Book II

.

_Nothing can touch him further._ _Macbeth_, III. 2.

_Voltaire’s Traveller._ See _Histoire des Voyages de Scarmentado._

_Be wise to-day._ _Night Thoughts_, I. 390–433.

115. _Zanga is a vulgar caricature of it._ Cf. _Characters of Shakespear’s Plays_, ‘Othello,’ vol. I. p. 209. Edward Young’s (1683–1765) _Revenge_ was first acted in 1721.

116. _We poets in our youth._ Wordsworth, _Resolution and Independence_, 8.

_Read the account of Collins._ See Johnson’s life of him in his _English Poets_, where the eighth verse of the ‘Ode to Evening’ is as follows:—

‘Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, Or find some ruin ‘midst its dreary dells, Whose Walls more awful nod, By thy religious gleams.’

And the last:—

‘So long regardful of thy quiet rule, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, smiling Peace, Thy gentlest influence own, And love thy favourite name!’

118. _Hammond._ James Hammond (1710–1741). See Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_. He seems to have died of love. His _Love Elegies_, in imitation of Tibullus, were published posthumously.

_Mr. Coleridge_ (_in his Literary Life_). See ed. Bohn, p. 19. ‘[I] felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when by Mr. Wordsworth’s conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray’s celebrated Elegy.’

_The still sad music of humanity._ Wordsworth’s _Tintern Abbey_.

_Be mine ... to read eternal new romances._ Letter to Richard West, Thursday, April 1742.

_Don’t you remember Lords —— and ——._ Letter to Richard West, May 27, 1742.

_Shenstone._ William Shenstone (1714–1763),the ‘water-gruel bard’ of Horace Walpole.

119. _Akenside._ Mark Akenside (1721–1770), physician and poet. The _Pleasures of the Imagination_ was begun in his eighteenth year, and was first published in 1744.

_Armstrong._ John Armstrong (1709–1779), also physician and poet, whose _Art of Preserving Health_, a poem in four books, was also published in 1744.

_Churchill._ Charles Churchill (1731–1764), satirist. His _Rosciad_, in which the chief actors of the time were taken off, was published in 1761. _The Prophecy of Famine_, a Scots Pastoral, inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq., in which the Scotch are ridiculed, appeared in 1763.

_Green._ Matthew Green (1696–1737). _The Spleen_ (1737).

_Dyer._ John Dyer (?1700–1758), _Grongar Hill_ (1727). See Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_ and Wordsworth’s Sonnet to him.

_His lot_ [feasts] _though small_. _The Traveller._

_And turn’d and look’d._ _The Deserted Village_, 370. ‘Return’d and wept and still return’d to weep.’

120. _Mr. Liston._ John Liston (1776–1846).

120. _His character of a country schoolmaster._ In _The Deserted Village_.

_Warton._ Thomas Warton (1728–1790), author of _The History of English Poetry_ (1774–81). He succeeded William Whitehead as poet laureate.

_Tedious and brief._ _All’s Well that Ends Well_, II. 3, etc.

122. _Chatterton._ Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770). The verse of Wordsworth’s quoted is in _Resolution and Independence_.

_Dr. Milles, etc._ Dr. Jeremiah Milles (1713–1784), whom Coleridge described as ‘an owl mangling a poor dead nightingale.’ See Sir Herbert Croft’s (1751–1816) _Love and Madness_, Letter 51 (1780). Vicesimus Knox, D.D. (1752–1821), author of many volumes of Essays, Sermons, etc.

VII. ON BURNS, AND THE OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

123. _Unslacked of motion._ See vol. IV., note to p. 42.

_Anderson._ Robert Anderson, M.D. (1751–1830), editor and biographer of _British Poets_.

_Mr. Malone._ Edmond Malone (1741–1812), the Shakespearian editor. He did not believe in the ‘antiquity’ of Chatterton’s productions. See his ‘Cursory Observations on the Poems attributed to Thomas Rowley,’ 1782.

_Dr. Gregory._ George Gregory, D.D. (1754–1808), author of _The Life of Thomas Chatterton, with Criticisms on his Genius and Writings, and a concise view of the Controversy concerning Rowley’s Poems_. 1789.

124. _Annibal Caracci._ Annibale Caracci (1560–1609), painter of the Farnese Gallery at Rome.

_Essays_, _p._ 144. The reference should be to Dr. Knox’s Essay, No. CXLIV., not p. 144 (vol. iii. p. 206, 1787).

127. _He was like a man made after supper._ _2 King Henry IV._, III. 2.

_Some one said._ Cf. Hazlitt’s Essay, ‘Of Persons one would wish to have seen,’ where Burns’s hand, held out to be grasped, is described as ‘in a burning fever.’

_Made him poetical._ _As You Like It_, III. 2.

_Create a soul under the ribs of death._ _Comus_, 562.

128. _A brazen candlestick tuned._ _1 King Henry IV._, III. 1.

_In a letter to Mr. Gray._ January 1816.

_Via goodman Dull._ _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. 1.

129. _Out upon this half-faced fellowship._ _1 King Henry IV._, I. 3.

_As my Uncle Toby._ Tristram Shandy,