198 On the Cockney School of Prose Writers.-No. I. English bishop, it would have been One HARRIS, a gentleman of fortune in Wiltshire, has published a kind of Universal or Philosophical Grammar, under the title of HERMES. It has many good things in it, though not comparable to the Gram. Generale et Raisonnée, of Port Royal. He is such an idolizer of the ancients, that he is right or wrong, as it happens, and as they lead the way. BYROM, of Manchester, a fine genius, but fanatical even to madness, has published a poetical Epistle on Enthusiasm : in which he has plentifully abused Middleton and me; he is too devout to cultivate poetry, otherwise he would have excelled in it. He has hit the true epistolary stile. There are many fine strokes, many obscurities, and many negligencies in it. I am, Dear Sir, Your our very faithful and affectionate Humble Servant, W. WARBURTON. P. P. Jan. 11, 1751-2. [Oct. I, his debut in the literary world as a manufacturer of essays for a jacobinical Sunday newspaper, "in the manner, as he himself modestly informs us, of the Spectator and Tatler!" How far the chaste simplicity and fervent piety of Addison will bear a comparison with the infidel scoffing and ribbald levity of this modern tuft hunter, it is not our purpose here to enquire, and we shall therefore dismiss the "Round Table," without further comment, as an item not mentioned in the indictment we have now to prefer against him. Our present conversation with this " learned Theban" will be found chiefly to refer to a "certaine daintie and facetious publication," bearing his hand and seal, denominated, "Lectures on the English Poets," and purporting to have been delivered by him at the Surrey Institution. We shall prove, in the course of this and subsequent papers, how totally incapacitated Mr. Hazlitt is, on various accounts, to wield the iron mace of criticism. He wants two kinds of independence that of the head and the heart; and though he is an excellent "hater," (a qualification which, according to his ideas, is absolutely necessary to independence,) he unfortunately confines his disgust to what the more respectable part of society would applaud and esteem. His insane invectives against a late illustrious statesman-his imbecile ravings at Mr. Southey, and the contempt he every where expresses for any thing in the shape of morality and religion, may well illustrate the truth of this remark, whilst his idolatrous reverence for the hero of Jaffa, Voltaire, and Mr. Leigh Hunt, is a striking proof how studious, individuals, desirous of being thought respectable, ought to be of doing any thing that may excite his admiration.. Before we proceed to analyze Mr. Hazlitt's first lecture, we shall take leave to offer a few general observations. He has doubtless a great command of words, but then they are "full of sound and fury signifying nothing," and he possesses to perfection what the Edinburgh Reviewers have attributed to Ariosto, namely, "Antithesis of style," for what he says one moment, he flatly contradicts the next. A vehemence of sentiment totally misplaced, and a ridiculous affectation of excessive sensibility, are also his most distinguishing characteristics. He has infused into his writings a good deal of that genuine simplicity so peculiar to Counsellor Phillips, and some THE CENTRE GROUP OF THE EASTERN COMPARTMENT New Custom House Representing BRITANNIA attended by Strength, Justive Naval Power & Victory 1818.] On the Cockney School of Prose Writers.-No. I. other gentlemen of the Irish bar. In the "Thomson is affected through carelessness: pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of character. He mounts upon stilts, not out of vanity but indolence!" p. 169. "As a comic writer, Goldsmith's Tony Lumpkin draws forth new powers from Mr. Liston's face," p. 238. Shakspeare did not trouble himself about Voltaire's criticisms on his works!" p. 110. By an equally agree ́able anachronism, mankind is introduced (p. 132) watching with anxiety the conduct of our first parents in Paradise. Poetry is more poetical than painting," p. 20." All is not poetry that passes for such," p. 27. Dryden's plays are not so good as Shakspeare's," p. 161. "Swift was not a Frenchman," p. 222. After the specimens here cited, it will not be very difficult to believe that Mr. Hazlitt's style is simple enough. That he knows nothing, or next to nothing, may be inferred from his ingenuous confession, that Mr. Coleridge was the only person of whom he ever learned any thing" and the baseness of his principles is, we think, sufficiently obvious in almost every page of his writings. He 'does not see any reason why the philosophical German writer, Schlegel, should be so severe on those pleasant persons, Lucius Pompey and Master Froth, as to call them wretches. They appear all mighty comfortable in their Occupations, and determined to pursue them;" and after praising Voltaire's andide, he asserts, that " there is somehing sublime in Martin's sceptical indifference to moral good and evil, as it 199 is better to suffer this living death than a living martyrdom." "The ladies of the bed chamber to Louis XV. found no fault with the immoral tendency of Voltaire's writings," and he sees "no reason why our modern purists should." As for our own Lord Rochester, he thinks "that his contempt for every thing that others respect amounts almost to sublimity." We are sorry we cannot pay Mr. Hazlitt a similar compliment; for in his dereliction of "every thing that others respect," we see nothing but ignorance, impudence, and littleness of mind. He may be assured, there is none of "that superiority of character"-" that dazzling splendour" about him which he so much admires in the ruined archangel of Milton." There is no dignity whatever- no poetry in his iniquities. The green-eyed critic of an infidel review, the second hand retailer of the blasphemies of Volney and Voltaire, the libeller of his King, and the petty hater of his country, can possess no qualifications to screen him from the "foul scorn" of the world. The poison he would instil