Chapter XXXVI: Act V: Sc. 3 (1)

KING JOHN

411. ‘_To me_,’ _etc._ _King John_, Act III. Sc. 1.

THE PRESS, ETC.

Hazlitt was a very frequent contributor to John Hunt’s ‘Weekly Miscellany,’ _The Yellow Dwarf_, which ran from Jan. 1 to May 23, 1818. Most of his contributions were included in _Political Essays_. See vol. III. pp. 254 _et seq._ Of those included in the present volume ‘The Opera’ was reprinted with some omissions and variations in _Literary Remains_, the rest are now republished for the first time, on the strength of what the editors regard as the conclusive internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship. All the essays are reprinted _verbatim_ from the Magazine.

411. _M. Jollivet._ Jean Baptiste Moïse, Comte Jollivet (1753–1818), a
prominent French politician.

412. ‘_Had’st thou believed_,’ _etc._ _Zapolya_, Prelude, Sc. 1.

413. _Was one of the passages, etc._ See the last chapter of
Coleridge’s _Biographia Literaria_.

_‘Restored,’ etc._ _Carmen Triumphale_, St. XVIII.

‘_A full solemne man._’ _Canterbury Tales_, Prologue, 209.

414. _Odes on Hoffer, etc._ Hazlitt refers to some of Wordsworth’s
‘Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.’

_‘A dateless bargain,’ etc._ Cf. _Romeo and Juliet_, Act V. Sc.
3.

_‘Stretching out,’ etc._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Sc. 1.

_‘The same,’ etc._ Hazlitt is no doubt quoting from Southey’s
_Carmen Nuptiale_, St. 52.

_Mrs. Tofts._ See Hogarth’s ‘Credulity, Superstition, and
Fanaticism,’ where the well-known imposture of Mary Tofts
(1701?–1763) is ridiculed.

415. _‘Charm these deaf adders,’ etc._ Cf. _Psalms_, lviii. 4, 5.

_‘Drops which sacred pity,’ etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc.
7.

_‘Which knaves,’ etc._ Butler, _Hudibras_, I. i. 35–6.

416. _‘The Gods,’ etc._ Cf. _As You Like It_, Act III. Sc. 3.

‘_A mingled_ [medley] _air,’ etc._ Wordsworth, _Peter Bell_,
304–5.

MR. COLERIDGE’S LECTURES

This course of Lectures began on Jan. 27, and ended on March 13, 1818. Hazlitt was lecturing on Poetry at the same time. For Coleridge’s prospectus see _Lectures on Shakespeare_ (ed. Ashe), 170.

416. _‘Those fair parts,’ etc._ Cf. _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Sc. 1.

417. ‘_Unhouselled_,’ [unhoused] _etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 2.

_‘This island’s mine,’ etc._ _The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2.

_‘Independently of his conduct,’ etc._ Cf. vol. III. (_Political
Essays_), p. 285.

_‘He had peopled else,’ etc._ _The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘_Lunes and abstractions._’ Cf. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act
IV. Sc. 2.

418. ‘_Conquering and to conquer._’ _Revelation_ vi. 2.

_Bertram._ Cf. vol. X. p. 158, and _ante_, pp. 412–3.

‘_Tedious and brief._’ _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act V. Sc. 1.

_‘The man may indeed be a reviewer,’ etc._ This saying does not
seem to have been reported elsewhere. Coleridge and Wordsworth
were often accused of ridiculing Southey’s poetical genius.

419. _‘Fie, Sir!’ etc._ Milman, _Fazio_, Act II. Sc. 1.

_‘To leave this keen encounter,’ etc._ _Richard III._, Act I. Sc.
2.

‘_Reason_ [reasons] _as plenty,’ etc._ _1 Henry IV._, Act II. Sc.
4.

‘_The inconstant moon._’ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

420. _‘His large discourse of reason,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Sc. 4.

CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE

420. _‘I do perceive a fury,’ etc._ Cf.

‘I do understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.’ _Othello_, Act IV. Sc. 2.

421. _‘And as the soldiers’ bare dead bodies lay,’ etc._ _1 Henry
IV._, Act I. Sc. 3.

_‘The very age,’ etc._ ‘The very age and body of the time.’
_Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

_‘An understanding,’ etc._ ‘Give it an understanding, but no
tongue.’ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 2.

421. _‘They are begot,’ etc._ Hazlitt was perhaps thinking of ‘Begot
upon itself, born on itself.’ _Othello_, Act III. Sc. 4.

_‘He has tasted,’ etc._ Lamb’s version (as given by Coleridge) of
Thekla’s song in Act II. Sc. 6 of _The Piccolomini_. See
Coleridge’s _Poetical Works_ (ed. J. D. Campbell), p. 648. Lamb
himself printed the song differently. See _The Works of Charles
and Mary Lamb_, ed. E. V. Lucas, v. 27 and notes.

422. _‘The man whose eye,’ etc._ Wordsworth, _Lines left upon a Seat
in a Yew-tree, etc._, 55–59.

_Hogarth’s famous print._ Hazlitt perhaps refers to Hogarth’s
frontispiece to Kirby’s ‘Perspective.’

‘_As ’twere in spite of scorn._’ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, I. 619.

_‘The child and champion,’ etc._ See vol. III. p. 99 and note.

424. _‘The statue,’ etc._ Thomson, _The Seasons_, Summer, 1346.

‘_The starry Galileo._’ _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_, Canto IV.
54.

_‘Now in glimmer,’ etc._ Coleridge, _Christabel_, 169.

_‘Moving wild laughter,’ etc._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act V. Sc.
2.

_‘The double night’, etc._ _Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage_, Canto
IV. 81.

425. ‘_Seen of all eyes._’ Cf. _Revelation_, i. 7.

THE OPERA

426. _‘The glass of fashion,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 1.

‘_The fool of the senses._’ _Macbeth_, Act II. Sc. 1.

_‘How happy,’ etc._ _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act II. Sc. 2.

428. _‘With some sweet,’ etc._ _Macbeth_, Act V. Sc. 3.

_‘The cloister’d heart,’ etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 268 and note.

429. _‘The flower of Britain’s warriors,’ etc._ Southey, _Carmen
Nuptiale_, 16.

430. _A contemporary critic._ Hazlitt perhaps refers to Schlegel. See
vol. VIII. (_A View, etc._) p. 324.

ON THE QUESTION WHETHER POPE WAS A POET

Hazlitt was for a time a fairly frequent contributor to _The Edinburgh Magazine_ (New Series), otherwise known as _The New Scots Magazine_. Two of his contributions, ‘Remarks on Mr. West’s Picture of Death on the Pale Horse,’ and ‘On the Ignorance of the Learned,’ have been published in vols. IX. and VI. respectively. The essays ‘On Fashion,’ ‘On Nicknames’ and ‘Thoughts on Taste’ in the present volume were first reprinted with omissions and variations in _Sketches and Essays_ (1839); those ‘On the Question whether Pope was a Poet,’ (signed W. H.), and ‘On Respectable People,’ are now reprinted for the first time.

431. ‘_The pale reflex._’ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 5.

