August 19, 2025 • 18 mins
In Spirit of the Age; Or, Contemporary Portraits, William Hazlitt masterfully captures the essence of his era through insightful monographs on a constellation of literary luminaries. Meet the likes of Jeremy Bentham, the architect of utilitarian philosophy, and William Godwin, who elevated morality beyond human reach. Delve into the minds of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Irving, and Sir Walter Scott, as Hazlitt reveals their distinct contributions to literature and society. From the eloquence of Thomas Campbell, known for Pleasures of Hope, to the impactful thoughts of William Wordsworth and Thomas Malthus, Hazlitt provides a vivid portrayal of his contemporaries. Engaging comparisons between the works of Charles Lamb and Washington Irving further enrich this collection, making it a fascinating exploration of the literary landscape of his time. Summary by Craig Campbell.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eighteen of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Hazlitt. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox, dot Org, Eliah and
Jeffrey Crayon. So mister Charles Lamb and mister Washington Irvine
(00:22):
choose to designate themselves and as their lucubrations under one
or other of these nom de guerre have gained considerable
notice from the public. We shall here attempt to discriminate
their several styles in manner, and to point out the
beauties and defects of each, entreating of somewhat similar subject.
Mister Irvine is, we take it, the more popular writer
(00:43):
of the two, or a more general favorite. Mister Lamb
has more devoted and perhaps more judicious partisans. Mister Irvine
is by birth and an American, and has, as it were,
skimmed of the cream and taken off patterns with great
skill and cleverness from our our best known and happiest writers,
so that their thoughts and almost to their reputation are
(01:05):
indirectly transferred to his page and smile upon us from
another hemisphere, like the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow. He
succeeds to our admiration and our sympathy by a sort
of prescriptive title and traditional privilege. Mister Lamb, on the contrary,
being native to the manner here, though he too has
(01:27):
borrowed from previous sources. Instead of availing himself of the
most popular and admired, has groped out his way and
made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate,
though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers.
Mister Washington Irvine has cold and transplanted the flowers of
(01:48):
modern literature for the amusement of the general reader. Mister
Lamb has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a
more remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and
poured over moth eaten, decayed manuscripts for the benefit of
the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity
after a time has the grace of novelty, as old
(02:10):
fashions revived or mistaken for new ones, and a certain
quaintness and singularity of style is an agreeable relief to
the smooth and insipid monotony of modern composition. Mister Lamb
has succeeded not by conforming to the spirit of the age,
but in opposition to it. He does not march boldly
(02:31):
along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to
pick his way in the contrary direction. He prefers by
ways to highways. When the full tide of human life
pours along to some festive shoe, to some pageant of
a day Aliyah would stand on one side to look
over an old bookstall, or strode down some deserted pathway
(02:53):
in search of a pensive inscription, over a tottering doorway,
or some quaint device in architectureive of embryo art in
ancient manners. Mister Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian,
as this implies a reflecting humanity. The film of the
past hovers forever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the
(03:14):
reverse of everything, coarse, vulgar, obtrusive and commonplace. He would
fain shuffle off this mortal coil, and his spirit clothes
itself in the garb of elder time, homelier but more durable.
He is borne along with no paupous paradoxes, shines, and
no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology. Is neither fop
(03:37):
nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth
of new fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear,
though it may often take an underground course or be
conveyed through old fashioned conduit pipes. Mister Lamb does not
court popularity, nor strut and gaudy plumes. The shrieks from
every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretensions to the retirement
(04:01):
of his own mind. The self applauding bird, the peacocks
sea mark what a sumptuous pharisee. As he meridian sunbeams
tempt him to unfold his radiant glories, azures, green and gold.
He treads as if some solemn music near his measured
step were governed by his ear, and seems to say, ye,
(04:21):
meaner fowl, give place, I am all splendor, dignity and grace.
Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes, though he
too has a glory in his plumes. He christian like
retreats with modest man to the close copes or far
sequestered green, and shines without desiring to be seen. These
lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties of mister
(04:44):
Lamb's writings, contrasted with the lofty and vainglorious pretensions of
some of his contemporaries. This gentleman is not one of
those who pay all their homage to the prevailing idol.
