e help_. III, x, 47.

_the change of Malbecco_. III, x, 56-60.

P. 31, n. _That all with one consent_. "Troilus and Cressida," iii, 3,
176.

P. 32. _High over hills_. III, x, 55.

_Pope who used to ask_. Pope is also quoted in Spence's "Anecdotes"
(Section viii, 1743-4) as saying that "there is something in Spenser that
pleases one as strongly in one's old age, as it did in one's youth. I
read the 'Faerie Queene,' when I was about twelve, with infinite delight,
and I think it gave me as much, when I read it over about a year or two
ago." Waller-Glover.

_the account of Talus_. V, i, 12.

_episode of Pastorella_. VI, ix, 12.

P. 33. _in many a winding bout_. "L'Allegro."

SHAKSPEARE

This selection is from the "Lectures on the English Poets." At the
beginning of his lecture on Shakespeare and Milton, Hazlitt maintains that
the arts reach their perfection in the early periods and are not
continually progressive like the sciences--an idea which he frequently
comes back to in his writings, notably in the "Round Table" paper, "Why
the Arts are not Progressive."

P. 34. _the fault_, etc. Cf. "Julius Caesar," i, 2, 140.

_Shakspeare as they would be_. Hazlitt may have had in mind Dr. Johnson's
comment in his preface to Shakespeare's works: "the event which he
represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effect would
probably be such as he had assigned; he has not only shewn human nature as
it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials to which it
cannot be exposed." (Nichol Smith: "Eighteenth Century Essays on
Shakespeare," p. 117.)

P. 35. _its generic quality_. Coleridge applied the epithet
"myriad-minded" to Shakespeare. See also Schlegel's "Lectures on the
Drama." ed. Bohn, p. 363: "Never perhaps was there so comprehensive a
talent for characterization as Shakespeare. It not only grasps the
diversity of rank, age, and sex, down to the lispings of infancy; not only
do the king and the beggar, the hero and the pickpocket, the sage and the
idiot, speak and act with equal truthfulness ... his human characters have
not only such depth and individuality that they do not admit of being
classed under common names, and are inexhaustible even in conception; no,
this Prometheus not merely forms men, he opens the gates of the magical
world of spirits, calls up the midnight ghost, exhibits before us the
witches with their unhallowed rites, peoples the air with sportive fairies
and sylphs;