NOTES
PAGE
1.Do you read, etc. See vol. viii. p. 319 (A View of the English Stage).
5.Feathered, two-legged things.
‘That unfeather’d two-legged thing, a son.’Dryden’sAbsalom and Achitophel, l. 170.
‘That unfeather’d two-legged thing, a son.’Dryden’sAbsalom and Achitophel, l. 170.
‘That unfeather’d two-legged thing, a son.’Dryden’sAbsalom and Achitophel, l. 170.
‘That unfeather’d two-legged thing, a son.’
Dryden’sAbsalom and Achitophel, l. 170.
Unpleasing flats and sharps.Cf. 4 ‘Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.’Romeo and Juliet,III.5.
His Muse has been silent.Waverleywas published in 1814, theLord of the Islesin 1815; other novels followed, and, with the exception ofHarold the Dauntless, published in 1817, Sir Walter’s work was confined to novels until the issue ofHalidon Hillin 1822. Scott publicly acknowledged his authorship of theWaverley Novelson Feb. 23, 1827.
6.The translation of Ossian’s poems.James Macpherson’s (1736–1796) so-called translations were published in 1761–1763.
Shaftesbury’s Characteristics.Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times(1711), a collection of the works of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713) third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, says Sidgwick, was ‘the first to make psychological experience the basis of ethics.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt’s attention was drawn to this work in Baskerville’s edition, which his father is represented as reading in the oil painting executed in 1804.
Foregone conclusion.Othello,III.3.
Horne Tooke.John Horne Tooke (1736–1812) was elected Member for Old Sarum in 1801, after unsuccessfully contesting Westminster in 1790 and 1797.
The Portraits of Kneller, Richardson, and others.Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648–1723), painter of the Kit-Cat Club Portraits, and Jonathan Richardson (c. 1665–1745), who, after Kneller’s death, was considered the head of his profession.
7.He murmurs by the running brooks.Wordsworth’s ‘A Poet’s Epitaph.’
Charles Fox. Charles James Fox (1749–1806).
Lord Stormont.David Murray (1727–1796), diplomatist and statesman, second Earl of Mansfield (1793) and eldest son of David, sixth Viscount Stormont, who died in 1748.
8.To come trippingly off the tongue.Hamlet,III.2.
Invita Minervâ.‘Tu nihil invita dices faciesve Minerva,’ Horace,De Arte Poet., 385.
9.Like Goldsmith ... a Noble Lord.Prior, in hisLife of Goldsmith,II.pp. 66–68,refers to this as a ‘ludicrous story’ which has ‘long been told.’ He describes it as ‘wholly a fabrication.’
10.Treads the primrose path.Hamlet,I.3.
The highest[brightest]heaven of invention.King Henry V.Prologue.
He is nothing if not fanciful[critical].Othello,II.1.
Bristol-stones.Brilliant crystals of colourless quartz, found on St. Vincent’s Rocks near Bristol, go by the name of Bristol Diamonds.
On the unstedfast footing of a spear.1 King Henry IV.,I.3.
11.To make us heirs.Wordsworth’s ‘Personal Talk,’Poems of SentimentXIII.[by heavenly lays].
Like beauty making beautiful old rime.Shakespeare’sSonnets, 106.
Letter to a Noble Lord.Published 1796.
12.Buttress, frieze ... pendant bed.Macbeth,I.6.
At one fell swoop.Macbeth,IV.4.
Sharp and sweet.Cf. ‘As sweet as sharp.’All’s Well that Ends Well,IV.4.
13.From Windsor’s heights.Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.[‘Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey’].
The so much admired description.Speech on the motion made for papers relative to the directions for charging the Nabob of Arcot’s private debts to Europeans on the Revenues of the Carnatick, February 28th, 1785.
The Abbe Sieyes ... ‘pigeon-holes.’Burke’sA Letter to a Noble Lord, p. 142 (Works, Bohn,V.).
The comparison of the Duke of Bedford.A Letter to a Noble Lord, (Ib.) p. 129.
That sea-beast.Paradise Lost,I.200–2.
Put his hook in the nostrils.The Book of Job, xli. 1–2.
The death of Lord Castlereagh.Robert Stewart (1769–1822), Viscount Castlereagh 1796, and second Marquis of Londonderry 1821. See vol.III.,Political Essays, note to p. 36. He committed suicide in a fit of insanity.
14.Mr. Montgomery.James Montgomery (1771–1854) began theSheffield Irisin 1794, and edited it until 1825.
