 | |  |
Notes
Leigh Hunt's marginalia has not gone unnoticed. For accounts see especially L. A. Brewer's Marginalia (1926), My Leigh Hunt Library (1932), and More Marginalia ed., A. F. Trams (1931), W. J. Burke's "Leigh Hunt's Marginalia," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 37 (February 1933), 87-107, reprints Hunt's marginalia in his copy of J. C. L. de Sismondi's Historical View of the Literature of the South of Europe and has a check-list of seventy-five works in which Hunt's marginalia may be found. Of more recent studies, F. H. Ristine, "Leigh Hunt's Horace," M.L.N., 66 (1951), 540-543, and W. B. Todd, "Leigh Hunt's Annotations in Johnson's Dictionary," Modern Philology, 73 (May 1976)—"a supplement to honor Arthur Friedman," S110-S112, concentrate on Hunt's marginal responses to specific authors and not, as is the case with the present study, on his reactions to various writers from differing periods.
Lewes's marginal mania has largely been neglected. See my "G. H. Lewes's Annotations to Coleridge's The Friend (1837)," The Library, 31 (March 1976), 31-36.
For Lewes's relationship with the Hunts see A. T. Kitchell, George Lewes and George Eliot (1933), pp. 11-16, 150, and Gordon S. Haight, George Eliot: A Biography (1968), pp. 131-132. For a good general account of Leigh Hunt, his life and opinions, see K. N. Cameron, Shelley and his Circle 1773-1822 (1961- ), I, 261-275.
Shelved at B.2. 35-38. Item 927 of my The George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Library: an annotated catalogue of their books at Dr. Williams's Library London (1977) records the presence of notations in some of the volumes. Lewes's annotations on Hallam's interpretation of Spinoza, volume IV, 251-254 are cited without comment. Plate V of the catalogue reproduces annotations in Hallam volume I, 427, and IV, 251.
L. A. Brewer's description of Hunt's reading habits also fits Lewes's: "It was his custom, evidently, to read with pen in hand and to mark passages that appealed to him because of one thing or another. These markings at times took the form of underscorings; frequently a perpendicular line was drawn down the page; a "q" was placed in the margin; and again a check mark, "√" was used by him." Marginalia, p. 29. When reproducing the marginalia in the Hallam volumes, material which I have been unable to decipher is represented by [ ]. The precise dating of these annotations presents problems. It is unlikely that any of them were made prior to 1837 when Murray published the first volume. The first title page has Lewes's "1837" dating, the second volume, (published in 1839), his "June 1840" dating. The third and fourth volumes were also published in 1839. The former has Lewes's "1840" dating. But it cannot be assumed that Lewes read the volumes at these dates. His friendship with Hunt, who got crustier as he grew older, and rarely mentions Lewes in his letters, could have lasted till the 1850-51 break with his wife Agnes over her relationships with Thornton Hunt. In the Leader for July 6, 1850 he praises Leigh Hunt highly (cited Kitchel, p. 150). Lewes in a 1846 Foreign Quarterly Review essay "Leigh Hunt on the Italian Poets" criticizes Hunt's view on Dante and writes that Hunt "judges works absolutely; the effect they produce on him is taken as a test of their excellence" (vol. 36, p. 338; cited A. R. Kaminsky, Gorge Henry Lewes as Literary Critic [1969] p. 28). This could have been written during a periodical turbulent point in their relationship. Lewes's concentration in his marginalia with Iberian literature and philosophy does point towards a pre-1846 date— Lewes's work in these areas appeared in 1846. One of the contemporaries Lewes cites in his marginalia, is John Stuart Mill, with whom he seems to have been most preoccupied with in the early 1840's. Lewes's citation in the third volume of Hallam p. 253 from Mill's A System of Logic, published in March 1843, points to the probability that he wrote that particular annotation after that date.
When describing Hunt's marginalia his "L. H." signature, characteristically following his annotations, has been omitted.
Lewes's reference is to William Robertson's The History of the reign of the Emperor Charles V, first published in 1769, and which went through various editions. Hallam's omission is a surprising one.
