Hazlitt on English Literature Part 25

[116] T. N. Talfourd: _Edinburgh Review_, Nov., 1820.

[117] _My Literary Pa.s.sions_, 120.

[118] _Edinburgh Review_, January, 1837.

[119] Thackeray's Works, ed. Trent and Henneman, XXV, 350-51.

[120] Robertson: _Essays Toward a Critical Method_, 81.

[121] Saintsbury's _History of Criticism_ and John Davidson's _Sentences and Paragraphs_, 113.

[122] In some Roman Catholic countries, pictures in part supplied the place of the translations of the Bible: and this dumb art arose in the silence of the written oracles.

[123] See _A Voyage to the Straits of Magellan_, 1594.

[124] Taken from Ta.s.so.

[125] This word is an instance of those unwarrantable freedoms which Spenser sometimes took with language.

[126]

"That all with one consent praise new-born gauds, Tho' they are made and moulded of things past, And give to Dust, that is a little gilt, More laud than gold o'er-dusted."

_Troilus and Cressida._

[127] In the account of her death, a friend has pointed out an instance of the poet's exact observation of nature:--

"There is a willow growing o'er a brook, That shews its h.o.a.ry leaves i' th' gla.s.sy stream."

The inside of the leaves of the willow, next the water, is of a whitish colour, and the reflection would therefore be "h.o.a.ry."

[128] Why Pope should say in reference to him, "Or _more wise_ Charron,"

is not easy to determine.

[129] As an instance of his general power of reasoning, I shall give his chapter ent.i.tled _One Man's Profit is Another's Loss_, in which he has nearly antic.i.p.ated Mandeville's celebrated paradox of private vices being public benefits:--

"Demades, the Athenian, condemned a fellow-citizen, who furnished out funerals, for demanding too great a price for his goods: and if he got an estate, it must be by the death of a great many people: but I think it a sentence ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit can be made, but at the expense of some other person, and that every kind of gain is by that rule liable to be condemned. The tradesman thrives by the debauchery of youth, and the farmer by the dearness of corn; the architect by the ruin of buildings, the officers of justice by quarrels and law-suits; nay, even the honour and functions of divines is owing to our mortality and vices.

No physician takes pleasure in the health even of his best friends, said the ancient Greek comedian, nor soldier in the peace of his country; and so of the rest. And, what is yet worse, let every one but examine his own heart, and he will find, that his private wishes spring and grow up at the expense of some other person. Upon which consideration this thought came into my head, that nature does not hereby deviate from her general policy; for the naturalists hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of any one thing, is the decay and corruption of another:

_Nam quodcunque suis mutatum finibus exit, Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante._ i.e.

For what from its own confines chang'd doth pa.s.s, Is straight the death of what before it was."

_Vol._ I, _Chap._ XXI.

[130] No. 125.

[131] The ant.i.thetical style and verbal paradoxes which Burke was so fond of, in which the epithet is a seeming contradiction to the substantive, such as "proud submission and dignified obedience," are, I think, first to be found in the Tatler.

[132] It is not to be forgotten that the author of Robinson Crusoe was also an Englishman. His other works, such as the Life of Colonel Jack, &c., are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind more like that of things than words.

[133] This character was written in a fit of extravagant candour, at a time when I thought I could do justice, or more than justice, to an enemy, without betraying a cause.

[134] For instance: he produced less effect on the mob that compose the English House of Commons than Chatham or Fox, or even Pitt.

[135] As in the comparison of the British Const.i.tution to the "proud keep of Windsor," etc., the most splendid pa.s.sage in his works.

[136] Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more characteristic of his mind than this circ.u.mstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished--

"And so by many winding nooks it strays, With willing sport to the wild ocean!"

[137] The description of the sports in the forest:

"To see the sun to bed and to arise, Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes," etc.

[138] Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where the Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother's arrival.

[139] This essay was written just before Lord Byron's death.

[140]

"Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain."

_Don Juan_, Canto XI.

[141] This censure applies to the first cantos of DON JUAN much more than to the last. It has been called a TRISTRAM SHANDY in rhyme: it is rather a poem written about itself.

[142] Burke's writings are not poetry, notwithstanding the vividness of the fancy, because the subject matter is abstruse and dry, not natural, but artificial. The difference between poetry and eloquence is, that the one is the eloquence of the imagination, and the other of the understanding. Eloquence tries to persuade the will, and convince the reason: poetry produces its effects by instantaneous sympathy. Nothing is a subject for poetry that admits of a dispute. Poets are in general bad prose-writers, because their images, though fine in themselves, are not to the purpose, and do not carry on the argument. The French poetry wants the forms of the imagination. It is didactic more than dramatic. And some of our own poetry, which has been most admired, is only poetry in the rhyme, and in the studied use of poetic diction.

[143] My father was one of those who mistook his talent after all. He used to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his Letters to his Sermons.

The last were forced and dry; the first came naturally from him. For ease, half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never seen them equalled.

[144] He complained in particular of the presumption of his attempting to establish the future immortality of man, "without" (as he said) "knowing what Death was or what Life was"--and the tone in which he p.r.o.nounced these two words seemed to convey a complete image of both.

[145] He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at this time I had as little as he. He sometimes gives a striking account at present of the cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air brandis.h.i.+ng his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.

[146] See Newgate Calendar for 1758.

[147] B---- at this time occupied chambers in Mitre-court, Fleet-street.

[148] Lord Bacon is not included in this list, nor do I know where he should come in. It is not easy to make room for him and his reputation together. This great and celebrated man in some of his works recommends it to pour a bottle of claret into the ground of a morning, and to stand over it, inhaling the perfumes. So he sometimes enriched the dry and barren soil of speculation with the fine aromatic spirit of his genius. His "Essays" and his "Advancement of Learning" are works of vast depth and scope of observation. The last, though it contains no positive discoveries, is a n.o.ble chart of the human intellect, and a guide to all future inquirers.

[149] Nearly the same sentiment was wittily and happily expressed by a friend, who had some lottery puffs, which he had been employed to write, returned on his hands for their too great severity of thought and cla.s.sical terseness of style, and who observed on that occasion, that "Modest merit never can succeed!"

[150] During the peace of Amiens, a young English officer, of the name of Lovelace, was presented at Buonaparte's levee. Instead of the usual question, "Where have you served, Sir?" the First Consul immediately addressed him, "I perceive your name, Sir, is the same as that of the hero of Richardson's Romance!" Here was a Consul. The young man's uncle, who was called Lovelace, told me this anecdote while we were stopping together at Calais. I had also been thinking that his was the same name as that of the hero of Richardson's Romance. This is one of my reasons for liking Buonaparte.

[151] He is there called "Citizen Lauderdale." Is this the present earl?