Hazlitt on English Literature Part 47

_That was Arion_. "Faerie Queene," IV, ix, 23.

_For Captain C., M. C., Miss D----_, "Literary Remains" supplies Admiral Burney, Martin Burney, Miss Reynolds.

_with lack-l.u.s.ter eye_. "As You Like It," ii, 7, 21.

P. 322. _his compliments_. See p. 129.

P. 323. _But why then publish_. "Prologue to Satires," 135.

_Gay's verses_. "Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece" (ed. Muses' Library, I, 207).

P. 324. _E----_. In "Literary Remains" the name supplied is Erasmus Phillips, probably a mistake for Edward Phillips.

_nigh-sphered in heaven_. Collins's "Ode on the Poetical Character," 66.

_Garrick_, David (1717-1779), the celebrated actor.

_J. F----_. According to "Literary Remains," Barron Field (1786-1846), Lamb's friend and correspondent.

_Handel_, George Frederick (1685-1759), the musical composer, German by birth but naturalized in England.

P. 325. _Wildair_, in Farquhar's comedy "Sir Harry Wildair."

_Abel Drugger_, in Ben Jonson's "Alchemist," was one of Garrick's famous parts.

P. 326. _author of Mustapha_. Fulke Greville.

_Kit Marlowe_ (1564-1593), the most brilliant writer of tragedy before Shakespeare. He wrote "Tamburlaine the Great," "The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus," "The Jew of Malta," and "Edward the Second." In the "Age of Elizabeth" Hazlitt says of him, "There is a l.u.s.t of power in his writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of the imagination, unhallowed by any thing but its own energies."

_Webster_, John, wrote during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. His chief plays are "The White Devil" and the "d.u.c.h.ess of Malfy."

_Dekker_, Thomas (c. 1570-1641). "The Shoemaker's Holiday," "The Honest Wh.o.r.e," and "Old Fortunatus" are his best plays. In the third lecture of the "Age of Elizabeth" Hazlitt thus compares Webster and Dekker: "Webster would, I think, be a greater dramatic genius than Deckar, if he had the same originality; and perhaps is so, even without it. His White Devil and d.u.c.h.ess of Malfy, upon the whole perhaps, come the nearest to Shakspeare of anything we have upon record; the only drawback to them, the only shade of imputation that can be thrown upon them, 'by which they lose some colour,' is, that they are too like Shakspeare, and often direct imitations of him, both in general conception and individual expression.... Deckar has, I think, more truth of character, more instinctive depth of sentiment, more of the unconscious simplicity of nature; but he does not, out of his own stores, clothe his subject with the same richness of imagination, or the same glowing colours of language.

Deckar excels in giving expression to certain habitual, deeply-rooted feelings, which remain pretty much the same in all circ.u.mstances, the simple uncompounded elements of nature and pa.s.sion:--Webster gives more scope to their various combinations and changeable aspects, brings them into dramatic play by contrast and comparison, flings them into a state of fusion by a kindled fancy, makes them describe a wider arc of oscillation from the impulse of unbridled pa.s.sion, and carries both terror and pity to a more painful and sometimes unwarrantable excess. Deckar is content with the historic picture of suffering; Webster goes on to suggest horrible imaginings. The pathos of the one tells home and for itself; the other adorns his sentiments with some image of tender or awful beauty. In a word, Deckar is more like Chaucer or Boccaccio; as Webster's mind appears to have been cast more in the mould of Shakespeare's, as well naturally as from studious emulation."

_Heywood_, Thomas (d. c. 1650), a prolific dramatist who excelled in the homely vein. His best-known play is "The Woman Killed with Kindness."

_Beaumont_, Francis (1584-1616), and _Fletcher_, John (1579-1625), composed their dramas in collaboration. In the "Age of Elizabeth" Hazlitt calls them lyric and descriptive poets of the first order, but as regards drama "the first writers who in some measure departed from the genuine tragic style of the age of Shakspeare. They thought less of their subject, and more of themselves, than some others. They had a great and unquestioned command over the stores both of fancy and pa.s.sion; but they availed themselves too often of commonplace extravagances and theatrical trick.... The example of preceding or contemporary writers had given them facility; the frequency of dramatic exhibition had advanced the popular taste; and this facility of production, and the necessity for appealing to popular applause, tended to vitiate their own taste, and to make them willing to pamper that of the public for novelty and extraordinary effect.

There wants something of the sincerity and modesty of the older writers.