432. _‘In fortune’s ray,’ etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘_Gnarled oak._’ Shakespeare uses this phrase (_Measure for
Measure_, Act II. Sc. 2), but Hazlitt probably meant a ‘knotted
oak’ which is the expression used in the passage he had just
written down.

_‘Calm contemplation,’ etc._ Thomson, _The Seasons_, Autumn,
1277.

ON RESPECTABLE PEOPLE

Signed ‘A. Z.’ in the Magazine.

434. ‘_Buys golden opinions._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 7.

_‘The learned pate,’ etc._ _Timon of Athens_, Act IV. Sc. 3.

435. _Otway, etc._ Otway, according to the familiar but probably
untrue account first given by T. Cibber in _The Lives of
the Poets_, was choked by the first mouthful of a roll
which he bought with money given to him by a gentleman in a
coffee-house.

‘_For a song._’ The story of Lord Burghley’s ungenerous treatment
of Spenser was first recorded by Fuller.

‘_The time gives evidence of it._’ Cf. ‘This was sometime a
paradox, but now the time gives it proof.’ _Hamlet_, Act III.
Sc. 1.

436. _‘What can ennoble sots,’ etc._ Pope, _An Essay on Man_, IV.
215–6.

‘_All honourable men._’ _Julius Cæsar_, Act III. Sc. 2.

437. ‘_Lives and fortunes men._’ For the old formula of ‘lives and
fortunes’ see Burke’s _Reflections on the Revolution in France_
(_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 18 and note.)

ON FASHION

437. _‘Born of nothing,’ etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 421.

_‘His garment,’ etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, III. xii. 8.

‘_The great vulgar and the small._’ Cowley, Horace’s _Odes_, III.
1.

439. _‘The sign of an inward,’ etc._ Misquoted from the Catechism.

440. _‘And are, when unadorned,’ etc._ Thomson, _The Seasons_, Autumn,
206.

‘_The city madam_’ [woman], _etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc.
7.

_‘The age is grown so picked,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

441. _The story in Peregrine Pickle._ Chap, lxxxvii.

_‘Lisping and ambling,’ etc._ Cf. _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 1.

442. ‘_In a high or low degree._’ Cf. Pope, _Epilogue to the Satires_,
1. 137.

_‘And thin partitions,’ etc._ Dryden, _Absalom and Achitophel_,
1. 164.

‘_Kings are naturally,’ etc._ Burke, _Speech on Economical
Reform_ (_Works_, Bohn, II. 106).

ON NICKNAMES

442. _‘Hæ nugæ,’ etc._ Cf. Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 451–2.

443. _‘The priest,’ etc._ _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act I. Sc. 1.

_‘As infidels,’ etc._ Hazlitt alludes to a note in the ‘Beauties
of the Anti-Jacobin,’ denouncing Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey.
See vol. X. (_Contributions to the Edinburgh Review_), p. 139.

444. _‘Sound them,’ etc._ _Julius Cæsar_, Act I. Sc. 2.

_An eminent character._ Probably Stoddart, late editor of _The
Times_. See _post_, p. 448.

_‘Hath Britain all the sun,’ etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act III. Sc. 4.

445. ‘_Brevity is the soul of wit._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

_‘The unbought grace of life,’ etc._ Burke, _Reflections on the
Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 89).

446. _‘Leave the will puzzled,’ etc._ _Ibid._, II. 103.

_‘Bring but a Scotsman,’ etc._ Burns, _The Author’s Earnest Cry
and Prayer, etc._ Postscript, St. 4.

447. _‘As rage,’ etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act I. Sc. 3.

_‘A nickname is the heaviest stone,’ etc._ Cf. ‘It is the
heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell
him he is at the end of his nature.’ Sir Thomas Browne,
_Hydriotaphia_, IV. 23. See also vol. III. (_Political
Essays_), p. 261.

_As Canning pelted a noble lord, etc._ Canning ridiculed Henry
Addington (afterwards Lord Sidmouth) under the title of the
‘Doctor.’ His father was well known as a ‘mad’ doctor.

448. _‘With so small a web,’ etc._ _Othello_, Act II. Sc. 1.

_‘A starling,’ etc._ _1 Henry IV._, Act I. Sc. 3.

449. _Stat nominis umbra._ Lucan, _Pharsalia_, I. 135.

THOUGHTS ON TASTE

450. _‘He had found a few pearls,’ etc._ _Œuvres_, L. 58. July 19,
1776.

_‘Rich as the oozy bottom,’ etc._ _Henry V._, Act I. Sc. 2.

_‘Or like a gate of steel,’ etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act
III. Sc. 3.

451. ‘_Damns_ [condemns] _him,’ etc._ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act
IV. Sc. 3.

_‘Lay their choppy fingers,’ etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 3.

452. _‘Have built high towers,’ etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 749.

_‘Majestic though in ruin.’_ _Paradise Lost_, II. 305.

_Innocence ‘likest heaven.’_ ‘O innocence deserving Paradise.’
_Ibid._, V. 445–6.

_‘In tones,’ etc._ _Paradise Regained_, IV. 255.

_The author of the ‘Friend,’ etc._ Coleridge may have said this
to Hazlitt himself. He described Pope’s writings as ‘a
conjunction disjunctive of epigrams’ (_Biographia Literaria_,
chap. I.). For his views on French Tragedy, see _ibid._,
Satyrane’s _Letters_, Letter II.

_The author of the ‘Excursion,’ etc._ See _The Excursion_, II.
484. Cf. vol. I. (_The Round Table_), p. 116 and note.

Note. _Non satis est, etc._ Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 99.

453. _‘Not to admire,’ etc._ ‘Not to admire is all the art I know,’
quoted by Pope from Creech’s translation of Horace. See
_Imitations of Horace_, Book I. Epistle vi. I.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

454. ‘_Hope told a flattering tale._’ An anonymous song sung to
Paisiello’s famous air, ‘Nel cor più non mi sento,’ from _La
Molinara_.

455. ‘_Pierceable._’ ‘Not perceable with any power of any starr’ (_The
Faerie Queene_, I. I. 7) is quoted elsewhere by Hazlitt.

_‘The drops,’ etc._ _As You Like It_, Act. II. Sc. 7.

456. ‘_Swept and garnished._’ _S. Matthew_ xii. 44.

_‘Knowledge at each entrance,’ etc._ _Paradise Lost_, III. 50.

Note. _Mr. Allston._ See _ante_, note to p. 189.

Note. _‘A temple,’ etc._ Cf. _2 Corinthians_, v. 1.

457. ‘_Nor seem’d_’ [appeared], _‘etc._ _Paradise Lost_, I. 592–4.

_Better than nothing._ At this point in the Magazine there is a
footnote by the editor, protesting against the view that
Rogers’s _Human Life_ is ‘nothing,’ and the _Lyrical Ballads_
only ‘something.’ He adds ‘Who told this lively writer that Mr.
Southey ever preferred the _Excursion_ to _Paradise Lost_?’

