Hazlitt on English Literature Part 44

_So from the ground_. "Faerie Queene," I, vi, 13.

P. 266. _the secret_ [hidden] _soul_. Milton's "L'Allegro."

P. 267. _the golden cadences_. "Love's Labour's Lost," iv, 2, 126.

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

_sounding always_. See p. 207 and n.

_except poets_. Cf. "On the Prose Style of Poets" in the "Plain Speaker": "What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of _rhythmus_ and cadence in what they write without the help of metrical rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompaniment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is loose, disjointed, and without expressive pauses or rapid movements. The measured cadence and regular _sing-song_ of rhyme or blank verse have destroyed, as it were, their natural ear for the mere characteristic harmony which ought to subsist between the sound and the sense. I should almost guess the Author of Waverley to be a writer of ambling verses from the desultory vacillation and want of firmness in the march of his style. There is neither _momentum_ nor elasticity in it; I mean as to the _score_, or effect upon the ear. He has improved since in his other works: to be sure, he has had practice enough. Poets either get into this incoherent, undetermined, shuffling style, made up of 'unpleasing flats and sharps,' of unaccountable starts and pauses, of doubtful odds and ends, flirted about like straws in a gust of wind; or, to avoid it and steady themselves, mount into a sustained and measured prose (like the translation of Ossian's Poems, or some parts of Shaftesbury's Characteristics) which is more odious still, and as bad as being at sea in a calm." Hazlitt's views on this question are peculiar, though his examples are well chosen. The more common opinion is that voiced by Coleridge in his remarks "On Style": "It is, indeed, worthy of remark that all our great poets have been good prose writers, as Chaucer, Spenser, Milton; and this probably arose from their just sense of metre.

For a true poet will never confound verse and prose; whereas it is almost characteristic of indifferent prose writers that they should be constantly slipping into sc.r.a.ps of metre." Works, IV, 342.

P. 268. _Addison's Campaign_ (1705), written in honor of Marlborough's victory at Blenheim, was described as "that gazette in rhyme" by Joseph Warton (1722-1800) in his "Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope," I, 29.

_Chaucer_. Cf. A. W. Pollard's "Chaucer," p. 35: "To Boccaccio's 'Teseide'

and 'Filostrato,' he was indebted for something more than the groundwork of two of his most important poems; and he was also acquainted with three of his works in Latin prose. If, as is somewhat hardily maintained, he also knew the _Decamerone_, and took from it, in however improved a fashion, the idea of his Canterbury Pilgrimage and the plots of any or all of the four tales (besides that of Grisilde) to which resemblances have been traced in his own work, his obligations to Boccaccio become immense.

Yet he never mentions his name, and it has been contended that he was himself unaware of the authorship of the poems and treatises to which he was so greatly indebted."

_Dryden_. His translations from Boccaccio are "Sigismonda and Guiscardo,"

"Theodore and Honoria," "Cymon and Iphigenia."

P. 269. _married to immortal verse_. "L'Allegro."

_John Bunyan_ (1628-1688), author of "Pilgrim's Progress" (1678).

_Daniel Defoe_ (c. 1659-1731), journalist and novelist. His masterpiece, "Robinson Crusoe," appeared in 1719.

_dipped in dews_. Cf. T. Heywood's "Ben Jonson, though his learned pen Was dipt in Castaly, is still but Ben."

_Philoctetes_. The story of the Greek hero who, on the voyage to the siege of Troy, was abandoned on an uninhabited island, is the subject of a play by Sophocles.

_As I walked about_. "Robinson Crusoe," Part I, p. 125 (ed. G. A. Aitken).

P. 270. _give an echo_. "Twelfth Night," ii, 4, 21.

P. 271. _Our poesy_. "Timon of Athens," i, 1, 21.

P. 272. _all plumed_. Cf. 1 "Henry IV," iv, 1, 98:

"All plumed like estridges that with the wind Baited like eagles having lately bathed; Glittering in golden coats, like images; As full of spirits as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer; Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls."

_If we fly_. Psalms, cx.x.xix, 9.

P. 275. _Pope Anastatius_. "Inferno," xi, 8.

_Count Ugolino_. Ibid., x.x.xiii.

_Ossian_. James Macpherson (1736-1796) published between 1760 and 1765 what he alleged to be a translation of the ancient Gaelic hero-bard, Oisin or Ossian. The poems fed the romantic appet.i.te of the generation and were translated into practically every European language. In Germany especially the influence of "Ossian" wrought powerfully through the enthusiasm it aroused in the young Goethe and in Schiller. In England, the poems, immediately upon their appearance, gave rise to a long controversy as to their authenticity, Dr. Johnson being among the first to attack the belief in their antiquity. The truth seems to be that, though there really is a legendary hero answering to Ossian, no such poems as Macpherson attributed to him were ever transmitted. The whole work is to all intents the original creation of Macpherson himself. The supposed Gaelic originals, which were published by the Highland Society of London in 1807, have been proved by philologists to be spurious, to be nothing in fact but translations into bad Gaelic from Macpherson's good English. This conclusion is further supported by the ma.s.s of borrowings from the Bible and the cla.s.sics which have been found in "Ossian." See J. C. Smart: "James Macpherson, An Episode in Literature" (1905).