He thinks that new born gods are made and molded
of things past. Nor does he give to dust that
is a little guilt more lawed than guilt or bedusted.
(05:07):
His convictions do not, in broad rumor lie, nor are
they set off to the world in the glistering foil
of fashion, but live and breathe aloft in those pure
eyes and perfect judgment of all seeing time. Mister Lamb
rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and remote
of that which rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit,
(05:30):
which scorns all alliance, or even the suspicion of owing
anything to noisy clamor to the glare of circumstances. There
is a fine tone of chuerist girl a moral perspective
in his writings. He delights to dwell on that which
is fresh to the eye of memory. He yearns after
and covets what soothes the frailty of human nature, that
(05:52):
touches him most nearly, which is withdrawn to a certain distance,
which verges on the borders of oblivion, that piques and
prove poakes his fancy, most which is hid from a
superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is still remembered,
is in his view, more genuine, and has given more
vital signs that it will live than a thing of
(06:15):
yesterday that may be forgotten tomorrow. Death has in this
sense the spirit of life in it, and the shadowy has,
to our authors something substantial in it. Ideas savor most
of reality in his mind, or rather his imagination, loiters
on the edge of each and a page of his
writings recalls to our fancy the stranger on the grate,
(06:37):
fluttering in its dusky tensity, with its idle superstition and
hospitable welcome. Mister Lamb has a distaste to new faces,
to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. He
is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of
self importance, of all adventitious ornaments of all mechanical advantages,
(06:59):
even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that
he does not rely upon or ordinarily avail himself of them.
He holds them in abhorreates, He utterly abjures and discards them,
and places a great gulf between him and them. He
disdains all the vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant
(07:20):
of criticism, and helps to no autoriety. He has no grand,
swelling theories to attract the visionary and the enthusiast, no
passing topics to allure the thoughtless. In the vein, he
evades the present, he mocks the future. His affections revert
to and settle on the past. But then even this
must have something personal and local in it to interest
(07:43):
him deeply and thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the
suburbs of existing manners, brings down the account of character
to the few straggling remains of the last generation. Seldom
ventures beyond the bills of mortality, and occupies that nice
point between each eotism and a disinterested humanity. No one
(08:04):
makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or describes the
manners of the last age so well as mister Lamb,
with so fine and yet so formal an air, with
such vivid obscurity, with such arc piquency, such picturesquequaintness, such
smiling pathos. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates
(08:25):
of the south Sea House. What fine fretwork he makes
of their double and single entries. With what a firm
yet subtle pencil he has embodied missus Battle's opinions on whist.
How notably he embalms a battered beau. How delightfully and
amour that was cold forty years ago revives in his pages,
(08:46):
with what well disguised humor he introduces us to his relations,
and how freely he serves up his friends. Certainly some
of his portraits are fixtures and will do to hang
up as lasting and lively emblems of human inferm Then
there is no one who has so sure an ear
for the chimes at midnight, not even accepting mister Justice shallow,
(09:08):
nor could Master Silence himself take his cheese and pippins
with a more significant and satisfactory air. With what augusto
mister Lamb describes the inns and courts of law. The
Temple and grazed in as if he had been a
student therefore at last two hundred years, and had been
as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon
(09:29):
as he is with his portrait or writings. It is
hard to say whether Saint John's gait is connected with
more intense and authentic associations in his mind as a
part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece time
out of mind of the Gentleman's magazine. He haunts Wattling
Street like a gentle spirit. The avenues to the playhouses
(09:50):
are thick with panting recollections, and Christ's Hospital still breathes
the balmy breath of infancy. In his description of it,
Whittington and his cat are fine hallucination for mister Lamb's
historic muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a
certain writer who took the subject of Guy Fox out
of his hands. The streets of London are his fairy land,
(10:13):
teeming with wonder, with life and interest. To his retrospective glance,
as it did to the eager eye of childhood, he
has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright
and endless romance. Mister Lamb's taste in books is also fine,
and it is peculiar. It is not the worst for
a little idiosyncracy. He does not go deep into the
(10:34):
Scott's novels, but he is at home in Smollett and Fielding.
