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rors of his age? Have we become insensible to the beauty of his mythology, because we enjoy a more rational system of religion? Or does his mode of fighting seem to us the less heroic, because we have a different set of military tactics? The progress of knowledge does not clip the wings of poetry. It only changes the direction of its flight. Philosophy may deprive it of an old province; but she remunerates it with new fields of imagination.

But we are wasting both time and space. If we were to refute one half of the nonsense, which is to be found in these volumes, we should ourselves commence the trade of making octavos. Mr. Hazlitt is one of those talkers, of whom it has been quaintly said, that their tongues appear to be hung in the middle, and to vibrate at both ends.

In the foregoing strictures, we have purposely abstained from taking instances out of the first book on our list. It is a compilation of paragraphs from the newspapers; and, though by reprinting them in the shape of a book, Mr. Hazlitt has challenged the animadversion of criticism, we do not think it fair, or even expedient to pass sentence in detail on a writer for a series of rude sketches which were composed in a moment, and intended only for a momentary purpose. We object to the book in the gross. Mr. Hazlitt's theatrical criticisms would do well enough for the columns of a daily newspaper; but they make a sorry appearance in the pages of a book. Nobody will dispute what he says in the preface, that we think ourselves fortunate, when we can meet with any person who remembers the principal performers of the last age, and who can give us some distant idea of Garrick's nature, or of an Abington's grace.' But does he, therefore, think himself entitled to swell out his book to 460 pages, with an account of all the present performers on the English stage, from the highest to the lowest! Posterity, if it sees this book, will not have much confidence in a critic, who tells us, that he was directed' to 'give a favourable account' of certain performers: that authors must live as well as actors;' and that he damns by virtue of his office.' We shall afford room for one specimen of his manner; and we are chiefly induced to do so, because, as our readers have witnessed the performances of the actor, they will be better enabled to estimate the justness of the criticism. We suspect that, in this instance, Mr. Hazlitt had been directed' to give an unfavourable character:—

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'Of Mr. Phillips we would not wish to speak; but as he puts himself forward, and is put forward by others, we must say something. He is said to be an imitator of Mr. Braham; if so, the imitation is a vile one. This gentleman has one qualification, which has been said to be the great secret of pleasing others, that he is evidently pleased with himself. But he does not produce a corresponding effect upon us: we have not one particle of sympathy with his wonderful self-complacency. We should wish never to hear him sing again: or, if he must sing, at least, we should hope never to see him act: let him not top his part-why should he sigh, and ogle, and languish, and display all his accomplishments he should spare the side-boxes.' Views, p. 106.

Our author's Characters are little more than a distillation of the crude materials contained in his Views. It is a book which any practised writer, with a moderate share of understanding, and a still less portion of industry, might easily compose. Shakspeare's plays are a mine upon the surface of the earth. It requires little digging to obtain their treasures. A deep and severe analysis of Shakspeare's poetry is a work of a very different kind;-a work, which our author is either too indolent to undertake, or, what we rather suspect, too feeble to accomplish. The only praise, to which the present volume can entitle him, is that of having translated the poetry of Shakspeare into a lively prose style, and of having thrown out, more by accident than design, an occasional happy thought of his own. He describes such a character as his master had described before him; and, after quoting a passage or two, by way of illustration, concludes that he has given us an analysis of the play. He seems to know nothing of criticism beyond this. The many operations, which are the legitimate business of philosophical criticism, are too laborious for a tribe of writers, who think themselves able to penetrate a subject at a glance, and to give its analysis in a flourish of the pen.