15.Poets have been said to succeed best in fiction.The reply of Edmund Waller to CharlesII., who had complained of the inferiority of the poet’s verses on the Restoration as compared with his panegyric on Cromwell.
Forlorn way obscure.Cf.Paradise Lost,II.615. ‘In confused march forlorn.’
16.Old Fuller, and Burton, and Latimer.Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) of theWorthies(1662); Robert Burton (1577–1640) of theAnatomy of Melancholy(1621); and Hugh Latimer (1491–1555), Bishop, and writer ofThe Ploughers(1549).
The poet-laureat.Robert Southey (1774–1843) was made poet-laureate in 1813.
Extravagant and erring spirit.Hamlet,I.1.
Stoops to earth.Cf. ‘But stoop’d to Truth, and moraliz’d his song.’ Pope,Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, l. 341.
The words of Mercury.Love’s Labour’s Lost, v. 2.
16.Wat Tyler.Published 1817.
The Author of Rimini, and Editor of the Examiner.Leigh Hunt’s poem,The Story of Rimini, was published in 1816. The first number ofThe Examiner, a Sunday Paper on Politics, Domestic Economy and Theatricals, appeared on Jan. 3, 1808.
17.His effusions in the Indicator.This paper lasted from Oct. 13, 1819 to March 21, 1821. A second series lasted from March 28, 1821 to Oct. 13, 1821.
ESSAY II. ON DREAMS
FromThe New Monthly Magazine, ‘Table Talk,VI.,’ ‘Dreaming,’ No. 27, Vol. 7, 1823.
17.Dr. Spurzheim.J. G. Spurzheim, phrenologist (1776–1832). SeeThe Physiognomical System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, founded on an Anatomical and Physiological Examination of the Nervous System in general, and of the Brain in particular, 1815. See also the Essay on p. 137,et seq.,ante, ‘On Dr. Spurzheim’s Theory.’
18.Imparted in dreadful secresy.Hamlet,I.2.
21.That which was now a horse.Antony and Cleopatra,IV.14.
22.Heat-oppressed brain.Macbeth,II.1.
24.Bishop Atterbury.Francis Atterbury (1662–1732), Bishop of Rochester, Jacobite and controversialist, and correspondent of Pope and Swift. See also vol.VIII.Lectures on the English Comic Writers, p. 14.
Intus et in cute.Persius,Sat.III.30.
The New Eloise.Rousseau’sNouvelle Héloïse(1760), Sixième Partie, LettreXII.
FromThe London Magazine, ‘Table Talk,III.,’ Sep. 20, 1820, signed ‘T., Winterslow Hut,’ vol. 2. The footnote which follows was not reprinted from the Magazine. The Essay was also published as ‘Table Talk,V.’The New Monthly Magazine, No. 24, Vol. 5, 1822. See the Essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen.’
‘Of all persons spouters at Debating Societies are the most intolerable and troublesome as acquaintance. They have a constant desire to hear themselves talk, and never know what any one else wishes to hear. They talk incessantly, and say nothing. They are loud, offensive, and common-place. They try to get the ear of the company as they get the ear of the Chair, which, having got, they will not let go. They bait some unpretending individual (as if it was a case-hardened antagonist) with gross and vapid assurance, and turn a drawing-room into a bear-garden. They have all the prolixity and unwieldiness of authorship, without any of the solidity, and have all the ambition of orators to shine, without the ability, the excuse, or the inclination on the part of others to attend to them. I know one of this class in particular who has no more business in any party of ladies and gentlemen, with his splay-foot manners and long train of awkward speeches, than the Dragon of Wantley.’
25.And of his port.Prologue to theCanterbury Tales, 69.
He is one that cannot make a good leg.The Return from Parnassus,II.6. See vol.V.,Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 284.
Tull’s Husbandry.New Horse-hoing Husbandry, or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation; wherein is shewn a sort of Vineyard Culture into the Corn Fields, in order to increase their Product, and diminish the Common Expense by Instruments described in the Cuts.By Jethro Tull (1733). The Fourth edition contained an Introduction by William Cobbett. See also vol.VI.,Table Talk, p. 102 and note.
The Philosopher of Botley.William Cobbett (1762–1835), who settled at Botley, Hampshire, in the early years of the nineteenth century.
26.Dilworth’s Spelling Book.? Thomas Dilworth’sA New Guide to the English Tongue, an eighteenth century book.
