274 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



We will ask Mr. Hazlitt to compare the text, as he prints it, with 



Into the hall he gose. (Vol. iii. p. 67.) 



We should have expected a note here on the c hall he-goose. 

 Not to speak of the point of the joke, such as it is, a goose that 

 could eat up a man s rib could only be matched by one that 

 could swallow such a note or write it ! 



We have made but a small florilegium from Mr. Hazlitt s re 

 markable volumes. His editorial method seems to have been 

 to print as the Lord would, till his eye was caught by some word 

 he did not understand, and then to make the reader comfortable 

 by a note showing that the editor is as much in the dark as he. 

 We are profoundly thankful for the omission of a glossary. It 

 would have been a nursery and seminary of blunder. To expose 

 pretentious charlatanry is sometimes the unpleasant duty of a 

 reviewer. It is a duty we never seek, and should not have as 

 sumed in this case but for the impertinence with which Mr. 

 Hazlitt has treated dead and living scholars, the latchets of 

 whose shoes he is not worthy to unloose, and to express their 

 gratitude to whom is, or ought to be, a pleasure to all honest 

 lovers of their mother-tongue. If he who has most to learn be 

 the happiest man, Mr. Hazlitt is indeed to be envied ; but we 

 hope he will learn a great deal before he lays his prentice hands 

 on Warton s History of English Poetry, a classic in its own 

 way. If he does not learn before, he will be likely to learn 

 after, and in no agreeable fashion. 



EMERSON THE LECTURER. 



BuFwt a singular fact that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily 

 humour, and accdexturer in America. Into that somewhat cold- 

 bonnes bouches. In Aa&JJLers of the sensational kind come down 

 of the king, Ja^- &quot;^ajii&cLJ^ 



They kneled downe without lettyng 

 And each helde vp his hande. 



To this passage (tolerably plain to those not too familiar with 

 our early literature ) Mr. Hazlitt appends this solemn note: 

 To hold up the hand was formerly a sign of respect or con 

 currence, or a mode of taking an oath ; and thirdly as a signa 

 for mercy. In all these senses it has been employed from the 

 most ancient times ; nor is it yet out of practice, as many savage 



