Hazlitt on English Literature Part 45

ch. 10.

_that other Vision of Judgment_. Byron's.

_Bridge-Street Junto_. "The Const.i.tutional a.s.sociation or, as it was called by its opponents, 'The Bridge Street Gang,' founded in 1821 'to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition.' The a.s.sociation was an ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared.

See an article in the Edinburgh Review for June, 1822." Waller-Glover, VI, 487.

P. 290. _at Tewkesbury_. In the essay "On Going a Journey," Hazlitt refers to this episode as occurring at Bridgewater: "I remember sitting up half the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn in Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla."

_Paul and Virginia_ (1788), a sentimental novel by Bernardin St. Pierre (1737-1814).

P. 291. _Camilla_ (1796), a novel by f.a.n.n.y Burney (1752-1840).

_a friend of the poet's_. "This is a mistake. Wordsworth paid 23 a year for Alfoxden. The agreement is given in Mrs. Henry Sandford's 'Thomas Poole and His Friends,' I, 225." Waller-Glover.

P. 292. _In the outset of life_. Alongside of this paragraph should be read the essay "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth," Works, XII, 150.

P. 294. _Chantrey_, Sir Francis (1781-1842). His bust of Wordsworth is now at Cole-Orton.

_Haydon_, Benjamin Robert (1786-1846), a celebrated English painter who was intimate with many literary men. In the picture referred to Haydon also introduced a portrait of Hazlitt.

_Monk Lewis_. Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) wrote among other things a sensational novel, "The Monk" (1795), which gained him his nickname. "The Castle Spectre" was originally produced at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1797.

P. 295. _Tom Poole_ (1765-1837), friend and patron of Coleridge.

P. 296. _Sir Walter Scott's_, etc. Probably a reference to the banquet given to George IV by the Magistrates of Edinburgh and attended by Scott, August 24, 1822.

_Blackwood_, William (1776-1834), the Edinburgh publisher.

_Gaspar Poussin_ (1613-1675). His real name was Dughet, but he changed it out of respect to his brother-in-law, Nicholas Poussin.

_Domenichino_ or Domenico Zampieri (1581-1641), a painter of Bologna.

P. 297. _Death of Abel_ (1758), an idyllic-pastoral poem by Solomon Gessner (1730-1788), a German poet of the Swiss school who enjoyed a wide popularity in the eighteenth century.

P. 298. _since the days of Henry II_. As Henry II lived in the twelfth century, and as neither Coleridge nor Wordsworth ever refer to the language of Henry II as their standard, the statement in the text may probably be considered as a blunder of Hazlitt's.

_He spoke with contempt of Gray and with intolerance of Pope._ Cf.

"Biographia Literaria," ch. 2: "I felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth's conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray's celebrated Elegy. I had long before detected the defects in The Bard; but the Elegy I had considered as proof against all fair attacks; and to this day I can not read either without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception of the faults in certain pa.s.sages, has been more than repaid to me by the additional delight with which I read the remainder." In his "Table Talk," October 23, 1833, Coleridge says again: "I think there is something very majestic in Gray's Installation Ode; but as to the Bard and the rest of his lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and artificial." Of Pope and his followers he writes ("Biographia Literaria," ch. 1): "I was not blind to the merits of this school, yet, as from inexperience of the world, and consequent want of sympathy with the general subjects of these poems, they gave me little pleasure, I doubtless undervalued the kind, and with the presumption of youth withheld from its masters the legitimate name of poets. I saw that the excellence of this kind consisted in just and acute observations on men and manners in an artificial state of society, as its matter and substance, and in the logic of wit, conveyed in smooth and strong epigrammatic couplets, as its form; that even when the subject was addressed to the fancy, or the intellect, as in the Rape of the Lock, or the Essay on Man; nay, when it was a consecutive narration, as in that astonishing product of matchless talent and ingenuity, Pope's Translation of the Iliad; still a point was looked for at the end of each second line, and the whole was, as it were, a _sorites_, or, if I may exchange a logical for a grammatical metaphor, a conjunction disjunctive, of epigrams. Meantime, the matter and diction seemed to me characterized not so much by poetic thoughts, as by thoughts translated into the language of poetry."

_he thought little of Junius as a writer_. Cf. Coleridge's "Table Talk,"

July 3, 1833: "The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of which is a balance of thesis and ant.i.thesis. When he gets out of his aphorismic metre into a sentence of five or six lines long, nothing can exceed the slovenliness of the English."

