The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
General
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
are whole need not a physician.’ The reasoning would be well founded, if
we lived in an hospital, and not in the world.
W. H.
NO. 3.] ON THE TATLER [MARCH 5, 1815.
Of all the periodical Essayists, (our ingenious predecessors), the
_Tatler_ has always appeared to us the most accomplished and agreeable.
Montaigne, who was the father of this kind of personal authorship among
the moderns, in which the reader is admitted behind the curtain, and
sits down with the writer in his gown and slippers, was a most
magnanimous and undisguised egotist; but Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq. was the
more disinterested gossip of the two. The French author is contented to
describe the peculiarities of his own mind and person, which he does
with a most copious and unsparing hand. The English journalist,
good-naturedly, lets you into the secret both of his own affairs and
those of his neighbours. A young lady, on the other side of Temple Bar,
cannot be seen at her glass for half a day together, but Mr. Bickerstaff
takes due notice of it; and he has the first intelligence of the
symptoms of the _belle_ passion appearing in any young gentleman at the
west end of the town. The departures and arrivals of widows with
handsome jointures, either to bury their grief in the country, or to
procure a second husband in town, are regularly recorded in his pages.
He is well acquainted with the celebrated beauties of the last age at
the Court of Charles II. and the old gentleman often grows romantic in
recounting the disastrous strokes which his youth suffered from the
glances of their bright eyes and their unaccountable caprices. In
particular, he dwells with a secret satisfaction on one of his
mistresses who left him for a rival, and whose constant reproach to her
husband, on occasion of any quarrel between them, was,—‘I, that might
have married the famous Mr. Bickerstaff, to be treated in this manner!’
The club at the _Trumpet_ consists of a set of persons as entertaining
as himself. The cavalcade of the justice of the peace, the knight of the
shire, the country squire, and the young gentleman, his nephew, who
waited on him at his chambers, in such form and ceremony, seem not to
have settled the order of their precedence to this hour; and we should
hope the Upholsterer and his companions in the Green Park stand as fair
a chance for immortality as some modern politicians. Mr. Bickerstaff
himself is a gentleman and a scholar, a humourist and a man of the
world; with a great deal of nice easy _naïveté_ about him. If he walks
out and is caught in a shower of rain, he makes us amends for this
unlucky accident, by a criticism on the shower in Virgil, and concludes
with a burlesque copy of verses on a city-shower. He entertains us, when
he dates from his own apartment, with a quotation from Plutarch or a
moral reflection; from the Grecian coffeehouse with politics; and from
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account