He is little read in Junius or Gibbon. But no
man can give a better account of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,
or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn Burial, or Fuller's Worthy's or
John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more unimpressible to
a specialist declamation. No one relishes a recondit beauty more.
(10:57):
His admiration of Shakespeare and Milton does not make him
despise Pope, and he can read Parnell with patience and
Gay with delight. His taste in French and German literature
is somewhat defective. Nor has he made much progress in
the science of political economy or other abtruse studies, though
(11:17):
he has read vast folios of controversial divinity merely for
the sake of the intricacy of dial and to save
himself the pain of thinking. Mister Lamb is a good
judge of prints, and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does
credit to both, particularly when it is considered that Leonardo
da Vinci is his next greatest favorite, and that his
(11:38):
love of the actual does not proceed from a want
of taste for the ideal. His worst fault is an
over eagerness of enthusiasm, which occasionally makes him take a
surfeit of his highest favorites. Mister Lammox sells in familiar
conversation almost as much as in writing. When his modesty
does not overpower his self possession, he is as little
(12:01):
of a proser as possible, but he blurts out the
finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps a
good deal in the background at first till some excellent
conceit pushes him forward, and then he abounds in whim
and pleasantry. There is a primitive simplicity and self denial
about his manners, and a Quakerism in his personal appearance,
(12:22):
which is however, relieved by a fine Titian head full
of dumb eloquence. Mister Lamb is a general favorite with
those who know him. His character is equally singular and amiable.
He is endeared to his friends, not less by his
foilables than his virtues. He insures their esteem by the one,
and does not wound their self love by the other.
(12:45):
He gains ground in the opinion of others by making
no advances in his own. We easily admire genius where
the diffidence of the possessor makes our acknowledgment of merit
seemed like a sort of patronage or act of condescension,
as we will mixed in our good offices, where they
are not exacted as obligations or repaid with sullen indifference.
(13:07):
The style of the essays of Elia is liable to
the charge of a certain mannerism. His sentences are cast
in the mold of old authors, as expressions are borrowed
from them, but his feelings and observations are genuine and original,
taken from actual life or from his own breast. And
he may be said, if any one can to have
(13:28):
coined his heart for jests, and to have split his
brain for fine distinctions. Mister Lamb, from the peculiarity of
his exterior and address as an author, would probably never
have made his way by detached and independent efforts. But
fortunately for himself and others, he has taken advantage of
(13:49):
the periodical press, where he has been stuck into notice,
and the texture of his compositions is assuredly fine enough
to bear the broadest glare of popularity that has hitherto
shown upon them. Mister Lamb's literary efforts have procured him
civic honors, being unheard of in our times, and he
has been invited, in his character of Eliah, to dine
(14:11):
at a select party with the Lord Mayor. We should
prefer this distinction to that of being poet laureate. We
would recommend to mister Waverman's perusal, if mister Lamb has
not anticipated us, the Rosamond Gray and the John Woodville
of the same author as an agreeable relief to the
noise of a city feast and the heat of city elections.