Fearn’s Treatise on Contingent Remainders.Charles Fearne’s (1742–1794)An Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises(1772). a book which made him an authority.
Etherial mould, sky-tinctured.Cf.Paradise Lost,II.139, andV.285.
Breathe in other air less pure.Paradise Lost,XI.284.
Confined and cabin’d in.Macbeth,III.4; ‘cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in.’
Verily we have our reward.S. Matthew, vi. 2.
27.Should go about to cozen fortune.Merchant of Venice,II.9.
Because we are scholars[virtuous].Twelfth Night,II.3.
27.The wretched slave.King Henry V.,IV.1.
28.Tell his tale.Milton’sL’Allegro.
Stocks and stones.‘You blocks, you stones, etc.’Julius Cæsar,I.1.
29.Miss ——.The reference is probably to Fanny Burney (1752–1840), and her novelsEvelina(1778) andCecilia(1782).
Whose is the superscription?S. Matthew, xxii. 20.
G—— C——.Probably Godwin and Coleridge.
32.The fear of being silent strikes us dumb[‘makes us mute’]. Cowper,Conversation, 352.
33.Grimm’s Memoirs.Colburn published in 1813 an abridgment in 4 vols. of theMémoires historiques, littéraires et anecdotiquesof Frederic Melchior, Baron de Grimm (1723–1807). They are full of entertaining information concerning eighteenth century French writers. See Vol.I.The Round Table, p. 131et seq.
We had good talk, sir.Boswell’sJohnson, ed. G. B. Hill,II.66.
I once knew a very ingenious man.Probably Sir John Stoddart, Hazlitt’s brother-in-law. He was a friend of the Bourbons. See vol.III.Political Essays, p. 169et seq.
Sterne ... Yorick.A Sentimental Journey: The Passport, Versailles.
34.Villainous, and shews a pitiful ambition.Hamlet,III.2.
When Greek meets Greek.‘When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war.’ Nathaniel Lee’s (1655–1692)Alexander the Great,IV.2.
C——.Coleridge.
35.L——‘s.Lamb’s. See the chapter entitled ‘Lamb’s Wednesdays’ in theMemoirs of W. Hazlitt, Vol.I.p. 271et seq.
The Small-coal man’s musical parties.Thomas Britton (1654–1714), a dealer in small coal and a collector of every musical book he could meet with. He was frightened to death by a ventriloquist.
John Buncle.See Vol.I.The Round Table, p. 51et seq., and Lamb’s Essay on ‘Imperfect Sympathies.’
36.And, in our flowing cups.
‘Then shall our names,Familiar in their mouths as household words ...Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.’King Henry V.IV.3.
‘Then shall our names,Familiar in their mouths as household words ...Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.’King Henry V.IV.3.
‘Then shall our names,Familiar in their mouths as household words ...Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.’King Henry V.IV.3.
‘Then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words ...
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.’
King Henry V.IV.3.
The cartoons at Hampton Court.See Hazlitt’s essay on ‘The Pictures at Hampton Court.’
A list of persons.See the essay entitled ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen.’
36.C——.Coleridge, here and throughout the essay.
37.Ned P——.Edward Phillips, secretary to Charles Abbott, Speaker of the House of Commons. See Lamb’sLetters, ed. Hazlitt,I.pp. 76, 419, etc.
Captain ——.Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750–1821), brother of Fanny Burney and author of the famousChronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean(1803–1817), 5 vols. He sailed with Captain Cook in two of his voyages.
Jem White, the author of Falstaff’s Letters.Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends, now first made public by a Gentleman, a descendant of Dame Quickly, from genuine MSS. which have been in the possession of the Quickly Family near four hundred years(1796). See Lamb’sLetters, ed. Hazlitt,I.10, 90, etc. andThe Lambs, 1897, pp. 24–6.
Turning like the latter end of a lover’s lute.Letters of Sir John Falstaff, etc. (see above), in a letter from ‘Davy to Shallow.’ Said of Master Abram, who dies of love for sweet Anne Page. See Lamb’s review of theLettersinThe Examiner, Sep. 5, 1819, and Leigh Hunt’s reprint of it inThe Indicator, Jan. 24, 1821. Lamb was suspected of having had a share in his friend and schoolmate’s book.
A——.William Ayrton (1777–1858), musical critic and editor of Charles Knight’sMusical Library.
Mrs. R——.Mrs. Reynolds, Lamb’s ‘sage woman.’
