THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT IN TWELVE VOLUMES
VOLUME SEVEN
All rights reserved
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT
EDITED BY A. R. WALLER AND ARNOLD GLOVER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
W. E. HENLEY
❦
The Plain Speaker.
Essay on the Principles of Human Action
Etc.
❦
1903
LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK
Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE PLAIN SPEAKER 5
AN ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN ACTION 385
REMARKS ON THE SYSTEMS OF HARTLEY AND HELVETIUS 434
NOTES 479
THE PLAIN SPEAKER
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, appeared anonymously in 1826 in two volumes (9 × 5½ inches), published by Henry Colburn, New Burlington Street. The imprint behind both title-pages is ‘London: Printed by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars’; but that at the end of the second volume is ‘London: Printed by J. Nichols and Son, Parliament Street.’ A list of ‘Interesting Works, Just published by Henry Colburn,’ at the end of the work contains an announcement of ‘The Spirits of the Age.... The Second Edition, with Additions’ (see vol. IV. p. 186, Bibliographical Note to The Spirit of the Age).
In the edition which was published in 1851, edited by his son, the Essay entitled ‘On a Portrait of a Lady, by Vandyke’ is not included: it was transferred to ‘Criticisms on Art.’
In the present issue the Essays have been numbered consecutively: in the original two-volume edition the ‘Second Series’ began with Essay I. ‘On the Qualifications Necessary to Success in Life.’
See also Bibliographical Note to Table Talk.
CONTENTS
ESSAY I. PAGE
On the Prose-Style of Poets 5
ESSAY II.
On Dreams 17
ESSAY III.
On the Conversation of Authors 24
ESSAY IV.
The same Subject continued 35
ESSAY V.
On Reason and Imagination 44
ESSAY VI.
On Application to Study 55
ESSAY VII.
On Londoners and Country People 66
ESSAY VIII.
On the Spirit of Obligations 78
ESSAY IX.
On the Old Age of Artists 88
ESSAY X.
On Envy (A Dialogue) 97
ESSAY XI.
On Sitting for one’s Picture 107
ESSAY XII.
Whether Genius is conscious of its Powers? 117
ESSAY XIII.
On the Pleasure of Hating 127
ESSAY XIV.
On Dr. Spurzheim’s Theory 137
ESSAY XV.
On Egotism 157
ESSAY XVI.
Hot and Cold 169
ESSAY XVII.
The New School of Reform (A Dialogue between a Rationalist and a Sentimentalist) 179
ESSAY XVIII.
On the Qualifications necessary to Success in Life 195
ESSAY XIX.
On the Look of a Gentleman 209
ESSAY XX.
On Reading Old Books 220
ESSAY XXI.
On Personal Character 230
ESSAY XXII.
On People of Sense 242
ESSAY XXIII.
On Antiquity 252
ESSAY XXIV.
On the Difference between Writing and Speaking 262
ESSAY XXV.
On a Portrait of an English Lady, by Vandyke 280
ESSAY XXVI.
On Novelty and Familiarity 294
ESSAY XXVII.
On Old English Writers and Speakers 311
ESSAY XXVIII.
Madame Pasta and Mademoiselle Mars 324
ESSAY XXIX.
Sir Walter Scott, Racine, and Shakespear 336
ESSAY XXX.
On Depth and Superficiality 346
ESSAY XXXI.
On Respectable People 360
ESSAY XXXII.
On Jealousy and Spleen of Party 365
THE PLAIN SPEAKER
ESSAY I ON THE PROSE-STYLE OF POETS
‘Do you read or sing? If you sing, you sing very ill!’
I have but an indifferent opinion of the prose-style of poets: not that it is not sometimes good, nay, excellent; but it is never the better, and generally the worse from the habit of writing verse. Poets are winged animals, and can cleave the air, like birds, with ease to themselves and delight to the beholders; but like those ‘feathered, two-legged things,’ when they light upon the ground of prose and matter-of-fact, they seem not to have the same use of their feet.
What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of rhythmus and cadence in what they write without the help of metrical rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompaniment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is loose, disjointed, and without expressive pauses or rapid movements. The measured cadence and regular sing-song of rhyme or blank verse have destroyed, as it were, their natural ear for the mere characteristic harmony which ought to subsist between the sound and the sense. I should almost guess the Author of Waverley to be a writer of ambling verses from the desultory vacillation and want of firmness in the march of his style. There is neither momentum nor elasticity in it; I mean as to the score, or effect upon the ear. He has improved since in his other works: to be sure, he has had practice enough[1]. Poets either get into this incoherent, undetermined, shuffling style, made up of ‘unpleasing flats and sharps,’ of unaccountable starts and pauses, of doubtful odds and ends, flirted about like straws in a gust of wind; or, to avoid it and steady themselves, mount into a sustained and measured prose (like the translation of Ossian’s Poems, or some parts of Shaftesbury’s Characteristics) which is more odious still, and as bad as being at sea in a calm. Dr. Johnson’s style (particularly in his Rambler,) is not free from the last objection. There is a tune in it, a mechanical recurrence of the same rise and fall in the clauses of his sentences, independent of any reference to the meaning of the text, or progress or inflection of the sense. There is the alternate roll of his cumbrous cargo of words; his periods complete their revolutions at certain stated intervals, let the matter be longer or shorter, rough or smooth, round or square, different or the same. This monotonous and balanced mode of composition may be compared to that species of portrait-painting which prevailed about a century ago, in which each face was cast in a regular and preconceived mould. The eye-brows were arched mathematically as if with a pair of compasses, and the distances between the nose and mouth, the forehead and chin, determined according to a ‘foregone conclusion,’ and the features of the identical individual were afterwards accommodated to them, how they could![2]
Horne Tooke used to maintain that no one could write a good prose style, who was not accustomed to express himself vivâ voce, or to talk in company. He argued that this was the fault of Addison’s prose, and that its smooth, equable uniformity, and want of sharpness and spirit, arose from his not having familiarised his ear to the sound of his own voice, or at least only among friends and admirers, where there was but little collision, dramatic fluctuation, or sudden contrariety of opinion to provoke animated discussion, and give birth to different intonations and lively transitions of speech. His style (in this view of it) was not indented, nor did it project from the surface. There was no stress laid on one word more than another—it did not hurry on or stop short, or sink or swell with the occasion: it was throughout equally insipid, flowing, and harmonious, and had the effect of a studied recitation rather than of a natural discourse. This would not have happened (so the Member for Old Sarum contended) had Addison laid himself out to argue at his club, or to speak in public; for then his ear would have caught the necessary modulations of sound arising out of the feeling of the moment, and he would have transferred them unconsciously to paper. Much might be said on both sides of this question[3]: but Mr. Tooke was himself an unintentional confirmation of his own argument; for the tone of his written compositions is as flat and unraised as his manner of speaking was hard and dry. Of the poet it is said by some one, that
‘He murmurs by the running brooks A music sweeter than their own.’