Hazlitt on English Literature Part 46

_Those days are over!_ The event here referred to may be Waterloo. Mr.

Lucas thinks that Hazlitt's share in Lamb's gatherings "ceased after an unfortunate discussion of f.a.n.n.y Burney's Wanderer, which Hazlitt condemned in terms that her brother, the Admiral, could not forgive." (Lamb's Works, I, 482.) It is likely that Mr. Lucas has been led astray by the statement in Crabb-Robinson's Diary to the effect that Hazlitt used to attend Captain Burney's whist-parties "till he affronted the Captain by severe criticisms on the works of his sister," presumably by his article in the Edinburgh Review in 1814. Hazlitt commemorates Lamb's evenings in the "Pleasure of Hating" ("Plain Speaker"): "What is become of 'that set of whist players,' celebrated by Elia in his notable _Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq._ ... 'that for so many years called Admiral Burney friend?'

They are scattered, like last year's snow. Some of them are dead--or gone to live at a distance--or pa.s.s one another in the street like strangers; or if they stop to speak, do it as coolly and try to _cut_ one another as soon as possible. Some of us have grown rich--others poor. Some have got places under Government--others a _niche_ in the Quarterly Review. Some of us have dearly earned a name in the world; whilst others remain in their original privacy. We despise the one, and envy and are glad to mortify the other."

_Like angels' visits_. Cf. Blair's "The Grave," 582: "Like those of angels, short and far between." Hazlitt was fond of pointing out this source for Campbell's famous line "Like angels' visits few and far between," and of insisting that the alteration spoiled the sense. Thereby he is said to have incurred Campbell's bitter hostility.

P. 306. _Mr. Douce_, Francis (1757-1834), Shakespearian scholar and keeper of the ma.n.u.scripts in the British Museum.

_L. H----_. Leigh Hunt. There is a sketch of him in the "Spirit of the Age."

_aliquando sufflaminandus erat_. "He sometimes had to be checked." This is a quotation from Seneca which Ben Jonson in "Timber" (ed. Sch.e.l.ling, p.

23) had applied to Shakespeare.

P. 307. _The Indicator_. Leigh Hunt's most successful series of essays, which began their run in 1819.

_Mr. Northcote_, James (1746-1831), the painter of whose talk Hazlitt has left an entertaining record in the "Conversations of James Northcote"

(1830), a book which inspired Crabb-Robinson to say, "I do not believe that Boswell gives so much good talk in an equal quant.i.ty of his life of Johnson."

P. 308. _Sir Joshua's_. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the famous English painter.

P. 309. _Horne Tooke_ (1736-1812), politician and author of a celebrated philological volume, "The Diversions of Purley" (1786, 1805). His portrait is included in the "Spirit of the Age": "He was without a rival (almost) in private conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!)--no delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies in public."

_hear a sound so fine_. J. S. Knowles's "Virginius," v, 2.

P. 310. _silenced a learned professor_. Cf. "Spirit of the Age": "He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wis.h.i.+ng to know the meaning of the common copulative, _Is_."

_Curran_, John Philpot (1750-1817), member of Parliament from Ireland, orator and wit.

P. 311. _Mrs. Inchbald_, Elizabeth (1753-1821), a well-known actress, dramatist, and novelist. In literature she is a.s.sociated with the group of William G.o.dwin, and her best-known works are "A Simple Story" and "Nature and Art."

_from noon to dewy eve_. "Paradise Lost," I, 743.

_Mrs. M----_. Mrs. Montagu, wife of Basil Montagu. In the "Pleasure of Hating" ("Plain Speaker") there is another allusion to Mrs. Montagu "whose dark raven locks made a picturesque background to our discourse."

_H--t's_. Leigh Hunt's.

_N--'s_. Northcote's.

_H--yd--n's_. Haydon's.

_Doctor Tronchin_. Theodore Tronchin, a physician of Geneva, figures in Rousseau's "Confessions."

P. 312. _Sir Fopling Flutter_, a character in George Etherege's comedy, "The Man of Mode."

_For wit is like a rest_. "Master Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson." For _players_ read _gamesters_.

_came down into the country_. Charles and Mary Lamb with a few of their friends paid a visit to Hazlitt at Winterslow in 1810.

_Like the most capricious poet_. "As You Like It," iii, 3, 8.

_walked gowned_. Lamb's "Sonnet Written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819."

P. 313. _the person I mean_. George Dyer (1755-1841), an amiable hack-writer and a friend of Lamb. He figures prominently in two of the Essays of Elia, "Oxford in the Vacation" and "Amicus Redivivus," and in many of Lamb's letters. "To G. D. a poem is a poem. His own as good as any bodie's, and G.o.d bless him, any bodie's as good as his own, for I do not think he has the most distant guess of the possibility of one poem being better than another. The G.o.ds by denying him the very faculty itself of discrimination have effectually cut off every seed of envy in his bosom."

Letter to Wordsworth (Lamb's Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 519).

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN

This, like the preceding essay, is a record of one of Lamb's Wednesday evenings. It was originally published in the New Monthly Magazine for January, 1826, from which the present text is reproduced. It was republished by Hazlitt's son in "Literary Remains" (1836) and "Winterslow"

(1850).

P. 315. _Come like shadows_. "Macbeth," iv, 1, 111.

_B----_. Lamb. The name is supplied in "Literary Remains."

_defence of Guy Faux_. See p. 224 and n.

_Never so sure_. Pope's "Moral Essays," II, 51.

_A----_. William Ayrton.

P. 316. _in his habit_. "Hamlet," iii, 4, 135.

P. 317. _And call up him_. "Il Penseroso," 109.

_wished that mankind_. Browne's "Religio Medici," Part 11, section 9.

_Prologues spoken_. See Prologue to Fulke Greville's tragedy of "Alaham."

P. 318. _old edition_. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt suggests that it is the edition of 1609 of which Lamb owned a copy. "Memoirs of Hazlitt," I, 276.

_Here lies_. "An Epithalamion on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine."

Muses' Library, I, 86.

_By our first strange_. "Elegy on his Mistress," I, 139.

P. 320. _lisped in numbers_. Pope's "Prologue to Satires," 128.

_His meeting with Petrarch_. Chaucer was in Italy in 1372-3, but his meeting with Petrarch is only a matter of conjecture. He probably did not meet Boccaccio, the author of the "Decameron."

_Ugolino_. See p. 275.

_portrait of Ariosto_. Hazlitt probably refers to the Portrait of a Poet in the National Gallery, now ascribed to Palma.

P. 321. _the mighty dead_. Thomson's "Winter," 432.

_creature of the element_. Cf. "Comus," 299:

"Of some gay creatures of the element, That in the colors of the rainbow live, And play i' the plighted clouds."