In general, Mr. Hazlitt seems to have formed a right conception of Shakspeare's characters; and, as an example of his best manner, we extract the opening paragraph of the article upon Romeo and Juliet:-

ROMEO and JULIET is the only tragedy which Shakspeare has written entirely on a love story. It is supposed to have been his first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the buoyant spirit of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said* of Romeo and Juliet by a great critic, "that whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is to be found in this poem." The description is true; and yet it it does not answer to our idea of the play. For, if it has the sweetness of the rose, it has its freshness too; if it has the languor of the nightingale's song, it has also its giddy transport; if it has the softness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in love, but they are not love sick. Every thing speaks the very soul of pleasure, the high and healthy pulse of the passions: the heart beats, the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship is not an insipid interchange of sentiments, lip-deep, learned at second-hand from poems and plays, -made up of beauties of the most shadowy kind, of "fancies wan that hang the pensive head, of evanescent smiles and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself, an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of

*So, again, the next paragraph begins with, we have heard it objected;' and Mr. Hazlitt is often found, in this manner, conjuring up objections, that he may have an opportunity to refute them. He must have learned this device from Mr. Thomas Thumb, who tells us, that, first of all, he makes a giant-and then he kills him.'

sense, spirit, truth, and nature!" It is the reverse of all this. It is Shakspeare all over, and Shakspeare when he was young.' pp. 141, 142.

It would be difficult to extract much meaning from some parts of this passage: and yet we can assure our readers, that it is one of the clearest in the whole volume.

Our author, it appears to us, has committed an error in the character of Falstaff, which is absolutely inexcusable. It is his idea, that sir John only acts a part; and that all his gasconade, and lying, and devices, are merely characters assumed to amuse his companions and himself. Such,' we are told, 'is the deliberate exaggeration of his own vices, that it does not seem quite certain, whether the account of his hostess' bill, found in his pocket, with such an out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack, with only one half-penny worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a trick to humour the jest upon his favourite propensities, and as a conscious caricature of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward, a glutton, &c. and yet we are not offended but delighted with him; for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself. He openly assumes all these characters to show the humorous part of them. In a word, he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view, than we should think of blaming an excellent comedian, who should represent him to the life.' We are persuaded, that we should at once lose all the pleasure we must derive from this masterly fiction, if Mr. Hazlitt could make us believe, that Falstaff's affectation of repentance is merely to show Hal his insincerity; that he ❝ran and roared' at Gadsill for the sake of being ridiculed; that he hacked his sword and tickled his nose, for no other reason than to be detected in the trick; and that when he made eleven men in buckram out of three, he was only devising a scheme to be caught in a lie. This mistake, with other similar ones of our author, have arisen partly from carelessness, and partly from that foolish affectation of independence, which leads such men to contradict an opinion, merely because it is generally received. The same affectation is shown in many other places; and it is this, together with Mr. Hazlitt's extravagant idolatry of Shakspeare, that chiefly offend us in the perusal of his Characters.

The first Lecture, in Mr. Hazlitt's third work, is upon Poetry in general. When we saw this subject announced, in the table of contents, we turned to the article with some hopes of finding an analysis of what is included in the comprehensive term-poetry. We found almost as many definitions of poetry as there are sentences in the Lecture; and, after all these thirty-eight pages, we cannot say, that we have obtained one new idea on the subject. How, indeed, are we to be improved in our notion of poetry by such senseless observations as this:-that poetry' comes home to the business and bosoms of men; for nothing but what so comes home to them in the most general and intelligible shape, can be a subject for poetry.' Or what possible meaning could Mr. Hazlitt have in view by such a paragraph as the following?

'One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointinent, it strengthens the desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing, by making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of passion lays bare and shows us the rich depths of the human soul: the whole of our existence, the sum total of our passions and pursuits, of that which we desire and that which we dread, is brought before us by contrast; the action and reaction are equal; the keenness of immediate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration after, and a more intimate participation with the antagonist world of good, makes us drink deeper of the cup of human life; tugs at the heart strings; loosens the pressure about them; and calls the springs of thought and feeling into play with tenfold force.' Lectures, p. 11, 12.

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We could fill many pages with such jargon as this. Mr. Hazlitt thinks it has meaning; and he even tells us in the preface to his Characters, that one mode in which he expects to improve on' Schlegel, is, by avoiding an appearance of mysticism in his style, not very attractive to an English reader.'

