258 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



in a late edition of the - most graceful of our lyric poets. Per 

 haps discrimination is not, after all, the right word, for we have 

 sometimes seen cause to doubt whether Mr. Hazlitt ever reads 

 carefully the very documents he prints. For example, in the 

 Biographical Notice prefixed to the Herri ck he says (p. xvii.) : 

 Mr. W. Perry Herrick has plausibly suggested that the pay 

 ments made by Sir William to his nephew were simply on 

 account of the fortune which belonged to Robert in right of his 

 father, and which his uncle held in trust ; this was about ,400 ; 

 and I think from allusions in the letters printed elsewhere that 

 this view may be the correct one. May be ! The poet says 

 expressly, I entreat you out of my little possession to deliver to 

 this bearer the customary e ^10, without which I cannot meate 

 [?] my ioyrney. The words we have italicised are conclusive. 

 By the way, Mr. Hazlitt s wise-looking query after meate is 

 conclusive also as to his fitness for editorship. Did he never 

 hear of the familiar phrase to meet the expense ? If so trifling 

 a misspelling can mystify him, what must be the condition of his 

 mind in face of the more than Protean travesties which words 

 underwent before they were uniformed by Johnson and Walker ? 

 Mr. Hazlitt s mind, to be sure, like the wind Cecias, always finds 

 its own fog. In another of Herrick s letters we find, For what 

 her monie can be effected (sic) when there is diuision twixt the 

 hart and hand ? Her monie of course means harmonie, and 

 effected is therefore right. What Mr. Hazlitt may heave meant 

 by his (sic) it were idle to enquire. 



We have already had occasion to examine some of Mr. 

 Hazlitt s work, and we are sorry to say that in the four volumes 

 before us we find no reason for changing our opinion of his utter 

 disqualification for the duties of editorship. He seldom clears 

 up a real difficulty (never, we might say, with lights of his own), 

 he frequently creates a darkness where none was before, and the 

 peculiar bumptiousness of his incapacity makes it particularly 

 offensive. We shall bring a few instances in proof of what we 

 assert, our only embarrassment being in the superabundance of 

 our material. In the Introduction to the second volume of his 

 collection, Mr. Hazlitt speaks of the uttei want of common care 

 on the part of previous editors of our old poetry. Such oversights 

 as he has remarked upon in his notes are commonly errors of 

 the press, a point on which Mr. Hazlitt, of all men, should have 

 been charitable, for his own volumes are full of them. We call 

 his attention to one such which is rather amusing. In his 

 additional notes we find line 77, ivy lie. Strike out the note 



