NOTES

THE ROUND TABLE

ON THE LOVE OF LIFE

This essay formed No. 3 of the Round Table series, the first two having been contributed by Leigh Hunt. To numbers 2, 3, 4 the following motto was prefixed: Sociali fædere mensa. Milton. A Table in a social compact joined.'

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1. That sage. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Bacon's lines

'What then remains, but that we still should cry
For being born, or being born, to die?'

which are taken from an epigram in the Greek Anthology.

2. The schoolboy,' says Addison. See The Spectator, No. 93.

Hope and fantastic expectations, etc. Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, Chap. i. § 3,

par. 4.

'An ounce of sweet, etc. 'A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre.' The Faerie Queene, Book 1. Canto iii. 30. This line formed the motto of Leigh Hunt's Indicator.

3. And that must end us, etc.

Paradise Lost, 11. 145-151.

In The Examiner Hazlitt publishes the following passage as a note to this quotation : 'Many persons have wondered how Bonaparte was able to survive the shock of that tremendous height of power from which he fell. But it was that very height which still rivetted his backward gaze, and made it impossible for him to take his eye from it, more than from a hideous spectre. The sun of Austerlitz still rose upon his imagination, and could not set. The huge fabric of glory which he had raised, still "mocked his eyes with air." He who had felt his existence so intensely could not consent to lose it!'

4. Are made desperate, etc. Wordsworth's Excursion, Book vi. The following note is appended to this essay in The Examiner: 'It is proper to notice that an extract from this article formerly appeared in another publication. A series of Criticisms on the principal English Poets will shortly be commenced, and till concluded, will appear alternately with the other subjects of the Round Table.' The publication referred to was The Morning Chronicle for September 4, 1813, where, under the heading 'Common Places,' the substance of the paragraph beginning The love of life is, in general, the effect,' and the following paragraph will be found. The plan for criticisms of the English Poets was not adhered to. Hazlitt shortly afterwards (1818) delivered a course of Lectures on the English Poets which was published in the same year.

1 Antony and Cleopatra, Act Iv. Scene 14.

·

ON CLASSICAL EDUCATION

This essay formed the greater part of No. 7 of the Round Table series. The first three paragraphs are from one of Hazlitt's 'Common Places' in The Morning Chronicle, September 25, 1813.

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4. A discipline of humanity.' Still green with bays, etc. 5. A celebrated political writer.

Bacon's Essays, Of Marriage and Single Life.

Pope's Essay on Criticism, 181-188.

Probably Cobbett, of whom Hazlitt says in another place: He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring excess.' (Table Talk, Character of Cobbett.)

6. The world is too much with us,' etc. Misquoted from Wordsworth's Sonnet. Falstaff's reasoning about honour. See 1 Henry IV. Act v. Scene 1.

"They that are whole, etc. St. Matthew, ix. 12.

In The Examiner this essay concluded with the following passage: 'We do not think a classical education proper for women. It may pervert their minds, but it cannot elevate them. It has been asked, Why a woman should not learn the dead languages as well as the modern ones? For this plain reason, that the one are still spoken, and have immediate associations connected with them, and the other not.. A woman may have a lover who is a Frenchman, or an Italian, or a Spaniard; and it is well to be provided against every contingency in that way. But what possible interest can she feel in those oldfashioned persons, the Greeks and Romans, or in what was done two thousand years ago? A modern widow would doubtless prefer Signor Tramezzani1 to Æneas, and Mr. Conway would be a formidable rival to Paris. No young lady in our days, in conceiving an idea of Apollo, can go a step beyond the image of her favourite poet : nor do we wonder that our old friend, the Prince Regent, passes for a perfect Adonis in the circles of beauty and fashion. Women in general have no ideas, except personal ones. They are mere egotists. They have no passion for truth, nor any love of what is purely ideal. They hate to think, and they hate every one who seems to think of anything but themselves. Everything is to them a perfect nonentity which does not touch their senses, their vanity, or their interest. Their poetry, their criticism, their politics, their morality, and their divinity, are downright affectation. That line in Milton is very striking

"He for God only, she for God in him."