_The preference given, etc._ A review of _Human Life_ by Jeffrey
in _The Edinburgh Review_ (XXXI. 325) contains a contemptuous
reference to ‘a Lakish ditty.’

457. _‘Carnation,’ etc._ _Henry V._, Act II. Sc. 3.

458. _I know an admirer of Don Quixote, etc._ This was Lamb. See vol.
VII. (_The Plain Speaker_), p. 36.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

This conclusion of ‘Thoughts on Taste’ does not appear to have been published in the _Edinburgh Magazine_, or, so far as the editors have been able to discover, in any Magazine. In the _Edinburgh Magazine_ the _second_ essay is described as ‘a conclusion of some thoughts on the same subject, in our Number for October 1818.’ This third essay is reprinted from _Sketches and Essays_, where it was perhaps printed from a MS. or proof.

460. _Mr. Pratt._ Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749–1814), whose ‘Sympathy, a
Poem,’ was published anonymously in 1788.

_‘That come’ etc._ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Sc. 4.

461. _‘And fit audience find,’ etc._ _Paradise Lost_, VII. 31.

[HISTORICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE]

(1) Two letters from Hazlitt under the heading ‘Historical Illustrations of Shakespeare’ appeared in the number for January 1819 (vol. IV. p. 39) and ran as follows: ‘Mr. Editor, I daresay you will agree with me in thinking, that whatever throws light on the dramatic productions of Shakespeare, deserves to be made public. I have already, in the volume called _Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays_,[81] shewn, by a reference to the passages in North’s translation of Plutarch, his obligations to the historian in his Coriolanus, and the noble way in which he availed himself of the lights of antiquity in composing that piece. I shall, with your permission, pursue the subject in the present and some future articles. The parallel is even more striking between the celebrated trial-scene in Henry VIII., and the following narrative of that event, as it actually took place, which is to be found in Cavendish’s Negociations of Cardinal Wolsey,’ [a long quotation from that work follows, and Hazlitt concludes]: ‘In another article I shall give some remarks on this subject, and the passages in Holingshed on which Macbeth is, in a great measure, founded. I am, Sir, your humble servant, W. Hazlitt. London, Nov. 13, 1818.’ Another letter on the same subject appeared in September 1819 (vol. V. p. 262): ‘Mr. Editor, The following passage in North’s translation of Plutarch will be found to have been closely copied in the scene between Brutus and his wife in Julius Cæsar’ [a long quotation from Plutarch—see Temple Classics edition, vol. IX. pp. 256–258—follows, and Hazlitt continues]: Again, the following curious account, extracted from Magellan’s Voyage to the South Seas, may throw light on the origin of the Tempest, and the character of Caliban. The mention of the god Setebos seems decisive of the identity of the source from which he borrowed.’ The letter concludes with an extract from Magellan’s Voyage.

ON THE PRESENT STATE OF PARLIAMENTARY ELOQUENCE

Many of Hazlitt’s numerous contributions to _The London Magazine_ have been included in former volumes of the present edition. Of those printed in this volume, the essay ‘On the Spirit of Partisanship’ was reprinted in _Sketches and Essays_ (1839), that ‘On Consistency of Opinion’ in _Winterslow_ (1850). The remaining five are now republished for the first time.

Some interesting particulars about _The London Magazine_ will be found in Mr. Bertram Dobell’s _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_ (1903).

The essay ‘On the Present State of Parliamentary Eloquence’ is signed ‘T.’ and is No. IV. of the series entitled ‘Table Talk.’ Cf. the Bibliographical and Critical Notes to _The Eloquence of the British Senate_, vol. III. p. 389, to which this essay may be regarded as supplementary. Hazlitt had been a parliamentary reporter on _The Morning Chronicle_ in 1813. The exact period does not seem to be ascertainable, but the present essay shows that he heard Plunket’s great speech on Catholic Emancipation (Feb. 25, 1813), and Sir James Mackintosh’s maiden speech (Dec. 14, 1813). With regard to Plunket’s speech there is a tradition that Hazlitt was so fascinated by it that he omitted to take any notes of it. See _Memoirs, etc._ (1867), I. 196. Most of the speakers here described are referred to more than once by Hazlitt elsewhere.

464. _‘Such a one,’ etc._ The Letters of the younger Pliny, I. 20.

465. _‘Domestic treason,’ etc._ Cf. _Macbeth_, Act III. Sc. 2.

466. ‘_Make a wanton._’ _Hamlet_, Act V. Sc. 2.

468. _‘Plays round the head,’ etc._ Pope, _An Essay on Man_, IV. 254.

469. _‘Kindle them,’ etc._ _Comus_, 794–5.

470. _‘Ample scope,’ etc._ Cf. Gray, _The Bard_, 51.

471. ‘_Would lengthen_ [stretch] _out,’ etc._ _Macbeth_, Act IV. Sc.
1.

472. _‘Grove nods to grove,’ etc._ Pope, _Moral Essays_, IV. 117–8.

_Roubilliac._ Louis François Roubiliac (1695–1762), many of whose
monuments are in Westminster Abbey. His remark quoted by
Hazlitt was made to Reynolds. See Northcote’s _Life of Sir J.
Reynolds_, p. 44.

Note 1. _‘It is a custom,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 4.

Note 2. _Mr. Phillips._ Hazlitt presumably refers to Charles
Phillips (1787?–1859), a florid Irish barrister, called to the
English bar in 1821.

Note 3. _‘Like Juno’s swans,’ etc._ _As You Like It_, Act I. Sc.
3.

473. _Mr. Banks._ Henry Bankes (1757–1834), M.P. for Corfe Castle
(1780–1826).

_Mr. Charles Yorke._ Charles Philip Yorke (1764–1834), who had
been conspicuous in the stormy privilege debates of 1810. He
was at this time M.P. for Liskeard.

_Mr. Secretary Peele._ Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850), then Chief
Secretary for Ireland and a strong opponent of Catholic
Emancipation.

‘_Without o’erflowing, full._’ Sir John Denham, _Cooper’s Hill_,
192.

_It was but indifferently reported, etc._ As to Hazlitt’s own
difficulty in reporting it, see _ante_, introductory note to
the essay.

474. _‘Come then, expressive silence,’ etc._ Thomson, _A Hymn_, 118.

Note 2. _‘That speech,’ etc._ This famous saying is usually
credited to Talleyrand, but Voltaire had said much the same
thing (_Dialogues_, XIV. _Le Chapon et la Poularde_).

Note 2. _Isabey._ Jean Baptiste Isabey’s (1767–1855) picture of
The Congress of Vienna is at Windsor Castle.

475. _‘In many a winding bout,’ etc._ _L’Allegro_, 139–140.

_‘But ’tis the fall,’ etc._ Pope, _Epilogue to the Satires_, I.
144–5.

476. ‘_Out upon such half-faced fellowship._’ _1 Henry IV._, Act I.
Sc. 3.

_Summum jus, etc._ Cicero, _De Officiis_, I. 10.

477. _‘The punto,’ etc._ Cf. _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act II. Sc.
3, and Act II. Sc. 1; and _Romeo and Juliet_, Act II. Sc. 4.

