Hazlitt on English Literature Part 41

P. 216. _Like the high leaves_. Southey's "The Holly Tree."

_of any poet_. In an essay in the "Plain Speaker" "On the Prose Style of Poets," Hazlitt elaborates his theory that poets turned out inferior prose. "I have but an indifferent opinion of the prose-style of poets: not that it is not sometimes good, nay, excellent; but it is never the better, and generally the worse from the habit of writing verse."

_full of wise saws_. "As You Like It," ii, 7, 156.

P. 217. _historian and prose-translator_. Southey wrote the "History of Brazil," the "History of the Peninsular War," the "Book of the Church,"

and lives of Wesley, Cowper, and Nelson. He translated from the Spanish the romances of "Amadis of Gaul," "Palmerin of England," and "The Cid."

P. 219. _Pindaric or Shandean_, i.e., whimsical. Pindaric should of course be understood as a reference to Peter Pindar, the name under which John Wolcot (1738-1819) wrote his coa.r.s.e and whimsical satires. Hazlitt mentions him at the end of his lectures "On the Comic Writers": "The bard in whom the nation and the king delighted, is old and blind, but still merry and wise:--remembering how he has made the world laugh in his time, and not repenting of the mirth he has given; with an involuntary smile lighted up at the mad pranks of his Muse, and the lucky hits of his pen."

Shandean is derived from Sterne's novel, "Tristram Shandy."

_And follows so_. "Henry V," iv, 1, 293.

_his political inconsistency_. This is the subject of Hazlitt's attacks on Southey. See "Political Essays" (Works, III, 109-120, 192-232).

ELIA

The last essay in the "Spirit of the Age" is ent.i.tled "Elia and Geoffrey Crayon." An edition published at Paris by Galignani in 1825 omits the account of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, and this text, as it is in all respects unexceptionable, has been here adopted for the sake of coherence. In a letter to Bernard Barton, February 10, 1825, Lamb refers to Hazlitt's sketch: "He has laid too many colours on my likeness, but I have had so much injustice done me in my own name, that I make a rule of accepting as much over-measure to 'Elia' as Gentlemen think proper to bestow."

P. 221. _shuffle off_. "Hamlet," iii, 1, 67.

_The self-applauding bird_. Cowper's "Truth," 58.

P. 222. _New-born gauds_ and _give to dust_. "Troilus and Cressida," iii, 3, 176-79.

_do not in broad rumor lie_, and the two following quotations are free renderings of "Lycidas," 78-82.

_Mr. Lamb rather affects_. Hazlitt had Lamb in his eye when he described the Occult School in the essay "On Criticism" ("Table Talk"): "There is another race of critics who might be designated as the _Occult School--vere adepti_. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the trans.m.u.tation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold--and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies are their delight, his mysteries are their study. They prefer Sir Thomas Brown to the Rambler by Dr. Johnson, and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy to all the writers of the Georgian Age. They judge of works of genius as misers do of hid treasure--it is of no value unless they have it all to themselves. They will no more share a book than a mistress with a friend. If they suspected their favourite volumes of delighting any eyes but their own, they would immediately discard them from the list. Theirs are superannuated beauties that every one else has left off intriguing with, bed-ridden hags, a 'stud of night-mares.' This is not envy or affectation, but a natural p.r.o.neness to singularity, a love of what is odd and out of the way. They must come at their pleasures with difficulty, and support admiration by an uneasy sense of ridicule and opposition. They despise those qualities in a work which are cheap and obvious. They like a monopoly of taste, and are shocked at the prost.i.tution of intellect implied in popular productions. In like manner, they would chuse a friend or recommend a mistress for gross defects; and tolerate the sweetness of an actress's voice only for the ugliness of her face. Pure pleasures are in their judgment cloying and insipid--

'An ounce of sour is worth a pound of sweet!'

Nothing goes down with them but what is _caviare_ to the mult.i.tude. They are eaters of olives and readers of black-letter. Yet they smack of genius, and would be worth any money, were it only for the rarity of the thing!"

P. 223. _fine fretwork_. "Essays of Elia," "The South-Sea House."

_the chimes at midnight_. 2 "Henry IV," iii, 2, 228.

P. 224. _cheese and pippins_. Ibid., v, 3.

_inns and courts of law_. "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," in "Essays of Elia."

_a certain writer_. Hazlitt himself. It is known to everybody that the friends.h.i.+p of Lamb for Hazlitt suffered certain strains, and various attempts have been made to guess at the provocations. Mutual recriminations in regard to literary borrowings have been thought to be responsible for more than one breach. So Mr. Bertram Dobell, in his "Sidelights on Lamb," 212-14, imagines that the mystery is solved in a letter of Hazlitt's to the editor of the London Magazine (April 12, 1820) charging Lamb with appropriating his ideas: "Do you keep the Past and Future? You see Lamb argues the same view of the subject. That 'young master' will antic.i.p.ate all my discoveries if I don't mind." The similarity of idea between Hazlitt's "Past and Future" and Lamb's "New Year's Eve," and the appearance in Lamb's essay of the phrase "young masters" makes it clear enough what Hazlitt is referring to, but that either man should have taken the matter very seriously is hard to believe.

It is easier to look upon Hazlitt's expression as banter of the same kind that Lamb allowed himself in connection with the essay on "Guy Faux"

alluded to in the present sketch. This subject had been proposed by Lamb, as we are informed in "Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen," and had been written up by Hazlitt in the Examiner in 1821 (Works, XI, 317-334).