Such is the order of nature and providence; and we should be sorry to see any fantastic improvements on it. Women are what they were meant to be; and we wish for no alteration in their bodies or their minds. They are the creatures of the circumstances in which they are placed, of sense, of sympathy and habit. They are exquisitely susceptible of the passive impressions of things: but to form an idea of pure understanding or imagination, to feel an interest in the true and the good beyond themselves, requires an effort of which they are incapable. They want principle, except that which consists in an adherence to established custom; and this is the reason of the severe laws which have been set up as a barrier against every infringement of decorum and propriety in women. It has been observed by an ingenious writer of the present day, that women want imagination. This

1 For Tramezzani and William Augustus Conway (1789-1828), who were not favourites of Hazlitt, see A View of the English Stage.

2 Paradise Lost, IV. 299.

requires explanation. They have less of that imagination which depends
on intensity of passion, on the accumulation of ideas and feelings round one
object, on bringing all nature and all art to bear on a particular purpose, on
continuity and comprehension of mind; but for the same reason, they have
more fancy, that is greater flexibility of mind, and can more readily vary
and separate their ideas at pleasure. The reason of that greater presence of
mind which has been remarked in women is, that they are less in the habit
of speculating on what is best to be done, and the first suggestion is decisive.
The writer of this article confesses that he never met with any woman who
could reason, and with but one reasonable woman. There is no instance of
a woman having been a great mathematician or metaphysician or poet or
painter but they can dance and sing and act and write novels and fall in
love, which last quality alone makes more than angels of them. Women
are no judges of the characters of men, except as men. They have no real
respect for men, or they never respect them for those qualities, for which
they are respected by men. They in fact regard all such qualities as inter-
fering with their own pretensions, and creating a jurisdiction different from
their own.
Women naturally wish to have their favourites all to them-
selves, and flatter their weaknesses to make them more dependent on their
own good opinion, which, they think, is all that they want. We have,
indeed, seen instances of men, equally respectable and amiable, equally
admired by the women and esteemed by the men, but who have been ruined
by an excess of virtues and accomplishments.' Leigh Hunt replied to these
remarks in the following number of the Round Table series (February 19,
1815), where he makes interesting reference to Hazlitt's appearance and
powers.

ON THE TATLER

This essay formed No. 10 of the Round Table series. The substance of it was repeated by Hazlitt in his volume of Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819). (See the Lecture on 'The Periodical Essayists.')

He dwells with a secret satisfaction. The Tatler, No. 107.
The club at the Trumpet. The Tatler, No. 132.

The cavalcade of the justice, etc. The Tatler, No. 86.

The upholsterer and his companions. See The Tatler, Nos. 155, 160, and 178. A burlesque copy of verses. The Tatler, No. 238. The verses are by Swift.

8. Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield. See p. 157. Betterton is frequently mentioned in The Tatler. See especially No. 167.

Mr. Penkethman and Mr. Bullock. See The Tatler, No. 88, and p. 157 of this volume.

The first sprightly runnings.' Dryden's Aurengzebe, Act iv. Scene 1.

9. The Court of Honour. Addison, in The Tatler, No. 250, created the Court of Honour. He and Steele together wrote the later papers (Nos. 253, 256, 259, 262, 265) in which the proceedings of the Court are recorded.

The Personification of Musical Instruments. The Spectator, Nos. 153 and 157. Note. This note is by Leigh Hunt. The authorship of the anonymous

paper (The Spectator, No. 95) is uncertain. The account of the two sisters. The Tatler, No. 151. The married lady. The Tatler, No. 104.

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9. The lover and his mistress. The Tatler, No. 94.

The bridegroom. The Tatler, No. 82.

Mr. Eustace and his wife. The Tatler, No. 172.
The fine dream. The Tatler, No. 117.
Mandeville's sarcasm.

the Bees.

Bernard Mandeville (d. 1733), author of The Fall of

Westminster Abbey. The Spectator, No. 26. Royal Exchange. The Spectator, No. 69. The best criticism. The Spectator, No. 226. 10. Note. An original copy of the 'Tatler.

The octavo edition of 1710-11.