They do not wait nature's time, or work out her materials patiently and faithfully, but try to antic.i.p.ate her, and so far defeat themselves. They would have a catastrophe in every scene; so that you have none at last: they would raise admiration to its height in every line; so that the impression of the whole is comparatively loose and desultory. They pitch the characters at first in too high a key, and exhaust themselves by the eagerness and impatience of their efforts. We find all the prodigality of youth, the confidence inspired by success, an enthusiasm bordering on extravagance, richness running riot, beauty dissolving in its own sweetness. They are like heirs just come to their estates, like lovers in the honeymoon. In the economy of nature's gifts, they 'misuse the bounteous Pan, and thank the G.o.ds amiss.' Their productions shoot up in haste, but bear the marks of precocity and premature decay. Or they are two goodly trees, the stateliest of the forest, crowned with blossoms, and with the verdure springing at their feet; but they do not strike their roots far enough into the ground, and the fruit can hardly ripen for the flowers!"

_Jonson_, Ben (1573-1637), was the originator of the "comedy of humors."

Hazlitt, in discussing him at length in the second lecture on the "Comic Writers," confesses a disrelish for his style. "He was a great man in himself, but one cannot readily sympathise with him. His works, as the characteristic productions of an individual mind, or as records of the manners of a particular age, cannot be valued too highly; but they have little charm for the mere general reader. Schlegel observes, that whereas Shakspeare gives the springs of human nature, which are always the same, or sufficiently so to be interesting and intelligible; Jonson chiefly gives the _humours_ of men, as connected with certain arbitrary and conventional modes of dress, action, and expression, which are intelligible only while they last, and not very interesting at any time.

Shakspeare's characters are men; Ben Jonson's are more like machines, governed by mere routine, or by the convenience of the poet, whose property they are.... His portraits are caricatures by dint of their very likeness, being extravagant tautologies of themselves; as his plots are improbable by an excess of consistency; for he goes thoroughst.i.tch with whatever he takes in hand, makes one contrivance answer all purposes, and every obstacle give way to a predetermined theory.... Old Ben was of a scholastic turn and had dealt a little in the occult sciences and controversial divinity. He was a man of strong crabbed sense, retentive memory, acute observation, great fidelity of description and keeping in character, a power of working out an idea so as to make it painfully true and oppressive, and with great honesty and manliness of feeling, as well as directness of understanding: but with all this, he wanted, to my thinking, that genial spirit of enjoyment and finer fancy, which const.i.tute the essence of poetry and wit.... There was nothing spontaneous, no impulse or ease about his genius: it was all forced, up-hill work, making a toil of pleasure. And hence his overweening admiration of his own works, from the effort they had cost him, and the apprehension that they were not proportionably admired by others, who knew nothing of the pangs and throes of his Muse in child-bearing." Works, VIII, 39-41. Of Ben Jonson's tragedies Hazlitt held a higher opinion than of his comedies. "The richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross and rubbish we have.... His tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or cla.s.sical history, looks like genius.... His tragedy of the Fall of Seja.n.u.s, in particular, is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic.... The depth of knowledge and gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked out the historian's outline, so that the vices and pa.s.sions, the ambition and servility of public men, in the heated and poisonous atmosphere of a luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more glowing colours." Works, V, 262-3.

_a vast species alone_. Cowley's "The Praise of Pindar."

_G----_. G.o.dwin, according to "Literary Remains."

_Drummond of Hawthornden_. William Drummond (1585-1649), the poet who recorded his conversation with Ben Jonson on the occasion of a visit paid to him by the latter in 1618. "He has not done himself or Jonson any credit by his account of their conversation," says Hazlitt in the "Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth." Works, V, 299.

_Eugene Aram_ was hanged in 1759 for a murder he had committed several years earlier.

_Admirable Crichton_. James Crichton (1560?-1582), a Scotchman of n.o.ble birth who, in a brief life, gained the reputation of universal genius and concerning whose powers many legends arose.

P. 327. _H----_. Hunt, according to "Literary Remains."

_Hobbes_, Thomas (1588-1679), the English philosopher. His chief work is "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil" (1651). Hazlitt vindicated the superiority of Hobbes as a thinker at a time when his fame was overshadowed by other reputations. He calls him the founder of the modern material philosophy and maintains that "the true reason of the fate which this author's writings met with was that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately understood, without pa.s.sing through the hands of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters.

Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred." Works, XI, 25-48.

