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NOTES

TABLE TALK

2. An Advertisement, etc. Talk was as follows:

The advertisement to the Paris edition of Table

"The work here offered to the public is a selection from the four volumes of Table Talk, printed in London. Should it meet with success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same description, which will include all that the author wishes to preserve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps serve to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or mode of treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had written or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had occasion to speak of it with a friend, the conversation generally took a much wider range, and branched off into a number of indirect and collateral questions, which were not strictly connected with the original view of the subject, but which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon human life in general. It therefore occurred to me as possible to combine the advantages of these two styles, the literary and the conversational; or after stating and enforcing some leading idea, to follow it up by such observations and reflections as would probably suggest themselves in discussing the same question in company with others. This seemed to me to promise a greater variety and richness, and perhaps a greater sincerity, than could be attained by a more precise and scholastic method. The same consideration had an influence on the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style which I have used. How far the plan was feasible, or how far I have succeeded in the execution of it must be left to others to decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains of thought; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by the careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous inquirer my style will be complained of as too light and desultory. To all this I can only answer that I have done not what I wished, but the best I could do; and I heartily wish it had been better.'

ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

This and the following essay are from The London Magazine for December 1820 (Vol. 11. pp. 597-607), No. v. of a series entitled Table Talk.

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5. There is a pleasure, etc. Cf. vol. 1. note to p. 76.

'No juggling here.' Cf. Here is such, patchery, such juggling, and such knavery Troilus and Cressida, Act 1. Scene 3.

Study with joy, etc.

Cowper, The Task, 111. 227-8.

6. More tedious, etc. King John, Act II. Scene 4. 'My mind to me, etc.

The first line of the well-known poem attributed to

Sir Edward Dyer (d. 1607).

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6. Note.

7.

See The Sorrows of Young Werther (Novels and Tales, Bohn, p. 254). "Pure in the last recesses of the mind.' Dryden's translation of the Second Satire of Persius, l. 133. According to Frances Reynolds (Johnsonian Miscellanies, ed. G. B. Hill, 11. 272), the lines were quoted by Johnson at the end of an eloquent eulogium of Mrs. Thrale.

"Palpable to feeling, etc. Cf. If 'tis not gross in sense... 'tis probable

and palpable to thinking.' Othello, Act 1. Scene 2. 8. Light thickened.

'Light thickens ; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood.'

Macbeth, Act 11. Scene 2.

Wilson. Richard Wilson (1714-1782). See Conversations of Northcote, ante, pp. 380, 438, 458.

It was not so Claude, etc. Claude finally settled in Rome in 1627 and remained there till his death in 1682.

The first head, etc. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1. 108 note. The picture, which seems to have been painted near Manchester in 1803, is still in the possession of Hazlitt's family.

9. With Sir Joshua. Cf. the second of Hazlitt's Essays on Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, ante, pp. 131 et seq.

As in a glass darkly', etc. 1 Corinthians, xiii. 12.

10. Sees into the life of things. Wordsworth, Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey.

Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow. Jan Steen (1626-1679), and Gerard Dou (1613-1675).

'Mist, etc. Paradise Lost, v. 435-6.

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Richardson.

The Essays of Jonathan Richardson (1665-1745), which originally appeared in 1715 and 1719, were published in two volumes in 1725, and in one volume, edited by his son, in 1773. See pp. 297-8 of the one volume edition. Vasari tells this story of Michael Angelo and the Pope.

II. That you might almost say, etc.

-so distinctly wrought

That one might almost say, her body thought.'

John Donne, An Anatomy of the World, Second Anniversary, 245-6.

12. Old Abraham Tucker. See vol. iv. pp. 371-385.

"The source,' &c. See Northcote's Life of Reynolds, 11. 286.

A picture of my father. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1806. See
Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1. 111.

Gribelin's etchings. In the second (1714) and subsequent editions of
Shaftesbury's Characteristics.

Riches fineless. Othello, Act II. Scene 3.

Ever in the haunch of winter sings.' Henry IV., Part II. Act iv. Scene 4. 13. 'I also am a painter,' See Vasari's Lives (ed. Blashfield and Hopkins), 1. 32, note 28.

Mr. Skeffington. Sir Lumley St. George Skeffington (1771-1850), author of The Sleeping Beauty and other plays, and a friend of the Regent's, succeeded his father as baronet in 1815.

The battle of Austerlitz. December 2, 1805.

He himself is gone to rest. Hazlitt's father died on July 16, 1820.

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ESSAY II. THe same subjeCT CONTINUED.

13. Whate'er Lorraine,' etc. Thomson, The Castle of Indolence, Canto 1. Stanza 38. Lord Radnor's park. For a fuller account of the collections here referred to, see the volume in the present edition containing Hazlitt's Fine Art Criticisms.

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'Hands that the rod, etc.

"A forked mountain, etc.

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Gray, Elegy, 47.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act iv. Scene 14.

Signifying nothing.' Macbeth, Act v. Scene 5,

15. When I went to the Louvre. In 1802. See Memoirs of William Hazlitt, 1.

84 et seq.

Titian's Mistress.

The picture so called is in the Louvre. It is in fact a

portrait of Alphonso of Ferrara and Laura Dianti. The Transfiguration, etc. On the fall of Napoleon, Raphael's Transfiguration, and Domenichino's Communion of St. Jerome were restored to Rome; Titian's St. Peter Martyr to Venice, and his Hippolito de Medici to Florence. The St. Peter Martyr was destroyed by fire in 1867. Hazlitt's copy of 'A young Nobleman with a glove' is still in the possession of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt.

16. If thou hast not seen,' etc. Cf. 'Wast ever in court, shepherd ?—No, truly.Then thou art damned.' As You Like It, Act II., Scene 2.

The Elgin marbles. See vol. i. p. 143 and note.

"Hard money. Specie opposed to paper currency. Cf. Your mother has a hundred pounds in hard money' etc. Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, Act iv. Scene 3.

"Number numberless.

"Casual fruition,' etc.

17. W.

Paradise Regained, 111. 310 [numbers].
Paradise Lost, IV. 766-7.

- Richard Wilson.

18. A friend of mine. Northcote, presumably, whose Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds had been praised in The Edinburgh Review (vol. xxiii. pp. 263 et seq.)

A friend had bought, etc. Mr. W. Č. Hazlitt suggests that this was Haydon. 19. Richardson, in his Essays. A Discourse on the Science of a Connoisseur (Essays, 1773, PP. 327 et seq.)

20. Guido Reni, etc. Richardson, Essays, 1773, pp. 217-8.

21. Gandy. William Gandy (died 1729). See Hazlitt's Conversations of James Northcote, ante, p. 345. A short Memoir of Gandy forms the Appendix to Northcote's Life of Reynolds.

Poor Dan. Stringer. Cf. ante, pp. 345-6.

'Swallowing the tailor's news,' King John, Act Iv., Scene 2.

"Bastards of his genius,' etc. Cf. vol. iv. p. 209.

ESSAY III. ON THE PAST AND FUTURE

22. When Sterne in the Sentimental Journey. A Sentimental Journey, 'Character. Versailles.'

23. The thoughts of which, etc. Cf. Yet loss of thee would never from my heart. Paradise Lost, 1x. 912.

'What though the radiance, etc. Wordsworth, Ode, Intimations of Immortality,

179 et seq.

"Retrace its footsteps, etc.

'And see how dark,' etc. evening.

Paradise Lost, XI. 329-333.

Wordsworth, Lines written while sailing in a boat at

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