all in life and motion, from the lord down to the hedger. When I see two men, whether in a market-room, by the way-side, in a parlor, in a churchyard, or even in the church itself, engaged in manifestly deep and most momentous discourse, I will, if it be any time between September and February, bet ten to one, that it is, in some way or other, about the game. The wives and daughters hear so much of it, that they inevitably get engaged in the disputes; and thus all are kept in a state of vivid animation. I should like very much to be able to take a spot, a circle of 12 miles in diameter, and take an exact amount of all the time spent by each individual, above the age of ten (that is the age they begin at), in talking, during the game season of one year, about the game and about sporting exploits. I verily believe that it would amount, upon an average, to six times as much as all the other talk put together; and, as to the anger, the satisfaction, the scolding, the commendation, the chagrin, the exultation, the envy, the emulation, where are there any of these in the country, unconnected with the game? There is, however, an important distinction to be made between hunters (including coursers) and shooters. The latter are, as far as relates to their exploits, a disagreeable class, compared with the former; and the reason of this is, their doings are almost wholly their own; while, in the case of the others, the achievements are the property of the dogs. Nobody likes to hear another talk much in praise of his own acts, unless those acts have a manifest tendency to produce some good to the hearer, and shooters do talk much of their own exploits, and those exploits rather tend to humiliate the hearer. Then, a great shooter will, nine times out of ten, go so far as almost to lie a little; and, though people do not tell him of it, they do not like him the better for it; and he but too frequently discovers that they do not believe him: whereas, hunters are mere followers of the dogs, as mere spectators; their praises, if any are called for, are bestowed on the greyhounds, the hounds, the fox, the hare, or the horses. There is a little rivalship in the riding, or in the behavior of the horses; but this has so little to do with the personal merit of the sportsmen, that it never produces a want of good fellowship in the evening of the day. A shooter who has been missing all day, must have an uncommon share of good sense, not to feel mortified while the slaughterers are relating the adventures of that day; and this is what cannot exist in the case of the hunters. Bring me into a room, with a dozen men in it, who have been sporting all day; or, rather let me be in an adjoining room, where I can hear the sound of their voices, without being able to distinguish the words, and I will bet ten to one that I tell whether they be hunters or shooters. I was once acquainted with a famous shooter whose name was William Ewing. He was a barrister of Philadelphia, who became far more renowned by his gun than by his law cases. We spent scores of days together a-shooting, and were extremely well matched. I having excellent dogs and caring little about my reputation as a shot, his dogs being good for nothing, and he caring more about his reputation as a shot than as a lawyer. The fact which I am going to relate respecting this gentleman, ought to be a warning to young men, how they become enamored of this species of vanity. We had gone about ten miles from our home, to shoot where partridges were said to be very plentiful. We found them so. In the course of a November day, he had, just before dark, shot, and sent to the farm-house, or kept in his bag, ninety-nine partridges. He made some few double shots, and he might have a miss or two, for he sometimes shot when out of my sight, on account of the woods. However, he said that he killed at every shot; and, as he had counted the birds, when we went to dinner at the farm-house and when he cleaned his gun, he, just before sun-set, knew that he had killed ninety-nine partridges, every one upon the wing, and a great part of them in woods very thickly set with largish trees. It was a grand achievement; but unfortunately, he wanted to make it a hundred. The sun was setting, and, in that country, darkness comes almost at once; it is more like the going out of a candle than that of a fire; and I wanted to be off, as we had a very bad road to go, and as he, being under strict petticoat government, to which he most loyally and dutifully submitted, was compelled to get home that night, taking me with him, the vehicle (horse and gig) being mine. I, therefore, pressed him to come away, and moved on myself towards the house (that of old John Brown, in Bucks county, grandfather of that General Brown, who gave some of our whiskered heroes such a rough handling last war,1 which was waged for the purpose of "depos1 The Anglo-American War of 1812, which_occurred during the presidency of Madison. The idea of "deposing James Madison" is attributed to Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke (1768-1831), a British admiral. ing James Madison"), at which house I would have stayed all night, but from which I was compelled to go by that watchful government, under which he had the good fortune to live. Therefore I was in haste to be off. No. he would kill the hundredth bird! In vain did I talk of the bad road and its many dangers for want of