trouble ourselves about the consequences resulting from them, for no mischievous consequences do result. Sir John is old as well as fat, which gives a melancholy retrospective tinge to the character, and, by the disparity between his inclinations and his capacity for enjoyment, makes it still more ludicrous and fantastical. The secret of Falstaff's wit is for the most part a masterly presence of mind, an absolute self-possession, which nothing can disturb. His repartees are involuntary suggestions of his selflove, instinctive evasions of every thing that threatens to interrupt the career of his triumphant jollity and self-complacency. His very size floats him out of all his difficulties in a sea of rich conceits, and he turns round on the pivot of his convenience, with every occasion and at a moment's warning. His natural repugnance to every unpleasant thought or circumstance of itself makes light of objections, and provokes the most extravagant and licentious answers in his own justification. His indifference to truth puts no check upon his invention, and the more improbable and unexpected his contrivances are, the more happily does he seem to be delivered of them, the anticipation of their effect acting as a stimulus to the gaiety of his fancy. The success of one adventurous sally gives him spirit to undertake another; he deals always in round numbers, and his exaggerations and excuses are "open, palpable, monstrous as the father that begets them." THE NONCONFORMISTS [The title is not Hazlitt's; the extract is from his essay On Court Influence, contributed to John Hunt's journal The Yellow Dwarf, and reprinted in the volume of Political Essays, 1819. The character of the dissenting minister here portrayed is a tribute to the writer's father, Rev. William Hazlitt. The closing portion of the extract is perhaps the finest example of Hazlitt's prose eloquence.] THERE is a natural alliance between the love of civil and religious liberty, as much as between church and state. Protestantism was the first school of political liberty in Europe; Presbyterianism has been one great support of it in England. The sectary in religion is taught to appeal to his own bosom for the truth and sincerity of his opinions, and to arm himself with stern indifference to what others think of them. This will no doubt often produce a certain hardness of manner and cold repulsiveness of feeling in trifling matters, but it is the only sound discipline of truth or inflexible honesty in politics as well as in religion. The same principle of independent inquiry and unbiased conviction which makes him reject all undue interference between his Maker and his conscience, will give a character of uprightness and disregard of personal consequences to his conduct and sentiments in what concerns the most important relations between man and man. He neither subscribes to the dogmas of priests, nor truckles to the mandates of ministers. He has a rigid sense of duty which renders him superior to the caprice, the prejudices, and the injustice of the world; and the same habitual consciousness of rectitude of purpose, which leads him to rely for his self-respect on the testimony of his own heart, enables him to disregard the groundless malice and rash judgments of his opponents. It is in vain for him to pay his court to the world, to fawn upon power; he labours under certain insurmountable disabilities for becoming a candidate for its favour: he dares to contradict its opinion and to condemn its usages in the most important article of all. The world will always look cold and askance upon him, and therefore he may defy it with less fear of his censures. The Presbyterian is said to be sour; he is not therefore over-complaisant Or if severe in thought, The love he bears to virtue is in fault. Dissenters are the safest partisans, and the steadiest friends. Indeed they are almost the only people who have an idea of an abstract attachment to a cause or to individuals, from a sense of fidelity, independently of prosperous or adverse circumstances, and in spite of opposition. No patriotism, no public spirit, not reared in that inclement sky and harsh soil, in "the hortus siccus of dissent," will generally last; it will either bend in 1 "Dry garden" (Burke). the storm or droop in the sunshine. Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius.1 You cannot engraft a medlar on a crab-apple. A thoroughbred Dissenter will never make an accomplished courtier. The antithesis of a Presbyterian divine of the old school is the Poet Laureate of the new. We have known instances of both, and give it decidedly in favour of old-fashioned honesty over new-fangled policy. We have known instances of both. The one we would willingly forget; the others we hope never to forget, nor can we ever. A Poet Laureate is an excrescence even in a court; he is doubly nugatory as a courtier and a poet; he is a refinement upon insignificance, and a superfluous piece of supererogation. But a dissenting minister is a character not to be so easily dispensed with, and whose place cannot well be supplied. It is the fault of sectarianism that it tends to skepticism, and so relaxes the springs of moral courage and patience into levity and indifference. The prospect of future rewards and punishments is a useful set-off against the immediate distribution of places and pensions; the anticipations of faith call off our attention from the grosser illusions of sense. It is a pity that this character has worn itself out; that that pulse of thought and feeling has ceased almost to beat