Hazlitt on English Literature Part 27

_Aretine_. The name of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), an Italian satirist who called himself "the scourge of princes," was well known in England, but there was no translation of his works.

_Machiavel_. Nicolo Machiavelli (1468-1527), a Florentine statesman, whose name had an odious a.s.sociation because of the supposedly diabolical policy of government set forth in his "Prince." But this work was not translated till 1640. His "Art of War" had been rendered into English in 1560 and his "Florentine History" in 1595.

_Castiglione_, Balda.s.sare (1478-1529). "Il Cortegiano," setting forth the idea of a gentleman, was translated as "The Courtier" by Thomas Hoby in 1561 and was very influential in English life.

_Ronsard_, Pierre de (1524-1585), the chief French lyric poet of the sixteenth century, whose sonnets had considerable vogue in England.

_Du Bartas_, Guillaume de Sal.u.s.te (1544-1590), author of "La Semaine, ou la Creation du Monde" (1578), "La Seconde Semaine" (1584), translated as the "Divine Weeks and Works" (1592 ff.) by Joshua Sylvester.

P. 13. _Fortunate fields_. "Paradise Lost," III, 568.

_Prospero's Enchanted Island_. Eden's "History of Travayle," 1577, is now given as the probable source of Setebos, etc.

_Right well I wote_. "Faerie Queene," II, Introduction, 1-3.

P. 14. _Lear is founded_. Shakespeare's actual sources were probably Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain" (c. 1130) and Holinshed's "Chronicle."

_Oth.e.l.lo on an Italian novel_, from the "Hecatommithi" of Giraldi Cinthio (1565).

_Hamlet on a Danish, Macbeth on a Scottish tradition_. The story of Hamlet is first found in Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish chronicler of the tenth century. Shakespeare probably drew it from the "Histoires Tragiques" of Belleforest. "Macbeth" was based on Holinshed's "Chronicle of Scottish History."

P. 15. _those bodiless creations_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 138.

_Your face_. "Macbeth," i, 5, 63.

_Tyrrell and Forrest_, persons hired by Richard III to murder the young princes in the Tower. See "Richard III," iv, 2-3.

_thick and slab_. "Macbeth," iv, 1, 32.

_s.n.a.t.c.hed a_ [wild and] _fearful joy_. Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College."

P. 16. _Fletcher the poet_. John Fletcher the dramatist died of the plague in 1625.

_The course of true love_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," i, 1, 34.

_The age of chivalry was not then quite gone._ Cf. Burke: "Reflections on the French Revolution" (ed. Bohn, II, 348): "But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever."

_fell a martyr_. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), poet, soldier, and statesman, received his mortal wound in the thigh at the battle of Zutphen because, in emulation of Sir William Pelham, he threw off his greaves before entering the fight.

_the gentle Surrey_. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1518?-1547), was distinguished as an innovator in English poetry as well as for his knightly prowess.

_who prized black eyes_. "Sessions of the Poets," verse 20.

_Like strength reposing_. "'Tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm." Keats's "Sleep and Poetry," 237.

P. 17. _they heard the tumult_. "I behold the tumult and am still."

Cowper's "Task," IV, 99.

_descriptions of hunting and other athletic games_. See "Midsummer Night's Dream," iv, 1, 107 ff., and "Two n.o.ble Kinsmen," iii.

_An ingenious and agreeable writer_. Nathan Drake (1766-1836), author of "Shakespeare and his Times" (1817). In describing the life of the country squire Drake remarks: "The luxury of eating and of good cooking were well understood in the days of Elizabeth, and the table of the country-squire frequently groaned beneath the burden of its dishes; at Christmas and at Easter especially, the hall became the scene of great festivity." Chap. V.

(ed. 1838, p. 37).

_Return from Parna.s.sus_. Hazlitt gives an account of this play in the "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," Lecture V.

P. 18. _it snowed_. "Canterbury Tales," Prologue, 345.

_as Mr. Lamb observes_, in a note to Marston's "What You Will" in the "Specimens of Dramatic Literature" (ed. Lucas, 1, 44): "The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of Symbols among us, which, whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people." Cf. Schlegel's remark in the first note.