P. 276. _lamentation of Selma_. Lament of Colma in "Songs of Selma,"

Ossian, ed. William Sharp, p. 410.

_Roll on_. Cf. ibid., p. 417: "ye bring no joy on your course!"

MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS

[The identification of quotations has been omitted for this essay in order to allow students an opportunity to try it for themselves.]

The third and fourth paragraphs of this essay had appeared in a letter of Hazlitt's to the Examiner (Works, III, 152). The entire essay was first published in the third number of the Liberal (see note to p. 244).

P. 277. _W--m_. Wem.

P. 281. _Murillo_ (1617-1682) and _Velasquez_ (1599-1660) are the two greatest Spanish painters.

_nothing--like what he has done_. In the essay "On Depth and Superficiality" ("Plain Speaker"), Hazlitt characterizes Coleridge as "a great but useless thinker."

P. 282. _Adam Smith_ (1723-1790), founder of the science of political economy, author of "The Wealth of Nations" (1776).

_huge folios_. In the essay "On Pedantry" ("Round Table") Hazlitt writes: "In the library of the family where we were brought up, stood the _Fratres Poloni_; and we can never forget or describe the feeling with which not only their appearance, but the names of the authors on the outside inspired us. Pripscovius, we remember, was one of the easiest to p.r.o.nounce. The gravity of the contents seemed in proportion to the weight of the volumes; the importance of the subjects increased with our ignorance of them."

P. 283, n. Hazlitt's father was the author of "Discourses for the Use of Families on the Advantages of a Free Enquiry and on the Study of the Scriptures" (1790) and of "Sermons for the Use of Families" in two volumes (1808).

P. 284. _Mary Wolstonecraft_ (1759-1797), author of the "Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792).

_Mackintosh_, Sir James (1765-1832), wrote "Vindiciae Gallicae, a Defence of the French Revolution and its English Admirers against the Accusations of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke." Hazlitt writes of Mackintosh in the "Spirit of the Age" as "one of the ablest and most accomplished men of the age, both as a writer, a speaker, and a converser," and comparing him with Coleridge, he remarks, "They have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversation; but in the mind of the one we see nothing but _fixtures_, in the other every thing is fluid."

_Tom Wedgwood_ (1771-1805) was an a.s.sociate of some of the literary men of his day.

P. 285. _Holcroft_, Thomas (1745-1809), actor, dramatist, novelist, a member of G.o.dwin's group of radicals. His chief writings are "The Road to Ruin" (1792), "Anna St. Ives" (1792), and "Hugh Trevor" (1794-97).

Holcroft's "Memoirs," written by himself, were edited and completed by Hazlitt and published in 1816 (Works, II).

P. 286. _Hume_, David (1711-1776), historian and sceptic philosopher, described by Hazlitt as "one of the subtlest and most metaphysical of all metaphysicians." His chief writings are "A Treatise on Human Nature, being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects" (1739-40), "Philosophical Essays" (1748), "Four Dissertations"

(1757).

P. 287. _Essay on Vision_. Hazlitt calls this "the greatest by far of all his works and the most complete example of elaborate a.n.a.lytical reasoning and particular induction joined together that perhaps ever existed."

(Works, XI, 108).

_Tom Paine_ (1737-1809), an influential revolutionary writer, author of "Common Sense" (1776), a pamphlet advocating American independence, "Rights of Man" (1791), a reply to Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," and "The Age of Reason" (1795). He also took an active part in both the American and French revolutions.

_prefer the unknown to the known_. Cf. the first essay "On the Conversation of Authors": "Coleridge withholds his tribute of applause from every person, in whom any mortal but himself can descry the least glimpse of understanding. He would be thought to look farther into a millstone than any body else. He would have others see with his eyes, and take their opinions from him on trust, in spite of their senses. The more obscure and defective the indications of merit, the greater his sagacity and candour in being the first to point them out. He looks upon what he nicknames _a man of genius_, but as the breath of his nostrils, and the clay in the potter's hands. If any such inert, unconscious ma.s.s, under the fostering care of the modern Prometheus, is kindled into life,--begins to see, speak, and move, so as to attract the notice of other people,--our jealous patroniser of latent worth in that case throws aside, scorns, and hates his own handy-work; and deserts his intellectual offspring from the moment they can go alone and shift for themselves."

_a discovery on the same subject_. Hazlitt's first publication, "On the Principles of Human Action."

P. 288. _I sat down to the task_, etc. Cf. "On Application to Study"

("Plain Speaker"): "If what I write at present is worth nothing, at least it costs me nothing. But it cost me a great deal twenty years ago. I have added little to my stock since then, and taken little from it. I 'unfold the book and volume of the brain,' and transcribe the characters I see there as mechanically as any one might copy the letters in a sampler. I do not say they came there mechanically--I transfer them to the paper mechanically." See also p. 345.

P. 289. _which ... he has somewhere told himself_. "Biographia Literaria,"