Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/39

 12 S. IV. JAN., 1918.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

33

on

Hazliit : Selected Essays. Edited by George Sampson. (Cambridge University Press, 3s. 6d. net.)

WE are much obliged to the Cambridge Press and to Mr. Sampson for an excellent selection of Hazlitt, prefaced by a brilliantly written intro- duction. The editor as a school teacher remarks that students' editions of Hazlitt generally con- fine themselves to his ' Characters of Shake- speare's Plays.' Good as these are, there is abundance of able criticism on the subject, and the selection here made does justice to Hazlitt's infinite gusto, which extended from poets to prizefighters. He got by his own account, which we can well believe, a great deal of enjoyment out of life ; but he was a disagreeable person, so obsessed by ideas of revolution and despotism that he was always breaking into extravagances of suspicion and ill-humour. Politics made letters inhumane at that period, and we know what was done to Keats as the friend of Leigh Hunt. In saying, however, that " The Edin- burgh cannot claim, like The Quarterly, to have killed a poet," Mr. Sampson seems to support Byron's rime about the " fiery particle " and the " article " which made The Quarterly guilty of killing Keats. The editor must be aware that this accusation has long been recognized as false. Leigh Hunt, when he saw Byron's lines in manu- script, told him they were wrong, but Byron would not miss a point smartly set down. On the other side, Hazlitt retorted with Billingsgate on Walter 'Scott which it is difficult to tolerate even from a mad partisan. We have every admiration for Hazlitt's prose, but he was ex- tremely trying to his best friends, as the words from Lamb quoted in the introduction show. It would have been easy to produce similar testi- mony, e.g., from Leigh Hunt, who was on Hazlitt's side in politics. The man who on a walking tour preferred to walk alone lacked something that belongs to many lesser men. Yet no one at his Tbeat can have had a finer appreciation of good talk and good letters. In the virtues of domes- ticity Hazlitt was not great, and his choice of wives was not fortunate. We do not know why Mr. Sampson should withhold the title of his 4 Liber Amoris.' The love frenzy it com- memorates is, after all, a part of Hazlitt, and a piece of human nature not ill recorded for the instruction of the world.

The Introduction brings us thoroughly and easily thanks to epigrams to an understanding of Hazlitt's position and ideas. It makes Napo- leon seven years old when Hazlitt was born in 1778, but surely the former was born in 1769. The essayist began as a painter, and looked back with regret to his earlier days hi France. This was the experience also of Thackeray.

The notes are very full, the editor having wisely realized how little the average reader knows. We think something more might have been added about that remarkable man Thomas Holcroft, but generally everything is said that ought to be said. Many quotations which might have been difficult to trace have been settled in the fine large edition of Hazlitt to which acknowledg- ment is made, and which is due to the devoted

labours of Mr. A. B. Waller and Arnold Glover. We hope that readers for human pleasure as well as students with examinations in view will be led by this selection to master the whole of Hazlitt in the ' Collected Works ' due- to these two scholars.

Surnames of the United Kingdom : a Concise Etymological Dictionary. By Henrv Harrison. Vol. II. Part 16. (Eaton Press, Is. net.)

THIS instalment deals with names from Tumson to Waggener. It includes a good many of mediaeval Latin and French origin, well known and curious, especially under V, which letter also brings before us a number of West-Country modifications now established as independent surnames. A proportion of the names somewhat larger than in recent instalments is illustrated by apt quotations from documents and books.

BOOKSELLERS' CATALOGUES.

MB. FBANCIS EDWARDS devotes his Cata- logue 379 to Books on the Drama and Dramatic Art. The pieces recorded in it are suitable for purchasers of all kinds, ranging from portraits of actors and actresses at a shilling each, and Tudor facsimiles of Elizabethan plays at half-a-crown, to a fine copy of the Second Folio Shakespeare, with the rare imprint " Printed by Thos. Cotes for Bd. Meighen," and in contemporary calf, at 400J. There is also a tall copy of the Fourth Folio, original calf binding, 120Z. These two folios worthily head the long section devoted to Shakespeare, comprising nearly 200 entries, and including facsimiles, criticism, and the Baconian controversy. Thus Booth's octavo facsimile of the First Folio, 1876, may be had for 6s. ; Methuen's folio facsimile of the Second Folio is 21. 10s., and their similar facsimile of the Third Folio 81., this being in leather instead of cloth. Among general collections of plays may be named a complete set of the " Tudor Facsimile Plays," 1907-14, 152 vols. folio and imperial octavo, 501. ; the Student's Edition, 137 vols. small quarto, 201. ; a large-paper set of Dodsley's " Old English Plays," 1825, edited by Payne Collier, 12 vols., red morocco, 101., and Carew Hazlitt's edition, 1874-6, 15 vols. 8vo, cloth, 81. 8s. ; and Pearson's " Reprints of the Old Dramatists," 1871-4, 27 vols., calf extra, 251. Genest's extremely useful ' English Stage from 1660 to 1830,' Bath, 1832, 10 vols., is 91. 9s. This was a work often commended by Joseph Knight, who is affectionately remembered by readers of ' N. & Q.' His own copy of The Monthly Mirror, 1795-1811, a complete set in 31 vols., with his signature and bookplate, is 101. The original edition of ' Their Majesties' Servants,' by Dr. Doran, an earlier editor of ' N. & Q.,' 1864, 2 vols., may be had for a sovereign ; and Mr. Lowe's edition of that work, 3 vols., with 50 copper- plate portraits, Nimmo, 1888, for 11. 4s. ' The Complete Works of Aphra Behn,' edited by a present contributor to ' N. & Q.,' Mr. Montague Summers, 1915, 6 vols., is 31. 3s. And readers of the 'review of Hazlitt on this page may like to secure either his ' Lectures on the English Comic Writers,' 1819, or those on ' The Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth,' 1821, for 6.