_‘No further seek,’ etc._ Misquoted from Gray’s _Elegy_, 125–6.

478. _‘Hear him’s that now rise,’ etc._ Cf. Burke, _Speech on American
Taxation_, 1774 (_Works_, Bohn, I. 429).

_‘Swinging slow,’ etc._ _Il Penseroso_, 76.

_‘Mother-wit,’ etc._ Cf. Dryden, _Alexander’s Feast_, 166.

_‘Sole sovereign sway,’ etc._ Cf. _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.

479. _‘What’s serious,’ etc._ Cf. _ante_, p. 342.

_‘A windy fan,’ etc._ Cf. _The Faerie Queene_, III. xii. 8.

480. _‘Trifles,’ etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Sc. 3.

_‘To make the worse,’ etc._ _Paradise Lost_, Book II. 113–4.

_‘Takes the rose,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 4.

‘_In the extremity of an oath._’ Probably an adaptation of a
common Shakesperian expression.

[MR. CRABBE]

To _The London Magazine_ for May 1821, Hazlitt contributed an essay on Crabbe, under the heading ‘Living Authors, No. V.’ The greater part of this essay was republished in _The Spirit of the Age_ (see vol. IV. pp. 348 _et seq._), but some passages were omitted which are here supplied.

In the Magazine the first paragraph (which differs to some extent from the opening of the _Spirit of the Age_ essay) runs as follows:

‘The object of Mr. Crabbe’s writings seems to be, to show what
an unpoetical world we live in: or rather, perhaps, the very
reverse of this conclusion might be drawn from them; for it
might be said, that if this is poetry, there is nothing but
poetry in the world. Our author’s style might be cited as an
answer to Audrey’s inquiry, “Is poetry a true thing?” If the
most feigning poetry is the truest, Mr. Crabbe is of all poets
the least poetical. There are here no ornaments, no flights of
fancy, no illusions of sentiment, no tinsel of words. His song
is one sad reality, one unraised, unvaried note of unavailing
woe. Literal fidelity serves him in the place of invention; he
assumes importance by a number of petty details; he rivets
attention by being prolix. He not only deals in incessant
matters of fact, but in matters of fact of the most familiar,
the least animating, and most unpleasant kind; but he relies for
the effect of novelty on the microscopic minuteness with which
he dissects the most trivial objects—and, for the interest he
excites on the unshrinking determination with which he handles
the most painful. His poetry has an official and professional
air. He is called out to cases of difficult births, of fractured
limbs, or breaches of the peace; and makes out a parish register
of accidents and offences. He takes the most trite, the most
gross and obvious, and revolting part of nature, for the subject
of his elaborate descriptions; but it is nature still, and
Nature is a great and mighty goddess. “Great is Diana of the
Ephesians.”[82] It is well for the reverend author that it is
so. Individuality is, in his theory, the only definition of
poetry. Whatever is, he hitches into rhyme. Whoever makes an
exact image of any thing on the earth below, however deformed or
insignificant, according to him, must succeed and he has
succeeded. Mr. Crabbe is one of the most popular and admired of
our living writers. That he is so, can be accounted for on no
other principle than the strong ties that bind us to the world
about us and our involuntary yearnings after whatever in any
manner powerfully and directly reminds us of it. His Muse is not
one of the daughters of Memory, but the old toothless mumbling
dame herself, doling out the gossip and scandal of the
neighbourhood, recounting, _totidem verbis et literis_, what
happens in every place in the kingdom every hour in the year,
and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels.
But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous,
leaving nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest
grievances, a village oracle and critic, most veritable, most
identical, bringing us acquainted with persons and things just
as they happened, and giving us a local interest in all she
knows and tells. The springs of Helicon are, in general,
supposed to be a living stream, bubbling and sparkling, and
making sweet music as it flows; but Mr. Crabbe’s fountain of the
Muses is a stagnant pool, dull, motionless, choked up with weeds
and corruption; it reflects no light from heaven, it emits no
cheerful sound:—his Pegasus has not floating wings, but feet,
cloven feet that scorn the low ground they tread upon;—no
flowers of love, of hope, or joy spring here, or they bloom only
to wither in a moment; our poet’s verse does not put a spirit of
youth in every thing, but a spirit of fear, despondency and
decay; it is not an electric spark to kindle and expand, but
acts like the torpedo touch to deaden and contract: it lends no
rainbow tints to fancy, it aids no soothing feelings in the
heart; it gladdens no prospect, it stirs no wish; in its view
the current of life runs slow, dull, cold, dispirited,
half-underground, muddy, and clogged with all creeping things.
The world is one vast infirmary; the hill of Parnassus is a
penitentiary; to read him is a penance; yet we read on! Mr.
Crabbe is a _fascinating_ writer. He contrives to “turn diseases
to commodities,” and makes a virtue of necessity. He puts us out
of conceit with this world, which perhaps a severe divine should
do; yet does not, as a charitable divine ought, point to
another. His morbid feelings droop and cling to the earth;
grovel, where they should soar; and throw a dead weight on every
aspiration of the soul after the good or beautiful. By degrees,
we submit and are reconciled to our fate, like patients to a
physician, or prisoners in the condemned cell. We can only
explain this by saying, as we said before, that Mr. Crabbe gives
us one part of nature, the mean, the little, the disgusting, the
distressing; that he does this thoroughly, with the hand of a
master; and we forgive all the rest!’—

The essay then proceeds as in _The Spirit of the Age_, with a few trifling variations, down to the words ‘inscribed to the Rutland family!’ (vol. IV. p. 351, last line), after which there is the following long passage, omitted from that work [the quotations are indicated in brackets]:

‘But enough of this; and to our task of quotation.’ The poem of
_The Village_ sets off nearly as follows:

‘“No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,” etc. [_The Village_,
i. 49–62].

‘This plea, we would remark by the way, is more plausible than
satisfactory. By associating pleasing ideas with the poor, we
incline the rich to extend their good offices to them. The
cottage twined round with real myrtles, or with the poet’s
wreath, will invite the hand of kindly assistance sooner than
Mr. Crabbe’s “ruin’d shed”; for though unusual, unexpected
distress excites compassion, that which is uniform and
remediless produces nothing but disgust and indifference.
Repulsive objects (or those which are painted so) do not
conciliate affection, or soften the heart.’

‘“Lo! where the heath with withering brake grown o’er,” etc.
[_The Village_, i. 63–84].[83]

‘This is a specimen of Mr. Crabbe’s taste in landscape-painting,
of the power, the accuracy, and the hardness of his pencil. If
this were merely a spot upon the canvas, which might act as a
foil to more luxuriant and happier scenes, it would be well. But
our valetudinarian “travels from Dan to Beersheba, and cries it
is all barren.” Or if he lights “in a favouring hour” on some
more favoured spot, where plenty smiles around, he then turns
his hand to his human figures, and the balance of the account is
still very much against Providence, and the blessings of the
English Constitution. Let us see.

