Hazlitt on English Literature Part 43

P. 246. _a chartered libertine_. "Henry V," i, 1, 48.

P. 247. _Like proud seas_. "Two n.o.ble Kinsmen," ii, 2, 23.

_Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation?_ Scott wrote to Byron's publisher, John Murray, December 17, 1821: "I accept with feelings of great obligation, the flattering proposal of Lord Byron to prefix my name to the very grand and tremendous drama of 'Cain.' I may be partial to it, and you will allow I have cause; but I do not think that his Muse has ever taken so lofty a flight amid her former soarings."

_Farthest from them_. "Paradise Lost," I, 247.

P. 248. _the first Vision of Judgment_, the one composed by Southey on the occasion of the death of George III, celebrating that monarch's entry into heaven and provoking a spirited travesty from Byron.

_None but itself_. This line is quoted by Burke in the "Letters on a Regicide Peace," from a play written or adapted by Lewis Theobald, "The Double Falsehood" (1727). Waller-Glover.

_the tenth transmitter_. Richard Savage's "The b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

P. 250. _Nothing can cover_. Beaumont and Fletcher's "The False One," ii, 1.

ON POETRY IN GENERAL

This is the first of the "Lectures on the English Poets."

P. 251. _spreads its sweet leaves_. "Romeo and Juliet," i, 1, 158.

P. 252. _the stuff_. "Tempest," iv, 1, 156.

_mere oblivion_. "As You Like It," ii, 7, 166.

_man's life_. "King Lear," ii, 4, 270.

P. 253. _There is warrant_. "Richard III," i, 4, 112.

_such seething brains_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," v, 1, 4.

_Angelica and Medoro_. Characters in "Orlando Furioso."

P. 254. _which ecstacy is very cunning in_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 138.

_Poetry, according to Lord Bacon_. Cf. Bacon's "Advancement of Learning,"

Book II: "Because _true Historie_ representeth Actions and Euents more ordinarie and lesse interchanged, therefore _Poesie_ endueth them with more Rarenesse and more vnexpected and alternatiue Variations: So as it appeareth that _Poesie_ serueth and conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation. And therefore it was euer thought to haue some partic.i.p.ation of diuinesse, because it doth raise and erect the Minde, by submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the Mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bowe the Mind unto the Nature of things."

P. 255. _Our eyes are made the fools_. "Macbeth," ii, 1, 44.

_That if it would_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," v, 1, 19.

_The flame o' th' taper_. "Cymbeline," ii, 2, 19.

P. 256. _for they are old_. Cf. "Lear," ii, 4, 194.

_Nothing but his unkind daughters_. Cf. "King Lear," iii, 4, 72:

"Nothing could have subdued nature To such a lowness but his unkind daughters."

P. 257. _The little dogs_. Ibid., iii, 6, 65.

_So I am_. Ibid., iv, 7, 70.

_O now, for ever_. "Oth.e.l.lo," iii, 3, 347.

_Never, Iago_. Ibid., iii, 3, 453.

P. 258. _But there_. Ibid., iv, 2, 57.

_To be discarded thence!_ The first edition at this point adds: "This is like that fine stroke of pathos in 'Paradise Lost,' where Milton makes Adam say to Eve,

'Should G.o.d create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart!'"

_Impa.s.sioned poetry is an emanation of the moral and intellectual part of our nature._ Cf. "On People of Sense" in "Plain Speaker": "Poetry acts by sympathy with nature, that is, with the natural impulses, customs, and imaginations of men, and is, on that account, always popular, delightful, and at the same time instructive. It is nature moralizing and _idealizing_ for us; inasmuch as, by shewing us things as they are, it implicitly teaches us what they ought to be; and the grosser feelings, by pa.s.sing through the strainers of this imaginary, wide-extended experience, acquire an involuntary tendency to higher objects. Shakspeare was, in this sense, not only one of the greatest poets, but one of the greatest moralists that we have. Those who read him are the happier, better, and wiser for it."

_Moore_, Edward (1712-1757), author of "The Gamester" (1753).

P. 259. _As Mr. Burke observes_, in "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," Part I, Section 15: "Choose a day on which to represent the most sublime and affecting tragedy we have; appoint the most favourite actors; spare no cost upon the scenes and decorations; unite the greatest efforts of poetry, painting, and music; and when you have collected your audience, just at the moment when their minds are erect with expectation, let it be reported that a state criminal of high rank is on the point of being executed in the adjoining square; in a moment the emptiness of the theatre would demonstrate the comparative weakness of the imitative arts, and proclaim the triumph of the real sympathy."

_Masterless pa.s.sion_. Cf. "Merchant of Venice," iv, 1, 51: "For affection, Mistress of pa.s.sion, sways it to the mood," etc.

P. 260. _satisfaction to the thought_. "Oth.e.l.lo," iii, 3, 97.

_Now night descending_. See p. 128.

_Throw him_. Collins's "Ode to Fear."

_Ingrat.i.tude_. Cf. "King Lear," i, 4, 281: "More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child."

P. 261. _both at the first_. "Hamlet," iii, 2, 23.

P. 262. _And visions_. Hazlitt uses this quotation in his paper on "Wordsworth's Excursion" in the "Round Table" with the change of _poetic_ to _prophetic_. "This couplet occurs in a letter from Gray to Walpole ('Letters,' ed. Tovey I, 7-8). The lines are apparently a translation by Gray of Virgil, 'aeneid,' VI, 282-84." Waller-Glover, XII, 504.

P. 263. _Doctor Chalmers's Discourses_. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a celebrated divine and preacher of Scotland, published in 1817 "A Series of Discourses on the Christian Revelation, Viewed in Connection with Modern Astronomy."

_bandit fierce_. Milton's "Comus," 426.

_our fell of hair_. "Macbeth," v, 5, 11.

_Macbeth ... for the sake of the music_. Some copies of the first edition misprint _Macheath_, the name of the leading character in Gay's "Beggar's Opera." In writing "On Commonplace Critics," in the "Round Table," Hazlitt represents the commonplace critic as questioning whether any one of Shakespeare's plays, "if brought out now for the first time, would succeed. He thinks that 'Macbeth' would be the most likely, from the music which has been introduced into it." The reference is to the music written for D'Avenant's version of the play, produced in 1672. According to Waller-Glover (I, 436), "this music, traditionally a.s.signed to Matthew Locke, is now attributed to Purcell"; but Furness, in the Variorum edition of "Macbeth," accepts the conclusion of Chappell in Grove's "Dictionary of Music," "that Purcell could not have been the composer of a work which appeared when he was in his fourteenth year," especially as "the only reason that can be a.s.signed why modern musicians should have doubted Locke's authorship is that a ma.n.u.script of it exists in the handwriting of Henry Purcell."

P. 264. _Between the acting_. "Julius Caesar," ii, 1, 63.

P. 265. _Thoughts that voluntary move_. "Paradise Lost," III, 37.

_the words of Mercury_. Cf. "Love's Labour's Lost," v, 2, 940: "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo."