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These papers were to be con- tributed by various persons on a variety of subjects ; and Mr. Hunt, as the editor, was to take the character- istic or dramatic part of the work upon himself. 1 undertook to furnish occasional essays and criticisms ; one or two other friends promised their assistance ; but the essence of the work was to be miscellaneous. The next thing was to fix upon a title for it. After much doubtful consultation, that of ' THE BOUND TABLE ' was agreed upon as most descriptive of its nature and design. But our plan had been no sooner arranged and entered upon than Bonaparte landed at Frejus, et voila la Table Eonde dissoute. Our little congress was broken up as well as the great one ; politics called off the attention of the editor from the belles lettres, and the task of continuing the work fell chiefly upon the person who was least able to give life and spirit to the original design. A want of variety in the subjects and mode of treating them is perhaps the least disadvantage resulting vi Advertisement to the present Edition. from this circumstance. All the papers in the two volumes here offered to the public were written by myself and Mr. Hunt, except a letter communicated by a friend in the sixteenth number. Out of the fifty-two numbers twelve are Mr. Hunt's, with the signatures L. H. or H. T. For all the rest I am answerable. W. HAZLITT. 1 January 5, 1817. 1 In 'A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., from William Hazlitt, Esq., 1819,' there is a vindication of this book from Gifford's malig- nant and absurd aspersions. This letter was reprinted in 1820 : but as both editions are very rare I reproduced the matter relating to 'THE ROUND TABLE' in the ' Memoirs of W. H.,' 1867, vol. i. p. 246-50. ED. ( vii ) ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT EDITION. THE principal portion of the contents of ' THE BOUND TABLE ' originally appeared in the columns of the ' Ex- aminer' newspaper; but the work, as printed in 1817, comprised articles not contributed to that periodical, and, on the other hand, excluded matter which had formed part of the series, as published in the ' Examiner.' 1 The two authors principally concerned had doubtless their reasons for this re-arrangement and substitution, and it has been decided that in the present case there shall be no departure from their plan beyond the ap- parently obvious step of withdrawing from the book those few Essays which were not written by Mr. Hazlitt, and which, therefore, could scarcely with much pro- priety be admitted into a collected edition of his works. In every other respect the edition of 'THE BOUND TABLE' now offered to the public is a faithful reproduction of that in two volumes duodecimo, 1817. W. C. H. KensingtoTi, May, 1871. 1 See Mr. Inland's interesting monograph, List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt,' 1868, p. 50. THE ROUND TABLE, No. I. IT is our intention, in the course of these papers, oc- casionally to expose certain vulgar errors, which have crept into our reasonings on men and manners. Perhaps one of the most interesting of these is that which relates to the source of our general attachment to life. We are not going to enter into the question, whether life is, ort- the whole, to be regarded as a blessing, though we are by no means inclined to adopt the opinion of that sage- who thought "that the best thing that could have- happened to a man was never to have been born, and the next best to have died the moment after he came into existence." The common argument, however, which is made use of to prove the value of life, from the strong desire which almost every one feels for its con- tinuance, appears to be altogether inconclusive. The wise and the foolish, the weak and the strong, the lame and the blind, the prisoner and the free, the prosperous and the wretched, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, from the little child who tries to leap over his own shadow to the old man who stumbles blindfold on his grave all feel this desire in common. Our notions with respect to the importance B 2 On the Love of Life. of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery. The love of life is, in general, the effect, not of our enjoyments, but of our passions. We are not attached to it so much for its own sake, or as it is connected with happiness, as because it is necessary to action. Without life there can be no action no objects of pursuit no restless desires no tormenting passions. Hence it is that we fondly cling to it that we dread its termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope. The proof that our attachment to life is not absolutely owing to the immediate satisfaction we find in it is, that those per- sons are commonly found most loth to part with it who have the least enjoyment of it, and who have the greatest difficulties to struggle with, as losing gamesters are the most desperate. And further, there are not many per- sons who, with all their pretended love of life, would not, if it had been in their power, have melted down the longest life to a few hours. " The schoolboy," says Addison, " counts the time till the return of the holi- days ; the minor longs to be of age ; the lover is im- patient till he is married." " Hope and fantastic ex- pectations spend much of our lives ; and while with passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, passing from fancy to possession without any intermediate notices, we throw away a precious year." (Jeremy Taylor.) We would willingly, and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any favourite object. We chiefly look upon life, then, as the means to an end. Its common enjoyments and its daily evils are alike disregarded for any idle purpose we have in view. It should seem as if there were a few green sunny spots in the desert of life, to which we are always hastening forward; we eye On the Love of Life. 3 (hem wistfully in the distance, and care not what perils or suffering we endure, so that we arrive at them at last. However weary we may be of the same stale round however sick of the past however hopeless of the future the mind still revolts at the thought of death, because the fancied possibility of good, which always remains with life, gathers strength as it is about to be torn from us for ever, and the dullest scene looks bright compared with the darkness of the grave. Our reluc- tance to part with existence evidently does not depend on the calm and even current of our lives, but on the force and impulse of the passions. Hence that indiffer- ence to death which has been sometimes remarked in people who lead a solitary and peaceful life in remote und barren districts. The pulse of life in them, does not beat strong enough to occasion any violent revulsion ot the frame when it ceases. He who treads the green mountain turf, or he who sleeps beneath it, enjoys an almost equal quiet. The death of those persons has always been accounted happy who had attained their utmost wishes, who had nothing left to regret or desire. Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain to the violence of our efforts, and the keenness of our disappointments and to our earnest desire to find in the future, if possible, a rich amends for the past. We may be said to nurse our existence with the greatest tenderness, according to the pain it has cost us ; and feel at every step of our varying progress the truth of that line of the poet " An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour." The love of life is in fact the sum of all our passions and of all our enjoyments ; but these are by no means the same thing, for the vehemence of our passion is irritated not less by disappointment than by the pro- spect of success. Kothing seems to be a match for this 4 On the Love of Life. general tenaciousness of existence, but such an extremity either of bodily or mental suffering as destroys at once the power both of habit and imagination. In short, the question whether life is accompanied with a greater quantity of pleasure or pain, may be fairly set aside as frivolous, and of no practical utility; for our attach- ment to life depends on our interest in it, and it cannot be denied that we have more interest in this moving busy scene, agitated with a thousand hopes and fears, and checkered with every diversity of joy and sorrow, than in a dreary blank. To be something is better than to be nothing, because we can feel no inter- est in nothing. Passion, imagination, selfwill, the sense of power, the very consciousness of our existence, bind us to life, and hold us fast in its chains, as by a magic spell, in spite of every other consideration. Nothing- can be more philosophical than the reasoning which Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel : " And that must end us, that must be our cure To be no more. Sad cure ! For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion ?" Nearly the same account may be given in answer to the question which has been asked, Why so few tyrants kill themselves ? In the first place, they are never satis- fied with the mischief they have done, and cannot quit their hold of power after all sense of pleasure is fled. Besides, they absurdly argue from the means of happi- ness placed within their reach to the end itself; and, dazzled by the pomp and pageantry of a throne, cannot relinquish the persuasion that they ought to be happier than other men. The prejudice of opinion, which attaches us to life, is in them stronger than in others, On the Love of Life. 5 and incorrigible to experience. The great are life's fools dupes of the splendid shadows that surround them, and wedded to the very mockeries of opinion. Whatever is our situation or pursuit in life, the result will be much the same. The strength of the passion seldom corresponds to the pleasure we find in its in- dulgence. The miser " robs himself to increase his store ;" the ambitious man toils up a slippery precipice only to be tumbled headlong from its height ; the lover is infatuated with the charms of his mistress, exactly in proportion to the mortifications he has received from her. Even those who succeed in nothing who, as it has been emphatically expressed, " Are made desperate by too quick a sense Of constant infelicity ; cut off From peace like exiles, on some barren rock, Their life's sad prison, \vith no more of ease Than sentinels between two armies set " are yet as unwilling as others to give over the unprofit- able strife : their harassed feverish existence refuses rest, and frets the languor of exhausted hope into the torture of unavailing regret. The exile, who has been unexpectedly restored to his country and to liberty, often finds his courage fail with the accomplishment of all his wishes, and the struggle of life and hope ceases at the same instant. AVe once more repeat, that we do not, in the foregoing remarks, mean to enter into a comparative estimate of the value of human life, but merely to show that the strength of our attachment to it is a very fallacious test of its happiness. 6 On Classical Education. No. II. On Classical Education. THE study of the Classics is less to be regarded as an exercise of the intellect that, as " a discipline of humanity." The peculiar advantage of this mode of education consists not so much in strengthening the understanding, as in softening and refining the taste. It gives men liberal views : it accustoms the mind to take an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own sake ; to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches ; and to fix our thoughts on the remote and permanent, instead of narrow and fleeting objects. It teaches us to believe that there is something reallj' great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile fear which bows only to present power and upstart authority. Borne and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind which can never be occupied again. They were two cities set on a hill, which could not be hid ; all eyes have seen them, and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time. " Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Destructive war, and all-involving age. Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days, Immortal heirs of universal praise ! Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow !" It is this feeling, more than anything else, which produces a marked difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages, and which, from the weight and importance of the consequences attached to the former, stamps every word with a monumental On Classical Education. 7 firmness. By conversing with the miglity dead, we im- bibe sentiment with knowledge ; we become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind ; we feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages. It is hard to find, in minds otherwise formed, either a real love of excellence, or a belief that any excellence exists superior to their own. Everything is brought down to the vulgar level of their own ideas and pursuits. Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns them- selves, or in things immediately within their observa- tion. But they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste or scale of opinion. The} 7 see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the cha- racteristic of self-taught men, and which degenerates into obstinate prejudice or petulant fickleness of opinion, according to the natural sluggishness or activity of their minds. For they either become blindly bigoted to the first opinions they have struck out for themselves, and inaccessible to conviction ; or else (the dupes of their own vanity and shrewdness) are everlasting converts to every crude suggestion that presents itself, and the last opinion is always the true one. Each successive dis- covery flashes upon them with equal light and evidence, and every new fact overturns their whole system. It is among this class of persons, whose ideas never extend beyond the feeling of the moment, that we find partisans, who are very honest men, with a total want of principle, and who unite the most hardened effrontery and in- tolerance of opinion to endless inconsistency and self- contradiction. A celebrated political writer of the present day, who 8 On Classical Education. is a great enemy to classical education, is a remarkable instance both of what can and what cannot be done without it. It has been attempted of late to set up a distinction between the education of words and the education of things, and to give the preference in all cases to- the latter. But, in the first place, the knowledge of things, or of the realities of life, is not easily to be taught except by things themselves, and, even if it were, is not so absolutely indispensable as it has been supposed. " The world is too much with us, early and late ;" and the fine dream of our youth is best prolonged among the visionary objects of antiquity. We owe many of our most amiable delusions, and some of our superiority over the gross- ness of mere physical existence, to the strength of our associations with words. Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects. There can be no true elegance without taste in style. In the next place, we mean absolutely to deny the appli- cation of the principle of utility to the present question. By an obvious transposition of ideas, some persons have confounded a knowledge of useful things with useful knowledge. Knowledge is only useful in itself, as it exercises or gives pleasure to the mind : the only know- ledge that is of use, in a practical sense, is professional knowledge. But knowledge, considered as a branch of general education, can be of use only to the mind of the person acquiring it. If the knowledge of language produces pedants, the other kind of knowledge (which is proposed to be substituted for it) can only produce quacks. There is no question but that the knowledge of astronomy, of chemistry, and of agriculture, is highly useful to the world, and absolutely necessary to be acquired by persons carrying on certain professions ; but the practical utility of a knowledge of these subjects On the < Taller: 9 ends there. For example, it is of the utmost importance to the navigator to know exactly in what degree of longitude and latitude such a rock lies ; but to us, sitting here about our Round Table, it is not of the smallest consequence whatever, whether the map-maker has placed it an inch to the right or to the left we are in no danger of running against it. So the art of making shoes is a highly useful art, and very proper to be known and practised by somebody : that is, by the shoemaker. But to pretend that every one else should be thoroughly acquainted with the whole process of this ingenious handicraft, as one branch of useful knowledge, would be preposterous. It is sometimes asked, What is the use of poetry? and we have heard the argument carried on almost like a parody onFalstaffs reasoning about honour : "Can it set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound ? No. Poetry hath no skill in surgery then ? No." It is likely that the most enthusiastic lover of poetry would so far agree to the truth of this statement, that if he had just broken a leg he would send for a surgeon, instead of a volume of poems from a library. But " they that are whole need not a physician." The reasoning would be well-founded if we lived in an hospital, and not in the world. No. III. On the ' Taller: OF all the periodical Essayists (our ingenious prede- cessors), the ' Tatler ' has always appeared to us the most accomplished and agreeable. Montaigne, who was the father of this kind of personal authorship among the modems, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and sits down with the writer in his gown and 10 On the ' Toiler: slippers, was a most magnanimous and undisguised egotist ; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., was the more disin- terested gossip of the two. The French author is con- tented to describe the peculiarities of his own mind and person, which he does with a most copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist, goodnaturedly, lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and those of his neighbours. A young lady, on the other side of Temple Bar, cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff takes due notice of it ; and he has the first intelligence of the symptoms of the belle passion appearing in any young gentleman at the west end of the town. The departures and arrivals of widows with hand- some jointures, either to bury their grief in the country, or to procure a second husband in town, are regularly re- corded in his pages. He is well acquainted with the cele- brated beauties of the last age at the Court of Charles the Second, and the old gentleman often grows romantic in recounting the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered from the glances of their bright eyes and their unaccount- able caprices. In particular, he dwells with a secret satis- faction on one of his mistresses who left him for a rival, and whose constant reproach to her husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was, "I, that might have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner !" The club at the Trumpet consists of a set of persons as entertaining as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the shire, the countiy squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who waited on him at his chambers in such form and ceremony, seem not to have settled the order of their precedence to this hour ; and we should hope the uphol- sterer and his companions in the Green Park stand as fair a chance for immortality as some modern politi- cians. Mr. Bickerstaff himself is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist and a man of the world, with a great On the l Toiler: 11 deal of nice easy naivete about him. If he walks out and is caught in a shower of rain, ho makes us amends for this unlucky accident by a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes with a burlesque copy of verses on a city shower. He entertains us, when he dates from his own apartment, with, a quotation from Plutarch or a moral reflection ; from the Grecian coffeehouse with politics, and from Will's or the Temple with the poets and players, the beaux and men of wit and pleasure about town. In reading the pages of the ' Tatler ' we seem as if suddenly transported to the age of Queen Anne of toupees and full- bottomed periwigs. The whole appearance of our dress and manners undergoes a delightful metamorphosis. AVe are surprised with the rustling of hoops and the glittering of paste buckles. The beaux and belles are of a quite different species ; we distinguish the dappers, the smarts, and the pretty fellows, as they pass ; we are introduced to Betterton and Mrs. Oldfield behind the scenes are made familiar with the persons of Mr. Pen- kethman and Mr. Bullock ; we listen to a dispute at a tavern on the merits of the Duke of Maryborough or Marshal Turenne ; or are present at the first rehearsal of a play by Vanbrugh, or the reading of a new poem by Mr. Pope. The privilege of thus virtually transport- ing ourselves to past times is even greater than that of visiting distant places. London a hundred years ago would be better worth seeing than Paris at the present moment. 1 It may be said that all this is to be found, in the same or a greater degree, in the ' Spectator.' We do not think so ; or at least, there is in the last work a much greater proportion of commonplace matter. We have always preferred the ' Tatler ' to the ' Spectator.' Whether it is owing to our having been earlier or better acquainted with the one than the other, our pleasure in reading the 1 This was written in 1815. ED. 12 On the ' Tatter.' two works is not at all in proportion to their compara- tive reputation. The 'Tatler' contains only half the number of volumes, and we will venture to say, at least an equal quantity of sterling wit and sense. " The first sprightly runnings " are there ; it has more of the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature. The indications of character and strokes of liumour are more true and frequent ; the reflections that suggest themselves arise more from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular dissertations. They are more like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation, and less like a lecture. Something is left to the under- standing of the reader. Steele seems to have gone into his closet only to set down what he observed out-of- doors ; Addison seems to have spun out and wire-drawn the hints which he borrowed from Steele, or took from nature, to the utmost. We do not mean to depreciate Addison's talents, but we wish to do justice to Steele, who was, upon the whole, a less artificial and more original writer. The descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches or fragments of a comedy ; those of Addi- son are ingenious paraphrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, not only in the ' Tatler ' but in the 1 Spectator,' were drawn by Steele. That of Sir Eoger de Coverley is among them. Addison has gained himself eter- nal honour by his manner of filling up this last character. Those of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind it in delicacy and felicity. Many of the most -exquisite pieces in the ' Tatler ' are also Addison's as the Court of Honour, and the Personification of Musical Instruments. We do not know whether the picture of the family of an old acquaintance, in which the children run to let Mr. Bickerstaff in at the door, and the one that loses the race that way turns back to tell the father that he is come, with the nice gradation of incredulity in the little boy, who is got into ' Guy of War wick' and ' The Seven On Hie ' Tatter.' 13 Champions,' and who shakes his head at the veracity of ' ^Esop's Fables,' is Steele's or Addison's. 1 The account of the two sisters, one of whom held her head up higher than ordinary from having on a pair of flowered garters, and of the married lady who complained to the 'Tatler' of the neglect of her husband, are unquestionably Steele's. If the ' Tatler ' is not inferior to the ' Spectator ' in manners and character, it is very superior to it in the interest of many of the stories. Several of the incidents related by Steele have never been surpassed in the heartrending pathos of private distress. We might refer to those of the lover and his mistress when the theatre caught fire ; of the bridegroom who, by accident, kills his bride on 1he day of their marriage ; the story of Mr. Eustace and his wife, and the fine dream about his own mistress when a youth. What has given its superior popularity to the ' Spectator ' is the greater gravity of its pretensions, its moral dissertations and critical reasonings, by which we confess we are less edified than by other things. Systems and opinions change, but nature is always true. It is the extremely moral and didactic tone of the ' Spectator ' which makes us apt to think of Addison (according to Mandeville's sarcasm) as " a parson in a tie-wig." Some of the moral essays are, however, exquisitely beautiful and happy. Such are the reflections on Westminster Abbey, on the Eoyal Exchange, and some very affecting ones on the death of a young lady. These, it must be allowed, are the perfection of elegant sermonising. His 1 It is Steele's, and the whole paper (No. 95) is in his most delightful manner. The dream about the mistress, however, is given to Addison by the Editors, and the general style of that number is his ; though, from the story being related personally of Bickerstaft', who is also represented as having been at that time in the army, we conclude it to have originally come from Steele, per- haps in the course of conversation. The particular incident is much more like a story of his than of Addison's. H. T. [Leiyh Hunt.'] 1-1 On Modern Comedy. critical essays we do not think quite so good. We prefer Steele's occasional selection of beautiful poetical pas- sages, without any affectation of analysing their beau- ties, to Addison's fine-spun theories. The best criticism in the ' Spectator,' that on the Cartoons of Raphael, is by Steele. We owed this acknowledgment to a writer who has so often put us in good humour with our- selves and everything about us, when few things else could. 1 No. IV. On Modern Comedy. THE question which has often been asked, Why there are so few good modern comedies ? appears in a great measure to answer itself. It is because so many ex- cellent comedies have been written, that there are none written at present. Comedy naturally wears itself out destroys the very food on which it lives ; and by con- stantly and successfully exposing the follies and weak- nesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at. It holds the mirror up to nature ; and men, seeing their most striking peculiarities and defects pass in gay review before them, learn either to avoid or conceal them. It is not the criticism which the public taste exercises upon, the stage, but the criti- cism which the stage exercises upon public manners, that is fatal to comedy, by rendering the subject-matter of it tame, correct, and spiritless. We are drilled into a sort of stupid decorum, and forced to wear the same 1 We had in our hands the other day an original copy of the ' Tatler,' and a list of the subscribers. It is curious to see some names there which we should hardly think of (that of Sir Isaac Newton is among them), and also to observe the degree of interest excited by those of the different persons, which is not adjusted according to the rules of the Heralds' College. On, Modern Comedy. 15 dull uniform of outward appearance ; and yet it is asked, why the comic muse does not point, as she was wont, at the peculiarities of our gait and gesture, and exhibit the picturesque contrast of our dress and costume, in all that graceful variety in which she delights. The genuine source of comic writing, " Where it must live, or have no life at all," is undoubtedly to be found in the distinguishing pecu- liarities of men and manners. Now, this distinction can subsist, so as to be strong, pointed, and general, only while the manners of different classes are formed im- mediately by their particular circumstances, and the characters of individuals by their natural temperament and situation, without being everlastingly modified and neutralised by intercourse with the world by know- ledge and education. In a certain stage of society, men may be said to vegetate like trees, and to become rooted to the soil in which they grow. They have no idea of anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere of action ; they are, as it were, circumscribed and de- fined by their particular circiimstances ; they are what their situation makes them, and nothing more. Each is absorbed in his own profession or pursuit, and each in his turn contracts that habitual peculiarity of manners and opinions, which makes him the subject of ridicule to others, and the sport of the comic muse. Thus the physician is nothing but a physician, the lawyer is a mere lawyer, the scholar degenerates into a pedant, the country squire is a different species of being from the fine gentleman, the citizen and the courtier inhabit a different world, and even the affectation of certain characters, in aping the follies or vices of their betters, only serves to show the immeasurable distance which custom or fortune has placed between them. Hence the early comic writers, taking advantage of this mixed and 16 On Modern Comedy. solid mass of ignorance, folly, pride, arid prejudice, made those deep and lasting incisions into it have given those sharp and nice touches, that bold relief to their characters have opposed them in every variety of contrast and collision, of conscious self-satisfaction and mutual antipathy, with a power which can only find full scope in the same rich and inexhaustible materials. But in proportion as comic genius succeeds in taking off the mask from ignorance and conceit, as it teaches us to " See ourselves as others see us ;" in proportion as we are brought out on the stage to- gether, and our prejudices clash one against the other, our sharp angular points wear off; we are no longer rigid in absurdity, passionate in folly, and we prevent the ridicule directed at our habitual foibles by laughing at them ourselves. If it be said that there is the same fund of absurdity and prejudice in the world as ever that there are the same unaccountable perversities lurking at the bottom of eveiy breast I should answer, be it so ; but at least we keep our follies to ourselves as much as possible we palliate, shuffle, and equivocate with them they sneak into by-corners, and do not, like Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, march along the highroad and form a procession they do not entrench themselves strongly behind custom and precedent they are not embodied in professions and ranks in life they are not organised into a system they do not openly resort to a standard, but are a sort of straggling nondescripts, that, like Wart, " present no mark to the foeman." As to the gross and palpable absurdities of modern manners, they are too shallow and barefaced, and those who affect are too little serious in them to make them worth the de- tection of the comic muse. They proceed from an idle impudent affectation of folly in general, in the dashing On Modern Comedy. 17 bravura style, not from an infatuation with any of its characteristic modes. In short, the proper object of ridicule is egotism ; and a man cannot be a very great egotist who every day sees himself represented on the stage. We are deficient in comedy, because we are without characters in real life as we have no historical pictures, because we have no faces proper for them. It is, indeed, the evident tendency of all literature to generalise and dissipate character, by giving men the same artificial education and the same common stock of ideas ; so that we see all objects from the same point of view, and through the same reflected medium. We learn to exist, not in ourselves, but in books; all men become alike mere readers spectators, not actors in the scene, and lose all proper personal identity. The tem- plar, the wit, the man of pleasure, and the man of fashion, the courtier and the citizen, the knight and the squire, the lover and the miser Lovelace, Lothario, Will Honeycomb, and Sir Koger de Coverley, Sparkish and Lord Foppington, Western and Tom Jones, My Father and My Uncle Toby, Millamant and Sir Samp- son Legend, Don Quixote and Sancho, Gil Bias and Guzman d'Alfarache, Count Fathom and Joseph Surface have all met, and exchanged commonplaces on the barren plains of the haute literature toil slowly on to the Temple of Science, seen a long way oft' upon a level, and end in one dull compound of politics, criti- cism, chemistry, and metaphysics ! We cannot expect to reconcile opposite things. If, for example, any of us were to put ourselves into the stage-coach from Salisbury to London, it is more than probable we should not meet with the same number of odd accidents, or ludicrous distresses on the road, that befei Parson Adams ; but why, if we get into a common vehicle, and submit to the conveniences of modern travelling, should we complain of the want of c 18 On Modern Comedy. adventures ? Modern manners may be compared to a modern stage-coach : our limbs may be a little cramped with the confinement, and we may grow drowsy; but we arrive safe, without any very amusing or very sad accident, at our journey's end. Again, the alterations which have taken place in con- versation and dress in the same period have been by no means favourable to comedy. The present prevailing style of conversation is not personal, but critical and analytical. It consists almost entirely in the discussion of general topics, in dissertations on philosophy or taste ; and Congreve would be able to derive no better hints from the conversations of our toilettes or drawing-rooms for the exquisite raillery or poignant repartee of his dialogues, than from a deliberation of the Eoyal Society. In the same manner, the extreme simplicity and grace- ful uniformity of modern dress, however favourable to the arts, has certainly stript comedy of one of its richest ornaments and most expressive symbols. The sweeping pall and buskin and nodding plume were never more serviceable to tragedy, than the enormous hoops and stiff stays worn by the belles of former days were to the intrigues of comedy. They assisted wonderfully in heightening the mysteries of the passion, and adding to the intricacy of the plot. Wycherley and Vanbrugh could not have spared the dresses of Vandyke. These strange fancy-dresses, perverse disguises, and counter- feit shapes, gave an agreeable scope to the imagination. " That sevenfold fence " was a sort of foil to the luscious- ness of the dialogue, and a barrier against the sly en- croachments of double entendre. The greedy e} T e and bold hand of indiscretion were repressed, which gave a greater licence to the tongue. The senses were not to be gratified in an instant. Love was entangled in the folds of the swelling handkerchief, and the desires might wander for ever round the circumference of a quilted On Modern Comedy. 19 petticoat, or find a rich lodging in the flowers of a damask stomacher. There was room for years of patient contrivance for a thousand thoughts, schemes, con- jectures, hopes, fears, and wishes. There seemed no end of difficulties and delays ; to overcome so many obstacles was the work of ages. A mistress was an angel con- cealed behind whalebone, flounces, and brocade. What an undertaking, to penetrate through the disguise ! What an impulse must it give to the blood, what a keenness to the invention, what a volubility to the tongue ! " Mr. Smirk, you are a brisk man," was then the most significant commendation. But nowadays a woman can be but undressed. The same account might be extended to tragedy. Aristotle has long since said, that tragedy purifies the mind by terror and pity that is, substitutes an artificial and intellectual interest for real passion. Tragedy, like comedy, must therefore defeat itself; for its patterns must be drawn from the living models within the breast, from feeling, or from observation; and the materials of tragedy cannot be found among a people who are the habitual spectators of tragedy, whose interests and passions are not their own, but ideal, remote, senti- mental, and abstracted. It is for this reason chiefly, we conceive, that the highest efforts of the tragic muse are in general the earliest ; where the strong impulses of nature are not lost in the refinements and glosses of art ; where the writers themselves, and those whom they saw about them, had " warm hearts of flesh and blood beating in their bosoms, and were not embowelled of their natural entrails, and stuffed with paltry blurred sheets of paper." Shakspeare, with all his genius, could not have written as he did, if he had lived in the present times. Nature would not have presented itself to him in the same freshness and vigour ; he must have seen it through all the refractions of successive dullness, and 20 On Mr. Keans lago. his powers would liave languished in the dense atmo- sphere of logic and criticism. " Men's minds," he some- where says, " are parcel of their fortunes ;" and his age was necessary to him. It was this which enabled him .,0 grapple at once with Nature, and which stamped his characters with her image and superscription. No. V. On Mr. Keans lago. 1 WE certainly think Mr. Kean's performance of the part of lago one of the most extraordinary exhibi- tions on the stage. There is no one within our re- membrance who has so completely foiled the critics as this celebrated actor. One sagacious person imagines that he must perform a part in a certain manner ; another virtuoso chalks out a different path for him ; and when the time comes, he does the whole off in a way that neither of them had the least conception of, and which both of them are therefore very ready to condemn as entirely wrong. It was ever the trick of genius to be thus. We confess that Mr. Kean has thrown us out more than once. For instance, we are very much in- clined to adopt the opinion of a contemporary critic, that his Eichard is not gay enough, and that his lago is not grave enough. This he may perhaps conceive to be the mere caprice of idle criticism ; but we will try to give our reasons, and shall leave them to Mr. Kean's better judgment. It is to be remembered, then, that Richard was a princely villain, borne along in a sort of trium- phal car of royal state, buoyed up with the hopes and privileges of his birth, reposing even on the sanctity of 1 Compare ' A View of the English Stage,' 1818, edit. 1821, p. 70. This criticism originally appeared in the Examiner newspaper, July 23, 1814. The text of 1817 presents occasional variations. ED. On Mr. Keans lago. 21 religion, trampling on his devoted victims without remorse, and who looked out and laughed from the high watchtower of his confidence and his expectations on the desolation and misery he had caused around him. He held on his way, unquestioned, " hedged in with the divinity of kings," amenable to no tribunal, and abusing his power in contempt of mankind. But as for lago, we conceive differently of him. He had not the same natural advantages. He was a mere adventurer in mischief a painstaking plodding knave, without patent or pedigree, who was obliged to work his uphill way by wit, not by will, and to be the founder of his own fortune. He was, if we may be allowed a vulgar allusion, a sort of proto- type of modern Jacobinism, who thought that talents ought to decide the place a man of " morbid sensi- bility" (in the fashionable phrase), full of distrust, of hatred, of anxious and corroding thoughts, and who, though he might assume a temporary superiority over others by superior adroitness, and pride himself in his skill, could not be supposed to assume it as a matter of course, as if he had been entitled to it from his birth. We do not here mean to enter into the characters of the two men, but something must be allowed to the differ- ence of their situations. There might be the same insensibility in both as to the end in view, but there could not well be the same security as to the success of the means. lago had to pass through a different ordeal : he had no appliances and means to boot no royal road to the completion of his tragedy. His pretensions were not backed by authority ; they were not baptized at the font ; they were not holy-water-proof. He had the whole to answer for in his own person, and. could not shift the responsibility to the heads of others. Mr. Kean's Richard was therefore, we think, deficient in something of that regal jollity and reeling triumph of success which the part would bear; but this we can 22 On Mr. Kean's lago. easily account for, because it is the traditional common place idea of the character, that he is to " play the dog to bite and snarl." The extreme unconcern and laboured levity of his lago, on the contrary, is a refine- ment and original device of the actor's own mind, and therefore deserves consideration. The character of lago, in fact, belongs to a class of characters common to Shak- speare, and at the same time peculiar to him namely, that of great intellectual activity, accompanied with a total want of moral principle, and thei'efore displaying itself at the constant expense of others, making use of reason as a pander to will, employing its ingenuity and its resources to palliate its own crimes and aggravate the faults of others, and seeking to confound the practical distinctions of right and wrong by referring them to some overstrained standard of speculative refinement. Some persons, more nice than wise, have thought the whole of the character of lago unnatural. Shakspeare, who was quite as good a philosopher as he was a poet, thought otherwise. He knew that the love of power, which is another name for the love of mischief, was natural to man. He would know this as well or better than if it had been demonstrated to him by a logical diagram, merely from seeing children paddle in the dirt, or kill flies for sport. We might ask those who think the character of lago not natural, why they go to see it performed, but from the interest it excites, the sharper edge which it sets on their curiosity and imagination? Why do we go to see tragedies in general, why do we always read the accounts in the newspapers of dreadful fires and shocking murders, but for the same reason ? Why do so many persons frequent executions and trials, or why do the lower classes almost universally take delight in barbarous sports and cruelty to animals, but because there is a natural tendency in the mind to- strong excitement, a desire to have its faculties roused On Mr. Kean's lago. 23 and stimulated to the utmost ? Whenever this principle is not under the restraint of humanity or the sense of moral obligation, there are no excesses to which it will not of itself give rise, without the assistance of any other motive, either of passion or self-interest. lago is only an extreme instance of the kind that is, of diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a pre- ference for the latter, because it falls more in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts, and scope to his actions. Be it observed, too (for the sake of those who are for squaring all human actions by the maxims of Eochefoucault), that he is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others ; that he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage ; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion an incorrigible love of mischief, an insatiable craving after action of the most difficult and dangerous kind. Our " ancient " is a philosopher, who fancies that a lie that kills has more point in it than an alliteration or an antithesis ; who thinks a fatal experiment on the peace of a family a better thing than watching the palpitations in the heart of a flea in an air-pump ; who plots the ruin of his friends as an exercise for his understanding, and stabs men in the dark to prevent ennui. Now this, though it be sport, yet it is dreadful sport. There is no room for trifling and indifference, nor scarcely for the appearance of it ; the very object of his whole plot is to keep his faculties stretched on the rack, in a state of watch and ward, in a sort of breathless suspense, with- out a moment's interval of repose. He has a desperate stake to play for, like a man who fences with poisoned weapons, and has business enough on his hands to call for the whole stock of his sober circumspection, his dark duplicity, and insidious gravity. He resembles a man who sits down to play at chess for the sake of the diffi- 24 On Mr. Keans lago. culty and complication of the game, and who immediately becomes absorbed in it. His amusements, if they are amusements, are severe and saturnine even his wit blisters. His gaiety arises from the success of bis treachery ; his ease from the sense of the torture he has inflicted on others. Even, if other circumstances permitted it, the part ho has to play with Othello re- quires that he should assume the most serious concern, and something of the plausibility of a confessor. " His cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o' Bedlam." He is repeatedly called " honest lago," which looks as if there were something suspicious in his appearance, which admitted a different construction. The tone which he adopts in the scenes with Eoderigo, Desdemona, and Cassio, is only a relaxation from the more arduous business of the play. Yet there is in all his conversation an inveterate misanthropy, a licentious keenness of perception, which is always sagacious of evil, and snuffs up the tainted scent of its quarry with rancorous delight. An exuberance of spleen is the essence of the character. The view which we have here taken of the subject (if at all correct) will not therefore justify the extreme alteration which Mr. Kean has introduced into the part. Actors in general have been struck only with the wickedness of the character, and have exhibited an assassin going to the place of execu- tion. Mr. Kean has abstracted the wit of the character, makes lago appear throughout an excellent good fellow and lively bottle-companion. But though we do not wish him to be represented as a monster or fiend, we see no reason why he should instantly be converted into- a pattern of comic gaiety and good-humour. The light which illumines the character should rather resemble the flashes of lightning in the murky sky, which make the darkness more terrible. Mr. Kean's lago is, we suspect, too much in the sun. His manner of acting On the Love of the Country. 25 the part would have suited better with the character of Edmund in ' King Lear,' who, though, in other respects much the same, has a spice of gallantry in his constitu- tion, and has the favour and countenance of the ladies, which always gives a man the smug appearance of a bridegroom. No. VI. On the Love of the Country. TO THE EDITOR OF 'THE BOUND TABLK.' SIR, I do not know that any one has ever explained satisfactorily the true source of our attachment to- natural objects, or of that soothing emotion which the sight of the country hardly ever fails to infuse into the mind. Some persons have ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty of the objects themselves ; others to the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity, which scenes of retirement afford ; others to the healthy and innocent employments of a country life ; others to the simplicity of country manners, and others to dif- ferent causes ; but none to the right one. All these causes may, I believe, have a share in producing this- feeling ; but there is another more general principle, which has been left untouched, and which I shall here explain, endeavouring to be as little sentimental as the subject will admit. Rousseau, in his ' Confessions ' the most valuable of all his works relates that, when he took possession of his room at Annecy, at the house of his beloved mistress- and friend, he found that he could see " a little spot of green " from his window, which endeared his situation, the more to him, because, he says, it was the first time he had had this object constantly before him since he. left Boissy, the place where he was at school when a 26 On the Love of the Country. child. 1 Some such feeling as that here described will be found lurking at the bottom of all our attachments of this sort. Were it not for the recollections habitually associated with them, natural objects could not interest the mind in the manner they do. No doubt the sky is beautiful ; the clouds sail majestically along its bosom ; the sun is cheering ; there is something exquisitely graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its branches ; the motion with which they bend and tremble in the evening breeze is soft and lovely ; there is music in the babbling of a brook ; the view from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur ; nor can we behold the ocean, with indifference. Or, as the minstrel sweetly sings " Oh, how can'st them renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her vot'ry yields ? The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even ; All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven Oh, how can'st thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven !" It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we admire in Nature ; the most insignificant and the rudest objects are often found connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to the most common and familiar images, as to the face of a friend whom we have long known, and from whom we have re- ceived many benefits. It is because natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention ; with 1 Pope also declares that he had a particular regard for an old post which stood in the courtyard before the house where he was brought up. On the Love of the Couninj. 27 change of place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends : it is because they have surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in pleasure and in pain because they have been one chief source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them as we do ourselves. There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of ideas. But this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical objects, the associations connected with any one object extending to the whole class. My having been attached to any particular person does not make me feel the same attachment to the next person I may chance to meet ; but if I have once associated strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and I shall ever after feel the same attachment to other objects of the same sort. I remember, when I was abroad, the trees and grass and wet leaves rustling in the walks of the Tuileries- seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same trees and grass that I had always been used to, as the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in England ; the faces only were foreign to me. AY hence comes this difference ? It arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the indi- vidual with man, and only the idea of the class with natural objects. In the one case, the external appear- ance or physical structure is the least thing to be at- tended to ; in the other, it is everything. The springs that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, 28 On the Love of the Country. governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make no inference from one individual to another; nor can my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to others. But it is otherwise with respect to Nature. There is neither hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reserva- tion in her favours. Our intercourse with her is not liable to accident or change, interruption or disappoint- ment. She smiles on us still the same. Tluis, to give an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook I can enjoy the pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, dryad or naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind being the same, not only in their appearance but in their practical \ises, we habitually confound them together under the same general idea ; and whatever fondness we may have conceived for one is immediately placed to the common account. The most opposite kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same senti- ment ; and in our love of Nature there is all the force of individual attachment combined with the most airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild interest to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true lover of Nature. The sight of the setting sun does not affect me so much from the beauty of the object itself, from the glory kindled through the glowing skies, the rich broken columns of light, or the dying streaks of day, as that it indistinctly recalls to me numberless thoughts and feelings with which, through many a year and season, I have watched On {lie Love of the Country. 29 his bright descent in the warm summer evenings, or beheld him struggling to cast a " farewell sweet " through the thick clouds of winter. I love to see the trees first covered with leaves in the spring, the prim- roses peeping out from some sheltered bank, and the innocent lambs running races on the soft green turf ; because at that birth-time of Nature I have always felt sweet hopes and happy wishes which have not been fulfilled ! The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream the woods swept by the loud blast the dark massy foliage of autumn the gray trunks and naked branches of the trees in winter the sequestered copse and wide extended heath the warm sunny showers and De- cember snows have all charms for me ; there is no object, however trifling or rude, that has not, in some mood or other, found the way to my heart ; and I might say, in the words of the poet : " To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Thus Nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents to us an old acquaintance with un- altered looks : " Nature did ne'er betray The heart that lov'd her. but through all the years Of this our life, it is her privilege To lead from joy to joy.'' For there is that consent and mutual harmony among all her works one undivided spirit pervading them throughout that, if we have once knit ourselves in hearty fellowship to any of them, they will never after- wards appear as strangers to us, but, whichever way we turn, we shall find a secret power to have gone out before us, moulding them into such shapes as fancy loves, in- forming them with life and sympathy, bidding them put on their festive looks and gayest attire at our approach, and to pour all their nweets and choicest treasures at our 80 On Posthumous Fame. feet. For him, then, who has well acquainted himself with Nature's works, she wears always one face, and speaks the same well-known language, striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the world, like the music of one's native tongue heard in some far-off country. We do not connect the same feelings with the works of Art as with those of Nature, because we refer them to man, and associate with them the separate interests and passions which we know belong to those who are the authors or possessors of them. Nevertheless, there are some such objects, as a cottage or a village church, which excite in us the same sensations as the sight of Nature, and which are, indeed, almost always included in descriptions of natural scenery. " Or from the mountain's sides View wilds and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires, And hear their simple bell." Which is in part, no doubt, because they are surrounded with natural objects, and, in a populous country, in- separable from them ; and also because the human interest they excite relates to manners and feelings which are simple, common, such as all can enter into, and which, therefore, always produce a pleasing effect upon the mind. No. VII. On Posthumous Fame. Whether Shakspeare was influenced by a Love of it f IT has been much disputed whether Shakspeare was actuated by the love of fame, though the question has been thought by others not to admit of any doubt, on the ground that it was impossible for any man of great genius to be without this feeling It was supposed On Posthumous Fame. 31 that immortality, which was the natural inheritance of men of powerful genius, must be ever present to their minds, as the reward, the object, and the animating spring of all their efforts. This conclusion does not ap- pear to be well-founded, and that for the following reasons. First, the love of fame is the offspring of taste rather than of genius. The love of fame implies a knowledge of its existence. The men of the greatest genius, whether poets or philosophers, who lived in the first ages of society, only just emerging from the gloom of ignorance and barbarism, could not be supposed to have much idea of those long trails of lasting glory which they were to leave behind them, and of which there were as yet no examples. But after such men, inspired by the love of truth and nature, have struck out those lights which become the gaze and admiration of after-times when those who succeed in distant generations read with wondering rapture the works which the bards and sages of antiquity have bequeathed to them when they con- template the imperishable power of intellect which sur- vives the stroke of death and the revolutions of empire it is then that the passion for fame becomes an habitual feeling in the mind, and that men naturally wish to excite the same sentiments of admiration in others which they themselves have felt, and to transmit their names with the same honours to posterity. It is from the fond enthusiastic veneration with which we recall the names of the celebrated men of past times, and the idolatrous worship we pay to their memories, that we learn what a delicious thing fame is, and would willingly make any efforts or sacrifices to be thought of in the same way. It is in the true spirit of this feeling that a modern writer exclaims "Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, The poets who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays ! Oh ! might my name be number'd among theirs, Then gladly would I end my mortal days !" 32 Gn Posthumous Fame. The lovo of fame is a species of emulation ; or, in other words, the love ot admiration is in proportion to the admiration with which the works of the highest genius have inspired us, to the delight we have received from their habitual contemplation, and to our participation in the general enthusiasm with which they have been regarded by mankind. Thus there is little of this feel- ing discoverable in the Greek writers, whose ideas of posthumous fame seem to have been confined to the glory of heroic actions ; whereas the Roman poets and orators, stimulated by the reputation which their pre- decessors had acquired, and having those exquisite models constantly before their eyes, are full of it. So Milton, whose capacious mind was imbued with the rich stores of sacred and of classic lore, to whom learning opened her inmost page, and whose eye seemed to be ever bent back to the great models of antiquity, was, it is evident, deeply impressed with a feeling of lofty emulation, and a strong desire to produce some work of lasting and equal reputation : "Nor sometimes forget Those other two, cquall'd with me in fate, So were I equall'd witli them in renown, Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old." ' Spenser, who was a man of learning, had a high opinion of the regard due to "famous poets' wit;" and Bacon, whose vanity is as well known as his excessive adula- tion of that of others, asks, in a tone of proud exultation, " Have not the poems of Homer lasted five-and-twenty hundred years, and not a syllable of them is lost?" Chaucer seems to have derived his notions of fame more immediately from the reputation acquired by the Italian poets, his contemporaries, which had at that time spread 1 See also the passage in his prose works relating to the first design of ' Paradise Lost.' On Posthumous Fame. 33 itself over Europe ; while the latter, who were the first to unlock the springs of ancient learning, and who slaked their thirst of knowledge at that pure fountain- head, would naturally imbibe the same feeling from its highest source. Thus, Dante has conveyed the finest image that can perhaps be conceived of the power of this principle over the human mind, when he describes the heroes and celebrated men of antiquity as " serene and smiling," though in the shades of death, " Because on earth their names In Fame's eternal volume shine for aye.'' But it is not so in Shakspeare. There is scarcely the slightest trace of any such feeling in his writings, nor any appearance of anxiety for their fate, or of a desire to perfect them or make them worthy of that immortality to which they were destined. And this indifference may be accounted for from the very circumstance, that he was almost entirely a man of genius, or that in, him this faculty bore sway over every other ; he was either not intimately conversant with the productions of the great writers who had gone before him, or at least was not much indebted to them ; he revelled in the world of observation and of fancy ; and perhaps his mind was of too prolific and active a kind to dwell with intense and continued interest on the images of beauty or of grandeur presented to it by the genius of others. He seemed scarcely to have an individual existence of his own, but to borrow that of others at will, and to pass successively through " every variety of untried being " to be now Hamlet, now Othello, now Lear, now Falstaff, now Ariel. In the mingled interests and feelings belonging to this wide range of imaginary reality, in the tumult and rapid transitions of this waking dream, the author could not easily find time to think of himself, nor wish to embody that personal identity in idle reputation after death, of which he was so little tenacious while living. 34 On Posthumous Fame. To feel a strong desire that others should think highly of us, it is, in general, necessary that we should think highly of ourselves. There is something of egotism, and even pedantry, in this sentiment ; and there is no author who was so little tinctured with these as Shak- speare. The passion for fame, like other passions, requires an exclusive and exaggerated admiration of its object, and attaches more consequence to literary attain- ments and pursuits than they really possess. Shak- speare had looked too much abroad into the world, and his views of things were of too universal and compre- hensive a cast, not to have taught him to estimate the importance of posthumous fame according to its true value and relative proportions. Though he might have some conception of his future fame, he could not but feel the contrast between that and his actual situation ; and, indeed, he complains bitterly of the latter in one of his sonnets. 1 He would perhaps think, that to be the idol of posterity when we are no more, was hardly a full compensation for being the object of the glance and scorn of fools while we are living ; and that, in truth, this universal fame so much vaunted was a vague phantom of blind enthusiasm ; for what is the amount even of Shakspeare's fame ? That in that very country which boasts his genius and his birth, perhaps not one person in ten has ever heard of his name or read a syllable of his writings ! 1 " Oh ! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmless deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." At another time, we find him " desiring this man's art, and that man's scope :" so little was Shakspeare, as far as we can learn, enamoured of himself ! On Hogarttis ' Marriage a la mode! 35 "VYe will add another observation in connection with this subject, which is, that men of the greatest genius produce their works with too much facility and, as it were, spontaneouslj- to require the love of fame as a stimulus to their exertions, or to make them seem de- serving of the admiration of mankind as their reward. It is, indeed, one characteristic mark of the highest class of excellence to appear to come naturally from the mind of the author, without consciousness or effort. The work seems like inspiration to be the gift of some god or of the muse. But it is the sense of difficulty which enhances the admiration of power, both in ourselves and in others. Hence it is that there is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. No. VII. On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' l THE superiority of the pictures of Hogarth, which we have seen in the late collection at the British Institu- tion, to the common prints is confined chiefly to the ' Marriage a. la mode.' We shall attempt to illustrate a few of their most striking excellences, more particu- larly with reference to the expression of character. Their merits are indeed so prominent, and have been so often discussed, that it may be thought difficult to point 1 This Essay, in two parts, is reprinted at the end of ' A Sketch of the Principal Picture Galleries,' &c. (1824).- ED. 36 On HogariTis ' Marriage a la mode' out any new beauties; but they contain so much truth of nature, they present the objects to the eye under so many aspects and bearings, admit of so many construc- tions, and are so pregnant with -meaning, that the subject is in a manner inexhaustible. Boccaccio, the most refined and sentimental of all the novel-writers, has been stigmatised as a mere inventor of licentious tales, because readers in general have only seized on those things in his works which were suited to their own taste, and have reflected their own gross- ness back upon the writer. So it has happened that the majority of critics having been most struck with the strong and decided expression in Hogarth, the extreme delicacy and subtle gradations of character in his pic- tures have almost entirely escaped them. In the first picture of the ' Marriage a la mode ' the three figures of the young nobleman, his intended bride, and her in- amorato the lawyer, show how much Hogarth excelled in the power of giving soft and effeminate expression. They have, however, been less noticed than the other figures, which tell a plainer story and convey a more palpable moral. Nothing can be more finely managed than the differences of character in these delicate per- sonages. The beau sits smiling at the looking-glass, with a reflected simper of self-admiration and a languish- ing inclination of the head, while the rest of his body is perked up on his high heels with a certain air of tip- toe elevation. He is the Narcissus of the reign of George II., whose powdered peruke, ruffles, gold lace, and patches, divide his self-love unequally with his own person the true Sir Plume of his day : " Of amber-lidded snuffbox justly vain, And the nice conduct of a clouded cane." There is the same felicity in the figure and attitude of the bride courted by the lawyer. There is the utmost flexibility and yielding softness in her whole person, a On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' 37 listless languor and tremulous suspense in the expres- sion of her face. It is the precise look and air which Pope has given to his favourite, Belinda, just at the moment of the ' Eape of the Lock.' The heightened glow, the forward intelligence, and loosened soul of love in the same face, in the assignation scene before the masquerade, form a fine and instructive contrast to the delicacy, timidity, and coy reluctance expressed in the first. The lawyer in both pictures is much the same perhaps too much so; though even this unmoved, un- altered appearance may be designed as characteristic. In both cases he has " a person and a smooth dispose, framed to make woman false." He is full of that easy good-humour and easy good opinion of himself with which the sex are delighted. There is not a sharp angle in his face to obstruct his success or give a hint of doubt or difficulty. His whole aspect is round and rosy, lively and unmeaning, happy without the least expense of thought, careless and inviting, and conveys a perfect idea of the uninterrupted glide and pleasing murmur of the soft periods that flow from his tongue. The expression of the bride in the morning scene is the most highly seasoned, and at the same time the most vulgar in the series. The figure, face, and attitude of the husband are inimitable. Hogarth has with great skill contrasted the pale countenance of the husband with the yellow-whitish colour of the marble chimney- piece behind him in such a manner as to preserve the fleshy tone of the former. The airy splendour of the view of the inner room in this picture is probably not exceeded by any of the productions of the Flemish School. The young girl in the third picture, who is repre- sented as the victim of fashionable profligacy, is un- questionably one of the artist's chefs-d'oeuvre. The exquisite delicacy of the painting is only surpassed by 38 On Hogarttis ' Marriage a la mode.' the felicity and subtlety of the conception. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indif- ference of her character. The vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain show the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity by which it has been goodnaturedly asserted that " vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness." The story of this picture is in some parts very obscure and enig- matical. It is certain that the nobleman is not looking straight forward to the quack, whom he seems to have been threatening with his cane, but that his eyes are turned up with an ironical leer of triumph to the pro- curess. The commanding attitude and size of this woman the swelling circumference of her dress, spread out like a turkey-cock's feathers the fierce, ungovern- able, inveterate malignity of her countenance, which hardly needs the comment of the clasp-knife to explain her purpose are all admirable in themselves, and still more so as they are opposed to the mute insensibility, the elegant negligence of the dress, and the childish figure of the girl who is supposed to be her protegee. As for the quack, there can be no doubt entertained about him. His face seems as if it were composed of salve, and his features exhibit all the chaos and confusion of the most gross, ignorant, and impudent empiricism. The gradations of ridiculous affectation in the music scene are finely imagined and preserved. The prepos- terous, overstrained admiration of the lady of quality ; the sentimental, insipid, patient delight of the man with his hair in papers and sipping his tea ; the pert, smirk- ing, conceited, half -distorted approbation of the figure next to him ; the transition to the total insensibility of On Hogartlis ' Marriage a la mode.'' 39 the round face in profile, and then to the wonder of the negro boy at the rapture of his mistress, form a perfect whole. The sanguine complexion and flame-coloured hair of the female virtuoso throw an additional light on the character. This is lost in the print. The continu- ing the red colour of the hair into the back of the chair has been pointed out as one of those instances of allitei'a- tion in colouring of which these pictures are every- where full. The gross bloated appearance of the Italian singer is well relieved by the hard features of the in- strumental performer behind him, which might be carved of wood. The negro boy holding the chocolate, both in expression, colour, and execution, is a masterpiece. The gay lively derision of the other negro boy, playing with the Acteeon, is an ingenious contrast to the profound amazement of the first. Some account has already been given of the two lovers in this picture. It is curious to observe the infinite activity of mind which the artist displays on every occasion. An instance occurs in the present picture. He has so contrived the papers in the hair of the bride as to make them look almost like a wreath of half-blown flowers, while those which he has placed on the head of the musical amateur very much resemble a chetal de frise of horns, which adorn and fortify the lacklustre expression and mild resignation of the face beneath. The night scene is inferior to the rest of the series. The attitude of the husband, who is just killed, is one in which it would be impossible for him to stand or even to fall. It resembles the loose pasteboard figures they make for children. The characters in the last picture, in which the wife dies, are all masterly. We would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self- sufficiency of the apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience and non-resistance 40 On Hogarth's l Marriage a la mode.' in the servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green -and-yellow livery is as long and melan- choly as his face. The disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer everything about him denotes the utmost per- plexity and dismay. The harmony and gradations of colour in this picture are uniformly preserved with the greatest nicety, and are well worthy the attention of the artist. No. IX. The Subject continued. IT has been observed that Hogarth's pictures are ex- ceedingly unlike any other representations of the same kind of subjects that they form a class, and have a character peculiar to themselves. It may be worth while to consider in what this general distinction con- sists. In the first place, they are, in the strictest sense, historical pictures ; and if what Fielding says be true, that his novel of ' Tom Jones ' ought to be regarded as an epic prose poem, because it contained a regular de- velopment of fable, manners, character, and passion, the compositions of Hogarth will, in like manner, be found to have a higher claim to the title of epic pictures than many which have of late arrogated that denomination to themselves. When we say that Hogarth treated his subjects historically, we mean that his works represent the manners and humours of mankind in action, and their characters by varied expression. Everything in his pictures has life and motion in it. Not only does the business of the scene never stand still, but every feature and muscle is put into full play ; the exact feeling of the moment is brought out and carried to its On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' 4 1 utmost height, and then instantly seized and stamped on the canvas for ever. The expression is always taken en passant, in a state of progress or change, and, as it were, at the salient point. Besides the excellence of each individual face, the reflection of the expression from face to face, the contrast and struggle of particular motives and feelings in the different actors in the scene as of anger, contempt, laughter, compassion are con- veyed in the happiest and most lively manner. His figures are not like the background on which they are painted : even the pictures on the wall have a peculiar look of their own. Again, with the rapidity, variety, and scope of history, Hogarth's heads have all the reality and correctness of portraits. He gives the extremes of character and expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life. It of course happens in subjects from common life, that the painter can procure real models, and he can get them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those attitudes and expressions have been chosen which could be assumed the longest, and in imi- tating which the artist, by taking pains and time, might produce almost as complete fac-similes as he could of a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain or a china vase. The copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and ridicule, affording frequent ex- amples of strange deformity and peculiarity of features, these have been eagerly seized by another class of artists, who, without subjecting themselves to the la- borious drudgery of the Dutch School and their imi- tators, have produced our popular caricatures, by rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of the human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the 42 On Hogarth" s ' Marriage a la mode.' faults of both these styles the insipid tameness of the one, and the gross vulgarity of the other so as to give to the productions of his pencil equal solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single instance) go beyond it : they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always see the links which bind them to nature : they bear all the marks and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen the actual faces for the first time, from the precision, consistency, and good sense with which the whole and every part is made out. They exhibit the most uncommon features with the most un- common expressions, but which are yet as familiar and intelligible as possible, because with all the boldness they have all the truth of nature. Hogarth has left be- hind him as many of these memorable faces, in their memorable moments, as perhaps most of us remember in the course of our lives, and has thus doubled the quantity of our observation. We have, in a former paper, attempted to point out the fund of observation, physical and moral, contained in one set of these pictures, the ' Marriage a la mode.' The rest would furnish as many topics to descant upon, were the patience of the reader as inexhaustible as the painter's invention. But as this is not the case, we shall content ourselves with barely referring to some of those figures in the other pictures which appear the most striking, and which we see not only while we are looking at them, but which we have before us at all other times. For instance, who having seen can easily forget that exquisite frost-piece of religion and morality, the antiquated prude in the morning scene? or that striking commentary on the good old times, the little wretched appendage of a footboy, who crawls half famished and half frozen behind her ? The French man and woman in the ' Noon ' are the perfection of flighty On Hogarttis ' Marriage a la mode.' 43 affectation and studied grimace ; the amiable fraternisation of the two old women saluting each other is not enough to be admired ; and in the little master, in the same national group, we see the early promise and personifica- tion of that eternal principle of wondrous self-com- placency, proof against all circumstances, and which makes the French the only people who are vain even of .being cuckolded and being conquered. Or shall we prefer to this the outrageous distress and unmitigated terrors of the boy, who has dropped his dish of meat, and who seems red all over with shame and vexation, and bursting with the noise he makes? Or what can be better than the good housewifery of the girl under- neath, who is devouring the lucky fragments ? or than the plump, ripe, florid, luscious look of the servant- wench, embraced by a greasy rascal of an Othello, with her pie-dish tottering like her virtue, and with the most precious part of its contents running over ? Just no, not quite as good is the joke of the woman overhead, who, having quarrelled with her husband, is throwing their Sunday's dinner out of the window, to complete this chapter of accidents of baked-dishes. The husband in the evening scene is certainly as meek as any re- corded in history ; but we cannot say that we admire this picture, or the night scene after it. But then, in the ' Taste in High Life,' there is that inimitable pair, differing only in sex, congratulating and delighting one another by " all the mutually reflected charities " of folly and affectation with the young lady coloured like a rose, dandling her little, black, pug-faced, white-teethed, chuckling favourite, and with the portrait of Monsieur Des Noyers in the background, dancing in a grand ballet, surrounded by butterflies. And again, in ' The Election Dinner,' is the immortal cobbler, surrounded by his peers, who, " frequent and full " " In loud recess and braiding conclave sit" 44 On Hogarth's ' Marriage a la mode.' the Jew in the second picture, a very Jew in grain innu- merable fine sketches of heads in the ' Polling for Votes,' of which the nobleman overlooking the caricaturist is the best ; and then the irresistible tumultuous display of broad humour in the ' Chairing the Member,' which is, perhaps, of all Hogarth's pictures, the most full of laughable incidents and situations the yellow, rusty- faced thresher, with his swinging flail, breaking the head of one of the chairmen, and his redoubted an- tagonist, the sailor, with his oak-stick, and stumping wooden leg, a supplemental cudgel the persevering ecstasy of the hobbling blind fiddler, who, in the fray, appears to have been trod upon by the artificial ex- crescence of the honest tar Monsieur the monkey, with piteous aspect, speculating the impending disaster of the triumphant candidate, and his brother, Bruin, ap- propriating the paunch the precipitous flight of the pigs, souse over head into the water, the fine lady fainting, with vermilion lips, and the two chimney- sweepers, satirical young rogiies ! We had almost for- got ' The Politician,' who is burning a hole through his hat with a candle in reading the newspaper ; and the chickens, in the ' March to Finchley,' wandering in search of their lost dam, which is found in the pocket of the sergeant. Of the pictures in the ' Eake's Progress ' in this collection we shall not here say anything, be- cause we think them, on the whole, inferior to the prints, and because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius. 1 1 See an ' Essay on the Genius of Hogarth,' by C. Lamb, pub- lished in a periodical work called the ' Reflector.' [It is strange that this admirable article should have been omitted in both series of ' Elia,' 1823 and 1833; it was not republished till 1838. ED.] On Milton's ' Lycidas.' 45 No. X. On Milton s ' Lycidas.' " At las/t he rose, and twitch'd his mantle blue : To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new." OF all Milton's smaller poems, ' Lycidas ' is the greatest favourite with us. We cannot agree to the charge which Dr. Johnson has brought against it, of pedantry and want of feeling. It is the fine emanation of classical sentiment in a youthful scholar " most musical, most melancholy." A certain tender gloom overspreads it, a wayward abstraction, a forgetfulness of his subject in the serious reflections that arise out of it. The gusts of passion come and go like the sounds of music borne on the wind. The loss of the friend whose death he laments seems to have recalled, with double force, the reality of those speculations which they had indulged together; we are transported to classic ground, and a mysterious strain steals responsive on the ear while we listen to the poet : " With eager thought warbling his Doric lay." We shall proceed to give a few passages at length in support of our opinion. The first we shall quote is as remarkable for the truth and sweetness of the natural descriptions as for the characteristic elegance of the allusions : " Together both, ere the high lawns appear 'd Under the opening eyelids of the morn, We drove afield ; and both together heard What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night Oft till the star that rose at evening bright Towards heaven's descent had sloped his westering wheel. Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to the oaten flute : Rough satyrs danced, and fauns with cloven he