moon. The poor partridges, which we had scattered about, were calling all around us; and, just at this moment, up got one under his feet, in a field in which the wheat was three or four inches high. He shot and missed. "That's it," said he, running as if to pick up the bird. "What!" said I, "you don't think you killed, do you? Why there is the bird now, not only alive, but calling in that wood"; which was at about a hundred yards distance. He, in that form of words usually employed in such cases, asserted that he had shot the bird and saw it fall; and I, in much about the same form of words, asserted, that he had missed, and that I, with my own eyes, saw the bird fly into the wood. This was too much! To miss once out of a hundred times! To lose such a chance of immortality! He was a good-humored man; I liked him very much; and I could not help feeling for him, when he said, "Well, Sir, I killed the bird; and if you choose to go away and take your dog away, so as to prevent me from finding it, you must do it; the dog is yours, to be sure. "The dog," said I, in a very mild tone; "why, Ewing, there is the spot; and could we not see it, upon this smooth green surface, if it were there?" However, he began to look about; and I called the dog, and affected to join him in the search. Pity for his weakness got the better of my dread of the bad road. After walking backward and forward many times upon about twenty yards square with our eyes to the ground, looking for what both of us knew was not there, I had passed him (he going one way and I the other), and I happened to be turning round just after I had passed him, when I saw him, putting his hand behind him, take a partridge out of his bag and let it fall upon the ground! I felt no temptation to detect him, but turned away my head, and kept looking about. Presently he having returned to the spot where the bird was, called out to me, in a most triumphant tone; "Here! here! Come here!" I went up to him, and he, pointing with his finger down to the bird, and looking hard in my face at the same time, said, “There, Cobbett; I hope that will be a warning to you never to be obstinate again"!-"Well," said I, "come 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 along" and away we went as merry as larks. When we got to Brown's, he told them the story, triumphed over me most clamorously, and, though he often repeated the story to my face, I never had the heart to let him know, that I knew of the imposition, which puerile vanity had induced so sensible and honorable a man to be mean enough to practice. A professed shot is, almost always, a very disagreeable brother sportsman. He must, in the first place, have a head rather of the emptiest to pride himself upon so poor a talent. Then he is always out of temper, if the game fail, or if he miss it. He never participates in that great delight which all sensible men enjoy at beholding the beautiful action, the docility, the zeal, the wonderful sagacity of the pointer and the setter. He is always thinking about himself; always anxious to surpass his companions. I remember that, once, Ewing and I had lost our dog. We were in a wood, and the dog had gone out, and found a covey in a wheat stubble joining the wood. We had been whistling and calling him for, perhaps, half an hour, or more. When we came out of the wood we saw him pointing, with one foot up; and, soon after, he, keeping his feet and body unmoved, gently turned round his head towards the spot where he heard us, as if to bid us to come on, and, when he saw that we saw him, turned his head back again. I was so delighted that I stopped to look with admiration. Ewing, astonished at my want of alacrity, pushed on, shot one of the partridges, and thought no more about the conduct of the dog than if the sagacious creature had had nothing at all to do with the matter. When I left America, in 1800, I gave this dog to Lord Henry Stuart, who was, when he came home, a year or two afterwards, about to bring him to astonish the sportsmen even in England; but, those of Pennsylvania were resolved not to part with him, and. therefore they stole him the night before his Lordship came away. Lord Henry had plenty of pointers after his return, and he saw hundreds; but always declared that he never saw anything approaching in excellence this American dog. For the information of sportsmen I ought to say that this was a small-headed and sharp-nosed pointer, hair as fine as that of a greyhound, little and short ears, very light in the body, very long legged, and swift as a good lurcher. I had him a puppy, and he never had any breaking, but he pointed staunchly at once; and I am of opinion that this sort is, in all respects, better than the heavy breed. Mr. Thornton (I beg his pardon, I believe he is now a Knight of some sort), who was, and perhaps still is, our envoy in Portugal, at the time here referred to, was a sort of partner with Lord Henry in this famous dog; and gratitude (to the memory of the dog, I mean) will, I am sure, or, at least, I hope so, make him bear witness to the truth of my character of him; and, if one could hear an Ambassador speak out, I think that Mr. Thornton would acknowledge that his calling has brought him in pretty close contact with many a man who was possessed of most tremendous political power, without possessing half the sagacity, half the understanding, of this dog, and without being a thousandth part so faithful to his trust. 