the present edition; and he gives an account of his relations with James Perry, the editor, in the essay ‘On Patronage and Puffing’ (see vol. VI. p. 289). None of the _Chronicle_ papers included in the present volume have been republished before.

162. _The article in The Edinburgh Review._ Vol. XXII. p. 198. The
review was by Jeffrey.

164. ‘_They were made fierce_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 27.

165. ‘_Four champions fierce_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 28.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

167. ‘_A justly decried author._’ Locke, _Third Letter to the Bishop
of Worcester_ (_Works_, Bohn, II. 401).

‘_Fame is no plant_,’ _etc._ _Lycidas_, 78–82.

168. ‘_Harsh and crabbed._’ _Comus_, 476.

_Willich. Elements of the Critical Philosophy, etc., Translated
by A. F. M. Willich, M.D._, appeared in 1798. _The Critique of
Pure Reason_ had appeared in 1781.

171. ‘_And all this_,’ _etc._ Ben Jonson, _The Alchemist_, Act II. Sc.
1.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

174. _‘A dark closet_,’ _etc._ Cf. Locke’s _Essay_, II. xi. 17.

‘_Drossy and divisible._’ Dryden, _The Hind and the Panther_, I.
319.

175. _Mrs. Salmon’s ... wax figures._ An old established exhibition in
Fleet Street, near Temple Bar. See _The Spectator_, No. 28.

176. ‘_Without form and void._’ _Genesis_ i. 2.

179. ‘_Thrills in each nerve_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 158.

‘_Jove’s light’nings_,’ _etc._ _The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

At the end of this letter it was announced that ‘Another Letter on the _Principles of Human Action_ will conclude this series.’ The promised Letter, however, does not seem to have been published.

181. ‘_Peace to all such._’ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 84.

Note. For Fearn’s book, see _Table Talk_, vol. VI. pp. 63–5;
260–2 and notes.

183. ‘_So from the root_,’ _etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 1.

186. ‘_Had oft been chased_,’ _etc._ _The Hind and the Panther_, I.
5–8.

FINE ARTS.—BRITISH INSTITUTION

Hazlitt used a portion of this notice in the essay on ‘Fine Arts’ which he afterwards (1824) contributed to _The Encyclopædia Britannica_. See vol. IX., pp. 406–7. The British Institution was founded in 1805 at 52 Pall Mall and continued till 1866. The winter exhibition was of the works of living artists. A second notice, in _The Morning Chronicle_ for Feb. 10, is probably by Hazlitt. It contains very brief comments on the less notable pictures, and is not reprinted here.

188. _Mr. Bird’s Picture of Job._ The painter was Edward Bird
(1772–1819), elected a Royal Academician in 1815.

189. _Mr. Allston’s large picture._ This picture by the ‘American
Titian,’ Washington Allston (1779–1843), gained a prize of
200 guineas from the British Institution and is now at
Philadelphia.

190. _Mr. Hilton’s Picture._ By William Hilton (1786–1839), Royal
Academician (1818).

_Mr. West’s Picture._ For Benjamin West (1738–1820), who
succeeded Reynolds (1792) as President of the Royal Academy,
see vol. IX. (_Essays on the Fine Arts_), pp. 318 _et seq._

‘_Pure religion_,’ _etc._ Wordsworth’s Sonnet, ‘O Friend! I know
not which way I must look,’ etc.

_Society for the suppression of vice._ Cf. vol. I. (_The Round
Table_), p. 60 and note.

_Mr. Turner’s grand landscape._ Now in the National Gallery and
(wrongly) known as ‘Apuleia in search of Apuleius.’ The
confusion seems to have arisen from a misreading by Turner of a
story in Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ (XIV. 517 _et seq._) which the
picture was designed to illustrate.

_Lord Egremont’s picture._ An engraving by Woollett of Claude’s
‘Jacob and Laban’ was in the possession of Lord Egremont at
Petworth, and it is probably to this that Hazlitt refers. It
was at Petworth that Turner painted the landscape in question.

191. ‘_Mercury and Herse._’ Exhibited in 1811.

_The Favourite Lamb._ By William Collins (1788–1847).

THE STAGE

Nearly the whole of this paper was incorporated into the essay on _Richard III._ in _Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays_. See vol. I. pp. 300–303 and notes.

192. ‘_As tenderly be led_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘_Bustle in._’ _Richard III._, Act I. Sc. 1.

THE FINE ARTS. THE LOUVRE

195. _Blücher._ The fighting at Laon had taken place on March 9 and
10. Blücher entered Paris on March 31.