M. B.Martin Charles Burney, Lamb’s friend, the son of Admiral Burney.
The author of ‘the Road to Ruin.’Thomas Holcroft. See Vol.II.p. 121et seq.
The Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant’s work was published in 1781.
Mitre-court.In the Temple, where the Lambs resided for eight years at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
38.The Biographia Literaria.Coleridge’s book was published in 1817.
Like Angels’ visits.‘Like those of angels, short and far between.’ Blair’sThe Grave, 582. Cf. Vol.V.Lectures on the English Poets, p. 150.
Mr. Douce of the Museum.Francis Douce (d. 1834), antiquarian, Shakespearian scholar, and keeper of manuscripts in the British Museum.
L. H—— ... tropical blood.Leigh Hunt’s father, Isaac Hunt, was a Barbadian.
Aliquando sufflaminandus erat.Probably quoted from Ben Jonson’sDiscoveries,LXIV., De Shakespeare Nostrati. See Vol.IV.The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 336.
39.Mr. Northcote.James Northcote (1746–1831).
40.Hear a sound so fine.James Sheridan Knowles’sVirginius(1820),V.2.
41.Fuseli.Heinrich Fuessly or Henry Fuseli, portrait-painter and art critic (1741–1825). Cf. Vol.IV.The Spirit of the Age, p. 233.
Curran.John Philpot Curran (1750–1817), the Irish advocate.
Mrs. Inchbald.Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), novelist, dramatist and actress.
Mary Woolstonecroft.Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759–1797), of theVindication of the Rights of Women(1792).
From noon to dewy eve.Paradise Lost,I.743.
A Table Talk.See note on source of this essay, above.
Peter Pindar.John Wolcot, ‘Peter Pindar’ (1738–1819), physician, satirist and poet.
Mrs. M——.Mrs. Montagu, Basil Montagu’s third wife, the widow of Thomas Skepper and mother (by Skepper) of Mrs. Bryan Waller Procter. She married Montagu about 1806.
42.H—t’s.Hunt’s.
N——‘s.Northcote’s.
H—y—dn’s.Haydon’s.
A Doctor Tronchin.Theodore Tronchin (1709–1781), Genevan physician and friend of Rousseau.
Sir Fopling Flutter.In Sir George Etherege’s comedyThe Man of Mode.
For wit is like a rest.Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben Jonson, printed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Comedies (1647) [the best gamesters].
L—— once came down.To Winterslow. See Vol.VI.Table Talk, notes to pp. 90 and 188.
Like the most capricious poet[honest]Ovid.As You Like It,III.3.
Walked gowned.Lamb’sSonnet, written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819.
The person I mean.Undoubtedly George Dyer. See Lamb’s description of him in ‘Oxford in the Vacation’ (Essays of Elia).
44.This breathing world.King Richard III.,I.1.
45.In the world’s volume.Cymbeline,III.4. ‘Seems as of it.’
There are more things.HamletI.5.
46.The shadows in Plato’s cave.The Republic, BookVII.
As mice in an air-pump.Burke,A Letter to a Noble Lord(Works, Bohn,V.p. 142). Cf. also Young,Love of Fame,V.177, andThe Spectator, No. 21.
All the mighty world of eye and ear.Wordsworth’sTintern Abbey.
The Last Moments of Mr. Fox.Circumstantial details of the Long Illness and last moments of the Rt. Hon. Charles James Fox, together with some strictures on his Public and Private Life, 1806. The remark about Burke’s style does not seem to have been made by Lord Holland.
Lord Holland.Henry Richard Vassall Fox, third Lord Holland (1773–1840).
Words that glow.‘Thoughts that breathe and words that burn.’ Gray’sProgress of Poesy, 110.
48.Granville Sharp.The abolitionist (1735–1813), whose Memoirs by Prince Hoare were published in 1810.
49.Mr. Bentham.See Vol.IV.The Spirit of the Age, pp. 189,et seq.
Paley’s Moral Philosophy.William Paley’s (1743–1805)Moral and Political Philosophywas published in 1785.
Tucker’s Light of Nature.Abraham Tucker’s (1705–1774)The Light of Nature Pursued(7 vols., 1768–1778) was abridged by Hazlitt. See Vol.IV.of the present edition, pp. 371–385.
50.The tyrant’s plea.Paradise Lost,IV.393.
Casts its shadow before.Campbell’sLochiel’s Warning.
51.The classical administration of Mr. Canning.The oratory of George Canning (1770–1827) was noted for its classical turn.
