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the world have not been fully sensible. Mr. Croly1 set out with high pretensions, and had some idea of rivalling Lord Byron in a certain lofty, imposing style of versification but he is probably by this time convinced that mere constitutional hauteur as ill supplies the place of elevation of genius as of the pride of birth; and that the public know how to distinguish between a string of gaudy, painted, turgid phrases, and the vivid creations of fancy, or touching delineations of the human heart.

Northcote. What did you say the writer's name was? Hazlitt. Croly. He is one of the Royal Society of Authors.

Northcote. I never heard of him. Is he an imitator of Lord Byron, did you say?

Hazlitt. I am afraid neither he nor Lord Byron would have it thought so.

Northcote. Such imitators do all the mischief, and bring real genius into disrepute. This is in some measure an excuse for those who have endeavored to disparage Pope and Dryden. We have had a surfeit of imitations of them. Poetry, in the hands of a set of mechanic scribblers, had become such a tame, mawkish thing, that we could endure it no longer, and our impatience of the abuse of a good thing transferred itself to the original source. It was this which enabled Wordsworth and the rest to raise up a new school (or to attempt it) on the ruins of Pope; because a race of writers had succeeded him without one particle of his wit, sense, and delicacy, and the world were tired of their everlasting sing-song and namby-pamby. People were disgusted at hearing the faults of Pope (the part most easily imitated) cried up as his greatest excellence, and were willing to take refuge from such nauseous cant in any novelty.

The Rev. Geo. Croly, one of the contributors to the London Magazine (see Memoirs of W. H., ii., 6–7), and the author of several works, including two volumes of verse printed in 1830.—En.

Hazlitt. What you now observe comes nearly to my account of the matter. Sir Andrew Wylie' will sicken people of the Author of Waverley. It was but the other day that someone was proposing that there should be a Society formed for not reading the Scotch novels. But it is not the excellence of that fine writer that we are tired of, or revolt at, but vapid imitations or catchpenny repetitions of himself. Even the quantity of them has an obvious tendency to lead to this effect. It lessens, instead of increasing our admiration: for it seems to be an evidence that there is no difficulty in the task, and leads us to suspect something like trick or deception in their production. We have not been used to look upon works of genius as of the fungus tribe. Yet these are so. had rather doubt our own taste than ascribe such a superiority of genius to another that it works without consciousness or effort, executes the labour of a life in a few weeks, writes faster than the public can read, and scatters the rich materials of thought and feeling like so much chaff.

We

Northcote. Aye, there it is. We had rather do anything than acknowledge the merit of another, if we have any possible excuse or evasion to help it. Depend upon it, you are glad Sir Walter Scott is a Tory-because it gives you an opportunity of qualifying your involuntary admiration of him. You would be sorry indeed if he were what you call an honest man! Envy is like a viper coiled up at the bottom of the heart, ready to spring upon and poison whatever approaches it. We live upon the vices, the imperfections, the misfortunes, and disappointments of others, as our natural food. We cannot bear a superior or an equal. Even our pretended cordial admiration is only a subterfuge of our vanity. By raising one, we proportionably lower and mortify others. Our