‘“But these are scenes where Nature’s niggard hand,” etc. [_The
Village_, I. 131–153.][84]

‘Grant all this to be true; nay, let it be told, but not told in
“mincing poetry.”[85] Next comes the WORKHOUSE, and this, it
must be owned, is a master-piece of description, and the climax
of the author’s inverted system of rural optimism.

‘“Thus groan the Old, till by disease opprest,” etc. [_The
Village_, I. 226 to the end of Book I.][86]

‘To put our taste in poetry, and the fairness of our opinion of
Mr. Crabbe’s in particular, to the test at once, we will
confess, that we think the two lines we have marked in italics:

‘“Him now they follow to his grave, and stand
Silent and sad, and gazing, hand in hand”—

worth nearly all the rest of his verses put together, and an
unanswerable condemnation of their general tendency and spirit.
It is images, such as these, that the polished mirror of the
poet’s mind ought chiefly to convey; that cast their soothing,
startling reflection over the length of human life, and grace
with their amiable innocence its closing scenes; while its less
alluring and more sombre tints sink in, and are lost in an
absorbent ground of unrelieved prose. Poetry should be the
handmaid of the imagination, and the foster-nurse of pleasure
and beauty: Mr. Crabbe’s Muse is a determined enemy to the
imagination, and a spy on nature.

‘Before we proceed, we shall just mark a few of those
quaintnesses of expression, by which our descriptive poet has
endeavoured to vary his style from common prose, and so far has
succeeded. Speaking of Quarle he says:

‘“Of Hermit Quarle we read, in island rare,
Far from mankind and seeming far from care;
Safe from all want, and sound in every limb;
Yes! there was he, and there was care with him.”[87]

· · · · ·

‘“Here are no wheels for either wool or flax,
But packs of cards—made up of sundry packs.”[88]

· · · · ·

‘“Fresh were his features, his attire was new;
Clean was his linen, and his jacket blue:
Of finest _jean_, his trowsers, tight and trim,
Brush’d the large buckle at the silver rim.”[89]

‘To compare small things with great, this last touch of minute
description is not unlike that in Theseus’s description of his
hounds:

‘“With ears that sweep away the morning dew.”[90]

· · · · ·

‘“Alas! your reverence, wanton thoughts, I grant,
Where once my motive, now the thoughts of want.
Women like me, as ducks in a decoy,
Swim down a stream, and seem to swim in joy.”[91]

· · · · ·

‘“But from the day, that fatal day she spied
The pride of Daniel, Daniel was her pride.”[92]

‘As an instance of the _curiosa felicitas_ in descriptive
allusion (among many others) take the following. Our author,
referring to the names of the genteeler couples, written in the
parish register, thus “morals” on the circumstance:

‘“How fair these names, how much unlike they look,” etc. [_The
Parish Register_, II. 283–300.]

‘The _Library_ and the _Newspaper_, in the same volume, are
heavy and common-place. Mr. Crabbe merely sermonises in his
didactic poetry. He must pierce below the surface to get at his
genuine vein. He is properly himself only in the petty and the
painful. The _Birth of Flattery_ is a homely, incondite lay. The
author is no more like Spenser than he is like Pope. The ballad
of Sir Eustace Grey is a production of great power and genius.
The poet, in treating of the wanderings of a maniac, has given a
loose to his conception of imaginary and preternatural evils.
But they are of a sort that chill, rather than melt the mind;
they repel instead of haunting it. They might be said to be
square, portable horrors, physical, external, not shadowy, not
malleable; they do not arise out of any passion in the mind of
the sufferer, nor touch the reader with involuntary sympathy.
Beds of ice, seas of fire, shaking bogs, and fields of snow, are
disagreeable matters of fact; and though their contact has a
powerful effect on the senses, we soon shake them off in fancy.
Let any one compare this fictitious legend with the unadorned,
unvarnished tale of Peter Grimes, and he will see in what Mr.
Crabbe’s characteristic strength lies. He is a most potent
copyist of actual nature, though not otherwise a great poet. In
the case of Sir Eustace, he cannot conjure up any phantoms from
a disordered imagination; but he makes honest Peter, the
fisherman of the Borough, see visions in the mud where he had
drowned his ’prentice boys, that are as ghastly and bewitching
as any mermaid. We cannot resist giving the scene of this
striking story, which is in our author’s exclusive manner.
“Within that circle none durst walk but he.”[93]

‘“Thus by himself compell’d to live each day,” etc. [_The
Borough_, Letter XXII. 171–204.]’

The last paragraph, following this quotation, is the same as in _The Spirit of the Age_ (vol. IV. pp. 352–3).

HAYDON’S CHRIST’S AGONY IN THE GARDEN

483. _Matthews._ Charles Mathews (1776–1835), the comedian, whose
famous ‘At Homes’ Hazlitt refers to.

‘_Sea, earth, and air._’ Cf. ‘And shot my being through earth,
sea, and air.’ Coleridge, _France, An Ode_, 103.

_He bestrides his art, etc._ Haydon was pleased with these words
which he quoted in a letter to a friend extracted in Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt’s _Four Generations of a Literary Family_ (I. 234).
Haydon wrongly refers to Hazlitt’s article as having appeared
in _The New Monthly Magazine._ See also Haydon’s _Life, etc._
(ed. T. Taylor, I. 418), where, speaking of this picture,
Haydon says ‘Except the Christ’s head and the St. John sleeping
it was the worst picture ever escaped my pencil.’

_‘Ample room,’ etc._ Gray, _The Bard_, 51.

484. _‘A hand,’ etc._ Donne, _The Storm_, 3–4.

485. _The celebrated Madonna, etc._ See vol. IX. p. 67.

POPE, LORD BYRON, AND MR. BOWLES

For Byron’s Letters to Murray ‘On the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles’s Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope’ and a full account of the controversy see Byron’s _Letters and Journals_ (ed. Prothero), V. Appendix iii. Cf. a passage in Hazlitt’s essay ‘On the Aristocracy of Letters,’ vol. VI. (_Table Talk_), pp. 210, 223, and notes.

487. _Jem Belcher._ James Belcher (1781–1811), who defeated Andrew
Gamble in 1800.

_In the Preface to his Tragedy._ _Marino Faliero._

‘_A tale of bawdry._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

488. ‘_Our sweet voices._’ _Coriolanus_, Act II. Sc. 3.

489. ‘_Most small faults._’ Cf. _King Lear_, Act I. Sc. 4.

_‘Ends of verse,’ etc._ Butler, _Hudibras_, I. iii. 1011–2.

490. ‘_Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms._’ The Earl of
Rochester, _On a Parish Clerk with a bad voice._

492. _‘Full of wise saws,’ etc._ _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 7.

494. _‘So perfumed,’ etc._ _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act II. Sc. 2.

495. ‘_Roaming the illimitable ocean wide._’ Cf. ‘Roaming the
illimitable waters round.’ Wordsworth, _The Female Vagrant_,
175.

‘_Ill at these numbers._’ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

‘_Damnable iteration in him._’ _1 Henry IV._, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘_Keeps distance due._’ _Paradise Lost_, III. 578.

496. _‘Luscious,’ etc._ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 3.