One would think that Mr. Hazlitt has a great antipathy to giving reasons; for though he is under no sort of compulsion, and though they may be as plenty as blackberries, no man must expect to find them in the pages of these Lectures. Mr. Leigh Hunt, who also belongs to this School, has said, in his Foliage, that we admire the happiness, and sometimes the better wisdom of children; and yet we imitate the worst of their nonsense-" I can't, because I can't." In the midst of what he thinks to be an analytical paragraph, Mr. Hazlitt says, we are as prone to make a torment of our fears, as to luxuriate in our hopes of good. If it be asked, why we do so? the best answer will be, because (he had better have stopped here) because we cannot help it.'

But our author's principal mode of analysis, is that of turning into a prose sentence some partial account of the subject, upon which he is discoursing. If, for instance, he would tell us what poetry is, he begins by saying that the eye of the poet, rolling in a fine phrenzy, glances from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven; and, as the imagination presents the forms of unknown things, his pen turns them to shape, and gives them a name. Now, add the passage itself, and the analysis is complete. 'Again,' (for Mr. Hazlitt pretends to be very methodical),

'Again, as it relates to passion, painting gives the event, poetry the progress of events: but it is during the progress, in the interval of expectation and suspense, while our hopes and fears are strained to the highest pitch of breathless agony, that the pinch of the interest lies. "Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma or a hideous dream. The mortal instruments are then in council;

And the state of man suffers an insurrection.""

Lectures, p. 20, 21.

There is one observation, respecting our author's style, which we have reserved for this place, because it occurred to us the most frequently in the perusal of his Lectures. He is too ambitious to display his acquaintance with other writers; and for several pages together, his sentences are a mere series of the most lofty poetical expressions, linked together by the lowest phrases in prose. Not only does he expose his own poverty, by borrowing so frequently; it is this species of glancing from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, that renders him so often incomprehensible. To give our readers at once an idea of this peculiarity, we shall extract a passage from the last Lecture, in which it is most amply displayed:

Poetry had with them "neither buttress nor coigne of vantage to make its pendant bed and procreant cradle." It was not "born so high: its aiery buildeth in the cedar's top, and dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun." It grew like a mushroom out of the ground, or was hidden in it like a truffle, which it required a particular sagacity and industry to find out and dig up. They founded the new school on a principle of sheer humanity, on pure nature void of art. It could not be said of these sweeping reformers and dictators in the republic of letters, that" in their train walked crowns and crownets; that realms and islands, like plates, dropt from their pockets:" but they were surrounded, in company with the Muses, by a mixed rabble of idle apprentices and Botany Bay convicts, female vagrants, gipsies, meek daughters in the family of Christ, idiot boys, and mad mothers, and after them" owls and night-ravens flew." They scorned "degrees, priority, and place, insisture, course, proportion, season, form, office, and custom in all line of order:"-the distinctions of birth, the vicissitudes of fortune, did not enter into their abstracted, lofty, and levelling calculation of human nature. He who was more than man, with them was none. They claimed kindred only with the commonest of the people: peasants, pedlars, and village-barbers, were their oracles and bosom friends. Their poetry, in the extreme to which it professedly tended, and was in effect carried, levels all distinctions of nature and society; has "no figures nor no fantasies," which the prejudices of superstition or the customs of the world draw in the brains of men; "no trivial fond records” of all that has existed in the history of past ages; it has no adventitious pride, pomp, or circumstance, to set it off; "the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe;" neither tradition, reverence, nor ceremony," that to great ones 'longs:" it breaks in pieces the golden images of poetry, and defaces its armorial bearings, to melt them down in the mould of common humanity or of its own upstart self-sufficiency. They took the same method in their new-fangled metre ballad-mongering" scheme, which Rousseau did in his prose paradoxes." Lectures, p. 320, 322.

After all these strictures, we are by no means insensible to the merit of some of this author's criticism. He is a tasteful admirer of poetry, if he has little power to investigate its qualities. He can describe, though he may not analyse:-he can give you a character in the gross, if he has no skill in examining its parts. He could make a good volume of elegant extracts; and we should be willing, on all occasions, to take him as our guide in a course of poetical reading. The passages, in the Lectures, which have struck

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