(14:35):
A friend a short time ago quoted some lines foot
note A from the last mentioned of these works, which,
meeting mister Godwin's eye, he was so struck with the
beauty of the passage, and with the consciousness of having
seen it before, that he was uneasy till he could
recollect where and after hunting in vain for it. In
ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other not unlikely places
(15:00):
to mister Lamb to know if he could help him
to the author, mister Washington. Irvine's acquaintance with English literature
begins almost where mister Lambs ends with the Spectator, Tom
Brown's works and the Wits of Queen Anne. He is
not bottomed in our elder writers, nor do we think
he has tasked his own faculties much at least on
(15:21):
English ground. Of the merit of his Knickerbocker and New
York stories we cannot pretend to judge. But in his
sketch Book and brace Bridge Hall he gives us very
good American copies of our British essays and novelists, which
may be very well on the other side of the water,
and as proofs of the capabilities of the national genius,
(15:42):
but which might be dispensed with here where we have
to boast of the originals. Not only mister Irvine's language
is with great taste and felicity modeled on that of Addison, Sterne,
Goldsmith or Mackenzie, but the thoughts and sentiments are taken
at the rebound, and as they are brought forward at
the prescent period want both freshness and probability. Mister Irvine's
(16:04):
writings are literary anachronisms. He comes to England for the
first time, and, being on the spot, fancies himself in
the midst of those characters and manners which he had
read of in the Spectator and other approved authors, and
which were the only idea he had hitherto formed of
the parent country. Instead of looking round to see what
we are, he sets to work to describe us as
(16:26):
we were at second hand. He has Parson Adams or
Sir Roger de Coverley in his mind's eye, and he
makes a village curate or a country squire in Yorkshire
or Hampshire sit to these admired models for their portraits
in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whatever the ingenious
author has been most delighted with in the representation of books,
(16:49):
he transfers to his portfolio and swears that he has
found it actually existing in the course of his observations
and travels through Great Britain. Instead of tracing the changes
that have taken place in society since Addison or Fielding wrote,
he transcribes their account in a different handwriting, and thus
keeps us stationary, at least on our most attractive and
(17:10):
praiseworthy qualities of simplicity, honesty, hospitality, modesty, and good nature.
This is a very flattering mode of turning fiction into
history or history to fiction, and we should scarcely know
ourselves again in the softened and altered likeness. But that
it bears the date of eighteen twenty and issues from
the press and Abermarle Street. This is one way of
(17:32):
complementing our national and tory prejudices, and coupled with literal
or exaggerated portraits of Yankee peculiarities, can hardly fail to please.
The first essay in the sketch book, that on national antipathies,
is the best. But after that the sterling ore of
wit or feelings gradually spun thinner and thinner till it
fades to the shadow of a shade. Mister Irvine is himself,
(17:56):
we believe, a most agreeable and deserving man, and has
been led into the natural and pardonable era we speak
of by the tempting bait of European popularity, in which
he thought there was no more likely method of succeeding
than by imitating the style of our standard authors and
giving us credits for the virtue of our forefathers. Footnote
(18:17):
eight description of sports in the forest to see the
sun to bed into a rise like some hot amorist
with glowing eyes into Section eighteen by William Haslett
Chapter eighteen of the Spirit of the Age or Contemporary
Portraits by William Hazlitt. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox, dot Org, Eliah and
Jeffrey Crayon. So mister Charles Lamb and mister Washington Irvine
(00:22):
choose to designate themselves and as their lucubrations under one
or other of these nom de guerre have gained considerable
notice from the public. We shall here attempt to discriminate
their several styles in manner, and to point out the
beauties and defects of each, entreating of somewhat similar subject.
Mister Irvine is, we take it, the more popular writer
(00:43):
of the two, or a more general favorite. Mister Lamb
has more devoted and perhaps more judicious partisans. Mister Irvine
is by birth and an American, and has, as it were,
skimmed of the cream and taken off patterns with great
skill and cleverness from our our best known and happiest writers,
so that their thoughts and almost to their reputation are
(01:05):
indirectly transferred to his page and smile upon us from
another hemisphere, like the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow. He
succeeds to our admiration and our sympathy by a sort
of prescriptive title and traditional privilege. Mister Lamb, on the contrary,
being native to the manner here, though he too has
(01:27):
borrowed from previous sources. Instead of availing himself of the
most popular and admired, has groped out his way and
made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate,
though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers.
Mister Washington Irvine has cold and transplanted the flowers of
(01:48):
modern literature for the amusement of the general reader. Mister
Lamb has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a
more remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and
poured over moth eaten, decayed manuscripts for the benefit of
the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity
after a time has the grace of novelty, as old
(02:10):
fashions revived or mistaken for new ones, and a certain
quaintness and singularity of style is an agreeable relief to
the smooth and insipid monotony of modern composition. Mister Lamb
has succeeded not by conforming to the spirit of the age,
but in opposition to it. He does not march boldly
(02:31):
along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to
pick his way in the contrary direction. He prefers by
ways to highways. When the full tide of human life
pours along to some festive shoe, to some pageant of
a day Aliyah would stand on one side to look
over an old bookstall, or strode down some deserted pathway
(02:53):
in search of a pensive inscription, over a tottering doorway,
or some quaint device in architectureive of embryo art in
ancient manners. Mister Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian,
as this implies a reflecting humanity. The film of the
past hovers forever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the
(03:14):
reverse of everything, coarse, vulgar, obtrusive and commonplace. He would
fain shuffle off this mortal coil, and his spirit clothes
itself in the garb of elder time, homelier but more durable.