is too easily neutralized to be of great importance— and those who may think proper to chastise his audacious arrogance, and expose his imbecility, will have advantages on their side, against which he will find it very difficult to contend. In his introductory lecture Mr. H. sets out with an attempt to define poetry; but, conscious perhaps, that his notions on that head are none of the clearest, he runs into such amplifications of his subject, such a series, of illustrations, that it requires no little ingenuity on the part of his readers to divine,not, what is poetry-but what is not! He describes it " as coming home to the bosoms and businesses of men ;" and no wonder, since he elsewhere tells us that "it is the stuff of which our life is made;" that "the child is a poet, in fact, when he first plays at hide and seek, or repeats the story of Jack the Giant Killer; the countryman when he stops to look at the rainbow, and the city apprentice when he gazes at the Lord Mayor's show." Not content with this, he goes still further, and pronounces hope, fear, love, hatred, contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder, pity, spair, and madness to be all poetry. "It is the highest eloquence of passion," yet" oaths and nicknames are poetry," and the miser, the courtier, the savage, the slave, the tyrant, the vain, the am de 200 On the Cockney School of Prose Writers.- No. I. bitious, the proud, the choleric man, the hero, the coward, the beggar, the king, the rich, and the poor, the young and the old, possess, all of them, the requisites for poetry, for "what the poet describes is only second hand folly and madness." Truly the critic himself would have some pretty strong claims to the character of a poet were there any truth in these observations. It would be a terrible encroachment on the time and attention of our readers, were we to quote half Mr. Hazlitt's definitions; for, like a tinker, who in mending a kettle makes two holes in his endeavours to patch up one, Mr. H's arguments are never finished; the last of his illustrations always requires further explanation to make it intelligible, and when by dint of extreme perseverance we at length discover what he is driving at, it seldom carries any thing conclusive with it, on the subject of the original question; and not unfrequently in the warmth of his zeal to make his hearers or readers understand what he is prating about, he concludes with a direct contradiction of all he had before affirmed. Thus at page 2, he observes that "nothing but what comes home to men in the most general and intelligible shape can be a subject for poetry;"-yet at page 5, he expresses it as his opinion that "neither a mere description of natural feelings, however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end of poetry." "Chaucer exhibits for the most part the naked object with little drapery thrown over it. There is no artificial pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived" p. 45. "Chaucer's poetry is more picturesque and historical than almost any other," p. 64. "Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation sacred or profane," p. 115. "Dryden and Pope are the great masters of the artificial style of poetry; Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespear, Milton, were of the natural," p. 135. "The question whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not, he must have been a great prose writer; that is, he was a great writer of some sort," p. 136. “He (Pope) had none of the enthusiasm of poetry about him; his mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur," p. 140. "Pope's letters and rose writings neither take away from nor add to his reputa [Oct, 1, tion," p. 156. Thompson is the best of our descriptive poets; for he gives most of the poetry of natural description, p. 171. Others have been quite equal to him, or have surpassed him; as Cowper, for instance, in the picturesque part of his art," p. 171. Cowper seldom launches out into general descriptions of nature," p. 181, He had neitheir Thompson's love of the unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegance of art," p. 182. "Dr. Johnson was a learned lazy man, who liked to think and talk better than to read or write, who however wrote much and well, but too often by rote; he invented a sort of jargon half way out of one language into another, which raised the Dr.'s reputation, and confounded all ranks of literature," p. 209 and 10. The absurd contradictions which these passages display need no comment. Mr. Hazlitt becomes his own critic; but could any thing encrease the contempt we already entertain for him, it would be the impudent familiarity with which he treats the venerable Johnson. His audacity in pretending to criticize the latinity of this great Lexicographer can only be equalled by his acknowledgment of the happy state of ignorance he enjoys, as to all that was ever said or done in the ancient languages. His idiot raving against the Dr. may very readily be accounted for; he hates, most inveterately, learning of all descriptions; as well as its professors, and in one of his essays on the "Ignorance of the learned," congratulates himself and the Cockney crew of which he is a member, on their total independence of the trammels of education. Neither does he omit a fling at the learned acquirements in the book we have now before us; for he very sedately informs us "that the progress of knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry," p. 18. Of this he may make himself pretty certain that "the limits of his imagination will never be circumscribed, either by the refinement of his manners, or the depth of his acquirements; for he is as miserably deficient in one as the other. Like his brother charlatan, Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt is always on the stretch to be pleasant, amiable, and witty; and, to use his own favourite metaphor, "mounts upon stilts" to talk on the merest trifles. He is not contcut to use the common language of life as the vehicle for his thoughts and sentiments, |