Ex uno omnes.Cf. ‘ab uno disce omnes,’ Virgil’sÆneid,II.65–6.
What can we reason.Pope’s Essayon Man, Ep.I.18.
52.A breath can mar[make]them. Goldsmith’sDeserted Village, 54.
His Social Contract.Published 1762.
54. ‘Duchess of Malfy.’ Webster’s tragedy (1623).
Give the mind pause.Cf. ‘Give us pause.’Hamlet,III.1.
One touch of nature.Troilus and Cressida,III.3.
Thou hast no speculation.Macbeth,III.4.
55.Both at the first and now.Hamlet,III.2.
To feel what others are.Gray,Ode to Adversity.
ESSAY VI. ON APPLICATION TO STUDY
FromThe New Monthly Magazine, No. 35, Vol.VIII., 1823, ‘Table Talk,X.’
55.Wilson the Painter.Richard Wilson (1714–1782), ‘The English Claude.’
56.Morland.George Morland (1763–1804), painter of country scenes and humble life.
Invita Minervâ.Seeante, note to p. 8.
The labour we delight in.Macbeth,II.1.
Denner.Balthasar Denner, a German portrait painter (1685–1749).
To him a kingdom was.Cf. ‘My mind to me a kingdom is,’ by Sir Edward Dyer.
A lucid mirror.Cowper,The Task,I.701–2.
Begun in gladness.Wordsworth’sResolution and Independence, St. 8.
57.The Children in the Fiery Furnace.Daniel, iii. 6.
Terræ filii.Cf. Persius,Sat.VI.59, ‘Terræ est jam filius.’
Highest[brightest]Heaven of invention.King Henry V.Prologue.
58.Nice customs curtesy.King Henry V.V.2.
A jest’s prosperity.Love’s Labour’s Lost,V.2.
59.The random, blindfold blows.
‘Strike in the dark, offending but by chance,Such are the blindfold blows of Ignorance.’Dryden,The Hind and the Panther,I.323–4.
‘Strike in the dark, offending but by chance,Such are the blindfold blows of Ignorance.’Dryden,The Hind and the Panther,I.323–4.
‘Strike in the dark, offending but by chance,Such are the blindfold blows of Ignorance.’Dryden,The Hind and the Panther,I.323–4.
‘Strike in the dark, offending but by chance,
Such are the blindfold blows of Ignorance.’
Dryden,The Hind and the Panther,I.323–4.
Had drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again.
‘As fastAs I had puffed it forth and sucked it inLike breath.’Beaumont and Fletcher’sPhilaster,V.5.
‘As fastAs I had puffed it forth and sucked it inLike breath.’Beaumont and Fletcher’sPhilaster,V.5.
‘As fastAs I had puffed it forth and sucked it inLike breath.’Beaumont and Fletcher’sPhilaster,V.5.
‘As fast
As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in
Like breath.’
Beaumont and Fletcher’sPhilaster,V.5.
The sounding cataract.Wordsworth,Tintern Abbey.
60.Propulsive force.Cf.
‘Like to the Pontic seaWhose icy current and compulsive courseNe’er feels retiring ebb, etc.Othello,III.3.
‘Like to the Pontic seaWhose icy current and compulsive courseNe’er feels retiring ebb, etc.Othello,III.3.
‘Like to the Pontic seaWhose icy current and compulsive courseNe’er feels retiring ebb, etc.Othello,III.3.
‘Like to the Pontic sea
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne’er feels retiring ebb, etc.Othello,III.3.
Grows with our growth.Pope’sEssay on Man, Epis.II.136.
61.The Prince of Painters.The title is generally given to Parrhasius, the Greek painter (c. 400B.C.), but Hazlitt refers to Raphael.
Salvator.Salvator Rosa, Neapolitan painter, musician and poet (1615–1673).
Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses.Published 1771, etc.
The Rev. W. Shepherd.HisLife of Poggio Braccioliniwas published at Liverpool in 1802.
62.Unfold the book.Hamlet,I.5.
Spiritus precipitandus est.See Vol.IV.The Spirit of the Age, note to p. 309.
Mr. Cobbett.See Vol.IV.,The Spirit of the Age, pp. 334et seq.
63.Perseverance, dear my lord.Troilus and Cressida,III.3.
64.Ned Softly, in the Tatler.See No. 163, April 25, 1710.
65.Never ending, still beginning.Dryden,Alexander’s Feast, 102. Also cf. ‘Still ending and beginning still,’ Cowper’sThe Task,III.627.