ON MODERN COMEDY

This essay did not form one of the Round Table series, but was published in The Examiner for August 20, 1815, under the heading "Theatrical Examiner.' It wa substantially repeated in the Lectures on the English Comic Writers (Lecture vi 6 on the Comic Writers of the Last Century'), and was republished verbatim in the posthumous volume entitled Criticisms and Dramatic Essays on the English Stape (1851). The essay is practically a reprint of the first of two letters which Ha wrote to The Morning Chronicle (September 25 and October 15, 1813). The second of these letters has not been republished.

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10. Where it must live, or have no life at all. Othello, Act. 11. Scene 4.

11. See ourselves as others see us.' Burns, 'To a Louse.'

Wart. He means Shadow. See 2 Henry IV., Act ш. Scene 2.

12. Lovelace, etc. Nearly all these characters are discussed in the English Com Writers. Sparkish is in Wycherley's Country Wife, Lord Foppington in Vanbrugh's Relapse, Millamant in Congreve's Way of the World, Sa Sampson Legend in Congreve's Love for Love.

We cannot expect, etc. This paragraph appeared originally in The Mang Chronicle, October 15, 1813.

་

13. That sevenfold fence.' The seven-fold shield of Ajax cannot keep the battery from my heart.' Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Scene 14. This passage B taken by Hazlitt from his own Reply to Malthus (1807).

14.

'Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man.' Foote's Minor, Act 11. Aristotle. In the Poetics.

Warm hearts of flesh and blood, etc. Quoted, with omissions and variations, from a passage in Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (Stiset Works, ed. Payne, ii. 101).

'Men's minds are parcel of their fortunes. Antony and Cleopatra, Act m. Scene 13.

ON MR. KEAN'S IAGO

Republished with a few variations from The Examiner of July 24, 1814. Hazlitt afterwards published the original article in A View of the English Stage (1818), and borrowed from it in Characters of Shakespear's Plays (See ante, pp. 206-7).

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14. A contemporary critic. This was Hazlitt himself who made this criticism ef Kean in an article in The Morning Chronicle (May 9, 1814), reprinted in View of the English Stage. 'Hedged in with the divinity of kings.' 15. Play the dog, etc. 3 Henry VI., Act v. 16. His cue is villainous melancholy,' etc.

From Hamlet, Act iv. Scene 5-
Scene 6.

King Lear, Act 1. Scene 2.

ON THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY

This essay was one of a series called Commonplaces (No. 111.) and appeared in The Examiner on November 27, 1814, before the Round Table series commenced. It was not, therefore, addressed, as it purports to be, to the editor of the "Round Table." The greater part of it was repeated in the Lectures on the English Poets (1818) at the end of Lecture v. on Thomson and Cowper.

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17. Rousseau in his Confessions. Partie I. Livre 111.

18. The minstrel. See Beattie's Minstrel, Book 1. st. 9.

This essay is not one of the Round Table series. It appeared in The Examiner on May 22, 1814.

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22.

23.

Blessings be with them,' etc. Wordsworth's Personal Talk, stanza 4.

"Nor sometimes forget, etc.

Paradise Lost, 111. 33 et seq.

Note. A part of the passage here referred to (from The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy) is quoted by Hazlitt in his Lectures on the English Poets (on Shakspeare and Milton).

'Famous poets' wit. See The Faerie Queene, Verses addressed by the author, No. 2. "Have not the poems of Homer, etc. The Advancement of Learning, First Book,

VIII. 6.

"Because on Earth, etc. See Dante's Inferno, Canto iv. Cf. 'On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.' The Faerie Queene, Book 1v. Canto ii. st. 32. 'Every variety of untried being.

'Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass !'

Addison's Cato, Act v. Scene 1. 24. Note. Oh! for my sake, etc. Sonnet No. 111. Desiring this man's art,' etc. Sonnet No. 29.

ON HOGARTH'S MARRIAGE À LA MODE'

This essay (from The Examiner, June 5, 1814) and the next one (June 19, 1814) continuing the same subject, were (in substance) republished in the English Comic Writers (see the Lecture vII. on the works of Hogarth) and also in Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England, etc. (1824).

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25. The late collection. In 1814.

Of amber-lidded snuff-box.' Pope's Rape of the Lock, Iv. 123.