Now proff and prow are radically different words. Proff here means proof, and if Mr. Hazlitt had read the stanza which he quotes, he would have found (as in all the others of the same poem) the meaning repeated in Latin in the last line, proba cio amicorum. But we wish to leave our readers (if not Mr. Hazlitt) in good humor, and accordingly we have reserved two of his notes as bonnes bouches. In "Adam Bel," when the outlaws ask pardon of the king, 66 They kneled downe without lettyng And each helde vp his hande." To this passage (tolerably plain to those not too familiar with "our early literature") Mr. Hazlitt appends this solemn note: "To hold up the hand was formerly a sign of respect or concurrence, or a mode of taking an oath; and thirdly as a signal for mercy. In all these senses it has been employed from the most ancient times; nor is it yet out of practice, as many savage nations still testify their respect to a superior by holding their hand [either their hands or the hand, Mr. Hazlitt!] over their head. Touching the hat appears to be a vestige of the same custom. In the present passage the three outlaws may be understood to kneel on approaching the throne, and to hold up each a hand as a token that they desire to ask the royal clemency or favour. In the lines which are subjoined it [what?] implies a solemn assent to an oath: "This swore the duke and all his men, The admirable Tupper could not have done better than this, even so far as the mere English of it is concerned. Where all is so fine, we hesitate to declare a preference, but, on the whole, must give in to the passage about touching the hat, which is as good as "mobbled queen." The Americans are still among the "savage nations" who "imply a solemn assent to an oath" by holding up the hand. Mr. Hazlitt does not seem to know that the question whether to kiss the book or hold up the hand was once a serious one in English politics. But Mr. Hazlitt can do better even than this! Our readers may be incredulous; but we shall proceed to show that he can. In the "ScholeHouse of Women," among much other equally delicate satire of the other sex, (if we may venture still to call them so,) the satirist undertakes to prove that woman was made, not of the rib of a man, but of a dog: "And yet the rib, as I suppose, That God did take out of the man Eat it clene; so that as than The woork to finish that God began Because the dog the rib conuaid. 1 The to is, we need not say, an addition of Mr. Hazlitt's. What faith can we put in the text of a man who so often copies even his quotations inaccurately? A remedy God found as yet; Out of the dog he took a rib." Mr. Hazlitt has a long note on way gose, of which the first sentence shall suffice us: the term way-goose is involved in We should think so, to be sure! "The origin of some obscurity.' Let us modern ize the spelling and grammar, and correct the punctuation, and then see how it looks: "A dog up caught and away goes, Eats it up." We will ask Mr. Hazlitt to compare the text, as he prints it, with "Into the hall he gose." (Vol. iii. p. 67.) We should have expected a note here on the "hall he-goose." Not to speak of the point of the joke, such as it is, a goose that could eat up a man's rib could only be matched by one that could swallow such a note, or write it! We have made but a small florilegium from Mr. Hazlitt's remarkable volumes. His editorial method seems to have been to print as the Lord would, till his eye was caught by some word he did not understand, and then to make the reader comfortable by a note showing that the editor is as much in the dark as he. We are profoundly thankful for the omission of a glossary. It would have been a nursery and seminary of blunder. To expose pretentious charlatanry is sometimes the unpleasant duty of a reviewer. It is a duty we never seek, and should not have assumed in this case but for the impertinence with which Mr. Hazlitt has treated dead and living scholars, the latchets of whose shoes he is not worthy to unloose, and to express their gratitude to whom is, or ought to be, a pleasure to all honest lovers of their mothertongue. If he who has most to learn be the happiest man, Mr. Hazlitt is indeed to be envied ; but we hope he will learn a great deal before he lays his prentice hands on Warton's "History of English Poetry," a classic in its own way. If he does not learn before, he will be likely to learn after, and in no agreeable fashion. EMERSON THE LECTURER 1861-68 Ir is a singular fact, that Mr. Emerson is the most steadily attractive lecturer in America. Into that somewhat cold-waterish region adventurers of the sensational kind come down now and then with a splash, to become disregarded King Logs before the next season. But Mr. Emerson always draws. A lecturer now for something like a third of a century, one of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and continually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes. What they do not fully understand they take on trust, and listen, saying to themselves, as the old poet of Sir Philip Sidney, "A sweet, attractive, kind of grace, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of gospel books." We call it a singular fact, because we Yankees are thought to be fond of the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is not |