Cf. fn. 5 above: for Hunt on Dante see C. D. Thorpe, "Leigh Hunt as Man of Letters," in Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism, ed., L. H. Houtchens, C. W. Houtchens, pp. 23-24. This volume is henceforth referred to as L.C.
George Eliot's and Captain John Willim's. The latter, Lewes's step-father, scrawlings of content lists are found in the end back papers. The fly leaf has G. Eliot's pencilled list of 21 items of interest ranging from "Publication of translations & parts of the Bible condemned p. 258" to "Atheism in the University of Padua p. 436."
For photographic examples of George Eliot's, Lewes's, Leigh Hunt's and Willim's hand see the reproductions in my The George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Library.
Of course George Eliot was steeped in German and one can be forgiven for sometimes feeling that the prolixity which occasionally infects her prose is due to her immersion in German a language which, as she comments in "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," Westminster Review, 55 (January 1856), "easily lands itself to all the purposes of poetry" and "generally appears awkward and unmanageable in the hands of prose writers" (cited Essays of George Eliot, ed. T. Pinney, [1963], p. 250, henceforth referred to as Pinney, Essays).
In her "German Wit: Heinrich Heine" George Eliot comments that "A great deal of humour may co-exist with a great deal of barbarism, as we see in the Middle Ages." In her review of W. E. H. Lecky's History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, Fortnightly Review, I (15 May 1865) she cites volume one, pp. 312, 320, of Hallam's Introduction—his section on Jean Bodin (see Pinney, Essays, 405). The Dr. Williams's copy shows no markings on these pages, nor does G. Eliot instance them in her fly leaf listing. I have not found references to Hallam's Introduction in the G. Eliot holograph notebooks that I have seen.
The form of G. Eliot's marginalia here is curious. The reference might possibly be to Pierre Bayle's Commentaire philosophique . . . ou Traité de la tolérance universelle. Rotterdam, 1713. (Dr. Williams's catalogue, item 156). Ernest Renan's Averroes et l'Averroism: essai historique was published in Paris in 1852. For G. Eliot's marked copy see Dr. Williams's catalogue, item 1792. Hallam (I, 274-275) is surprisingly sympathetic to Averroes metaphysical strictures on the soul: Emerson remarks in his "English Traits" (1856) that Hallam "is unconscious of the deep worth which lies in the mystics" (The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed., B. Atkinson, [1956], p. 653). This is, of course, not the case with George Eliot.
Probably a reference to stanza 12 in the induction to A Mirror for Magistrates, see R. Bell ed., The Annotated Edition of the English Poets, (1854) pp. 269-270. J. Haslewood's edition of Sackville appeared in 1815.
Thomas Twining's translation of Aristotle's Poetics with Twining's "'two dissertations, on poetical, and musical, imitation" was published in 1789. Hallam's reference is probably to Daniel Twining's two-volume second edition published by L. Hunnard and Sons in 1812.
Hallam's reference is to William Julius Mickle's translation of Os Lusiadas-The Lusiad; or The Discovery of India. This first appeared in 1776 and by 1820 had gone through at least three editions. John Murray published in 1826 Thomas Moore Musgrave's translation of the same work. There is a copy of Luiz de Camoens Os Lusiadas, 2 vols., Avinhaŏ, 1818, in the Lewes collection at Dr. Williams's Library. The first volume has some of Lewes's linings, the second is unopened—see item 360.
I should like to thank Professor René Wellek for sending me an inscribed copy of his "Preface."
A. R. Kaminsky in her George Henry Lewes as Literary Critic discusses at some length Lewes's writings on Calderon and Lope de Vega, see pp. 163-166.