in the heart of a nation, who, if not remarkable for sincerity and plain downright well-meaning, are remarkable for nothing. But we have known some such, in happier days, who had been brought up and lived from youth to age in the one constant belief of God and of his Christ, and who thought all other things but dross compared with the glory hereafter to be revealed. Their youthful hopes and vanity had been mortified in them, even in their boyish days, by the neglect and supercilious regards of the world, and they turned to look into their own minds for something else to build their hopes and confidence upon. They were true priests. They set up an image in their own minds, it was truth; they worshiped an idol there, it was justice. They looked on man as their brother, and only bowed the knee to the Highest. Separate from the world, they walked humbly with their God, and lived in thought with those who had borne testimony of a good conscience, with the spirits of just men in all ages. They saw 1 "A [statue of] Mercury cannot be made from any tree-trunk." (Erasmus.) Moses when he slew the Egyptian, and the prophets who overturned the brazen images, and those who were stoned and sawn asunder. They were with Daniel in the lions' den, and with the three children who passed through the fiery furnace, Meshech, Shadrach, and Abednego; they did not crucify Christ twice over, or deny him in their hearts, with St. Peter; the Book of Martyrs was open to them; they read the story of William Tell, of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, and the old one-eyed Zisca; they had Neale's History of the Puritans by heart, and Calamy's Account of the Two Thousand Ejected Ministers, and gave it to their children to read, with the pictures of the polemical Baxter, the silver-tongued Bates, the mild-looking Calamy, and old honest Howe; they believed in Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History; they were deep-read in the works of the Fratres Poloni, Pripscovius, Crellius, Cracovius, who sought out truth in texts of Scripture, and grew blind over Hebrew points; their aspiration after liberty was a sigh uttered from the towers, "time-rent," of the Holy Inquisition, and their zeal for religious toleration was kindled at the fires of Smithfield. Their sympathy was not with the oppressors, but the oppressed. They cherished in their thoughts and wished to transmit to their posterity- those rights and privileges for asserting which their ancestors had bled on scaffolds, or had pined in dungeons, or in foreign climes. Their creed too was "Glory to God, peace on earth, good will to man." This creed, since profaned and rendered vile, they kept fast through good report and evil report. This belief they had, that looks at something out of itself, fixed as the stars, deep as the firmament, that makes of its own heart an altar to truth, a place of worship for what is right, at which it does reverence with praise and prayer like a holy thing, apart and content,— that feels that the greatest Being in the universe is always near it, and that all things work together for the good of his creatures, under his guiding hand. This covenant they kept, as the stars keep their courses; this principle they stuck by, for want of knowing better, as it sticks by them to the last. It grew with their growth, it does not wither in their decay. It lives when the almond-tree flourishes, and is not bowed down with the tottering knees. It glimmers with the last feeble eyesight, smiles in the faded cheek like infancy, and lights a path before them to the grave! - This is better than the life of a whirligig court poet. A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ. 1819 [Gifford, editor of the Quarterly Review, had injured the sale of Hazlitt's book on Shakespeare by a bitter attack upon it, and had called his Lectures on the English Poets predatory incursions on truth and common sense." Hazlitt's retort, one of the most brilliant invectives in English literature, treats his enemy primarily as the representative of Toryism in all departments of life.] SIR: You have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do not like; and it will be the object of this letter to cure you of it. You say what you please of others: it is time you were told what you are. In doing this, give me leave to borrow the familiarity of your style; for the fidelity of the picture I shall be answerable. You are a little person, but a considerable cat's-paw, and so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons high in office constantly influences your opinions, and alone gives importance to them. You are the Government Critic, a character nicely differing from that of a government spy-the invisible link that connects literature with the police. It is your business to keep a strict eye over all writers who differ in opinion with his Majesty's ministers, and to measure their talents and attainments by the standard of their servility and meanness. For this office you are well qualified. Besides being the editor of the Quarterly Review, you are also paymaster of the band of Gentlemen Pensioners, and when an author comes before you in the one capacity, with whom you are not acquainted in the other, you know how to deal with him. You have your cue beforehand. The distinction between truth and falsehood you make no account of: you mind only the distinction between Whig and Tory. Accustomed to the indulgence of your mercenary virulence and party spite, you have lost all relish as well as capacity for the unperverted exercises of the |