Hazlitt on English Literature Part 39

_a tragedy_. "The Borderers" was written in 1795-96 but not published till 1842. The quotation which follows is from Act iii, 1, 405, and should read:

"Action is transitory--a step, a blow, The motion of a muscle--this way or that-- 'Tis done, and in the after-vacancy We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed; Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And shares the nature of infinity."

Wordsworth quoted these lines after the dedication to "The White Doe of Rylstone" and later added a note: "This and the five lines that follow were either read or recited by me more than thirty years since, to the late Mr. Hazlitt, who quoted some expressions in them (imperfectly remembered) in a work of his published several years ago."

P. 201. _Let observation_. Cf. De Quincey's "Rhetoric" (Works, ed. Ma.s.son, X, 128): "We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson, published immediately after his death, in which, among other instances of desperate tautology, the author quotes the well-known lines from the Doctor's imitation of Juvenal--'Let observation,' etc., and contends with some reason that this is saying in effect,--_'Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively.'_" Coleridge somewhere makes the same remark.

_Drawcansir_. A character in "The Rehearsal" by the Duke of Buckingham.

"Let petty kings the names of Parties know: Where'er I am, I slay both friend and foe." v, 1.

_Walton's Angler_. In the fifth lecture of the "English Poets" Hazlitt writes: "Perhaps the best pastoral in the language is that prose-poem, Walton's Complete Angler. That well-known work has a beauty and romantic interest equal to its simplicity, and arising out of it. In the description of a fishing-tackle, you perceive the piety and humanity of the author's mind. It is to be doubted whether Sannazarius's Piscatory Eclogues are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air: we walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose on the banks of a river under a shady tree; and in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls 'the patience and simplicity of poor honest fishermen.' We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare; while Maud, the pretty milkmaid, at her mother's desire, sings the cla.s.sical ditties of the poet Marlow; 'Come live with me, and be my love.'"

_Paley_, William (1743-1805), a noted theologian. Cf. "On the Clerical Character" in "Political Essays" (Works, III, 276): "This same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley, who afterwards employed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-hand abilities, in tampering with religion, morality, and politics,--in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g between his convenience and his conscience,--in crawling between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy, is celebrated and popular for no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingenious and amusing apology for existing abuses of any description, by which any thing is to be got. It is a very elaborate and consolatory elucidation of the text, _that men should not quarrel with their bread and b.u.t.ter_. It is not an attempt to show what is right, but to palliate and find out plausible excuses for what is wrong. It is a work without the least value, except as a convenient commonplace book or _vade mec.u.m_, for tyro politicians and young divines, to smooth their progress in the Church or the State. This work is a text-book in the University: its morality is the acknowledged morality of the House of Commons." See also Coleridge's opinion of Paley on p. 288.

_Bewick_, Thomas (1753-1828), a well-known wood-engraver.

_Waterloo_, Antoine (1609?-1676?), a French engraver, painter, and etcher.

_Rembrandt_, Harmans van Rijn (1606-1669.), Dutch painter, whose mastery of light and shade was the object of Hazlitt's special admiration.

P. 202. _He hates conchology_, etc. See the lecture "On the Living Poets": "He hates all science and all art; he hates chemistry, he hates conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir Isaac Newton; he hates wisdom; he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which he says are unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them; he hates prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the dialogues in Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he hates Rubens, he hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates t.i.tian; he hates Vand.y.k.e; he hates the antique; he hates the Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of Medicis."

_Where one for sense_. Butler's "Hudibras," II, 29.

P. 203. _take the good_. Plautus's "Rudens," iv, 7.

MR. COLERIDGE

From the "Spirit of the Age."

P. 205. _and thank_. Cf. "Comus," 176: "In wanton dance they praise the bounteous Pan."

_a mind reflecting_. See p. 35 and n.

_dark rearward_. Cf. "Tempest," i, 2, 50: "In the dark backward and abysm of time."

P. 206. _That which was_. "Antony and Cleopatra," iv, 14, 9.

_quick, forgetive_. 2 "Henry IV," iv, 3, 107.

_what in him is weak_. Cf. "Paradise Lost," I, 22: "What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support."