In his "Recent Novels," Fraser's Magazine, 35 (1847) Lewes placed Fielding's Tom Jones above the Waverly novels (p. 687), but in his "Historical Romance: The Foster Brother, and Whitehall," Westminster Review, 45 (1846) he wrote that Scott "divined important historical truths which have escaped the sagacity of all historians" (p. 37). George Eliot's attitude to Scott is reflected in Lewes's inscription in the fly leaf of the first of the 48 volume set of the Waverly Novels he gave her: "To Marian Evans Lewes, The best of Novelists and Wives. These works of longest-venerated and best-loved Romancist are given by her grateful Husband 1 January 1860." Cited G. S. Haight, George Eliot A Biography. (1968), p. 319.
Louis Landré in his Leigh Hunt (1784-1859): 2 vols (1936), quotes a letter Hunt wrote to his friend Shelley on 20 September 1819: "Do you know Donne? I should like to have some more talk with you about him. He was one of those over-metaphysical-headed men, who can find out connections between everything and anything, and allowed himself at last to become a clergyman after he had (to my conviction, at least) been as free and deep a speculator in morals as yourself" (II, 168). Hunt does seem to have revised his opinion on Donne.
Reviewing Tennyson's Poems, chiefly Lyrical in the Tatler (March 1, 1831), Hunt writes that "Supposed Confessions of a Second-Rate Sensitive Mind Not in Unity with Itself" is "a very striking" poem. "It is such as Crashaw might have written in a moment of scepticism, had he possessed vigour enough." Cited L.C. p. 352. Such evidence contrasted with marginalia tempts speculation that a shift in Hunt's attitudes to the Metaphysicals took place in the 1830's.
In Johnson's "Denham," Lives of the English Poets (1779-81). For a modern text see A. Waugh ed., (1968), I, 59.
For Hallam's contributions to the Edinburgh Review see The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900, I, ed., W. E. Houghton (1966), 922. For William Gifford and the Quarterly Review see H. and H. C. Shine, The "Quarterly Review" Under Gifford. Identification of Contributors, 1809-24 (1949).
The Quarterly Review highly praised the Introduction to the Literature of Europe, see I. Jack, p. 353, and H. H. Milman's review, Quarterly Review, 65 (March 1840), 340-383.
Lewes's reference is probably to Milton's "A Paraphrase on Psalm 114" or to "Psalm 136" both of which were composed when Milton was fifteen and appeared in the 1673 edition of the Minor Poems: see The Complete Poetry of John Milton, ed., J. T. Shawcross (1971), pp. 3, 4. For Hunt's opinion see his "On the Latin Poems of Milton," Literary Examiner, 30 August 1823—pp. 178ff.
L.C. pp. 269-270. C. D. Thorpe places Leigh Hunt "quite clearly in the empirical tradition in English criticism which had made progress from at least Hobbes down." Ibid., p. 46. Carl R. Woodring's "Leigh Hunt as Political Essayist," in Leigh Hunt's Political and Occasional Essays, ed., C. W. Houtchens (1962) writes "Machiavelli and the Tractatus of Spinoza, starting points for many of Hunt's poetic contemporaries, lay beyond his goal as a political journalist" p. 9.
David M. Fahey, "Henry Hallam—A Conservative As Whig Historian," The Historian, 28 (August 1966), p. 638, fn. 52.
Published by Charles Knight in 1846. My references are to the Routledge (1900) single volume reprint—for Bacon see p. 359 fn., 381 (citing Hallam III, 169, 182).
Mill writes "the philosopher who more than all others made professions of rejecting authority, Descartes, constructed his system on this very basis. His favourite device for arriving at truth, even in regard to outward things, was by looking into his own mind for it. 'Credidi me,' says his celebrated maxim, 'pro regulâ generali sumere posse, omne id quod valdè et distinctè concipiebam, verum esse;' whatever can be very clearly conceived must certainly exist; that is as he afterwards explains it, 'if the idea includes existence.'" My reference is to A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, ed., J. M. Robson (1973), II, 751. I have been unable to locate Mill's comment on Bacon and Latin. For Lewes and J. S. Mill see A. T. Kitchell, George Lewes and George Eliot, pp. 27-43, and G. Tillotson, "A Mill-Lewes Item," Mill Newsletter, 5 (1969), 17-18.
| | |