straction of a single mind,—as if it would make itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth cherishing but its intellectual diseases., It is like a cancer eating into the heart of poetry. But still there is power, and power rivets attention and forces admiration. "His genius hath a demon," and that is the next thing to being full of the God. The range of Lord Byron's imagination is contracted, but within that range he has great unity and truth of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind-the dark and glittering ocean-the frail bark hurrying before the storm. He gives all the tumultuous eagerness of action, and the fixed despair of thought. In vigour of style, and force of conception, he surpasses every writer of the present day. His indignant apothegms are like oracles of misanthropy. Yet he has beauty allied to his strength, tenderness sometimes blended with his despair. But the flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over the grave. Mr Hazlitt next spoke of WALTER SCOTT; whose popularity he seemed to attribute to the comparative mediocrity of his talents-to his describing that which is most easily understood in a style the most easy and intelligible, and to the nature of the story which he selects. Walter Scott, said the lecturer, has great intuitive power of fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external objects before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque rather than moral. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible changes in outward objects, rather than their "mortal consequences." He is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in delightful fancy, and to Wordsworth in profound sentiment; but he has more picturesque power than any of them. After referring to examples of this, Mr H. observed, that it is remarkable that Mr Westall's illustrations of Scott's poems always give one the idea of their being fac similes of the persons represented, with ancient costume, and a theatrical air. The truth is, continued he, there is a modern air in the midst of the antiquarian research of Mr Scott's poetry. It is history in masquerade. Not only the crust of old words and images is worn off, but the substance is become comparatively light and worthless. The forms are old and uncouth, but the spirit is effeminate and fashionable. This, however, has been no obstacle to the success of his poetry-for he has just hit the town between the romantic and the modern, and between the two, has secured all classes of readers on his side. In a word, said Mr Hazlitt, I conceive that he is to the great poet what an excellent mimic is to a great actor. There is no determinate impression left on the mind by reading his poetry. The reader rises from the perusal with new images and associations, but he remains the same man that he was before. The notes to his poems are just as entertaining as the poems themselves, and his poems are nothing but entertaining. Mr H. now proceeded to speak of WORDSWORTH, whom he described as the most original poet now living, and the reverse of Walter Scott in every particular,-having nearly all that the other wants, and wanting all that the other possesses. His poetry is not external, but internal; he is the poet of mere sentiment. Great praise was given to many of the Lyrical Ballads, as opening a finer and deeper vein of thought and feeling than any poet in modern times has done or attempted; but it was observed, that Mr Wordsworth's powers had been mistaken, both by the age and by himself. He cannot form a whole, said Mr H.-he wants the constructive faculty. He can give the fine tones of thought drawn from his mind by accident or nature, like the sounds of the Æolian harp; but he is totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry. Mr Hazlitt here entered at some length into the origin of what has been called the Lake School of Poetry, and endeavoured to trace it to the convulsion which was caused in the moral world by the events of the French revolution. This, and his concluding remarks on Southey and Coleridge, we omit, partly for want of room, but chiefly on account of the indefinite and personal nature of those remarks. When we undertook to give the foregoing abstract of Mr Hazlitt's Lectures, it was not our intention to have accompanied it by a single observation in the shape of judgment, as to their merits or defects; but we find, that our own opinions have been strangely supposed to be identified with those we have done nothing more than detail. We choose, therefore, to say a few words on the impression we have received from these, and from Mr Hazlitt's previous writings on similar subjects. We are not apt to imbibe half opinions, or to express them by halves; we shall therefore say at once, that when Mr Hazlitt's taste and judgment are left to themselves, we think him among the best, if not the very best, living critic on our national literature. His sincere and healthful perceptions of truth and beauty, of falsehood and deformity, have a clearness, a depth, and a comprehensiveness, that have rarely been equalled. They appear to come to him by intuition; and he conveys the impression of them to others, with a vividness and precision that cannot be surpassed. But his genius is one that will not be "constrained by mastery." When, in spite of him. self, his prejudices or habits of personal feeling interfere, and attempt to shackle or bias its movements, it deserts him at once. It is like a proud steed that has been but half broke to the bitt; when at liberty, it bounds along, tossing its head to the free air, and seeming to delight and glory in the beauty that surrounds it. But the moment it feels constraint, it curvets, and kicks, and bites, and foams at the mouth, and does nothing but mischief. man's person, he cannot intend the LETTERS OF TIMOTHY TICKLER TO LETTER III.-To Francis Jeffrey, Esq. MY DEAR JEFFREY, I DARE say, that when you receive this letter, you will wonder what the deuce Timothy Tickler has got to say to you; and, no doubt, that slavish herd of boy-admirers that dog your heels, will think it excessively impertinent that an obscure person like me should offer admonition to so exalted a personage as the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. But the truth is, that I ad mire you as much as they do, though I have not been able to bring myself, like them, to think you an oracle, whose inspiration, it is blasphemy to doubt, and whose very name ought to be kept in reverential and inviolable silence. For nearly twenty years you have made pretty free with the names, talents, and acquirements, of all the literary men in Britain; and have decided upon their pretension to glory, if not with dogmatical, at least with authoritative assurance. Something As we have not scrupled to declare, of this has been owing to the constituthat we think Mr Hazlitt is sometimes tion of your mind, which has made the very best living critic, we shall you, on the whole, greatly to overrate venture one step farther, and add, your own talents, and greatly to underthat we think he is sometimes the very rate the talents of others; and I am worst. One would suppose he had a willing to believe, that still more of it personal quarrel with all living writ- has been owing to the influence of ers, good, bad, or indifferent. In your assumed character as Critic of fact, he seems to know little about the age; fully to support which, it them, and to care less. With him, to was necessary that you should subdue be alive is not only a fault in itself, within yourself all misgivings arising but it includes all other possible faults. from the occasional consciousness of He seems to consider life as a disease, inferiority, and at all times show a and death as your only doctor. He bold and defying front to the enemy. reverses the proverb, and thinks a Yet I am much mistaken if you, afdead ass is better than a living lion. ter all, have succeeded in deceiving In his eyes, death, like charity, either yourself or others into the be"covereth a multitude of sins." In liot that you are the leading Spirit of short, if you want his praise, you the Age. With all your cleverness, inmust die for it; and when such praise genuity, and wit, there is a melanchois deserved, and given really con amore, ly want about all your writings. You it is almost worth dying for. can expose what is little, but when have you created what is great? You can follow with nimble steps the route of other men, but into what recesses of By the bye, what can our Editor's facetious friend mean by " pimpled Hazlitt?" If he knows that gentle 66 knowledge have you ever conducted dear friend, you ought to have given, them as a guide? It is a truth which that in future times pilgrims might will not be concealed, that you are not repair to the spot, and worship the a great man. There is something me- chair on which you took your evening teorous about you-and it is pleasant nap, haply beneath the wings of the to see that brilliant light glancing Spread Eagle," or the mane of the through the lower regions of the sky" Red Lion," or the bushy locks of the -but we fix our eyes at last on the "Queen's Head." What is the use large bright stars of heaven, and the of a bulletin at all, unless it be comtrack of the kindled vapour is forgot- prehensive and complete?___The importance of the subject would have justified the most lengthened detail, for what was the meeting of Kings and Emperors on "that famous Raft," "to the celestial colloquy sublime," of Reviewer and Bard, in the back parlour of an Inn at Keswick ? ten. I beg your pardon, my dear Jeffrey, for this inflated manner of writing, so ill-suited to epistolary correspondence, and forming so very awkward an introduction to the very trifling and ludicrous subject on which I am about to put a few questions. You have yourself such an exquisite perception of the absurd-you are so alive to the follies and whimsies of others that I am sure you will pardon me for laughing very heartily at yourself, when you chance to make yourself ridiculous. And surely, if ever man did make himself ridiculous, you have done so, by your note on page 509, &c. of the 56th Number of your Review, which, by some accident, I saw yesterday for the first time. Perhaps it may not be quite fair to allude to what is now forgotten-for I have regularly observed, that each Number of your Work is so much better than that which preceded it, that the existence of the one destroys all remembrance of the other; so that, in reality, there is but one Number of the Edinburgh Review existing in the world; and of all that mighty family of pamphlets we see before us, only the last-born, Benja min the Ruler. Who ever thought they would live to see the day, when the Editor of the Edinburgh Review would publish in that work a bulletin of