He is borne along with no paupous paradoxes, shines, and
no glittering tinsel of a fashionable phraseology. Is neither fop
(03:37):
nor sophist. He has none of the turbulence or froth
of new fangled opinions. His style runs pure and clear,
though it may often take an underground course or be
conveyed through old fashioned conduit pipes. Mister Lamb does not
court popularity, nor strut and gaudy plumes. The shrieks from
every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretensions to the retirement
(04:01):
of his own mind. The self applauding bird, the peacocks
sea mark what a sumptuous pharisee. As he meridian sunbeams
tempt him to unfold his radiant glories, azures, green and gold.
He treads as if some solemn music near his measured
step were governed by his ear, and seems to say, ye,
(04:21):
meaner fowl, give place, I am all splendor, dignity and grace.
Not so the pheasant on his charms presumes, though he
too has a glory in his plumes. He christian like
retreats with modest man to the close copes or far
sequestered green, and shines without desiring to be seen. These
lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties of mister
(04:44):
Lamb's writings, contrasted with the lofty and vainglorious pretensions of
some of his contemporaries. This gentleman is not one of
those who pay all their homage to the prevailing idol.
He thinks that new born gods are made and molded
of things past. Nor does he give to dust that
is a little guilt more lawed than guilt or bedusted.
(05:07):
His convictions do not, in broad rumor lie, nor are
they set off to the world in the glistering foil
of fashion, but live and breathe aloft in those pure
eyes and perfect judgment of all seeing time. Mister Lamb
rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and remote
of that which rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit,
(05:30):
which scorns all alliance, or even the suspicion of owing
anything to noisy clamor to the glare of circumstances. There
is a fine tone of chuerist girl a moral perspective
in his writings. He delights to dwell on that which
is fresh to the eye of memory. He yearns after
and covets what soothes the frailty of human nature, that
(05:52):
touches him most nearly, which is withdrawn to a certain distance,
which verges on the borders of oblivion, that piques and
prove poakes his fancy, most which is hid from a
superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is still remembered,
is in his view, more genuine, and has given more
vital signs that it will live than a thing of
(06:15):
yesterday that may be forgotten tomorrow. Death has in this
sense the spirit of life in it, and the shadowy has,
to our authors something substantial in it. Ideas savor most
of reality in his mind, or rather his imagination, loiters
on the edge of each and a page of his
writings recalls to our fancy the stranger on the grate,
(06:37):
fluttering in its dusky tensity, with its idle superstition and
hospitable welcome. Mister Lamb has a distaste to new faces,
to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. He
is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of
self importance, of all adventitious ornaments of all mechanical advantages,
(06:59):
even to a nervous excess. It is not merely that
he does not rely upon or ordinarily avail himself of them.
He holds them in abhorreates, He utterly abjures and discards them,
and places a great gulf between him and them. He
disdains all the vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant
(07:20):
of criticism, and helps to no autoriety. He has no grand,
swelling theories to attract the visionary and the enthusiast, no
passing topics to allure the thoughtless. In the vein, he
evades the present, he mocks the future. His affections revert
to and settle on the past. But then even this
must have something personal and local in it to interest
(07:43):
him deeply and thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the
suburbs of existing manners, brings down the account of character
to the few straggling remains of the last generation. Seldom
ventures beyond the bills of mortality, and occupies that nice
point between each eotism and a disinterested humanity. No one
(08:04):
makes the tour of our southern metropolis, or describes the
manners of the last age so well as mister Lamb,
with so fine and yet so formal an air, with
such vivid obscurity, with such arc piquency, such picturesquequaintness, such
smiling pathos. How admirably he has sketched the former inmates
(08:25):
of the south Sea House. What fine fretwork he makes
of their double and single entries. With what a firm
yet subtle pencil he has embodied missus Battle's opinions on whist.