Physician, heal thyself.S. Luke, iv. 23.
66.Dr. Burney.Charles Burney the elder (1726–1814), historian of music.
ESSAY VII. ON LONDONERS AND COUNTRY PEOPLE
FromThe New Monthly Magazine, No. 32, vol.VIII.1823, ‘Table Talk,VII.’
66.Mr. Blackwood ... Cockney.See Vol.VI.Table Talk, note to p. 98.
67.Beyond Hyde Park.Etherege’sThe Man of Mode,V.2.
68.He is owner of all he surveys.‘I am monarch of all I survey.’ Cowper’sVerses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk.
69.A barker in Monmouth Street.A shop-tout or sham auctioneer. See vol.VI.Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, note to p. 459.
A slop-seller in Radcliffe Highway.It will be remembered that the Marrs kept a lace and pelisse warehouse, 29 Ratcliffe Highway. See De Quincey’sMurder considered as one of the Fine Arts.
Pennant.Some Account of London, 1790. 4to. A well-known and much appreciated topographical account that passed through several editions in the early years of last century.
Where Hicke’s Hall formerly stood.Hicks’s Hall, formerly in St. John Street, Clerkenwell. The milestones on the Great North Road were measured from here.
70.Cider-Cellar.The tavern at 20, Maiden Lane, a favourite resort of Porson’s, who furnished the Latin motto over the door, ‘Honos erit huic quoque homo.’
Shorter excursions tries.Pope,An Essay on Criticism, 737–8.
White-conduit House.For this (Pentonville) and Bagnigge Wells (King’s Cross) see Vol.IV.note to p. 108.
Rosemary Branch.At Peckham. See Vol.VI.Table Talk, note to p. 88.
Catch the breezy air.Wordsworth, ‘Lines written in Early Spring’ (Lyrical Ballads, 1798).
There’s nought so sweet on earth.One of Moore’s ‘Irish Melodies.’
Brahams.John Abraham, tenor singer (1774–1856). ‘He was,’ said Sir Walter Scott, ‘a beast of an actor, but an angel of a singer.’ He began life by selling lead pencils in London streets as a boy, made an enormous fortune as the greatest tenor singer of his day, and squandered it in building St. James’s Theatre and buying the Colosseum in Regent’s Park (See Vol.VI.Mr. Northcote’s Conversations, note to p. 429).
Durusets.J. B. Duruset, singer (See theLiterary Gazetteof June 26 and July 3, 1824).
71.An hour by St. Dunstan’s clock.Cf. ‘We rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.’1 King Henry IV.V.4.
Copenhagen-house.A tavern and tea-garden in North London between Maiden Lane and Hogbush Lane. See Vol.VI.Table Talk, p. 86–89.
72.For how should the soul of Socrates.The Road to Ruin, ActIII.2.
Hole in the Wall.In Chancery Lane, kept by Randall the pugilist. See Vol.VI.Table Talk, note to p. 202.
The poet Jago.Richard Jago (1715–1781), author ofEdge Hill.
Anthony Collins.The deist (1676–1729), author of aDiscourse of Freethinking(1713).
73.Mr. Dunster ... the fishmonger in the Poultry.SeeMemoirs of W. Hazlitt.II.310. His real name was, apparently, Fisher, of Duke Street, St. James’s.
74.The Story of the King of Bohemia.Tristram Shandy, viii. 19.
76.See Round Table,Vol.II.p. 116. See Vol.I.pp. 122,et seq.
This bottle’s the sun of our table.R. B. Sheridan’sThe Duenna,III.5.76.Bannister, King.John Bannister (1760–1836), Thomas King (1730–1805).
Mr. Justice Shallow.2 King Henry IV.,III.2.
77.A species alone.‘The Phœnix Pindar is a vast species alone.’ Cowley,The Praise of Pindar.
FromThe New Monthly Magazine, ‘Table Talk,XI.,’ No. 37, Vol.X.1824.
78.Nihil humani.Terence,Heautontimorumenos,I.1.
80.Make mouths at the invisible event.Hamlet,IV.4.
Born for their use, etc.Young’sThe Revenge,V.2.
81.Wise saws.As You Like It,II.7.
82.Mr. Wilberforce.William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the parliamentary leader of the anti-slavery cause. See Vol.IV.The Spirit of the Age, pp. 331,et seq.
83.If to their share.Pope,The Rape of the Lock,II., 17–18.