Berkeley (none at all of popularity) and would rather that a single inquirer after truth should pronounce my name, after I am dead, with the same feelings that I have thought of theirs, than be puffed in all the newspapers, and praised in all the reviews, while I am living. I myself have been a thinker; and I cannot but believe that there are and will be others, like me. If the few and scattered sparks of truth, which I have been at so much pains to collect, should still be kept alive in the minds of such persons, and not entirely die with me, I shall be satisfied. I am, Sir, Yours, etc. WILLIAM HAZlitt. End of A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD. NOTES THE ROUND TABLE ON THE LOVE OF LIFE This essay formed No. 3 of the Round Table series, the first two having been contributed by Leigh Hunt. To numbers 2, 3, 4 the following motto was prefixed: Sociali fædere mensa. Milton. A Table in a social compact joined.' PAGE 1. That sage. Hazlitt perhaps refers to Bacon's lines— 2. "What then remains, but that we still should cry For being born, or being born, to die?' which are taken from an epigram in the Greek Anthology. "The schoolboy,' says Addison. See The Spectator, No. 93. "Hope and fantastic expectations, etc. Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, Chap. i. § 3, par. 4. 'An ounce of sweet, etc. A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre.' The Faerie Queene, Book 1. Canto iii. 30. This line formed the motto of Leigh Hunt's Indicator. 3. And that must end us, etc. Paradise Lost, 11. 145-151. In The Examiner Hazlitt publishes the following passage as a note to this quotation : Many persons have wondered how Bonaparte was able to survive the shock of that tremendous height of power from which he fell. But it was that very height which still rivetted his backward gaze, and made it impossible for him to take his eye from it, more than from a hideous spectre. The sun of Austerlitz still rose upon his imagination, and could not set. The huge fabric of glory which he had raised, still "mocked his eyes with air.”1 He who had felt his existence so intensely could not consent to lose it !' 4. Are made desperate, etc. Wordsworth's Excursion, Book vi. The following note is appended to this essay in The Examiner: 'It is proper to notice that an extract from this article formerly appeared in another publication. A series of Criticisms on the principal English Poets will shortly be commenced, and till concluded, will appear alternately with the other subjects of the Round Table.' The publication referred to was The Morning Chronicle for September 4, 1813, where, under the heading 'Common Places,' the substance of the paragraph beginning The love of life is, in general, the effect,' and the following paragraph will be found. The plan for criticisms of the English Poets was not adhered to. Hazlitt shortly afterwards (1818) delivered a course of Lectures on the English Poets which was published in the same year. 1 Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Scene 14. |