832.] Memoir of James Sheridan Knowles. 493 



He became a teacher of elocution ; he was an actor for three years, in Ire- 

 land ; and, finally, he has added a name to the list of those extraordinary 

 men, who so remarkably abounded on the stage at one time, as combiners of 

 acting with authorship. It will have been seen, by the above account of 

 his plays, that, like all other fine and useful writers, he has not been without 

 his helps of experience and trouble : and he has had others. He delights 

 to call to mind the acquaintance he made, when a boy, with the late Mr. 

 Hazlitt, and the great good done him by that admirable critic, and good- 

 hearted, though irritable man. Mr. Hazlitt took a liking to him, gave 

 him the best advice, quoted passages for him from the best writers, and 

 showed him how superior nature was to art, and what a capital thing it was 

 to have faith in her. The young dramatist also became acquainted with Mr. 

 Lamb, another admirable humanist, whom no man of letters ever knew 

 without being the better for it. Mr. Hazlitt pointed out to his earliest notice, 

 as an instance of clear and elegant writing, a passage in Mr. Lamb's " John 

 Woodville," about a stag ; we know not whether that, in which the stag is 

 pictured as making " a dancing shadow of his horns in the water," or the 

 other passage, in which there is a beautiful comparison of the shyness of 

 deer with " bashful younkers in society." Mr. Knowles, however, never 

 *' studied" the old masters in the drama ; indeed he has said that, with 

 the exception of Shakspeare, he purposely avoided them, when he com- 

 menced writing, that his ideas might be unshackled. 



But what did Mr. Knowles as much good perhaps, as any thing else in 

 Mr. Hazlitt's society, was that spirit of self- forge tfulness, and equality of 

 intercourse, which all young people, who recollect that great writer, are so 

 thankful to remember. He put himself on a level with him, listened to 

 his arguments, as if they were those of a grown man, and answered them 

 as if he valued them accordingly j and he knew this was wise for himself 

 too, as well as for the boy; since childhood in its unhampered and 

 natural wisdom, often says things capable of suggesting light to wisdom 

 full grown. Besides, Mr. Hazlitt knew how to love the beauty of a child' 

 mind, and to live with it in its primeval world. Mr. Knowles knew him 

 long, and may be said, in some measure, to have grown up under his 

 mind. He has mentioned him in private, as having been a sort of " mental 

 father." We must not forget that Mr. Hazlitt introduced him to Cole- 

 ridge, who read him one of his fine extemporaneous lectures on poetry 

 and amazed him by the simplicity of another great mind, and the interest 

 he took in talking with a little boy. Among his recollections of Hazlett 

 livelier passages are not wanted, illustrative of other parts of his friend's 

 character. The bashful and irritable metaphysician, who was always 



