Hazlitt on English Literature Part 28

_and mask_. "L'Allegro."

_And more to lull_. I, i, 41.

_honey-heavy dew of slumber_. "Julius Caesar," ii, 1, 230.

_Eftsoons they heard_. II, xii, 70.

P. 25. _House of Pride_. I, iv, 4.

_Cave of Mammon_. II, vii, 28.

_Cave of Despair_. I, ix, 33.

_the account of Memory_. II, ix, 54.

_description of Belphoebe_. II, iii, 21.

_story of Florimel_. III, vii, 12.

_Gardens of Adonis_. III, vi, 29.

_Bower of Bliss_. II, xii, 42.

_Mask of Cupid_. III, xii.

_Colin Clout's Vision_. VI, x, 10-27.

P. 26. _Poussin_, Nicolas (1594-1665), French painter. See Hazlitt's delightful essay in "Table Talk" "On a Landscape by Nicholas Poussin."

_And eke_. III, ix, 20.

_the cold icicles_. III, viii, 35.

_That was Arion_. IV, xi, 23-24.

_Procession of the Pa.s.sions_. I, iv, 16 ff.

P. 28. _Yet not more sweet_. Southey's "Carmen Nuptiale: Lay of the Laureate." In the "Character of Milton's Eve" in the "Round Table,"

Hazlitt remarks that Spenser "has an eye to the consequences, and steeps everything in pleasure, often not of the purest kind."

P. 30. _Rubens_, Peter Paul (1577-1640), Flemish painter. See the paper on "The Pictures at Oxford and Blenheim" (Works, IX, 71): "Rubens was the only artist that could have embodied some of our countryman Spenser's splendid and voluptuous allegories. If a painter among ourselves were to attempt a Spenser Gallery, (perhaps the finest subject for the pencil in the world after Heathen mythology and Scripture history), he ought to go and study the principles of his design at Blenheim."

_the account of Satyrane_. I, vi, 24.

_by the help_. III, x, 47.

_the change of Malbecco_. III, x, 56-60.

P. 31, n. _That all with one consent_. "Troilus and Cressida," iii, 3, 176.

P. 32. _High over hills_. III, x, 55.

_Pope who used to ask_. Pope is also quoted in Spence's "Anecdotes"

(Section viii, 1743-4) as saying that "there is something in Spenser that pleases one as strongly in one's old age, as it did in one's youth. I read the 'Faerie Queene,' when I was about twelve, with infinite delight, and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a year or two ago." Waller-Glover.

_the account of Talus_. V, i, 12.

_episode of Pastorella_. VI, ix, 12.

P. 33. _in many a winding bout_. "L'Allegro."

SHAKSPEARE

This selection is from the "Lectures on the English Poets." At the beginning of his lecture on Shakespeare and Milton, Hazlitt maintains that the arts reach their perfection in the early periods and are not continually progressive like the sciences--an idea which he frequently comes back to in his writings, notably in the "Round Table" paper, "Why the Arts are not Progressive."

P. 34. _the fault_, etc. Cf. "Julius Caesar," i, 2, 140.

_Shakspeare as they would be_. Hazlitt may have had in mind Dr. Johnson's comment in his preface to Shakespeare's works: "the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effect would probably be such as he had a.s.signed; he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials to which it cannot be exposed." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 117.)

P. 35. _its generic quality_. Coleridge applied the epithet "myriad-minded" to Shakespeare. See also Schlegel's "Lectures on the Drama." ed. Bohn, p. 363: "Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps the diversity of rank, age, and s.e.x, down to the lispings of infancy; not only do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness ... his human characters have not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being cla.s.sed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception; no, this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical world of spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us the witches with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies and sylphs; and these beings, though existing only in the imagination, nevertheless possess such truth and consistency, that even with such misshapen abortions as Caliban, he extorts the a.s.senting conviction, that were there such beings they would so conduct themselves. In a word, as he carries a bold and pregnant fancy into the kingdom of nature, on the other hand, he carries nature into the region of fancy, which lies beyond the confines of reality. We are lost in astonishment at the close intimacy he brings us into with the extraordinary, the wonderful, and the unheard-of."

_a mind reflecting ages past_. "These words occur in the first lines of a laudatory poem on Shakespeare printed in the second folio (1632). The poem is signed 'J. M. S.' and was attributed by Coleridge to 'John Milton, Student.' See his 'Lectures on Shakespeare' (ed. T. Ashe), pp. 129-130."

Waller-Glover, IV, 411.

P. 36. _All corners_, etc. "Cymbeline." iii. 4, 39.

_nodded to him_. "Midsummer Night's Dream," iii, I, 177.

_his so potent art_. "Tempest," v, i, 50.

_When he conceived of a character_, etc. Cf. Maurice Morgann, "On the Character of Falstaff": "But it was not enough for Shakespeare to have formed his characters with the most perfect truth and coherence; it was further necessary that he should possess a wonderful facility of compressing, as it were, his own spirit into these images, and of giving alternate animation to the forms. This was not to be done _from without_; he must have _felt_ every varied situation, and have spoken thro' the organ he had formed. Such an intuitive comprehension of things and such a facility must unite to produce a Shakespeare." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare," p. 247, n.)

_subject to the same skyey influences_. Cf. "Measure for Measure," iii, I, 9: "servile to all the skyey influences."

_his frequent haunts_. Cf. "Comus," 314: "my daily walks and ancient neighborhood."

P. 37. _coheres semblably together_. Cf. 2 "Henry IV," v, i, 72: "to see the semblable coherence."

_It has been ingeniously remarked_, by Coleridge, "Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton," p. 116: "The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to instil that energy into the mind, which compels the imagination to produce the picture.... Here, by introducing a single happy epithet, 'crying,' a complete picture is presented to the mind, and in the production of such pictures the power of genius consists."

_me and thy crying self_. "Tempest," i, 2, 132.

_What! man_. "Macbeth," iv, 3, 208.

_Rosencrans_. The early editions consistently misspell this name Rosencraus.

_Man delights not me_. "Hamlet," ii, 2, 321.