Table-Talk

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Table-Talk
By William Hazlitt.


Table of Contents

 Titlepage
 Imprint
 Volume I

 On the Pleasure of Painting
 The Same Subject Continued
 On the Past and Future
 On Genius and Common Sense
 The Same Subject Continued
 Character of Cobbett
 On People with One Idea
 On the Ignorance of the Learned
 The Indian Jugglers
 On Living to One’s-Self
 On Thought and Action
 On Will-Making
 On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses
 The Same Subject Continued
 On Paradox and Commonplace
 On Vulgarity and Affectation


 Volume II

 On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin
 On Milton’s Sonnets
 On Going a Journey
 On Coffeehouse Politicians
 On the Aristocracy of Letters
 On Criticism
 On Great and Little Things
 On Familiar Style
 On Effeminacy of Character
 Why Distant Objects Please
 On Corporate Bodies
 Whether Actors Ought to Sit in the Boxes?
 On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority
 On Patronage and Puffing
 On the Knowledge of Character
 On the Picturesque and Ideal
 On the Fear of Death


 Endnotes
 Colophon
 Uncopyright




Imprint

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Volume I


On the Pleasure of Painting

“There is a pleasure in painting which none but painters know.”


In writing, you have to contend with the world; in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with Nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. From the moment that you take up the pencil, and look Nature in the face, you are at peace with your own heart. No angry passions rise to disturb the silent progress of the work, to shake the hand, or dim the brow: no irritable humours are set afloat: you have no absurd opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool to annoy⁠—you are actuated by fear or favour to no man. There is “no juggling here,” no sophistry, no intrigue, no tampering with the evidence, no attempt to make black white, or white black: but you resign yourself into the hands of a greater power, that of Nature, with the simplicity of a child, and the devotion of an enthusiast⁠—“study with joy her manner, and with rapture taste her style.” The mind is calm, and full at the same time. The hand and eye are equally employed. In tracing the commonest object, a plant or the stump of a tree, you learn something every moment. You perceive unexpected differences, and discover likenesses where you looked for no such thing. You try to set down what you see⁠—find out your error, and correct it. You need not play tricks, or purposely mistake: with all your pains, you are still far short of the mark. Patience grows out of the endless pursuit, and turns it into a luxury. A streak in a flower, a wrinkle in a leaf, a tinge in a cloud, a stain in an old wall or ruin grey, are seized with avidity as the spolia opima of this sort of mental warfare, and furnish out labour for another half-day. The hours pass away untold, without chagrin, and without weariness; nor would you ever wish to pass them otherwise. Innocence is joined with industry, pleasure with business; and the mind is satisfied, though it is not engaged in thinking or in doing any mischief. 1
I have not much pleasure in writing these Essays, or in reading them afterwards; though I own I now and then meet with a phrase that I like, or a thought that strikes me as a true one. But after I begin them, I am only anxious to get to the end of them, which I am not sure I shall do, for I seldom see my way a page or even a sentence beforehand; and when I have as by a miracle escaped, I trouble myself little more about them. I sometimes have to write them twice over: then it is necessary to read the proof, to prevent mistakes by the printer; so that by the time they appear in a tangible shape, and one can con them over with a conscious, sidelong glance to the public approbation, they have lost their gloss and relish, and become “more tedious than a twice-told tale.” For a person to read his own works over with any great delight, he ought first to forget that he ever wrote them. Familiarity naturally breeds contempt. It is, in fact, like poring fondly over a piece of blank paper; from repetition, the words convey no distinct meaning to the mind⁠—are mere idle sounds, except that our vanity claims an interest and property in them. I have more satisfaction in my own thoughts than in dictating them to others: words are necessary to explain the impression of certain things upon me to the reader, but they rather weaken and draw a veil over than strengthen it to myself. However I might say with the poet, “My mind to me a kingdom is,” yet I have little ambition “to set a throne or chair of state in the understandings of other men.” The
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