1 An indifferent novel by Mr. John Galt, supposed to have been written in imitation of the Waverley series.-Ed.

self-love may perhaps be taken by surprise and thrown off its guard by novelty; but it soon recovers itself, and begins to cool in its warmest expressions, and find every possible fault. Ridicule, for this reason, is sure to prevail over truth, because the malice of mankind thrown into the scale gives the casting-weight. We have one succession of authors, of painters, of favourites, after another, whom we hail in their turns, because they operate as a diversion to one another, and relieve us of the galling sense of the superiority of any one individual for any length of time. By changing the object of our admiration, we secretly persuade ourselves that there is no such thing as excellence. It is that which we hate above all things. It is the worm that gnaws us, that never dies. The mob shout when a king or a conqueror appears they would take him and tear him to pieces, but that he is the scapegoat of their pride and vanity, and makes all other men appear like a herd of slaves and cowards. Instead of a thousand equals, we compound for one superior, and allay all heartburnings and animosities among ourselves, by giving the palm to the least worthy. This is the secret of monarchy.-Loyalty is not the love of kings, but hatred and jealousy of mankind. A lacquey rides behind his lord's coach, and feels no envy of his master. Why? because he looks down and laughs, in his borrowed finery, at the ragged rabble below. Is it not so in our profession? What Academician eats his dinner in peace, if a rival sits near him; if his own are not the most admired pictures in the room; or, in that case, if there are any others that are at all admired, and divide distinction with him? Is not every artifice used to place the pictures of other artists in the worst light? Do they not go there after their performances are hung up, and try to paint one another out? What is the case among players? Does not a favourite actor threaten to leave the stage, as soon as a new candidate for public

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favour is taken the least notice of? Would not a manager of a theatre (who has himself pretensions) sooner see it burnt down, than that it should be saved from ruin and lifted into the full tide of public prosperity and favour by the efforts of one whom he conceives to have supplanted himself in the popular opinion? Do we not see an author, who has had a tragedy damned, sit at the play every night of a new performance for years after, in the hopes of gaining a new companion in defeat? Is it not an indelible offence to a picture-collector and patron of the arts, to hint that another has a fine head in his collection? Will any merchant in the city allow another to be worth a plum? What wit will applaud a bon mot by a rival? He sits uneasy and out of countenance till he has made another which he thinks will make the company forget the first. Do women ever allow beauty in others? Observe the people in a country town, and see how they look at those who are better dressed than themselves; listen to the talk in country places, and mind if it is composed of anything but slanders, gossip, and lies.

Hazlitt. But don't you yourself admire Sir Joshua Reynolds ?

Northcote. Why, yes: I think I have no envy myself, and yet I have sometimes caught myself at it. I don't know that I do not admire Sir Joshua merely as a screen against the reputation of bad pictures.

Hazlitt. Then, at any rate, what I say is true: we envy the good less than we do the bad.

Northcote. I do not think so; and am not sure that Sir Joshua himself did not admire Michael Angelo to get rid of the superiority of Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt, which pressed closer on him, and "galled his kibe more."

Hazlitt. I should not think that at all unlikely; for I look upon Sir Joshua as rather a spiteful man, and always thought he could have little real feeling for the

works of Michael Angelo or Raphael, which he extolled so highly, or he would not have been insensible to their effect the first time he ever beheld them. Northcote. He liked Sir Peter Lely better.

On Sitting for One's Picture.

THERE is a pleasure in sitting for one's picture, which many persons are not aware of. People are coy on this subject at first, coquet with it, and pretend not to like it, as is the case with other venial indulgences, but they soon get over their scruples, and become resigned to their fate. There is a conscious vanity in it; and vanity is the aurum potabile in all our pleasures, the true elixir of human life. The sitter at first affects an air of indifference, throws himself into a slovenly or awkward position, like a clown when he goes a courting for the first time, but gradually recovers himself, attempts an attitude, and calls up his best looks, the moment he receives intimation that there is something about him that will do for a picture. The beggar in the street is proud to have his picture painted, and would almost sit for nothing: the finest lady in the land is as fond of sitting to a favourite artist as of seating herself before her looking-glass; and the more so, as the glass in this case is sensible of her charms, and does all it can to fix or heighten them. Kings lay aside their crowns to sit for their portraits, and poets their laurels to sit for their busts! I am sure my father had as little vanity, and as little love for the art, as most persons: yet when he had sat to me a few times (now some twenty years ago),2 he

The Author himself painted a small portrait in oils of a poor old woman whom he met near Manchester in 1803.-ED.

This was in 1804, when the sitter was in his 67th year, and Unitarian minister at Wem, in Shropshire.--ED.

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