_The grand-daughters of Mr. Coutts._ The two Misses Burdett,
presumably the daughters of Sir Francis Burdett and therefore
grand-daughters of Thomas Coutts the banker, were presented at
court on May 3, 1821, but Hazlitt’s meaning is a little
obscure.

_The Editor of the New Monthly Magazine._ Campbell, the poet.

_‘High arbiter,’ etc._ _Paradise Lost_, II. 908–9.

‘_All the art of art is flown._’ Cf. the note on ‘all the life of
life was flown’ in vol. VI. (_Table Talk_), p. 24.

497. _‘The stones and tower,’ etc._ Cf. _Peter Bell_, 856 _et seq._

497. ‘_Host of human life._’ Byron in his Letter speaks of having met
Bowles at the house ‘of our venerable host of _Human Life_,’
_i.e._ Rogers, the Poet.

498. _‘Of amber-headed snuff-box,’ etc._ Pope, _The Rape of the Lock_,
IV. 123–4.

499. ‘_Denote no foregone conclusion._’ _Othello_, Act III. Sc. 3.

_‘How far,’ etc._ _The Merchant of Venice_, Act V. Sc. 1.

500. _‘So was it,’ etc._ Cf. Wordsworth’s ‘My heart leaps up,’ etc.

501. _Almanach des gourmands._ See _The Edinburgh Review_, XXXV. 53.

502. ‘_Circumscription and confine_,’ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘_The poor man’s only music._’ Coleridge, _Frost at Midnight_,
29.

503. _‘The earth hath bubbles,’ etc._ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 3.

‘_Loud-hissing urn._’ Cowper, _The Task_, The Winter Evening, 38.

_‘Enforc’d to seek,’ etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, I. i. 7 and 8.

504. ‘_A thing of life._’ ‘She walks the waters like a thing of life.’
Byron, _The Corsair_, I. iii.

_‘Behold the lilies,’ etc._ Cf. _S. Matthew_, vi. 28–9.

_‘Daffodils,’ etc._ _A Winter’s Tale_, Act IV. Sc. 4.

505. _‘Hail, adamantine steel,’ etc._ Erasmus Darwin, _The Botanic
Garden_, Part I, II. 201–6.

_‘Launched,’ etc._ _The Rape of the Lock_, II. 4.

_‘Strange that such difference,’ etc._ Byrom, ‘On the Feuds
between Handel and Bononcini.’

506. _‘Let me not,’ etc._ _The Canterbury Tales_, The Clerke’s Tale,
880.

_‘Pope was not assuredly,’ etc._ The rest of the essay is quoted
from a former paper ‘On the question whether Pope was a poet.’
See _ante_, pp. 431–2 and notes.

ON CONSISTENCY OF OPINION

Published with some omissions in _Winterslow_ (1850).

508. _‘Servetur ad imum,’ etc._ Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 126–7.

509. _‘It is the eye of childhood,’ etc._ _Macbeth_, Act II. Sc. 2.

_‘Where the treasure is,’ etc._ _S. Matthew_ vi. 21.

_‘To be wise,’ etc._ Cf. ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate.’
_Coriolanus_, V. 3.

_Mr._ ——. Northcote, no doubt, who told Haydon that he was so
delighted with the _Catalogue_ that he ‘ordered a long candle
and went to bed to read it in ecstasy.’ _Life of Haydon_ (ed.
T. Taylor), I. 376.

511. _‘Sots,’ etc._ Pope, _An Essay on Man_, IV. 215.

_‘I had rather hear,’ etc._ Cf. _1 Henry IV._, Act III. Sc. 1.

_‘Amaze the very faculties,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

512. _Mr. Wordsworth has hardly, etc._ This passage, down to
‘Constitutional Association-monger’ (p. 513) was omitted from
_Winterslow_.

_‘So small a drop,’ etc._ _Cymbeline_, Act IV. Sc. 2.

_Applied for an injunction, etc._ A hit at Southey. See vol. III.
(_Political Essays_), pp. 192 _et seq._ and notes.

_One stroke of his prose-pen, etc._ Hazlitt probably refers
to Wordsworth’s _Two Addresses to the Freeholders of
Westmoreland_, published in 1818.

_‘The wreck of matter,’ etc._ Addison, _Cato_, v. I.

514. _Contra audentior ito._ _Æneid_, VI. 95.

_‘Whose genius,’ etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, The Garden, 255–6.

_‘Like a worm,’ etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 506.

‘_There’s sympathy._’ _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act II. Sc.
1.

515. ‘_Ancestral voices._’ Coleridge, _Kubla Khan_, 29.

515. _‘He looks up with awe,’ etc._ Cf. Burke, _Reflections on the
Revolution in France_ (_Select Works_, ed Payne, II. 101).

_‘I’ve heard of hearts unkind,’ etc._ Wordsworth, _Simon Lee_,
93–6.

_‘Every thing by turns,’ etc._ Cf. Dryden, _Absalom and
Achitophel_, I. 548.

_A young student, etc._ This passage, to the end of the
paragraph, was omitted in _Winterslow_. It would seem from the
last sentence that Sir John Stoddart is referred to.

_‘Perpetual volley,’ etc._ Cf. ‘Arrowy sleet, skin-piercing
volley.’ Cowper, _The Task_, The Winter Morning Walk, 140–1.

516. _—— always sets himself, etc._ The reference seems clearly to be
to Northcote.

_‘Though truth be truth,’ etc._ Cf. _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 1.

517. _‘Pride elevates,’ etc._ Cf. ‘Hope elevates, and joy brightens
his crest.’ _Paradise Lost_, IX. 633–4.

_‘From morn to noon,’ etc._ _Ibid._ I. 742–4.

518. _‘In all things,’ etc_. Cf. Burke’s Speech on Economical Reform
(Feb. 11, 1780), _Works_, Bohn, II. 105.

_‘To have done,’ etc._ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act III. Sc. 3.

_‘With one consent,’ etc._ _Ibid._

‘_Like a fashionable host_,’ _Ibid._

519. _‘Noise,’ etc._ Cf. _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

_‘Tell me your company,’ etc._ Cf. the well-known proverb quoted
in _Don Quixote_, Part II. chap. xxiii.

520. ‘_Linked_ [bound] _each to each,’ etc._ Wordsworth, ‘My heart
leaps up,’ etc., 9.

ON THE SPIRIT OF PARTISANSHIP

Published in _Sketches and Essays_ (1839).

521. _‘Ever strong,’ etc._ _King John_, Act III. Sc. 1.

522. _‘In their generation,’ etc._ Cf. _S. Luke_ xvi. 8.

‘_The milk of human kindness._’ _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘_Stuff o’ the conscience._’ _Othello_, Act I. Sc. 2.

_‘Turned to the stroke,’ etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, The
Time-Piece, 324–5.

523. _‘Though sun and moon,’ etc._ _Comus_, 374–5.

_‘To do a great right,’ etc._ _The Merchant of Venice_, Act IV.
Sc. 1.

524. _‘The very arm,’ etc._ Cf. _Antony and Cleopatra_, Act I. Sc. 5.