Two years later Lamb contributed a paper on the same subject to the London Magazine, founded partly on an essay in the Reflector (1811), ent.i.tled "On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason." The essay in the London Magazine (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, I, 236 ff.) opens with a facetious thrust at Hazlitt: "A very ingenious and subtle writer, whom there is good reason for suspecting to be an ex-Jesuit, not unknown at Douay some five-and-twenty years since (he will not obtrude himself at M--th again in a hurry), about a twelvemonth back, set himself to prove the character of the Powder Plot conspirators to have been that of heroic self-devotedness and true Christian martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candour, he actually gained admission for his treatise into a London weekly paper, not particularly distinguished for its zeal towards either religion. But, admitting Catholic principles, his arguments are shrewd and incontrovertible. [Then follows a quotation from Hazlitt setting forth the Catholic standpoint.] It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to admit the force of this reasoning; we can only not help smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England at the commencement of the nineteenth century. We will just, as a contrast, show what we Protestants (who are a party concerned) thought upon the same subject, at a period rather nearer to the heroic project in question."

This is the kind of resentment we would expect Lamb to show at the appropriation of his ideas. That there were not wanting grounds for real grievance against Hazlitt may be gathered from a letter to Wordsworth, September 23, 1816 (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 491): "There was a cut at me a few months back by the same hand.... It was a pretty compendium of observation, which the author has collected in my disparagement, from some hundred of social evenings which we had spent together,--however in spite of all, there is something tough in my attachment to H---- which these violent strainings cannot quite dislocate or sever asunder. I get no conversation in London that is absolutely worth attending to but his." To one of his quarrels with Lamb Hazlitt owes the finest compliment he ever received, and happily it marks the termination of all differences between them. It occurs in the well-known "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey" which Lamb published in the London Magazine when Southey reproached him with his friends.h.i.+p for Hazlitt (Works, I, 233): "I stood well with him for fifteen years (the proudest of my life), and have ever spoke my full mind of him to some, to whom his panegyric must naturally be least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from him, I never betrayed him, I never slackened in my admiration for him, I was the same to him (neither better nor worse) though he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust me. At this instant, he may be preparing for me some compliment, above my deserts, as he has sprinkled many such among his admirable books, for which I rest his debtor; or, for any thing I know, or can guess to the contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He is welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can divert a spleen, or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would not quarrel with the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting against much that he has written, and some things he chooses to do; judging him by his conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by his books, in those places where no clouding pa.s.sion intervenes--I should belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion."

_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_ was published in 1621. Its quaint prose was often imitated by Lamb and had a direct effect on his style.

_Sir Thomas Browne_ (1605-1682), physician and essayist, author of "Religio Medici" (1642), "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" (1646), and "Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial" (1658).

_Fuller's Worthies_. The "History of the Worthies of England" (1662) is the best known work of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an English divine and writer on church history.

_does not make him despise Pope_. See p. 322.

_Parnell_, Thomas (1679-1717). In the sixth lecture on the "English Poets"

Hazlitt says: "Parnell, though a good-natured, easy man, and a friend to poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an occasional versifier."

_Gay_, John (1685-1732), is best known by his "Beggar's Opera" (1728) and "Fables" (1727 and 1738). Hazlitt writes of Gay in the sixth lecture on the "English Poets" and has a paper on "The Beggar's Opera" in the "Round Table."

_His taste in French and German_. Cf. "On Old English Writers and Speakers" in the "Plain Speaker": "Mr. Lamb has lately taken it into his head to read St. Evremont, and works of that stamp. I neither praise nor blame him for it. He observed, that St. Evremont was a writer half-way between Montaigne and Voltaire, with a spice of the wit of the one and the sense of the other. I said I was always of the opinion that there had been a great many clever people in the world, both in France and England, but I had been sometimes rebuked for it. Lamb took this as a slight reproach; for he had been a little exclusive and national in his tastes."

P. 225. _His admiration of Hogarth_. See note to p. 158.

_Leonardo da Vinci_ (1452-1519). Italian painter, sculptor, architect.

_fine t.i.tian head_. Hazlitt painted a portrait of Lamb in the costume of a Venetian senator. This portrait now hangs in the National Gallery.

P. 226. _to have coined_. Cf. "Julius Caesar," iv, 3, 72: "I had rather coin my heart, And drop my blood for drachmas."

_Mr. Waithman_, Robert (1764-1833), was Lord Mayor in 1823.

_Rosamond Gray_, a tale, was published in 1798 and "John Woodvill," a tragedy, in 1802. The lines in the footnote are from the second act of "John Woodvill."

SIR WALTER SCOTT

This selection forms the latter half of the sketch of Scott in the "Spirit of the Age." The following dialogue between Northcote and Hazlitt, "Conversations of Northcote," XVI, represents Hazlitt's feelings for Scott: "N. 'You don't know him, do you? He'd be a pattern to you. Oh! he has a very fine manner. You would learn to rub off some of your asperities. But you admire him, I believe.' H. 'Yes; on this side of idolatry and Toryism.' N. 'That is your prejudice.' H. 'Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a devoted enthusiast notwithstanding. There are two things I admire in Sir Walter, his capacity and his simplicity; which indeed I am apt to think are much the same.'"

P. 227. _more lively_. Cf. "Coriola.n.u.s," iv, 5, 237; "it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent."

_their habits_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 135.

P. 228. _Baron of Bradwardine_ and the others mentioned in this sentence appear in "Waverley."

_Paul Veronese_ (1528-1588), a painter of the Venetian school.

_Balfour of Burley_ and the others in this sentence appear in "Old Mortality." The quotation is from chapter 38.

_Meg Merilees_ to _Dominie Sampson_, in "Guy Mannering."

P. 229. _her head to the east_. Cf. "Guy Mannering," chap. 15; "Na, na!

not that way, the feet to the east."

_Rob Roy_ to _Die Vernon_, in "Rob Roy."

_thick coming_. Cf. "Macbeth," v, 3, 38: "thick-coming fancies."