his tea-drinking at Keswick? I forget-it was not tea, but coffee. What an image! The stern destroyer of systems, political, poetical, metaphysical-having "coffee handed to him" by Robert Southey's servant-lass! He sips it while the destined Laureate stands aloof" with cold civility," and the "Ancient Mariner" "holds him with his glittering eye," so that he can with the utmost difficulty snatch a moment's intermission for a mouthful of buttered toast! In this sublimated state of happiness, 66 an hour or two" passes away,-and then Mr Francis Jeffrey returns to "the Inn," the name of which, my How you passed the night-how many blankets you slept under-and whether the hair mattrass was beneath or above the feather-bed, you have, with that forgetfulness so characteristic of genius, omitted to inform the world. But next day "you walked into the fields with Mr Coleridge," he clad, I presume, in " russet weeds," and you in a natty surtout and hessians. "His whole conversation was poetry;" and when that light fare was digested," he did you the honour to dine with you at the Inn." Next morning, you parted to meet no more or, in your own simple words, “I left Keswick, and have not seen him since." I cannot well understand, my dear Jeffrey, the nature of those feelings which induced you to publish this bulletin. They seem to have been strangely compounded of excessive egotism and shrinking timidity. Mr Coleridge, it appears, had brought forward some vague and indefinite charges against you, the head and front of which was, that you had handled severely the poems of a certain bard, after you had eaten his beef and drunk his wine; whereas, the truth is, you had only sipp'd his coffee, and perhaps munch'd his muffins. Even if it had been as the "Ancient Mariner" asserted, the world, who seldom take a deep interest in affairs of that kind, would not have thought a whit the worse of you. But you began to think that the fifteen million inhabitants of these kingdoms had their eyes all fixed upon you-and in the silence of night you heard voices calling on you to vindicate yourself against the Feast of the Poets. The public, who you imagined were thinking only upon you, were then trifling away their time about the more general, though less interesting affairs of Europe, and could not guess what was the meaning of all this talk of coffee, and all the dark and mysterious charges of wickedness and crime connected with the drinking of it. "Such little things are great to little men." But I will not press this matter any farther. Before concluding, however, I beg leave to say, that your behaviour towards Mr Coleridge has been very far from being either candid or manly. Undoubtedly you were not under the necessity of praising his poetry unless you admired it; but after the free and friendly intercourse you had with him; and after the many flattering, and probably sincere encomiums you paid his genius to his face, you were, I think, bound in honour, either to let his poetical productions pass unnoticed, or to review them yourself. It is a poor and unworthy get off, to say that CHRISTABEL was reviewed by another person. You should have boldly advanced your own opinions-for you are, with all your prejudices, an excellent judge of poetry, and could not but have seen beauty of some kind or other in a poem enthusiastically admired by Scott and Byron. Instead of this, you committed the task to a savage and truculent jacobin, the very twitching of whose countenance is enough to frighten the boldest muse into hysterics. That person was not ashamed to confess in his critique that he despised Mr Coleridge's poetry, because he hated his politics; as if no man could be admitted into the court of Apollo who did not vilify his Majesty's government. And this restless demagogue you let loose upon the friend with whom " you walked in the fields about Keswick," "whose whole conversation was poetry," who stood smil ingly by, while "coffee was handed to you," and whom, "as he liked to receive compliments," you were led to gratify with that kind of fare." There seems some little inconsistency of behaviour in first buttering a man all over with flattery, and then getting a raw-boned prize-fighter to belabour him with a hedge stake. 39 66 My dear fellow-God bless yougood bye-Pray do let me hear from you. You seem to have given up letter-writing entirely. What immense sheets I used to have from you long ago! I wish to goodness I had kept them; but I had no idea when I, then an old stager, first heard you clipping the King's English in the Outer House, that you were to become so great a man, and I to remain only your affectionate friend, TIMOTHY TICKLER. NOTICES OF THE ACTED DRAMA IN Concluded from our last Number. Ir is a great and a very general mistake to suppose that Mr Kean's acting is deficient in dignity. So far from this being the case, dignity is perhaps the one quality it exhibits, and is distinguished by, oftener and more successfully than by any other. Not the dignity resulting from a certain given arrangement of the arms and legs on a certain given occasion, according to a set of theatrical bye laws "in that case made and provided" but that real and sustained mental dignity which springs from lofty and intense feeling, and is allied to, and expressed by, spontaneous and highly picturesque, yet perfectly temperate, graceful, and appropriate bodily action. They must have strange notions