P. 207. _and by the force_. Cf. "Macbeth," iii, 5, 28: "As by the strength of their illusion Shalt draw him on to his confusion."

_rich strond_. "Faerie Queene," III, iv, 18, 29, 34.

_goes sounding_. "Hazlitt seems to have had a hazy recollection of two pa.s.sages in Chaucer's _Prologue_. In his essay on 'My First Acquaintance with Poets,' he says, 'the scholar in Chaucer is described as going "sounding on his way,"' and in his _Lectures on the English Poets_ he says, 'the merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way "sounding always the increase of his winning."' The scholar is not described as 'sounding on his way,' but Chaucer says of him, 'Souninge in moral vertu was his speche,' while the merchant, though 'souninge alway th' encrees of his winning,' is not described as going on his way. Wordsworth has a line ('Excursion,' Book III), 'Went sounding on a dim and perilous way,' but it seems clear that Hazlitt thought he was quoting Chaucer." Waller-Glover, IV, 412.

P. 208. _his own nothings_. "Coriola.n.u.s," ii, 2, 81.

_letting contemplation_. Cf. Dyer's "Grongar Hill," 26: "till contemplation have its fill."

_Sailing with supreme dominion_. Gray's "Progress of Poesy."

_He lisped_. Pope's "Prologue to the Satires," 128.

_Ode on Chatterton_. "Monody on the Death of Chatterton," written by Coleridge in 1790, at the age of eighteen.

P. 209. _gained several prizes_. "At Cambridge Coleridge won the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode in 1792." Waller-Glover.

_At Christ's Hospital_, a London school which Leigh Hunt and Lamb attended about the same time as Coleridge. The former has left a record of its life in his "Autobiography," and Lamb has written of it, with special reference to Coleridge, in his "Recollections of Christ's Hospital" and "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago."

_Struggling in vain_. "Excursion," VI, 557.

P. 210. _Hartley_, David (1705-1757), author of "Observations on Man"

(1749), and identified chiefly with the theory of a.s.sociation. Cf.

Coleridge's "Religious Musings," 368: "and he of mortal kind Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain."

_Dr. Priestley_, Joseph (1733-1804), scientist and philosopher of the materialistic school, author of "The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Ill.u.s.trated" (1777). "See! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage."

"Religious Musings," 371.

_Bishop Berkeley's fairy-world_. George Berkeley (1685-1753), idealistic philosopher. Cf. p. 287.

_Malebranche_, Nicholas (1638-1715), author of "De la Recherche de la Verite" (1674).

_Cudworth_, Ralph (1617-1688), author of "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" (1678).

_Lord Brook's hieroglyphical theories_. Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628), friend and biographer of Sir Philip Sidney.

_Bishop Butler's Sermons_. Joseph Butler (1692-1752), author of "Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel" (1726), and "The a.n.a.logy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Const.i.tution and Course of Nature"

(1736).

_d.u.c.h.ess of Newcastle_. Margaret Cavendish (1624?-1674), published about a dozen folio volumes of philosophical fancies, poems, and plays. In "Mackery End in Hertfordshire" Lamb refers to her as "the thrice n.o.ble, chaste, and virtuous, but again somewhat fantastical and original-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle."

_Clarke_, Samuel (1675-1729), English theologian of lat.i.tudinarian principles.

_South_, Robert (1634-1716), controversial writer and preacher.

_Tillotson_, John (1630-1694), a popular theological writer of rationalistic tendency.

_Leibnitz's Pre-established Harmony_. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716), a German philosopher, represented the world as consisting of an infinite number of independent substances or monads related to each other in such a way (by the pre-established harmony) as to form one universe. Cf. Coleridge's "Destiny of Nations," 38 ff.:

"Others boldlier think That as one body seems the aggregate Of atoms numberless, each organized; So by a strange and dim similitude Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds Are an all-conscious spirit, which informs With absolute ubiquity of thought (His own eternal self-affirming act!) All his involved Monads, that yet seem With various province and apt agency Each to pursue its own self-centering end."

P. 210, n. _And so by many_. "Two Gentlemen of Verona," ii, 7, 30.

P. 211. _hortus siccus_ [dry garden] _of Dissent_. Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," Works, ed. Bohn, II, 287.