How notably he embalms a battered beau. How delightfully and
amour that was cold forty years ago revives in his pages,
(08:46):
with what well disguised humor he introduces us to his relations,
and how freely he serves up his friends. Certainly some
of his portraits are fixtures and will do to hang
up as lasting and lively emblems of human inferm Then
there is no one who has so sure an ear
for the chimes at midnight, not even accepting mister Justice shallow,
(09:08):
nor could Master Silence himself take his cheese and pippins
with a more significant and satisfactory air. With what augusto
mister Lamb describes the inns and courts of law. The
Temple and grazed in as if he had been a
student therefore at last two hundred years, and had been
as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon
(09:29):
as he is with his portrait or writings. It is
hard to say whether Saint John's gait is connected with
more intense and authentic associations in his mind as a
part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece time
out of mind of the Gentleman's magazine. He haunts Wattling
Street like a gentle spirit. The avenues to the playhouses
(09:50):
are thick with panting recollections, and Christ's Hospital still breathes
the balmy breath of infancy. In his description of it,
Whittington and his cat are fine hallucination for mister Lamb's
historic muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a
certain writer who took the subject of Guy Fox out
of his hands. The streets of London are his fairy land,
(10:13):
teeming with wonder, with life and interest. To his retrospective glance,
as it did to the eager eye of childhood, he
has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a bright
and endless romance. Mister Lamb's taste in books is also fine,
and it is peculiar. It is not the worst for
a little idiosyncracy. He does not go deep into the
(10:34):
Scott's novels, but he is at home in Smollett and Fielding.
He is little read in Junius or Gibbon. But no
man can give a better account of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy,
or Sir Thomas Brown's Urn Burial, or Fuller's Worthy's or
John Bunyan's Holy War. No one is more unimpressible to
a specialist declamation. No one relishes a recondit beauty more.
(10:57):
His admiration of Shakespeare and Milton does not make him
despise Pope, and he can read Parnell with patience and
Gay with delight. His taste in French and German literature
is somewhat defective. Nor has he made much progress in
the science of political economy or other abtruse studies, though
(11:17):
he has read vast folios of controversial divinity merely for
the sake of the intricacy of dial and to save
himself the pain of thinking. Mister Lamb is a good
judge of prints, and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does
credit to both, particularly when it is considered that Leonardo
da Vinci is his next greatest favorite, and that his
(11:38):
love of the actual does not proceed from a want
of taste for the ideal. His worst fault is an
over eagerness of enthusiasm, which occasionally makes him take a
surfeit of his highest favorites. Mister Lammox sells in familiar
conversation almost as much as in writing. When his modesty
does not overpower his self possession, he is as little
(12:01):
of a proser as possible, but he blurts out the
finest wit and sense in the world. He keeps a
good deal in the background at first till some excellent
conceit pushes him forward, and then he abounds in whim
and pleasantry. There is a primitive simplicity and self denial
about his manners, and a Quakerism in his personal appearance,
(12:22):
which is however, relieved by a fine Titian head full
of dumb eloquence. Mister Lamb is a general favorite with
those who know him. His character is equally singular and amiable.
He is endeared to his friends, not less by his
foilables than his virtues. He insures their esteem by the one,
and does not wound their self love by the other.
(12:45):
He gains ground in the opinion of others by making
no advances in his own. We easily admire genius where
the diffidence of the possessor makes our acknowledgment of merit
seemed like a sort of patronage or act of condescension,
as we will mixed in our good offices, where they
are not exacted as obligations or repaid with sullen indifference.
