Hazlitt on English Literature Part 38

P. 174. _the elephant to make them sport_. "Paradise Lost" IV, 345.

_native and endued_. "Hamlet," iv, 7, 180.

_Lord Chatham_. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-1778), the great English statesman.

P. 176. _a new creation_. Goldsmith's "Traveler," 296.

P. 178. _All the great changes_. Cf. Morley's "Life of Burke," ch. 8: "All really profound speculation about society comes in time to touch the heart of every other object of speculation, not by directly contributing new truths or directly corroborating old ones, but by setting men to consider the consequences to life of different opinions on these abstract subjects, and their relations to the great paramount interests of society, however those interests may happen at the time to be conceived. Burke's book marks a turning-point in literary history, because it was the signal for that reaction over the whole field of thought, into which the Revolution drove many of the finest minds of the next generation, by showing the supposed consequences of pure individualistic rationalism."

P. 179. _Alas! Leviathan_. Cowper's "Task," II, 322.

_the corner stone_. Psalms, cxvii, 22.

_to the Jews_. 1 Corinthians, i, 23.

P. 183. _the consequences of his writings_. In this view Hazlitt has the full support of Lord Morley.

P. 184. _How charming_. Milton's "Comus," 476.

_He was one of the severest writers we have._ The description of Burke's style which follows should be compared with that given on pp. 344-5 and with the splendid pa.s.sage in the "Plain Speaker" essay "On the Prose Style of Poets," beginning: "It has always appeared to me that the most perfect prose-style, the most powerful, the most dazzling, the most daring, that which went the nearest to the verge of poetry, and yet never fell over, was Burke's. It has the solidity, and sparkling effect of the diamond; all other _fine writing_ is like French paste or Bristol-stones in the comparison. Burke's style is airy, flighty, adventurous, but it never loses sight of the subject; nay, is always in contact with, and derives its increased or varying impulse from it. It may be said to pa.s.s yawning gulfs 'on the unsteadfast footing of a spear:' still it has an actual resting-place and tangible support under it--it is not suspended on nothing. It differs from poetry, as I conceive, like the chamois from the eagle: it climbs to an almost equal height, touches upon a cloud, overlooks a precipice, is picturesque, sublime--but all the while, instead of soaring through the air, it stands upon a rocky cliff, clambers up by abrupt and intricate ways, and browzes on the roughest bark, or crops the tender flower."

P. 186. _the set or formal style_. See pp. 147-8.

P. 187. _Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents_ (1770), a criticism of the ministerial policy of the English government under George III.

_Reflections on the Revolution in France_ (1790), a severe arraignment of the principles which inspired the revolution and a prophetic warning of its consequences.

_Letter to the Duke of Bedford_. A Letter from the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, to a n.o.ble Lord, on the attacks made upon him and his pension, in the House of Lords, by the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, early in the present session of Parliament. (1706.)

_Regicide Peace_. Three Letters addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament, on the proposals for peace with the regicide Directory of France. (1796.)

P. 188. _Fox_, Charles James (1749-1806), the famous Whig statesman who was frequently the opponent of Burke and of the younger Pitt.

P. 189. _Dr. Johnson observed_, in his "Life of Pope" (ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 230): "In their similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed; the s.h.i.+p-race, compared with the chariot-race, is neither ill.u.s.trated nor aggrandised; land and water make all the difference: when Apollo running after Daphne is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made plainer, and a G.o.d and the daughter of a G.o.d are not represented much to their advantage by a hare and a dog."

_a person_. Conjecturally Joseph Fawcett. In the essay "On Criticism"

("Table Talk") Hazlitt says: "The person of the most refined and least contracted taste I ever knew was the late Joseph Fawcett, the friend of my youth. He was almost the first literary acquaintance I ever made, and I think the most candid and unsophisticated. He had a masterly perception of all styles and of every kind and degree of excellence, sublime or beautiful, from Milton's Paradise Lost to Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad, from Butler's a.n.a.logy down to Humphrey Clinker."

P. 189, n. _the comparison of the British Const.i.tution_. "Letter to a n.o.ble Lord," Works, ed. Bohn, V, 137.

MR. WORDSWORTH

From "The Spirit of the Age." Characterizations of Wordsworth also occur in the lecture "On the Living Poets" and in the Essay "On Genius and Common Sense" in "Table Talk."

P. 191. _lowliness is young ambition's ladder_. "Julius Caesar," ii, 1, 22.

_no figures_. Cf. "Julius Caesar," ii, 1, 231: " Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies Which busy care draws in the brains of men."

_skyey influences_. "Measure for Measure," iii, 1, 9.

P. 192. _nihil humani_. Terence: "Heautontimoroumenos." i, 1, 25.

_the cloud-capt towers_. "Tempest," iv, 1, 151.

P. 193. _the judge's robe_. Cf. "Measure for Measure," ii, 2, 59;

"No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe."

_Pindar and Alcaeus_. Greek lyric poets.

_a sense of joy_. Wordsworth's "To My Sister."

P. 194. _Beneath the hills_. Cf. Wordsworth's "Excursion," VI, 531:

"Amid the groves, under the shadowy hills The generations are prepared...."

P. 195. _To him the meanest flower_. "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality."

P. 196. _Grasmere_ was the residence of Wordsworth between 1799 and 1813.

_Cole-Orton_ was the residence of Wordsworth's friend, Sir George Beaumont, to whom he dedicated the 1815 edition of his poems: "Some of the best pieces were composed under the shade of your own groves, upon the cla.s.sic ground of Cole-Orton."

P. 197. _Calm contemplation_. Cf. "Laodamia": "Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains."

_Fall blunted_ "from each indurated heart." Goldsmith's "Traveler," 232.

_and fit audience_. Wordsworth quotes this line from "Paradise Lost," VII, 31, in "The Recluse," 776:

"'Fit audience let me find though few!'

So prayed, more gaining than he asked, the Bard-- In holiest mood."

P. 198. _The Excursion_. Hazlitt wrote a review of this poem for the Examiner which not only aroused Wordsworth's resentment but led to one of his disagreements with Lamb. The review appears in the "Round Table."

_toujours perdrix_, "always partridges," alluding to a story of a French king, who, on being reproved by his confessor for faithlessness to his wife, punished the offender by causing him to be fed on nothing but his favorite dish, which was partridge. See Notes and Queries, Series IV, Vol.

III, p. 336.

_In his person_. In 1803, while on a visit to the Lake Country, Hazlitt had painted a portrait of Wordsworth. "He has painted Wordsworth," writes Southey, "but so dismally, though Wordsworth's face is his idea of physiognomical perfection, that one of his friends, on seeing it, exclaimed, 'At the gallows--deeply affected by his deserved fate--yet determined to die like a man;' and if you saw the picture, you would admire the criticism." "Life and Correspondence," II, 238.

_His manner of reading_. See p. 295.

_a man of no mark_. 1 "Henry IV," iii, 2, 45.

P. 199. _He finds fault with Dryden's description._ Hazlitt adopted this criticism in his lecture "On Pope and Dryden."

P. 200. _t.i.tian_ (c. 1477-1576), the great Venetian painter.

_Chaucer_. Wordsworth's modernizations of Chaucer are "The Prioress's Tale," "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," and a part of "Troilus and Cressida."