‘_Entire affection scorneth_ [hateth],’ _etc._ _The Faerie
Queene_, I. VIII. 40.

_‘Our bane,’ etc._ Addison, _Cato_, V. 1.

‘_Screwed to the sticking place._’ Cf. _Macbeth_, Act I. Sc. 7.

_‘Away to Heaven,’ etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act III. Sc. 1.

525. ‘_To grinning scorn._’

‘To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,
And grinning infamy.’
Gray, _On a Distant Prospect of Eton College_, 73–4.

526. _‘In peace,’ etc._ _Henry V._, Act III. Sc. 1.

_‘Those who are not for us,’ etc._ Cf. _S. Matthew_, xii. 30.

527. _‘Letting our frail thoughts,’ etc._ Cf. _Lycidas_, 153.

_‘Nothing but vanity,’ etc._ Cf. _ante_, note to p. 373.

530. ‘_Our withers are unwrung._’ _Hamlet_, Act III. Sc. 2.

_‘Green-eyed,’ etc._ Cf. Burke, _A Letter to a Noble Lord_
(_Works_, Bohn, V. 142).

THE PIRATE

Now republished for the first time on the strength of the internal evidence of Hazlitt’s authorship.

531. ‘_So potent art._’ _The Tempest_, Act V. Sc. 1.

‘_A far war-cry to Lochiel._’ ‘It is a far cry to Lochow’ is the
old saying.

532. _That described by Mr. Coleridge._ See _Selections from Mr.
Coleridge’s Literary Correspondence_, No. I. Letter IV., ‘To a
Junior Soph. at Cambridge,’ (_Blackwood’s Magazine_, Oct. 1821,
X. 256), republished in _Miscellanies, etc._ (Bohn, ed. Ashe),
pp. 246 _et seq._

_‘Guns,’ etc._ Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, I. 26.

_‘Hell itself,’ etc._ Cf. _The Tempest_, Act I. Sc. 2.

‘_There be land pirates, etc._’ Cf. _The Merchant of Venice_, Act
I. Sc. 3.

_Multum abludit imago._ Horace, _Satires_, II. iii. 320.

533. ‘_A brave man in distress._’ Macheath is described by Lucy as ‘a
great man in distress.’ _The Beggar’s Opera_, Act III. Sc. 4.

PEVERIL OF THE PEAK

Now republished for the first time, as it appeared in the first copies of _The London Magazine_ for February 1823. Before fifty copies had been sold, the second and third paragraphs,—from ‘There were two things that we used to admire,’ etc. to ‘Might not such a man have written the Scotch Novels?’ (see post, p. 538)—were suppressed. Shortly afterwards a writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_, having obtained possession of one of the original copies, published this passage together with indignant comments. See _Blackwood’s Magazine_, August 1824, XVI. 180–1. The editor of _The London Magazine_ replied to this attack in the number for October 1824, and stated that the review was by ‘a celebrated critic,’ and that the passage had been withdrawn out of respect, not fear. See Mr. Bertram Dobell’s _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_ (pp. 205 _et seq._). The suppressed passage is here reprinted from _Blackwood’s Magazine_.

538. _‘Thinly scattered,’ etc._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act V. Sc. 1.

_‘He knows all qualities,’ etc._ _Othello_, Act III. Sc. 3.

_‘The wisest,’ etc._ Cf. Pope, _An Essay on Man_, IV. 282.

COMMON PLACES

These were first republished by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in Bohn’s Standard Library (1871) in the volume containing _The Round Table_, etc. They originally appeared in _The Literary Examiner_ on the following dates in 1823, viz.: Nos. I.–XVIII., September 6; Nos. XIX.–XLV., September 13; Nos. XLVI.–LIII., October 11; Nos. LIV.–LIX., October 25; Nos. LX.–LXI., November 8; Nos. LXII.–LXXIII., November 15; Nos. LXXIV.–LXXV., November 22; Nos. LXXVI.–LXXXII., November 29; Nos. LXXXIII.–LXXXVII., December 13.

547. _‘According to our own deserts,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act II. Sc. 2.

_‘The true fuller’s earth,’ etc._ Cf. ‘For time, like fuller’s
earth, takes out each stain.’ Peter Pindar, _Lyric Odes_, VII.
14.

_The taste of the great in pictures, etc._ Cf. vol. VII. (_The
Plain Speaker_) pp. 292–4, where the whole paragraph is
repeated.

549. _‘Were I as tedious,’ etc._ _Much Ado About Nothing_, Act III.
Sc. 5.

550. _‘I am Misanthropos,’ etc._ _Timon of Athens_, Act IV. Sc. 3.

_‘The cruel sunshine,’ etc._ Cf. Armstrong, _The Art of
Preserving Health_, IV.

551. ‘_In its vacant interlunar cave._’ _Samson Agonistes_, 89.

_Slop._ Sir John Stoddart, no doubt. Cf. vol. III. p. 158 and
note.

552. _‘In spite of pride,’ etc._ Pope, _An Essay on Man_, I. 293.

553. _Mr. Martin’s picture._ By John Martin (1789–1854).

l. 9. _Bowers._ Query, a misprint for ‘flowers.’

_‘The earth spins round,’ etc._ Cf. _Paradise Lost_, VIII. 164–5.

555. _‘A gentle Husher,’ etc._ _The Faerie Queene_, I. IV. 13.

556. _Mr. Cobbett alone was not invited._ The editor of _The Literary
Examiner_ says, in a note, ‘This is _bien trouvé_, but not
quite correct.’

_‘What went they forth,’ etc._ Cf. _S. Matthew_ xi. 7.

_The author of the love-letters, etc._ Cf. vol. III. (_Political
Essays_) p. 218 and note.

‘_Oh, the wonderful works of nature._’ Farquhar, _The Recruiting
Officer_, Act II. Sc. 3.

557. _‘The primrose path,’ etc._ _Hamlet_, Act I. Sc. 3.

559. _‘Via Goodman Dull,’ etc._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, Act V. Sc. 1.

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press

-----

Footnote 1:

Those essays which are now republished for the first time are
indicated by an asterisk.

Footnote 2:

These two essays were published together in _Winterslow_ as ‘Mind and
Motive.’

Footnote 3:

Published in _Winterslow_ as ‘Matter and Manner.’

Footnote 4:

This paper did not appear in _The Edinburgh (New Scots) Magazine_. See
_post_, note to p. 459.

Footnote 5:

The passage in Locke is as follows:

‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists
quickness of parts, in this of having them unconfused and being able
nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the
least difference, consists in a great measure the exactness of
judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man
above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that
common observation that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt
memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason.
For wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting them
together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any
resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and
agreeable visions in the fancy; judgment on the contrary lies quite on
the other side, in separating carefully one from another ideas wherein
can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by
similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—_Locke’s
Essay_, vol. i. p. 143.

