_Table-Talk_, one of the greenest pastures of the Hazlittian champaign generally, is among the least literary of the books, and yet so literary enough. “On Genius and Common Sense” contributes its Character of Wordsworth,[505] on whom Hazlitt is always interesting, because of the extraordinary opposition between the men’s temperaments. The companion on Shelley,[506] which is supplied by “On Paradox and Commonplace,” is hardly less interesting, though, for the reasons above indicated, much less valuable. “On Milton’s Sonnets,” however, is, as it ought to be, a pure study and an admirable one.[507] “The Aristocracy of Letters” carries its hay high on the horn, yet it is not negligible: and “On Criticism,” which follows, really deserves the title, despite its frequent and inevitable flings and runnings-amuck. The good-humoured, though rather “home” description of “the Occult School”[508] (_v. supra_ on Lamb) is perfectly just. “On Familiar” Style is also no false promiser, and yet another passage on Coleridge meets us in the paper “On Effeminacy of Character.” [Sidenote: The Round Table, _&c._] Nor is the interesting “omnibus” volume, which takes its general title from _The Round Table_, of the most fertile. The collection of short papers, properly so called, was written earlier (1817) than most of the books hitherto discussed, and therefore has some first drafts or variants of not a little that is in them. In a note of it[509] occurs the passage on Burke, which, with that on Scott in the _Spirit of the Age_, is Hazlitt’s nearest approach to the sheer _delirium tremens_ of the Gifford Letter: but he is not often thus. “The Character of Milton’s Eve” is a fine critical paper of its kind, and “takes the taste out” well after the passage on Burke. The long handling of _The Excursion_ is very interesting to compare with that in the _English Poets_, as is the earlier “Midsummer Night’s Dream” with similar things elsewhere. “Pedantry” and others give something: and though no human being (especially no human being who knows both books) has ever discovered what made Hazlitt call _John Buncle_ “the English Rabelais,” the paper on Amory’s queer novel is a very charming one. “On the Literary Character” does somewhat deceive us: “Commonplace Critics” less so: but to “Poetical Versatility” we must return. Of the remaining contents of the volume, the well-known _Conversations with Northcote_ (where the painter plays Hazlitt’s idea of an Advocatus Diaboli on Hazlitt) gives less still. But there is a striking passage on Wordsworth,[510] a paradox (surely?) on Tom Paine[511] as “a fine writer” (you might as well call a good getter of coal at the face “a fine sculptor”), an interesting episode[512] on early American nineteenth-century literature; and not a few others, especially the profound self-criticism (for no doubt Northcote had nothing to do with it) on Hazlitt’s abstinence from society.[513] In _Characteristics_, one of the few