(13:07):
The style of the essays of Elia is liable to
the charge of a certain mannerism. His sentences are cast
in the mold of old authors, as expressions are borrowed
from them, but his feelings and observations are genuine and original,
taken from actual life or from his own breast. And
he may be said, if any one can to have
(13:28):
coined his heart for jests, and to have split his
brain for fine distinctions. Mister Lamb, from the peculiarity of
his exterior and address as an author, would probably never
have made his way by detached and independent efforts. But
fortunately for himself and others, he has taken advantage of
(13:49):
the periodical press, where he has been stuck into notice,
and the texture of his compositions is assuredly fine enough
to bear the broadest glare of popularity that has hitherto
shown upon them. Mister Lamb's literary efforts have procured him
civic honors, being unheard of in our times, and he
has been invited, in his character of Eliah, to dine
(14:11):
at a select party with the Lord Mayor. We should
prefer this distinction to that of being poet laureate. We
would recommend to mister Waverman's perusal, if mister Lamb has
not anticipated us, the Rosamond Gray and the John Woodville
of the same author as an agreeable relief to the
noise of a city feast and the heat of city elections.
(14:35):
A friend a short time ago quoted some lines foot
note A from the last mentioned of these works, which,
meeting mister Godwin's eye, he was so struck with the
beauty of the passage, and with the consciousness of having
seen it before, that he was uneasy till he could
recollect where and after hunting in vain for it. In
ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, and other not unlikely places
(15:00):
to mister Lamb to know if he could help him
to the author, mister Washington. Irvine's acquaintance with English literature
begins almost where mister Lambs ends with the Spectator, Tom
Brown's works and the Wits of Queen Anne. He is
not bottomed in our elder writers, nor do we think
he has tasked his own faculties much at least on
(15:21):
English ground. Of the merit of his Knickerbocker and New
York stories we cannot pretend to judge. But in his
sketch Book and brace Bridge Hall he gives us very
good American copies of our British essays and novelists, which
may be very well on the other side of the water,
and as proofs of the capabilities of the national genius,
(15:42):
but which might be dispensed with here where we have
to boast of the originals. Not only mister Irvine's language
is with great taste and felicity modeled on that of Addison, Sterne,
Goldsmith or Mackenzie, but the thoughts and sentiments are taken
at the rebound, and as they are brought forward at
the prescent period want both freshness and probability. Mister Irvine's
(16:04):
writings are literary anachronisms. He comes to England for the
first time, and, being on the spot, fancies himself in
the midst of those characters and manners which he had
read of in the Spectator and other approved authors, and
which were the only idea he had hitherto formed of
the parent country. Instead of looking round to see what
we are, he sets to work to describe us as
(16:26):
we were at second hand. He has Parson Adams or
Sir Roger de Coverley in his mind's eye, and he
makes a village curate or a country squire in Yorkshire
or Hampshire sit to these admired models for their portraits
in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Whatever the ingenious
author has been most delighted with in the representation of books,
(16:49):
he transfers to his portfolio and swears that he has
found it actually existing in the course of his observations
and travels through Great Britain. Instead of tracing the changes
that have taken place in society since Addison or Fielding wrote,
he transcribes their account in a different handwriting, and thus
keeps us stationary, at least on our most attractive and
(17:10):
praiseworthy qualities of simplicity, honesty, hospitality, modesty, and good nature.
This is a very flattering mode of turning fiction into
history or history to fiction, and we should scarcely know
ourselves again in the softened and altered likeness. But that
it bears the date of eighteen twenty and issues from
the press and Abermarle Street. This is one way of
(17:32):
complementing our national and tory prejudices, and coupled with literal
or exaggerated portraits of Yankee peculiarities, can hardly fail to please.
The first essay in the sketch book, that on national antipathies,
is the best. But after that the sterling ore of
wit or feelings gradually spun thinner and thinner till it
fades to the shadow of a shade. Mister Irvine is himself,
(17:56):
we believe, a most agreeable and deserving man, and has
been led into the natural and pardonable era we speak
of by the tempting bait of European popularity, in which
he thought there was no more likely method of succeeding
than by imitating the style of our standard authors and
giving us credits for the virtue of our forefathers. Footnote
(18:17):
eight description of sports in the forest to see the
sun to bed into a rise like some hot amorist
with glowing eyes into Section eighteen by William Haslett
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