of dignity, even in the most common-place sense of the term, who do not find it in Mr Kean's manner in dismissing Cassio from his command: "I love thee Cassio, but never more be officer of mine;" or in his apostrophy to his name, in Richard II. "Arm, arm, my name! A puny subject strikes At thy great glory, &c.. or in his rebuke to Northumberland in the same play: "No lord of thine, thou haught, insulting man," &c. or throughout the whole performance of Richard III. It is a vulgar error to call Mr Kean's acting undignified. It is exactly like calling the Beggar's Opera vulgar. The persons who do this are those who quarrel with the ankles of the Apollo Belvidere, because, forsooth, the turn of them does not conform to what they have chosen to consider as the standard of gentility. With them Dr Johnson is a more dignified prosewriter than Milton, because the latter could say "How d'ye do," in three words, while the former put a mask upon nothing, and induced us to mistake it, at first sight, for something else. With them, a person who writes English is not fit to be read by Englishmen, and they scorn to understand any one who makes himself intelligible. They cannot conceive a wise man without a large wig, and think it a very undignified proceeding in a king to put a night-cap on when he goes to bed: "A clout upon that head Where late a diadem stood !" Mr Kean must be content to do without the patronage of these kind of people, till he grows as tall as Mr Conway. In the mean time he is quite dignified enough for nature and Shakspeare, which is all that can be reasonably demanded of him. the floor of his tent, in Richard III.; and his noble death-scene in the same play. But we begin to find that we have got upon a topic almost too fertile for the limits in which we are compelled to treat of it. We must have done. Besides, we ought to have a little consideration for those look-warm, yet good-sort of people who think Mr Kean is " a very clever young man," but who are loath to admit that any one can be possessed of genius who has not been dead a century or two. But they should recollect that actors, unlike other votaries of the fine arts, cannot reckon upon immortality, even if they deserve it. It is but common justice, therefore, to place the laurel upon their living brows. It slips off the moment they die, and will not be persuaded to flourish upon their graves. It is another remarkable feature of Mr Kean's acting, that, even when he is performing Shakspeare, he affects you not so much by what he says, and by his manner of saying it, as by the effect which you see that what he says produces upon himself. From this it results, that the attention is exclusively fixed on what he is employed in at the moment you are looking at him. Or if it ever wanders from what he is doing, it is always to what he has done in the last scene or act-never to what he will do in the next. He never excites that idlest of all our mental propensities, mere curiosity, because he always fills and satisfies the mind, and leaves it no time or inclination to gaze about it. We never wish to see him in a new character; on the contrary, he always delights us most in those plays we are best acquainted with. For though he never plays a character exactly as any one predicts before hand that he will play it, yet he always best satisfies those who are best entitled to anticipate how it should be played. In fact he recreates all his characters, and adds to them all-but never in a wrong spirit. We say this without any cautious qualification whatever. And it is even more true of Shakspeare's characters than of any others. Mr Kean gilds refined gold ;" he " paints the lily;" he "throws a perfume on the violet ;" and yet one is never disposed to exclaim against his additions as "wastefull and ridiculous excess." We might name a hundred examples of this. Take among others his returning to kiss the hand of Ophelia, after his apparently harsh treatment of her; Over the sunny peebles breathingly. his drawing figures with his sword on We shall mention some of Mr Kean's faults and deficiencies, and conclude with some general observations on a few of his principal characters. A critic in an Edinburgh paper has, as far as we know, been the only one to remark, that Mr Kean's voice is merely defective not bad. We think this is true. His voice is greatly deficient in power and compass, and is therefore totally unfit for lofty declamation; but it has a pathos that makes up for every thing. Though its tones do not strike upon the ear like the tinkling of a rill passing over a bed of pebbles*, they sink into the heart like the sighing of the breeze among the strings of an Eolian harp. And its occasional harshness is admirably adapted to express the broken and tempestuous sounds that burst from a soul torn asunder by conflicting passions. With all its defects, it would be difficult to exchange Mr Kean's voice for one better fitted for its uses. It might be improved by additions-from that of Macready's for instance-but we would not part with one of its own notes. It is singular that Mr Kean, who has nearly banished the mock-heroic from our stage, should be the very person who at times exhibits the most of it. In fact, this is his grand fault. He frequently gives what is called the level-speaking of a part, in a style that would not disgrace an amateur theatre -Whose voice is like a rill that slips LEIGH HUNT |