_dislike for Dr. Johnson_. Cf. "Table Talk," July 4, 1833: "Dr. Johnson's fame now rests princ.i.p.ally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his _bow-wow_ manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.... As to Burke's testimony to Johnson's powers, you must remember that Burke was a great courtier; and after all, Burke said and wrote more than once that he thought Johnson greater in talking than in writing, and greater in Boswell than in real life."

_opinion of Burke_. Cf. "Table Talk," April 8, 1833: "Burke was indeed a great man. No one ever read history so philosophically as he seems to have done.... He would have been more influential if he had less surpa.s.sed his contemporaries, as Fox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds, in all respects."

_He liked Richardson, but not Fielding._ On this subject Coleridge evidently changed his mind. Cf. "Table Talk," July 5, 1834: "What a master of composition Fielding was! Upon my word, I think the OEdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, and Tom Jones the three most perfect plots ever planned.

And how charming, how wholesome, Fielding always is! To take him up after Richardson is like emerging from a sickroom heated by stoves into an open lawn on a breezy day in May."

_Caleb Williams_, the chief novel of William G.o.dwin.

P. 298, n. _He had no idea of pictures_. See p. 212.

_Buffamalco_. Cristofani Buonamico (1262-1351), also known as Buffalmacco, a painter of Florence.

P. 300. _Elliston_, Robert William (1774-1813), actor and later manager of the Drury Lane Theatre.

_still continues_. See p. 224 and n.

ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS

This is the t.i.tle of Essays III and IV of the "Plain Speaker." Our selection begins with the last paragraph of the first, which forms a fitting introduction to the account of one of Lamb's celebrated Wednesday evenings. Lamb tells us that his sister was accustomed to read this essay with unmixed delight.

P. 301. _When Greek meets Greek_. Nathaniel Lee's "Alexander the Great,"

iv, 2.

_C----_. Coleridge.

P. 302. _small-coal man_. Thomas Britton (1654?-1714), a dealer in small coal, who on the floor of his hut above the coal-shop held weekly concerts of vocal and instrumental music, at which the greatest performers of the day, even Handel, were to be heard.

_And, in our flowing cups_. Cf. "Henry V," iv, 3, 51:

"then shall our names Familiar in his mouth as household words ...

Be in their flowing cups freely remember'd."

P. 303. _the cartoons_. See Hazlitt's account of Raphael's cartoons in "The Pictures at Hampton Court" (Works, IX, 43).

_Donne_, John (1573-1631), poet and divine. Hazlitt in the "Lectures on the English Poets" confesses that he knows nothing of him save "some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad (see p. 318), and some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel." V, 83.

P. 304. _Ned P----_. Edward Phillips. Lamb speaks of him as "that poor card-playing Phillips, that has felt himself for so many years the outcast of Fortune." (Works, ed. Lucas, VII, 972.)

_Captain ----_. Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), brother of f.a.n.n.y Burney the novelist, author of a "Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean" in five volumes (1803-1817). "The captain was himself a character, a fine, n.o.ble creature--gentle, with a rough exterior, as became the a.s.sociate of Captain Cook in his voyages round the world, and the literary historian of all these acts of circ.u.mnavigation." Crabb-Robinson's Diary, 1810.

_Jem White_. James White (1775-1820), of whom Lamb has left us a sketch in the essay "On the Praise of Chimney-Sweepers": "He carried away half the fun of the world when he died." He wrote, it is supposed with some cooperation from Lamb, the "Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends" (1796), which were described by Lamb as "without exception the best imitations I ever saw." (Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 2.) A review of this book by Lamb, consisting chiefly of specimens, appeared in the Examiner in 1819 (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 191 ff).

_turning like the latter end_. This phrase occurs in one of the extracts in Lamb's review of Falstaff's Letters just mentioned (p. 194).

_A----_. William Aryton (1777-1858), a musical critic and director of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. In the letter of Elia to Robert Southey (Lamb's Works, I, 230) he is spoken of as "the last and steadiest left me of that little knot of whist-players, that used to a.s.semble weekly, for so many years, at the Queen's Gate."

_Mrs. R-----_. Mrs. Reynolds, who had been Lamb's schoolmistress.

_M. B._ Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney. "Martin Burney is as odd as ever.... He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil's 'aeneid' all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.' So he goes on, hara.s.sing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat wrong one--harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one--: may be, he has tired him out." Lamb's Works, VII, 855.

_Author of the Road to Ruin_. Thomas Holcroft.

P. 305. _Critique of Pure Reason_, by Kant.

_Biographia Literaria_. Coleridge's account of his literary life, published in 1817.