_in act_. "Oth.e.l.lo," i, I, 62.

_description of a mad-house_. "Honest Wh.o.r.e," Part 1, v. 2.

_A Mad World, My Masters_, the t.i.tle of a comedy by Middleton.

P. 19. _Music and painting are not our forte._ Cf. Hazlitt's review of the "Life of Reynolds" (X, 186-87): "Were our ancestors insensible to the charms of nature, to the music of thought, to deeds of virtue or heroic enterprise? No. But they saw them in their mind's eye: they felt them at their heart's core, and there only. They did not translate their perceptions into the language of sense: they did not embody them in visible images, but in breathing words. They were more taken up with what an object suggested to combine with the infinite stores of fancy or trains of feeling, than with the single object itself; more intent upon the moral inference, the tendency and the result, than the appearance of things, however imposing or expressive, at any given moment of time.... We should say that the eye in warmer climates drinks in greater pleasure from external sights, is more open and porous to them, as the ear is to sounds; that the sense of immediate delight is fixed deeper in the beauty of the object; that the greater life and animation of character gives a greater spirit and intensity of expression to the face, making finer subjects for history and portrait; and that the circ.u.mstances in which a people are placed in a genial atmosphere, are more favourable to the study of nature and of the human form."

_like birdlime_. "Oth.e.l.lo," ii, 1, 126.

P. 20. _Materiam superabat opus_. Ovid's "Metamorphoses," II, 5.

_Pan is a G.o.d_. Lyly's "Midas," iv, 1.

SPENSER

This is the latter half of the lecture on Chaucer and Spenser from the "English Poets."

P. 21. _Spenser flourished_, etc. Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599), served as secretary to Sir Henry Sidney in Ireland in 1577, and went again in 1580 as secretary to Lord Grey of Wilton, the Queen's new deputy to Ireland. He was driven out by a revolt of the Irish in 1598. "A View of the State of Ireland, written dialogue-wise between Eudoxus and Irenaeus ... in 1596"

was first printed in 1633.

_description of the bog of Allan_. "Faerie Queene," II, ix, 16.

_Treatment he received from Burleigh_. Hazlitt refers to this treatment specifically in the essay "On Respectable People" (XI, 435): "Spenser, kept waiting for the hundred pounds which Burleigh grudged him 'for a song,' might feel the mortification of his situation; but the statesman never felt any diminution of his sovereign's favour in consequence of it."

The facts, as they are recorded in the "Dictionary of National Biography,"

are as follows: "The queen gave proof of her appreciation by bestowing a pension on the poet. According to an anecdote, partly reported by Manningham, the diarist (Diary, p. 43), and told at length by Fuller, Lord Burghley, in his capacity of treasurer, protested against the largeness of the sum which the queen suggested, and was directed by her to give the poet what was reasonable. He received the formal grant of 50 a year in February 1590-1." Cf. Spenser's lines in "Mother Hubbard's Tale," 895 ff.

_Though much later than Chaucer_. The rest of this paragraph and most of the points elaborated in this lecture appeared in Hazlitt's review of Sismondi's "Literature of the South" in 1815 (X, 73 ff.).

_Spenser's poetry is all fairyland._ In a lecture delivered in February, 1818, three years after Hazlitt's remarks had appeared in the Edinburgh Review, Coleridge spoke as follows: "You will take especial note of the marvellous independence and true imaginative absence of all particular s.p.a.ce or time in the Faery Queene. It is in the domains neither of history or geography; it is ignorant of all artificial boundary, all material obstacles; it is truly in the land of Faery, that is, of mental s.p.a.ce. The poet has placed you in a dream, a charmed sleep, and you neither wish, nor have the power, to inquire where you are, or how you got there." Works, IV, 250.

P. 22. _clap on high_. "Faerie Queene," III, xii, 23.

_In green vine leaves_. I, iv, 22.

_Upon the top_. I, vii, 32.

P. 23. _In reading the Faerie Queene_, etc. See III, ix, 10; I, vii; II, vi, 5; III, xii.