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 I am quite satisfied that there are as many sorts of men as there are of dogs.1 Swift, was a man, and so is Walter the base. But, is the sort the same? It cannot be education alone that makes the amazing difference that we see. Besides, we see men of the very same rank and riches and education, differing as widely as the pointer does from the pug. The name, man, is common to all the sorts, and hence arises very great mischief. What confusion must there be in rural affairs, if there were no names whereby to distinguish hounds, greyhounds, pointers, spaniels, terriers, and sheep dogs, from each other! And, what pretty work, if, without regard to the sorts of dogs, men were to attempt to employ them! Yet, this is done in the case of men! A man is always a man; and, without the least regard as to the sort, they are promiscuously placed in all kinds of situations. Now, if Mr. Brougham, Doctors Birkbeck, 40 Macculloch and Black, and that profound personage, Lord John Russell, will, in their forthcoming "London University," teach us how to divide men into sorts, instead of teaching us to "augment the capital of the nation," by making paper-money, they will render us a real service. That will be feelosofy worth attending to. What would be said of the 'Squire who should take a fox-hound out to find partridges for him to shoot at? Yet, would this be more absurd than to set a man to law-making who was manifestly formed for the express purpose of sweeping the streets or digging out sewers? 1 See Macbeth, III, 1, 90-100. 2 John Walter (1739-1812), founder of The London Times. London University was founded in 1825, but was not chartered until 1836. 45 50 55 EAST EVERLEY, Monday Morning, A very fine morning; a man, eighty-two years of age, just beginning to mow the short-grass, in the garden; I thought it, even when I was young, the hardest work that man had to do. To look on, this work seems nothing; but it tries every sinew in your frame, if you go upright and do your work well. This old man never knew how to do it well, and he stoops, and he hangs his scythe wrong; but, with all this, it must be a surprising man to mow short-grass, as well as he does, at eighty. I wish I may be able to mow short-grass at eighty! That's all I have to say of the matter. I am just setting off for the source of the Avon, which runs from near Marlborough to Salisbury, and thence to the sea; and I intend to pursue it as far as Salisbury. In the distance of thirty miles, here are, I see by the books, more than thirty churches. I wish to see, with my own eyes, what evidence there is that those thirty churches were built without hands, without money, and without a congregation; and, thus, to find matter, if I can, to justify the mad wretches, who, from Committee-Rooms and elsewhere, are bothering this half-distracted nation to death about a "surplus popalashon, mon. My horse is ready; and the rooks are just gone off to the stubble-fields. These rooks rob the pigs; but, they have a right to do it. I wonder (upon my soul I do) that there is no lawyer, Scotchman, or Parson-Justice, to propose a law to punish the rooks for trespass. WILLIAM HAZLITT (1778-1830) From CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR'S PLAYS 1817 HAMLET This is that Hamlet the Dane, whom we read of in our youth, and whom we may be said almost to remember in our after-years; he who made that famous soliloquy on life,2 who gave the advice to the players, who thought "this goodly frame, the earth, a sterile promontory, and this brave o'erhanging firmament, the air, this majestical 1 A reference to the political economist T. R. Malthus (1766-1834) and his followers, who held that population tends to multiply faster than does its means of subsistence, and that unless the increase can be checked, poverty and suffering will be inevitable. See Hood's Ode to Mr. Malthus. In spite of the census returns Cobbett persisted in believing that the population was decreasing. 2 Hamlet, III, 1, 56-88. Act III, 2, 1-50. roof fretted with golden fire, a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors;" whom man delighted not, nor woman neither;''2 he who talked with the grave-diggers, and moralized on Yorick's skull; the schoolfellow of Rosencrans and Guildenstern at Wittenberg; the friend of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; he that was mad and sent to England; the slow avenger of his father's death; who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years before we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as well as we do our own, because we have read them in Shakespear. 