s, from the effort they had cost him, and the
apprehension that they were not proportionably admired by others, who knew
nothing of the pangs and throes of his Muse in child-bearing." Works,
VIII, 39-41. Of Ben Jonson's tragedies Hazlitt held a higher opinion than
of his comedies. "The richer the soil in which he labours, the less dross
and rubbish we have.... His tenaciousness of what is grand and lofty, is
more praiseworthy than his delight in what is low and disagreeable. His
pedantry accords better with didactic pomp than with illiterate and vulgar
gabble; his learning engrafted on romantic tradition or classical history,
looks like genius.... His tragedy of the Fall of Sejanus, in particular,
is an admirable piece of ancient mosaic.... The depth of knowledge and
gravity of expression sustain one another throughout: the poet has worked
out the historian's outline, so that the vices and passions, the ambition
and servility of public men, in the heated and poisonous atmosphere of a
luxurious and despotic court, were never described in fuller or more
glowing colours." Works, V, 262-3.

_a vast species alone_. Cowley's "The Praise of Pindar."

_G----_. Godwin, according to "Literary Remains."

_Drummond of Hawthornden_. William Drummond (1585-1649), the poet who
recorded his conversation with Ben Jonson on the occasion of a visit paid
to him by the latter in 1618. "He has not done himself or Jonson any
credit by his account of their conversation," says Hazlitt in the
"Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth." Works, V, 299.

_Eugene Aram_ was hanged in 1759 for a murder he had committed several
years earlier.

_Admirable Crichton_. James Crichton (1560?-1582), a Scotchman of noble
birth who, in a brief life, gained the reputation of universal genius and
concerning whose powers many legends arose.

P. 327. _H----_. Hunt, according to "Literary Remains."

_Hobbes_, Thomas (1588-1679), the English philosopher. His chief work is
"Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth,
Ecclesiastical and Civil" (1651). Hazlitt vindicated the superiority of
Hobbes as a thinker at a time when his fame was overshadowed by other
reputations. He calls him the founder of the modern material philosophy
and maintains that "the true reason of the fate which this author's
writings met with was that his views of things were too original and
comprehensive to be immediately understood, without passing through the
hands of several su