ersiles and Sigismunda, and
the Galatea of the same author. But I somehow reserve them like "another
Yarrow." I should also like to read the last new novel (if I could be sure
it was so) of the author of Waverley:--no one would be more glad than I to
find it the best!--

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Dramatic Essays_, VIII, 415.

[2] "On Living to One's Self," in _Table Talk_.

[3] "On Reading Old Books," pp. 344-45.

[4] "On Criticism," in _Table Talk_.

[5] _Life of Holcroft_, Works, II, 171, n.

[6] "On the Pleasure of Painting," in _Table Talk_.

[7] W. C. Hazlitt: _Lamb and Hazlitt_ (1900), p. 44. The letter in which
these phrases are to be found is dated 1793 by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, but the
present writer has given a detailed statement of his reasons for believing
that it was written in 1803. See _Nation_, October 19, 1911.

[8] XI, 26.

[9] _Table Talk_, "On the Indian Jugglers."

[10] _Round Table_.

[11] "On Respectable People," in _Plain Speaker_.

[12] "On Paradox and Commonplace," in _Table Talk_.

[13] Hazlitt's _Table Talk_ was included by Stevenson in a youthful
_Catalogus Librorum Carissimorum_. It is interesting that at the same time
that Carlyle was composing _Sartor Resartus_, Hazlitt should have penned
this bit of savage satire. "It has been often made a subject of dispute,
What is the distinguishing characteristic of man? And the answer may,
perhaps, be given that _he is the only animal that dresses_.... Swift has
taken a good bird's-eye view of man's nature, by abstracting the habitual
notions of size, and looking at it in _great_ or in _little_: would that
some one had the boldness and the art to do a similar service, by
stripping off the coat from his back, the vizor from his thoughts, or by
dressing up some other creature in similar mummery! It is not his body
alone that he tampers with, and metamorphoses so successfully; he tricks
out his mind and soul in borrowed finery, and in the admired costume of
gravity and imposture. If he has a desire to commit a base or a cruel
action without remorse and with the applause of the spectators, he has
only to throw the cloak of religion over it, and invoke Heaven to set its
seal on a massacre or a robbery. At one time dirt, at another indecency,
at another rapine, at a fourth rancorous malignity, is decked out and
accredited in the garb of sanctity. The instant there is a flaw, a 'damned
spot' to be concealed, it is glossed over with a doubtful nam