10 15 humanity. Whatever happens to him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moralizer; and what makes him 5 worth attending to is that he moralizes on his own feelings and experience. He is not a common-place pedant. If Lear shows the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the inality, and unstudied development of charmost remarkable for the ingenuity, origacter. Shakespear had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There thing is left for time and circumstances to is no attempt to force an interest: everyunfold. The attention is excited without effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters of course, the characters think and entirely to themselves. There is no set purspeak and act just as they might do, if left pose, no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the passing scenethe gusts of passion come and go like sounds is an exact transcript of what might be supof music borne on the wind. The whole play posed to have taken place at the court of Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon,1 before the modern refinements in would have been interesting enough to morals and manners were heard of. It have been admitted as a by-stander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and seen something of what was going on. But not only "the outward pageants and the here we are more than spectators. We have signs of grief;" but "we have that within which passes show."2 We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as very fine versions and paraphrases of nathey rise. Other dramatic writers give us ture: but Shakespear, together with his own comments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for ourselves. This is a very great advantage. 25 30 Hamlet is a name; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real? They are as real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which 20 is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself "too much i' th' sun;' 5 whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known "the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes; " he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre; whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock representation of them-this is the true Hamlet. We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticize it any more than we should know how to describe our own faces. But we must make such observations as we can. It is the one of Shakespear's plays that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of 4 Act V, 1, 161. 1 Act II, 2, 310-15. 2 Act II, 2, 322. Act V, 1, 127-215. 5 Act I, 2, 67. 35 40 45 50 55 The character of Hamlet is itself a pure effusion of genius. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiman can well be: but he is a young and ment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility-the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refinthe natural bias of his disposition by the ing on his own feelings, and forced from strangeness of his situation. He seems in 1 The Hamlet story in its earliest form was told by Saxo Grammaticus in his Latin history of Denmark (c. 1200). 2 Act I, 2, 85. 5 capable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills Polonius,1 and again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrans and Guildenstern are taking with them to England,2 purporting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and skeptical, dallies with his purposes, till 10 the occasion is lost, and always finds some pretence to relapse into indolence and, thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill the King when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice, which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to some more fatal opportunity, when he shall be engaged in some act "that has no relish of salvation in it.'' 3 He kneels and prays, And now I'll do 't, and so he goes to heaven, He is the prince of philosophical speculators, and because he cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea his wish can form, he misses it altogether. So he scruples to trust the suggestions of the Ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have surer proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment, instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness, taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. How all occasions do inform against me, 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Witness this army1 of such mass and charge, To all that fortune, death and danger dare, To hide the slain?-O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.2 Still he does nothing; and this very speculation on his own infirmity only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not for any want of attachment to his father or abhorrence of his murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory, but it is more to his taste to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to act: and any vague pretence that flatters this propensity instantly diverts him from his previous purposes. The moral perfection of this character has been called in question, we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interesting than according to rules: amiable, though not faultless. The ethical delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist''3 (as Shakespear has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-colored quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied either from The Whole Duty of Man or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess, we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The want of punctilious exactness in his behavior either partakes of the license of the time," or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world 1 The Norwegian army led by Fortinbras. 2 Act IV, 4, 32-66. 3 Lamb refers to the Elizabethan dramatists as "those noble and liberal casuists" in his Characters of Dramatic Writers; the expression occurs in the remarks on Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. With this passage compare Lamb's On the Tragedies of Shakspeare (p. 925a, 28 ff.). |