_Jonathan Edwards_ (1703-1758). In writing "On the Tendency of Sects" in the "Round Table," Hazlitt had alluded to Edwards as an Englishman and had spoken of his work on the Will as "written with as much power of logic, and more in the true spirit of philosophy, than any other metaphysical work in the language."

P. 327, n. _Lord Bacon_, Francis (1561-1626), statesman, scientist, and man of letters. His chief works are the "Essays" (1597), the "Advancement of Learning" (1604), "Novum Organum" (1620), "History of Henry VII"

(1622).

P. 328. _Dugald Stewart_ (1753-1828), Scotch philosopher.

_d.u.c.h.ess of Bolton_. Lavinia Fenton (1708-1760), the original Polly in Gay's "Beggar's Opera," married the Duke of Bolton in 1751.

P. 329. _Raphael_, Sanzio (1483-1520), the greatest of all the Italian painters.

_Lucretia Borgia with calm golden locks_. This sounds like a striking antic.i.p.ation of Landor's fine line, "Calm hair meandering in pellucid gold" in his poem "On Lucretia Borgia's Hair." Or had Hazlitt seen the poem before it was published?

_Michael Angelo_ (1475-1564), poet, painter, architect, and sculptor, the most famous of the great Italian artists.

_Correggio_ (1494-1534), _Giorgione_ (1477-1510), _Guido_ (1575-1642), _Cimabue_ (1240-1302), _Vand.y.k.e_ (1599-1641). The other painters are mentioned elsewhere in this volume.

_whose names on earth_. In his review of Sismondi's "Literature of the South" (Works, X, 62) Hazlitt cites among the proofs of Dante's poetic power "his description of the poets and great men of antiquity, whom he represents 'serene and smiling,' though in the shades of death, 'because on earth their names in fame's eternal records s.h.i.+ne for aye.'" As these lines have not been located in Dante, they have been ascribed to the lying memory of Lamb, from whose lips Hazlitt learned them.

P. 330. _Mrs. Hutchinson_, Lucy (b. 1620), whose life of her Puritan husband, Colonel Hutchinson, had appeared in 1806, presumably shortly before the conversation recorded in this essay.

_one in the room_. Mary Lamb, the sister of the essayist.

_Ninon de Lenclos_ (1615-1705), for a long time the leader of fas.h.i.+on in Paris and the patroness of poets.

_Voltaire_ (1694-1778), the sceptical philosopher of the Enlightenment; _Rabelais_ (1490-1553), the greatest French humorist, author of "Gargantua and Pantagruel"; _Moliere_ (1622-1673), the master of French comedy; _Racine_ (1639-1699), the master of French cla.s.sic tragedy; _La Fontaine_ (1621-1695), author of the "Fables"; _La Rochefoucauld_ (1613-1680), celebrated for his book of cynical "Maxims" which Hazlitt imitated in his "Characteristics"; _St. Evremont_ (1610-1703), a critic.

P. 331. _Your most exquisite reason_. Cf. "Twelfth Night," ii, 3, 155.

_Oh, ever right_. "Coriola.n.u.s," ii, 1, 208.

_H----_. This speech is attributed to Lamb in "Literary Remains," but wrongly so according to Waller and Glover "because, in the first place, the speech seems more characteristic of Hunt than of Lamb, and, secondly, because the volume of the New Monthly in which the essay appeared contains a list of errata in which two corrections (one of them relating to initials) are made in the essay and yet this 'H----' is left uncorrected."

ON READING OLD BOOKS

This essay was first published in the London Magazine for February, 1821, and republished in the "Plain Speaker."

P. 333. _I hate to read new books._ It would take too long to recall all the pa.s.sages in which Hazlitt voices his sentimental attachment to the writers with whom he first became acquainted. "The greatest pleasure in life," he says in one essay, "is that of reading when we are young," and at the conclusion of his lectures on the "Age of Elizabeth" he remarks: "Were I to live much longer than I have any chance of doing, the books which I read when I was young, I can never forget." Patmore's statement concerning Hazlitt's later reading may be exaggerated, but it is interesting in this connection: "I do not believe Hazlitt ever read the half of any work that he reviewed--not even the Scotch novels, of which he read more than of any other modern productions, and has written better perhaps, than any other of their critics. I am certain that of many works that he has reviewed, and of many writers whose general pretensions he has estimated better than anybody else has done, he never read one t.i.the." "My Friends and Acquaintances," III, 122.