‘_Away to Heav’n_,’ _etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘_Nay, if you mouth_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

196. ‘_Pigeon-liver’d_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘_Scrawls_,’ _etc._ Pope, _Prologue to the Satires_, 19–20.

_The treaty of Pilnitz._ See vol. III. (_Political Essays_), p.
61 and note.

‘_This present ignorant time._’ Cf. _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘_Tell me your company_,’ _etc._ The proverb is quoted in _Don
Quixote_, Part II. chap. 23.

‘_Stands the statue_,’ _etc._ Thomson, _The Seasons_, _Summer_,
1347. The Venus de Medici was restored to Florence after the
fall of Napoleon.

_There is the Apollo_, _etc._ This enumeration of the treasures
collected at the Louvre by Napoleon makes Hazlitt’s authorship
of the essay quite certain. Cf. vol. VI. (_Table Talk_),
pp. 15–16 and notes, and vol. VIII. (_The English Comic
Writers_), p. 149, where the present passage is repeated almost
_verbatim_. See also _Notes of a Journey_, _etc._, vol. IX. p.
107.

197. ‘_There is old Proteus_,’ _etc._ Misquoted from Wordsworth’s
Sonnet, ‘The world is too much with us,’ etc.

‘_What’s Hecuba to them_,’ _etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘_Real feelings_,’ _etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the Revolution
in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 101).

‘_We look up_,’ _etc. Ibid._

‘_Breath can make them_,’ _etc._ Goldsmith, _The Deserted
Village_, 54.

_Wittgenstein_, _etc._ Louis Adolphe Pierre Wittgenstein
(1769–1843); Ferdinand, Baron Wintzingerode (1770–1818), two
well-known Russian generals.

‘_But once put out their light_,’ _etc._ _Othello_, Act V. Sc. 2.

_Poet who celebrated the fall_, _etc._ Coleridge, presumably.

‘_Time-hallowed laws._’ Hazlitt elsewhere attributes this phrase
to Wordsworth. See vol. III., note to p. 175.

WILSON’S LANDSCAPES AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

Part of this article was incorporated in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ article on ‘Fine Arts’ (see vol. IX. pp. 392–394), and a further part was included in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of the same essay in _Essays on the Fine Arts_ (1873). Many of Wilson’s landscapes were exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1903. In this and in the later notices of exhibitions the catalogue numbers have been omitted, and in a few cases it has been necessary to substitute a semicolon for a comma, in order to distinguish between different pictures.

199. ‘_A buoy_,’ _etc._ _King Lear_, Act IV. Sc. 6.

200. ‘_Resembling a goose-pye_,’ Swift, _Vanburgh’s House_, l. 104.

201. Note. ‘_Silly shepherds_,’ _etc._ Cf. Milton, _On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity_, The Hymn, St. viii.

202. ‘_While universal Pan_,’ _etc._ _Paradise Lost_, IV. 266–8.

Note. _Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter._ See vol. I. (_The
Round Table_), note to p. 162.

ON GAINSBOROUGH’S PICTURES

This article, like the last, was used for the _Encyclopædia_ essay (vol. IX. pp. 395–6) and was partly reproduced in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of _Essays on the Fine Arts_, 1873 (notes to p. 244).

202. _A Portrait of a Youth._ The famous ‘Blue Boy’ belonging to the
Duke of Westminster, painted in 1779.

203. _Portrait of Garrick._ Painted in 1776, and now at the
Stratford-on-Avon Museum.

‘_Distilled books_,’ _etc._ Bacon, _Essays_ (‘Of Studies’).

‘_I to Hercules._’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2.

_Cottage Children._ ‘Rustic Children,’ now in the National
Gallery.

205. Note. _Two Spanish Beggar Boys._ In the Dulwich Gallery. See vol.
IX. p. 25.

MR. KEMBLE’S PENRUDDOCK

This theatrical notice is clearly Hazlitt’s, though he omitted it from _A View of the English Stage_. Cf. vol. I. (_Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays_), p. 237, where the same words are used, with trifling variations, in criticism of Kemble’s _Hamlet_. Cf. also vol. VIII. p. 376.

205. _Penruddock._ In Richard Cumberland’s _The Wheel of Fortune_
(1795).

206. ‘_Is whispering nothing_,’ _etc._ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act I. Sc.
2.

207. ‘_There is no variableness_,’ _etc._ _St. James_ i. 17.

‘_Splenetic_ [splenetive] _and rash_.’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘_The fiery soul_,’ _etc._ Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_, l.
156–8.

‘_You shall relish_,’ _etc._ Cf. _Othello_, Act II. Sc. 1.