Footnote 6:

This relates to what Mr. Locke says of unity, whom all succeeding
writers have made a point of bringing forward on all occasions, merely
for the purpose of differing from him. They set him up as the
standard, or _ne plus ultra_ of profound wisdom, and yet they always
contrive to go beyond him. I will just add, by the bye, on this
argument about number, that the fair way of putting it is by asking
whether one combination of ideas is not different from another, or
whether one foot or one inch is the same with thirty-six feet, or
thirty-six inches, not whether one foot is the same as thirty-six
inches. Otherwise there will remain a real distinction of number, both
in idea and in fact.

Footnote 7:

The two men of the greatest ability in modern times as metaphysicians,
that is, with the greatest power of seeing things in the abstract, and
of pursuing a principle into all its consequences, are in my opinion
Hobbes and Berkeley: after them come Hume and Hartley. Compared with
these Locke was a mere common practical man: of the four, I think
Hobbes was at the head, as the others only worked out the materials
with which he furnished them.

Footnote 8:

This, if the translation is correct, is proving a great deal more than
Leibnitz’s restriction of Locke’s doctrine requires, and is, as it
appears to me, the great stumbling block in Kant’s Philosophy. It is
quite enough to shew, not that there are certain notions _à priori_ or
independent of sensation, but certain faculties independent of the
senses or sensible objects, which are the intellect itself, and
necessary, after the objects are given, to form _ideas_ of them. That
is to say, ideas are the result of the action of objects on such and
such faculties of the mind. Kant’s notions _à priori_, seem little
better than the innate ideas of the schools, or the Platonic ideas or
forms, which are to me the forms of _nothing_. The sole and simple
question is, whether there are not certain intellectual faculties
distinct from the senses, which exist before any ideas can be formed,
as it is not denied by any one, that there are certain sensitive
faculties which must exist before any sensations can be received. The
one supposition no more implies innate ideas, than the other implies
innate sensations.

Footnote 9:

Now Kant, by thus classing, as he apparently does, the representations
of space and time as forms of the sensitive faculty, throws up the
whole argument: for if these very complex (not to say distracted)
ideas, can be referred to mere sensation, I do not see why all the
rest may not. Time is obviously an idea of succession or memory, and
cannot be the result of an immediate sensible impression. The only
power of the sensitive faculty is to receive blind, unconscious,
unconnected impressions; the only category of the understanding is to
perceive the _relations between these impressions_, so as to connect
them consciously together, or to form ideas. To this category of
relation, all the other general categories of quantity, totality,
cause and effect, etc. as well as the ideas of space and time, are
necessarily consequent and subordinate.

Footnote 10:

See to the same purpose Hobbes’s Human Nature, p. 25, and Leviathan,
p. 14. Berkeley’s Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 15 and 24. Hume’s
Treatise, p. 46. Helvetius on the Mind, p. 10, and Condillac’s Logic,
p. 54.

Footnote 11:

‘Lastly, that there is some one principle or substance, absolutely
simple in its nature, and distinct from every composition of matter,
which is the seat of thought, the soul of man, and the bond of our
existence, will appear evident to any one who considers the nature of
judgment and comparison: where both terms of the one, and both
branches of the other must be apprehended together, in order to
determine between them. Let one man be ever so well acquainted with
St. Peter’s at Rome, and another with St. Paul’s in London, they can
never tell which is the larger, the handsomer, or make any other
comparison between the two buildings by virtue of this knowledge. But
you will say, the one may communicate his knowledge to the other: but
then that other has the idea of both before him in his imagination,
and it is from this that he forms his judgment. Nor is the case
different with respect to the parts of a percipient being: let the
idea of an elephant be impressed upon particle _a_, and that of a
mouse upon particle _b_, they can never know either jointly or
separately which is the larger creature: nor can a judgement be formed
till the ideas of both coincide in one and the same individual. This
is the common sense of mankind. For when we make use of the pronouns,
I, He, You, &c. and say, _I heard such a sound_; _I saw such a sight;
or felt such a sensation_; are not these different impressions all
referred by implication to the same simple individual? Or were I to
say, that in looking at a chess-board for instance, one part of me saw
the yellow king, another the black, another the queen, another the
bishop, and so on, should I not be laughed at by every body as not
knowing what I was talking about?’—Tucker’s Light of Nature pursued,
chapter on the Independent Existence of Mind. See also Rousseau’s
reasoning in Answer to Helvetius, Emile, tom. 3. And Bentley’s Sermons
at the Boyle Lecture.

Footnote 12:

So little has this principle of the unity of thought and consciousness
been understood, that even Professor Stewart, the great champion of
the intellectual philosophy, utterly rejects it, and supposes that the
idea which the mind forms of any visible figure is nothing but a rapid
succession of the ideas of the several parts. See his reasoning on
this subject most ably confuted in a work lately published, entitled
‘An Essay on Consciousness, by John Fearn.’—This Essay, in spite of
the disadvantage of the mechanical hypothesis with which it is
encumbered, and the technical obscurity of the style, contains, I
think, more close and original observation on the individual processes
of the human mind, than any work published in this country in the last
fifty years.

Footnote 13:

The faces of N. Poussin want expression, as his figures want grace;
but the landscape part of his historical compositions was never
surpassed. In his plague of Athens the buildings seem stiff with
horror. His Giants seated on the tops of their fabled mountains, and
playing on their Pan’s pipes are as natural and familiar as ‘silly
shepherds sitting in a row.’ The finest of his landscapes is his
picture of the Deluge. The sun is just seen wan and drooping in his
course, the sky is bowed down with a weight of waters, and heaven and
earth seem commingling.

Footnote 14:

The reader is referred to an elegant and beautiful description of
Claude, in Mr. Northcote’s Dream of a Painter.

Footnote 15:

The idea of the necessity of tampering with nature, or giving what is
called _a flattering likeness_, was universal in this country fifty
years ago. This would no doubt be always easy, if the whole of the art
consisted in leaving out, and not putting in, what is to be found in
nature. It may not be improper to add here, that, in our opinion,
Murillo is at the head of the class of painters, who have treated
subjects of common life. There is something in his pictures which is
not to be found at all in the productions of the Dutch school. After
making the colours on the canvass feel and think, the next best thing
is to make them breathe and live. But there is in Murillo’s pictures a
look of real life, a cordial flow of animal spirits, to be met with no
where else. We might here particularly refer to his picture of the
_Two Spanish Beggar-boys_ in Mr. Desenfans’ collection, which cannot
be forgotten by those who have ever seen it.

Footnote 16:

This theory will be found contained in Richardson’s Essay on Painting,
and in Coypel’s Discourses to the French Academy.

Footnote 17:

This painter’s book of studies from nature, commonly called _Liber
Veritatis_, disproves the truth of Sir Joshua’s assumption, that his
landscapes are mere general compositions, for the finished pictures
are nearly fac-similes of the original sketches, and what is added to
them in point of regularity (if this addition was any advantage) was
at least the result of his own genius.

Footnote 18:

Sir Joshua considers it as a great disadvantage to Raphael in studying
from the antique, that he had not the facilities afforded by modern
prints, but was forced to seek out, and copy them one by one with
great care. We should be disposed to reverse this conclusion.

Footnote 19:

The pictures of Rubens at Blenheim are another proof of this, and
certainly finer than the Luxembourg gallery.

Footnote 20: