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WILLIAM HAZLITT
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anfc Critic
SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS
SGJSftfj a ilHemotr, Biographical anto Critical,
BY
ALEXANDER IRELAND
AUTHOR OF " MEMOIR AND RECOLLECTIONS OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON,
"THE BOOK-LOVER'S ENCHIRIDION," ETC. ETC.
LONDON AND NEW YORK
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
Ik
579562
PREFACE.
IN the following Selections from the writings of William
Hazlitt, it has been my aim to present to the reader what is
most characteristic of him as a Critic of Literature, and an
Essayist on Life, Manners, and Art. The selection has been
made with much care and deliberation, and after a life-long
acquaintance with his works, which extend over a period of
twenty-seven years (1805 to 1830), and number about thirty-
five volumes.
The specimens selected include his remarks on, and gene-
ral estimates of our greatest Poets, Dramatists, Novelists,
and Essayists. Following these are given several of his best
Essays on Men, Society, and Books, almost without abridgment,
and from others the most striking pages. Among these will
be found occasional passages illustrative of his individual ex-
periences, hopes, aspirations, and disappointments, which will
help the reader to understand his peculiar character. Among
the essays given entire are, "My First Acquaintance with
Poets," "On Persons one would wish to have seen," "On
Living to Oneself," " On Going a Journey," and " On the Fear
of Death." The essays "A Farewell to Essay- writing " and
" The Sick-chamber " will be read with pathetic interest. The
latter was written only a few weeks before his death, and has
been unaccountably omitted from the collected edition of his
principal writings. His carefully-drawn and searching estimate
of Burke, as well as of his great antagonist, Fox, are reprinted
without abridgment. Almost the whole of the admirable In-
vi PREFACE.
troduction to the study of the Elizabethan Literature is given,
in which he traces, with singular power, the causes which led
to the remarkable awakening of genius and thought at that
epoch of our history.
Of his criticisms on Painters and Painting a sufficient
number of specimens are given to enable readers on this
subject to form some idea of the treasures of subtle thought
and insight awaiting them in the numerous papers which he
contributed to this department of the Fine Arts. Never, up to
his time, had there been given to the world such appreciative
criticism of the works of the great painters, or such masterly
estimates of their genius. His "Character of Hamlet" is
given unabridged, being one of his most characteristic pro-
ductions. Those who have studied Hazlitt, as revealed in
his books, must come to the conclusion that in this ingenious
and original paper, in which he theorizes on the character
of Hamlet, he has drawn largely from within, and that his
imaginary Dane is probably a reproduction of his own thoughts
and feelings. As specimens of the remarkable versatility of
his genius I have given his essays entitled " The Fight " and
" On the Conduct of Life ; or, Advice to a School-Boy " (his
son). The latter is written with earnest feeling, and expressed
in a simple and unadorned style. Any reader of the former,
not knowing it to be Hazlitt's, would suppose it to have been
penned by a skilful professional reporter of pugilistic combats.
I have also given some extracts from his " Life of Napoleon "
— a remarkable but unequal work — which show his philo-
sophic insight into the causes of the French Revolution, as
well as his powers of vivid description.
To those who may wish to go farther afield among the plea-
sant intellectual pasturages afforded by Hazlitt's voluminous
writings, I may recommend the handy edition of his principal
works in seven volumes (the "Life of Napoleon" is not included),
published by Messrs. Bell & Sons, and a volume issued by
Messrs. Reeves & Turner, containing exclusively his writings
on the Fine Arts. This volume includes his excellent article on
PREFACE, vii
The Fine Arts contributed to the Encylopa&dia Britannica in
1824. Both of these collections are edited by Mr. W. C.
Hazlitt. The seven volumes of reprints of his principal
writings, just referred to, comprise seventeen of the thirty-
five volumes which bear his name.
The character of Hazlitt is one of deep interest, and
deserving of careful study. With all his faults, he was a man
to be loved and honoured. He was wayward, perverse, wilful,
at times unreasonable and splenetic — often in consequence of a
sense of his own intellectual superiority, and an impatience of
mediocre and inferior minds. But against these failings and
infirmities of temper — which belonged to the accidents of
his nature, not to its essence — must be set his tenderness of
heart, his unselfishness, his sympathy with the suffering and
oppressed, his candour towards opponents, his rectitude and
honesty of mind and purpose. He was an ardent lover of
truth and beauty, if ever one existed, and he never swerved
from his fealty to the cause of liberty and human progress.
The highest eulogium that could be bestowed upon him is con-
tained in one brief sentence of his friend Talfourd's : — " He
had as passionate a desire for truth, as others have for wealth,
or power, or fame." He was, perhaps, the most hardly treated
man of genius of his time, and when one takes into account
the unmerited obloquy to which he was so long and system-
atically subjected, it is not surprising that his sensitive nature
was wounded, his temper soured, and his mind often darkened
by fits of misanthropy which, for a time, overclouded the char-
acteristic qualities of a noble, generous, and most unselfish
nature. Herein lies the excuse, if not the justification, of those
outbursts of fierce invective which he occasionally launched
against his unscrupulous traducers.
In the Introductory Memoir I have endeavoured to present
Hazlitt in his habit as he lived, and as he was known and
seen by his friends — passing over none of his frailties or
errors, and not hesitating to use freely the recorded recollec-
tions of those who were most intimate with him. These I
viii PREFACE.
have incorporated in my sketch, in order to add to the reality
of the picture. The reader will thus be able to see, through
many different eyes, as it were, something of his personality
and surroundings. I would particularly direct the attention
of my readers to what was said of him by his earliest, dearest,
wisest, and most considerate friend, Charles Lamb (" Memoir,"
p. Ivii.), whose beautiful words will live in our literature as
one of the truest and most tender tributes ever paid by one
man of genius to another.
Should the following selections from his writings inspire
in some thoughtful minds a desire to become better acquainted
with a remarkable writer, too little known to the present
generation, I shall feel amply rewarded for my labour of love.
I can promise such minds a store of instruction and delightful
mental invigoration. There is no better reading to be found
than is afforded by his works. So happy a power of inspiring
enthusiasm for genius, and of stimulating intellectual sympathy,
has been exhibited by very few writers either of this or the last
century. He has the supreme art of putting himself en rapport
with his reader. He communicates the interest he feels. In
his flowing and vigorous style he lays open the often stubborn
thought, as the sharp ploughshare the glebe. The reader is
never perplexed by ideas imperfectly grasped, or by thoughts
which the writer cannot clearly express. What has been well
said of Macaulay by Mr. Cotter Morison — " that his thought
is always within his reach, and is unfolded with complete
mastery and ease to its utmost filament " — is equally applicable
to Hazlitt.
ALEXANDER IRELAND.
SOUTHPOBT, June 1889.
CONTENTS.
PAG«
PREFACE v
CONTENTS ix
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT xiii to Ixiii
SELECTIONS FEOM HIS WRITINGS—
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE I
LATER REMARKS ON BURKE 14
THE CHARACTER OF FOX l8
TUCKER'S "LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED" .... 27
THE LOVE OF LIFE 29
THE LOVE OF THE COUNTRY -32
THE TENDENCY OF SECTS 37
ON "JOHN BUNGLE" 40
THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU 46
GOOD-NATURE 50
COUNTRY PEOPLE 54
RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY . . 57
COMMONPLACE CRITICS 60
ACTORS AND ACTING 64
CHARACTERS OF SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS — "Macbeth" . . 66
„ „ „ " Othello " -7O
„ „ „ "Hamlet" . . 72
„ „ „ " Romeo and Juliet " 76
"Lear" '• . . 78
„ „ „ "Falsta/" . . 82
THE ACTING OF KEAN 84
MRS. SIDDONS 86
DISSENTERS AND DISSENTING MINISTERS .... 87
THE CHURCH AND ITS CLERGY 9O
THE ESTABLISHED CLERGY 91
A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD 93
POETRY, IN GENERAL) 98
x CONTENTS.
SELECTIONS FEOM HIS WRITINGS (continued) — PAGE
CHAUCER AND SPENSER . . . . . . . . IO6
SHAKSPEAKE AND MILTON HO
MILTON'S CHARACTER OP "SATAN" 118
DRYDEN AND POPE I2O
WITHER I24
THOMSON AND COWPER 12$
SWIFT 129
SWIFT— RABELAIS — VOLTAIRE 131
GRAY 133
GOLDSMITH 134
BURNS 135
RYRON 136
SCOTT 137
WORDSWORTH 13^
WIT AND HUMOUR 14°
ENGLISH COMEDY I41
THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS 143
MONTAIGNE 144
STEELE AND ADDISON 146
THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS 149
CERVANTES AND LE SAGE 151
FIELDING AND SMOLLETT 156
RICHARDSON AND STERNE l6l
SIR WALTER SCOTT 165
LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH — INTRODUCTION 167
TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 174
THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST 175
WEBSTER AND DECKER l8o
THE EARLY DRAMATISTS— WINTERSLOW HUTT . . . l8l
BACON 183
SIR THOMAS BROWNE 185
JEREMY TAYLOR 187
THE PAST AND FUTURE 189
CAPACITY AND GENIUS — ORIGINALITY 198
ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA 2OI
THE INDIAN JUGGLERS . 209
JOHN CAVANAGH, THE FIVES-PLAYER 2l6
ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF 219
ON THOUGHT AND ACTION 228
ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION 229
ON GOING A JOURNEY 232
ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS 240
ON FAMILIAR STYLE — LAMB 243
CONTENTS. xl
SELECTIONS FKOM HIS WRITINGS (continued) — PAGE
ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER 246
WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE 248
ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY 253
ON THE FEAR OF DEATH . 257
THE FIGHT • • • 266
ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE : OR, ADVICE TO A SCHOOLBOY 280
BURKE'S STYLE ......... 293
COLERIDGE'S STYLE 296
LEIGH HUNT'S STYLE 296
THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS 297
CHARLES LAMB'S EVENINGS 300
LEIGH HUNT'S CONVERSATION 303
MR. NORTHCOTE, THE PAINTER 304
CHARACTER OF THE SCHOLAR 305
APPLICATION TO STUDY 306
THE SPIRIT OF OBLIGATIONS 31 1
WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS . -313
PRIDE 3*5
ON READING OLD BOOKS 317
ON NOVELTY AND FAMILIARITY 322
IDENTITY OF AN AUTHOR WITH HIS BOOKS . . . 327
"VIVIAN GREY" AND THE DANDY SCHOOL. . . . 330
ON READING NEW BOOKS 334
ON CANT AND HYPOCRISY 339
WALTON'S "COMPLETE ANGLER" 343
ON A SUN-DIAL 344
ON PREJUDICE 345
ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE 349
SENSIBILITY TO REAL EXCELLENCE . .... 352
£MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETJft . . . -353
OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN . . . 369
TOLERATION 380
ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH . . .381
A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING 387
THE SICK-CHAMBER 391
CHARACTERISTICS 397
COMMONPLACES 397
THE WORKS OF HOGARTH 402
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING 406
ON THE IDEAL 415
ON JUDGING OF PICTURES 4*7
EXPRESSION 42C
THE DULWICH GALLERY 421
xii CONTENTS.
SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS (continued) — PAOK
INTEECOUESE WITH PICTURES AND BOOKS .... 422
APOSTROPHE TO BUBLEIGH HOUSE 424
OXFOED 426
COLERIDGE 428-
COLEEIDGE AND GODWIN 433
SIR WALTER SCOTT 435
f*LORD BYBQJB. 44!
CWOEDSWORTH^ 451
FRANCIS JEFFREY 457
WILLIAM COBBETT 462
CHARLES LAMB 472
LEIGH HUNT 474
THE LOUVRE 476
ROMAN CATHOLICISM 479
CONVERSATIONS WITH NORTHCOTE 481
LIFE OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE-
DEFENCE OF NAPOLEON 483
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION .... 485
ENGLAND'S HOSTILITY 493
BURKE'S WRITINGS 494
THE HORRORS OF THE REVOLUTION 494
THE TAKING OF THE BASTILLE 496
THE BURNING OF MOSCOW ....... 503
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT,
BIOGEAPHICAL AND CEITICAL.
THE father of the subject of this Memoir was William Hazlitt, of
Shrone Hill, Tipperary, originally from the county of Antrim. He
graduated at the University of Glasgow, where he was a contempo-
rary of Adam Smith. About the year 1761 he joined the English
Presbyterian body, and became a minister of that denomination.
His first appointment was at Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, whither
he went in 1764, at the age of twenty-seven. Two years later he
married Grace Loftus, a farmer's daughter, who was twenty years
old, very handsome, and also simple and good. The marriage took
place upon his leaving Wisbeach for Marshfield, in Gloucestershire,
where, in the following year, 1767, his eldest son, John, was born.
A daughter, named Peggy, followed. He then left Marshfield for
Maidstone, where more children were born, but none of them sur-
vived except the youngest. He was named William after his father,
and lived to make the name illustrious. He was born in Mitre
Lane, Maidstone, on the loth of April 1778. His father, who
knew Benjamin Franklin and corresponded with Dr. Priestley,
left Maidstone when his youngest child was two years old, to take
charge of a congregation of Unitarians at Bandon, in the county
of Cork. In that town he was settled for three years. His
sympathy with the Americans in their struggle for independence
led him to exert himself in behalf of the American prisoners con-
fined at Kinsale, near Bandon. On the conclusion of the war, he
went with his family to America, reaching New York in May 1783.
He was fifteen months in Philadelphia, preaching occasionally, and
delivering in the winter a course of lectures on the Evidences of
Christianity. He made a short stay at Boston, where he founded
xiv MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
the first Unitarian Church there, and declined the degree of D.D.
In 1786-87 he returned to England, and settled as a Unitarian
minister at Wem, in Shropshire. He was then in his fiftieth year.
His son John, then about twenty years old, was beginning the
world as a miniature-painter, and in 1788 had some of his works
exhibited at the Koyal Academy.
William, who was then a child of eight or nine, was educated at
Wem under his father's roof, as well as in a neighbouring school.
He was by all accounts a docile pupil. From his earliest boyhood
his father had impressed upon his mind the great principles of
moral and political truth and the duty of asserting the rights of
his fellow-creatures. Some of his letters written to his father and
brother when he was away from home on visits, as at Liverpool
in 1790, indicate a studious, inquiring mind, with a religious tone
of thought in them. In a letter written to his father from Liver-
pool when he was barely twelve years of age, he makes remarks
which show a lively and shrewd observation of character. "Mrs.
Barton asked us, as if she were afraid we would accept her invita-
tion, if we would stay to tea .... I had rather one would tell
one to go out of the house than ask one to stay, and at the same
time be trembling all over for fear one should take a slice of meat
or a dish of tea with them .... I spent a very agreeable day yester-
day, as I read 160 pages of Priestley and heard two good sermons.
. . . After I had sealed up my last letter to you, George asked me
if I were glad the Test Act was not repealed. I told him, No.
Then he asked me why ; and I told him because I thought that all
the people who are inhabitants of a country, of whatever sect or
denomination, should have the same rights with others. But, says
he, then they would try to get their religion established, or some-
thing to that purpose. Well, what if it should be so ? "
Here is revealed the early dawning of his hatred of privilege and
intolerance. It is evident that his boyhood was spent under happy
influences. As a proof of this, here is a portion of his father's
answer to the above letter, showing the excellent lessons which this
unworldly man inculcated on his clever, eager, inquiring boy, who
ever spoke of him in after years with the highest reverence and
respect : —
" MY DEAR WILLIAM, .... Your brother said that your letter
to him was very long, very clever, and very entertaining. On
Wednesday evening we had your letter, which was finished on the
preceding Monday. The piety displayed in the first part of it was
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xv
a great refreshment to me ; continue to cherish those thoughts
which then occupied your mind. Continue to be virtuous, and
you will finally be that happy being whom you describe ; and,
to this purpose, you have nothing more to do than to pursue that
conduct which will always yield you the highest pleasures even
in this present life. But he who once gives way to any known
vice, in the very instant hazards his total depravity and total ruin.
You must, therefore, fixedly resolve never, through any possible
motives, to do anything which you believe to be wrong. This will
be only resolving never to be miserable ; and this I rejoicingly
expect will be the unwavering resolution of my William. Your
conversation upon the Test Act did you honour. If we only think
justly, we shall always easily foil all the advocates of tyranny. The
inhospitable ladies whom you mention were perhaps treated by
you with too great severity. We know not how people may be
circumstanced at a particular moment, whose disposition is generally
friendly. They may then happen to pass under a cloud which
unfits them for social intercourse. We must see them more than
once or twice to be able to form a tolerable judgment of their
characters. I only wish to caution you against forming too hasty
a judgment of characters, who can seldom be known at a single
interview. ... I am glad you employed the last Sunday so well ;
and that the employment afforded you so much satisfaction. Nothing
else can truly satisfy us but the acquisition of knowledge and
virtue. May these blessings be yours more and more every day ! "
Strange to say, his first literary production made its appearance
when he was only thirteen. The occasion was this. The Birming-
ham mob, in an outburst of zeal for the supposed interests of the
monarchy and the Christian religion, had burned the house of Dr.
Priestley over his head, and had destroyed his valuable library.
Fired by this insult to one who professed the religion in which he
himself had been brought up, the boy wrote a letter to the editor
of the Shrewsbury Chronicle on the subject. It is so remarkable a
production for so young a writer, and so reveals his mental character
and future opinions, that it is worth giving entire : —
"ME. WOOD, — 'Tis really surprising that men — men, too, that
aspire to the character of Christians — should seem to take such
pleasure in endeavouring to load with infamy one of the best, one
of the wisest, and one of the greatest of men.
" One of your late correspondents, under the signature of OTAEIS,
seems desirous of having Dr. Priestley in chains, and indeed would
xvi MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZILTT.
not perhaps (from the gentleman's seemingly charitable disposi-
tion) be greatly averse to seeing him in the flames also. This is
the Christian !
" This the mild spirit its great Master taught. Ah ! Chris-
tianity, how art thou debased ! How am I grieved to see that
universal benevolence, that love to all mankind, that love even to
our enemies, and that compassion for the failings of our fellow-men,
that thou art contracted to promote, contracted and shrunk up
within the narrow limits that prejudice and bigotry mark out.
But to return ; — supposing the gentleman's end to be intentionally
good, supposing him indeed to desire all this, in order to extir-
pate the Doctor's supposedly impious and erroneous doctrines and
promote the cause of truth ; yet the means he would use are
certainly wrong. For may I be allowed to remind him of this
(which prejudice has hitherto apparently prevented him from
seeing), that violence and force can never promote the cause of
truth, but reason and argument or love, and whenever these fail,
all other means are vain and ineffectual. And as the Doctor
himself has said in his letter to the inhabitants of Birmingham,
' that if they destroyed him, ten others would arise, as able or abler
than himself, and stand forth immediately to defend his principles ;
and that were these destroyed, an hundred would appear ; for the
God of truth will not suffer His cause to lie defenceless.'
" This letter of the Doctor's also, though it throughout breathes
the pure and genuine spirit of Christianity, is, by another of your
correspondents, charged with sedition and heresy ; but indeed, if
such sentiments as those which it contains be sedition and heresy,
sedition and heresy would be an honour ; for all their sedition is
that fortitude that becomes the dignity of man and the character
of Christian : and their heresy, Christianity : the whole letter,
indeed, far from being seditious, is peaceable and charitable, and
far from being heretical, that is, in the usual acceptance of the
word, furnishing proofs of that resignation so worthy of himself.
And to be sensible of this, 'tis only necessary that any one, laying
aside prejudice, read the letter itself with candour. What or who,
then, is free from the calumniating pen of malice — malice concealed,
perhaps, under the specious disguise of religion and a love of truth ?
"Keligious persecution is the bane of all religion, and the
friends of persecution are the worst enemies religion has ; and of
all persecutions, that of calumny is the most intolerable. Any
other kind of persecution can affect our outward circumstances
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xvii
only, our properties, our lives ; but this may affect our characters
for ever. And this great man has not only had his goods spoiled,
his habitation burned, and his life endangered, but is also calum-
niated, aspersed with the most malicious reflections, and charged
with everything bad, for which a misrepresentation of the truth
and prejudice can give the least pretence. And why all this 1 To
the shame of some one, let it be replied, merely on account of
particular speculative opinions, and not anything scandalous, shame-
ful, or criminal in his moral character. 'Where I see,' says the
great and admirable Robinson, 'a spirit of intolerance, I think
1 see the great Devil.' And 'tis certainly the worst of devils. And
here I shall conclude, staying only to remind your anti-Priestlian
correspondents, that when they presume to attack the character
of Dr. Priestley, they do not so much resemble the wren pecking
at the eagle, as the owl attempting by the flap of her wings to
hurl Mount Etna into the ocean ; and that while Dr. Priestley's
name 'shall flourish in immortal youth,' and his memory be
respected and revered by posterity, prejudice no longer blinding
the understandings of men, theirs will be forgotten in obscurity, or
only remembered as the friends of bigotry and persecution, the
most odious of all characters. EAIASON."
While at Liverpool, young Hazlitt acquired some knowledge
of French and music. Afterwards he continued to read with hia
father, but does not appear to have devoted much time to writing.
His father had a strong desire to see his son a Dissenting minister ;
but to this destination the youth had an invincible repugnance. In
his fifteenth year, however, he was sent to the Unitarian College at
Hackney, where he was placed under the tutorship of a Mr. Corrie,
who is reported to have said of his pupil that " he found him rather
backward in many of the ordinary points of learning, and in
general of a dry and intractable understanding." His mind was
occupying itself with political and metaphysical ideas and projects.
Philosophy gained more of his attention than Theology. In the
ordinary routine of education for the Unitarian ministry, he was a
backward student. His teacher found that this intractable pupil
was not an idler, but that his head was full of arguments about the
bounds of religious liberty, the repeal of the Corporation and Test
Acts, and a project for a new theory of civil and criminal juris-
prudence. The latter scheme of political rights and general juris-
prudence was afterwards (1828) set forth by him in the form which
B
xviii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
it takes in the Literary Remains (1836). Naturally enough, his
father wished that he should abandon this desultory essay-writing
and devote himself to the work of the College ; but to the expres-
sion of this wish he replied with a dignified statement of his opinion
that, " with respect to themes, he really thought them disserviceable
than otherwise." How, when, and under what circumstances he
quitted the Unitarian College is not recorded. It would seem, how-
ever, that he entirely abandoned the notion of entering the Unitarian
ministry, and that he returned to his father's house at Wem.
It was at this time, 1798, when Hazlitt was twenty years old,
that Coleridge, who was officiating at Shrewsbury for the Unitarian
minister there, came over to Wem, according to the custom of
courtesy among ministers, to pay a visit to the Eev. William Hazlitt.
Y"oung Hazlitt had already walked to Shrewsbury, through ten
miles of mud, to hear him preach ; and his recollections of what he
then heard, and of Coleridge's visit to Wem a few days later, is too
well known to be more than alluded to here. These recollections
are given in his brilliant paper, entitled, " My First Acquaintance
with Poets," which will be found in extenso in the present volume.
Coleridge's brilliancy entirely captivated young Hazlitt, who was
bitterly disappointed when, after three months' stay at Shrewsbury,
Coleridge accepted Mr. Thomas Wedgwood's offer of an annuity
of ^150 to retire from the ministry, and devote himself to poetry
and philosophy. This change did not break up their friend-
ship. Coleridge invited the young thinker to visit him at Nether
Stowey, in Somersetshire, where, some time later, he received him
kindly, and took him to Alfoxden, two miles from Stowey, where
Wordsworth was then living. The poet was then from home, but
in a day or two after his return from Bristol, he called at Coleridge's
cottage ; and there it was that Hazlitt first saw Wordsworth face to
face.
It was during this visit that Coleridge first encouraged young
Hazlitt to write. The work he set himself to compose was An Essay
on the Principles of Human Action: being An Argument in favour of
the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mindj but it was not
published until eight years afterwards, viz., in 1805. Sir James
Mackintosh pronounced it " a work of great ability." Hazlitt
himself said of it, that it was " the only thing I ever piqued myself
upon writing." It is remarkable as an instance of early development
of the reasoning powers — the first rough draft or outline of the plan
of the essay being made at the age of eighteen. The sale of the
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. XJX
book was small, and he never received any profit from it. A valu-
able friend made by him about this time was the Eev. Joseph
Fawcett, who had a strong relish for all good literature, and for the
catholicity of whose tastes he always expressed great admiration.
" A heartier friend or honester critic I never coped withal. With
him I passed some of the pleasantest days of my life. The con-
versations I had with him on subjects of taste and philosophy gave
me a delight such as I can never feel again."
From 1798 to 1802 little is known of Hazlitt and his doings. He
had for some time definitely abandoned the notion of entering the
Unitarian ministry, but had not settled on any plan of life. His
time seems to have been spent in reading and thinking, but without
any fixed object. A career was, however, indispensable. The income
of his father was wholly insufficient to support him in practical
idleness, so that he began to cast about for some means of living.
At this time, his elder brother John, who had become a painter,
/:ame forward with a suggestion that he should embrace the pro-
fession of painting. This notion was adopted, and in 1802 William
took up his abode under his brother's roof, and began the study
of art in earnest. In October of the same year he left England
for Paris, where he continued his studies, occupying himself with
copying some of the pictures in the Louvre. He remained four
months in Paris, and during that time made copies and sketches
from Titian, Guido, Eaphael's Transfiguration, and Lana's Death of
Clorinda — a kind of work for which he had sundry commissions
from friends of his brother in London. He then returned to
England, bringing with him, not merely his copies from the great
masters, but a set of tastes and principles in art, very few of
which he ever afterwards modified. Not long after his return,
he made a professional tour in the North of England as a portrait-
painter, and was not unsuccessful in obtaining sitters. Words-
worth sat to him, but Hazlitt, dissatisfied with his work, destroyed
the portrait. During this tour he visited a family in Liverpool
called Eailton, who were friends of his father's, and fell in love with
an attractive daughter of the house, of whom he painted a minia-
ture on ivory. The suit was not favoured by the young lady's family
and the relations between the lovers were broken off. Somewhere
about this time it is reported that he fell in love a second time
— in this case, with a rustic beauty in Wordsworth's neighbourhood.
According to Patmore, he narrowly escaped being ducked by the
villagers for his unwelcome attentions. De Quincey reports that
xx MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
Hazlitt was smitten by the charms of Dorothy Wordsworth, the
poet's sister, but the story wants proof. At all events, if the passion
ever existed, it came to nothing.
Among other portraits, he painted one of his father — which was a
labour of love both to artist and sitter — a half-length of Sir Joshua
Keynolds, and a head of Lear. One of his earliest attempts was the
head of an old woman in deep shade, of which he makes mention
in one of his essays. It was done after the manner of Rembrandt,
and was said to have been a picture of considerable effect. He was
a severe critic of his own performances, and his standard was a high
one. He failed to satisfy his own aspirations and ideals, or to over-
come the diffidence he felt in his own powers. He was often im-
patient with himself, and when he could not produce the effect he
desired, he has been known to cut the canvas into ribbons. At last
he decisively relinquished the pursuit he so much loved, and laid
down his pencil for ever. It is difficult to say whether patience and
perseverance would have overcome his difficulties. Northcote said
he gave up the experiment too soon, and that he would have made
a great painter had he devoted himself entirely to his art. Among
the latest work from his hand was a portrait of his newly-made
friend, Charles Lamb, in the dress of a Venetian senator. The
discipline of this brief practice of art was no doubt of permanent
advantage to him. It has been justly said that it made him better
understand " the worth of beauty and the elements of character ;
his perception was quickened, his insight deepened, and his powers
as an observer and analyst enlarged." In connection with this
phase of his life, his essays on " The Pleasure of Painting," " On
a Portrait by Vandyck," "On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin,"
"Sketches of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England," and his
article " The Fine Arts," are well worth reading.
In 1806 he published at his own expense a pamphlet entitled
Free Thoughts on Public Affairs; or Advice to a Patriot. Although
powerful in its language and breathing a warm spirit of freedom,
it attracted little attention, and is now all but unknown. It is
reprinted in the volume, containing "The Spirit of the Age" in
Messrs. Bell & Sons' edition of his chief works. In 1807 ap-
peared An Abridgment of The Light of Nature Revealed, by Abraham
Tucker, Esq., originally published in seven volumes, under the name of
Edivard Search, Esq. It was through the friendly offices of Charles
Lamb (whose acquaintance he had about this time made through
his brother John) that Johnson the publisher was induced to under-
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxi
take the issue of this work. In it the spirit of the seven volumes
is felicitously condensed into one, in which are preserved entire all
the singular turns of thought and striking illustrations of the
original. " As to the pains and labour it has cost me, or the time
I have devoted to it," he says, " I shall say nothing. However, if
any one should be scrupulous on that head, I might answer, as Sir
Joshua Eeynolds is said to have done to some persons who cavilled
at the price of a picture, and desired to know how long he had been
doing it — ' All my life ' " In his " Dissertation on the Progress of
Ethical Philosophy," Sir James Mackintosh devotes a chapter to
Tucker, and refers to Hazlitt's abridgment of it, and " his excellent
preface to it." The learned Dr. Parr, who was a thorough master
of the original work, said that he never could tell what had been
omitted in the abridgment — a very happy compliment to the
abridger. In the same year (1807) he issued a clever attempt to
invalidate the theory of Malthus, under the title, Reply to the Essay
on Population by the Rev. T. R. Malthus. In a Series of Letters : to
which are added Extracts from the Essay, with Notes. This had been
begun as a series of letters in a newspaper, and was advertised by
Longman & Co. as in the press "by a person of eminence." He
also gave to the world this year The Eloquence of the British Senate ;
or Select, Specimens from the Speeches of the most distinguished Parlia-
mentary Speakers, from the beginning of the Reign of Charles I. to the
present time; with Notes, Biographical, Critical, and Explanatory, 2
vols. This was a piece of honest taskwork. The speeches are
illustrated by powerfully drawn characters of some of the more
prominent orators — especially those of more recent date — Chatham,
Pitt, Burke, and Fox. These portraits were afterwards reprinted
in his Political Essays, 1819.
It was at the house of his brother John, at 12 Rathbone Place,
that Hazlitt first met Dr. Stoddart and his sister Sarah. Stoddart,
who was then, like John Hazlitt, an extreme Liberal in politics, was
appointed King's Advocate at Malta. In 1807 Hazlitt became
engaged to Miss Stoddart, who was about thirty-two years of age,
he being twenty-nine. She had been on the point of marriage several
times, but the various matches had been broken off, generally on
account of pecuniary reasons. Miss Stoddart seems to have been
intimate with Mary Lamb, and those who are curious to know more
about the former lady will find a number of letters from Mary to
her friend in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's Memoir of his grandfather. The
marriage, after some preparations, in which he exhibited much
xxii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
eccentricity, was solemnised on Sunday, ist May 1808, at St.
Andrew's, Holborn. The only persons present, besides the bride
and bridegroom, were Dr. and Mrs. Stoddart, and Charles Lamb
and his sister. The bride's property, which was worth about ^120
per annum, had been, at her brother's instigation, and to Hazlitt's
annoyance, settled upon herself. The ceremony over, they proceeded
to the village of Winterslow, in Wiltshire, where Mrs. Hazlitt's little
property was situated. They lived in a cottage which formed part
of the property. Here Hazlitt prepared a work which appeared in
1810 under the following title — A New and Improved Grammar of
the English Tongue; for the use of Schools. In which the Genius of
our Speech is especially attended to, and the Discoveries of Mr. Home
TooTce, and other Modern Writers on the Formation of Language are for
the first time incorporated. To which is added a New Guide to the
English Tongue, in a Letter to W. F. Mylius, author of the School
Dictionary, by Edward Baldwin, Esq. This work, although well
received, was not a success. It never reached a second edition, and
is now a bibliographical curiosity. It was afterwards abridged by
Mr. Godwin, under the name of Baldwin. A critic of the day said,
that although intended for the use of schools, "yet the advanced
student would find in it much valuable information, the definitions
being concise yet intelligible, the rules clear and important, and
the examples selected perspicuous and appropriate." He also about
this time prepared an abridgment into English of Bourgoing's
"Tableau de 1'Espagne moderne," but this was labour wasted, as
no publisher would bring it out. It was never printed, and still
remains in MS.
In January 1809 a son was born, who was named William, but he
died when six months old. In the following autumn the Lambs paid
a visit to the Hazlitts in Wiltshire, along with Martin Burney and
Colonel Phillips. After a fashion which it is now difficult to under-
stand, these guests appear to have paid for their board during their
stay in Wiltshire. Hazlitt was about this time busy with a Memoir
of Holcroft, which, however, did not appear until 1816, under the
title Memoirs of the late Thomas Holcroft, written by himself; and
continued to the time of his Death, from his Diary, Notes, and other
Papers. The continuation is by Hazlitt. It was reprinted in 1852
in "The Traveller's Library." The materials for this work had
been confided to him by Holcroft's family. It was humorously
nicknamed by Mary Lamb "The Life Everlasting," from the way
in which it was perpetually talked about by friends interested in
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxiii
Holcroft, and from the inordinate length of time during which it
hung on hand. On 26th September 1811 another son was born.
Like the first, he was named William, after his father and his
grandfather. A few months afterwards the couple moved from
Winterslow to London, where they settled down at No. 19 York
Street, Westminster — a house which, according to tradition, had
belonged to Milton, and which looked out upon one occupied by
Jeremy Bentham. Hazlitt had no introductions, was shy, proud,
and irritable, and had need, as Lamb hinted, of "something of a
better temper," if not of " a smoother head of hair." He had ability
enough to set up a score of popular authors, and a warm heart, but
he was wanting in that open manner which goes so far in the way
of attracting and winning friends. He was then thirty-four years
old. He had one or two intimates who understood and loved him —
notably Charles Lamb and his sister. He began his London career
by proposing to the Royal Institution to give a course of ten lectures
on the English Philosophers and Metaphysicians. His name being
in some repute, the offer was accepted. Some fragments of these
lectures have been given in the volumes entitled Literary Remains.
He also sought and obtained an engagement as a parliamentary
reporter on the Morning Chronicle. He was not a good shorthand
writer, and trusted much to his good memory. After a short
experiment of this kind of life, he took to critical writing for the
Chronicle, sometimes contributing political articles. Early in 1814
he succeeded Mr. Mudford as theatrical critic on that paper. His
dramatic experiences commenced with Bannister. His great favourites
were Kean and Miss Stephens, and he was an enthusiastic admirer of
Mrs. Siddons. His connection with the Chronicle was not of long
continuance. About this time he also wrote for the Examiner and
the Champion newspapers. In 1814 Jeffrey asked him to write for
the Edinburgh Review. His second article embodied a brilliant series
of sketches of the English Novelists (including remarks on Cervantes
and Le Sage), which he afterwards reproduced in his Lectures on
the English Comic Writers. The reader will find this delightful
paper in the selections following this Memoir. For some years his
contributions to the Edinburgh Review were tolerably numerous.
Altogether nineteen articles from his pen appeared in its pages,
ranging from 1814 to 1830. His grandson gives a list of fourteen
only. In a letter to Notes and Queries, March 1879, to which any
reader curious in this matter is referred, I point out five additional
articles, which may without doubt be attributed to him, one of them,
xxiv MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
on " American Literature and Dr. Channing," of peculiar interest for
reasons given in my communication.
Mr. W. C. Hazlitt * in his Memoir of his grandfather refers to the
establishment in York Street, Westminster, and to the domestic mis-
management and want of home comfort which characterised it. He
gives a curious illustration of this, furnished by Haydon the artist,
whom Hazlitt had invited to a christening entertainment. When
Haydon arrived, Hazlitt was out endeavouring to find a parson, and
his wife was sitting by the fire in a bedgown, — nothing ready for
the guests, and everything wearing the appearance of neglect and
indifference. The biographer, speaking of his grand-parents, says
that " the marriage was certainly not one of choice (though it was in
no way forced upon him), and the woman with whom he thus knit
himself permanently was one of the least domestic of her sex. She
was a lady of excellent disposition, an affectionate mother, and
endowed with no ordinary intelligence and information. But for
household economy she had not the slightest turn ; and she was
selfish, unsympathising, without an idea of management, and
destitute of all taste in dress. She was fond of finery, but her
finery was not always very congruous. A lady is living who
recollects very well the first visit Mrs. Hazlitt paid to her family at
Bayswater. It was a very wet day, and she had been to a walking
match. She was dressed in a white muslin gown and black velvet
spencer, and a leghorn hat with a white feather. Her clothes were
perfectly saturated, and a complete change of things was necessary
before she could sit down." With a wife of such " excellent dis-
position" and habits as the mistress of his household, it was not
likely that the wayward and unmethodical Hazlitt could lead a very
happy or comfortable life. Later on it will be seen how the union
of this ill-matched pair ended.
Between January 1815 and January 1817 appeared a series of
papers in the Examiner under the title, "The Round Table,"
which in the latter year were collected in two volumes, with some
omissions and additions, and published under the title The Round
Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners.
It was proposed that this series of papers should be in the manner
of the early periodical essayists the Spectator and Taller. Twelve
* Grandson of William Hazlitt, author of " Memoir of William Hazlitt,"
"History of the Origin and Rise of the Venetian Republic," "A Hand-
Book of Early English Literature," " Mary and Charles Lamb, Their Poems,
Letters and Remains," editor of "The Shakespeare Jest-Books," &c. &c.
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxv
of the essays were contributed by Leigh. Hunt, and one by an
anonymous writer. The rest were by Hazlitt. These papers are
generally shorter than those he wrote later. They are distinguished
by force of style and acuteness of observation, and deserve a place
in the literature of the earlier portion of this century. They possess
all the ease and unstudied variety of conversation.
In 1817 Hazlitt gave to the world his Characters of Shakespeare's
Plays. This work, although it professes to be dramatic criticism,
is in reality a discourse on the philosophy of life and human nature,
more suggestive than many approved treatises expressly devoted
to that subject. It was very favourably criticised by Jeffrey in the
Edinburgh Review, who considered it a work of originality and
genius. " What we chiefly look for in such a work," says he, " is a
fine sense of the beauties of the author, and an eloquent exposition
of them : and all this, and more, we think may be found in the
volume before us. There is nothing niggardly in his praises, and
nothing affected in his raptures. He seems animated throughout
with a full and hearty sympathy with the delight which his
author should inspire, and pours himself gladly out in explanation
of it, with a fluency and ardour, obviously much more akin to
enthusiasm than affectation."
In 1818 his dramatic criticisms, contributed during the previous
four years to the Morning Chronicle, the Champion, the Examiner,
and the Times, were collected into a volume, under the title, A
View of the English Stage, or a Series of Dramatic Criticisms. He
had always been fond of the theatres, and frequented them to the
last. His earliest admiration rested on Mrs. Siddons. He always
held that she had touched the summit of perfection. " While the
stage lasts," he used to say, "there never will be another Mrs.
Siddons." One of the last essays he wrote, only a few months
before his death, was called " The Free Admission," which is full
of picturesque and striking thought. The finest criticisms in the
above-named volume are those in which he illustrated the acting
of Edmund Kean, whose matchless powers he recognised at once
on the very first evening of his appearance, and whose reputation
he did so much to establish, in spite of actors, managers, and critics.
From that night he became the most devoted of Kean's supporters.
" His dramatic criticisms," says Talfourd, " are more pregnant with
fine thoughts on that bright epitome of human life than any
other which ever were written. . . . He began to write with a rich
fund of theatrical recollections ; and except when Kean, or Miss
xxvi MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
Stephens, or Listen supplied new and decided impulses, he did
little more than draw upon this old treasury. The theatre to him
was redolent of the past — of images of Mrs. Siddons, of Kemble,
of Bannister, of Jordan, . . . but his habits of mind were unsuited
to the ordinary duties of a theatrical critic. The players put him
out. He could not, like Leigh Hunt, who gave theatrical criticism
a place in modern literature, apply his graphic powers to the details
of a performance, and make it interesting by the delicacy of his
touch. ... In just and picturesque criticism, Hunt has never
been approached."
In the same year (1818) he gave a series of eight lectures on the
English Poets at the Surrey Institution. These were followed by
two other courses, on the English Comic Writers in 1819, and on the
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth in 1821. With reference to his
manner in lecturing, his friend Talfourd says that he was not eloquent
in the true sense of the term ; for his thoughts were too weighty to
be moved along by the shallow stream of feeling which an evening's
excitement can rouse. He wrote all his lectures, and read them as
they were written ; but his deep voice and earnest manner suited
his matter well. He seemed to dig into his subject — and not in
vain. In delivering his longer quotations, he had scarcely continuity
enough for the versification of Shakespeare and Milton, " with linked
sweetness long drawn out ; " but he gave Pope's brilliant satire and
divine compliments, which are usually complete within the couplet,
with an elegance and point which the poet himself would have felt
as their highest praise. Talfourd mentions one or two instances in
which he startled and shocked his audience with a fine audacity
which put their prejudices and conventional feelings on edge.
" When he read a well-known extract from Cowper, comparing a
poor villager with Voltaire, and had pronounced the line ' a truth
the brilliant Frenchman never knew,' they broke into a joyous
shout of self-gratulation that they were so much wiser than a wicked
Frenchman. When he passed by Mrs. Hannah More with observing
that ' she had written a great deal which he had never read,' a voice
gave expression to the general commiseration and surprise by calling
out, ' More pity for you ! ' They were confounded at his reading,
with more emphasis perhaps than discretion, Gay's epigrammatic
lines on Sir Richard Blackmore, in which scriptural persons are
freely hitched into rhyme ; but he went doggedly on to the end,
and, by his perseverance, baffled those who, if he had acknowledged
himself wrong by stopping, would have hissed him without mercy.
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxvii
He once had an edifying advantage over them. He was enumera-
ting the humanities which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, and,
at the close of an agreeable catalogue, mentioned, as last and noblest,
his carrying the poor victim of disease and dissipation on his back
through Fleet Street — at which a titter arose from some, who were
struck by the picture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others, who
deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite. He paused for an instant,
and then added in his sturdiest and most impressive manner, ' An
act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan,' at which his
moral and delicate hearers shrunk rebuked into deep silence."
The first course of lectures was soon afterwards published, under
the title, Lectures on the English Poets, delivered at the Surrey
Institution, and was well received — a second edition appearing in
the following year. The volume is perhaps one of the most
generally interesting of his critical works. He handles his subject
with great gusto, acuteness, and felicity of touch ; you feel that
much patient thinking must have been exercised by the writer
before giving his final judgments on our great poets. Many of these
judgments show a very delicate apprehension of the authors under
notice, mingled with an exquisite sensitiveness to beauty of every
kind, moral and material. The reader capable of enjoying an in-
tellectual treat of a high order will linger over Keflections on Poetry
in General, the Remarks on Shakespeare and Milton, and his account
of the Rise and Progress of the Lake School of Poetry.
His Lectures on the English Comic Writers were delivered and
published in the year following — 1819. They include a great variety
of interesting subjects — the comic poets and dramatists, the perio-
dical essayists, the great novelists of the last century — Fielding,
Smollet, Sterne and Richardson — as well as some of the modern
writers of fiction, such as Scott and Godwin. The works of Hogarth
also come under review. The reader may not agree with him in his
estimate of Steele, whom he places above Addison, but he should
carefully read the critic's reasons for his opinion. In his criticism
on Johnson there will be no difference of judgment. His remarks
on the Congreve and Wycherley group of dramatists have been pro-
nounced by Leigh Hunt almost equal to Lamb's, leaving a truer
impression respecting them, as well as containing the most detailed
criticism on their individual plays. His opinions of Rabelais,
Montaigne, Cervantes, and Le Sage, which occur in the lectures on
the Essayists and Novelists, are among the good things in this
volume.
xxviii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
In 1817 and 1818 he contributed articles to the Champion, the
Examiner, and the Yellow Dwarf, a periodical started by Mr. John
Hunt, which only lived a few months. Most of these articles were
afterwards reprinted in his collected volumes. An Edinburgh maga-
zine about this date contained some of his lucubrations — one of them
being on the question " Whether Pope was a Poet." In 1 8 1 9 appeared
A Letter to William Gifford, Esq., from William Hazlitt, Esq. It con-
sists of eighty-seven pages, and exposes "the wretched cavillings,
wilful falsehoods and omissions, and servile malignity" of the
disgraceful articles in the Quarterly Review on his Bound Table,
Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, and Lectures on the English Poets.
These attacks, as well as those in Blackwood's Magazine, will be spoken
of more fully in a subsequent page. Talfourd said that the latter
portion of the Letter to Gifford was one of Hazlitt's noblest effusions.
In 1819 was published Political Essays, with Sketches of Public
Characters. It was Mr. Hone's proposal to collect Hazlitt's poli-
tical writings from the columns of the Morning Chronicle and other
journals, and he was the publisher of the volume. It was dedi-
cated to John Hunt, one of the sturdiest and most independent of
Liberals, and a man of the highest probity. The preface to this
collection runs to a considerable length — thirty-six pages. His son
says of it, that in his mind it is " the very finest and most manly
exposition of high political principle that was ever put forth, and
the whole of the volume breathes the noblest spirit of liberty and
virtue." His opening words are : " I am no politician, and still
less can I be said to be a party man ; but I have a hatred for tyranny,
and a contempt for its tools ; and this feeling I have expressed as
often and as strongly as I could ; " and a few pages farther on, after
denning his principles and politics : " This is the only politics I
know ; the only patriotism I feel. The question with me is, whether
I and all mankind are born slaves or free. That is the one thing
necessary to know and to make good. The rest isflocci, nauci, nihili,
pili. Secure this point, and all is safe ; lose this, and all is lost."
It may be here mentioned that in this volume were reprinted Hazlitt's
estimates of the characters of Burke, Fox, Chatham, and Pitt, from
The Eloquence of the British Senate.
One of the most important of Hazlitt's works was published in
1821, viz., Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of
Elizabeth, delivered at the Surrey Institution. After a general
introductory view of the subject, he criticises the dramatists and
poets anterior to, contemporary with, and immediately succeeding
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxix
Shakespeare — Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia" and the works of
Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, and Jeremy Taylor, the Spirit of Ancient
and Modern Literature, and the German drama contrasted with that
of the Age of Elizabeth. This volume contains some of the best
eriticisims from his pen. They display more than his usual strength,
acuteness, and animation, with less of his usual acerbities of temper.
An American critic justly says that "his stern, sharp analysis pierces
and probes the subject down through the surface to the centre ; and
it is exercised in a more kindly spirit than is common with him.
He had a profound appreciation of the elder dramatists, though a
less social feeling for them than Lamb ; and their characteristic
excellences drew from him some of his heartiest bursts of eloquent
panegyric." From Hazlitt's criticisms and Lamb's " Specimens " the
general reader will gain a more vivid notion of the intellectual era
they commemorate than from any other sources except the originals
themselves. The reader will find in the Edinburgh Review for 1820
an article on this volume from the pen of Talfourd, characterised by
warm appreciation of the ability of Hazlitt, as well as by a discrimi-
nating judgment of his deficiencies and limitations. " He possesses
one noble quality at least," says his critic, " for the office which he
has chosen, in the intense admiration and love which he feels for the
great authors on whose excellences he chiefly dwells. His relish for
their beauties is so keen, that while he describes them, the pleasures
which they impart become almost palpable to the sense. He intro-
duces us almost corporeally into the presence of the great of old time.
He draws aside the veil of Time with a hand tremulous with mingled
delight and reverence, and descants, with kindling enthusiasm, on
all the delicacies of that picture of genius which he discloses. His
intense admiration of intellectual beauty seems always to sharpen his
critical faculties. He perceives it, by a kind of intuitive power, how
deeply soever it may be buried in rubbish, and separates it in a
moment from all that would encumber or deform it." The intro-
ductory lecture is distinguished by a peculiar dignity and weight of
style and observation, which makes it perhaps one of the best and
most unexceptionable of his compositions. He shows that the general
causes of that sudden and rich development of poetical feeling and
of intellectual activity were mainly the mighty impulse given to
thought by the Eeformation, by the translation of the Bible, the
discovery of the New World, and the new opening of the stores of
classic lore. The translation of the Bible, he considers, was the chief
influence in bringing about the great work. To use his own words, " It
xxx MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and
morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed
the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired
teachers to the meanest of the people. . . . The Bible was thrown
open to all ranks and conditions ' to run and read,' with its wonderful
table of contents, from Genesis to the Eevelation. ... To leave
more disputable points, and take only the more historical parts of
the Old Testament or the moral sentiments of the New, there is
nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and admiration or
of riveting sympathy. . . . There is something in the character of
Christ, too (leaving religious faith quite out of the question), of
more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the
mind of man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be
found in history, whether actual or feigned. His character is that
of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before our
race. There shone manifestly both in His words and actions, ... in
every act and word of His life, a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love,
a patience and wisdom worthy of the Son of God. His whole life
and being were imbued, steeped in the word Charity. . . . He taught
the love of good for the sake of good, without regard to personal and
remoter views, and made the affections of the heart the sole seat of
morality, instead of the pride of the understanding or the sternness
of the will. . . . He has done more to humanise the thoughts and
tame the unruly passions than all who have tried to reform and
benefit mankind."
Before leaving this work, I must relate a circumstance in con-
nection with it recorded by his friend Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall).
He says, "He had a very quick perception of the beauties and
defects of books. "When he was about to write his 'Lectures on
the Age of Elizabeth,' he knew little or nothing of the dramatists
of that time, with the exception of Shakespeare. He spoke to
Charles Lamb and to myself, who were supposed by many to be
well acquainted with those ancient writers. I lent him about a
dozen volumes, comprehending the finest of the old plays ; and
he then went down to Winterslow Hut, in Wiltshire, and after a
stay of six weeks came back to London, fully impregnated with
the subject, with his thoughts fully made up upon it, and with all
his lectures written. And he then appeared to comprehend the
character and merits of the old writers more thoroughly than any
other person, although he had so lately entered upon the subject."
In 1820 was started a periodical called the London Magazine,
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxxi
edited by Mr. John Scott, formerly editor of the Champion, a man
of considerable ability and fine literary tastes, who secured as con-
tributors some of the ablest writers of the day, among whom were
Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, and Allan Cunningham, and a year or
two later, Thomas Carlyle, whose " Life of Schiller " first appeared
in its pages. Lamb's immortal "Essays of Elia" made their first
appearance in this magazine. Hazlitt contributed to it about a
dozen essays during the first two years of its existence. Two of these
essays are included in the first volume of Table- Talk, or Original
Essays, published in 1821. The others were afterwards included in
another publication of Hazlitt's, called The Plain Speaker, which did
not appear until some years later. A second volume of Table-Talk
followed in 1822, and a second edition in 1824, with the additional
title Original Essays on Men and Manners. Many of these essays
were written at Winterslow Hut (spelled Hutt), a coaching-inn on
the border of Salisbury Plain, to which he had been in the habit of
resorting when he wished to get away from London.
This solitary and desolately situated inn will always be re-
membered with interest from the beautiful allusion to it in his
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, when speaking of the old drama-
tists Decker and Webster. The passage will be found in the Selec-
tions, p. 1 8 r. It was his favourite haunt when he wished to secure
that entire solitude and seclusion from the world which he found
so favourable to thought and quiet literary work. It was here
that he drew upon his recollections of books and pictures, recalling
what he had observed of men and things, probing his own character
unshrinkingly, and extracting an infinite amount of self-knowledge
from his own infirmities. It was here he would wander for hours
over the bare, bleak pasturages and among the scantily-wooded
hollows, and get home to his inn, miles from any other habitation,
and set down the thoughts that had come to him on his solitary
rambles, making the whole evening hours his own for steady and
continuous work. Prompted by a wish to see this memorable resort
of Hazlitt's — a wish " subdued and cherished long " — the writer of
this Memoir at last realised his desire, and on a beautiful spring
day — May Day of the present year — found himself at Winterslow
Hutt. It is on the old coach-road between London and Salisbury,
and near the sixth milestone from that cathedral town. In the
old days, before railways, the London coach stopped here to change
horses, and the traveller could find good cheer and accommoda-
tion if required. Now it is a desolate place, fallen into decay,
xxxii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
and tenanted by a labouring man and his family, cultivating a small
farm of some thirty acres and barely able to make a living out of it.
In winter two or three weeks will sometimes elapse without even
a beggar or tramp or cart passing the door. On the ground-floor,
looking out upon a horse-pond, flanked by two old Hme-trees, is a
little parlour, which was the one probably used by Hazlitt as his
sitting-room. At the other end of the house is a large empty room,
formerly devoted to cock-fighting matches and singlestick combats,
in which he who first brought blood from his adversary's head
was pronounced victor. It was with a strange and eerie feeling
that I contemplated this little parlour, and pictured to myself the
many solitary evenings during which Hazlitt sat in it, enjoying
copious libations of his favourite beverage, tea (for during the last
fifteen years of his life he never tasted alcoholic drinks of any kind),
perhaps reading " Tom Jones " for the tenth time, or enjoying one
of Congreve's comedies, or Eousseau's "Confessions," or writing,
in his large flowing hand, a dozen pages of the essay " On Persons
one would Wish to have Seen," or " On Living to One's Self." One
cannot imagine any retreat more consonant with the feelings of this
lonely thinker, during one of his periods of seclusion, than the out-
of-the-world place in which I stood. In winter-time it must have
been desolate beyond description — on wild nights especially, —
" heaven's chancel-vault " blind with sleet — the fierce wind sweep-
ing down from the bare wolds around, and beating furiously against
the doors and windows of the unsheltered hostelry.
The essays in Table-Talk contain much vigorous thinking, many
fine bursts of eloquence, and tender reminiscences of past days and
bygone moods of mind. It is almost invidious to point out particular
papers, but I cannot refrain from naming — " On Going a Journey,"
" The Love of Life," " The Fear of Death," " On People with One
Idea," "Why Distant Objects Please," "The Past and Future,"
"The Indian Jugglers." The essay "On Living to One's Self" is
in his best manner, and is steeped in intense recollection of his past
life. The author's own early aspirations and toils after eminence
in art as a painter are gathered up and embalmed in his essay " On
the Pleasures of Painting," which is full of pathos and tender beauty ;
the spirit of long-crushed hope breathes throughout its pages.
In 1820 Hazlitt's father died, an old man of eighty -four. His son
was not in London at the time, and his habits were so erratic and
his movements so uncertain, that nobody knew where to address him,
and he thus remained in ignorance of the event until after the
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxxiii
funeral. About the same time, Mrs. Hazlitt the elder lost her
mother, at the extreme age of ninety -nine. Her portrait was taken
by John Hazlitt when she was ninety-six. The Rev. Mr. Hazlitt
left four volumes of sermons. He was a correspondent of Dr.
Priestley. His widow, born in 1746, lived to witness the accession
of Queen Victoria. It is probable that Hazlitt had his good father
in his mind when he wrote the striking passage, beginning, " But
we have known some such in happier days," &c. (see Selections —
" Dissenting Ministers," page 89.)
The reception by the press and the public of Hazlitt's productions
during the previous few years was highly favourable. An exception,
however, must be made in the case of Blackwood's Magazine, the
Quarterly Review (then edited by Gifford), and some of the Govern-
ment journals of the period, which attacked him with an animosity
and unscrupulous malignity almost incredible to the present genera-
tion. His crime in the eyes of these writers was that he was an
uncompromising reformer, and that in some of his political effusions
he had exposed the abuses of the Government, denouncing things
and systems to which he was conscientiously opposed in terms not
to be mistaken. Granted that his political sympathies were ardent
and the expression of them often vehement, and that he had taken
the unfashionable side, wilfully placing himself from the first in
collision with all the interests that were in the sunshine of the
world, and with all the persons that were then all-powerful in
England ; surely the intrinsic ability of his purely literary works
might have been acknowledged and their merits admitted. He
himself never failed to do justice to the intellectual gifts of
opponents, however keenly he may have attacked their political
opinions and tergiversations. Witness what he always said of the
genius of such men as Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and Scott.
It is never without a sad feeling, akin to regret, that he attacks
what he considers their backslidings, and launches against them
his invective and sarcasm. But he never carried poisoned arrows
into political conflict. In his bitterest remarks upon the changed
opinions of Coleridge and Wordsworth, he makes you feel how
much they were once rooted in his affection, and that, in spite of
their differences, he can never cease to admire their genius. Such
was his chivalrous sense of honour and justice. His example in
this respect was not followed by his enemies and assailants. The
merits of his works and the recognition of his literary powers Vere
systematically ignored by the writers in the Government interest,
C
xxxiv MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
and the author was deliberately held up to public odium and dis-
gust. He was denounced as an incendiary, a Kadical, a Bonapartist,
a man of loose morals, and a Cockney scribbler, the friend and com-
panion of Leigh Hunt, the editor of the Examiner, who was always
attacking the Government — a man equally obnoxious and hateful.
The object of this literary ruffianism was to disparage the writer
and prevent the public from reading his works. These shameless
attacks had the desired effect of blighting his credit with the
publishers and seriously limiting the circulation of his books, and
in one instance entirely stopping the sale of one of his works from
the day on which the malignant article appeared. His friend
Leigh Hunt was subjected to the same scandalous treatment, and
with similar results. The public mind was in this way extensively
poisoned with regard to these two writers and men of genius, thus
causing a much tardier recognition of their merits in influential
quarters than would otherwise have been the case. In order to
justify the strong expressions used by me, it may be stated that
I have carefully read the various articles referred to, and could,
if necessary, produce a selection of passages which would stand
unparalleled in the annals of criticism for their gross violation
of the laws and decencies of literary warfare. To such lengths did
party feeling go in those days ! Let us rejoice that this style of
criticism has gone by, never to return. The most violent political
partisan of the present day would shrink from using such weapons.
It is with pleasure I record the fact that the Quarterly Review, nearly
fifty years after the date of these attacks, gave utterance, through
the pen of Bulwer, to a most generous recognition of the genius of
Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. It may also be stated, in justice to Black-
wood's Magazine, that, fifteen years later, Wilson made the amende
honorable to Hunt in a graceful and touching passage in one of the
" Noctes," the concluding words of which were : " The animosities
are mortal, the humanities live for ever." He even invited him to
write for the Magazine ; but Hunt declined the offer.
Mention has already been made of the want of sympathy between
Hazlitt and his wife, and of the qualities and peculiarities in each
which stood in the way of their domestic happiness. "Never,"
says his grandson, " was there a worse-matched pair. If they had
not happened to marry, if they had continued to meet at the Lambs',
as of old, or at her brother's, they would have remained probably
the best of friends. She would have appreciated better his attain-
ments and genius, . . . but there was a sheer want of sympathy
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxxv
from the first set-out. They married after studying each other's
characters very little, and observing very little how their tempers
were likely to harmonise. ... I believe that Mr. Hazlitt was
physically incapable of giving his affections to a single object. . . .
His wife had not much pretence for quarrelling with him on the
ground of former attachments still lingering in his thoughts, and
keeping his affections in a state of tangle, for she too had had her
little love affairs, and accepted him only when her other suitors
broke faith." This want of sympathy between them and alienation
of feeling kept increasing, and their uncomfortable relations grew
more and more distasteful to both. For some time they had been
living apart — he often by himself at Winterslow Hutt, or in lodgings
in town.
About this time (1822) he became the subject of a singular and
infatuated attachment. He was violently smitten with the beauty
of Sarah Walker, daughter of a tailor in Southampton Buildings,
at whose house he lodged. It was a sort of frenzy of platonic
devotion. Hazlitt was in a state of hallucination about her
beauty and moral excellence. The amazing thing about it was
that his insane enthusiasm so over-mastered him and carried him
off his balance, that he could not help speaking about it to every
one he knew. This unfortunate infatuation took entire possession
of him, and he was completely carried away by it. He was really
in a condition of mind in which he could scarcely be considered
a responsible being. His son, in the biographical sketch prefixed
to his father's "Literary Eemains," speaks of the divorce of his
father and mother, and refers to the painful incident of this infatu-
ated attachment in the following sensible words : — " It was in 1823
that a circumstance occurred, the influence of which on my father's
public as well as private life obliges me to advert to it, although
other reference than a bare record of the fact is as unnecessary
to the reader as it would be painful to me. About this period,
then, my father and mother were divorced under the law of
Scotland. Their union had for some years past failed to produce
that mutual happiness which was its object, owing in great measure
to an imagined and most unfounded idea on my father's part of
a want of sympathy on that of my mother. For some time previous
to this my father had fallen into an infatuation which he has him-
self illustrated in glowing and eloquent language in a regretted
publication called 'Liber Amoris.' The subject is a painful one,
and admits of but one cheerful consolation — that my father's name
*xxvl MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
and character were but momentarily dimmed by what indeed was
but a momentary delusion."
The book referred to appeared in 1823 under the title of Liber
Amoris, or the New Pygmalion. In it he records his conversations with
this imaginary goddess of his admiration, who in the eyes of every
one but himself was a very common-place person. One of his critics
spoke of the book as a most remarkable psychological curiosity, and
one of the most signal examples extant of the power of a genuine
passion, not merely to palliate what was wrong, but to dignify what
was ridiculous. A lady critic says of this passage in Hazlitt's life, that
"it is enough that no vicious or sensual man could have fallen into
such fascination, nor any decently hypocritical one have proclaimed
it." De Quincey called it " an explosion of frenzy. He threw out his
clamorous anguish to the clouds, and to the winds, and to the air ;
caring not who might listen, who might sympathise, or who might
sneer— the sole necessity for him was to empty his over-burdened
spirit." A philosophical critic of the book calls it a novelty in the
English language, and says that he is not aware of the publi-
cation of anything so vindicatory of the ideal theory of Berkeley
— nothing so approaching a demonstration that mind is the great
creator, and matter a fable. Mrs. Jameson has a very eloquent
passage on the subject in one of her volumes. The late Lord
Houghton incidentally expressed his great admiration of the book
in an article on Keats in the Fortnightly Review. Before leaving
this painful subject, it will be well to give a few sentences from
the pen of Bryan Waller Procter, better known by his nom de plume
Barry Cornwall, who knew Hazlitt well, met him at this time, and
who had seen the girl at his (H.'s) lodgings. " His intellect was
completely subdued by an insane passion. He was, for a time,
unable to think or talk of anything else. He abandoned criticism
and books as idle matters, and fatigued every person whom he met
by expressions of her love, of her deceit, and of his own vehement
disappointment. This was when he lived in Southampton Build-
ings, Holborn. Upon one occasion I know that he told the story
of his attachment to five different persons in the same day, and at
each time entered into minute details of his love-story. 'I am
a cursed fool,' said he to me. 'I saw J going into "Wills'
Coffee-house yesterday morning ; he spoke to me. I followed him
into the house, and whilst he lunched I told him the whole story.
Then I wandered into the Regent's Park, where I met one of
M 's sons. I walked with him some time, and on his using
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxxvii
some civil expression, by Jove, sir, I told him the whole story ! '
[Here he mentioned another instance which I forget.] ' Well, sir '
(he went on), ' I then went and called on Haydon, but he was out.
There was only his man, Salmon, there ; but by Jove ! I could not
help myself. It all came out ; the whole cursed story. Afterwards
I went to look at some lodgings at Pimlico. The landlady at one
place, after some explanations as to rent, &c., said to me very kindly,
" I am afraid you are not well, sir ? " " No, ma'am," said I, " I am
not well ; " and on inquiring further, the devil take me if I did not
let out the whole story from beginning to end.' I used to see this
girl, Sarah Walker, at his lodgings, and could not account for the
extravagant passion of her admirer. She was the daughter of the
lodging-house-keeper. Her face was round and small, and her eyes
were motionless, glassy, and without any speculation (apparently)
in them. Her movements in walking were very remarkable, for
I never observed her to make a step. She went onwards in a sort
of wavy, sinuous manner, like the movement of a snake. She was
silent, or uttered monosyllables only, and was very demure. Her
steady, unmoving gaze upon the person whom she was addressing
was exceedingly unpleasant. The Germans would have extracted
a romance from her, endowing her perhaps with some diabolic
attribute. To this girl he gave all his valuable time, all his wealth
of thought, and all the loving frenzy of his heart. For a time I
think that on this point he was substantially insane — certainly
beyond self-control. To him she was a being full of witchery, full
of grace, with all the capacity of tenderness. The retiring coquetry,
which had also brought others to her, invested her in his sight with
the attractions of a divinity." I have not given any extracts from
this work, as, from the nature of its contents, it would be impossible
to convey a correct idea of it by detached passages.
With regard to the divorce mentioned by his son in the extract
given above, both parties went to Edinburgh, swore that there was no
collusion between them, and, after considerable delay, obtained their
obj ect. A detailed account of the whole transaction, including extracts
from Mrs. Hazlitt's diary, is given in his grandson's Memoir. It is
difficult to understand how the affair was carried through with so much
coolness, and how husband and wife, so soon to be divorced, could meet
as they did on terms of apparent friendship ; how they could drink
tea together, arrange as to the payment of her expenses, and deal with
each other, all through, as if the matter about which they had met in
Edinburgh was one of the most ordinary and everyday character.
xxxviii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
In 1822-23 five articles by Hazlitt appeared in the Liberal, a perio-
dical started by Lord Byron and Shelley, and to which Leigh Hunt
was also a contributor. It only extended to four numbers. Byron's
"Vision of Judgment" and "Heaven and Earth, a Mystery," first
appeared in it. Hazlitt's contributions were "My First Acquaintance
with Poets," "Arguing in a Circle," "On the Scotch Character,"
"Pulpit Oratory — Chalmers and Irving," and "On the Spirit of
Monarchy."
In 1823 he issued a little volume called Characteristics in the
Manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims. The book is less known than
almost any of his writings. Mr. K. H. Home, in his introductory
remarks to the second edition (1837), says that it contains much that
is cynical, though nothing malevolent. Some of his most bitter
sarcasms are distinctly levelled at himself. In his most cutting
truths it is a striking peculiarity with him that he always brings
himself in for his full share. There is stuff alone in this little
volume to make a reputation. To the latest edition of Charac-
teristics, (1871), are added "Common-Places," reprinted from Hunt's
Literary Examiner (1823), and "Trifles Light as Air" from the
Atlas newspaper (1829).
In 1824 Mr. Hazlitt contributed to the seventh edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica an article on The Fine Arts, afterwards
reprinted with the title Painting and the Fine Arts, being the
articles contributed under these heads to the seventh edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, by B. R. Haydon, Esq., and William
Hazlitt, Esq. A critic writing on this essay says, that if he wished
to give any young or uninstructed individual a correct and exalted
idea of what is meant by the term " The Arts " or " The Fine
Arts," he would simply place it in his hands. The whole tendency
of the paper is to show that the perfection attained by all the great
masters arose from the study of the nature which surrounded them,
and not from that imagined improvement upon nature which has
been called the ideal.
In the same year, 1824, appeared Sketches of the Principal Picture-
Galleries in England, with a Criticism on " Marriage-a-la-Mode." In
no department of criticism did Hazlitt write with more insight,
power, and picturesqueness than on painting and pictures. Leigh
Hunt considered him the greatest critic on art that ever appeared
("his writings on that subject casting a light like a painted
window"). Some of the opening sketches prefixed to his descrip-
tions of the galleries of Dulwich, Stafford House, Burleigh, and
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xxxix
Blenheim are as charming as the best pictures they celebrate. The
volume is full of beauties, although it seems to be written carelessly,
and often in too dazzling language. The reader will find in it his
account of the Cartoons of Eaphael, of Rembrandt's picture of
Joseph's Dream, his estimate of Holbein, of Poussin, and Watteau.
His description of the Stafford Collection is prefaced by some
striking observations on the duration of works of art. In his
account of the pictures at Burleigh House there is a passage redolent
with associations of the past, and embodying his recollections of a
visit twenty years before, which may be 'pointed out as one of the
most tender and eloquent he ever wrote. It is only one of several
to be found in this volume. It may be here mentioned that a
volume containing almost all that Hazlitt has written on the Fine
Arts, including his sketches of the English Picture-Galleries, has
been edited by his grandson, Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, and published by
Messrs. Eeeves & Turner.
Having got rid of his wife by divorce, according to the law of
Scotland in those days, and having recovered from his mad infa-
tuation for his lodging-house-keeper's daughter, who, it is almost
superfluous to say, not long afterwards married a younger and less
imaginative lover, he astonished his family and friends by very soon
making a second marriage. In one of his many journeyings from
and to London he made the acquaintance in a coach of a lady with
some property, named Bridgwater. It is not reported how much
time elapsed between the first meeting and their marriage, but the
latter took place in the first half of 1824. In August of the same
year they started on a trip to the Continent, during which his son,
then a lad of about fourteen or fifteen, joined them. For some
months they travelled about, visiting Paris, Turin, Florence, Rome,
Venice, Milan, Geneva, and by the Rhine to Holland. During this
tour he had opportunities of studying the Italian masters, and
described them, as well as the places he visited, in a series of letters
to the Morning Chronicle. He returned to London without his wife,
who never afterwards rejoined him. Those who might be expected
to give any information as to the cause of this abrupt termination
of the brief period of his second married life are silent, and we are
left to form our own conclusions. All we are told by Mr. "W. C.
Hazlitt is this : " Mr. Hazlitt and his son returned home alone. Mrs.
Hazlitt had stopped behind. At the end of a fortnight he wrote to
her, asking her when he should come to fetch her ; and the answer
which he got was that she had proceeded to Switzerland with her
xl MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
sister, and that they had parted for ever." A writer on Hazlitt —
Mr. Saintsbury — says very justly of this matter, " When a man with
such antecedents marries a woman of whom no one has anything
bad to say, lives with her for a year, chiefly on her money, and is
then quitted by her with the information that she will have nothing
more to do with him, it is not, I think, uncharitable to conjecture
that most of the fault is his."
The letters he wrote while on his journey were published the
following year (1826) in a volume entitled Notes of a Journey in
France and Italy. This memorial of travel is full of enjoyment,
observation, and thought. His conversation was described by one
who fell in with him on the journey as being better than any book
on the art pictorial he had ever read. His local descriptions —
the passage across the Alps, his sketches of Swiss and Italian
scenery, of Eome, Venice, and the Italian cities — are conspicuous
for their vividness. The productions of some of the great Italian
masters are criticised with his usual skill and felicity. The
opinions of a man so eminently qualified to, judge in such matters
were read with attention and interest. This volume has never been
reprinted.
We get a glimpse of Hazlitt during this journey in a forgotten
article in an early volume of Fraser's Magazine (March 1839). It is
written by Captain Medwin, the friend and biographer of Shelley.
The article is entitled " Hazlitt in Switzerland : A Conversation."
Medwin, who does not tell us how he came to meet Hazlitt, begins by
saying that he found him living in a cottage near Vevay, on the Lake
of Geneva. He describes him as by no means striking in appearance,
though not unprepossessing — his dress neglected, his face unshaven.
His countenance bore the marks of intense application, and there
was such a habitual expression of melancholy, as though he was
brooding over past miseries or indulging in hopeless views of the
future. His figure was emaciated and his vital energy apparently
very low. His body seemed only a tenement for spirit. A con-
versation ensued, the substance of which is given in five or six
pages. It was about Byron, Scott, Shakespeare, and other literary
topics. At its conclusion he entered into a long history of his
own literary wrongs, his neglect by the public, and his bitter per-
secution by the reviewers. The chord, thus touched, vibrated in
every nerve, and he spoke for half an hour with much rapidity, and
with an attempt at times to suppress his feelings, which was* dis-
tressing to both. At last, working himself up into a fury, he poured
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xli
forth the fiercest diatribes against his assailants. Medwin tried to
calm him, and then took his leave.
In 1824 he prepared a volume, Selections from the English Poets.
In this he was assisted by Lamb and Procter. Some poets (chiefly
living), whose works were copyright, were included in the collection.
An injunction being threatened, the volume was withdrawn from
sale. A few, however, got into circulation, one of which is in my
possession. In its original form, it extended to 822 royal octavo
double columns. It was issued in 1825 with a new title and frontis-
piece, and consisted of 562 pages, with his name on the title-page.
The authors not included in the re-issue are Eogers, Campbell,
Bloomfield, Crabbe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Scott, Lamb,
Montgomery, Byron, Moore, Hunt, Shelley, Thurlow, Keats, Milman,
Bowles, and Barry Cornwall. The selections are preceded by brief,
pithy, and comprehensive paragraphs, describing the characteristics
of each poet. In his preface he says : " I have made it my aim to
exhibit the characteristic and striking features of English poetry
and English genius ; and with this view have endeavoured to give
such specimens from each author as showed his peculiar powers of
mind, and the peculiar style in which he excelled."
In 1825 was published in one volume The Spirit of the Age, or
Contemporary Portraits. This work is regarded by some of Hazlitt's
critics as his best — the most matured in thought, the most impar-
tial and deliberate in judgment, and the most finished in style.
One calls it " The Harvest Home " of his mind ; another says that in
the delicate discrimination of the finer shades of character, and in
those evanescent forms of expression which an inferior artist might
in vain attempt to catch, he is the Clarendon of his age. He gives
portraits of Coleridge, Scott, Wordsworth, Byron, Brougham, and
a dozen more of his distinguished contemporaries, both political and
literary. The portrait of Byron is a masterpiece of analysis of that
poet's wayward genius and character. The character of Cobbett,
considered by many of Hazlitt's admirers as one of the best pieces
he ever wrote, and which originally appeared in Table-Talk in 1820,
is not given in the first edition of The Spirit of the Age, but appears
in the third, edited by his son, 1835, an(^ in subsequent editions.
The Plain-Speaker ; Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, 2 vols.,
1826, was the next work which he gave to the public. These essays
present a great variety of subjects discussed in Hazlitt's best manner.
The titles of some of them have only to be named to whet the
appetite of the reader. " Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers,"
xlii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
" On Application to Study," " On Reading Old Books," " On People
of Sense," " On Depth and Superficiality," " On Personal Character,"
" On the Qualifications Necessary to Success in Life," and many more.
The volume includes the most of the articles he contributed to the
London Magazine in 1820 and 1821. Talfourd has pronounced these
as well as most his previous essays " to differ not so much in degree
as in kind from that of all others of their class. There is a weight
and substance about them which makes us feel that, amidst all their
dexterous analysis, they are in no small measure creations. The
quantity of thought which is accumulated upon his favourite
subjects, the variety and richness of the illustrations, and the
strong sense of beauty and pleasure which pervades and animates
the composition, give them a place, if not above, yet apart from,
the writings of all other essayists. They have not, indeed, the
dramatic charm of the old Spectator and Tatler, nor the airy touch
with which Addison and Steele skimmed along the surface of
many-coloured life ; but they disclose the subtle essence of char-
acter, and trace the secret springs of the affections, with a more
learned and penetrating spirit of human dealing than either of these
essayists."
The work above described was the last collection of essays given
by Mr. Hazlitt to the public. His son afterwards gathered together
and published two volumes of essays contributed to various perio-
dicals, and not included in Table- Talk or The Plain- Speaker. They
will be found indispensable companions to these collections. It is
well, therefore, to give a brief account of these before proceeding to
describe the last two works from his pen, his Conversations with
Northcote and the Life of Napoleon. The two collections of essays
referred to are entitled Sketches and Essays, now first collected by his
son, 1839; Winterslow; Essays and Characters, written there, collected
by his son, 1850. In these two volumes will be found his memorable
paper, " My First Acquaintance with Poets " (which, in its complete
form, first appeared in " The Liberal " in 1823), his brilliant record of
a conversation at one of Lamb's evenings, under the title "Of Persons
One would Wish to have Seen," and the touching essays entitled
"On a Sun-Dial" and "A Farewell to Essay- Writing," written
at Winterslow Hutt in 1828. There are also included his characters
of Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Chatham, written in his earlier days, and
reprinted from The Eloquence of the British Senate. Besides those
named, there are twenty-seven other essays, each stamped with the
mint-mark of his genius, and which will be welcome to all lovers
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xliii
of English literature. Indeed, these two volumes include specimen*)
of Hazlitt as an essayist at his very best. In them we recognise
the familiar hand of the acute, wilful, unselfish, benevolent philo-
sopher, his unfailing sympathy with mankind at large, doing justice
to the good as well as bad sides of a question, and heartily relishing
beauty and genius wherever he found them, — enemies not excepted.
It may here be stated that in Hazlitt's Literary Remains, edited by
his son, 1836, will be found several essays not included in either of
the posthumous volumes named, nor in any of those published
during Hazlitt's lifetime. Among these is the memorable article
" The Fight," describing the pugilistic encounter between Hickman
and Neate in 1822 with marvellous vividness, and with an apparent
skill which would almost make one suppose that Hazlitt was an
"old hand" in that line, — a professional describer of prize-fights
for a sporting newspaper. I have been advised not to reprint this
paper, but Hazlitt must be shown in every phase ; an ardent admirer
pronounces it his chef-d'oeuvre.
In 1827 Hazlitt contributed an article to the Examiner entitled
"The Dandy School." It was written soon after the appearance
of "Vivian Grey" (not then published with Disraeli's name as
author), about which the fashionable world was then in ecstasies of
admiration. As this article has never been reprinted, it is deserv-
ing of notice here. In it he exposed the low aims of the novelist
in his usual incisive style, indignantly protested against the degrada-
tion of the functions of literature by such writers as the author of
"Vivian Grey" and Theodore Hook, and treated with wholesome
scorn the views of life and society embodied in the adventures
and conversations of their tuft-hunting heroes.
In 1826-27 a series of articles under the title of "Boswell
Kedivivus " appeared in the New Monthly Magazine. These articles
consist of a record of conversations with Mr. Northcote, the painter,
then about eighty years of age, whom Hazlitt had known so far
back as 1802 through his brother John. Northcote was a shrewd
observer, and had seen and heard a great deal in the world of art
and literature. He had great vivacity, plenty of anecdote, and many
recollections of people whom he had known. These attractions
drew Hazlitt frequently to his studio. He was generally considered
an ill-conditioned, malevolent, and unamiable man, and it is rather
singular that Hazlitt had so strong a relish for his society. He
says : " The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit
with the most regret, never did me the smallest favour. I once did
xliv MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
him an uncalled-for service, and we nearly quarrelled about it. If
I were in the utmost distress, I should just as soon think of asking
his assistance as of stopping a person on the highway. Practical
benevolence is not his forte. . . . His hand is closed ; but what of
that ? His eye is ever open, and reflects the universe. His silver
accents, beautiful, venerable as his silver hairs, but not scanted, flow
as a river. I never ate or drank in his house ; nor do I know or
care how the flies or spiders fare in it, or whether a mouse can get
a living. But I know that I can get there what I can get nowhere
else — a welcome, as if one was expected to drop in just at that
moment, a total absence of all respect of persons, and of airs of
self -consequence, refined thoughts, made more striking by ease and
simplicity of manner — the husk, the shell of humanity is left at
the door, and the spirit, mellowed by time, resides within ! . . . I
asked leave to write down one or two of these conversations ; he
said I might if I thought it worth while ; ' but,' he said, ' I do
assure you that you overrate them. You have not lived long
enough in society to be a judge.' ... I have generally taken him
as my lay-figure or model, and worked upon it, selon mon gr^ by
fancying how he would express himself on any occasion, and making
up a conversation according to this preconception in my mind. I
have also introduced little incidental details that never happened ;
thus, by lying, giving a greater air of truth to the scene — an art
understood by most historians ! In a word, Mr. Northcote is only
answerable for the wit, sense, and spirit there may be in these
papers ; I take all the dulness, the impertinence, and malice upon
myself. He has furnished the text. I fear I have often spoiled it
by the commentary." We are told by Mr. Patmore that in one of
these conversations Hazlitt reported something which Northcote
said should not have been printed. Northcote was furious, and
spoke of Hazlitt as " the diabolical Hazlitt," and wrote indignantly
to the editor of the New Monthly, in which the articles were appear-
ing. The editor replied that Hazlitt should never again write in
the Magazine. Notwithstanding this explosion, they continued to
meet as before, the latter taking notes with Northcote's knowledge,
and the conversations continuing to appear in the Magazine. These
conversations contain much fine thought and practical wisdom ;
many of the thoughts are strikingly original. The respective shares
of author and artist are not always easy to determine. It was saiJ.
by one critic of these conversations that all the ill-nature in the
book is Northcote's, and all, or almost all, the talent Hazlitt's.
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xlv
The work was not published in volume form until 1830. Its title
is Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. In the same year
was issued The Life of Titian; with Anecdotes of the Distinguished
Persons of his Time, by James Northcote, Esq., R.A. Although this
work bears the name of Mr. Northcote on its title-page, the material
furnished by him was of a very unconnected kind, and only made
available (with the addition of a great many notes) by Hazlitt's
manipulation. To swell out the work into two volumes, a trans-
lation of Ticozzi's Life of Titian, by Hazlitt and his son, was intro-
duced.
It now remains to speak of his last and largest work, The Life of
Napoleon Buonaparte, 4 vols. Vols. I. and II. 1828. Vols. III. and
IV. 1830. New edition, revised by his son, 4 vols. 1852. This Life
had loomed before his view for many years, and he meant it to be a
monumental work. During 1827 he worked upon his cherished
task at Winterslow Hutt. The first volume and the greater part
of the second were finished and ready for printing, when he was
taken ill, and had to return to London for medical advice. In the
following year the first two volumes were issued, and the author
went on perseveringly with the remaining two volumes. His
strength was visibly declining, and he was anxious to complete his
task. We are told that the finishing touches were put to the last
two volumes under the roof of Mr. Whiting, the printer, of Beaufort
House, in the Strand. The concluding volumes were sent forth to
the public in 1830. The sale of the first two volumes had not been
encouraging. Coming after Sir Walter Scott's work on the same
subject was a serious disadvantage, and interfered with the success
of the book. He was to have received ^500 for the copyright, but
his publisher's affairs became involved, and the result was that he
received no recompense for this laboriously and conscientiously per-
formed work. This led to a pecuniary crisis, disastrous in its issue
to Hazlitt, bringing with it the greatest inconvenience and annoyance.
His health and spirits suffered much under this misfortune. In the
beginning of 1830 he removed to 6 Frith Street, Soho, and there he
was threatened with a recurrence of his previous serious illness.
The Preface, which he intended to appear at the commencement of
the Life, was for some reason or other omitted, but it found a place
at the beginning of the third volume — not standing by itself, but
incorporated with and forming part of the text. He himself,
writing about this Preface, says in a letter to Mr. Charles Cowden
Clarke : " In Paris the Preface was thought a masterpiece, the best
xlvi MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
and only possible defence of Buonaparte, and quite new there."
Talfourd, in his "Thoughts upon the Intellectual Character of
William Hazlitt," devotes several pages to an ingenious explanation
of his admiration of Napoleon. One of Hazlitt's reasons for justifying
this predilection to himself was no doubt the revolutionary origin of
his hero, and the contempt with which he trampled upon the claims
of legitimacy and humbled the pride of kings ; but Talfourd points
out other reasons, arising from the constitution of Hazlitt's mind,
which help us to understand this idolatrous worship. He does not
speak with unqualified admiration of the work. He considers it
as often confused and spiritless, although "redeemed by scattered
thoughts of true originality and depth," and descriptions, "written with
a master's hand," such as that of the disastrous retreat from Moscow.
At times " the author's strength becomes concentrated, his narrative
assumes an epic dignity and fervour, and glows with 'the long-
resounding march and energy divine.' " Mr. Fonblanque, one of the
most acute of our political writers, and whose judgments are always
characterised by discrimination and fairness, in a review of this
work in the Examiner, says, " With respect to the narrative, it is
rapid, spontaneous, and abounding with the mental touches which
so peculiarly distinguish this writer ; although it certainly wants
something of form and due digestion regarded as the record of a
series of great actions and important events. To Napoleon, as a man
of commanding intellect, Mr. Hazlitt will, by some, be considered
too favourable. It is much to say, however, that in no instance
does he spare him when either his grand characteristics or his
passions bring him into opposition to the great cause of liberty or
the general benefit of mankind. . . . There is a noble and eloquent
exposition of the inevitable results of a free press, which is admi-
rably demonstrative of the utter inability, from the constitution
and nature of the human mind, of an eternal resistance on the
part of- oppression and tyranny to the operation of the interchange
of ideas which it produces. . . . We will venture to assert that this
work displays a deeper insight into the sources and principles of
morals and politics, in brief, rapid, and lightning glances — often as
it were en passant — than nine out of ten of the formal treatises which
are regarded as profound authority. We would rather, for instance,
be the author of the remarks therein on the character of Robespierre
and the Reign of Terror, than of the whole of Burke's great and
high-wrought work."
Before concluding the record of Hazlitt's works, I may direct
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xlvii
attention to two papers of his, hitherto unreprinted, which appeared
the year after his death. They may be of interest to those who wish
to know his opinion on the subjects discussed, viz., " The Punishment
of Death " and " The Emancipation of the Jews." The latter will be
found in the Taller, March 28, 1831, and the former in Fraser's
Magazine, January 1831. I may also add that two articles from
his pen were written a few months before his death, and appeared
in the New Monthly Magazine. They were entitled " The Free
Admission" and "The Sick Chamber." The latter will be found
in the following Selections ; they have not been included in any of
the volumes of his collected Essays.
Pecuniary anxieties and disappointments bore heavily upon
him during 1830, and he grew gradually feebler. The stirring
events in France in July of that year seemed to give him new
life for a while, and came to him in his shattered condition
like a sudden and unexpected gleam of sunshine. By the tender
care of some of his friends he seemed to rally slightly at times, but
in the course of the summer he grew weaker and worse. Still he
was able to think and write a little. His grandson tells us that he
composed a paper on " Personal Politics," in view of the then recent
deposition of Charles X. and the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty.
It was something to have lived to see that. "I saw him (once
only)," says his friend Procter, "as he lay, ghastly, shrunk, and
helpless, on the bed from which he never afterwards rose. His
mind seemed to have weathered all the danger of extreme sickness,
and to be safe and as strong as ever. But the physical portion had
endured sad decay. He could not lift his hand from the coverlet ;
and his voice was changed, and diminished to a hoarse whistle,
resembling the faint scream that I have heard from birds. I never
was so sensible of the power of Death before." All through the
month of August he was struggling with death. He seemed to live
on " by a pure act of volition." He asked those who were- with
him to fetch his mother to him, that he might see her once more
before he died. But this was impossible ; she was in Devonshire
and eighty-four years of age. His old and ever-dear friend, Charles
Lamb, was beside him at the close, on the i8th of September. The
end was so peaceful, that his son, who was sitting by his bedside, did
not know that he had passed away till the breathing had ceased for
a moment or two. The last words he uttered were, " Well, I've had
a happy life." Let it be recorded to the honour of Francis Jeffrey
that he sent Hazlitt ^50, in reply to an application made from hia
xlviii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
sick-bed, but the kind gift did not arrive until after his death. Mr.
R. H. Home says that those who nursed him and cared for him
during his last illness were Charles Lamb, Mr. Patmore (father of
the poet), and Mr. Basil Montagu. " I brought an Italian artist, who
took an admirable plaster cast from Hazlitt's face and the upper part
of his head. The countenance was grandly taken. It had a latent
smile, not unlike that which gradually dawns upon one after gazing
for a time at some faces of the Egyptian sculptures." Wells, the
author of " Joseph and his Brethren," went with Home to see the
body. He had at one time been intimate with Hazlitt. He after-
wards raised a tablet to his memory in the Church of St. Anne's,
Soho, where he lies buried. The inscription on the tablet is a long
one, and will be found in the " Literary Remains."
" When Hazlitt died," said Bulwer, " he left no successor ; others
may equal him, but none resemble. I confess that few deaths of the
great writers of my time ever affected me more painfully than his.
For of most of those who, with no inferior genius, have gone before
him, it may be said that in their lives they tasted the sweets of their
immortality, they had their consolations of glory ; and if fame can
atone for the shattered nerve, the jaded spirit, the wearied heart of
those ' who scorn delight and live laborious days,' verily they have
their reward. But Hazlitt went down to the dust without having
won the crown for which he so bravely struggled ; his reputation,
great amongst limited circles, was still questionable to the world.
He who had done so much for the propagation of thought, from
whose wealth so many had filled their coffers, left no stir on the
surface from which he sank to the abyss. ... A great man sinking
amidst the twilight of his own renown, after a brilliant and un-
clouded race, if a solemn, is an inspiring and elating influence. But
Nature has no sight more sad and cheerless than the sun of a genius
which the clouds have so long and drearily overcast, that there
are few to mourn and miss the luminary when it sinks from the
horizon."
HAZLITT AS A CRITIC AND ESSAYIST.
As a critic and essayist, Hazlitt takes a deservedly high place in
English literature. His writings bear upon them the impress of a
vigorous and original genius. They are characterised by genuine
eloquence and fine perception of every kind of beauty, by sincerity
and earnestness, and for the most part, when disturbing influences
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. xlix*
were not present, by an unerring critical judgment ; and at times
his page sparkles with epigrammatic brilliancy. His thoughts are
expressed in vigorous, idiomatic, vivid, easy-flowing language. It is
to be regretted that so few readers of the present day are acquainted
with his works. There are several reasons for this. One of these
reasons — upon which I have enlarged in the previous part of this
Memoir — is the hostility directed against him during his lifetime
by an influential class of critics, who were at the head of powerful
literary organs on the Government side of politics. Hazlitt was
an uncompromising politician. He was on the popular side, and
evinced the most strenuous opposition to the existing Governments,
at home and abroad. His thorough integrity, his denunciation of
corruption and official servility, and his unswerving consistency,
rendered him an object of hatred to the supporters of "things as
they are ; " and led to those personal attacks upon his works and
literary character which undoubtedly injured his popularity as an
author, and left behind them influences and prejudices which have
not yet altogether ceased to act unfavourably upon his reputation.
Another cause which has diminished his influence is the voluminous-
ness of his writings. An author who has left so much behind him
is at a disadvantage compared with one of equal power whose works
are contained within a moderate compass. For twenty years he
was constantly writing for his livelihood, and thus often compelled
to the act of composition when his health and surroundings were
anything but favourable to thought. His consciousness of in-
tellectual power, assisted by unusual command of language, induced
him to draw continually on his mental resources, leading in some
of his writings to repetition, and to a certain egotistical tone,
which his enemies knew how to turn to his disadvantage, and for
which the ability and originality of other portions were not allowed
to atone.
Hazlitt's writings abound in acute and eloquently expressed
opinions on literature, art, life, and manners. No critic so
thoroughly imparts to his readers the sense of his own enjoyment
of genius, as well as reveals the process of it with such success.
His critical judgments are sometimes warped by personal and
political prejudices ; but, with all their drawbacks, there are none
superior to his in vigour and general truthfulness. Even when
his judgments are at fault, they are hardly calculated to mislead the
taste of the reader, from the ease with which it is perceived and re
ferred to its source in caprice or a momentary fit of spleen. Hazlitt
D
1 MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
infused an entirely new spirit into the criticism of his day. He
showed that the way to comprehend a work was to enjoy it, and
that just perception is closely allied to sympathy. If we trace the
history of English criticism, we shall find that Hazlitt began a new
era ; and whatever may be our opinion of his estimates of individual
writers and artists, it must be allowed that his way of treating their
productions — that is, sympathisingly, and not merely in a conven-
tional or prescriptive manner — is a great advance upon the previous
methods of treatment. The word "critical" hardly conveys a true idea
of his mode of dealing with the works and genius of great writers.
It is a kind of treatment which had never before been attempted, or
even dreamed of. It has been described as not so much an art
cultivated, as a new and beautiful sphere of literature created,
ministering wholly to refined enjoyment. He is less a writer than
an illustrator, and less an illustrator than an enthusiastic expositor
and panegyrist, whose eulogium is the spontaneous overflow of an
exquisite perception of, and an intense sympathy with, the beauties
on which he expatiates. His appreciation of literature and art was
more earnest, suggestive, and discriminating than that of any critic
of his time or before him ; while his style was calculated to rivet
attention by its remarkable clearness, fluency, and vigour, its warmth
and richness of colouring. His knowledge of the fine arts, the drama,
works of fancy and fiction, and other departments of literature,
taken severally, may not equal that of some other writers, but
taken altogether, is certainly unrivalled. His works are full of
spirit and vivacity, and there is at the same time an intensity and
vividness of conception which embodies ideas that are so volatile
and fugitive as to escape the grasp of a slower, though even pro-
founder intellect. He professes to throw aside the conventional for-
mality of authorship, and to give his thoughts to the world with the
freedom and frankness of Montaigne. He has fine sensibility, great
imaginative power, remarkable acuteness of intellect, and a masterly
gift of expression. His beauties are procured by a great expendi-
ture of thinking, and some of his single strokes and flashes reveal
more to the reader's understanding than whole pages of an ordinary
author. He is one of the most suggestive of writers. There are
few who make their readers think so much, and he is constantly
putting us on the track of speculation or intellectual sympathy.
He makes life interesting by hinting to us its latent significance,
and he reveals the mysterious charm of character by analysing its
elements and probing its inmost depth. Seldom have the inmost
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. li
experiences of an author been more completely revealed than in the
case of Hazlitt. There are few salient points and startling passages
in his life that he has omitted to look upon or glance at in his
Essays. The processes and impressions of his own mind had such
an interest for him, that he feels a delight in recording them and
speculating on them. In treating of a work of art or a favourite
author, he brought to bear on their interpretation all the sym-
pathetic insight born of his own experience. He makes us ac-
quainted with all his tastes and antipathies, his prejudices and
passions. He reveals his errors and weaknesses, and is anything
but a self-laudator. Indeed, authorship was to him a kind of con-
fessional. It has been remarked that some of his best essays may
be said to be in a sense autobiographical, because in them he recalls
his enthusiasms and the passionate hopes on which he fed his spirit.
Some of these apostrophes and references to his past life are not to
be matched for tenderness and sad regret by anything in the range
of literature. An American critic, alluding to this peculiarity of
Hazlitt's — his indulgence in retrospective thought and self -revelation
— says, " He was an epicurean in this regard, delighting to renew the
vivid experience of the past by the glow of deliberate reminiscence,
and to associate his best moods for work and his most genial studies
with natural scenery and physical comfort. No writer ever more
delicately fused sensation and sentiment, or drew from sunshine,
fireside, landscape, air, viands, and vagabondage more delectable
adjuncts."
The extreme wilfulness of his character often led him into the
indulgence of strong prejudices and induced a fondness for para-
dox ; but even his paradoxes often serve as admirable stimulants
to thought. In an unreprinted essay of his in a newspaper
in 1828, "On the Causes of Popular Opinion," he explains his
love of paradox in this way : " All abstract reasoning is in ex-
tremes, or only takes up one view of a question, or what is called
the principle of the thing ; and if you want to give this popularity
and effect, you are in danger of running into extravagance and
hyperbole. I have had to bring out some obscure distinction, or
to combat some strong prejudice, and in doing this with all my
might, may have often overshot the mark. It was easy to correct
the excess of truth afterwards."
He possessed a deep and earnest feeling for truth, which was
indeed the guiding-star of all his thoughts and speculations. No
truer words were ever spoken of him than those of Talfourd
lii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
when he says that " he had as passionate a desire for truth as others
have for wealth, or power, or fame." His purpose was always pure
and earnest, and no temptation could induce him to pervert or to
conceal the faith that was in him. One of the most profitable
results accruing from, his critical writings is the intellectual zeal
which they communicate, sending us to the writers on whom he
is discoursing with a whetted appetite, eager to relish their beauties.
So keen is his enjoyment of every trait of beauty and truth in
literature and in life which forcibly strikes his imagination, so
warm the feeling that pervades his thought, and so rich the colour-
ing in which the thought is invested, that he at once makes captive
our sympathies, and compels us "by his so potent art" to join in
his admiration. One remarkable peculiarity in his writings is his
love of quotation, which is always just, striking, and unmistakably
felicitous. Emerson says, " We are as much informed of a writer's
genius by what he selects as by what he originates. We read the
quotation with his eyes, and find a new and fervent sense." Some
of Hazlitt's essays were so studded with rich gems of thought, that
the pages shine like cloth of gold. To the charges made by some
of his critics that he was inconsistent, that he had a narrow range
of ideas and repeated himself, and that he made personal attacks on
his friends, he gives the following answer in a newspaper article
which has never been reprinted : — " I have been accused of in-
consistency for writing an essay, for instance, on the Advantages
of Pedantry, and another on the Ignorance of the Learned, as if
ignorance had not its comforts as well as knowledge. The person-
alities I have fallen into have never been gratuitous. If I have
sacrificed my friends, it has always been to a theory. I have been
found fault with for repeating myself, and for a narrow range of
ideas. To a want of general reading I plead guilty, and am sorry
for it ; but perhaps if I had read more, I might have thought less.
As to my barrenness of invention, I have at least glanced over a
number of subjects — painting, poetry, prose, plays, politics, parlia-
mentary speakers, metaphysical lore, books, men and things. There
is some point, some fancy, some feeling, some taste, shown in treat-
ing of these. Which of my conclusions have been reversed ? Is it
what I said ten years ago of the Bourbons, which raised the war-
whoop against me ? Surely all the world are of that opinion now.
I have then given proof of some talent, and of more honesty ; if
there is haste or want of method, there is no common-place, nor a
line that licks the dust ; and if I do not appear to more advantage,
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. liii
I at least appear such as I am. ... I hope to be acquitted of an
absolute dearth of resources, and want of versatility in the direc-
tion of my studies."
HAZLITT'S PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
We have one or two descriptive accounts of Hazlitt by friends
which enable us to form some notion of his personal appearance
and ways. Talfourd describes him to have been "of the middle
eize, with a handsome and eager countenance, worn by sickness and
thought, and dark hair, which had curled stiffly over the temples,
and was only of late years sprinkled with grey. His gait was
slouching and awkward, and his dress neglected ; but when he
began to talk, he could not be mistaken for a common man. In the
company of persons with whom he was not familiar his bashfulness
was painful ; but when he became entirely at ease, and entered on
a favourite topic, no one's conversation was ever more delightful.
He did not talk for effect, to dazzle, or surprise, or annoy, but
with the most simple and honest desire to make his view of the
subject entirely apprehended by his hearer. There was sometimes
an obvious struggle to do this to his own satisfaction ; he seemed
labouring to drag his thought to light from its deep lurking-place ;
and, with modest distrust of that power of expression which he
had found so late in life, he often betrayed a fear that he had
failed to make himself understood, and recurred to the subject again
and again, that he might be assured he had succeeded. In argu-
ment he was candid and liberal ; there was nothing about him
pragmatical or exclusive." For many years previous to his death
he abstained entirely from the use of alcoholic liquors, having found
indulgence in them to be injurious to his health. We are told
that the cheerfulness with which he made this resolution and
adhered to it was one of the most amiable traits in his character.
To give Talfourd's words, "He had no censure for others, who,
with the same motive, were less wise or less resolute ; nor did he
think he had earned, by his own constancy, any right to intrude
advice. . . . He avowed that he yielded to necessity ; and instead
of avoiding the sight of that which he could no longer taste, he
was seldom so happy as when he sat with friends at their wine,
participating in the sociality of the time, and renewing his own past
enjoyment in that of his companions, without regret and without
liv MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
envy. ... In society, as in politics, he was no flincher. He loved
'to hear the chimes at midnight,' without considering them as a
summons to rise. At these seasons, when in his happiest mood,
he used to dwell on the conversational powers of his friends, and
live over again the delightful hours he had passed with them,
repeat the pregnant puns that one had made, tell over again a
story with which another had convulsed the room, or expand in
the eloquence of a third ; always best pleased when he could detect
some talent which was unregarded by the world, and giving alike
to the celebrated and the unknown due honour."
Mr. Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) saw a great deal of
Hazlitt during the last twelve or thirteen years of his life, and has
left on record his impressions of him. He first met him at supper
at Leigh Hunt's. He expected to find a severe, defiant-looking being,
instead of which he met a grave man, diffident, almost awkward in
manner, whose appearance did not impress him with much respect.
" He had a quick restless eye, however, which opened eagerly when
any good or bright observation was made ; and he found at the
conclusion of the evening, that when any question arose, the most
sensible reply always came from him. He had nothing that was
parsimonious or mean in his character, and never thought of eating
or drinking except when hunger or thirst reminded him of these
wants. With the exception of a very rare dinner or supper with a
friend or intimate, his time was generally spent alone. After a late
breakfast he took his quire of foolscap paper, and commenced writing,
in a large hand, almost as large as text, his day's work. There never
was any rough draft or copy. He wrote readily — not very swiftly,
but easily, as if he had made up his mind ; and this was the manu-
script that went to the printer. He was of the middle size, with
eager, expressive eyes ; near which his black hair, sprinkled sparsely
with grey, curled round in a wiry, resolute manner. His grey eyes,
not remarkable in colour, expanded into great expression when occa-
sion demanded it. Being very shy, however, they often evaded your
steadfast look. They never (as has been asserted by some one) had
a sinister expression ; but they sometimes flamed with indignant
glances, when their owner was moved to anger ; like the eyes of
other angry men. At home his style of dress (or undress) was perhaps
slovenly, because there was no one to please ; but he always pre-
sented a very clean and neat appearance when he went abroad. His
mode of walking was loose, weak, and unsteady, although his arms
displayed strength, which he used to put forth when he played at
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. lv
rackets with Martin Burney and others. He played in the old Fives
Court (now pulled down), and occasionally exhibited impatience when
the game went against him. The whole of many, and the half of
more days, were consumed in this amusement. It was here that he
witnessed the play at fives of the celebrated John Kavanagh, of whom
he has written an account — at once an eulogy and an epitaph."
Mr. P. G. Patmore, who knew Hazlitt during the last sixteen or
seventeen years of his life, devotes a large portion of the three
volumes called "My Friends and Acquaintances" to recollections
of him. From these the following sentences are taken : — " For depth,
force, and variety of intellectual expression, a finer head and face
than Hazlitt's were never seen. I speak of them when his coun-
tenance was not dimmed and obscured by illness, or clouded and
deformed by those fearful indications of internal passion which he
never even attempted to conceal. The expression of his face, when
anything was said that seriously offended him, or when any pecu-
liarly painful recollection passed across his mind, was truly awful
— more so than can be conceived as within the capacity of the human
countenance ; except perhaps by those who have witnessed Edmund
Kean's last scene of Sir Giles Overreach from the front of the pit.
But when he was in good health, and in a tolerable humour with
himself and the world, his face was more truly and entirely answer-
able to the intellect that spoke through it than any other I ever
saw, either in life or on canvas ; and its crowning portion, the brow
and forehead, was, to my thinking, quite unequalled for mingled
capacity and beauty. . . . The forehead, as I have hinted, was mag-
nificent ; the nose precisely that (combining strength with lightness
and elegance) which physiognomists have assigned as evidence of a
fine and highly cultivated taste ; though there was a peculiar char-
acter about the nostrils, like that observable in those of a fiery and
unruly horse. The mouth, from its ever-changing form and char-
acter, could scarcely be described, except as to its astonishingly
varied power of expression, which was equal to, and greatly re-
sembled, that of Edmund Kean. . . . He always lived (during the
period of my intimacy with him) in furnished lodgings. . . . He
usually rose at from one to two o'clock in the day — scarcely ever
before .twelve ; and, if he had no work in hand, he would sit over
his breakfast (of excessively strong black tea and a toasted French
roll) till four or five in the afternoon — silent, motionless, and self-
absorbed, as a Turk over his opium-pouch ; for tea served him pre-
cisely in this capacity. It was the only stimulant he ever took, and
Ivi MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
at the same time the only luxury ; the delicate state of his digestive
organs prevented him from tasting any fermented liquors, or touching
any food but beef or mutton, or poultry or game. ... A cup of his
tea (if you happened to come in for the first brewage of it) was a
peculiar thing ; I have never tasted anything like it. He always
made it himself, using with it a great quantity of sugar and cream.
To judge from its occasional effects upon myself, I should say that
the quantity he drank of this tea produced ultimately a most injurious
effect upon him. . . . His breakfast and tea were frequently the
only meals that he took till late at night, when he usually ate a
hearty supper of hot meat. This he invariably took at a tavern.
. . . Among the houses he frequented was the Southampton Coffee-
House, in Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. This he has
immortalised in one of the most amusing of his essays, ' On Coffee-
House Politicians.' Here, for several years, he used to hold a sort
of evening levee, where, after a certain hour at night, he was always
to be found, and always more or less ready to take part in that sort
of desultory talk in which he excelled every man I have ever met
with. Here, in that little bare and comfortless coffee-room, have I
scores of times seen the daylight peep through the crevices of the
window-shutters upon ' Table-Talk ' that was worthy an intellectual
feast of the gods. . . . With regard to his actual method of com-
position, he never thought for half an hour beforehand as to what
he should say on any given subject, or even as to the general manner
in which he should treat it. ... The total want of premeditation
with which he could produce, in a singularly short space of time, an
essay full of acute or profound thought, copious, with various and
novel illustrations, and perfectly original views, couched in terse,
polished, vigorous, and epigrammatic language, was quite extra-
ordinary, and is only to be explained by the two facts — first, that
lie never by choice wrote on any topic or question in which he did
not, for some reason or other, feel a deep personal interest ; and
secondly, because on all questions on which he did so feel, he had
thought, meditated, and pondered, in the silence and solitude of his
own. heart, for years and years before he ever contemplated doing
more than thinking of them."
ESTIMATES OF HAZLITT,
Before bringing this Memoir to a close, it will be well to place on
record a few estimates of Hazlitt's genius, writings, and character
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. Ivii
from pens of recognised authority. They will serve as an example
of the singular consensus of opinion regarding this remarkable
writer among men of high literary reputation as well as of the most
diverse intellectual gifts. They are selected from a large array of
criticism that would fill a volume, including the names of De
Quincey, Jeffrey, Leigh Hunt, John Forster, Albany Fonblanque,
Miss Mitford, W. J. Fox, Ebenezer Elliot, Mrs. Jameson, George
Gilfillan, Sir A. Alison, and many others. I give only seven, which
will represent, as it were, in historical order, the best critical and
general estimates of Hazlitt from the time of his death, nearly sixty
years ago, down to the present day.
Foremost of all opinions regarding Hazlitt must be placed the
beautiful and touching words of his oldest and best-beloved friend,
Charles Lamb. They were written on an occasion when he felt bound
to defend his friend against some remarks from a hostile quarter.
Southey had paid Lamb a compliment at the expense of some of his
companions, Hazlitt being included among them. At this time there
had been a slight interruption of the friendship between them, arising
from a misunderstanding on the part of Hazlitt. This did not matter
to Lamb. He loved Hazlitt too well to allow any temporary ill-
temper or waywardness on the part of the former to interfere with
his affection and esteem for him, and he refused the proffered com-
pliment at such a price. Lamb, with his fine sense of the weakness
no less than of the strength of human nature, always made allowance
for Hazlitt's errors and inconsistencies, treating them with a wise
and just consideration. He always spoke freely of him, behind his
back or before his face, but never disparagingly. In canvassing his
faults of character, he always bore in mind, and called to mind
in others, the rare and admirable qualities by which they were
accompanied, and with which they were probably naturally linked.
Hazlitt felt this, and it was the secret of his regard for Lamb. As
the tribute to Hazlitt referred to was a public one, it at once put
an end to the misunderstanding, and no cloud ever afterwards
intervened between them. Lamb's words were these, and they will
always stand as a noble record of his heart and intellect : — " I stood
well with him for fifteen years (the proudest of my life), and have
ever spoke my full mind of him to some to whom his panegyric
must naturally be least tasteful. I never in thought swerved from
him ; I never betrayed him ; I never slackened in my admiration
for him ; I was the same to him (neither better nor worse), though
he could not see it, as in the days when he thought fit to trust me.
Iviii MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
At this instant he may be preparing for me some compliment above
my deserts, as he has sprinkled such among his admirable books, for
which I rest his debtor ; or, for anything I know or can guess to the
contrary, he may be about to read a lecture on my weaknesses. He
is welcome to them (as he was to my humble hearth), if they can
divert a spleen or ventilate a fit of sullenness. I wish he would
not quarrel with the world at the rate he does ; but the reconciliation
must be effected by himself, and I despair of living to see that day.
But, protesting against much that he has written, and some things
which he chooses to do ; judging him by his conversations, which I
enjoyed so long and relished so deeply, or by his books, in those
places where no clouding passion intervenes — I should belie my
own conscience if I said less than that I think W. H. to be, in his
natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breath-
ing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy which was betwixt
us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved
it entire ; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or
expecting to find, such another companion."
Next among these records of opinion regarding Hazlitt I place
the following desultory remarks by Bryan Waller Procter, known
in literature by the nom de plume of Barry Cornwall, and as the
father of the poetess, Adelaide Procter. Procter was the intimate
and esteemed friend of Hazlitt for sixteen or seventeen years before
his death, and the companion of Lamb, Hunt, and other men of
letters of the time. These remarks are little more than a rough
draft, jotted down between his seventy-fifth and seventy -ninth years
— mere memoranda for a more complete portrait which he contem-
plated. He died at the age of eighty -seven. He was a man of
refined literary tastes and culture, and an accomplished writer both
in prose and verse. He had a sound judgment and wide sympathies,
and was capable of forming a sober and unexaggerated estimate of
his contemporaries. Hence the value of his remarks on the subject
of this Memoir.
"Justice has never been done, I think, to the great and varied
talents of William Hazlitt. The opinion of the dominant party
('public opinion,' as it is called) was directed against him during
his life, and that opinion has continued to prevail, amongst the
unthinking and easy multitude, ever since. . . . Hazlitt himself
had strong passions and a few prejudices ; and his free manifes-
tation of these were adduced as an excuse for the slander and
animosity with which he was perpetually assailed. He attacked
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. lix
others, indeed (a few only), and of these he expressed his dislike
in terms sometimes too violent perhaps. . . . Yet, when an oppor-
tunity arose to require from him an unbiassed opinion, he was
always just. . . . Subject to the faults arising out of this his warm
temperament, he possessed qualities worthy of affection and respect.
He was a simple, unselfish man, void of all deception and pretence ;
and he had a clear, acute intellect, when not traversed by some
temporary passion or confused by a strong prejudice. Almost all
men come to the consideration of a subject (not mathematical) with
some prejudice or predilection. And even a prejudice, as Burke
says, has its kernel (which should be preserved) as well as its husk
(which should be cast aside). Like many others, he was sometimes
swayed by his affections. He loved the first Napoleon beyond the
bounds of reason. He loved the worker better than the idler.
He hated pretensions supported merely by rank or wealth or repute,
or by the clamour of factions. And he felt love and hatred in an
intense degree. But he was never dishonest. He never struck
down the weak nor trod on the prostrate. He was never treache-
rous, never tyrannical, never cruel. . . . The history of Hazlitt is
like that of some of the scholars of former times, who were always
face to face with misfortune. Merit (especially without prudence)
is of insufficient strength to oppose injustice, which is always
without pity. It seems to be a hopeless task to be always toiling
up an ascent, where power and malignity united stand armed at
the top. Then at one time he had ill-health, which added its
weight to the constant obloquy with which he was assailed. To
oppose this were the strength arising from a sense of injustice and
the native vigour of his own soul. He had a grand masculine
intellect, which conquered details as well as entireties, and rejected
nothing which helped the understanding. . . . The decisions of
a hostile majority pressed down (as I have said) the reputation of
William Hazlitt, and no one has taken the trouble to elevate it
to its proper position since. . . . Hazlitt's range of thought was
very extensive. He wrote on books and men, on politics and
manners. Metaphysics were not too remote from him, nor was
the stage too trivial or too near. In his pages you may read of
Berkeley and Hume, of Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne.
You may recreate yourself with Shakespeare and Milton, with
Wordsworth, with Pope, and Lord Byron. He has commented
on philosophers and divines, on tragedy and comedy, on poetry
and politics, on morals, on manners, on style, on reasoning. . . ,
Ix MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
Hazlitt's critical style, in all cases where he does not overwhelm
it by elaborate eulogy, is strong, picturesque, and expressive. As
a piece of eloquent writing, few passages in literature surpass his
'Introduction to the Literature of Elizabeth.' Leigh Hunt said,
cleverly, that his 'criticisms on art threw a light on the subject
as from a painted window.' . . . No man was competent to write
upon Hazlitt who did not know him personally. Some things of
which he has been accused were referable merely to temporary
humour or irritability, which was not frequent, and which was
laid aside in an hour. At other times (by far the greater portion
of his life) he was a candid and reasonable man. He felt the
injuries and slanders, however, which were spit forth upon him,
acutely, and resented them. He was not one of those easy,
comfortable, and so-called 'good-natured' men, who are simply
inaccessible to strong emotions, and from whom the minor ills of
life fall off, without disturbing them, like rain from a pent-house
top. . . . His essays are full of thought ; full of delicate perceptions.
They do not speak of matters which he has merely seen or remem-
bered, but enter into the rights and wrongs of persons ; into the
meaning and logic of things ; into causes and results ; into motives
and indications of character. He is, in short, not a raconteur, but
a reasoner. This will be observed in almost all his numerous
essays. If he is often ostentatious, that is to say, if he accumulates
image upon image, reason upon reason, it is simply that he is more
in earnest than other writers."
A few sentences have already been given from Bulwer's " Thoughts
on the Genius and Writings of William Hazlitt," contributed to the
Literary Remains, which appeared six years after his death. The
following sentences are taken from the same article : — " He had a
keen sense of the Beautiful and the Subtle ; and what is more, he
was deeply imbued with sympathies for the Humane. He ranks
high among the social writers — his intuitive feeling was in favour of
the multitude ; yet had he nothing of the demagogue in literature ; he
did not pander to a single vulgar passion. . . . Posterity will do him
justice. ... A complete collection of his works is all the monument
he demands. To the next age he will stand amongst the foremost
of the thinkers of the present ; and that late and tardy retribution
will assuredly be his, which compensates to others the neglect to
which men of genius sometimes (though not so frequently as we
believe) are doomed ; — that retribution which, long after the envy
they provoked is dumb, and the errors they themselves committed
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. ki
are forgotten — invests with interest everything that is associated
with their names ; — making it an honour even to have been their
contemporaries."
Thirty years later the same critic again spoke of Hazlitt in the
following terms : — " Amidst all his intolerant prejudices and his
wild extravagance of apparent hate, there are in Hazlitt from time
to time — those times not unfrequent — outbursts of sentiment scarcely
surpassed among the writers of our century for tender sweetness,
rapid perceptions of truth and beauty in regions of criticism then
but sparingly cultured — nay, scarcely discovered — and massive frag-
ments of such composition as no hand of ordinary strength could
hew out of the unransacked mines of our native language. . . It
is not as a guide that Hazlitt can be useful to any man. His
merit is that of a companion in districts little trodden — a companion
strong and hardy, who keeps our sinews in healthful strain ; rough
and irascible ; whose temper will constantly offend us if we do not
steadily preserve our own ; but always animated, vivacious, brilliant
in his talk ; suggestive of truths even when insisting on paradoxes ;
and of whom, when we part company, we retain impressions stamped
with the crown-mark of indisputable genius." (Quarterly Review,
January 1867, "Charles Lamb and Some of his Companions.")
" Hazlitt," says Thackeray (in a review of Home's " New Spirit of
the Age" in the Morning Chronicle, 1845), "was one of the keenest
and brightest critics that ever lived. With partialities and pre-
judices innumerable, he had a wit so keen, a sensibility so exquisite,
an appreciation of humour or pathos, or even of the greatest art,
so lively, quick, and cultivated, that it was always good to know
what were the impressions made by books, or men, or pictures on
such a mind ; and that, as there were not probably a dozen men in
England with powers so varied, all the rest of the world might be
rejoiced to listen to the opinions of this accomplished critic. He
was of so different a caste to the people who gave authority in his
day — the pompous big-wigs and schoolmen, who never could pardon
him his familiarity of manner, so unlike their own — his popular —
too popular — habits and sympathies, so much beneath their dignity.
... In all his modes of life and thought he was so different from
the established authorities, with their degrees and white neckcloths,
that they hooted the man down with all the power of their lungs,
and disdained to hear truth that came from such a rugged philo-
sopher."
In her "History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace,"
Ixu MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
Harriet Martineau thus writes of Hazlitt :— " In Hazlitt we lost the
prince of critics ; and after he was gone, there were many who could
never look at a picture, or see a tragedy, or ponder a point of morals,
or take a survey of any public character, without a melancholy sense
of loss in Hazlitt's absence and silence. There c&n scarcely be a
stronger gratification of the critical faculties than in reading Hazlitt'a
essays. He was not an amiable and happy, but he was a strong and
courageous-minded man. His constitutional irritability was too
restless to be soothed by the influences of literature and art, and
his friends suffered from his temper almost as much as himself.
Yet he was regarded with respect for his ingenuous courage in
saying what was true about many important things and persons of
his time, of whom it was fitting that the truth should be told.
Hazlitt would have passed his life as an artist, but that he could
not satisfy his own critical taste, and had no patience with any
position but the first in any department in which he worked.
The greater part of his life, therefore, was spent in a province of
literature in which he was supreme in his own day, if not alone.
As an essayist, he had rivals ; as a critical essayist, he had none."
Dr. Richard Garnett, in a carefully written and discriminative
article on William Hazlitt in the new edition of the Encyclopcedia
Britannica, thus speaks of this writer : " Hazlitt's criticisms on Shake-
speare, the Early Dramatists, the English Poets, Comic Writers, the
Novelists and Essayists, are masterpieces of ingenious and felicitous
exposition. ... As an essayist, he is even more effective than as a
critic, for his style of composition allows more scope to the striking
individuality of his character. Being enabled to select his own sub-
jects, he escapes dependence upon others either for his manner or his
illustrations, and presents himself by turns as a metaphysician, a
moralist, a humourist, a painter of manners and characteristics, but
always, whatever his ostensible theme, deriving the essence of his
commentary from his own bosom. This combination of intense sub-
jectivity with strict adherence to his subject is one of Hazlitt's most
distinctive and creditable traits. Intellectual truthfulness is a
passion with him. He steeps his topic in the hues of his own
individuality, but never uses it as a means of self-display. . . .
With many serious defects both on the intellectual and the moral
side, Hazlitt's character in both had at least the merit of sincerity
and consistency. He was a compound of intellect and passion, and
the refinement of his critical analysis is associated with vehement
eloquence and glowing imagery. He was essentially a critic, a
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZL1TT. Ixiii
dissector, and, as Bulwer justly remarks, a much better judge of men
of thought than of men of action. But he also possessed many gifts
in no way essential to the critical character, and transcending the
critic's ordinary sphere. These, while giving him rank as an in-
dependent writer, frequently perturbed the natural clearness of his
critical judgment, and seduced him into the paradoxes with which
his works abound. These paradoxes, however, never spring from
affectation ; they are in general the sallies of a mind so agile and
ardent as to overrun its own goal. His style is perfectly natu-
ral, and yet admirably calculated for effect. His diction, always
rich and masculine, seems to kindle as he proceeds ; and when
thoroughly animated by his subject, he advances with a succession
of energetic hard-hitting sentences, each carrying his argument a
step farther, like a champion dealing out blows as he presses upon
the enemy."
The most recent opinion delivered on Hazlitt is from the pen of
Mr. George Saintsbury, and it is one with which every discriminating
admirer of the essayist will in the main agree. It is characterised by
that critical acumen and sound judgment which distinguish most of
Mr. Saintsbury's literary estimates. It will be found in Macmillan's
Magazine for 1887. It is only possible to give some sentences from
the paper, which deserves a careful perusal by those who would wish
to understand Hazlitt.
"There is indeed no doubt that Hazlitt is one of the most
absolutely unequal writers in English, if not in any literature,
Wilson being perhaps his only compeer. ... It could not indeed be
otherwise, because the inequality itself is due less to an intellectual
than to a moral defect. The clear sunshine of Hazlitt's admirably
acute intellect is always there ; but it is constantly obscured by
driving clouds of furious prejudice. . . . He was, in literature, a
great man. I am myself disposed to think that, for all his access of
hopelessly uncritical prejudice, he was the greatest critic that England
has yet produced ; and there are some who think (though I do not
agree with them) that he was even greater as a miscellaneous essayist
than as a critic. It is certainly upon his essays, critical and other,
that his fame must rest. . . . These various drawbacks only set off the
merits which almost every lover of literature must perceive in him.
In most writers — in all save the very greatest — we look for one or
two or for a few special faculties and capacities, and we know
perfectly well that other (generally many other) capacities and
faculties will not be found in them at all. . . . But in Hazlitt you
Ixiv MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
may find something of almost everything, except the finer bursts of
wit and humour ; to which last, however, he makes a certain side-
approach by dint of his appreciation of the irony of nature and fate.
Almost every other grace in matter and form that can be found in
prose may be found at times in his. . . . Most of the fine writing of
these latter days is but as crumpled tarlatan to brocaded satin
beside the passage on Coleridge in the English Poets, or the descrip-
tion of Winterslow and its neighbourhood in the ' Farewell to Essay-
Writing,' or 'On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin' in the Table-Talk.
Bead these pieces and nothing else, and an excusable impression
might be given that the writer was nothing if not florid. But turn
over a dozen pages, and the most admirable examples of the grave
and chaste manner occur. He is an inveterate quoter, yet few men
are more original. No man is his superior in lively, gossipy descrip-
tion, yet he could, within his limits, reason closely and expound
admirably. . . . Hazlitt's enthusiastic appreciation of what is good
in letters, his combination of gusto with sound theory as to what is
excellent in prose and verse, his felicitous method of expression, and
the acuteness that kept him from that excessive and paradoxical
admiration which both Lamb and Coleridge affected, and which haa
gained many more pupils than his own moderation, are always
present. Nothing better has ever been written than his general
view of the subject as an introduction to the Lectures on Elizabethan
Literature. Of the famous four treatments of the dramatists of the
Bestoration — Lamb's, Hazlitt's, Leigh Hunt's, and Macaulay's — hia
eeems to me by far the best. . . . No one has written better on
Pope. . . . His chapter on the English novelists (that is to say,
those of the last century) is perhaps the best thing ever written on
the subject. ... The 'Character of Cobbett' is the best thing the
writer ever did of the kind, and the best thing that has ever been
written about Cobbett. . . . 'My First Acquaintance with Poets'
is a masterpiece. ... A hap-hazard catalogue of the titles of essays
may not be very succulent. But within moderate space there is
really no other means of indicating the author's extraordinary range
of subject, and at the same time the pervading excellence of his
treatment. ... In criticism of English literature, he is for the
critic a subject never to be wearied of, always to be profited by.
His very aberrations are often more instructive than other men's
right-goings ; and if he sometimes fails to detect or acknowledge a
beauty, he never praises a defect. . . . The fact is that he was a
born man of letters, and that he could not help turning everything
MEMOIR OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. Ixv
he touched into literature. . . . He was not, as it seems to me, quite
at home in very short papers — in papers of the length of the average
newspaper article. What he could do, as hardly any other man has
ever done in England, was a causerie of about the same length as
Sainte-Beuve's, or a little shorter, less limited in range, but also less
artificially proportioned, than the great Frenchman's literary and
historical studies, giving scope for considerable digression, but
coming to an end before the author was wearied of his subject, or
had exhausted the fresh thoughts and the happy borrowings and
analogies which he had ready for it. ... Hazlitt must have been,
one of the most uncomfortable of all English men of letters, who
can be called great, to know as a friend. He is certainly, to those
who know him only as readers, one of the most fruitful both in
instruction and delight."
NOTE ON THE PORTRAIT.
The history of the portrait prefixed to this volume is as follows : — In
1824 Hazlitt visited Glasgow, and, while lecturing there, was introduced
to a club devoted to the study of Shakespeare. A young artist, named
Bewick (not belonging to the Newcastle Bewicks), also a member of this
club, made a sketch of Hazlitt, an engraving from which, thirteen years later,
was prefixed to the Literary Remains, edited by his son. Another member
of the club, also an artist, made a copy of the original sketch. Not altogether
satisfied with the expression of the features, he endeavoured to improve
it by adding a few touches of his own, which made the likeness a decidedly
more successful rendering of the living man. About ten or twelve years
ago I heard of this improved sketch through a friend who knew the artist,
then an old man (since dead). He allowed a photographic copy of it to be
taken for me, and it is from this copy that the present portrait has been
engraved. If the two portraits are compared — viz., the one facing the
title-page, with the one prefixed to the Literary Remains — the former
impresses one with a much higher sense of the intellectual power and
expression indicated in Hazlitt's features, than the latter. My friend,
Mrs. Mary Cowden Clarke (still living), who knew Hazlitt during the
last few years of his life, assures me that the likeness is an excellent one,
as she well remembers his features and general expression.
SELECTIONS
FROM THE
WRITINGS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT.
[17te Eloquence of the British Senate ; or, Select Specimens from the Speeches
of the Most Distinguished Parliamentary Speakers, from the beginning
of the Reign of Charles the First to the Present Time, with Notes, Bio-
graphical, Critical, and Explanatory. In 2 vols., 1807.]
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE.
[Originally appeared in The Eloquence of the British Senate, reprinted in
Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters, 1819, with the following
note : ' ' This character was written in a fit of extravagant candour at a time
when I thought I could do justice, or more than justice, to an enemy, without
betraying a cause." It is included, along with the characters of Fox, Pitt,
and Lord Chatham, in one of the volumes of Bell & Sons' edition of Hazlitt's
principal works, 1872.]
THEBE is no single speech of Mr. Burke which can convey a satis-
factory idea of his powers of mind : to do him justice, it would be
necessary to quote all his works ; the only specimen of Burke is, all
that he wrote. With respect to most other speakers, a specimen is
generally enough, or more than enough. When you are acquainted
with their manner, and see what proficiency they have made in the
mechanical exercise of their profession, with what facility they can
borrow a simile, or round a period, how dexterously they can argue,
and object, and rejoin, you are satisfied ; there is no other difference
in their speeches than what arises from the difference of the sub-
jects. But this was not the case with Burke. He brought his
1 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
subjects along with him ; he drew his materials from himself. The
only limits which circumscribed his variety were the stores of his
own mind. His stock of ideas did not consist of a few meagre facts,
meagrely stated, of half a dozen commonplaces tortured into a
thousand different ways; but his mine of wealth was a profound
understanding, inexhaustible as the human heart, and various as the
sources of human nature. He therefore enriched every subject to
which he applied himself, and new subjects were only the occasions
of calling forth fresh powers of mind which had not been before
exerted. It would therefore be in vain to look for the proof of his
powers in any one of his speeches or writings : they all contain some
additional proof of power. In speaking of Burke, then, I shall
speak of the whole compass and circuit of his mind — not of that
small part or section of him which I have been able to give ; to do
otherwise would be like the story of the man who put the brick in
his pocket, thinking to show it as the model of a house. I have
been able to manage pretty well with respect to all my other
speakers, and curtailed them down without remorse. It was easy to
reduce them within certain limits, to fix their spirit, and condense
their variety ; by having a certain quantity given, you might infer
all the rest ; it was only the same thing over again. But who can
bind Proteus, or confine the roving flight of genius ?
Burke's writings are better than his speeches, and indeed his
speeches are writings. But he seemed to feel himself more at ease,
to have a fuller possession of his faculties in addressing the public,
than in addressing the House of Commons. Burke was raised into
public life ; and he seems to have been prouder of this new dignity
than became so great a man. For this reason, most of his speeches
have a sort of parliamentary preamble to them : he seems fond of
coquetting with the House of Commons, and is perpetually calling
the Speaker out to dance a minuet with him before he begins.
There is also something like an attempt to stimulate the superficial
dulness of his hearers by exciting their surprise, by running into
extravagance : and he sometimes demeans himself by condescending
to what may be considered as bordering too much upon buffoonery,
for the amusement of the company. Those lines of Milton were
admirably applied to him by some one — "The elephant to make
them sport wreathed his proboscis lithe." The truth is, that he
was out of his place in the House of Commons ; he was eminently
qualified to shine as a man of genius, as the instructor of mankind,
as the brightest luminary of his age ; but he had nothing in common
with that motley crew of knights, citizens, and burgesses. He could
not be said to be " native and endued unto that element." He was
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 3
above it ; and never appeared like himself, but when, forgetful of
the idle clamours of party, and of the little views of little men, he
applied to his country and the enlightened judgment of mankind.
I am not going to make an idle panegyric on Burke (he has no
need of it) ; but I cannot help looking upon him as the chief boast
and ornament of the English House of Commons. What has been
said of him is, I think, strictly true, that " he was the most eloquent
man of his time : his wisdom was greater than his eloquence." The
only public man that in my opinion can be put in any competition
with him, is Lord Chatham ; and he moved in a sphere so very
remote, that it is almost impossible to compare them. But though
it would perhaps be difficult to determine which of them excelled
most in his particular way, there is nothing in the world more easy
than to point out in what their peculiar excellences consisted. They
were in every respect the reverse of each other. Chatham's eloquence
was popular : his wisdom was altogether plain and practical. Burke's
eloquence was that of the poet ; of the man of high and unbounded
fancy: his wisdom was profound and contemplative. Chatham's
eloquence was calculated to make men act : Burke's was calculated
to make them think. Chatham could have roused the fury of a
multitude, and wielded their physical energy as he pleased : Burke's
eloquence carried conviction into the mind of the retired and lonely
student, opened the recesses of the human breast, and lighted up
the face of nature around him. Chatham supplied his hearers with
motives to immediate action : Burke furnished them with reasons for
action which might have little effect upon them at the time, but for
which they would be the wiser and better all their lives after. In
research, in originality, in variety of knowledge, in richness of inven-
tion, in depth and comprehension of mind, Burke had as much the
advantage of Lord Chatham as he was excelled by him in plain
common sense, in strong feeling, in steadiness of purpose, in vehe-
mence, in warmth, in enthusiasm, and energy of mind. Burke was
the man of genius, of fine sense, and subtle reasoning; Chatham
was a man of clear understanding, of strong sense, and violent
passions. Burke's mind was satisfied with speculation : Chatham's
was essentially active; it could not rest without an object. The
power which governed Burke's mind was his Imagination ; that
which gave its impetus to Chatham was Will. The one was almost
the creature of pure intellect, the other of physical temperament.
There are two very different ends which a man of genius may pro-
pose to himself, either in writing or speaking, and which will accord-
ingly give birth to very different styles. He can have but one of these
two objects; either to enrich or strengthen the mind; either to
4 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
furnish us with new ideas, to lead the mind into new trains of
thought, to which it was before unused, and which it was incapable
of striking out for itself; or else to collect and embody what we
already knew, to rivet our old impressions more deeply ; to make
what was before plain still plainer, and to give to that which was
familiar all the effect of novelty. In the one case we receive an
accession to the stock of our ideas; in the other, an additional
degree of life and energy is infused into them : our thoughts con-
tinue to flow in the same channels, but their pulse is quickened and
invigorated. I do not know how to distinguish these different
styles better than by calling them severally the inventive and refined,
or the impressive and vigorous styles. It is only the subject-matter
of eloquence, however, which is allowed to be remote or obscure.
The things themselves may be subtle and recondite, but they must
be dragged out of their obscurity and brought struggling to the
light ; they must be rendered plain and palpable (as far as it is in
the wit of man to do so), or they are no longer eloquence. That
which by its natural impenetrability, and in spite of every effort,
remains dark and difficult, which is impervious to every ray, on
which the imagination can shed no lustre, which can be clothed with
no beauty, is not a subject for the orator or poet. At the same time
it cannot be expected that abstract truths or profound observations
should ever be placed in the same strong and dazzling points of
view as natural objects and mere matters of fact. It is enough if
they receive a reflex and borrowed lustre, like that which cheers
the first dawn of morning, where the effect of surprise and novelty
gilds every object, and the joy of beholding another world gradually
emerging out of the gloom of night, " a new creation rescued from
his reign," fills the mind with a sober rapture. Philosophical
eloquence is in writing what chiaro-scuro is in painting ; he would be
a fool who should object that the colours in the shaded part of a
picture were not so bright as those on the opposite side ; the eye of
the connoisseur receives an equal delight from both, balancing the
want of brilliancy and effect with the greater delicacy of the tints,
and difficulty of the execution. In judging of Burke, therefore, we
are to consider, first, the style of eloquence which he adopted, and,
secondly, the effects which he produced with it. If he did not pro-
duce the same effects on vulgar minds as some others have done, it
was not for want of power, but from the turn and direction of his
mind. It was because his subjects, his ideas, his arguments, were
less vulgar. The question is not whether he brought certain truths
equally home to us, but how much nearer he brought them than
they were before. In my opinion, he united the two extremes of
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 5
refinement and strength in a higher degree than any other writer
whatever.
The subtlety of his mind was undoubtedly that which rendered
Burke a less popular writer and speaker than he otherwise would
have been. It weakened the impression of his observations upon
others, but I cannot admit that it weakened the observations them-
selves ; that it took anything from their real weight or solidity.
Coarse minds think all that is subtle, futile : that because it is
not gross and obvious and palpable to the senses, it is therefore
light and frivolous, and of no importance in the real affairs of life ;
thus making their own confined understandings the measure of
truth, and supposing that whatever they do not distinctly perceive,
is nothing. Seneca, who was not one of the vulgar, also says, that
subtle truths are those which have the least substance in them,
and consequently approach nearest to nonentity. But for my own
part I cannot help thinking that the most important truths must
be the most refined and subtle ; for that very reason, that they
must comprehend a great number of particulars, and instead of
referring to any distinct or positive fact, must point out the com-
bined effects of an extensive chain of causes, operating gradually,
remotely, and collectively, and therefore imperceptibly. General
principles are not the less true or important because from their
nature they elude immediate observation ; they are like the air,
which is not the less necessary because we neither see nor feel it,
or like that secret influence which binds the world together, and
holds the planets in their orbits. The very same persons who are
the most forward to laugh at all systematic reasoning as idle and
impertinent, you will the next moment hear exclaiming bitterly
against the baleful effects of new-fangled systems of philosophy, or
gravely descanting on the immense importance of instilling sound
principles of morality into the mind. It would not be a bold con-
jecture, but an obvious truism, to say, that all the great changes
which have been brought about in the mortal world, either for the
better or worse, have been introduced, not by the bare statement
of facts, which are things already known, and which must always
operate nearly in the same manner, but by the development of
certain opinions and abstract principles of reasoning on life and
manners, on the origin of society and man's nature in general,
which being obscure and uncertain, vary from time to time, and
produce corresponding changes in the human mind. They are the
wholesome dew and rain, or the mildew and pestilence that silently
destroy. To this principle of generalisation all wise law-givers, and
the systems of philosophers, owe their influence.
6 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
It has always been with me a test of the sense and candour of any
one belonging to the opposite party, whether he allowed Burke to
be a great man. Of all the persons of this description that I have
ever known, I never met with above one or two who would make
this concession ; whether it was that party feelings ran too high to
admit of any real candour, or whether it was owing to an essential
vulgarity in their habits of thinking, they all seemed to be of
opinion that he was a wild enthusiast, or a hollow sophist, who
was to be answered by bits of facts, by smart logic, by shrewd
questions, and idle songs. They looked upon him as a man of dis-
ordered intellects, because he reasoned in a style to which they had
not been used, and which confounded their dim perceptions. If
you said that though you differed with him in sentiment, yet you
thought him an admirable reasoner, and a close observer of human
nature, you were answered with a loud laugh, and some hackneyed
quotation. "Alas! Leviathan was not so tamed!" They did not
know whom they had to contend with. The corner-stone, which
the builders rejected, became the head-corner, though to the Jews
a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness; for, indeed, I
cannot discover that he was much better understood by those of
his own party, if we may judge from the little affinity there is
between his mode of reasoning and theirs. The simple clue to all
his reasonings on politics is, I think, as follows. He did not agree
with some writers that that mode of government is necessarily the
best which is the cheapest. He saw in the construction of society
other principles at work, and other capacities of fulfilling the desires,
and perfecting the nature of man, 'besides those of securing the
equal enjoyment of the means of animal life, and doing this at as
little expense as possible. He thought that the wants and happi-
ness of men were not to be provided for, as we provide for those of
a herd of cattle, merely by attending to their physical necessities.
He thought more nobly of his fellows. He knew that man had
affections and passions and powers of imagination, as well as hunger
and thirst, and the sense of heat and cold. He took his idea of poli-
tical society from the pattern of private life, wishing, as he himself
expresses it, to incorporate the domestic charities with the orders
of the state, and to blend them together. He strove to establish
an analogy between the compact that binds together the community
at large, and that which binds together the several families that
compose it. He knew that the rules that form the basis of private
morality are not founded in reason, that is, in the abstract pro-
perties of those things which are the subjects of them, but in the
nature of man, and his capacity of being affected by certain things
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 7
from habit, from imagination, and sentiment, as well as from
reason.
Thus, the reason why a man ought to be attached to his wife
and children is not, surely, that they are better than others (for
in this case every one else ought to be of the same opinion), but
because he must be chiefly interested in those things which are
nearest to him, and with which he is best acquainted, since his
understanding cannot reach equally to everything ; because he must
be most attached to those objects which he has known the longest,
and which by their situation have actually affected him the most,
not those which in themselves are the most affecting whether they
have ever made any impression on him or no ; that is, because he
is by his nature the creature of habit and feeling, and because it is
reasonable that he should act hi conformity to his nature. Burke
was so far right in saying that it is no objection to an institution
that it is founded in prejudice, but the contrary, if that prejudice
is natural and right ; that is, if it arises from those circumstances
which are properly subjects of feeling and association, not from any
defect or perversion of the understanding in those things which fall
strictly under its jurisdiction. On this profound maxim he took his
stand. Thus he contended, that the prejudice in favour of nobility
was natural and proper, and fit to be encouraged by the positive
institutions of society : not on account of the real or personal merit
of the individuals, but because such an institution has a tendency
to enlarge and raise the mind, to keep alive the memory of past
greatness, to connect the different ages of the world together, to
carry back the imagination over a long tract of time, and feed it
with the contemplation of remote events : because it is natural to
think highly of that which inspires us with high thoughts, which
has been connected for many generations with splendour, and
affluence, and dignity, and power, and privilege. He also conceived,
that by transferring the respect from the person to the thing, and
thus rendering it steady and permanent, the mind would be habitu-
ally formed to sentiments of deference, attachment, and fealty, to
whatever else demanded its respect : that it would be led to fix its
view on what was elevated and lofty, and be weaned from that low
and narrow jealousy which never willingly or heartily admits of any
superiority in others, and is glad of every opportunity to bring down
all excellence to a level with its own miserable standard. Nobility
did not, therefore, exist to the prejudice of the other orders of the
state, but by, and for them. The inequality of the different orders
of society did not destroy the unity and harmony of the whole.
The health and well-being of the moral world was to be promoted
8 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
by the same means as the beauty of the natural world ; by contrast,
by change, by light and shade, by variety of parts, by order and
proportion. To think of reducing all mankind to the same insipid
level, seemed to him the same absurdity as to destroy the inequalities
of surface in a country, for the benefit of agriculture and commerce.
In short, he believed that the interests of men in society should be
consulted, and their several stations and employments assigned, with
a view to their nature, not as physical, but as moral beings, so as to
nourish their hopes, to lift their imagination, to enliven their fancy,
to rouse their activity, to strengthen their virtue, and to furnish
the greatest number of objects of pursuit, and means of enjoyment
to beings constituted as man is, consistently with the order and
stability of the whole.
The same reasoning might be extended farther. I do not say
that his arguments are conclusive ; but they are profound and true,
as far as they go. There may be disadvantages and abuses neces-
sarily interwoven with his scheme, or opposite advantages of in-
finitely greater value, to be derived from another order of things
and state of society. This, however, does not invalidate either the
truth or importance of Burke's reasoning ; since the advantages he
points out as connected with the mixed form of government are
really and necessarily inherent in it : since they are compatible, in
the same degree, with no other ; since the principle itself on which
he rests his argument (whatever we may think of the application)
is of the utmost weight and moment ; and since, on whichever side
the truth lies, it is impossible to make a fair decision without
having the opposite side of the question clearly and fully stated to
us. This Burke has done in a masterly manner. He presents to
you one view or face of society. Let him who thinks he can, give
the reverse side with equal force, beauty, and clearness. It is said,
I know, that truth is one; but to this I cannot subscribe, for it
appears to me that truth is many. There are as many truths as
there are things and causes of action and contradictory principles
at work in society. In making up the account of good and evil,
indeed, the final result must be one way or the other ; but
the particulars on which that result depends are infinite and
various.
It will be seen from what I have said, that I am very far from
agreeing with those who think that Burke was a man without
understanding, and a merely florid writer. There are two causes
which have given rise to this calumny ; namely, that narrowness
of mind which leads men to suppose that the truth lies entirely on
the side of their own opinions, and that whatever does not make
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 9
for them is absurd and irrational ; secondly, a trick we have of
confounding reason with judgment, and supposing that it is merely
the province of the understanding to pronounce sentence, and not
to give evidence, or argue the case ; in short, that it is a passive,
not an active faculty. Thus there are persons who never run into
any extravagance, because they are so buttressed up with the
opinions of others on all sides, that they cannot lean much to one
side or the other ; they are so little moved with any kind of reason-
ing, that they remain at an equal distance from every extreme, and
are never very far from the truth, because the slowness of their facul-
ties will not suffer them to make much progress in error. These
are persons of great judgment. The scales of the mind are pretty
sure to remain even, when there is nothing in them. In this sense
of the word, Burke must be allowed to have wanted judgment, by
all those who think that he was wrong in his conclusions. The
accusation of want of judgment, in fact, only means that you your-
self are of a different opinion. But if in arriving at one error he
discovered a hundred truths, I should consider myself a hundred
times more indebted to him than if, stumbling on that which I
consider as the right side of the question, he had committed a
hundred absurdities in striving to establish his point. I speak of
him now merely as an author, or as far as I and other readers are
concerned with him ; at the same time, I should not differ from
any one who may be disposed to contend that the consequences of
his writings as instruments of political power have been tremendous,
fatal, such as no exertion of wit or knowledge or genius can ever
counteract or atone for.
Burke also gave a hold to his antagonists by mixing up sentiment
and imagery with his reasoning ; so that, being unused to such
a sight in the region of politics, they were deceived, and could not
discern the fruit from the flowers. Gravity is the cloak of wisdom ;
and those who have nothing else think it an insult to affect the one
without the other, because it destroys the only foundation on which
their pretensions are built. The easiest part of reason is dulness ;
the generality of the world are therefore concerned in discouraging
any example of unnecessary brilliancy that might tend to show that
the two things do not always go together. Burke in some measure
dissolved the spell. It was discovered, that his gold was not the
less valuable for being wrought into elegant shapes, and richly
embossed with curious figures ; that the solidity of a building is
not destroyed by adding to it beauty and ornament ; and that the
strength of a man's understanding is not always to be estimated
in exact proportion to his want of imagination. His understand-
jo WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ing was not the less real, because it was not the only faculty he
possessed. He justified the description of the poet —
" How charming is divine philosophy !
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute ! "
Those who object to this union of grace and beauty with reason,
are in fact weak-sighted people, who cannot distinguish the noble
and majestic form of Truth from that of her sister Folly, if they are
dressed both alike ! But there is always a difference even in the
adventitious ornaments they wear, which is sufficient to distinguish
them.
Burke was so far from being a gaudy or flowery writer, that he
was one of the severest writers we have. His words are the most
like things ; his style is the most strictly suited to the subject. He
unites every extreme and every variety of composition ; the lowest
and the meanest words and descriptions with the highest. He
exults in the display of power, in showing the extent, the force,
and intensity of his ideas ; he is led on by the mere impulse and
vehemence of his fancy, not by the affectation of dazzling his
readers by gaudy conceits or pompous images. He was completely
carried away by his subject. He had no other object but to pro-
duce the strongest impression on his reader, by giving the truest,
the most characteristic, the fullest, and most forcible description of
things, trusting to the power of his own mind to mould them into
grace and beauty. He did not produce a splendid effect by setting
fire to the light vapours that float in the regions of fancy, as the
chemists make fine colours with phosphorus, but by the eagerness
of his blows struck fire from the flint, and melted the hardest
substances in the furnace of his imagination. The wheels of his
imagination did not catch fire from the rottenness of the materials,
but from the rapidity of their motion. One would suppose, to hear
people talk of Burke, that his style was such as would have suited
the Lady's Magazine; soft, smooth, showy, tender, insipid, full of
fine words, without any meaning. The essence of the gaudy or
glittering style consists in producing a momentary effect by fine
words and images brought together, without order or connection.
Burke most frequently produced an effect by the remoteness and
novelty of his combinations, by the force of contrast, by the striking
manner in which the most opposite and unpromising materials
were harmoniously blended together ; not by laying his hands on
all the fine things he could think of, but by bringing together those
things which he knew would blaze out into glorious light by their
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 11
collision. The florid style is a mixture of affectation and common-
place. Burke's was an union of untameable vigour and originality.
Burke was not a verbose writer. If he sometimes multiplies
words, it is not for want of ideas, but because there are no words
that fully express his ideas, and he tries to do it as well as he can by
different ones. He had nothing of the set or formal style, the
measured cadence, and stately phraseology of Johnson, and most of
our modern writers. This style, which is what we understand by
the artificial, is all in one key. It selects a certain set of words to
represent all ideas whatever, as the most dignified and elegant, and
excludes all others as low and vulgar. The words are not fitted to
the things, but the things to the words. Everything is seen through
a false medium. It is putting a mask on the face of nature, which
may indeed hide some specks and blemishes, but takes away all
beauty, delicacy, and variety. It destroys all dignity or elevation f
because nothing can be raised where all is on a level, and completely
destroys all force, expression, truth, and character, by arbitrarily
confounding the differences of things, and reducing everything to
the same insipid standard. To suppose that this stiff uniformity
can add anything to real grace or dignity, is like supposing
that the human body, in order to be perfectly graceful, should
never deviate from its upright posture. Another mischief of this
method is, that it confounds all ranks in literature. Where there is
no room for variety, no discrimination, no nicety to be shown iu
matching the idea with its proper word, there can be no room for
taste or elegance. A man must easily learn the art of writing, when
every sentence is to be cast in the same mould : where he is only
allowed the use of one word he cannot choose wrong, nor will he
be in much danger of making himself ridiculous by affectation or
false glitter, when, whatever subject he treats of, he must treat of
it in the same way. This indeed is to wear golden chains for the
sake of ornament.
Burke was altogether free from the pedantry which I have here
endeavoured to expose. His style was as original, as expressive,
as rich and varied, as it was possible; his combinations were as
exquisite, as playful, as happy, as unexpected, as bold and daring, as
his fancy. If anything, he ran into the opposite extreme of too
great an inequality, if truth and nature could ever be carried to an
extreme.
Those who are best acquainted with the writings and speeches
of Burke will not think the praise I have here bestowed on them
exaggerated. Some proof will be found of this in the following
extracts. But the full proof must be sought in his works at large,
12 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and particularly in the Thoughts on the Discontents; in his Reflections
on the French Revolution ; in his Letter to the Duke of Bedford; and
in the Regicide Peace. The two last of these are perhaps the most
remarkable of all his writings, from the contrast they afford to each
other. The one is the most delightful exhibition of wild and brilliant
fancy that is to be found in English prose, but it is too much like
a beautiful picture painted upon gauze; it wants something to
support it : the other is without ornament, but it has all the solidity,
the weight, the gravity of a judicial record. It seems to have been
written with a certain constraint upon himself, and to show those
who said he could not reason, that his arguments might be stripped
of their ornaments without losing anything of their force. It is
certainly, of all his works, that in which he has shown most power
of logical deduction, and the only one in which he has made any
important use of facts. In general he certainly paid little attention
to them : they were the playthings of his mind. He saw them as
he pleased, not as they were ; with the eye of the philosopher or the
poet, regarding them only in their general principle, or as they might
serve to decorate his subject. This is the natural consequence of
much imagination : things that are probable are elevated into the
rank of realities. To those who can reason on the essences of things,
or who can invent according to nature, the experimental proof is of
little value. This was the case with Burke. In the present instance,
however, he seems to have forced his mind into the service of facts ;
and he succeeded completely. His comparison between our connec-
tion with France or Algiers, and his account of the conduct of the
war, are as clear, as convincing, as forcible examples of this kind of
reasoning, as are anywhere to be met with. Indeed I do not think
there is anything in Fox (whose mind was purely historical) or in
Chatham (who attended to feelings more than facts), that will bear
a comparison with them.
Burke has been compared to Cicero — I do not know for what
reason. Their excellences are as different, and indeed as opposite,
as they can well be. Burke had not the polished elegance, the
glossy neatness, the artful regularity, the exquisite modulation of
Cicero : he had a thousand times more richness and originality of
mind, more strength and pomp of diction.
It has been well observed, that the ancients had no word that
properly expresses what we mean by the word genius. They perhaps
had not the thing. Their minds appear to have been too exact, too
retentive, too minute and subtle, too sensible to the external differ-
ences of things, too passive under their impressions, to admit of those
bold and rapid combinations, those lofty flights of fancy, which,
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 13
glancing from heaven to earth, unite the most opposite extremes,
and draw the happiest illustrations from things the most remote.
Their ideas were kept too confined and distinct by the material form
or vehicle in which they were conveyed, to unite cordially together,
or be melted down in the imagination. Their metaphors are taken
from things of the same class, not from things of different classes ;
the general analogy, not the individual feeling, directs them in their
choice. Hence, as Dr. Johnson observed, their similes are either
repetitions of the same idea, or so obvious and general as not to
lend any additional force to it ; as when a huntress is compared to
Diana, or a warrior rushing into battle to a lion rushing on his prey.
Their forte was exquisite art and perfect imitation. Witness their
statues and other things of the same kind. But they had not that
high and enthusiastic fancy which some of our own writers have
shown. For the proof of this, let any one compare Milton and
Shakspeare with Homer and Sophocles, or Burke with Cicero.
It may be asked whether Burke was a poet. He was so only in
the general vividness of his fancy, and in richness of invention.
There may be poetical passages in his works, but I certainly think
that his writings in general are quite distinct from poetry ; and that
for the reason before given, namely, that the subject-matter of them
is not poetical. The finest part of them are illustrations or per-
sonifications of dry abstract ideas ; l and the union between the idea
and the illustration is not of that perfect and pleasing kind as to
constitute poetry, or indeed to be admissible, but for the effect
intended to be produced by it ; that is, by every means in our power
to give animation and attraction to subjects in themselves barren
of ornament, but which at the same time are pregnant with the
most important consequences, and in which the understanding and
the passions are equally interested.
I have heard it remarked by a person, to whose opinion I would
sooner submit than to a general council of critics, that the sound
of Burke's prose is not musical; that it wants cadence; and that
instead of being so lavish of his imagery as is generally supposed,
he seemed to him to be rather parsimonious in the use of it, always
expanding and making the most of his ideas. This may be true if
we compare him with some of our poets, or perhaps with some of
our early prose writers, but not if we compare him with any of our
political writers or parliamentary speakers. There are some very
fine things of Lord Bolingbroke's on the same subjects, but not
1 As in the comparison of the British Constitution to the "proud keep of
Windsor," &c., the most splendid passage in his works.
14 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
equal to Burke's. As for Junius, he is at the head of his class:
but that class is not the highest. He has been said to have more
dignity than Burke. Yes — if the stalk of a giant is less dignified
than the strut of a petit-maitre. I do not mean to speak disrespect-
fully of Junius, but grandeur is not the character of his composition ;
and if it is not to be found in Burke, it is to be found nowhere.
LATER REMARKS ON BURKE.
[The following, under the heading "Character of Mr. Burke," dated
October 5, 1817, appeared in Political Essays and Sketches of Public Char-
acters, 1819.]
IT is not without reluctance that we speak of the vices and infir-
mities of such a mind as Burke's : but the poison of high example
has by far the widest range of destruction : and, for the sake of
public honour and individual integrity, we think it right to say,
that however it may be defended upon other grounds, the political
career of that eminent individual has no title to the praise of con-
sistency. Mr. Burke, the opponent of the American war, and Mr.
Burke, the opponent of the French Revolution, are not the same
person, but opposite persons — not opposite persons only, but deadly
enemies. In the latter period, he abandoned not only all his prac-
tical conclusions, but all the principles on which they were founded.
He proscribed all his former sentiments, denounced all his former
friends, rejected and reviled all the maxims to which he had formerly
appealed as incontestable. In the American war, he constantly
spoke of the rights of the people as inherent, and inalienable : after
the French Revolution, he began by treating them with the chicanery
of a sophist, and ended by raving at them with the fury of a maniac.
In the former case, he held out the duty of resistance to oppression,
as the palladium and only ultimate resource of natural liberty ; in
the latter, he scouted, prejudged, vilified and nicknamed, all resistance
in the abstract, as a foul and unnatural union of rebellion and
sacrilege. In the one case, to answer the purposes of faction, he
made it out, that the people are always in the right ; in the other,
to answer different ends, he made it out that they are always in the
wrong — lunatics in the hands of their royal keepers, patients in the
sick-wards of an hospital, or felons in the condemned cells of a prison.
In the one, he considered that there was a constant tendency on
the part of the prerogative to encroach on the rights of the people,
which ought always to be the object of the most watchful jealousy,
and of resistance, when necessary: in the other, he pretended to
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 15
regard it as the sole occupation and ruling passion of those in power,
to watch over the liberties and happiness of their subjects. The
burthen of all his speeches on the American war, was conciliation,
concession, timely reform, as the only practicable or desirable alterna-
tive of rebellion : the object of all his writings on the French Revolu-
tion was, to deprecate and explode all concession and all reform, as
encouraging rebellion, and as an irretrievable step to revolution and
anarchy. In the one, he insulted kings personally, as among the
lowest and worst of mankind ; in the other, he held them up to the
imagination of his readers, as sacred abstractions. In the one case,
he was a partisan of the people, to court popularity ; in the other,
to gain the favour of the Court, he became the apologist of all courtly
abuses. In the one case, he took part with those who were actually
rebels against his Sovereign : in the other, he denounced as rebels
and traitors, all those of his own countrymen who did not yield
sympathetic allegiance to a foreign Sovereign, whom we had always
been in the habit of treating as an arbitrary tyrant.
Nobody will accuse the principles of his present Majesty, or the
general measures of his reign, of inconsistency. If they had no
other merit, they have, at least, that of having been all along
actuated by one uniform and constant spirit : yet Mr. Burke at
one time vehemently opposed, and afterwards most intemperately
extolled them : and it was for his recanting his opposition, not for
his persevering in it, that he received his pension. He does not
himself mention his flaming speeches on the American war, as among
the public services which had entitled him to this remuneration.
The truth is, that Burke was a man of fine fancy and subtle reflec-
tion ; but not of sound and practical judgment, nor of high or rigid
principles. — As to his understanding, he certainly was not a great
philosopher ; for his works of mere abstract reasoning are shallow
and inefficient : — nor was he a man of sense and business ; for, both
in counsel and in conduct, he alarmed his friends as much at least
as his opponents : — but he was an acute and accomplished man of
letters — an ingenious political essayist. He applied the habit of
reflection, which he had borrowed from his metaphysical studies, but
which was not competent to the discovery of any elementary truth
in that department, with great facility and success, to the mixed
mass of human affairs. He knew more of the political machine than
a recluse philosopher; and he speculated more profoundly on its
principles and general results than a mere politician. He saw a
number of fine distinctions and changeable aspects of things, the
good mixed with the ill, and the ill mixed with the good ; and with
a sceptical indifference, in which the exercise of his own ingenuity
F
16 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
was obviously the governing principle, suggested various topics to
qualify or assist the judgment of others. But for this very reason,
he was little calculated to become a leader or a partisan in any
important practical measure. For the habit of his mind would lead
him to find out a reason for or against anything : and it is not on
speculative refinements (which belong to every side of a question),
but on a just estimate of the aggregate mass and extended com-
binations of objections and advantages, that we ought to decide or
act. Burke had the power of throwing true or false weights into
the scales of political casuistry, but not firmness of mind (or, shall we
say, honesty enough) to hold the balance. When he took a side, his
vanity or his spleen more frequently gave the casting vote than his
judgment ; and the fieriness of his zeal was in exact proportion to the
levity of his understanding, and the want of conscious sincerity.
He was fitted by nature and habit for the studies and labours of
the closet ; and was generally mischievous when he came out ; because
the very subtlety of his reasoning, which, left to itself, would have
counteracted its own activity, or found its level in the common sense
of mankind, became a dangerous engine in the hands of power,
which is always eager to make use of the most plausible pretexts to
cover the most fatal designs. That which, if applied as a general
observation on human affairs, is a valuable truth suggested to the
mind, may, when forced into the interested defence of a particular
measure or system, become the grossest and basest sophistry. Facts
or consequences never stood in the way of this speculative politician.
He fitted them to his preconceived theories, instead of conforming
his theories to them. They were the playthings of his style, the
sport of his fancy. They were the straws of which his imagination
made a blaze, and were consumed, like straws, in the blaze they
had served to kindle. The fine things he said about Liberty and
Humanity, in his speech on the Begum's affairs, told equally well,
whether Warren Hastings was a tyrant or not : nor did he care one
jot who caused the famine he described, so that he described it in a
way that no one else could. On the same principle, he represented
the French priests and nobles under the old regime as excellent
moral people, very charitable and very religious, in the teeth of
notorious facts, — to answer to the handsome things he had to say
in favour of priesthood and nobility in general ; and, with similar
views, he falsifies the records of our English Revolution, and puts an
interpretation on the word abdication, of which a schoolboy would
be ashamed. He constructed his whole theory of government, in
short, not on rational, but on picturesque and fanciful principles ;
as if the king's crown were a painted gewgaw, to be looked at on
THE CHARACTER OF BURKE. 17
gala-days ; titles an empty sound to please the ear ; and the whole
order of society a threatrical procession. His lamentations over the
age of chivalry, and his projected crusade to restore it, are about as
wise as if any one, from reading the Beggar's Opera, should take to
picking of pockets: or, from admiring the landscapes of Salvator
Rosa, should wish to convert the abodes of civilised life into the
haunts of wild beasts and banditti. On this principle of false refine-
ment, there is no abuse, nor system of abuses, that does not admit
of an easy and triumphant defence ; for there is something which a
merely speculative inquirer may always find out, good as well as
bad, in every possible system, the best or the worst ; and if we can
once get rid of the restraints of common sense and honesty, we may
easily prove, by plausible words, that liberty and slavery, peace and
war, plenty and famine, are matters of perfect indifference. This is
the school of politics, of which Mr. Burke was at the head ; and it
is perhaps to his example, in this respect, that we owe the prevailing
tone of many of those newspaper paragraphs, which Mr. Coleridge
thinks so invaluable an accession to our political philosophy.
Burke's literary talents were, after all, his chief excellence. His
style has all the familiarity of conversation, and all the research of
the most elaborate composition. He says what he wants to say, by
any means, nearer or more remote, within his reach. He makes use
of the most common or scientific terms, of the longest or shortest
sentences, of the plainest and most downright, or of the most figu-
rative modes of speech. He gives for the most part loose reins to
his imagination, and follows it as far as the language will carry him.
As long as the one or the other has any resources in store to make
the reader feel and see the thing as he has conceived it, in its nicest
shades of difference, in its utmost degree of force and splendour, he
never disdains, and never fails to employ them. Yet, in the extremes
of his mixed style, there is not much affectation, and but little either
of pedantry or of coarseness. He everywhere gives the image he
wishes to give, in its true and appropriate colouring : and it is the
very crowd and variety of these images that have given to his lan-
guage its peculiar tone of animation, and even of passion. It is his
impatience to transfer his conceptions entire, living, in all their
rapidity, strength, and glancing variety, to the minds of others,
that constantly pushes him to the verge of extravagance, and yet
supports him there in dignified security —
" Never so sure our rapture to create,
As when he treads the brink of all we hate."
He is, with the exception of Jeremy Taylor, the most poetical of
18 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
our prose writers, and at the same time his prose never degenerates
into the mere effeminacy of poetry; for he always aims at over-
powering rather than at pleasing ; and consequently sacrifices beauty
and delicacy to force and vividness. He has invariably a task to
perform, a positive purpose to execute, an effect to produce. His
only object is therefore to strike hard, and in the right place ; if he
misses his mark, he repeats his blow ; and does not care how un-
graceful the action, or how clumsy the instrument, provided it brings
down his antagonist.
THE CHAKACTEE OF FOX.
[Originally appeared in the Eloquence of the British Senate, 2 vols., 1807,
reprinted in Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters, 1819, and is
included in one of the volumes of Bell & Sons' edition of Hazlitt's principal
works 1872.]
I SHALL begin with observing generally, that Mr. Fox excelled all
his contemporaries in the extent of his knowledge, in the clearness
and distinctness of his views, in quickness of apprehension, in plain
practical common sense, in the full, strong, and absolute possession
of his subject. A measure was no sooner proposed than he seemed
to have an instantaneous and intuitive perception of its various
bearings and consequences ; of the manner in which it would operate
on the different classes of society, on commerce or agriculture, on
our domestic or foreign policy ; of the difficulties attending its exe-
cution ; in a word, of all its practical results, and the comparative
advantages to be gained either by adopting or rejecting it. He was
intimately acquainted with the interests of the different parts of
the community, with the minute and complicated details of political
economy, with our external relations, with the views, the resources,
and the maxims of other states. He was master of all those facts
and circumstances which it was necessary to know in order to judge
fairly and determine wisely ; and he knew them not loosely or lightly,
but in number, weight, and measure. He had also stored his
memory by reading and general study, and improved his under-
standing by the lamp of history. He was well acquainted with
the opinions and sentiments of the best authors, with the maxims
of the most profound politicians, with the causes of the rise and fall
of states, with the general passions of men, with the characters of
different nations, and the laws and constitution of his own country.
THE CHARACTER OF FOX. 19
He was a man of large, capacious, powerful, and highly cultivated
intellect. No man could know more than he knew; no man's
knowledge could be more sound, more plain and useful ; no man's
knowledge could lie in more connected and tangible masses ; no man
could be more perfectly master of his ideas, could reason upon them
more closely, or decide upon them more impartially. His mind
was full, even to overflowing. He was so habitually conversant
with the most intricate and comprehensive trains of thought, or
such was the natural vigour and exuberance of his mind, that he
seemed to recall them without any effort. His ideas quarrelled for
utterance. So far from ever being at a loss for them, he was obliged
rather to repress and rein them in, lest they should overwhelm and
confound, instead of informing the understandings of his hearers.
If to this we add the ardour and natural impetuosity of his mind,
his quick sensibility, his eagerness in the .defence of truth, and his
impatience of everything that looked like trick or artifice or affecta-
tion, we shall be able in some measure to account for the character
of his eloquence. His thoughts came crowding in too fast for the
slow and mechanical process of speech. What he saw in an instant,
he could only express imperfectly, word by word, and sentence after
sentence. He would, if he could, " have bared his swelling heart,"
and laid open at once the rich treasures of knowledge with which
his bosom was fraught. It is no wonder that this difference between
the rapidity of his feelings, and the formal round-about method of
communicating them, should produce some disorder in his frame ;
that the throng of his ideas should try to overleap the narrow
boundaries which confined them, and tumultuously break down
their prison-doors, instead of waiting to be let out one by one,
and following patiently at due intervals and with mock dignity, like
poor dependents, in the train of words ; that he should express him-
self in hurried sentences, in involuntary exclamations, by vehement
gestures, by sudden starts and bursts of passion. Everything showed
the agitation of his mind. His tongue faltered, his voice became
almost suffocated, and his face was bathed in tears. He was lost in
the magnitude of his subject. He reeled and staggered under the
load of feeling which oppressed him. He rolled like the sea beaten
by a tempest. Whoever, having the feelings of a man, compared
him at these times with his boasted rival — his stiff, straight, upright
figure, his gradual contortions, turning round as if moved by a pivot,
his solemn pauses, his deep tones, " whose sound reverbed their own
hollowness," must have said, This is a man ; that is an automaton.
If Fox had needed grace, he would have had it ; but it was not the
character of his mind, nor would it have suited with the style of his
20 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
eloquence. It was Pitt's object to smooth over the abruptness and
intricacies of his argument by the gracefulness of his manner, and
to fix the attention of his hearers on the pomp and sound of his
words. Lord Chatham, again, strove to command others ; he did not
try to convince them, but to overpower their understandings by the
greater strength and vehemence of his own ; to awe them by a sense
of personal superiority : and he therefore was obliged to assume
a lofty and dignified, manner. It was to him they bowed, not to
truth ; and whatever related to himself, must therefore have a tendency
to inspire respect and admiration. Indeed, he would never have at-
tempted to gain that ascendant over men's minds that he did, if
either his mind or body had been different from what they were ; if
his temper had not urged him to control and command others, or if
his personal advantages had not enabled him to secure that kind of
authority which he coveted. But it would have been ridiculous in
Fox to have affected either the smooth plausibility, the stately gravity
of the one, or the proud domineering, imposing dignity of the other ;
or even if he could have succeeded, it would only have injured the
effect of his speeches. What he had to rely on was the strength,
the solidity of his ideas, his complete and thorough knowledge of
his subject. It was his business therefore to fix the attention of his
hearers, not on himself, but on his subject ; to rivet it there, to hurry
it on from words to things : — the only circumstance of which they
required to be convinced with respect to himself, was the sincerity
of his opinions ; and this would be best done by the earnestness of
his manner, by giving a loose to his feelings, and by showing the
most perfect forgetf ulness of himself, and of what others thought of
him. The moment a man shows you either by affected words or
looks or gestures, that he is thinking of himself, and you, that he is
trying either to please or terrify you into compliance, there is an
end at once to that kind of eloquence which owes its effect to the
force of truth, and to your confidence in the sincerity of the speaker.
It was, however, to the confidence inspired by the earnestness and
simplicity of his manner, that Mr. Fox was indebted for more than
half the effect of his speeches. Some others might possess nearly as
much information, as exact a knowledge of the situation and interests
of the country ; but they wanted that zeal, that animation, that
enthusiasm, that deep sense of the importance of the subject, which
removes all doubt or suspicion from the minds of the hearers, and
communicates its own warmth to every breast. We may convince
by argument alone ; but it is by the interest we discover in the suc-
cess of our reasonings, that we persuade others to feel and act with
us. There are two circumstances which Fox's speeches and Lord
THE CHARACTER OF FOX. 21
Chatham's had in common : they are alike distinguished by a kind
of plain downright common sense, and by the vehemence of their
manner. But still there is a great difference between them, in both
these respects. Fox in his opinions was governed by facts — Chatham
was more influenced by the feelings of others respecting those facts.
Fox endeavoured to find out what the consequences of any measure
would be ; Chatham attended more to what people would think of
it. Fox appealed to the practical reason of maakind ; Chatham to
popular prejudice. The one repelled the encroachments of power
by supplying his hearers with arguments against it ; the other by
rousing their passions and arming their resentment against those
who would rob them of their birthright. Their vehemence and im-
petuosity arose also from very different feelings. In Chatham it was
pride, passion, self-will, impatience of control, a determination to
have his own way, to carry everything before him ; in Fox it was
pure, good nature, a sincere love of truth, an ardent attachment to
what he conceived to be right ; an anxious concern for the welfare
and liberties of mankind. Or if we suppose that ambition had
taken a strong hold of both their minds, yet their ambition was of
a very different kind : in the one it was the love of power, in the
other it was the love of fame. Nothing can be more opposite than
these two principles, both in their origin and tendency. The one
originates in a selfish, haughty, domineering spirit ; the other in a
social and generous sensibility, desirous of the love and esteem of
others, and anxiously bent upon gaining merited applause. The one
grasps at immediate power by any means within its reach : the other,
if it does not square its actions by the rules of virtue, at least refers
them to a standard which comes the nearest to it — the disinterested
applause of our country, and the enlightened judgment of posterity.
The love of fame is consistent with the steadiest attachment to
principle, and indeed strengthens and supports it ; whereas the love
of power, where this is the ruling passion, requires the sacrifice of
principle, at every turn, and is inconsistent even with the shadow
of it. I do not mean to say that Fox had no love of power, or
Chatham no love of fame (this would be reversing all we know of
human nature), but that the one principle predominated in the one,
and the other in the other. My reader will do me great injustice if
he supposes that in attempting to describe the characters of different
speakers by contrasting their general qualities, I mean anything be-
yond the more or less : but it is necessary to describe those qualities
simply and in the abstract, in order to make the distinction intelli-
gible. Chatham resented any attack made upon the cause of liberty,
of which he was the avowed champion, as an indignity offered to
22 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
himself. Fox felt it as a stain upon the honour of his country, and
as an injury to the rights of his fellow-citizens. The one was swayed
by his own passions and purposes, with very little regard to the con-
sequences ; the sensibility of the other was roused, and his passions
kindled into a generous flame, by a real interest in whatever related
to the welfare of mankind, and by an intense and earnest contempla-
tion of the consequences of the measures he opposed. It was this
union of the zeal of the patriot with the enlightened knowledge of
the statesman, that gave to the eloquence of Fox a more than mortal
energy ; that warmed, expanded, penetrated every bosom. He relied
on the force of truth and nature alone ; the refinements of philo-
sophy, the pomp and pageantry of the imagination were forgotten,
or seemed light and frivolous ; the fate of nations, the welfare of
millions, hung suspended as he spoke ; a torrent of manly eloquence
poured from his heart, bore down everything in its course, and
surprised into a momentary sense of human feeling the breathing
corpses, the wire-moved puppets, the stuffed figures, the flexible
machinery, the " deaf and dumb things " of a court.
I find (I do not know how the reader feels) that it is difficult to
write a character of Fox without running into insipidity or extrava-
gance. And the reason of this is, there are no splendid contrasts,
no striking irregularities, no curious distinctions to work upon ; no
" jutting frieze, buttress, nor coigne of Vantage," for the imagination
to take hold of. It was a plain marble slab, inscribed in plain legible
characters, without either hieroglyphics or carving. There was the
same directness and manly simplicity in everything that he did.
The whole of his character may indeed be summed up in two words
— strength and simplicity. Fox was in the class of common men,
but he was the first in that class. Though it is easy to describe the
differences of things, nothing is more difficult than to describe their
degrees or quantities. In what I am going to say, I hope I shall
not be suspected of a design to underrate his powers of mind, when
in fact I am only trying to ascertain their nature and direction. The
degree and extent to which he possessed them can only be known
by reading, or indeed by having heard his speeches.
His mind, as I have already said, was, I conceive, purely historical;
and having said this, I have, I believe, said all. But perhaps it will
be necessary to explain a little further what I mean. I mean, then,
that his memory was in an extraordinary degree tenacious of facts ;
that they were crowded together in his mind without the least per-
plexity or confusion ; that there was no chain of consequences too
vast for his powers of comprehension ; that the different parts and
ramifications of his subject were never so involved and intricate but
THE CHARACTER OF FOX. 23
that they were easily disentangled in the clear prism of his under-
standing. The basis of his wisdom was experience: he not only
knew what had happened, but by an exact knowledge of the real
state of things, he could always tell what in the common course of
events would happen in future. The force of his mind was exerted
on facts : as long as he could lean directly upon these, as long as he
had the actual objects to refer to, to steady himself by, he could
analyse, he could combine, he could compare and reason upon them,
with the utmost exactness ; but he could not reason out of them.
He was what is understood by a matter-of-fact reasoner. He was
better acquainted with the concrete masses of things, their sub-
stantial forms and practical connections, than with their abstract
nature or general definitions. He was a man of extensive informa-
tion, of sound knowledge, and clear understanding, rather than the
acute observer or profound thinker. He was the man of business,
the accomplished statesman, rather than the philosopher. His
reasonings were, generally speaking, calculations of certain positive
results, which, the data being given, must follow as matters of course,
rather than unexpected and remote truths drawn from a deep insight
into human nature, and the subtle application of general principles
to particular cases. They consisted chiefly in the detail and com-
bination of a vase number of items in an account, worked by the
known rules of political arithmetic ; not in the discovery of bold,
comprehensive, and original theorems in the science. They were
rather acts of memory, of continued attention, of a power of bring-
ing all his ideas to bear at once upon a single point, than of reason
or invention. He was the attentive observer who watches the
various effects and successive movements of a machine already con-
structed, and can tell how to manage it while it goes on as it has
always done ; but who knows little or nothing of the principles on
which it is constructed, nor how to set it right, if it becomes dis-
ordered, except by the most common and obvious expedients. Burke
was to Fox what the geometrician is to the mechanic. Much has
been said of the "prophetic mind " of Mr. Fox. The same epithet
has been applied to Mr. Burke, till it has become proverbial. It
has, I think, been applied without much reason to either. Fox
wanted the scientific part. Burke wanted the practical. Fox
had too little imagination, Burke had too much : that is, he was
careless of facts, and was led away by his passions to look at one
side of a question only. He had not that fine sensibility to outward
impressions, that nice tact of circumstances, which is necessary to
the consummate politician. Indeed, his wisdom was more that of
the legislator than of the active statesman. They both tried their
24 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
strength in the Ulysses' bow of politicians, the French Revolution :
and they were both foiled. Fox indeed foretold the success of the
French in combating with foreign powers. But this was no more
than what every friend of the liberty of France foresaw or foretold
as well as he. All those on the same side of the question were
inspired with the same sagacity on the subject. Burke, on the other
hand, seems to have been beforehand with the public in foreboding
the internal disorders that would attend the Revolution, and its ul-
timate failure ; but then it is at least a question whether he did not
make good his own predictions : and certainly he saw into the causes
and connection of events much more clearly after they had happened
than before. He was, however, undoubtedly a profound commen-
tator on that apocalyptical chapter in the history of human nature,
which I do not think Fox was. Whether led to it by the events or
not, he saw thoroughly into the principles that operated to produce
them ; and he pointed them out to others in a manner which could
not be mistaken. I can conceive of Burke, as the genius of the storm,
perched over Paris, the centre and focus of anarchy (so he would have
us believe), hovering " with mighty wings outspread over the abyss,
and rendering it pregnant," watching the passions of men gradually
unfolding themselves in new situations, penetrating those hidden
motives which hurried them from one extreme into another, arrang-
ing and analysing the principles that alternately pervaded the vast
chaotic mass, and extracting the elements of order and the cement
of social life from the decomposition of all society ; while Charles Fox
in the meantime dogged the heels of the allies (all the while calling
out to them to stop) with his sutler's bag, his muster-roll, and army
estimates at his back. He said, You have only fifty thousand troops,
the enemy have a hundred thousand : this place is dismantled, it can
make no resistance : your troops were beaten last year, they must
therefore be disheartened this. This is excellent sense and sound
reasoning, but I do not see what it has to do with philosophy. But
why was it necessary that Fox should be a philosopher ? Why, in
the first place, Burke was a philosopher, and Fox, to keep up with
him, must be so too. In the second place, it was necessary in order
that his indiscreet admirers, who have no idea of greatness but as it
consists in certain names and pompous titles, might be able to talk
big about their patron. It is a bad compliment we pay to our idol
when we endeavour to make him out something different from him-
self; it shows that we are not satisfied with what he is. I have
heard it said that he had as much imagination as Burke. To this
extravagant assertion I shall make what I conceive to be a very
cautious and moderate answer : that Burke was as superior to Fox
THE CHARACTER OF FOX. 25
in this respect as Fox perhaps was to the first person you would
meet in the street. There is, in fact, hardly an instance of imagina-
tion to be met with in any of his speeches ; what there is, is of the
rhetorical kind. I may, however, be wrong. He might excel as much
in profound thought, and richness of fancy, as he did in other things ;
though I cannot perceive it. However, when any one publishes a
book called The Beauties of Fox, containing the original reflections,
brilliant passages, lofty metaphors, &c., to be found in his speeches,
without the detail or connection, I shall be very ready to give the
point up.
In logic Fox was inferior to Pitt — indeed, in all the formalities of
eloquence, in which the latter excelled as much as he was deficient
in the soul of substance. When I say that Pitt was siiperior to Fox
in logic, I mean that he excelled him in the formal division of the
subject, in always keeping it in view, as far as he chose ; in being
able to detect any deviation from it in others ; in the manage-
ment of his general topics ; in being aware of the mood and figure
in which the argument must move, with all its non-essentials,
dilemmas, and alternatives ; in never committing himself, nor ever
suffering his antagonist to occupy an inch of the plainest ground,
but under cover of a syllogism. He had more of " the dazzling fence
of argument," as it has been called. He was, in short, better at his
weapon. But then, unfortunately, it was only a dagger of lath that
the wind could turn aside ; whereas Fox wore a good trusty blade,
of solid metal, and real execution.
I shall not trouble myself to inquire whether Fox was a man of
strict virtue and principle ; or in other words, how far he was one of
those who screw themselves up to a certain pitch of ideal perfection,
who, as it were, set themselves in the stocks of morality, and make
mouths at their own situation. He was not one of that tribe, and shall
not be tried by their self-denying ordinances. But he was endowed
with one of the most excellent natures that ever fell to the lot of any
of God's creatures. It has been said, that " an honest man's the
noblest work of God." There is indeed a purity, a rectitude, an
integrity of heart, a freedom from every selfish bias and sinister
motive, a manly simplicity and noble disinterestedness of feeling,
which is in my opinion to be preferred before every other gift of
nature or art. There is a greatness of soul that is superior to all
the brilliancy of the understanding. This strength of moral char-
acter, which is not only a more valuable but a rarer quality than
strength of understanding (as we are oftener led astray by the
narrowness of our feelings, than want of knowledge), Fox possessed
in the highest degree. He was superior to every kind of jealousy,
26 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of suspicion, of malevolence ; to every narrow and sordid motive.
He was perfectly above every species of duplicity, of low art and
cunning. He judged of everything in the downright sincerity of
his nature, without being able to impose upon himself by any
hollow disguise, or to lend his support to anything unfair or dis-
honourable. He had an innate love of truth, of justice, of probity,
of whatever was generous or liberal. Neither his education, nor
his connections, nor his situation in life, nor the low intrigues and
virulence of party, could ever alter the simplicity of his taste, nor
the candid openness of his nature. There was an elastic force about
his heart, a freshness of social feeling, a warm glowing humanity,
which remained unimpaired to the last. He was by nature a
gentleman. By this I mean that he felt a certain deference and
respect for the person of every man ; he had an unaffected frank-
ness and benignity in his behaviour to others, the utmost liberality
in judging of their conduct and motives. A refined humanity con-
stitutes the character of a gentleman. He was the true friend of
his country, as far as it is possible for a statesman to be so. But
his love of his country did not consist in his hatred of the rest of
mankind. I shall conclude this account by repeating what Burke
said of him at a time when his testimony was of the most value.
"To his great and masterly understanding he joined the utmost
possible degree of moderation : he was of the most artless, candid,
open, and benevolent disposition ; disinterested in the extreme ; of
a temper mild and placable, even to a fault ; and without one drop
of gall in his constitution."
27
TUCKER'S "LIGHT OF NATURE PURSUED."
[An abridgement of The Light of Nature Pursued, by Abraham Tucker,
Esq., originally published in seven volumes, under the name of Edward
Search, Esq., 1807.]
... A GOOD abridgement ought to contain just as much as we
should wish to recollect of a book ; it should give back (only in a
more perfect manner) to a reader well acquainted with the original,
"the image of his mind," so that he would miss no favourite
passage, none of the prominent parts, or distinguishing features of
the work. ... As to the pains and labour it has cost me, or
the time I have devoted to it, I shall say nothing. However, if
any one should be scrupulous on that head, I might answer, as Sir
Joshua Reynolds is said to have done to some person who cavilled
at the price of a picture, and desired to know how long he had
been doing it, " All my life."
Of the work itself, I can speak with more confidence. I do not
know of any work in the shape of a philosophical treatise that con-
tains so much good sense so agreeably expressed. The character of
the work is, in this respect, altogether singular. Amidst all the
abstruseness of the most subtle disquisitions, it is as familiar as
Montaigne, and as wild and entertaining as John Buncle. To the
ingenuity and closeness of the metaphysician, he unites the practical
knowledge of the man of the world, and the utmost sprightliness,
and even levity of imagination. He is the only philosopher who
appears to have had his senses always about him, or to have
possessed the enviable faculty of attending at the same time to
what was passing in his own mind, and what was going on with-
out him. He applied everything to the purposes of philosophy ; he
could not see anything, the most familiar objects or the commonest
events, without connecting them with the illustration of some diffi-
cult problem. The tricks of a young kitten, or a little child at play,
were sure to suggest to him some useful observation, or nice dis-
tinction. To this habit he was, no doubt, indebted for what Paley
28 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
justly calls "his unrivalled power of illustration." To be convinced
that he possessed this power in the highest degree, it is only necessary
to look into almost any page of his writings. . . .
The great merit of our author's writings is undoubtedly that
sound, practical, comprehensive good sense, which is to be found in
every part of them. What is, I believe, the truest test of fine sense,
is that affecting simplicity in his observations, which proceeds from
their extreme truth and liveliness. Whatever recalls strongly to
our remembrance the common feelings of human nature, and marks
distinctly the changes that take place in the human breast, must
always be accompanied with some sense of emotion; for our own
nature can never be indifferent to us. . . .
Had our author been a vain man, his situation would not have
been an enviable one. Even the sternest stoic of us all wishes at
least for some person to enter into his views and feelings, and con-
firm him in the opinion he entertains of himself. But he does not
seem to have had his spirits once cheered by the animating cordial
of friendly sympathy. Discouraged by his friends, neglected by the
public, and ridiculed by the reviewers, he still drew sufficient encour-
agement from the testimony of his own mind, and the inward con-
sciousness of truth. He still pursued his inquiries with the same
calmness and industry, and entered into the little round of his
amusements with the same cheerfulness as ever. He rested satisfied
with the enjoyment of himself, and of his own faculties ; and was
not disgusted with his simple employments, because they made no
noise in the world. He did not seek for truth as the echo of loud
folly; and he did not desist from the exercise of his own reason,
because he could make no impression on ignorance and vulgarity.
He could contemplate the truth by its own clear light, without the
aid of the false lustre and glittering appearance which it assumes in
the admiring eyes of the beholders. He sought for his reward, where
only the philosopher will find it, in the secret approbation of his
own heart, and the clear convictions of an enlightened understand-
ing. The man of deep reflection is not likely to gain much popular
applause ; and he does not stand in need of it. He has learned to
live upon his own stock, and can build his self-esteem on a better
foundation than that of vanity. I cannot help mentioning, that
though Mr. Tucker was blind when he wrote the last volumes of his
work, which he did with a machine contrived by himself, he has not
said a word of this circumstance : this would be with me a sufficient
trait of his character.
[The Bound Table ; a Collection of Essays on Literature, Men and Manners,
2 vols., 1817. The chief portion of these Essays originally appeared in the
Examiner, in 1815-1817. Twelve of the fifty-two were by Leigh Hunt. Three
editions have been published.]
THE LOVE OF LIFE.
IT is our intention, in the course of these papers, occasionally to
expose certain vulgar errors, which have crept into our. reasonings
011 men and manners. Perhaps one of the most interesting of these
is that which relates to the source of our general attachment to life.
We are not going to enter into the question, whether life is, on the
whole, to be regarded as a blessing, though we are by no means in-
clined to adopt the opinion of that sage who thought " that the
best thing that could have happened to a man was never to have
been born, and the next best to have died the moment after he
came into existence." The common argument, however, which is
made use of to prove the value of life, from the strong desire which
almost every one feels for its continuance, appears to be altogether
inconclusive. The wise and the foolish, the weak and the strong,
the lame and the blind, the prisoner and the free, the prosperous
and the wretched, the beggar and the king, the rich and the poor,
the young and the old, from the little child who tries to leap over
his own shadow to the old man who stumbles blindfold on his grave
— all feel this desire in common. Our notions with respect to the
importance of life, and our attachment to it, depend on a principle
which has very little to do with its happiness or its misery.
The love of life is, in general, the effect, not of our enjoyments,
but of our passions. We are not attached to it so much for its own
sake, or as it is connected with happiness, as because it is neces-
sary to action. Without life there can be no action — no objects of
pursuit — no restless desires — no tormenting passions. Hence it is
that we fondly cling to it — that we dread its termination as the
close, not of enjoyment, but of hope. The proof that our attach-
ment to life is not absolutely owing to the immediate satisfaction
we find in it is, that those peraons are commonly found most loth
to part with it who have the least enjoyment of it. and who have
30 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the greatest difficulties to struggle with, as losing gamesters are
the most desperate. And further, there are not many persons
who, with all their pretended love of life, would not, if it had been
in their power, have melted down the longest life to a few hours.
"The schoolboy," says Addison, "counts the time till the return
of the holidays ; the minor longs to be of age ; the lover is im-
patient till he is married." " Hope and fantastic expectations
spend much of our lives ; and while with passion we look for a
coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, passing from
fancy to possession without any intermediate notices, we throw
away a precious year." — (Jeremy Taylor.) We would willingly,
and without remorse, sacrifice not only the present moment, but
all the interval (no matter how long) that separates us from any
favourite object. We chiefly look upon life, then, as the means to
an end. Its common enjoyments and its daily evils are alike dis-
regarded for any idle purpose we have in view. It should seem as
if there were a few green sunny spots in the desert of life, to which
we are always hastening forward; we eye them wistfully in the
distance, and care not what perils or suffering we endure, so that
we arrive at them at last. However weary we may be of the same
stale round — however sick of the past — however hopeless of the
future — the mind still revolts at the thought of death, because the
fancied possibility of good, which always remains with life, gathers
strength as it is about to be torn from us for ever, and the dullest
scene looks bright compared with the darkness of the grave. Our
reluctance to part with existence evidently does not depend on the
calm and even current of our lives, but on the force and impulse of
the passions. Hence that indifference to death which has been some-
times remarked in people who lead a solitary and peaceful life in
remote and barren districts. The pulse of life in them does not
beat strong enough to occasion any violent revulsion of the frame
when it ceases. He who treads the green mountain turf, or he who
sleeps beneath it, enjoys an almost equal quiet. The death of those
persons has always been accounted happy who had attained their
utmost wishes, who had nothing left to regret or desire. Our re-
pugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of
having lived in vain — to the violence of our efforts, and the keen-
ness of our disappointments — and to our earnest desire to find in
the future, if possible, a rich amends for the past. We may be
said to nurse our existence with the greatest tenderness, according
to the pain it has cost us ; and feel at every step of our varying
progress the truth of that line of the poet —
" An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour."
THE LOVE OF LIFE. 31
The love of life is in fact the sum of all our passions and of all
our enjoyments ; but these are by no means the same tiling, for
the vehemence of our passion is irritated not less by disappointment
than by the prospect of success. Nothing seems to be a match
for this general tenaciousness of existence, but such an extremity
either of bodily or mental suffering as destroys at once the power
both of habit and imagination. In short, the question whether
life is accompanied with a greater quantity of pleasure or pain,
may be fairly set aside as frivolous, and of no practical utility ; for
our attachment to life depends on our interest in it, and it cannot
be denied that we have more interest in this moving busy scene,
agitated with a thousand hopes and fears, and checkered with every
diversity of joy and sorrow, than in a dreary blank. To be some-
thing is better than to be nothing, because we can feel no interest
in nothing. Passion, imagination, self-will, the sense of power, the
very consciousness of our existence, bind us to life, and hold us fast
in its chains, as by a magic spell, in spite of every other considera-
tion. Nothing can be more philosophical than the reasoning which
Milton puts into the mouth of the fallen angel —
" And that must end us, that must be our cure —
To be no more. Sad cure ! For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion ? "
Nearly the same account may. be given in answer to the question
which has been asked, Why so few tyrants kill themselves ? In the
first place, they are never satisfied with the mischief they have done,
and cannot quit their hold of power after all sense of pleasure is
fled. Besides, they absurdly argue from the means of happiness
placed within their reach to the end itself ; and, dazzled by the
pomp and pageantry of a throne, cannot relinquish the persuasion
that they ought to be happier than other men. The prejudice of
opinion, which attaches us to life, is in them stronger than in others,
and incorrigible to experience. The great are life's fools — dupes of
the splendid shadows that surround them, and wedded to the very
mockeries of opinion.
Whatever is our situation or pursuit in life, the result will be much
the same. The strength of the passion seldom corresponds to the
pleasure we find in its indulgence. The miser " robs himself to in-
crease his store; the ambitious man toils up a slippery precipice only
32 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
to be tumbled headlong from its height ; the lover is infatuated
with the charms of his mistress, exactly in proportion to the mor-
tifications he has received from her. Even those who succeed in
nothing — who, as it has been emphatically expressed,
" Are made desperate by too quick a sense
Of constant infelicity ; cut off
From peace like exiles, on some barren rock,
Their life's sad prison, with no more of ease
Than sentinels between two armies set " —
are yet as unwilling as others to give over the unprofitable strife :
their harassed feverish existence refuses rest, and frets the languor
of exhausted hope into the torture of unavailing regret. The exile,
who has been unexpectedly restored to his country and to liberty,
often finds his courage fail with the accomplishment of all his
wishes, and the struggle of life and hope ceases at the same
instant.
We once more repeat, that we do not, in the foregoing remarks,
mean to enter into a comparative estimate of the value of human
life, but merely to show that the strength of our attachment to it is
a very fallacious test of its happiness.
LOVE OF THE COUNTRY.
[This letter is incorporated in the critical remarks on Thomson and Cowper
in Lectures on the English Poets, 1818.]
TO THE EDITOR OP "THE HOUND TABLE."
SIR, — I do not know that any one has ever explained satisfactorily
the true source of our attachment to natural objects, or of that
soothing emotion which the sight of the country hardly ever fails to
infuse into the mind. Some persons have ascribed this feeling to
the natural beauty of the objects themselves ; others to the freedom
from care, the silence and tranquillity, which scenes of retirement
afford ; others to the healthy and innocent employments of a country
life ; others to the simplicity of country manners, and others to dif-
ferent causes ; but none to the right one. All these causes may, I
believe, have a share in producing this feeling ; but there is another
more general principle, which has been left untouched, and which I
LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 33
shall here explain, endeavouring to be as little sentimental as the
subject will admit.
Rousseau, in his " Confessions " — the most valuable of all his works
— relates that, when he took possession of his room at Annecy, at
the house of his beloved mistress and friend, he found that he could
see " a little spot of green " from his window, which endeared his
situation the more to him, because, he says, it was the first time he
had had this object constantly before him since he left Boissy, the
place where he was at school when a child. Some such feeling as
that here described will be found lurking at the bottom of all our
attachments of this sort. Were it not for the recollections habitually
associated with them, natural objects could not interest the mind in
the manner they do. No doubt the sky is beautiful ; the clouds sail
majestically along its bosom; the sun is cheering; there is some-
thing exquisitely graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree
puts forth its branches ; the motion with which they bend and
tremble in the evening breeze is soft and lovely ; there is music in
the babbling of a brook ; the view from the top of a mountain is full
of grandeur ; nor can we behold the ocean with indifference. Or, as
the minstrel sweetly sings —
" Oh, how can'st thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her vot'ry yields ?
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even ; •
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven —
Oh, how can'st thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven I"
It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we
admire in Nature; the most insignificant and the rudest objects
are often found connected with the strongest emotions ; we become
attached to the most common and familiar images, as to the face of
a friend whom we have long known, and from whom we have received
many benefits. It is because natural objects have been associated
with the sports of our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feel-
ings in solitude, when the mind takes the strongest hold of things,
and clings with the fondest interest to whatever strikes its atten-
tion ; with change of place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts
of distant friends : it is because they have surrounded us in almost
all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in pleasure and in pain — because
they have been one chief source and nourishment of our feelings, and
a part of our being, that we love them as we do ourselves.
34 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of
Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of
ideas. But this is not all. That which distinguishes this attach-
ment from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with
respect to physical objects, the associations connected with any one
object extending to the whole class. My having been attached to
any particular person does not make me feel the same attachment
to the next person I may chance to meet ; but if I have once
associated strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural
scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and I shall ever after feel the
same attachment to other objects of the same sort. I remember,
when I was abroad, the trees and grass and wet leaves rustling in
the walks of the Tuileries seemed to be as much English, to be as
much the same trees and grass that I had always been used to, as
the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in
England ; the faces only were foreign to me. Whence comes this
difference ? It arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the
idea of the individual with man, and only the idea of the class with
natural objects. In the one case, the external appearance or physical
structure is the least thing to be attended to ; in the other, it is
everything. The springs that move the human form, and make it
friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of
motives, passions, and ideas contained in that narrow compass, of
which I know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each indi-
vidual is a world to himself, governed by a thousand contradictory
and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make no inference from
one individual to another; nor can my habitual sentiments, with
respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to others. But it
is otherwise with respect to Nature. There is neither hypocrisy,
caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. Our intercourse with
her is not liable to accident or change, interruption or disappoint-
ment. She smiles on us still the same. Thus, to give an obvious
instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been
lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet,
I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook I can enjoy
the pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can
easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that in-
habits them, dryad or nai'ad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting
shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of
the same kind being the same, not only in their appearance but in
their practical uses, we habitually confound them together under the
same general idea ; and whatever fondness we may have conceived
for one is immediately placed to the common account. The most
LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 35
opposite kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich
the same sentiment ; and in our love of Nature there is all the force
of individual attachment combined with the most airy abstraction.
It is this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and
wild interest to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which
every one must have experienced who is a true lover of Nature. The
sight of the setting sun does not affect me so much from the beauty
of the object itself, from the glory kindled through the glowing skies,
the rich broken columns of light, or the dying streaks of day, as that
it indistinctly recalls to me numberless thoughts and feelings with
which, through many a year and season, I have watched his bright
descent in the warm summer evenings, or beheld him struggling to
cast a " farewell sweet " through the thick clouds of winter. I love
to see the trees first covered with leaves hi the spring, the primroses
peeping out from some sheltered bank, and the innocent lambs
running races on the soft green turf ; because at that birth-time of
Nature I have always felt sweet hopes and happy wishes — which have
not been fulfilled ! The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream —
the woods swept by the loud blast — the dark massy foliage of autumn
— the grey trunks and naked branches of the trees in winter — the
sequestered copse and wide-extended heath — the warm sunny showers
and December snows — have all charms for me ; there is no object,
however trifling or rude, that has not, in some mood or other, found
the way to my heart ; and I might say, in the words of the poet :
" To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
Thus Nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it pre-
sents to us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks :
"Nature did ne'er betray
The heart that lov'd her, but through all the years
Of this our life, it is her privilege
To lead from joy to joy."
For there is that consent and mutual harmony among all her works
— one undivided spirit pervading them throughout — that, if we
have once knit ourselves in hearty fellowship to any of them, they
will never afterwards appear as strangers to us, but, whichever way
we turn, we shall find a secret power to have gone out before us,
moulding them into such shapes as fancy loves, informing them
with life and sympathy, bidding them put on their festive looks
and gayest attire at our approach, and to pour all their sweets
and choicest treasures at our feet. For him, then, who has well
36 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
acquainted himself with Nature's works, she wears always one face,
and speaks the same well-known language, striking on the heart,
amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the world, like the
music of one's native tongue heard in some far-off country.
We do not connect the same feelings with the works of Art as
with those of Nature, because we refer them to man, and associate
with them the separate interests and passions which we know be-
long to those who are the authors or possessors of them. Never-
theless, there are some such objects, as a cottage or a village church,
which excite in us the same sensations as the sight of Nature, and
which are, indeed, almost always included in descriptions of natural
scenery.
" Or from the mountain's sides
View wilds and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires,
And hear their simple bell."
Which is in part, no doubt, because they are surrounded with
natural objects, and, in a populous country, inseparable from them ;
and also because the human interest they excite relates to manners
and feelings which are simple, common, such as all can enter into,
and which, therefore, always produce a pleasing effect upon the
mind.
THE TENDENCY OF SECTS.
THERE is a natural tendency in sects to narrow the mind.
The extreme stress laid upon differences of minor importance, to
the neglect of more general truths and broader views of things,
gives an inverted bias to the understanding ; and this bias is con-
tinually increased by the eagerness of controversy, and captious
hostility to the prevailing system. A party-feeling of this kind
once formed will insensibly communicate itself to other topics ; and
will be too apt to lead its votaries to a contempt for the opinions of
others, a jealousy of every difference of sentiment, and a disposition
to arrogate all sound principle as well as understanding to them-
selves and those who think with them. We can readily conceive
how such persons, from fixing too high a value on the practical
pledge which they have given of the independence and sincerity of
their opinions, come at last to entertain a suspicion of every one
else as acting under the shackles of prejudice or the mask of hypo-
crisy. All those who have not given in their unqualified protests
THE TENDENCY OF SECTS. 37
against received doctrines and established authority, are supposed
to labour under an acknowledged incapacity to form a rational de-
termination on any subject -whatever. Any argument, not having
the presumption of singularity in its favour, is immediately set
aside as nugatory. There is, however, no prejudice so strong as
that which arises from a fancied exemption from all prejudice. For
this last implies not only the practical conviction that it is right,
but the theoretical assumption that it cannot be wrong. From
considering all objections as in this manner "null and void," the
mind becomes so thoroughly satisfied with its own conclusions as to
render any further examination of them superfluous, and confounds
its exclusive pretensions to reason with the absolute possession of
it. Those who, from their professing to submit everything to the
test of reason, have acquired the name of Rational Dissenters, have
their weak sides as well as other people ; nor do we know of any
class of disputants more disposed to take their opinions for granted
than those who call themselves Freethinkers. A long habit of ob-
jecting to everything establishes a monopoly in the right of contra-
diction— a prescriptive title to the privilege of starting doubts and
difficulties in the common belief, without being liable to have our
own called in question. There cannot be a more infallible way to
prove that we must be in the right, than by maintaining roundly
that every one else is in the wrong. Not only the opposition
of sects to one another, but their unanimity among themselves,
strengthens their confidence in their peculiar notions. They feel
themselves invulnerable behind the double fence of sympathy with
themselves and antipathy to the rest of the world. Backed by the
zealous support of their followers, they become equally intolerant
with respect to the opinions of others and tenacious of their own.
They fortify themselves within the narrow circle of their new-fangled
prejudices ; the whole exercise of their right of private judgment
is after a time reduced to the repetition of a set of watchwords,
which have been adopted as the shibboleth of the party ; and their
extremest points of faith pass as current as the bead-roll and legends
of the Catholics, or St. Athanasius' Creed and the Thirty-nine Articles.
We certainly are not going to recommend the establishment of
articles of faith, or implicit assent to them, as favourable to the pro-
gress of philosophy ; but neither has the spirit of opposition to them
this tendency, as far as relates to its immediate effects, however
useful it may be in its remote consequences. The spirit of contro-
versy substitutes the irritation of personal feeling for the independent
exertion of the understanding ; and when this irritation ceases, the
mind flags for want of a sufficient stimulus to urge it on. It dis-
38 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
charges all its energy with its spleen. Besides, this perpetual cavil-
ling with the opinions of others, detecting petty flaws in their argu-
ments, calling them to a literal account for their absurdities, and
squaring their doctrines by a pragmatical standard of our own, is
necessarily adverse to any great enlargement of mind or original
freedom of thought.1 The constant attention bestowed on a few
contested points, by at once nattering our pride, our prejudices, and
our indolence, supersedes more general inquiries; and the bigoted
controversialist, by dint of repeating a certain formula of belief, shall
not only convince himself that all those who differ from him are
undoubtedly wrong on that point, but that their knowledge on all
others must be comparatively slight and superficial. We have known
some very worthy and well-informed Biblical critics, who, by virtue
of having discovered that one was not three, or that the same body
could not be in two places at once, would be disposed to treat the
whole Council of Trent, with Father Paul at their head, with very
little deference, and to consider Leo X., with all his court, as no
better than drivellers. Such persons will hint to you, as an addi-
tional proof of his genius,, that Milton was a Nonconformist, and
will excuse the faults of " Paradise Lost," as Dr. Johnson magnified
them, because the author was a Republican. By the all-sufficiency
of their merits in believing certain truths which have been " hid from
ages," they are elevated, in their own imagination, to a higher sphere
of intellect, and are released from the necessity of pursuing the more
ordinary tracks of inquiry. Their faculties are imprisoned in a few
favourite dogmas, and they cannot break through the trammels of a
sect. Hence we may remark a hardness and setness in the ideas of
those who have been brought up in this way, an aversion to those
finer and more delicate operations of the intellect, of taste, and
genius, which require greater flexibility and variety of thought, and
do not afford the same opportunity for dogmatical assertion and
controversial cabal. The distaste of the Puritans, Quakers, &c., to
pictures, music, poetry, and the fine arts in general, may be traced
to this source as much as to their affected disdain of them, as not
sufficiently spiritual and remote from the gross impurity of sense.
1 The Dissenters in this country (if we except the founders of sects, who
fall under a class by themselves) have produced only two remarkable men,
Priestley and Jonathan Edwards. The work of the letter on the Will is
written with as much power of logic, and more in the true spirit of philosophy,
than any other metaphysical work in the language. His object throughout
is not to perplex the question, but to satisfy his own mind and the reader's.
In general, the principle of Dissent arises more from want of sympathy and
imagination, than from strength of reason. The spirit of contradiction is not
the spirit of philosophy.
THE TENDENCY OF SECTS. 39
We learn from the interest we take in things, and according to
the number of things in which we take an interest. Our ignorance
of the real value of different objects and pursuits will in general
keep pace with our contempt for them. To set out with denying
common sense to every one else is not the way to be wise our-
selves; nor shall we be likely to learn much if we suppose that
no one can teach us anything worth knowing. Again, a contempt
for the habits and manners of the world is as prejudicial as a con-
tempt for its opinions. A puritanical abhorrence of everything
that does not fall in with our immediate prejudices and customs
must effectually cut us off, not only from a knowledge of the world
and of human nature, but of good and evil, of vice and virtue — at
least, if we can credit the assertion of Plato (which, to some degree,
we do), that the knowledge of everything implies the knowledge of
its opposite. " There is some soul of goodness in things evil." A
most respectable sect among ourselves (we mean the Quakers) have
carried this system of negative qualities nearly to perfection. They
labour diligently, and with great success, to exclude all ideas from
their minds which they might have in common with others. On the
principle that "evil communications corrupt good manners," they
retain a virgin purity of understanding and laudable ignorance of
all liberal arts and sciences ; they take every precaution, and keep up
a perpetual quarantine against the infection of other people's vices —
or virtues ; they pass through the world like figures cut out of paste-
board or wood, turning neither to the right nor the left ; and their
minds are no more affected by the example of the follies, the pursuits,
the pleasures, or the passions of mankind, than the clothes which they
wear. Their ideas want airing ; they are the worse for not being used ;
for fear of soiling them they keep them folded up and laid by in a
sort of mental clothes-press through the whole of their lives. They
take their notions on trust from one generation to another — like the
scanty cut of their coats — and are so wrapped up in these traditional
maxims, and so pin their faith on them, that one of the most in-
telligent of this class of people, not long ago, assured us that " war
was a thing that was going quite out of fashion." This abstract
sort of existence may have its advantages, but it takes away all the
ordinary sources of a moral imagination, as well as strength of
intellect. Interest is the only link that connects them with the
world. We can understand the high enthusiasm and religious
devotion of monks and anchorites, who gave up the world and its
pleasures to dedicate themselves to a sublime contemplation of a
future state ; but the sect of the Quakers, who have transplanted
the maxims of the desert into manufacturing towns and populous
40 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC,
cities — who have converted the solitary cells of the religious orders
into counting-houses, their beads into ledgers, and keep a regular
" debtor and creditor " account between this world and the next —
puzzle us mightily. The Dissenter is not vain, but conceited — that
is, he makes up by his own good opinion for the want of the cordial
admiration of others ; but this often stands their self-love in so good
stead that they need not envy their dignified opponents who repose
on lawn-sleeves and ermine. The unmerited obloquy and dislike to
which they are exposed has made them cold and reserved in their
intercourse with society. The same cause will account for the
dryness and general homeliness of their style. They labour under
a sense of the want of public sympathy. They pursue truth, for
its own sake, into its private recesses and obscure corners. They
have to dig their way along a narrow underground passage. It is
not their object to shine ; they have none of the usual incentives of
vanity — light, airy, and ostentatious. Archiepiscopal sees and mitres
do not glitter in their distant horizon. They are not wafted on the
wings of fancy, fanned by the breath of popular applause. The
voice of the world, the tide of opinion, is not with them. They do
not, therefore, aim at 4dat — at outward pomp and show. They have
a plain ground to work upon, and they do not attempt to embellish
it with idle ornaments. It would be in vain to strew the flowers of
poetry round the borders of the Unitarian controversy.
There is one quality common to all sectaries, and that is, a
principle of strong fidelity. They are the safest partisans and the
steadiest friends. Indeed, they are almost the only people who have
any idea of an abstract attachment, either to a cause or to indi-
viduals, from a sense of duty, independently of prosperous or adverse
circumstances, and in spite of opposition.
ON "JOHN BUNGLE."
JOHN BUNCLE is the English Rabelais. This is an author with
whom, perhaps, many of our readers are not acquainted, and whom
we therefore wish to introduce to their notice. As most of our
countrymen delight in English generals and in English admirals, in
English courtiers and in English kings, so our great delight is in
English authors.
The soul of Francis Rabelais passed into John Amory, the author
of " The Life and Adventures of John Buncle." Both were physicians,
ON "JOHN BUNCLE." 41
and enemies of too much gravity. Their great business was to enjoy
life. Rabelais indulges his spirit of sensuality in wine, in dried
neats-tongues, in Bologna sausages, in botargos. John Buncle shows
the same symptoms of inordinate satisfaction in tea and bread-and-
butter. While Rabelais roared with Friar John and the monks,
John Buncle gossiped with, the ladies, and with equal and uncon-
trolled gaiety. These two authors possessed all the insolence of
health, so that their works give a fillip to the constitution ; but
they carried off the exuberance of their natural spirits in different
ways. The title of one of Rabelais' chapters (and the contents
answer to the title) is, " How they chirped over their cups." The
title of a corresponding chapter in " John Buncle " would run thus :
" The author is invited to spend the evening with the divine Miss
Hawkins, and goes accordingly; with the delightful conversation
that ensued." Natural philosophers are said to extract sunbeams
from ice ; our author has performed the same feat upon the the cold
quaint subtleties of theology. His constitutional alacrity over-
comes every obstacle. He converts the thorns and briars of contro-
versial divinity into a bed of roses. He leads the most refined and
virtuous of their sex through the mazes of inextricable problems
with the air of a man walking a minuet in a drawing-room ; mixes
up in the most natural and careless manner the academy of com-
pliments with the rudiments of algebra ; or passes with rapturous
indifference from the First of St. John and a disquisition on the
Logos to the no less metaphysical doctrines of the principle of self-
preservation or the continuation of the species. " John Buncle " is
certainly one of the most singular productions in the language, and
herein lies its peculiarity. It is a Unitarian romance, and one in
which the soul and body are equally attended to. The hero is a
great philosopher, mathematician, anatomist, chemist, philologist,
and divine, with a good appetite, the best spirits, and an amorous
constitution, who sets out on a series of strange adventures to pro-
pagate his philosophy, his divinity, and his species, and meets with
a constant succession of accomplished females, adorned with equal
beauty, wit, and virtue, who are always ready to discuss all kinds of
theoretical and practical points with him. His angels — and all his
women are angels — have all taken their degrees in more than one
science : love is natural to them. He is sure to find
" A mistress and a saint in every grove. "
Pleasure and business, wisdom and mirth, take their turns with the
most agreeable regularity: A jocis ad seria, in seriis vicissim adjocos
42 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
transire. After a chapter of calculations in fluxions, or on the
descent of tongues, the lady and gentleman fall from Platonics to
hoydening, in a manner as truly edifying as anything in the scenes
of Vanbrugh or Sir George Etherege. No writer ever understood so
well the art of relief. The effect is like travelling in Scotland, and
coming all of a sudden to a spot of habitable ground. His mode
of making love is admirable He takes it quite easily, and never
thinks of a refusal. His success gives him confidence, and his con-
fidence gives him success. For example : in the midst of one of his
rambles in the mountains of Cumberland he unexpectedly comes to an
elegant country-seat, where, walking on the lawn with a book in her
hand, he sees a most enchanting creature, the owner of the mansion.
Our hero is on fire, leaps the ha-ha which separates them, presents
himself before the lady with an easy but respectful air, begs to know
the subject of her meditation ; they enter into conversation, mvitual
explanations take place, a declaration of love is made, and the
wedding-day is fixed for the following Tuesday. Our author now
leads a life of perfect happiness with his beautiful Miss Noel, in a
charming solitude, for a few weeks, till, on his return from one of
his rambles in the mountains, he finds her a corpse. He " sits with
his eyes shut for seven days" absorbed in silent grief; he then bids
adieu to melancholy reflections — not being one of that sect of philoso-
phers who think that " man was made to mourn " — takes horse, and
sets out for the nearest watering-place. As he alights at the first
inn on the road, a lady dressed in a rich green riding-habit steps out
of a coach; John Buncle hands her into the inn, they drink tea
together, they converse, they find an exact harmony of sentiment, a
declaration of love follows as a matter of course, and that day week
they are married. Death, however, contrives to keep up the ball
for him : he marries seven wives in succession, and buries them all.
In short, John Buncle's gravity sat upon him with the happiest
indifference possible. He danced the Hays with religion and morality
with the ease of a man of fashion and of pleasure. He was deter-
mined to see fair-play between grace and nature — between his im-
mortal and his mortal part ; and, in case of any difficulty, upon the
principle of " first come first served," made sure of the present hour.
We sometimes suspect him of a little hypocrisy, but upon a closer
inspection it appears to be only an affectation of hypocrisy. His
fine constitution comes to his relief, and floats him over the shoals
and quicksands that lie in his way, " most dolphin-like." You see
him, from mere happiness of nature, chuckling with inward satis-
faction in the midst of his periodical penances, his grave grimaces,
his death's-heads and memento marts :
ON "JOHN BUNGLE." 43
" And there the antic sits
Mocking his state, and grinning at his pomp."
As men make use of olives to give a relish to their wine, so John
Buncle made use of philosophy to give a relish to life. He stops in
a ball-room at Harrogate to moralise on the small number of faces
that appeared there out of those he remembered some years before ;
all were gone whom he saw at a still more distant period ; but this
casts no damper on his spirits, and he only dances the longer and
better for it. He suffers nothing unpleasant to remain long upon
his mind. He gives, in one place, a miserable description of two
emaciated valetudinarians whom he met at an inn, supping a little
mutton-broth with difficulty ; but he immediately contrasts himself
with them in fine relief. " While I beheld things with astonishment,
the servant," he says, " brought in dinner — a pound of rump-steaks
and a quart of green peas, two cuts of bread, a tankard of strong
beer, and a pint of port wine ; with a fine appetite I soon despatched
my mess, and over my wine, to help digestion, began, to sing the following
lines." The astonishment of the two strangers was now as great as
his own had been.
We wish to enable our readers to judge for themselves of the style
of our whimsical moralist, but are at a loss what to choose — whether
his account of his man O'Fin, or of his friend Tom Fleming, or of his
being chased over the mountains by robbers, " whisking before them
like the wind away," as if it were high sport ; or his address to the
sun, which is an admirable piece of serious eloquence ; or his char-
acter of six Irish gentlemen — Mr. Gollogher, Mr. Gallaspy, Mr.
Dunkley, Mr. Makins, Mr. Monaghan, and Mr. O'Keefe — the last
"descended from the Irish kings, and first-cousin to the great O'Keefe,
who was buried not long ago in Westminster Abbey." He professes
to give an account of these Irish gentlemen, "for the honour of
Ireland, and as they were curiosities of humankind." Curiosities,
indeed, but not so great as their historian ! —
" Mr. Makins was the only one of the set who was not tall and
handsome. He was a very low thin man, not four feet high, and had
but one eye, with which he squinted most shockingly. But as he
was matchless on the fiddle, sang well, and chatted agreeably, he
was a favourite with the ladies. They preferred ugly Makins (as he
was called) to many very handsome men. He was a Unitarian.
"Mr. Monaghan was an honest and charming fellow. This
gentleman and Mr. Dunkley married ladies they fell in love with
at Harrogate Wells ; Dunkley had the fair Alcmena, Miss Cox of
Northumberland; and Monaghan, Antiope with haughty charms
44 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Miss Pearson of Cumberland. They lived very happy many years,
and their children, I hear, are settled in Ireland ! "
Gentle reader, here is the character of Mr. Gallaspy :
"Gallaspy was the tallest and strongest man I have ever seen,
well-made, and very handsome : had wit and abilities, sang well,
and talked with great sweetness and fluency, but was so extremely
wicked that it were better for him if he had been a natural fool.
By his vast strength and activity, his riches and eloquence, few
things could withstand him. He was the most profane swearer I
have known; fought everything, whored everything, and drank
seven-in-hand — that is, seven glasses so placed between the fingers
of his right hand that, in drinking, the liquor fell into the next
glasses, and thereby he drank out of the first glass seven glasses at
once. This was a common thing, I find from a book in my posses-
sion, in the reign of Charles II., in the madness that followed the
restoration of that profligate and worthless prince. But this gentle-
man was the only man I ever saw who could or would attempt to
do it ; and he made but one gulp of whatever he drank. He did
not swallow a fluid like other people, but if it was a quart, poured
it in as from pitcher to pitcher. When he smoked tobacco, he
always blew two pipes at once, one at each corner of his mouth,
and threw the smoke out at both his nostrils. He had killed two
men in duels before I left Ireland, and would have been hanged, but
that it was his good fortune to be tried before a judge who never
let any man suffer for killing another in this manner. (This was
the late Sir John St. Leger.) He debauched all the women he
could, and many whom he could not corrupt "... The rest of
this passage would, we fear, be too rich for the "Round Table,"
as we cannot insert it, in the manner of Mr. Buncle, in a sand-
wich of theology. Suffice it to say, that the candour is greater
than the candour of Voltaire's "Candide," and the modesty equal
to Colley Gibber's.
To his friend Mr. Gollogher he consecrates the following irre-
sistible petit souvenir : —
" He might, if he had pleased, have married any one of the most
illustrious and richest women in the kingdom ; but he had an aver-
sion to matrimony, and could not bear the thoughts of a wife.
Love and a bottle were his taste. He was, however, the most
honourable of men in his amours, and never abandoned any woman
in distress, as too many men of fortune do when they have gratified
desire. All the distressed were ever sharers in Mr. Gollogher's fine
estate, and especially the girls he had taken to his breast. Ho
provided happily for them all, and left nineteen daughters he had
ON "JOHN BUNCLE." 45
by several women a thousand pounds each. This was acting with
a temper worthy of a man ; and to the memory of the benevolent Tom
Gollogher I devote this memorandum."
Lest our readers should form rather a coarse idea of our author
from the foregoing passages, we will conclude with another list of
friends in a different style : —
" The Conniving-house (as the gentlemen of Trinity called it in
my time, and long after) was a little public-house, kept by Jack
Macklean, about a quarter of a mile beyond Ringsend, on the top
of the beach, within a few yards of the sea. Here we used to have
the finest fish at all times ; and, in the season, green peas, and all
the most excellent vegetables. The ale here was always extra-
ordinary, and everything the best ; which, with its delightful situa-
tion, rendered it a delightful place of a summer's evening. Many
a delightful evening have I passed in this pretty thatched house
with the famous Larry Grogan, who played on the bagpipes ex-
tremely well ; dear Jack Lattin, matchless on the fiddle, and the
most agreeable of companions ; that ever-charming young fellow,
Jack Wall, the most worthy, the most ingenious, the most en-
gaging of men, the son of Counsellor Maurice Wall ; and many
other delightful fellows, who went in the days of their youth to
the shades of eternity. When 1 think of them and their evening
songs — ' \\'e will go to Johnny MacJclean's, to try if his ale be good or
no,' &c. — and that years and infirmities begin to oppress me — what
is life ? "
We have another English author, very different from the last-
mentioned one, but equal in naivete, and in the perfect display of
personal character ; we mean Izaak Walton, who wrote the " Com-
plete Angler." That well-known work has an extreme simplicity,
and an extreme interest, arising out of its very simplicity. In the
description of a fishing-tackle you perceive the piety and humanity
of the author's mind. This is the best pastoral in the language,
not excepting Pope's or Philips's. We doubt whether Sannazarius'
" Piscatory Eclogues " are equal to the scenes described by Walton
on the banks of the river Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air.
We walk with him along the dusty roadside, or repose on the banks
of the river under a shady tree, and in watching for the finny prey
imbibe what he beautifully calls "the patience and simplicity of
poor honest fishermen." We accompany them to their inn at night,
and partake of their simple but delicious fare, while Maud, the pretty
milkmaid, at her mother's desire, sings the classical ditties of Sir
Walter Raleigh. Good cheer is not neglected in this work, any
more than in " John Buncle," or any other history which sets a
46 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
proper value on the good things of life. The prints in the " Com-
plete Angler " give an additional reality and interest to the scenes
it describes. While Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy
work, amiable and happy old man, shall last !
THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU.
MADAME DE STAEL, in her " Letters on the Writings and Character
of Rousseau," gives it as her opinion " that the imagination was the
first faculty of his mind, and that this faculty even absorbed all the
others." And she further adds, " Rousseau had great strength of
reason on abstract questions, or with respect to objects which have
no reality but in the mind." Both these opinions are radically
wrong. Neither imagination nor reason can properly be said to
have been the original predominant faculty of his mind. The
strength both of imagination and reason which he possessed was
borrowed from the excess of another faculty ; and the weakness
and poverty of reason and imagination which are to be found in
his works may be traced to the same source — namely, that these
faculties in him were artificial, secondary, and dependent, operating
by a power not theirs, but lent to them. The only quality which
he possessed in an eminent degree, which alone raised him above
ordinary men, and which gave to his writings and opinions an
influence greater, perhaps, than has been exerted by any individual
in modern times, was extreme sensibility, or an acute and even
morbid feeling of all that related to his own impressions, to the
objects and events of his life. He had the most intense conscious-
ness of his own existence. No object that had once made an im-
pression on him was ever after effaced. Every feeling in his mind
became a passion. His craving after excitement was an appetite
and a disease. His interest in his own thoughts and feelings was
always wound up to the highest pitch, and hence the enthusiasm
which he excited in others. He owed the power which he exercised
over the opinions of all Europe, by which he created numberless
disciples, and overturned established systems, to the tyranny which
his feelings in the first instance exercised over himself. The
dazzling blaze of his reputation was kindled by the same fire that
fed upon his vitals.1 His ideas differed from those of other men
1 He did more towards the French Revolution than any other man.
Voltaire, by bis wit and penetration, had rendered superstition contemptioie
THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU. 47
only in their force and intensity. His genius was the effect of
his temperament. He created nothing, he demonstrated nothing,
by a pure effort of the understanding. His fictitious characters
are modifications of his own being, reflections and shadows of
himself. His speculations are the obvious exaggerations of a
mind giving a loose to its habitual impulses, and moulding all
nature to its own purposes. Hence his enthusiasm and his elo-
quence, bearing down all opposition. Hence the warmth and the
luxuriance as well as the sameness of his descriptions. Hence the
frequent verboseness of his style ; for passion lends force and reality
to language, and makes words supply the place of imagination.
Hence the tenaciousness of his logic, the acuteness of his observa-
tions, the refinement and the inconsistency of his reasoning. Hence
his keen penetration, and his strange want of comprehension of
mind; for the same intense feeling which enabled him to discern
the first principles of things, and seize some one view of a subject in
all its ramifications, prevented him from admitting the operation
of other causes which interfered with his favourite purpose, and
involved him in endless wilful contradictions. Hence his excessive
egotism, which filled all objects with himself, and would have oc-
cupied the universe with his smallest interest. Hence his jealousy
and suspicion of others ; for no attention, no respect or sympathy,
could come up to the extravagant claims of his self-love. Hence his
dissatisfaction with himself and with all around him ; for nothing
could satisfy his ardent longings after good, his restless appetite of
being. Hence his feelings, overstrained and exhausted, recoiled upon
themselves, and produced his love of silence and repose, his feverish
aspirations after the quiet and solitude of nature. Hence in part
also his quarrel with the artificial institutions and distinctions of
society, which opposed so many barriers to the unrestrained in-
dulgence of his will, and allured his imagination to scenes of
pastoral simplicity or of savage life, where the passions were either
not excited or left to follow their own impulse — where the petty
vexations and irritating disappointments of common life had no
place — and where the tormenting pursuits of arts and sciences were
lost in pure animal enjoyment or indolent repose. Thus he describes
the first savage wandering for ever under the shade of magnificent
forests or by the side of mighty rivers, smit with the unquenchable
love of nature !
and tyranny odious ; but it was Rousseau who brought the feeling of irre-
concilable enmity to rank and privileges, above humanity, home to the bosom
of every man — identified it with all the pride of intellect and with the
deepest yearnings of the human heart.
H
48 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
The best of all his works is the " Confessions," though it is that
which has been least read, because it contains the fewest set para-
doxes or general opinions. It relates entirely to himself; and no
one was ever so much at home on this subject as he was. From the
strong hold which they had taken of his mind, he makes us enter
into his feelings as if they had been our own, and we seem to
remember every incident and circumstance of his life as if it had
happened to ourselves. We are never tired of this work, for it
everywhere presents us with pictures which we can fancy to be
counterparts of our own existence. The passages of this sort are
innumerable. There is the interesting account of his childhood,
the constraints and thoughtless liberty of which are so well de-
scribed ; of his sitting up all night reading romances with his father,
till they were forced to desist by hearing the swallows twittering in
their nests; his crossing the Alps, described with all the feelings
belonging to it — his pleasure in setting out, his satisfaction in
coming to his journey's end, the delight of " coming and going he
knew not where;" his arriving at Turin; the figure of Madame
Basile, drawn with such inimitable precision and elegance; the
delightful adventure of the Chateau de Toune, where he passed the
day with Mademoiselle G * * * * and Mademoiselle Galley; the
story of his Zulietta, the proud, the charming Zulietta, whose last
words, " Va Zanetto, e studio, la Matematica" were never to be for-
gotten ; his sleeping near Lyons in a niche of the wall, after a fine
summer's day, with a nightingale perched above his head ; his first
meeting with Madame Warens, the pomp of sound with which he
has celebrated her name, beginning "Louise Eleonore de Warens
etoit une demoiselle de la Tour de Pil, noble et ancienne famille de
Vevai, ville du pays de Vaud" (sounds which we still tremble to
repeat) ; his description of her person, her angelic smile, her mouth
of the si^e of his own ; his walking out one day while the bells were
chiming to vespers, and anticipating in a sort of waking dream the
life he afterwards led with her, in which months and years, and life
itself, passed away in undisturbed felicity ; the sudden disappoint-
ment of his hopes; his transport thirty years after at seeing the
same flower which they had brought home together from one of
their rambles near Chambery ; his thoughts in that long interval of
time ; his suppers with Grimm and Diderot after he came to Paris ;
the first idea of his prize dissertation on the savage state; his
account of writing the "New Eloise," and his attachment to
Madame d'Houdetot ; his literary projects, his fame, his misfortunes,
his unhappy temper; his last solitary retirement in the lake and
island of Bienne, with his dog and his boat; his reveries and
THE CHARACTER OF ROUSSEAU. 49
delicious musings there — all these crowd into our minds with recol-
lections which we do not choose to express. There are no passages
in the " New Eloise " of equal force and beauty with the best descrip-
tions in the " Confessions," if we except the excursion on the water,
Julia's last letter to St. Preux, and his letter to her, recalling the
days of their first loves. We spent two whole years in reading
these two works, and (gentle reader, it was when we were young) in
shedding tears over them,
" As fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gums."
They were the happiest years of our life. We may well say of them,
sweet is the dew of their memory, and pleasant the balm of their
recollection ! There are, indeed, impressions which neither time nor
circumstances can efface.
Rousseau, in all his writings, never once lost sight of himself.
He was the same individual from first to last. The springs that
moved his passions never* went down, the pulse that agitated his
heart never ceased to beat. It was this strong feeling of interest,
accumulating in his mind, which overpowers and absorbs the feel-
ings of his readers. He owed all his power to sentiment. The
writer who most nearly resembles him in our own times is the
author of the "Lyrical Ballads." We see no other difference
between them, than that the one wrote hi prose and the other in
poetry, and that prose is perhaps better adapted to express those
local and personal feelings, which are inveterate habits in the mind,
than poetry, which embodies its imaginary creations. We conceive
that Rousseau's exclamation, " Ah, voild de lapervenche ! " comes more
home to the mind than Mr. Wordsworth's discovery of the linnet's
nest "with five blue eggs," or than his address to the cuckoo,
beautiful as we think it is; and we will confidently match the
citizen of Geneva's adventures on the Lake of Bienne against the
Cumberland poet's floating dreams on the Lake of Grasmere.
Both create an interest out of nothing, or rather out of their own
feelings ; both weave numberless recollections into one sentiment ;
both wind their own being round whatever object occurs to them.
But Rousseau, as a prose-writer, gives only the habitual and per-
sonal impression. Mr. Wordsworth, as a poet, is forced to lend the
colours of imagination to impressions which owe all their force to
their identity with themselves, and tries to paint what is only to
be felt. Rousseau, in a word, interests you in certain objects by
interesting you in himself: Mr. Wordsworth would persuade you
that the most insignificant objects are interesting in themselves,
50 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
because he is interested in them. If he had met with Rousseau's
favourite periwinkle, he would have translated it into the most
beautiful of flowers.
This is not imagination, but want of sense. If his jealousy of
the sympathy of others makes him avoid what is beautiful and
grand in nature, why does he undertake elaborately to describe
other objects ? His nature is a mere Dulcinea del Toboso, and he
would make a Vashti of her. Rubens appears to have been as
extravagantly attached to his three wives as Raphael was to his
Fornarina ; but their faces were not so classical. The three greatest
egotists that we know of — that is, the three writers who felt their
own being most powerfully and exclusively — are Rousseau, Words-
worth, and Benvenuto Cellini. As Swift somewhere says, we defy
the world to furnish out a fourth.
GOOD-NATUKE.
LORD SHAFTESBURY somewhere remarks that a great many people
pass for very good-natured persons for no other reason than because
they care about nobody but themselves ; and consequently, as nothing
annoys them but what touches their own interest, they never irritate
themselves unnecessarily about what does not concern them, and
seem to be made of the very milk of human kindness.
Good-nature — or what is often considered as such — is the most
selfish of all the virtues ; it is, nine times out of ten, mere indolence
of disposition. A good-natured man is, generally speaking, one who
does not like to be put out of his way ; and, as long as he can help
it — that is, till the provocation comes home to himself — he will
not. He does not create fictitious uneasiness out of the distresses of
others ; he does not fret and fume and make himself uncomfortable
about things he cannot mend, and that no way concern him even if
he could ; but then there is no one who is more apt to be discon-
certed by what puts him to any personal inconvenience, however
trifling ; who is more tenacious of his selfish indulgences, however
unreasonable ; or who resents more violently any interruption of his
ease and comforts — the very trouble he is put to in resenting it
being felt as an aggravation of the injury. A person of this char-
acter feels no emotions of anger or detestation if you tell him of the
devastation of a province, or the massacre of the inhabitants of a
town or the enslaving of a people ; but if his dinner is spoiled by a
GOOD-NATURE. 51
lump of soot falling down the chimney he is thrown into the utmost
confusion, and can hardly recover a decent command of his temper
for the whole day. He thinks nothing can go amiss so long as he
is at his ease, though a pain in his little finger makes him so peevish
and quarrelsome that nobody can come near him. Knavery and
injustice in the abstract are things that by no means ruffle his
temper or alter the serenity of his countenance, unless he is to be
the sufferer by them ; nor is he ever betrayed into a passion in
answering a sophism, if he does not think it immediately directed
against his own interest.
On the contrary, we sometimes meet with persons who regularly
heat themselves in an argument, and get out of humour on every
occasion, and make themselves obnoxious to a whole company about
nothing. This is not because they are ill-tempered, but because
they are in earnest. Good-nature is a hypocrite ; it tries to pass off
its love of its own ease, and indifference to everything else, for a
particular softness and mildness of disposition. All people get in a
passion and lose their temper if you offer to strike them dr cheat
them of their money — that is, if you interfere with that which they
are really interested in. Tread on the heel of one of these good-
natured persons — who do not care if the whole world is in flames —
and see how he will bear it. If the truth were known, the most
disagreeable people are the most amiable. They are the only persons
who feel an interest in what does not concern them. They have as
much regard for others as they have for themselves. They have as
many vexations and causes of complaint as there are in the world.
They are general righters of wrongs and redressers of grievances.
They not only are annoyed by what they can help — by an act of
inhumanity done in the next street, or in a neighbouring country
by their own countrymen ; they riot only do not claim any share in
the glory, and hate it the more, the more brilliant the success ; but
a piece of injustice done three thousand years ago touches them to
the quick. They have an unfortunate attachment to a set of abstract
phrases, such as liberty, truth, justice, humanity, honour, which are
continually abused by knaves and misunderstood by fools ; and they
can hardly contain themselves for spleen. They have something to
keep them in perpetual hot water. No sooner is one question set
at rest than another rises up to perplex them. They wear them-
selves to the bone in the affairs of other people, to whom they can
do no manner of service, to the neglect of their own business and
pleasure. They tease themselves to death about the morality of
the Turks or the politics of the French. There are certain words
that afflict their ears and things that lacerate their souls, and remain
52 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
a plague-spot there for ever after. They have a fellow-feeling with
all that has been done, said, or thought in the world. They have
an interest in all science and in all art. They hate a lie as much as
a wrong, for truth is the foundation of all justice. Truth is the
first thing in their thoughts, then mankind, then their country, last
themselves. They love excellence and bow to fame, which is the
shadow of it. Above all, they are anxious to see justice done to
the dead, as the best encouragement to the living and the lasting
inheritance of future generations. They do not like to see a great
principle undermined, or the fall of a great man. They would
sooner forgive a blow in the face than a wanton attack on
acknowledged reputation. The contempt in which the French hold
Shakspeare is a serious evil to them ; nor do they think the matter
mended when they hear an Englishman, who would be thought a
profound one, say that Voltaire was a man without wit. They are
vexed to see genius playing at Tom Fool and honesty turned bawd.
It gives them a cutting sensation to see a number of things which,
as they 'are unpleasant to see, we shall not here repeat. In short,
they have a passion for truth ; they feel the same attachment to
the idea of what is right that a knave does to his interest, or that
a good-natured man does to his ease ; and they have as many sources
of uneasiness as there are actual or supposed deviations from this
standard in the sum of things, or as there is a possibility of folly
and mischief in the world.
Principle is a passion for truth — an incorrigible attachment to a
general proposition. Good-nature is humanity that costs nothing.
No good-natured man was ever a martyr to a cause — in religion or
politics. He has no idea of striving against the stream. He may
become a good courtier and a loyal subject ; and it is hard if he
does not, for he has nothing to do in that case but to consult his
ease, interest, and outward appearances. The Vicar of Bray was a
good-natured man. What a pity he was but a vicar ! A good-
natured man is utterly unfit for any situation or office in life that
requires integrity, fortitude, or generosity — any sacrifice, except of
opinion, or any exertion, but to please. A good-natured man will
debauch his friend's mistress, if he has an opportunity, and betray
his friend sooner than share disgrace or danger with him. He will
not forego the smallest gratification to save the whole world. He
makes his own convenience the standard of right and wrong. He
avoids the feeling of pain in himself, and shuts his eyes to the
sufferings of others. He will put a malefactor or an innocent
person (no matter which) to the rack, and only laugh at the un-
couthness of the gestures, or wonder that he is so unmannerly as
GOOD-NATURE. 53
to cry out. There is no villainy to which he will not lend a helping
hand with great coolness and cordiality, for he sees only the pleasant
and profitable side of things. He will assent to a falsehood with a
leer of complacency, and applaud any atrocity that comes recom-
mended in the garb of authority. He will betray his country
to please a Minister, and sign the death-warrant of thousands of
wretches, rather than forfeit the congenial smile, the well-known
squeeze of the hand. The shrieks of death, the torture of mangled
limbs, the last groans of despair, are things that shock his smooth
humanity too much ever to make an impression on it ; his good-
nature sympathises only with the smile, the bow, the gracious
salutation, the fawning answer : vice loses its sting, and corruption
its poison, in the oily gentleness of his disposition. He will not
hear of anything wrong in Church or State. He will defend every
abuse by which anything is to be got, every dirty job, every act
of every Minister. In an extreme case, a very good-natured man
indeed may try to hang twelve honester men than himself to rise
at the Bar, and forge the seal of the realm to continue his colleagues
a week longer in office. He is a slave to the will of others, a coward
to their prejudices, a tool of their vices. A good-natured man is
no more fit to be trusted in public affairs than a coward or a woman
is to lead an army. Spleen is the soul of patriotism and of public
good. Lord Castlereagh is a good-natured man, Lord Eldon is
a good-natured man, Charles Fox was a good-natured man. The
last instance is the most decisive. The definition of a true patriot
is a good hater.
A king who is a good-natured man is in a fair way of being a
great tyrant. A king ought to feel concern for all to whom his
power extends ; but a good-natured man cares only about himself.
If he has a good appetite, eats and sleeps well, nothing in the
universe besides can disturb him. The destruction of the lives or
liberties of his subjects will not stop him in the least of his caprices,
but will concoct well with his bile, and " good digestion wait on
appetite, and health on both." He will send out his mandate to
kill and destroy with the same indifference or satisfaction that he
performs any natural function of his body. The consequences are
placed beyond the reach of liis imagination, or would not affect him
if they were not, for he is a fool and good-natured. A good-natured
man hates more than any one else whatever thwarts his will or
contradicts his prejudices ; and if he has the power to prevent it,
depend upon it, he will use it without remorse and without control.
There is a lower species of this character which is what is usually
understood by a well-meaning man. A well-meaning man is one who
54 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
often does a great deal of mischief without any kind of malice. He
means no one any harm, if it is not for his interest. He is not a
knave, nor perfectly honest. He does not easily resign a good place.
Mr. Vansittart is a well-meaning man.
The Irish are a good-natured people; they have many virtues,
but their virtues are those of the heart, not of the head. In their
passions and affections they are sincere, but they are hypocrites in
understanding. If they once begin to calculate the consequences,
self-interest prevails. An Irishman who trusts to his principles and
a Scotchman who yields to his impulses are equally dangerous. The
Irish have wit, genius, eloquence, imagination, affections ; but they
want coherence of understanding, and consequently have no standard
of thought or action. Their strength of mind does not keep pace
with the warmth of their feelings or the quickness of their concep-
tions. Their animal spirits run away with them ; their reason is a
jade. There is something crude, indigested, rash, and discordant in
almost all that they do or say. They have no system, no abstract
ideas. They are " everything by starts, and nothing long." They
are a wild people. They hate whatever imposes a law on their
understandings or a yoke on their wills. To betray the principles
they are most bound by their own professions and the expectations
of others to maintain, is with them a reclamation of their original
rights, and to fly in the face of their benefactors and friends, an
assertion of their natural freedom of will. They want consistency
and good faith. They unite fierceness with levity. In the midst of
their headlong impulses they have an undercurrent of selfishness and
cunning, which in the end gets the better of them. Their feelings,
when no longer excited by novelty or opposition, grow cold and
stagnant. Their blood, if not heated by passion, turns to poison.
They have a rancour in their hatred of any object they have aban-
doned proportioned to the attachment they have professed to it.
Their zeal, converted against itself, is furious.
COUNTRY PEOPLE.
[From the Essay on Wordsworth's "Excursion."]
ALL country people hate each other. They have so little comfort
that they envy their neighbours the smallest pleasure or advantage,
and nearly grudge themselves the necessaries of life. From not
being accustomed to enjoyment, they become hardened and averse
COUNTRY PEOPLE. 55
to it — stupid, for want of thought — selfish, for want of society.
There is nothing good to be had in the country, or, if there is, they
will not let you have it. They had rather injure themselves than
oblige any one else. Their common mode of life is a system of
wretchedness and self-denial, like what we read of among barbarous
tribes. You live out of the world. You cannot get your tea and
sugar without sending to the next town for it ; you pay double,
and have it of the worst quality. The small-beer is sure to be sour
— the milk skimmed — the meat bad, or spoiled in the cooking. You
cannot do a single thing you like ; you cannot walk out, or sit at
home, or write or read, or think or look as if you did, without being
subject to impertinent curiosity. The apothecary annoys you with
his complaisance ; the parson with his superciliousness. If you are
poor, you are despised ; if you are rich, you are feared and hated.
If you do any one a favour, the whole neighbourhood is up in arms ;
the clamour is like that of a rookery ; and the person himself, it is
ten to one, laughs at you for your pains, and takes the first oppor-
tunity of showing you that he labours under no uneasy sense of
obligation. There is a perpetual round of mischief-making and
backbiting, for want of any better amusement. There are no shops,
no taverns, no theatres, no opera, no concerts, no pictures, no
public buildings, no crowded streets, no noise of coaches or of courts
of law — neither courtiers nor courtesans, no literary parties, no
fashionable routs, no society, no books, or knowledge of books.
Vanity and luxury are the civilisers of the world and sweeteners
of human life. Without objects either of pleasure or action, it
grows harsh and crabbed: the mind becomes stagnant, the affec-
tions callous, and the eye dull. Man left to himself soon de-
generates into a very disagreeable person. Ignorance is always
bad enough ; but rustic ignorance is intolerable. Aristotle has
observed, that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and pity.
If so, a company of tragedians should be established at the public
expense in every village or hundred, as a better mode of education
than either Bell's or Lancaster's. The benefits of knowledge are
never so well understood as from seeing the effects of ignorance, in
their naked undisguised state, upon the common country people.
Their selfishness and insensibility are perhaps less owing to the
hardships and privations, which make them, like people out at sea
in a boat, ready to devour one another, than to their having no
idea of anything beyond themselves and their immediate sphere of
action. They have no knowledge of, and consequently can take
no interest in, anything which is not an object of their senses and
of their daily pursuits. They hate all strangers, and have generally
56 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
a nickname for the inhabitants of the next village. The two young
noblemen in "Guzman d'Alfarache," who went to visit their mistresses
only a league out of Madrid, were set upon by the peasants, who
came round them calling out, "A wolf!" Those who have no en-
larged or liberal ideas can have no disinterested or generous senti-
ments. Persons who are in the habit of reading novels and romances
are compelled to take a deep interest in, and to have their affections
strongly excited by, fictitious characters and imaginary situations ;
their thoughts and feelings are constantly carried out of themselves,
to persons they never saw and things that never existed. History
enlarges the mind, by familiarising us with the great vicissitudes
of human affairs and the catastrophes of states and kingdoms ; the
study of morals accustoms us to refer our actions to a general
standard of right and wrong ; and abstract reasoning, in general,
strengthens the love of truth, and produces an inflexibility of
principle which cannot stoop to low trick and cunning. Books,
in Bacon's phrase, are " a discipline of humanity." Country people
have none of these advantages, nor any others to supply the place
of them. Having no circulating libraries to exhaust their love of
the marvellous, they amuse themselves with fancying the disasters
and disgraces of their particular acquaintance. Having no hump-
backed Richard to excite their wonder and abhorrence, they make
themselves a bugbear of their own out of the first obnoxious person
they can lay their hands on. Not having the fictitious distresses
and gigantic crimes of poetry to stimulate their imagination and
their passions, they vent their whole stock of spleen, malice, and
invention on their friends and next-door neighbours. They get up
a little pastoral drama at home, with fancied events, but real char-
acters. All their spare time is spent in manufacturing and propa-
gating the lie for the day, which does its office and expires. The
next day is spent in the same manner. It is thus that they embel-
lish the simplicity of rural life! The common people in civilised
countries are a kind of domesticated savages. They have not the
wild imagination, the passions, the fierce energies, or dreadful vicis-
situdes of the savage tribes, nor have they the leisure, the indolent
enjoyments, and romantic superstitions which belonged to the pas-
toral life in milder climate and more remote periods of society.
They are taken out of a state of nature, without being put in pos-
session of the refinements of art. The customs and institutions of
society cramp their imaginations without giving them knowledge.
If the inhabitants of the mountainous districts described by Mr.
Wordsworth are less gross and sensual than others, they are more
selfish. Their egotism becomes more concentrated as they are more
RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY. 57
insulated, and their purposes more inveterate as they have less com-
petition to struggle with. The weight of matter which surrounds
them crushes the finer sympathies. Their minds become hard and
cold, like the rocks which they cultivate. The immensity of their
mountains makes the human form appear little and insignificant.
Men are seen crawling between heaven and earth, like insects to
their graves. Nor do they regard one another more than flies on a
wall. Their physiognomy expresses the materialism of their char-
acter, which has only one principle — rigid self-will. They move on
with their eyes and foreheads fixed, looking neither to the right nor
to the left, with a heavy slouch in their gait, and seeming as if
nothing would divert them from their path. We do not admire this
plodding pertinacity, always directed to the mam chance. There is
nothing which excites so little sympathy in our minds as exclusive
selfishness. If our theory is wrong, at least it is taken from pretty
close observation, and is, we think, confirmed by Mr. Wordsworth's
own account.
RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY.
RELIGION either makes men wise and virtuous, or it makes them set
tip false pretences to both. In the latter case, it makes them hypo-
crites to themselves as well as others. Religion is, in the grosser
minds, an enemy to self-knowledge. The consciousness of the pre-
sence of an all-powerful Being, who is both the witness and judge
of every thought, word, and action, where it does not produce its
proper effect, forces the religious man to practise every mode of
deceit upon himself with respect to his real character and motives ;
for it is only by being wilfully blind to his own faults that he can
suppose they will escape the eye of Omniscience. Consequently, the
whole business of a religious man's life, if it does not conform to
the strict line of his duty, may be said to be to gloss over his errors
to himself, and to invent a thousand shifts and palliations in order
to hoodwink the Almighty. Where he is sensible of his own de-
linquency, he knows that it cannot escape the penetration of his
invisible Judge ; and the distant penalty annexed to every offence,
though not sufficient to make him desist from the commission of
it, will not suffer him to rest easy till he has made some compro-
mise with his own conscience as to his motives for committing it.
As far as relates to this world, a cunning knave may take a pride in
the imposition he practises upon others ; and instead of striving to
58 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
conceal his true character from himself, may chuckle with inward
satisfaction at the folly of those who are not wise enough to detect
it. " But 'tis not so above." This shallow skin-deep hypocrisy will
not serve the turn of the religious devotee, who is " compelled to
give in evidence, against himself," and who must first become the
dupe of his own imposture before he can natter himself with the
hope of concealment, as children hide their eyes with their hands,
and fancy that no one can see them. Religious people often pray
very heartily for the forgiveness of a " multitude of trespasses and
sins," as a mark of humility, but we never knew them admit any
one fault in particular, or acknowledge themselves in the wrong in
any instance whatever. The natural jealousy of self-love is in them
heightened by the fear of damnation, and they plead Not Guilty to
every charge brought against them with all the conscious terrors of
a criminal at the bar. It is for this reason that the greatest hypo-
crites in the world are religious hypocrites.
This quality, as it has been sometimes found united with the
clerical character, is known by the name of " priestcraft." The
ministers of religion are perhaps more liable to this vice than any
other class of people. They are obliged to assume a greater degree
of sanctity, though they have it not, and to screw themselves up to
an unnatural pitch of severity and self-denial. They must keep a
constant guard over themselves, have an eye always to their own
persons, never relax in their gravity, nor give the least scope to
their inclinations. A single slip, if discovered, may be fatal to
them. Their influence and superiority depend on their pretensions
to virtue and piety; and they are tempted to draw liberally on
the funds of credulity and ignorance allotted for their convenient
support. All this cannot be very friendly to downright simplicity
of character. Besides, they are so accustomed to inveigh against
the vices of others that they naturally forget that they have any
of their own to correct. They see vice as an object always out of
themselves, with which they have no other concern than to denounce
and stigmatise it. They are only reminded of it in the third person.
They as naturally associate sin and its consequences with their
flocks as a pedagogue associates a false concord and flogging with
his scholars. If we may so express it, they serve as conductors to
the lightning of Divine indignation, and have only to point the
thunders of the law at others. They identify themselves with that
perfect system of faith and morals of which they are the professed
teachers, and regard any imputation on their conduct as an indirect
attack on the function to which they belong, or as compromising
the authority under which they act. It is only the head of the
RELIGIOUS HYPOCRISY. 59
Popish church who assumes the title of " God's Vicegerent upon
Earth ; " but the feeling is nearly common to all the oracular in-
terpreters of the will of Heaven — from the successor of St. Peter
down to the simple unassuming Quaker, who, disclaiming the im-
posing authority of title and office, yet fancies himself the imme-
diate organ of a preternatural impulse, and affects to speak only
as the Spirit moves him.
There is another way in which the formal profession of religion
aids hypocrisy : by erecting a secret tribunal, to which those who
affect a more than ordinary share of it can (in case of need) appeal
from the judgments of men. The religious impostor reduced to
his last shift, and having no other way left to avoid the most " open
and apparent shame," rejects the fallible decisions of the world, and
thanks God that there is one who knows the heart. He is amenable
to a higher jurisdiction, and while all is well with Heaven he can
pity the errors and smile at the malice of his enemies. Whatever
cuts men off from their dependence on common opinion or obvious
appearances must open a door to evasion and cunning, by setting
up a standard of right and wrong in every one's own breast, of the
truth of which nobody can judge but the person himself. There
are some fine instances in the old plays and novels (the best com-
mentaries on human nature) of the effect of this principle in giving
the last finishing to the character of duplicity. Miss Harris, in
Fielding's " Amelia," is one of the most striking. Moliere's Tartuffe
is another instance of the facility with which religion may be per-
verted to the purposes of the most flagrant hypocrisy. It is an
impenetrable fastness, to which this worthy person, like so many
others, retires without the fear of pursuit. It is an additional dis-
guise, in which he wraps himself up like a cloak. It is a stalking-
horse, which is ready on all occasions — an invisible conscience, which
goes about with him — his good genius, that becomes surety for
him in all difficulties — swears to the purity of his motives — extri-
cates him out of the most desperate circumstances — baffles detec-
tion, and furnishes a plea to which there is no answer.
The same sort of reasoning will account for the old remark, that
persons who are stigmatised as nonconformists to the established
religion, Jews, Presbyterians, &c., are more disposed to this vice
than their neighbours. They are inured to the contempt of the
world and steeled against its prejudices ; and the same indifference
which fortifies them against the unjust censures of mankind may be
converted, as occasion requires, into a screen for the most pitiful
conduct. They have no cordial sympathy with others, and there-
fore no sincerity in their intercourse with them. It is the necessity
60 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of concealment, in the first instance, that produces, and is in some
measure an excuse for, the habit of hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy, as it is connected with cowardice, seems to imply weak-
ness of body or want of spirit. The impudence and insensibility
which belong to it ought to suppose robustness of constitution.
There is certainly a very successful and formidable class of sturdy,
jolly, able-bodied hypocrites, the Friar Johns of the profession.
Raphael has represented Elymas the sorcerer with a hard iron
visage and large uncouth figure, made up of bones and muscles ; as
one not troubled with weak nerves or idle scruples — as one who
repelled all sympathy with others — who was not to be jostled out
of his course by their censures or suspicions, and who could break
with ease through the cobweb snares which he had laid for the
credulity of others, without being once entangled in his own delu-
sions. His outward form betrays the hard, unimaginative, self-
willed understanding of the sorcerer.
COMMONPLACE CRITICS.
" Nor can I think what thoughts they can conceive."
WE have already given some account of commonplace people ; we
shall now attempt to give a description of another class of the
community, who may be called (by way of distinction) commonplace
critics. The former are a set of people who have no opinions of
their own, and do not pretend to have any ; the latter are a set of
people who have no opinions of their own, but who affect to have
one upon every subject you can mention. The former are a very
honest, good sort of people, who are contented to pass for what they
are ; the latter are a very pragmatical, troublesome sort of people,
who would pass for what they are not, and try to put off their
commonplace notions in all companies and on all subjects as some-
thing of their own. They are of both species, the grave and the
gay ; and it is hard to say which is the most tiresome.
A commonplace critic has something to say upon every occasion,
and he always tells you either what is not true, or what you knew
before, or what is not worth knowing. He is a person who thinks
by proxy and talks by rote. He diners with you, not because he
thinks you are in the wrong, but because he thinks somebody else
will think so. Nay, it would be well if he stopped here ; but he will
COMMONPLACE CRITICS. 6l
undertake to misrepresent you by anticipation lest others should mis-
understand you, and will set you right, not only in opinions which
you have, but in those which you may be supposed to have. Thus,
if you say that Bottom the weaver is a character that has not had
justice done to it, he shakes his head, is afraid you will be thought
extravagant, and wonders you should think the " Midsummer Night's
Dream " the finest of all Shakspeare's plays. He judges of matters
of taste and reasoning, as he does of dress and fashion, by the pre-
vailing tone of good company ; and you would as soon persuade him
to give up any sentiment that is current there as to wear the hind-
part of his coat before. By the best company, of which he is per-
petually talking, he means persons who live on their own estates
and other people's ideas. By the opinion of the world, to which
he pays and expects you to pay, great deference, he means that
of a little circle of his own, where he hears and is heard. Again,
good sense is a phrase constantly in his mouth, by which he does
not mean his own sense or that of anybody else, but the opinions
of a number of persons who have agreed to take their opinions on
trust from others. If any one observes that there is something
better than common sense, viz., uncommon sense, he thinks this a
bad joke. If you object to the opinions of the majority, as often
arising from ignorance or prejudice, he appeals from them to the
sensible and well-informed; and if you say there may be other
persons as sensible and well-informed as himself and his friends, he
smiles at your presumption. If you attempt to prove anything to
him, it is in vain, for he is not thinking of what you say, but of
what will be thought of it. The stronger your reasons the more in-
corrigible he thinks you ; and he looks upon any attempt to expose
his gratuitous assumptions as the wandering of a disordered imagi-
nation. His notions are, like plastered figures cast in a mould, as
brittle as they are hollow ; but they will break before you can make
them give way. In fact, he is the representative of a large part of
the community — the shallow, the vain, and the indolent — of those
who have time to talk and are not bound to think ; and he con-
siders any deviation from the select forms of commonplace, or the
accredited language of conventional impertinence, as compromising
the authority under which he acts in Ms diplomatic capacity. It is
wonderful how this class of people agree with one another; how
they herd together in all their opinions ; what a tact they have for
folly; what an instinct for absurdity; what a sympathy in senti-
ment ; how they find one another out by infallible signs, like Free-
masons ! The secret of this unanimity and strict accord is, that not
any one of them ever admits any opinion that can cost the least
62 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
effort of mind in arriving at, or of courage in declaring it. Folly
is as consistent with itself as wisdom; there is a certain level of
thought and sentiment which the weakest minds, as well as the
strongest, find out as best adapted to them ; and you as regularly
come to the same conclusions by looking no farther than the surface,
as if you dug to the centre of the earth ! You know beforehand
what a critic of this class will say on almost every subject the first
time he sees you, the next time, the time after that, and so on to
the end of the chapter. The following list of his opinions may be
relied on: — It is pretty certain that before you have been in the
room with him ten minutes he will give you to understand that
Shakspeare was a great but irregular genius. Again, he thinks it a
question whether any one of his plays, if brought out now for the
first time, would succeed. He thinks that " Macbeth " would be the
most likely, from the music which has been since introduced into
it. He has some doubts as to the superiority of the French school
over us in tragedy, and observes that Hume and Adam Smith were
both of that opinion. He thinks Milton's pedantry a great blemish
in his writings, and that " Paradise Lost " has many prosaic passages
in it. He conceives that genius does not always imply taste, and
that wit and judgment are very different faculties. He considers Dr.
Johnson as a great critic and moralist, and that his Dictionary was
a work of prodigious erudition and vast industry, but that some of
the anecdotes of him in " Boswell " are trifling. He conceives that
Mr. Locke was a very original and profound thinker. He thinks
Gibbon's style vigorous but florid. He wonders that the author
of " Junius " was never found out. He thinks Pope's translation of
the " Iliad " an improvement on the simplicity of the original, which
was necessary to fit it to the taste of modern readers. He thinks
there is a great deal of grossness in the old comedies ; and that
there has been a great improvement in the morals of the higher
classes since the reign of Charles II. He thinks the reign of Queen
Anne the golden period of our literature, but that, upon the whole,
we have no English writer equal to Voltaire. He speaks of Boc-
caccio as a very licentious writer, and thinks the wit in Rabelais
quite extravagant, though he never read either of them. He cannot
get through Spenser's " Fairy Queen," and pronounces all allegorical
poetry tedious. He prefers Smollett to Fielding, and discovers
more knowledge of the world in " Gil Bias " than in " Don Quixote."
Richardson he thinks very minute and tedious. He thinks the
French Revolution has done a great deal of harm to the cause of
liberty ; and blames Buonaparte for being so ambitious. He reads
the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and thinks as they do. He is
COMMONPLACE CRITICS. 63
shy of having an opinion on a new actor or a new singer, for the
public do not always agree with the newspapers. He thinks that
the moderns have great advantages over the ancients in many
respects. He thinks Jeremy Bentham a greater man than Aristotle.
He can see no reason why artists of the present day should not
paint as well as Raphael or Titian. For instance, he thinks there
is something very elegant and classical in Mr. Westall's drawings.
He has no doubt that Sir Joshua Reynolds' Lectures were written
by Burke. He considers Home Tooke's account of the conjunction
That very ingenious, and holds that no writer can be called elegant
who uses the present for the subjunctive mood, who says If it is for
If it be. He thinks Hogarth a great master of low comic humour,
and Cobbett a coarse, vulgar writer. He often talks of men of
liberal education, and men without education, as if that made much
difference. He judges of people by their pretensions; and pays
attention to their opinions according to their dress and rank in life
If he meets with a fool, he does not find him out ; and if he meets
with any one wiser than himself, he does not know what to make
of him. He thinks that manners are of great consequence to the
common intercourse of life. He thinks it difficult to prove the
existence of any such thing as original genius, or to fix a general
standard of taste. He does not think it possible to define what
wit is. In religion his opinions are liberal. He considers all
enthusiasm as a degree of madness particularly to be guarded
against by young minds ; and believes that truth lies in the middle,
between the extremes of right and wrong. He thinks that the
object of poetry is to please ; and that astronomy is a very pleasing
and useful study. He thinks all this and a great deal more, that
amounts to nothing. We wonder we have remembered one-half of it —
" For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit."
Though he has an aversion to all new ideas, he likes all new plans
and matters of fact : the new Schools for All, the Penitentiary, the
new Bedlam, the new steamboats, the gaslights, the new patent
blacking — everything of that sort but the Bible Society. The
Society for the Suppression of Vice he thinks a great nuisance, as
every honest man must.
In a word, a commonplace critic is the pedant of polite conver-
sation. He refers to the opinion' of Lord M. or Lady G. with the
same air of significance that the learned pedant does to the authority
of Cicero or Virgil ; retails the wisdom of the day, as the anecdote-
monger does the wit ; and carries about with him the sentiments of
people of a certain respectability in life, as the dancing-master does
their air or their valets their clothes.
64 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ACTOKS AND ACTING.
PLAYEKS are " the abstracts and brief chronicles of the times," the
motley representatives of human nature. They are the only honest
hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream, a studied madness.
The height of their ambition is to be beside themselves. To-day
Icings, to-morrow beggars, it is only when they are themselves that
they are nothing. Made up of mimic laughter arid tears, passing
from the extremes of joy or woe at the prompter's call, they wear
the livery of other men's fortunes ; their very thoughts are not their
own. They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and
hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves
at second-hand in them ; they show us all that we are, all that we
wish to be, and all that we dread to be. The stage is an epitome,
a bettered likeness, of the world, with the dull part left out ; and
indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all the
rest. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate
us, we, in our turn, imitate them. How many fine gentlemen do
we owe to the stage ! How many romantic lovers are mere Romeos
in masquerade ! How many soft bosoms have heaved with Juliet's
sighs ! They teach us when to laugh and when to weep, when to
love and when to hate, upon principle and with a good grace.
Wherever there is a playhouse the world will go on not amiss. The
stage not only refines the manners, but it is the best teacher of
morals, for it is the truest and most intelligible picture of life. It
stamps the image of virtue on the mind by first softening the rude
materials of which it is composed by a sense of pleasure. It regu-
lates the passions by giving a loose to the imagination. It points
out the selfish and depraved to our detestation, the amiable and
generous to our admiration ; and if it clothes the more seductive
vices with the borrowed graces of wit and fancy, even those graces
operate as a diversion to the coarser poison of experience and bad
example, and often prevent or carry off the infection by inoculating
the mind with a certain taste and elegance. . . .
If the stage is useful as a school of instruction, it is no less so as
a source of amusement. It is the source of the greatest enjoyment
at the time, and a never-failing fund of agreeable reflection after-
wards. The merits of a new play or of a new actor are always
among the first topics of polite conversation. One way in which
public exhibitions contribute to refine and humanise mankind is by
supplying them with ideas and subjects of conversation and interest
hi common. The progress of civilisation is in proportion to the
ACTORS AND ACTING. 65
number of commonplaces current in society. For instance, if we
meet with a stranger at an inn or in a stage-coach, who knows
nothing but his own affairs, his shop, his customers, his farm, his
pigs, his poultry, we can carry on no conversation with him on these
local and personal matters, the only way is to let him have all the
talk to himself. But if he has fortunately ever seen Mr. Listen act,
this is an immediate topic of mutual conversation, and we agree
together the rest of the evening in discussing the merits of that
inimitable actor, with the same satisfaction as in talking over the
affairs of the most intimate friend.
If the stage thus introduces us familiarly to our contemporaries,
it also brings us acquainted with former times. It is an interesting
revival of past ages, manners, opinions, dresses, persons, and actions
— whether it carries us back to the wars of York and Lancaster, or
half-way back to the heroic times of Greece and Rome, in some trans-
lation from the French, or quite back to the age of Charles II. in
the scenes of Congreve and of Etherege (the gay Sir George !) —
happy age, when kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives;
when the utmost stretch of a morning's study went no further than
the choice of a sword-knot or the adjustment of a side-curl ; when
the soul spoke out in all the pleasing eloquence of dress ; and beaux
and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another's follies, flut-
tered like gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of
St. James's Park !
A good company of comedians, a theatre-royal judiciously
managed, is your true Heralds' College — the only Antiquarian
Society that is worth a rush. It is for this reason that there is
such an air of romance about players, and that it is pleasanter to
see them, even in their own persons, than any of the three learned
professions. We feel more respect for John Kemble in a plain coat
than for the Lord Chancellor on the woolsack. He is surrounded,
to our eyes, with a greater number of imposing recollections ; he is
a more reverend piece of formality — a more complicated tissue of
costume. We do not know whether to look upon this accomplished
actor as Pierre, or King John, or Coriolanus, or Cato, or Leontes,
or the Stranger. But we see in him a stately hieroglyphic of
humanity, a living monument of departed greatness, a sombre com-
ment on the rise and fall of kings. We look after him till he is out
of sight as we listen to a story of one of Ossian's heroes, to " a tale
of other times !"....
The most pleasant feature in the profession of a player, and which
indeed is peculiar to it, is, that we not only admire the talents of
those who adorn it, but we contract a personal intimacy with them.
66 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
There is no class of society whom so many persons regard with affection
as actors. We greet them on the stage ; we like to meet them in the
streets ; they almost always recall to us pleasant associations ; and we
feel our gratitude excited without the uneasiness of a sense of obliga-
tion. The very gaiety and popularity, however, which surround the
life of a favourite performer make the retiring from it a very serious
business. It glances a mortifying reflection on the shortness of human
life and the vanity of human pleasures. Something reminds us that
" all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
[Characters ofShakspeare's Plays, 1817. Five Editions of this work Jiave
appeared in England, and more than one in the United States.]
MACBETH.
" The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven ;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."
[Midsummer Night's Dream, v. i.]
"MACBETH" and "Lear," "Othello" and "Hamlet," are usually
reckoned Shakspeare's four principal tragedies. " Lear " stands first
for the profound intensity of the passion ; " Macbeth " for the wildness
of the imagination and the rapidity of the action ; " Othello " for the
progressive interest and powerful alternations of feeling ; " Hamlet "
for the refined development of thought and sentiment. If the force
of genius shown in each of these works is astonishing, their variety is
not less so. They are like different creations of the same mind, not
one of which has the slightest reference to the rest. This distinct-
ness and originality is indeed the necessary consequence of truth
and nature. Shakspeare's genius alone appeared to possess the
resources of nature. He is " your only tragedy-maker." His plays
have the force of things upon the mind. What he represents is
brought home to the bosom as a part of our experience, implanted
in the memory as if we had known the places, persons, and things of
which he treats. " Macbeth " is like a record of a preternatural and
tragical event. It has the rugged severity of an old chronicle with
all that the imagination of the poet can engraft upon traditional
belief. The castle of Macbeth, round which " the air smells wooingly,"
and where " the temple-haunting martlet builds," has a real subsist-
ence in the mind; the Weird Sisters meet us in person on "the
blasted heath;" the "air-drawn dagger" moves slowly before our
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— MACBETH. 67
eyes; the "gracious Duncan," the " blood-boltered Banquo," stand
before us: all that passed through the mind of Macbeth passes
without the loss of a tittle, through ours. All that could actually
take place, and all that is only possible to be conceived, what was
said and what was done, the workings of passion, the spells of magic,
are brought before us with the same absolute truth and vividness.
Shakspeare excelled in the openings of his plays : that of " Macbeth "
is the most striking of any. The wildness of the scenery, the sudden
shifting of the situations and characters, the bustle, the expectations
excited, are equally extraordinary. From the first entrance of the
Witches and the description of them when they meet Macbeth,
What are these
So wither'd, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth
And yet are on't ? "
the mind is prepared for all that follows.
This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it dis-
plays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action ; and the one is
made the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming pressure
of preternatural agency urges on the tide of human passion with re-
doubled force. Macbeth himself appears driven along by the violence
of his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm : he reels to and fro like
a drunken man ; he staggers under the weight of his own purposes
and the suggestions of others ; he stands at bay with his situation;
and from the superstitious awe and breathless suspense into which
the communications of the Weird Sisters throw him, is hurried on
with daring impatience to verify their predictions, and with impious
and bloody hand to tear aside the veil which hides the uncertainty
of the future. He is not equal to the struggle with fate and con-
science. He now " bends up each corporal agent to this terrible
feat ; " at other times his heart misgives him, and he is cowed and
abashed by his success. " The attempt, and not the deed, confounds
us." His mind is assailed by the stings of remorse, and full of
" preternatural solicitings." His speeches and soliloquies are dark
riddles on human life, baffling solution, and entangling him in their
labyrinths. In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and
desperate in act, from a distrust of his own resolution. His energy
springs from the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His blindly
rushing forward on the objects of his ambition and revenge, or his
recoiling from them, equally betrays the harassed state of his feel-
ings. This part of his character is admirably set off by being
brought in connection with that of Lady Macbeth, whose obdurate
68 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
strength of will and masculine firmness give her the ascendency
over her husband's faltering virtue. She at once seizes on the
opportunity that offers for the accomplishment of all their wished-
for greatness, and never flinches from her object till all is over.
The magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of
her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom
we fear more than we hate. She does not excite our loathing and
abhorrence like Regan and Goneril. She is only wicked to gain a
great end, and is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding
presence of mind and inexorable self-will, which do not suffer her
to be diverted from a bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and
womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her heart or want of
natural affections. The impression which her lofty determination
of character makes on the mind of Macbeth is well described where
he exclaims,
'• Bring forth men-children only ;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males ! "
Nor do the pains she is at to " screw his courage to the sticking-
place," the reproach to him, not to be " lost so poorly in himself,"
the assurance that " a little water clears them of this deed," show
anything but her greater consistency in depravity. Her strong-
nerved ambition furnishes ribs of steel to the " sides of his intent ; "
and she is herself wound up to the execution of her baneful project __
with the same unshrinking fortitude in crime, that in other cir-
cumstances she would probably have shown patience in suffering.
The deliberate sacrifice of all other considerations to the gaining
" for their future days and nights sole sovereign sway and master-
dom," by the murder of Duncan, is gorgeously expressed in her
invocation on hearing of "his fatal entrance under her battle-
ments : " —
-" Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here :
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty ! make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief ! Come, thick night !
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— MACBETH. 69
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold !— "
When she first hears that " the king [Duncan] comes here tonight,"
she is so overcome by the news, which is beyond her utmost expec-
tations, that she answers the messenger, " Thou'rt mad to say it : "
and on receiving her husband's account of the predictions of the
Witches, conscious of his instability of purpose, and that her pre-
sence is necessary to goad him on to the consummation of his
promised greatness, she exclaims —
" Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal."
This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this uncontrol-
lable eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and
take possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh-and-
blood display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold,
abstracted, gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are
equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere
love of mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and
cruelty. They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity,
malicious from their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruc-
tion, because they are themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences :
who become sublime from their exemption from all human sym-
pathies and contempt for all human affairs, as Lady Macbeth does
by the force of passion ! Her fault seems to have been an excess
of that strong principle of self-interest and family aggrandisement,
not amenable to the common feelings of compassion and justice,
which is so marked a feature in barbarous nations and times. A
passing reflection of this kind, on the resemblance of the sleeping
long to her father, alone prevents her from slaying Duncan with
her own hand.
In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought not
to pass over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting that part. We can
conceive of nothing grander. It was something above nature. It
seemed almost as if a being of a superior order had dropped from a
higher sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance.
Power was seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast
as from a shrine ; she was tragedy personified. In coming on in the
sleeping-scene, her eyes were open, but their sense was shut. She
70 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
was like a person bewildered and unconscious of what she did. Her
lips moved involuntarily: all her gestures were involuntary and
mechanical. She glided on and off the stage like an apparition
To have seen her in that character was an event in every one's life,
not to be forgotten.
OTHELLO.
IT has been said that tragedy purifies the affections by terror and
pity. That is, it substitutes imaginary sympathy for mere selfishness.
It gives us a high and permanent interest, beyond ourselves, in
humanity as such. It raises the great, the remote, and the possible
to an equality with the real, the little, and the near. It makes man
a partaker with his kind. It subdues and softens the stubbornness
of his will. It teaches him that there are and have been others like
himself, by showing him as in a glass what they have felt, thought,
and done. It opens the chambers of the human heart. It leaves
nothing indifferent to us that can affect our common nature. It
excites our sensibility by exhibiting the passions wound up to the
utmost pitch by the power of imagination or the temptation of
circumstances; and corrects their fatal excesses in ourselves by
pointing to the greater extent of sufferings and of crimes to which
they have led others. Tragedy creates a balance of the affections.
It makes us thoughtful spectators in the lists of life. It is the
refiner of the species ; a discipline of humanity. The habitual study
of poetry and works of imagination is one chief part of a well-
grounded education. A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete
the character of a gentleman. Science alone is hard and mechanical.
It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it
leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own im-
mediate, narrow interests. — "Othello" furnishes an illustration of
these remarks. It excites our sympathy in an extraordinary degree.
The moral it conveys has a closer application to the concerns of human
life than that of almost any other of Shakspeare's plays. " It comes
directly home to the bosoms and business of men." The pathos in
"Lear" is indeed more dreadful and overpowering; but it is less
natural, and less of every day's occurrence. We have not the same
degree of sympathy with the passions described in " Macbeth." The
interest in " Hamlet " is more remote and reflex. That of " Othello "
is at once equally profound and affecting.
The picturesque contrasts of character in this play are almost
as remarkable as the depth of the passion. The Moor Othello, the
gentle Desdemona, the villain lago, the good-natured Cassio, the
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— OTHELLO. 71
fool Roderigo, present a range and variety of character as striking
and palatable as that produced by the opposition of costume in
a picture. Their distinguishing qualities stand out to the mind's
eye, so that even when we are not thinking of their actions or
sentiments, the idea of their persons is still as present to us as ever.
These characters and the imagoes they stamp upon the mind are the
farthest asunder possible, the distance between them is immense ;
yet the compass of knowledge and invention which the poet has
shown in embodying these extreme creations of his genius is only
greater than the truth and felicity with which he has identified each
character with itself, or blended their different qualities together in
the same story. What a contrast the character of Othello forms to that
of lago ! At the same time, the force of conception with which these
two figures are opposed to each other is rendered still more intense
by the complete consistency with which the traits of each character
are brought out in a state of the highest finishing. The making
one black and the other white, the one unprincipled, the other
unfortunate in the extreme, would have answered the common
purposes of effect, and satisfied the ambition of an ordinary painter
of character. Shakspeare has laboured the finer shades of difference
in both with as much care and skill as if he had had to depend on
the execution alone for the success of his design. On the other hand,
Desdemona and ^Emilia are not meant to be opposed with anything
like strong contrast to each other. Both are, to outward appear-
ance, characters of common life, not more distinguished than women
usually are, by difference of rank and situation. The difference
of their thoughts and sentiments is, however, laid open, their minds
are separated from each other by signs as plain and as little to be
mistaken as the complexions of their husbands.
The movement of the passion in Othello is exceedingly different
from that of Macbeth. In Macbeth there is a violent struggle
between opposite feelings, between ambition and the stings of
conscience, almost from first to last : in Othello, the doubtful con-
flict between contrary passions, though dreadful, continues only
for a short time, and the chief interest is excited by the alternate
ascendency of different passions, by the entire and unforeseen
change from the fondest love and most unbounded confidence
to the tortures of jealousy and the madness of hatred. The
revenge of Othello, after it has once taken thorough possession
of his mind, never quits it, but grows stronger and stronger at
every moment of its delay. The nature of the Moor is noble,
confiding, tender, and generous ; but his blood is of the most in-
flammable kind ; and being once roused by a sense of his wrongs,
72 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
he is stopped by no considerations of remorse or pity till he has
given a loose to all the dictates of his rage and his despair. It
is in working his noble nature up to this extremity through rapid
but gradual transitions, in raising passion to its height from the
smallest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, in painting the
expiring conflict between love and hatred, tenderness and resent-
ment, jealousy and remorse, in unfolding the strength and the
weakness of our nature, in uniting sublimity of thought with the
anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in motion the various im-
pulses that agitate this our mortal being, and at last blending them
in that noble tide of deep and sustained passion, impetuous lut
majestic, that " flows on to the Propontic, and knows no ebb," that
Shakspeare has shown the mastery of his genius and of his power
over the human heart. The third act of "Othello" is his finest
display, not of knowledge or passion separately, but of the two com-
bined, of the knowledge of character with the expression of passion,
of consummate art in the keeping up of appearances with the pro-
found workings of nature, and the convulsive movements of uncon-
trollable agony, of the power of inflicting torture and of suffering it.
Not only is the tumult of passion in Othello's mind heaved up from
the very bottom of the soul, but every the slightest undulation of
feeling is seen on the surface, as it arises from the impulses of imagi-
nation or the malicious suggestions of lago. The progressive pre-
paration for the catastrophe is wonderfully managed from the Moor's
first gallant recital of the story of his love, of " the spells and witch-
craft he had used," from his unlooked-for and romantic success, the
fond satisfaction with which he dotes on his own happiness, the
unreserved tenderness of Desdemona and her innocent impor-
tunities in favour of Cassio, irritating the suspicions instilled into
her husband's mind by the perfidy of lago, and rankling there to
poison, till he loses all command of himself, and his rage can only
be appeased by blood.
HAMLET.
THIS is that Hamlet the Dane whom we read of in our youth, and
whom we may be said almost to remember in our after-years ; he
who made that famous soliloquy on life, who gave the advice to
the players, who thought " this goodly frame, the earth," a sterile
promontory, and "this brave o'erhanging firmament, the air, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire," " a foul and pestilent con-
gregation of vapours;" whom "man delighted not, nor woman
neither ; " he who talked with the gravediggers, and moralised on
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— HAMLET. 73
Yorick's skull; the schoolfellow of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
at Wittenberg; the friend of Horatio; the lover of Ophelia; he
that was mad and sent to England ; the slow avenger of his father's
death ; who lived at the court of Horwendillus five hundred years
before we were born, but all whose thoughts we seem to know as
well as we do our own, because we have read them in Shakspeare.
Hamlet is a name ; his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage
of the poet's brain. What then, are they not real ? They are as
real as our own thoughts. Their reality is in the reader's mind
It is we who are Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which
is above that of history. Whoever has become thoughtful and
melancholy through his own mishaps or those of others ; whoever
has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and
thought himself "too much i' th' sun;" whoever has seen the
golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own
breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank
with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known "the
pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which
patient merit of the unworthy takes ; " he who has felt his mind
sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who
has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered by the appari-
tions of strange things ; who cannot be well at ease, while he sees
evil hovering near him like a spectre ; whose powers of action have
been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite,
and himself nothing ; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless
of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to
shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock represen-
tation of them — this is the true Hamlet.
We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how
to criticise it any more than we should know how to describe our
own faces. But we must make such observations as we can. It
is the one of Shakspeare's plays that we think of the oftenest,
because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and
because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his
mind, to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to
him we apply to ourselves, because he applies it so himself as a
means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser; and what
makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own
feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace pedant. If
" Lear " is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, " Hamlet "
is the most remarkable for the ingenuity, originality, and unstudied
development of character. Shakspeare had more magnanimity than
any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in
74 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: everything
is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The attention is
excited without effort, the incidents succeed each other as matters
of course, the characters think and speak and act just as they
might do if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose,
no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the
passing scene — the gusts of passion come and go like sounds of
music borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript
of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of
Denmark, at the remote period of time fixed upon, before the
modern refinements in morals and manners we^e heard of. It
would have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a
bystander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and wit-
nessed something of what was going on. But here we are more
than spectators. We have not only "the outward pageants and
the signs of grief ; " but " we have that within which passes show."
We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living
as they rise. Other dramatic writers give us very fine versions
and paraphrases of nature ; but Shakspeare, together with his own
comments, gives us the original text, that we may judge for our-
selves. This is a very great advantage.
The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a char-
acter marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refine-
ment of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero
as a man can well be ; but he is a young and princely novice, full
of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility — the sport of circum-
stances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings,
and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strange-
ness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and
is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when
he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills Polonius,
and again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are taking with them to England, purporting his
death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains
puzzled, undecided, and sceptical, dallies with his purposes, till the
occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indo-
lence and thoughtfulness again. For this reason he refuses to kill
the Bang when he is at his prayers, and by a refinement in malice,
which is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution,
defers his revenge to a more fatal opportunity, when he shall be
engaged in some act " that has no relish of salvation in it."
He is the prince of philosophical speculators ; and because he
cannot have his revenge perfect, according to the most refined idea
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— HAMLET. 75
his wish can form, he declines it altogether. So he scruples to trusts
the suggestions of the Ghost, contrives the scene of the play to have
surer proof of his uncle's guilt, and then rests satisfied with this
confirmation of his suspicions, and the success of his experiment,
instead of acting upon it. Yet he is sensible of his own weakness,
taxes himself with it, and tries to reason himself out of it. Still
he does nothing; ar.d this very speculation on his own infirmity
only affords him another occasion for indulging it. It is not from
any want of attachment to his father or of abhorrence of his
murder that Hamlet is thus dilatory ; but it is more to his taste
to indulge his imagination in reflecting upon the enormity of the
crime and refining on his schemes of vengeance, than to put them
into immediate practice. His ruling passion is to think, not to
act ; and any vague pretext that flatters this propensity instantly
diverts him from his previous purposes.
The moral perfection of this character has been called in question,
we think, by those who did not understand it. It is more interest-
ing than according to rules; amiable, though not faultless. The
ethical delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist" (as Shak-
speare has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism
of morali ty. His plays are not copied either from the " Whole Duty
of Man " or from " The Academy of Compliments ! " We confess we
are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are
shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of
punctilious exactness in his behaviour either partakes of the " licence
of the time," or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refine-
ment in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as
well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to
be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too
much taken up with the airy world of contemplation to lay as much
stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His
habitual principles of action are unhinged and out of joint with
the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circum-
stances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of
disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not
obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him ! Amidst
the natural and preternatural horrors of his situation, he might
be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When
" his father's spirit was in arms," it was not a time for the son to
make love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her
mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst
hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken him years
to have come to a direct explanation on the point. In the harassed
76 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
state of his mind, he could not have done much otherwise than he
did. His conduct does not contradict what he says when he sees
her funeral :
"I loved Ophelia : forty thousand brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum."
Nothing can be more affecting or beautiful than ohe Queen's
apostrophe to Ophelia on throwing the flowers into the grave :
" Sweets to the sweet, farewell. [Scattering flowers.
I hop'd thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife ;
I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid,
And not have strew'd thy grave."
Shakspeare was thoroughly a master of the mixed motives of
human character, and he here shows us the Queen, who was so
criminal in some respects, not without sensibility and affection in
other relations of life. — Ophelia is a character almost too exquisitely
touching to be dwelt upon. Oh rose of May, oh flower too soon
faded ! Her love, her madness, her death, are described with the
truest touches of tenderness and pathos. It is a character which
nobody but Shakspeare could have drawn in the way that he has
done, and to the conception of which there is not even the smallest
approach, except in some of the old romantic ballads.
ROMEO AND JULIET.
" ROMEO AND JULIET " is the only tragedy which Shakspeare has
written entirely on a love-story. It is supposed to have been his
first play, and it deserves to stand in that proud rank. There is the
buoyant spirit of youth in every line, in the rapturous intoxication
of hope, and in the bitterness of despair. It has been said of
"Romeo and Juliet" by a great critic, that "whatever is most
intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the
song of the nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the
rose, is to be found in this poem." The description is true ; and yet
it does not answer to our idea of the play. For if it has the sweet-
ness of the rose, it has its freshness too ; if it has the languor of the
nightingale's song, it has also its giddy transport ; if it has the soft-
ness of a southern spring, it is as glowing and as bright. There is
nothing of a sickly and sentimental cast. Romeo and Juliet are in
love, but they are not love-sick. Everything speaks the very soul
of pleasure, the high arid healthy pulse of the passions : the heart
beats, the blood circulates and mantles throughout. Their courtship
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— ROMEO AND JULIET. 77
is not an insipid interchange of sentiments lip-deep, learnt at second-
hand from poems and plays, — made up of beauties of the most
shadowy kind, of "fancies wan that hang the pensive head," of
evanescent smiles, and sighs that breathe not, of delicacy that
shrinks from the touch, and feebleness that scarce supports itself,
an elaborate vacuity of thought, and an artificial dearth of sense,
spirit, truth, and nature ! It is the reverse of all this. It is Shak-
speare all over, and Shakspeare when he was young.
We have heard it objected to "Romeo and Juliet," that it is
founded on an idle passion between a boy and a girl, who have
scarcely seen and can have but little sympathy or rational esteem
for one another, who have had no experience of the good or ills of
life, and whose raptures or despair must be therefore equally ground-
less and fantastical. Whoever objects to the youth of the parties
in this play as " too unripe and crude " to pluck the sweets of love,
and wishes to see a first-love carried on into a good old age, and the
passions taken at the rebound, when their force is spent, may find
all this done in " The Stranger " and in other German plays, where
they do things by contraries, and transpose nature to inspire sen-
timent and create philosophy. Shakspeare proceeded in a more
straightforward and, we think, effectual way. He did not endea-
vour to extract beauty from wrinkles, or the wild throb of passion
from the last expiring sigh of indifference. He did not " gather
grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles." It was not his way. But he
has given a picture of human life, such as it is in the order of nature.
He has founded the passion of the two lovers not on the pleasures
they had experienced, but on all the pleasures they had not experi-
enced. All that was to come of life was theirs. At that untried
source of promised happiness they slaked their thirst, and the first
eager draught made them drunk with love and joy. They were in
full possession of their senses and their affections. Their hopes were
of air, their desires of fire. Youth is the season of love, because the
heart is then first melted in tenderness from the touch of novelty,
and kindled to rapture, for it knows no end of its enjoyments or
its wishes. Desire has no limit but itself. Passion, the love and
expectation of pleasure, is infinite, extravagant, inexhaustible, till
experience comes to check and kill it. Juliet exclaims on her first
interview with Romeo :
" My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep."
And why should it not ? What was to hinder the thrilling tide of
pleasure, which had just gushed from her heart, from flowing on
78 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
without stint or measure but experience, which she was yet with-
out ? What was to abate the transport of the first sweet sense of
pleasure, which her heart and her senses had just tasted, but in-
difference which she was yet a stranger to? What was there to
check the ardour of hope, of faith, of constancy, just rising in her
breast, but disappointment which she had not yet felt? As are
the desires and the hopes of youthful passion, such is the keenness
of its disappointments, and their baleful effect. Such is the transi-
tion in this play from the highest bliss to the lowest despair, from
the nuptial couch to an untimely grave. The only evil that even
in apprehension befalls the two lovers is the loss of the greatest
possible felicity ; yet this loss is fatal to both, for they had rather
part with life than bear the thought of surviving all that had made
life dear to them. In all this, Shakspeare has but followed nature,
which existed in his time, as well as now. The modern philosophy,
which reduces the whole theory of the mind to habitual impressions,
and leaves the natural impulses of passion and imagination out of
the account, had not then been discovered ; or if it had, would have
been little calculated for the uses of poetry.
LEAR.
WE wish that we could pass this play over, and say nothing about
it. All that we can say must fall far short of the subject ; or even
of what we ourselves conceive of it. To attempt to give a descrip-
tion of the play itself or of its effect upon the mind, is mere im-
pertinence : yet we must say something. It is, then, the best of all
Shakspeare's plays, for it is the one in which he was the most in
earnest. He was here fairly caught in the web of his own imagina-
tion. The passion which he has taken as his subject is that which
strikes its root deepest into the human heart ; of which the bond is
the hardest to be unloosed ; and the cancelling and tearing to pieces
of which gives the greatest revulsion to the frame. This depth of
nature, this force of passion, this tug and war of the elements of
our being, this firm faith in filial piety, and the giddy anarchy and
whirling tumult of the thoughts at finding this prop failing it, the
contrast between the fixed, immovable basis of natural affection
and the rapid, irregular starts of imagination, suddenly wrenched
from all its accustomed holds and resting-places in the soul, this is
what Shakspeare has given, and what nobody else but he could give.
So we believe. The mind of Lear, staggering between the weight of
attachment and the hurried movements of passion, is like a tall
ship driven about by the winds, buffeted by the furious waves, but
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— LEAR. 79
that still rides above the storm, having its anchor fixed in the bottom
of the sea ; or it is like the sharp rock circled by the eddying whirl-
pool that foams and beats against it, or like the solid promontory
pushed from its basis by the force of an earthquake.
The character of Lear itself is very finely conceived for the pur-
pose. It is the only ground on which such a story could be built
with the greatest truth and effect. It is his rash haste, his violent
impetuosity, his blindness to everything but the dictates of his
passions or affections, that produces all his misfortunes, that aggra-
vates his impatience of them, that enforces our pity for him. The
part which Cordelia bears in the scene is extremely beautiful : the
story is almost told in the first words she utters. We see at once
the precipice on which the poor old king stands from his own
extravagant and credulous importunity, the indiscreet simplicity
of her love (which, to be sure, has a little of her father's obstinacy
in it), and the hollowness of her sisters' pretensions. Almost the
first burst of that noble tide of passion which runs through the
play is in the remonstrance of Kent to his royal master on the
injustice of his sentence against his youngest daughter : " Be Kent
unmannerly, when Lear is mad ! " This manly plainness, which
draws down on him the displeasure of the unadvised king, is worthy
of the fidelity with which he adheres to his fallen fortunes. The
true character of the two eldest daughters, Regan and Goneril (they
are so thoroughly hateful that we do not even like to repeat their
names), breaks out in their answer to Cordelia, who desires them
to treat their father well : " Prescribe not us our duties " — their hatred
of advice being in proportion to their determination to do wrong, and
to their hypocritical pretensions to do right. Their deliberate hypoc-
risy adds the last finishing to the odiousness of their characters.
It has been said, and we think justly, that the third act of
" Othello " and the three first acts of " Lear " are Shakspeare's great
masterpieces in the logic of passion : that they contain the highest
examples not only of the force of individual passion, but of its
dramatic vicissitudes and striking effects arising from the different
circumstances and characters of the persons speaking. We see the
ebb and flow of the feeling, its pauses and feverish starts, its im-
patience of opposition, its accumulating force when it has time to
recollect itself, the manner in which it avails itself of every pass-
ing word or gesture, its haste to repel insinuation, the alternate con-
traction and dilatation of the soul, and all " the dazzling fence of
controversy " in this mortal combat with poisoned weapons, aimed
at the heart, where each wound is fatal. We have seen in "Othello "
how the unsuspecting frankness and impetuous passions of the Moor
8o WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
are played upon and exasperated by the artful dexterity of lago.
In the present play, that which aggravates the sense of sympathy in
the reader, and of uncontrollable anguish in the swollen heart of Lear,
is the petrifying indifference, the cold, calculating, obdurate selfishness
of his daughters. His keen passions seem whetted on their stony
hearts. The contrast would be too painful, the shock too great, but
for the intervention of the Fool, whose well-timed levity comes in
to break the continuity of feeling when it can no longer be borne,
and to bring into play again the fibres of the heart just as they are
growing rigid from overstrained excitement. The imagination is
glad to take refuge in the half-comic, half -serious comments of the
Fool, just as the mind under the extreme anguish of a surgical
operation vents itself in sallies of wit. The character was also a
grotesque ornament of the barbarous times, in which alone the
tragic groundwork of the story could be laid. In another point of
view it is indispensable, inasmuch as, while it is a diversion to the
too great intensity of our disgust, it carries the pathos to the
highest pitch of which it is capable, by showing the pitiable weak-
ness of the old king's conduct and its irretrievable consequences in
the most familiar point of view. Lear may well " beat at the gate
which let his folly in," after, as the Fool says, " he has made his
daughters his mothers." The character is dropped in the third act
to make room for the entrance of Edgar as Mad Tom, which well
accords with the increasing bustle and wildness of the incidents ;
and nothing can be more complete than the distinction between
Lear's real and Edgar's assumed madness, while the resemblance in
the cause of their distresses, from the severing of the nearest ties
of natural affection, keeps up a unity of interest. Shakspeare's
mastery over his subject, if it was not art, was owing to a know-
ledge of the connecting-links of the passions, and their effect
upon the mind, still more wonderful than any systematic ad-
herence to rules, and that anticipated and outdid all the efforts
of the most refined art, not inspired and rendered instinctive by
genius. . . .
When Lear dies, indeed, we feel the truth of what Kent says on
the occasion —
" Vex not his ghost : 0 let him pass ! he hates him,
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."
Yet a happy ending has been contrived for this play, which is
approved of by Dr. Johnson and condemned by Schlegel. A better
authority than either on any subject in which poetry and feeling are
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS-LEAR. 81
concerned — Mr. Charles Lamb — has given it in favour of Shakspeare,
in some remarks on the acting of Lear, with which we shall conclude
this account : —
" The ' Lear ' of Shakspeare cannot be acted. The contemptible
machinery with which they mimic the storm which he goes out in,
is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements
than any actor can be to represent Lear. The greatness of Lear is
not in corporal dimension, but in intellectual ; the explosions of his
passions are terrible as a volcano : they are storms turning up and
disclosing to the bottom that rich sea, his mind, with all its vast
riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and
blood seems too insignificant to be thought on ; even as he himself
neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporal infirmities
and weakness, the impotence of rage ; while we read it we see not
Lear, but we are Lear ; — we are in his mind : we are sustained by a
grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms ; in the
aberrations of his reason we discover a mighty, irregular power of
reasoning, immethodised from the ordinary purposes of life, but
exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will on
the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones
to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the
heavens themselves, when in his reproaches to them for conniving
at the injustice of his children he reminds them that ' they them-
selves are old ' ? What gesture shall we appropriate to this ?
What has the voice or the eye to do with such things ? But the
play is beyond all art, as the tamperings with it show: it is too
hard and stony : it must have love-scenes, and a happy ending. It
is not enough that Cordelia is a daughter, she must shine as a lover
too. Tate has put his hook in the nostrils of this Leviathan, for
Garrick and his followers, the showmen of the scene, to draw it
about more easily. A happy ending ! — as if the living martyrdom
that Lear had gone through, — the flaying of his feelings alive, did not
make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing
for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain
this world's burden after, why all this pudder and preparation — why
torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As if the childish
pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him
to act over again his misused station, — as if at his years and with
his experience, anything was left but to die."
62 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
FALSTAFF.
IF Shakspeare's fondness for the ludicrous sometimes led to faults in
his tragedies (which was not often the case), he has made us amends
by the character of Falstaff. This is perhaps the most substantial
comic character that ever was invented. Sir John carries a most
portly presence in the mind's eye; and in him, not to speak it
profanely, " we behold the fulness of the spirit of wit and humour
bodily." We are as well acquainted with his person as his mind,
and his jokes come upon us with double force and relish from the
quantity of flesh through which they make their way, as he shakes
his fat sides with laughter, or "lards the lean earth as he walks
along." Other comic characters seem, if we approach and handle
them, to resolve themselves into air, " into thin air ; " but this is
embodied and palpable to the grossest apprehension : it lies " three
lingers deep upon the ribs," it plays about the lungs and diaphragm
with all the force of animal enjoyment. His body is like a good
estate to his mind, from which he receives rents and revenues of
profit and pleasure in kind, according to its extent and the richness
of the soil. Wit is often a meagre substitute for pleasurable sensa-
tion ; an effusion of spleen and petty spite at the comforts of others,
from feeling none in itself. FalstafFs wit is an emanation of a fine
constitution ; an exuberance of good-humour and good-nature ; an
overflowing of his love of laughter and good-fellowship ; a giving
vent to his heart's ease, and over-contentment with himself and
others. He would not be in character if he were not so fat as
he is ; for there is the greatest keeping in the boundless luxury of
his imagination and the pampered self-indulgence of his physical
appetites. He manures and nourishes his mind with jests, as he
does his body with sack and sugar. He carves out his jokes as he
would a capon or a haunch of venison, where there is cut and come
again, and pours out upon them the oil of gladness. His tongue
drops fatness, and in the chambers of his brain " it snows of meat
and drink." He keeps up perpetual holiday and open house, and
we live with him in a round of invitations to a rump and dozen.
Yet we are not to suppose that he was a mere sensualist. All this
is as much in imagination as in reality. His sensuality does not
engross and stupefy his other faculties, but " ascends me into the
brain, dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours
which environ it, makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of
nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes." His imagination keeps up
the ball after his senses have done with it. He seems to have
SHAKSPEARE'S CHARACTERS— FALSTAFF. 83
even a greater enjoyment of the freedom from restraint, of good
cheer, of his ease, of his vanity, in the ideal exaggerated description
which he gives of them, than in fact. He never fails to enrich his
discourse with allusions to eating and drinking, but we never see
him at table. He carries his own larder about with him, and he is
himself " a tun of man." His pulling out the bottle in the field of
battle is a joke to show his contempt for glory accompanied with
danger, his systematic adherence to his Epicurean philosophy in the
most trying circumstances. Again, such is his deliberate exaggera-
tion of his own vices, that it does not seem quite certain whether
the account of his hostess's bill, found in his pocket, with such an
out-of-the-way charge for capons and sack with only one halfpenny-
worth of bread, was not put there by himself as a trick to humour
the jest upon his favourite propensities, and as a conscious carica-
ture of himself. He is represented as a liar, a braggart, a coward,
a glutton, &c., and yet we are not offended but delighted with him ;
for he is all these as much to amuse others as to gratify himself.
He openly assumes all these characters to show the humorous part
of them. The unrestrained indulgence of his own ease, appetites,
and convenience has neither malice nor hypocrisy in it. In a word,
he is an actor in himself almost as much as upon the stage, and we
no more object to the character of Falstaff in a moral point of view
than we should think of bringing an excellent comedian, who should
represent him to the life, before one of the police-offices. We only
consider the number of pleasant lights in which he puts certain
foibles (the more pleasant as they are opposed to the received rules
and necessary restraints of society), and do not 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 self-love ; instinctive
evasions of everything 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
84 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
invention, and the more improbable and unexpected his contriv-
ances 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 spirits
to undertake another : he deals always in round numbers, and his
exaggerations and excuses are "open, palpable, monstrous as the
father that begets them."
[A View of the English Stage ; or a Series of Dramatic Criticisms, 1818.]
THE ACTING OF KEAN.
... I- WENT to see him the first night of his appearing in Shylock.
I remember it well. The boxes were empty, and the pit not half-
full: "some quantity of barren spectators and idle renters were
thinly scattered to make up a show." The whole presented a
dreary, hopeless aspect. I was in considerable apprehension for the
result. From the first scene in which Mr. Kean came on my doubts
were at an end. I had been told to give as favourable an account
as I could : I gave a true one. I am not one of those who, when
they see the sun breaking from behind a cloud, stop to ask others
whether it is the moon. Mr. Kean's appearance was the first gleam
of genius breaking athwart the gloom of the Stage, and the public
have since gladly basked in its ray, in spite of actors, managers, and
critics. . . .
Mr. Kean (of whom report had spoken highly) last night 1 made
his appearance at Drury Lane Theatre in the character of Shylock.
For voice, eye, action, and expression no actor has come out for
many years at all equal to him. The applause, from the first scene
to the last, was general, loud, and uninterrupted. Indeed, the very
first scene in which he comes on with Bassanio and Antonio showed
the master in his art, and at once decided the opinion of the
audience. Perhaps it was the most perfect of any. Notwith-
standing the complete success of Mr. Kean in the part of Shylock
we question whether he will not become a greater favourite in other
parts. There was a lightness and vigour in his tread, a buoyancy
and elasticity of spirit, a fire and animation, which would accord
better with almost any other character than with the morose,
sullen, inward, inveterate, inflexible malignity of Shylock. The
character of Shylock is that of a man brooding over one idea, that
1 January 26, 1814.
THE ACTING OF KEAN. 85
of its wrongs, and bent on one unalterable purpose, that of revenge.
In conveying a profound impression of this feeling, or in embodying
the general conception of rigid and uncontrollable self-will, equally
proof against every sentiment of humanity or prejudice of opinion,
we have seen actors more successful than Mr. Kean ; but in giving
effect to the conflict of passions arising out of the contrasts of situa-
tion, in varied vehemence of declamation, in keenness %f sarcasm, in
the rapidity of his transitions from one tone and feeling to another,
in propriety and novelty of action, presenting a succession of strik-
ing pictures, and giving perpetually fresh shocks of delight and
surprise, it would be difficult to single out a competitor. The fault
of his acting was (if we may hazard the objection) an over-display
of the resources of the art, which gave too much relief to the hard,
impenetrable, dark groundwork of the character of Shylock. It
would be endless to point out individual beauties, where almost
every passage was received with equal and deserved applause. We
thought, in one or two instances, the pauses in the voice were too
long, and too great a reliance placed on the expression of the
countenance, which is a language intelligible only to a part of the
house. . . .
. . . Mr. Kean's Othello is his best character, and the highest
effort of genius on the stage. We say this without any exception
or reserve. Yet we wish it was better than it is. In parts, we
think he rises as high as human genius can go: at other times,
though powerful, the whole effort is thrown away in a wrong direc-
tion, and disturbs our idea of the character. There are some tech-
nical objections. Othello was tall ; but that is nothing : he was
black ; but that is nothing. But he was not fierce, and that is every-
thing. It is only in the last agony of human suffering that he gives
way to his rage and his despair, and it is in working his noble nature
up to that extremity that Shakspeare has shown his genius and his
vast power over the human heart. It was in raising passion to its
height, from the lowest beginnings and in spite of all obstacles, in
showing the conflict of the soul, the tug and war between love
and hatred, rage, tenderness, jealousy, remorse, in laying open the
strength and the weaknesses of human nature, in uniting sublimity
of thought with the anguish of the keenest woe, in putting in
motion all the springs and impulses which make up this our mortal
being, and at last blending them in that noble tide of deep and
sustained passion, impetuous but majestic, "that flows on to the
Propontic and knows no ebb," that the great excellence of Shakspeare
lay. Mr. Kean is in general all passion, all energy, all relentless
will. He wants imagination, that faculty which contemplates
86 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
events, and broods over feelings with a certain calmness and gran-
deur ; his feelings almost always hurry on to action, and hardly ever
repose upon themselves. He is too often in the highest key of
passion, too uniformly on the verge of extravagance, too constantly
on the rack. This does very well in certain characters, as Zanga or
Bajazet, where there is merely a physical passion, a boiling of the
blood to be expressed, but it is not so in the lofty-minded and
generous Moor.
We make these remarks the more freely, because there were parts
of the character in which Mr. Kean showed the greatest sublimity
and pathos, by laying aside all violence of action. For instance,
the tone of voice in which he delivered the beautiful apostrophe,
" Then, oh, farewell ! " struck on the heart like the swelling notes
of some divine music, like the sound of years of departed happiness.
Why not all so, or all that is like it ? Why not speak the affecting
passage, " I found not Cassio's kisses on her lips " — why not speak
the last speech, in the same manner ? They are both of them, we
do most strenuously contend, speeches of pure pathos, of thought
and feeling, and not of passion, venting itself in violence of action
or gesture. Again, the look, the action, the expression of voice,
with which he accompanied the exclamation, " Not a jot, not a jot,"
was perfectly heart-rending. His vow of revenge against Cassio
and his abandonment of his love for Desdemona were as fine as
possible. The whole of the third act had an irresistible effect upon
the house, and indeed is only to be paralleled by the murder-scene
in "Macbeth." .
MRS. SIDDONS.
. . . THE homage she has received is greater than that which is
paid to Queens. The enthusiasm she excited had something idola-
trous about it ; she was regarded less with admiration than with
wonder, as if a being of a superior order had dropped from another
sphere to awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. She
raised Tragedy to the skies, or brought it down from thence. It
was something above nature. We can conceive of nothing grander.
She embodied to our imagination the fables of mythology, of the
heroic and deified mortals of elder time. She was not less than a
goddess, or than a prophetess inspired by the gods. Power was
seated on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a
shrine. She was Tragedy personified. She was the stateliest
ornament of the public mind. She was not only the idol of the
people, she not only hushed the tumultuous shouts of the pit in
DISSENTERS AND DISSENTING MINISTERS. 87
breathless expectation, and quenched the blaze of surrounding
beauty in silent tears, but to the retired and lonely student, through
long years of solitude, her face has shone as if an eye had appeared
from heaven ; her name has been as if a voice had opened the
chambers of the human heart, or as if a trumpet had awakened the
sleeping and the dead. To have seen Mrs. Siddons was an event in
every one's life. . . .
Mrs. Siddons's appearance in Lady Macbeth at this theatre on
Thursday drew immense crowds to every part of the house. We
should suppose that more than half the number of persons were
compelled to return without gaining admittance. We succeeded in
gaining a seat in one of the back-boxes, and saw this wonderful
performance at a distance, and consequently at a disadvantage.
Though the distance of place is a disadvantage to a performance
like Mrs. Siddons's Lady Macbeth, we question whether the distance
of time at which we have formerly seen it is any. It is nearly
twenty years since we first saw her hi this character, and certainly
the impression which we have still left on our minds from that first
exhibition is stronger than the one we received the other evening.
The sublimity of Mrs. Siddons's acting is such, that the first impulse
which it gives to the mind can never wear out, and we doubt whether
this original and paramount impression is not weakened, rather
than strengthened, by subsequent repetition ; if we have seen Mrs.
Siddons in Lady Macbeth only once, it is enough. The impression
is stamped there for ever, and any after-experiments and critical
inquiries only serve to fritter away and tamper with the sacredness
of the early recollection.
[Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters, 1819.]
DISSENTERS AND DISSENTING MINISTERS.
. . . WE are told that the different sects are hot-beds of sedition,
because they are nurseries of public spirit, and independence, and
sincerity of opinion in all other respects. They are so necessarily,
and by the supposition. They are Dissenters from the Established
Church ; they submit voluntarily to certain privations, they incur
a certain portion of obloquy and ill-will, for the sake of what they
believe to be the truth : they are not time-servers on the face of the
evidence, and that is sufficient to expose them to the instinctive
hatred and ready ribaldry of those who think venality the first of
88 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
virtues, and prostitution of principle the best sacrifice a man can
make to the Graces or his Country. The Dissenter does not change
his sentiments with the seasons : he does not suit his conscience to
his convenience. This is enough to condemn him for a pestilent
fellow. He will not give up his principles because they are un-
fashionable ; therefore he is not to be trusted. He speaks his mind
bluntly and honestly ; therefore he is a secret disturber of the peace,
a dark conspirator against the State. On the contrary, the different
sects in this country are, or have been, the steadiest supporters of
its liberties and laws : they are checks and barriers against the in-
sidious or avowed encroachments of arbitrary power, as effectual and
indispensable as any others in the Constitution : they are depositaries
of a principle as sacred and somewhat rarer than a devotion to Court-
influence — we mean the love of truth. It is hard for any one to be
an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter. Nothing
else can sufficiently inure and steel a man against the prevailing pre-
judices of the world but that habit of mind which arises from non-
conformity to its decisions in matters of religion. 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 unbiassed conviction which makes him reject all undue inter-
ference 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 be-
tween 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 ground-
less 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
DISSENTERS AND DISSENTING MINISTERS. 89
look cold and askance upon him ; and therefore he may defy it with
less fear of its censures.
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 the storm or droop in the
sunshine. Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius. You cannot engraft
a medlar on a crab-apple. A thoroughbred Dissenter will never
make an accomplished courtier. . . .
. . . We have known some such [Dissenting ministers] 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 re-
vealed. 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 worshipped 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 con-
science, with the spirits of just men in all ages. They saw 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 Abed-
nego ; 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
90 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
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.
THE CHUKCH AND ITS CLEKGY.
. . . THE bane of all religions has been the necessity (real or sup-
posed) of keeping up an attention and attaching a value to external
forms and ceremonies. It was, of course, much easier to conform
to these, or to manifest a reverence for them, than to practise the
virtues or understand the doctrines of true religion, of which they
were merely the outward types and symbols. The consequence has
been, that the greatest stress has been perpetually laid on what
was of the least value and most easily professed. The form of
religion has superseded the substance ; the means have supplanted
the end ; and the sterling coin of charity and good works has been
driven out of the currency, for the base counterfeits of supersti-
tion and intolerance, by all the money-changers and dealers in the
temples established to religion throughout the world. Vestments
and chalices have been multiplied for the reception of the Holy
Spirit ; the tagged points of controversy and lacquered varnish of
hypocrisy have eaten into the solid substance and texture of piety ;
" and all the inward acts of worship, issuing from the native strength
THE ESTABLISHED CLERGY. 91
of the soul, run out (as Milton expresses it) lavishly to the upper
skin, and there harden into the crust of formality." Hence we have
had such shoals of
" Eremites and Friars
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery " —
who have foisted their " idiot and embryo " inventions upon us for
truth, and who have fomented all the bad passions of the heart,
and let loose all the mischiefs of war, of fire and famine, to avenge
the slightest difference of opinion on any one iota of their lying
creeds, or the slightest disrespect to any one of those mummeries
and idle pageants which they had set up as sacred idols for the
world to wonder at. We do not forget, in making these remarks,
that there was a time when the persons who will be most annoyed
and scandalised at them would have taken a more effectual mode of
showing their zeal and indignation ; when to have expressed a free
opinion on a monk's cowl or a Cardinal's hat would have exposed
the writer who had been guilty of such sacrilege to the pains and
penalties of excommunication : to be burnt to an auto da fe; to be
consigned to the dungeons of the Inquisition, or doomed to the
mines of Spanish America ; to have his nose slit, or his ears cut off,
or his hand reduced to a stump. Such were the considerate and
humane proceedings by which the priests of former times vindicated
their own honour, which they pretended to be the honour of God.
Such was their humility, when they had the power. . . .
THE ESTABLISHED CLERGY.
. . . THE Established Clergy of any religion are bound to conform
their professions of religious belief to a certain popular and lucrative
standard, and bound over to keep the peace by certain articles of
faith. It is a rare felicity in any one who gives his attention fairly
and freely to the subject, and has read the Scriptures, the Misnah,
and the Talmud — the Fathers, the Schoolmen, the Socinian divines,
the Lutheran and Calvinistic controversy, with innumerable volumes
appertaining thereto and illustrative thereof, to believe all the
Thirty-nine Articles, " except one." If those who are destined for
the episcopal office exercise their understandings honestly and
openly upon every one of these questions, how little chance is there
that they should come to the same conclusion upon them all ! If
they do not inquire, what becomes of their independence of under-
92 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
standing? If they conform to what they do not believe, what
becomes of their honesty ? Their estimation in the world, as well
as their livelihood, depends on their tamely submitting their under-
standing to authority at first, and on their not seeing reason to
alter their opinion afterwards. Is it likely that a man will intrepidly
open his eyes to conviction when he sees poverty and disgrace
staring him in the face as the inevitable consequence ? . . .
Take one illustration of the truth of all that has been here said,
and of more that might be said, upon the subject. It is related in
that valuable comment on the present reign and the existing order
of things, Bishop Watson's Life, that the late Dr. Paley, having at
one time to maintain a thesis in the University, proposed to the
Bishop, for his approbation, the following: — "That the Eternity
of Hell torments is contradictory to the goodness of God." The
Bishop observed, that he thought this a bold doctrine to maintain
in the face of the Church ; but Paley persisted in his determination.
Soon after, however, having sounded the opinions of certain persons
high in authority and well read in the orthodoxy of preferment, he
came back in great alarm, said he found the thing would not do,
and begged, instead of his first thesis, to have the reverse one sub-
stituted in its stead, viz. — " That the Eternity of Hell torments is
not contradictory to the goodness of God." What burning daylight
is here thrown on clerical discipline and the bias of a University
education ! This passage is worth all Mosheim's " Ecclesiastical
History," Wood's " Athense Oxonienses," and Mr. Coleridge's two
"Lay Sermons." This same shuffling divine is the same Dr. Paley who
afterwards employed the whole of his life, and his moderate second-
hand abilities, in tampering with religion, morality, and politics,—
in trimming between his convenience and his conscience, — in crawl-
ing between heaven and earth, and trying to cajole both. His
celebrated and popular work on Moral Philosophy is celebrated and
popular for no other reason, than that it is a somewhat ingeni-
ous and amusing apology for existing abuses of every description,
by which anything is to be got. It is a very elaborate and con-
solatory elucidation of the text, that men should not quarrel with
their bread and butter. It is not an attempt to show what is right,
but to palliate and find out plausible excuses for what is wrong.
It is a work without the least value, except as a convenient common-
place book or vade mecum for tyro politicians and young divines,
to smooth their progress in the Church or the State. This work is
a text-book in the University. . . .
LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD. 93
[Letter to William Gifford, Esq., 1819.]
[If ever an author was justified in attacking an unscrupulous critic, it was
Hazlitt. The reader, after perusing what has been said on this subject in the
Memoir prefixed to this volume, will not be surprised at the indignant tone
of the letter. I have only given the introductory pages. The "bringing
to book " of the slanderer is a fine specimen of trenchant exposure.]
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 impor-
tance 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 understand-
ing, and make up for the obvious want of ability by a barefaced
want of principle. The same set of threadbare commonplaces,
the same second-hand assortment of abusive nick-names, the same
assumption of little magisterial airs of superiority, are regularly
repeated ; and the ready convenient lie comes in aid of the dearth
of other resources, and passes off, with impunity, in the garb of
religion and loyalty. If no one finds it out, why then there is no
harm done— snub's the word ; or if it should be detected, it is a good
joke, shows spirit and invention in proportion to its grossness and
impudence, and it is only a pity that what was so well meant in
94 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
so good a cause should miscarry! The end sanctifies the means;
and you keep no faith with heretics in religion or government.
You are under the protection of the Court j and your zeal for
your king and country entitles you to say what you choose of every
public writer who does not do all in his power to pamper the one
into a tyrant, and to trample the other into a herd of slaves. You
derive your weight with the great and powerful from the very cir-
cumstance that takes away all real weight from your authority, viz.,
that it is avowedly, and upon every occasion, exerted for no one
purpose but to hold up to hatred and contempt whatever opposes
in the slightest degree and in the most flagrant instances of abuse
their pride and passions. You dictate your opinions to a party,
because not one of your opinions is formed upon an honest conviction
of the truth or justice of the case, but by collusion with the pre-
judices, caprice, interest, or vanity of your employers. The mob of
well-dressed readers who consult the Quarterly Review know that
there is no offence in it. They put faith in it because they are aware
that it is " false and hollow, but will please the ear ; " that it
will tell them nothing but what they would wish to believe. Your
reasoning comes under the head of Court-news; your taste is a
standard of the prevailing ton in certain circles, like Ackerman's
dresses for May. When you damn an author, one knows that he is
not a favourite at Carlton House. When you say that an author
cannot write common sense or English, you mean that he does not
believe in the doctrine of divine right. Of course, the clergy and
gentry will not read such an author. Your praise or blame has
nothing to do with the merits of a work, but with the party to
which the writer belongs, or is in the inverse ratio of its merits.
The dingy cover that wraps the pages of the Quarterly Review does
not contain a concentrated essence of taste and knowledge, but is a
receptacle for the scum and sediment of all the prejudice, bigotry,
ill-will, ignorance, and rancour afloat in the kingdom. This the
fools and knaves who pin their faith on you know, and it is on this
account they pin their faith on you. They come to you for a scale
not of literary talent, but of political subserviency. They want you
to set your mark of approbation on a writer as a thorough-paced
tool, or of reprobation as an honest man. Your fashionable readers,
Sir, are hypocrites as well as knaves and fools ; and the watchword,
the practical intelligence they want, must be conveyed to them
without implied offence to their candour and liberality, in the patois
and gibberish of fraud of which you are a master. When you begin
to jabber about common sense and English, they know what to be
at, shut up the book, and wonder that any respectable publisher can
LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD. 95
be found to let it lie on his counter, as much as if it were a Petition
for Reform. . . . There is something in your nature and habits that
fits you for the situation into which your good fortune has thrown
you. In the first place, you are in no danger of exciting the jealousy
of your patrons by a mortifying display of extraordinary talents,
while your sordid devotion to their will and to your own interest at
once ensures their gratitude and contempt. To crawl and lick the
dust is all they expect of you, and all you can do. Otherwise they
might fear your power, for they could have no dependence on your
fidelity : but they take you with safety and with fondness to their
bosoms ; for they know that if you cease to be a tool you cease to
be anything. If you had an exuberance of wit, the unguarded use
of it might sometimes glance at your employers ; if you were sincere
yourself, you might respect the motives of others ; if you had suffi-
cient understanding, you might attempt an argument, and fail in it.
But luckily for yourself and your admirers, you are but the dull
echo, "the tenth transmitter" of some hackneyed jest : the want of
all manly and candid feeling in yourself only excites your suspicion
and antipathy to it in others, as something at which your nature
recoils ; your slowness to understand makes you quick to misrepre-
sent ; and you infallibly make nonsense of what you cannot possibly
conceive. What seem your wilful blunders are often the felicity of
natural parts, and your want of penetration has all the appearance
of an affected petulance !
Again, of an humble origin yourself, you recommend your per-
formances to persons of fashion by always abusing low people, with
the smartness of a lady's waiting-woman and the independent spirit
of a travelling tutor. Raised from the lowest rank to your present
despicable eminence in the world of letters, you are indignant that
any one should attempt to rise into notice, except by the same
regular trammels and servile gradations, or should go about to
separate the stamp of merit from the badge of sycophancy. The
silent listener in select circles, and menial tool of noble families, you
have become the oracle of Church and State. The purveyor to the
prejudices or passions of a private patron succeeds, by no other title,
to regulate the public taste. You have felt the inconveniences of
poverty, and look up with base and grovelling admiration to the
advantages of wealth and power : you have had to contend with
the mechanical difficulties of a want of education, and you see
nothing in learning but its mechanical uses. A self-taught man
naturally becomes a pedant, and mistakes the means of knowledge
for the end, unless he is a man of genius ; and you, Sir, are not a
man of genius. From having known nothing originally, you think
96 WILLIAM HAZLITT—ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
it a great acquisition to know anything now, no matter what
or how small it is — nay, the smaller and more insignificant it is,
the more curious you seem to think it, as it is farther removed
from common sense and human nature. The collating of points and
commas is the highest game your literary ambition can reach to, and
the squabbles of editors are to you infinitely more important than
the meaning of an author. You think more of the letter than the
spirit of a passage, and, in your eagerness to show your minute
superiority over those who have gone before you, generally miss
both. In comparing yourself with others, you make a considerable
mistake. You suppose the common advantages of a liberal educa-
tion to be something peculiar to yourself, and calculate your progress
beyond the rest of the world from the obscure point at which you
first set out. Yet your overweening self-complacency is never easy
but in the expression of your contempt for others ; like a conceited
mechanic in a village ale-house, you would set down every one who
differs from you as an ignorant blockhead, and very fairly infer that
any one who is beneath yourself must be nothing. You have been
well called an ultra-Crepidarian critic. From the difficulty you
yourself have in constructing a sentence of common grammar, and
your frequent failures, you instinctively presume that no author who
comes under the lash of your pen can understand his mother-tongue:
and again, you suspect every one who is not your "very good friend"
of knowing nothing of the Greek or Latin, because you are surprised
to think how you came by your own knowledge of them. There is
an innate littleness and vulgarity in all you do. In combating an
opinion, you never take a broad and liberal ground, state it fairly,
allow what there is of truth or an appearance of truth, and then
assert your own judgment by exposing what is deficient in it, and
giving a more masterly view of the subject. No : this would be
committing your powers and pretensions where you dare not trust
them. You know yourself better. You deny the meaning alto-
gether, misquote or misapply, and then plume yourself on your own
superiority to the absurdity you have created. Your triumph over
your antagonists is the triumph of your cunning and mean-spirited-
ness over some nonentity of your own making ; and your wary self-
knowledge shrinks from a comparison with any but the most puny
pretensions, as the spider retreats from the caterpillar into its web.
There cannot be a greater nuisance than a dull, envious, prag-
matical, low-bred man, who is placed as you are in the situation of
the Editor of such a work as the Quarterly Review. Conscious that
his reputation stands on very slender and narrow grounds, he
is naturally jealous of that of others. He insults unsuccessful
LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD. 97
authors : he hates successful ones. He is angry at the faults of a
work ; more angry at its excellences. If an opinion is old, he treats
it with supercilious indifference ; if it is new, it provokes his rage.
Everything beyond his limited range of inquiry appears to him a
paradox and an absurdity ; and he resents every suggestion of the
kind as an imposition on the public and an imputation on his own
sagacity. He cavils at what he does not comprehend, and misre-
presents what he knows to be true. Bound to go through the
nauseous task of abusing all those who are not, like himself, the abject
tools of power, his irritation increases with the number of obstacles
he encounters and the number of sacrifices he is obliged to make of
common sense and decency to his interest and self-conceit. Every
instance of prevarication he wilfully commits makes him more in
love with hypocrisy, and every indulgence of his hired malignity
makes him more disposed to repeat the insult and the injury. His
understanding becomes daily more distorted, and his feelings more
and more callous. Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels
on to the last with prostituted impotence and shameless effrontery ;
salves a meagre reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his
spleen and impertinence on others ; answers their arguments by
confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a
particular acuteness, not to be imposed upon by shallow appear-
ances ; unprincipled rancour for zealous loyalty ; and the irritable,
discontented, vindictive, peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental
imbecility for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of under-
standing.
Such, Sir, is the picture of which you have sat for the outline : — •
all that remains is to fill up the little, mean, crooked, dirty details.
The task is to me no very pleasant one ; for I can feel very little
ambition to follow you through your ordinary routine of pettifogging
objections and barefaced assertions, the only difficulty of making
which is to throw aside all regard to truth and decency, and the
only difficulty in answering them is to overcome one's contempt for
the writer. But you are a nuisance, and should be abated.
WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
[Lectures on the English Poets, 1818. Second Edition 1819. Third
Edition 1841. Fourth Edition 1872.]
I
ON POETRY IN GENERAL.
THE best general notion which I can give of poetry is, that it is the
|| natural impression of any object or event, by its vividness exciting
II an involuntary movement of imagination and passion, and pro-
Hducing, by sympathy, a certain modulation of the voice, or sounds,
(•expressing it. ...
Poetry is the language of the imagination and the passions. It
relates to whatever gives immediate pleasure or pain to the human
mind. It comes home to the bosoms and businesses of men ; for
nothing but what so comes home to them in the most general
and intelligible shape can be a subject for poetry. Poetry is the
universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself.
He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for
himself, or for anything else. It is not a mere frivolous accomplish-
ment (as some persons have been led to imagine), the trifling
amusement of a few idle readers or leisure hours : it has been the
study and delight of mankind in all ages. Many people suppose
that poetry is something to be found only in books, contained in
lines of ten syllables with like endings ; but wherever there jft a
sense of beauty, or power, or harmony, as in the motion of a wave
^e seaT in the growth of a flower that "spreads its sweet lea/yes
° ^e a*r? an(^ dedicates its beauty to the sun." there is poetry,, in
ts birth.. If history is a grave study, poetry may be said to be a
graver: its materials lie deeper, and are spread wider. History
treats, for the most part, of the cumbrous and unwieldy masses of
things, the empty cases in which the affairs of the world are packed,
under the heads of intrigue or war, in different states, and from
century to century; but there is no thought or feeling that can
have entered into the mind of man which he would be eager to
communicate to others, or which they would listen to with delight,
that is not a fit subject for poetry. It is not a branch of author-
ship ; it is " the stuff of which our life is made." The rest is " mere
oblivion," a dead letter : for all that is worth remembering in life
is the poetry of it. Fear is poetry, hope is poetry, love is poetry,
hatred is poetry ; contempt, jealousy, remorse, admiration, wonder,
pity, despair, or madness are all poetry. Poetry is that fine particle
within us that expands, rarefies, refines, raises our whole being:
ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 99
without it " man's life is poor as beast's." Man is a poetical animal ;
and those of us who do not study the principles of poetry act upon
them all our lives, like Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, who had
always spoken prose without knowing it. The child is a poet, in
fact, when he first plays at hide-and-seek, or repeats the story of
Jack the Giant-killer; the shepherd-boy is a poet when he first
crowns his mistress with a garland of flowers ; the countryman,
when he stops to look at the rainbow ; the city apprentice, when he
gazes after the Lord Mayor's show ; the miser, when he hugs his
gold ; the courtier, who builds his hopes upon a smile ; the savage,
who paints his idol with blood ; the slave, who worships a tyrant ;
or the tyrant, who fancies himself a god ; the vain, the ambitious,
the proud, the choleric man, the hero and the coward, the beggar
and the king, the rich and the poor, the young and the old, all live
in a world of their own making ; and the poet does no more than
describe what all the others think and act. . . .
Poetry, then, is an imitation of nature, but the imagination and
the passions are a part of man's nature. We shape things according
toour wishes and fancies, without poetry; but poetry is the most
emphatical language that can be found for those creations of the
mind " which ecstasy is very cunning in." . Neither a mere descrip-
tion_of natural objects nor a mere delineation of natural feelings,
however distinct or forcible, constitutes the ultimate end and aim
of poetry. Without the heightenings of the imagination?) _ The light
pf poetry is not only a direct but also a reflected light, that, while
it shows us the object, throws a sparkling radiance on all around
it: the flame of the passions, communicated to the imagination,
reveals to us, as with a flash of lightning, the inmost recesses of
thought, and penetrates our whole being. Poetry represents forms
chiefly as they suggest other forms : feelings, as they suggest forms
or other feelings. Poetry puts a spirit of life and motion into the
universe.. It describes the flowing, not the fixed. It does not
define the limits of sense, or analyse the distinctions of the under-
standing, but signifies the excess of the imagination beyond the
actual or ordinary impression of any object or feeling. The poetical
impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty
or power that cannot be contained within itself, that is impatient
of all limit, that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to
some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur, to enshrine itself,
as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching
sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner, and by
the most striking examples of the same quality in other instances.
Poetry, according to Lord Bacon, for this reason " has something
loo WILLIAM HAZLITT- ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
divine in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity,
by conforming the shows of things to the desires of the soul, instead
of subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and history do."
It is strictly the language of the imagination ; and the imagination
is that faculty which represents objects, not as they are in them-
selves, but as they are moulded by other thoughts and feelings,
into an infinite variety of shapes and combinations of power. This
language is not the less true to nature because it is false in point
'of fact, but so much the more true and natural if it conveys the
impression which the object under the influence of passion makes
on the mind. Let an object, for instance, be presented to the
senses in a state of agitation or fear, and the imagination will
distort or magnify the object, and convert it into the likeness of
whatever is most proper to encourage the fear. . . .
One mode in which the dramatic exhibition of passion excites our
sympathy without raising our disgust is, that in proportion as it
sharpens the edge of calamity and disappointment it strengthens
the desire of good. It enhances our consciousness of the blessing,
by making us sensible of the magnitude of the loss. The storm of
passion lays bare and shows us the rich depths of the human soul^
the whole of our existence, the sum-total of our passions and pur-
suits, of that which we desire and that which we dread, is brought
before us by contrast ; the action and reaction are equal ; the keen-
ness of immediate suffering only gives us a more intense aspiration
after and a more intimate participation with the antagonist world
of good : makes us drink deeper of the cup of human life : tugs at
the heart-strings: loosens the pressure about them, and calls the
springs of thought and feeling into play with tenfold force. . . .
Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and
the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more
absurd than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid
and pedantic critics for reducing the language of poetry to the
standard of common sense and reason ; for the end and use of
poetry, "both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror
up to nature," seen through the medium of passion and imagina-
tion, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth, or
abstract reason. The painter of history might as well be required
to represent the face of a person who has just trod upon a serpent
with the still-life expression of a common portrait, as the poet to
describe the most striking and vivid impressions which things can
be supposed to make upon the mind in the language of common
conversation. Let who will strip nature of the colours and the
shapes of fancy, the poet is not bound to do so ; the impressions of
ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 101
common sense and strong imagination, that is, of passion and indif-
ference, cannot be the same, and they must have a separate language
to do justice to either. Objects must strike differently upon the
mind, independently of what they are in themselves, as long as we
Tiave a different interest in them, as we see them in a different point
of view, nearer or at a greater distance (morally or physically speak-
ing), from novelty, from old acquaintance, from our ignorance of
them, from our fear of their consequences, from contrast, from un-
expected likeness. We can no more take away the faculty of the|
imagination than we can see ail objects without light or shade, fl
Some things must dazzle us by their preternatural light; others
must hold us in suspense, and tempt our curiosity to explore their
obscurity. Those who would dispel these various illusions, to give
us their drab-coloured creation in their stead, are not very wise.
Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home
with him in a box, and find it next morning nothing but a little
grey worm : let the poet or the lover of poetry visit it at evening,
when beneath the scented hawthorn and the crescent moon it
has built itself a palace of emerald light. This is also one part of
nature, one appearance which the glow-worm presents, and that not
the least interesting; so poetry is one part of the history of the
human mind, though it is neither science nor philosophy. It cannot"
be concealed, however, that the progress of knowledge and refine-
ment has a tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination
and to clip the wings of poetry. The province of the imagination
is principally visionary, the unknown and undefined: the under-
standing restores things to their natural boundaries, and strips
them of their fanciful pretensions. . . .
Wherever any object takes such a hold of the mind as to make us
dwell upon it and brood over it, melting the heart in tenderness, or
kindling it to a sentiment of enthusiasm ; wherever a movement of
imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks
to prolong and repeat the emotion, to bring all other objects into
accord with it, and to give the same movement of harmony, sustained
and continuous, or gradually varied, according to the occasion, to the
sounds that express it — this is poetry. The musical hi sound is the*"
sustained and continuous ; the musical in thought is the sustained
and continuous also. There is a near connection between music and
deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As often as articulation
passes naturally into intonation, there poetry begins. Where one
idea gives a tone and colour to others, where one feeling melts
others into it, there can be no reason why the same principle should
not be extended to the sounds by which the voice utters these
102 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
emotions of the soul, and blends syllables and lines into each other.
It is to supply the inherent defect of harmony in the customary
mechanism of language, to make the sound an echo to the sense,
when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself — to mingle the tide
of verse, " the golden cadences of poetry," with the tide of feeling,
flowing and murmuring as it flows — in short, to take the language
of the imagination from off the ground, and enable it to spread its
wings where it may indulge its own impulses :
" Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air " —
without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses
and petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that
poetry was invented. It is to common language what springs are
to a carriage or wings to feet. . . .
I will mention three works which come as near to poetry as pos-
sible without absolutely being so ; namely, the "Pilgrim's Pro-
gress," "Robinson Crusoe," and the TalFfi nf y>nppi).p.cio Chaucer and
Dryden have translated some of the last into English rhyme, but the
essence and the power of poetry was there before. That which lifts
the spirit above the earth, which draws the soul out of itself with
indescribable longings, is poetry in kind, and generally fit to become
so in name, by being " married to immortal verse." If it is of the
essence of poetry to strike and fix the imagination, whether we will
or no, to make the eye of childhood glisten with the starting tear, to
be never thought of afterwards with indifference, John Bunyan and
Daniel Defoe may be permitted to pass for poets in their way. The
mixture of fancy and reality in the " Pilgrim's Progress " was never
equalled in any allegory. His pilgrims walk above the earth, and
yet are on it. What zeal, what beauty, what truth of fiction !
What deep feeling in the description of Christian's swimming across
the water at last, and in the picture of the Shining Ones within
the gates, with wings at their backs and garlands on their heads,
who are to wipe all tears from his eyes ! The writer's genius, though
not " dipped in dews of Castalie," was baptized with the Holy Spirit
and with fire. The prints in this book are no small part of it. If
the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject
for the most beautiful of all the Greek tragedies, what shall we
say to Robinson Crusoe in his ? Take the speech of the Greek hero
on leaving his cave, beautiful as it is, and compare it with the
reflections of the English adventurer in his solitary place of confine-
ment. The thoughts of home, and of all from which he is for ever
cut off, swell and press against his bosom, as the heaving ocean rolls
ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 103
its ceaseless tide against the rocky shore, and the very beatings of
his heart become audible in the eternal silence that surrounds him.
Thus he says :
"As I walked about, either in my hunting, or for viewing the
country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out
upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to
think of the woods, the mountains, and deserts I was in ; and how
I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the
ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the
midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out
upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep like
a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work,
and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the
ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me,
for if I could burst into tears or vent myself in words, it would go
off, and the grief having exhausted itself would abate."
... I shall conclude this general account with some remarks on
four of the principal works of poetry in the world, at different periods
of history — Homer, the Bible. Dante, and, let me add. Ossian. In
Homer, the principle of action or life is predominant ; in the -BipTe".
the prinqplft "f faitiv an^ the idea of Providence; Dante is a per-
sonification of blind will ; and in Ossian we see the decay of life and
the lag-end ot the world Homer's poetry is the heroic : it is full"
of life and action ; it is bright as the day, strong as a river. In the
vigour of his intellect, he grapples with all the objects of nature,
and enters into all the relations of social life. He saw many
countries, and the manners of many men ; and he has brought
them all together in his poem. He describes his heroes going to
battle with a prodigality of life, arising from an exuberance of
animal spirits ; we see them before us, their number and their order
of battle, poured out upon the plain '' all plumed like ostriches, like
eagles newly bathed, wanton as goats, wild as young bulls, youthful
as May, and gorgeous as the sun at midsummer," covered with
glittering armour, with dust and blood ; while the gods quaff their
nectar in golden cups or mingle in the fray; and the old men
assembled on the walls of Troy rise up with reverence as Helen
passes by them. The multitude of things in Homer is wonderful ;
their splendour, their truth, their force and variety. His poetry is,
like his religion, the poetry of number and form : he describes the
bodies as well as the souls of men.
The poetry of the Bible is that of imagination and of faith : it
is abstract and disembodied : it is not the poetry of form, but of
power; not of multitude, but of immensity. It does not divide
104 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
into many, but aggrandises into one. Its ideas of nature are like
its ideas of God. It is not the poetry of social life, but of solitude :
each man seems alone in the world, with the original forms of nature,
the rocks, the earth, and the sky. It is not the poetry of action or
heroic enterprise, but of faith in a supreme Providence and resigna-
tion to the power that governs the universe. As the idea of God
was removed farther from humanity and a scattered polytheism, it
became more profound and intense, as it became more universal, for
the Infinite is present to everything : " If we fly into the uttermost
parts of the earth, it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the
west, we cannot escape from it." Man is thus aggrandised in the
image of his Maker. The history of the patriarchs is of this kind ;
they are founders of a chosen race of people, the inheritors of the
earth ; they exist in the generations which are to come after them.
Their poetry, like their religious creed, is vast, unformed, obscure, and
infinite ; a vision is upon it ; an invisible hand is suspended over it.
The spirit of the Christian religion consists in the glory hereafter to
be revealed ; but in the Hebrew dispensation Providence took an im-
mediate share in the affairs of this life. Jacob's dream arose out of
this intimate communion between heaven and earth : it was this
that let down, in the sight of the youthful patriarch, a golden
ladder from the sky to the earth, with angels ascending and de-
scending upon it, and shed a light upon the lonely place, which
can never pass away. The story of Ruth, again, is as if all the depth
of natural affection in the human race was involved in her breast.
There are descriptions in the Book of Job more prodigal of imagery,
more intense in passion, than anything in Homer ; as that of the
state of his prosperity, and of the vision that came upon him by
night. The metaphors in the Old Testament are more boldly figura-
tive. Things were collected more into masses, and gave a greater
momentum to the imagination.
I Dante was the father of modern poetry, and he may therefore
claim a place in this connection. His poem is the first great step
from Gothic darkness and barbarism ; and the struggle of thought
in it to burst the thraldom in which the human mind had been so
long held is felt in every page. He stood bewildered, not appalled
on that dark shore which separates the ancient and the modern
world, and saw the glories of antiquity dawning through the abyss
of time, while revelation opened its passage to the other world. He
was lost in wonder at what had been done before him, and he dared
to emulate it. Dante seems to have been indebted to the Bible for
the gloomy tone of his mind, as well as for the prophetic fury which
exalts and kindles his poetry ; but he is utterly unlike Homer. His
ON POETRY IN GENERAL. 105
genius is not a sparkling flame, but the sullen heat of a furnace.
He is power, passion, self-will personified. In all that relates to the
descriptive or fanciful part of poetry, he bears no comparison to
many who had gone before, or who have come after him ; but there
is a gloomy abstraction in his conceptions, which lies like a dead
weight upon the mind — a benumbing stupor, a breathless awe, from
the intensity of the impression — a terrible obscurity, like that which
oppresses us in dreams — an identity of interest, which moulds every
object to its own purposes, and clothes all things with the passions
and imaginations of the human soul — that make amends for all
other deficiencies. The immediate objects he presents to the mind
are not much in themselves ; they want grandeur, beauty, and order ;
but they become everything by the force of the character he impresses
upon them. His mind lends its own power to the objects which it
contemplates, instead of borrowing it from them. He takes advan-
tage even of the nakedness and dreary vacuity of his subject. His
imagination peoples the shades of death, and broods over the silent
air. He is the severest of all writers, the most hard and impene-
trable, the most opposite to the flowery and glittering ; [the writer]
who relies most on his own power, and the sense of it in others, and
who leaves most room to the imagination of his readers. Dante's
only endeavour is to interest ; and he interests by exciting our
sympathy with the emotion by which he is himself possessed. He
does not place before us the objects by which that emotion has been
created ; but he seizes on the attention, by showing us the effect
they produce on his feelings ; and his poetry accordingly gives the
same thrilling and overwhelming sensation which is caught by gazing
on the face of a person who has seen some object of horror. The
improbability of the events, the abruptness and monotony in the
" Inferno " are excessive ; but the interest never flags, from the con-
tinued earnestness of the author's mind. Dante's great power is in
combining internal feelings with external objects. . . .
Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot
persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork,
is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be
destroyed in the minds of his readers. As Homer is the first
vigour and lustihead, Ossian is the decay and old age of poetry. He
lives only in the recollection and regret of the past. There is one
impression which he conveys more entirely than all other poets;
namely, the sense of privation, the loss of all things, of friends, of
good name, of country ; he is even without God in the world. He
converses only with the spirits of the departed ; with the motionless
and silent clouds. The cold moonlight sheds its faint lustre on his
106 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
head ; the fox peeps out of the ruined tower ; the thistle waves its
beard to the wandering gale ; and the strings of his harp seem, as
the hand of age, as the tale of other times, passes over them, to
sigh and rustle like the dry reeds in the winter's wind ! The feeling
of cheerless desolation, of the loss of the pith and sap of existence,
of the annihilation of the substance, and the clinging to the shadow
of all things, as in a mock-embrace, is here perfect. In this way,
the lamentation of Selma for the loss of Salgar is the finest of all.
If it were indeed possible to show that this writer was nothing, it
would only be another instance of mutability, another blank made,
another void left in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling
which makes him so often complain, " Roll on, ye dark brown years,
ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian ! "
CHAUCER AND SPENSER.
CHAUCER (who has been very properly considered as the father of
English poetry) preceded Spenser by two centuries. He is supposed
to have been born in London, in the year 1328, during the reign of
Edward III., and to have died in 1400, at the age of seventy-two.
He received a learned education at one or at both of the Universi-
ties, and travelled early into Italy, where he became thoroughly
imbued with the spirit and excellences of the great Italian poets
and prose-writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and is said to
have had a personal interview with one of these, Petrarch. He was
connected by marriage with the famous John of Gaunt, through
whose interest he was introduced into several public employments.
Chaucer was an active partisan, a religious reformer, and from the
share he took in some disturbances on one occasion, he was obliged
to fly the country. On his return he was imprisoned, and made his
peace with Government, as it is said, by a discovery of his associates.
Fortitude does not appear at any time to have been the distinguish-
ing virtue of poets. There is, however, an obvious similarity between
the practical turn of Chaucer's mind and restless impatience of his
character and the tone of his writings. Yet it would be too much
to attribute the one to the other as cause and effect ; for Spenser,
whose poetical temperament was as effeminate as Chaucer's was
stern and masculine, was equally engaged in public affairs, and had
mixed equally in the great world. So much does native disposition
predominate over accidental circumstances, moulding them to its
previous bent and purposes ! For while Chaucer's intercourse with
the busy world, and collision with the actual passions and conflicting
CHAUCER AND SPENSEX. 107
interest of others, seemed to brace the sinews of his understanding,
and gave to his writings the air of a man who describes persons and
things that he had known and been intimately concerned in, the
same opportunities, operating on a differently constituted frame,
only served to alienate Spenser's mind the more from the " close-
pent-up " scenes of ordinary life, and to make him " rive their con-
cealing continents," to give himself up to the unrestrained indulgence
of " flowery tenderness."
It is not possible for any two writers to be more opposite in this
respect. Spenser delighted in luxurious enjoyment; Chaucer, in
severe activity of mind. As Spenser was the most romantic and
visionary, Chaucer was the most practical of all the great poets, the
most a man of business and the world. His poetry reads like his-
tory. Everything has a downright reality, at least -in the relater's
mind. A simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon
evidence. . . .
He speaks of what he wishes to describe with the accuracy, the
discrimination of one who relates what has happened to himself, or
has had the best information from those who have been eye- witnesses
of it. The strokes of his pencil always tell. He dwells only on the
essential, on that which would be interesting to the persons really
concerned : yet, as he never omits any material circumstance, he is
prolix from the number of points on which he touches, without
being diffuse on any one ; and is sometimes tedious from the fidelity
with which he adheres to his subject, as other writers are from the
frequency of their digressions from it. The chain of his story is
composed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, and
riveted by a single blow. There is an instance of the minuteness
which he introduces into his most serious descriptions in his account
of Palamon when left alone in his cell :
" Swiche sorrow he maketh that the grete tour
Eesouned of his yelling and clamour :
The pure fetters on his shinnes grete
Were of his bitter salte teres wete."
The mention of this last circumstance looks like a part of the in-
structions he had to follow, which he had no discretionary power
to leave out or introduce at pleasure. He is contented to find grace
and beauty in truth. He exhibits for the most part the naked
object, with little drapery thrown over it. His metaphors, which
are few, are not for ornament but use, and as like as possible to the
things themselves. He does not affect to show his power over the
reader's mind, but the power which his subject has over his own.
io8 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what the persons
he describes must have felt than perhaps those of any other poet.
His sentiments are not voluntary effusions of the poet's fancy, but
[are] founded on the natural impulses and habitual prejudices of
the characters he has to represent. There is an inveteracy of pur-
pose, a sincerity of feeling, which never relaxes or grows vapid, in
whatever they do or say. There is no artificial, pompous display,
but a strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplicity
of the age in which he lived. His poetry resembles the root just
springing from the ground, rather than the full-blown flower. His
muse is no " babbling gossip of the air," fluent and redundant, but,
like a stammerer or a dumb person, that has just found the use of
speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with anxious
pauses, and fond repetitions to prevent mistake. His words point
as an index to the objects, like the eye or finger. There were none
of the commonplaces of poetic diction in our author's time, no
reflected lights of fancy, no borrowed roseate tints ; he was obliged
to inspect things for himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle
the object, as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly
grope our way ; so that his descriptions have a sort of tangible
character belonging to them, and produce the effect of sculpture on
the mind. Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and dis-
crimination of character ; and his interest in what he saw gave new
distinctness and force to his power of observation. The picturesque
and the dramatic are in him closely blended together, and hardly
distinguishable; for he principally describes external appearances
as indicating character, as symbols of internal sentiment. There
is a meaning in what he sees ; and it is this which catches his eye by
sympathy. Thus the costume and dress of the Canterbury Pilgrims,
of the Knight, the Squire, the Oxford Scholar, the Gap-toothed
Wife of Bath, and the rest speak for themselves. . . .
Chaucer's descriptions of natural scenery possess the same sort
of characteristic excellence, or what might be termed gusto. They
have a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the
air, the coolness or moisture of the ground. Inanimate objects are
thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story, and
render back the sentiment of the speaker's mind. One of the finest
parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind. It is the beginning of the
" Flower and the Leaf," where he describes the delight of that young
beauty, shrouded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the
year, to the singing of the nightingale ; while her joy rises with the
rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne
along with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases, and repeats,
CHAUCER AND SPENSER. 109
and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb. The coolness of the arbour,
its retirement, the early time of the day, the sudden starting up
of the birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with
which they devour and rend the opening buds and flowers, are ex-
pressed with a truth and feeling which make the whole appear like
the recollection of an actual scene. . . .
The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary.
There is nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve,
" ancient Gower," Lydgate, Wyatt, Surrey, and Sackville. Spenser
flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir
John Davies into Ireland, of which he has left behind him some
tender recollections in his description of the bog of Allan, and a
record in an ably written paper, containing observations on the state
of that country and the means of improving it, which remain in
full force to the present day. Spenser died at an obscure inn in
London, it is supposed in distressed circumstances. The treat-
ment he received from Burleigh is well known. Spenser, as well as
Chaucer, was engaged in active life ; but the genius of his poetry
was not active ; it is inspired by the love of ease and the relaxation
from all the cares and business of life. Of all the poets, he is the
most poetical. Though much later than Chaucer, his obligations
to preceding writers were less. He has in some measure borrowed
the plan of his poem (as a number of distinct narratives) from
Ariosto ; but he has engrafted upon it an exuberance of fancy and
an endless voluptuousness of sentiment which are not to be found
in the Italian writer. Further, Spenser is even more of an inventor
in the subject-matter. There is an originality, richness, and variety
in his allegorical personages and fictions which almost vies with
tne splendour of the ancient mythology. If Ariosto transports us
into the regions of romance, Spenser's poetry is all fairy-land. In
Ariosto, we walk upon the ground, in a company gay, fantastic,
and adventurous enough. In Spenser, we wander in another world
among ideal beings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a
lovelier nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills
and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but as we
expected to find it, and fulfils the delightful promise of our youth.
He waves his wand of enchantment, and at once embodies airy
beings, and throws a delicious veil over all actual objects. The two
worlds of reality and of fiction are poised on the wings of his
imagination. His ideas, indeed, seem more distinct than his per-
ceptions. He is the painter of abstractions, and describes them
with dazzling minuteness. . . .
The language of Spenser is full and copious to overflowing : it is
no WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
less pure and idiomatic than Chaucer's, and is enriched and adorned
with phrases borrowed from the different languages of Europe, both
ancient and modern. He was, probably, seduced into a certain
license of expression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his
complicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his native
language. This stanza, with alternate and repeatedly recurring
rhymes, is borrowed from the Italians. It was peculiarly fitted to
their language, which abounds in similar vowel terminations, and is
as little adapted to ours, from the stubborn, unaccommodating re-
sistance which the consonant endings of the northern languages
make to this sort of endless sing-song. Not that I would, on that
account, part with the stanza of Spenser. We are, perhaps, in-
debted to this very necessity of finding out new forms of expression,
and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical language
rich and varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost all
later, example. His versification is at once the most smooth and
the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet
sounds, " in many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn
out," that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is
constantly relieved and enchanted by their continued variety of
modulation, dwelling on the pauses of the action, or flowing on in a
fuller tide of harmony with the movement of the sentiment. It has
not the bold dramatic transitions of Shakspeare's blank verse, nor
the high-raised tone of Milton's ; but it is the perfection of melting
harmony, dissolving the soul in pleasure, or holding it captive in the
chains of suspense. Spenser was the poet of our waking dreams ;
and he has invented not only a language, but a music of his own for
them. The undulations are infinite, like those of the waves of the
sea ; but the effect is still the same, lulling the senses into a deep
oblivion of the jarring noises of the world, from which we have no
wish to be over recalled.
SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON.
IN looking back to the great works of genius in former times, we
are sometimes disposed to wonder at the little progress which has
since been made in poetry, and in the arts of imitation in general.
But this is perhaps a foolish wonder. Nothing can be more con-
trary to the fact than the supposition that in what we understand
by the fine arts as painting and poetry, relative perfection is only
the result of repeated efforts in successive periods, and that what
has been once well done constantly leads to something better.
What is mechanical, reducible to rule, or capable of demonstration,
SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. ill
is progressive, and admits of gradual improvement: what is not
mechanical, or definite, but depends on feeling, taste, and genius,
very soon becomes stationary or retrograde, and loses more than it
gains by transfusion. The contrary opinion is a vulgar error which
has grown up, like many others, from transferring an analogy of
one kind to something quite distinct, without taking into account
the difference in the nature of the things or attending to the dif-
ference of the results. For most persons, finding what wonderful
advances have been made in Biblical criticism, in chemistry, in
mechanics, in geometry, astronomy, &c., i.e., in things depending on
mere inquiry and experiment or on absolute demonstration, have
been led hastily to conclude that there was a general tendency in
the efforts of the human intellect to improve by repetition, and, in
all other arts and institutions, to grow perfect and mature by time.
We look back upon the theological creed of our ancestors, and their
discoveries in natural philosophy, with a smile of pity : science, and
the arts connected with it, have all had their infancy, their youth
and manhood, and seem to contain in them no principle of limita-
tion or decay ; and, inquiring no further about the matter, we infer,
in the intoxication of our pride and the height of our self-congratu-
lation, that the same progress has been made, and will continue to
be made, in all other things which are the work of man. The fact,
however, stares us so plainly in the face, that one would think the
smallest reflection must suggest the truth, and overturn our sanguine
theories. The greatest poets, the ablest orators, the best painters,
and the finest sculptors that the world ever saw appeared soon after
the birth of these arts, and lived in a state of society which was, in
other respects, comparatively barbarous. Those arts, which depend
on individual genius and incommunicable power, have always leaped
at once from infancy to manhood, from the first rude dawn of in-
vention to their meridian height and dazzling lustre, and have in
general declined ever after. This is the peculiar distinction and
privilege of each, of science and of art : of the one, never to attain
its utmost limit of perfection ; and of the other, to arrive at it
almost at once. Homer, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dante, and
Ariosto (Milton alone was of a later age, and not the worse for it) :
Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Cervantes, and Boc-
caccio : the Greek sculptors and tragedians : all lived near the be-
ginning of their arts, perfected, and all but created them. These
giant-sons of genius stand indeed upon the earth, but they tower
above their fellows; and the long line of their successors, in dif-
ferent ages, does not interpose any object to obstruct their view or
lessen their brightness. In strength and stature they are unrivalled;
M
112 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
in grace and beauty they have not been surpassed. In after-ages
and more refined periods (as they are called) great men have ariser,
one by one, as it were by throes and at intervals ; though in general
the best of these cultivated and artificial minds were of an inferior
order, as Tasso and Pope among poets ; Guido and Vandyke among
painters. But in the earlier stages of the arts, as soon as the first
mechanical difficulties had been got over, and the language was suf-
ficiently acquired, they rose by clusters and in constellations, never
so to rise again !
The arts of painting and poetry are conversant with the world of
thought within us, and with the world of sense around us — with
what we know, and see, and feel intimately. They flow from the
sacred shrine of our own breasts, and are kindled at the living lamp
of nature. But the pulse of the passions assuredly beat as high, the
depths and soundings of the human heart were as well understood,
three thousand or three hundred years ago as they are at present :
the face of nature and " the human face divine " shone as bright then
as they have ever done. But it is their light, reflected by true genius
on art, that marks out its path before it, and sheds a glory round the
Muses' feet, like that which
" Circled Una's angel face,
And made a sunshine in the shady place."
The four greatest names in English poetry are almost the four
first we come to : Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. There
are no others that can really be put in competition with these. The
two last have had justice done them by the voice of common fame.
Their names are blazoned in the very firmament of reputation ;
while the two first (though " the fault has been more in their stars
than in themselves that they are underlings ") either never emerged
far above the horizon or were too soon involved in the obscurity of
tune.
In comparing these four writers together, it might be said that
Chaucer excels as the poet of manners, or of real life ; Spenser, as
the poet of romance ; Shakspeare as the poet of nature (in the
largest use of the term) ; and Milton, as the poet of morality.
Chaucer most frequently describes things as they are ; Spenser, as
we wish them to be ; Shakspeare, as they would be ; and Milton,
as they ought to be. As poets, and as great poets, imagination,
that is, the power of feigning things according to nature, was com-
mon to them all ; but the principle or moving power to which this
faculty was most subservient in Chaucer was habit or inveterate
prejudice ; in Spenser, novelty and the love of the marvellous ; in
SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 113
Shakspeare, it was the force of passion, combined with every variety
of possible circumstances ; and in Milton, [combined] only with the
highest. The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity ; of Spenser,
remoteness ; of Milton, elevation ; of Shakspere, everything. It has
been said by some critic, that Shakspeare was distinguished from the
other dramatic writers of his day only by his wit ; that they had all
his other qualities but that; that one writer had as much sense,
another as much fancy, another as much knowledge of character,
another the same depth of passion, and another as great a power of
language. This statement is not true ; nor is the inference from it
well founded, even if it were. This person does not seem to have
been aware that, upon his own showing, the great distinction of
Shakspeare's genius was its virtually including the genius of all the
great men of his age, and not his differing from them in one acci-
dental particular. But to have done with such minute and literal
trifling.
The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic
quality, its power of communication with all other minds, so that
it contained a universe of thought and feeling within itself, and had
no one peculiar bias or exclusive excellence more than another. He
was just like any other man, but that he was like all other men.
He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be. He was
nothing in himself ; but he was all that others were, or that they
could become. He not only had in himself the germs of every faculty
and feeling, but he could follow them by anticipation, intuitively,
into all their conceivable ramifications, through every change of
fortune or conflict of passion, or turn of thought. He had " a mind
reflecting ages past " and present : all the people that ever lived are
there. There was no respect of persons with him. His genius shone
equally on the evil and on the good, on the wise and the foolish, the
monarch and the beggar. " All corners of the earth, kings, queens,
and states, maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave," are hardly
hid from his searching glance. He was like the genius of humanity,
changing places with all of us at pleasure, and playing with our
purposes as with his own. He turned the globe round for his
amusement, and surveyed the generations of men, and the indivi-
duals as they passed, with then* different concerns, passions, follies,
vices, virtues, actions, and motives — as well those that they knew
as those which they did not know, or acknowledge to themselves.
The dreams of childhood, the ravings of despair, were the toys of
his fancy. Airy beings waited at his call and came at his bidding.
Harmless fairies " nodded to him, and did him courtesies ; " and the
night-hag bestrode the blast at the command of "his so potent
114 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
art." The world of spirits lay open to him, like the world of real
men and women ; and there is the same truth in his delineations of
the one as of the other ; for if the preternatural characters he de-
scribes could be supposed to exist, they would speak, and feel, and act
as he makes them. He had only to think of anything in order to be-
come that thing, with all the circumstances belonging to it. When
he conceived of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only
entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and
as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same
objects, " subject to the same skyey influences," the same local, out-
ward, and unforeseen accidents which would occur in reality. Thus
the character of Caliban not only stands before us with a language
and manners of its own, but the scenery and situation of the en-
chanted island he inhabits, the traditions of the place, its strange
noises, its hidden recesses, " his frequent haunts and ancient neigh-
bourhood," are given with a miraculous truth of nature, and with all
the familiarity of an old recollection. The whole " coheres semblably
together " in time, place, and circumstance. In reading this author,
you do not merely learn what his characters say : you see their per-
sons. By something expressed or understood, you are at no loss
to decipher their peculiar physiognomy, the meaning of a look, the
grouping, the by-play, as we might see it on the stage. A word,
an epithet, paints a whole scene, or throws us back whole years in
the history of the person represented. . . .
That which, perhaps, more than anything else distinguishes the
dramatic productions of Shakspeare from all others is this wonder-
ful truth and individuality of conception. Each of his characters is
as much itself, and as absolutely independent of the rest as well as
of the author, as if they were living persons, not fictions of the
mind. The poet may be said, for the time, to identify himself with
the character he wishes to represent, and to pass from one to
another, like the same soul successively animating different bodies.
By an art like that of the ventriloquist, he throws his imagination
out of himself, and makes every word appear to proceed from the
mouth of the person in whose name it is given. His plays alone
are properly expressions of the passions, not descriptions of them.
His characters are real beings of flesh and blood ; they speak like
men, not like authors. One might suppose that he had stood by at
the time, and overheard what passed. As in our dreams we hold
conversations with ourselves, make remarks, or communicate intelli-
gence, and have no idea of the answer which we shall receive, and
which we ourselves make, till we hear it : so the dialogues in Shak-
speare are carried on without any consciousness of what is to follow,
SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 115
without any appearance of preparation or premeditation. The gusts
of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind.
Nothing is made out by formal inference and analogy, by climax
and antithesis : all comes, or seems to come, immediately from
nature. Each object and circumstance exists in his mind, as it
would have existed in reality: each several train of thought and
feeling goes on of itself, without confusion or effort. In the world
of his imagination everything has a life, a place and being of its
own! . . .
Shakspeare's imagination is of the same plastic kind as his con-
ception of character or passion. " It glances from heaven to earth,
from earth to heaven." Its movement is rapid and devious. It
unites the most opposite extremes; or, as Puck says, in boasting
of his own feats, "puts a girdle round about the earth in forty
minutes." He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while
describing it ; but the stroke, like the lightning's, is sure as it is
sudden. He takes the widest possible range, but from that very
range he has his choice of the greatest variety and aptitude of
materials. He brings together images the most alike, but placed at
the greatest distance from each other; that is, found in circum-
stances of the greatest dissimilitude. From the remoteness of his
combinations, and the celerity with which they are effected, they
coalesce the more indissolubly together. The more the thoughts
are strangers to each other, and the longer they have been kept
asunder, the more intimate does their union seem to become.
Their felicity is equal to their force. Their likeness is made more
dazzling by their novelty. They startle, and take the fancy prisoner
in the same instant. . . .
Shakspeare's language and versification are like the rest of him.
He has a magic power over words ; they come winged at his bidding,
and seem to know their places. They are struck out at a heat on
the spur of the occasion, and have all the truth and vividness which
arise from an actual impression of the objects. His epithets and
single phrases are like sparkles, thrown off from an imagination fired
by the whirling rapidity of its own motion. His language is hiero-
glyphical. It translates thoughts into visible images. It abounds
in sudden transitions and elliptical expressions. This is the source
of his mixed metaphors, which are only abbreviated forms of speech.
These, however, give no pain from long custom. They have, in fact,
become idioms in the langxiage. They are the building, and not the
scaffolding to thought. We take the meaning and effect of a well-
known passage entire, and no more stop to scan and spell out the
particular words and phrases than the syllables of which they are
Ii6 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
composed. In trying to recollect any other author, one sometimes
stumbles, in case of failure, on a word as good. In Shakspeare,
any other word but the true one is sure to be wrong. If any-
body, for instance, could not recollect the words of the following
description —
-"Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood, "
he would be greatly at a loss to substitute others for them equally
expressive of the feeling. . . .
Shakspeare discovers in his writings little religious enthusiasm,
and an indifference to personal reputation: he had none of the
bigotry of his age ; and his political prejudices were not very strong.
In these respects, as well as in every other, he formed a direct con-
trast to Milton. Milton's works are a perpetual invocation to the
Muses, a hymn to Fame. He had his thoughts constantly fixed on
the contemplation of the Hebrew theocracy, and of a perfect com-
monwealth ; and he seized the pen with a hand just warm from the
touch of the ark of faith. His religious zeal infused its character
into his imagination; so that he devotes himself with the same
sense of duty to the cultivation of his genius as he did to the
exercise of virtue or the good of his country. The spirit of the
poet, the patriot, and the prophet vied with each other in his
breast. His mind appears to have held equal communion with the
inspired writers, and with the bards and sages of ancient Greece
and Rome :
" Blind Thamyris, and blind Mseonides,
And Tiresias, and Phineus, prophets old."
He had a high standard with which he was always comparing him-
self, nothing short of which could satisfy his jealous ambition. He
thought of nobler forms and nobler things than those he found
about him. He lived apart in the solitude of his own thoughts,
carefully excluding from his mind whatever might distract its pur-
poses, or alloy its purity, or damp its zeal. " With darkness and
with dangers compassed round," he had the mighty models of
antiquity always present to his thoughts, and determined to raise
a monument of equal height and glory, " piling up every stone of
lustre from the brook," for the delight and wonder of posterity.
He had girded himself up, and, as it were, sanctified his genius to
this service from his youth. " For after," he says, " I had from my
first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, been
exercised to the tongues, and some sciences as my age could suffer,
SHAKSPEARE AND MILTON. 117
by sundry masters and teachers, it was found that whether aught
was imposed upon me by them, or betaken to of my own choice, the
style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live ; but much
latelier, in the private academies of Italy, perceiving that some
trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or there-
about, met with acceptance above what was looked for, I began
thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at
home, and not less to an inward prompting which now grew daily
upon me, that by labour and intense study (which I take to be my
portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature,
I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times as they
should not willingly let it die. The accomplishment of these inten-
tions, which have lived within me ever since I could conceive myself
anything worth to my country, lies not but in a power above man's
to promise ; but that none hath by more studious ways endeavoured,
and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare almost
aver of myself, as far as life and free leisure will extend. Neither
do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for
some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment
of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from
the heat of youth or the vapours of wine : like that which flows at
waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury
of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame
Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that
eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and sends out His Seraphim with the hallowed fire of His altar,
to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases : to this must be
added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and in-
sight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs. Although it
nothing content me to have disclosed thus much beforehand ; but
that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness
I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and
leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and con-
fident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
disputes, from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the
quiet and still air of delightful studies."
So that of Spenser :
" The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought,
And is with child of glorious great intent,
Can never rest until it forth have brought
The eternal brood of glory excellent. "
Milton, therefore, did not write from casual impulse, but after a
severe examination of his own strength, and with a resolution to
riS WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
leave nothing undone which it was in his power to do. He always
labours, and almost always succeeds. He strives hard to say the
finest things in the world, and he does say them. He adorns and
dignifies his subject to the utmost : he surrounds it with every
possible association of beauty or grandeur, whether moral, intel-
lectual, or physical. He refines on his descriptions of beauty, loading
sweets on sweets, till the sense aches at them, and raises his images
of terror to a gigantic elevation, that " makes Ossa like a wart." In
Milton, there is always an appearance of effort : in Shakspeare,
scarcely any. . . .
Milton's blank verse is the only blank verse in the language
(except Shakspeare's) that deserves the name of verse. Dr. John-
son, who had modelled his ideas of versification on the regular
sing-song of Pope, condemns the "Paradise Lost" as harsh and
unequal. I shall not pretend to say that this is not sometimes the
case ; for where a degree of excellence beyond the mechanical rules
of art is attempted, the poet must sometimes fail. But I imagine
that there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical expres-
sion, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the verse
to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other writers, whether
of rhyme or blank verse, put together (with the exception already
mentioned). Spenser is the most harmonious of our stanza-writers,
sis Dryden is the most sounding and varied of our rhymists. But
in neither is there anything like the same ear for music, the same
power of approximating the varieties of poetical to those of musical
rhythm, as there is in our great epic poet. The sound of his lines
is moulded into the expression of the sentiment, almost of the very
image. They rise or fall, pause or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite
art, but without the least trick or affectation, as the occasion seems
to require.
MILTON'S CHARACTER OF " SATAN."
SATAN is the most heroic subject that ever was chosen for a poem ;
and the execution is as perfect as the design is lofty. He was the
first of created beings who, for endeavouring to be equal with the
highest, and to divide the empire of heaven with the Almighty, was
hurled down to hell. His aim was no less than the throne of the
universe; his means, myriads of angelic armies bright, the third
part of the heavens, whom he lured after him with his counte-
nance, and who durst defy the Omnipotent in arms. His ambition
was the greatest, and his punishment was the greatest ; but not so
his despair: for his fortitude was as great as his sufferings. Hia
MILTON'S CHARACTER OF "SATAN." 119
strength of mind was matchless as his strength of body ; the vast-
ness of his designs did not surpass the firm, inflexible determination
with which he submitted to his irreversible doom and final loss of
all good. His power of action and of suffering was equal. He was
the greatest power that was ever overthrown, with the strongest
will left to resist or to endure. He was baffled, not confounded.
He stood like a tower ; or
-"As when heaven's fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines."
He was still surrounded with hosts of rebel angels, armed warriors,
who own him as their sovereign leader, and with whose fate he
sympathises as he views them round, far as the eye can reach ;
though he keeps aloof from them in his own mind, and holds
supreme counsel only with his own breast. An outcast from
heaven, hell trembles beneath his feet, Sin and Death are at his
heels, and mankind are his easy prey :
" All is not lost ; th' unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what else is not to be overcome,"
are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magni-
tude of it ; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made
innoxious by the greater fierceness of his pride ; the loss of infinite
happiness to himself is compensated in thought by the power of
inflicting infinite misery on others. Yet Satan is not the principle
of malignity, or of the abstract love of evil, but of the abstract love
of power, of pride, of self-will personified, to which last principle
all other good and evil, and even his own, are subordinate. From
this principle he never once flinches. His love of power and con-
tempt for suffering are never once relaxed from the highest pitch
of intensity. His thoughts burn like a hell within him ; but the
power of thought holds dominion in his mind over every other con-
sideration. The consciousness of a determined purpose, of "that
intellectual being, those thoughts that wander through eternity,
though accompanied with endless pain, he prefers to nonentity, to
" being swallowed up and lost in the wide womb of uncreated night."
He expresses the sum and substance of all ambition in one line:
" Fallen cherub, to be weak as miserable, doing or suffering ! " After
such a conflict as his and such a defeat, to retreat in order, to rally,
to make terms, to exist at all, is something ; but he does more than
this: he founds a new empire in hell, and from it conquers this
120 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
new world, whither he bends his undaunted flight, forcing his way
through nether and surrounding fires. The poet has not in all
this given us a mere shadowy outline ; the strength is equal to the
magnitude of the conception. The Achilles of Homer is not more
distinct; the Titans were not more vast; Prometheus chained to
his rock was not a more terrific example of suffering and of crime.
Wherever the figure of Satan is introduced, whether he walks or
flies, " rising aloft incumbent on the dusky air," it is illustrated with
the most striking and appropriate images : so that we see it always
before us, gigantic, irregular, portentous, uneasy, and disturbed ; but
dazzling in its faded splendour, the clouded ruins of a god. The
deformity of Satan is only in the depravity of his will ; he has no
bodily deformity to excite our loathing or disgust. The horns and
tail are not there, poor emblems of the unbending, unconquered
spirit, of the writhing agonies within. Milton was too magnanimous
and open an antagonist to support his argument by the by-tricks of
a hump and cloven foot, to bring into the fair field of controversy
the good old catholic prejudices of which Tasso and Dante have
availed themselves, and which the mystic German critics would
restore. He relied on the justice of his cause, and did not scruple
to give the devil his due. Some persons may think that he has
carried his liberality too far, and injured the cause he professed to
espouse by making him the chief person in his poem. Considering
the nature of his subject, he would be equally in danger of running
into this fault, from his faith in religion and his love of rebellion ;
and perhaps each of these motives had its full share in determining
the choice of his subject.
DRYDEN AND POPE.
THE question, whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled,
and is hardly worth settling ; for if he was not a great poet, he must
have been a great prose-writer ; that is, he was a great writer of
some sort. He was a man of exquisite faculties, and of the most
refined taste ; and as he chose verse (the most obvious distinction
of poetry) as the vehicle to express his ideas, he has generally passed
for a poet, and a good one. If indeed by a great poet we mean one
who gives the utmost grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the
utmost force to the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense
a great poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay
the clean contrary way ; namely, in representing things as they ap-
pear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice and passion,
as in his " Critical Essays ; " or in representing them in the most
DRYDEN AND POPE. 121
contemptible and insignificant point of view, as in his " Satires ; " or
in clothing the little with mock-dignity, as in his poems of AFancy ;"
or in adorning the trivial incidents and familiar relations oruf e with
the utmost elegance of expression and all the flattering illusions of
friendship or self-love, as in his " Epistles." He was not, then, dis-
tinguished as a poet of lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with
a passionate sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into
the workings of the heart : but he was a wit and a critic, a man
of sense, of observation, and the world, with a keen relish for the
elegances of art, or of nature when embellished by art, a quick tact
for propriety of thought and manners as established by the forms
and customs of society, a refined sympathy with the sentiments and
habitudes of human life, as he felt them within the little circle of
his family and friends. He was, in a word, the poet, not of nature,
but of art ; and the distinction between the two, as well as I can
make it out, is this. The poet of nature is one who, from the
elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own breast,
sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned
in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the
senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men ; so that the poet of
nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be
said to hold communion with the very soul of nature ; to be identi-
fied with, and to foreknow, and to record the feelings of all men at
all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions, and
to exert the same power over the minds of his readers that nature
does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as
they are ; he feels them in their universal interest, for he feels them
as they affect the first principles of his and our common nature.
Such was Homer, such was Shakspeare, whose works will last as
long as nature, because they are a copy of the indestructible forms
and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out from the bosom as from
a perennial spring, or stamped upon the senses by the hand of their
Maker. The power of the imagination in them is the representative
power of all nature. It has its centre in the human soul, and makes
the circuit of the universe.
Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank
of it. He saw nature only dressed by art ; he judged of beauty by
fashion ; he sought for truth in the opinions of the world ; he judged
of the feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shak-
speare had an intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could
enter into the heart of man in all possible circumstances : Pope had
an exact knowledge of all that he himself loved or hated, wished or
wanted. Milton has winged his daring flight from heaven to earth,
122 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
through Chaos and old Night. Pope's Muse never wandered with
safety but from his library to his grotto, or from his grotto into his
library back again. His mind dwelt with greater pleasure on his
own garden than on the garden of Eden; he could describe the
fautless whole-length mirror that reflected his own person better
than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven,
a piece of cut-glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brilliance
and effect than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the sun. He
would be more delighted with a patent lamp than with " the pale
reflex of Cynthia's brow," that fills the skies with its soft, silent
lustre, that trembles through the cottage-window, and cheers the
watchful mariner on the lonely wave. In short, he was the poet of
personality and of polished life. That which was nearest to him
was the greatest : the fashion of the day bore sway in his mind
over the immutable laws of nature. He preferred the artificial to
the natural in external objects, because he had a stronger fellow-
feeling with the self-love of the maker or proprietor of a gewgaw
than admiration of that which was interesting to all mankind. He
preferred the artificial to the natural in passion, because the in-
voluntary and uncalculating impulses of the one hurried him away
with a force and vehemence with which he could not grapple ; while
he could trifle with the conventional and superficial modifications
of mere sentiment at will, laugh at or admire, put them on or off
like a masquerade dress, make much or little of them, indulge them
for a longer or a shorter time, as he pleased ; and because, while they
amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once dis-
turbed his vanity, his levity or indifference. His mind was the
antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was the power of
indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry ; he was in
poetry what the sceptic is in religion. . . .
His Muse was oil a peace-establishment, and grew somewhat
effeminate by long ease and indulgence. He lived in the smiles of
fortune, and basked in the favour of the great. In his smooth
and polished verse we meet with no prodigies of nature, but with
miracles of wit ; the thunders of his pen are whispered flatteries ;
its forked lightnings, pointed sarcasms ; for " the gnarled oak " he
gives us " the soft myrtle : " for rocks, and seas, and mountains,
artificial grass-plots, gravel-walks, and tinkling rills : for earth-
quakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower-pot or the fall of a
china-jar : for the tug and war of the elements or the deadly strife
of the passions we have
"Calm contemplation and poetic ease."
DRYDEN AND POPE. 123
Yet within this retired and narrow circle how much, and that how
exquisite, was contained! What discrimination, what wit, what
delicacy, what fancy, what lurking spleen, what elegance of thought,
what pampered refinement of sentiment ! It is like looking at
the world through a microscope, where everything assumes a new
character and a new consequence, where things are seen in their
minutest circumstances and slightest shades of difference ; where
the little becomes gigantic, the deformed beautiful, and the beauti-
ful deformed. The wrong end of the magnifier is, to be sure, held
to everything; but still the exhibition is highly curious, and we
know not whether to be most pleased or surprised. Such, at least,
is the best account I am able to give of this extraordinary man,
without doing injustice to him or others. It is time to refer to
particular instances in his works. . . .
Dryden was a better prose-writer, and a bolder and more varied
versifier than Pope. He was a more vigorous thinker, a more correct
and logical declaimer, and had more of what may be called strength
of mind than Pope ; but he had not the same refinement and delicacy
of feeling. Dryden's eloquence and spirit were possessed in a higher
degree by others, and in nearly the same degree by Pope himself ;
but that by which Pope was distinguished was an essence which he
alone possessed, and of incomparable value on that sole account.
Dryden's " Epistles " are excellent, but inf erior to Pope's, though they
appear (particularly the admirable one to Congreve) to have been
the model on which the latter formed his. His " Satires " are better
than Pope's. His "Absalom and Achitophel " is superior, both in force
of invective and discrimination of character, to anything of Pope's
in the same way. The character of Achitophel is very fine, and
breathes, if not a sincere love for virtue, a strong spirit of indignation
against vice.
MacFlecknoe is the origin of the idea of the " Dunciad ; " but it is
less elaborately constructed, less feeble, and less heavy. The differ-
ence between Pope's satirical portraits and Dryden's appears to
be this in a good measure, that Dryden seems to grapple with his
antagonists, and to describe real persons ; Pope seems to refine upon
them in his own mind, and to make them out just what he pleases,
till they are not real characters, but the mere drivelling effusions of
his spleen and malice. Pope describes the thing, and then goes on
describing his own description, till he loses himself in verbal repeti-
tions. Dryden recurs to the object often, takes fresh sittings of
nature, and gives us new strokes of character as well as of his pencil.
The " Hind and Panther " is an allegory as well as a satire, and so far
it tells less home ; the battery is not so point-blank. But otherwise
124 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
it has more genius, vehemence, and strength of description than
any other of Dryden's works, not excepting the "Absalom and Achi-
tophel." It also contains the finest examples of varied and sounding
versification. . . .
He has left the best character of Shakspeare that has ever been
written : — " To begin, then, with Shakspeare : he was the man who of
all modern, and perhaps ancient, poets had the largest and most com-
prehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him,
and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes
anything you more than see it — you feel it too. Those who accuse
him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation :
he was naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books to
read Nature : he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say
he is everywhere alike ; were he so, I should do him injury to com-
pare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and
insipid ; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swell-
ing into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion
is presented to him. . . .
WITHER.
WITHER is a name now almost forgotten, and his works seldom
read ; but his poetry is not infrequently distinguished by a tender
and pastoral turn of thought ; and there is one passage of exquisite
feeling, describing the consolations of poetry in the following terms :
" She doth tell me where to borrow
Comfort in the midst of sorrow ;
Makes the desolatest place
To her presence be a grace ;
And the blackest discontents
Be her fairest ornaments.
In my former days of bliss
Her divine skill taught me this,
That from everything I saw,
I could some invention draw ;
And raise pleasure to her height,
Through the meanest object's sight,
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rusteling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed ;
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me,
Than all Nature's beauties can
In some other wiser man.
THOMSON AND COWPER. 125
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Some things that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness.
The dull loneness, the black shade,
That these hanging vaults have made ;
The strange music of the waves,
Beating on these hollow caves :
This black den which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss :
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight :
This my chamber of neglect,
Wall'd about with disrespect :
From all these and this dull air
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight.
Therefore, thou best earthly bliss,
I will cherish thee for this.
Poesie, thou sweet'st content
That e'er Heav'n to mortals lent :
Though they as a trifle leave thee,
Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee :
Though thou be to them a scorn,
That to nought but earth are born :
Let my life no longer be
Than I am in love with thee.
Though our wise ones call thee madness,
Let me never taste of sadness,
If I love not thy maddest fits,
Above all their greatest wits.
And though some too seeming holy,
Do account thy raptures folly,
Thou dost teach me to contemn
What makes knaves and fools of them.
THOMSON AND COWPER.
ALL that is admirable in Thomson's poem, "The Seasons," is the
emanation of a fine natural genius and sincere love of his subject,
unforced, unstudied, that comes uncalled for and departs unbidden.
But he takes no pains, uses no self-correction ; or if he seems to
labour, it is worse than labour lost. His genius " cannot be con-
strained by mastery." The feeling of nature, of the changes of the
seasons, was in his mind ; and he could not help conveying this
feeling to the reader by the mere force of spontaneous expression ;
but if the expression did not come of itself, he left the whole busi-
12.6 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ness to chance; or, willing to evade instead of encountering the
difficulties of his subject, fills up the intervals of true inspiration
with the most vapid and worthless materials, pieces out a beautiful
half-line with a bombastic allusion, or overloads an exquisitely
natural sentiment or image with a cloud of painted, pompous,
cumbrous phrases, like the shower of roses in which he represents
the Spring, his own lovely, fresh, and innocent Spring, as descend-
ing to the earth :
" Come, gentle Spring ! ethereal Mildness ! come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend."
Who, from such a flimsy, round-about, unmeaning commencement
as this, would expect the delightful, unexaggerated, home-felt de-
scriptions of natural scenery which are scattered in such uncon-
scious profusion through this and the following cantos? For in-
stance, the very next passage is crowded with a set of striking
images :
"•And see where surly Winter passes off
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts :
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale ;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless ; so that scarce
The bittern knows his time with bill ingulpht
To shake the sounding marsh, or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the list'ning waste."
Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets ; for he gives most
of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal
to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper, for instance, in the pic-
turesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious
details of objects ; no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum-
total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind. He does
not go into the minutiae of a landscape, but describes the vivid im-
pression which the whole makes upon his own imagination, and thus
transfers the same unbroken, unimpaired impression to the imagina-
tion of his readers. The colours with which he paints seem yet wet
and breathing, like those of the living statue in the " Winter's Tale."
THOMSON AND COW PER. 127
Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and
lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its humidity
or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom of
winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full overshadowing
foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn. He
transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or plunges us
into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. We
hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and
see the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops
of a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the
coming storm resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he
describes not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the
whole man. He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels,
and humanises whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions
teem with life and vivifying soul. His faults were those of his style
— of the author and the man ; but the original genius of the poet,
the pith and marrow of his imagination, the fine natural mould in
which his feelings were bedded, were too much for him to counteract
by neglect, or affectation, or false ornaments. It is for this reason
that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all our poets, treating of
a subject that all can understand, and in a way that is interesting
to all alike, to the ignorant or the refined, because he gives back the
impression which the things themselves make upon us in nature.
" That," said a man of genius, seeing a little shabby, soiled copy of
Thomson's " Seasons " lying on the window-seat of an obscure country
alehouse, " That is true fame ! " . . .
Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived at a
considerable distance of time after Thomson, and had some advan-
tages over him, particularly in simplicity of style, in a certain pre-
cision and minuteness of graphical description, and in a more careful
and leisurely choice of such topics only as his genius and peculiar
habits of mind prompted him to treat of. The " Task " has fewer
blemishes than the " Seasons ; " but it has not the same capital ex-
cellence, the " unbought grace " of poetry, the power of moving and
infusing the warmth of the author's mind into that of the reader.
If Cowper had a mere polished taste, Thomson had beyond comparison
a more fertile genius, more impulsive force, a more entire forgetful-
ness of himself in his subject. If in Thomson you are sometimes
offended with the slovenliness of the author by profession, determined
to get through his task at all events, in Cowper you are no less
dissatisfied with the finicalness of the private gentleman, who does
not care whether he completes his work or not, and in whatever he
does is evidently more solicitous to please himself than the public.
N
128 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
There is an effeminacy about him which shrinks from and repels
common and hearty sympathy. With all his boasted simplicity and
love of the country, he seldom launches out into general descriptions
of nature; he looks at her over his clipped hedges and from his
well-swept garden-walks ; or if he makes a bolder experiment now
and then, it is with an air of precaution, as if he were afraid of being
caught in a shower of rain, or of not being able, in case of any un-
toward accident, to make good his retreat home. He shakes hands
with nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on, and leads "his
Vashti " forth to public view with a look of consciousness and atten-
tion to etiquette, as a fine gentleman hands a lady out to dance a
minuet. He is delicate to fastidiousness, and glad to get back, after
a romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gipsies, or a little
child on a common, to the drawing-room and the ladies again, to the
sofa and the tea-kettle — no, I beg his pardon, riot to the singing,
well-scoured tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud-hissing urn.
His walks and arbours are kept clear of worms and snails with as
much an appearance of petit-maltreship as of humanity. He has
some of the sickly sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope;
but then Pope prided himself in them ; whereas Cowper affects to
be all simplicity and plainness. He had neither Thomson's love of
the unadorned beauties of nature nor Pope's exquisite sense of the
elegances of art. He was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid of trusting
himself to the seductions of the one, and ashamed of putting for-
ward his pretensions to an intimacy with the other ; but to be a
coward is not the way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in
love ! Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his reputation.
His worst vices are amiable weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though
there is a frequent dryness, timidity, and jejuneness in his manner,
he has left a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social
refinement, as well as of natural imagery and feeling, which can
hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. Such, among
others, are his memorable description of the post coming in, that of
the preparations for tea on a winter's evening in the country, of the
unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty morning (with the fine satirical
transition to the Empress of Russia's palace of ice), and, most of all,
the winter's walk at noon. Every one of these may be considered
as distinct studies, or highly-finished cabinet pieces, arranged with-
out order or coherence. .
SWIFT. 129
SWIFT.
SWIFT'S reputation as a poet has been in a manner obscured by
the greater splendour, by the natural force and inventive genius of
his prose writings ; but if he had never written either the " Tale of a
" Tub " or " Gulliver's Travels," his name merely as a poet would have
come down to us, and have gone down to posterity with well-earned
honours. His " Imitations of Horace," and still more his Verses on
his own Death, place him in the first rank of agreeable moralists
in verse. There is not only a dry humour, an exquisite tone of
irony, in these productions of his pen, but there is a touching, un-
pretending pathos, mixed up with the most whimsical and eccentric
strokes of pleasantry and satire. His " Description of the Morning
in London," and of a " City Shower," which were first published in
the Tatler, are among the most delightful of the contents of that
very delightful work. Swift shone as one of the most sensible of
the poets ; he is also distinguished as one of the most nonsensical
of them. No man has written so many lackadaisical, slipshod,
tedious, trifling, foolish, fantastical verses as he, which are so little
an imputation on the wisdom of the writer, and which, in fact, only
show his readiness to oblige others and to forget himself. He has
gone so far as to invent a new stanza of fourteen and sixteen syllable
lines for Mary the cookmaid to vent her budget of nothings, and
for Mrs. Harris to gossip with the deaf old housekeeper. Oh, when
shall we have such another Rector of Laracor ? The " Tale of a Tub "
is one of the most masterly compositions in the language, whether
for thought, wit, or style. It is so capital and undeniable a proof
of the author's talents, that Dr. Johnson, who did not like Swift,
would not allow that he wrote it. It is hard that the same per-
formance should stand in the way of a man's promotion to a
bishopric, as wanting gravity, and at the same time be denied to
be his, as having too much wit. It is a pity the Doctor did not
find out some graver author, for whom he felt a critical kindness,
on whom to father this splendid but unacknowledged production.
Dr. Johnson could not deny that " Gulliver's Travels " were his ; he
therefore disputed their merits, and said that, after the first idea of
them was conceived, they were easy to execute ; all the rest followed
mechanically. I do not know how that may be ; but the mechanism
employed is something very different from any that the author
of " Rasselas " was in the habit of bringing to bear on such occa-
sions. There is nothing more futile, as well as invidious, than
130 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC,
this mode of criticising a work of original genius. Its greatest
merit is supposed to be in the invention ; and you say very
wisely, that it is not in the execution. You might as well take away
the merit of the invention of the telescope by saying that, after its
uses were explained and understood, any ordinary eyesight could
look through it. Whether the excellence of " Gulliver's Travels " is in
the conception or the execution is of little consequence ; the power
is somewhere, and it is a power that has moved the world. The
power is not that of big words and vaunting commonplaces. Swift
left these to those who wanted them, and has done what his acute-
ness and intensity of mind alone could enable any one to conceive
or to perform. His object was to strip empty pride and grandeur
of the imposing air which external circumstances throw around
them ; and for this purpose he has cheated the imagination of the
illusions which the prejudices of sense and of the world put upon
it, by reducing everything to the abstract predicament of size. He
enlarges or diminishes the scale, as he wishes to show the insignifi-
cance or the grossness of our overweening self-love. That he has
done this with mathematical precision, with complete presence of
mind, and perfect keeping, in a manner that comes equally home to
the understanding of the man and of the child, does not take away
from the merit of the work or the genius of the author. He has
taken a new view of human nature, such as a being of a higher
sphere might take of it ; he has torn the scales from off his moral
vision ; he has tried an experiment upon human life, and sifted its
pretensions from the alloy of circumstances ; he has measured it
with a rule, has weighed it in a balance, and found it, for the most
part, wanting and worthless — in substance and in show. Nothing
solid, nothing valuable is left in his system but virtue and wisdom.
What a libel is this upon mankind ! What a convincing proof of
misanthropy ! What presumption and what malice prepense, to show
men what they are, and to teach them what they ought to be!
What a mortifying stroke aimed at national glory is that unlucky
incident of Gulliver's wading across the channel and carrying off
the whole fleet of Blefuscu ! After that, we have only to consider
which of the contending parties was in the right. What a shock to
personal vanity is given in the account of Gulliver's nurse, Glumdal-
clitch! Still, notwithstanding the disparagement to her personal
charms, her good-nature remains the same amiable quality as before.
I cannot see the harm, the misanthropy, the immoral and degrading
tendency of this. The moral lesson is as fine as the intellectual
exhibition is amusing. It is an attempt to tear off the mask of im-
posture from the world ; and nothing but imposture has a right to
SWIFT— RABELAIS— VOLTAIRE. 131
complain of it. It is, indeed, the way with our quacks m morality
to preach up the dignity of human nature, to pamper pride and
hypocrisy with the idle mockeries of the virtues they pretend to,
and which they have not ; but it was not Swift's way to cant
morality or anything else ; nor did his genius prompt him to write
unmeaning panegyrics on mankind ! . . .
SWIFT— RABELAIS— VOLTAIRE.
SWIFT was not a Frenchman. In this respeet he differed from
Rabelais and Voltaire. They have been accounted the three greatest
wits in modern times ; but their wit was of a peculiar kind in each.
They are little beholden to each other ; there is some resemblance
between Lord Peter in the " Tale of a Tub " and Rabelais' Friar John ;
but in general they are all three authors of a substantive character
in themselves. Swift's wit (particularly in his chief prose works)
was serious, saturnine, and practical ; Rabelais' was fantastical and
joyous ; Voltaire's was light, sportive, and verbal. Swift's wit was
the wit of sense ; Rabelais', the wit of nonsense ; Voltaire's, of indif-
ference to both. The ludicrous in Swift arises out of his keen sense
of impropriety, his soreness and impatience of the least absurdity.
He separates with a severe and caustic air truth from falsehood, folly
from wisdom, " shows vice her own image, scorn her own feature ; "
and it is the force, the precision, and the honest abruptness with
which the separation is made that excites our surprise, our admira-
tion, and laughter. He sets a mark of reprobation on that which
offends good sense and good manners which cannot be mistaken,
and which holds it up to our ridicule and contempt ever after. His
occasional disposition to trifling (already noticed) was a relaxation
from the excessive earnestness of his mind. Indignatio facit versus.
His better genius was his spleen. It was the biting acrimony of his
temper that sharpened his other" faculties. The truth of his per-
ceptions produced the pointed coruscations of his wit ; his playful
irony was the result of inward bitterness of thought ; his imagina-
tion was the product of the literal, dry, incorrigible tenaciousness
of his understanding. He endeavoured to escape from the per-
secution of realities into the regions of fancy, and invented his
Liliputians and Brobdignagians, Yahoos and Houynhyms, as a
diversion to the more painful knowledge of the world around him :
they only made him laugh, while men and women made him angry.
His feverish impatience made him view the infirmities of that great
baby, the world, with the same scrutinising glance and jealous
132 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
irritability that a parent regards the failings of its offspring ; but,
as Rousseau has well observed, parents have not on this account
been supposed to have more affection for other people's children
than their own. In other respects, and except from the sparkling
effervescence of his gall, Swift's brain was as " dry as the remainder
biscuit after a voyage." He hated absurdity: Rabelais loved it,
exaggerated it with supreme satisfaction, luxuriated in its endless
varieties, rioted in nonsense, "reigned there and revelled." He
dwelt on the absurd and ridiculous for the pleasure they gave him,
not for the pain. He lived upon laughter, and died laughing. He
indulged his vein, and took his full swing of folly. He did not
balk his fancy or his readers. His wit was to him " as riches fine-
less ; " he saw no end of his wealth in that way, and set no limits
to his extravagance: he was communicative, prodigal, boundless,
and inexhaustible. His were the Saturnalia of wit, the riches and
the royalty, the health and long life. He is intoxicated with gaiety,
mad with folly. His animal spirits drown him in a flood of mirth :
his blood courses up and down his veins like wine. His thirst of
enjoyment is as great as his thirst of drink : his appetite for good
things of all sorts is unsatisfied, and there is a never-ending supply.
Discourse is dry ; so they moisten their words in their cups, and
relish their dry jests with plenty of Botargos and dried neats'-
tongues. It is like Camacho's wedding in "Don Quixote," where
Sancho ladled out whole pullets and fat geese from the soup-kettles
at a pull. The flagons are set a-running, their tongues wag at the
same time, and their mirth flows as a river. How Friar John roars
and lays about him in the vineyard ! How Panurge whines in the
storm, and how dexterously he contrives to throw the sheep over-
board! How much Pantagruel behaves like a wise king! How
Gargantua mewls, and pules, and slabbers his nurse, and demeans
himself most like a royal infant ! what provinces he devours ! what
seas he drinks up ! How he eats, drinks, and sleeps — sleeps, eats, and
drinks ! The style of Rabelais is no less prodigious than his matter.
His words are of marrow — unctuous, dropping fatness. He was a mad
wag, the king of good fellows, and prince of practical philosophers !
Rabelais was a Frenchman of the old school, Voltaire of the new.
The wit of the one arose from an exuberance of enjoyment ; of the
other, from an excess of indifference, real or assumed. Voltaire had
no enthusiasm for one thing or another: he made light of everything.
In his hands all things turn to chaff and dross, as the pieces of silver
money in the " Arabian Nights " were changed by the hands of the
enchanter into little dry crumbling leaves ! He is a Parisian. He
never exaggerates, is never violent : he treats things with the most
GRAY. 133
provoking sang-froid, and expresses his contempt by the most in-
direct hints and in the fewest words, as if he hardly thought them
worth even his contempt. He retains complete possession of him-
self and of his subject. He does not effect his purpose by the
eagerness of his blows, but by the delicacy of his tact. The poisoned
wound he inflicted was so fine as scarcely to be felt till it rankled
and festered in its " mortal consequences." His callousness was an
excellent foil for the antagonists he had mostly to deal with. He
took knaves and fools on his shield well. He stole away its cloak
from grave imposture. If he reduced other things below their true
value, making them seem worthless and hollow, he did not degrade
the pretensions of tyranny and superstition below their true value,
by making them seem utterly worthless and hollow, as contemptible
as they were odious. This was the service he rendered to truth and
mankind ! His " Candide " is a masterpiece of wit. It has been called
" the dull product of a scoffer's pen." It is, indeed, " the product
of a scoffer's pen ; " but after reading the " Excursion," few people
will think it dull. It is in the most perfect keeping, and without
any appearance of effort. Every sentence tells, and the whole reads
like one sentence. . . .
GRAY.
GRAY'S " Elegy in a Country Churchyard " is one of the most classical
productions that ever was penned by a refined and thoughtful mind,
moralising on human life. The ode on a " Distant Prospect of Eton
College " is more mechanical and commonplace ; but it touches on
certain strings about the heart, that vibrate in unison with it to our
latest breath. No one ever passes by Windsor's " stately heights," or
sees the distant spires of Eton College below, without thinking of Gray.
He deserves that we should think of him ; for he thought of others,
and turned a trembling, ever-watchful ear to " the still sad music of
humanity." His Letters are inimitably fine. If his poems are some-
times finical and pedantic, his prose is quite free from affectation. He
pours his thoughts out upon paper as they arise in his mind ; and they
arise in his mind without pretence or constraint, from the pure im-
pulse of learned leisure and contemplative indolence. He is not here
on stilts or in buckram, but smiles in his easy-chair, as he moralises
through the loopholes of retreat, on the bustle and raree-show of the
world, or on " those reverend bedlams, colleges and schools ! " He
had nothing to do but to read and to think, and to tell his friends
what he read and thought. His life was a luxurious, thoughtful
dream. " Be mine," he says in one of his Letters, " to read eternal
134 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon." And in another, to
show his contempt for action and the turmoils of ambition, he says
to some one, " Don't you remember Lords and , who are
now great statesmen, little dirty boys playing at cricket ? For my
part, I do not feel a bit wiser, or bigger or older, than I did then."
What an equivalent for not being wise or great, to be always young !
What a happiness never to lose or gain anything in the game of
human life, by being never anything more than a looker-on !
GOLDSMITH.
THE principal name of the period we are now come to is that of
Goldsmith, than which few names stand higher or fairer in the
annals of modern literature. One should have his own pen to
describe him as he ought to be described: amiable, various, and
bland, with careless inimitable grace touching on every kind of
excellence : with manners unstudied, but a gentle heart : perform-
ing miracles of skill from pure happiness of nature, and whose
greatest fault was ignorance of his own worth. As a poet, he is the
most flowing and elegant of our versifiers since Pope, with traits of
artless nature which Pope had not, and with a peculiar felicity in
his turns upon words, which he constantly repeated with delightful
effect, such as :
" His lot, though small,
He sees that little lot, the lot of all." -
" And turn'd and look'd, and turn'd to look again."
As a novelist, his " Vicar of Wakefield " has charmed all Europe.
What reader is there in the civilised world who is not the better for
the story of the washes which the worthy Dr. Primrose demolished so
deliberately with the poker — for the knowledge of the guinea which
the Miss Primroses kept unchanged in their pockets — the adventure
of the picture of the Vicar's family, which could not be got into the
house — and that of the Flamborough family, all painted with oranges
in their hands — or for the story of the case of shagreen spectacles
and the cosmogony ?
As a comic writer, his " Tony Lumpkin " draws forth new powers
from Mr. Liston's face. That alone is praise enough for it. Poor
Goldsmith ! how happy he has made others ! how unhappy he was
in himself ! He never had the pleasure of reading his own works !
He had only the satisfaction of good-naturedly relieving the neces-
sities of others, and the consolation of being harassed to death with
his own ! He is the most amusing and interesting person in one
BURNS. 135
of the most amusing and interesting books in the world, Boswell's
" Life of Johnson." His peach-coloured coat shall always bloom in
Boswell's writings, and his fame survive in his own ! His genius
was a mixture of originality and imitation : he could do nothing
without some model before him, and he could copy nothing that
he did not adorn with the graces of his own mind. Almost all the
latter part of the " Vicar of Wakefield," and a great deal of the former,
is taken from "Joseph Andrews ; " but the circumstances I have men-
tioned above are not. The finest things he has left behind him in
verse are his character of a country schoolmaster, and that prophetic
description of Burke in the " Retaliation." His moral Essays in the
" Citizen of the World " are as agreeable chit-chat as can be con-
veyed in the form of didactic discourses.
BURNS.
BURNS the poet had a strong mind, and a strong body, the fellow to
it. He had a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his bosom — you
can almost hear it throb. Some one said, that if you had shaken
hands with him, his hands would have burnt yours. The Gods
indeed " made him poetieal ; " but Nature had a hand in him first.
His heart was in the right place. He did not " create a soul under
the ribs of death," by tinkling siren sounds, or by piling up centos of
poetical diction ; but for the artificial flowers of poetry, he plucked
the mountain-daisy under his feet; and a field-mouse, hurrying
from its ruined dwelling, could inspire him with the sentiments of
terror and pity. He held the plough or the pen with the same firm,
manly grasp ; nor did he cut out poetry as we cut out watch-papers,
with finical dexterity, nor from the same flimsy materials. Burns
was not like Shakspeare in the range of his genius; but there is
something of the same magnanimity, directness, and unaffected
character about him. He was not a sickly sentimentalist, a namby-
pamby poet, a mincing metre ballad-monger, any more than Shak-
speare. He would as soon hear " a brazen candlestick tuned, or a
dry wheel grate on the axletree." He was as much of a man, not a
twentieth part as much of a poet, as Shakspeare. With but little
of his imagination or inventive power, he had the same life of mind :
within the narrow circle of personal feeling or domestic incidents,
the pulse of his poetry flows as healthily and vigorously. He had
an eye to see, a heart to feel: — no more. His pictures of good-
fellowship, of social glee, of quaint humour, are equal to anything ;
they come up to nature, and they cannot go beyond it. The sly
jest collected in his laughing eye at the sight of the grotesque and
136 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ludicrous in manners ; the large tear rolled down his manly cheek
at the sight of another's distress. He has made us as well
acquainted with himself as it is possible to be, has let out the
honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal conflict of
the passions in his breast, with the same frankness and truth of
description. His strength is not greater than his weakness; his
virtues were greater than his vices. His virtues belonged to his
genius : his vices to his situation, which did not correspond to his
genius. . . .
One would think that nothing could surpass his songs in beauty
of expression and in true pathos; and nothing does or can, but
some of the old Scotch ballads themselves. There is in them a still
more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery — the thistle's
glittering down, the gilliflower on the old garden-wall, the horse-
man's silver bells, the hawk on its perch: a closer intimacy with
nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which
the mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners,
a greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished and longer
deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave, and " thoughts that
often lie too deep for tears." We seem to feel that those who
wrote and sang them (the early minstrels) lived in the open air,
wandering on from place to place with restless feet and thoughts,
and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war or love,
floating on the breath of old tradition or common fame, and moving
the strings of their harp with sounds that sank into a nation's heart.
How fine an illustration of this is that passage in " Don Quixote "
where the knight and Sancho, going in search of Dulcinea, inquire
their way of the countryman who was driving his mules to plough
before break of day, " singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles ! "
BYRON.
LORD BYRON shuts himself up too much in the impenetrable gloom
of his own thoughts, and buries the natural light of things in " nook
monastic." The " Giaour," the " Corsair," " Childe Harold," are all the
same person, and they are apparently all himself. The everlasting repe-
tition of one subject, the same dark ground of fiction, with the darker
colours of the poet's mind spread over it, the unceasing accumula-
tion of horrors on horror's head, steels the mind against the sense
of pain, as inevitably as the unwearied Siren sounds and luxurious
monotony of Mr. Moore's poetry make it inaccessible to pleasure.
Lord Byron's poetry is as morbid as Mr. Moore's is careless and
dissipated. He has more depth of passion, more force and im-
SCOTT. 137
petuosity, but the passion is always of the same unaccountable
character, at once violent and sullen, fierce and gloomy. It is not
the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune or the hopeless-
ness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted
with, or indifferent to, all other things. There is nothing less
poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is
nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of all
the interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling
passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make
itself the centre of the universe, and there was nothing worth
cherishing but its intellectual diseases. It is like a cancer eating
into the heart of poetry. But still there is power ; and power
rivets attention and forces admiration. " He hath a demon ; " and
that is the next thing to being full of the God. His brow collects
the scattered gloom ; his eye flashes livid fire that withers and con-
sumes. But still we watch the progress of the scathing bolt with
interest, and mark the ruin it leaves behind with awe. Within the
contracted range of his imagination, he has great unity and truth
of keeping. He chooses elements and agents congenial to his mind :
the dark and glittering ocean, the frail bark hurrying before the
storm, pirates, and men that "house on the wild sea with wild
usages." He gives the tumultuous eagerness of action and the
fixed despair of thought. In vigour of style and force of concep-
tion he in one sense surpasses every writer of the present day. His
indignant apothegms are like oracles of misanthropy. He who
wishes for " a curse to kill with " may find it in Lord Byron's
writings. Yet he has beauty lurking underneath his strength,
tenderness sometimes joined with the frenzy of despair. A flash
of golden light sometimes follows from a stroke of his pencil, like
a falling meteor. The flowers that adorn his poetry bloom over
charnel-houses and the grave ! . . .
SCOTT.
WALTER SCOTT is the most popular of all the poets of the present
day, and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and
generally understood with more vivacity and effect than anybody
else. He has no excellences, either of a lofty or recondite kind,
which lie beyond the reach of the most ordinary capacity to find
out ; but he has all the good qualities which all the world agree to
understand. His style is clear, flowing, and transparent : his senti-
ments, of which his style is an easy and natural medium, are com-
mon to him with his readers. He has none of Mr. Wordsworth's
138 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
idiosyncrasy. He differs from his readers only in a greater range
of knowledge and facility of expression. His poetry belongs to the
class of improvisatore poetry. It has neither depth, height, nor
breadth in it; neither uncommon strength nor uncommon refine-
ment of thought, sentiment, or language. It has no originality.
But if this author has no research, no moving power in his own
breast, he relies with the greater safety and success on the force of
his subject. He selects a story such as is sure to please, full of
incidents, characters, peculiar manners, costume, and scenery ; and
he tells it in a way that can offend no one. He never wearies or
disappoints you. He is communicative and garrulous; but he is
not his own hero. He never obtrudes himself on your notice to
prevent your seeing the subject. What passes in the poem, passes
much as it would have done in reality. The author has little or
nothing to do with it. Mr. Scott has great intuitive power of
fancy, great vividness of pencil in placing external objects and
events before the eye. The force of his mind is picturesque rathef
than moral. He gives more of the features of nature than the soul
of passion. He conveys the distinct outlines and visible changes
in outward objects, rather than "their mortal consequences." He
is very inferior to Lord Byron in intense passion, to Moore in
delightful fancy, to Mr. Wordsworth in profound sentiment; but
he has more picturesque power than any of them ; that is, he places
the objects themselves, about which they might feel and think, in
a much more striking point of view, with greater variety of dress
and attitude, and with more local truth of colouring. His imagery
is Gothic and grotesque. The manners and actions have the interest
and curiosity belonging to a wild country and a distant period of
time. Few descriptions have a more complete reality, a more
striking appearance of life and motion, than that of the warriors in
the " Lady of the Lake," who start up at the command of Rhoderic
Dhu from their concealment under the fern, and disappear again in
an instant. The " Lay of the Last Minstrel " and " Marmion " are
the first, and perhaps the best, of his works. . . .
WORDSWORTH.
MR. WORDSWORTH is the most original poet now living. He is
the reverse of Walter Scott in his defects and excellences. He
has nearly all that the other wants, and wants all that the other
possesses. His poetry is not external, but internal; it does not
depend upon tradition, or story, or old song ; he furnishes it from
his own mind, and is his own subject. He is the poet of mere senti-
WORDSWORTH. 130
ment. Of many of the " Lyrical Ballads " it is not possible to speak
in terms of too high praise, such as " Hart-leap Well," the " Banks of
the Wye," " Poor Susan," parts of the " Leech-gatherer," the " Lines
t® a Cuckoo," " to a Daisy," the " Complaint," several of the Sonnets,
and a hundred others of inconceivable beauty, of perfect originality
and pathos. They open a finer and deeper vein of thought and feel-
ing than any poet in modern times has done, or attempted. He has
produced a deeper impression, and on a smaller circle, than any
other of his contemporaries. His powers have been mistaken by
the age, nor does he exactly understand them himself. He cannot
form a whole. He has not the constructive faculty. He can give
only the fine tones of thought, drawn from his mind by accident or
nature, like the sounds drawn from the ^Eolian harp by the wander-
ing gale. He is totally deficient in all the machinery of poetry.
His " Excursion," taken as a whole, notwithstanding the noble mate-
rials thrown away in it, is a proof of this. The line labours, the
sentiment moves slow ; but the poem stands stock-still. The reader
makes no way from the first line to the last. It is more than any-
thing in the world like Robinson Crusoe's boat, which would have
been an excellent good boat, and would have carried him to the
other side of the globe, but that he could not get it out of the
sand where it stuck fast. I did what little I could to help to launch
it at the time, but it would not do. I am not, however, one of
those who laugh at the attempts or failures of men of genius. It
is not my way to cry, " Long life to the conqueror ! " Success and
desert are not with me synonymous terms ; and the less Mr. Words-
worth's general merits have been understood, the more necessary is
it to insist upon them. This is not the place to repeat what I have
already said on the subject. The reader may turn to it in the
" Bound Table." I do not think, however, there is anything in the
larger poem equal to many of the detached pieces in the " Lyrical
Ballads." As Mr. Wordsworth's poems have been little known to
the public, or chiefly through garbled extracts from them, I will
here give an entire poem, ." Hart-Leap Well " (one that has always
been a favourite with me), that the reader may know what it is that
the admirers of this author find to be delighted with in his poetry.
Those who do not feel the beauty and tiie force of it may savo
themselves the trouble of inquiring further.
140 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
[Lectures on the English Comic Writers, 1819. Four Editions of this
work have been published.]
I SHALL conclude this imperfect and desultory sketch of wit and
humour with Barrow's celebrated description of the same snbject.
He says : — "But first it may be demanded, what the thing we speak
of • is, or what this facetiousness doth import ; to which question I
might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a
man — 'tin that which we all see and know ; and one better apprehends
what it is by acquaintance, than I can inform him by description. It
is, indeed, a thing so versatile and multiform, appearing in so many
shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously apprehended by
several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a
clear and certain notice thereof, than to make a portrait of Proteus,
or to define the figure of fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat
allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial
saying, or in forging an apposite tale : sometimes it playeth in words
and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense,
or the affinity of their sound : sometimes it is wrapped in a dress
of luminous expression : sometimes it lurketh under an odd simili-
tude. Sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer ;
in a quirkish reason ; in a shrewd intimation ; in cunningly diverting
or cleverly restoring an objection : sometimes it is couched in a bold
scheme of speech ; in a tart irony ; in a lusty hyperbole ; in a start-
ling metaphor ; in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in
acute nonsense : sometimes a scenical representation of persons or
things, a counterfeit speech, a mimical look or gesture passeth
for it ; sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous
bluntness giveth it being; sometimes it riseth only from a lucky
hitting upon what is strange : sometimes from a crafty wresting
obvious matter to the purpose : often it consisteth in one knows
not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are
unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless
rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner
of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth
and knoweth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness
in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, showing
in it some wonder, and breathing some delight thereto. It raiseth
admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a
special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit, and reach of wit
more than vulgar : it seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts,
that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable; a notable skill
ENGLISH COMEDY. 141
that he can dexterously accommodate them to a purposfi before him,
together with a lively briskness of humour, not apt to damp those
sportful flashes of imagination. (Whence in Aristotle such persons
are termed eiri5e£ioi, dexterous men and ewrpoiroi, men of facile or
versatile manners, who can easily turn themselves to all things, or
turn all things to themselves.) It also procureth delight by gratify-
ing curiosity with its rareness or semblance of difficulty (as monsters,
not for their beauty but their rarity; as juggling tricks, not for
their use but their abstruseness, are beheld with pleasure) ; by
diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts ; by instilling
gaiety and airiness of spirit ; by provoking to such dispositions of
spirit, in way of emulation or complaisance, and by seasoning
matter, otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and thence
grateful tang." . . .
ENGLISH COMEDY.
COMEDY is a " graceful ornament to the civil order ; the Corinthian
capital of polished society." Like the mirrors which have been
added to the sides of one of our theatres, it reflects the images of
grace, of gaiety, and pleasure double, and completes the perspective
of human life. To read a good comedy is to keep the best company
in the world, where the best things are said and the most amusing
happen. The wittiest remarks are always ready on the tongue, and
the luckiest occasions are always at hand to give birth to the happiest
conceptions. Sense makes strange havoc of nonsense. Refinement
acts as a foil to affectation, and affectation to ignorance. Sentence
after sentence tells. We don't know which to admire most, the
observation or the answer to it. We would give our fingers to be
able to talk so ourselves, or to hear others talk so. In turning
over the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to
another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all
life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a
gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are
admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or
birthday ; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and pleasure, of
gallantry and Charles II. ! What an air breathes from the name !
what a rustling of silks and waving of plumes ! what a sparkling of
diamond earrings and shoe-buckles ! What bright eyes ! (Ah, those
were Waller's Sacharissa's as she passed !) what killing looks and
graceful motions ! How the faces of the whole ring are dressed in
smiles 1 how the repartee goes round ! how wit and folly, elegance
and awkward imitation of it, set one another off! Happy, thought-
142 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
less age, when kings and nobles led purely ornamental lives ; when
the utmost stretch of a morning's study went no further than the
choice of a sword-knot or the adjustment of a side-curl ; when the
soul spoke out in all the pleasing eloquence of dress ; and beaux and
belles, enamoured of themselves in one another's follies, fluttered
like gilded butterflies, in giddy mazes, through the walks of St.
James's Park !
The four principal writers of this style of comedy (which I think
the best) are undoubtedly Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and
Farquhar. The dawn was in Etherege, as its latest close was in
Sheridan. It is hard to say which of these four is best, or in what
eacli of them excels, they had so many and such great excellences.
Congreve is the most distinct from the others, and the most
easily denned, both from what he possessed and from what he
wanted. He had by far the most wit and elegance, with less of
other things, of humour, character, incident, &c. His style is
inimitable, nay, perfect. It is the highest model of comic dialogue.
Every sentence is replete with sense and satire, conveyed in the
most polished and pointed terms. Every page presents a shower of
brilliant conceits, is a tissue of epigrams in prose, is a new triumph
of wit, a new conquest over dulness. The fire of artful raillery is
nowhere else so well kept up. This style, which he was almost the
first to introduce, and which he carried to the utmost pitch of
classical refinement, reminds one exactly of Collins's description of
wit as opposed to humour :
" Whose jewels in his crisped hair
Are placed each other's light to share."
Sheridan will not bear a comparison with him in the regular anti-
thetical construction of his sentences, and in the mechanical artifices
of his style, though so much later, and though style in general has
been so much studied, and in the mechanical part so much improved
since then. It bears every mark of being what he himself in the
dedication of one of his plays tells us that it was, a spirited copy
taken off and carefully revised from the most select society of his
time, exhibiting all the sprightliness, ease, and animation of familiar
conversation, with the correctness and delicacy of the most finished
composition. His works are a singular treat to those who have
cultivated a taste for the niceties of English style : there is a peculiar
flavour in the very words, which is to be found in hardly any other
writer. To the mere reader his writings would be an irreparable
loss : to the stage they are already become a dead letter, with the
exception of one of them, " Love for Love." This play is as full of
THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS. 143
character, incident, and stage-effect as almost any of those of his
contemporaries, and fuller of wit than any of his own, except perhaps
the " Way of the World." It still acts, and is still acted well. The
effect of it is prodigious on the well-informed spectator. . . .
Wycherley was before Congreve; and his "Country Wife" will
last longer than anything of Congreve's as a popular acting play.
It is only a pity that it is not entirely his own, but it is enough so
to do him never-ceasing honour, for the best things are his own. His
humour is, in general, broader, his characters more natural, and his
incidents more striking than Congreve's. It may be said of Con-
greve, that the workmanship overlays the materials : in Wycherley,
the casting of the parts and the fable are alone sufficient to ensure
success. We forget Congreve's characters, and only remember what
they say : we remember Wycherley's characters, and the incidents
they meet with, just as if they were real, and forget what they say,
comparatively speaking. Miss Peggy (or Mrs. Margery Pinchwife)
is a character that will last for ever, I should hope ; and even when
the original is no more, if that should ever be, while self-will,
curiosity, art, and ignorance are to be found in the same person, it
will be just as good and as intelligible as ever in the description,
because it is built on first principles, and brought out in the fullest
and broadest manner. .
THE PERIODICAL ESSAYISTS.
"The proper study of mankind is man."
I NOW come to speak of that sort of writing which has been so
successfully cultivated in this country by our periodical Essayists,
and which consists in applying the talents and resources of the
mind to all that mixed mass of human affairs which, though not
included under the head of any regular art, science, or profession,
falls under the cognisance of the writer, and " comes home to the
business and bosoms of men."
Quicquid agunt homines nostri farrago libelli,
is the general motto of this department of literature. It does not
treat of minerals or fossils, of the virtues of plants or the influence
of planets ; it does not meddle with forms of belief or systems of
o
I44 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC
philosophy, nor launch into the world of spiritual existences ; but
it makes familiar with the world of men and women, records their
actions, assigns their motives, exhibits their whims, characterises
their pursuits in all their singular and endless variety, ridicules their
absurdities, exposes their inconsistencies, " holds the mirror up to
nature, and shows the very age and body of the time, its form and
pressure ; " takes minutes of our dress, air, looks, words, thoughts,
and actions; shows us what we are, and what we are not; plays
the whole game of human life over before us, and by making us
enlightened spectators of its many-coloured scenes, enables us (if
possible) to become tolerably reasonable agents in the one in which
we have to perform a part. " The act and practic part of life is
thus made the mistress of our theorique." It is the best and most
natural course of study. It is in morals and manners what the
experimental is in natural philosophy, as opposed to the dogmatical
method. It does not deal in sweeping clauses of proscription and
anathema, but in nice distinctions and liberal constructions. It
makes up its general accounts from details, its few theories from
many facts. It does not try to prove all black or all white as it
wishes, but lays on the intermediate colours (and most of them not
unpleasing ones), as it finds them blended with " the web of our life,
which is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together." It inquires
what human life is and has been, to show what it ought to be. It
follows it into courts and camps, into town and country, into rustic
sports or learned disputations, into the various shades of prejudice
or ignorance, of refinement or barbarism, into its private haunts or
public pageants, into its weaknesses and littlenesses, its professions
and its practices : before it pretends to distinguish right from wrong,
or one thing from another. How, indeed, should it do so other-
wise?
" Quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Plenius et melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit."
The writers I speak of are, if not moral philosophers, moral historians,
and that's better : or if they are both, they found the one character
upon the other ; their premises precede their conclusions ; and we
put faith in their testimony, for we know that it is true.
MONTAIGNE.
MONTAIGNE was the first person who in his "Essays" led the way
to this kind of writing among the moderns. The great merit of
Montaigne, then, was that he may be said to have been the first
MONTAIGNE. 145
who had the courage to say as an author what he felt as a man.
And as courage is generally the effect of conscious strength, he was
probably led to do so by the richness, truth, and force of his own
observations on books and men. He was, in the truest sense, a
man of original mind; that is, he had the power of looking at
things for himself, or as they really were, instead of blindly trusting
to and fondly repeating what others told him that they were. He
got rid of the go-cart of prejudice and affectation, with the learned
lumber that follows at their heels, because he could do without them.
In taking up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator,
or moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to tell us
whatever passed through his mind, in its naked simplicity and force,
that he thought anyways worth communicating. He did not, in the
abstract character of an author, undertake to say all that could be
said upon a subject, but what in his capacity as an inquirer after
truth he happened to know about it. He was neither a pedant nor
a bigot. He neither supposed that he was bound to know all things,
nor that all things were bound to conform to what he had fancied or
would have them to be. In treating of men and manners, he spoke
of them as he found them, not according to perconceived notions
and abstract dogmas ; and he began by teaching us what he himself
was. In criticising books he did not compare them with rules and
systems, but told us what he saw to like or dislike in them. He
did not take his standard of excellence " according to an exact
scale " of Aristotle, or fall out with a work that was good for any-
thing because "not one of the angles at the four corners was a
right one." He was, in a word, the first author who was not a
bookmaker, and who wrote not to make converts of others to
established creeds and prejudices, but to satisfy his own mind of the
truth of things. In this respect we know not which to be most
charmed with, the author or the man. There is an inexpressible
frankness and sincerity, as well as power, in what he writes. There
is no attempt at imposition or concealment, no juggling tricks or
solemn mouthing, no laboured attempts at proving himself always
in the right, and everybody else in the wrong; he says what is
uppermost, lays open what floats at the top or the bottom of his
mind, and deserves Pope's character of him, where he professes to
-" pour out all as plain
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne."
He does not converse with us like a pedagogue with his pupil, whom
he wishes to make as great a blockhead as himself, but like a philo-
sopher and friend who has passed through life with thought and
146 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
observation, and is willing to enable others to pass through it with
pleasure and profit. A writer of this stamp, I confess, appears to
me as much superior to a common bookworm as a library of real
books is superior to a mere bookcase, painted and lettered on the
outside with the names of celebrated works. As he was the first to
attempt this new way of writing, so the same strong natural impulse
which prompted the undertaking carried him to the end of his
career. The same force and honesty of mind which urged him to
throw off the shackles of custom and prejudice would enable him
to complete his triumph over them. He has left little for his
successors to achieve in the way of just and original speculation on
human life. Nearly all the thinking of the two last centuries of
that kind which the French denominate morale observatrice is to be
found in Montaigne's " Essays : " there is the germ, at least, and
generally much more. He sowed the seed and cleared away the
rubbish, even where others have reaped the fruit or cultivated and
decorated the soil to a greater degree of nicety and perfection.
There is no one to whom the old Latin adage is more applicable
than to Montaigne, " Pereant isti qui ante nos nostra dixerunt."
There has been no new impulse given to thought since his time.
Among the specimens of criticisms on authors which he has left us
are those on Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio, in the account of books
which he thinks worth reading, or (which is the same thing) which
he finds he can read in his old age, and which may be reckoned
among the few criticisms which are worth reading at any age. . . .
STEELE AND ADDISON.
I HAVE always preferred the "Tatler" to the "Spectator."
Whether it is owing to my having been earlier or better ac-
quainted with the one than the other, my pleasure in reading these
two admirable works is not in proportion to their comparative
reputation. The " Tatler " contains only half the number of volumes,
and, I will venture to say, nearly an equal quantity of sterling wit
and sense. " The first sprightly runnings " are there : it has more
of the original spirit, more of the freshness and stamp of nature.
The indications of character and strokes of humour are more true
and frequent; the reflections that suggest themselves arise more
from the occasion, and are less spun out into regular dissertations.
They are more like the remarks which occur in sensible conversation,
and less like a lecture. Something is left to the understanding of
the reader. Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set
STEELE AND ADDISON. 147
down what he observed out of doors. Addison seems to have spent
most of his time in his study, and to have spun out and wiredrawn
the hints which he borrowed from Steele, or took from nature, to
the utmost. I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents,
but I am anxious to do justice to Steele, who was, I think, upon
the whole a less artificial and more original writer. The humorous
descriptions of Steele resemble loose sketches, or fragments of a
comedy ; those of Addison are rather comments or ingenious para-
phrases on the genuine text. The characters of the club, not only
in the "Tatler," but in the "Spectator," were drawn by Steele.
That of Sir Roger de Coverley is among the number. Addison has,
however, gained himself immortal honour by his manner of filling
up this last character. Who is there that can forget, or be insen-
sible to, the inimitable nameless graces and varied traits of nature
and of old English character in it : to his unpretending virtues and
amiable weaknesses : to his modesty, generosity, hospitality, and
eccentric whims : to the respect of his neighbours, and the affection
of his domestics : to his wayward, hopeless, secret passion for his
fair enemy, the widow, in which there is more of real romance and
true delicacy than in a thousand tales of knight-errantry (we per-
ceive the hectic flush of his cheek, the faltering of his tongue in
speaking of her bewitching airs and " the whiteness of her hand ") :
to the havoc he makes among the game in his neighbourhood : to
his speech from the bench, to show the Spectator what is thought
of him in the country : to his unwillingness to be put up as a sign-
post, and his having his own likeness turned into the Saracen's
head : to his gentle reproof of the baggage of a gipsy that tells him
" he has a widow in his line of life : " to his doubts as to the exist-
ence of witchcraft, and protection of reputed witches : to his account
of the family pictures, and his choice of a chaplain : to his falling
asleep at church, and his reproof of John Williams, as soon as he
recovered from his nap, for talking in sermon-time ? The characters
of Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb are not a whit behind their
friend, Sir Roger, in delicacy and felicity. The delightful simplicity
and good-humoured officiousness in the one are set off by the grace-
ful affectation and courtly pretension in the other. How long since
I first became acquainted with these two characters in the " Spec-
tator ! " What old-fashioned friends they seem, and yet I am not
tired of them like so many other friends, nor they of me ! How
airy these abstractions of the poet's pen stream over the dawn of
our acquaintance with human life ! how they glance their fairest
colours on the prospect before us ! how pure they remain in it to
the last, like the rainbow in the evening-cloud, which the rude hand
148 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of time and experience can neither soil nor dissipate ! What a pity
that we cannot find the reality! And yet if we did, the dream
would be over. .
JOHNSON.
THE most triumphant record of the talents and character of Johnson
is to be found in Boswell's Life of him. The man was superior to
the author. When he threw aside his pen, which he regarded as
an encumbrance, he became not only learned and thoughtful, but
acute, witty, humorous, natural, honest ; hearty and determined,
" the king of good fellows and wale of old men." There are as many
smart repartees, profound remarks, and keen invectives to be found
in Boswell's " inventory of all he said " as are recorded of any cele-
brated man. The life and dramatic play of his conversation forms
a contrast to his written works. His natural powers and undisguised
opinions were called out in convivial intercourse. In public, he
practised with the foils on: in private, he unsheathed the sword
of controversy, and it was " the Ebro's temper." The eagerness of
opposition roused him from his natural sluggishness and acquired
timidity; he returned blow for blow; and whether the trial were
of argument or wit, none of his rivals could boast much of the
encounter. Burke seems to have been the only person who had a
chance with him ; and it is the unpardonable sin of Boswell's work,
that he has purposely omitted their combats of strength and skill.
Goldsmith asked, " Does he wind into a subject like a serpent, as
Burke does ? " And when exhausted with sickness, he himself said,
" If that fellow Burke were here now, he would kill me." It is to
be observed that Johnson's colloquial style was as blunt, direct,
and downright as his style of studied composition was involved and
circuitous. As when Topham Beauclerc and Langton knocked him
up at his chambers, at three in the morning, and he came to the
door with the poker in his hand, but seeing them, exclaimed,
' What, is it you, my lads ? then I'll have a frisk with you ! " And
he afterwards reproaches Langton, who was a literary milksop, for
leaving them to go to an engagement " with some un-ideal girls."
What words to come from the mouth of the great moralist and
lexicographer ! His good deeds were as many as his good sayings.
His domestic habits, his tenderness to servants, and readiness to
oblige his friends ; the quantity of strong tea that he drank to keep
down sad thoughts ; his many labours reluctantly begun and irre-
solutely laid aside; his honest acknowledgment of his own, and
indulgence to the weaknesses of others ; his throwing himself back
THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS. 149
in the post-chaise with Boswell, and saying, " Now I think I am a
good-humoured fellow," though nobody thought him so, and yet he
was ; his quitting the society of Garrick and his actresses, and his
reason for it; his dining with Wilkes, and his kindness to Gold-
smith ; his sitting with the young ladies on his knee at the Mitre,
to give them good advice, in which situation, if not explained, he
might be taken for Falstaff; and last and noblest, his carrying the
unfortunate victim of disease and dissipation on his back up through
Fleet Street (an act which realises the parable of the good Samaritan)
— all these, and innumerable others, endear him to the reader, and
must be remembered to his lasting honour. He had faults, but they
lie buried with him. He had his prejudices and his intolerant feel-
ings ; but he suffered enough in the conflict of his own mind with
them. For if no man can be happy in the free exercise of his reason,
no wise man can be happy without it. His were not time-serving,
heartless, hypocritical prejudices, but deep, inwoven, not to be
rooted out but with life and hope, which he found from old habit
necessary to his own peace of mind, and thought so to the peace
of mankind. I do not hate, but love him for them. They were
between himself and his conscience; and should be left to that
higher tribunal, " where they in trembling hope repose, the bosom
of his Father and his God." In a word, he has left behind him
few wiser or better men.
THE ENGLISH NOVELISTS.
[The greater portion of this paper originally appeared in the Edinburgh
Review in 1815.]
THERE is an exclamation in one of Gray's Letters — "Be mine to
read eternal new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon ! " If I did
not utter a similar aspiration at the conclusion of the last new
novel which I read (I would not give offence by being more parti-
cular as to the name), it was not from any want of affection for the
class of writing to which it belongs ; for, without going so far as
the celebrated French philosopher, who thought that more was to
be learnt from good novels and romances than from the gravest
treatises on history and morality, yet there are few works to which
I am oftener tempted to turn for profit or delight than to the
standard productions in this species of composition. We find there
a close imitation of men and manners; we see the very web and
texture of society as it really exists, and as we meet with it when
we come into the world. If poetry has " something more divine in
150 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
it," this savours more of humanity. We are brought acquainted
with the motives and characters of mankind, imbibe our notions of
virtue and vice from practical examples, and are taught a knowledge
of the world through the airy medium of romance. As a record of
past manners and opinions, too, such writings afford the best and
fullest information. For example, I should be at a loss where to
find in any authentic documents of the same period so satisfactory
an account of the general state of society, and of moral, political,
and religious feeling in the reign of George II., as we meet with in
the " Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Abraham
Adams." This work, indeed, I take to be a perfect piece of statistics
in its kind. In looking into any regular history of that period,
into a learned and eloquent charge to a grand jury or the clergy of
a diocese, or into a tract on controversial divinity, we should hear
only of the ascendency of the Protestant succession, the horrors of
Popery, the triumph of civil and religious liberty, the wisdom and
moderation of the sovereign, the happiness of the subject, and the
flourishing state of manufactures and commerce. But if we really
wish to know what all these fine-sounding names come to, we
cannot do better than turn to the works of those who, having no
other object than to imitate nature, could only hope for success
from the fidelity of their pictures, and were bound (in self-defence)
to reduce the boasts of vague theorists and the exaggerations of
angry disputants to the mortifying standard of reality. Extremes
are said to meet ; and the works of imagination, as they are called,
sometimes come the nearest to truth and nature. Fielding, in
speaking on this subject and vindicating the use and dignity of the
style of writing in which he excelled against the loftier pretensions
of professed historians, says that in their productions nothing is
true but the names and dates, whereas in his everything is true but
the names and dates. If so, he has the advantage on his side.
I will here confess, however, that I am a little prejudiced on the
point in question, and that the effect of many fine speculations has
been lost upon me, from an early familiarity with the most striking
passages in the work to which I have just alluded. Thus nothing
can be more captivating than the description somewhere given by Mr.
Burke of the indissoluble connection between learning and nobility,
and of the respect universally paid by wealth to piety and morals.
But the effect of this ideal representation has always been spoiled
by my recollection of Parson Adams sitting over his cup of ale in
Sir Thomas Booby's kitchen. Echard "On the Contempt of the
Clergy " is, in like manner, a very good book, and " worthy of all
acceptation ; " but, somehow, an unlucky impression of the reality
CERVANTES AND LE SAGE. 151
of Parson Trulliber involuntarily checks the emotions of respect to
which it might otherwise give rise ; while, on the other hand, the
lecture which Lady Booby reads to Lawyer Scout on the immediate
expulsion of Joseph and Fanny from the parish casts no very
favourable light on the flattering accounts of our practical juris-
prudence which are to be found in " Blackstone " or " De Lolme."
The most moral writers, after all, are those who do not pretend to
inculcate any moral. The professed moralist almost unavoidably
degenerates into the partisan of a system ; and the philosopher is
too apt to warp the evidence to his own purpose. But the painter
of manners gives the facts of human nature, and leaves us to draw
the inference : if we are not able to do this, or do it ill, at least it
is our own fault.
The first-rate writers in this class of course are few ; but those
few we may reckon among the greatest ornaments and best bene-
factors of our kind. There is a certain set of them who, as it were,
take their rank by the side of reality, and are appealed to as evidence
on all questions concerning human nature. The principal of these
are Cervantes and Le Sage, who may be considered as having been
naturalised among ourselves ; and, of native English growth, Field-
ing, Smollett, Richardson, and Sterne.1 As this is a department
of criticism which deserves more attention than has been usually
bestowed upon it, I shall here venture to recur (not from choice,
but necessity) to what I have said upon it in a well-known periodical
publication, and endeavour to contribute my mite towards settling
the standard of excellence, both as to degree and kind, in these
several writers.
CERVANTES AND LE SAGE.
I SHALL begin with the history of the renowned Don Quixote de
la Mancha, who presents something more stately, more romantic,
and at the same time more real to the imagination than any other
hero upon record. His lineaments, his accoutrements, his paste-
board vizor, are familiar to us ; and Mambrino's helmet still glitters
in the sun ! We not only feel the greatest love and veneration for
the knight himself, but a certain respect for all those connected
with him — the curate and Master Nicolas the barber, Sancho and
Dapple, and even for Rosinante's leanness and his errors. Perhaps
1 It is not to be forgotten that the author of " Robinson Crusoe " was also
an Englishman. His other works, such as the "Life of Colonel Jack," &c.,
are of the same cast, and leave an impression on the mind more like that of
things than words.
152 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
there is no work which combines so much whimsical invention with
such an air of truth. Its popularity is almost unequalled ; and yet
its merits have not been sufficiently understood. The story is the
least part of them ; though the blunders of Sancho, and the unlucky
adventures of his master, are what naturally catch the attention
of the majority of readers. The pathos and dignity of the senti-
ments are often disguised under the ludicrousness of the subject,
and provoke laughter when they might well draw tears. The
character of Don Quixote himself is one of the most perfect dis-
interestedness. He is an enthusiast of the most amiable kind:
of a nature equally open, gentle, and generous: a lover of truth
and justice; and one who had brooded over the fine dreams of
chivalry and romance, till they had robbed him of himself, and
cheated his brain into a belief of their reality. There cannot be
a greater mistake than to consider "Don Quixote" as a merely
satirical work, or as a vulgar attempt to explode "the long-forgotten
order of chivalry." There could be no need to explode what no
longer existed. Besides, Cervantes himself was a man of the most
sanguine and enthusiastic temperament ; and even through the
crazed and battered figure of the knight, the spirit of chivalry
shines out with undiminished lustre; as if the author had half-
designed to revive the example of past ages, and once more " witch
the world with noble horsemanship." Oh ! if ever the mouldering
flame of Spanish liberty is destined to break forth, wrapping the
tyrant and the tyranny in one consuming blaze, that the spark of
generous sentiment and romantic enterprise, from which it must
be kindled, has not been quite extinguished will perhaps be owing
to thee, Cervantes, and to thy " Don Quixote ! "
The character of Sancho is not more admirable in itself than
as a relief to that of the knight. The contrast is as picturesque
and striking as that between the figures of Rosinante and Dapple.
Never was there so complete a partie quarree : — they answer to one
another at all points. Nothing need surpass the truth of physiog-
nomy in the description of the master and man, both as to body
and mind ; the one lean and tall, the other round and short ; the
one heroical and courteous, the other selfish and servile ; the one
full of high-flown fancies, the other a bag of proverbs; the one
always starting some romantic scheme, the other trying to keep to
the safe side of custom and tradition. The gradual ascendency,
however, obtained by Don Quixote over Sancho is as finely managed
as it is characteristic. Credulity and a love of the marvellous are
as natural to ignorance as selfishness and cunning. Sancho by
degrees becomes a kind of lay-brother of the order ; acquires a taste
CERVANTES AND LE SAGE. 153
for adventures in his own way, and is made all but an entire con-
vert, by the discovery of the hundred crowns in one of his most
comfortless journeys. Towards the end, his regret at being forced
to give up the pursuit of knight-errantry almost equals his master's ;
and he seizes the proposal of Don Quixote for them to turn shepherds
with the greatest avidity — still applying it in his own fashion ; for
while the Don is ingeniously torturing the names of his humble
acquaintance into classical terminations, and contriving scenes of
gallantry and song, Sancho exclaims, " Oh, what delicate wooden
spoons shall I carve ! what crumbs and cream shall I devour ! " — for-
getting, in his milk and fruits, the pullets and geese at Camacho's
wedding.
This intuitive perception of the hidden analogies of things, or, as
it may be called, this instinct of the imagination, is, perhaps, what
stamps the character of genius on the productions of art more than
any other circumstance ; for it works unconsciously like nature, and
receives its impressions from a kind of inspiration. There is as
much of this indistinct keeping and involuntary unity of purpose
in Cervantes as in any author whatever. Something of the same
unsettled, rambling humour extends itself to all the subordinate
parts and characters of the work. Thus we find the curate confi-
dentially informing Don Quixote, that if he could get the ear of the
Government, he has something of considerable importance to propose
for the good of the State ; and our adventurer afterwards (in the
course of his peregrinations) meets with a young gentleman who
is a candidate for poetical honours, with a mad lover, a forsaken
damsel, a Mahometan lady converted to the Christian faith, &c. —
all delineated with the same truth, wildness, and delicacy of fancy.
The whole work breathes that air of romance, that aspiration after
imaginary good, that indescribable longing after something more
than we possess, that in all places and in all conditions of life,
-" still prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we wish to live, or dare to die ! "
The leading characters in " Don Quixote " are strictly individuals ;
that is, they do not so much belong to as form a class by them-
selves. In other words, the actions and manners of the chief
dramatis personce do not arise out of the actions and manners of
those around them, or the situation of life in which they are placed,
but out of the peculiar dispositions of the persons themselves,
operated upon by certain impulses of caprice and accident. Yet
these impulses are so true to nature, and their operation so exactly
described, that we not only recognise the fidelity of the representa-
154 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
tion, but recognise it with all the advantages of novelty superadded.
They are in the best sense originals, namely, in the sense in which
nature has her originals. They are unlike anything we have seen
before — may be said to be purely ideal, and yet identify themselves
more readily with our imagination, and are retained more strongly
in memory, than perhaps any others: they are never lost in the
crowd. One test of the truth of this ideal painting is the number
of allusions which "Don Quixote" has furnished to the whole of
civilised Europe ; that is to say, of appropriate cases and striking
illustrations of the universal principles of our nature. The detached
incidents and occasional descriptions of human life are more familiar
and obvious; so that we have nearly the same insight here given
us into the characters of innkeepers, barmaids, hostlers, and puppet-
show men that we have in Fielding. There is a much greater mix-
ture, however, of the pathetic and sentimental with the quaint
and humorous, than there ever is in Fielding. I might instance the
story of the countryman whom Don Quixote and Sancho met in their
doubtful search after Dulcinea, driving his mules to plough at break
of day, and " singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles ! " The
episodes which are frequently introduced are excellent, but have,
upon the whole, been overrated. They derive their interest from
their connection with the main story. We are so pleased with that,
that we are disposed to receive pleasure from everything else.
Compared, for instance, with the serious tales of Boccaccio, they
are slight and somewhat superficial. That of Marcella the fair
shepherdess is, I think, the best. I shall 'only add, that "Don
Quixote" was, at the time it was published, an entirely original
work in its kind, and that the author claims the highest honour
which can belong to one, that of being the inventor of a new style
of writing. I have never read his "Galatea," nor his "Loves of
Persiles and Sigismunda," though I have often meant to do it, and
I hope to do so yet. Perhaps there is a reason lurking at the bottom
of this dilatoriness. I am quite sure the reading of these works could
not make me think higher of the author of " Don Quixote," and it
might, for a moment or two, make me think less.
There is another Spanish novel, " Gusman D'Alfarache," nearly of
the same age as " Don Quixote," and of great genius, though it can
hardly be ranked as a novel or a work of imagination. It is a series
of strange, unconnected adventures, rather dryly told, but accom-
panied by the most severe and sarcastic commentary. The satire,
the wit, the eloquence and reasoning, are of the most potent kind ;
but they are didactic rather than dramatic. They would suit a
homily or a pasquinade as well [as] or better than a romance.
CERVANTES AND LE SAGE. 155
Still there are in this extraordinary book occasional sketches of
character and humorous descriptions to which it would be difficult
to produce anything superior. This work, which is hardly known
in this country except by name, has the credit without any reason
of being the original of " Gil Bias." There is one incident the same,
that of the unsavoury ragout which is served up for supper at the
inn. In all other respects these two works are the very reverse of
each other, both in their excellences and defects. "Lazarillo de
Tonnes " has been more read than the " Spanish Rogue," and is
a work more readable, on this account among others, that it is
contained in a duodecimo instead of a folio volume. This, however,
is long enough, considering that it treats of only one subject, that
of eating, or rather the possibility of living without eating. Famine
is here framed into an art, and feasting is banished far hence. The
hero's time and thoughts are taken up in a thousand shifts to pro-
cure a dinner ; and that failing, in tampering with his stomach till
supper-time, when, being forced to go supperless to bed, he com-
forts himself with the hopes of a breakfast the next morning,
of which being again disappointed, he reserves his appetite for a
luncheon, and then has to stave it off again by some meagre excuse
or other till dinner ; and so on, by a perpetual adjournment of this
necessary process, through the four-and-twenty hours round. The
quantity of food proper to keep body and soul together is reduced
to a minimum ; and the most uninviting morsels with which Laza-
rillo meets once a week as a God's-send are pampered into the
most sumptuous fare by a long course of inanition. The scene of
this novel could be laid nowhere so properly as in Spain, that land
of priestcraft and poverty, where hunger seems to be the ruling
passion, and starving the order of the day.
"Gil Bias" has, next to "Don Quixote," been more generally
read and admired than any other novel ; and in one sense deservedly
so ; for it is at the head of its class, though that class is very dif-
ferent from, and I should say inferior to, the other. There is little
individual character in " Gil Bias." The author is a describer of
manners, and not of character. He does not take the elements of
human nature, and work them up into new combinations (which
is the excellence of "Don Quixote"), nor trace the peculiar and
shifting shades of folly and knavery as they are to be found in real
life (like Fielding) ; but he takes off, as it were, the general, habitual
impression which circumstances make on certain conditions of life,
and moulds all his characters accordingly. All the persons whom
he introduces carry about with them the badge of their profession ;
and you see little more of them than their costume. He describes
156 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
men as belonging to distinct classes in society ; not as they are in
themselves, or with the individual differences which are always to
be discovered in nature. His hero, in particular, has no character
but that of the successive circumstances in which he is placed. His
priests are only described as priests : his valets, his players, his
women, his courtiers and his sharpers, are all alike. Nothing can
well exceed the monotony of the work in this respect, at the same
time that nothing can exceed the truth and precision with which
the general manners of these different characters are preserved, nor
the felicity of the particular traits by which their common foibl&s
are brought out. Thus the Archbishop of Granada will remain an
everlasting memento of the weakness of human vanity; and the
account of Gil Bias' legacy, of the uncertainty of human expecta-
tions. This novel is also deficient in the fable as well as in the
characters. It is not a regularly constructed story, but a series of
amusing adventures told with equal gaiety and good sense, and in
the most graceful style imaginable.
It has been usual to class our own great novelists as imitators of
one or other of these two writers. Fielding, no doubt, is more like
" Don Quixote " than " Gil Bias ; " Smollett is more like " Gil Bias "
than " Don Quixote ; " but there is not much resemblance in either
case. Sterne's " Tristram Shandy " is a more direct instance of
imitation; Richardson can scarcely be called an imitator of any
one ; or if he is, it is of the sentimental refinement of Marivaux, or
of the verbose gallantry of the writers of the seventeenth century.
There is very little to warrant the common idea that Fielding
was an imitator of Cervantes, except his own declaration of such an
intention in the title-page of " Joseph Andrews," the romantic turn
of the character of Parson Adams (the only romantic character in
his works), and the proverbial humour of Partridge, which is kept
up only for a few pages. Fielding's novels are, in general, thoroughly
his own; and they are thoroughly English. What they are most)
remarkable for is neither sentiment, nor imagination, nor wit. nor
even humour, though there is an immense deal of this last quality ;| i
but profound knowledge of human nature, at least of English nature, i I
and masterly pictures of the characters of men as he saw them exisW-'
ing. This quality distinguishes all his works, and is shown almost
equally in all of them. As a painter of real life, he was equal to
Hogarth : as a mere observer of human nature, he was little infe-
rior to Shakspeare, though without any of the genius and poetical
qualities of his mind. His humour is less rich and laughable than
Smollett's ; his wit as often misses as hits ; he has none of the fine
pathos of Richardson or Sterne; but he has brought together a
FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 157
greater variety of characters in common life, marked with more
distinct peculiarities and without an atom of caricature, than any
other novel-writer whatever. The extreme subtlety of observation
on the springs of human conduct in ordinary characters is only
equalled by the ingenuity of contrivance in bringing those springs
into play, in such a manner as to lay open their smallest irregularity.
The detection is always complete, and made with the certainty and
skill of a philosophical experiment, and the obviousness and famili-
arity of a casual observation. The truth of the imitation is indeed
so great, that it has been argued that Fielding must have had his
materials ready-made to his hands, and was merely a transcriber of
local manners and individual habits. For this conjecture, however,
there seems to be no foundation. His representations, it is true,
are local and individual ; but they are not the less profound and
conclusive. The feeling of the general principles of human nature,
operating in particular circumstances, is always intense, and upper-
most in his mind ; and he makes use of incident and situation only
to bring out character.
It is scarcely necessary to give any illustrations. Tom Jones is
full of them. There is the account, for example, of the gratitude
of the elder Blifil to his brother, for assisting him to obtain the
fortune of Miss Bridget Alworthy by marriage ; and of the gratitude
of the poor in his neighbourhood to Alworthy himself, who had
done so much good in the country that he had made every one in
it his enemy. There is the account of the Latin dialogues between
Partridge and his maid, of the assault made on him during one of
these by Mrs. Partridge, and the severe bruises he patiently re-
ceived on that occasion, after which the parish of Little Badding-
ton rang with the story that the schoolmaster had killed his wife.
There is the exquisite keeping in the character of Blifil, and the
want of it in that of Jones. There is the gradation in the lovers
of Molly Seagrim ; the philosopher Square succeeding to Tom Jones,
who again finds that he himself had succeeded to the accomplished
Will Barnes, who had the first possession of her person, and had
still possession of her heart, Jones being only the instrument of her
vanity, as Square was of her interest. Then there is the discreet
honesty of Black George, the learning of Thwackum and Square,
and the profundity of Squire Western, who considered it as a
physical impossibility that his daughter should fall in love with
Tom Jones. We have also that gentleman's disputes with his
sister, and the inimitable appeal of that lady to her niece: — "I
was never so handsome as you, Sophy : yet I had something of you
formerly. I was called the cruel Parthenissa. Kingdoms and
158 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
states, as Tully Cicero says, undergo alteration, and so must the
human form ! " The adventure of the same lady with the highway-
man, who robbed her of her jewels while he complimented her
beauty, ought not to be passed over, nor that of Sophia and her
muff, nor the reserved coquetry of her cousin Fitzpatrick, nor the
description of Lady Bellaston, nor the modest overtures of the
pretty widow Hunt, nor the indiscreet babblings of Mrs. Honour.
The moral of this book has been objected to without much reason ;
but a more serious objection has been made to the want of refine-
ment and elegance in two principal characters. We never feel this
objection, indeed, while we are reading the book ; but at other times
we have something like a lurking suspicion that Jones was but an
awkward fellow, and Sophia a pretty simpleton. I do not know
how to account for this effect, unless it is that Fielding's constantly
assuring us of the beauty of his hero, and the good sense of his
heroine, at last produces a distrust of both. The story of "Torn
Jones" is allowed to be unrivalled; and it is this circumstance,
together with the vast variety of characters, that has given the
" History of a Foundling " so decided a preference over Fielding's
other novels. The characters themselves, both in "Amelia" and
" Joseph Andrews," are quite equal to any of those in " Tom Jones."
The account of Miss Matthews and Ensign Hibbert, in the former
of these ; the way in which that lady reconciles herself to the death
of her father ; the inflexible Colonel Bath ; the insipid Mrs. James,
the complaisant Colonel Trent, the demure, sly, intriguing, equivocal
Mrs. Bennet, the lord who is her seducer, and who attempts after-
wards to seduce Amelia by the same mechanical process of a con-
cert-ticket, a book, and the disguise of a great-coat ; his little, fat,
short-nosed, red-faced, good-humoured accomplice, the keeper of the
lodging-house, who, having no pretensions to gallantry herself, has
a disinterested delight in forwarding the intrigues and pleasures of
others (to say nothing of honest Atkinson, the story of the miniature
picture of Amelia, and the hashed mutton, which are in a different
style), are masterpieces of description. The whole scene at the lodg-
ing-house, the masquerade, &c., in " Amelia " are equal in interest to
the parallel scenes in "Tom Jones," and even more refined in the know-
ledge of character. For instance, Mrs. Bennet is superior to Mrs.
Fitzpatrick in her own way. The uncertainty in which the event of
her interview with her former seducer is left is admirable. Fielding
was a master of what may be called the double entendre of character,
and surprises you no less by what he leaves in the dark (hardly
known to the persons themselves) than by the unexpected dis-
coveries he makes of the real traits and circumstances in a character
FIELDING AND SMOLLETT. 159
with which, till then, you find you were unacquainted. There is
nothing at all heroic, however, in the usual style of his delineations.
He does not draw lofty characters or strong passions ; all his per-
sons are of the ordinary stature as to intellect, and possess little
elevation of fancy or energy of purpose. Perhaps, after all, Parson
Adams is his finest character. It is equally true to nature, and
more ideal than any of the others. Its unsuspecting simplicity
makes it not only more amiable, but doubly amusing, by gratifying
the sense of superior sagacity in the reader. Our laughing at him
does not once lesson our respect for him. His declaring that he
would willingly walk ten miles to fetch his sermon on vanity, merely
to convince Wilson of his thorough contempt of this vice, and his
consoling himself for the loss of his " ^Eschylus " by suddenly recol-
lecting that he could not read it if he had it, because it is dark, are
among the finest touches of notivete. The night-adventures at Lady
Booby's with Beau Didapper and the amiable Slipslop are the most
ludicrous ; and that with the huntsman, who draws off the hounds
from the poor Parson, because they would be spoiled by following
vermin, the most profound. Fielding did not often repeat himself ;
but Dr. Harrison, in " Amelia," may be considered as a variation of
the character of Adams : so also is Goldsmith's " Vicar of Wake-
field ; " and the latter part of that work, which sets out so delight-
fully, an almost entire plagiarism from Wilson's account of himself,
and Adams's domestic history.
Smollett's first novel, " Roderick Random," which is also his best,
appeared about the same time as Fielding's " Tom Jones ; " and yet
it has a much more modern air with it ; but this may be accounted
for from the circumstance that Smollett was quite a young man at
the time, whereas Fielding's manner must have been formed long
before. The style of " Roderick Random " is more easy and flowing
than that of " Tom Jones ; " the incidents follow one another more
rapidly (though, it must be confessed, they never come in such a
throng, or are brought out with the same dramatic effect) ; the
humour is broader and as effectual ; and there is very nearly, if not
quite, an equal interest excited by the story. What, then, is it that
gives the superiority to Fielding ? It is the superior insight into the
springs of human character, and the constant development of that
character through every change of circumstance. Smollett's humour
often rises from the situation of the persons, or the peculiarity of their
external appearance, as from Roderick Random's carroty locks, which
hung down over his shoulders like a pound of candles, or Strap's
ignorance of London, and the blunders that follow from it. There
is a tone of vulgarity about all his productions. The incidents fre-
P
160 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
quently resemble detached anecdotes taken from a newspaper or
magazine ; and, like those in " Gil Bias," might happen to a hundred
other characters. He exhibits the ridiculous accidents and reverses
to which human life is liable, not " the stuff" of which it is composed.
He seldom probes to the quick, or penetrates beyond the surface ;
and therefore he leaves no stings in the minds of his readers, and in
this respect is far less interesting than Fielding. His novels always
enliven, and never tire us : we take them up with pleasure, and
lay them down without any strong feeling of regret. We look on
and laugh, as spectators of a highly amusing scene, without closing in
with the combatants or being made parties in the event. We read
" Roderick Random " as an entertaining story ; for the particular
accidents and modes of life which it describes have ceased to exist ;
but we regard " Tom Jones " as a real history, because the author
never stops short of those essential principles which lie at the
bottom of all our actions, and in which we feel an immediate
interest — intus et in cute. Smollett excels most as the lively cari-
caturist, Fielding as the exact painter and profound metaphysician.
I am far from maintaining that this account applies uniformly to
the productions of these two writers ; but I think that, as far as
they essentially differ, what I have stated is the general distinction
between them. " Roderick Random " is the purest of Smollett's
novels : I mean in point of style and description. Most of the
incidents and characters are supposed to have been taken from the
events of his own life, and are therefore truer to nature. There is a
rude conception of generosity in some of his characters, of which
Fielding seems to have been incapable, his amiable persons being
merely good-natured. It is owing to this that Strap is superior to
Partridge, as there is a'heartiness and warmth of feeling in some of
the scenes between Lieutenant Bowling and his nephew, which is
beyond Fieldmg's power of impassioned writing. The whole of the
scene on ship-board is a most admirable and striking picture, and,
I imagine, very little if at all exaggerated, though the interest it
excites is of a very unpleasant kind, because the irritation and re-
sistance to petty oppression can be of no avail. The picture of the
little profligate French friar, who was Roderick's travelling com-
panion, and of whom he always kept to the windward, is one
of Smollett's most masterly sketches. "Peregrine Pickle" is no
great favourite of mine, and " Launcelot Greaves " was not worthy
of the genius of the author.
"Humphry Clinker" and "Count Fathom" are both equally
admirable in their way. Perhaps the former is the most pleasant
gossiping novel that ever was written : that which gives the most
RICHARDSON AND STERNE. 161
pleasure with the least effort to the reader. It is quite as amusing
as going the journey could have been ; and we have just as good an
idea of what happened on the road as if we had been of the party.
Humphry Clinker himself is exquisite ; and his sweetheart, Winifred
Jenkins, not much behind him. Matthew Bramble, though not
altogether original, is excellently supported, and seems to have
been the prototype of Sir Anthony Absolute in the " Rivals." But
Lismahago is the flower of the flock. His tenaciousness in argu-
ment is not so delightful as the relaxation of his logical severity,
when he finds his fortune mellowing in the wintry smiles of Mrs.
Tabitha Bramble. This is the best-preserved and most severe of all
Smollett's characters. The resemblance to " Don Quixote " is only
just enough to make it interesting to the critical reader without
giving offence to anybody else. The indecency and filth in this
novel are what must be allowed to all Smollett's writings. The sub-
ject and characters in " Count Fathom " are, in general, exceedingly
disgusting : the story is also spun out to a degree of tediousness
in the serious and sentimental parts ; but there is more power of
writing occasionally shown in it than in any of his works. I need
only refer to the fine and bitter irony of the Count's address to the
country of his ancestors on his landing in England ; to the robber-
scene in the forest, which has never been surpassed ; to the Parisian
swindler who personates a raw English country squire (Western is
tame in the comparison) ; and to the story of the seduction in the
west of England. It would be difficult to point out, in any author,
passages written with more force and mastery than these.
It is not a very difficult undertaking to class Fielding or Smollett
— the one as an observer of the characters of human life, the other
as a describer of its various eccentricities. But it is by no means
so easy to dispose of Richardson, who was neither an observer of
the one nor a describer of the other, but who seemed to spin his
materials entirely out of his own brain, as if there had been nothing
existing in the world beyond the little room in which he sat writing.
There is an artificial reality about his works, which is nowhere else
to be met with. They have the romantic air of a pure fiction, with
the literal minuteness of a common diary. The author had the
strongest matter-of-fact imagination that ever existed, and wrote
the oddest mixture of poetry and prose. He does not appear to
have taken advantage of anything in actual nature, from one end
of his works to the other ; and yet, throughout all his works, volu-
minous as they are — and this, to be sure, is one reason why they
are so — he sets about describing every object and transaction as if
the whole had been given in on evidence by an eye-witness. This
162 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
kind of high finishing from imagination is an anomaly in the history
of human genius ; and certainly nothing so fine was ever produced
by the same accumulation of minute parts. There is not the least
distraction, the least forgetfulness of the end : every circumstance
is made to tell. I cannot agree that this exactness of detail pro-
duces heaviness ; on the contrary, it gives an appearance of truth,
and a positive interest to the story ; and we listen with the same
attention as we should to the particulars of a confidential commu-
nication. I at one time used to think some parts of " Sir Charles
Grandison " rather trifling and tedious, especially the long descrip-
tion of Miss Harriet Byron's wedding-clothes, till I was told of two
young ladies who had severally copied out the whole of that very
description for their own private gratification. After that, I could
not blame the author.
The effect of reading this work is like an increase of kindred.
You find yourself all of a sudden introduced into the midst of a
large family, with aunts and cousins to the third and fourth gene-
ration, and grandmothers both by the father's and mother's side ;
and a very odd set of people they are, but people whose real exist-
ence and personal identity you can no more dispute than your own
senses, for you see and hear all that they do or say. What is still
more extraordinary, all this extreme elaborateness in working out
the story seems to have cost the author nothing ; for it is said that
the published works are mere abridgments. I have heard (though
this, I suspect, must be a pleasant exaggeration) that " Sir Charles
Grandison " was originally written in eight-and-twenty volumes.
Pamela is the first of Richardson's productions, and the very
child of his brain. Taking the general idea of the character of a
modest and beautiful country girl, and of the ordinary situation
in which she is placed, he makes out all the rest, even to the
smallest circumstance, by the mere force of a reasoning imagina-
tion. It would seem as if a step lost would be as fatal here as
in a mathematical demonstration. The development of the char-
acter is the most simple, and comes the nearest to nature that
it can do, without being the same thing. The interest of the story
increases with the dawn of understanding and reflection in the
heroine : her sentiments gradually expand themselves, like opening
flowers. She writes better every time, and acquires a confidence
in herself, just as a girl would do writing such letters in such
circumstances; and yet it is certain that no girl would ivrite such
letters in such circumstances. What I mean is this — Richardson's
nature is always the nature of sentiment and reflection, not of
impulse or situation. He furnishes his characters, on every occasion,
RICHARDSON AND STERNE. 163
with the presence of mind of the author. He makes them act,
not as they would from the impulse of the moment, but as they
might upon reflection, and upon a careful review of every motive
and circumstance in their situation. They regularly sit down to
write letters ; and if the business of life consisted in letter-writing,
and was carried on by the post (like a Spanish game at chess),
human nature would be what Richardson represents it. All actual
objects and feelings are blunted and deadened by being presented
through a medium which may be ture to reason, but is false in
nature. He confounds his own point of view with that of the
immediate actors in the scene, and hence presents you with a con-
ventional and factitious nature, instead of that which is real. Dr.
Johnson seems to have preferred this truth of reflection to the
truth of nature, when he said that there was more knowledge of
the human heart in a page of Richardson than in all Fielding.
Fielding, however, saw more of the practical results, and understood
the principles as well ; but he had not the same power of speculat-
ing upon their possible results, and combining them in certain ideal
forms of passion and imagination, which was Richardson's real
excellence.
It must be observed, however, that it is this mutual good un-
derstanding, and comparing of notes between the author and the
persons he describes : his infinite circumspection, his exact process
of ratiocination and calculation, which gives such an appearance
of coldness and formality to most of his characters — which makes
prudes of his women, and coxcombs of his men. Everything is too
conscious in his works. Everything is distinctly brought home to
the mind of the actors in the scene, which is a fault undoubtedly ;
but then it must be confessed everything is brought home in its full
force to the mind of the reader also, and we feel the same interest
in the story as if it were our own. Can anything be more beautiful
or more affecting than Pamela's reproaches to her " lumpish heart,"
when she is sent away from her master's at her own request: its
lightness, when she is sent for back : the joy which the conviction
of the sincerity of his love diffuses in her heart, like the coming on
of spring ; the artifice of the stuff gown : the meeting with Lady
Davers after her marriage : and the trial-scene with her husband ?
Who ever remained insensible to the passion of Lady Clementina, ex-
cept Sir Charles Grandison himself, who was the object of it ? Clarissa
is, however, his masterpiece, if we except Lovelace. If she is fine in
herself, she is still finer in his account of her. With that foil her
purity is dazzling indeed ; and she who could triumph by her virtue
and the force of her love over the regality of Lovelace's mind, his
164 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
wit, his person, his accomplishments, and his spirit, conquers all
hearts. I should suppose that never sympathy more deep or sincere
was excited than by the heroine of Richardson's romance, except by
the calamities of real life. The links in this wonderful chain of
interest are not more finely wrought than their whole weight is
overwhelming and irresistible. Who can forget the exquisite grada-
tions of her long dying scene, or the closing of the coffin-lid, when
Miss Howe comes to take her last leave of her friend ; or the heart-
breaking reflection that Clarissa makes on what was to have been
her wedding-day ? Well does a certain writer exclaim —
" Books are a real world, both pure and good,
Kound which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow ! "
Richardson's wit was unlike that of any other writer : his humour
was so too. Both were the effect of intense activity of mind:
laboured,. and yet completely effectual. I might refer to Lovelace's
reception and description of Hickman, when he calls out Death in
his ear, as the name of the person with whom Clarissa had fallen
in love, and to the scene at the glove-shop. What can be more
magnificent than his enumeration of his companions — " Belt m, so
pert and so pimply : Tourville, so fair and so foppish," &c. ? In
casuistry this author is quite at home ; and with a boldness greater
even than his puritanical severity, [he] has exhausted every topic
on virtue and vice. There is another peculiarity in Richardson not
perhaps so uncommon, which is his systematically preferring his
most insipid characters to his finest, though both were equally his
own invention, and he must be supposed to have understood some-
thing of their qualities. Thus he preferred the little, selfish, affected,
insignificant Miss Byron to the divine Clementina, and, again, Sir
Charles Grandison to the nobler Lovelace. I have nothing to say
in favour of Lovelace's morality ; but Sir Charles is the prince of
coxcombs, whose eye was never once taken from his own person
and his own virtues, and there is nothing which excites so little
sympathy as this excessive egotism.
It remains to speak of Sterne ; and I shall do it in few words.
There is more of mannerism and affectation in him, and a more
immediate reference to preceding authors ; but his excellences, where
he is excellent, are of the first order. His characters are intellectual
and inventive, like Richardson's, but totally opposite in the execu-
tion. The one is made out by continuity and patient repetition of
touches : the others, by glancing transitions and graceful apposition.
His style is equally different from Richardson's : it is at times the
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 165
most rapid, the most happy, the most idiomatic of any that is to be
found. It is the pure essence of English conversational style. His
works consist only of morceaux — of brilliant passages. I wonder
that Goldsmith, who ought to have known better, should call him
" a dull fellow." His wit is poignant, though artificial ; and his
characters (though the groundwork of some of them had been laid
before) have yet invaluable original differences ; and the spirit of
the execution, the master-strokes constantly thrown into them, are
not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them : — Yorick, Dr.
Slop, Mr. Shandy, My Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and the Widow
Wadman. In these he has contrived to oppose with equal felicity
and originality two characters, one of pure intellect, and the other
of pure good-nature, in My Father and My Uncle Toby. There
appears to have been in Sterne a vein of dry, sarcastic humour, and
of extreme tenderness of feeling ; the latter sometimes carried to
affectation, as in the tale of " Maria " and the apostrophe to the
recording angel ; but at other times pure and without blemish. The
story of Le Fevre is perhaps the finest in the English language.
My Father's restlessness, both of body and mind, is inimitable. It
is the model from which all those despicable performances against
modern philosophy ought to have been copied, if their authors had
known anything of the subject they were writing about. My
Uncle Toby is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human
nature. He is the most unoffending of God's creatures ; or, as
the French express it, un tel petit bon hommel Of his bowling-
green, his sieges, and his amours, who would say or think anything
amiss? . . .
In knowledge, in variety, in facility, in truth of painting, in
costume and scenery, in freshness of subject and in untired interest,
in glancing lights and the graces of a style passing at will from
grave to gay, from lively to severe, at once romantic and familiar,
having the utmost force of imitation and apparent freedom of inven-
tion, the Waverley novels have the highest claims to admiration.
What lack they yet? The author has all power given him from
without — he has not, perhaps, an equal power from within. The
intensity of the feeling is not equal to the distinctness of the imagery.
He sits like a magician in his cell, and conjures up all shapes and
sights to the view ; and with a little variation we might apply to
him what Spenser says of Fancy : —
" Hia chamber was depainted all within
With sundry colours, in which were writ
Infinite shape of things dispersed thin ;
Some such as in the world were never yet ;
166 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Some daily seen and knowen by their names,
Such as in idle fantasies do flit ;
Infernal hags, centaurs, fiends, hippodames,
Apes, Hones, eagles, owls, fools, lovers, children, dames."
In the midst of all this phantasmagoria, the author himself never
appears to take part with his characters, to prompt our affection to
the good or sharpen our antipathy to the bad. It is the perfection
of art to conceal art ; and this is here done so completely, that while
it adds to our pleasure in the work, it seems to take away from the
merit of the author. As he does not thrust himself forward in the
foreground, he loses the credit of the performance. The copies are
so true to nature, that they appear like tapestry figures taken off
by the pattern — the obvious patchwork of tradition and history.
His characters are transplanted at once from their native soil to the
page which we are reading, without any traces of their having passed
through the hotbed of the author's genius or vanity. He leaves them
as he found them ; but this is doing wonders. The Laird and the
Bailie of Bradwardine, the idiot rhymer David Gellatly, Miss Rose
Bradwardine and Miss Flora Mac Ivor, her brother the Highland Jaco-
bite chieftain, Vich Ian Vohr, the Highland rover, Donald Bean Lean,
and the worthy page Callum Beg, Bothwell and Balfour of Burley,
Claverhouse and Macbriar, Elshie, the Black Dwarf, and the Red
Reever of Westburn Flat, Hobbie and Grace Armstrong, Lucy
Bertram and Dominie Sampson, Dirk Hatteraick and Meg Merrilies,
are at present " familiar in our mouths as household names," and
whether they are actual persons or creations of the poet's pen is an
impertinent inquiry. The picturesque and local scenery is as fresh
as the lichen on the rock : the characters are a part of the scenery.
If they are put in action, it is a moving picture : if they speak, we
hear their dialect and the tones of their voice. If the humour is
made out by dialect, the character by the dress, the interest by the
facts and documents in the author's possession, we have no right to
complain, if it is made out ; but sometimes it hardly is, and then
we have a right to say so. For instance, in the " Tales of my Land-
lord," Canny Elshie is not in himself so formidable or petrific a person
as the real Black Dwarf, called David Ritchie, nor are his acts or
sayings so staggering to the imagination. Again, the first introduc-
tion of this extraordinary personage, groping about among the hoary
twilight ruins of the Witch of Micklestane Moor and her Grey Geese,
is as full of preternatural power and bewildering effect (according
to the tradition of the country) as can be ; while the last decisive
scene, where the Dwarf, in his resumed character of Sir Edward
Mauley, comes from the tomb in the chapel, to prevent the forced
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE— INTRODUCTORY. 167
marriage of the daughter of his former betrothed mistress with the
man she abhors, is altogether powerless and tame. No situation
could be imagined more finely calculated to call forth an author's
powers of imagination and passion ; but nothing is done. The
assembly is dispersed under circumstances of the strongest natural
feeling and the most appalling preternatural appearances, just as if
the effect had been produced by a peace-officer entering for the same
purpose. These instances of a falling off are, however, rare ; and if
this author should not be supposed by fastidious critics to have
original genius in the highest degree, he has other qualities which
supply its place so well : his materials are so rich and varied, and he
uses them so lavishly, that the reader is no loser by the exchange.
We are not in fear that he should publish another novel ; we are
under no apprehension of his exhausting himself, for he has shown
that he is inexhaustible.
[Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Aye of Elizabeth, 1821. Second
Edition, 1821. Third Edition, 1840. Fourth Edition, 1873.]
GENERAL VIEW OF THE SUBJECT.
THE age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in
our history by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and
whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours : states-
men, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers ; Raleigh,
Drake, Coke, Hooker, and — high and more sounding still, and still
more frequent in our mouths — Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon,
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom Fame has eternised in
her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were
benefactors of their country and ornaments of human nature. Their
attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it
was sterling ; what they did had the mark of their age and country
upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain never shone out fuller
or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. Our
writers and great men had something in them that savoured of the
soil from which they grew : they were not French ; they were not
Dutch, or German, or Greek, or Latin; they were truly English.
They did not look out of themselves to see what they should be ;
they sought for truth and nature, and found it in themselves.
There was no tinsel, and but little art ; they were not the spoilt
children of affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, inde-
168 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
pendent race of thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with
none but natural grace and heart-felt, unobtrusive delicacy. They
were not at all sophisticated. The mind of their country was great
in them, and it prevailed. With their learning and unexampled
acquirement, they did not forget that they were men: with all
their endeavours after excellence, they did not lay aside the strong
original bent and character of their minds. What they performed
was chiefly nature's handiwork ; and Time has claimed it for his
own. To these, however, might be added others not less learned,
nor with a scarce less happy vein, but less fortunate in the event,
who, though as renowned in their day, have sunk into "mere
oblivion," and of whom the only record (but that the noblest) is
to be found in their works. Their works and their names, " poor,
poor dumb names," are all that remains of such men as Webster,
Decker, Marston, Marlowe, Chapman, Heywood, Middleton, and
Rowley ! " How lov'd, how honour'd once, avails them not : "
though they were the friends and fellow-labourers of Shakspeare,
sharing his fame and fortunes with him, the rivals of Jonson, and
the masters of Beaumont and Fletcher's well-sung woes ! They
went out one by one unnoticed, like evening lights, or were swal-
lowed up in the headlong torrent of puritanic zeal which succeeded,
and swept away everything in its unsparing course, throwing up
the wrecks of taste and genius at random, and at long fitful
intervals, amidst the painted gewgaws and foreign frippery of the
reign of Charles II., and from which we are only now recovering
the scattered fragments and broken images to erect a temple to
true Fame ! How long before it will be completed ?
If I can do anything to rescue some of these writers from hopeless
obscurity, and to do them right, without prejudice to well-deserved
reputation, I shall have succeeded in what I chiefly propose. I shall
not attempt, indeed, to adjust the spelling or restore the pointing,
as if the genius of poetry lay hid in errors of the press, but, leaving
these weightier matters of criticism to those who are more able
and willing to bear the burden, try to bring out their real beauties
to the eager sight, " draw the curtain of Time, and show the pic-
ture of Genius," restraining my own admiration within reasonable
bounds !
There is not a lower ambition, a poorer way of thought, than that
which would confine all excellence, or arrogate its final accomplish-
ment, to the present or modern times. We ordinarily speak and
think of those who had the misfortune to write or live before us
as labouring under very singular privations and disadvantages in
not having the benefit of those improvements which we have made,
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE— INTRODUCTORY. 169
as buried in the grossest ignorance, or the slaves " of poring pedan-
try ; " and we make a cheap and infallible estimate of their progress
in civilisation upon a graduated scale of perfectibility, calculated
from the meridian of our own times. If we have pretty well got
rid of the narrow bigotry that would limit all sense or virtue to
our own country, and have fraternised, like true cosmopolites, with
our neighbours and contemporaries, we have made our self-love
amends by letting the generation we live in engross nearly all our
admiration, and by pronouncing a sweeping sentence of barbarism
and ignorance on our ancestry backwards, from the commencement
(as near as can be) of the nineteenth or the latter end of the eigh-
teenth century. From thence we date a new era, the dawn of our
own intellect and that of the world, like " the sacred influence of
light " glimmering on the confines of Chaos and old night ; new
manners rise, and all the cumbrous " pomp of elder days " vanishes,
and is lost in worse than Gothic darkness. Pavilioned in the glitter-
ing pride of our superficial accomplishments and upstart pretensions,
we fancy that everything beyond that magic circle is prejudice and
error, and all before the present enlightened period but a dull and
useless blank in the great map of Time. We are so dazzled with
the gloss and novelty of modern discoveries, that we cannot take
into our mind's eye the vast expanse, the lengthened perspective of
human intellect, and a cloud hangs over and conceals its loftiest
monuments, if they are removed to a little distance from us — the
cloud of our own vanity and short-sightedness. The modern sciolist
stultifies all understanding but his own, and that which he conceives
like his own. We think, in this age of reason and consummation of
philosophy, because we knew nothing twenty or thirty years ago,
and began to think then, for the first time in our lives, that the
rest of mankind were in the same predicament, and never knew any-
thing till we did ; that the world had grown old in sloth and ignor-
ance, had dreamt out its long minority of five thousand years in a
dozing state, and that it first began to wake out of sleep, to rouse
itself, and look about it, startled by the light of our unexpected
discoveries, and the noise we made about them. Strange error of
our infatuated self-love ! Because the clothes we remember to have
seen worn when we were children are now out of fashion, and our
grandmothers were then old women, we conceive, with magnanimous
continuity of reasoning, that it must have been much worse three
hundred years before, and that grace, youth, and beauty are things
of modern date — as if nature had ever been old, or the sun had first
shone on our folly and presumption. Because, in a word, the last
generation, when tottering off the stage, were not so active, so
170 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
sprightly, and so promising as we were, we begin to imagine that
people formerly must have crawled about in a feeble, torpid state,
like flies in winter, in a sort of dim twilight of the understanding ;
" nor can we think what thoughts they could conceive," in the
absence of all those topics that so agreeably enliven and diversify
our conversation arid literature, mistaking the imperfection of our
knowledge for the defect of their organs, as if it was necessary for
us to have a register and certificate of their thoughts, or as if, be-
cause they did not see with our eyes, hear with our ears, and under-
stand with our understandings, they could hear, see, and understand
nothing. A falser inference could not be drawn, nor one more con-
trary to the maxims and cautions of a wise humanity. " Think, '
says Shakspeare, the prompter of good and true feelings, " there's
livers out of Britain." So there have been thinkers, and great and
sound ones, before our time. They had the same capacities that we
have, sometimes greater motives for their exertion, and, for the
most part, the same subject-matter to work upon. What we learn
from nature, we may hope to do as well as they ; what we learn
from them, we may in general expect to do worse. What is, I think,
as likely as anything to cure us of this overweening admiration of
the present and unmingled contempt for past times is the looking
at the finest old pictures : at Raphael's heads, at Titian's faces, at
Claude's landscapes. We have there the evidence of the senses,
without the alterations of opinion or disguise of language. We
there see the blood circulate through the veins (long before it was
known that it did so), the same red and white " by Nature's own
sweet and cunning hand laid on," the same thoughts passing through
the mind and seated on the lips, the same blue sky and glittering
sunny vales, " where Pan, knit with the Graces and the Hours in
dance, leads on the eternal spring." And we begin to feel that
nature and the mind of man are not a thing of yesterday, as we had
been led to suppose, and that " there are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy." Or grant that we
improve, in some respects, in a uniformly progressive ratio, and
build, Babel-high, on the foundation of other men's knowledge, as
in matters of science and speculative inquiry, where, by going often
over the same general ground, certain general conclusions have been
arrived at, and in the number of persons reasoning on a given sub-
ject truth has at last been hit upon and long-established error
exploded ; yet this does not apply to cases of individual power and
knowledge, to a million of things beside, in which we are still to
seek as much as ever, and in which we can only hope to find by
going to the fountain-head of thought and experience. We are
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE— INTRODUCTORY. 171
quite wrong in supposing (as we are apt to do) that we can plead
an exclusive title to wit and wisdom, to taste and genius, as the
net produce and clear reversion of the age we live in, and that all
we have to do to be great is to despise those who have gone before
us as nothing. . . .
It is the present fashion to speak with veneration of old English
literature ; but the homage we pay to it is more akin to the rites
of superstition than the worship of true religion. Our faith is
doubtful, our love cold, our knowledge little or none. We now and
then repeat the names of some of the old writers by rote ; but we
are shy of looking into their works. Though we seem disposed to
think highly of them, and to give them every credit for a masculine
and original vein of thought, as a matter of literary courtesy and
enlargement of taste, we are afraid of coming to the proof, as too
great a trial of our candour and patience. We regard the enthusi-
astic admiration of these obsolete authors, or a desire to make
proselytes to a belief in their extraordinary merits, as an amiable
weakness, a pleasing delusion, and prepare to listen to some favourite
passage that may be referred to in support of this singular taste
with an incredulous smile ; and are in no small pain for the result
of the hazardous experiment, feeling much the same awkward con-
descending disposition to patronise these first crude attempts at
poetry and lispings of the Muse as when a fond parent brings for-
ward a bashful child to make a display of its wit or learning. We
hope the best, put a good face on the matter, but are sadly afraid
the thing cannot answer. Dr. Johnson said of these writers gener-
ally, that "they were sought after because they were scarce, and
would not have been scarce had they been much esteemed." His
decision is neither true history nor sound criticism. They were
esteemed, and they deserved to be so.
One cause that might be pointed out here as having contributed
to the long-continued neglect of our earlier writers lies in the very
nature of our academic institutions, which unavoidably neutralises
a taste for the productions of native genius, estranges the mind
from the history of our own literature, and makes it in each succes-
sive age like a book sealed. The Greek and Roman classics are a
sort of privileged text-books, the standing order of the day, in a
university education, and leave little leisure for a competent ac-
quaintance with or due admiration of a whole host of able writers
of our own, who are suffered to moulder in obscurity on the shelves
of our libraries, with a decent reservation of one or two top-names,
that are cried up for form's sake, and to save the national character.
Thus we keep a few of these always ready in capitals, and strike off
172 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the rest, to prevent the tendency to a superfluous population in the
republic of letters ; in other words, to prevent the writers from be-
coming more numerous than the readers. The ancients are become
effete in this respect : they no longer increase and multiply ; or, if
they have imitators among us, no one is expected to read, and still
less to admire, them. It is not possible that the learned professors
and the reading public should clash in this way, or necessary for
them to use any precautions against each other. But it is not the
same with the living languages, where there is danger of being over-
whelmed by the crowd of competitors ; and pedantry has combined
with ignorance to cancel their unsatisfied claims.
We affect to wonder at Shakspeare and one or two more of that
period, as solitary instances upon record; whereas it is our own
dearth of information that makes the waste ; for there is no time
more populous of intellect or more prolific of intellectual wealth
than the one we are speaking of. Shakspeare did not look upon him-
self in this light, as a sort of monster of poetical genius, or on his
contemporaries as " less than smallest dwarfs," when he speaks with
true, not false, modesty of himself and them and of his wayward
thoughts, " desiring this man's art, and that man's scope." We
fancy that there were no such men that could either add to or take
anything away from him, but such there were. He indeed over-
looks and commands the admiration of posterity, but he does it
from the tableland of the age in which he lived. He towered above
his fellows, " in shape and gesture proudly eminent ; " but he was
one of a race of giants — the tallest, the strongest, the most grace-
ful and beautiful of them. But it was a common and a noble brood.
He was not something sacred and aloof from the vulgar herd of
men, but shook hands with Nature and the circumstances of the
time, and is distinguished from his immediate contemporaries, not
in kind, but in degree and greater variety of excellence. He did
not form a class or species by himself, but belonged to a class or
species. His age was necessary to him; nor could he have been
wrenched from his place, in the edifice of which he was so con-
spicuous a part, without equal injury to himself and it. Mr.
Wordsworth says of Milton, that "his soul was like a star, and
dwelt apart." This cannot be said with any propriety of Shakspeare,
who certainly moved in a constellation of bright luminaries, and
"drew after him a third part of the heavens." If we allow, for
argument's sake (or for truth's, which is better), that he was in
himself equal to all his competitors put together, yet there was
more dramatic excellence in that age than in the whole of the
period that has elapsed since. If his contemporaries, with their
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE— INTRODUCTORY. 173
united strength, would hardly make one Shakspeare, certain it is
that all his successors would not make half a one. With the excep-
tion of a single writer, Otway, and of a single play of his (" Venice
Preserved "), there is nobody in tragedy and dramatic poetry (I
do not here speak of comedy) to be compared to the great men of
the age of Shakspeare and immediately after. They are a mighty
phalanx of kindred spirits closing him round, moving in the same
orbit, and impelled by the same causes in their whirling and
eccentric career. They had the same faults and the same excel-
lences ; the same strength and depth and richness ; the same truth
of character, passion, imagination, thought, and language, thrown,
heaped, massed together without careful polishing or exact method,
but poured out in unconcerned profusion from the lap of Nature
and Genius in boundless and unrivalled magnificence. The sweet-
ness of Decker, the thought of Marston, the gravity of Chapman,
the grace of Fletcher and his young-eyed wit, Jonson's learned
sock, the flowing vein of Middleton, Heywood's ease, the pathos of
Webster, and Marlowe's deep designs, add a double lustre to the
sweetness, thought, gravity, grace, wit, artless nature, copiousness,
ease, pathos, and sublime conceptions of Shakspeare's Muse. They
are indeed the scale by which we can best ascend to the true know-
ledge and love of him. Our admiration of them does not lessen
our relish for him, but, on the contrary, increases and confirms it.
For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy
and genius many causes may be assigned ; and we may seek for the
chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the
time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the
character of the men who adorned that period, and availed them-
selves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach.
I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, and
of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the
poetry of the country at the period of which I have to treat,
independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there
is no accounting, but which, after all, have often the greatest share
in determining the most important results.
The first cause I shall mention as contributing to this general
effect was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This
event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought
and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices
throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general ; but
the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-
grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow ; heaved the ground
from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience ; and the
174 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold,
might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet
subsided. Germany first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and
gave the watchword; but England joined the shout, and echoed
it back with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy
shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry the genius
of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations.
There was a mighty fermentation : the waters were out ; public
opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all
to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy ; their spirits
stirring ; their hearts full ; and their hands not idle. Their eyes
were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned
with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might
make them free. The death-blow which had been struck at scarlet
vice and bloated hypocrisy loosened their tongues, and made the
talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she
had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the
people, fall harmless from their necks.
The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great
work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of
religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a
shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the
lessons of inspired teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest
of the people. It gave them a common interest in the common
cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a,
mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought
and feeling. It cemented their union of character and sentiment ;
it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. They found
objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude
of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eager-
ness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in
maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the understanding
by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and
braces the will by their infinite importance. We perceive in the
history of this period a nervous masculine intellect. No levity,
no feebleness, no indifference ; or, if there were, it is a relaxation
from the intense activity which gives a tone to its general character.
But there is a gravity approaching to piety ; a seriousness of impres-
sion, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervour and
enthusiasm in their mode of handling almost every subject. The
debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough ; but they
wanted interest and grandeur, and were, besides, confined to a few :
they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE— INTRODUCTORY. 175
Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions " to run and
read," with its wonderful Table of Contents from Genesis to the
Revelations. Every village in England would present the scene so
well described in Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Night." I cannot think
that all this variety and weight of knowledge could be thrown in all
at once upon the mind of a people, and not make some impression
upon it, the traces of which might be discerned in the manners and
literature of the age. For to leave more disputable points, and
take only the historical parts of the Old Testament, or the moral
sentiments of the New, there is nothing like them in the power of
exciting awe and admiration, or of riveting sympathy. We see
what Milton has made of the account of the Creation, from the
manner in which he has treated it, imbued and impregnated with
the spirit of the time of which we speak. Or what is there equal
(in that romantic interest and patriarchal simplicity which goes to
the heart of a country, and rouses it, as it were, from its lair in
wastes and wildernesses) to the story of Joseph and his Brethren,
of Rachel and Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of Ruth and Boaz, the
descriptions in the Book of Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of
Egypt, or the account of their captivity and return from Babylon ?
There is in all these parts of the Scripture, and numberless more
of the same kind, to pass over the Orphic hymns of David, the pro-
phetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel,
an originality, a vastness of conception, a depth and tenderness of
feeling, and a touching simplicity in the mode of narration, which
he who does not feel need be made of no " penetrable stuff." There
is something in the character of Christ, too (leaving religious faith
quite out of the question), of more sweetness and majesty, and
more likely to work a change in the mind of man, by the contem-
plation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, whether
actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime humanity,
such as was never seen on earth before nor since. This shone
manifestly both in His words and actions. We see it in His wash-
ing the disciples' feet the night before His death, that unspeakable
instance of humility and love, above all art, all meanness, and all
pride, and in the leave He took of them on that occasion: "My
peace I give unto you; that peace which the world cannot give,
give I unto you ; " and in His last commandment, that " they should
love one another." Who can read the account of His behaviour on
the cross, when, turning to His mother, He said, " Woman, behold
thy son," and to the disciple John, "Behold thy mother," and
" from that hour that disciple took her to his own home," without
having his heart smote within him ? We see it in His treatment of
Q
176 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the woman taken in adultery, and in His excuse for the woman who
poured precious ointment on His garment as an offering of devotion
and love, which is here all in all. His religion was the religion of the
heart. We see it in His discourse with the disciples as they walked
together towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them ;
in His Sermon from the Mount, in His parable of the Good Samari-
tan, and in that of the Prodigal Son — in every act and word of His
life a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom
worthy of the Son of God. His whole life and being were imbued,
steeped in this word, charity ; it was the spring, the well-head from
which every thought and feeling gushed into act ; and it was thia
that breathed a mild glory from His face in that last agony upon
the cross, " when the meek Saviour bowed His head and died," pray-
ing for His enemies. He was the first true teacher of morality ; for
He alone conceived the idea of a pure humanity. He redeemed man
from the worship of that idol, self, and instructed him by precept
and example to love his neighbour as himself, to forgive our enemies,
to do good to those that curse us and despitefully use us. He taught
the love of good for the sake of good, without regard to personal or
sinister views, and made the affections of the heart the sole seat of
morality, instead of the pride of the understanding or the sternness
of the will. In answering the question, " Who is our neighbour ? "
as one who stands in need of our assistance, and whose wounds we
can bind up, He has done more to humanise the thoughts and tame
the unruly passions than all who have tried to reform and benefit
mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence, of the desire to
do good because another wants our services, and of regarding the
human race as one family, the offspring of one common parent, is
hardly to be found in any other code or system. It was " to the
Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." The Greeks
and Romans never thought of considering others, but as they were
Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by certain positive
ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by fiercer anti-
pathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines ; their
vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain
with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in
the Christian religion " we perceive a softness coming over the
heart of a nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it melt
and drop off." It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of forgiveness,
of relaxing in its claims and remitting its power. We strike it, and
is does not hurt us : it is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood,
clay tempered with tears, and (< soft as sinews of the new-born babe."
The Gospel was first preached to the poor, for it consulted their
I
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE— INTRODUCTORY. 177
wants and interests, not its own pride and arrogance. It first pro-
mulgated the equality of mankind in the community of duties and
benefits. It denounced the iniquities of the chief priests and Phari-
sees, and declared itself at variance with principalities and powers,
for it sympathises not with the oppressor but the oppressed. It
first abolished slavery, for it did not consider the power of the will
to inflict injury as clothing it with a right to do so. Its law is
good, not power. It at the same time tended to wean the mind
from the grossness of sense, and a particle of its divine flame was
lent to brighten and purify the lamp of love !
There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the Divine
mission of Christ, having taken an unaccountable prejudice to His
doctrines, and have been disposed to deny the merit of His character;
but this was not the feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth
(whatever might be their belief), one of whom says of Him, with a
boldness equal to its piety :
" The best of men
That e'er wore earth about Him was a sufferer ;
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit ;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed."
This was old honest Decker, and the lines ought to embalm his
memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy,
or humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help thinking that we may
discern the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the
spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting
terror and pity, in the delineation of the passions of grief, remorse,
love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings
after immortality, in the heaven of hope and the abyss of despair it
lays open to us.
The literature of this age, then, I would say, was strongly in-
fluenced (among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, and
secondly by the spirit of Protestantism.
The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy may
be seen in the writings and history of the next and of the following
ages. They are still at work, and will continue to be so. The
effects on the poetry of the time were chiefly confined to the mould-
ing of the character, and giving a powerful impulse to the intellect
of the country. The immediate use or application that was made of
religion to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an
obvious ground of separation) so direct or frequent as that which
was made of the classical and romantic literature.
For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of
the Greek *«id Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry
178 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of Spain and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown
open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. This last
circumstance could hardly have afforded so much advantage to the
poets of that day, who were themselves, in fact, the translators, as it
shows the general curiosity and increasing interest in such subjects
as a prevailing feature of the tunes. There were translations of
Tasso by Fairfax, and of Ariosto by Harrington, of Homer and
Hesiod by Chapman, and of Virgil long before, and Ovid soon after;
there was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, of which Shak-
speare has made such admirable use in his " Coriolanus " and "Julius
Csesar;" and Ben Jonson's tragedies of "Catiline" and "Sejanus"
may themselves be considered as almost literal translations into
verse of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero's "Orations" in his consulship.
Boccaccio, the divine Boccaccio, Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine,
Machiavel, Castiglione, and others were familiar to our writers, and
they make occasional mention of some few French authors, as
Ronsard and Du Bartas ; for the French literature had not at this
stage arrived at its Augustan period, and it was the imitation of
their literature a century afterwards, when it had arrived at its
greatest height (itself copied from the Greek and Latin), that en-
feebled and impoverished our own. But of the time that we are
considering it might be said, without much extravagance, that every
breath that blew, that every wave that rolled to our shores, brought
with it some accession to our knowledge, which was engrafted on
the national genius. In fact, all the disposable materials that had
been accumulating for a long period of time, either in our own or
in foreign countries, were now brought together, and required
nothing more than to be wrought up, polished, or arranged in
striking forms, for ornament and use. To this every inducement
prompted : the novelty of the acquisition of knowledge in many
cases, the emulation of foreign wits and of immortal works, the
want and the expectation of such works among ourselves, the op-
portunity and encouragement afforded for their production by
leisure and affluence ; and, above all, the insatiable desire of the
mind to beget its own image, and to construct out of itself, and for
the delight and admiration of the world and posterity, that excel-
lence of which the idea exists hitherto only in its own breast, and
the impression of which it would make as universal as the eye of
Heaven, the benefit as common as the air we breathe. The first
impulse of genius is to create what never existed before : the con-
templation of that which is so created is sufficient to satisfy the
demands of taste ; and it is the habitual study and imitation of the
original models that takes away the power and even wish to do the
ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE—INTRODUCTORY. 179
like. Taste limps after genius, and from copying the artificial
models we lose sight of the living principle of nature. It is the
effort we make and the impulse we acquire in overcoming the first
obstacles that projects us forward ; it is the necessity for exertion
that makes us conscious of our strength ; but this necessity and this
impulse once removed, the tide of fancy and enthusiasm, which is at
first a running stream, soon settles and crusts into the standing
pool of dulness, criticism, and vertu.
What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at this
period was the discovery of the New World and the reading of
voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to
arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste,
and invite the cupidity or wing the imagination of the dreaming
speculator. Fairyland was realised in new and unknown worlds.
" Fortunate fields and groves and flowery vales, thrice happy isles,"
were found floating, " like those Hesperian gardens famed of old,"
beyond Atlantic seas, as dropped from the zenith. The people, the
soil, the clime, everything gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of
the traveller and reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge
the bounds of knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled
at our feet. It is from a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that
Shakspeare has taken the hint of Prospero's Enchanted Island, and
of the savage Caliban with his god Setebos. Spenser seems to have
had the same feeling in his mind in the production of his " Faery
Queen," and vindicates his poetic fiction on this very ground of
analogy. . . .
Lastly, to conclude this account : What gave a unity and common
direction to all these causes was the natural genius of the country,
which was strong in these writers in proportion to their strength.
We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it, nor mend our-
selves if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when
we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our forte; for
what we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed
from others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets
and philosophers. That's something. We have had strong heads
and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and
left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for
truth and freedom. That is our natural style ; and it were to be
wished we had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has
given us a certain cast of thought and character, and our liberty
has enabled us to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not
moulded into every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent.
We are slow to think, and therefore impressions do not work upon
i8o WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC,
us till they act in masses. We are not forward to express our
feelings, and therefore they do not come from us till they force
their way in the most impetuous eloquence. Our language is, as
it were, to begin anew, and we make use of the most singular and
boldest combinations to explain ourselves. Our wit comes from us,
" like birdlime, brains and all." We pay too little attention to
form and method, leave our works in an unfinished state, but still
the materials we work in are solid and of Nature's mint ; we do not
deal in counterfeits. We both under and over do, but we keep an
eye to the prominent features, the main chance. We are more for
weight than show ; care only about what interests ourselves, instead
of trying to impose upon others by plausible appearances, and are
obstinate and intractable in not conforming to common rules, by
which many arrive at their ends with half the real waste of thought
and trouble. We neglect all but the principal object, gather our
force to make a great blow, bring it down, and relapse into sluggish-
ness and indifference again. Materiam superabat opus cannot be said
of us. We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsiness ; of
extravagance, but not of affectation ; of want of art and refinement,
but not of a want of truth and nature. Our literature, in a word,
is Gothic and grotesque, unequal and irregular, not cast in a
previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but of great weight
in the whole, and of incomparable value in the best parts. It aims
at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very
good indeed or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies
in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which is its
best period, before the introduction of a rage for French rules and
French models ; for, whatever may be the value of our own original
style of composition, there can be neither offence nor presumption
in saying, that it is at least better than our second-hand imitations
of others. Our understanding (such as it is and must remain to
be good for anything) is not a thoroughfare for commonplaces,
smooth as the palm of one's hand, but full of knotty points and
jutting excrescences, rough, uneven, overgrown with brambles ; and
I like this aspect of the mind (as some one said of the country),
where nature keeps a good deal of the soil in her own hands.
Perhaps the genius of our poetry has more of Pan than of Apollo ;
" but Pan is a god, Apollo is no more ! "
WEBSTER AND DECKER.
IT remains for me to say something of Webster and Decker. For
these two writers I do not know how to show my regard and admira-
THE EARLY DRAMATISTS. 181
tion sufficiently. Noble-minded Webster, gentle-hearted Decker,
how may I hope to "express ye unblamed," and repay to your
neglected manes some part of the debt of gratitude I owe for proud
and soothing recollections ? I pass by the " Appius and Virginia " of
the former, which is, however, a good, sensible, solid tragedy, cast
in a framework of the most approved models, with little to blame
or praise in it, except the affecting speech of Appius to Virginia just
before he kills her ; as well as Decker's " Wonder of a Kingdom," his
Jacomo Gentili, that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron,
and Old Fortunatus and his Wishing-cap, which last has the idle
garrulity of age, with the freshness and gaiety of youth still upon
its cheek and in its heart. These go into the common catalogue,
and are lost in the crowd ; but Webster's " Vittoria Corombona " I
cannot so soon part with ; and old honest Decker's Signer Orlando
Friscobaldo I shall never forget ! I became only of late acquainted
with this last-mentioned worthy character, but the bargain between
us is, I trust, for life. We sometimes regret that we had not sooner
met with characters like these, that seem to raise, revive, and give
a new zest to our being. Vain the complaint 1 We should never
have known their value if we had not known them always: they
are old, very old acquaintance, or we should not recognise them at
first sight. We only find in books what is already written within
" the red-leaved tables of our hearts." The pregnant materials are
there; "the pangs, the internal pangs are ready; and poor humanity's
afflicted will struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." But the
reading of fine poetry may indeed open the bleeding wounds, or pour
balm and consolation into them, or sometimes even close them up
for ever ! . . .
THE EARLY DRAMATISTS— APOSTROPHE.
... IN short, the great characteristic of the elder dramatic writers
is, that there is nothing theatrical about them. In reading them you
only think how the persons into whose mouths certain sentiments
are put would have spoken or looked : in reading Dryden and others
of that school you only think, as the authors themselves seem to
have done, how they would be ranted on the stage by some buskined
hero or tragedy-queen. In this respect, indeed, some of his more
obscure contemporaries have the advantage over Shakspeare himself,
inasmuch as we have never seen their works represented on the
stage ; and there is no stage-trick to remind us of it. The characters
of their heroes have not been cut down to fit into the prompt-book,
nor have we ever seen their names flaring in the play-bills in small
i82 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
or large capitals. I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of the
stage ; but I think still higher of nature, and next to that, of books.
They are the nearest to our thoughts : they wind into the heart ;
the poet's verse slides into the current of our blood. We read them
when young ; we remember them when old. We read there of what
has happened to others ; we feel that it has happened to ourselves.
They are to be had everywhere cheap and good. We breathe but
the air of books : we owe everything to their authors, on this side
barbarism ; and we pay them easily with contempt while living, and
with an epitaph when dead ! Michael Angelo is beyond the Alps ;
Mrs. Siddons has left the stage, and us to mourn her loss. Were
it not so, there are neither picture-galleries nor theatres-royal on
Salisbury Plain, where I write this ; but here, even here, with a few
old authors, I can manage to get through the summer or the winter
months without ever knowing what it is to feel ennui. They sit
with me at breakfast ; they walk out with me before dinner. After
a long walk through unfrequented tracks, after starting the hare
from the fern, or hearing the wing of the raven rustling above my
head, or being greeted by the woodman's " stern good-night," as he
strikes into his narrow homeward path, I can " take mine ease at
mine inn," beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands with Signor
Orlando Friscobaldo, as the oldest acquaintance I have. Ben
Jonson, learned Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Heywood are
there, and seated round, discourse the silent hours away. Shakspeare
is there himself, not in Gibber's manager's coat. Spenser is hardly
yet returned from a ramble through the woods, or is concealed
behind a group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton lies on the
table, as on an altar, never taken up or laid down without reverence.
Lyly's Endymion sleeps with the moon, that shines in at the window,
and a breath of wind stirring at a distance seems a sigh from the
tree under which he grew old. Faustus disputes in one corner of
the room with fiendish faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bella-
front soothes Matheo, Vittoria triumphs over her judges, and old
Chapman repeats one of the hymns of Homer, in his own fine trans-
lation ! I should have no objection to pass my life in this manner
out of the world, not thinking of it, nor it of me : neither abused
by my enemies nor defended by my friends ; careless of the future,
but sometimes dreaming of the past, which might as well be for-
gotten. Mr. Wordsworth has expressed this sentiment well (perhaps
I have borrowed it from him) :
" Books, dreams, are each a world ; and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good,
BACON. 183
Bound these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
Two shall be named pre-eminently dear,
The gentle lady married to the Moor,
And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.
Blessings be with them and eternal praise,
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight in deathless lays.
Oh, might my name be number'd among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days ! "
I have no sort of pretension to join in the concluding wish of the
last stanza ; but I trust the writer feels that this aspiration of his
early and highest ambition is already not unfulfilled !
BACON.
BACON has been called (and justly) one of the wisest of mankind.
The word wisdom characterises him more than any other. It was
not that he did so much himself to advance the knowledge of man
or nature, as that he saw what others had done to advance it, and
what was still wanting to its full accomplishment. He stood upon
the high vantage-ground of genius and learning, and traced, " as
in a map the voyager his course," the long devious march of human
intellect, its elevations and depressions, its windings and its errors.
He had a " large discourse of reason, looking before and after." He
had made an exact and extensive survey of human acquirements :
he took the gauge and meter, the depths and soundings of the
human capacity. He was master of the comparative anatomy of
the mind of man, of the balance of power among the different facul-
ties. He had thoroughly investigated and carefully registered the
steps and processes of his own thoughts, with their irregularities
and failures, their liabilities to wrong conclusions, either from the
difficulties of the subject or from moral causes, from prejudice, in-
dolence, vanity, from conscious strength or weakness ; and he applied
this self-knowledge on a mighty scale to the general advances or
retrograde movements of the aggregate intellect of the world. He
knew well what the goal and crown of moral and intellectual power
was, how far men had fallen short of it, and how they came to miss
it. He had an instantaneous perception of the quantity of truth
or good in any given system, and of the analogy of any given result
or principle to others of the same kind scattered through nature or
history. His observations take in a larger range, have more pro-
184 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
fundity from the fineness of his tact, and more comprehension from
the extent of his knowledge, along the line of which his imagination
ran with equal celerity and certainty, than any other persons whose
writings I know. He, however, seized upon these results rather by
intuition than by inference : he knew them in their mixed modes
and combined effects rather than by abstraction or analysis, as he
explains them to others, not by resolving them into their component
parts and elementary principles, so much as by illustrations drawn
from other things operating in like manner and producing similar
results; or as he himself has finely expressed it, "by the same
footsteps of Nature treading or printing upon several subjects or
matters." He had great sagacity of observation, solidity of judg-
ment, and scope of fancy ; in this resembling Plato and Burke, that
he was a popular philosopher and a philosophical declaimer. His
writings have the gravity of prose with the fervour and vividness of
poetry. His sayings have the effect of axioms, are at once striking
and self-evident. He views objects from the greatest height, and
his reflections require a sublimity in proportion to their profundity,
as in deep wells of water we see the sparkling of the highest fixed stars.
The chain of thought reaches to the centre, and ascends the brightest
heaven of invention. Reason in him works like an instinct, and his
slightest suggestions carry the force of conviction. His opinions are
judicial. His induction of particulars is alike wonderful for learning
and vivacity, for curiosity and dignity, and an all-pervading intellect
binds the whole together in a graceful and pleasing form. His style
is equally sharp and sweet, flowing and pithy, condensed and ex-
pansive, expressing volumes in a sentence, or amplifying a single
thought into pages of rich, glowing, and delightful eloquence. He
had great liberality from seeing the various aspects of things (there
was nothing bigoted or intolerant or exclusive about him), and yet
he had firmness and decision from feeling their weight and conse-
quences. His character was, then, an amazing insight into the limits
of human knowledge and acquaintance with the landmarks of human
intellect, so as to trace its past history or point out the path to
future inquirers ; but when he quits the ground of contemplation of
what others have done or left undone to project himself into future
discoveries, he becomes quaint and fantastic, instead of original.
His strength was in reflection, not in production : he was the sur-
veyor, not the builder, of the fabric of science. He had not strictly
the constructive faculty. He was the principal pioneer in the march
of modern philosophy, and has completed the education and dis-
cipline of the mind for the acquisition of truth, by explaining all
the impediments or furtherances that can be applied to it or cleared
SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 185
out of its way. In a word, he was one of the greatest men this
country has to boast, and his name deserves to stand, where it is
generally placed, by the side of those of our greatest writers, whether
we consider the variety, the strength, or splendour of his faculties,
for ornament or use. .
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
SIR, THOMAS BROWNE and Bishop Taylor were two prose-writers
in the succeeding age, who, for pomp and copiousness of style, might
be compared to Bacon. In all other respects they were opposed to
him and to one another. As Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts
to the practice of life, and to bring home the light of science to "the
bosoms and businesses of men," Sir Thomas Browne seemed to be
of opinion that the only business of life was to think, and that the
proper object of speculation was, by darkening knowledge, to breed
more speculation, and " find no en4 in wandering mazes lost." He
chose the incomprehensible and impracticable as almost the only
subjects fit for a lofty and lasting contemplation, or for the exercise
of a solid faith. He cried out for an oh altitudo beyond the heights
of revelation, and posed himself with apocryphal mysteries, as the
pastime of his leisure hours. He pushes a question to the utmost
verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the certainty of doubt ;
and he removes an object to the greatest distance from him, that
he may take a high and abstracted interest in it, consider it in its
relation to the sum of things, not to himself, and bewilder his un-
derstanding in the universality of its nature and the inscrutable-
ness of its origin. His is the sublime of indifference ; a passion for
the abstruse and imaginary. He turns the world round for his
amusement, as if it was a globe of pasteboard. He looks down on
sublunary affairs as if he had taken his station in one of the planets.
The antipodes are next-door neighbours to him, and doomsday is
not far off. With a thought he embraces both the poles ; the march
of his pen is over the great divisions of geography and chronology.
Nothing touches him nearer than humanity. He feels that he is
mortal only in the decay of nature and the dust of long-forgotten
tombs. The finite is lost in the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly
bodies or the history of empires are to him but a point in time or a
speck in the universe. The great Platonic year revolves in one of
his periods. Nature is too little for the grasp of his style. He
scoops an antithesis out of fabulous antiquity, and rakes up an
epithet from the sweepings of chaos. It is as if his books had
dropped from the clouds, or as if Friar Bacon's head could speak.
186 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
He stands on the edge of the world of sense and reason, and gains a
vertigo by looking down at impossibilities and chimeras. Or he busies
himself with the mysteries of the Cabala or the enclosed secrets
of the heavenly quincunxes, as children are amused with tales of
the nursery. The passion of curiosity (the only passion of child-
hood) had in him survived to old age, and had superannuated his
other faculties. He moralises and grows pathetic on a mere idle
fancy of his own, as if thought and being were the same, or as if
"all this world were one glorious lie." For a thing to have ever
had a name is sufficient warrant to entitle it to respectful belief,
and to invest it with all the rights of a subject and its predicates.
He is superstitious, but not bigoted : to him all religions are much
the same, and he says that he should not like to have lived in the
time of Christ and the apostles, as it would have rendered his faith
too gross and palpable. His gossiping egotism and personal char-
acter have been preferred unjustly to Montaigne's. He had no
personal character at all, but the peculiarity of resolving all the
other elements of his being into thought, and of trying experiments
on his own nature in an exhausted receiver of idle and unsatisfactory
speculations. All that he " differences himself by," to use his own
expression, is this moral and physical indifference. In describing
himself, he deals only in negatives. He says he has neither pre-
judices nor antipathies to manners, habits, climate, food, to persons
or things ; they were alike acceptable to him, as they afforded new
topics for reflection; and he even professes that he could never
bring himself heartily to hate the devil. He owns in one place of
the " Religio Medici," that " he could be content if the species were
continued like trees," and yet he declares that this was from no
aversion to love, or beauty, or harmony ; and the reasons he assigns
to prove the orthodoxy of his taste in this respect is, that he was
an admirer of the music of the spheres ! He tells us that he often
composed a comedy in his sleep. It would be curious to know the
subject or the texture of the plot. It must have been something
like Nabbes's " Mask of Microcosmus," of which the dramatis personce
have been already given ; or else a misnomer, like Dante's " Divine
Comedy of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory." He was twice married, as
if to show his disregard even for his own theory ; and he had a hand
in the execution of some old women for witchcraft, I suppose, to
keep a decorum in absurdity, and to indulge an agreeable horror at
his own fantastical reveries on the occasion. In a word, his mind
seemed to converse chiefly with the intelligible forms, the spectral
apparitions of things ; he delighted in the preternatural and vision-
ary, and he only existed at the circumference of his nature. He
JEREMY TAYLOR. 187
had the most intense consciousness of contradictions and nonenti-
ties, and he decks them out in the pride and pedantry of words as
if they were the attire of his proper person : the categories hang
about his neck like the golden chain of knighthood, and he " walks
gowned " in the intricate folds and sweeping drapery of dark sayings
and impenetrable riddles ! . . .
JEREMY TAYLOR.
JEREMY TAYLOR was a writer as different from Sir Thomas Browne
as it was possible for one writer to be from another. He was a
dignitary of the Church, and except in matters of casuistry and con-
troverted points, could not be supposed to enter upon speculative
doubts or give a loose to a sort of dogmatical scepticism. He had
less thought, less " stuff of the conscience," less " to give us pause,"
in his impetuous oratory, but he had equal fancy — not the same
vastness and profundity, but more richness and beauty, more warmth
and tenderness. He is as rapid, as flowing and endless, as the other
is stately, abrupt, and concentrated. The eloquence of the one is
like a river, that of the other is more like an aqueduct. The one is
as sanguine as the other is saturnine in the temper of his mind.
Jeremy Taylor took obvious and admitted truths for granted, and
illustrated them with an inexhaustible display of new and enchant-
ing imagery. Sir Thomas Browne talks in sum -totals : Jeremy
Taylor enumerates all the particulars of a subject. He gives every
aspect it will bear, and never " cloys with sameness." His charac-
teristic is enthusiastic and delightful amplification. Sir Thomas
Browne gives the beginning and end of things, that you may judge
of their place and magnitude : Jeremy Taylor describes their quali-
ties and texture, and enters into all the items of the debtor and
creditor account between life and death, grace and nature, faith and
good works. He puts his heart into his fancy. He does not pretend
to annihilate the passions and pursuits of mankind in the pride of
philosophic indifference, but treats them as serious and momentous
things, warring with conscience and the soul's health, or furnishing
the means of grace and hopes of glory. In his writings, the frail
stalk of human life reclines on the bosom of eternity. His " Holy
Living and Dying " is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faithful
followers of Christ, as the shepherd pipes to his flock. He introduces
touching and heartfelt appeals to familiar life ; condescends to men
of low estate ; and his pious page blushes with modesty and beauty.
His style is prismatic. It unfolds the colours of the rainbow; it
floats like the bubble through the air ; it is like innumerable dew-
1 88 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
drops that glitter on the face of morning, and tremble as they glitter.
He does not dig his way underground, but slides upon ice, borne on
the winged car of fancy. The dancing light he throws upon objects
is like an aurora borealis, playing betwixt heaven and earth :
" Where pure Niemi's faery banks arise,
And fringed with roses Tenglio rolls its stream."
His exhortations to piety and virtue are a gay memento mori. He
mixes up death's-heads and amaranthine flowers ; makes life a pro-
cession to the grave, but crowns it with gaudy garlands, and " rains
sacrificial roses " on its path. In a word, his writings are more like
fine poetry than any other prose whatever ; they are a choral song
in praise of virtue, and a hymn to the Spirit of the Universe.
CONCLUSION.
I HAVE done: and if I have done no better, the fault has been
in me, not in the subject. My liking to this grew with my know-
ledge of it ; but so did my anxiety to do it justice. I somehow felt
it as a point of honour not to make my hearers think less highly
of some of these old writers than I myself did of them. If I have
praised an author, it was because I liked him : if I have quoted a
passage, it was because it pleased me in the reading: if I have
spoken contemptuously of any one, it has been reluctantly. It is
no easy task that a writer, even in so humble a class as myself,
takes upon him ; he is scouted and ridiculed if he fails ; and if he
succeeds, the enmity and cavils and malice with which he is assailed
are just in proportion to his success. The coldness and jealousy
of his friends not infrequently keep pace with the rancour of his
enemies. They do not like you a bit the better for fulfilling the
good opinion they always entertained of you. They would wish you
to be always promising a great deal, and doing nothing, that they
may answer for the performance. That shows their sagacity and
does not hurt their vanity. An author wastes his time in painful
study and obscure researches, to gain a little breath of popularity,
and meets with nothing but vexation and disappointment in
ninety-nine instances out of a hundred ; or when he thinks to grasp
the luckless prize, finds it not worth the trouble — the perfume of
a minute, fleeting as a shadow, hollow as a sound ; " as often got
without merit as lost without deserving." He thinks that the
attainment of acknowledged excellence will secure him the expres-
sion of those feelings in others which the image and hope of it
had excited in his own breast ; but instead of that, he meets with
THE PAST AND FUTURE. 189
nothing (or scarcely nothing) but squint-eyed suspicion, idiot
wonder, and grinning scorn. It seems hardly worth while to have
taken all the pains he has been at for this !
In youth we borrow patience from our future years: the spring
of hope gives us courage to act and suffer. A cloud is upon our
onward path, and we fancy that all is sunshine beyond it. The
prospect seems endless, because we do not know the end of it. We
think that life is long because art is so, and that because we have
much to do it is well worth doing : or that no exertions can be too
great, no sacrifices too painful, to overcome the difficulties we have
to encounter. Life is a continued struggle to be what we are not,
and to do what we cannot. But as we approach the goal we draw
in the reins ; the impulse is less, as we have not so far to go : as
we see objects nearer, we become less sanguine in the pursuit : it
is not the despair of not attaining, so much as knowing that there
is nothing worth obtaining, and the fear of having nothing left even
to wish for, that damps our ardour and relaxes our efforts ; and if
the mechanical habit did not increase the facility, would, I believe,
take away all inclination or power to do anything. We stagger
on the few remaining paces to the end of our journey ; make per-
haps one final effort ; and are glad when our task is done !
[Table- Talk, or Original Essays on Men and Manners, 2 vols., 1821-2. Second
Edition, 1824. Third Edition, 1845-6. Fourth Edition, 1873. Many
of these Essays originally appeared in the London Magazine and other
Periodicals.]
THE PAST AND FUTURE.
I HAVE naturally but little imagination, and am not of a very
sanguine turn of mind. I have some desire to enjoy the present
good, and some fondness for the past ; but I am not at all given to
building castles in the air, nor to look forward with much confidence
or hope to the brilliant illusions held out by the future. Hence I
have perhaps been led to form a theory which is very contrary to
the common notions and feelings on the subject, and which I will
here try to explain as well as I can.
I cannot see, then, any rational or logical ground for that mighty
difference in the value which mankind generally set upon the past
and future, as if the one was everything and the other nothing — •
of no consequence whatever. On the other hand, I conceive that
the past is as real and substantial a part of our being, that it is as
igo WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
much a bond fide, undeniable consideration in the estimate of human
life, as the future can possibly be. To say that the past is of no
importance, unworthy of a moment's regard, because it has gone by
and is no longer anything, is an argument that cannot be held to
any purpose ; for if the past has ceased to be, and is therefore to
be accounted nothing in the scale of good or evil, the future is yet
to come, and has never been anything. Should any one choose to
assert that the present only is of any value in a strict and positive
sense, because that alone has a real existence, that we should seize
the instant good and give all else to the winds, I can understand
what he means (though perhaps he does not himself) ; but I cannot
comprehend how this distinction between that which has a down-
right and sensible and that which has only a remote and airy exist-
ence can be applied to establish the preference of the future over
the past ; for both are in this point of view equally ideal, absolutely
nothing, except as they are conceived of by the mind's eye, and are
thus rendered present to the thoughts and feelings. Nay, the one
is even more imaginary, a more fantastic creature of the brain than
the other, and the interest we take in it more shadowy and gratui-
tous; for the future, on which we lay so much stress, may never
come to pass at all, that is, may never be embodied into actual
existence in the whole course of events, whereas the past has cer-
tainly existed once, has received the stamp of truth, and left an
image of itself behind. It is so far, then, placed beyond the possibility
of doubt, or as the poet has it,
" Those joys are lodg'd beyond the reach of fate."
It is not, however, attempted to be denied that though the future
is nothing at present, and has no immediate interest while we are
speaking, yet it is of the utmost consequence in itself, and of the
utmost interest to the individual, because it will have a real exist-
ence, and we have an idea of it as existing in time to come. Well,
then, the past also has no real existence ; the actual sensation and
the interest belonging to it are both fled; but it has had a real
existence, and we can still call up a vivid recollection of it as having
once been ; and therefore, by parity of reasoning, it is not a thing
perfectly insignificant in itself, nor wholly indifferent to the mind,
whether it ever was or not. Oh no ! Far from it ! Let us not
rashly quit our hold upon the past, when perhaps there may be little
else left to bind us to existence. Is it nothing to have been, and to
have been happy or miserable ? Or is it a matter of no moment to
think whether I have been one or the other ? Do I delude myself,
do I build upon a shadow or a dream, do I dress up in the gaudy
THE PAST AND FUTURE. 191
garb of idleness and folly a pure fiction, with nothing answering to
it in the universe of things and the records of truth, when I look
back with fond delight or with tender regret to that which was
at one time to me my all, when I revive the glowing image of some
bright reality,
" The thoughts of which can never from my heart" ?
Do I then muse on nothing, do I bend my eyes on nothing, when
I turn back in fancy to " those suns and skies so pure " that lighted
up my early path ? Is it to think of nothing, to set an idle value
upon nothing, to think of all that has happened to me, and of all
that can ever interest me ? Or, to use the language of a fine poet
(who is himself among my earliest and not least painful recol-
lections) :
" What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever vanish'd from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flow'r ? " —
yet am I mocked with a lie when I venture to think of it ? Or do
I not drink in and breathe again the air of heavenly truth when
I but " retrace its footsteps, and its skirts far off adore " ? I cannot
s>ay with the same poet :
"And see how dark tho backward stream,
A little moment past so smiling " —
for it is the past that gives me most delight and most assurance
of reality. What to me constitutes the great charm of the " Con-
fessions of Rousseau" is their turning so much upon this feeling.
He seems to gather up the past moments of his being like drops
of honey-dew to distil a precious liquor from them ; his alternate
pleasures and pains are the bead-roll that he tells over and piously
worships ; he makes a rosary of the flowers of hope and fancy that
strewed his earliest years. When he begins the last of the " Reveries
of a Solitary Walker," " II y a aujourd'hui, jour des Pdques Fleuris,
cinquante cms depuis que fai premier vu Madame Warens" what a
yeaming of the soul is implied in that short sentence ! Was all
that had happened to him, all that he had thought and felt in that
sad interval of time, to be accounted nothing? Was that long,
dim, faded retrospect of years happy or miserable — a blank that
was not to make his eyes fail and his heart faint within him in try-
ing to grasp all that had once filled it and that had since vanished,
because it was not a prospect into futurity? Was he wrong in
finding more to interest him in it than in the next fifty years —
192 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
which he did not live to see; or if he had, what then? Would
they have been worth thinking of, compared with the times of his
youth, of his first meeting with Madame Warens, with those times
which he has traced with such truth and pure delight "in our
heart's tables " ? When " all the life of life was flown," was he not
to live the first and best part of it over again, and once more be
all that he then was ? — Ye woods that crown the clear lone brow
of Norman Court, why do I revisit ye so oft, and feel a soothing
consciousness of your presence, but that your high tops waving in
the wind recall to me the hours and years that are for ever fled ;
that ye renew in ceaseless murmurs the story of long-cherished
hopes and bitter disappointment ; that in your solitudes and tangled
wilds I can wander and lose myself as I wander on and am lost in
the solitude of my own heart ; and that as your rustling branches
give the loud blast to the waste below — borne on the thoughts of
other years, I can look down with patient anguish at the cheerless
desolation which I feel within ! Without that face pale as the
primrose with hyacinthine locks, for ever shunning and for ever
haunting me, mocking my waking thoughts as in a dream ; without
that smile which my heart could never turn to scorn ; without those
eyes dark with their own lustre, still bent on mine, and drawing
the soul into their liquid mazes like a sea of love; without that
name trembling in fancy's ear ; without that form gliding before
me like Oread or Dryad in fabled groves, what should I do ? how
pass away the listless leaden-footed hours ? Then wave, wave on,
ye woods of Tuderley, and lift your high tops in the «ir ; my sighs
and vows uttered by your mystic voice breathe into me my former
being, and enable me to bear the thing I am ! — The objects that
we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the
weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future
lot. The future is like a dead wall or a thick mist hiding all objects
from our view ; the past is alive and stirring with objects, bright
or solemn, and of unfading interest. What is it, in fact, that we
recur to oftenest ? What subjects do we think or talk of ? Not
the ignorant future, but the well-stored past. Othello, the Moor
of Venice, amused himself and his hearers at the house of Signor
Brabantio by " running through the story of his life even from his
boyish days," and oft " beguiled them of their tears, when he did
speak of some disastrous stroke which his youth suffered." This
plan of ingratiating himself would not have answered if the past
had been, like the contents of an old almanac, of no use but to
be thrown aside and forgotten. What a blank, for instance, does
the history of the world for the next six thousand years present to
THE PAST AND FUTURE. 193
the mind, compared with that of the last ! All that strikes the
imagination or excites any interest in the mighty scene is what has
been !
Neither in itself, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation
has the future any advantage over the past. But with respect
to our grosser passions and pursuits it has. As far as regards the
appeal to the understanding or the imagination, the past is just as
good, as real, of as much intrinsic and ostensible value as the future ;
but there is another principle in the human mind, the principle of
action or will; and of this the past has no hold, the future en-
grosses it entirely to itself. It is this strong lever of the affections
that gives so powerful a bias to our sentiments on this subject,
and violently transposes the natural order of our associations. We
regret the pleasures we have lost, and eagerly anticipate those which
are to come : we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we
have escaped (Posthcec mcminisse iuvabif), and dread future pain.
The good that is past is in this sense like money that is spent, which
is of no further use, and about which we give ourselves little concern.
The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, and in the enjoy-
ment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What
has happened to us we think of no consequence : what is to happen
to us, of the greatest. Why so ? Simply because the one is still
in our power, and the other not, because the efforts of the will to
bring any object to pass or to prevent it strengthen our attachment
or aversion to that object, because the pains and attention bestowed
upon anything add to our interest in it, and because the habitual
and earnest pursuit of any end redoubles the ardour of our expecta-
tions, and converts the speculative and indolent satisfaction we
might otherwise feel in it into real passion. Our regrets, anxiety,
and wishes are thrown away upon the past ; but the insisting on the
importance of the future is of the utmost use in aiding our resolu-
tions and stimulating our exertions. If the future were no more
amenable to our wills than the past ; if our precautions, our sanguine
schemes, our hopes and fears, were of as little avail in the one case
as the other; if we could neither soften our minds to pleasure nor
steel our fortitude to the resistance of pain beforehand ; if all objects
drifted along by us like straws or pieces of wood in a river, the will
being purely passive, and as little able to avert the future as to
arrest the past, we should in that case be equally indifferent to both ;
that is, we should consider each as they affected the thoughts and
imagination with certain sentiments of approbation or regret, but
without the importunity of action, the irritation of the will, throw-
ing the whole weight of passion and prejudice into one scale, and
194 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
leaving the other quite empty. While the blow is coming we pre-
pare to meet it, we think to ward off or break its force, we arm our-
selves with patience to endure what cannot be avoided, we agitate
ourselves with fifty needless alarms about it ; but when the blow is
struck the pang is over, the struggle is no longer necessary, and we
cease to harass or torment ourselves about it more than we can help.
It is not that the one belongs to the future and the other to time
past ; but that the one is a subject of action, of uneasy apprehension,
of strong passion, and that the other has passed wholly out of the
sphere of action into the region of
" Calm contemplation and majestic pains."
It would not give a man more concern to know that he should be
put to the rack a year hence than to recollect that he had been put
to it a year ago, but that he hopes to avoid the one, whereas he must
sit down patiently under the consciousness of the other. In this
hope he wears himself out in vain struggles with fate, and puts him-
self to the rack of his imagination every day he has to live in the
meanwhile. When the event is so remote or so independent of the
will as to set aside the necessity of immediate action, or to baffle all
attempts to defeat it, it gives us little more disturbance or emotion
than if it had already taken place, or were something to happen in
another state of being, or to an indifferent person. Criminals are
observed to grow more anxious as their trial approaches ; but after
their sentence is passed they become tolerably resigned, and gener-
ally sleep sound the night before its execution.
It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more
or less importance to past and future events according as they are
more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those
who have a fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power,
think little of the past, for it does not contribute greatly to their
views : those who have nothing to do but to think take nearly the
same interest in the past as in the future. The contemplation of
the one is as delightful and real as that of the other. The season
of hope has an end ; but the remembrance of it is left. The past
still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to look back upon
the way that they have trod, and can from it " catch glimpses that
may make them less forlorn." The turbulence of action and un-
easiness of desire must point to the future : it is only in the quiet
innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of pastoral ages, that a
tomb was found with this inscription, " I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN ! "
Though I by no means think that our habitual attachment to
life is in exact proportion to the value of the gift, yet I am not one
THE PAST AND FUTURE. 195
of those splenetic persons who affect to think it of no value at all.
Que pen de chose est la vie humaine ! is an exclamation in the mouths
of moralists and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little,
it is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, and
leave out all that has gone before, which has been one way of
looking at the subject. Such calculators seem to say that life is
nothing when it is over, and that may, in their sense, be true. If
the old rule, Respice finem, were to be made absolute, and no one
could be pronounced fortunate till the day of his death, there are
few among us whose existence would, upon those conditions, be
much to be envied. But this is not a fair view of the case. A
man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the
candle ; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a little matter,
whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish
conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated desires or
forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say a man never
was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he
is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not
depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be
judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the
first nor last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these
two — not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what
we do, feel, and think while there — that we are to attend to in
pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would be easy to show
that it is the very extent of human life, the infinite number of
things contained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests,
the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months,
years spent in one fond pursuit after another ; that it is, in a word,
the length of our common journey, and the quantity of events
crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception,
make it slide from our memory and dwindle into nothing in its
own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing !
It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big
enough to hold its striking groups, its endless subjects ? It is light
as vanity, and yet if all its weary moments, if all its head and heart
aches were compressed into one, what fortitude would not be over-
whelmed with the blow ! What a huge heap, a " huge, dumb heap,"
of wishes, thoughts, feelings, anxious cares, soothing hopes, loves,
joys, friendships, it is composed of ! How many ideas and trains of
sentiment, long and deep and intense, often pass through the mind
in only one day's thinking or reading, for instance ! How many
such days are there in a year, how many years in a long life, still
occupied with something interesting, still recalling some old im-
196 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
pression, still recurring to some difficult question and making pro-
gress in it, every step accompanied with a sense of power, and
every moment conscious of " the high endeavour or the glad suc-
cess ; " for the mind seizes only on that which keeps it employed,
and is wound up to a certain pitch of pleasurable excitement or
lively solicitude, by the necessity of its own nature. . . .
The passions contract and warp the natural progress of life. They
paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice.
This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of child-
hood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A
load of cares lies like a weight of guilt upon the mind ; so that a
man of business often has all the air, the distraction and restless-
ness and hurry of feeling of a criminal. A knowledge of the world
takes away the freedom and simplicity of thought as effectually as
the contagion of its example. The artlessness and candour of our
early years are open to all impressions alike, because the mind
is not clogged and preoccupied with other objects. Our pleasures
and our pains come single, make room for one another, and the
spring of the mind is fresh and unbroken, its aspect clear and
unsullied. Hence " the tear forgot as soon as shed, the sunshine of
the breast." But as we advance farther the will gets greater head.
We form violent antipathies and indulge exclusive preferences. We
make up our minds to some one thing, and if we cannot have that,
will have nothing. We are wedded to opinion, to fancy, to pre-
judice, which destroys the soundness of our judgments and the
serenity and buoyancy of our feelings. The chain of habit coils
itself round the heart, like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it. It
grows rigid and callous ; and for the softness and elasticity of child-
hood, full of proud-flesh and obstinate tumours. The violence and
perversity of our passions come in more and more to overlay our
natural sensibility and well-grounded affections ; and we screw our-
selves up to aim only at those things which are neither desirable
nor practicable. Thus life passes away in the feverish irritation of
pursuit and the certainty of disappointment. By degrees, nothing
but this morbid state of feeling satisfies us ; and all common
pleasures and cheap amusements are sacrificed to the demon of
ambition, avarice, or dissipation. The machine is overwrought :
the parching heat of the veins dries up and withers the flowers of
Love, Hope, and Joy ; and any pause, any release from the rack of
ecstasy on which we are stretched, seems more insupportable than
the pangs which we endure. We are suspended between tormenting
desires and the horrors of ennui. The impulse of the will, like the
wheels of a carriage going downhill, becomes too strong for the
THE PAST AND FUTURE. 197
driver, Reason, and cannot be stopped nor kept within bounds.
Some idea, some fancy, takes possession of the brain ; and however
ridiculous, however distressing, however ruinous, haunts us by a
sort of fascination through life.
Not only is this principle of excessive irritability to be seen at
work in our more turbulent passions and pursuits, but even in the
formal study of arts and sciences the same thing takes place, and
undermines the repose and happiness of life. The eagerness of
pursuit overcomes the satisfaction to result from the accomplish-
ment. The mind is overstrained to attain its purpose ; and when
it is attained, the ease and alacrity necessary to enjoy it are
gone. The irritation of action does not cease and go down with
the occasion for it ; but we are first uneasy to get to the end of our
work, and then uneasy for want of something to do. The ferment
of the brain does not of itself subside into pleasure and soft repose.
Hence the disposition to strong stimuli observable in persons of
much intellectual exertion to allay and carry off the overexcite-
ment. The improvisatori poets (it is recorded by Spence in his
" Anecdotes of Pope ") cannot sleep after an evening's continued
display of their singular and difficult art. The rhymes keep running
in their head in spite of themselves, and will not let them rest.
Mechanics and labouring people never know what to do with them-
selves on a Sunday, though they return to their work with greater
spirit for the relief, and look forward to it with pleasure all the
week. Sir Joshua Reynolds was never comfortable out of his paint-
ing-room, and died of chagrin and regret because he could not paint
on to the last moment of his life. He used to say that he could
go on retouching a picture for ever, as long as it stood on his easel ;
but as soon as it was once fairly out of the house he never wished
to see it again. An ingenious artist of our own time has been
heard to declare, that if ever the devil got him into his clutches he
would set him to copy his own pictures. Thus the secure, self-com-
placent retrospect to what is done is nothing, while the anxious,
uneasy looking forward to what is to come is everything. We are
afraid to dwell upon the past, lest it should retard our future pro-
gress ; the indulgence of ease is fatal to excellence ; and to succeed
in life we lose the ends of being.
198 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
CAPACITY AND GENIUS.
[From the article " On Genius and Common-Sense. "]
CAPACITY is not the same thing as genius. Capacity may be de-
scribed to relate to the quantity of knowledge, however acquired, —
genius to its quality and the mode of acquiring it. Capacity is power
over given ideas or combinations of ideas ; genius is the power over
those which are not given, and for which no obvious or precise rule
can be laid down. Or capacity is power of any sort ; genius is power
of a different sort from what has yet been shown. A retentive
memory, a clear understanding, is capacity, but it is not genius.
The Admirable Crichton was a person of prodigious capacity, but
there is no proof (that I know) that he had an atom of genius. His
verses that remain are dull and sterile. He could learn all that was
known of any subject : he could do anything if others could show
him the way to do it. This was very wonderful ; but that is all you
can say of it. It requires a good capacity to play well at chess ;
but, after all, it is a game of skill, and not of genius. Know what
you will of it, the understanding still moves in certain tracks in
which others have trod it before, quicker or slower, with more or
less comprehension and presence of mind. The greatest skill strikes
out nothing for itself, from its own peculiar resources ; the nature
of the game is a thing determinate and fixed : there is no royal or
poetical road to checkmate your adversary. There is no place for
genius but in the indefinite and unknown. The discovery of the
binomial theorem was an effort of genius ; but there was none shown
in Jedediah Buxton's being able to multiply nine figures by nine
in his head. If he could have multiplied ninety figures by ninety
instead of nine, it would have been equally useless toil and trouble.
He is a man of capacity who possesses considerable intellectual
riches : he is a man of genius who finds out a vein of new ore.
Originality is the seeing nature differently from others, and yet as
it is in itself. It is not singularity or affectation, but the discovery
of new and valuable truth. All the world do not see the whole
meaning of any object they have been looking at. Habit blinds
them to some things : short-sightedness to others. Every mind is
not a gauge and measure of truth. Nature has her surface and her
dark recesses. She is deep, obscure, and infinite. It is only minds
on whom she makes her fullest impressions that can penetrate her
shrine or unveil her Holy of Holies. It is only those whom she has
filled with her spirit that have the boldness or the power to reveal
CAPACITY AND GENIUS— ORIGINALITY. 199
her mysteries to others. But nature has a thousand aspects, and
one man can only draw out one of them. Whoever does this is a
man of genius. One displays her force, another her refinement ; one
her power of harmony, another her suddenness of contrast ; one her
beauty of form, another her splendour of colour. Each does that
for which he is best fitted by his particular genius ; that is to say,
by some quality of mind into which the quality of the object sinks
deepest where it finds the most cordial welcome, is perceived to its
utmost extent, and where again it forces its way out from the
fulness with which it has taken possession of the mind of the
student. The imagination gives out what it has first absorbed by
congeniality of temperament, what it has attracted and moulded
into itself by elective affinity, as the loadstone draws and impreg-
nates iron. A little originality is more esteemed and sought for
than the greatest acquired talent, because it throws a new light
upon things and is peculiar to the individual. The other is com-
mon, and may be had for the asking, to any amount.
The value of any work is to be judged of by the quantity of origi-
nality contained in it. A very little of this will go a great way.
If Goldsmith had never written anything but the two or three first
chapters of the " Vicar of Wakefield " or the character of a Village
Schoolmaster, they would have stamped him a man of genius.
The editors of Encyclopaedias are not usually reckoned the first
literary characters of the age. The works of which they have the
management contain a great deal of knowledge, like chests or ware-
houses, but the goods are not their own. We should as soon think
of admiring the shelves of a library ; but the shelves of a library are
useful and respectable. I was once applied to, in a delicate emer-
gency, to write an article on a difficult subject for an Encyclopaedia,
and was advised to take time and give it a systematic and scientific
form, to avail myself of all the knowledge that was to be obtained
on the subject, and arrange it with clearness and method. I made
answer that, as to the first, I had taken time to do all that I ever
pretended to do, as I had thought incessantly on different matters
for twenty years of my life ; that I had no particular knowledge of
the subject in question, and no head for arrangement ; and that the
utmost I could do in such a case would be, when a systematic and
scientific article was prepared, to write marginal notes upon it, to
insert a remark or illustration of my own (not to be found in former
Encylopsedias) or to suggest a better definition than had been offered
in the text. There are two sorts of writing. The first is compilation,
and consists in collecting and stating all that is already known of
any question in the best possible manner, for the benefit of the un-
200 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
informed reader. An author of this class is a very learned amanuensis
of other people's thoughts. The second sort proceeds on an entirely
different principle. Instead of bringing down the account of know-
ledge to the point at which it has already arrived, it professes to
start from that point on the strength of the writer's individual re-
flections ; and supposing the reader in possession of what is already
known, supplies deficiencies, fills up certain blanks, and quits the
beaten road in search of new tracts of observation or sources of
feeling. It is in vain to object to this last style that it is disjointed,
disproportioned, and irregular. It is merely a set of additions and
corrections to other men's works, or to the common stock of human
knowledge, printed separately. You might as well expect a con-
tinued chain of reasoning in the notes to a book. It skips all the
trite, intermediate, level commonplaces of the subject, and only
stops at the difficult passages of the human mind, or touches on
some striking point that has been overlooked in previous editions.
A view of a subject, to be connected and regular, cannot be all new.
A writer will always be liable to be charged either with paradox or
commonplace, either with dulness or affectation. But we have no
right to demand from any one more than he pretends to. There is
indeed a medium in all things, but to unite opposite excellences is
a task ordinarily too hard for mortality. He who succeeds in what
he aims at, or who takes the lead in any one mode or path of excel-
lence, may think himself very well off. It would not be fair to com-
plain of the style of an Encyclopaedia as dull, as wanting volatile
salt, nor of the style of an Essay because it is too light and spark-
ling, because it is not a caput mortuum. ... I grant it best to unite
solidity with show, general information with particular ingenuity.
This is the pattern of a perfect style ; but I myself do not pretend
to be a perfect writer. In fine, we do not banish light French wines
from our tables, or refuse to taste sparkling Champagne when we
can get it because it has not the body of old port. Besides, I do
not know that dulness is strength, or that an observation is slight
because it is striking. Mediocrity, insipidity, want of character, is
the great fault.
It is not, then, acuteness of organs or extent of capacity that con-
stitutes rare genius or produces the most exquisite models of art,
but an intense sympathy with some one beauty or distinguishing
characteristic in nature. Irritability alone, or the interest taken
in certain things, may supply the place of genius in weak and
otherwise ordinary minds. As there are certain instruments fitted
to perform certain kinds of labour, there are certain minds so framed
as to produce certain chef-d'ceuvres in art and literature, which is
PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 201
surely the best use they can be put to. If a man had all sorts of
instruments in his shop and wanted one, he would rather have that
one than be supplied with a double set of all the others. If he had
them twice over, he could only do what he can do as it is, whereas
without that one he perhaps cannot finish any one work he has in
hand. So if a man can do one thing better than anybody else, the
value of this one thing is what he must stand or fall by, and his
being able to do a hundred other things merely as well as anybody
else would not alter the sentence or add to his respectability ; on
the contrary, his being able to do so many other things well would
probably interfere with and encumber him in the execution of the
only thing that others cannot do as well as he, and so far be a
drawback and a disadvantage. More people, in fact, fail from
a multiplicity of talents and pretensions than from an absolute
poverty of resources. . . .
ON PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA.
THERE are people who have but one idea ; at least, if they have more
they keep it a secret, for they never talk but of one subject. There
is Major Cartwright : he has but one idea or subject of discourse,
Parliamentary Reform. Now this a very good thing, a very good
idea, and a very good subject to talk about ; but why should it be the
only one ? To hear the worthy and gallant Major resume his favourite
topic is like law-business, or a person who has a suit in Chancery
going on. Nothing can be attended to, nothing can be talked
of, but that. Now it is getting on, now again it is standing still ;
at one time the Master has promised to pass judgment by a certain
day, at another he has put it off again and called for more papers,
and both are equally reasons for speaking of it. Like the piece of
packthread in the barrister's hands, he turns and twists it all ways,
and cannot proceed a step without it. Some schoolboys cannot
read but in their own book ; and the man of one idea cannot con-
verse out of his own subject. Conversation it is not ; but a sort
of recital of the preamble of a bill, or a collection of grave argu-
ments for a man's being of opinion with himself. It would be well
if there was anything of character, of eccentricity in all this ; but
that is not the case. It is a political homily personified, a walking
commonplace we have to encounter and listen to. It is just as
if a man was to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth
chapter of the Book of Judges every time you meet, or like the
story of the Cosmogony in the " Vicar of Wakefield." It is a tune
played on a barrel-organ. It is a common vehicle of discourse into
202 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
which they get and are set down when they please, without any
pains or trouble to themselves. Neither is it professional pedantry
or trading quackery : it has no excuse. The man has no more to
do with the question which he saddles on all his hearers than you
have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a farmer talks
to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a physician about his
patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a merchant about stock,
or an author about himself, you know how to account for this;
it is a common infirmity ; you have a laugh at his expense, and
there is no more to be said. But here is a man who goes out of
his way to be absurd, and is troublesome by a romantic effort of
generosity. You cannot say to him, " All this may be interesting
to you, but I have no concern in it : " you cannot put him off in
that way. He retorts the Latin adage upon you, Nihil humani a
me alienum puto. He has got possession of a subject which is of
universal and paramount interest (not "a fee-grief, due to some
single breast "), and on that plea may hold you by the button as
long as he chooses. His delight is to harangue on what nowise
regards himself : how, then, can you refuse to listen to what as little
amuses you? Time and tide wait for no man. The business of
the State admits of no delay. The question of Universal Suffrage
and Annual Parliaments stands first on the order of the day — takes
precedence in its own right of every other question. Any other
topic, grave or gay, is looked upon in the light of impertinence, and
sent to Coventry. Business is an interruption ; pleasure a digression
from it. It is the question before every company where the Major
comes, which immediately resolves itself into a committee of the
whole world upon it, is carried on by means of a perpetual virtual
adjournment, and it is presumed that no other is entertained while
this is pending — a determination which gives its persevering advo-
cate a fair prospect of expatiating on it to his dying day. As Cicero
says of study, it follows him into the country, it stays with him at
home : it sits with him at breakfast, and goes out with him to
dinner. It is like a part of his dress, of the costume of his person,
without which he would be at a loss what to do. If he meets you
in the street, he accosts you with it as a form of salutation : if you
see him at his own house, it is supposed you come upon that. If
you happen to remark, " It is a fine day, or the town is full," it is
considered as a temporary compromise of the question; you are
suspected of not going the whole length of the principle. As
Sancho, when reprimanded for mentioning his homely favourite in
the Duke's kitchen, defended himself by saying, " There I thought
of Dapple, and there I spoke of him," so the true stickler for
PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 203
Reform neglects no opportunity of introducing the subject wherever
he is. Place its veteran champion under the frozen north, and he
will celebrate sweet smiling Reform : place him under the midday
Afric suns, and he will talk of nothing but Reform — Reform so
sweetly smiling and so sweetly promising for the last forty years —
" Dulce ridentem Lalagen,
Dulce loquentem I "
A topic of this sort of which the person himself may be considered
as almost sole proprietor and patentee is an estate for life, free from
all encumbrance of wit, thought, or study; you live upon it as a
settled income ; and others might as well think to eject you out of
a capital freehold house and estate as think to drive you out of it
into the wide world of common-sense and argument. Every man's
house is his castle, and every man's commonplace is his stronghold,
from which he looks out and smiles at the dust and heat of con-
troversy, raised by a number of frivolous and vexatious questions —
" Rings the world with the vain stir ! " A cure for this and every
other evil would be a Parliamentary Reform ; and so we return in
a perpetual circle to the point from which we set out. Is not this
a species of sober madness more provoking than the real ? Has not
the theoretical enthusiast his mind as much warped, as much en-
slaved by one idea, as the acknowledged lunatic, only that the former
has no lucid intervals ? If you see a visionary of this class going
along the street, you can tell as well what he is thinking of and will
say next as the man that fancies himself a teapot or the Czar of
Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible to reason as the other : if the
one raves, the other dotes !
There are some who fancy the Corn Bill the root of all evil, and
others who trace all the miseries of life to the practice of muffling
up children in night-clothes when they sleep or travel. They will
declaim by the hour together on the first, and argue themselves
black in the face on the last. It is in vain that you give up the
point. They persist in the debate, and begin again — " But don't
you see — ?" These sort of partial obliquities, as they are more
entertaining and original, are also by their nature intermittent.
They hold a man but for a season. He may have one a year or
every two years ; and though, while he is in the heat of any new
discovery, he will let you hear of nothing else, he varies from him-
self, and is amusing undesignedly. He is not like the chimes at
midnight.
People of the character here spoken of, that is, who tease you to
death with some one idea, generally differ in their favourite notion
204 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
from the rest of the world ; and, indeed, it is the love of distinction
which is mostly at the bottom of this peculiarity. Thus one person
is remarkable for living on a vegetable diet, and never fails to en-
tertain you all dinner-time with an invective against animal food.
One of this self-denying class, who adds to the primitive simplicity
of this sort of food the. recommendation of having it in a raw state,
lamenting the death of a patient whom he had augured to be in a
good way as a convert to his system, at last accounted for his dis-
appointment in a whisper — "But she ate meat privately, depend
upon it." It is not pleasant, though it is what one submits to
willingly from some people, to be asked, every time you meet,
whether you have qiu'te left off drinking wine, and to be compli-
mented or condoled with on your looks according as you answer in
the negative or affirmative. Abernethy thinks his pill an infallible
cure for all disorders. A person once complaining to his physician
that he thought his mode of treatment had not answered, he
assured him it was the best in the world, — " and as a proof of it,"
says he, " I have had one gentleman, a patient with your disorder,
under the same regimen for the last sixteen years ! " — I have known
persons whose minds were entirely taken up at all times and on all
occasions with such questions as the Abolition of the Slave-trade,
the Restoration of the Jews, or the progress of Unitarianism. I
myself at one period took a pretty strong turn to inveighing against
the Doctrine of Divine Right, and am not yet cured of my pre-
judice on that subject. How many projectors have gone mad in
good earnest from incessantly harping on one idea, the discovery of
the philosopher's stone, the finding out the longitude, or paying off
the national debt ! The disorder at length comes to a fatal crisis ;
but long before this, and while they were walking about and talking
as usual, the derangement of the fancy, the loss of all voluntary
power to control or alienate their ideas from the single subject that
occupied them, was gradually taking place, and overturning the
fabric of the understanding by wrenching it all on one side. Some
persons have got a definition of the verb, others a system of short-
hand, others a cure for typhus fever, others a method for preventing
the counterfeiting of bank-notes, which they think the best possible,
and indeed the only one. Others insist there have been only three
great men in the world, leaving you to add a fourth. A man who
has been in Germany will sometimes talk of no thing but what
is German : a Scotchman always leads the discourse to his own
country. Some descant on the Kantean philosophy. There is a
conceited fellow about town who talks always and everywhere on
this subject. He wears the Categories round his neck like a pearl-
PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 205
chain : he plays off the names of the primary and transcendental
qualities like rings on his fingers. He talks of the Kantean system
while he dances ; he talks of it while he dines, he talks of it to his
children, to his apprentices, to his customers. He called on me to
convince me of it, and said I was only prevented from becoming a
complete convert by one or two prejudices. He knows no more
about it than a pikestaff. Why, then, does he make so much
ridiculous fuss about it ? It is not that he has got this one idea in
his head, but that he has got no other. A dunce may talk on the
subject of the Kantean philosophy with great impunity : if he
opened his lips on any other, he might be found out. A French
lady who had married an Englishman who said little, excused him
by saying, " He is always thinking of Locke and Newton." This is
one way of passing muster by following in the suite of great names !
— A friend of mine, whom I met one day in the street, accosted me
with more than usual vivacity, and said, " Well, we're selling, we're
selling ! " I thought he meant a house. " No," he said ; " haven't
you seen the advertisement in the newspapers ? I mean five-and-
twenty copies of the Essay." This work, a comely, capacious quarto
on the most abstruse metaphysics, had occupied his sole thoughts
for several years, and he concluded that I must be thinking of what
he was. . . .
Mr. Owen is a man remarkable for one idea. It is that of himself
and the Lanark cotton-mills. He carries this idea backwards and
forwards with him from Glasgow to London, without allowing any-
thing for attrition, and expects to find it in the same state of purity
and perfection in the latter place as at the former. He acquires a
wonderful velocity and impenetrability in his undaunted transit.
Resistance to him is vain while the whirling motion of the mail-
coach remains in his head.
" Nor Alps nor Apennines can keep him out,
Nor fortified redoubt. "
He even got possession, in the suddenness of his onset, of the
steam-engine of the Times newspaper, and struck off ten thousand
woodcuts of the " Projected Villages," which afforded an ocular
demonstration to all who saw them of the practicability of Mr. Owen's
whole scheme. He comes into a room with one of these documents
in his hand, with the air of a schoolmaster and a quack doctor
mixed, asks very kindly how you do, and on hearing you are still in
an indifferent state of health owing to bad digestion, instantly turns
round and observes, that " all that will be remedied in his plan ;
that, indeed, he thinks too much attention has been paid to the mind,
2c6 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and not enough to the body ; that in his system, which he has now
perfected, and which will shortly be generally adopted, he has pro-
vided effectually for both ; that he has been long of opinion that
the mind depends altogether on the physical organisation, and
where the latter is neglected or disordered, the former must languish
and want its due vigour ; that exercise is therefore a part of his
system, with full liberty to develop every faculty of mind and body;
that two objections had been made to his ' New View of Society,'
viz., its want of relaxation from labour and its want of variety ; but
the first of these, the too great restraint, he trusted he had already
answered, for where the powers of mind and body were freely exer-
cised and brought out, surely liberty must be allowed to exist in
the highest degree; and as to the second, the monotony which
would be produced by a regular and general plan of co-operation, he
conceived he had proved in his ' New View ' and ' Addresses to the
Higher Classes ; ' that the co-operation he had recommended was
necessarily conducive to the most extensive improvement of the
ideas and faculties, and where this was the case, there must be the
greatest possible variety instead of a want of it." And having said
this, this expert and sweeping orator takes up his hat and walks
downstairs after reading his lecture of truisms like a playbill or an
apothecary's advertisement ; and should you stop him at the door
to say, by way of putting in a word in common, that Mr. Southey
seems somewhat favourable to his plan in his late Letter to Mr.
William Smith, he looks at you with a smile of pity at the futility
of all opposition and the idleness of all encouragement. People
who thus swell out some vapid scheme of their own into undue
importance seem to me to labour under water in the head — to
exhibit a huge hydrocephalus ! They may be very worthy people
for all that, but they are bad companions and very indifferent
reasoners. . . .
I hate to be surfeited with anything, however sweet. I do not
want to be always tied to the same question, as if there were no
other in the world. I like a mind more Catholic.
" I love to talk with mariners
That come from a far countree."
I am not for " a collusion " but " an exchange " of ideas. It is
well to hear what other people have to say on a number of subjects.
I do not wish to be always respiring the same confined atmosphere,
but to vary the scene, and get a little relief and fresh air out of
doors. Do all we can to shake it off, there is always enough
pedantry, egotism, and self-conceit left lurking behind; we need
PEOPLE WITH ONE IDEA. 207
not seal ourselves up hermetically in these precious qualities; so
as to think of nothing but our own wonderful discoveries, and hear
nothing but the sound of our own voice. Scholars, like princes,
may learn something by being incognito. Yet we see those who
cannot go into a bookseller's shop, or bear to be five minutes hi a
stage-coach, without letting you know who they are. They carry
their reputation about with them as the snail does its shell, and sit
under its canopy, like the lady in the lobster. I cannot understand
this at all. What is the use of a man's always revolving round his
own little circle ? He must, one should think, be tired of it him-
self, as well as tire other people. A well-known writer says with
much boldness, both in the thought and expression, that " a Lord
is imprisoned in the Bastille of a name, and cannot enlarge himself
into man ; " and I have known men of genius in the same predica-
ment. Why must a man be for ever mouthing out his own poetry,
comparing himself with Milton, passage by passage, and weighing
every line in a balance of posthumous fame which he holds in his
own hands ? It argues a want of imagination as well as common-
sense. Has he no ideas but what he has put into verse, or none
in common with his hearers? Why should he think it the only
scholar-like thing, the only " virtue extant," to see the merit of his
writings, and that " men are brutes without them " ? Why should
he bear a grudge to all art, to all beauty, to all wisdom that does
not spring from his own brain ? Or why should he fondly imagine
that there is but one fine thing in the world, namely, poetry, and
that he is the only poet in it ? It will never do. Poetry is a very
fine thing ; but there are other things besides it. Everything must
have its turn. Does a wise man think to enlarge his comprehension
by turning his eyes only on himself, or hope to conciliate the ad-
miration of others by scouting, proscribing, and loathing all that
they delight in ? He must either have a disproportionate idea of
himself, or be ignorant of the world in which he lives. It is quite
enough to have one class of people born to think the universe made
for them ! — It seems also to argue a want of repose, of confidence,
and firm faith in a man's real pretensions to be always dragging
them forward into the foreground, as if the proverb held here,
Out of sight out of mind. Does he, for instance, conceive that no
one would ever think of his poetry unless he forced it upon them
by repeating it himself ? Does he believe all competition, all allow-
ance of another's merit, fatal to him ? Must he, like Moody in the
" Country Girl," lock up the faculties of his admirers in ignorance of
all other fine things, painting, music, the antique, lest they should
play truant to him ? Methinks such a proceeding implies no good
8
208 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
opinion of his own genius or their taste : — it is deficient in dignity
and in decorum. Surely if any one is convinced of the reality of an
acquisition, he can bear not to have it spoken of every minute. If
he knows he has an undoubted superiority in any respect, he will
not be uneasy because every one he meets is not in the secret, nor
staggered by the report of rival excellence.
There are persons who, without being chargeable with the vice
here spoken of, yet " stand accountant for as great a sin ; " though
not dull and monotonous, they are vivacious mannerists in their
conversation and excessive egotists. Though they run over a thou-
sand subjects in mere gaiety of heart, their delight still flows from
one idea, namely, themselves. Open the book in what page you
will, there is a frontispiece of themselves staring you in the face.
They are a sort of Jacks 61 the Green, with a sprig of laurel, a little
tinsel, and a little smut, but still playing antics and keeping in
incessant motion, to attract attention and extort your pittance of
approbation. Whether they talk of the town or the country, poetry
or politics, it comes to much the same thing. If they talk to you
of the town, its diversions, " its palaces, its ladies, and its streets,"
they are the delight, the grace, and ornament of it. If they are
describing the charms of the country, they give no account of any
individual spot or object or source of pleasure but the circumstance
of their being there. " With them conversing, we forget all place,
all seasons, and their change." They perhaps pluck a leaf or a
flower, patronise it, and hand it you to admire, but select no one
feature of beauty or grandeur to dispute the palm of perfection with
their own persons. Their rural descriptions are mere landscape
backgrounds with their own portraits in an engaging attitude in
front. They are not observing or enjoying the scene, but doing
the honours as masters of the ceremonies to nature, and arbiters
of elegance to all humanity. If they tell a love-tale of enamoured
princesses, it is plain they fancy themselves the hero of the piece.
If they discuss poetry, their encomiums still turn on something
genial and unsophisticated, meaning their own style ; if they enter
into politics, it is understood that a hint from them to the potentates
of Europe is sufficient. In short, as a lover (talk of what you will)
brings in his mistress at every turn, so these persons contrive to
divert your attention to the same darling object — they are, in fact,
in love with themselves, and, like lovers, should be left to keep their
own company.
THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 209
THE INDIAN JUGGLERS.
COMING forward and seating himself on the ground in his white
dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian jugglers begins
with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do,
and concludes with keeping up four at the same time, which is what
none of us could do to save our lives, nor if we were to take our
whole lives to do it in. Is it, then, a trifling power we see at work,
or is it not something next to miraculous ? It is the utmost stretch
of human ingenuity, which nothing but the bending the faculties
of body and mind to it from the tenderest infancy with incessant,
ever-anxious application up to manhood can accomplish or make
even a slight approach to. Man, thou art a wonderful animal, and
thy ways past finding out ! Thou canst do strange things, but thou
turnest them to little account ! — To conceive of this effort of extra-
ordinary dexterity distracts the imagination and makes admiration
breathless. Yet it costs nothing to the performer, any more than
if it were a mere mechanical deception with which he had nothing
to do but to watch and laugh at the astonishment of the spectators.
A single error of a hair's-breadth, of the smallest conceivable portion
of time, would be fatal : the precision of the movements must be
like a mathematical truth, their rapidity is like lightning. To catch
four balls in succession in less than a second of time, and deliver
them back so as to return with seeming consciousness to the
hand again ; to make them revolve round him at certain intervals,
like the planets in their spheres ; to make them chase one another
like sparkles of fire, or shoot up like flowers or meteors ; to throw
them behind his back and twine them round his neck like ribbons
or like serpents ; to do what appears an impossibility, and to do it
with all the ease, the grace, the carelessness imaginable ; to laugh at,
to play with the glittering mockeries ; to follow them with his eye
as if he could fascinate them with its lambent fire, or as if he had
only to see that they kept time with the music on the stage — there
is something in all this which he who does not admire may be quite
sure he never really admired anything in the whole course of his
life. It is skill surmounting difficulty, and beauty triumphing
over skill. It seems as if the difficulty once mastered naturally
revolved itself into ease and grace, and as if, to be overcome
at all, it must be overcome without an effort. The smallest
awkwardness or want of pliancy or self-possession would stop
the whole process. It is the work of witchcraft, and yet sport
210 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
for children. Some of the other feats are quite as curious and
wonderful, such as the balancing the artificial tree and shooting a
bird from each branch through a quill ; though none of them have
the elegance or facility of the keeping up of the brass balls. You
are in pain for the result, and glad when the experiment is over ;
they are not accompanied with the same unmixed, unchecked delight
as the former ; and I would not give much to be merely astonished
without being pleased at the same time. As to the swallowing of
the sword, the police ought to interfere to prevent it. When I saw
the Indian juggler do the same things before, his feet were bare,
and he had large rings on the toes, which kept turning round all
the time of the performance, as if they moved of themselves. The
hearing a speech in Parliament, drawled or stammered out by the
Honourable Member or the Noble Lord, the ringing the changes on
their commonplaces, which any one could repeat after them as well
as they, stirs me not a jot, shakes not my good opinion of myself ;
but the seeing the Indian jugglers does. It makes me ashamed of
myself. I ask what there is that I can do as well as this ? Nothing.
What have I been doing all my life ? Have I been idle, or have I
nothing to show for* all my labour and pains ? Or have I passed my
time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone
up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the
teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding
them ? Is there no one thing in which I can challenge competition,
that I can bring as an instance of exact perfection, in which others
cannot find a flaw? The utmost I can pretend to is to write a
description of what this fellow can do. I can write a book ; so can
many others who have not even learned to spell. What abortions are
these Essays ! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked
reasons, what lame conclusions ! How little is made out, and that
little how ill ! Yet they are the best I can do. I endeavour to
recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon a subject, and
to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects
at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the thread of one
discourse clear and unentangled. I have also time on my hands to
correct my opinions and polish my periods ; but the one I cannot,
and the other I will not do. I am fond of arguing ; yet with a good
deal of pains and practice it is often as much as I can do to beat
my man, though he may be an indifferent hand. A common fencer
would disarm his adversary in the twinkling of an eye, unless he
were a professor like himself. A stroke of wit will sometimes pro-
duce this effect, but there is no such power or superiority in sense
or reasoning. There is no complete mastery of execution to be
THE INDIAN "JUGGLERS. 211
shown there ; and yoxi hardly know the professor from the impudent
pretender or the mere clown. . . .
Further, what is meant by perfection in mechanical exercises is
the performing certain feats to a uniform nicety, that is, in fact,
undertaking no more than you can perform. You task yourself;
the limit you fix is optional, and no more than human industry and
skill can attain to ; but you have no abstract, independent standard
of difficulty or excellence (other than the extent of your own
powers). Thus he who can keep up four brass balls does this to
perfection; but he cannot keep up five at the same instant, and
would fail every time he attempted it. That is, the mechanical
performer undertakes to emulate himself, not to equal another.
But the artist undertakes to imitate another, or to do what nature
has done, and this, it appears, is more difficult, viz., to copy what
she has set before us in the face of nature or " human face divine,"
entire and without a blemish, than to keep up four brass balls at
the same instant ; for the one is done by the power of human skill
and industry, and the other never was nor will be. Upon the whole,
therefore, I have more respect for Reynolds than I have for Richer;
for, happen how it will, there have been more people in the world
who could dance on a rope like the one than who could paint like
Sir Joshua. The latter was but a bungler in his profession to the
other, it is true ; but then he had a harder taskmaster to obey,
whose will was more wayward and obscure, and whose instructions
it was more difficult to practise. You can put a child apprentice
to a tumbler or rope-dancer with a comfortable prospect of success,
if they are but sound of wind and limb ; but you cannot do the
same thing in painting. The odds are a million to one. You may
make, indeed, as many Haydons and H s as you put into that
sort of machine, but not one Reynolds amongst them all, with his
grace, his grandeur, his blandness of gusto, " in tones and gestures
hit," unless you could make the man over again. To snatch this
grace beyond the reach of art is, then, the height of art, where fine
art begins, and where mechanical skill ends. The soft suffusion of
the soul, the speechless breathing eloquence, the looks " commercing
with the skies," the ever-shifting forms of an eternal principle, that
which is seen but for a moment, but dwells in the heart always,
and is only seized as it passes by strong and secret sympathy, must
be taught by nature and genius, not by rules or study. It is sug-
gested by feeling, not by laborious microscopic inspection ; in seek-
ing for it without, we lose the harmonious clue to it within ; and
in aiming to grasp the substance, we let the very spirit of art
evaporate. In a word, the objects of fine art are not the objects
212 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of sight but as these last are the objects of taste and imagination,
that is, as they appeal to the sense of beauty, of pleasure, and of
power in the human breast, and are explained by that finer sense,
and revealed in their inner structure to the eye in return. Nature
is also a language. Objects, like words, have a meaning ; and the
true artist is the interpreter of this language, which he can only
do by knowing its application to a thousand other objects in a
thousand other situations. Thus the eye is too blind a guide of
itself to distinguish between the warm or cold tone of a deep-blue
sky, but another sense acts as a monitor to it, and does not err.
The colour of the leaves in autumn would be nothing without the
feeling that accompanies it ; but it is that feeling that stamps them
on the canvas, faded, seared, blighted, shrinking from the winter's
flaw, and makes the sight as true as touch
" And visions, as poetic eyes avow,
Cling to each leaf and hang on every bough."
The more ethereal, evanescent, more refined and sublime part of
art is the seeing nature through the medium of sentiment and
passion, as each object is a symbol of the affections and a link in the
chain of our endless being. But the unravelling this mysterious
web of thought and feeling is alone in the Muse's gift, namely, in
the power of that trembling sensibility which is awake to every
change and every modification of its ever-varying impressions, that
' ' Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line. "
This power is indifferently called genius, imagination, feeling,
taste ; but the manner in which it acts upon the mind can neither
be defined by abstract rules, as is the case in science, nor verified
by continual unvarying experiments, as is the case in mechanical
performances. The mechanical excellence of the Dutch painters in
colouring and handling is that which comes the nearest in fine art
to the perfection of certain manual exhibitions of skill. The truth
of the effect and the facility with which it is produced are equally
admirable. Up to a certain point, everything is faultless. The
hand and eye have done their part. There is only a want of
taste and genius. It is after we enter upon that enchanted
ground that the human mind begins to droop and flag as in a
strange road or in a thick mist, benighted and making little way
with many attempts and many failures, and that the best of us only
escape with half a triumph. The undefined and the imaginary are
the regions that we must pass like Satan, difficult and doubtful,
" half-flying, half on foot." The object in sense is a positive thing,
and execution conies with practice.
THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 213
Cleverness is a certain knack or aptitude at doing certain things
which depend more on a particular adroitness and off-hand readiness
than on force or perseverance, such as making puns, making epi-
grams, making extempore verses, mimicking the company, mimicking
a style, &c. Cleverness is either liveliness and smartness, or some-
thing answering to sleight-of-hand, like letting a glass fall sideways
off a table, or else a trick, like knowing the secret spring of a watch.
Accomplishments are certain external graces, which are to be learned
from others, and which are easily displayed to the admiration of the
beholder, viz., dancing, riding, fencing, music, and so on. These
ornamental acquirements are only proper to those who are at ease
in mind and fortune. I know an individual who, if he had been
born to an estate of five thousand a year, would have been the
most accomplished gentleman of the age. He would have been the
delight and envy of the circle in which he moved — would have graced
by his manners the liberality flowing from the openness of his heart,
would have laughed with the women, have argued with the men,
have said good things and written agreeable ones, have taken a hand
at piquet or the lead at the harpsichord, and have set and sung his
own verses — nugce canorce — with tenderness and spirit ; a Rochester
without the vice, a modern Surrey ! As it is, all these capabilities
of excellence stand in his way. He is too versatile for a professional
man, not dull enough for a political drudge, too gay to be happy,
too thoughtless to be rich. He wants the enthusiasm of the poet,
the severity of the prose-writer, and the application of the man of
business. — Talent is the capacity of doing anything that depends
on application and industry, such as writing a criticism, making a
speech, studying the law. Talent differs from genius, as voluntary
differs from involuntary power. Ingenuity is genius in trifles,
greatness is genius in undertakings of much pith and moment. A
clever or ingenious man is one who can do anything well, whether it
is worth doing or not ; a great man is one who can do that which
when done is of the highest importance. Themistocles said he could
not play on the flute, but that he could make of a small city a
great one. This gives one a pretty good idea of the distinction
in question.
Greatness is great power, producing great effects. It is not
enough that a man has great power in himself, he must show it to
all the world in a way that cannot be hid or gainsaid. He must
fill up a certain idea in the public mind. I have no other notion of
greatness than this twofold definition, great results springing from
great inherent energy. The great in visible objects has relation to
that which extends over space : the great in mental ones has to do
214 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
with space and time. No man is truly great who is great only in
his life-time. The test of greatness is the page of history. Nothing
can be said to be great that has a distinct limit, or that borders on
something evidently greater than itself. Besides, what is short-
lived and pampered into mere notoriety is of a gross and vulgar
quality in itself. A Lord Mayor is hardly a great man. A city
orator or patriot of the day only show, by reaching the height of
their wishes, the distance they are at from any true ambition.
Popularity is neither fame nor greatness. A king (as such) is not
a great man. He has great power, but it is not his own. He
merely wields the lever of the State, which a child, an idiot, or a
madman can do. It is the office, not the man, we gaze at. Any
one else in the same situation would be just as much an object of
abject curiosity. We laugh at the country girl who, having seen a
king, expressed her disappointment by saying, " Why, he is only a
man ! " Yet, knowing this, we run to see a king as if he was some-
thing more than a man. To display the greatest powers, unless
they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character
of greatness. To throw a barleycorn through the eye of a needle,
to multiply nine figures by nine in the memory, argues definite
dexterity of body and capacity of mind, but nothing comes of either.
There is a surprising power at work, but the effects are not propor-
tionate, or such as take hold of the imagination. To impress the
idea of power on others, they must be made in some way to feel it.
It must be communicated to their understandings in the shape of
an increase of knowledge, or it must subdue and overawe them by
subjecting their wills. Admiration to be solid and lasting must be
founded on proofs from which we have no means of escaping ; it is
neither a slight nor a voluntary gift. A mathematician who solves
a profound problem, a poet who creates an image of beauty in the
mind that was not there before, imparts knowledge and power to
others, in which his greatness and his fame consists, and on which
it reposes. Jedediah Buxton will be forgotten ; but Napier's bones
will live. Lawgivers, philosophers, founders of religion, conquerors
and heroes, inventors and great geniuses in arts and sciences, are
great men, for they are great public benefactors, or formidable
scourges to mankind. Among ourselves, Shakspeare, Newton,
Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for they showed great
power by acts and thoughts, which have not yet been consigned to
oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature whose shadows
lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer may be a
great man ; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind,
the author of " Don Quixote " was a great man. So have there been
THE INDIAN JUGGLERS. 215
many others. A great chess-player is not a great man, for he
leaves the world as he found it. No act terminating in itself
constitutes greatness. This will apply to all displays of power or
trials of skill, which are confined to the momentary, individual
effort, and construct no permanent image or trophy of themselves
without them. Is not an actor, then, a great man, because "he
dies and leaves the world no copy " ? I must make an exception
for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness for her
sake. A man at the top of his profession is not therefore a great
man. He is great in his way, but that is all, unless he shows the
marks of a great moving intellect, so that we trace the master-mind,
and can sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The rest
is but a craft or mystery. John Hunter was a great man — that any
one might see without the smallest skill in surgery. His style and
manner showed the man. He would set about cutting up the carcass
of a whale with the same greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo
would have hewn a block of marble. Lord Nelson was a great naval
commander ; but for myself, I have not much opinion of a seafaring
life. Sir Humphry Davy is a great chemist, but I am not sure
that he is a great man. I am not a bit the wiser for any of his
discoveries, nor I never met with any one that was. But it is in
the nature of greatness to propagate an idea of itself, as wave impels
wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms for a
coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has always an
idea of something greater than himself. I have observed that
certain sectaries and polemical writers have no higher compli-
ment to pay their most shining lights than to say that " such a one
was a considerable man in his day." Some new elucidation of a
text sets aside the authority of the old interpretation, and a " great
scholar's memory outlives him half-a-century," at the utmost. A
rich man is not a great man, except to his dependents and his
steward. A lord is a great man in the idea we have of his ancestry,
and probably of himself, if we know nothing of him but his title.
I have heard a story of two bishops, one of whom said (speaking of
St. Peter's at Home) that when he first entered it he was rather
awe-struck, but that as he walked up it his mind seemed to swell
and dilate with it and at last to fill the whole building : the other
said, that as he saw more of it he appeared to himself to grow less
and less every step he took, and in the end to dwindle into nothing.
This was in some respects a striking picture of a great and little
mind — for greatness sympathises with greatness, and littleness
shrinks into itself. The one might have become a Wolsey; the
other was only fit to become a Mendicant Friar — or there might
216 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
have been court-reasons for making him a bishop. The French
have to me a character of littleness in all about them ; but they
have produced three great men that belong to every country,
Moliere, Rabelais, and Montaigne.
JOHN CAVANAGH.
To return from this digression, and conclude the Essay. A singular
instance of manual dexterity was shown in the person of the late
John Cavanagh, whom I have several times seen. His death was
celebrated at the time in an article in the Examiner newspaper
(February 7, 1819), written apparently between jest and earnest;
but as it is pat to our purpose, and falls in with my own way of con-
sidering such subjects, I shall here take leave to quote it : —
" Died at his house in Burbage Street, St. Giles's, John Cavanagh,
the famous hand fives-player. When a person dies who does any
one thing better than any one else in the world, which so many
others are trying to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not
likely that any one will now see the game of fives played in its perfec-
tion for many years to come — for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left
his peer behind him. It may be said that there are things of more
importance than striking a ball against a wall — there are things,
indeed, that make more noise and do as little good, such as making
war and peace, making speeches and answering them, making verses
and blotting them, making money and throwing it away. But
the game of fives is what no one despises who has ever played at it.
It is the finest exercise for the body, and the best relaxation for the
mind. The Roman poet said that ' Care mounted behind the horse-
man and stuck to his skirts.' But this remark would not have
applied to the fives-player. He who takes to playing at fives is
twice young. He feels neither the past nor future ' in the instant.'
Debts, taxes, 'domestic treason, foreign levy, nothing can touch
him further.' He has no other wish, no other thought, from the
moment the game begins, but that of striking the ball, of placing
it, of malting it! This Cavanagh was sure to do. Whenever he
touched the ball there was an end of the chase. His eye was
certain, his hand fatal, his presence of mind complete. He could
do what he pleased, and he always knew exactly what to do. He
saw the whole game, and played it ; took instant advantage of his
adversary's weakness, and recovered balls, as if by a miracle and from
sudden thought, that every one gave for lost. He had equal power
and skill, quickness and judgment. He could either outwit his
JOHN CAVANAGH, THE FIVES-PLAYER. 217
antagonist by finesse, or beat him by main strength. Sometimes,
when he seemed preparing to send the ball with the full swing of
his arm, he would by a slight turn of his wrist drop it within an
inch of the line. In general, the ball came from his hand, as if
from a racket, in a straight horizontal line ; so that it was in vain
to attempt to overtake or stop it. As it was said of a great orator
that he never was at a loss for a word, and for the properest word,
so Cavanagh always could tell the degree of force necessary to be
given to a ball, and the precise direction in which it should be sent.
He did his work with the greatest ease, never took more pains than
was necessary, and while others were fagging themselves to death,
was as cool and collected as if he had just entered the court. His
style of play was as remarkable as his power of execution. He had
no affectation, no trifling. He did not throw away the game to
show off an attitude or try an experiment. He was a fine, sensible,
manly player, who did what he could, but that was more than any
one else could even affect to do. His blows were not undecided and
ineffectual — lumbering like Mr. Wordsworth's epic poetry, nor waver-
ing like Mr. Coleridge's lyric prose, nor short of the mark like Mr.
Brougham's speeches, nor wide of it like Mr. Canning's wit, nor foul
like the Quarterly, nor let balls like the Edinburgh Review. Cobbett
and Junius together would have made a Cavanagh. He was the
best uphill player in the world ; even when his adversary was four-
teen, he would play on the same or better, and as he never flung
away the game through carelessness and conceit, he never gave it up
through laziness or want of heart. The one peculiarity of his play
was that he never volleyed, but let the balls hop ; but if they rose
an inch from the ground, he never missed having them. There was
not only nobody equal, but nobody second to him. It is supposed
that he could give any other player half the game, or beat them
with his left hand. His service was tremendous. He once played
Woodward and Meredith together (two of the best players in
England) in the Fives-court, St. Martin's Street, and made seven-
and-twenty aces following by services alone — a thing unheard of.
He another time played Peru, who was considered a first-rate fives-
player, a match of the best out of five games, and in the three first
games, which of course decided the match, Peru got only one ace.
Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth, and a house-painter by pro-
fession. He had once laid aside his working-dress, and walked up,
in his smartest clothes, to the Rosemary Branch to have an after-
noon's pleasure. A person accosted him, and asked him if he would
have a game. So they agreed to play for half-a-crown a game and
a bottle of cider. The first game began — it was seven, eight, ten,
218 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
thirteen, fourteen, all. Cavanagh won it. The next was the same.
They played on, and each game was hardly contested. ' There,' said
the unconscious fives-player, 'there was a stroke that Cavanagh
could not take: I never played better in my life, and yet I can't win a
game. I don't know how it is ! ' However, they played on, Cavanagh
winning every game and the bystanders drinking the cider and laugh-
ing all the time. In the twelfth game, when Cavanagh was only
four, and the stranger thirteen, a person came in and said, ' What !
are you here, Cavanagh ? ' The words were no sooner pronounced
than the astonished player let the ball drop from his hand, and
saying, ' What ! have I been breaking my heart all this time to
beat Cavanagh ? ' refused to make another effort. ' And yet, I give
you my word,' said Cavanagh, telling the story with some triumph,
' I played all the while with my clenched fist.' — He used frequently
to play matches at Copenhagen House for wagers and dinners.
The wall against which they play is the same that supports the
kitchen chimney, and when the wall resounded louder than usual,
the cooks exclaimed, 'Those are the Irishman's balls,' and the
joints trembled on the spit ! — Goldsmith consoled himself that
there were places where he too was admired ; and Cavanagh was
the admiration of all the fives-courts where he ever played. Mr.
Powell, when he played matches in the court in St. Martin's
Street, used to fill his gallery at half-a-crown a head, with amateurs
and admirers of talent in whatever department it is shown. He
could not have shown himself in any ground in England but he
would have been immediately surrounded with inquisitive gazers,
trying to find out in what part of his frame his unrivalled skill lay.
He was a young fellow of sense, humour, and courage. He once
had a quarrel with a waterman at Hungerford Stairs, and, they say,
served him out in great style. In a word, there are hundreds at
this day who cannot mention his name without admiration, as the
best fives-player that perhaps ever lived (the greatest excellence
of which they have any notion) ; and the noisy shout of the ring
happily stood him in stead of the unheard voice of posterity ! The
only person who seems to have excelled as much in another way
as Cavanagh did in his was the late John Davies, the racket-player.
It was remarked of him that he did not seem to follow the ball,
but the ball seemed to follow him. Give him a foot of wall, and
he was sure to make the ball. The four best racket-players of that
day were Jack Spines, Jem Harding, Armitage, and Church. Davies
could give any one of these two hands a time, that is, half the
game, and each of these, at their best, could give the best player
now in London the same odds. Such are the gradations in all
LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 219
exertions of human skill and art. He once played four capital
players together, and beat them. He was also a first-rate tennis-
player and an excellent fives-player. In the Fleet or King's Bench
he would have stood against Powell, who was reckoned the best
open-ground player of his time. This last-mentioned player is at
present the keeper of the Fives-court, and we might recommend
to him for a motto over his door — ' Who enters here forgets him-
self, his country, and his friends.' And the best of it is, that by
the calculation of the odds, none of the three are worth remember-
ing ! — Cavanagh died from the bursting of a blood-vessel, which
prevented him from playing for the last two or three years. This,
he was often heard to say, he thought hard upon him. He was
fast recovering, however, when he was suddenly carried off, to the
regret of all who knew him. As Mr. Peel made it a qualification
of the present Speaker, Mr. Manners Sutton, that he was an excel-
lent moral character, so Jack Cavanagh was a zealous Catholic, and
could not be persuaded to eat meat on a Friday, the day on which
he died. We have paid this willing tribute to his memory.
' Let no rude hand deface it,
And his forlorn " Hie Jacet." ' "
ON LIVING TO ONE'S SELF.
" Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
Or by the lazy Scheldt or wandering Po."
I NEVER was in a better place or humour than I am at present for
writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my
supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the season
of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the
only thing that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good
before me, and therefore I will attempt it. It is as well to do it at
once as to have it to do for a week to come.
If the writing on this subject is no easy task, the thing itself is a
harder one. It asks a troublesome effort to ensure the admiration
of others : it is a still greater one to be satisfied with one's own
thoughts. As I look from the window at the wide bare heath before
me, and through the misty moonlight air see the woods that wave
over the top of Winterslow,
" While heav'n's chancel -vault is blind with sleet,"
my mind takes its flight through too long a series of years, supported
220 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
only by the patience of thought and secret yearnings after truth
and good, for me to be at a loss to understand the feeling I intend
to write about ; but I do not know that this will enable me to con-
vey it more agreeably to the reader. . . .
What I mean by living to one's self is living in the world, as in it,
not of it ; it is as if no one knew there was such a person, and you
wished no one to know it ; it is to be a silent spectator of the mighty
scene of things, not an object of attention or curiosity in it ; to take
a thoughtful, anxious interest in what is passing in the world, but
not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It
is such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an
interest as it might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative,
passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at their
follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubled
by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once dreamt of by
them. He who lives wisely to himself and to his own heart looks
at the busy world through the loopholes of retreat, and does not
want to mingle in the fray. " He hears the tumult, and is still."
He is not able to mend it, nor willing to mar it. He sees enough
in the universe to interest him without putting himself forward to
try what he can do to fix the eyes of the universe upon him. Vain
the attempt ! He reads the clouds, he looks at the stars, he watches
the return of the seasons, the falling leaves of autumn, the perfumed
breath of spring, starts with delight at the note of a thrush in a
copse near him, sits by the fire, listens to the moaning of the wind,
pores upon a book, or discourses the freezing hours away, or melts
down hours to minutes in pleasing thought. All this while he
is taken up with other things, forgetting himself. He relishes an
author's style without thinking of turning author. He is fond of
looking at a print from an old picture in the room, without teasing
himself to copy it. He does not fret himself to death with trying
to be what he is not, or to do what he cannot. He hardly knows
what he is capable of, and is not in the least concerned whether he
shall ever make a figure in the world. He feels the truth of the
lines —
" The man whose eye is ever on himself
Doth look one, the least of nature's works ;
One who might move the wise man to that scorn
Which wisdom holds unlawful ever."
He looks out of himself at the wide-extended prospect of nature,
and takes an interest beyond his narrow pretensions in general
humanity. He is free as air, and independent as the wind. Woe
LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 221
be to him when he first begins to think what others say of him.
While a man is contented with himself and his own resources, all is
well. When he undertakes to play a part on the stage, and to
persuade the world to think more about him than they do about
themselves, he is got into a track where he will find nothing but
briars and thorns, vexation and disappointment. I can speak a
little to this point. For many years of my life I did nothing but
think. I had nothing else to do but solve some knotty point, or
dip in some abstruse author, or look at the sky, or wander by the
pebbled sea-side :
" To see the children sporting on the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore."
I cared for nothing, I wanted nothing. I took my time to consider
whatever occurred to me, and was in no hurry to give a sophistical
answer to a question — there was no printer's devil waiting for me.
I used to write a page or two perhaps in half a year, and remember
laughing heartily at the celebrated experimentalist, Nicholson, who
told me that in twenty years he had written as much as would
make three hundred octavo volumes. If I was not a great author,
I could read with ever-fresh delight, " never ending, still beginning,"
and had no occasion to write a criticism when I had done. If I
could not paint like Claude, I could admire " the witchery of the
soft blue sky " as I walked out, and was satisfied with the pleasure
it gave me. If I was dull, it gave me little concern : if I was lively,
I indulged my spirits. I wished well to the world, and believed as
favourably of it as I could. I was like a stranger in a foreign land,
at which I looked with wonder, curiosity, and delight, without ex-
pecting to be an object of attention in return. I had no relations
to the State, no duty to perform, no ties to bind me to others : I
had neither friend nor mistress, wife nor child. I lived in a world
of contemplation, and not of action.
This sort of dreaming existence is the best. He who quits it to
go in search of realities generally barters repose for repeated dis-
appointments and vain regrets. His time, thoughts, and feelings
are no longer at his own disposal. From that instant he does not
survey the objects of nature as they are in themselves, but looks
asquint at them to see whether he cannot make them the instru-
ments of his ambition, interest, or pleasure; for a candid, unde-
signing, undisguised simplicity of character, his views become
jaundiced, sinister, and double : he takes no further interest in the
great changes of the world but as he has a paltry share in produc-
ing them : instead of opening his senses, his understanding, and his
222 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
heart to the resplendent fabric of the universe, he holds a crooked
mirror before his face, in which he may admire his own person and
pretensions, and just glance his eye aside to see whether others are
not admiring him too. He no more exists in the impression which
" the fair variety of things " makes upon him, softened and subdued
by habitual contemplation, but in the feverish sense of his own
upstart self-importance. By aiming to fix, he is become the slave of
opinion. He is a tool, a part of a machine that never stands still,
and is sick and giddy with the ceaseless motion. He has no satis-
faction but in the reflection of his own image in the public gaze —
but in the repetition of his own name in the public ear. He himself
is mixed up with and spoils everything. . . .
I have seen a celebrated talker of our own time turn pale and go
out of the room when a showy-looking girl has come into it, who
for a moment divided the attention of his hearers. Infinite are
the mortifications of the bare attempt to emerge from obscurity ;
numberless the failures; and greater and more galling still the
vicissitudes and tormenting accompaniments of success :
"Whose top to climb
Is certain falling, or so slippery, that
The fear's as bad as falling. "
" Would to God," exclaimed Oliver Cromwell, when he was at any
time thwarted by the Parliament, "that I had remained by my
woodside to tend a flock of sheep, rather than have been thrust
on such a government as this!" When Buonaparte got into his
carriage to proceed on his Russian expedition, carelessly twirling
his glove and singing the air, "Malbrook to the war is going,"
he did not think of the tumble he has got since, the shock of which
no one could have stood but himself. We see and hear chiefly of
the favourites of Fortune and the Muse, of great generals, of first-
rate actors, of celebrated poets. These are at the head ; we are
struck with the glittering eminence on which they stand, and long
to set out on the same tempting career, — not thinking how many
discontented half-pay lieutenants are in vain seeking promotion all
their lives, and obliged to put up with " the insolence of office, and
the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes ; " how many
half-starved strolling-players are doomed to penury and tattered
robes in country places, dreaming to the last of a London engage-
ment ; how many wretched daubers shiver and shake in the ague-fit
of alternate hopes and fears, waste and pine away in the atrophy of
genius, or else turn drawing-masters, picture-cleaners, or newspaper
critics ; how many hapless poets have sighed out their souls to the
LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 223
Muse in vain, without ever getting their effusions further known
than the Poet's Corner of a country newspaper, and looked and
looked with grudging, wistful eyes at the envious horizon that
bounded their provincial fame ! — Suppose an actor, for instance,
" after the heart-aches and the thousand natural pangs that flesh is
heir to," does get at the top of his profession, he can no longer bear
a rival near the throne ; to be second, or only equal to another, is to
be nothing : he starts at the prospect of a successor, and retains the
mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp : perhaps, as he is about to seize
the first place which he has long had in his eye, an unsuspected
competitor steps in before him and carries off the prize, leaving
him to commence his irksome toil again. He is in a state of alarm
at every appearance or rumour of the appearance of a new actor :
" a mouse that takes up its lodgings in a cat's ear " has a mansion
of peace to him : he dreads every hint of an objection, and least of
all can forgive praise mingled with censure : to doubt is to insult ;
to discriminate is to degrade : he dare hardly look into a criticism
unless some one has tasted it for him, to see that there is no offence
in it : if he does not draw crowded houses every night, he can
neither eat nor sleep ; or if all these terrible inflictions are removed,
and he can " eat his meal in peace," he then becomes surfeited with
applause and dissatisfied with his profession : he wants to be some-
thing else, to be distinguished as an author, a collector, a classical
scholar, a man of sense and information, and weighs every word he
utters, and half-retracts it before he utters it, lest if he were to
make the smallest slip of the tongue, it should get buzzed abroad
that Mr. was only clever as an actor ! If ever there was a man
who did not derive more pain than pleasure from his vanity, that
man, says llousseau, was no other than a fool. . . .
Even in the common affairs of life, in love, friendship, and
marriage, how little security have we when we trust our happiness
in the hands of others ! Most of the friends I have seen have
turned out the bitterest enemies or cold, uncomfortable acquaint-
ance. Old companions are like meats served up too often, that lose
their relish and their wholesomeness. He who looks at beauty to
admire, to adore it, who reads of its wondrous power in novels, in
poems, or in plays, is not unwise ; but let no man fall in love, for
from that moment he is " the baby of a girl." I like very well to
repeat such lines as these in the play of " Mirandola : "
" With what a waving air she goes
Along the corridor ! How like a fawn !
Yet statelier. Hark ! No sound, however soft,
T
224 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads,
But every motion of her shape doth seem
Hallowed by silence."
How few out of the infinite number of those that marry and are
given in marriage wed with those they would prefer to all the
world ! Nay, how far the greater proportion are joined together by
mere motives of convenience, accident, recommendation of friends,
or indeed not infrequently by the very fear of the event, by re-
pugnance and a sort of fatal fascination ! Yet the tie is for life,
not to be shaken off but with disgrace or death : a man no longer
lives to himself, but is a body (as well as mind") chained to another,
in spite of himself :
" Like life and death in disproportion met."
If love at first sight were mutual, or to be conciliated by kind
offices ; if the fondest affection were not so often repaid and chilled
by indifference and scorn ; if so many lovers, both before and since
the madman in "Don Quixote," had not " worshipped a statue, hunted
the wind, cried aloud to the desert ; " if friendship were lasting ;
if merit were renown, and renown were health, riches, and long
life ; or if the homage of the world were paid to conscious worth
and the true aspirations after excellence, instead of its gaudy signs
and outward trappings ; then, indeed, I might be of opinion that
it is better to live to others than one's self ; but as the case stands,
1 incline to the negative side of the question.
" I have not loved the world, nor the world me ;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee —
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles — nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo ; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such ; I stood
Among them, but not of them ; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filled my mind which thus itself subdued.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me —
But let us part fair foes ; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things — hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful nor weave
Snares for the failing : I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve ;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem —
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."
Sweet verse embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy; but woe
LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 225
betide the ignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to compare
notes with the world, or tax it roundly with imposture.
If I had sufficient provocation to rail at the public, as Ben Jonson
did at the audience in the Prologues to his plays, I think I should
do it in good set terms, nearly as follows : — There is not a more
mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful
animal than the Public. It is the greatest of cowards, for it is
afraid of itself. From its unwieldly, overgrown dimensions, it
dreads the least opposition to it, and shakes like isinglass at the
touch of a finger. It starts at its own shadow, like the man in the
Hartz mountains, and trembles at the mention of its own name.
It has a lion's mouth, the heart of a hare, with ears erect and sleep-
less eyes. It stands " listening its fears." It is so in awe of its
own opinion, that it never dares to form any, but catches up the
first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and
echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice. The
idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever
thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judg-
ment ; so that, in short, the public ear is at the mercy of the first
impudent pretender who chooses to fill it with noisy assertions, or
false surmises, or secret whispers. What is said by one is heard
by all ; the supposition that a thing is known to all the world
makes all the world believe it, and the hollow repetition of a vague
report drowns the "still, small voice" of reason. We may believe or
know that what is said is not true; but we know or fancy that
others believe it — we dare not contradict or are too indolent to
dispute with them, and therefore give up our internal, and, as we
think, our solitary conviction to a sound without substance, with-
out proof, and often without meaning. Nay, more ; we may believe
and know not only that a thing is false, but that others believe
and know it to be so, that they are quite as much in the secret of
the imposture as we are, that they see the puppets at work, the
nature of the machinery, and yet if any one has the art or power
to get the management of it, he shall keep possession of the public
ear by virtue of a cant phrase or nickname, and by dint of effrontery
and perseverance make all the world believe and repeat what all
the world know to be false. The ear is quicker than the judgment.
We know that certain things are said ; by that circumstance alone
we know that they produce a certain effect on the imagination of
others, and we conform to their prejudices by mechanical sympathy,
and for want of sufficient spirit to differ with them. So far, then,
is public opinion from resting on a broad and solid basis, as the
aggregate of thought and feeling in a community, that it is slight
226 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and shallow and variable to the last degree — the bubble of the
moment ; so that we may safely say the public is the dupe of public
opinion, not its parent. The public is pusillanimous and cowardly,
because it is weak. It knows itself to be a great dunce, and that
it has no opinions but upon suggestion. Yet it is unwilling to
appear in leading-strings, and would have it thought that its
decisions are as wise as they are weighty. It is hasty in taking
up its favourites, more hasty in laying them aside, lest it should
be supposed deficient in sagacity in either case. It is generally
divided into two strong parties, each of which will allow neither
common-sense nor common honesty to the other side. It reads
the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and believes them both — or
if there is a doubt, malice turns the scale. Taylor and Hessey told
me that they had sold nearly two editions of the " Characters of
Shakspeare's Plays" in about three months, but that after the
Quarterly review of them came out they never sold another copy.
The public, enlightened as they are, must have known the meaning
of that attack as well as those who made it. It was not ignorance
then, but cowardice, that led them to give up their own opinion.
A crew of mischievous critics at Edinburgh having affixed the
epithet of the Cockney School to one or two writers born in the
metropolis, all the people in London became afraid of looking into
their works, lest they too should be convicted of cockneyism. Oh,
brave public ! . . .
The public is as envious and ungrateful as it is ignorant, stupid,
and pigeon-livered :
" A huge-sized monster of ingratitudes."
It reads, it admires, it extols, only because it is the fashion, not
from any love of the subject or the man. It cries you up or runs
you down out of mere caprice and levity. If you have pleased it,
it is jealous of its own involuntary acknowledgment of merit, and
seizes the first opportunity, the first shabby pretext, to pick a
quarrel with you and be quits once more. Every petty caviller is
erected into a judge, every tale-bearer is implicitly believed. Every
little low paltry creature that gaped and wondered only because
others did so is glad to find you (as he thinks) on a level with him-
self. An author is not then, after all, a being of another order.
Public admiration is forced, and goes against the grain. Public
obloquy is cordial and sincere : every individual feels his own im-
portance in it. They give you up bound hand and foot into the
power of your accusers. To attempt to defend yourself is a high
crime and misdemeanour, a contempt of court, an extreme piece of
LIVING TO ONE'S SELF. 227
impertinence. Or if you prove every charge unfounded, they never
think of retracing their error or making you amends. It would
be a compromise of their dignity ; they consider themselves as the
party injured, and resent your innocence as an imputation on their
judgment. The celebrated Bub Doddington, when out of favour at
Court, said " he would not justify before his sovereign : it was for
Majesty to be displeased, and for him to believe himself in the
wrong ! " The public are not quite so modest. People already begin
to talk of the Scotch Novels as overrated. How, then, can common
authors be supposed to keep their heads long above water ? As a
general rule, all those who live by the public starve, and are made
a by-word and a standing jest into the bargain. Posterity is no
better (not a bit more enlightened or more liberal), except that you
are no longer in their power, and that the voice of common fame
saves them the trouble of deciding on your claims. The public now
are the posterity of Milton and Shakspeare. Our posterity will be
the living public of a future generation. When a man is dead they
put money in his coffin, erect monuments to his memory, and cele-
brate the anniversary of his birthday in set speeches. Would they
take any notice of him if he were living ? No ! — I was complain-
ing of this to a Scotchman who had been attending a dinner and
a subscription to raise a monument to Burns. He replied he
would sooner subscribe twenty pounds to his monument than have
given it him while living ; so that if the poet were to come to life
again, he would treat him just as he was treated in fact. This was
an honest Scotchman. What he said, the rest would do.
Enough : my soul, turn from them, and let me try to regain the
obscurity and quiet that I love, " far from the madding strife," in
some sequestered corner of my own, or in some far-distant land !
In the latter case, I might carry with me as a consolation the pas-
sage in Bolingbroke's " Reflections on Exile " in which he describes
in glowing colours the resources which a man may always find within
himself, and of which the world cannot deprive him : —
" Believe me, the providence of God has established such an
order in the world, that of all which belongs to us, the least valuable
parts can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is
safest ; lies out of the reach of human power ; can neither be given
nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work of nature,
the world. Such is the mind of man, which contemplates and ad-
mires the world whereof it makes the noblest part. These are in-
separably ours, and as long as we remain in one, we shall enjoy the
other. Let us march, therefore, intrepidly wherever we are led by
the course of human accidents. Wherever they lead us, on what
228 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
coast soever we are thrown by them, we shall not find ourselves
absolutely strangers. We shall feel the same revolution of seasons,
and the same sun and moon will guide the course of our year. The
same azure vault, bespangled with stars, will be everywhere spread
over our heads. There is no part of the world from whence we may
not admire those planets which roll, like ours, in different orbits
round the same central sun ; from whence we may not discover an
object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars hung up in
the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns whose beams
enlighten and cherish the unknown world which roll around them ;
and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst
my soul is thus raised up to heaven, it imports me little what
ground I tread upon." . . .
ON THOUGHT AND ACTION.
... IF there is a propensity in the vulgar to admire the achieve-
ments of personal prowess or instances of fortunate enterprise too
much, it cannot be denied that those who have to weigh out and dis-
pense the meed of fame in books have been too much disposed, by
a natural bias, to confine all merit and talent to the productions of
the pen, or at least to those works which, being artificial or abstract
representations of things, are transmitted to posterity and cried up
as models in their kind. This, though unavoidable, is hardly just.
Actions pass away and are forgotten, or are only discernible in their
effects: conquerors, statesmen, and kings live but by their names
stamped on the page of history. Hume says rightly that more
people think about Virgil and Homer (and that continually) than
ever trouble their heads about Csesar or Alexander. In fact, poets
are a longer-lived race than heroes : they breathe more of the air
of immortality. They survive more entire in their thoughts and
acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much as if we had
lived at the same time with them : we can hold their works in our
hands, or lay them on our pillows, or put them to our lips. Scarcely
a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as to be
visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men,
still breathing and moving in their writings ; the others, the con-
querors of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy
(so to speak) between thought and thought is more intimate and
vital than that between thought and action. Thought is linked to
thought as flame kindles into flame : the tribute of admiration to
the manes of departed heroism is like burning incense in a marble
VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 229
monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with the progress of time harden
into substances : things, bodies, actions, moulder away or melt into
a sound, into thin air ! — Yet though the Schoolmen in the Middle
Ages disputed more about the texts of Aristotle than the battle of
Arbela, perhaps Alexander's generals in his lifetime admired his
pupil as much and liked him better. For not only a man's actions
are effaced and vanish with him ; his virtues and generous qualities
die with him also : — his intellect only is immortal and bequeathed
unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only things that last for
ever. . . .
ON VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION.
FEW subjects are more nearly allied than these two — vulgarity and
affectation. It may be said of them truly that " thin partitions do
their bounds divide." There cannot be a surer proof of a low origin
or of an innate meanness of disposition than to be always talking
and thinking of being genteel. One must feel a strong tendency to
that which one is always trying to avoid ; whenever we pretend, on
all occasions, a mighty contempt for anything, it is a pretty clear
sign that we feel ourselves very nearly on a level with it. Of the
two classes of people, I hardly know which is to be regarded with
most distaste, the vulgar aping the genteel, or the genteel constantly
sneering at and endeavouring to distinguish themselves from the
vulgar. These two sets of persons are always thinking of one
another ; the lower of the higher with envy, the more fortunate of
their less happy neighbours with contempt. They are habitually
placed in opposition to each other ; jostle in their pretensions at
every turn ; and the same objects and train of thought (only re-
versed by the relative situation of either party) occupy their whole
time and attention. The one are straining every nerve and out-
raging common-sense, to be thought genteel ; the others have no
other object or idea in their heads than not to be thought vulgar.
This is but poor spite, 'a very pitiful style of ambition. To be
merely not that which one heartily despises is a very humble claim
to superiority ; to despise what one really is, is still worse.
Gentility is only a more select and artificial kind of vulgarity.
It cannot exist but by a sort of borrowed distinction. It plumes
itself up and revels in the homely pretensions of the mass of man-
kind. It judges of the worth of everything by name, fashion, and
opinion ; and hence, from the conscious absence of real qualities or
sincere satisfaction in itself, it builds its supercilious and fantastic
230 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
conceit on the wretchedness and wants of others. Violent anti-
pathies are always suspicious, and betray a secret affinity. The
difference between the " Great Vulgar and the Small " is mostly in
outward circumstances. The coxcomb criticises the dress of the
clown, as the pedant cavils at the bad gramma? of the illiterate,
or the prude is shocked at the backslidings of her frail acquaintance.
Those who have the fewest resources in themselves naturally seek
the food of their self-love elsewhere. The most ignorant people
find most to laugh at in strangers ; scandal and satire prevail most
in country places ; and a propensity to ridicule every the slightest
or most palpable deviation from what we happen to approve, ceases
with the progress of common-sense and decency. True worth does
not exult in the faults and deficiencies of others, as true refine-
ment turns away from grossness and deformity, instead of being
tempted to indulge in an unmanly triumph over it. Raphael would
not faint away at the daubing of a signpost, nor Homer hold his
head the higher for being in the company of a Grub Street bard.
Real power, real excellence, does not seek for a foil in inferiority,
nor fear contamination from coming in contact with that which is
coarse and homely. It reposes on itself, and is equally free from
spleen and affectation. But the spirit of gentility is the mere essence
of spleen and affectation ; — of affected delight in its own would-be
qualifications, and of ineffable disdain poured out upon the involun-
tary blunders or accidental disadvantages of those whom it chooses
to treat as its inferiors. . . .
Now, the essence of vulgarity, I imagine, consists in taking
manners, actions, words, opinions, on trust from others, without
examining one's own feelings or weighing the merits of the case.
It is coarseness or shallowness of taste arising from want of indi-
vidual refinement, together with the confidence and presumption
inspired by example and numbers. It may be defined to be a prosti-
tution of the mind or body to ape the more or less obvious defects
of others, because by so doing we shall secure the suffrages of those
we associate with. To affect a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because
it is the rage with a large number of persons, or to hold it in abhor-
rence because another set of persons very little, if at all, better
informed cry it down to distinguish themselves from the former, is
in either case equal vulgarity and absurdity. — A thing is not vulgar
merely because it is common. 'Tis common to breathe, to see, to
feel, to live. Nothing is vulgar that is natural, spontaneous, un-
avoidable. Grossness is not vulgarity, ignorance is not vulgarity,
awkwardness is not vulgarity; but all these become vulgar when
they are affected and shown off on the authority of others, or to fall
VULGARITY AND AFFECTATION. 231
in with the fashion or the company we keep. Caliban is coarse
enough, but surely he is not vulgar. We might as well spurn the
clod under our feet, and call it vulgar. Cobbett is coarse enough,
but he is not vulgar. He does not belong to the herd. Nothing
real, nothing original, can be vulgar ; but I should think an imitator
of Cobbett a vulgar man. . . .
There is a well-dressed and an ill-dressed mob, both which I hate.
Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo. The vapid affectation of the one to
me is even more intolerable than the gross insolence and brutality
of the other. If a set of low-lived fellows are noisy, rude, and
boisterous to show their disregard of the company, a set of fashion-
able coxcombs are, to a nauseous degree, finical and effeminate to
show their thorough breeding. The one are governed by their feel-
ings, however coarse and misguided, which is something ; the others
consult only appearances, which are nothing, either as a test of
happiness or virtue. Hogarth in his prints has trimmed the balance
of pretension between the downright blackguard and the soi-disant
fine gentleman unanswerably. It does not appear in his moral
demonstrations (whatever it may do in the genteel letter-writing
of Lord Chesterfield or the chivalrous rhapsodies of Burke) that
vice by losing all its grossness loses half its evil. It becomes more
contemptible, not less disgusting. What is there in common, for
instance, between his beaux and belles, his rakes and his coquets,
and the men and women, the true heroic and ideal characters in
Raphael ? But his people of fashion and quality are just upon a
par with the low, the selfish, the unideal characters in the con-
trasted view of human life, and are often the very same characters,
only changing places. If the lower ranks are actuated by envy and
uncharitableness towards the upper, the latter have scarcely any
feelings but of pride, contempt, and aversion to the lower. If the
poor would pull down the rich to get at their good things, the rich
would tread down the poor as in a wine-press, and squeeze the last
shilling out of their pockets and the last drop of blood out of their
veins. If the headstrong self-will and unruly turbulence of a
common alehouse are shocking, what shall we say to the studied
insincerity, the insipid want of common-sense, the callous insensi-
bility of the drawing-room and boudoir ? I would rather see the
feelings of our common nature (for they are the same at bottom)
expressed in the most naked and unqualified way, than see every
feeling of our nature suppressed, stifled, hermetically sealed under
the smooth, cold, glittering varnish of pretended refinement and
conventional politeness. The one may be corrected by being better
informed; the other is incorrigible, wilful, heartless depravity. I
232 WILLIAM HAZLITf— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
cannot describe the contempt and disgust I have felt at the tone of
what would be thought good company when I have witnessed the
sleek, smiling, glossy, gratuitous assumption of superiority to every
feeling of humanity, honesty, or principle, as a part of the etiquette,
the mental and moral costume of the table, and every profession of
toleration or favour for the lower orders, that is, for the great mass
of our fellow-creatures, treated as an indecorum and breach of the
harmony of well-regulated society. . . .
ON GOING A JOURNEY.
ONE of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey ; but
I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society in a room ; but out of
doors nature is company enough for me. I am then never less
alone than when alone.
" The fields his study, nature was his book."
I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same time.
When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country.
I am not for criticising hedgerows and black cattle. I go out of
town in order to forget the town and all that is in it. There are
those who for this purpose go to watering-places, and carry the
metropolis with them. I like more elbow-room, and fewer encum-
brances. I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake
of solitude ; nor do I ask for
" a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper solitude is sweet."
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do,
just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be free of all
impediments and of all inconveniences ; to leave ourselves behind,
much more to get rid of others. It is because I want a little breath-
ing-space to muse on indifferent matters, where Contemplation
" May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd,"
that I absent myself from the town for a while, without feeling at
a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead of a friend in a
post-chaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good things with and vary
the same stale topics over again, for once let me have a truce with
impertinence. Give me the clear blue sky over my head and the
green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three
ON GOING A JOURNEY. 233
hours' march to dinner — and then to thinking! It is hard if I
cannot start some game on these lone heaths. I latigh, I run, I
leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, I
plunge into my past being, and revel there, as the sunburnt Indian
plunges headlong into the wave that wafts him to his native
shore. Then long-forgotten things, like "sunken wrack and sumless
treasuries," burst upon my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think,
and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by
attempts at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed
silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No one likes
puns, alliterations, antitheses, argument, and analysis better than
I do ; but I sometimes had rather be without them. " Leave, oh,
leave me to my repose ! " I have just now other business in hand,
which would seem idle to you, but is with me " very stuff o' the
conscience." Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment ? Does
not this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald ? Yet if
I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so endeared
it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better, then, keep it
to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder
craggy point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon ?
I should be but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being
alone. I have heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes
on, walk or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this
looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you are
thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your party. " Out
upon such half-faced fellowship ! " say I. I like to be either entirely
to myself or entirely at the disposal of others ; to talk or be silent,
to walk or sit still, to be sociable or solitary. I was pleased with an
observation of Mr. Cobbett's, that "he thought it a bad French
custom to drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman
ought to do only one thing at a time." So I cannot talk and think,
or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation, by fits and
starts. " Let me have a companion of my way," says Sterne, " were
it but to remark how the shadows lengthen as the sun declines."
It is beautifully said ; but, in my opinion, this continual comparing
of notes interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon
the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what you feel
in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid : if you have to explain it, it is
making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot read the book of nature
without being perpetually put to the trouble of translating it for the
benefit of others. I am for this synthetical method on a journey
in preference to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of
ideas then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I want
234 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle before the
breeze, and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of
controversy. For once, I like to have it all my own way ; and this
is impossible unless you are alone, or in such company as I do not
covet. I have no objection to twenty miles of measured road, but
not for pleasure. If you remark the scent of a bean-field crossing
the road, perhaps your fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point
to a distant object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out
his glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in the
colour of a cloud, which hits your fancy, but the effect of wliich you
are unable to account for. There is then no sympathy, but an un-
easy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the
way, and in the end probably produces ill-humour. Now, I never
quarrel with myself, and take all my own conclusions for granted
till I find it necessary to defend them against objections. It is not
merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and circum-
stances that present themselves before you — these may recall a
number of objects, and lead to associations too delicate and refined
to be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish,
and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the
throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company seems
extravagance or affectation ; and, on the other hand, to have to
unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others
take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered), is
a task to which few are competent. We must " give it an under-
standing, but no tongue." My old friend Coleridge, however, could
do both. He could go on in the most delightful explanatory way
over hill and dale a summer's day, and convert a landscape into a
didactic poem or a Pindaric ode. " He talked far above singing."
If I could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words, I might
perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire the swelling
theme ; or I could be more content, were it possible for me still to
hear his echoing voice in the woods of All-Foxden. They had " that
fine madness in them which our first poets had; " and if they could
have been caught by some rare instrument, would have breathed
such strains as the following : —
-" Here be woods as green
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled streams, with flow'rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any ;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells,
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbines, caves and dells ;
ON GOING A JOURNEY. 235
Choose where thou wilt, whilst I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers ; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoubo, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whoso eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies ;
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest." 1
Had I words and images at command like these, I would attempt
to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden ridges in tho
evening clouds ; but at the sight of nature my fancy, poor as it is,
droops and closes up its leaves, like flowers at sunset. I can mako
nothing out on the spot : — I must have time to collect myself.
In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects : it should
be reserved for Table-talk. Lamb is for this reason, I take it, tho
worst company in the world out of doors ; because he is the best
within. I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk
on a journey, and that is, what one shall have for supper when we
get to our inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conver-
sation or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on appetite.
Every mile of the road heightens the flavour of the viands we expect
at the end of it. How fine it is to enter some old town, walled and
turreted, just at approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling
village, with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom ;
and then after inquiring for the best entertainment that the place
affords, to " take one's ease at one's inn ! " These eventful moments
in our lives' history are too precious, too full of solid, heartfelt hap-
piness, to be frittered and dribbled away in imperfect sympathy.
I would have them all to myself, and drain them to the last drop :
they will do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a deli-
cate speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea,
" The cups that cheer, but not inebriate,"
and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit considering what
we shall have for supper — eggs and a rasher, a rabbit smothered in
onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet ! Sancho in such a situation once
fixed on cow-heel ; and his choice, though ho could not help it, is
not to be disparaged. Then, in the intervals of pictured scenery
and Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the stir
in the kitchen (getting ready for the gentleman in tho parlour).
1 Fletcher's " Faithful Shepherdess."
236 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Procul, 0 procul este profani ! These hours are sacred to silence and
to musing, to be treasured up in the memory, and to feed the source
of smiling thoughts hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk ;
or if I must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would
rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger takes his hue
and character from the time and place ; he is a part of the furniture
and costume of an inn. If he is a Quaker, or from the West Riding
of Yorkshire, so much the better. I do not even try to sympathise
with him, and he breaks no squares. How I love to see the camps
of the gipsies, and to sigh my soul into that sort of life ! If I express
this feeling to another, he may qualify and spoil it with some objec-
tion. I associate nothing with my travelling companion but present
objects and passing events. In his ignorance of me and my affairs, 1
in a manner forget myself. But a friend reminds one of other things,
rips up old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene.
He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary character.
Something is dropped in the course of conversation that gives a
hint of your profession and pursuits ; or from having some one with
you that knows the less sublime portions of your history, it seems
that other people do. You are no longer a citizen of the world ;
but your " unhoused free condition is put into circumspection and
confine." The incognito of an inn is one of its striking privileges —
" lord of one's self, uncumbered with a name." Oh ! it is great to
shake off the trammels of the world and of public opinion ; to lose
our importunate, tormenting, everlasting personal identity in the
elements of nature, and become the creature of the moment, clea"r
of all ties ; to hold to the universe only by a dish of sweetbreads
and to owe nothing but the score of the evening ; and no longer
seeking for applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by
no other title than the Gentleman in the parlour ! One may take
one's choice of all characters in this romantic state of uncertainty
as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely respectable
and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and disappoint
conjecture ; and from being so to others, begin to be objects of
curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more those
hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world ; an inn re-
stores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society ! I
have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns, — sometimes when
I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some
metaphysical problem, as once at Witham Common, where I found
out the proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas,
— at other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at
St. Neot's (I think it was), where I first met with Gribelin's engrav-
ON GOING A JOURNEY. 237
ings of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little
inn on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging
some of Westall's drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a
theory that I had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a
girl who had ferried me over the Severn, standing up in a boat be-
tween me and the twilight, — at other times I might mention luxuri-
ating in books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I remember
sitting up half the night to read " Paul and Virginia," which I
picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the
rain all day ; and at the same place I got through two volumes of
Madame D'Arblay's "Camilla." It was on the loth of April 1798
that I sat down to a volume of the " New Eloise," at the inn at
Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The letter I
chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as he first
caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de Vaud,
which I had brought with me as a bon louche to crown the evening
with. It was my birthday, and I had for the first time come from
a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road
to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham ; and on pass-
ing a certain point you come all at once upon the valley, which
opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic
state on either side, with " green upland swells that echo to the
bleat of flocks " below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed
in the midst of them. The valley at this time " glittered green with
sunny showers," and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches
in the chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along
the highroad that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating the
lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's poems ! But
besides the prospect which opened beneath my feet, another also
opened to my inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written,
in letters large as Hope could make them, these four words, LIBERTY,
GENIUS, LOVE, VIRTUE, which have since faded into the light of
common day, or mock my idle gaze.
" The beautiful is vanished, and returns not."
Still, I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot ;
but I would return to it alone. What other self could I find to
share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight, the fragments
of which I could hardly conjure up to myself, so much have they been
broken and defaced ? I could stand on some tall rock, and overlook
the precipice of years that separates me from what I then was. I
was at that time going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above
named. Where is he now ? Not only I myself have changed ; the
238 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
world, which was then new to me, has become old and incorrigible.
Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan Dee, in joy, in youth
and gladness, as thou then wert ; and thou shalt always be to me
the river of Paradise, where I will drink of the waters of life freely !
There is hardly anything that shows the short-sightedness or
capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling does. With
change of place we change our ideas ; nay, our opinions and feelings.
We can by an effort, indeed, transport ourselves to old and long-
forgotten scenes, and then the picture of the mind revives again ;
but we forget those that we have just left. It seems that we can
think but of one place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of
a certain extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they
immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our conceptions ;
we only shift our point of view. The landscape bares its bosom to
the enraptured eye ; we take our fill of it, arid seem as if we could
form no other image of beauty or grandeur. We pass on, and think
no more of it : the horizon that shuts it from our sight also blots
it from our memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild
barren country, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated one.
It appears to me that all the world must be barren, like what I see
of it. In the country we forget the town, and in town we despise
the country. " Beyond Hyde Park," says Sir Topling Flutter, " all
is a desert." All that part of the map that we do not see before us
is blank. The world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a
nutshell. It is not one prospect expanded into another, county
joined to county, kingdom to kingdom, land to seas, making an
image voluminous and vast ; — the mind can form no larger idea of
space than the eye can take in at a single glance. The rest is a
name written in a map, a calculation of arithmetic. For instance,
what is the true signification of that immense mass of territory and
population known by the name of China to us ? An inch of paste-
board on a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange !
Things near us are seen of the size of life : things at a distance
are diminished to the size of the understanding. We measure the
universe by ourselves, and even comprehend the texture of our
own being only piecemeal. In this way, however, we remember an
infinity of things and places. The mind is like a mechanical instru-
ment that plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them
in succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time
excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections, we cannot
as it were unfold the whole web of our existence ; we must pick out
the single threads. So in coming to a place where we have formerly
lived, and with which we have intimate associations, every one must
ON GOING A JOURNEY. 239
have found that the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach
the spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression : we
remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names that we had
not thought of for years ; but for the time all the rest of the world
is forgotten ! — To return to the question I have quitted above : —
I have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures, in
company with a friend or a party, but rather the contrary, for the
former reason reversed. They are intelligible matters, and will
bear talking about. The sentiment here is not tacit, but com-
municable and overt. Salisbury Plain is barren of criticism, but
Stonehenge will bear a discussion antiquarian, picturesque, and
philosophical. In setting out on a party of pleasure, the first
consideration always is where we shall go to : in taking a solitary
ramble, the question is what we shall meet with by the way. " The
mind is its own place ; " nor are we anxious to arrive at the end
of our journey. I can myself do the honours indifferently well to
works of art and curiosity. I once took a party to Oxford with no
mean tclat — showed them that seat of the Muses at a distance,
" With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd ; "
descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy quad-
rangles and stone walls of halls and colleges ; was at home in the
Bodleian ; and at Blenheim quite superseded the powdered cicerone
that attended us, and that pointed in vain with his wand to com-
monplace beauties in matchless pictures. As another exception to
the above reasoning, I should not feel confident in venturing on
a journey in a foreign country without a companion. I should
want at intervals to hear the sound of my own language. There
is an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to
foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance of social
sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from home increases,
this relief, which was at first a luxury, becomes a passion and an
appetite. A person would almost feel stifled to find himself in the
deserts of Arabia without friends and countrymen : there must be
allowed to be something in the view of Athens or old Rome that
claims the utterance of speech ; and I own that the Pyramids are
too mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations, so
opposite to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems a species by
one's self, a limb torn off from society, unless one can meet with
instant fellowship and support. Yet I did not feel this want or
craving very pressing once, when I first set my foot on the laughing
shores of France. Calais was peopled with novelty and delight.
The confused, busy murmur of the place was like oil and wine
240 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
poured into my ears ; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung
from the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun went
down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only breathed the air
of general humanity. I walked over "the vine-covered hills and
gay regions of France," erect and satisfied ; for the image of man
was not cast down and chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones :
I was at no loss for language, for that of all the great schools of
painting was open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade.
Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled ; nothing remains but
the Bourbons and the French people! — There is undoubtedly a
sensation in travelling into foreign parts that is to be had nowhere
else ; but it is more pleasing at the time than lasting. It is too
remote from our habitual associations to be a common topic of
discourse or reference, and, like a dream or another state of exist-
ence, does not piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated
but a momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange
our actual for our ideal identity ; and to feel the pulse of our old
transports revive very keenly, we must "jump" all our present
comforts and connections. Our romantic and itinerant character
is not to be domesticated. Dr. Johnson remarked how little foreign
travel added to the facilities of conversation in those who had been
abroad. In fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful
and, in one sense, instructive ; but it appears to be cut out of our
substantial, downright existence, and never to join kindly on to
it. We are not the same, but another, and perhaps more enviable,
individual all the tune we are out of our own country. We are
lost to ourselves as well as our friends. So the poet somewhat
quaintly sings :
" Out of my country and myself I go."
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent them-
selves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them : but
we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the place that gave us
birth. I should on this account like well enough to spend the
whole of my life in travelling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow
another lif e to spend afterwards at home !
ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS.
... I LIKE very well to sit in a room where there are people
talking on subjects I know nothing of, if I am only allowed to sit
silent and as a spectator; but I do not much like to join in the
COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS. 241
conversation, except with people and on subjects to my taste.
Sympathy is necessary to society. To look on a variety of faces,
humours, and opinions is sufficient : to mix with others, agreement
as well as variety is indispensable. What makes good society ? I
answer, in one word, real fellowship. Without a similitude of tastes,
acquirements, and pursuits (whatever may be the difference of
tempers and characters) there can be no intimacy or even casual
intercourse worth the having. What makes the most agreeable
party ? A number of people with a number of ideas in common,
" yet so as with a difference ; " that is, who can put one or more
subjects which they have all studied in the greatest variety of enter-
taining or useful lights. Or in other words, a succession of good
things said with good humour, and addressed to the understand-
ings of those who hear them, make the most desirable conversation.
Ladies, lovers, beaux, wits, philosophers, the fashionable or the
vulgar, are the fittest company for one another. The discourse at
Randal's is the best for boxers ; that at Long's for lords and loungers.
I prefer Hunt's conversation almost to any other person's, because,
with a familiar range of subjects, he colours with a totally new and
sparkling light, reflected from his own character. Elia, the grave
and witty, says things not to be surpassed in essence; but the
manner is more painful and less a relief to my own thoughts. Some
one conceived he could not be an excellent companion because he
was seen walking down the side of the Thames, passibus iniquis, after
dining at Richmond. The objection was not valid. I will, however,
admit that the said Elia is the worst company in the world in bad
company, if it be granted me that in good company he is nearly
the best that can be. He is one of those of whom it may be said,
Tell me your company, and Fll tell you your manners. He is the
creature of sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion you seem
to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the apprehensions of the
circle, and invariably acts up or down to the point of refinement or
vulgarity at which they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure
in exaggerating the prejudice of strangers against him ; a pride in
confirming the prepossessions of friends. In whatever scale of intel-
lect he is placed, he is as lively or as stupid as the rest can be for
their lives. If you think him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more
and more so every minute, a la folie, till he is a wonder gazed [at]
by all — set him against a good wit and a ready apprehension, and
he brightens more and more —
" Or like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
Its figure and its heat."
242 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
We had a pleasant party one evening at Procter's. A young literary
bookseller who was present went away delighted with the elegance
of the repast, and spoke in raptures of a servant in green livery and
a patent-lamp. I thought myself that the charm of the evening
consisted in some talk about Beaumont and Fletcher and the old
poets, in which every one took part or interest, and in a conscious-
ness that we could not pay our host a better compliment than in
thus alluding to studies in which he excelled, and in praising authors
whom he had imitated with feeling and sweetness ! — I should think
it may also be laid down as a rule on this subject, that to constitute
good company a certain proportion of hearers and speakers is requi-
site. Coleridge makes good company for this reason. He immediately
establishes the principle of the division of labour in this respect,
wherever he comes. He takes his cue as speaker, and the rest of the
party theirs as listeners — a " Circean herd " — without any previous
arrangement having been gone through. I will just add that there
can be no good society without perfect freedom from affectation and
constraint. If the unreserved communication of feeling or opinion
leads to offensive familiarity, it is not well ; but it is no better where
the absence of offensive remarks arises only from formality and an
assumed respectfulness of manner.
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to
be found out of London : and that for the two following reasons.
First, there is neighbourhood elsewhere, accidental or unavoidable
acquaintance : people are thrown together by chance or grow together
like trees ; but you can pick your society nowhere but in London.
The very persons that of all others you would wish to associate with
in almost every line of life (or at least of intellectual pursuit) are
to be met with there. It is hard if out of a million of people you
cannot find half-a-dozen to your liking. Individuals may seem lost
and hid in the size of the place ; but, in fact, from this very cir-
cumstance you are within two or three miles' reach of persons that
without it you would be some hundreds apart from. Secondly,
London is the only place in which each individual in company is
treated according to his value in company, and to that only. In
every other part of the kingdom he carries another character about
with him, which supersedes the intellectual or social one. It is
known in Manchester or Liverpool what every man in the room is
worth in land or money ; what are his connections and prospects in
life ; and this gives a character of servility or arrogance, of mercena-
riness, or impertinence to the whole of provincial intercourse. You
laugh not in proportion to a man's wit, but his wealth ; you have
to consider not what but whom you contradict. You speak by the
FAMILIAR STYLE. 243
pound, and are heard by the rood. In the metropolis there is
neither time nor inclination for these remote calculations. Every
man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he
brings into society for the reception he meets with in it. A member
of Parliament soon finds his level as a commoner: the merchant
and manufacturer cannot bring his goods to market here : the great
landed proprietor shrinks from being the lord of acres into a pleasant
companion or a dull fellow. When a visitor enters or leaves a room,
it is not inquired whether he is rich or poor, whether he lives in a
garret or a palace, or comes in his own or a hackney-coach, but
whether he has a good expression of countenance, with an unaffected
manner, and whether he is a man of understanding or a blockhead.
These are the circumstances by which you make a favourable impres-
sion on the company, and by which they estimate you in the abstract.
In the country, they consider whether you have a vote at the next
election or a place in your gift, and measure the capacity of others
to instruct or entertain them by the strength of their pockets and
their credit with their banker. Personal merit is at a prodigious
discount in the provinces. I like the country very well, if I want
to enjoy my own company ; but London is the only place for equal
society, or where a man can say a good thing or express an honest
opinion without subjecting himself to being insulted, unless he first
lays his purse on the table to back his pretensions to talent or
independence of spirit. I speak from experience.
ON FAMILIAR STYLE.
. . . MR. LAMB is the only imitator of old English style I can read
with pleasure ; and he is so thoroughly imbued with the spirit of his
authors, that the idea of imitation is almost done away. There is an
inward unction, a marrowy vein both in the thought and feeling, an
intuition, deep and lively, of his subject, that carries off any quaint-
ness or awkwardness arising from an antiquated style and dress.
The matter is completely his own, though the manner is assumed.
Perhaps his ideas are altogether so marked and individual as to
require their point and pungency to be neutralised by the affecta-
tion of a singular but traditional form of conveyance. Tricked out
in the prevailing costume, they would probably seem more startling
and out of the way. The old English authors, Burton, Fuller,
Coryat, Sir Thomas Brown, are a kind of mediators between us and
the more eccentric and whimsical modern, reconciling us to his pecu-
liarities. I do not, however, know how far this is the case or not till
244 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
he condescends to write like one of us. I must confess that what I
like best of his papers under the signature of Elia (still, I do not
presume, amidst such excellence, to decide what is most excellent)
is the account of " Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," which is also
the most free from obsolete allusions and turns of expression :
"A well of native English undefiled."
To those acquainted with his admired prototypes, these Essays of
the ingenious and highly-gifted author have the same sort of charm
and relish that Erasmus's Colloquies or a fine piece of modern Latin
have to the classical scholar. Certainly, I do not know any borrowed
pencil that has more power or felicity of execution than the one of
which I have here been speaking.
It is as easy to write a gaudy style without ideas as it is to spread
a pallet of showy colours or to smear in a flaunting transparency.
" What do you read ? " — " Words, words, words." — " What is the
matter?" — "Nothing," it might be answered. The florid style is
the reverse of the familiar. The last is employed as an unvarnished
medium to convey ideas ; the first is resorted to as a spangled veil
to conceal the want of them. When there is nothing to be set down
but words, it costs little to have them fine. Look through the Dic-
tionary, and cull out a florilegium, rival the tulippomania. Rouge
high enough, and never mind the natural complexion. The vulgar,
who are not in the secret, will admire the look of preternatural
health and vigour; and the fashionable, who regard only appear-
ances, will be delighted with the imposition. Keep to your sound-
ing generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well. Swell
out an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A
thought, a distinction, is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of
verbiage splits at once. Such writers have merely verbal imagina-
tions, that retain nothing but words. Or their puny thoughts have
dragon-wings, all green and gold. They soar far above the vulgar
failing of the Sermo humi obrepens— their most ordinary speech is
never short of an hyperbole, splendid, imposing, vague, incompre-
hensible, magniloquent, a cento of sounding commonplaces. If
some of iis, whose "ambition is more lowly," pry a little too
narrowly into nooks and corners to pick up a number of " uncon-
sidered trifles," they never once direct their eyes or lift their hands
to seize on any but the most gorgeous, tarnished, threadbare patch-
work set of phrases, the lef t-off finery of poetic extravagance, trans-
mitted down through successive generations of barren pretenders.
If they criticise actors and actresses, a huddled phantasmagoria of
feathers, spangles, floods of light, and oceans of sound float before
FAMILIAR STYLE. 245
their morbid sense, which they paint in the style of Ancient Pistol.
Not a glimpse can you get of the merits or defects of the per-
formers : they are hidden in a profusion of barbarous epithets and
wilful rhodomontade. Our hypercritics are not thinking of these
little fantoccini beings,
"That strut and fret their hour upon the stage,"
but of tall phantoms of words, abstractions, genera and species,
sweeping clauses, periods that unite the Poles, forced alliterations,
astounding antitheses :
"And on their pens Fustian sits plumed."
If they describe kings and queens, it is an Eastern pageant. The
Coronation at either House is nothing to it. We get at four re-
peated images — a curtain, a throne, a sceptre, and a footstool.
These are with them the wardrobe of a lofty imagination ; and they
turn their servile strains to servile uses. Do we read a description
of pictures ? It is not a reflection of tones and hues which " nature's
own sweet and cunning hand laid on," but piles of precious stones,
rubies, pearls, emeralds, Golconda's mines, and all the blazonry
of art. Such persons are, in fact, besotted with words, and their
brains are turned with the glittering, but empty and sterile phan-
toms of things. Personifications, capital letters, seas of sunbeams,
visions of glory, shining inscriptions, the figures of a transparency,
Britannia with her shield, or Hope leaning on an anchor, make
up their stock-in-trade. They may be considered as hieroglyphical
writers. Images stand out in their minds isolated and important
merely in themselves, without any groundwork of feeling — there is
no context in their imaginations. Words affect them in the same
way, by the mere sound, that is, by their possible, not by their
actual, application to the subject in hand. They are fascinated by
first appearances, and have no sense of consequences. Nothing more
is meant by them than meets the ear : they understand or feel
nothing more than meets their eye. The web and texture of the
universe, and of the heart of man, is a mystery to them : they have
no faculty that strikes a chord in unison with it. They cannot get
beyond the daubings of fancy, the varnish of sentiment. Objects
are not linked to feelings, words to things, but images revolve
in splendid mockery, words represent themselves in their strange
rhapsodies. The categories of such a mind are pride and ignorance
— pride -in outside show, to which they sacrifice everything, and
ignorance of the true worth and hidden structure both of words and
things. With a sovereign contempt for what is familiar and natural,
246 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
they are the slaves of vulgar affectation — of a routine of high-flown
phrases. Scorning to imitate realities, they are unable to invent
anything, to strike out one original idea. They are not copyists
of nature, it is true ; but they are the poorest of all plagiarists,
the plagiarists of words. All is far-fetched, dear-bought, artificial,
oriental, in subject and allusion : all is mechanical, conventional,
vapid, formal, pedantic, in style and execution. They startle and
confound the understanding of the reader by the remoteness and
obscurity of their illustrations : they soothe the ear by the mono-
tony of the same everlasting round of circuitous metaphors. They
are the mock-school in poetry and prose. They flounder about be-
tween fustian in expression and bathos in sentiment. They tanta-
lise the fancy, but never reach the head nor touch the heart. Their
Temple of Fame is like a shadowy structure raised by Dulness to
Vanity, or like Cowper's description of the Empress of Russia's
palace of ice, " as worthless as in show 'twas glittering : "
" It smiled, and it was cold ! "
ON EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER.
. . . BUT oh thou ! who didst lend me speech when I was dumb, to
whom I owe it that I have not crept on my belly all the days of my
life like the serpent, but sometimes lift my forked crest or tread the
empyrean, wake thou out of thy midday slumbers ! 1 Shake off the
heavy honeydew of thy soul, no longer lulled with that Circean cup,
drinking thy own thoughts with thy own ears, but start up in thy
promised likeness, and shake the pillared rottenness of the world !
Leave not thy sounding words in air ; write them in marble, and
teach the coming age heroic truths ! Up, and wake the echoes of
Time ! Rich in deepest lore, die not the bed-rid churl of knowledge,
leaving the survivors unblest ! Set, set as thou didst rise in pomp
and gladness ! Dart like the sunflower one broad, golden flash of
light ; and ere thou ascendest thy native sky, show us the steps by
which thou didst scale the Heaven of philosophy, with Truth and
Fancy for thy equal guides, that we may catch thy mantle, rainbow-
dipped, and still read thy words dear to Memory, dearer to Fame !
There is another branch of this character, which is the trifling
or dilatory character. Such persons are always creating difficulties,
and unable or unwilling to remove them. They cannot brush aside
a cobweb, and are stopped by an insect's wing. Their character
1 Coleridge is the person here addressed.
EFFEMINACY OF CHARACTER. 247
is imbecility, rather than effeminacy. The want of energy and re-
solution in the persons last described arises from the habitual and
inveterate predominance of other feelings and motives ; in these it is
a mere want of energy and resolution, that is, an inherent natural
defect of vigour of nerve and voluntary power. There is a specific
levity about such persons, so that you cannot propel them to any
object or give them a decided momentum in any direction or pursuit.
They turn back, as it were, on the occasion that should project them
forward with manly force and vehemence. They shrink from in-
trepidity of purpose, and are alarmed at the idea of attaining their
end too soon. They will not act with steadiness or spirit, either for
themselves or you. If you chalk out a line of conduct for them, or
commission them to execute a certain task, they are sure to conjure
up some insignificant objection or fanciful impediment in the way,
and are withheld from striking an effectual blow by mere feebleness
of character. They may be officious, good-natured, friendly, generous
in disposition, but they are of no use to any one. They will put
themselves to twice the trouble you desire, not to carry your point,
but to defeat it; and in obviating needless objections, neglect
the main business. If they do what you want, it is neither at the
time nor in the manner that you wish. This timidity amounts to
treachery ; for by always anticipating some misfortune or disgrace,
they realise their unmeaning apprehensions. The little bears sway
in their minds over the great : a small inconvenience outweighs a
solid and indispensable advantage ; and their strongest bias is uni-
formly derived from the weakest motive. They hesitate about the
best way of beginning a thing till the opportunity for action is lost,
and are less anxious about its being done than the precise manner
of doing it. They will destroy a passage sooner than let an objec-
tionable word pass, and are much less concerned about the truth
or the beauty of an image than about the reception it will meet
with from the critics. They alter what they write, not because it
is, but because it may possibly be wrong, and in their tremulous
solicitude to avoid imaginary blunders, run into real ones. What
is curious enough is, that with all this caution and delicacy, they
are continually liable to extraordinary oversights. They are, in fact,
so full of all sorts of idle apprehensions, that they do not know how
to distinguish real from imaginary grounds of apprehension; and
they often give some unaccountable offence either from assuming a
sudden boldness half in sport, or while they are secretly pluming
themselves on their dexterity in avoiding everything exceptionable ;
and the same distraction of motive and short-sightedness which gets
them into scrapes hinders them from seeing their way out of them.
248 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Such persons (often of ingenious and susceptible minds) are con-
stantly at cross-purposes with themselves and others ; will neither
do things nor let others do them ; and whether they succeed or fail,
never feel confident or at their ease. They spoil the freshness and
originality of their own thoughts by asking contradictory advice ;
and in befriending others, while they are about it and about it, you
might have done the thing yourself a dozen times over.
There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and
decision of character. I like a person who knows his own mind and
sticks to it ; who sees at once what is to be done in given circum-
stances and does it. He does not beat about the bush for difficulties
or excuses, but goes the shortest and most effectual way to work to
attain his own ends or to accomplish a useful object. If he can
serve you, he will do so ; if he cannot, he will say so without keeping
you in needless suspense or laying you under pretended obligations.
The applying to him in any laudable undertaking is not like stirring
" a dish of skimmed milk." There is stuff in him, and it is of the
right, practicable sort. He is not all his life at hawk-and-buzzard
whether he shall be a Whig or a Tory, a friend or a foe, a knave or
a fool, but thinks that life is short, and that there is no time to
play fantastic tricks in it, to tamper with principles or trifle with
individual feelings. If he gives you a character, he does not add a
damning clause to it : he does not pick holes in you lest others
should, or anticipate objections lest he should be thought to be
blinded by a childish partiality. His object is to serve you, and
not to play the game into your enemies' hands.
" A generous friendship no cold medium knows,
Burns with one love, with one resentment glows."
WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE.
DISTANT objects please because, in the first place, they imply an
idea of space and magnitude, and because, not being obtruded too
close upon the eye, we clothe them with the indistinct and airy
colours of fancy. In looking at the misty mountain-tops that
bound the horizon, the mind is, as it were, conscious of all the con-
ceivable objects and interests that lie between ; we imagine all sorts
of adventures in the interim ; strain our hopes and wishes to reach
the air-drawn circle, or to "descry new lands, rivers, and mountains/'
stretching far beyond it: our feelings, carried out of themselves,
lose their grossness and their husk, are rarefied, expanded, melt
into softness and brighten into beauty, turning to ethereal mould,
WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. 249
sky-tinctured. We drink the air before us, and borrow a more
refined existence from objects that hover on the brink of nothing.
Where the landscape fades from the dull sight, we fill the thin,
viewless space with shapes of unknown good, and tinge the hazy
prospect with hopes and wishes and more charming fears.
" But thou, oh Hope ! with eyes so fair,
What was thy delighted measure ?
Still it whisper'd promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail ! "
Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, what-
ever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure ; and
all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for
its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with
an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant
objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded
by its touch. When I was a boy I lived within sight of a range of
lofty hills, whose blue tops blending with the setting sun had often
tempted my longing eyes and wandering feet. At last I put my
project in execution, and on a nearer approach, instead of glimmer-
ing air woven into fantastic shapes, found them huge lumpish heaps
of discoloured earth. I learnt from this (in part) to leave " Yarrow
un visited," and not idly to disturb a dream of good !
Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of place.
It is not surprising that fancy colours the prospect of the future as
it thinks good, when it even effaces the forms of memory. Time
takes out the sting of pain ; our sorrows after a certain period have
been so often steeped in a medium of thought and passion, that they
" unmould their essence," and all that remains of our original im-
pressions is what we would wish them to have been. Not only the
untried steep ascent before us, but the rude, unsightly masses of our
past experience presently resume their power of deception over the
eye ; the golden cloud soon rests upon their heads, and the purple
light of fancy clothes their barren sides ! Thus we pass on, while
both ends of our existence touch upon heaven ! There is (so to
speak) " a mighty stream of tendency " to good in the human mind,
upon which all objects float and are imperceptibly borne along ; and
though in the voyage of life we meet with strong rebuffs, with rocks
and quicksands, yet there is " a tide in the affairs of men," a heaving
and a restless aspiration of the soul, by means of which, " with sails
and tackle torn," the wreck and scattered fragments of our entire
being drift into the port and haven of our desires ! In all that re-
lates to the affections we put the will for the deed ; — so that the
250 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
instant the pressure of unwelcome circumstances is removed the
mind recoils from their hold, recovers its elasticity, and reunites
itself to that image of good, which is but a reflection and configura-
tion of its own nature. Seen in the distance, in the long perspective
of waning years, the meanest incidents, enlarged and enriched by
countless recollections, become interesting ; the most painful, broken
and softened by time, soothe. How any object that unexpectedly
brings back to us old scenes and associations startles the mind !
What a yearning it creates within us ! what a longing to leap the
intermediate space ! How fondly we cling to and try to revive the
impression of all that we then were !
" Such tricks hath strong imagination ! "
In truth, we impose upon ourselves, and know not what we wish.
It is a cunning artifice, a quaint delusion, by which, in pretending
to be what we were at a particular moment of time, we would fain
be all that we have since been, and have our lives to come over
again. It is not the little, glimmering, almost annihilated speck in
the distance that rivets our attention and " hangs upon the beating
of our hearts ; " it is the interval that separates us from it, and of
which it is the trembling boundary, that excites all this coil and
mighty pudder in the breast. Into that great gap in our being
" come thronging soft desires " and infinite regrets. It is the con-
trast, the change from what we then were, that arms the half-
extinguished recollection with its giant strength and lifts the fabric
of the affections from its shadowy base. In contemplating its utmost
verge we overlook the map of our existence, and retread, in appre-
hension, the journey of life. So it is that in early youth we strain
our eager sight after the pursuits of manhood, and as we are
sliding off the stage, strive to gather up the toys and flowers that
pleased our thoughtless childhood.
When I was quite a boy my father used to take me to the Mont-
pelier Tea-gardens at Walworth. Do I go there now ? No ; the
place is deserted, and its borders and its beds o'erturned. Is there,
then, nothing that can
" Bring back the hour
Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower ? "
Oh yes ! I unlock the casket of memory and draw back the warders
of the brain, and there this scene of my infant wanderings still lives
unfaded, or with fresher dyes. A new sense comes upon me, as in a
dream ; a richer perfume, brighter colours start out ; my eyes dazzle ;
my heart heaves with its new load of bliss, and I am a child again.
WHY DISTANT OBJECTS PLEASE. 251
My sensations are all glossy, spruce, voluptuous, and fine : they wear
a candied coat, and are in holiday trim. I see the beds of larkspur
with purple eyes ; tall hollyhocks, red or yellow ; the broad sun-
flowers, caked in gold, with bees buzzing round them ; wildernesses
of pinks, and hot glowing peonies ; poppies run to seed ; the sugared
lily and faint mignonette, all ranged in order, and as thick as they
can grow ; the box-tree borders ; the gravel-walks, the painted
alcove, the confectionery, the clotted cream : — I think I see them
now with sparkling looks ; or have they vanished while I have been
writing this description of them ? No matter ; they will return
again when I least think of them. All that I have observed since,
of flowers and plants, and grass-plots, and of suburb delights, seems
to me borrowed from " that first garden of my innocence " — to be slips
and scions stolen from that bed of memory. In this manner the
darlings of our childhood burnish out in the eye of after years, and
derive their sweetest perfume from the first heartfelt sigh of pleasure
breathed upon them,
' ' Like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour ! "
If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchen-garden too,
and for the same reason. If I see a row of cabbage-plants or of
peas or beans coming up, I immediately think of those which I used
so carefully to water of an evening at Wem, when my day's tasks
were done, and of the pain with which I saw them droop and hang
down their leaves in the morning's sun. Again, I never see a child's
late in the air but it seems to pull at my heart. It is to me " a
thing of life." I feel the twinge at my elbow, the flutter and palpi-
tation, with which I used to let go the string of my own, as it rose
in the air and towered among the clouds. My little cargo of hopes
and fears ascended with it ; and as it made a part of my own con-
sciousness then, it does so still, and appears " like some gay creature
of the element," my playmate when life was young, and twin-born
with my earliest recollections. I could enlarge on this subject of
childish amusements, but Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it so well, in
a paper in the Indicator on the productions of the toy-shops of
the metropolis, that if I were to insist more on it I should only pass
for an imitator of that ingenious and agreeable writer, and for an
indifferent one into the bargain.
Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes are remembered longer than
visible objects, and serve, perhaps, better for links in the chain of
association. The reason seems to be this : they are in their nature
252 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
intermittent, and comparatively rare ; whereas objects of sight are
always before us, and, by their continuous succession, drive one
another out. The eye is always open ; and between any given im-
pression and its recurrence a second time, fifty thousand other im-
pressions have, in all likelihood, been stamped upon the sense and
on the brain. The other senses are not so active or vigilant. They
are but seldom called into play. The ear, for example, is oftener
courted by silence than noise ; and the sounds that break that
silence sink deeper and more durably into the mind. I have a more
present and lively recollection of certain scents, tastes, and sounds,
for this reason, than I have of mere visible images, because they are
more original, and less worn by frequent repetition. Where there
is nothing interposed between any two impressions, whatever the
distance of time that parts them, they naturally seem to touch ; and
the renewed impression recalls the former one in full force, without
distraction or competitor. The taste of barberries which have hung
out in the snow during the severity of a North American winter I
have in my mouth still, after an interval of thirty years ; 1 for I have
met with no other taste, in all that time, at all like it. It remains
by itself, almost like the impression of a sixth sense. But the colour
is mixed up indiscriminately with the colours of many other berries,
nor should I be able to distinguish it among them. The smell of
a brickkiln carries the evidence of its own identity with it : neither
is it to me (from peculiar associations) unpleasant. The colour of
brickdust, on the contrary, is more common, and easily confounded
with other colours. Raphael did not keep it quite distinct from
his flesh-colour. I will not say that we have a more perfect recollec-
tion of the human voice than of that complex' picture the human
face, but I think the sudden hearing of a well-known voice has some-
thing in it more affecting and striking than the sudden meeting
with the face : perhaps, indeed, this may be because we have a more
familiar remembrance of the one than the other, and the voice takes
us more by surprise on that account. I am by no means certain
(generally speaking) that we have the ideas of the other senses so
accurate and well made out as those of visible form : what I chiefly
mean is, that the feelings belonging to the sensations of our other
organs, when accidentally recalled, are kept more separate and pure.
Musical sounds, probably, owe a good deal of their interest and
romantic effect to the principle here spoken of. Were they constant
they would become indifferent, as we may find with respect to dis-
agreeable noises, which we do not hear after a time. I know no
* See "Memoirs of William Hazlitt," 1867, i. 6, 7.— ED.
DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY. 253
situation more pitiable than that of a blind fiddler, who has but one
sense left (if we except the sense of snuff-taking l), and who has that
stunned or deafened by his own villainous noises. Shakspeare says :
"How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night ! "
It has been observed in explanation of this passage, that it is because
in the day-time lovers are occupied with one another's faces, but
that at night they can only distinguish the sound of each other's
voices. I know not how this may be ; but I have, ere now, heard a
voice break so upon the silence,
" To angels' 'twas most like,
and charm the moonlight air with its balmy essence, that the bud-
ding leaves trembled to its accents. Would I might have heard it
once more whisper peace and hope (as erst when it was mingled with
the breath of spring), and with its soft pulsations lift winged fancy
to heaven ! But it has ceased, or turned where I no more shall hear
it ! — Hence, also, we see what is the charm of the shepherd's pastoral
reed ; and why we hear him, as it were, piping to his flock, even in
a picture. Our ears are fancy stung ! I remember once strolling
along the margin of a stream, skirted with willows and plashy
sedges, in one of those low sheltered valleys on Salisbury Plain
where the monks of former ages had planted chapels and built
hermits' cells. There was a little parish church near, but tall elms
and quivering alders hid it from my sight, when, all of a sudden, I
was startled by the sound of the full organ pealing on the ear, ac-
companied by rustic voices and the willing choir of village maids
and children. It rose, indeed, " like an exhalation of rich distilled
perfumes." The dew from a thousand pastures was gathered in its
softness ; the silence of a thousand years spoke in it. It came upon
the heart like the calm beauty of death ; fancy caught the sound,
and faith mounted on it to the skies. It filled the valley like a
mist, and still poured out its endless chant, and still it swells upon
the ear, and wraps me in a golden trance, drowning the noisy
tumult of the world ! .
ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL
SUPERIORITY.
THE chief disadvantage of knowing more and seeing farther than
others is not to be generally understood. A man is, in consequence
i See Wilkie's "Blind Fiddler."
254 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of this, liable to start paradoxes, which immediately transport him
beyond the reach of the commonplace reader. A person speaking
once in a slighting manner of a very original-minded man, received
for answer — " He strides on so far before you that he dwindles in
the distance ! "
Petrarch complains, that " nature had made him different from
other people " — singular1 d'altri genii. The great happiness of life
is, to be neither better nor worse than the general run of those
you meet with. If you are beneath them, you are trampled upon ;
if you are above them, you soon find a mortifying level in their
indifference to what you particularly pique yourself upon. What is
the use of being moral in a night-cellar or wise in Bedlam ? " To
be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten
thousand." So says Shakspeare; and the commentators have not
added that, under these circumstances, a man is more likely to
become the butt of slander than the mark of admiration for being
so. " How now, thou particular fellow ? " is the common answer
to all such out-of-the-way pretensions. By not doing [at Rome]
as those at Rome do, we cut ourselves off from good-fellowship and
society. We speak another language, have notions of our own, and
are treated as of a different species. Nothing can be more awkward
than to intrude with any such far-fetched ideas among the common
herd.
Ignorance of another's meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and
fear produces hatred : hence the suspicion and rancour entertained
against all those who set up for greater refinement and wisdom
than their neighbours. It is in vain to .think of softening down this
spirit of hostility by simplicity of manners, or by condescending to
persons of low estate. The more you condescend, the more they
will presume upon it ; they will fear you less, but hate you more,
and will be the more determined to take their revenge on you for
a superiority as to which they are entirely in the dark, and of which
you yourself seem to entertain considerable doubt. All the humility
in the world will only pass for weakness and folly. They have no
notion of such a thing. They always put their best foot forward,
and argue that you would do the same if you had any such wonder-
ful talents as people say. You had better, therefore, play off the
great man at once — hector, swagger, talk big, and ride the high
horse over them: you may by this means extort outward respect
or common civility ; but you will get nothing (with low people)
by forbearance and good-nature but open insult or silent contempt.
Holeridge always talks to people about what they don't understand :
I, for one, endeavour to talk to them about what they do under-
DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY. 255
stand, and find I only get the more ill-will by it. They conceive I
do not think them capable of anything better ; that I do not think
it worth while, as the vulgar saying is, to throw a word to a dog. I
once complained of this to Coleridge, thinking it hard I should be
sent to Coventry for not making a prodigious display. He said,
"As you assume a certain character, you ought to produce your
credentials. It is a tax upon people's good-nature to admit supe-
riority of any kind, even where there is the most evident proof of
it ; but it is too hard a task for the imagination to admit it without
any apparent ground at all."
There is not a greater error than to suppose that you avoid
the envy, malice, and uncharitableness so common in the world by
going among people without pretensions. There are no people who
have no pretensions ; or the fewer their pretensions, the less they
can afford to acknowledge yours without some sort of value received.
The more information individuals possess, or the more they have
refined upon any subject, the more readily can they conceive and
admit the same kind of superiority to themselves that they feel
over others. But from the low, dull, level sink of ignorance and
vulgarity no idea or love of excellence can arise. You think you
are doing mighty well with them ; that you are laying aside the
buckram of pedantry and pretence, and getting the character of
a plain, unassuming, good sort of fellow. It will not do. All the
while that you are making these familiar advances, and wanting
to be at your ease, they are trying to recover the wind* of you.
You may forget that you are an author, an artist, or what not —
they do not forget that they are nothing, nor bate one jot of their
desire to prove you in the same predicament. . . .
Meanwhile, those things in which you may really excel go for
nothing, because they cannot judge of them. They speak highly of
some book which you do not like, and therefore you make no answer.
You recommend them to go and see some picture in which they do
not find much to admire. How are you to convince them that you
are right ? Can you make them perceive that the fault is in them,
and not in the picture, unless you could give them your knowledge ?
They hardly distinguish the difference between a Correggio and a
common daub. Does this bring you any nearer to an understanding ?
The more you know of the difference, the more deeply you feel it, or
the more earnestly you wish to convey it, the farther do you find
yourself removed to an immeasurable distance from the possibility
of making them enter into views and feelings of which they have
not even the first rudiments. You cannot make them see with
your eyes, and they must judge for themselves.
x
256 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Intellectual is not like bodily strength. You have no hold of the
understanding of others but by their sympathy. Your knowing, in
fact, so much more about a subject does not give you a superiority,
that is, a power over them, but only renders it the more impossible
for you to make the least impression on them. Is it, then, an ad-
vantage to you ? It may be, as it relates to your own private satis-
faction, but it places a greater gulf between you and society. It
throws stumbling-blocks in your way at every turn. All that you
take most pride and pleasure in is lost upon the vulgar eye. What
they are pleased with is a matter of indifference or of distaste
to you. . . .
It is recorded in the life of some worthy (whose name I forget)
that he was one of those " who loved hospitality and respect : " and
I profess to belong to the same classification of mankind. Civility
is with me a jewel. I like a little comfortable cheer and careless,
indolent chat. I hate to be always wise, or aiming at wisdom. I
have enough to do with literary cabals, questions, critics, actors,
essay-writing, without taking them out with me for recreation
and into all companies. I wish at these times to pass for a good-
humoured fellow ; and good-will is all I ask in return to make good
company. I do not desire to be always posing myself or others
with the questions of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute, &c.
I must unbend sometimes. I must occasionally lie fallow. The
kind of conversation that I affect most is what sort of a day it is,
and whether it is likely to rain or hold up fine for_to-morrow. This
I consider as enjoying the otium cum dignitate, as the end and
privilege of a life of study. I would resign myself to this state of
easy indifference, but I find I cannot. I must maintain a certain
pretension, which is far enough from my wish. I must be put on
my defence, I must take up the gauntlet continually, or I find I
lose ground. " I am nothing, if not critical." While I am thinking
what o'clock it is, or how I came to blunder in quoting a well-known
passage, as if I had done it on purpose, others are thinking whether
I am not really as dull a fellow as I am sometimes said to be. If a
drizzling shower patters against the windows, it puts me in mind of
a mild spring rain from which I retired twenty years ago into a
little public-house near Weni, in Shropshire, and while I saw the
plants and shrubs before the door imbibe the dewy moisture,
quaffed a glass of sparkling ale, and walked home in the dusk of
evening, brighter to me than noonday suns at present are ! Would
I indulge this feeling ? In vain. They ask me what news there is,
and stare if I say I don't know. If a new actress has come out, why
must I have seen her ? If a new novel has appeared, why must I
THE FEAR OF DEATH. 257
have read it? I, at one time, used to go and take a hand at
cribbage with a friend, and afterwards discuss a cold sirloin of beef,
and throw out a few lackadaisical remarks, in a way to please my-
self, but it would not do long. I set up little pretension, and there-
fore the little that I did set up was taken from me. As I said
nothing on that subject myself, it was continually thrown in my
teeth that I was an author. From having me at this disadvantage,
my friend wanted to peg on a hole or two in the game, and was
displeased if I would not let him. If I won of him, it was hard he
should be beat by an author. If he won, it would be strange if he
did not understand the game better than I did. If I mentioned my
favourite game of rackets, there was a general silence, as if this was
my weak point. If I complained of being ill, it was asked why I
made myself so. If I said such an actor had played a part well, the
answer was, there was a different account in one of the newspapers.
If any allusion was made to men of letters, there was a suppressed
smile. If I told a humorous story, it was difficult to say whether
the laugh was at me or at the narrative. The wife hated me for
my ugly face ; the servants because I could not always get them
tickets for the play, and because they could not tell exactly what
an author meant. If a paragraph appeared against anything I had
written, I found it was ready there before me, and I was to undergo
a regular roasting. I submitted to all this till I was tired, and then
I gave it up. . . .
ON THE FEAR OF DEATH.
"And our little life is rounded with a sleep."
PERHAPS the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life
has a beginning as well as an end. There was a tune when we "were
not : this gives us no concern — why, then, should it trouble us that
a time will come when we shall cease to be ? I have no wish to
have been alive a hundred years ago, or in the reign of Queen
Anne : why should I regret and lay it so much to heart that I shall
not be alive a hundred years hence, in the reign of I cannot tell
whom?
When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays, I knew nothing of the sub-
jects of them ; nay, much later, and but the other day, as it were,
in the beginning of the reign of George III., when Goldsmith,
Johnson, Burke, used to meet at the Globe, when Garrick was in
his glory, and Reynolds was over head and ears with his portraits,
and Sterne brought out the volumes of " Tristram Shandy " year by
258 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
year, it was without consulting me : I had not the slightest intima-
tion of what was going on : the debates in the House of Commons
on the American war or the firing at Bunker's Hill disturbed not
me: yet I thought this no evil — I neither ate, drank, nor was
merry, yet I did not complain : I had not then looked out into this
breathing world, yet I was well ; and the world did quite as well
without me as I did without it ! Why, then, should I make all this
outcry about parting with it, and being no worse off than I was
before ? There is nothing in the recollection that at a certain time
we were not come into the world, that " the gorge rises at " — why
should we revolt at the idea that we must one day go out of it ?
To die is only to be as we were before we were born : yet no one
feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this
last idea. It is rather a relief and disburdening of the mind: it
seems to have been holiday-time with us then : we were not called
to appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh
or cry, be hooted or applauded ; we had lain perdus all this while,
snug, out of harm's way; and had slept out our thousands of
centuries without wanting to be waked up ; at peace and free from
care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of
infancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst
that we dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vaia
hopes and idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the
troubled dream of life ! ... Ye armed men, knights templars, that
sleep in the stone aisles of that old Temple church, where all
is silent above, and where a deeper silence reigns below (not
broken by the pealing organ), are ye not contented where ye lie ?
Or would you come out of your long homes to go to the Holy
War ? Or do you complain that pain no longer visits you ; that
sickness has done its worst ; that you have paid the last debt to
nature ; that you hear no more of the thickening phalanx of the foe
or your lady's waning love ; and that while this ball of earth rolls
its eternal round, no sound shall ever pierce through to disturb
your lasting repose, fixed as the marble over your tombs, breathless
as the grave that holds you ! And thou, oh ! thou, to whom my
heart turns, and will turn while it has feeling left, who didst love in
vain, and whose first was thy last sigh, wilt not thou too rest in
peace (or wilt thou cry to me complaining from thy clay-cold bed ?)
when that sad heart is no longer sad, and that sorrow is dead which
thou wert only called into the world to feel ?
It is certain that there is nothing in the idea of a pre-existent
state that excites our longing like the prospect of a posthumous
existence. We are satisfied to have begun life when we did; we
THE FEAR OF DEATH. 259
have no ambition to have set out on our journey sooner ; and feel
that we have had quite enough to do to battle our way through
since. We cannot say,
"The wars we well remember of King Nine,
Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine."
Neither have we any wish : we are contented to read of them in
story, and to stand and gaze at the vast sea of time that separates
us from them. It was early days then : the world was not well-aired,
enough for us : we have no inclination to have been up and stirring.
We do not consider the six thousand years of the world before we
were born as so much time lost to us : we are perfectly indifferent
about the matter. We do not grieve and lament that we did not
happen to be in time to see the grand mask and pageant of human
life going on in all that period ; though we are mortified at being
obliged to quit our stand before the rest of the procession passes.
It may be suggested in explanation of this difference, that we
know from various records and traditions what happened in the
time of Queen Anne, or even in the reigns of the Assyrian monarchs ;
but that we have no means of ascertaining what is to happen here-
after but by awaiting the event, and that our eagerness and curiosity
are sharpened in proportion as we are in the dark about it. This is
not at all the case ; for at that rate we should be constantly wishing
to make a voyage of discovery to Greenland or to the Moon, neither
of which we have, in general, the least desire to do. Neither, in
truth, have we any particular solicitude to pry into the secrets of
futurity, but as a pretext for prolonging our own existence. It is
not so much that we care to be alive a hundred or a thousand years
hence, any more than to have been alive a hundred or a thousand
years ago : but the thing lies here, that we would all of us wish the
present moment to last for ever. We would be as we are, and would
have the world remain just as it is, to please us.
"The present eye catches the present object " —
to have and to hold while it may ; and abhors, on any terms, to have
it torn from us, and nothing left in its room. It is the pang of
parting, the unloosing our grasp, the breaking asunder some strong
tie, the leaving some cherished purpose unfulfilled, that creates the
repugnance to go, and " makes calamity of so long life," as it often is.
" Oh ! thou strong heart !
There's such a covenant 'twixt the world and thee,
They're loth to break ! "
The love of life, then, is an habitual attachment, not an abstract
260 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
principle. Simply to be does not " content man's natural desire : "
we long to be in a certain time, place, and circumstance. We would
much rather be now, " on this bank and shoal of time," than have
our choice of any future period, than take a slice of fifty or sixty
years out of the Millennium, for instance. This shows that our
attachment is not confined either to being or to well-being, but that
we have an inveterate prejudice in favour of our immediate exist-
ence, such as it is. The mountaineer will not leave his rock, nor
the savage his hut ; neither are we willing to give up our present
mode of life, with all its advantages and disadvantages, for any other
that could be substituted for it. No man would, I think, exchange
his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief
not be, as not be ourselves. There are some persons of that reach of
soul that they would like to live two hundred and fifty years hence,
to see to what height of empire America will have grown up in that
period, or whether the English constitution will last so long. These
are points beyond me. But I confess I should like to live to see the
downfall of the Bourbons. That is a vital question with me ; and I
shall like it the better the sooner it happens !
No young man ever thinks he shall die. He may believe that
others will, or assent to the doctrine that " all men are mortal "
as an abstract proposition, but he is far enough from bringing it
home to himself individually. Youth, buoyant activity, and animal
spirits hold absolute antipathy with old age as well as with death ;
nor have we, in the heyday of life, any more than in the thought-
lessness of childhood, the remotest conception how
1 ' This sensible warm motion can become
A kneaded clod " —
nor how sanguine, florid health and vigour shall " turn to withered,
weak, and grey." Or if in a moment of idle speculation we indulge
in this notion of the close of life as a theory, it is amazing at what
a distance it seems; what a long, leisurely interval there is between;
what a contrast its slow and solemn approach affords to our present
gay dreams of existence ! We eye the farthest verge of the horizon,
and think what a way we shall have to look back upon ere we
arrive at our journey's end ; and without our in the least suspecting
it, the mists are at our feet, and the shadows of age encompass us.
The two divisions of our lives have melted into each other; the
extreme points close and meet with none of that romantic interva]
stretching out between them that we had reckoned upon ; and for
the rich, melancholy, solemn hues of age, " the sear, the yellow leaf/'
the deepening shadows of an autumnal evening, we only feel a
THE FEAR OF DEATH. 261
dank, cold mist, encircling all objects, after the spirit of youth is
fled. There is no inducement to look forward ; and what is worse,
little interest in looking back to what has become so trite and
common. The pleasures of our existence have worn themselves
out, are "gone into the wastes of time," or have turned their
indifferent side to us : the pains by their repeated blows have worn
us out, and have left us neither spirit nor inclination to encounter
them again in retrospect. We do not want to rip up old grievances,
nor to renew our youth like the phcenix, nor to live our lives
twice over. Once is enough. As the tree falls, so let it lie. Shut
up the book and close the account once for all !
It has been thought by some that life is like the exploring of a
passage that grows narrower and darker the farther we advance,
without a possibility of ever turning back, and where we are stifled
for want of breath at last. For myself, I do not complain of the
greater thickness of the atmosphere as I approach the narrow house.
I felt it more, formerly, when the idea alone seemed to suppress a
thousand rising hopes and weighed upon the pulses of the blood.
At present I rather feel a thinness and want of support, I stretch
out my hand to some object and find none, I am too much in a
world of abstraction; the naked map of life is spread out before
me, and in the emptiness and desolation I see Death coming to
meet me. In my youth I could not behold him for the crowd of
objects and feelings, and Hope stood always between us, saying,
" Never mind that old fellow ! " If I had lived indeed, I should
not care to die. But I do not like a contract of pleasure broken
off unfulfilled, a marriage with joy unconsummated, a promise of
happiness rescinded. My public and private hopes have been left
a ruin, or remain only to mock me. I would wish them to be
re-edified. I should like to see some prospect of good to mankind,
such as my life began with. I should like to leave some sterling
work behind me. I should like to have some friendly hand to
consign me to the grave. On these conditions I am ready, if not
willing, to depart. I shall then write on my tomb — GRATEFUL AND
CONTENTED ! But I have thought and suffered too much to be
willing to have thought and suffered in vain. — In looking back, it
sometimes appears to me as if I had in a manner slept out my life
in a dream or shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge, where
I have fed on books, on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in
half- murmurs the trampling of busy feet or the noises of the
throng below. Waked out of jthis dim, twilight existence^ and
startled with the passing scene, I have felt a wish to descend to the
world of realities and join in the chase. But I fear too late, and
262 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
that I had better return to my bookish chimeras and indolence once
more ! Zanetto, lascia le donne, et studio, la matematica. I will
think of it.
It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death
become more familiar to us as we approach nearer to it ; that life
Beems to ebb with the decay of blood and youthful spirits ; and that
as we find everything about us subject to chance and change, as
our strength and beauty die, as our hopes and passions, our friends
and our affections, leave us, we begin by degrees to feel ourselves
mortal !
I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. It
is years ago. The look was calm and placid, and the face was fair
and firm. It was as if a waxen image had been laid out in the
coffin, and strewed with innocent flowers. It was not like death,
but more like an image of life ! No breath moved the lips, no pulse
stirred, no sight or sound would enter those eyes or ears more.
While I looked at it, I saw no pain was there ; it seemed to smile
at the short pang of life which was over ; but I could not bear the
coffin-lid to be closed — it seemed to stifle me; and still as the
nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard over his little grave, the
welcome breeze helps to refresh me and ease the tightness at my
breast.
[I did not see my father after he was dead, but I saw Death
shake him by the palsied hand and stare him in the face. He
made as good an end as Falstaff ; though different, as became him.
After repeating the name of his R(edeemer) often, he took my
mother's hand, and, looking up, put it in my sister's, and so expired.
There was something graceful and gracious in his nature, which
showed itself in his last act.]
An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the two
children, is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we not grieve
and fret that the marble is not alive, or fancy that it has a shortness
of breath ? It never was alive ; and it is the difficulty of making
the transition from life to death, the struggle between the two in
our imagination, that confounds their properties painfully together,
and makes us conceive that the infant that is but just dead still
wants to breathe, to enjoy, and look about it, and is prevented by
the icy hand of death locking up its faculties and benumbing its
senses ; so that, if it could, it would complain of its own hard state.
Perhaps religious considerations reconcile the mind to this change
sooner than any others, by representing the spirit as fled to another
sphere, and leaving the body behind it. So in reflecting on death
generally, we mix up the idea of life with it, and thus make it the
THE FEAR OF DEATH. 263
ghastly monster it is. We think how we should feel, not how the
dead feel.
" Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries ;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires ! "
There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's " Light
of Nature Pursued," which I shall transcribe, as by much the best
illustration I can offer of it : —
" The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion pro-
vided for it to inhabit, dark, cold, close, and solitary, are shocking to
the imagination ; but it is to the imagination only, not the under-
standing ; for whoever consults this faculty will see at first glance
that there is nothing dismal in all these circumstances ; if the corpse
were kept wrapped up in a warm bed, with a roasting fire in the
chamber, it would feel no comfortable warmth therefrom ; were
store of tapers lighted up as soon as day shuts in, it would see no
objects to divert it ; were it left at large it would have no liberty,
nor if surrounded with company would be cheered thereby ; neither
are the distorted features expressions of pain, uneasiness, or distress.
This every one knows, and will readily allow upon being suggested,
yet still cannot behold, nor even cast a thought upon those objects
without shuddering ; for knowing that a living person must suffer
grievously under such appearances, they become habitually formid-
able to the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which is increased
by the customs of the world around us."
There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily to
the fear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss which
others will have in us. If that were all, we might reasonably set
our minds at rest. The pathetic exhortation on country tombstones,
" Grieve not for me, my wife and children dear," &c., is for the most
part speedily followed to the letter. We do not leave so great a
void in society as we are inclined to imagine, partly to magnify our
own importance, and partly to console ourselves by sympathy. Even
in the same family the gap is not so great ; the wound closes up
sooner than we should expect. Nay, our room is not infrequently
thought better than our company. People walk along the streets
the day after our deaths just as they did before, and the crowd is
not diminished. While we were living, the world seemed in a man-
ner to exist only for us, for our delight and amusement, because it
contributed to them. But our hearts cease to beat, and it goes on
as usual, and thinks no more about us than it did in our lifetime.
The million are devoid of sentiment, and care as little for you or me
as if we belonged to the moon. We live the week over in the Sun-
day's paper, or are decently interred in some obituary at the month's
264 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
end ! It is not surprising that we are forgotten so soon after we
quit this mortal stage ; we are scarcely noticed while we are on it.
It is not merely that our names are not known in China — they have
hardly been heard of in the next street. We are hand and glove
with the universe, and think the obligation is mutual. This is an
evident fallacy. If this, however, does not trouble us now, it will
not hereafter. A handful of dust can have no quarrel to pick with
its neighbours, or complaint to make against Providence, and might
well exclaim, if it had but an understanding and a tongue, " Go thy
ways, old world, swing round in blue ether, voluble to every age,
you and I shall no more jostle ! "
It is amazing how soon the rich and titled, and even some of those
who have wielded great political power, are forgotten.
" A little rule, a little sway,
Is all the great and mighty have
Betwixt the cradle and the grave " —
and, after its short date, they hardly leave a name behind them.
" A great man's memory may, at the common rate, survive him half
a year." His heirs and successors take his titles, his power, and his
wealth — all that made him considerable or courted by others ; and
he has left nothing else behind him either to delight or benefit the
world. Posterity are not by any means so disinterested as they are
supposed to be. They give their gratitude and admiration only in
return for benefits conferred. They cherish the memory of those to
whom they are indebted for instruction and delight ; and they cherish
it just in proportion to the instruction and delight they are conscious
they receive. The sentiment of admiration springs immediately
from this ground, and cannot be otherwise than well founded.
The effeminate clinging to life as such, as a general or abstract
idea, is the effect of a highly civilised and artificial state of society.
Men formerly plunged into all the vicissitudes and dangers of war,
or staked their all upon a single die, or some one passion, which
if they could not have gratified, life became a burden to them —
now our strongest passion is to think, our chief amusement is to
read new plays, new poems, new novels, and this we may do at our
leisure, in perfect security, ad infinitum. If we look into the old
histories and romances, before the belles-lettres neutralised human
affairs and reduced passion to a state of mental equivocation, we
find the heroes and heroines not setting their lives "at a pin's
fee," but rather courting opportunities of throwing them away in
very wantonness of spirit. They raise their fondness for some
favourite pursuit to its height, to a pitch of madness, and think
no price too dear to pay for its full gratification. Everything else
THE FEAR OF DEATH. 26$
is dross. They go to death as to a bridal bed, and sacrifice them-
selves or others without remorse at the shrine of love, of honour,
of religion, or any other prevailing feeling. Borneo runs his " sea-
sick, weary bark upon the rocks" of death the instant he finds
himself deprived of his Juliet ; and she clasps his neck in their last
agonies, and follows him to the same fatal shore. One strong idea
takes possession of the mind and overrules every other ; and even
life itself, joyless without that, becomes an object of indifference or
loathing. There is at least more of imagination in such a state of
things, more vigour of feeling and promptitude to act than in our
lingering, languid, protracted attachment to life for its own poor
sake. It is, perhaps, also better, as well as more heroical, to strike
at some daring or darling object, and if we fail in that, to take the
consequences manfully, than to renew the lease of a tedious, spirit-
less, charmless existence, merely (as Pierre says) " to lose it after-
wards in some vile brawl " for some worthless object. Was there
not a spirit of martyrdom as well as a spice of the reckless energy
of barbarism in this bold defiance of death? Had not religion
something to do with it ; the implicit belief in a future life, which
rendered this of less value, and embodied something beyond it to
the imagination; so that the rough soldier, the infatuated lover,
the valorous knight, &c., could afford to throw away the present
venture, and take a leap into the arms of futurity, which the
modern sceptic shrinks back from, with all his boasted reason and
vain philosophy, weaker than a woman ! I cannot help thinking
so myself ; but I have endeavoured to explain this point before, and
will not enlarge further on it here.
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It
not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every
step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
Sedentary and studious men are the most apprehensive on this
score. Dr. Johnson was an instance in point. A few years seemed
to him soon over, compared with those sweeping contemplations
on time and infinity with which he had been used to pose himself.
In the still-life of a man of letters there was no obvious reason for
a change. He might sit in an arm-chair and pour out cups of tea
to all eternity. Would it had been possible for him to do so ! The
most rational cure, after all, for the inordinate fear of death is
to set a just value on life. If we merely wish to continue on the
scene to indulge our headstrong Tmmours and tormenting passions,
we had better begone at once : and if we only cherish a fondness
for existence according to the good we derive from it, the pang we
feel at parting with it will not be very severe !
266 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
THE FIGHT.
[This Essay first appeared in The New Monthly Magazine in 1822. It was
reprinted in Haditt's Literary Remains, 1836, and again in the third
Edition of Table-Talk, edited by his son, 1845.]
-"The fight, the fight's the thing,
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."
Where there's a will, there's a way. — I said so to myself, as I walked
down Chancery Lane, about half-past six o'clock on Monday the
loth of December, to inquire at Jack Randall's where the fight the
next day was to be ; and I found the proverb nothing " musty " in
the present instance. I was determined to see this fight, come what
would, and see it I did in great style. It was my first fight, yet it
more than answered my expectations. . . .
I was going down Chancery Lane, thinking to ask at Jack Randall's
where the fight was to be, when, looking through the glass-door of
the Hole in the Wall, I heard a gentleman asking the same question
at Mrs. Randall, as the author of " Waverley " would express it.
Now Mrs. Randall stood answering the gentleman's question, with
all the authenticity of the Lady of the Champion of the Light
Weights. Thinks I, I'll wait till this person comes out, and learn
from him how it is. For, to say a truth, I was not fond of going
into this house-of-call for heroes and philosophers, ever since the
owner of it (for Jack is no gentleman) threatened once upon a time
to kick me out of doors for wanting a mutton-chop at his hospitable
board, when the conqueror in thirteen battles was more full of blue
ruin than of good manners. I was the more mortified at this
repulse, inasmuch as I heard Mr. James Simpkins, hosier in the
Strand, one day when the character of the Hole in the Wall was
brought in question, observe, "The house is a very good house,
and the company quite genteel : I have been there myself ! "
Remembering this unkind treatment of mine host, to which mine
hostess was also a party, and not wishing to put her in unquiet
thoughts at a time jubilant like the present, I waited at the door,
when who should issue forth but my friend Joe P s, and seeing
him turn suddenly up Chancery Lane with that quick jerk and im-
patient stride which distinguish a lover of the FANCY, I said, " I'll
be hanged if that fellow is not going to the fight, and is on his way
to get me to go with him." So it proved in effect, and we agreed
to adjourn to my lodgings to discuss measures with that cordiality
THE FIGHT. 267
which makes old friends like new, and new friends like old, on great
occasions. We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves,
and have neither thoughts nor feelings to impart to them. Give a
man a topic in his head, a throb of pleasure in his heart, and he will
be glad to share it with the first person he meets. Joe and I,
though we seldom meet, were an alter idem on this memorable
occasion, and had not an idea that we did not candidly impart ; and
" so carelessly did we fleet the time," that I wish no better, when
there is another fight, than to have him for a companion on my
journey down, and to return with my friend Jack Pigott, talking of
what was to happen or of what did happen, with a noble subject
always at hand, and liberty to digress to others whenever they
offered. Indeed, on my repeating the lines from Spenser in an
involuntary fit of enthusiasm,
" What more felicity can fall to creature,
Than to enjoy delight with liberty ? "
my last-named ingenious friend stopped me by saying thut this,
translated into the vulgate, meant " Going to see a fight."
Joe and I could not settle about the method of going down. He
said there was a caravan, he understood, to start from Tom Belcher's
at two, which would go there right out and back again the next day.
Now, I never travel all night, and said I should get a cast to New-
bury by one of the mails. Joe swore the thing was impossible, and
I could only answer that I had made up my mind to it. In short,
he seemed to me to waver, said he only came to see if I was going,
had letters to write, a cause coming on the day after, and faintly
said at parting (for I was bent on setting out that moment),
"Well, we meet at Philippi?" I made the best of my way to
Piccadilly. The mail-coach stand was bare. " They are all gone,"
said I ; " this is always the way with me — in the instant I lose the
future — if I had not stayed to pour out that last cup of tea, I should
have been just in time ; " — and cursing my folly and ill-luck together,
without inquiring at the coach-office whether the mails were gone
or not, I walked on in despite, and to punish my own dilatoriness
and want of determination. At any rate, I would not turn back :
I might get to Hounslow, or perhaps farther, to be on my road
the next morning. I passed Hyde park corner (my Rubicon), and
trusted to fortune. Suddenly I heard the clattering of a Brentford
stage, and the fight rushed full upon my fancy. I argued (not un-
wisely) that even a Brentford coachman was better company than
my own thoughts (such as they were just then), and at his invita-
tion mounted the box with him. I immediately stated my case to
268 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
him — namely, my quarrel with myself for missing the Bath or
Bristol mail, and my determination to get on in consequence as
well as I could, without any disparagement or insulting comparison
between longer or shorter stages. It is a maxim with me that
stage-coaches, and consequently stage-coachmen, are respectable in
proportion to the distance they have to travel : so I said nothing
on that subject to my Brentford friend. Any incipient tendency to
an abstract proposition, or (as he might have construed it) to a per-
sonal reflection of this kind, was, however, nipped in the bud ; for
I had no sooner declared indignantly that I had missed the mails,
than he flatly denied that they were gone along, and lo! at the
instant three of them drove by in rapid, provoking, orderly succes-
sion, as if they would devour the ground before them. Here again
I seemed in the contradictory situation of the man in Dryden who
exclaims,
" I follow Fate, which does too hard pursue ! "
If I had stopped to inquire at the White Horse Cellar, which would
not have taken me a minute, I should now have been driving down
the road in all the dignified unconcern and ideal perfection of
mechanical conveyance. The Bath mail I had set my mind upon,
and I had missed it, as I miss everything else, by my own absurdity,
in putting the will for the deed, and aiming at ends without employ-
ing means. " Sir," said he of the Brentford, " the Bath mail will
be up presently ; my brother-in-law drives it, and I will engage to
stop him if there is a place empty." I almost doubted my good
genius ; but, sure enough, up it drove like lightning, and stopped
directly at the call of the Brentford Jehu. I would not have be-
lieved this possible, but the brother-in-law of a mail-coach driver is
himself no mean man. I was transferred without loss of time from
the top of one coach to that of the other, desired the guard to pay
my fare to the Brentford coachman for me, as I had no change,
was accommodated with a greatcoat, put up my umbrella to keep off
a drizzling mist, and we began to cut through the air like an arrow.
The milestones disappeared one after another, the rain kept off;
Tom Turtle 1 the trainer sat before me on the coach-box, with whom
I exchanged civilities as a gentleman going to the fight : the passion
that had transported me an hour before was subdued to pensive
regret and conjectural musing on the next day's battle; I was
promised a place inside at Beading, and upon the whole I thought
myself a lucky fellow. Such is the force of imagination ! On the
outside of any other coach on the loth of December, with a Scotch
i John Thurtell, to wit.
THE FIGHT. 269
mist drizzling through the cloudy moonlight air, I should have
been cold, comfortless, impatient, and, no doubt, wet through ; but
seated on the Royal-mail, I felt warm and comfortable ; the air did
me good, the ride did me good, I was pleased with the progress we
had made, and confident that all would go well through the journey.
When I got inside at Reading, I found Turtle and a stout valetudi-
narian, whose costume bespoke him one of the FANCY, and who had
risen from a three months' sick-bed to get into the mail to see the
fight. They were intimate, and we fell into a lively discourse. My
friend the trainer was confined in his topics to fighting dogs and
men, to bears and badgers ; beyond this he was " quite chapfallen,"
not a word to throw at a dog, or indeed very wisely fell asleep,
when any other game was started. The whole art of training (I,
however, learnt from him) consists in two things, exercise and ab-
stinence, abstinence and exercise, repeated alternately and without
end. A yolk of an egg with a spoonful of rum in it is the first thing
in a morning, and then a walk of six miles till breakfast. This meal
consists of a plentiful supply of tea and toast and beefsteaks. Then
another six or seven miles till dinner-time, and another supply of solid
beef or mutton with a pint of porter, and perhaps, at the utmost, a
couple of glasses of sherry. Martin trains on water, but this in-
creases his infirmity on another very dangerous side. The Gas-man
takes now and then a chirping glass (under the rose) to console him,
during a six weeks' probation, for the absence of Mrs. Hickman — an
agreeable woman, with (I understand) a pretty fortune of two
hundred pounds. How matter presses on me! What stubborn
things are facts ! How inexhaustible is nature and art ! " It is
well," as I once heard Mr. Richmond observe, " to see a variety.''
He was speaking of cock-fighting as an edifying spectacle. I cannot
deny but that one learns more of what is (I do not say of what
ought to bi) in this desultory mode of practical study than from
reading the same book twice over, even though it should be a moral
treatise. Where was I ? I was sitting at dinner with the candidate
for the honours of the ring, " where good digestion waits on appe-
tite, and health on both." Then follows an hour of social chat and
native glee ; and afterwards, to another breathing over heathy hill
or dale. Back to supper, and then to bed, and up by six again—
our hero
"Follows so the ever-running sun,
With profitable ardour" —
to the day that brings him victory or defeat in the green fairy
circle. Is not this life more sweet than mine ? I was going to say ;
but I will not libel any life by comparing it to mine, which is (at
270 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the date of these presents) bitter as coloquintida and the dregs of
aconitum !
The invalid in the Bath mail soared a pitch above the trainer, and
did not sleep so sound, because he had "more figures and more
fantasies." We talked the hours away merrily. He had faith in
surgery, for he had three ribs set right, that had been broken in a
turn-up at Belcher's, but thought physicians old women, for they
had no antidote in their catalogue for brandy. An indigestion is
an excellent commonplace for two people that never met before.
By way of ingratiating myself, I told him the story of my doctor,
who, on my earnestly representing to him that I thought his regi-
men had done me harm, assured me that the whole pharmacopoeia
contained nothing comparable to the prescription he had given me ;
and, as a proof of its undoubted efficacy, said that "he had had
one gentleman with my complaint under his hands for the last fifteen
years." This anecdote made my companion shake the rough sides of
his three greatcoats with boisterous laughter ; and Turtle, starting
out of his sleep, swore he knew how the fight would go, for he had had
a dream about it. Sure enough, the rascal told us how the three first
rounds went off, but " his dream," like others, " denoted a foregone
conclusion." He knew his men. The moon now rose in silver state,
and I ventured, with some hesitation, to point out this object of
placid beauty, with the blue serene beyond, to the man of science, to
which his ear he " seriously inclined," the more as it gave promise
dun beau jour for the morrow, and showed the ring undrenched by
envious showers, arrayed in sunny smiles. Just then, all going on
well, I thought on my friend Joe, whom I had left behind, and
said innocently, " There was a blockhead of a fellow I left in town,
who said there was no possibility of getting down by the mail, and
talked of going by a caravan from Belcher's at two in the morning,
after he had written some letters." — " Why," said he of the lapels,
" I should not wonder if that was the very person we saw running
about like mad from one coach-door to another, and asking if any
one had seen a friend of his, a gentleman going to the fight, whom
he had missed stupidly enough by staying to write a note." — " Pray,
sir," said my fellow-traveller, " had he a plaid-cloak on ? " — " Why,
no," said I, " not at the time I left him, but he very well might
afterwards, for he offered to lend me one." The plaid-cloak and the
letter decided the thing. Joe, sure enough, was in the Bristol mail,
which preceded us by about fifty yards. This was droll enough.
We had now but a few miles to our place of destination, and the
first thing I did on alighting at Newbury, both coaches stopping at
the same time, was to call out, "Pray, is there a gentleman in that
THE FIGHT. 271
mail of the name of P s ? " — " No," said Joe, borrowing something
of the vein of Gilpin, " for I have just got out." — " Well ! " says he,
" this is lucky ; but you don't know how vexed I was to miss you ;
for," added he, lowering his voice, " do you know, when I left you I
went to Belcher's to ask about the caravan, and Mrs. Belcher said,
very obligingly, she couldn't tell about that, but there were two
gentlemen who had taken places by the mail and were gone on in a
landau, and she could frank us. It's a pity I didn't meet with you ;
we could then have got down for nothing. But mum's the word."
It's the devil for any one to tell me a secret, for it is sure to come
out in print. I do not care so much to gratify a friend, but the
public ear is too great a temptation to me.
Our present business was to get beds and supper at an inn ; but
this was no easy task. The public-houses were full, and where you
saw a light at a private house, and people poking their heads out of
the casement to see what was going on, they instantly put them in
and shut the window, the moment you seemed advancing with a
suspicious overture for accommodation. Our guard and coachman
thundered away at the outer gate of the Crown for some time with-
out effect — such was the greater noise within ; and when the doors
were unbarred and we got admittance, we found a party assembled
in the kitchen round a good hospitable fire, some sleeping, others
drinking, others talking on politics and on the fight. A tall English
yeoman (something like Matthews in the face, and quite as great
a wag) —
" A lusty man to ben an abbot able " —
was making such a prodigious noise about rent and taxes, and the
price of corn now and formerly, that he had prevented us from being
heard at the gate. The first thing I heard him say was to a shuffling
fellow who wanted to be oft' a bet for a shilling glass of brandy and
water — " Confound it, man, don't be insipid ! " Thinks I, that is a
good phrase. It was a good omen. He kept it up so all night, nor
flinched with the approach of morning. He was a fine fellow, with
sense, wit, and spirit, a hearty body and a joyous mind, free-spoken,
frank, convivial — one of that true English breed that went with
Harry the Fifth to the siege of Harfleur — "standing like grey-
hounds in the slips," &c. We ordered tea and eggs (beds were soon
found to be out of the question), and this fellow's conversation was
sauce piquante. It did one's heart good to see him brandish his oaken
towel and to hear him talk. He made mince-meat of a drunken,
stupid, red-faced, quarrelsome, frowsy farmer, whose nose " he moral-
ised into a thousand similes," making it out a firebrand like Bar-
Y
272 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
dolph's. " I'll tell you what, my friend," says he, " the landlady has
only to keep jrou here to save fire and candle. If one was to touch
your nose, it would go off like a piece of charcoal." At this the
other only grinned like an idiot, the sole variety in his purple face
being his little peering grey eyes and yellow teeth ; called for another
glass, swore he would not stand it ; and after many attempts to
provoke his humorous antagonist to single combat, which the other
turned off (after working him up to a ludicrous pitch of choler) with
great adroitness, he fell quietly asleep with a glass of liquor in his
hand, which he could not lift to his head. His laughing persecutor
made a speech over him, and turning to the opposite side of the
room, where they were all sleeping in the midst of this " loud and
furious fun," said, " There's a scene, by G — d ! for Hogarth to paint.
I think he and Shakspeare were our two best men at copying life."
This confirmed me in my good opinion of him. Hogarth, Shak-
speare, and Nature were just enough for him (indeed for any
man) to know. I said, " You read Cobbett, don't you ? At least,"
says I, " you talk just as well as he writes." He seemed to doubt
this. But I said, " We have an hour to spare ; if you'll get pen,
ink, and paper, and keep on talking, I'll write down what you say ;
and if it doesn't make a capital ' Political Register,' I'll forfeit my
head. You have kept me alive to-night, however. I don't know
what I should have done without you." He did not dislike this
view of tltte thing, nor my asking if he was not about the size of
Jem Belcher; and told me soon afterwards, in the confidence of
friendship, that " the circumstance which had given him nearly the
greatest concern in his life was Cribb's beating Jem after he had
lost his eye by racket-playing." — The morning dawns ; that dim but
yet clear light appears, which weighs like solid bars of metal on the
sleepless eyelids ; the guests dropped down from their chambers one
by one — but it was too late to think of going to bed now (the
clock was on the stroke of seven) ; we had nothing for it but to find
a barber's (the pole that glittered in the morning sun lighted us to
his shop), and then a nine miles' march to Hungerford. The day
was fine, the sky was blue, the mists retiring from the marshy
ground, the path was tolerably dry, the sitting-up all night had not
done us much harm — at least the cause was good ; we talked of
this and that with amicable difference, roving and sipping of many
subjects, but still invariably we returned to the fight. At length,
a mile to the left of Hungerford, on a gentle eminence, we saw the
ring, surrounded by covered carts, gigs, and carriages, of which
hundreds had passed us on the road ; Joe gave a youthful shout,
and we hastened down a narrow lane to the scene of action.
THE FIGHT. 273
Reader, have you ever seen a fight ? If not, yon have a pleasure
to come, at least if it is a fight like that between the Gas-man and
Bill Neate. The crowd was very great when we arrived on the
spot; open carriages were coming up, with streamers flying and
music playing, and the country-people were pouring in over hedge
and ditch in all directions, to see their hero beat or be beaten. The
odds were still on Gas, but only about five to four. Gully had been
down to try Neate, and had backed him considerably, which was a
damper to the sanguine confidence of the adverse party. About
,£200,000 were pending. Gas says he has lost ^3000, which were
promised him by different gentlemen if he had won. He had pre-
sumed too much on himself, which had made others presume on
him. This spirited and formidable young fellow seems to have
taken for his motto the old maxim, that " there are three things
necessary to success in life — Impudence ! Impudence ! Impudence ! "
It is so in matters of opinion, but not in the FANCY, which is the
most practical of all things, though even here confidence is half the
battle, but only half. Our friend had vapoured and swaggered too
much, as if he wanted to grin and bully his adversary out of the
fight. " Alas ! the Bristol man was not so tamed ! " — " This is the
gravedigger" (would Tom Hickman exclaim in the moments of
intoxication from gin and success, showing his tremendous right
hand) ; " this will send many of them to their long homes ; I haven't
done with them yet ! " Why should he — though he had licked four
of the best men within the hour — why should he threaten to inflict
dishonourable chastisement on my old master Richmond, a veteran
going off the stage, and who has borne his sable honours meekly ?
Magnanimity, my dear Tom, and bravery should be inseparable. Or
why should he go up to his antagonist, the first time he ever saw
him at the Fives-court, and measuring him from head to foot with
a glance of contempt, as Achilles surveyed Hector, say to him,
"What, are you Bill Neate? I'll knock more blood out of that
great carcass of thine, this day fortnight, than you ever knocked
out of a bullock's ! " It was not manly, — 'twas not fighter-like. If
he was sure of the victory (as he was not), the less said about it the
better. Modesty should accompany the FANCY as its shadow. The
best men were always the best behaved. Jem Belcher, the Game
Chicken (before whom the Gas-man could not have lived), were
civil, silent men. So is Cribb ; so is Tom Belcher, the most elegant
of sparrers, and not a man for every one to take by the nose. I
enlarged on this topic in the mail (while Turtle was asleep), and said
very wisely (as I thought) that impertinence was a part of no pro-
fession. A boxer was bound to beat his man, but not to thrust his
274 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
fist, either actually or by implication, in every one's face. Even a
highwayman, in the way of trade, may blow out your brains, but if
he uses foul language at the same time, I should say he was no
gentleman. A boxer, I would infer, need not be a blackguard or a
coxcomb, more than another. Perhaps I press this point too much
on a fallen man — Mr. Thomas Hickman has by this time learnt that
first of all lessons, " That man was made to mourn." He has lost
nothing by the late fight but his presumption ; and that every
man may do as well without ! By an over-display of this quality,
however, the public had been prejudiced against him, and the
knowing ones were taken in. Few but those who had bet on him
wished Gas to win. With my own prepossessions on the subject,
the result of the nth of December appeared to me as fine a
piece of poetical justice as I had ever witnessed. The difference
of weight between the two combatants (fourteen stone to twelve)
was nothing to the sporting men. Great, heavy, clumsy, long-armed
Bill Neate kicked the beam in the scale of the Gas-man's vanity.
The amateurs were frightened at his big words, and thought they
would make up for the difference of six feet and five feet nine
Truly, the FANCY are not men of imagination. They judge of what
has been, and cannot conceive of anything that is to be. The Gas-
man had won hitherto ; therefore he must beat a man half as big
again as himself — and that to a certainty. Besides, there are as
many feuds, factions, prejudices, pedantic notions, in the FANCY as
in the State or in the schools. Mr. Gully is almost the only cool,
sensible man among them, who exercises an unbiassed discretion,
and is not a slave to his passions in these matters. But enough of
reflections, and to our tale. The day, as I have said, was fine for
a December morning. The grass was wet and the ground miry,
and ploughed up with multitudinous feet, except that, within the
ring itself, there was a spot of virgin-green, closed in and unpro-
faned by vulgar tread, that shone with dazzling brightness in the
midday sun. For it was now noon, and we had an hour to wait.
This is the trying time. It is then the heart sickens, as you think
what the two champions are about, and how short a time will
determine their fate. After the first blow is struck there is no
opportunity for nervous apprehensions ; you are swallowed up in
the immediate interest of the scene — but
" Between the acting of a dreadful tiling
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream."
I found it so as I felt the sun's rays clinging to my back, and
THE FIGHT. 275
saw the white wintry clouds sink below the verge of the horizon.
" So," I thought, " my fairest hopes have faded from my sight ! —
so will the Gas-man's glory, or that of his adversary, vanish in an
hour." The swells were parading in their white box-coats, the outer
ring was cleared with some bruises on the heads and shins of the
rustic assembly (for the Cockneys had been distanced by the sixty-
six miles) ; the time drew near ; I had got a good stand ; a bustle,
a buzz, ran through the crowd ; and from the opposite side entered
Neate, between his second and bottle-holder. He rolled along,
swathed in his loose greatcoat, his knock-knees bending under his
huge bulk ; and, with a modest, cheerful air, threw his hat into the
ring. He then just looked round, and begun quietly to undress ;
when from the other side there was a similar rush and an opening
made, and the Gas-man came forward with a conscious air of anti-
cipated triumph, too much like the cock-of-the-walk. He strutted
about more than became a hero, sucked oranges with a supercilious
air, and threw away the skin with a toss of his head, and went up
and looked at Neate, which was an act of supererogation. The
only sensible thing he did was, as he strode away from the modern
Ajax, to fling out his arms, as if he wanted to try whether they
would do their work that day. By this time they had stripped,
and presented a strong contrast in appearance. If Neate was like
Ajax, " with Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear " the pugilistic reputa-
tion of all Bristol, Hickman might be compared to Diomed, light,
vigorous, elastic, and his back glistened in the sun, as he moved
about, like a panther's hide. There was now a dead pause — atten-
tion was awe-struck. Who at that moment, big with a great event,
did not draw his breath short — did not feel his heart throb ? All
was ready. They tossed up for the sun, and the Gas-man won.
They were led up to the scratch — shook hands, and went at it.
In the first round every one thought it was all over. After
making play a short time, the Gas-man flew at his adversary like
a tiger, struck five blows in as many seconds, three first, and then
following him as he staggered back, two more, right and left, and
down he fell, a mighty ruin. There was a shout, and I said, "There
is no standing this." Neate seemed like a lifeless lump of flesh and
bone, round which the Gas-man's blows played with the rapidity
of electricity or lightning, and you imagined he would only be
lifted up to be knocked down again. It was as if Hickman held
a sword or a fire in that right hand of his, and directed it against
an unarmed body. They met again, and Neate seemed, not cowed,
but particularly cautious. I saw his teeth clenched together and
his brows knit close against the sun. He held out both his arms
276 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
at full length straight before him, like two sledgehammers, and
raised his left an inch or two higher. The Gas-man could not get
over this guard — they struck mutually and fell, but without advan-
tage on either side. It was the same in the next round ; but the
balance of power was thus restored — the fate of the battle was
suspended. No one could tell how it would end. This was the
only moment in which opinion was divided; for, in the next, the
Gas-man aiming a mortal blow at his adversary's neck with his
right hand, and failing from the length he had to reach, the
other returned it with his left at full swing, planted a tremendous
blow on his cheek-bone and eyebrow, and made a red ruin of that
side of his face. The Gas-man went down, and there was another
shout — a roar of triumph as the waves of fortune rolled tumultuously
from side to side. This was a settler. Hickman got up, and
" grinned horrible a ghastly smile," yet he was evidently dashed in
his opinion of himself ; it was the first time he had ever been so
punished ; all one side of his face was perfect scarlet, and his right
eye was closed in dingy blackness, as he advanced to the fight, less
confident, but still determined. After one or two rounds, not re-
ceiving another such remembrancer, he rallied and went at it with his
former impetuosity. But in vain. His strength had been weakened,
— his blows could not tell at such a distance, — he was obliged to
fling himself at his adversary, and could not strike from his feet ;
and almost as regularly as he flew at him with his right hand,
Neate warded the blow, or drew back out of its reach, and felled
him with the return of his left. There was little cautious sparring
— no half -hits — no tapping and trifling, none of the petit-maitres/tip
of the art — they were almost all knock-down blows : the fight was a
good stand-up fight. The wonder was the half-minute time. If
there had been a minute or more allowed between each round, it
would have been intelligible how they should by degrees recover
strength and resolution ; but to see two men smashed to the ground,
smeared with gore, stunned, senseless, the breath beaten out of their
bodies ; and then, before you recover from the shock, to see them
rise up with new strength and courage, stand ready to inflict or
receive mortal offence, and rush upon each other " like two clouds
over the Caspian " — this is the most astonishing thing of all : this is
the high and heroic state of man ! From this time forward the
event became more certain every round ; and about the twelfth it
seemed as if it must have been over. Hickman generally stood with
his back to me ; but in the scuffle he had changed positions, and
Neate just then made a tremendous lunge at him, and hit him full
in the face. It was doubtful whether he would fall backwards or
THE FIGHT.
277
forwards ; he hung suspended for a minute or two, and then fell
back, throwing his hands in the air, and with his face lifted up to
the sky. I never saw anything more terrific than his aspect just
before he fell. All traces of life, of natural expression, were gone
from him. His face was like a human skull, a death's-head spouting
blood. The eyes were filled with blood, the nose streamed with
blood, the mouth gaped blood. He was not like an actual man, but
like a preternatural, spectral appearance, or like one of the figures
in Dante's " Inferno." Yet he fought on after this for several rounds,
still striking the first desperate blow, and Neate standing on the
defensive, and using the same cautious guard to the last, as if he had
still all his work to do ; and it was not till the Gas-man was so
stunned in the seventeenth or eighteenth round that*his senses
forsook him, and he could not come to time, that the battle was
declared over. Ye who despise the FANCY, do something to show as
much pluck or as much self-possession as this, before you assume a
superiority which you have never given a single proof of by any one
action in the whole course of your lives ! — When the Gas-man came
to himself, the first words he uttered were, " Where am I ? What
is the matter ? " — " Nothing is the matter, Tom, — you have lost the
battle, but you are the bravest man ah' ve." And Jackson whispered
to him, " I am collecting a purse for you, Tom." — Vain sounds, and
unheard at that moment ! Neate instantly went up and shook him
cordially by the hand, and seeing some old acquaintance, began to
flourish with his fists, calling out, " Ah ! you always said I couldn't
fight — what do you think now ? " But all in good-humour, and
without any appearance of arrogance; only it was evident Bill
Neate was pleased that he had won the fight. When it was over, I
asked Cribb if he did not think it was a good one. He said,
" Pretty wdl /" The carrier-pigeons now mounted into the air, and
one of them flew with the news of her husband's victory to the
bosom of Mrs. Neate. Alas for Mrs. Hickman !
Mais au revoir, as Sir Fopling Flutter says. I went down with
Joe P s; I returned with Jack Pigott, whom I met on the
ground. Tom's is a rattle-brain ; Pigott is a sentimentalist. Now,
under favour, I am a sentimentalist too — therefore I say nothing,
but that the interest of the excursion did not flag as I came back.
Pigott and I marched along the causeway leading from Hungerford
to Newbury, now observing the effect of a brilliant sun on the
tawny meads or moss-coloured cottages, now exulting in the fight,
now digressing to some topic of general and elegant literature.
My friend was dressed in character for the occasion, or like one
of the FANCY ; that is, with a double portion of greatcoats,
278 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
clogs, and overhauls ; and just as we had agreed with a couple
of country-lads to carry his superfluous wearing-apparel to the
next town, we were overtaken by a return post-chaise, into which
I got, Pigott preferring a seat on the bar. There were two
strangers already in the chaise, and on their observing they
supposed I had been to the fight, I said I had, and concluded
they had done the same. They appeared, however, a little shy
and sore on the subject; and it was not till after several hints
dropped and questions put, that it turned out that they had missed
it. One of tHese friends had undertaken to drive the other there
in his gig: they had set out, to make sure work, the day before
at three in the afternoon. The owner of the one-horse vehicle
scorned to. ask his way, and drove right on to Bagshot, instead of
turning off at Hounslow : there they stopped all night, and set off
the next day across the country to Heading, from whence they took
coach, and got down within a mile or two of Hungerford, just half-
an-hour after the fight was over. This might be safely set down
as one of the miseries of human life. We parted with these two
gentlemen who had been to see the fight, but had returned as they
went, at Wolhampton, where we were promised beds (an irresistible
temptation, for Pigott had passed the preceding night at Hunger-
ford as we had done at Newbury), and we turned into an old
bow-windowed parlour with a carpet and a snug fire ; and after
devouring a quantity of tea, toast, and eggs, sat down to consider,
during an hour of philosophic leisure, what we should have for
supper. In the midst of an Epicurean deliberation between a
roasted fowl and mutton-chops with mashed potatoes, we were
interrupted by an inroad of Goths and Vandals — 0 procul este pro-
fani — not real flash-men, but interlopers, noisy pretenders, butchers
from Tothill-fields, brokers from Whitechapel, who called immedi-
ately for pipes and tobacco, hoping it would not be disagreeable
to the gentlemen, and began to insist that it was a cross. Pigott
withdrew from the smoke and noise into another room, and left me
to dispute the point with them for a couple of hours sans intermis-
sion by the dial. The next morning we rose refreshed ; and ou
observing that Jack had a pocket volume in his hand, in which he
read in the intervals of our discourse, I inquired what it was, and
learned, to my particular satisfaction, that it was a volume of the
" New Eloise." Ladies, after this, will you contend that a love for
the FANCY is incompatible with the cultivation of sentiment ? —
We jogged on as before, my friend setting me up in a genteel drab
greatcoat and green silk handkerchief (which I must say became
me exceedingly), and after stretching our legs for a few miles, and
THE FIGHT. 279
seeing Jack Randall, Ned Turner, and Scroggins pass on the top
of one of the Bath coaches, we engaged with the driver of the
second to take us to London for the usual fee. I got inside, and
found three other passengers. One of them was an old gentleman
with an aquiline nose, powdered hair, and a pigtail, and who
looked as if he had played many a rubber at the Bath rooms. I
said to myself, " He is very like Mr. Windham ; I wish he would
enter into conversation, that I might hear what fine observations
would come from those finely-turned features." However, nothing
passed, till, stopping to dine at Reading, some inquiry was made
by the company about the fight, and I gave (as the reader may
believe) an eloquent and animated description of it. When we
got into the coach again, the old gentleman, after a graceful exor-
dium, said he had, when a boy, been to a fight between the famous
Broughton and George Stevenson, who was called the Fighting
Coachman, in the year 1770, with the late Mr. Windham. This
beginning flattered the spirit of prophecy within me, and riveted
my attention. He went on — " George Stevenson was coachman
to a friend of my father's. He was an old man when I saw him
some years afterwards. He took hold of his own arm and said,
' There was muscle here once, but now it is no more than this
young gentleman's.' He added, 'Well, no matter; I have been
here long; I am willing to go hence, and I hope I have done no
more harm than another man.' Once," said my unknown com-
panion, "I asked him if he had ever beat Broughton. He said
Yes ; that he had fought with him three times, and the last time
he fairly beat him, though the world did not allow it. 'I'll tell
you how it was, master. When the seconds lifted us up in the
last round, we were so exhausted that neither of us could stand,
and we fell upon one another, and as Master Broughton fell upper-
most, the mob gave it in his favour, and he was said to have won
the battle. But the fact was, that as his second (John Cuthbert)
lifted him up, and said to him, "I'll fight no more, I've had enough;''
which,' says Stevenson, ' you know, gave me the victory. And to
prove to you that this was the case, when John Cuthbert was on
his deathbed, and they asked him if there was anything on his
mind which he wished to confess, he answered, " Yes ; that there
was one thing he wished to set right, for that certainly Master
Stevenson won the last fight with Master Broughton; for he
whispered him as he lifted him up in the last round of all, that
he had had enough." ' This," said the Bath gentleman, " was a
bit of human nature ; " and I have written this account of the
fight on purpose that it might not be lost to the world. He also
28o WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
stated as a proof of the candour of mind in this class of men, that
Stevenson acknowledged that Broughton could have beat him in
his best day; but that he (Broughton) was getting old in then-
last rencounter. When we stopped in Piccadilly, I wanted to ask
the gentleman some questions about the late Mr. "Windham, but
had not courage. I got out, resigned my coat and green silk
handkerchief to Pigott (loth to part with these ornaments of life),
and walked home in high spirits.
P.S. — Joe called upon me the next day, to ask me if I did not
think the fight was a complete thing. I said I thought it was. I
hope he will relish my account of it.
ON THE CONDUCT OF LIFE ; OE, ADVICE TO A
SCHOOLBOY.1
[This paper appeared in a Paris Edition of Table-Talk, 1825. It was
printed in the Literary Remains, 1836 ; and in the third Edition of
Table-Talk, edited by his son, 1846. It is one of the most pleasing
of his compositions, written with much earnestness and feeling, and
in an unadorned style. The pages relating to love and marriage are
omitted. Of all able writers, Hazlitt had the least knowledge of the
female character. It is a subject on which he seldom ventures, and
never successfully.]
MY DEAR LITTLE FELLOW, — You are now going to settle at school,
and may consider this as your first entrance into the world. As my
health is so indifferent, and I may not be with you long, I wish to
leave you some advice (the best I can) for your conduct in lif e, both
that it may be of use to you, and as something to remember me
by. I may at least be able to caution you against my own errors,
if nothing else.
As we went along to your new place of destination, you often
repeated that " you durst say they were a set of stupid, disagreeable
people," meaning the people at the school. You were to blame in
this. It is a good old rule to hope for the best. Always, my dear,
1 His son, William Hazlitt, Eegistrar of the London Bankruptcy Court, now
in his eightieth year [1889]. He is known as an author by his translations of
"The Life of Luther," Michelet's "Roman Republic," Guizot's "History of
Civilisation," and " The English Revolution," Thierry's " Conquest of England
by the Normans," &c. He wrote a continuation of Johnson's "Lives of the
Poets," and edited the first reprints of his father's works, as well as Cotton's
Montaigne, and a selection of Defoe's works.
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 281
believe things to be right, till you find them the contrary ; and even
then, instead of irritating yourself against them, endeavour to put
up with them as well as you can, if you cannot alter them. You
said " you were sure you should not like the school where you were
going." This was wrong. What you meant was, that you did not
like to leave home. But you could not tell whether you should like
the school or not till you had given it a trial. Otherwise, your
saying that you should not like it was determining that you would
not like it. Never anticipate evils, or, because you cannot have
things exactly as you wish, make them out worse than they are,
through mere spite and wilfulness.
You seemed at first to take no notice of your schoolfellows, or
rather to set yourself against them, because they were strangers to
you. They knew as little of you as you did of them ; so that this
would have been a reason for their keeping aloof from you as well,
which you would have felt as a hardship. Learn never to conceive
a prejudice against others because you know nothing of them. It.
is bad reasoning, and makes enemies of half the world. Do not
think ill of them till they behave ill to you ; and then strive to
avoid the faults which you see in them. This will disarm their
hostility sooner than pique or resentment or complaint.
I thought you were disposed to criticise the dress of some of the
boys as not so good as your own. Never despise any one for any-
thing that he cannot help — least of all, for his poverty. I would
wish you to keep up appearances yourself as a defence against the
idle sneers of the world, but I would not have you value yourself
upon them. I hope you will neither be the dupe nor victim of
vulgar prejudices. Instead of saying above, "Never despise any
one for anything that he cannot help," I might have said, " Never
despise any one at all ; " for contempt implies a triumph over and
pleasure in the ill of another. It means that you are glad and con-
gratulate yourself on their failings or misfortunes. The sense of
inferiority in others, without this indirect appeal to our self-love, is
a painful feeling and not an exulting one.
You complain since, that the boys laugh at you and do not care
about you, and that you are not treated as you were at home. My
dear, that is one chief reason for your being sent to school, to inure
you betimes to the unavoidable rubs and uncertain reception you
may meet with in life. You cannot always be with me, and perhaps
it is as well that you cannot. But you must not expect others to
show the same concern about you as I should. You have hitherto
been a spoiled child, and have been used to have your own way a
good deal, both in the house and among your playfellows, with whom
282 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
you were too fond of being a leader ; but you have good-nature and
good sense, and will get the better of this in time. You have now
got among other boys who are your equals, or bigger and stronger
than yourself, and who have something else to attend to besides
humouring your whims and fancies, and you feel this as a repulse or
piece of injustice. But the first lesson to learn is, that there are
other people in the world besides yourself. There are a number of
boys in the school where you are, whose amusements and pursuits
(whatever they may be) are and ought to be of as much consequence
to them as yours can be to you, and to which, therefore, you must
give way in your turn. The more airs of childish self-importance
you give yourself, you will only expose yourself to be the more
thwarted and laughed at. True equality is the only true morality or
true wisdom. Remember always that you are but one among others,
and you can hardly mistake your place in society. In your father's
house you might do as you pleased ; in the world you will find com-
petitors at every turn. You are not born a king's son, to destroy or
dictate to millions ; you can only expect to share their fate, or settle
your differences amicably with them. You already find it so at
school ; and I wish you to be reconciled to your situation as soon
and with as little pain as you can.
It was my misfortune (perhaps) to be bred up among Dissenters,
who look with too jaundiced an eye at others, and set too high a
value on their own peculiar pretensions. From being proscribed
themselves, they learn to proscribe others ; and come in the end to
reduce all integrity of principle and soundness of opinion within the
pale of their own little communion. Those who were out of it, and
did not belong to the class of Rational Dissenters, I was led errone-
ously to look upon as hardly deserving the name of rational beings.
Being thus satisfied as to the select few who are " the salt of the
earth," it is easy to persuade ourselves that we are at the head of
them, and to fancy ourselves of more importance in the scale of
true desert than all the rest of the world put together, who do not
interpret a certain text of Scripture in the manner that we have
been taught to do. You will (from the difference of education) be
free from this bigotry, and will, I hope, avoid everything akin
to the same exclusive and narrow-minded spirit. Think that the
minds of men are various as their faces ; that the modes and em-
ployments of life are numberless as they are necessary ; that there
is more than one class of merit; that though others may be wrong
in some things, they are not so in all ; and that countless races of
men have been born, have lived and died without ever hearing of any
one of those points in which you take a just pride and pleasure, and
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 283
you will not err on the side of that spiritual pride or intellectual cox-
combry which has been so often the bane of the studious and learned !
I observe you have got a way of speaking of your schoolfellows
as " that Hoare, that Harris," and so on, as if you meant to mark
them out for particular reprobation, or did not think them good
enough for you. It is a bad habit to speak disrespectfully of
others ; for it will lead you to think and feel uncharitably towards
them. Ill names beget ill blood. Even where there may be some
repeated trifling provocation, it is better to be courteous, mild, and
forbearing than captious, impatient, and fretful. The faults of
others too often arise out of our own ill-temper ; or though they
should be real, we shall not mend them by exasperating ourselves
against them. Treat your playmates, as Hamlet advises Polonius
to treat the players, " according to your own dignity, rather than
their deserts." If you fly out at everything in them that you dis-
approve or think done on purpose to annoy you, you lie constantly
at the mercy of their caprice, rudeness, or ill-nature. You should
be more your own master.
Do not begin to quarrel with the world too soon ; for, bad as it
may be, it is the best we have to live in — here. If railing would
have made it better, it would have been reformed long ago; but
as this is not to be hoped for at present, the best way is to slide
through it as contentedly and innocently as we may. The worst
fault it has is want of charity ; and calling knave and fool at every
turn will not cure this failing. Consider (as a matter of vanity)
that if there were not so many knaves and fools as we find, the wise
and honest would not be those rare and shining characters that
they are allowed to be ; and (as a matter of philosophy) that if the
world be really incorrigible in this respect, it is a reflection to make
one sad, not angry. We may laugh or weep at the madness of
mankind: we have no right to vilify them, for our own sakes or
theirs. Misanthropy is not the disgust of the mind at human
nature, but with itself; or it is laying its own exaggerated vices
and foul blots at the door of others! Do not, however, mistake
what I have here said. I would not have you, when you grow up,
adopt the low and sordid fashion of palliating existing abuses or
of putting the best face upon the worst things. I only mean that
indiscriminate, unqualified satire can do little good, and that those
who indulge in the most revolting speculations on human nature
do not themselves always set the fairest examples or strive to pre-
vent its lower degradation. They seem rather willing to reduce it
to their theoretical standard. For the rest, the very outcry that is
made (if sincere) shows that things cannot be quite so bad as they
284 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
are represented. The abstract hatred and scorn of vice implies the
capacity for virtue : the impatience expressed at the most striking
instances of deformity proves the innate idea and love of beauty in
the human mind. The best antidote I can recommend to you here-
after against the disheartening effect of such writings as those of
Rochefoucauld, Mandeville, and others, will be to look at the
pictures of Raphael and Correggio. You need not be altogether
ashamed, my dear little boy, of belonging to a species which could
produce such faces as those ; nor despair of doing something worthy
of a laudable ambition, when you see what such hands have wrought !
You will, perhaps, one day have reason to thank me for this advice.
As to your studies and school-exercises, I wish you to learn Latin,
French, and dancing. I would insist upon the last more particularly,
both because it is more likely to be neglected, and because it is of
the greatest consequence to your success in life. Everything almost
depends upon first impressions ; and these depend (besides person,
which is not in our power) upon two things, dress and address, which
every one may command with proper attention. These are the
small coin in the intercourse of life, which are continually in request ;
and perhaps you will find at the year's end, or towards the close of
life, that the daily insults, coldness, or contempt to which you have
been exposed by a neglect of such superficial recommendations are
hardly atoned for by the few proofs of esteem or admiration which
your integrity or talents have been able to extort in the course of
it. When we habitually disregard those things which we know will
ensure the favourable opinion of others, it shows we set that opinion
at defiance, or consider ourselves above it, which no one ever did
with impunity. An inattention to our own persons implies a disre-
spect to others, and may often be traced no less to a want of good-
nature than of good sense. The old maxim, Desire to please, and
you will infallibly please, explains the whole matter. If there is
a tendency to vanity and affectation on this side of the question,
there is an equal alloy of pride and obstinacy on the opposite
one. — Slovenliness may at any time be cured by an effort of re-
solution, but a graceful carriage requires an early habit, and, in
most cases, the aid of the dancing-master. I would not have you,
from not knowing how to enter a room properly, stumble at the
very threshold in the good graces of those on whom it is possible
the fate of your future life may depend. Nothing creates a greater
prejudice against any one than awkwardness. A person who is con-
fused in manner and gesture seems to have done something wrong,
or as if he was conscious of no one qualification to build a confidence
in himself upon. On the other hand, openness, freedom, self-poses-
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 285
sion, set others at ease with you by showing that you are on good
terms with yourself. Grace in women gains the affections sooner,
and secures them longer, than anything else — it is an outward and
visible sign of an inward harmony of soul — as the want of it in men,
as if the mind and body equally hitched in difficulties and were
distracted with doubts, is the greatest impediment in the career of
gallantry and road to the female heart. Another thing I would
caution you against is not to pore over your books till you are
bent almost double — a habit you will never be able to get the better
of, and which you will find of serious ill consequence. A stoop in
the shoulders sinks a man in public and in private estimation. You
are at present straight enough, and you walk with boldness and
spirit. Do nothing to take away the use of your limbs or the spring
and elasticity of your muscles. As to all worldly advantages, it is
to the full of as much importance that your deportment should be
erect and manly as your actions.
You will naturally find out all this and fall into it, if your atten-
tion is drawn out sufficiently to what is passing around you ; and
this will be the case, unless you are absorbed too much in books and
those sedentary studies
" Which waste the marrow, and consume the brain."
You are, I think, too fond of reading as it is. As one means of
avoiding excess in this way, I would wish you to make it a rule
never to read at meal-times, nor in company when there is any (even
the most trivial) conversation going on, nor ever to let your eager-
ness to learn encroach upon your play-hours. Books are but one
inlet of knowledge ; and the pores of the mind, like those of the
body, should be left open to all impressions. I applied too close to
my studies, soon after I was of your age, and hurt myself irreparably
by it. Whatever may be the value of learning, health and good
spirits are of more.
I would have you, as I said, make yourself master of French,
because you may find it of use in the commerce of life ; and I would
have you learn Latin, partly because I learnt it myself, and I would
not have you without any of the advantages or sources of knowledge
that I possessed — it would be a bar of separation between us — and
secondly, because there is an atmosphere round this sort of classical
ground to which that of actual life is gross and vulgar. Shut out
from this garden of early sweetness, we may well exclaim —
" How shall we part and wander down
Into a lower world, to this obscure
And wild ? How shall we breathe in other air
Less pure, accustom'd to immortal fruits i '"
286 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
I do not think the Classics so indispensable to the cultivation of your
intellect as on another account, which I have explained elsewhere,
and you will have no objection to turn with me to the passage.
" The study of the Classics is less to be regarded as an exercise
of the intellect than as a discipline of humanity. The peculiar
advantage of this mode of education consists not so much in
strengthening the understanding as in softening and refining the
taste. It gives men liberal views ; it accustoms the mind to take
an interest in things foreign to itself; to love virtue for its own
sake; to prefer fame to life, and glory to riches; and to fix our
thoughts on the remote and permanent instead of narrow and fleet-
ing objects. It teaches us to believe that there is something really
great and excellent in the world, surviving all the shocks of accident
and fluctuations of opinion, and raises us above that low and servile
fear which bows only to present power and upstart authority. Home
and Athens filled a place in the history of mankind which can never
be occupied again. They were two cities set on a hill, which could
not be hid ; all eyes have seen them, and their light shines like a
mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time.
1 Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ;
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
Hail, bards triumphant, born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise !
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow ! '
It is this feeling more than anything else which produces a marked
difference between the study of the ancient and modern languages,
and which, by the weight and importance of the consequences
attached to the former, stamps every word with a monumental
firmness. By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment
with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can
no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which
they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power
which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch
the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages."
Because, however, you have learnt Latin and Greek, and can speak
a different language, do not fancy yourself of a different order of
beings from those you ordinarily converse with. They perhaps know
and can do more things than you, though you have learnt a greater
variety of names to express the same thing by. The great object,
indeed, of these studies is to be " a cure for a narrow and selfish
spirit," and to carry the mind out of its petty and local prejudices
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 287
to the idea of a more general humanity. Do not fancy, because
you are intimate with Homer and Virgil, that your neighbours who
can never attain the same posthumous fame are to be despised,
like those impudent valets who live in noble families and look down
upon every one else. Though you are master of Cicero's " Orations,"
think it possible for a cobbler at a stall to be more eloquent than
you. " But you are a scholar, and he is not." Well, then, you have
that advantage over him, but it does not follow that you are to
have every other. Look at the heads of the celebrated poets and
philosophers of antiquity in the collection at Wilton, and you will
say they answer to their works; but you will find others in the
same collection whose names have hardly come down to us that are
equally fine, and cast in the same classic mould. Do you imagine
that all the thoughts, genius, and capacity of those old and mighty
nations are contained in a few odd volumes, to be thumbed by
schoolboys ? This reflection is not meant to lessen your admiration
of the great names to which you will be accustomed to look up,
but to direct it to that solid mass of intellect and power, of which
they were the most shining ornaments. I would wish you to excel
in this sort of learning and to take a pleasure in it, because it is
the path that has been chosen for you ; but do not suppose that
others do not excel equally in their line of study or exercise of skill,
or that there is but one mode of excellence in art or nature. You
have got on vastly beyond the point at which you set out; but
others have been getting on as well as you in the same or other
ways, and have kept pace with you. What then, you may ask, is
the use of all the pains you have taken, if it gives you no superiority
over mankind in general? It is this — You have reaped all the
benefit of improvement and knowledge yourself ; and further, if you
had not moved forwards, you would by this time have been left
behind. Envy no one, disparage no one, think yourself above no
one. Their demerits will not piece out your deficiencies ; nor is it
a waste of time and labour for you to cultivate your own talents
because you cannot bespeak a monopoly of all advantages. You
are more learned than many of your acquaintance who may be
more active, healthy, witty, successful in business, or expert in some
elegant or useful art than you ; but you have no reason to complain,
if you have attained the object of your ambition. Or if you should
not be able to compass this from a want of genius or parts, yet
learn, my child, to be contented with a mediocrity of acquirements.
You may still be respectable in your conduct, and enjoy a tranquil
obscurity, with more friends and fewer enemies than you might
otherwise have had.
z
288 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
There is one almost certain drawback on a course of scholastic
study, that it unfits men for active life. The ideal is always at
variance with the practical. The habit of fixing the attention on
the imaginary and abstracted deprives the mind equally of energy
and fortitude. By indulging our imaginations on fictions and
chimeras, where we have it all our own way and are led on only
by the pleasure of the prospect, we grow fastidious, effeminate,
lapped in idle luxury, impatient of contradiction, and unable to
sustain the shock of real adversity, when it comes ; as by being
taken up with abstract reasoning or remote events in which we
are merely passive spectators, we have no resources to provide
against it, no readiness, or expedients for the occasion, or spirit
to use them, even if they occur. We must think again before we
determine, and thus the opportunity for action is lost. While we
are considering the very best possible mode of gaining an object,
we find that it has slipped through our fingers, or that others have
laid rude, fearless hands upon it. The youthful tyro reluctantly
discovers that the ways of the world are not his ways, nor their
thoughts his thoughts. Perhaps the old monastic institutions were
not in this respect unwise, which carried on to the end of life the
secluded habits and romantic associations with which it began,
and which created a privileged world for the inhabitants, distinct
from the common world of men and women. You will bring with
you from your books and solitary reveries a wrong measure of men
and things, unless you correct it by careful experience and mixed
observation. You will raise your standard of character as much
too high at first as from disappointed expectation it will sink too
low afterwards. The best qualifier of this theoretical mania and
of the dreams of poets and moralists (who both treat of things as
they ought to be and not as they are) is in one sense to be found
in some of our own popular writers, such as our Novelists and
periodical Essayists. But you had, after all, better wait and see
what things are than try to anticipate the results. You know
more of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures
and descriptions in the world. You will find the business of life
conducted on a much more varied and individual scale than you
would expect. People will be concerned about a thousand things
that you have no idea of, and will be utterly indifferent to what
you feel the greatest interest in. You will find good and evil, folly
and discretion, more mingled, and the shades of character running
more into each other than they do in the ethical charts. No one
is equally wise or guarded at all points, and it is seldom that any
one is quite a fool. Do not be surprised, when you go out into the
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 289
world, to find men talk exceedingly well on different subjects who
do not derive their information immediately from books. In the
first place, the light of books is diffused very much abroad in the
world in conversation and at second hand; and besides, common-
sense is not a monopoly, and experience and observation are sources
of information open to the man of the world as well as to the
retired student. If you know more of the outline and principles, he
knows more of the details and " pradique part of life." A man may
discuss the adventures of a campaign in which he was engaged very
agreeably without having read the " Retreat of the Ten Thousand,"
or give a singular account of the method of drying teas in China
without being a profound chemist. It is the vice of scholars to
suppose that there is no knowledge in the world but that of books.
Do you avoid it, I conjure you ; and thereby save yourself the pain
and mortification that must ensue from finding out your mistake
continually !
Gravity is one great ingredient in the conduct of life, and perhaps
a certain share of it is hardly to be dispensed with. Few people can
afford to be quite unaffected. At any rate, do not put your worst
qualities foremost. Do not seek to distinguish yourself by being
ridiculous, nor entertain that miserable ambition to be the sport
and butt of the company. By aiming at a certain standard of
behaviour or intellect, you will at least show your taste and value
for what is excellent. There are those who blurt out their good
things with so little heed of what they are about that no one thinks
anything of them ; as others by keeping their folly to themselves
gain the reputation of wisdom. Do not, however, affect to speak
only in oracles or to deal in Ion-mots; condescend to the level of
the company, and be free and accessible to all persons. Express
whatever occurs to you, that cannot offend others or hurt yourself .
Keep some opinions to yourself. Say what you please of others,
but never repeat what you hear said of them to themselves. If you
have nothing better to offer, laugh with the witty, assent to the
wise ; they will not think the worse of you for it. Listen to informa-
tion on subjects you are unacquainted with, instead of always striving
to lead the conversation to some favourite one of your own. By the
last method you will shine, but will not improve. I am ashamed
myself ever to open my lips on any question I have ever written
upon. It is much more difficult to be able to converse on an equality
with a number of persons in turn than to soar above their heads,
and excite the stupid gaze of all companies by bestriding some
senseless topic of your own and confounding the understandings of
those who are ignorant of it. Be not too fond of argument. In-
290 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
deed, by going much into company (which I do not, however, wish
you to do) you will be weaned from this practice, if you set out
with it. Rather suggest what remarks may have occurred to you
on a subject than aim at dictating your opinions to others or at
defending yourself at all points. You will learn more by agreeing
in the main with others and entering into their trains of thinking,
than by contradicting and urging them to extremities. Avoid
singularity of opinion as well as of everything else. Sound conclu-
sions come with practical knowledge, rather than with speculative
refinements ; in what we really understand, we reason but little.
Long-winded disputes fill up the place of common-sense and candid
inquiry. Do not imagine that you will make people friends by
showing your superiority over them ; it is what they will neither
admit nor forgive, unless you have a high and acknowledged reputa-
tion beforehand, which renders this sort of petty vanity more inex-
cusable. Seek to gain the goodwill of others, rather than to extort
their applause ; and to this end be neither too tenacious of your
own claims nor inclined to press too hard on their weaknesses.
Do not affect the society of your inferiors in rank, nor court that
of the great. There can be no real sympathy in either case. The
first will consider you as a restraint upon them, and the last as an
intruder or upon sufferance. It is not a desirable distinction to be
admitted into company as a man of talents. You are a mark for
invidious observation. If you say nothing or merely behave with
common propriety and simplicity, you seem to have no business
there. If you make a studied display of yourself, it is arrogating a
consequence you have no right to. If you are contented to pass as
an indifferent person, they despise you ; if you distinguish yourself,
and show more knowledge, wit, or taste than they do, they hate you
for it. You have no alternative. I would rather be asked out to
sing than to talk. Every one does not pretend to a fine voice, but
every one fancies he has as much understanding as another. In-
deed, the secret of this sort of intercourse has been pretty well
found out. Literary men are seldom invited to the tables of the
great ; they send for players and musicians, as they keep monkeys
and parrots !
I would not, however, have you run away with a notion that the
rich are knaves or that lords are fools. They are, for what I know,
as honest and as wise as other people. But it is a trick of our self-
love, supposing that another has the decided advantage of us in
one way, to strike a balance by taking it for granted (as a moral
antithesis) that he must be as much beneath us in those qualities
on which we plume ourselves, and which we would appropriate
THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 291
almost entirely to our own use. It is hard indeed if others are
raised above us not only by the gifts of fortune, but of understand-
ing too. It is not to be credited. People have an unwillingness to
admit that the House of Lords can be equal in talent to the House
of Commons. So in the other sex, if a woman is handsome, she is
an idiot or no better than she should be : in ours, if a man is worth
a million of money, he is a miser, a fellow that cannot spell his own
name, or a poor creature in some way, to bring him to our level
This is malice, and not truth. Believe all the good you can of
every one. Do not measure others by yourself. If they have ad-
vantages which you have not, let your liberality keep pace with
their good fortune. Envy no one, and you need envy no one. If
you have but the magnanimity to allow merit wherever you see it —
understanding in a lord or wit in a cobbler — this temper of mind
will stand you instead of many accomplishments. Think no man
too happy. Raphael died young : Milton had the misfortune to be
blind. If any one is vain or proud, it is from folly or ignorance.
Those who pique themselves excessively on some one thing have but
that one thing to pique themselves upon, as languages, mechanics,
&c. I do not say that this is not an enviable delusion where it is
not liable to be disturbed ; but at present knowledge is too much
diffused and pretensions come too much into collision for this to be
long the case ; and it is better not to form such a prejudice at first
than to have it to undo all the rest of one's life. If you learn any
two things, though they may put you out of conceit one with the
other, they will effectually cure you of any conceit you might have
of yourself, by showing the variety and scope there is in the human
mind beyond the limits you had set to it.
You were convinced the first day that you could not learn Latin,
which now you find easy. Be taught from this, not to think other
obstacles insurmountable that you may meet with in the course of
your life, though they seem so at first sight.
Attend above all things to your health ; or rather, do nothing
wilfully to impair it. Use exercise, abstinence, and regular hours.
Drink water when you are alone, and wine or very little spirits in
company. It is the last that are ruinous by leading to unlimited
excess. There is not the same headlong impetus in wine. But one glass
of brandy and water makes you want another, that other makes you
want a third, and so on, in an increased proportion. Therefore no
one can stop midway who does not possess the resolution to abstain
altogether ; for the inclination is sharpened with its indulgence
Never gamble. Or if you play for anything, never do so for what
will give you uneasiness the next day. Be not precise in these
292 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
matters ; but do not pass certain limits, which it is difficult to re-
cover. Do nothing in the irritation of the moment, but take time
to reflect. Because you have done one foolish thing, do not do
another; nor throw away your health or reputation or comfort
to thwart impertinent advice. Avoid a spirit of contradiction, both
in words and actions. Do not aim at what is beyond your reach,
but at what is within it. Indulge in calm and pleasing pursuits,
rather than violent excitements ; and learn to conquer your own
will, instead of striving to obtain the mastery of that of others.
With respect to your friends, I would wish you to choose them
neither from caprice nor accident, and to adhere to them as long as
you can. Do not take a surfeit of friendship, through over-sanguine
enthusiasm, nor expect it to last for ever. Always speak well of
those with whom you have once been intimate, or take some part of
the censure you bestow on them to yourself. Never quarrel with
tried friends, or those whom you wish to continue such. Wounds
of this kind are sure to open again. When once the prejudice is
removed that sheaths defects, familiarity only causes jealousy and
distrust. Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the
substance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. Bury the
carcass of friendship : it is not worth embalming.
As to the books you will have to read by choice or for amuse-
ment, the best are the commonest. The names of many of them
are already familiar to you. Read them as you grow up with all
the satisfaction in your power, and make much of them. It is per-
haps the greatest pleasure you will have in life, the one you will
think of longest, and repent of least. If my life had been more full
of calamity than it has been (much more than I hope yours will be),
I would live it over again, my poor little boy, to have read the books
I did in my youth.
In politics I wish you to be an honest man, but no brawler. Hate
injustice and falsehood for your own sake. Be neither a martyr
nor a sycophant. Wish well to the world without expecting to
see it much better than it is ; and do not gratify the enemies of
liberty by putting yourself at their mercy, if it can be avoided
with honour. . . .
There is but one other point on which I meant to speak to you,
and that is, the choice of a profession. This, probably, had better be
left to time or accident or your own inclination. You have a very
fine ear, but I have somehow a prejudice against men-singers, and
indeed against the stage altogether. It is an uncertain and ungrate-
ful soil. All professions are bad that depend on reputation, which
is " as often got without merit as lost without deserving." Yet I
BURKE'S STYLE. 293
cannot easily reconcile myself to your being a slave to business, and
I shall hardly be able to leave you an independence. A situation in
a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without
the two great springs of life, Hope and Fear. Perhaps, however,
it might ensure you a competence, and leave you leisure for some
other favourite amusement or pursuit. I have said all reputation
is hazardous, hard to win, harder to keep. Many never attain a
glimpse of what they have all their lives been looking for, and
others survive a passing shadow of it. Yet if I were to name one
pursuit rather than another, I should wish you to be a good painter,
if such a thing could be hoped. I have failed in this myself, and
should wish you to be able to do what I have not — to paint like
Claude or Rembrandt or Guido or Vandyke, if it were possible.
Artists, I think, who have succeeded in their chief object, live to
be old, and are agreeable old men. Their minds keep alive to the
last. Cosway's spirits never flagged till after ninety, and Nollekens,
though blind, passed all his mornings in giving directions about
some group or bust in his workshop. You have seen Mr. Northcote,
that delightful specimen of the last age. With what avidity he
takes up his pencil, or lays it down again to talk of numberless
things ! His eye has not lost its lustre, nor " paled its ineffectual
fire." His body is a shadow: he himself is a pure spirit. There
is a kind of immortality about this sort of ideal and visionary
existence that dallies with Fate and baffles the grim monster,
Death. If I thought you could make as clever an artist and arrive
at such an agreeable old age as Mr. Northcote, I should declare at
once for your devoting yourself to this enchanting profession ; and
in that reliance should feel less regret at some of my own dis-
appointments, and little anxiety on your account !
[The Plain Speaker. Opinions on Books, Men, and Things. 2 vols.,
1826. Second Edition, 1851. Third Edition, 1873.]
BURKE'S STYLE.
[From the Essay " On the Prose-Style of Poets."]
IT has always appeared to me that the most perfect prose-style,
the most powerful, the most dazzling, the most daring, that which
went the nearest to the verge of poetry, and yet never fell over,
was Burke's. It has the solidity and sparkling effect of the
294 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
diamond: all other fine writing is like French paste or Bristol-
stones in the comparison. Burke's style is airy, nighty, adventurous,
but it never loses sight of the subject ; nay, is always in contact
with and derives its increased or varying impulse from it. It may
be said to pass yawning gulfs "on the unsteadfast footing of a
spear : " still it has an actual resting-place and tangible suppoit
under it — it is not suspended on nothing. It differs from poetry,
as I conceive, like the chamois from the eagle: it climbs to an
almost equal height, touches upon a cloud, overlooks a precipice,
is picturesque, sublime — but all the while, instead of soaring
through the air, it stands upon a rocky cliff, clambers up by abrupt
and intricate ways, and browses on the roughest bark or crops the
tender flower. The principle which guides his pen is truth, not
beauty — not pleasure, but power. He has no choice, no selection
of subject to natter the reader's idle taste or assist his own fancy :
he must take what comes, and make the most of it. He works the
most striking effects out of the most unpromising materials, by the
mere activity of his mind. He rises with the lofty, descends with
the mean, luxuriates in beauty, gloats over deformity. It is all the
same to him, so that he loses no particle of the exact, characteristic,
extreme impression of the thing he writes about, and that he com-
municates this to the reader, after exhausting every possible mode
of illustration, plain or abstracted, figurative or literal. Whatever
stamps the original image more distinctly on the mind is welcome.
The nature of his task precludes continual beauty ; but it does not
preclude continual ingenuity, force, originality. He had to treat
of political questions, mixed modes, abstract ideas, and his fancy
(or poetry, if you will) was ingrafted on these artificially, and, as
it might sometimes be thought, violently, instead of growing natu-
rally out of them, as it would spring of its own accord from indi-
vidual objects and feelings. . . . What can be more remote, for
instance, and at the same time more apposite, more the same, than
the following comparison of the English Constitution to "the proud
Keep of Windsor," in the celebrated Letter to a noble Lord ?
"Such are their ideas; such their religion, and such their law.
But as to our country and our race, as long as the well-compacted
structure of our Church and State, the sanctuary, the holy of holies
of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power —
a fortress at once and a temple — shall stand inviolate on the brow
of the British Sion; as long as the British Monarchy — not more
limited than fenced by the orders of the State — shall, like the proud
Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with
the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers; as long as this
BURKE' S STYLE. 295
awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land, so long
the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have
nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.
As long as our Sovereign Lord the King, and his faithful subjects,
the Lords and Commons of this realm — the triple cord which no
man can break; the solemn, sworn, constitutional frank-pledge of
this nation; the firm guarantees of each other's being and each
other's rights; the joint and several securities, each in its place
and order, for every kind and every quality of property and of
dignity — as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford is
safe : and we are all safe together — the high, from the blights of
envy and the spoliations of rapacity ; the low, from the iron hand
of oppression and the insolent spurn of contempt. Amen ! and so
be it : and so it will be,
' Dum domus ^Enese Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet ; imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.' "
Nothing can well be more impracticable to a simile than the vague
and complicated idea which is here embodied in one ; yet how finely,
how nobly it stands out, in natural grandeur, in royal state, with
double barriers round it to answer for its identity, with " buttress,
frieze, and coigne of Vantage" for the imagination to "make its
pendant bed and procreant cradle," till the idea is confounded with
the object representing it — the wonder of a kingdom; and then
how striking, how determined the descent, " at one fell swoop," to
the " low, fat, Bedford level ! " Poetry would have been bound to
maintain a certain decorum, a regular balance between these two
ideas ; sterling prose throws aside all such idle respect to appear-
ances, and with its pen, like a sword, " sharp and sweet," lays open
the naked truth ! The poet's Muse is like a mistress, whom we
keep only while she is young and beautiful, durante bene placito ;
the Muse of prose is like a wife, whom we take during life, for 'better,
for worse. Burke's execution, like that of all good prose, savours of
the texture of what he describes, and his pen slides or drags over
the ground of his subject, like the painter's pencil. The most rigid
fidelity and the most fanciful extravagance meet and are reconciled
in his pages. I never pass Windsor but I think of this passage in
Burke, and hardly know to which I am indebted most for enriching
my moral sense, that, or the fine picturesque stanza in Gray :
" From Windsor's heights the expanse below
Of mead, of lawn, of wood survey," &c.
296 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC,
COLERIDGE'S STYLE.
I AM indebted to Mr. Coleridge for the comparison of poetic prose
to the second-hand finery of a lady's-maid (just made use of). He
himself is an instance of his own observation, and (what is even
worse) of the opposite fault — an affectation of qaintness and ori-
ginality. With bits of tarnished lace and worthless frippery, he
assumes a sweeping oriental costume, or borrows the stiff dresses of
our ancestors, or starts an eccentric fashion of his own. He is swell-
ing and turgid — everlastingly aiming to be greater than his subject ;
filling his fancy with fumes and vapours in the pangs and throes of
miraculous parturition, and bringing forth only still births. He has
an incessant craving, as it were, to exalt every idea into a metaphor,
to expand every sentiment into a lengthened mystery, voluminous
and vast, confused and cloudy. His style is not succinct, but en-
cumbered with a train of words and images that have no practical,
and only a possible, relation to one another — that add to its stateli-
ness, but impede its march. One of his sentences winds its " forlorn
way obscure " over the page like a patriarchal procession with camels
laden, wreathed turbans, household wealth, the whole riches of the
author's mind poured out upon the barren waste of his subject.
The palm-tree spreads its sterile branches overhead, and the land
of promise is seen in the distance. All this is owing to his wishing
to overdo everything — to make something more out of everything
than it is, or than it is worth. The simple truth does not satisfy
him — no direct proposition fills up the moulds of his understanding.
All is foreign, far-fetched, irrelevant, laboured, unproductive. To
read one of his disquisitions is like hearing the variations to a piece
of music without the score. Or, to vary the simile, he is not like
a man going a journey by the stage-coach along the highroad, but
is always getting into a balloon and mounting into the air, above
the plain ground of prose. Whether he soars to the empyrean or
dives to the centre (as he sometimes does), it is equally to get away
from the question before him, and to prove that he owes every-
thing to his own mind. His object is to invent; he scorns to
imitate. The business of prose is the contrary. But Mr. Coleridge
is a poet, and his thoughts are free.
LEIGH HUNT'S STYLE.
To my taste, the author of " Rimini " and Editor of the Examiner
is among the best and least corrupted of our poetical prose-writers.
In his light but well-supported columns we find the raciness, the
THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 297
sharpness, and sparkling effect of poetry, with little that is extrava-
gant or far-fetched, and no turgidity or pompous pretension. Per-
haps there is too much the appearance of relaxation and trifling (as
if he had escaped the shackles of rhyme), a caprice, a levity, and a
disposition to innovate in words and ideas. Still, the genuine master-
spirit of the prose-writer is there ; the tone of lively, sensible con-
versation ; and this may in part arise from the author's being himself
an animated talker. Mr. Hunt wants something of the heat and
earnestness of the political partisan; but his familiar and miscel-
laneous papers have all the ease, grace, and point of the best style
of Essay-writing. Many of his effusions in the Indicator show that
if he had devoted himself exclusively to that mode of writing, he
inherits more of the spirit of Steele than any man since his time.
Not to spin out this discussion too much, I would conclude by
observing, that some of the old English prose-writers (who were
not poets) are the best, and, at the same time, the most poetical in
the favourable sense. Among these we may reckon some of the old
divines, and Jeremy Taylor at the head of them. There is a flush
like the dawn over his writings ; the sweetness of the rose, the
freshness of the morning dew. There is a softness in his style, pro-
ceeding from the tenderness of his heart : but his head is firm, and
his hand is free. His materials are as finely wrought up as they are
original and attractive in themselves. Milton's prose-style savours
too much of poetry, and, as I have already hinted, of an imitation
of the Latin. Dryden's is perfectly unexceptionable, and a model, in
simplicity, strength, and perspicuity, for the subjects he treated of.
THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS.
. . . BOOKS are a world in themselves, it is true ; but they are not the
only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries
in it. Learning is a sacred deposit from the experience of ages;
but it has not put all future experience on the shelf, or debarred
the common herd of mankind from the use of their hands, tongues,
eyes, ears, or understandings. Taste is a luxury for the privileged
few ; but it would be hard upon those who have not the same stan-
dard of refinement in their own minds that we suppose ourselves to
have, if this should prevent them from having recourse, as usual,
to their old frolics, coarse jokes, and horse-play, and getting through
the wear and tear of the world, with such homely sayings and
298 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
shrewd helps as they may. Happy is it, that the mass of mankind
eat and drink, and sleep, and perform their several tasks, and do as
they like without us — caring nothing for our scribblings, our carp-
ings, and our quibbles; and moving on the same, in spite of our
fine-spun distinctions, fantastic theories, and lines of demarcation,
which are like chalk-figures drawn on ballroom floors to be danced
out before morning! In the field opposite the window where I
write this there is a country-girl picking stones : in the one next
it there are several poor women weeding the blue and red flowers
from the corn : farther on, are two boys tending a flock of sheep.
What do they know or care about what I am writing about them,
or ever will ? — or what would they be the better for it, if they did ?
Or why need we despise
" The wretched slave,
Who like a lackey, from the rise to the set,
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night
Sleeps in Elysium ; next day, after dawn,
Doth rise, and help Hyperion to his horse ;
And follows so the ever-running year
With profitable labour to his grave ? "
Is not this life as sweet as writing Ephemerides? But we put
that which flutters the brain idly for a moment, and then is heard
no more, in competition with nature, which exists everywhere, and
lasts always. We not only underrate the force of nature, and make
too much of art, but we also overrate our own accomplishments
and advantages derived from art. In the presence of clownish
ignorance, or of persons without any great pretensions, real or
affected, we are very much inclined to look upon ourselves as the
virtual representatives of science, art, and literature. We have a
strong itch to show off and do the honours of civilisation for all the
great men whose works we have ever read, and whose names our
auditors have never heard of, as noblemen's lackeys, in the absence
of their masters, give themselves airs of superiority over every one
else. But though we have read Congreve, a stage-coachman may
be an overmatch for us in wit : though we are deep-versed in the
excellence of Shakspeare's colloquial style, a village beldam may
outscold us : though we have read Machiavel in the original Italian,
we may be easily outwitted by a clown : and though we have cried
our eyes out over the " New Eloise," a poor shepherd lad, who hardly
knows how to spell his own name, may "tell his tale, under the
thawthorn in the dale," and prove a more thriving wooer. What, then
is the advantage we possess over the meanest of the mean ? Why,
this, that we have read Congreve, Shakspeare, Machiavel, the " New
THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS. 299
Eloise ; " — not that we are to have their wit, gonius. shrewdness, or
melting tenderness. . . .
Argument, again, is the death of conversation, if carried on in a
spirit of hostility : but discussion is a pleasant and profitable thing,
where you advance and defend your opinions as far as you can, and
admit the truth of what is objected against them with equal
impartiality : in short, where you do not pretend to set up for an
oracle, but freely declare what you really know about any question,
or suggest what has struck you as throwing a new light upon it,
and let it pass for what it is worth. This tone of conversation was
well described by Dr. Johnson, when he said of some party at which
he had been present the night before, " We had a good talk, sir ! "
As a general rule, there is no conversation worth anything but
between friends, or those who agree in the same leading views of
a subject. Nothing was ever learnt by either side in a dispute.
You contradict one another, will not allow a grain of sense in what
your adversary advances, are blind to whatever makes against your-
self, dare not look the question fairly in the face, so that you cannot
avail yourself even of your real advantages, insist most on what
you feel to be the weakest points of your argument, and get more
and more absurd, dogmatical, and violent every moment. . . .
This litigious humour is bad enough : but there is one char-
acter still worse — that of a person who goes into company, not
to contradict, but to talk at you. This is the greatest nuisance
in civilised society. Such a person does not come armed to defend
himself at all points, but to unsettle, if he can, and throw a slur
on all your favourite opinions. If he has a notion that any one in
the room is fond of poetry, he immediately volunteers a contemp-
tuous tirade against the idle jingle of verse. If he suspects you
have a delight in pictures, he endeavours, not by fair argument,
but by a side-wind, to put you out of conceit with so frivolous an
art. If you have a taste for music, he does not think much good
is to be done by this tickling of the ears. If you speak in praise
of a comedy, he does not see the use of wit : if you say you have
been to a tragedy, he shakes his head at this mockery of human
misery, and thinks it ought to be prohibited. He tries to find
out beforehand whatever it is that you take a particular pride or
pleasure in, that he may annoy your self-love in the tenderest
point (as if he were probing a wound) and make you dissatisfied
with yourself and your pursuits for several days afterwards. A
person might as well make a practice of throwing out scandalous
aspersions against your dearest friends or nearest relations, by way
of ingratiating himself into your favour. Such ill-timed imperti-
300 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
nence is " villainous, and shows a pitiful ambition in the fool that
uses it."
The soul of conversation is sympathy. — Authors should converse
chiefly with authors, and their talk should be of books. "When
Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war." There is nothing
so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic. No man can get
above his pursuit in life : it is getting above himself, which is im-
possible. There is a freemasonry in all things. You can only speak
to be understood, but this you cannot be, except by those who are
in the secret. Hence an argument has been drawn to supersede
the necessity of conversation altogether ; for it has been said, that
there is no use in talking to people of sense, who know all that
you can tell them, nor to fools, who will not be instructed. There
is, however, the smallest encouragement to proceed, when you are
conscious that the more you really enter into a subject, the farther
you will be from the comprehension of your hearers ; and that the
more proofs you give of any position, the more odd and out-of-the-
way they will think your notions. Coleridge is the only person
who can talk to all sorts of people, on all sorts of subjects, without
caring a farthing for their understanding one word he says — and
he talks only for admiration and to be listened to, and accordingly
the least interruption puts him out. I firmly believe he would
make just the same impression on half his audiences, if he purposely
repeated absolute nonsense with the same voice and manner and
inexhaustible flow of undulating speech ! In general, wit shines
only by reflection. You must take your cue from your company
— must rise as they rise, and sink as they fall. You must see that
your good things, your knowing allusions, are not flung away, like
the pearls in the adage. What a check it is to be asked a foolish
question ; to find that the first principles are not understood !
You are thrown on your back immediately, the conversation is
stopped like a country-dance by those who do not know the figure.
But when a set of adepts, of illuminati, get about a question, it
is worth while to hear them talk. They may snarl and quarrel
over it, like dogs ; but they pick it bare to the bone, they masticate
it thoroughly.
CHARLES LAMB'S EVENINGS.
THIS was the case formerly at Lamb's, where we used to have many
lively skirmishes at their Thursday evening parties. I doubt whether
the Small-coal man's musical parties could exceed them. Oh ! for
CHARLES LAMB'S EVENIXGS. 301
the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a petit souvenir to their
memory ! — There was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most
provoking, the most witty and sensible of men. He always made
the best pun, and the best remark in the course of the evening. His
serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one
ever stammered out such fine piquant, deep, eloquent things in half
a dozen half-sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears : and
he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen, laugh-
ing, hare-brained vein of home-felt truth ! What choice venom !
How often did we cut into the haunch of letters, while we discussed
the haunch of mutton on the table ! How we skimmed the cream
of criticism ! How we got into the heart of controversy ! How we
picked out the marrow of authors ! " And, in our flowing cups,
many a good name and true was freshly remembered." Recollect
(most sage and critical reader) that in all this I was but a guest !
Need I go over the names ? They were but the old everlasting set
— Milton and Shakspeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison,
Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's
prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and
all those things that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch
Novels had not then been heard of : so we said nothing about them.
In general, we were hard upon the moderns. The author of the
"Rambler" was only tolerated in Boswell's "Life" of him; and it was
as much as any one could do to edge in a word for " Junius." Lamb
could not bear "Gil Bias." This was a fault. I remember the
greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some years'
difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. On one occasion
he was for making out a list of persons famous in history that one
would wish to see again — at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate,
Sir Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus — but we blackballed most of
his list ! But with what a gusto would he describe his favourite
authors, Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed
passages delicious ! He tried them on his palate as epicures taste
olives, and his observations had a smack in them, like a roughness
on the tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a defect in
what he admired most ! — as in saying that the display of the sump-
tuous banquet in " Paradise Regained " was not in true keeping, as the
simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of
hunger — and stating that Adam and Eve in " Paradise Lost " were too
much like married people. He has furnished many a text for Cole-
ridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or cant about him : nor
were his sweets or his sours ever diluted with one particle of affecta-
tion. I cannot say that the party at Lamb's were all of one de-
302 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
soription. There were honorary members, lay-brothers. Wit and
good-fellowship was the motto inscribed over the door. When a
stranger came in, it was not asked, " Has he written anything ? "-
we were above that pedantry ; but we waited to see what he could
do. If he could take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down.
If a person liked anything, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient.
He would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other things
besides Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A character was good
anywhere, in a room or on paper. But we abhorred insipidity,
affectation, and fine gentlemen. There was one of our party who
never failed to mark " two for his Nob " at cribbage, and he was
thought no mean person. This was Ned Phillips, and a better fellow
in his way breathes not. There was , who asserted some in-
credible matter of fact as a likely paradox, and settled all contro-
versies by an ipse dixit, a fiat of his will, hammering out many a
hard theory on the anvil of his brain — the Baron Munchaiisen of
politics and practical philosophy : — there was Captain Burney, who
had you at an advantage by never understanding you : — there was
Jem White, the author of " FalstafTs Letters," who the other day
left this dull world to go in search of more kindred spirits, " turn-
ing like the latter end of a lover's lute : " — there was Ayrton, who
sometimes dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of our set — and Mrs.
Reynolds, who, being of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy debate.
An utterly uninformed person might have supposed this a scene of
vulgar confusion and uproar. While the most critical question was
pending, while the most difficult problem in philosophy was solving,
Phillips cried out, " That's game," and Martin Burney muttered a
quotation over the last remains of a veal-pie at a side-table. Once,
and once only, the literary interest overcame the general. For
Coleridge was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the
Categories of the Transcendental Philosophy to the author of the
" Road to Ruin ; " who insisted on his knowledge of German, and
German metaphysics, having read the " Critique of Pure Reason "
in the original. " My dear Mr. Holcroft," said Coleridge, in a tone
of infinitely provoking conciliation, " you really put me in mind of
a sweet, pretty German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the
Hartz forest in Germany — and who one day, as I was reading the
" Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable," the profoundest of
all his works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and lean-
ing over, said, ' What ! you read Kant ? Why, 7, that am a German
born, don't understand him ! ' " This was too much to bear, and
Holcroft, starting up, called out in no measured tone, " Mr. Cole-
ridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most
LEIGH HUNT.
303
troublesome with your eloquence ! " Phillips held the cribbage-peg,
that was to mark him game, suspended in his hand ; and the whist-
table was silent for a moment. I saw Holcroft downstairs, and
on coming to the landing-place at Mitre Court, he stopped me to
observe, that " he thought Mr. Coleridge a very clever man, with a
great command of language, but that he feared he did not always
affix very precise ideas to the words he used." After he was gone
we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on the nature
of Reason, the Imagination, and the Will. I wish I could find a
publisher for it ; it would make a supplement to the " Biographia
Literaria," in a volume and a half octavo.
Those days are over ! An event, the name of which I wish never
to mention, broke up our party, like a bombshell thrown into the
room ; and now we seldom meet :
" Like angels' visits, short and far between. "
There is no longer the same set of persons, nor of associations.
Lamb does not live where he did. By shifting his abode, his notions
seem less fixed. He does not wear his old snuff-coloured coat and
breeches. It looks like an alteration in his style. An author and a
wit should have a separate costume, a particular cloth ; he should
present something positive and singular to the mind, like Mr.
Douce of the Museum. Our faith in the religion of letters will
not bear to be taken to pieces, and put together again by caprice
or accident. Leigh Hunt goes there sometimes. He has a fine
vinous spirit about him, and tropical blood in his veins; but he
is better at his own table. He has a great flow of pleasantry
and delightful animal spirits ; but his hits do not tell like
Lamb's ; you cannot repeat them the next day. He requires
not only to be appreciated, but to have a select circle of admirers
and devotees, to feel himself quite at home. He sits at the
head of a party with great gaiety and grace ; has an elegant man-
ner and turn of features; is never at a loss — aliquando sufflami-
nandus erat — has continual sportive sallies of wit or fancy ; tells a
story capitally ; mimics an actor or an acquaintance to admiration ;
laughs with great glee and good-humour at his own or other, people's
jokes; understands the point of an equivoque or an observation
immediately; has a taste and knowledge of books, of music, of
medals ; manages an argument adroitly ; is genteel and gallant, and
has a set of by-phrases and quaint allusions always at hand to
produce a laugh: — if he has a fault, it is that he does not listen
so well as he speaks, is impatient of interruption, and is fond of
being looked up to, without considering by whom. I believe, how-
2A
304 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ever, he has pretty well seen the folly of this. Neither is his ready
display of personal accomplishment and variety of resources an
advantage to his writings. They sometimes present a desultory
and slipshod appearance, owing to this very circumstance. The
same things that tell, perhaps, best to a private circle round the
fireside are not always intelligible to the public, nor does he take
pains to make them so. He is too confident and secure of his
audience. That which may be entertaining enough with the assist-
ance of a certain liveliness of manner may read very flat on paper,
because it is abstracted from all the circumstances that had set it
off to advantage. A writer should recollect that he has only to
trust to the immediate impression of words, like a musician who
sings without the accompaniment of an instrument. There is
nothing to help out, or slubber over, the defects of the voice in the
one case, nor of the style in the other. The reader may, if he pleases,
get a very good idea of Leigh Hunt's conversation from a very
agreeable paper he has lately published, called the Indicator, than
which nothing can be more happily conceived or executed.
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being
heard. Authors in general are not good listeners. Some of the best
talkers are, on this account, the worst company ; and some who are
very indifferent, but very great talkers, are as bad. It is sometimes
wonderful to see how a person who has been entertaining or tiring
a company by the hour together drops his countenance as if he had
been shot, or had been seized with a sudden lockjaw, the moment
any one interposes a single observation. The best converser I know
is, however, the best listener. I mean Mr. Northcote, the painter.
Painters by their profession are not bound to shine in conversation,
and they shine the more. He lends his ear to an observation as if
you had brought him a piece of news, and enters into it with as
much avidity and earnestness as if it interested himself personally.
If he repeats an old remark or story, it is with the same freshness
and point as for the first time. It always arises out of the occasion,
and has the stamp of originality. There is no parroting of himself.
His look is a continual, ever-varying history-piece of what passes in
his mind. His face is a book. There need no marks of interjection
or interrogation to what he says. His manner is quite picturesque.
There is an excess of character and naivete that never tires. His
thoughts bubble up and sparkle like beads on old wine. The fund
of anecdote, the collection of curious particulars, is enough to set
up any common retailer of jests that dines out every day ; but these
are not strung together like a row of galley-slaves, but are always
introduced to illustrate some argument or bring out some fine
CHARACTER OF THE SCHOLAR. 305
distinction of character. The mixture of spleen adds to the sharp-
ness of the point, like poisoned arrows. Mr. Northcote enlarges with
enthusiasm on the old painters, and tells good things of the new.
The only thing he ever vexed me in was his liking the " Catalogue
Baisonnee." I had almost as soon hear him talk of Titian's pictures
(which he does with tears in his eyes, and looking just like them)
as see the originals, and I had rather hear him talk of Sir Joshua's
than see them. He is the last of that school who knew Goldsmith
and Johnson. How finely he describes Pope ! His elegance of
mind, his figure, his character, were not unlike his own. He does
not resemble a modern Englishman, but puts one in mind of a
Roman cardinal or a Spanish inquisitor. I never ate or drank with
Mr. Northcote; but I have lived on his conversation with un-
diminished relish ever since I can remember, — and when I leave it,
I come out into the street with feelings lighter and more ethereal
than I have at any other time. . . .
There is a character of a gentleman ; so there is a character of a
scholar, which is no less easily recognised. The one has an air of
books about him, as the other has of good-breeding. The one wears
his thoughts as the other does his clothes, gracefully ; and even if
they are a little old-fashioned, they are not ridiculous : they have
had their day. The gentleman shows, by his manner, that he has
been used to respect from others : the scholar, that he lays claim to
self-respect and to a certain independence of opinion. The one has
been accustomed to the best company; the other has passed his
time in cultivating an intimacy with the best authors. There is
nothing forward or vulgar in the behaviour of the one ; nothing
shrewd or petulant in the observations of the other, as if he should
astonish the bystanders, or was astonished himself at his own dis-
coveries. Good taste and good sense, like common politeness, are,
or are supposed to be, matters of course. One is distinguished by
an appearance of marked attention to every one present ; the other
manifests an habitual air of abstraction and absence of mind. The
one is not an upstart, with all the self-important airs of the founder
of his own fortune ; nor the other a self-taught man, with the repul-
sive self-sufficiency which arises from an ignorance of what hundreds
have known before him. We must excuse, perhaps, a little conscious
family pride in the one, and a little harmless pedantry in the other.
As there is a class of the first character which sinks into the mere
gentleman — that is, which has nothing but this sense of respectability
and propriety to support it — so the character of a scholar not in-
frequently dwindles down into the shadow of a shade, till nothing
is left of it but the mere bookworm. There is often something
306 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC,
amiable as well as enviable in this last character. I know one such
instance, at least. The person I mean has an admiration for learn-
ing, if he is only dazzled by its light. He lives among old authors,
if he does not enter much into their spirit. He handles the covers,
and turns over the page, and is familiar with the names and dates.
He is busy and self-involved. He hangs like a film and cobweb upon
letters, or is like the dust upon the outside of knowledge, which
should not be rudely brushed aside. He follows learning as its
shadow ; but as such, he is respectable. He browses on the husk
and leaves of books, as the young fawn browses on the bark and
leaves of trees. Such a one lives all his life in a dream of learning,
and has never once had his sleep broken by a real sense of things.
He believes implicitly in genius, truth, virtue, liberty, because he
finds the names of these things in books. He thinks that love and
friendship are the finest things imaginable, both in practice and
theory. The legend of good women is to him no fiction. When he
steals from the twilight of his cell, the scene breaks upon him like
an illuminated missal, and all the people he sees are but so many
figures in a camera obscura. He reads the world, like a favourite
volume, only to find beauties in it, or like an edition of some old
work which he is preparing for the press, only to make emendations
in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipped in. He
and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted, faithful,
affectionate creatures — if Tray could but read ! His mind cannot
take the impression of vice ; but the gentleness of his nature turns
gall to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of
mankind from the guileless simplicity of his own heart : and when
he dies, his spirit will take its smiling leave, without having ever
had an ill thought of others, or the consciousness of one in itself !
APPLICATION TO STUDY.
... I THINK there are two mistakes, common enough, on this sub-
ject; viz., that men of genius, or of first-rate capacity, do little,
except by intermittent fits, or per saltum, and that they do that
little in a slight and slovenly manner. There may be instances of
this; but they are not the highest, and they are the exceptions,
not the rule. On the contrary, the greatest artists have in general
been the most prolific or the most elaborate, as the best writers
have been frequently the most voluminous as well as indefatigable.
We have a great living instance among writers, that the quality of
a man's productions is not to be estimated in the inverse ratio of
APPLICATION TO STUDY. 307
their quantity — I mean in the author of " Waverley," the fecundity
of whose pen is no less admirable than its felicity. Shakspeare is
another instance of the same prodigality of genius; his materials
being endlessly poured forth with no niggard or fastidious hand,
and the mastery of the execution being (in many respects at least)
equal to the boldness of the design. As one example among others
that I might cite of the attention which he gave to his subject, it
is sufficient to observe, that there is scarcely a word in any of his
more striking passages that can be altered for the better. If any
person, for instance, is trying to recollect a favourite line, and can-
not hit upon some particular expression, it is in vain to think of
substituting any other so good. That in the original text is not
merely the best, but it seems the only right one. I will stop to
illustrate this point a little. I was at a loss the other day for the
line in Henry V. :
" Nice customs curtsey to great kings. "
I could not recollect the word nice: I tried a number of others,
such as old, grave, &c. — they would none of them do, but seemed all
heavy, lumbering, or from the purpose : the word nice, on the con-
trary, appeared to drop into its place, and be ready to assist in
paying the reverence required. Again :
" A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it."
I thought, in quoting from memory, of " A jest's success" " A jest's
renown" &c. I then turned to the volume, and there found the
very word that of all others expressed the idea. Had Shakspeare
searched through the four quarters of the globe, he could not have
lighted on another to convey so exactly what he meant — a casual,
hollow, sounding success ! I could multiply such examples, but that
I am sure the reader will easily supply them himself ; and they
show sufficiently that Shakspeare was not (as he is often repre-
sented) a loose or clumsy writer. The bold, happy texture of his
style, in which every word is prominent, and yet cannot be torn
from its place without violence, any more than a limb from the
body, is (one should think) the result either of vigilant painstaking
or of unerring, intuitive perception, and not the mark of crude con-
ceptions and " the random, blindfold blows of Ignorance."
There cannot be a greater contradiction to the common prejudice
that " Genius is naturally a truant and a vagabond " than the as-
tonishing and (on this hypothesis) unaccountable number of chefs-
308 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
d'ceuvre left behind them by the old masters. The stream of their
invention supplies the taste of successive generations like a river :
they furnish a hundred galleries, and preclude competition, not
more by the excellence than by the number of their performances.
Take Raphael and Rubens alone. There are works of theirs in
single collections enough to occupy a long and laborious life, and
yet their works are spread through all the collections of Europe.
They seem to have cost them no more labour than if they " had
drawn in their breath and puffed it forth again." But we know
that they made drawings, studies, sketches, of all the principal of
these, with the care and caution of the merest tyros in the art ; and
they remain equal proofs of their capacity and diligence. The car-
toons of Raphael alone might have employed many years, and made
a life of illustrious labour, though they look as if they had been
struck off at a blow, and are not a tenth part of what he produced
in his short but bright career. Titian and Michael Angelo lived
longer, but they worked as hard and did as well. Shall we bring
in competition with examples like these some trashy caricaturist or
idle dauber, who has no sense of the infinite resources of nature or
art, nor, consequently, any power to employ himself upon them for
any length of time or to any purpose, to prove that genius and
regular industry are incompatible qualities ?
In my opinion, the very superiority of the works of the great
painters (instead of being a bar to) accounts for their multiplicity.
Power is pleasure ; and pleasure sweetens pain. A fine poet thus
describes the effect of the sight of nature on his mind :
" The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms were then to me
An appetite, a feeling, and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye."
So the forms of nature, or the human form divine, stood before the
great artists of old, nor required any other stimulus to lead the eye
to survey or the hand to embody them, than the pleasure derived
from the inspiration of the subject, and " propulsive force " of the
mimic creation. The grandeur of their works was an argument with
them, not to stop short, but to proceed. They could have no higher
excitement or satisfaction than in the exercise of their art and end-
less generation of truth and beauty. Success prompts to exertion,
and habit facilitates success. It is idle to suppose we can exhaust
APPLICATION TO STUDY.
309
nature ; and the more we employ our own faculties, the more we
strengthen them and enrich our stores of observation and invention.
The more we do, the more we can do. Not, indeed, if we get our ideas
out of our own heads — that stock is soon exhausted, and we recur
to tiresome, vapid imitations of ourselves. But this is the differ-
ence between real and mock talent, between genius and affectation.
Nature is not limited, nor does it become effete, like our con-
ceit and vanity. The closer we examine it, the more it refines upon
us ; it expands as we enlarge and shift our view ; it " grows with
our growth, and strengthens with our strength." The subjects
are endless; and our capacity is invigorated as it is called out
by occasion and necessity. He who does nothing renders himself
incapable of doing anything ; but while we are executing any
work, we are preparing and qualifying ourselves to undertake
another. The principles are the same in all nature ; and we under-
stand them better as we verify them by experience and practice.
It is not as if there were a given number of subjects to work upon,
or a set of innate or preconceived ideas in our minds which we en-
croached upon with every new design ; the subjects, as I said before,
are endless, and we acquire ideas by imparting them. Our expendi-
ture of intellectual wealth makes us rich : we can only be liberal as
we have previously accumulated the means. By lying idle, as by
standing still, we are confined to the same trite, narrow round of
topics : by continuing our efforts, as by moving forwards in a road,
we extend our views, and discover continually new tracts of country.
Genius, like humanity, rusts for want of use.
Habit also gives promptness ; and the soul of despatch is decision.
One man may write a book or paint a picture while another is
deliberating about the plan or the title-page. The great painters were
able to do so much, because they knew exactly what they meant to do,
and how to set about it. They were thoroughbred workmen, and were
not learning their art while they were exercising it. One can do a
great deal in a short time if one only knows how. Thus an author
may become very voluminous who only employs an hour or two hi a
day in study. If he has once obtained, by habit and reflection, a use
of his pen, with plenty of materials to work upon, the pages vanish
before him. The time lost is in beginning, or in stopping after we
have begun. If we only go forward with spirit and confidence, we
shall soon arrive at the end of our journey. A practised writer
ought never to hesitate for a sentence from the moment he sets pen
to paper, or think about the course he is to take. He must trust to
his previous knowledge of the subject and to his immediate impulses,
and he will get to the close of his task without accidents or loss of
3io WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
time. I can easily understand how the old divines and controver-
sialists produced their folios : I could write folios myself, if I rose
early and sat up late at this kind of occupation. But I confess I
should soon be tired of it, besides wearying the reader.
In one sense, art is long and life is short. In another sense, this
aphorism is not true. The best of us are idle half our time. It
is wonderful how much is done in a short space, provided we set
about it properly, and give our minds wholly to it. Let any one
devote himself to any art or science ever so strenuously, and he
will still have leisure to make considerable progress in half-a-dozen
other acquirements. Leonardo da Vinci was a mathematician, a
musician, a poet, and an anatomist, besides being one of the greatest
painters of his age. The Prince of Painters was a courtier, a lover,
and fond of dress and company. Michael Angelo was a prodigy of
versatility of talent — a writer of Sonnets (which Wordsworth has
thought worth translating) and the admirer of Dante. Salvator
was a lutenist and a satirist. Titian was an elegant letter-writer
and a finished gentleman. Sir Joshua Reynolds's " Discourses " are
more polished and classical even than any of his pictures. Let a man
do all he can in any one branch of study, he must either exhaust
himself and doze over it, or vary his pursuit, or else lie idle. All
our real labour lies in a nutshell. The mind makes, at some period
or other, one herculean effort, and the rest is mechanical. We have
to climb a steep and narrow precipice at first ; but after that the
way is broad and easy, where we may drive several accomplish-
ments abreast. Men should have one principal pursuit, which may
be both agreeably and advantageously diversified with other lighter
ones, as the subordinate parts of a picture may be managed so as
to give effect to the centre group. It has been observed by a
sensible man, that the having a regular occupation or professional
duties to attend to is no excuse for putting forth an inelegant or
inaccurate work ; for a habit of industry braces and strengthens
the mind, and enables it to wield its energies with additional ease
and steadier purpose. Were I allowed to instance in myself, if
what I write at present is worth nothing, at least it costs me
nothing. But it cost me a great deal twenty years ago. I have
added little to my stock since then, and taken little from it. I
"unfold the book and volume of the brain," and transcribe the
characters I see there as mechanically as any one might copy the
letters in a sampler. I do not say they came there mechanically —
I transfer them to the paper mechanically. After eight or ten
years' hard study, an author (at least) may go to sleep. . . .
THE SPIRIT OF OBLIGATIONS. 311
THE SPIRIT OF OBLIGATIONS.
... I LIKE real good-nature and good-will, better than I do any
offers of patronage or plausible rules for my conduct in life. I may
suspect the soundness of the last, and I may not be quite sure of the
motives of the first. People complain of ingratitude for benefits,
and of the neglect of wholesome advice. In the first place, we pay
little attention to advice, because we are seldom thought of in it.
The person who gives it either contents himself to lay down (ex
cathedra) certain vague, general maxims and " wise saws," which we
knew before, or, instead of considering what we ought to do, recom-
mends what he himself would do. He merely substitutes his own
will, caprice, and prejudices for ours, aud expects us to be guided by
them. Instead of changing places with us (to see what is best to
be done in the given circumstances), he insists on our looking at
the question from his point of view, and acting in such a manner as
to please him. This is not at all reasonable ; for one man's meat,
according to the old adage, is another man's poison. And it is not
strange, that, starting from such opposite premises, we should seldom
jump in a conclusion, and that the art of giving and taking advice
is little better than a game at cross-purposes. I have observed that
those who are the most inclined to assist others are the least forward
or peremptory with their advice ; for, having our interest really at
heart, they consider what can, rather than what cannot be done,
and aid our views and endeavour to avert ill-consequences by moder-
ating our impatience and allaying irritations, instead of thwarting
our main design, which only tends to make us more extravagant
and violent than ever. In the second place, benefits are often con-
ferred out of ostentation or pride, rather than from true regard ;
and the person obliged is too apt to perceive this. People who are
fond of appearing in the light of patrons will perhaps go through
fire and water to serve you, who yet would be sorry to find you no
longer wanted their assistance, and whose friendship cools and their
good-will slackens, as you are relieved by their active zeal from the
necessity of being further beholden to it. Compassion and generosity
are their favourite virtues ; and they countenance you as you afford
them opportunities for exercising them. The instant you can go
alone, or can stand upon your own ground, you are discarded as
unfit for their purpose.
This is something more than mere good-nature or humanity. A
thoroughly good-natured man, a real friend, is one who is pleased at
312 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
our good-fortune, as well as prompt to seize every occasion of reliev-
ing our distress. We apportion our gratitude accordingly. We are
thankful for good-will rather than for services, for the motive than
the quantum of favour received — a kind word or look is never for-
gotten, while we cancel prouder and weightier obligations; and
those who esteem us or evince a partiality to us are those whom we
still consider as our best friends. Nay, so strong is this feeling,
that we extend it even to those counterfeits in friendship — flatterers
and sycophants. Our self-love, rather than our self-interest, is the
master-key to our affections. . . .
There are different modes of obligation, and different avenues
to our gratitude and favour. A man may lend his countenance
who will not part with his money, and open his mind to us who
will not draw out his purse. How many ways are there in which
our peace may be assailed besides actual want ! How many com-
forts do we stand in need of besides meat and drink and clothing !
Is it nothing to " administer to a mind diseased " — to heal a
wounded spirit ? After all other difficulties are removed, we still
want some one to bear with our infirmities, to impart our con-
fidence to, to encourage us in our hobbies (nay, to get up and ride
behind us), and to like us with all our faults. True friendship is
self-love at second hand ; where, as in a flattering mirror, we may
see our virtues magnified and our errors softened, and where we
may fancy our opinion of ourselves confirmed by an impartial and
faithful witness. He (of all the world) creeps closest to our bosoms,
into our favour and esteem, who thinks of us most nearly as we
do of ourselves. Such a one is indeed the pattern of a friend,
another self — and our gratitude for the blessing is as sincere as it is
hollow in most other cases ! This is one reason why entire friend-
ship is scarcely to be found except in love. There is a hardness
and severity in our judgments of one another ; the spirit of com-
petition also intervenes, unless where there is too great an inequality
of pretension or difference of taste to admit of mutual sympathy
and respect; but a woman's vanity is interested in making the
object of her choice the god of her idolatry ; and in the intercourse
with that sex, there is the finest balance and reflection of opposite
and answering excellences imaginable ! . . .
The difference of age, of situation in life, and an absence of all
considerations of business have, I apprehend, something of the same
effect in producing a refined and abstracted friendship. The person
whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret,
never did me the smallest favour. I once did him an uncalled-for
service, and we nearly quarrelled about it. If I were in the utmost
CONSCIOUSNESS OF GENIUS. 313
distress, I should just as soon think of asking his assistance as of
stopping a person on the highway. Practical benevolence is not
his forte. He leaves the profession of that to others. His habits,
his theory, are against it as idle and vulgar. His hand is closed,
but what of that ? His eye is ever open, and reflects the universe :
his silver accents, beautiful, venerable as his silver hairs, but not
scanted, flow as a river. I never ate or drank in his house ; nor
do I know or care how the flies or spiders fare in it, or whether
a mouse can get a living. But I know that I can get there what
I get nowhere else — a welcome, as if one was expected to drop in
just at that moment, a total absence of all respect of persons
and of airs of self-consequence, endless topics of discourse, refined
thoughts, made more striking by ease and simplicity of manner —
the husk, the shell of humanity is left at the door, and the spirit,
mellowed by time, resides within! All you have to do is to sit
and listen ; and it is like hearing one of Titian's faces speak. To
think of worldly matters is a profanation, like that of the money-
changers in the Temple ; or it is to regard the bread and wine of
the Sacrament with carnal eyes. We enter the enchanter's cell,
and converse with the divine inhabitant. To have this privilege
always at hand, and to be circled by that spell whenever we choose
with an " Enter Sessami," is better than sitting at the lower end
of the tables of the great, than eating awkwardly from gold plate,
than drinking fulsome toasts, or being thankful for gross favours,
and gross insults !
WHETHER GENIUS IS CONSCIOUS OF ITS POWERS.
. . . THERE are two persons who always appear to me to have worked
under this involuntary, silent impulse more than any others; I
mean Rembrandt and Correggio. It is not known that Correggio
ever saw a picture of any great master. He lived and died obscurely
in an obscure village. We have few of his works, but they are all
perfect. What truth, what grace, what angelic sweetness are there !
Not one line or tone that is not divinely soft or exquisitely fair ;
the painter's mind rejecting, by a natural process, all that is dis-
cordant, coarse, or unpleasing. The whole is an emanation of pure
thought. The work grew under his hand as if of itself, and came
out without a flaw, like the diamond from the rock. He knew not
what he did ; and looked at each modest grace as it stole from the
canvas with anxious delight and wonder. Ah, gracious God ! not
he alone ; how many more in all time have looked at their works
314 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
with the same feelings, not knowing but they too may have done
something divine, immortal, and finding in that sole doubt ample
amends for pining solitude, for want, neglect, and an untimely fate !
Oh ! for one hour of that uneasy rapture, when the mind first thinks
that it has struck out something that may last for ever ; when the
germ of excellence bursts from nothing on the startled sight ! Take,
take away the gaudy triumphs of the world, the long deathless
shout of fame, and give back that heartfelt sigh with which the
youthful enthusiasts first wed immortality as his secret bride ! And
thou too, Rembrandt ! Thou wert a man of genius, if ever painter
was a man of genius ! — did this dream hang over you as you painted
that strange picture of "Jacob's Ladder"? Did your eye strain
over those gradual dusky clouds into futurity, or did those white-
vested, beaked figures babble to you of fame as they approached ?
Did you know what you were about, or did you not paint much as
it happened ? Oh ! if you had thought once about yourself or any-
thing but the subject, it would have been all over with " the glory,
the intuition, the amenity," the dream had fled, the spell had been
broken. The hills would not have looked like those we see in sleep
— that tatterdemalion figure of Jacob, thrown on one side, would
not have slept as if the breath was fairly taken out of his body. So
much do Rembrandt's pictures savour of the soul and body of reality,
that the thoughts seem identical with the objects — if there had
been the least question what he should have done, or how he should
do it, or how far he had succeeded, it would have spoiled everything.
Lumps of light hung upon his pencil and fell upon his canvas like
dewdrops : the shadowy veil was drawn over his backgrounds by
the dull, obtuse finger of night, making darkness visible by still
greater darkness that could only be felt ! . . .
The greatest pleasure in life is that of reading, while we are young.
I have had as much of this pleasure as perhaps any one. As I grow
older it fades ; or else, the stronger stimulus of writing takes off the
edge of it. At present, I have neither time nor inclination for it :
yet I should like to devote a year's entire leisure to a course of the
English Novelists; and perhaps clap on that sly old knave, Sir
Walter, to the end of the list. It is astonishing how I used formerly
to relish the style of certain authors, at a time when I myself de-
spaired of ever writing a single line. Probably this was the reason.
It is not in mental as in natural ascent — intellectual objects seem
higher when we survey them from below, than when we look
down from any given elevation above the common level. My three
favourite writers about the time I speak of were Burke, Junius, and
Rousseau. I was never weary of admiring and wondering at the
PRIDE. 315
felicities of the style, the turns of expression, the refinements of
thought and sentiment : I laid the book down to find out the secret
of so much strength and beauty, and took it up again in despair, to
read on and admire. So I passed whole days, months, and, I may
add, years ; and have only this to say now, that as my life began,
so I could wish that it may end. The last time I tasted this luxury
in its full perfection was one day after a sultry day's walk in summer
between Farnham and Alton. I was fairly tired out ; I walked
into an inn-yard (I think at the latter place) ; I was shown by the
waiter to what looked at first like common outhouses at the other
end of it, but they turned out to be a suite of rooms, probably a
hundred years old. The one I entered opened into an old-fashioned
garden, embellished with beds of larkspur and a leaden Mercury ; it
was wainscoted, and there was a grave-looking, dark-coloured por-
trait of Charles II. hanging over the tiled chimmey-piece. I had
" Love for Love " * in my pocket, and began to read ; coffee was
brought in in a silver coffee-pot ; the cream, the bread and butter,
everything was excellent, and the flavour of Congreve's style pre-
vailed over all. I prolonged the entertainment till a late hour, and
relished this divine comedy better even than when I used to see it
played by Miss Mellon, as Miss Prue; Bob Palmer, as Tattle; and
Bannister, as honest Ben. This circumstance happened just five
years ago, and it seems like yesterday. If I count my life so by
lustres, it will soon glide away ; yet I shall not have to repine, if,
while it lasts, it is enriched with a few such recollections I
PRIDE.
[From the Essay "On Egotism."]
... I CAN conceive of nothing so little or so ridiculous as pride. It
is a mixture of insensibility and ill-nature, in which it is hard to say
which has the largest share. If a man knows or excels in, or has
ever studied, any two things, I will venture to affirm he will be proud
of neither. It is perhaps excusable for a person who is ignorant of
all but one thing, to think that the sole excellence, and to be full of
himself as the possessor. The way to cure him of this folly is to give
him something else to be proud of. Vanity is a building that falls
to the ground as you widen its foundation, or strengthen the props
that should support it. The greater a man is, the less he necessarily
thinks of himself, for his knowledge enlarges with his attainments.
In himself he feels that he is nothing, a point, a speck in the
1 Congreve's play. — ED.
316 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
universe, except as his mind reflects that universe, and as he enters
into the infinite variety of truth, beauty, and power contained in it.
Let any one be brought up among books, and taught to think words
the only things, and he may conceive highly of himself from the pro-
ficiency he has made in language and in letters. Let him then be
compelled to attempt some other pursuit — painting, for instance —
and be made to feel the difficulties, the refinements of which it is
capable, and the number of things of which he was utterly ignorant
before, and there will be an end of his pedantry and his pride
together. Nothing but the want of comprehension of view or
generosity of spirit can make any one fix on his own particular
acquirement as the limit of all excellence. No one is (generally
speaking) great in more than one thing — if he extends his pursuits,
he dissipates his strength — yet in that one thing how small is the
interval between him and the next in merit and reputation to him-
self ! But he thinks nothing of, or scorns or loathes the name of
his rival, so that all that the other possesses in common goes for
nothing, and the fraction of a difference between them constitutes
(in his opinion) the sum and substance of all that is excellent in
the universe ! Let a man be wise, and then let us ask, Will his
wisdom make him proud ? Let him excel all others in the graces of
the mind, has he also those of the body ? He has the advantage of
fortune, but has he also that of birth ? or if he has both, has he
health, strength, beauty, in a supreme degree ? Or have not others
the same ? or does he think all these nothing because he does not
possess them ? The proud man fancies that there is no one worth
regarding but himself: he might as well fancy there is no other
being but himself. The one is not a greater stretch of madness
than the other. To make pride justifiable, there ought to be but
one proud man in the world, for if any one individual has a right to
be so, nobody else has. So far from thinking ourselves superior to
all the rest of the species, we cannot be sure that we are above the
meanest and most despised individual of it : for he may have some
virtue, some excellence, some source of happiness or usefulness
within himself, which may redeem all other disadvantages : or even
if he is without any such hidden worth, this is not a subject of
exultation, but of regret, to any one tinctured with the smallest
humanity, and he who is totally devoid of the latter cannot have
much reason to be proud of anything else. Arkwright, who
invented the spinning- jenny, for many years kept a paltry barber's
shop in a provincial town: yet at that time that wonderful ma-
chinery was working in his brain, which has added more to the
wealth and resources of this country than all the pride of ancestry
READING OLD BOOKS. 317
or insolence of upstart nobility for the last hundred years. We
should be cautious whom we despise. If we do not know them, we
can have no right to pronounce a hasty sentence: if we do, they
may espy some few defects in us. No man is a hero to his valet-de-
chambre. What is it, then, that makes the difference? The dress
and pride. But he is the most of a hero who is least distinguished
by the one and most free from the other. If we enter into conver-
sation upon equal terms with the lowest of the people, unrestrained
by circumstance, unawed by interest, we shall find in ourselves but
little superiority over them. If we know what they do not, they
know what we do not. In general, those who do things for others,
know more about them than those for whom they are done. A
groom knows more about horses than his master. He rides them
too: but the one rides behind, the other before! Hence the
number of forms and ceremonies that have been invented to keep
the magic circle of fancied self-importance inviolate. The late King
sought but one interview with Dr. Johnson : his present Majesty is
never tired of the company of Mr. Croker.
ON READING OLD BOOKS.
... I DO not think altogether the worse of a book for having
survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence
in the dead than the living. Contemporary writers may generally
be divided into two classes — one's friends or one's foes. Of the
first we are compelled to think too well, and of the last we are
disposed to think too ill, to receive much genuine pleasure from
the perusal, or to judge fairly of the merits of either. One candi-
date for literary fame, who happens to be of our acquaintance,
writes finely, and like a man of genius; but unfortunately has a
foolish face, which spoils a delicate passage: — another inspires us
with the highest respect for his personal talents and character, but
does not quite come up to our expectations in print. All these
contradictions and petty details interrupt the calm current of our
reflections. If you want to know what any of the authors Uere
who lived before our time, and are still objects of anxious inquiry,
you have only to look into their works. But the dust and smoke
and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with the
pure, silent air of immortality.
When I take up a work that I have read before (the oftener
the better) I know what I have to expect. The satisfaction is
not lessened by being anticipated. When the entertainment is
3i8 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
altogether new, I sit down to it as I should to a strange dish, —
turn and pick out a bit here and there, and am in doubt what to
think of the composition. There is a want of confidence and
security to second appetite. New-fangled books are also like made-
dishes in this respect, that they are generally little else than hashes
and rifaccimenti of what has been served up entire and in a more
natural state at other times. Besides, in thus turning to a well-
known author, there is not only an assurance that my tune will
not be thrown away, or my palate nauseated with the most insipid
or vilest trash, — but I shake hands with, and look an old, tried, and
valued friend in the face, — compare notes, and chat the hours away.
It is true, we form dear friendships with such ideal guests — dearer,
alas ! and more lasting, than those with our most intimate acquaint-
ance. In reading a book which is an old favourite with me (say
the first novel I ever read) I not only have the pleasure of imagina-
tion and of a critical relish of the work, but the pleasures of memory
added to it. It recalls the same feelings and associations which I
had in first reading it, and which I can never have again in any
other way. Standard productions of this kind are links in the
chain of our conscious being. They bind together the different
scattered divisions of our personal identity. They are landmarks
and guides in our journey through life. They are pegs and loops
on which- we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at
pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our
best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours. They
are " for thoughts and for remembrance ! " They are like Fortu-
natus's Wishing-Cap — they give us the best riches — those of Fancy;
and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better)
over half our lives, at a word's notice !
My father Shandy solaced himself with Bruscambille. Give me
for this purpose a volume of " Peregrine Pickle " or " Tom Jones."
Open either of them anywhere — at the " Memoirs of Lady Vane,"
or the adventures at the masquerade with Lady Bellaston, or the
disputes between Thwackum and Square, or the escape of Molly
Seagrim, or the incident of Sophia and her muff, or the edifying
prolixity of her aunt's lecture — and there I find the same delightful,
busy, bustling scene as ever, and feel myself the same as when I was
first introduced into the midst of it. Nay, sometimes the sight of
an odd volume of these good old English authors on a stall, or the
name lettered on the back among others on the shelves of a library,
answers the purpose, revives the whole train of ideas, and sets " the
puppets dallying." Twenty years are struck off the list, and I am a
child again. A sage philosopher, who was not a very wise man, said,
READING OLD BOOKS. 319
that he should like very well to be young again, if he could take his
experience along with him. This ingenious person did not seem to
be aware, by the gravity of his remark, that the great advantage of
being young is to be without this weight of experience, which he
would fain place upon the shoulders of youth, and which never
comes too late with years. Oh ! what a privilege to be able to let
this hump, like Christian's burthen, drop from off one's back, and
transport oneself, by the help of a little musty duodecimo, to the
time when " ignorance was bliss," and when we first got a peep at
the raree-show of the world, through the glass of fiction — gazing at
mankind, as we do at wild beasts in a menagerie, through the bars
of their cages, — or at curiosities in a museum, that we must not
touch ! For myself, not only are the old ideas of the contents of the
work brought back to my mind in all their vividness, but the old
associations of the faces and persons of those I then knew, as they
were in their lifetime — the place where I sat to read the volume, the
day when I got it, the feeling of the air, the fields, the sky — return,
and all my early impressions with them. This is better to me —
those places, those times, those persons, and those feelings that
come across me as I retrace the story and devour the page are to
me better far than the wet sheets of the last new novel from the
Ballantyne press, to say nothing of the Minerva press in Leadenhall
Street. It is like visiting the scenes of early youth. I think of the
time " when I was in my father's house, and my path ran down with
butter and honey," — when I was a little thoughtless child, and had
no other wish or care but to con my daily task arid be happy ! — " Tom
Jones," I remember, was the first work that broke the spell. It
came down in numbers once a fortnight, in Cooke's pocket-edition,
embellished with cuts. I had hitherto read only in school-books,
and a tiresome ecclesiastical history (with the exception of Mrs
RadcliflVs " Romance of the Forest ") : but this had a different relish
with it, — " sweet in the mouth," though not " bitter in the belly."
It smacked of the world I lived in, and in which I was to live — and
showed me groups, "gay creatures" not "of the element," but of
the earth ; not " living in the clouds," but travelling the same
road that I did ; — some that had passed on before me, and others
that might soon overtake me. My heart had palpitated at the
thoughts of a boarding-school ball, or gala-day at Midsummer or
Christmas : but the world I had found out in Cooke's edition of the
" British Novelists " was to me a dance through life, a perpetual gala-
day. The sixpenny numbers of this work regularly contrived to
leave off just in the middle of a sentence, and in the nick of a story.
"With what eagerness I used to look forward to the next number,
2 B
320 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and open the prints ! Ah ! never again shall I feel the enthusiastic
delight with which I gazed at the figures, and anticipated the story
and adventures of Major Bath and Commodore Trunnion, of Trim
and my Uncle Toby, of Don Quixote and Sancho and Dapple, of Gil
Bias and Dame Lorenza Sephora, of Laura and the fair Lucretia,
whose lips open and shut like buds of roses. To what nameless ideas
did they give rise, — with what airy delights I filled up the outlines,
as I hung in silence over the page ! — Let me still recall them, that
they may breathe fresh life into me, and that I may live that birth-
day of thought and romantic pleasure over again ! Talk of the
ideal ! This is the only true ideal — the heavenly tints of Fancy
reflected in the bubbles that float upon the spring-tide of human
life.
" 0 Memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life ! "
... I remember, as long ago as the year 1798, going to a neigh-
bouring town (Shrewsbury, where Farquhar has laid the plot of his
" Recruiting Officer "), and bringing home with me, " at one proud
swoop," a copy of Milton's " Paradise Lost," and another of Burke's
" Reflections on the French Revolution " — both which I have still ;
and I still recollect, when I see the covers, the pleasure with which
I dipped into them as I returned with my double prize. I was set
up for one while. That time is past " with all its giddy raptures : "
but I am still anxious to preserve its memory, "embalmed with
odours." . . . Again, as to the other work, Burke's " Reflections," I
took a particular pride and pleasure in it, and read it to myself and
others for months afterwards. I had reason for my prejudice in favour
of this author. To understand an adversary is some praise : to admire
him is more. I thought I did both : I knew I did one. From the
first time I ever cast my eyes on anything of Burke's (which was an
extract from his " Letter to a Noble Lord " in a three-times-a-week
paper, the St. James's Chronicle, in 1796), I said to myself, "This is
true eloquence : this is a man pouring out his mind on paper." All
other style seemed to me pedantic and impertinent. Dr. Johnson's
was walking on stilts; and even Junius's (who was at that time
a favourite with me), with all his terseness, shrank up into little
antithetic points and well- trimmed sentences. But Burke's style
was forked and playful as the lightning, crested like the serpent.
He delivered plain things on a plain ground ; but when he rose,
there was no end of his flights and circumgyrations — and in this
very Letter, " he, like an eagle in a dovecot, fluttered his Volscians "
(the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale) " in Corioli." I
READING OLD BOOKS. 321
did not care for his doctrines. I was then, and am still, proof
against their contagion; but I admired the author, and was con-
sidered as not a very staunch partisan of the opposite side, though
I thought myself that an abstract proposition was one thing — a
masterly transition, a brilliant metaphor, another. I conceived,
too, that he might be wrong in his main argument, and yet deliver
fifty truths in arriving at a false conclusion. I remember Coleridge
assuring me, as a poetical and political set-off to my sceptical ad-
miration, that Wordsworth had written an " Essay on Marriage,"
which, for manly thought and nervous expression, he deemed incom-
parably superior. As I had not, at that time, seen any specimens
of Mr. Wordsworth's prose style, I could not express my doubts
on the subject. If there are greater prose-writers than Burke, they
either lie out of my course of study or are beyond my sphere of
comprehension. I am too old to be a convert to a new mythology
of genius. The niches are occupied, the tables are full. If such is
still my admiration of this man's misapplied powers, what must it
have been at a time when I myself was in vain trying, year after
year, to write a single essay, nay, a single page or sentence ; when
I regarded the wonders of his pen with the longing eyes of one
who was dumb and a changeling ; and when to be able to convey
the slightest conception of my meaning to others in words was
the height of an almost hopeless ambition ! But I never measured
others' excellences by my own defects : though a sense of my own
incapacity, and of the steep, impassable ascent from me to them,
made me regard them with greater awe and fondness. I have thus
run through most of my early studies and favourite authors, some
of whom I have since criticised more at large. Whether those
observations will survive me, I neither know nor do I much care :
but to the works themselves, " worthy of all acceptation," and to
the feelings they have always excited in me since I could distinguish
a meaning in language, nothing shall ever prevent me from looking
back with gratitude and triumph. To have lived in the cultivation
of an intimacy with such works, and to have familiarly relished such
names, is not to have lived quite in vain.
There are other authors whom I have never read, and yet whom I
have frequently had a great desire to read, from some circumstance
relating to them. Among these is Lord Clarendon's " History of
the Grand Rebellion," after which I have a hankering, from hearing
it spoken of by good judges, from my interest in the events, and
knowledge of the characters from other sources, and from having
seen fine portraits of most of them. I like to read a well-penned
character, and Clarendon is said to have been a master in his way.
322 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
I should like to read Froissart's " Clironicles," Holinshed and Stowe,
and Fuller's " Worthies." I intend, whenever I can, to read
Beaumont and Fletcher all through. There are fifty-two of their
plays, and I have only read a dozen or fourteen of them. " A Wife
for a Month " and " Thierry and Theodoret" are, I am told, delicious,
and I can believe it. I should like to read the speeches in " Thucy-
dides," and Guicciardini's " History of Florence," and " Don Quixote "
in the original. I have often thought of reading the " Loves of
Persiles and Sigismunda," and the "Galatea "of the same author.
But I somehow reserve them like " another Yarrow." 1 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 !
ON NOVELTY AND FAMILIARITY.
. , . THE best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to
come, or in fancying what may have happened in real or fictitious
story to others. I have had more pleasure in reading the adventures
of a novel (and perhaps changing situations with the hero) than I
ever had in my own. I do not think any one can feel much happier
— a greater degree of heart's ease — than I used to feel in reading
" Tristram Shandy," and " Peregrine Pickle," and " Tom Jones," and
the "Tatler," and "Gil Bias of Santillane," and "Werter," and
" Boccaccio." It was some years after that I read the last, but his
tales
" Dallied with the innocence of love,
Like the old Time. "
The story of Frederigo Alberigi affected me as if it had been my
own case, and I saw his hawk upon her perch in the clear, cold air,
" and how fat and fair a bird she was," as plain as ever I saw a
picture of Titian's; and felt that I should have served her up as
he did, as a banquet for his mistress, who came to visit him at his
own poor farm. I could wish that Lord Byron had employed him-
self while in Italy in rescuing such a writer as Boccaccio from un-
merited obloquy, instead of making those notable discoveries — that
Pope was a poet, and that Shakspeare was not one ! Mrs. Inchbald
was always a great favourite with me. There is the true soul of
woman breathing from what she writes, as much as if you heard her
voice. It is as if Venus had written books. I first read her " Simple
Story " (of all places in the world) at M . No matter where it
was ; for it transported me out of myself. I recollect walking out
NOVELTY AND FAMILIARITY. 323
to escape from one of the tenderest parts, in order to return to it
again with double relish. An old crazy hand-organ was playing
" Robin Adair ; " a summer-shower dropped manna on my head, and
slaked my feverish thirst of happiness. Her heroine, Miss Milnor,
was at my side. My dream has since been verified : — how like it
was to the reality ! In truth, the reality itself was but a dream.
Do I not still see that " simple movement of her finger " with which
Madam Basil beckoned Jean Jacques to the seat at her feet, the
heightened colour that tinged her profile as she sat at her work
netting, the bunch of flowers in her hair ? Is not the glow of youth
and beauty in her cheek blended with the blushes of the roses in
her hair ? Do they not breathe the breath of love ? And (what
though the adventure was unfinished by either writer or reader ?) is
not the blank filled up with the rare and subtle spirit of fancy, that
imparts the fulness of delight to the air-drawn creations of brain ?
I once sat on a sunny bank in a field in which the green blades of
corn waved in the fitful northern breeze, and read the letter in the
" New Eloise " in which St. Preux describes the Pays de Vaud. I
never felt what Shakspeare calls my " glassy essence " so much as
then. My thoughts were pure and free. They took a tone from
the objects before me, and from the simple manners of the inhabi-
tants of mountain-scenery so well described in the letter. The style
gave me the same sensation as the drops of morning dew before they
are scorched by the sun ; and I thought Julia did well to praise it.
I wished I could have written such a letter. That wish, enhanced
by my admiration of genius and the feeling of the objects around
me, was accompanied with more pleasure than if I had written fifty
such letters, or had gained all the reputation of its immortal author !
Of all the pictures, prints, or drawings I ever saw, none ever gave
me such satisfaction as the rude etchings at the top of Rousseau's
" Confessions." There is a necromatic spell in the outlines. Im-
agination is a witch. It is not even said anywhere that such is the
case, but I had got it into my head that the rude sketches of old-
fashioned houses, stone-walls, and stumps of trees represented the
scenes at Annecy and Vevay, where he who relished all more sharply
than others, and by his own intense aspirations after good had
nearly delivered mankind from the yoke of evil, first drew the
breath of hope. Here love's golden rigol bound his brows, and here
fell from it. It was the partition-wall between life and death to
him, and all beyond it was a desert ! . . .
" And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail."
I used to apply this line to the distant range of hills in a paltry
324 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
landscape, which, however, had a tender vernal tone and a dewy
freshness. I could look at them till my eyes filled with tears and
my heart dissolved in faintness. Why do I recall the circumstance
after a lapse of years with so much interest ? Because I felt it then.
Those feeble outlines were linked in my mind to the purest, fondest
yearnings after good ; that dim, airy space contained my little all of
hope, buoyed up by charming fears; the delight with which I dwelt
upon it, enhanced by my ignorance of what was in store for me, was
free from mortal grossness, familiarity, or disappointment, and I
drank pleasure out of the bosom of the silent hills and gleaming
valleys as from a cup filled to the brim with love-philtres and
poisonous sweetness by the sorceress Fancy !
ON OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS.
THE expression in Holbein's pictures conveys a faithful but not
very favourable notion of the literary character of that period. It
is painful, dry, and laboured. Learning was then an ascetic, but
recluse and profound. You see a weight of thought and care in the
studious heads of the time of the Reformation, a sincerity, an in-
tegrity, a sanctity of purpose, like that of a formal dedication to a
religious life or the inviolability of monastic vows. They had their
work to do ; we reap the benefits of it. We skim the surface, and
travel along the high-road. They had to explore dark recesses, to
dig through mountains, and make their way through pathless wilder-
nesses. It is no wonder they looked grave upon it. The seriousness,
indeed, amounts to an air of devotion ; and it has to me something
fine, manly, and old English about it. There is a heartiness and
determined resolution ; a willingness to contend with opposition ;
a superiority to ease and pleasure ; some sullen pride, but no trifling
vanity. They addressed themselves to study as to a duty, and were
ready to " leave all and follow it." In the beginning of such an
era, the difference between ignorance and learning, between what
was commonly known and what was possible to be known, would
appear immense ; and no pains or time would be thought too great
to master the difficulty. Conscious of their own deficiencies and
the scanty information of those about them, they would be glad to
look out for aids and support, and to put themselves apprentices
to time and nature. This temper would lead them to exaggerate
rather than to make light of the difficulties of their undertaking,
and would call forth sacrifices in proportion. Feeling how little
they knew, they would be anxious to discover all that others had
OLD ENGLISH WRITERS AND SPEAKERS. 325
known, and instead of making a display of themselves, their first
object would be to dispel the mist and darkness that surrounded
them. They did not cull the flowers of learning, or pluck a leaf of
laurel for their own heads, but tugged at the roots and very heart
of their subject, as the woodman tugs at the roots of the gnarled
oak. The sense of the arduousness of their enterprise braced their
courage, so that they left nothing half-done. They inquired de
omne scibile et quibusdam aliis. They ransacked libraries, they ex-
hausted authorities. They acquired languages, consulted books,
and deciphered manuscripts. They devoured learning, and swallowed
antiquity whole, and (what is more) digested it. They read inces-
santly, and remembered what they read, from the zealous interest
they took in it. Repletion is only bad when it is accompanied with
apathy and want of exercise. They laboured hard, and showed great
activity both of reasoning and speculation. Their fault was, that
they were too prone to unlock the secrets of nature with the key of
learning, and often to substitute authority in the place of argument.
They were also too polemical, as was but naturally to be expected
in the first breaking-up of established prejudices and opinions. It
is curious to observe the slow progress of the human mind in loosen-
ing and getting rid of its trammels, link by link, and how it crept
on its hands and feet, and with its eyes bent on the ground, out of
the cave of Bigotry, making its way through one dark passage after
another ; those who gave up one half of an absurdity contending
as strenuously for the remaining half, the lazy current of tradition
stemming the tide of innovation, and making an endless struggle
between the two. But in the dullest minds of this period there was
a deference to the opinions of their leaders ; an imposing sense of
the importance of the subject, of the necessity of bringing all the
faculties to bear upon it ; a weight either of armour or of internal
strength, a zeal either for or against; a head, a heart, and a hand,
a holding out to the death for conscience' sake, a strong spirit of
proselytism — no flippancy, no indifference, no compromising, no pert,
shallow scepticism, but truth was supposed indissolubly knit to good,
knowledge to usefulness, and the temporal and eternal welfare of
mankind to hang in the balance. The pure springs of a lofty faith
(so to speak) had not then descended by various gradations from their
skyey regions and cloudy height, to find their level in the smooth,
glittering expanse of modem philosophy, or to settle in the stagnant
pool of stale hypocrisy ! A learned man of that day, if he knew no
better than others, at least knew all that they did. He did not come
to his subject, like some dapper barrister who has never looked
at his brief, and trusts to the smartness of his wit and person for
326 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the agreeable effect he means to produce, but like an old and
practised counsellor, covered over with the dust and cobwebs of
the law. If it was a speaker in Parliament, he came prepared to
handle his subject, armed with cases and precedents, the constitu-
tion and history of Parliament from the earliest period, a knowledge
of the details of business and the local interests of the country ; in
short, he had taken up the freedom of the House, and did not treat
the question like a cosmopolite or a writer in a magazine. If it
were a divine, he knew the Scriptures and the Fathers, and the
Councils and the Commentators, by heart, and thundered them in
the ears of his astonished audience. Not a trim essay or a tumid
oration, patronising religion by modern sophisms, but the Law and
the Prophets, the chapter and the verse. If it was a philosopher,
Aristotle and the Schoolmen were drawn out in battle-array against
you: — if an antiquarian, the Lord bless us ! There is a passage in
Selden's notes on Drayton's " Poly-Olbion," in which he elucidates
some point of topography by a reference not only to Stowe, and
Holinshed, and Camden, and Saxo-Grammaticus, and Dugdale, and
several other authors that we are acquainted with, but to twenty
obscure names, that no modern reader ever heard of ; and so on
through the notes to a folio volume, written apparently for relaxation.
Such were the intellectual amusements of our ancestors ! Learning
then ordinarily lay-in of folio volumes : now she litters octavos and
duodecimos, and will soon, as in France, miscarry of half -sheets!
Poor Job Orton ! Why should I not record a jest of his (perhaps
the only one he ever made), emblematic as it is of the living and
the learning of the good old times ? The Rev. Job Orton was a Dis-
senting minister in the middle of the last century, and had grown
heavy and gouty by sitting long at dinner and at his studies. He
could only get downstairs at last by spreading the folio volumes of
Caryl's " Commentaries upon Job " on the steps and sliding down
them. Surprised one day in his descent, he exclaimed, " You have
often heard of Caryl upon Job — now you see Job upon Caryl ! "
This same quaint-witted gouty old gentleman seems to have been
one of those " superior, happy spirits " who slid through life on the
rollers of learning, enjoying the good things of the world and laugh-
ing at them, and turning his infirmities to a livelier account than
his patriarchal namesake. Reader, didst thou ever hear either of
Job Orton or of Caryl on Job ? I dare say not. Yet the one did
not therefore slide down his theological staircase the less pleasantly ;
nor did the other compile his Commentaries in vain ! For myself,
I should like to browse on folios, and have to deal chiefly with
authors that I have scarcely strength to lift, that are as solid as
IDENTITY OF THE AUTHOR WITH HIS BOOKS. 327
they are heavy, and if dull, are full of matter. It is delightful to
repose on the wisdom of the ancients ; to have some great name at
hand, besides one's own initials always staring one in the face ; to
travel out of oneself into the Chaldee, Hebrew, and Egyptian char-
acters ; to have the palm-trees waving mystically in the margin of
the page, and the camels moving slowly on in the distance of three
thousand years. In that dry desert of learning we gather strength
and patience, and a strange and insatiable thirst of knowledge.
The ruined monuments of antiquity are also there, and the frag-
ments of buried cities (under which the adder lurks), and cool springs,
and green sunny spots, and the whirlwind, and the lion's roar, and
the shadow of angelic wings. To those who turn with supercilious
disgust from the ponderous tomes of scholastic learning, who never
felt the witchery of the Talmuds and the Cabbala, of the Commen-
tators and the Schoolmen, of texts and authorities, of types and
antitypes, hieroglyphics and mysteries, dogmas and contradictions,
and endless controversies and doubtful labyrinths, and quaint tradi-
tions, I would recommend the lines of Warton written in a blank
leaf of Dugdale's " Monasticon : "
" Deem not devoid of elegance the sage,
By fancy's genuine feelings unbeguiled,
Of painful pedantry the poring child,
Who turns of these proud tomes the historic page,
Now sunk by time and Henry's fiercer rage.
Think'st thou the warbling Muses never smiled
On his lone hours ? Ingenious views engage
His thoughts, on themes (unclassic falsely styled)
Intent. While cloister'd piety displays
Her mouldering scroll, the piercing eye explores
New manners and the pomp of elder days ;
Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores.
Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strewn with flowers."
IDENTITY OF THE AUTHOR WITH HIS BOOKS.
[From the Essay " On the Jealousy and the Spleen of Party."]
. . . WHATEVER the reader thinks fine in books assuredly existed
before in the living volume of the author's brain : that which is a pass-
ing and casual impression in the one case, a floating image, an empty
sound, is in the other an heirloom of the mind, the very form into
which it is warped and moulded, a deep and inward harmony that
flows on for ever, as the springs of memory and imagination unlock
328 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
their secret stores. "Thoughts that glow and words that burn"
are his daily sustenance. He leads a spiritual life, and walks with
God. The personal is, as much as may be, lost in the universal. He
is Nature's high-priest, and his mind is a temple where she treasures
up her fairest and loftiest forms. These he broods over, till he be-
comes enamoured of them, inspired by them, and communicates
some portion of his ethereal fires to others. For these he has given
up everything, wealth, pleasure, ease, health ; and yet we are to be
told he takes no interest in them, does not enter into the meaning
of the words he uses, or feel the force of the ideas he imprints upon
the brain of others. Let us give the devil his due. An author, I
grant, may be deficient in dress or address, may neglect his person
and his fortune —
" But his soul is fair,
Bright as the children of yon azure sheen : "
he may be full of inconsistencies elsewhere, but he is himself in his
books : he may be ignorant of the world we live in, but that he is
not at home and enchanted with that fairy-world which hangs upon
his pen, that he does not reign and revel in the creations of his own
fancy, or tread with awe and delight the stately domes and empyrean
palaces of eternal truth, the portals of which he opens to us, is what
I cannot take Mr. Moore's word for. He does not " give us reason
with his rhyme." An author's appearance or his actions may not
square with his theories or descriptions, but his mind is seen in his
writings, as his face is in the glass. All the faults of the literary
character, in short, arise out of the predominance of the professional
mania of such persons, and their absorption in those ideal studies
and pursuits, their affected regard to which the poet tells us is a
mere mockery, and a barefaced insult to people of plain, straight-
forward, practical sense and unadorned pretensions, like himself. . . .
In turning to the " Castle of Indolence " for the lines quoted a little
way back, I chanced to light upon another passage which I cannot
help transcribing :
" I care not, Fortune, what you me deny :
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace ;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face ;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns by living stream at eve :
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave :
Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave."
Were the sentiments here so beautifully expressed mere affectation
IDENTITY OF THE AUTHOR WITH HIS BOOKS. 329
in Thomson, or are we to make it a rule that as a writer imparts to
us a sensation of disinterested delight, he himself has none of the
feeling he excites in us ? This is one way of showing our gratitude,
and being even with him.
" Books, dreams are each a world, and books, we know,
Are a substantial world, both pure and good ;
Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,
Our pastime and our happiness may grow."
Let me, then, conjure the gentle reader, who has ever felt an attach-
ment to books, not hastily to divorce them from their authors.
Whatever love or reverence may be due to the one is equally owing
to the other. The volume we prize may be little, old, shabbily
bound, an imperfect copy, does not step down from the shelf to give
us a graceful welcome, nor can it extend a hand to serve us in ex-
tremity, and so far may be like the author ; but whatever there is
of truth or good, or of proud consolation or of cheering hope, in the
one, all this existed in a greater degree in the imagination and the
heart and brain of the other. To cherish the work and damn the
author is as if the traveller who slakes his thirst at the running
stream should revile the spring-head from which it gushes. I do
not speak of the degree of passion felt by Rousseau towards Madame
Warens, nor of his treatment of her, nor hers of him ; but that he
thought of her for years with the tenderest yearnings of affection
and regret, and felt towards her all that he has made his readers
feel, this I cannot for a moment doubt. So far, then, he is no im-
postor or juggler. Still less could he have given a new and personal
character to the literature of Europe, and changed the tone of
sentiment and the face of society, if he had not felt the strongest
interest in persons and things, or had been the heartless pretender
he is sometimes held out to us. ...
330 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
"VIVIAN GKEY" AND THE DANDY SCHOOL.
[Appeared in the Examiner, November 18, 1827, under the head of The
Dandy School.]
[It is a striking proof of Hazlitt's keen insight, that he so unerringly took
the moral measure of the then unknown author of "Vivian Grey."
He detected at once the vulgar affectation of gentility, the selfishness,
and disbelief in unselfish motives of action, the worship of success, the
absence of all conception of true greatness, and the general self-seeking
spirit which pervades the novel — contrasting its aims and those of
kindred productions by Theodore Hook with the nobler ideals of such
manly and healthy writers as Scott.]
... IT was formerly understood to be the business of literature to
enlarge the bounds of knowledge and feeling ; to direct the mind's
eye beyond the present moment and the present object ; to plunge
us in the world of romance, to connect different languages, manners,
times together ; to wean us from the grossness of sense, the illusions
of self-love ; — by the aid of imagination, to place us in the situations
of others and enable us to feel an interest in all that strikes them ;
and to make books the faithful witnesses and interpreters of nature
and the human heart. Of late, instead of this liberal and useful
tendency, it has taken a narrower and more superficial tone. All
that we learn from it is the servility, egotism, and upstart preten-
sions of the writers. Instead of transporting you to faery-land or
into the middle ages, you take a turn down Bond Street or go
through the mazes of the dance at Almack's. You have no new
inlet to thought or feeling opened to you ; but the passing object,
the topic of the day (however insipid or repulsive), is served up to
you with a self-sufficient air, as if you had not already had enough
of it. You dip into an essay or a novel, and may fancy yourself
reading a collection of quack or fashionable advertisements : — Macas-
sar Oil, Eau de Cologne, Hock and Seltzer Water, Otto of Roses,
Pomade Divine, glance through the page in inextricable confusion,
and make your head giddy. Far from extending your sympathies,
they are narrowed to a single point, the admiration of the folly,
caprice, insolence, and affectation of a certain class ; — so that, with
the exception of people who ride in their carriages, you are taught
to look down upon the rest of the species with indifference, abhor-
rence, or contempt. A schoolmaster in a black coat is a monster
— a tradesman and his wife who eat cold mutton and pickled cab-
THE DANDY SCHOOL. 331
bage are wretches to be hunted out of society. That is the end and
moral of it : it is part and parcel of a system. The Dandy School
give the finishing-touch to the principles of paternal government.
First comes the political sycophant, and makes the people over to
their rulers as a property in perpetuity ; but then they are to be
handled tenderly, and need not complain, since the sovereign is the
father of his people, and we are to be all one family of love. So
says the " Austrian Catechism." Then comes the literary sycophant
to finish what the other had begun ; and the poor fools of people
having been caught in the trap of plausible professions, he takes off
the mask of paternity, treats them as of a different species instead of
members of the same family, loads them with obloquy and insult,
and laughs at the very idea of any fellow-feeling with or considera-
tion towards them, as the height of bad taste, weakness, and vul-
garity. So says Mr. Theodore Hook and the author of "Vivian
Grey." So says not Sir Walter. Ever while you live, go to a man
of genius in preference to a dunce ; for, let his prejudices or his party
be what they may, there is still a saving grace about him, for he
himself has something else to trust to besides his subserviency to
greatness to raise him from insignificance. He takes you and places
you in a cottage or a cavern, and makes you feel the deepest interest
in it, for you feel all that its inmates feel. The Dandy School tell
you all that a dandy would feel in such circumstances, viz., that he
was not in a drawing-room or at Long's. Or if he does forfeit his
character for a moment, he at most brings himself to patronise
humanity, condescends to the accidents of common life, touches the
pathetic with his pen as if it were with a pair of tongs, and while
he just deigns to notice the existence or endure the infirmities of
his fellow-creatures, indemnifies his vanity by snatching a conscious
glance at his own person and perfections. Whatever is going on,
he himself is the hero of the scene; the distress (however excru-
ciating) derives its chief claim to attention from the singular cir-
cumstance of his being present ; and he manages the whole like a
piece of private theatricals with an air of the most absolute nonchal-
ance and decorum. The Whole Duty of Man is turned into a butt
and by-word, or like Mr. Martin's Bill for humanity to animals,
is a pure voluntary, a caprice of effeminate sensibility: the great
business of life is a kind of masquerade or melodrama got up for
effect and by particular desire of the Great. We soon grow tired of
nature so treated, and are glad to turn to the follies and fopperies
of high life, into which the writer enters with more relish, and where
he finds himself more at home. So Mr. Croker (in his place in the
House of Commons) does not know where Bloomsbury Square is :
332 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
thus affecting to level all the houses in the metropolis that are not
at the Court-end, and leaving them tenantless by a paltry sneer, as
if a plague had visited them. It is no wonder that his protege's and
understrappers out of doors should echo this official impertinence —
draw the line still closer between the East and West End — arrest
a stray sentiment at the corner of a street, relegate elegance to a
fashionable square — annihilate all other enjoyments, all other pre-
tensions, but those of their employers — reduce the bulk of mankind
to a cipher, and make all but a few pampered favourites of fortune
dissatisfied with themselves and contemptible to one another. The
reader's mind is so varnished over with affectation that not an
avenue to truth or feeling is left open, and it is stifled for want of
breath. Send these people across the Channel who make such a
fuss about the East and West End, and no one can find out the
difference. The English are not a nation of dandies; nor can John
Bull afford (whatever the panders to fashion and admirers of courtly
graces may say to the contrary) to rest all his pretensions upon that.
He must descend to a broader and more manly level to keep his
ground at all. Those who would persuade him to build up his fame
on frogged coats or on the embellishments of a snuff-box, he should
scatter with one loud roar of indignation and trample into the earth
like grasshoppers, as making not only a beast but an aste of him.
A writer of this accomplished stamp comes forward to tell you,
not how his hero feels on any occasion — for he is above that — but how
he was dressed, and makes him a mere lay-figure of fashion with a
few pert, current phrases in his mouth. The Sir Sedley Clarendels
and Meadowses of a former age are become the real fine gentlemen
of this. Then he gives you the address of his heroine's milliner, lest
any shocking surmise should arise in your mind of the possibility of
her dealing with a person of less approved taste, and also informs
you that the quality eat fish with silver forks. This is all he knows
about the matter : is this all they feel ? The fact is new to him : it
is old to them. It is so new to him and he is so delighted with it,
that, provided a few select persons eat fish with silver forks, he con-
siders it a circumstance of no consequence if a whole country starves :
but these privileged persons are not surely thinking all the time and
every day of their lives of that which Mr. Theodore Hook has never
forgotten since he first witnessed it, viz., that they eat their fish with
a silver fork. What, then, are they thinking of in their intervals of
leisure — what are their feelings that we can be supposed to know
nothing of? Will Mr. Theodore Hook, who is "comforted with
their bright radiance, though not in their sphere," condescend to
give us a glimpse of these, that we may admire their real elegance
THE DANDY SCHOOL. 333
and refinement as much as he does a f rogged coat or silver fork ?
It is cruel in him not to do so. " The Court, as well as we, may
chide him for it." He once criticised a city feast with great minute-
ness and bitterness, in which (as it appears) the sideboard is ill-
arranged, the footman makes a blunder, the cook has sent up a dish
too little or too highly seasoned. Something is wanting, as Mr.
Hook insinuates is necessarily the case whenever people in the
neighbourhood of Russell Square give dinners. But that something
is not the manners or conversation of gentlemen — this never enters
his head — but something that the butler, the cook, or the valet of
people of fashion could have remedied quite as well (to say the least)
as their masters. It is here the cloven foot, the under-bred tone,
the undue admiration of external circumstances, breaks out and
betrays the writer. Mr. Hook has a fellow-feeling with low life, or
rather with vulgarity aping gentility, but he has never got beyond
the outside of what he calls good society. He can lay the cloth or play
the buffoon after dinner — but that is the utmost he can pretend to.
We have in " Sayings and Doings " and in " Vivian Grey " abundance
of Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys, but they are titles without
characters, or the blank is filled up with the most trite impertinence.
So a young linen-draper or attorney's clerk from the country, who
had gained a thirty thousand pound prize in the lottery and wished
to set up for a fine gentleman, might learn from these novels what
hotel to put up at, what watering-place to go to, what hatter, hosier,
tailor, shoemaker, friseur, to employ, what part of the town he
should be seen in, what theatre he might frequent; but how to
behave, speak, look, feel, or think in his new and more aspiring
character he would not find the most distant hint in the gross cari-
catures or flimsy sketches of the most mechanical and shallow of all
schools. It is really as if, in lieu of our royal and fashionable " Society
of Authors," a deputation of tailors, cooks, lackeys, had taken pos-
session of Parnassus, and had appointed some Abigail out of place
perpetual Secretary. The Congreves, Wycherleys, and Vanbrughs of
former days gave us some taste of gentility and courtly refinement
in their plays : enchanted us with their Millamants, or made us bow
with respect to their Lord Townleys. It would seem that the race
of these is over, or that our modern scribes have not had access to
them on a proper footing — that is, not for their talents or conversa-
tion, but as mountebanks or political drudges.
At first it appears strange that persons of so low a station in life
should be seized with such a rage to inveigh against themselves, and
make us despise all but a few arrogant people, who pay them ill for
what they do. But this is the natural process of servility, and we
334 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
see all valets and hangers-on of the Great do the same thing. The
powdered footman looks down on the rabble that dog his master's
coach as beneath his notice. He feels the one little above him, and
the other (by consequence) infinitely below him. Authors at present
would be thought gentlemen, as gentlemen have a fancy to turn
authors. The first thing a dandy scribbler does is to let us know he
is dressed in the height of the fashion (otherwise we might imagine
him some miserable garreteer, distinguished only by his poverty and
learning) — and the next thing he does is to make a supercilious allu-
sion to some one who is not so well dressed as himself. He then
proceeds to give us a sparkling account of his Champagne and of his
box at the Opera. A newspaper hack of this description also takes
care to inform us that the people at the Opera in general, the Mr.
Smiths and the Mr. Browns, are not good enough for him, and that
he shall wait to begin his critical lucubrations till the stars of
fashion meet there in crowds and constellations! At present it
should seem that a seat on Parnassus conveys a title to a box at
the Opera, and that Helicon no longer runs water, but Champagne.
Literature, so far from supplying us with intellectual resources to
counterbalance immediate privations, is made an instrument to add
to our impatience and irritability under them, and to nourish our
feverish, childish admiration of external show and grandeur. This
rage for fashion and for fashionable writing seems becoming universal,
and some stop must be put to it, unless it cures itself by its own
excessive folly and insipidity. . . .
[Sketches and Essays (now first collected by his Son) — 1839. This volume
consists of Essays contributed to various periodicals, but not previously
published in a collective form. It may be regarded as a continuation
of Table- Talk and The Plain Speaker.']
ON READING NEW BOOKS.
"And what of this new book, that the whole world make such a rout
about ? "—STERNE.
I CANNOT understand the rage manifested by the greater part of
the world for reading New Books. If the public had read all those
that have gone before, I can conceive how they should not wish to
read the same work twice over ; but when I consider the countless
volumes that lie unopened, unregarded, unread, and unthought of,
I cannot enter into the pathetic complaints that I hear made that
READING NEW BOOKS. 335
Sir Walter writes no more — that the press is idle — that Lord Byron
is dead. If I have not read a book before, it is, to all intents and
purposes, new to me, whether it was printed yesterday or three
hundred years ago. If it be urged that it has no modern, passing
incidents, and is out of date and old-fashioned, then it is so much
the newer ; it is farther removed from other works that I have lately
read, from the familiar routine of ordinary life, and makes so much
more addition to my knowledge. But many people would as soon
think of putting on old armour as of taking up a book not published
within the last month, or year at the utmost. There is a fashion in
reading as well as in dress, which lasts only for the season. One
would imagine that books were, like women, the worse for being
old ; that they have a pleasure in being read for the first time ; that
they open their leaves more cordially ; that the spirit of enjoyment
wears out with the spirit of novelty ; and that, after a certain age, it
is high time to put them on the shelf. This conceit se'ems to be fol-
lowed up in practice. What is it to me that another — that hundreds
or thousands have in all ages read a work ? Is it on this account
the less likely to give me pleasure, because it has delighted so many
others ? Or can I taste this pleasure by /proxy ? Or am I in any
degree the wiser for their knowledge ? Yet this might appear to be
the inference. Their having read the work may be said to act upon
us by sympathy, and the knowledge which so many other persons
have of its contents deadens our curiosity and interest altogether.
We set aside the subject as one on which others have made up their
minds for us (as if we really could have ideas in their heads), and are
quite on the alert for the next new work, teeming hot from the press,
which we shall be the first to read, criticise, and pass an opinion on.
Oh, delightful ! To cut open the leaves, to inhale the fragrance of the
scarcely dry paper, to examine the type to see who is the printer
(which is some clue to the value that is set upon the work), to launch
out into regions of thought and invention never trod till now, and
to explore characters that never met a human eye before — this is a
luxury worth sacrificing a dinner-party or a few hours of a spare
morning to. Who, indeed, when the work is critical and full of
expectation, would venture to dine out, or to face a coterie of blue-
stockings in the evening, without having gone through his ordeal,
or at least without hastily turning over a few of the first pages,
while dressing, to be able to say that the beginning does not promise
much, or to tell the name of the heroine ?
A new work is something in our power ; we mount the bench, and
sit in judgment on it ; we can damn or recommend it to others at
pleasure can decry or extol it to the skies and can give an answer
2c
336 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
to those who have not yet read it and expect an account of it ; and
thus show our shrewdness and the independence of our taste before
the world have had time to form an opinion. If we cannot write
ourselves, we become, by busying ourselves about it, a kind of
accessories after the fact. Though not the parent of the bantling
that " has just come into this breathing world, scarce half made up,"
without the aid of criticism and puffing, yet we are the gossips and
foster-nurses on the occasion, with all the mysterious significance
and self-importance of the tribe. If we wait, we must take our
report from others ; if we make haste, we may dictate ours to them.
It is not a race, then, for priority of information, but for precedence
in tattling and dogmatising. The work last out is the first that
people talk and inquire about. It is the subject on the tapis — the
cause that is pending. It is the last candidate for success (other
claims have been disposed of), and appeals for this success to us?
and us alone. Our predecessors can have nothing to say to this
question, however they may have anticipated us on others ; future
ages, in all probability, will not trouble their heads about it ; we
are the panel. How hard, then, not to avail ourselves of our im-
mediate privilege to give sentence of life or death — to seem in
ignorance of what every one else is full of — to be behindhand with
the polite, the knowing, and fashionable part of mankind— to be at
a loss and dumb-founded, when all around us are in their glory,
and figuring away, on no other ground than that of having read a
work that we have not ! Books that are to be written hereafter
cannot be criticised by us ; those that were written formerly have
been criticised long ago ; but a new book is the property, the prey
of ephemeral criticism, which it darts triumphantly upon ; there is
a raw, thin air of ignorance and uncertainty about it, not filled up
by any recorded opinion ; and curiosity, impertinence, and vanity
rush eagerly into the vacuum. A new book is the fair field for
petulance and coxcombry to gather laurels in — the butt set up for
roving opinion to aim at. Can we wonder, then, that the circulating
libraries are besieged by literary dowagers and their granddaughters
when a new novel is announced ? That mail-coach copies of the
Edinburgh Review are or were coveted ? That the manuscript of
the Waverley Romances is sent abroad in time for the French,
German, or even Italian translation to appear on the same day as
the original work, so that the longing Continental public may not
be kept waiting an instant longer than their fellow-readers in the
English metropolis, which would be as tantalising and insupportable
as a little girl being kept without her new frock, when her sister's
is just come home and is the talk and admiration of every one in
READING NEW BOOKS. 337
the house ? To be sure, there is something in the taste of the
times ; a modern work is expressly adapted to modern readers. It
appeals to our direct experience, and to well-known subjects ; it is
part and parcel of the world around us, and is drawn from the same
sources as our daily thoughts. There is, therefore, so far, a natural
or habitual sympathy between us and the literature of the day,
though this is a different consideration from the mere circumstance
of novelty. An author now alive has a right to calculate upon the
living public; he cannot count upon the dead, nor look forward
with much confidence to those that are unborn. Neither, however,
is it true that we are eager to read all new books alike ; we turn
from them with a certain feeling of distaste and distrust, unless
they are recommended to us by some peculiar feature or obvious
distinction. Only young ladies from the boarding-school or milliners'
girls read all the new novels that come out. It must be spoken of
or against ; the writer's name must be well known or a great secret ;
it must be a topic of discourse and a mark for criticism — that is, it
must be likely to bring us into notice in some way — or we take no
notice of it. There is a mutual and tacit understanding on this
head. We can no more read all the new books that appear than we
can read all the old ones that have disappeared from time to time.
A question maybe started here, and pursued as far as needful, whether,
if an old and worm-eaten manuscript were discovered at the present
moment, it would be sought after with the same avidity as a new
and hot-pressed poem or other popular work ? Not generally, certainly,
though by a few with perhaps greater zeal. For it would not affect
present interests, or amuse present fancies, or touch on present
manners, or fall in with the public egotism in any way ; it would be the
work either of some obscure author — in which case it would want
the principle of excitement — or of some illustrious name, whose style
and manner would be already familiar to those most versed in the
subject, and his fame established ; so that, as a matter of comment
and controversy, it would only go to account on the old score ;
there would be no room for learned feuds and heart-burnings. . . .
I have been often struck by the unreasonableness of the complaint
we constantly hear of the ignorance and barbarism of former ages,
and the folly of restricting all refinement and literary elegance to
our own. We are, indeed, indebted to the ages that have gone
before us, and could not well do without them. But in all ages
there will be found still others that have gone before with nearly
equal lustre and advantage, though, by distance and the intervention
of multiplied excellence, this lustre may be dimmed or forgotten.
Had, it then, no existence ? We might, with the same reason, sup-
338 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
pose that the horizon is the last boundary and verge of the round
earth. Still, as we advance, it recedes from us ; and so time from
its storehouse pours out an endless succession of the productions of
art and genius ; and the farther we explore the obscurity, other
trophies and other landmarks rise up. It is only our ignorance
that fixes a limit — as the mist gathered round the mountain's brow
makes us fancy we are treading the edge of the universe ! Here
was Eloise living at a period when monkish indolence and supersti-
tion were at their height — in one of those that are emphatically
called the dark ages ; and yet, as she is led to the altar to make her
last fatal vow, expressing her feelings in language quite natural to
her, but from which the most accomplished and heroic of our
modern females would shrink back with pretty and affected wonder
and affright. The glowing and impetuous lines which she mur-
mured, as she passed on, with spontaneous and rising enthusiasm,
were engraven on her heart, familiar to her as her daily thoughts ;
her mind must have been full of them to overflowing, and at the
same time enriched with other stores and sources of knowledge
equally elegant and impressive ; and we persist, notwithstanding
this and a thousand similar circumstances, in indulging our surprise
how people could exist, and see, and feet, in those days, without
having access to our opportunities and acquirements, and how Shak-
speare wrote long after, in a barbarous age ! The mystery in this
case is of our own making. We are struck with astonishment at
finding a fine moral sentiment or a noble image nervously expressed
in an author of the age of Queen Elizabeth ; not considering that,
independently of nature and feeling, which are the same in all
periods, the writers of that day, who were generally men of educa-
tion and learning, had such models before them as the one that has
been just referred to — were thoroughly acquainted with those mas-
ters of classic thought and language, compared with whom, in all
that relates to the artificial graces of composition, the most studied
of the moderns are little better than Goths and Vandals. It is true
we have lost sight of and neglected the former, because the latter
have, in a great degree, superseded them, as the elevations nearest
to us intercept those farthest off; but our not availing ourselves of
this vantage-ground is no reason why our forefathers should not
(who had not our superfluity of choice), and most assuredly they
did study and cherish the precious fragments of antiquity, collected
together in their time, " like sunken wreck and sumless treasuries ; " 1
and while they did this, we need be at no loss to account for any
examples of grace, or force, or dignity in their writings, if these
1 " Henry V.," i. 2 [Dyce's edit., 1868, iv. 429].
CANT AND HYPOCRISY. 339
must always be traced back to a previous source. One age cannot
understand how another could subsist without its lights, as one
country thinks every other must be poor for want of its physical
productions. This is a narrow and superficial view of the subject :
we should by all means rise above it. I am not for devoting the
whole of our time to the study of the classics, or of any other set
of writers, to the exclusion and neglect of nature ; but I think we
should turn our thoughts enough that way to convince us of the
existence of genius and learning before our time, and to cure us of
an overweening conceit of ourselves, and of a contemptuous opinion
of the world at large. Every civilised age and country (and of these
there is not one, but a hundred) has its literature, its arts, its com-
forts, large and ample, though we may know nothing of them.; nor
is it (except for our own sakes) important that we should. . . .
CANT AND HYPOCRISY.
. . . THE hypocrisy of priests has been a butt for ridicule in all
ages ; but I am not sure that there has not been more wit than
philosophy in it. A priest, it is true, is obliged to affect a greater
degree of sanctity than ordinary men, and probably more than he
possesses ; and this is so far, I am willing to allow, hypocrisy and
solemn grimace. But I cannot admit, that though he may exag-
gerate or even make an ostentatious display of religion and virtue
through habit and spiritual pride, this is a proof he has not
these sentiments in his heart, or that his whole behaviour is the
mere acting of a part. His character, his motives, are not altogether
pure and sincere : are they therefore all false and hollow ? No such
thing. It is contrary to all our observation and experience so to
interpret it. We all wear some disguise — make some professions —
use some artifice to set ourselves off as being better than we are ;
and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and
praiseworthy qualities at bottom, though we may endeavour to
keep some others that we think less to our credit as much as pos-
sible in the background ; — why, then, should we not extend the same (
favourable construction to monks and priests, who may be sometimes
caught tripping as well as other men — with less excuse, no doubt ;
but if it is also with greater remorse of conscience, which probably
often happens, their pretensions are not all downright, barefaced
imposture. Their sincerity, compared with that of other men, can
only be judged of by the proportion between the degree of virtue
they profess and that which they practise, or at least carefully seek
to realise. To conceive it otherwise is to insist that characters must
340 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
be all perfect or all vicious— neither of which suppositions is even
possible. ... If a poor half-starved parish priest pays his court to an
olla podrida or a venison pasty with uncommon gusto, shall we say
that he has no other sentiments in offering his devotions to a cru-
cifix, or in counting his beads ? I see no more ground for such an
inference than for affirming that Handel was not in earnest when he
sat down to compose a Symphony, because he had at the same time,
perhaps, a bottle of cordials in his cupboard ; or that Raphael was
not entitled to the epithet of divine, because he was attached to the
Fornarina. Everything has its turn in this chequered scene of things,
unless we prevent it from taking its turn by over-rigid conditions,
or drive men to despair or the most callous effrontery, by erecting a
standard of perfection to which no one can conform in reality. . . .
It has been frequently remarked that the most obstinate heretic
or confirmed sceptic, witnessing the service of the Roman Catholic
Church, the elevation of the host amidst the sounds of music, the
pomp of ceremonies, the embellishments of art, feels himself spell-
bound, and is almost persuaded to become a renegade to his reason
or his religion. Even in hearing a vespers chanted on the stage, or
in reading an account of a torchlight procession in a romance, a
superstitious awe creeps over the frame, and we are momentarily
charmed out of ourselves. When such is the obvious and in-
voluntary influence of circumstances on the imagination, shall we
say that a monkish recluse, surrounded from his childhood by all
this pomp, a stranger to any other faith, who has breathed no other
atmosphere, and all whose meditations are bent on this one subject
both by interest and habit and duty, is to be set down as a rank
and heartless mountebank in the professions he makes of belief in
it, because his thoughts may sometimes wander to forbidden sub-
jects, or his feet stumble on forbidden ground ? Or shall not the
deep shadows of the woods in Vallombrosa enhance the solemnity
of this feeling, or the icy horrors of the Grand Chartreux add to its
elevation and its purity? To argue otherwise is to misdeem of
human nature, and to limit its capacities for good or evil by some
narrow-minded standard of our own. Man is neither a god nor a
brute ; but there is a prosaic and a poetical side to everything con-
cerning him, and it is as impossible absolutely and for a constancy
to exclude either one or the other from the mind, as to make him
live without air or food. The ideal, the empire of thought and
aspiration after truth and good, is inseparable from the nature of
an intellectual being — what right have we, then, to catch at every
strife which in the mortified professors of religion the spirit wages
with the flesh as grossly vicious ? or at every doubt, the bare sugges-
CANT AND HYPOCRISY. 341
tion of which fills them with consternation and despair, as a proof of
the most glaring hypocrisy? The grossnesses of religion and its
stickling for mere forms as its essence have given a handle, and a
just one, to its impugners. At the feast of Ramadan (says Voltaire)
the Mussulmans wash and pray five times a day, and then fall to
cutting one another's throats again with the greatest deliberation
and good-will. The two things, I grant, are sufficiently at variance ;
but they are, I contend, equally sincere in both. The Mahometans
are savages, but they are not the less true believers — they hate their
enemies as heartily as they revere the Koran. This, instead of
showing the fallacy of the ideal principle, shows its universality and
indestructible essence. Let a man be as bad as he will, as little
refined as possible, and indulge whatever hurtful passions or gross
vices he thinks proper, these cannot occupy the whole of his time ;
and in the intervals between one scoundrel action and another he
may, and must, have better thoughts, and may have recourse to
those of religion (true or false) among the number, without in this
being guilty of hypocrisy or of making a jest of what is considered
as sacred. This, I take it, is the whole secret of Methodism, which
is a sort of modern vent for the ebullitions of the spirit through the
gaps of unrighteousness.
We often see that a person condemns in another the very thing
he is guilty of himself. Is this hypocrisy ? It may, or it may not.
If he really feels none of the disgust and abhorrence he expresses,
this is quackery and impudence. But if he really expresses what he
feels (and he easily may, for it is the abstract idea he contemplates
in the case of another, and the immediate temptation to which he
yields in his own, so that he probably is not even conscious of the
identity or connection between the two), then this is not hypocrisy,
but want of strength and keeping in the moral sense. All morality
consists in squaring our actions and sentiments to our ideas of what
is fit and proper; and it is the incessant struggle and alternate
triumph of the two principles, the ideal and the physical, that keeps
up this " mighty coil and pudder " about vice and virtue, and is one
great source of all the good and evil in the world. The mind of
man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be
as constantly wound up. The ideal principle is the master-key that
winds it up, and without which it would come to a stand: the
sensual and selfish feelings are the dead weights that pull it down
to the gross and grovelling. Till the intellectual faculty is destroyed
(so that the mind sees nothing beyond itself or the present moment),
it is impossible to have all brutal depravity ; till the material and
physical are done away with (so that it shall contemplate every-
342 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
thing from a purely spiritual and disinterested point of view), it is
impossible to have all virtue. There must be a mixture of the two,
as long as man is compounded of opposite materials, a contradiction
and an eternal competition for the mastery. I by no means think
a single bad action condemns a man, for he probably condemns it as
much as you do ; nor a single bad habit, for he is probably trying
all his life to get rid of it. A man is only thoroughly profligate
when he has lost the sense of right and wrong; or a thorough
hypocrite when he has not even the wish to be what he appears.
The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. To recom-
mend certain things is worse than to practise them. There may be
an excuse for the last in the frailty of passion ; but the former can
arise from nothing but an utter depravity of disposition. Any one
may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love and aspiration
after virtue ; but he who maintains vice in theory has not even the
conception or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men err : fiends only
make a mock at goodness. . . .
If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to
the world. There are a number of things the idea of which is a
clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship,
genius, freedom, as long as they will — the very names of these de-
spised qualities are better than anything else that could be substi-
tuted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against
them. It is no small consideration that the mind is capable even of
feigning such things. So I would contend against that reasoning
which would have it thought that if religion is not true, there is no
difference between mankind and the beasts that perish ; — I should
say that this distinction is equally proved if religion is supposed to
be a mere fabrication of the human mind ; the capacity to conceive it
makes the difference. The idea alone of an overruling Providence,
or of a future state, is as much a distinctive mark of a superiority
of nature as the invention of the mathematics, which are true — or of
poetry, which is a fable. Whatever the truth or falsehood of our
speculations, the power to make them is peculiar to ourselves. . . .
Thus, 'though I think there is very little downright hypocrisy in
the world, I do think there is a great deal of cant — " cant religious,
cant political, cant literary," &c., as Lord Byron said. Though few
people have the face to set up for the very thing they in their hearts
despise, we almost all want to be thought better than we are, and
affect a greater admiration or abhorrence of certain things than we
really feel. Indeed, some degree of affectation is as necessary to the
mind as dress is to the body ; we must overact our part in some
measure, in order to produce any effect at all. There was formerly
WALTON'S "COMPLETE ANGLER." 343
the two hours' sermon, the long-winded grace, the nasal drawl, the
uplifted hands and eyes ; all which, though accompanied with some
corresponding emotion, expressed more than was really felt, and were
in fact intended to make up for the conscious deficiency. As our
interest in anything wears out with time and habit, we exaggerate
the outward symptoms of zeal as mechanical helps to devotion,
dwell the longer on our words as they are less felt, and hence the
very origin of the term, cant. The cant of sentimentality has suc-
ceeded to that of religion. There is a cant of humanity, of patriotism
and loyalty — not that people do not feel these emotions, but they
make too great a fuss about them, and drawl out the expression of
them till they tire themselves and others. There is a cant about
Shakspeare. There is a cant about Political Economy just now. In
short, there is and must be a cant about everything that excites a
considerable degree of attention and interest, and that people would be
thought to know and care rather more about them than they actually
do. Cant is the voluntary overcharging or prolongation of a real
sentiment ; hypocrisy is the setting up a pretension to a feeling you
never had and have no wish for. There are people who are made
up of cant, that is, of mawkish affectation and sensibility, but who
have not sincerity enough to be hypocrites, that is, have not hearty
dislike or contempt enough for anything, to give the lie to their
puling professions of admiration and esteem for it.
WALTON'S "COMPLETE ANGLER."
[From the Essay, "Merry England."]
... I SHOULD suppose no other language than ours can show such a
book as an often-mentioned one, Walton's " Complete Angler "• — so
full of notiveU, of unaffected sprightliness, of busy trifling, of dainty
songs, of refreshing brooks, of shady arbours, of happy thoughts, and
of the herb called Heart's Ease ! Some persons can see neither the
wit nor wisdom of this genuine volume, as if a book as well as a
man might not have a personal character belonging to it, amiable,
venerable from the spirit of joy and thorough goodness it manifests,
independently of acute remarks or scientific discoveries ; others ob-
ject to the cruelty of Walton's theory and practice of trout-fishing
— for my part, I should as soon charge an infant with cruelty for
killing a fly, and I feel the same sort of pleasure in reading his book
as I should have done in the company of this happy, child-like old
man, watching his ruddy cheek, his laughing eye, the kindness of his
heart, and the dexterity of his hand in seizing his finny prey ! . . .
344 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ON A SUN-DIAL.
. . . SURELY, if there is anything with which we should not mix up our
vanity and self-consequence, it is with Time, the most independent
of all things. All the sublimity, all the superstition, that hang upon
this palpable mode of announcing its flight are chiefly attached
to this circumstance. Time would lose its abstracted character, if
we kept it like a curiosity or a jack-in-a-box : its prophetic warnings
would have no effect, if it obviously spoke only at our prompting
like a paltry ventriloquism. The clock that tells the coming,
dreaded hour — the castle bell, that " with its brazen throat and iron
tongue, sounds one unto the drowsy ear of night" — the curfew,
" swinging slow with sullen roar " o'er wizard stream or fountain,
are like a voice from other worlds, big with unknown events. The
last sound, which is still kept up as an old custom in many parts of
England, is a great favourite with me. I used to hear it when a
boy. It tells a tale of other times. The days that are past, the
generations that are gone, the tangled forest glades and hamlets
brown of my native country, the woodsman's art, the Norman
warrior armed for the battle or in his festive hall, the conqueror's
iron rule and peasant's lamp extinguished, all start up at the
clamorous peal, and fill my mind with fear and wonder. I confess,
nothing at present interests me but what has been — the recollection
of the impressions of my early life, or events long past, of which
only the dim traces remain in a mouldering ruin or half-obsolete
custom. That things should be that are now no more, creates in my
mind the most unfeigned astonishment. I cannot solve the mystery
of the past, nor exhaust my pleasure in it. The years, the genera-
tions to come, are nothing to me. We care no more about the
world in the year 2300 than we do about one of the planets. We
might as well make a voyage to the moon as think of stealing
a march upon Time with impunity. De non apparentibus et non
existentibus eadem est ratio. Those who are to come after us and
push us from the stage seem like upstarts and pretenders, that may
be said to exist in vacua, we know not upon what, except as they
are blown up with vanity and self-conceit by their patrons among
the moderns. But the ancients are true and bond fide people, to
whom we are bound by aggregate knowledge and filial ties, and in
whom, seen by the mellow light of history, we feel our own existence
doubled and our pride consoled, as we ruminate on the vestiges of
the past. The public in general, however, do not carry this specu-
ON PREJUDICE. 345
lative indifference about the future to what is to happen to them-
selves, or to the part they are to act in the busy scene. For my own
part, I do ; and the only wish I can form, or that ever prompts the
passing sigh, would be to live some of my years over again — they
would be those in which I enjoyed and suffered most ! . . .
For myself, I have never had a watch nor any other mode of keep-
ing time in my possession, nor ever wish to learn how time goes.
It is a sign I have had little to do, few avocations, few engagements.
When I am in a town, I can hear the clock ; and when I am in the
country, I can listen to the silence. What I like best is to lie whole
mornings on a sunny bank on Salisbury Plain, without any object
before me, neither knowing nor caring how time passes, and thus
" with light-winged toys of feathered Idleness " to melt down hours
to moments. Perhaps some such thoughts as I have here set down
float before me like motes before my half-shut eyes, or some vivid
image of the past by forcible contrast rushes by me — " Diana and
her fawn, and all the glories of the antique world ; " then I start
away to prevent the iron from entering my soul, and let fall some
tears into that stream of time which separates me farther and farther
from all I once loved ! At length I rouse myself from my reverie,
and home to dinner, proud of killing time with thpught, nay, even
without thinking. Somewhat of this idle humour I inherit from
my father, though he had not the same freedom from ennui, for he
was not a metaphysician ; and there were stops and vacant intervals
in his being which he did not know how to fill up. He used in
these cases, and as an obvious resource, carefully to wind up his
watch at night, and " with lack-lustre eye " more than once in the
course of the day look to see what o'clock it was. Yet he had
nothing else in his character in common with the elder Mr. Shandy.
ON PREJUDICE.
PREJUDICE, in its ordinary and literal sense, is prejudging any ques-
tion without having sufficiently examined it, and adhering to our
opinion upon it through ignorance, malice, or perversity, in spite of
every evidence to the contrary. The little that we know has a strong
alloy of misgiving and uncertainty in it ; the mass of things of which
we have no means of judging, but of which we form a blind and
confident opinion, as if we were thoroughly acquainted with them,
is monstrous. Prejudice is the child of ignorance ; for as our actual
knowledge falls short of our desire to know, or curiosity and interest
in the world about us, so must we be tempted to decide upon a
346 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
greater number of things at a venture ; and having no check from
reason or inquiry, we shall grow more obstinate and bigoted in our
conclusions, according as we have been rash and presumptuous.
The absence of proof, instead of suspending our judgment, only gives
us an opportunity of making things out according to our wishes and
fancies ; mere ignorance is a blank canvas, on which we lay what
colours we please, and paint objects black or white, as angels or
devils, magnify or diminish them at our option ; and in the vacuum
either of facts or arguments, the weight of prejudice and passion
falls with double force, and bears down everything before it. If we
enlarge the circle of our previous knowledge ever so little, we may
meet with something to create doubt and difficulty ; but as long as
we remain confined to the cell of our native ignorance, while we
know nothing beyond the routine of sense and custom, we shall refer
everything to that standard, or make it out as we would have it to
be, like spoiled children who have never been from home, and expect
to find nothing in the world that does not accord with their wishes
and notions. It is evident that the fewer things we know, the more
ready we shall be to pronounce upon and condemn what is new and
strange to us ; that is, the less capable we shall be of varying our
conceptions, and the more prone to mistake a part for the whole.
What we do not understand the meaning of must necessarily appear
to us ridiculous and contemptible ; and we do not stop to inquire,
till we have been taught by repeated experiments and warnings of
our own fallibility, whether the absurdity is in ourselves, or in the
object of our dislike and scorn. The most ignorant people are rude
and insolent, as the most barbarous are cruel and ferocious. All our
knowledge at first lying in a narrow compass (crowded by local and
physical causes), whatever does not conform to this shocks us as out
of reason and nature. The less we look abroad, the more our ideas
are introverted, and our habitual impressions, from being made up of
a few particulars always repeated, grow together into a kind of con-
crete substance, which will not bear taking to pieces, and where the
smallest deviation destroys the whole feeling. . . . This account of
the concrete nature of prejudice, or of the manner in which our ideas
by habit and the dearth of general information coalesce together
into one indissoluble form, will show (what otherwise seems unac-
countable) how such violent antipathies and animosities have been
occasioned by the most ridiculous or trifling differences of opinion,
or outward symbols of it ; for by constant custom, and the want of
reflection, the most insignificant of these was as inseparably bound
up with the main principle as the most important, and to give up
any part was to give up the whole essence and vital interests of
ON PREJUDICE. 347
religion, morals, and government. Hence we see all sects and parties
mutually insist on their own technical distinctions as the essentials
and fundamentals of religion and politics, and for the slightest
variation in any of these, unceremoniously attack their opponents
as atheists and blasphemers, traitors and incendiaries. . . .
The most dangerous enemies to established opinions are those
who, by always defending them, call attention to their weak
sides. The priests and politicians, in former times, were therefore
wise in preventing the first approaches of innovation and inquiry ;
in preserving inviolate the smallest link in the adamantine chain
with which they had bound the souls and bodies of men ; in closing
up every avenue or pore through which a doubt could creep in, for
they knew that through the slightest crevice floods of irreligion and
heresy would rush like a tide. Hence the constant alarm at free
discussion and inquiry : hence the clamour against innovation and
reform : hence our dread and detestation of those who differ with
us in opinion, for this at once puts us on the necessity of defending
ourselves, or of owning ourselves weak or in the wrong, if we
cannot ; and converts that which was before a bed of roses, while
we slept undisturbed upon it, into a cushion of thorns ; and' hence
our natural tenaciousness of those points which are most vulner-
able, and of which we have no proof to offer ; for as reason fails us,
we are more annoyed by the objections, and require to be soothed
and supported by the concurrence of others. . . . The great
stumbling-block to candour and liberality is the difficulty of being
fully possessed of the excellence of any opinion or pursuits of our
own, without proportionably condemning whatever is opposed to it ;
nor can we admit the possibility that when our side of the shield is
black, the other should be white. The largest part of our judgments
is prompted by habit and passion ; but because habit is like a second
nature, and we necessarily approve what passion suggests, we will
have it that they are founded entirely on reason and nature, and
that all the world must be of the same opinion, unless they wilfully
shut their eyes to the truth. Animals are free from prejudice,
because they have no notion or care about anything beyond them-
selves, and have no wish to generalise or talk big on what does
not concern them : man alone falls into absurdity and error by
setting up a claim to superior wisdom and virtue, and to be a
dictator and lawgiver to all around him, and on all things
that he has the remotest conception of. ... Those who think
they can make a clear stage of it, and frame a set of opinions
on all subjects by an appeal to reason alone, and without the
smallest intermixture of custom, imagination, or passion, know
348 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
just as little of themselves as they do of human nature. The best
way to prevent our running into the wildest excesses of pre-
judice and the most dangerous aberrations from reason is, not to
represent the two things as having a great gulf between them, which
it is impossible to pass without a violent effort, but to show that we
are constantly (even when we think ourselves most secure) treading
on the brink of a precipice ; that custom, passion, imagination, in-
sinuate themselves into and influence almost every judgment we
pass or sentiment we indulge, and are a necessary help (as well as
hindrance) to the human understanding ; and that to attempt to
refer every question to abstract truth and precise definition, with-
out allowing for the frailty of prejudice, which is the unavoidable
consequence of the frailty and imperfection of reason, would be to
unravel the whole web and texture of human understanding and
society. Such daring anatomists of morals and philosophy think
that the whole beauty of the mind consists in the skeleton ; cut
away, without remorse, all sentiment, fancy, taste, as superfluous
excrescences ; and in their own eager, unfeeling pursuit of scientific
truth and elementary principles, they " murder to dissect."
It is a mistake, however, to suppose that all prejudices are false,
though it is not an easy matter to distinguish between true and
false prejudice. Prejudice is properly an opinion or feeling, not for
which there is no reason, but of which we cannot render a satisfac-
tory account on the spot. It is not always possible to assign a
" reason for the faith that is in us," not even if we take time and
summon up all our strength ; but it does not therefore follow that
our faith is hollow and unfounded. A false impression may be
defined to be an effect without a cause, or without any adequate one ;
but the effect may remain and be true, though the cause is concealed
or forgotten. The grounds of our opinions and tastes may be deep,
and be scattered over a large surface ; they may be various, remote,
and complicated ; but the result will be sound and true, if they have
existed at all, though we may not be able to analyse them into
classes, or to recall the particular time, place, and circumstances of
each individual case or branch of the evidence. The materials of
thought and feeling, the body of facts and experience, are infinite,
are constantly going on around us, and acting to produce an impres-
sion of good or evil, of assent or dissent to certain inferences ; but
to require that we should be prepared to retain the whole of this
mass of experience in our memory, to resolve it into its component
parts, and be able to quote chapter and verse for every conclusion
we unavoidably draw from it, or else to discard the whole together
as unworthy the attention of a rational being, is to betray an utter
DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 349
ignorance both of the limits and the several uses of the human capa-
city. The feeling of the truth of anything, or the soundness of the
judgment formed upon it from repeated, actual impressions, is one
thing ; the power of vindicating and enforcing it, by distinctly ap-
pealing to or explaining those impressions, is another. The most
fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest
thinkers. .
ON DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE.
THOSE people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable
to others. I do not here mean to speak of persons who offend in-
tentionally, or are obnoxious to dislike from some palpable defect of
mind or body, ugliness, pride, ill-humour, &c. ; but of those who are
disagreeable in spite of themselves, and, as it might appear, with
almost every qualification to recommend them to others. This
want of success is owing chiefly to something hi what is called their
manner; and this again has its foundation in a certain cross-
grained and unsociable state of feeling on their part, which in-
fluences us, perhaps, without our distinctly adverting to it. The
mind is a finer instrument than we sometimes suppose it, and is not
only swayed by overt acts and tangible proofs, but has an instinctive
feeling of the air of truth. We find many individuals in whose
company we pass our time, and have no particular fault to find with
their understandings or character, and yet we are never thoroughly
satisfied with them : the reason will turn out to be, upon examination,
that they are never thoroughly satisfied with themselves, but uneasy
and out of sorts all the time ; and this makes us uneasy with them,
without our reflecting on or being able to discover the cause.
Thus, for instance, we meet with persons who do us a number of
kindnesses, who show us every mark of respect and good-will, who
are friendly and serviceable — and yet we do not feel grateful to
them, after all. We reproach ourselves with this as caprice or in-
sensibility, and try to get the better of it ; but there is something
in their way of doing things that prevents us from feeling cordial or
sincerely obliged to them. We think them very worthy people, and
would be glad of an opportunity to do them a good turn if it were
in our power ; but we cannot get beyond this : the utmost we can
do is to save appearances, and not come to an open rupture with
them. The truth is, in all such cases, we do not sympathise (as we
ought) with them, because they do not sympathise (as they ought)
with us. They have done what they did from a sense of duty in a
cold, dry manner, or from a meddlesome, busybody humour ; or to
350 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
show their superiority over us, or to patronise our infirmity ; or they
have dropped some hint by the way, or blundered upon some topic
they should not, and have shown, by one means or other, that they
were occupied with anything but the pleasure they were affording
us, or a delicate attention to our feelings. Such persons may be
styled friendly grievances. They are commonly people of low spirits
and disappointed views, who see the discouraging side of human life,
and, with the best intentions in the world, contrive to make every-
thing they have to do with uncomfortable. They are alive to your
distress, and take pains to remove it ; but they have no satisfaction
in the gaiety and ease they have communicated, and are on the
look-out for some new occasion of signalising their zeal; nor are
they backward to insinuate that you will soon have need of their
assistance, to guard you against running into fresh difficulties, or
extricate you from them. From large benevolence of soul and
" discourse of reason, looking before and after," they are continually
reminding you of something that has gone wrong in time past, or
to that may do so in that which is to come, and are surprised that
their awkward hints, sly innuendos, blunt questions, and solemn
features do not excite all the complacency and mutual good under-
standing in you which it is intended that they should. When they
make themselves miserable on your account, it is hard that you will
not lend them your countenance and support. This deplorable
humour of theirs does not hit any one else. They are useful but
not agreeable people ; they may assist you in your affairs, but they
depress and tyrannise over your feelings. When they have made
you happy, they will not let you be so — have no enjoyment of the
good they have done — will on no account part with their melancholy
and desponding tone — and, by their mawkish insensibility and dole-
ful grimaces, throw a damp over the triumph they are called upon
to celebrate. They would keep you in hot water, that they may
help you out of it. They will nurse you in a fit of sickness (con-
genial sufferers !) — arbitrate a law-suit for you, and embroil you
deeper — procure you a loan of money ; — but all the while they are
only delighted with rubbing the sore place, and casting the colour of
your mental or other disorders. " The whole need not a physician ; "
and, being once placed at ease and comfort, they have no further
use for you as subjects for their singular beneficence, and you are
not sorry to be quit of their tiresome interference. The old pro-
verb, A friend in need is a friend indeed, is not verified in them.
The class of persons here spoken of are the very reverse of summer-
friends, who court you in prosperity, flatter your vanity, are the
humble servants of your follies, never see or allude to anything
DISAGREEABLE PEOPLE. 351
wrong, minister to your gaiety, smooth over every difficulty, and,
with the slightest approach of misfortune or of anything unpleasant,
take French leave —
" As when, in prime of June, a burnish'd fly
Sprung from the meads, o'er which he sweeps along,
Cheer'd by the breathing bloom and vital sky,
Tunes up, amid these airy halls, his song,
Soothing at first the gay reposing throng ;
And oft he sips their bowl, or, nearly drown "d,
He thence recovering drives their beds among,
And scares their tender sleep with trump profound ;
Then out again he flies, to wing his mazy round."
However we may despise such triflers, yet we regret them more than
those well-meaning friends on whom a dull melancholy vapour hangs,
that drags them and every one about them to the ground. . . .
There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they?
Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding
or good-nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you com-
plain of : on the contrary, they have probably many points of attrac-
tion ; but they have one that neutralises all these — they care nothing
about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think
of them. They manifest no joy at your approach ; and when you
leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without
you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind ;
but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely
one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society
as in a solitude ; and, however their brain works, their pulse beats
neither faster nor slower for the common accidents of life. There
is, therefore, something cold and repulsive in the air that is about
them — like that of marble. In a word, they are modern philosophers ;
and the modern philosopher is what the pedant was of old — a being
who lives in a world of his own, and has no correspondence with this.
It is not that such persons have not done you services — you acknow-
ledge it ; it is not that they have said severe things of you — you
submit to it as a necessary evil : but it is the cool manner in which
the whole is done that annoys you — the speculating upon you, as
if you were nobody — the regarding you, with a view to an experi-
ment in corpore vili — the principle of dissection — the determination
to spare no blemishes — to cut you down to your real standard ; — in
short, the utter absence of the partiality of friendship, the blind
enthusiasm of affection, or the delicacy of common decency, that
whether they " hew you as a carcass fit for hounds, or carve you as
a dish fit for the gods," the operation on your feelings and your
2D
352 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
sense of obligation is just the same ; and, whether they are demons
or angels in themselves, you wish them equally at the devil / . . .
To please universally, we must be pleased with ourselves and
others. There should be a tinge of the coxcomb, an oil of self-com-
placency, an anticipation of success — there should be no gloom, no
moroseness, no shyness — in short, there should be very little of the
Englishman, and a good deal of the Frenchman. But though, I
believe, this is the receipt, we are none the nearer making use of it.
It is impossible for those who are naturally disagreeable ever to
become otherwise. This is some consolation, as it may save a world
of useless pains and anxiety. "Desire to please, and you will in-
fallibly please," is a true maxim ; but it does not follow that it is
in the power of all to practise it. A vain man, who thinks he is
endeavouring to please, is only endeavouring to shine, and is still
farther from the mark. An irritable man, who puts a check upon
himself, only grows dull, and loses spirit to be anything. Good
temper and a happy turn of mind (which are the indispensable
requisites) can no more be commanded than good health or good
looks; and though the plain and sickly need not distort their
features, and may abstain from excess, this is all they can do. The
utmost a disagreeable person can do is to hope, by care and study,
to become less disagreeable than he is, and to pass unnoticed in
society. With this negative character he should be contented, and
may build his fame and happiness on other things. . . .
SENSIBILITY TO REAL EXCELLENCE.
[From the Essay, "On Taste."]
... To be dazzled by admiration of the greatest excellence, and of
the highest works of genius, is natural to the best capacities and
the best natures ; envy and dulness are most apt to detect minute
blemishes and unavoidable inequalities, as we see the spots in the
sun by having its rays blunted by mist or smoke. It may be asked,
then, whether mere extravagance and enthusiasm are proofs of
taste. And I answer, no; where they are without reason and
knowledge. Mere sensibility is not true taste, but sensibility to
real excellence is. To admire and be wrapt up in what is trifling or
absurd, is a proof of nothing but ignorance or affectation : on the
contrary, he who admires most what is most worthy of admiration
(let his raptures or his eagerness to express them be what they may)
shows himself neither extravagant nor unwise. . . .
The highest taste is shown in habitual sensibility to the greatest
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 353
beauties; the most general taste is shown in a perception of the
greatest variety of excellence. Many people admire Milton, and as
many admire Pope, while there are but few who have any relish for
both. Almost all the disputes on this subject arise, not so much
from false as from confined taste. We suppose that only one thing
can have merit ; and that, if we allow it to anything else, we deprive
the favourite object of our critical faith of the honours due to it.
We are generally right in what we approve ourselves, for liking pro-
ceeds from a certain conformity of objects to the taste ; as we are
generally wrong in condemning what others admire, for our dislike
mostly proceeds from a want of taste for what pleases them. Our
being totally senseless to what excites extreme delight in those who
have as good a right to judge as we have, in all human probability,
implies a defect of faculty in us rather than a limitation in the
resources of nature or art. Those who are pleased with the fewest
things, know the least ; as those who are pleased with everything,
know nothing. . . .
[Winterslow ; Essays and Characters written there, 1850. This volume is
a further collection, by his son, of miscellaneous essays, contributed
by Hazlitt to various periodicals. The title is taken from the name
of a village near Salisbury Plain, to a roadside inn near which he used
frequently to resort. See Memoir p. xxxi. ; and Selections, p. 182.]
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS.
[The original germ of this memorable essay, considered by some of Hazlitt's
critics the best he ever wrote, first made its appearance in the " Examiner "
in 1817, in the form of a short letter. This was reprinted in Political Essays,
1819. A few years later (1823) it appeared in its present extended form in
" The Liberal," where it occupied 24 pages.]
MY father was a Dissenting minister at Wem, in Shropshire;
and in the year 1798 Mr. Coleridge came to Shrewsbury, to
succeed Mr. Rowe in the spiritual charge of a Unitarian con-
gregation there. He did not come till late on the Saturday
afternoon before he was to preach; and Mr. Rowe, who himself
went down to the coach, in a state of 'anxiety and expectation,
to look for the arrival of his successor, could find no one at
all answering the description but a round-faced man, in a short
black coat (like a shooting- jacket) which hardly seemed to have
been made for him, but who seemed to be talking at a great rate
354 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
to his fellow-passengers. Mr. Howe had scarce returned to give
an account of his disappointment, when the round-faced man in
black entered, and dissipated all doubts on the subject by beginning
to talk. He did not cease while he stayed ; nor has he since, that
I know of. He held the good town of Shrewsbury in delightful
suspense for three weeks that he remained there "fluttering the
proud Salopians, like an eagle in a dove-cote ; " and the Welsh
mountains that skirt the horizon with their tempestuous confusion
agree to have heard no such mystic sounds since the days of
" High-born Hoel's harp or soft Llewellyn's lay."
As we passed along between Wem and Shrewsbury, and I eyed
their blue tops seen through the wintry branches, or the red
rustling leaves of the sturdy oak-trees by the roadside, a sound
was in my ears as of a Syren's song ; I was stunned, startled with
it, as from deep sleep ; but I had no notion then that I should ever
be able to express my admiration to others in motley imagery or
quaint allusion, till the light of his genius shone into my soul, like
the sun's rays glittering in the puddles of the road. I was at that
time dumb, inarticulate, helpless, like a worm by the wayside,
crushed, bleeding, lifeless ; but now, bursting the deadly bands that
" bound them,
" With Styx nine times round them,"
my ideas float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes,
catch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained
in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and
unsatisfied ; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay,
has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to ; but that
my understanding also did not remain dumb and brutish, or at
length found a language to express itself, I owe to Coleridge. But
this is not to my purpose.
My father lived ten miles from Shrewsbury, and was in the habit
of exchanging visits with Mr. Howe, and with Mr. Jenkins of
Whitchurch, nine miles farther on, according to the custom of
Dissenting ministers in each other's neighbourhood. A line of
communication is thus established, by which the flame of civil and
religious liberty is kept alive, and nourishes its smouldering fire un-
quenchable, like the fires in the " Agamemnon " of ^Eschylus, placed
at different stations, that waited for ten long years to announce
with their blazing pyramids the destruction of Troy. Coleridge
had agreed to come over and see my father, according to the
courtesy of the country, as Mr. Howe's probable successor ; but in
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 355
the meantime, I had gone to hear him preach the Sunday after his
arrival. A poet and a philosopher getting up into a Unitarian
pulpit to preach the gospel was a romance in these degenerate
days, a sort of revival of the primitive spirit of Christianity, which
was not to be resisted.
It was in January of 1 798 that I rose one morning before day-
light, to walk ten miles in the mud, to hear this celebrated person
preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such
another walk as this cold, raw, comfortless one, in the winter of the
year 1798. 11 y a des impressions que ni le terns ni les circonstances
peuvent effacer. Dusse-je vivre des siecles entiers, le doux terns de ma
jeunesse ne pent renaltre pour moi, ni s'ejfacer jamais dans ma
memoir e. When I got there, the organ was playing the looth
Psalm, and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his
text : " And he went up into the mountain to pray, HIMSELF, ALONE."
As he gave out this text, his voice " rose like a steam of rich distilled
perfumes ; " and when he came to the two last words, which he pro-
nounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then
young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human
heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in solemn silence
through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, " of
one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose
food was locusts and wild honey." The preacher then launched
into his subject, like an eagle dallying with the wind. The sermon
was upon peace and war ; upon Church and State — not their alliance,
but their separation — on the spirit of the world and the spirit of
Christianity, not as the same, but as opposed to one another. He
talked of those who had " inscribed the cross of Christ on banners
dripping with human gore." He made a poetical and pastoral
excursion — and to show the fatal effects of war, drew a striking con-
trast between the simple shepherd-boy, driving his team afield, or
sitting under the hawthorn, piping to his flock, " as though he
should never be old," and the same poor country lad, crimped, kid-
napped, brought into town, made drunk at an ale-house, turned
into a wretched drummer-boy, with his hair sticking on end with
powder and pomatum, a long cue at his back, and tricked out in the
loathsome finery of the profession of blood :
"Such were the notes our once-loved poet sung."
And for myself, I could not have been more delighted if I had heard
the music of the spheres. Poetry and Philosophy had met together.
Truth and Genius had embraced, under the eye and with the sanc-
tion of Religion. This was even beyond my hopes. I returned
356 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
home well satisfied. The sun, that was still labouring pale and wan
through the sky, obscured by thick mists, seemed an emblem of the
good cause ; and the cold dank drops of dew, that hung half-melted
on the beard of the thistle, had something genial and refreshing in
them ; for there was a spirit of hope and youth in all nature, that
turned everything into good. The face of nature had not then the
brand of Jus DIVHSTXTM on it :
" Like to that sanguine flower inscrib'd with woe."
On the Tuesday following, the half-inspired speaker came. I was
called down into the room where he was, and went half-hoping, half-
afraid. He received me very graciously, and I listened for a long
time without uttering a word. I did not suffer in his opinion by
my silence. " For those two hours," he afterwards was pleased to
say, "he was conversing with William Hazlitt's forehead!" His
appearance was different from what I had anticipated from seeing
him before. At a distance, and in the dim light of the chapel,
there was to me a strange wildness in his aspect, a dusky obscurity,
and I thought him pitted with the small-pox. His complexion was
at that time clear, and even bright —
"As are the children of yon azure sheen."
His forehead was broad and high, light as if built of ivory, with
large projecting eyebrows, and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a
sea with darkened lustre. " A certain tender bloom his face o'er-
spread," a purple tinge as we see it in the pale, thoughtful com-
plexions of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Valasquez.
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent ; his chin good-
humoured and round ; but his nose, the rudder of the face, the index
of the will, was small, feeble, nothing — like what he has done. It
might seem that the genius of his face as from a height surveyed
and projected him (with sufficient capacity and huge aspiration)
into the world unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing
to support or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had launched
his adventurous course for the New World in a scallop, without
oars or compass. So, at least, I comment on it after the event.
Coleridge, in his person, was rather above the common size, inclining
to the corpulent, or, like Lord Hamlet, " somewhat fat and pursy."
His hair (now, alas ! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's,
and fell in smooth masses over his forehead. This long pendulous
hair is peculiar to enthusiasts, to those whose minds tend heaven-
ward ; and is traditionally inseparable (though of a different colour)
from the pictures of Christ. It ought to belong, as a character, to
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 357
all who preach Christ crucified, and Coleridge was at that time one
of those !
It was curious to observe the contrast between him and my father,
who was a veteran in the cause, and then declining into the vale of
years. He had been a poor Irish lad, carefully brought up by his
parents, and sent to the University of Glasgow (where he studied
under Adam Smith) to prepare him for his future destination. It
was his mother's proudest wish to see her son a Dissenting minister.
So, if we look back to past generations (as far as eye can reach), we
see the same hopes, fears, wishes, followed by the same disappoint-
ments, throbbing in the human heart ; and so we may see them (if
we look forward) rising up for ever, and disappearing, like vapourish
bubbles, in the human breast ! After being tossed about from con-
gregation to congregation in the heats of the Unitarian controversy
and squabbles about the American war, he had been relegated to an
obscure village, where he was to spend the last thirty years of his
life, far from the only converse that he loved, the talk about disputed
texts of Scripture, and the cause of civil and religious liberty. Here
he passed his days, repining, but resigned, in the study of the Bible
and the perusal of the Commentators — huge folios, not easily got
through, one of which would outlast a winter ! Why did he pore on
these from morn to night (with the exception of a walk in the fields
or a turn in the garden to gather broccoli-plants or kidney beans of
his own rearing, with no small degree of pride and pleasure) ? Here
were " no figures nor no fantasies " — neither poetry nor philosophy
— nothing to dazzle, nothing to excite modern curiosity ; but to his
lack-lustre eyes there appeared within the pages of the ponderous,
unwieldy, neglected tomes the sacred name of JEHOVAH in Hebrew
capitals : pressed down by the weight of the style, worn to the last
fading thinness of the understanding, there were glimpses, glimmer-
ing notions of the patriarchal wanderings, with palm-trees hovering
in the horizon, and processions of camels at the distance of three
thousand years; there was Moses with the Burning Bush, the
number of the Twelve Tribes, types shadows, glosses on the law and
the prophets ; there were discussions (dull enough) on the age of
Methuselah (a mighty speculation !) there were outlines, rude guesses
at the shape of Noah's Ark and of the riches of Solomon's Temple ;
questions as to the date of the creation, predictions of the end of all
things ; the great lapses of time, the strange mutations of the globe,
were unfolded with the voluminous leaf, as it turned over ; and
and though he soul might slumber with an hieroglyphic veil of
inscrutable mysteries drawn over it, yet it was in a slumber ill ex-
changed for all the sharpened realities of sense, wit, fancy, or reason.
358 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
My father's life was comparatively a dream ; but it was a dream of
infinity and eternity, of death, the resurrection, and a judgment
to come !
No two individuals were ever more unlike than were the host and
his guest. A poet was to my father a sort of nondescript; yet
whatever added grace to the Unitarian cause was to him welcome.
He could hardly have been more surprised or pleased if our visitor
had worn wings. Indeed, his thoughts had wings ; and as the silken
sounds rustled round our little wainscoted parlour, my father threw
back his spectacles over his forehead, his white hairs mixing with its
sanguine hue; and a smile of delight beamed across his rugged,
cordial face, to think that Truth had found a new ally in Fancy ! 1
Besides, Coleridge seemed to take considerable notice of me, and
that of itself was enough. He talked very familiarly, but agreeably,
and glanced over a variety of subjects. At dinner-time he grew
more animated, and dilated in a very edifying manner on Mary
Wolstonecraft and Mackintosh. The last, he said, he considered
(on my father's speaking of his " Vindicice Gallicce " as a capital per-
formance) as a clever, scholastic man — a master of the topics — or
as the ready warehouseman of letters, who knew exactly where to
lay his hand on what he wanted, though the goods were not his
own. He thought him no match for Burke, either in style or matter.
Burke was a metaphysician, Mackintosh a mere logician. Burke
was an orator (almost a poet) who reasoned in figures, because he
had an eye for nature : Mackintosh, on the other hand, was a rhe-
torician, who had only an eye to commonplaces. On this I ventured
to say that I had always entertained a great opinion of Burke, and
that (as far as I could find) the speaking of him with contempt
might be made the test of a vulgar, democratical mind. This was
the first observation I ever made to Coleridge, and he said it was
a very just and striking one. I remember the leg of Welsh mutton
and the turnips on the table that day had the finest flavour imagin-
able. Coleridge added that Mackintosh and Tom Wedgwood (of
whom, however, he spoke highly) had expressed a very indifferent
opinion of his friend Mr. Wordsworth, on which he remarked to
them, "He strides on so far before you, that he dwindles in the
distance ! " Godwin had once boasted to him of having carried on
an argument with Mackintosh for three hours with dubious success ;
1 My father was one of those who mistook his talent, after all. He used
to be very much dissatisfied that I preferred his " Letters " to his ' ' Sermons. "
The last were forced and dry ; the first came naturally from him. For ease,
half-plays on words, and a supine, monkish, indolent pleasantry, I have never
seen them equalled.
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 359
Coleridge told him, " If there had been a man of genius in the room
he would have settled the question in five minutes." He asked me
if I had ever seen Mary Wolstonecraft, and I said I had once for
a few moments, and that she seemed to me to turn off Godwin's
objections to something she advanced with quite a playful, easy air.
He replied, that " this was only one instance of the ascendency which
people of imagination exercised over those of mere intellect." He
did not rate Godwin very high (this was caprice or prejudice, real or
affected), but he had a great idea of Mrs. Wolstonecraft's powers of
conversation ; none at all of her talent for book-making. We talked
a little about Holcroft. He had been asked if he was not much
struck with him, and he said, he thought himself in more danger of
being struck by him. I complained that he would not let me get on
at all, for he required a definition of every the commonest word,
exclaiming, " What do you mean by a sensation, sir ? What do you
mean by an idea ? " This, Coleridge said, was barricadoing the
road to truth ; it was setting up a turnpike-gate at every step we
took. I forget a great number of things, many more than I re-
member ; but the day passed off pleasantly, and the next morning
Mr. Coleridge was to return to Shrewsbury. When I came down to
breakfast, I found that he had just received a letter from his friend,
T. Wedgwood, making him an offer of £150 a year if he chose to
waive his present pursuit, and devote himself entirely to the study
of poetry and philosophy. Coleridge seemed to make up his mind
to close with this proposal in the act of tying on one of his shoes.
It threw an additional damp on his departure. It took the way-
ward enthusiast quite from us to cast him into Deva's winding vales,
or by the shores of old romance. Instead of living at ten miles'
distance, of being the pastor of a Dissenting congregation at Shrews-
bury, he was henceforth to inhabit the Hill of Parnassus, to be a
Shepherd on the Delectable Mountains. Alas ! I knew not the
way thither, and felt very little gratitude for Mr. Wedgwood's
bounty. I was pleasantly relieved from this dilemma; for Mr.
Coleridge, asking for a pen and ink, and going to a table to write
something on a bit of card, advanced towards me with undulating
step, and giving me the precious document, said that that was his
address, Mr. Coleridge, Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire; and that he
should be glad to see me there in a few weeks' time, and, if I chose,
would come half-way to meet me. I was not less surprised than
the shepherd-boy (this simile is to be found in " Cassandra ") when
he sees a thunderbolt fall close at his feet. I stammered out my
acknowledgments and acceptance of this offer (I thought Mr.
Wedgwood's annuity a trifle to it) as well as I could ; and this
360 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
mighty business being settled, the poet-preacher took leave, and I
accompanied him six miles on the road. It was a fine morning in
the middle of winter, and he talked the whole way. The scholar in
Chaucer is described as going
"Sounding on his way."
So Coleridge went on his. In digressing, in dilating, in passing
from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on
ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have
preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury,
one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord's Supper, showing that
he could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified
him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed
me on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath ^o_ tfaa
other. This struck me as an odd movement ; but I did not at that
'time connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntar^
change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed unable to
keep on in a straight jine^ He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose
" Essay on Miracles " he said was stolen from an objection started
in one of South's sermons—" Credat Judceus Appella ! ") I was not
very much pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just been
reading, with infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical
choJcepears, his "Treatise on Human Nature," to which the "Essays,"
in point of scholastic subtilty and close reasoning, are mere elegant
trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge even denied the excel-
lence of Hume's general style, which I think betrayed a want of
taste or candour. He, however, made me amends by the manner
in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his
" Essay on Vision " as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it
undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson
for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author's
" Theory of Matter and Spirit," and saying, " Thus I confute him, sir."
Coleridge drew a parallel (I don't know how he brought about the
connection) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the
one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than
which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-
boy's quality, the other the characteristic of a philosopher. He
considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, a profound and
conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and his own mind.
He did not speak of his " Analogy," but of his " Sermons at the Rolls'
Chapel," of which I had never heard. Coleridge somehow always
contrived to prefer the unknown to the known. In this instance he
was right. The "Analogy " is a tissue of sophistry, of wiredrawn,
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 361
theological special-pleading; the "Sermons" (with the preface to
them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal
to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and without
bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was some-
times foolish enough to believe that 1 had made a discovery on the
same subject (the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind) —
and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with
great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself under-
stood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth
time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of it,
wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton style of a mathema-
tical demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page ; and
after trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions, appre-
hensions, facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction in
which I had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave
up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless
despondency on the blank, unfinished paper. I can write fast
enough now. Am I better than I was then ? Oh no ! One truth
discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is
better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world. Would that
I could go back to what I then was ! Why can we not revive past
times as we can revisit old places ? If I had the quaint Muse of
Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a " Sonnet to the Road
between Wem and Shrewsbury," and immortalise every step of it by
some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very mile-
stones had ears, and that Harmer Hill stooped with all its pines to
listen to a poet, as he passed ! I remember but one other topic of
discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the natural-
ness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments,
thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that " the fact of
his work on Moral and Political Philosophy being made a text-book
in our Universities was a disgrace to the national character. We
parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward, pensive,
but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a
person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me.
" Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and should be
honoured ever with suitable regard." He was the first poet I had
known, and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had
heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not dis-
appointed. In fact, I never met with anything at all like them,
either before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which
were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and
gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory,
362 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
when he made the whole material universe look like a transparency
of fine words ; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere
told himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of his
smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, where
the company found him, to their no small surprise, which was in-
creased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his
eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours' description
of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream, very different
from Mr. Southey's " Vision of Judgment," and also from that other
"Vision of Judgment," which Mr. Murray, the Secretary of the
Bridge Street Junta, took into his especial keeping.
On my way back I had a sound in my ears — it was the voice of
Fancy ; I had a light before me — it was the face of Poetry. The
one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side ! Coleridge,
in truth, met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should
not have been won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy,
pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During
those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming ; the
vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets,
the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and
prospects. / was to visit Coleridge in the spring. This circumstance
was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feel-
ings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer
postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially
urging me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp,
but rather increased my ardour. In the meantime I went to
Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries of
natural scenery ; and I must say I was enchanted with it. I had
been reading Coleridge's description of England in his fine " Ode on
the Departing Year," and I applied it, con amore, to the objects
before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a
new existence : in the river that winds through it, my spirit was
baptized in the waters of Helicon !
I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with
unworn heart and untired feet. My way lay through Worcester
and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and
the adventure of the muff. I remember getting completely wet
through one day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at Tewkes-
bury), where I sat up all night to read " Paul and Virginia." Sweet
were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet
the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read ! I recollect a
remark of Coleridge's upon this very book, that nothing could show
th$ gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption of
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 363
their imagination more strongly than the behaviour of the heroine
in the last fatal scene, who turns away from a person on board the
sinking vessel, that offers to save her life, because he has thrown
off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think
of such a circumstance ? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were
sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he had bor-
rowed the idea of his " Poems on the Naming of Places " from the
local inscriptions of the same kind in "Paul and Virginia." He
did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction without
a difference in defence of his claim to originality. Any, the slightest
variation would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind ; for what-
ever he added or altered would inevitably be worth all that any
one else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. It was
still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken
care to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridge-
water; and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its
muddy river, returned to the inn and read "Camilla." So have
I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going
to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I
have wanted only one thing to make me happy ; but wanting that,
have wanted everything !
I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether
Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw
it but the other day, after an inverval of twenty years, from a hill
near Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out before me,
as the map of the country lay at my feet ! In the afternoon
Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden, a romantic old family
mansion of the St. Aubins', where Wordsworth lived. It was then
in the possession of a friend of the poet's, who gave him the free
use of it. Somehow, that period (the time just after the French
Revolution) was not a time when nothing was given for nothing.
The mind opened and a softness might be perceived coming over
the heart of individuals, beneath " the scales that fence " our self-
interest. Wordsworth himself was from home, but his sister kept
house, and set before us a frugal repast ; and we had free access
to her brother's poems, the " Lyrical Ballads," which were still in
manuscript, or in the form of "Sybilline Leaves." I dipped into
a few of these with great satisfaction, and with the faith of a
novice. I slept that night in an old room with blue hangings, and
covered with the round-faced family portraits of the age of George
I. and II., and from the wooded declivity of the adjoining park
that overlooked my window at the dawn of day, could
" hear the loud stag speak."
364 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
*' In the outset of life (and particularly at this time I felt it so) our
imagination has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping
and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses of strange
shapes, and there is always something to come better than what we
see. As in our dreams the fulness of the blood gives warmth and
reality to the coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed,
and fed, and pampered with our good spirits ; we breathe thick with
thoughtless happiness, the weight of future years presses on the
strong pulses of the heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in
truth and good. As we advance, we exhaust our fund of enjoyment
and of hope. We are no longer wrapped in lamVs-wool, lulled in
Elysium. As we taste the pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates,
the sense palls ; and nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless
shadows of what has been !
That morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into
the park, and seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash-tree that
stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud with a sonorous
and musical voice the ballad of " Betty Foy." I was not critically
or sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took
the rest for granted. But in the " Thorn," the " Mad Mother," and
the " Complaint of a Poor Indian Woman," I felt that deeper power
and pathos which have been since acknowledged,
" In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,"
as the characteristics of this author ; and the sense of a new style
and a new spirit in poetry came over me. It had to me something
of the effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of
the first welcome breath of Spring :
" While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed."
Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his
voice sounded high
" Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,"
as we passed through echoing grove, by fairy stream or waterfall,
gleaming in the summer moonlight! He lamented that Words-
worth was not prone enough to believe in the traditional supersti-
ittions of the place, and that there was a something corporeal, a
\rmatter-of-fact-ness, a clinging to the palpable, or often to the petty,
jjin his poetry, in consequence. His genius was not a spirit that
descended to him through the air; it sprung out of the ground
like a flower, or unfolded itself from a green spray, on which the
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 365
goldfinch sang. He said, however (if I remember right), that
this objection must be confined to his descriptive pieces, that his
philosophic poetry had a grand and comprehensive spirit in it, so
that his soul seemed to inhabit the universe like a palace, and to
discover truth by intuition, rather than by deduction. The next
day Wordsworth arrived from Bristol at Coleridge's cottage. I
think I see him now. He answered in some degree to his friend's
description of him, but was more gaunt and Don Quixote-like. He
was quaintly dressed (according to the costume of that unconstrained
period) in a brown fustian jacket and striped pantaloons. There
was something of a roll, a lounge, in his gait, not unlike his own
" Peter Bell." There was a severe, worn pressure of thought about
his temples, a fire in his eye (as if he saw something in objects more
than the outward appearance), an intense, high, narrow forehead, a
Roman nose, cheeks furrowed by strong purpose and feeling, and a
convulsive inclination to laughter about the mouth, a good deal at
variance with the solemn, stately expression of the rest of his face.
Chantrey's bust wants the marking traits ; but he was teased into
making it regular and heavy : Haydon's head of him, introduced
into the " Entrance of Christ into Jerusalem," is the most like his
drooping weight of thought and expression. He sat down and
talked very naturally and freely, with a mixture of clear, gushing
accents in his voice, a deep guttural intonation, and a strong
tincture of the northern burr, like the crust on wine. He instantly
began to make havoc of the half of a Cheshire cheese on the table,
and said, triumphantly, that " his marriage with experience had not
been so productive as Mr. Southey's in teaching him a knowledge of
the good things of this life." He had been to see the " Castle Spectre,"
by Monk Lewis, while at Bristol, and described it very well. He
said " it fitted the taste of the audience like a glove." This ad
captandum merit was, however, by no means a recommendation of
it, according to the severe principles of the new school, which reject
rather than court popular effect. Wordsworth, looking out of the
low, latticed window, said, " How beautifully the sun sets on that
yellow bank ! " I thought within myself, " With what eyes these
poets see nature ! " and ever after, when I saw the sunset stream
upon the objects facing it, conceived I had made a discovery, or
thanked Mr. Wordsworth for having made one for me ! We went
over to All-Foxden again the day following, and Wordsworth read
us the story of " Peter Bell " in the open air ; and the comment
upon it by his face and voice was very different from that of some
later critics ! Whatever might be thought of the poem, " his face
was as a book where men might read strange matters," and he an-
366 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
nounced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. There is a chawit
in the recitation both of Coleridge and Wordsworth, which acts as a
spell upon the hearer, and disarms the judgment. Perhaps they
have deceived themselves by making habitual use of this ambiguous
accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full, animated, and
varied: Wordsworth's mm-a finable, sustained, and internal. Theone
might be termed more dramatic, the other more lyrical. Coleridge
has told me that he himself liked to compose in walking over uneven
ground, or breaking through the straggling branches of a copse-wood;
whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if he could) walking up and
down a straight gravel-walk, or in some spot where the continuity
of his verse met with no collateral interruption. Returning that
same evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth,
while Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale
to his sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves
perfectly clear and intelligible. Thus I passed three weeks at Nether
Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons
to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet's friend,
Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm-trees, and listening to the bees
humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among
other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel,
as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John
Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether Stowey, one
of those who were attracted to Coleridge's discourse as flies are to
honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He
" followed in the chase like a dog who hunts, not like one that made
up the cry." He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy
breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like
a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of
trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state-
coach, that he might not lose a syllable or sound that fell from
Coleridge's lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was
a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an
opinion the whole way : yet of the three, had I to choose during
that journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards followed
Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philosophers were
puzzled how to bring him under any of their categories. When he
sat down at table with his idol, John's felicity was complete ; Sir
Walter Scott's or Mr. Blackwood's, when they sat down at the
same table with the King, was not more so. We passed Dunster on
our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the sea. I
remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us : contrasted with the
woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as embrowned and
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS. 367
ideal as any landscape I have seen since, of Gaspar Poussin's or
Domenichino's. We had a long day's march (our feet kept time to
the echoes of Coleridge's tongue) through Minehead and by the Blue
Anchor, and on to Lintcn, which we did not reach till near midnight,
and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We, how-
ever, knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid
for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried
bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We
walked for miles and miles on dark brown heaths overlooking the
Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into
little sheltered valleys close by the seaside, with a smuggler's face
scowling by us, and then had to ascend conical hills with a path
winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk's shaven
crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge's notice the
bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon, and within
the red-orbed disc of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the
" Ancient Mariner." At Linton the character of the sea-coast be-
comes more marked and rugged. There is a place called the " Valley
of Rocks " (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it), bedded
among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath,
into which the waves dash, and where the sea-gull for ever wheels
its screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown
transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind
these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the Giant's
Causeway. A thunderstorm came on while we were at the inn, and
Coleridge was running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of
the elements in the " Valley of Rocks ; " but, as if in spite, the clouds
only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops.
Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made this
place the scene of a prose tale, which was to have been in the
manner of, but far superior to, the " Death of Abel," but they had re-
linquished the design. In the morning of the second day, we break-
fasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour, on tea, toast, eggs,
and honey, in the very sight of the bee-hives from which it had been
taken, and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had pro-
duced it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil's " Georgics,"
but not well. I do not think he had much feeling for the classical
or elegant. It was in this room that we found a little worn-out
copy of the " Seasons," lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge
exclaimed, " That is true fame ! " He said Thomson was a great
poet, rather than a good one ; his style was as meretricious as his
thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern
poet. He said the "Lyrical Ballads" were an experiment about to be
368 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would
endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style than had
hitherto been attempted ; totally discarding the artifices of poetical
diction, and making use only of such words as had probably been
common in the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II.
Some comparison was introduced between Shakspeare and Milton.
He said " he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakspeare appeared to
him a mere stripling in the art ; he was as tall and as strong, with
infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never appeared to have
come to man's estate ; or if he had, he would not have been a man,
but a monster." He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intoler-
ance of Pope. He did not like the versification of the latter. He
observed that " the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged
with having short memories, that could not retain the harmony of
whole passages." He thought little of Junius as a writer ; he had
a dislike of Dr. Johnson ; and a much higher opinion of Burke as an
orator and politician than of Fox or Pitt. He, however, thought
him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some of our
elder prose-writers, particularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked Richard-
son, but not Fielding ; nor could I get him to enter into the merits
of " Caleb Williams." In short, he was profound and discriminat-
ing with respect to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave
his judgment fair-play ; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his
antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the " ribbed sea-sands," in
such talk as this, a whole morning, and, I recollect, met with a curious
seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country name ! A fisher-
man give Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the
day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their
own lives. He said " he did not know how it was that they ven-
tured, but, sir, we have a nature towards one another." This ex-
pression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that
theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had
adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that
likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in
the sand put one in mind of a man's foot, not because it was part of
a former impression of a man's foot (for it was quite new), but be-
cause it was like the shape of a man's foot. He assented to the
justness of this distinction (which I have explained at length else-
where for the benefit of the curious), and John Chester listened;
not from any interest in the subject, but because he was astonished
that I should be able to suggest anything to Coleridge that he did
not already know. We returned on the third morning, and Coleridge
remarked the silent cottage-smoke curling up the valleys, where, a
PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 369
few evenings before, we had seen the lights gleaming through the
dark.
In a day or two after we arrived at Stowey we set out, I on my
return home, and he for Germany. It was a Sunday morning, and
he was to preach that day for Dr. Toulmin of Taunton. I asked
him if he had prepared anything for the occasion. He said he had
not even thought of the text, but should as soon as we parted. I
did not go to hear him — this was a fault — but we met in the even-
ing at Bridgewater. The next day we had a long day's walk to
Bristol, and sat down, I recollect, by a well-side on the road, to cool
ourselves and satisfy our thirst, when Coleridge repeated to me
some descriptive lines of his tragedy of " Remorse," which I must
say became his mouth and that occasion better than they, some
years after, did Mr. Elliston's and the Drury Lane boards —
" Oh memory ! shield me from the world's poor strife,
And give those scenes thine everlasting life."
I saw no more of him for a year or two, during which period
he had been wandering in the Hartz Forest, in Germany ; and his
return was cometary, meteorous, unlike his setting out. It was
not till some time after that I knew his friends Lamb and Southey.
The last always appears to me (as I first saw him) with a common-
place-book under his arm, and the first with a lion-mot in his
mouth. It was at Godwin's that I met him with Holcroft and
Coleridge, where they were disputing fiercely which was the best —
Man as he was, or man as he is to be. " Give me," says Lamb, " man
as he is not to be." This saying was the beginning of a friendship
between us, which I believe still continues. Enough of this for the
present.
" But there is matter for another rhyme,
And I to this may add a second tale. "
OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN.
"Come like shadows — so depart."
LAMB it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the
defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however,
ho would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both, a task for
which he would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity
than the felicity of his pen :
"Never so sure our rapture to create
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate."
370 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a commonplace piece
of business of it ; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost,
and, besides, I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress
of it. I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of
other people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far
into paradox or mysticism ; the others I am not bound to follow
further than I like, or than seems fair and reasonable.
On the question being started, Ayrton said, " I suppose the two
first persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest
names in English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?"
In this Ayrton, as usual, reckoned without his host. Every one
burst out a-laughing at the expression of Lamb's face, in which
impatience was restrained by courtesy. " Yes, the greatest names,"
he stammered out hastily, " but they were not persons — not per-
sons."— " Not persons ? " said Ayrton, looking wise and foolish at
the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. " That is,"
rejoined Lamb, " not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir
Isaac Newton you mean the ' Essay on the Human Understanding '
and the ' Principia,' which we have to this day. Beyond their con-
tents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But
what we want to see any one bodily for, is when there is something
peculiar, striking in the individuals, more than we can learn from
their writings, and yet are curious to know. I dare say Locke and
Newton were very like Kneller's portraits of them. But who could
paint Shakspeare ? " — " Ay," retorted Ayrton, " there it is ; then I
suppose you would prefer seeing him and Milton instead ? " — " No,"
said Lamb, " neither. I have seen so much of Shakspeare on the
stage and on bookstalls, in frontispieces and on mantelpieces, that
I am quite tired of the everlasting repetition : and as to Milton's
face, the impressions that have come down to us of it I do not like ;
it is too starched and puritanical ; and I should be afraid of losing
some of the manna of his poetry in the leaven of his countenance
and the precisian's band and gown." — " I shall guess no more," said
Ayrton. " Who is it, then, you would like to see ' in his habit as he
lived,' if you had your choice of the whole range of English litera-
ture ? " Lamb then named Sir Thomas Browne and Fulke Greville,
the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, as the two worthies whom he should
feel the greatest pleasure to encounter on the floor of his apartment
in their nightgown and slippers, and to exchange friendly greeting
with them. At this Ayrton laughed outright, and conceived Lamb
was jesting with him ; but as no one followed his example, he
thought there might be something in it, and waited for an expla-
nation in a state of whimsical suspense. Lamb then (as well as I
PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 371
can remember a conversation that passed twenty years ago — how
time slips ! ) went on as follows : — " The reason why I pitch upon
these two authors is, that their writings are riddles, and they them-
selves the most mysterious of personages. They resemble the sooth-
sayers of old, who dealt in dark hints and doubtful oracles ; and I
should like to ask them the meaning of what no mortal but them-
selves, I should suppose, can fathom. There is Dr. Johnson : I have
no curiosity, no strange uncertainty about him ; he and Boswell
together have pretty well let me into the secret of what passed
through his mind. He and other writers like him are sufficiently
explicit : my friends whose repose I should be tempted to disturb
(were it in my power) are implicit, inextricable, inscrutable.
" When I look at that obscure but gorgeous prose composition,
the ' Urn-burial,' I seem to myself to look into a deep abyss, at the
bottom of which are hid pearls and rich treasure ; or it is like a
stately labyrinth of doubt and withering speculation, and I would
invoke the spirit of the author to lead me through it. Besides, who
would not be curious to see the lineaments of a man who, having
himself been twice married, wished that mankind were propagated
like trees ! As to Fulke Greville, he is like nothing but one of his
own ' Prologues spoken by the ghost of an old king of Ormus,' a
truly formidable and inviting personage : his style is apocalyptical,
cabalistical, a knot worthy of such an apparition to untie ; and for
the unravelling a passage or two, I would stand the brunt of an
encounter with so portentous a commentator ! " — " I am afraid, in
that case," said Ayrton, " that if the mystery were once cleared up,
the merit might be lost ; " and turning to me, whispered a friendly
apprehension, that while Lamb continued to admire these old crabbed
authors, he would never become a popular writer. Dr. Donne was
mentioned as a writer of the same period, with a very interesting
countenance, whose history was singular, and whose meaning was
often quite as uncomeatable, without a personal citation from the
dead, as that of any of his contemporaries. . . .
Some one then inquired of Lamb if we could not see from the
window the Temple walk in which Chaucer used to take his exercise ;
and on his name being put to the vote, I was pleased to find that
there was a general sensation in his favour in all but Ayrton,
who said something about the ruggedness of the metre, and even
objected to the quaintness of the orthography. I was vexed at
this superficial gloss, pertinaciously reducing everything to its own
trite level, and asked " if he did not think it would be worth while
to scan the eye that had first greeted the Muse in that dim twilight
and early dawn of English literature ; to see the head round which
372 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the visions of fancy must have played like gleams of inspiration or
a sudden glory; to watch those lips that 'lisped in numbers, for
the numbers came' — as by a miracle, or as if the dumb should
speak ? Nor was it alone that he had been the first to tune his
native tongue (however imperfectly to modern ears) ; but he was
himself a noble, manly character, standing before his age and striv-
ing to advance it ; a pleasant humorist withal, who has not only
handed down to us the living manners of his time, but had, no
doubt, store of curious and quaint devices, and would make as
hearty a companion as mine host of the Tabard. His interview
with Petrarch is fraught with interest. Yet I would rather have
seen Chaucer in company with the author of the ' Decameron,' and
have heard them exchange their best stories together— the ' Squire's
Tale ' against the ' Story of the Falcon,' the ' Wife of Bath's Pro-
logue ' against the ' Adventures of Friar Albert.' How fine to
see the high mysterious brow which learning then wore, relieved by
the gay, familiar tone of men of the world, and by the courtesies
of genius ! Surely, the thoughts and feelings which passed through
the minds of these great revivers of learning, these Cadmuses who
sowed the teeth of letters, must have stamped an expression on
their features as different from the moderns as their books, and
well worth the perusal. Dante," I continued, " is as interesting a
person as his own Ugolino, one whose lineaments curiosity would
as eagerly devour in order to penetrate his spirit, and the only one
of the Italian poets I should care much to see. There is a fine
portrait of Ariosto by no less a hand than Titian's ; light, Moorish,
spirited, but not answering our idea. The same artist's large
colossal profile of Peter Aretine is the only likeness of the kind
that has the effect of conversing with ' the mighty dead ; ' and this
is truly spectral, ghastly, necromantic." Lamb put it to me if I
should like to see Spenser as well as Chaucer; and I answered,
without hesitation, " No ; for that his beauties were ideal, visionary,
not palpable or personal, and therefore connected with less curiosity
about the man. His poetry was the essence of romance, a very
halo round the bright orb of fancy ; and the bringing in the indi-
vidual might dissolve the charm. No tones of voice could come up
to the mellifluous cadence of his verse ; no form but of a winged
angel could vie with the airy shapes he has described. He was
(to my apprehension) rather a ' creature of the element, that lived
in the rainbow and played in the plighted clouds,' than an ordinary
mortal. Or if he did appear, I should wish it to be as a mere
vision, like one of his own pageants, and that he should pass by
unquestioned like a dream or sound :
PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 373
' That was Arion crown'd :
So went he playing on the wat'ry plain.' "
Captain Burney muttered something about Columbus, and Martin
Burney hinted at the Wandering Jew ; but the last was set aside
as spurious, and the first made over to the New World.
"I should like," said Mrs. Reynolds, "to have seen Pope talk
with Patty Blount ; and I have seen Goldsmith." Every one turned
round to look at Mrs. Reynolds, as if by so doing they could get a
sight at Goldsmith.
" Where," asked a harsh, croaking voice, " was Dr. Johnson in
the years 1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of,
nor is there any account of him in Boswell during those two years.
Was he in Scotland with the Pretender ? He seems to have passed
through the scenes in the Highlands in company with Boswell,
many years after, ' with lack-lustre eye,' yet as if they were familiar
to him, or associated in his mind with interests that he durst not
explain. If so, it would be an additional reason for my liking
him ; and I would give something to have seen him seated in the
tent with the youthful Majesty of Britain, and penning the Pro-
clamation to all true subjects and adherents of the legitimate
Government."
" I thought," said Ayrton, turning short round upon Lamb, " that
you of the Lake School did not like Pope ? " — " Not like Pope !
My dear sir, you must be under a mistake — I can read him over
and over for ever ! " — " Why, certainly, the ' Essay on Man ' must be
allowed to be a masterpiece." — " It may be so, but I seldom look
into it." — " Oh ! then it's his Satires you admire ? " — " No, not his
Satires, but his friendly Epistles and his compliments." — " Compli-
ments ! I did not know he ever made any." — " The finest," said
Lamb, " that were ever paid by the wit of man. Each of them is
worth an estate for life — nay, is an immortality. There is that
superb one to Lord Cornbury :
' Despise low joys, low gains ;
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains :
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.'
Was there ever more artful insinuation of idolatrous praise ? And
then that noble apotheosis of his friend Lord Mansfield (however
little deserved), when, speaking of the House of Lords, he adds :
' Conspicuous scene ! another yet is nigh,
(More silent far) where kings and poets lie ;
Where Murray (long enough his country's pride)
Shall be no more than Tully or than Hyde.'
374 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
And with what a fine turn of indignant flattery he addresses Lord
Bolingbroke :
' Why rail they then, if but one wreath of mine,
Oh ! all-accomplish'd St. John, deck thy shrine ? '
Or turn," continued Lamb, with a slight hectic on his cheek and his
eye glistening, " to his list of early friends :
' But why then publish ? Granville the polite,
And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write ;
Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,
And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays :
The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,
Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head ;
And St. John's self (great Dryden's friend before)
Received with open arms one poet more.
Happy my studies, if by these approved !
Happier their author, if by these beloved 1
From these the world will judge of men and books,
Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cooks.' "
Here his voice totally failed him, and throwing down the book, he
said, " Do you think I would not wish to have been friends with
such a man as this ? "
" "What say you to Dryden ? " — " He rather made a show of him-
self, and courted popularity in that lowest temple of fame, a coffee-
shop, so as in some measure to vulgarise one's idea of him. Pope,
on the contrary, reached the very beau ideal of what a poet's life
should be ; and his fame while living seemed to be an emanation
from that which was to circle his name after death. He was so far
enviable (and one would feel proud to have witnessed the rare
spectacle in him) that he was almost the only poet and man of
genius who met with his reward on this side of the tomb, who
realised in friends, fortune, the esteem of the world, the most
sanguine hopes of a youthful ambition, and who found that sort of
patronage from the great during his lifetime which they would be
thought anxious to bestow upon him after his death. Read Gay's
verses to him on his supposed return from Greece, after his trans-
lation of Homer was finished, and say if you would not gladly join
the bright procession that welcomed him home, or see it once
more land at Whitehall stairs."—" Still," said Mrs. Reynolds, " I
would rather have seen him talking with Patty Blount, or riding by
in a coronet-coach with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ! "
Erasmus Phillips, who was deep in a game of piquet at the other
end of the room, whispered to Martin Burney to ask if Junius
PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN, 375
would not be a fit person to invoke from the dead. " Yes," said
Lamb, " provided he would agree to lay aside his mask."
We were now at a stand for a short time, when Fielding was
mentioned as a candidate ; only one, however, seconded the proposi-
tion. " Richardson ? " — " By all means, but only to look at him
through the glass-door of his back-shop, hard at work upon one of
his novels (the most extraordinary contrast that ever was presented
between an author and his works) ; not to let him come behind his
counter, lest he should want you to turn customer, or to go upstairs
with him, lest he should offer to read the first manuscript of ' Sir
Charles Grandison,' which was originally written in eight-and-twenty
volumes octavo, or get out the letters of his female correspondents,
to prove that Joseph Andrews was low."
There was but one statesman in the whole of English history that
any one expressed the least desire to see — Oliver Cromwell, with his
fine, frank, rough, pimply face, and wily policy ; and one enthusiast,
John Bunyan, the immortal author of the " Pilgrim's Progress." It
seemed that if he came into the room, dreams would follow him,
and that each person would nod under his golden cloud, "nigh-
sphered in heaven," a canopy as strange and stately as any in
Homer.
Of all persons near our own time, Garrick's name was received
with the greatest enthusiasm, who was proposed by Barron Field.
He presently superseded both Hogarth nnd Handel, who had been
talked of, but then it was on condition that he should act in tragedy
and comedy, in the play and the farce, " Lear " and " Wildair " and
"Abel Drugger." What a sight for sore eyes that would be! Who
would not part with a year's income at least, almost with a year of
his natural life, to be present at it ? Besides, as he could not act
alone, and recitations are unsatisfactory things, what a troop he
must bring with him ! — the silver-tongued Barry, and Quin, and
Shuter and Weston, and Mrs. Clive and Mrs. Pritchard, of whom I
have heard my father speak as so great a favourite when he was
young. This would indeed be a revival of the dead, the restoring
of art; and so much the more desirable, as such is the lurking
scepticism mingled with our overstrained admiration of past excel-
lence, that though we have the speeches of Burke, the portraits
of Reynolds, the writings of Goldsmith, and the conversation of
Johnson, to show what people could do at that period, and to con-
firm the universal testimony to the merits of Garrick; yet, as it
was before our time, we have our misgivings, as if he was probably,
after all, little better than a Bartlemy Fair actor, dressed out to
play Macbeth in a scarlet coat and laced cocked hat. For one,
376 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
I should like to have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears.
Certainly, by all accounts, if any one was ever moved by the true
histrionic cestus, it was Garrick. When he followed the Ghost in
" Hamlet," he did not drop the sword, as most actors do, behind the
scenes, but kept the point raised the whole way round, so fully was
he possessed with the idea, or so anxious not to lose sight of his part
for a moment. Once, at a splendid dinner-party at Lord 's,
they suddenly missed Garrick, and could not imagine what was
become of him, till they were drawn to the window by the con-
vulsive screams and peals of laughter of a young negro boy, who was
rolling on the ground in an ecstasy of delight to see Garrick mimick-
ing a turkey-cock in the courtyard, with his coat-tail stuck out
behind, and in a seeming nutter of feathered rage and pride. Of our
party only two persons present had seen the British Roscius ; and
they seemed as willing as the rest to renew their acquaintance with
their old favourite.
We were interrupted in the hey-day and mid-career of this fanciful
speculation by a grumbler in a corner, who declared it was a shame
to make all this rout about a mere player and farce-writer, to the
neglect and exclusion of the fine old dramatists, the contemporaries
and rivals of Shakspeare. Lamb said he had anticipated this objec-
tion when he had named the author of " Mustapha " and " Alaham ; "
and, out of caprice, insisted upon keeping him to represent the set,
in preference to the wild, hare-brained enthusiast, Kit Marlowe ; to
the sexton of St. Ann's, Webster, with his melancholy yew-trees and
death's-heads ; to Decker, who was but a garrulous proser ; to the
voluminous Hey wood ; and even to Beaumont and Fletcher, whom
we might offend by complimenting the wrong author on their joint
productions. Lord Brooke, on the contrary, stood quite by himself,
or, in Cowley's words, was " a vast species alone." Some one hinted
at the circumstance of his being a lord, which rather startled Lamb,
but he said a ghost would perhaps dispense with strict etiquette,
on being regularly addressed by his title. Ben Jonson divided our
suffrages pretty equally. Some were afraid he would begin to traduce
Shakspeare, who was not present to defend himself. " If he grows
disagreeable," it was whispered aloud, " there is Godwin can match
him." At length his romantic visit to Drummond of Hawthornden
was mentioned, and turned the scale in his favour.
Lamb inquired if there was any one that was hanged that I would
choose to mention. And I answered, " Eugene Aram." The name of
the "Admirable Crichton " was suddenly started as a splendid example
of waste talents, so different from the generality of his countrymen.
This choice was mightily approved by a North-Briton present, who
PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 377
declared himself descended from that prodigy of learning and ac-
complishment, and said he had family plate in his possession as
vouchers for the fact, with the initials A. C. — Admirable Grichton !
Hunt laughed, or rather roared, as heartily at this as I should think
he has done for many years.
The last-named Mitre-courtier then wished to know whether there
were any metaphysicians to whom one might be tempted to apply
the wizard spell. I replied, there were only six in modern times
deserving the name — Hobbes, Berkeley, Butler, Hartley, Hume,
Leibnitz, and perhaps Jonathan Edwards, a Massachusetts man.
As to the French, who talked fluently of having created this science,
there was not a tittle in any of their writings that was not to be
found literally in the authors I had mentioned. [Home Tooke, who
might have a claim to come in under the head of Grammar, was still
living.] None of these names seemed to excite much interest, and
I did not plead for the reappearance of those who might be thought
best fitted by the abstracted nature of their studies for the present
spiritual and disembodied state, and who, even while on this living
stage, were nearly divested of common flesh and blood. As Ayrton,
with an uneasy, fidgety face, was about to put some question about
Mr. Locke and Dugald Stewart, he was prevented by Martin Burney,
who observed, " If J was here, he would undoubtedly be for
having up those profound and redoubted socialists, Thomas Aquinas
and Duns Scotus." I said this might be fair enough in him who
had read, or fancied he had read, the original works, but I did not
see how we could have any right to call up these authors to give
an account of themselves in person, till we had looked into their
writings.
By this time it should seem that some rumour of our whimsical
deliberation had got wind, and had disturbed the irritable genus in
their shadowy abodes, for we received messages from several candi-
dates that we had just been thinking of. Gray declined our invita-
tion, though he had not yet been asked ; Gay offered to come, and
bring in his hand the Duchess of Bolton, the original Polly ; Steel e
and Addison left their cards as Captain Sentry and Sir Roger de
Coverley; Swift came in and sat down without speaking a word,
and quitted the room as abruptly ; Otway and Chatterton were seen
lingering on the opposite side of the Styx, but could not muster
enough between them to pay Charon his fare ; Thomson fell asleep
in the boat, and was rowed back again ; and Burns sent a low fellow,
one John Barleycorn, an old companion of his, who had conducted
him to the other world, to say that he had during his lifetime been
drawn out of his retirement as a show, only to be made an excise-
3?8 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
man of, and that he would rather remain where he was. He desired,
however, to shake hands by his representative — the hand, thus held
out, was in a burning fever, and shook prodigiously.
The room was hung round with several portraits of eminent
painters. While we were debating whether we should demand
speech with these masters of mute eloquence, whose features were
so familiar to us, it seemed that all at once they glided from their
frames, and seated themselves at some little distance from us. There
was Leonardo, with his majestic beard and watchful eye, having
a bust of Archimedes before him ; next him was Raphael's graceful
head turned round to the Fomarina; and on his other side was
Lucretia Borgia, with calm, golden locks; Michael Angelo had
placed the model of St. Peter's on the table before him ; Correggio
had an angel at his side ; Titian was seated with his mistress between
himself and Giorgione ; Guido was accompanied by his own Aurora,
who took a dice-box from him ; Claude held a mirror in his hand ;
Rubens patted a beautiful panther (led in by a satyr) on the head ;
Vandyke appeared as his own Paris, and Rembrandt was hid under
firs, gold chains, and jewels, which Sir Joshua eyed closely, holding
his hand so as to shade his forehead. Not a word was spoken ; and
as we rose to do them homage, they still presented the same surface
to the view. Not being bond-fide representations of living people,
we got rid of the splendid apparitions by signs and dumb show.
As soon as they had melted into thin air, there was a loud noise at
the outer door, and we found it was Giotto, Cimabue, and Ghir-
landaio, who had been raised from the dead by their earnest desire
to see their illustrious successors —
" Whose names on earth
In Fame's eternal records live for aye ! "
Finding them gone, they had no ambition to be seen after them,
and mournfully withdrew. " Egad ! " said Lamb, " these are the
very fellows I should like to have had some talk with, to know how
they could see to paint when all was dark around them."
" But shall we have nothing to say ? " interrogated G. J , " to
the ' Legend of Good Women ? ' " — " Name, name, Mr. J ," cried
Hunt in a boisterous tone of friendly exultation, " name as many as
you please, without reserve or fear of molestation!" J was
perplexed between so many amiable recollections, that the name of
the lady of his choice expired in a pensive whiff of his pipe ; and
Lamb impatiently declared for the Duchess of Newcastle. Mrs.
Hutchinson was no sooner mentioned, than she carried the day
from the Duchess. We were the less solicitous on this subject of
PERSONS OXE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN. 379
filling up the posthumous lists of Good Women, as there was already
one in the room as good, as sensible, and in all respects as exem-
plary as the best of them could be for their lives ! " I should like
vastly to have seen Ninon de 1'Enclos,*' said that incomparable
person ; and this immediately put us in mind that we had neglected
to pay honour due to our friends on the other side of the Channel :
Voltaire, the patriarch of levity, and Rousseau, the father of sen-
timent; Montaigne and Rabelais (great in wisdom and in wit);
Moliere and that illustrious group that are collected round him
(in the print of that subject) to hear him read his comedy of the
" Tartuffe ** at the house of Xinon ; Racine, La Fontaine, Roche-
foucauld, St. Evremont, &c.
"There is one person,"' said a shrill, querulous voice, "I would
rather see than all these — Don Quixote ! "
"Come, come!" said Hunt; "I thought we should have no
heroes, real or fabulous. "What say you, Mr. Lamb ? Are you for
eking out your shadowy list with such names as Alexander, Julius
Cjesar, Tamerlane, or Ghengis Khan ? " — " Excuse me," said Lamb :
" on the subject of characters in active life, plotters and disturbers
of the world, I have a crotchet of my own, which I beg leave to
reserve." — " Xo, no! come out with your worthies!" — "What do
you think of Guy Fawkes and Judas Iscariot ? " Hunt turned an
eye upon him like a wild Indian, but cordial and full of smothered
glee. " Your most exquisite reason ! " was echoed on all sides ;
and Ayrton thought that Lamb had now fairly entangled himself.
" Why, I cannot but think," retorted he of the wistful countenance,
u that Guy Fawkes, that poor, fluttering annual scarecrow of straw
and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something to
see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches
and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was
to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion; but if
I say any more, there is that fellow Godwin will make something
of it. And as to Judas Iscariot, my reason is different. I would
fain see the face of him who, having dipped his hand in the same
dish with the Son of Man, could afterwards betray Him. I have
*no conception of such a thing; nor have I ever seen any picture
(not even Leonardo's very fine one) that gave me the least idea
of it." — u You have said enough, Mr. Lamb, to justify your choice."
" Oh ! ever right, Menenius — ever right ! "
" There is only one other person I can ever think of after this,"
continued Lamb: but without mentioning a name that once put
on a semblance of mortality. " If Shakspeare was to come into the
room, we should all rise up to meet him ; but if that person was
380 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
to come into it, we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of
His garment ! "
As a lady present seemed now to get uneasy at the turn the
conversation had taken, we rose up to go. The morning broke
with that dim, dubious light by which Giotto, Cimabue, and
Ghirlandaio must have seen to paint their earliest works ; and we
parted to meet again and renew similar topics at night, the next
night, and the night after that, till that night overspread Europe
which saw no dawn. The same event, in truth, broke up our little
Congress that broke up the great one. But that was to meet
again : our deliberations have never been resumed.
TOLERATION.
[From the Essay, " On Party Spirit."]
WE may be intolerant even in advocating the cause of toleration,
and so bent on making proselytes to freethinking as to allow no
one to think freely but ourselves. The most boundless liberality in
appearance may amount in reality to the most monstrous ostracism
of opinion — not condemning this or that tenet, or standing up for
this or that sect or party, but in a supercilious superiority to all
sects and parties alike, and proscribing, in one sweeping clause, all
arts, sciences, opinions, and pursuits but our own. Till the time of
Locke and Toland a general toleration was never dreamt of : it was
thought right on all hands to punish and discountenance heretics
and schismatics, but each party alternately claimed to be true
Christians and orthodox believers. Daniel De Foe, who spent his
whole life, and wasted his strength, in asserting the right of the
Dissenters to a Toleration (and got nothing for his pains but the
pillory), was scandalised at the proposal of the general principle,
and was equally strenuous in excluding Quakers, Anabaptists, Soci-
nians, Sceptics, and all who did not agree in the essentials of Chris-
tianity— that is, who did not agree with him — from the benefit of
such an indulgence to tender consciences. We wonder at the cruelties
formerly practised upon the Jews : is there anything wonderful in
it ? They were at that time the only people to make a butt and a
bugbear of, to set up as a mark of indignity, and as a foil to our
self-love, for the ferce naturce principle that is within us, and always
craving its prey to run down, to worry and make sport of at discre-
tion, and without mercy — the unvarying uniformity and implicit
faith of the Catholic Church had imposed silence, and put a curb on
our jarring dissensions, heart-burnings, and ill-blood, so that we had
THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 381
no pretence for quarrelling among ourselves for the glory of God or
the salvation of men : — a JORDANTJS BKUNO, an Atheist or sorcerer i
once in a way, would hardly suffice to stay the stomach of our
theological rancour ; we therefore fell with might and main upon
the Jews as a forlorn hope in this dearth of objects of spite or zeal ;
or when the whole of Europe was reconciled to the bosom of holy
Mother Church, went to the Holy Land in search of a difference of
opinion, and a ground of mortal offence ; but no sooner was there
a division of the Christian world, than Papists fell on Protestants
or Schismatics, and Schismatics upon one another, with the same
loving fury as they had before fallen upon Turks and Jews. The
disposition is always there, like a muzzled mastiff; the pretext only
is wanting ; and this is furnished by a name, which, as soon as it is
affixed to different sects or parties, gives us a licence, we think, to let
loose upon them all our malevolence, domineering humour, love of
power, and wanton mischief, as if they were of different species.
The sentiment of the pious English bishop was good, who, on seeing
a criminal let to execution, exclaimed, " There goes my wicked self ! "
ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH.
No young man believes he shall ever die. It was a saying of my
brother's, and a fine one. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth
which makes us amends for everything. To be young is to be as
one of the Immortals. One half of time indeed is spent — the other
half remains in store for us, with all its countless treasures, for
there is no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes.
We make the coming age our own —
"The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us."
Death, old age, are words without a meaning, a dream, a fiction,
with which we have nothing to do. Others may have undergone,
or may still undergo them — we " bear a charmed life," which laughs
to scorn all such idle fancies. As, in setting out on a delightful
journey, we strain our eager sight forward,
" Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail,"
and see no end to prospect after prospect, new objects presenting
themselves as we advance, so in the outset of life we see no end to
our desires nor to the opportunities of gratifying them. We have
as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag, and it seems that
we can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of
382 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
life and motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in ourselves all
the vigour and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from
any present signs how we shall be left behind in the race, decline
into old age, and drop into the grave. It is the simplicity and,
as it were, abstractedness of our feelings in youth that (so to speak)
identifies us with nature and (our experience being weak and our
passions strong) makes us fancy ourselves immortal like it. Our
short-lived connection with being, we fondly flatter ourselves, is
an indissoluble and lasting union. As infants smile and sleep, we
are rocked in the cradle of our desires, and hushed into fancied
security by the roar of the universe around us — we quaff the cup
of life with eager thirst without draining it, and joy and hope seem
ever mantling to the brim — objects press around us, filling the mind
with their magnitude and with the throng of desires that wait upon
them, so that there is no room for the thoughts of death. We are
too much dazzled by the gorgeousness and novelty of the bright
waking dream about us to discern the dim shadow lingering for
us in the distance. Nor would the hold that life has taken of us
permit us to detach our thoughts that way, even if we coiild. We
are too much absorbed in present objects and pursuits. While the
spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere " the wine of life is drunk,"
we are like people intoxicated or in a fever, who are hurried away
by the violence of their own sensations : it is only as present objects
begin to pall upon the sense, as we have been disappointed in our
favourite pursuits, cut off from our closest ties, that we by degrees
become weaned from the world, that passion loosens its hold upon
futurity, and that we begin to contemplate as in a glass darkly the
possibility of parting with it for good. Till then, the example of
others has no effect upon us. Casualties we avoid ; the slow
approaches of age we play at hide-and-seek with. Like the foolish
fat scullion in Sterne, who hears that Master Bobby is dead, our
only reflection is, " So am not I ! " The idea of death, instead of
staggering our confidence, only seems to strengthen and enhance
our sense of the possession and enjoyment of life. Others may fall
around us like leaves, or be mowed down by the scythe of Time
like grass: these are but metaphors to the unreflecting, buoyant
ears and overweening presumption of youth. It is not till we see
the flowers of Love, Hope, and Joy withering around us, that we
give up the flattering delusions that before led us on, and that the
emptiness and dreariness of the prospect before us reconciles us
hypothetically to the silence of the grave.
Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most mysterious.
No wonder, when it is first granted to us, that our gratitude, our
THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 383
admiration, and our delight should prevent us from reflecting on
our own nothingness, or from thinking it will ever be recalled. Our
first and strongest impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene
that is opened to us, and we unconsciously transfer its durability as
well as its splendour to ourselves. So newly found, we cannot think
of parting with it yet, or at least put off that consideration sine die.
Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and
have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night. We
know our existence only by ourselves, and confound our knowledge
with the objects of it. We and Nature .are therefore one. Other-
wise the illusion, the " feast of reason and the flow of soul," to which
we are invited, is a mockery and a cruel insult. We do not go from
a play till the last act is ended and the lights are about to be ex-
tinguished. But the fairy face of Nature still shines on : shall we
be called away before the curtain falls, or ere we have scarce had
a glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our stepmother
Nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe, and then,
as if we were a burden to her to support, lets us fall down again.
Yet what brave sublunary things does not this pageant present,
like a ball or fete of the universe !
To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the outstretched ocean ; to
walk upon the green earth, and be lord of a thousand creatures ; to
look down yawning precipices or over distant sunny vales ; to see the
world spread out under one's feet on a map ; to bring the stars near ;
to view the smallest insects through a microscope ; to read history,
and consider the revolutions of empire and the successions of gene-
rations ; to hear of the glory of Tyre, of Sidon, of Babylon, and of
Susa, and to say all these were before me and are now nothing ; to
say I exist in such a point of time, and in such a point of space ; to
be a spectator and a part of its ever-moving scene ; to witness the
change of season, of spring and autumn, of winter and summer ; to
feel hot and cold, pleasure and pain, beauty and deformity, right
and wrong ; to be sensible to the accidents of nature ; to consider
the mighty world of eye and ear ; to listen to the stock-dove's notes
amid the forest deep ; to journey over moor and mountain ; to hear
the midnight sainted choir ; to visit lighted halls, or the cathedral's
gloom, or sit in crowded theatres and see life itself mocked ; to study
the works of art and refine the sense of beauty to agony ; to worship
fame, and to dream of immortality ; to look upon the Vatican, and
to read Shakspeare; to gather up the wisdom of the ancients, and to
pry into the fnture ; to listen to the trump of war, the shout of
victory ; to question history as to the movements of the human
heart ; to seek for truth ; to plead the cause of humanity ; to over-
2 F
384 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
look the world as if time and Nature poured their treasures at our
feet — to be and to do all this, and then in a moment to be nothing
—to have it all snatched from us by a juggler's trick or a phantas-
magoria I There is something in this transition from all to nothing
that shocks us and damps the enthusiasm of youth new flushed with
hope and pleasure, and we cast the comfortless thought as far from
us as we can. In the first enjoyment of the estate of life we discard
the fear of debts and duns, and never think of the final payment of
our great debt to Nature. Art, we know, is long ; life, we flatter our-
selves, should be so too. We see no end of the difficulties and delays
we have to encounter : perfection is slow of attainment, and we must
have time to accomplish it in. The fame of the great names we look
up to is immortal : and shall not we who contemplate it imbibe a por-
tion of ethereal fire, the divince particula aurce, which nothing can
extinguish ? A wrinkle in Rembrandt or in Nature takes whole days
to resolve itself into its component parts, its softenings and its sharp-
nesses ; we refine upon our perfections, and unfold the intricacies of
Nature. What a prospect for the future ! What a task have we not
begun ! And shall we be arrested in the middle of it ? We do not count
our time thus employed lost, or our pains thrown away ; we do not flag
or grow tired, but gain new vigour at our endless task. Shall Time,
then, grudge us to finish what we have begun, and have formed a
compact with Nature to do ? Why not fill up the blank that is left
us in this manner ? I have looked for hours at a Rembrandt with-
out being conscious of the flight of time, but with ever-new wonder
and delight, have thought that not only my own but another exist-
ence I could pass in the same manner. This rarefied, refined exist-
ence seemed to have no end, nor stint, nor principle of decay in it.
The print would remain long after I who looked on it had become
the prey of worms. The thing seems in itself out of all reason :
health, strength, appetite, are opposed to the idea of death, and we
are not ready to credit it till we have found our illusions vanished
and our hopes grown cold. Objects in youth, from novelty, &c.,
are stamped upon the brain with such force and integrity that one
thinks nothing can remove or obliterate them. They are riveted
there, and appear to us as an element of our nature. It must be a
mere violence that destroys them, not a natural decay. In the very
strength of this persuasion we seem to enjoy an age by anticipation.
We melt down years into a single moment of intense sympathy,
and by anticipating the fruits defy the ravages of time. If, then,
a single moment of our lives is worth years, shall we set any limits
to its total value and extent ? Again, does it not happen that so
secure do we think ourselves of an indefinite period of existence, that
THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH. 385
at times, when left to ourselves, and impatient of novelty, we feel
annoyed at what seems to us the slow and creeping progress of time,
and argue that if it always moves at this tedious snail's-pace it will
never come to an end ? How ready are we to sacrifice any space of
time which separates us from a favourite object, little thinking that
before long we shall find it move too fast !
For my part, I started in life with the French Revolution, and I
have lived, alas ! to see the end of it. But I did not foresee this
result. My sun arose with the first dawn of liberty, and I did not
think how soon both must set. The new impulse to ardour given to
men's minds imparted a congenial warmth and glow to mine ; we
were strong to run a race together, and I little dreamed that long
before mine was set the sun of liberty would turn to blood, or set
once more in the night of despotism. Since then, I confess, I have
no longer felt myself young, for with that my hopes fell.
I have since turned my thoughts to gathering up some of the
fragments of my early recollections, and putting them into a form
to which I might occasionally revert. The future was barred to my
progress, and I turned for consolation and encouragement to the
past. It is thus that, while we find our personal and substantial
identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain a reflected and vicarious
one in our thoughts : we do not like to perish wholly, and wish to
bequeath our names, at least, to posterity. As long as we can make
our cherished thoughts and nearest interests live hi the minds of
others, we do not appear to have retired altogether from the stage.
We still occupy the breasts of others, and exert an influence and
power over them, and it is only our bodies that are reduced to dust
and powder. Our favourite speculations still find encouragement,
and we make as great a figure in the eye of the world, or perhaps
a greater, than in our lifetime. The demands of our self-love are
thus satisfied, and these are the most imperious and unremitting.
Besides, if by our intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in
this world, by our virtues and faith we may attain an interest in
another and a higher state of being, and may thus be recipients at
the same time of men and of angels.
" E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires."
As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes vivid.
Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence. We can never
cease wondering that that which has ever been should cease to be.
We find many things remain the same : why, then, should there be
change in us ? This adds a convulsive grasp of whatever is, a sense
386 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of a fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead of the full, pulpy
feeling of youth tasting existence and every object in it, all is flat
and vapid, — a whited sepulchre, fair without, but full of ravening -
and all uncleanness within. The world is a witch that puts us off
with false shows and appearances. The simplicity of youth, the
confiding expectation, the boundless raptures, are gone: we only
think of getting out of it as well as we can, and without any great
mischance or annoyance. The flush of illusion, even the complacent
retrospect of past joys and hopes, is over: if we can slip out of
life without indignity, can escape with little bodily infirmity, and
frame our minds to the calm and respectable composure of still-life
before we return to physical nothingness, it is as much as we can
expect. We do not die wholly at our deaths : we have mouldered
away gradually long before. Faculty after faculty, interest after
interest, attachment after attachment, disappear : we are torn from
ourselves while living, year after year sees us no longer the same,
and death only consigns the last fragment of what we were to the
grave. That we should wear out by slow stages, and dwindle at
last into nothing, is not wonderful, when even in our prime our
strongest impressions leave little trace but for the moment, and
we are the creatures of petty circumstance. How little effect is
made on us in our best days by the books we have read, the scenes
we have witnessed, the sensations we have gone through ! Think
oi^ly of the feelings we experience in reading a fine romance (one
of Sir Walter's, for instance) ; what beauty, what sublimity, what
interest, what heart-rending emotions ! You would suppose the
feelings you then experienced would last for ever, or subdue the
mind to their own harmony and tone: while we are reading, it
seems as if nothing could ever put us out of our way or trouble us :
— the first splash of mud that we get on entering the street, the
first twopence we are cheated out of, the feeling vanishes clean
out of our minds, and we become the prey of petty and annoying
circumstance. The mind soars to the lofty : it is at home in the
grovelling, the disagreeable, and the little. And yet we wonder
that age should be feeble and querulous, — that the freshness of
youth should fade away. Both worlds would hardly satisfy the
extravagance of our desires and of our presumption.
[From the Essay, "Mind and Motive."]
. . . HAPPY are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and
see all things in the light of their own minds ; who walk by faith
and hope ; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from
A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING. 387
afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered ! They
have not been " hurt by the archers," nor has the iron entered their
souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious
of harm. The evil things come not nigh them. The shafts of ridi-
cule pass unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. The example
of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of
Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them like drops of water. The
yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold
on them. They are in it, not of it ; and a dream and a glory is ever
around them !
A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING.
[Written at Winterslow Hutt, Feb. 20, 1828.]
"This life is best, if quiet life is best."
FOOD, warmth, sleep, and a book ; these are all I at present ask —
the ultima Thule of my wandering desires. Do you not then wish for
"A friend in your retreat,
Whom you may whisper, solitude is sweet " ?
Expected, well enough : — gone, still better. Such attractions are
strengthened by distance. Nor a mistress? "Beautiful mask! I
know thee ! " When I can judge of the heart from the face, of the
thoughts from the lips, I may again trust myself. Instead of these
give me the robin red-breast, pecking the crumbs at the door, or
warbling on the leafless spray, the same glancing form that has
followed me wherever I have been, and " done its spiriting gently ; "
or the rich notes of the thrush that startle the ear of winter, and
seem to have drunk up the full draught of joy from the very sense
of contrast. To these I adhere, and am faithful, for they are true
to me ; and, dear in themselves, are dearer for the sake of what is
departed, leading me back (by the hand) to that dreaming world,
in the innocence of which they sat and made sweet music, waking
the promise of future years, and answered by the eager throbbings
of my own breast. But now " the credulous hope of mutual minds
is o'er," and I turn back from the world, that has deceived me, to
Nature, that lent it a false beauty, and that keeps up the illusion of
the past. As I quaff my libations of tea in a morning, I love to
watch the clouds sailing from the west, and fancy that " the spring
comes slowly up this way." In this hope, while " fields are dank and
ways are mire," I follow the same direction to a neighbouring wood,
where, having gained the dry, level greensward, I can see my way
388 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
for a mile before me, closed in on each side by copse-wood, and end-
ing in a point of light more or less brilliant, as the day is bright or
cloudy. What a walk is this to me ! I have no need of book or
companion — the days, the hours, the thoughts of my youth are at
my side, and blend with the air that fans my cheek. Here I can
saunter for hours, bending my eye forward, stopping and turning
to look back, thinking to strike off into some less-trodden path, yet
hesitating to quit the one I am in, afraid to snap the brittle threads
of memory. I remark the shining trunks and slender branches of
the birch-trees, waving in the idle breeze ; or a pheasant springs up
on whirring wing ; or I recall the spot where I once found a wood-
pigeon at the foot of a tree, weltering in its gore, and think how
many seasons have flown since " it left its little life in air." Dates,
names, faces, come back — to what purpose ? Or why think of them
now ? Or rather, why not think of them oftener ? We walk through
life, as through a narrow path, with a thin curtain drawn around
it ; behind are ranged rich portraits, airy harps are strung — yet we
will not stretch forth our hands and lift aside the veil, to catch
glimpses of the one or sweep the chords of the other,. As in a
theatre, when the old-fashioned green curtain drew up, groups of
figures, fantastic dresses, laughing faces, rich banquets, stately
columns, gleaming vistas, appeared beyond ; so we have only at any
time to " peep through the blanket of the past " to possess ourselves
at once of all that has regaled our senses, that is stored up in our
memory, that has struck our fancy, that has pierced our hearts : —
yet to all this we are indifferent, insensible, and seem intent only
on the present vexation, the future disappointment. If there is a
Titian hanging up in the room with me, I scarcely regard it : how,
then, should I be expected to strain the mental eye so far, or to
throw down, by the magic spells of the will, the stone-walls that
enclose it in the Louvre ? There is one head there of which I have
often thought, when looking at it, that nothing should ever disturb
me again, and I would become the character it represents— such
perfect calmness and self-possession reigns in it ! Why do I not
hang an image of this in some dusky corner of my brain, and turn
an eye upon it ever and anon, as I have need of some such talisman
to calm my troubled thoughts? The attempt is fruitless, if not
natural ; or, like that of the French, to hang garlands on the grave,
and to conjure back the dead by miniature pictures of them while
living ! It is only some actual coincidence or local association that
tends, without violence, to " open all the cells where memory slept."
I can easily, by stooping over the long-sprent grass and clay-cold
clod, recall the tufts of primroses or purple hyacinths that formerly
A FAREWELL TO ESSAY-WRITING. 389
grew on the same spot, and cover the bushes with leaves and singing-
birds, as they were eighteen summers ago ; or prolonging my walk
and hearing the sighing gale rustle through the tall, straight wood
at the end of it, can fancy that I distinguish the cry of hounds,
and the fatal group issuing from it, as in the tale of "Theodore
and Honoria." A moaning gust of wind aids the belief ; I look once
more to see whether the trees before me answer to the idea of the
horror-stricken grove, and an air-built city towers over their grey tops.
" Of all the cities in Romanian lands,
The chief and most renown'd Ravenna stands."
I return home resolved to read the entire poem through, and after
dinner, drawing my chair to the fire, and holding a small print close
to my eyes, launch into the full tide of Dryden's couplets (a stream
of sound), comparing his didactic and descriptive pomp with the
simple pathos and picturesque truth of Boccaccio's story, and tasting
with a pleasure which none but an habitual reader can feel some
quaint examples of pronunciation in this accomplished versifier.
" Which when Honoria view'd,
The fresh impulse her former fright renew'd."
" And made th' insult, which in his grief appears,
The means to mourn thee with my pious tears."
These trifling instances of the wavering and unsettled state of the
language give double effect to the firm and stately march of the
verse, and make me dwell with a sort of tender interest on the diffi-
culties and doubts of an earlier period of literature. . . .
What sometimes surprises me in looking back to the past is, with
the exception already stated, to find myself so little changed in the
time. The same images and trains of thought stick by me : I have
the same tastes, likings, sentiments, and wishes that I had then
One great ground of confidence and support has, indeed, been struck
from under my feet ; but I have made it up to myself by proportion-
able pertinacity of opinion. The success of the great cause to which
I had vowed myself was to me more than all the world : I had a
strength in its strength, a resource which I knew not of, till it failed
me for the second time.
" Fall'n was Glenartny's stately tree !
Oh ! ne'er to see Lord Eonald more ! "
It was not till I saw the axe laid to the root that I found the
full extent of what I had to lose and suffer. But my conviction of
the right was only established by the triumph of the wrong ; and
iny earliest hopes will be my last regrets. One source of this un-
390 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
bendingness (which some may call obstinacy) is, that, though living
much alone, I have never worshipped the Echo. I see plainly enough
that black is not white, that the grass is green, that kings are not
their subjects ; and, in such self-evident cases, do not think it neces-
sary to collate my opinions with the received prejudices. In subtler
questions, and matters that admit of doubt, as I do not impose my
opinion on others without a reason, so I will not give up mine to
them without a better reason; and a person calling me names,
or giving himself airs of authority, does not convince me of his
having taken more pains to find out the truth than I have, but
the contrary. . . .
In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my conclusions
have not been quite shallow or hasty is the circumstance of their
having been lasting. I have the same favourite books, pictures,
passages, that I ever had : I may therefore presume that they will
last me my life — nay, I may indulge a hope that my thoughts will
survive me. This continuity of impression is the only thing on which
I pride myself. Even Lamb, whose relish of certain things is as keen
and earnest as possible, takes a surfeit of admiration, and I should
be afraid to ask about his select authors or particular friends after
a lapse of ten years. As to myself, any one knows where to have
me. What I have once made up my mind to, I abide by to the end
of the chapter. One cause of my independence of opinion is, I be-
lieve, the liberty I give to others, or the very diffidence and distrust
of making converts. I should be an excellent man on a jury. I
might say little, but should starve "the other eleven obstinate
fellows " out. ... I have not sought to make partisans, still less did
I dream of making enemies ; and have therefore kept my opinions
myself, whether they were currently adopted or not. To get others
to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs ; and
it is necessary to follow in order to lead. At the time I lived here
formerly, I had no suspicion that I should ever become a voluminous
writer, yet I had just the same confidence in my feelings before I had
ventured to air them in public as I have now. Neither the outcry
for or against moves me a jot ; I do not say that the one is not more
agreeable than the other.
Not far from the spot where I write, I first read Chaucer's " Flower
and Leaf," and was charmed with that young beauty, shrouded in
her bower, and listening with ever-fresh delight to the repeated song
of the nightingale close by her — the impression of the scene, the
vernal landscape, the cool of the morning, the gushing notes of the
songstress,
" And ayen methought she sung close by mine ear,"
THE SICK-CHAMBER. 391
is as vivid as if it had been of yesterday ; and nothing can persuade
me that that is not a fine poem. I do not find this impression con-
veyed in Dryden's version, and therefore nothing can persuade me
that that is as fine. I used to walk out at this time with Mr. and
Miss Lamb of an evening, to look at the Claude Lorraine skies over
our heads melting from azure into purple and gold, and to gather
mushrooms, that sprang up at our feet, to throw into our hashed
mutton at supper. I was at that time an enthusiastic admirer of
Claude, and could dwell for ever on one or two of the finest prints
from him hung round my little room ; the fleecy flocks, the bending
trees, the winding streams, the groves, the nodding temples, the air-
wove hills, and distant sunny vales ; and tried to translate them
into their lovely living hues. . . .
It is in looking back to such scenes that I draw my best consola-
tion for the future. Later impressions come and go, and serve to
fill up the intervals ; but these are my standing resource, my true
classics. If I have had few real pleasures or advantages, my ideas,
from their sinewy texture, have been to me in the nature of
realities ; and if I should not be able to add to the stock, I can
live by husbanding the interest. As to my speculations, there is
little to admire in them but my admiration of others ; and whether
they have an echo in time to come or not, I have learned to set
a grateful value on the past, and am content to wind up the ac-
count of what is personal only to myself and the immediate circle
of objects in which I have moved, with an act of easy oblivion,
"And curtain-close such scene from every future view."
THE SICK-CHAMBER
This is the last Essay which Hazlitt wrote — not many weeks before
his death, apparently. It is now reprinted from The New Monthly
Magazine, August 1830. He died on i8th September of the same year.
It is remarkable that the two last lines of this his final contribution
to literature should be a tribute to books : — "They are the first and
last, the most home-felt, the most heart-felt, of all our enjoyments ! "]
WHAT a difference between this subject and my last — a "Free
Admission ! " Yet from the crowded theatre to the sick-chamber,
from the noise, the glare, the keen delight, to the loneliness, the
darkness, the dulness, and the pain, there is but one step. A
392 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
breath of air, an overhanging cloud effects it ; and though the
transition is made in an instant, it seems as if it would last for
ever. A sudden illness not only puts a stop to the career of our
triumphs and agreeable sensations, but blots out and cancels all
recollection of and desire for them. We lose the relish of enjoy-
ment; we are effectually cured of our romance. Our bodies are
confined to our beds ; nor can our thoughts wantonly detach
themselves and take the road to pleasure, but turn back with
doubt and loathing at the faint, evanescent phantom which has
usurped its place. If the folding-doors of the imagination were
thrown open or left ajar, so that from the disordered couch where
we lay we could still hail the vista of the past or future, and see
the gay and gorgeous visions floating at a distance, however denied
to our embrace, the contrast, though mortifying, might have some-
thing soothing in it, the mock-splendour might be the greater for
the actual gloom : but the misery is, that we cannot conceive any-
thing beyond or better than the present evil ; we are shut up and
spell-bound in that, the curtains of the mind are drawn close, we
cannot escape from "the body of this death," our souls are con-
quered, dismayed, " cooped and cabined in," and thrown with the
lumber of our corporeal frames in one corner of a neglected and
solitary room. We hate ourselves and everything else ; nor does
one ray of comfort "peep through the blanket of the dark" to give
us hope. How should we entertain the image of grace and beauty,
when our bodies writhe with pain ? To what purpose invoke the
echo of some rich strain of music, when we ourselves can scarcelj
breathe ? The very attempt is an impossibility. We give up the
vain task of linking delight to agony, of urging torpor into ecstasy,
which makes the very heart sick. We feel the present pain, and
an impatient longing to get rid of it. This were indeed " a con-
summation devoutly to be wished:" on this we are intent, in
earnest, inexorable : all else is impertinence and folly ; and could
we but obtain ease (that goddess of the infirm and suffering) at
any price, we think we could forswear all other joy and all other
sorrows. Hoc erat in votis. All other things but our disorder and
its cure seem less than nothing and vanity. It assumes a palpable
form ; it becomes a demon, a spectre, an incubus hovering over
and oppressing us : we grapple with it : it strikes its fangs into us>
spreads its arms round us, infects us with its breath, glares upon
us with its hideous aspect ; we feel it take possession of every fibre
and of every faculty ; and we are at length so absorbed and fasci-
nated by it, that we cannot divert our reflections from it for an
instant, for all other things but pain (and that which we suffer
THE SICK-CHAMBER. 393
most acutely) appear to have lost their pith and power to interest.
They are turned to dust and stubble. This is the reason of the
fine resolutions we sometimes form in such cases, and of the vast
superiority of a sick-bed to the pomps and thrones of the world.
We easily renounce wine when we have nothing but the taste of
physic in our mouths : the rich banquet tempts us not, when " our
very gorge rises " within us : Love and Beauty fly from a bed
twisted into a thousand folds by restless lassitude and tormenting
cares : the nerve of pleasure is killed by the pains that shoot
through the head or rack the limbs : an indigestion seizes you with
its leaden grasp and giant force (down, Ambition!) — you shiver
and tremble like a leaf in a fit of the ague (Avarice, let go your
palsied hold!). We then are in the mood, without ghostly advice,
to betake ourselves to the life of " hermit poor,
"In pensive place obscure," —
and should be glad to prevent the return of a fever raging in
the blood by feeding on pulse and slaking our thirst at the limpid
brook. These sudden resolutions, however, or " vows made in pain
as violent and void," are generally of short duration : the excess and
the sorrow for it are alike selfish ; and those repentances which are
the most loud and passionate are the surest to end speedily in a
relapse ; for both originate in the same cause, the being engrossed
by the prevailing feeling (whatever it may be), and an utter in-
capacity to look beyond it.
" The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be :
The Devil grew well, the Devil a monk was he ! "
It is amazing how little effect physical suffering or local circum-
stances have upon the mind, except while we are subject to their
immediate influence. While the impression lasts, they are every-
thing : when it is gone, they are nothing. We toss and tumble
about in a sick-bed ; we lie on our right side, we then change to the
left ; we stretch ourselves on our backs, we turn on our faces ; we
wrap ourselves up under the clothes to exclude the cold, we throw
them off to escape the heat and suffocation ; we grasp the pillow
in agony, we fling ourselves out of bed, we walk up and down the
room with hasty or feeble steps ; we return into bed ; we are worn
out with fatigue and pain, yet can get no repose for the one, or
intermission for the other ; we summon all our patience, or give
vent to passion and petty rage : nothing avails ; we seem wedded to
our disease, " like life and death in disproportion met ; " we make
new efforts, try new expedients, but nothing appears to shake it off,
394 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
or promise relief from our grim foe : it infixes its sharp sting into
us, or overpowers us by its sickly and stunning weight: every
moment is as much as we can bear, and yet there seems no end of
our lengthening tortures ; we are ready to faint with exhaustion, or
work ourselves up to frenzy ; we " trouble deaf Heaven with our
bootless prayers ; " we think our last hour is come, or peevishly
wish it were, to put an end to this scene ; we ask questions as to the
origin of evil and the necessity of pain; we "moralise our com-
plaints into a thousand similes ; " we deny the use of medicine in
Mo, we have a full persuasion that all doctors are mad or knaves,
that our object is to gain relief, and theirs (out of the perversity of
human nature, or to seem wiser than we) to prevent it ; we catechise
the apothecary, rail at the nurse, and cannot so much as conceive
the possibility that this state of things should not hist for ever ; we
are even angry at those who would give us encouragement, as if
they would make dupes or children of us ; we might seek a release
by poison, a halter, or the sword, but we have not strength of mind
enough — our nerves are too shaken — to attempt even this poor
revenge — when lo ! a change comes, the spell falls off, and the next
moment we forget all that has happened to us. No sooner does our
disorder turn its back upon us than we laugh at it. The state we
have been in sounds like a dream, a fable : health is the order of
the day, strength is ours de jure and de facto ; and we discard all
uncalled-for evidence to the contrary with a smile of contemptuous
incredulity, just as we throw our physic-bottles out of the window !
I see (as I awake from a short, uneasy doze) a golden light shine
through my white window-curtains on the opposite wall : — is it the
dawn of a new day, or the departing light of evening ? I do not
well know, for the opium "they have drugged my posset with"
nas made strange havoc with my brain, and I am uncertain whether
time has stood still, or advanced, or gone backward. By " puzzling
o'er the doubt," my attention is drawn a little out of myself to
external objects ; and I consider whether it would not administer
some relief to my monotonous languor if I could call up a vivid
picture of an evening sky I witnessed a short while before, the
white fleecy clouds, the azure vault, the verdant fields and balmy air.
In vain! the wings of fancy refuse to mount from my bedside.
The air without has nothing in common with the closeness within :
the clouds disappear, the sky is instantly overcast and black I
walk out in this scene soon after I recover ; and with those favourite
and well-known objects interposed, can no longer recall the tumbled
pillow, the juleps or the labels, or the unwholesome dungeon in
Much I was before immured. What is contrary to our present
THE SICK-CHAMBER. 395
sensations or settled habits, amalgamates indifferently with our
belief : the imagination rules over imaginary themes ; the senses
and custom have a narrower sway, and admit but one guest at a
time. It is hardly to be wondered at that we dread physical
calamities so little beforehand : we think no more of them the
moment after they have happened. Out of sight, out of mind. This
will perhaps explain why all actual punishment has so little effect ;
it is a state contrary to nature, alien to the will. If it does not
touch honour and conscience (and where these are not, how can it
touch them ?) it goes for nothing : and where these are, it rather
sears and hardens them. The gyves, the cell, the meagre fare, the
hard labour, are abhorrent to the mind of the culprit on whom
they are imposed, who carries the love of liberty or indulgence to
licentiousness ; and who throws the thought of them behind him
(the moment he can evade the penalty) with scorn and laughter,
" Like Samson his green wythes."
So, in travelling, we often meet with great fatigue and incon-
venience from heat or cold, or other accidents, and resolve never to
go a journey again ; but we are ready to set off on a new excursion
to-morrow. We remember the landscape, the change of scene, the
romantic expectation, and think no more of the heat, the noise, and
dust. The body forgets its grievances, till they recur ; but imagina-
tion, passion, pride, have a longer memory and quicker apprehensions.
To the first the pleasure or the pain is nothing when once over ;
to the last it is only then that they begin to exist. The line in
Metastasio,
" The worst of every evil is the fear,"
is true only when applied to this latter sort. — It is curious that, on
coming out of a sick-room, where one has been pent some time, and
grown weak and nervous, and looking at Nature for the first time,
the objects that present themselves have a very questionable and
spectral appearance ; the people in the street resemble flies crawling
about, and seem scarce half-alive. It is we who are just risen from
a torpid and unwholesome state, and who impart our imperfect feel-
ings of existence, health, and motion to others. Or it may be that
the violence and exertion of the pain we have gone through make
common every-day objects seem unreal and unsubstantial. It is
not till we have established ourselves in form in the sitting-room,
wheeled round the arm-chair to the fire (for this makes part of our
reintroduction to the ordinary modes of being in all seasons), felt
our appetite return, and taken up a book, that we can be con-
396 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
sidered as at all restored to ourselves. And even then our first
sensations are rather empirical than positive ; as after sleep we
stretch out our hands to know whether we are awake. This is the
time for reading. Books are then indeed " a world, both pure and
good," into which we enter with all our hearts, after our revival
from illness and respite from the tomb, as with the freshness and
novelty of youth. They are not merely acceptable as without too
much exertion they pass the time and relieve ennui / but from a
certain suspension and deadening of the passions, and abstraction
from worldly pursuits, they may be said to bring back and be
friendly to the guileless and enthusiastic tone of feeling with which
we formerly read them. Sickness has weaned us pro tempore from
contest and cabal ; and we are fain to be docile and children again.
All strong changes in our present pursuits throw us back upon the
past. This is the shortest and most complete emancipation from
our late discomfiture. We wonder that any one who has read " The
History of a Foundling " should labour under an indigestion ; nor
do we comprehend how a perusal of the " Faery Queen " should not
ensure the true believer an uninterrupted succession of halcyon days.
Present objects bear a retrospective meaning, and point to " a fore-
gone conclusion. Returning back to life with half-strung nerves
and shattered strength, we seem as when we first entered it with
uncertain purposes and faltering aims. The machine has received a
shock, and it moves on more tremulously than before, and not all at
once in the beaten track. Startled at the approach of death, we
are willing to get as far from it as we can by making a proxy of our
former selves ; and finding the precarious tenure by which we hold
existence, and its last sands running out, we gather up and make
the most of the fragments that memory has stored up for us.
Everything is seen through a medium of reflection and contrast.
We hear the sound of merry voices in the street ; and this carries
us back to the recollections of some country-town or village-group —
" We see the children sporting on the shore,
And hear the mighty waters roaring evermore."
A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas
gambols long ago. The very cries in the street seem to be of a
former date ; and the dry toast eats very much as it did — twenty
years ago. A rose smells doubly sweet, after being stifled with
tinctures and essences ; and we enjoy the idea of a journey and an
inn the more for having been bed-rid. But a book is the secret and
sure charm to bring all these implied associations to a focus. I
should prefer an old one, Mr. Lamb's favourite, the " Journey to
CHARACTERISTICS. 397
Lisbon," or the " Decameron," if I could get it ; but if a new one,
let it be " Paul Clifford." That book has the singular advantage of
being written by a gentleman, and not about his own class. The
characters he commemorates are every moment at fault between
life and death, hunger and a forced loan on the public ; and therefore
the interest they take in themselves, and which we take in them,
has no cant or affectation in it, but is " lively, audible, and full of
vent." A set of well-dressed gentlemen picking their teeth with a
graceful air after dinner, endeavouring to keep their cravats from
the slightest discomposure, and saying the most insipid things in
the most insipid manner, do not make a scene. Well, then, I have
got the new paraphrase on the " Beggar's Opera," am fairly em-
barked in it ; and at the end of the first volume, where I am gallop-
ing across the heath with the three highwaymen, while the moon is
shining full upon them, feel my nerves so braced, and my spirits so
exhilarated, that, to say truth, I am scarce sorry for the occasion
that has thrown me upon the work and the author — have quite
forgot my Sick-Room, and am more than half ready to recant the
doctrine that a Free-Admission to the theatre is
" The true pathos and sublime
Of human life : " —
for I feel as I read, that if the stage shows us the masks of men and
the pageant of the world, books let us into their souls and lay open
to us the secrets of our own. They are the first and last, the most
home-felt, the most heart-felt of all our enjoyments !
[Characteristics, in the Manner of Jtochefoucald's Maxims, 1823. Second
Edition, with Preface by R. H. Home, 1837. Third Edition, 1871,
with the addition of Common-Places, from Hunt's Literary Examiner,
1827, and Trifles Light as Air, from the Atlas newspaper, 1829.]
CHARACTERISTICS.
WHAT makes it so difficult to do justice to others is, that we are
hardly sensible of merit unless it falls in with our own views and
line of pursuit ; and where this is the case it interferes with our own
pretentions. To be forward to praise others implies either great
eminence, that can afford to part with applause, or great quickness
of discernment, with confidence in our own judgments ; or great
sincerity and love of truth, getting the better of our self-love.
398 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain
point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
We are more jealous of frivolous accomplishments with brilliant
success, than of the most estimable qualities without it. Dr. John-
son envied Garrick, whom he despised, and ridiculed Goldsmith,
whom he loved.
Some there are who can only find out in us those good qualities
which nobody else has discovered : as there are others who make
a point of crying up our deserts, after all the rest of the world have
agreed to do so. The first are patrons, not friends : the last are not
friends, but sycophants.
We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion
of themselves : yet nothing gives such offence, or creates so many
enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of
manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance.
The surest way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by
seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their
good qualities, they will not complain of the want of them in us.
Silence is one great art of conversation. He is not a fool who
knows when to hold his tongue ; and a person may gain credit for
sense, eloquence, wit, who merely says nothing to lessen the opinion
which others have of these qualities in themselves.
We sometimes hate those who differ from us in opinion worse
than we should for an attempt to injure us in the most serious
point. A favourite theory is a possession for life ; and we resent
any attack upon it proportionably.
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
There is neither so much vice nor so much virtue in the world as
it might appear at first sight that there is. Many people commit
actions that they hate, as they affect virtues that they laugh at,
merely because others do so.
CHARACTERISTICS. 399
We are never so much disposed to quarrel with others as when
we are dissatisfied with ourselves.
A person who talks with equal vivacity on every subject, excites
no interest in any. Repose is as necessary in conversation as in a
picture.
Surly natures have more pleasure in disobliging others than in
serving themselves.
People in general consult their prevailing humour or ruling
passion (whatever it may be) much more than their interest.
The throwing out malicious imputations against any character
leaves a stain which no after-reputation can wipe out. To create
an unfavourable impression, it is not necessary that certain things
should be true, but that they have been said. The imagination is
of so delicate a texture, that even words wound it.
Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to
our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.
We find persons who are actuated in all their tastes and feelings
by a spirit of contradiction. They like nothing that other people
do, and have a natural aversion to whatever is agreeable in itself.
They read books that no one else reads, and are delighted with
passages that no one understands but themselves. They only arrive
at beauties through faults and difficulties, and all their conceptions
are brought to light by a sort of Csesarean process.
It is a fine remark of Rousseau's that the best of us differ from
others in fewer particulars than we agree with them in. The dif-
ference between a tall and a short man is only a few inches, whereas
they are both several feet high. So a wise or learned man knows
many things of which the vulgar are ignorant ; but there is a still
greater number of things the knowledge of which they share in
common with him.
To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two
2o
400 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of
mind.
To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the
highest wisdom and virtue.
There is nothing that I so hate as I do to hear a commonplace
set up against a feeling of truth and nature.
The best kind of conversation is that which is made up of observa-
tions, reflections, and anecdotes. A string of stories without appli-
cation is as tiresome as a long-winded argument.
The greatest offence against virtue is to speak ill of it. To re-
commend certain things is worse than to practise them. There
may be an excuse for the last in the frailty of passion; but the
former can arise from nothing but an utter depravity of disposi-
tion. Any one may yield to temptation, and yet feel a sincere love
and aspiration after virtue ; but he who maintains vice in theory,
has not even the idea or capacity for virtue in his mind. Men err :
fiends only make a mock at goodness.
Health and good-temper are the two greatest blessings in life. In
all the rest men are equal, or find an equivalent.
The best lesson we can learn from witnessing the folly of mankind
is not to irritate ourselves against it.
When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human
life, the proper answer to them would be, that there is hardly any
one who at some time or other has not been in love. If we consider
the high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous
refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it
is, this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of
balm turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar —
" And vindicates the ways of God to man."
We are very much what others think of us. The reception our
CHARACTERISTICS. 401
observations meet with gives us courage to proceed or damps our
efforts. A man is a wit and a philosopher in one place who dares
not open his mouth and is considered as a blockhead in another.
In some companies nothing will go down but coarse practical
jests, while the finest remark or sarcasm would be disregarded.
People sometimes complain that you do not talk, when they
have not given you an opportunity to utter a word for a whole
evening. The real ground of disappointment has been, that you
have not shown a sufficient degree of attention to what they have said.
The seat of knowledge is in the head ; of wisdom, in the heart.
We are sure to judge wrong it we do not feel right.
An honest man speaks truth, though it may give offence ; a vain
man, in order that it may.
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
The way to procure insults is to submit to them. A man meets
with no more respect than he exacts.
Those who can command themselves command others.
The last pleasure in life is the sense of discharging our duty.
Those who are fond of setting things to rights have no great
objection to seeing them wrong. There is often a good deal of
spleen at the bottom of benevolence.
There are some persons who never succeed, from being too
indolent to undertake anything; and others who regularly fail,
because the instant they find success in their power, they grow
indifferent and give over the attempt.
COMMONPLACES.
THE art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.
Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once
the masters and the slaves.
402 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
[Essays on the Fine Arts, by William Ilazlitt, edited by W. C. Haditt, 1873.
This volume consists of a reprint of almost all Hazlitt's writings on
Art, included among his miscellaneous essays. Some of them are
from periodicals long since extinct. It also contains a reprint
of two special works : Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in
England, 1824, and The Fine Arts, an article contributed to the
Seventh Edition of the Encyclopedia, Britannicd (first separately
published along with the article Painting byB. R. Haydon, in 1838).
Three articles are given from Hazlitt's contributions to the Edin-
burgh Review, — on Sir Joshua Reynolds, Salvator Rosa, and Flaxman,
the sculptor. The collection would have been more complete had it
included the Essays, " On the Works of Hogarth ; On the Grand and
Familiar Style of Painting," "On the Pleasure of Painting," "On a
Landscape of Nicholas Poussin," " On Certain Inconsistencies in Sir
Joshua Reynolds' Discourses," and "On the Progress of Art," which
appeared in The English Comic Writers, Table- Talk, and other volumes.
THE WORKS OF HOGARTH ; ON THE GRAND AND
FAMILIAR STYLE OF PAINTING.
[This Essay will be found in its complete form in Lectures on the English
Comic Writers. Although this and the succeeding paper are not included in
the volume, Essays on The Fine Arts, described above, I here reprint a con-
siderable portion of both ; this being their most suitable place.]
IF the quantity of amusement, or of matter for more serious reflec-
tion which their works have afforded, is that by which we are to
judge of precedence among the intellectual benefactors of mankind,
there are, perhaps, few persons who can put in a stronger claim
to our gratitude than Hogarth. It is not hazarding too much to
assert, that he was one of the greatest comic geniuses that ever
lived, and he was certainly one of the most extraordinary men this
country has produced. The wonderful knowledge which he pos-
sessed of human life and manners is only to be surpassed (if it can
be) by the power of invention with which he has combined and con-
trasted his materials in the most ludicrous and varied points of
view, and by the mastery of execution with which he has embodied
and made tangible the very thoughts and passing movements of the
mind. Critics sometimes object to the style of Hogarth's pictures,
or to the class to which they belong. First, he belongs to no class,
or, if he does, it is to the same class as Fielding, Smollett, Vanbrugh
and Moliere. Besides, the merit of his pictures does not depend on
the nature of the subject, but on the knowledge displayed of it, on
the number of ideas they excite, on the fund of thought and observa-
THE WORKS OF HOGARTH. 403
tion contained in them. They are to be studied as works of science
as well as of amusement ; they satisfy our love of truth ; they fill
up the void in the mind ; they form a series of plates in natural his-
tory, and of that most interesting part of natural history, the history
of our own species. Make what deductions you please for the vul-
garity of the subject, yet in the research, the profundity, the absolute
truth and precision of the delineation of character ; in the inven-
tion of incident, in wit and humour ; in the life with which they
are " instinct in every part ; " in everlasting variety and originality,
they never have been, and probably never will be, surpassed. They
stimulate the faculties as well as soothe them. " Other pictures we
see, Hogarth's we read." * ...
What distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same
general kind is, that they are equally remote from caricature and
from mere still life. It, of course, happens in subjects taken from
common life, that the painter can procure real models, and he
can get them to sit as long as he pleases. Hence, in general, those
attitudes and expressions have been chosen which could be assumed
the longest ; and in imitating which the artist, by taking pains and
time, might produce almost as complete fac-similes as he could of
a flower or a flower-pot, of a damask curtain or a china vase. The
copy was as perfect and as uninteresting in the one case as in the
other. On the contrary, subjects of drollery and ridicule affording
frequent examples of strange deformity and peculiarity of features,
these have been eagerly seized by another class of artists, who, with-
out subjecting themselves to the laborious drudgery of the Dutch
school and their imitators, have produced our popular caricatures
by rudely copying or exaggerating the casual irregularities of the
human countenance. Hogarth has equally avoided the faults of
both these styles so as to give to the productions of his pencil
equal solidity and effect. For his faces go to the very verge
of caricature, and yet never (I believe in any single instance) go
beyond it : they take the very widest latitude, and yet we always
see the links which bind them to nature : they bear all the marks
and carry all the conviction of reality with them, as if we had seen
the actual faces for the first time, from the precision, consistency,
and good sense with which the whole and every part is made out.
They exhibit the most uncommon features with the most uncommon
expressions, but which yet are as familiar and intelligible as possible,
because, with all the boldness, they have all the truth, of nature.
Hogarth has left behind him as many of these memorable faces in
their memorable moments as, perhaps, most of us remember in the
* See the admirable Essay on the Genius of Hogarth by Charles Lamb.
404 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
course of our lives, and has thus doubled the quantity of our expe-
rience. . . .
I have promised to say something in this Lecture on the difference
between the grand and familiar style of painting ; and I shall throw
out what imperfect hints I have been able to collect on this subject,
so often attempted, and never yet succeeded in, taking the examples
and illustrations from Hogarth, that is, from what he possessed or
wanted in each kind.
And first, the difference is not that between imitation and inven-
tion ; for there is as much of this last quality in Hogarth as in any
painter or poet whatever. As, for example, to take two of his pic-
tures only, I mean the " Enraged Musician " and the " Gin Lane ; " in
one of which every conceivable variety of disagreeable and discor-
dant sound — the razor-grinder turning his wheel ; the boy with his
drum, and the girl with her rattle momentarily suspended ; the pursui-
vant blowing his horn ; the shrill milkwoman ; the inexorable ballad-
singer, with her squalling infant ; the pewterer's shop close by ; the
fishwomen ; the chimney-sweepers at the top of a chimney, and the
two cats in melodious concert on the ridge of the tiles ; with the
bells ringing in the distance, as we see by the flags flying ; — and in
the other, the complicated forms and signs of death and ruinous
decay — the woman on the stairs of the bridge asleep, letting her
child fall over ; her ghastly companion opposite, next to death's
door, with hollow, famished cheeks and staring ribs ; the dog fight-
ing with the man for the bare shin-bone ; the man hanging himself
in a garret ; the female corpse put into a coffin by the parish beadle ;
the men marching after a funeral, seen through a broken wall in the
background ; and the very houses reeling as if drunk and tumbling
about the ears of the infatuated victims below, the pawnbroker's
being the only one that stands firm and unimpaired — enforce the
moral meant to be conveyed by each of these pieces with a richness
and research of combination and artful contrast not easily paralleled
in any production of the pencil or the pen. The clock pointing to
four in the morning, in " Modern Midnight Conversation," just as the
immovable Parson Ford is filling out another glass from a brimming
punch-bowl, while most of his companions, with the exception of
the sly lawyer, are falling around him " like leaves in October ; "
and again, the extraordinary mistake of the man leaning against the
post, in the "Lord Mayor's Procession," show a mind capable of seiz-
ing the most rare and transient coincidences of things, of imagining
what either never happened at all, or of instantly fixing on and
applying to its purpose what never happened but once. So far,
the invention shown in the great style of painting is poor in the
THE WORKS OF HOGARTH. 405
comparison. Indeed, grandeur is supposed (whether rightly or
not I shall not here inquire) to imply a simplicity inconsistent
with this inexhaustible variety of incident and circumstantial
detail.
Secondly, the difference between the ideal and familiar style is not
to be explained by the difference between the genteel and vulgar ;
for it is evident that Hogarth was almost as much at home in the
genteel comedy as in the broad farce of his pictures. He excelled
not only in exhibiting the coarse humours and disgusting incidents
of low life, but in exhibiting the vices, follies, and frivolity of the
fashionable manners of his time : his fine ladies hardly yield the
palm to his waiting-maids, and his lords and his footmen are on a
respectable footing of equality. There is no want, for example, in
the " Marriage-a-la-Mode," or in " Taste in High Life," of affectation
verging into idiotism, or of languid sensibility that might —
"Die of a rose in aromatic pain."
In short, Hogarth was a painter not of low, but of actual life ; and
the ridiculous and prominent features of high or low life, of the
great vulgar or the small, lay equally open to him. The Country
Girl, in the first plate of the " Harlot's Progress," coming out of the
waggon, is not more simple and ungainly than the same figure, in
the second, is thoroughly initiated into the mysteries of her art, and
suddenly accomplished in all the airs and graces of affectation, ease,
and impudence. The affected languor and imbecility of the same
girl afterwards, when put to beat hemp in Bridewell, is exactly in
keeping with the character she had been taught to assume. Sir
Joshua could do nothing like it in his line of portrait, which dif-
fered chiefly in the background. The fine gentleman at his levee,
in the " Rake's Progress," is also a complete model of a person of rank
and fortune, surrounded by needy and worthless adventurers, fiddlers,
poetasters, and virtuosi, as was the custom in those days. Lord
Chesterfield himself would not have been disgraced by sitting for it.
I might multiply examples to show that Hogarth was not charac-
teristically deficient in that kind of elegance which arises from an
habitual attention to external appearance and deportment. I will
only add as instances, among his women, the two elegantes in the
Bedlam scene, who are dressed (allowing for the difference of not
quite a century) in the manner of Ackerman's dresses for May ; and
among the men, the Lawyer in " Modern Midnight Conversation,"
whose gracious significant leer and sleek lubricated countenance
exhibit all the happy finesse of his profession, when a silk gown has
been added, or is likely to be added, to it ; and several figures in the
406 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
"Cockpit," who are evidently, at the first glance, gentlemen of the old
school, and where the mixture of the blacklegs with the higher
character is a still further test of the discriminating skill of the
painter.
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING.
[This Essay will be found in its complete form in Table-Talk.]
" 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 differ-
ences, 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. . . .
After I have once written on a subject, it goes out of my mind :
my feelings about it have been melted down into words, and them
I forget. I have, as it were, discharged my memory of its old
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 407
habitual reckoning, and rubbed out the score of real sentiment.
For the future, it exists only for the sake of others. — But I cannot
say, from my own experience, that the same process takes place
in transferring our ideas to canvas ; they gain more than they
lose in the mechanical transformation. One is never tired of paint-
ing, because you have to set down not what you knew already
but what you have just discovered. In the former case, you trans-
late feelings into words ; in the latter, names into things. There
is a continual creation out of nothing going on. With every stroke
of the brush, a new field of inquiry is laid open; new difficulties
arise, and new triumphs are prepared over them. By comparing
the imitation with the original, you see what you have done, and
how much you have still to do. The test of the senses is severer
than that of fancy, and an overmatch even for the delusions of
our self-love. One part of a picture shames another, and you de-
termine to paint up to yourself, if you cannot come up to nature.
Every object becomes lustrous from the light thrown back upon
it by the mirror of art : and by the aid of the pencil we may be
said to touch and handle the objects of sight. The air-drawn
visions that hover on the verge of existence have a bodily presence
given them on the canvas : the form of beauty is changed into a
substance : the dream and the glory of the universe is made
" palpable to feeling as to sight." — And see ! a rainbow starts from
the canvas, with all its humid train of glory, as if it were drawn
from its cloudy arch in heaven. The spangled landscape glitters
with drops of dew after the shower. The " fleecy fools " show their
coats in the gleams of the setting sun. The shepherds pipe their
farewell notes in the fresh evening air. And is this bright vision
made from a dead dull blank, like a bubble reflecting the mighty
fabric of the universe ? Who would think this miracle of Rubens'
pencil possible to be performed ? Who, having seen it, would not
spend his life to do the like ? See how the rich fallows, the bare
stubble-field, the scanty harvest-home, drag in Rembrandt's land-
scapes ! How often have I looked at them and nature, and tried
to do the same, till the very " light thickened," and there was an
earthiness in the feeling of the air ! There is no end of the refine-
ments of art and nature in this respect. One may look at the
misty glimmering horizon till the eye dazzles and the imagination
is lost, in hopes to transfer the whole interminable expanse at one
blow upon the canvas. Wilson said, he used to try to paint the
effect of the motes dancing in the setting sun. At another time,
a friend, coming into his painting-room when he was sitting on the
ground in a melancholy posture, observed that his picture looked
408 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
like a landscape after a shower : he started up with the greatest
delight, and said, "That is the effect I intended to produce, but
thought I had failed." Wilson was neglected; and, by degrees,
neglected his art to apply himself to brandy. His hand became
unsteady, so that it was only by repeated attempts that he could
reach the place, or produce the effect he aimed at ; and when he had
done a little to a picture, he would say to any acquaintance who
chanced to drop in, "I have painted enough for one day: come,
let us somewhere." It was not so Claude left his pictures, or his
studies on the banks of the Tiber, to go in search of other enjoy-
ments, or ceased to gaze upon the glittering sunny vales and
distant hills ; and while his eye drank in the clear sparkling hues
and lovely forms of nature, his hand stamped them on the lucid
canvas to last there for ever! One of the most delightful parts
of my life was one fine summer, when I used to walk out of an
evening to catch the last light of the sun, gemming the green
slopes or russet lawns, and gilding tower or tree, while the blue
sky gradually turning to purple and gold, or skirted with dusky
grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all, as we see it in
the great master of Italian landscape. But to come to a more
particular explanation of the subject : —
The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with
the upper part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly
laboured [at] it with great perseverance. It took me numberless
sittings to do it. I have it by me still, and sometimes look at it
with surprise, to think how much pains were thrown away to little
purpose, — yet not altogether in vain if it taught me to see good
in everything, and to know that there is nothing vulgar in nature
seen with the eye of science or of true art. Refinement creates
beauty everywhere : it is the grossness of the spectator that dis-
covers nothing but grossness in the object. Be this as it may,
I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I thought that
life was so too at that moment. I got in the general effect the
first day ; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my success.
The rest was a work of time — of weeks and months (if need were),
of patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by
Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could produce a head at
all like Rembrandt in a year, in my lifetime, it would be glory
and felicity and wealth and fame enough for me! The head I
had seen at Burleigh was an exact and wonderful fac-simile of
nature, and I resolved to make mine (as nearly as I could) an
exact fac-simile of nature. I did not then, nor do I now, believe,
with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in giving
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 409
general appearances without individual details, but in giving
general appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had
done my work the first day. But I saw something more in nature
than general effect, and I thought it worth my while to give it in
the picture. There was a gorgeous effect of light and shade : but
there was a delicacy as well as depth in the chiaro scuro which I was
bound to follow into all its dim and scarce perceptible variety of
tone and shadow. Then I had to make the transition from a strong
light to as dark a shade, preserving the masses, but gradually soften-
ing off the intermediate parts. It was so in nature ; the difficulty
was to make it so in the copy. I tried, and failed again and again ;
I strove harder, and succeeded as I thought. The wrinkles in Rem-
brandt were not hard lines, but broken and irregular. I saw the
same appearance in nature, and strained every nerve to give it. If
I could hit off this edgy appearance, and insert the reflected light
in the furrows of old age in half a morning, I did not think I had
lost a day. Beneath the shrivelled yellow parchment look of the
skin, there was here and there a streak of the blood-colour tinging
the face ; this I made a point of conveying, and did not cease to
compare what I saw with what I did (with jealous lynx-eyed watch-
fulness) till I succeeded to the best of my ability and judgment.
How many revisions were there ! How many attempts to catch an
expression which I had seen the day before ! How often did we try
to get the old position, and wait for the return of the same light !
There was a puckering-up of the lips, a cautious introversion of
the eye under the shadow of the bonnet, indicative of the feeble-
ness and suspicion of old age, which at last we managed, after many
trials and some quarrels, to a tolerable nicety. The picture was
never finished, and I might have gone on with it to the present
hour. I used to set it on the ground when my day's work was
done, and saw revealed to me with swimming eyes the birth of new
hopes, and of a new world of objects. The painter thus learns to
look at nature with different eyes. He before saw her " as in a glass
darkly, but now face to face." He understands the texture and
meaning of the visible universe, and " sees into the life of things,"
not by the help of mechanical instruments, but of the improved
exercise of his faculties, and an intimate sympathy with nature.
The meanest thing is not lost upon him, for he looks at it with an
eye to itself, not merely to his own vanity or interest, or the opinion
of the world. Even where there is neither beauty nor use — if that
ever were — still there is truth, and a sufficient source of gratification
in the indulgence of curiosity and activity of mind. The humblest
painter is a true scholar ; and the best of scholars — the scholar of
4io WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
nature. For myself, and for the real comfort and satisfaction of
the thing, I had rather have been Jan Steen, or Gerard Dow, than
the greatest casuist or philologer that ever lived. The painter
does not view things in clouds or " mist, the common gloss of theo-
logians," but applies the same standard of truth and disinterested
spirit of inquiry, that influence his daily practice, to other subjects.
He perceives form, he distinguishes character. He reads men and
books with an intuitive eye. He is a critic as well as a connoisseur.
The conclusions he draws are clear and convincing, because they are
taken from the things themselves. He is not a fanatic, a dupe, or
a slave ; for the habit of seeing for himself also disposes him to
judge for himself. The most sensible men I know (taken as a class)
are painters; that is, they are the most lively observers of what
passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what
passes in their own minds. From their profession they in general
mix more with the world than authors ; and if they have not the
same fund of acquired knowledge, are obliged to rely more on in-
dividual sagacity. I might mention the names of Opie, Fuseli,
Northcote, as persons distinguished for striking description and
acquaintance with the subtle traits of character. Painters in or-
dinary society, or in obscure situations where their value is not
known, and they are treated with neglect and indifference, have
sometimes a forward self-sufficiency of manner ; but this is not so
much their fault as that of others. Perhaps their want of regular
education may also be in fault in such cases. . . .
Besides the exercise of the mind, painting exercises the body. It
is a mechanical as well as a liberal art. To do anything, to dig
a hole in the ground, to plant a cabbage, to hit a mark, to move
a shuttle, to work a pattern, — in a word, to attempt to produce
any effect, and to succeed, has something in it that gratifies the
love of power, and carries off the restless activity of the mind of
man. Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must
be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than
thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame; and
painting combines them both incessantly. The hand furnishes
a practical test of the correctness of the eye; and the eye, thus
admonished, imposes fresh tasks of skill and industry upon the
hand. Every stroke tells, as the verifying of a new truth ; and
every new observation, the instant it is made, passes into an act
and emanation of the will. Every step is nearer what we wish,
and yet there is always more to do. In spite of the facility, the
fluttering grace, the evanescent hues, that play round the pencil
of Rubens and Vandyke, however I may admire, I do not envy
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 411
them this power so much as I do the slow, patient, laborious
execution of Correggio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andrea del Sarto,
where every touch appears conscious of its charge, emulous of
truth, and where the painful artist has so distinctly wrought,
" That you might almost say his picture thought ! "
In the one case, the colours seem breathed on the canvas as if
by magic, the work and the wonder of a moment ; in the other,
they seem inlaid in the body of the work, and as if it took the
artist years of unremitting labour, and of delightful never-ending
progress to perfection. Who would wish ever to come to the close
of such works, — not to dwell on them, to return to them, to be
wedded to them to the last ? Rubens, with his florid, rapid style,
complained that when he had just learned his art, he should be
forced to die. Leonardo, in the slow advances of his, had lived
long enough !
Painting is not, like writing, what is properly understood by
a sedentary employment. It requires not, indeed, a strong, but
a continued and steady exertion of muscular power. The precision
and delicacy of the manual operation makes up for the want of
vehemence, — as to balance himself for any time in the same
position the rope-dancer must strain every nerve. Painting for
a whole morning gives one as excellent an appetite for one's dinner
as old Abraham Tucker acquired for his by riding over Banstead
Downs. It is related of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that "he took no
other exercise than what he used in his painting-room," — the writer
means, in walking backwards and forwards to look at his picture ;
but the act of painting itself, of laying on the colours in the proper
place and proper quantity, was a much harder exercise than this
alternate receding from and returning to the picture. This last
would be rather a relaxation and relief than an effort. It is not
to be wondered at, that an artist like Sir Joshua, who delighted
so much in the sensual and practical part of his art, should have
found himself at a considerable loss when the decay of his sight
precluded him, for the last year or two of his life, from the follow-
ing up of his profession, — " the source," according to his own
remark, " of thirty years' uninterrupted enjoyment and prosperity
to him." It is only those who never think at all, or else who have
accustomed themselves to brood incessantly on abstract ideas, that
never feel ennui.
To give one instance more, and then I will have done with this
rambling discourse. One of my first attempts was a picture of
my father, who was then in a green old age, with strongly-marked
412 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
features, and scarred with the small-pox. I drew it out with a
broad light crossing the face, looking down, with spectacles on,
reading. The book was Shaftesbury's "Characteristics," in a fine
old binding, with Gribelin's etchings. My father would as lieve
it had been any other book ; but for him to read was to be content,
was " riches fineless." The sketch promised well ; and I set to work
to finish it, determined to spare no time nor pains. My father
was willing to sit as long as I pleased ; for there is a natural desire
in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object of
continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied ; and besides
his satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist,
though he would rather I should have written a sermon than
painted like Rembrandt or like Raphael. Those winter days, with
the gleams of sunshine coming through the chapel-windows, and
cheered by the notes of the robin-redbreast in our garden (that
" ever in the haunch of winter sings "), — as my afternoon's work
drew to a close, — were among the happiest of my life. When I
gave the effect I intended to any part of the picture for which
I had prepared my colours ; when I imitated the roughness of the
skin by a lucky stroke of the pencil ; when I hit the clear pearly
tone of a vein ; when I gave the ruddy complexion of health, the
blood circulating under the broad shadows of one side of the face,
I thought my fortune made ; or rather it was already more than
made, in my fancying that I might one day be able to say with
Correggio, " / also am a painter ! " It was an idle thought, a boy's
conceit ; but it did not make me less happy at the time. I used
regularly to set my work in the chair to look at it through the
long evenings ; and many a time did I return to take leave of it
before I could go to bed at night. I remember sending it with
a throbbing heart to the Exhibition, and seeing it hung up there
by the side of one of the Honourable Mr. Skeffington (now Sir
George). There was nothing in common between them, but that
they were the portraits of two very good-natured men. I think,
but am not sure, that I finished this portrait (or another after-
wards) on the same day that the news of the battle of Austerlitz
came ; I walked out in the afternoon, and as I returned, saw the
evening star set over a poor man's cottage with other thoughts
and feelings than I shall ever have again. Oh for the revolution
of the great Platonic year, that those times might come over
again! I could sleep out the three hundred and sixty-five thou-
sand intervening years very contentedly ! — The picture is left : the
table, the chair, the window where I learned to construe Livy,
the chapel where my father preached, remain where they were;
ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING. 413
but he himself is gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope, and
charity !
The painter not only takes a delight in nature, he has a new and
exquisite source of pleasure opened to him in the study and contem-
plation of works of art —
" Whate'er Lorraine light touch'd with soft'ning hue,
Or savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew."
He turns aside to view a country gentleman's seat with eager looks,
thinking it may contain some of the rich products of art. There is
an air round Lord Radnor's park, for there hang the two Claudes,
the " Morning and Evening of the Roman Empire " — round Wilton
House, for there is Vandyke's picture of the Pembroke family —
round Blenheim, for there is his picture of the Duke of Bucking-
ham's children, and the most magnificent collection of Rubenses in
the world — at Knowsley, for there is Rembrandt's " Handwriting on
the Wall " — and at Burleigh, for there are some of Guido's angelic
heads. The young artist makes a pilgrimage to each of these places,
eyes them wistfully at a distance, " bosomed high in tufted trees,"
and feels an interest in them of which the owner is scarce conscious :
he enters the well-swept walks and echoing archways, passes the
threshold, is led through wainscoted rooms, is shown the furniture,
the rich hangings, the tapestry, the massy services of plate — and, at
last, is ushered into the room where his treasure is, the idol of his
vows — some speaking face or bright landscape ! It is stamped on
his brain, and lives there thenceforward, a tally for nature and a
test of art. He furnishes out the chambers of the mind from the
spoils of time, picks and chooses which shall have the best places —
nearest his heart. He goes away richer than he came, richer than
the possessor; and thinks that he may one day return, when he
perhaps shall have done something like them, or even from failure
shall have learned to admire truth and genius more.
My first initiation in the mysteries of the art was at the Orleans
Gallery : it was there I formed my taste, such as it is ; so that I am
irreclaimably of the old school in painting. I was staggered when I
saw the works there collected, and looked at them with wondering
and with longing eyes. A mist passed away from my sight : the
scales fell off. A new sense came upon me, a new heaven and a new
earth stood before me. I saw the soul speaking in the face — " hands
that the rod of empire had swayed " in mighty ages past — " a forked
mountain or blue promontory,"
-" with trees upon't
That nod unto the world, and mock our eyes with air."
4H WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Old Time had unlocked his treasures, and Fame stood portress at
the door. We had all heard of the names of Titian, Raphael, Guido,
Domenichino, the Caracci — but to see them face to face, to be in
the same room with their deathless productions, was like breaking
some mighty spell — was almost an effect of necromancy ! From that
time I lived in a world of pictures. Battles, sieges, speeches in
Parliament seemed mere idle noise and fury, " signifying nothing,'*
compared with those mighty works and dreaded names that spoke
to me in the eternal silence of thought. This was the more remark-
able, as it was but a short time before that I was not only totally
ignorant of, but insensible to, the beauties of art. As an instance,
I remember that one afternoon I was reading "The Provoked
Husband " with the highest relish, with a green woody landscape of
Ruysdael or Hobbima just before me, at which I looked off the book
now and then, and wondered what there could be in that sort of
work to satisfy or delight the mind — at the same time asking my-
self, as a speculative question, whether I should ever feel an interest
in it like what I took in reading Vanbrugh and Gibber ?
I had made some progress in painting when I went to the Louvre
to study, and I never did anything afterwards. I never shall forget
conning over the Catalogue which a friend lent me just before I set
out. The pictures, the names of the painters, seemed to relish in the
mouth. There was one of Titian's mistress at her toilette. Even
the colours with which the painter had adorned her hair were not
more golden, more amiable to sight, than those which played round
and tantalised my fancy ere I saw the picture. There were two
portraits by the same hand — " A Young Nobleman with a Glove " —
another, " a companion to it." I read the description over and over
with fond expectancy, and filled up the imaginary outline with what-
ever I could conceive of grace, and dignity, and an antique gusto —
all but equal to the original. There was the " Transfiguration " too.
With what awe I saw it in my mind's eye, and was overshadowed
with the spirit of the artist ! Not to have been disappointed with
these works afterwards, was the highest compliment I can pay to
their transcendent merits. Indeed, it was from seeing other works
of the same great masters that I had formed a vague, but no dis-
paraging idea of these. The first day I got there, I was kept for
some time in the French Exhibition room, and thought I should not
be able to get a sight of the old masters. I just caught a peep at
them through the door (vile hindrance !), like looking out of purgatory
into paradise — from Poussin's noble mellow-looking landscapes to
where Rubens hung out his gaudy banner, and down the glimmer-
ing vista to the rich jewels of Titian and the Italian school. At last,
ON THE IDEAL. 415
by much importunity, I was admitted, and lost not an instant in
making use of my new privilege. It was un beau jour to me. I
marched delighted through a quarter of a mile of the proudest efforts
of the mind of man, a whole creation of genius, a universe of art ! I
ran the gauntlet of all the schools from the bottom to the top ; and
in the end got admitted into the inner room, where they had been
repairing some of their greatest works. Here the " Transfiguration,"
the " St. Peter Martyr," and the " St. Jerome " of Domenichino stood
on the floor, as if they had bent their knees, like camels stooping, to
unlade their riches to the spectator. On one side, on an easel, stood
" Hippolito de Medici " (a portrait by Titian), with a boar-spear in his
hand, looking through those he saw, till you turned away from the
keen glance ; and thrown together in heaps were landscapes of the
same hand, green pastoral hills and vales, and shepherds piping to
their mild mistresses underneath the flowering shade. Reader, " if
thou hast not seen the Louvre, thou art damned ! " — for thou hast
not seen the choicest remains of the works of art ; or thou hast not
seen all these together, with their mutually reflected glories. I say
nothing of the statues ; for I know but little of sculpture, and never
liked any till I saw the Elgin Marbles. . . . Here, for four months
together, I strolled and studied, and daily heard the warning sound
— " Quatres heures passes, il faut fermer, Citoyens " — (Ah ! why did
they ever change their style ?) — muttered in coarse provincial French ;
and brought away with me some loose draughts and fragments, which
I have been forced to part with, like drops of life-blood, for " hard
money." How often, thou tenantless mansion of godlike magnifi-
cence— how often has my heart since gone a pilgrimage to thee ! . . .
ON THE IDEAL.
[Reprinted from the Atlas newspaper.]
THE ideal is the abstraction of anything from all the circumstances
that weaken its effect, or lessen our admiration of it ; or it is filling
up the outline of truth and beauty existing in the mind, so as to
leave nothing wanting, or to desire further. The principle of the
ideal is the satisfaction we have in the contemplation of any quality
or object which makes us seek to heighten, to prolong, to extend
that satisfaction to the utmost ; and beyond this we cannot go ; for
we cannot get beyond the highest conceivable degree of any quality
or excellence diffused over the whole of an object. Any notion of
perfection beyond this is a word without meaning — a thing in the
2 H
416 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
clouds. Another name for the ideal is the divine, for what we
imagine of the gods is pleasure without pain, power without effort.
It is the most exalted idea we can form of humanity. . . .
The ideal, then, it appears by this account of it, is the enhancing
and expanding an idea from the satisfaction we take in it, or it is
taking away whatever divides, and adding whatever increases our
sympathy with pleasure and power " till our content is absolute," or
at the height. Hence that repose which has been remarked as one
striking condition of the ideal ; for, as it is nothing but the con-
tinued approximation of the mind to the great and the good, so in
the attainment of this object it rejects as much as possible not only
the petty, the mean, and disagreeable, but also the agony and vio-
lence of passion, the force of contrast, and the extravagance of
imagination. It is a law to itself. It relies on its own aspirations
after pure enjoyment and lofty contemplations alone, self-moved
and self-sustained, without the grosser stimulus of the irritation of
the will, privation, or suffering, unless when it is inured and recon-
ciled to the last (as an element of its being) by heroic fortitude,
and when " strong patience conquers deep despair." In this sense
Milton's " Satan " is ideal, though tragic ; for it is permanent
tragedy, or one fixed idea without vicissitude or frailty, and where
all the pride of intellect and power is brought to bear in confronting
and enduring pain. Mr. Wordsworth has expressed this feeling of
stoical indifference (proof against outward impressions) admirably
in the poem of " Laodamia : " —
"Know, virtue were not virtue, if the joys
Of sense were able to return as fast
And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys
Those raptures truly ; Erebus disdains —
Calm pleasures there abide, majestic pains."
These lines are a noble description and example of the ideal in
poetry. But the ideal is not in general the stronghold of poetry •
for description inwards (to produce any vivid impression) requires a
translation of the object into some other form, which is the language
of metaphor and imagination, as narrative can only interest by a
succession of events and a conflict of hopes and fears. Therefore,
the sphere of the ideal is in a manner limited to sculpture and
painting, where the object itself is given entire without any pos-
sible change of circumstances, and where, though the impression is
momentary, it lasts for ever. . . .
The ideal, then, is the highest point of purity and perfection to
which we can carry the idea of any object or quality. The natural
JUDGING OF PICTURES. 417
differs from the ideal style, inasmuch as what anything is differs
from what we wish and can conceive it to be. Many people would
substitute the phrase, from what it ought to be, to express the
latter part of the alternative, and would explain what a thing ought
to be by that which is best. But for myself, I do not understand,
or at least it does not appear to me a self-evident proposition,
either what a thing ought to be or what it is best that it should
be ; it is only shifting the difficulty a remove further, and begging
the question a second time. I may know what is good ; I can tell
what is better ; but that which is best is beyond me — it is a thing
in the clouds. There is perhaps also a species of cant — the making
up for a want of clearness of ideas by insinuating a pleasing moral
inference — in the words purity and perfection used above ; but I
would be understood as meaning by purity nothing more than a
freedom from alloy or any incongruous mixture in a given quality
or character of an object, and by perfection completeness, or the
extending that quality to all the parts and circumstances of an
object, so that it shall be as nearly as possible of a piece. The
imagination does not ordinarily bestow any pains on that which is
mean and indifferent in itself, but having conceived an interest in
anything, and the passions being once excited, we endeavour to
give them food and scope by making that which is beautiful still
more beautiful, that which is striking still more grand, that which
is hateful still more deformed, through the positive, comparative,
and superlative degrees, till the mind can go no farther in this pro-
gression of fancy and passion without losing the original idea, or
quitting its hold of nature, which is the ground on which it still
rests with fluttering pinions. The ideal does not transform any
object into something else, or neutralise its character, but, by re-
moving what is irrelevant and supplying what was defective, makes
it more itself than it was before. . . .
ON JUDGING OF PICTURES.
[Reprinted from Hunt's Literary Examiner, 1823, No 5.]
PAINTERS assume that none can judge of pictures but themselves.
Many do this avowedly, some by implication, and all in practice.
They exclaim against any one writing about art who has not served
his apprenticeship to the craft, who is not versed in the detail of its
mechanism. This has often put me a little out of patience — but I
will take patience, and say why.
In the first place, with regard to the productions of living artists,
418 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
painters have no right to speak at all. The way in which they are
devoured and consumed by envy would be ludicrous if it were not
lamentable. It is folly to talk of the divisions and backbitings of
authors and poets while there are such people as painters in the
world. I never in the whole course of my life heard one speak in
hearty praise of another. Generally they blame downrightly ; but
at all events their utmost applause is with a damning reservation.
Authors — even poets, the genus irritabile — do taste and acknowledge
the beauties of the productions of their competitors ; but painters
either cannot see them through the green spectacles of envy, or
seeing, they hate and deny them the more. In conformity with
this, painters are more greedy of praise than any other order of men.
" They gorge the little fame they get all raw " — they are gluttonous
of it in their own persons in the proportion in which they would
starve others. . . .
But to come to the more general subject. I deny in toto and at
once the exclusive right and power of painters to judge of pictures.
What is a picture made for ? To convey certain ideas to the mind
of a painter, that is, of one man in ten thousand? No, but to
make them apparent to the eye and mind of all. If a picture be
admired by none but painters, I think it is a strong presumption
that the picture is bad. A painter is no more a judge, I suppose,
than another man of how people feel and look under certain passions
and events. Everybody sees as well as he whether certain figures
on the canvas are like such a man, or like a cow, a tree, a bridge, or
a windmill. All that the painter can do more than the lay spectator
is to tell why and how the merits and defects of a picture are pro-
duced. I see that such a figure is ungraceful, and out of nature —
he shows me that the drawing is faulty, or the foreshortening in-
correct. He then points out to me whence the blemish arises ; but
he is not a bit more aware of the existence of the blemish than I am.
In Hogarth's " Frontispiece " I see that the whole business is
absurd, for a man on a hill two miles off could not light his pipe at
a candle held out of a window close to me; he tells me that is
from a want of perspective — that is, of certain rules by which certain
effects are obtained. He shows me why the picture is bad, but I am
just as well capable of saying " the picture is bad " as he is. To
take a coarse illustration, but one most exactly apposite : I can tell
whether a made dish be good or bad — whether its taste be pleasant
or disagreeable ; it is dressed for the palate of uninitiated people,
and not alone for the disciples of Dr Kitchener and Mr Ude. But
it needs a cook to tell one why it is bad ; that there is a grain too
much of this, or a drop too much of t'other ; that it has been boiled
JUDGING OF PICTURES. 419
rather too much, or stewed rather too little. These things, the
wherefores, as Squire Western would say, I require an artist to tell
me ; but the point in debate — the worth or the bad quality of the
painting or pottage — I am as well able to decidb upon as any who
ever brandished a pallet or a pan, a brush or a skimming-ladle.
To go into the higher branches of the art — the poetry of painting
— I deny still more peremptorily the exclusiveness of the initiated.
It might as well be said that none but those who could write a play
have any right to sit in the third row in the pit, on the first night
of a new tragedy ; nay, there is more plausibility in the one than
the other. No man can judge of poetry without possessing in some
measure a poetical mind ; it need not be of that degree necessary to
create, but it must be equal to taste and to analyse. Now, in paint-
ing there is a directly mechanical power required to render those
imaginations, to the judging of which the mind may be perfectly
competent. I may know what is a just or a beautiful representa-
tion of love, anger, madness, despair, without being able to draw a
straight line ; and I do not see how that faculty adds to the capa-
bility of so judging. A very great proportion of painting is me-
chanical. The higher kinds of painting need first a poet's mind to
conceive ; very well, but then they need a draughtsman's hand to
execute. Now he who possesses the mind alone is fully able to
judge of what is produced, even though he is by no means endowed
with the mechanical power of producing it himself. I am far from
saying that any one is capable of duly judging pictures of the
higher class. It requires a mind capable of estimating the noble, or
touching, or terrible, or sublime subjects which they present ; but
there is no sort of necessity that we should be able to put them
upon the canvas ourselves. . . .
I am the farthest in the world from falling into the absurdity of
upholding that painters should neglect the mechanical parts of
their profession ; for without a mastery in them it would be impos-
sible to body forth any imaginations, however strong or beautiful.
I only wish that they should not overlook the end to which these
are the means — and give them an undue preference over that end
itself. Still more I object to their arrogating to the possessors of
these qualities of hand and eye all power of judging that which is
conveyed through the physical vision into the inward soul.
On looking over what I have written, I find that I have used
some expressions with regard to painters as a body which may
make it appear that I hold them in light esteem, whereas no one
can admire their art, or appreciate their pursuit of it, more highly
than I do. Of what I have said, however, with regard to their paltry
420 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
denial of each other's merits, I cannot bate them an ace. I appeal
to all those who are in the habit of associating with painters to say
whether my assertion is not correct. And why should they do this ?
— surely the field is wide enough. Surely there are parallel roads
which may be followed, each leading to the same point, but neither
crossing nor trenching upon one another.
The art of Painting is one equally delightful to the eye and to
the mind. It has very nearly the reality of dramatic exhibition,
and has permanence, which that is wholly without. We may gaze
at a picture, and pause to think, and turn and gaze again. The art
is inferior to poetry in magnitude of extent and succession of detail,
but its power over any one point is far superior ; it seizes it, and
figures it forth in corporeal existence, if not in bodily life. It gives
to the eye the physical semblance of those figures which have floated
in vagueness in the mind. It condenses indistinct and gauzy visions
into palpable forms — as, in the story, the morning mist gathered into
the embodying a spirit. But shall it be said that the enchanter alone
can judge of the enchantment — that none shall have an eye to see,
and a heart to feel, unless he have also a hand to execute ? Alas !
our inherent perceptions give the lie to this. As I used to go to the
Louvre, day after day, to glut myself and revel in the congregated
genius of pictorial ages, would any one convince me that it was neces-
sary to be able to paint, that I might duly appreciate a picture ?
EXPRESSION.
EXPRESSION is the great test and measure of a genius for painting and
the fine arts. The mere imitation of still-life, however perfect, can
never furnish proofs of the highest skill or talent ; for there is an
inner sense, a deeper intuition into nature that is never unfolded
by merely mechanical objects, and which, if it were called out by a
new soul being suddenly infused into an inanimate substance, would
make the former unconscious representation appear crude and vapid.
The eye is sharpened and the hand made more delicate in its tact,
" While by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."
We not only see but feel expression by the help of the finest of
all our senses, the sense of pleasure and pain. He, then, is the
greatest painter who can put the greatest quantity of expression
into his works, for this is the nicest and most subtle object of
imitation ; it is that in which any defect is soonest visible, which
THE DULWICH GALLERY. 421
must be able to stand the severest scrutiny, and where the power of
avoiding errors, extravagance, or tameness can only be supplied by
the fund of moral feeling, the strength or delicacy of the artist's
sympathy with the ideal object of his imagination. To see or imi-
tate any given sensible object is one thing, the effect of attention
and practice ; but to give expression to a face is to collect its mean-
ing from a thousand other sources, is to bring into play the obser-
vation and feeling of one's whole life, or an infinity of knowledge
bearing upon a single object in different degrees and manners,
and implying a loftiness and refinement of character proportioned to
the loftiness and refinement of expression delineated. Expression
is of all things the least to be mistaken, and the most evanescent in
its manifestation. Pope's lines on the character of women may be
addressed to the painter who undertakes to embody it : —
" Come then, the colours and the ground prepare,
Dip in the rainbow, trick it off in air ;
Choose a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it
Catch, ere it change, the Cynthia of the minute."
— " On a Picture by Vandyck."
[The four following extracts are from Sketches of the Principal Picture
Galleries in England, 1824, which is reprinted in the volume of col-
lected Essays on the Fine Arts.]
THE DULWICH GALLERY.
IT was on the 5th of November that we went to see this Gallery.
The morning was mild, calm, pleasant : it was a day to ruminate on
the object we had in view. It was the time of year
" When yellow leaves, or few, or none do hang
Upon the branches ; "
their scattered gold was strongly contrasted with the dark green
spiral shoots of the cedar-trees that skirt the road ; the sun shone
faint and watery, as if smiling his last ; Winter gently let go the
hand of Summer, and the green fields, wet with the mist, anticipated
the return of Spring. At the end of a beautiful little village, Dul-
wich College appeared in view, with modest state, yet mindful of
the olden time; and the name of Allen and his compeers rushed
full upon the memory ! How many races of schoolboys have played
within its walls, or stammered out a lesson, or sauntered away their
vacant hours in its shade : yet, not one Shakspeare is there to be
found among them all ! The boy is clothed and fed, and gets through
422 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
his accidence ; but no trace of his youthful learning, any more than
of his saffron livery, is to be met with in the man. Genius is not to
be " constrained by mastery." Nothing comes of these endowments
and foundations for learning ; you might as well make dirt-pies, or
build houses with cards. Yet something does come of them too — a
retreat for age, a dream in youth — a feeling in the air around them,
the memory of the past, the hope of what will never be. Sweet are
the studies of the schoolboy, delicious his idle hours ! Fresh and
gladsome is his waking, balmy are his slumbers, book-pillowed ! He
wears a green and yellow livery, perhaps ; but " green and yellow
melancholy " comes not near him, or, if it does, is tempered with
youth and innocence ! To thumb his Eutropius, or to knuckle down
at taw, are to him equally delightful ; for whatever stirs the blood,
or inspires thought in him, quickens the pulse of life and joy. He
has only to feel, in order to be happy ; pain turns smiling from him,
and sorrow is only a softer kind of pleasure. Each sensation is but
an unfolding of his new being ; care, age, sickness, are idle words ;
the musty records of antiquity look glossy in his sparkling eye, and
he clasps immortality as his future bride! The coming years hurt
him not — he hears their sound afar off, and is glad. See him there,
the urchin seated in the sun, with a book in his hand, and the wall
at his back. He has a thicker wall before him — the wall that parts
him from the future. He sees not the archers taking aim at his
peace ; he knows not the hands that are to mangle his bosom. He
stirs not, he still pores upon his book, and as he reads, a slight
hectic flush passes over his cheek, for he sees the letters that com-
pose the word FAME glitter on the page, and his eyes swim, and he
thinks that he will one day write a book, and have his name repeated
by thousands of readers, and assume a certain signature, and write
Essays and Criticisms in a LONDON MAGAZINE, as a consummation
of felicity scarcely to be believed. Come hither, thou poor little
fellow, and let us change places with thee, if thou wilt ; here take
the pen, and finish this article, and sign what name you please to it ;
so that we may but change our dress for yours, and sit shivering in
the sun, and con over our little task, and feed poor, and lie hard,
and be contented and happy, and think what a fine thing it is to be
an author, and dream of immortality, and sleep o' nights ! . . .—
" The Dulwich Gallery."
INTERCOURSE WITH PICTURES AND BOOKS.
OUR intercourse with the dead is better than our intercourse with
the living. There are only three pleasures in life pure and lasting,
INTERCOURSE WITH PICTURES AND BOOKS. 423
and all derived from inanimate things — books, pictures, and the
face of nature. What is the world but a heap of ruined friendships,
but the grave of love ? All other pleasures are as false and hollow,
vanishing from our embrace like smoke, or like a feverish dream.
Scarcely can we recollect that they were, or recall without an effort
the anxious and momentary interest we took in them.
But thou, oh ! divine " Bath of Diana," with deep azure dyes, with
roseate hues, spread by the hand of Titian, art still there upon the
wall, another, yet the same that thou wert five-and-twenty years
ago, nor wantest
" Forked mountain or blue promotory,
With trees upon 't that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air ! "
And lo ! over the clear lone brow of Tuderley and Norman Court,
knit into the web and fibres of our heart, the sighing grove waves
in the autumnal air, deserted by Love, by Hope, but for ever haunted
by Memory ! And there that fine passage stands in " Antony and
Cleopatra " as we read it long ago with exulting eyes in Paris, after
puzzling over a tragedy of Racine's, and cried aloud, " Our Shak-
speare was also a poet ! " These feelings are dear to us at the time ;
and they come back unimpaired, heightened, mellowed, whenever
we choose to go back to them. We turn over the leaf and " volume
of the brain," and there see them face to face. — Marina in " Pericles "
complains that
" Life is as a storm hurrying her from her friends ! "
Not so from the friends above mentioned. If we bring but an eye,
an understanding, and a heart to them, we find them always with
us, always the same. The change, if there is one, is in us, not in
them. Oh ! thou then, whoever thou art, that dost seek happiness
in thyself, independent of others, not subject to caprice, not mocked
by insult, not snatched away by ruthless hands, over which Time
has no power, and that Death alone cancels, seek it (if thou art
wise) in books, in pictures, and the face of nature, for these alone
we may count upon as friends for life ! While we are true to our-
selves, they will not be faithless to us. While we remember any-
thing, we cannot forget them. As long as we have a wish for
pleasure, we may find it here ; for it depends only on our love for
them, and not on theirs for us. The enjoyment is purely ideal,
and is refined, unembittered, unfading, for that reason. — " The
Marquis of Stafford's Gallery."
424 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
APOSTROPHE TO BURLEIGH HOUSE.
BUKLEIGH ! thy groves are leafless, thy walls are naked,
" And dull, cold winter does inhabit here."
The yellow evening rays gleam through thy fretted Gothic windows ;
but I only feel the rustling of withered branches strike chill to my
breast ; it was not so twenty years ago. Thy groves were leaflesa
then as now : it was the middle of winter twice that I visited thee
before ; but the lark mounted in the sky, and the sun smote my
youthful blood with its slant ray, and the ploughman whistled as he
drove his team afield ; hope spread out its glad vista through thy
fair domains, O Burleigh ! Fancy decked thy walls with works of
sovereign art, and it was spring, not winter, in my breast. All is
still the same, like a petrifaction of the mind — the same thing in the
same places ; but their effect is not the same upon me. I am twenty
years the worse for wear and tear. What is become of the never-
ending studious thoughts that brought their own reward or pro-
mised good to mankind ? of the tears that started welcome and
unbidden ? of the sighs that whispered future peace ? of the smiles
that shone, not in my face indeed, but that cheered my heart, and
made a sunshine there when all was gloom around? That fairy
vision — that invisible glory, by which I was once attended — ushered
into life, has left my side, and " faded to the light of common day,"
and I now see what is, or has been — not what may lie hid in time's
bright circle and golden chaplet ! Perhaps this is the characteristic
difference between youth and a later period of life— that we, by
degrees, learn to take things more as we find them, call them more
by their right names ; that we feel the warmth of summer, but the
winter's cold as well ; that we see beauties, but can spy defects in
the fairest face ; and no longer look at everything through the
genial atmosphere of our own existence. We grow more literal
and less credulous every day, lose much enjoyment, and gain some
useful, and more useless, knowledge. The second time I passed
along the road that skirts Burleigh Park, the morning was dank and
" ways were mire." I saw and felt it not : my mind was otherwise
engaged. Ah ! thought I, there is that fine old head by Rembrandt ;
there, within those cold grey walls, the painter of old age is en-
shrined, immortalised in some of his inimitable works ! The name
of Rembrandt lives in the fame of him who stamped it with renown,
while the name of Burleigh is kept up by the present owner. An
artist survives in the issue of his brain to all posterity — a lord is
APOSTROPHE TO BURLEIGH HOUSE. 425
nothing without the issue of his body lawfully begotten, and is lost
in a long line of illustrious ancestors. So much higher is genius
than rank — such is the difference between fame and title ! A great
name in art lasts for centuries — it requires twenty generations of a
noble house to keep alive the memory of the first founder for the
same length of time. So I reasoned, and was not a little proud of
my discovery.
In this dreaming mood, dreaming of deathless works and deathless
names, I went on to Peterborough, passing, as it were, under an
archway of fame,
" And, still walking under,
Found some new matter to look up and wonder."
I had business there : I will not say what. I could at this time do
nothing. I could not write a line — I could not draw a stroke. " I
was brutish ; " though not " warlike as the wolf, nor subtle as the
fox for prey." In words, in looks, in deeds, I was no better than a
changeling. Why, then, do I set so much value on my existence
formerly ? O God ! that I could but be for one day, one hour, but
for an instant (to feel it in all the plenitude of unconscious bliss,
and take one long, last, lingering draught of that full brimming
cup of thoughtless freedom), what then I was ; — that I might, as in a
trance, a waking dream, hear the hoarse murmur of the bargemen,
as the Minster tower appeared in the dim twilight, come up from
the willowy stream, sounding low and underground like the voice
of the bittern ; — that I might paint that field opposite the window
where I lived, and feel that there was a green, dewy moisture in
the tone, beyond my pencil's reach, but thus gaining almost a new
sense, and watching the birth of new objects without me ; — that I
might stroll down Peterborough bank (a winter's day), and see the
fresh marshes stretching out in endless level perspective (as if Paul
Potter had painted them), with the cattle, the windmills, and the
red-tiled cottages gleaming in the sun to the very verge of the
horizon ; and watch the fieldfares in innumerable flocks, gambolling
in the air, and sporting in the sun, and racing before the clouds,
making summersaults, and dazzling the eye by throwing themselves
into a thousand figures and movements ; — that I might go, as then,
a pilgrimage to the town where my mother was born, and visit the
poor farm-house where she was brought up, and lean upon the
gate where she told me she used to stand when a child of ten years
old and look at the setting sun ! — I could do all this still, but with
different feelings. As our hopes leave us, we lose even our interest
and regrets for the past. I had at this time, simple as I seemed,
426 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
many resources. I could in some sort " play at bowls with the sun
and moon ; " or at any rate there was no question in metaphysics
that I could not bandy to and fro, as one might play at cup-and-
ball, for twenty, thirty, forty miles of the great North Road, and
at it again the next day as fresh as ever. I soon get tired of this
now, and wonder how I managed formerly. I knew " Tom Jones " by
heart, and was deep in " Peregrine Pickle." I was intimately ac-
quainted with all the heroes and heroines of Richardson's romances,
and could turn from one to the other as I pleased. I could con
over that single passage in " Pamela " about " her lumpish heart,"
and never have done admiring the skill of the author and the truth
of nature. I had my sports and recreations too, some such as
these following : —
" To see the sun to bed, and to arise,
Like some hot amourist, with glowing eyes
Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,
With all his fires and travelling glories round him.
Sometimes the moon on soft night clouds to rest,
Like beauty nestling in a young man's breast,
And all the winking stars, her handmaids, keep
Admiring silence while those lovers sleep.
Sometimes outstretched, in very idleness,
Nought doing, saying little, thinking less,
To view the leaves, thin dancers upon air,
Go eddying round, and small birds how they fare,
When mother Autumn fills their beaks with corn,
Filched^ from the careless Amalthea's horn :
And how the woods berries and worms provide
Without their pains, when earth has nought beside
To answer their small wants.
To view the graceful deer come tripping by,
Then stop and gaze, then turn they know not why,
Like bashful younkers in society.
To mark the structure of a plant or tree,
And all fair things of earth, how fair they be." *
— Pictures at Burleigh House.
OXFORD.
ROME has been called the " Sacred City : " might not our Oxford be
called so too ? There is an air about it resonant of joy and hope :
it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart : it waves its mighty
shadow over the imagination : it stands in lowly sublimity on the
* From Charles Lamb's "John Woodvil," a Tragedy, 1802.
OXFORD. 427
"hill of ages," and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it
greets the eager gaze from afar " with glistening spires and pinnacles
adorned," that shine with an eternal light as with the lustre of
setting suns ; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the
spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen re-
treating or advancing to the eye of memory : its streets are paved
with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green
quadrangles breathe the silence of thought, conscious of the weight
of yearnings innumerable after the past, of loftiest aspirations for
the future : Isis babbles of the Muse, its waters are from the springs
of Helicon, its Christ Church meadows, classic, Elysian fields ! we
could pass our lives in Oxford without having or wanting any other
idea — that of the place is enough. We imbibe the air of thought ;
we stand in the presence of learning. We are admitted into the
Temple of Fame, we feel that we are in the sanctuary, on holy
ground, and "hold high converse with the mighty dead." The
enlightened and the ignorant are on a level, if they have but faith
in the tutelary genius of the place. We may be wise by proxy,
and studious by prescription. Time has taken upon himself the
labour of thinking ; and accumulated libraries leave us leisure to be
dull. There is no occasion to examine the buildings, the churches,
the colleges, by the rules of architecture, to reckon up the streets,
to compare it with Cambridge (Cambridge lies out of the way, on
one side of the world) ; but woe to him who does not feel in passing
through Oxford that he is in " no mean city," that he is surrounded
with the monuments and lordly mansions of the mind of man,
outvying in pomp and splendour the courts and palaces of princes,
rising like an exhalation in the night of ignorance, and triumphing
over barbaric foes, saying, " All eyes shall see me, and all knees shall
bow to me ! " — as the shrine where successive ages came to pay their
pious vows, and slake the sacred thirst of knowledge ; where youth-
ful hopes (an endless flight) soared to truth and good ; and where
the retired and lonely student brooded over the historic or over
fancy's page, imposing high tasks for himself, framing high destinies
fo the race of man — the lamp, the mine, the well-head whence the
spark of learning was kindled, its stream flowed, its treasures were
spread out through the remotest corners of the land and to distant
nations. Let him, then, who is fond of indulging in a dream-like
existence, go to Oxford, and stay there ; let him study this magnifi-
cent spectacle, the same under all aspects, with its mental twilight
tempering the glare of noon, or mellowing the silver moonlight ; let
him wander in her sylvan suburbs, or linger in her cloistered halls ;
but let him not catch the din of scholars or teachers, or dine or sup
428 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC,
with them, or speak a word to any of the privileged inhabitants ;
for if he does, the spell will be broken, the poetry and the religion
gone, and the palace of the enchantment will melt from his embrace
into thin air ! — " Pictures at Oxford and Blenheim."
[From The Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits, 1825. Some of
the portraits had previously appeared in the New Monthly Mayazine.
Second Edition, 1825. Third Edition, 1858. Fourth Edition, 1886.]
COLERIDGE,
. . . MB. COLERIDGE has " a mind reflecting ages past : " his voice
is like the echo of the congregated roar of the " dark rearward and
abyss " of thought. He who has seen a mouldering tower by the
side of a crystal lake, hid by the mist, but glittering in the wave
below, may conceive the dim, gleaming, uncertain intelligence of
his eye : he who has marked the evening clouds uprolled (a world
of vapours) has seen the picture of his mind, unearthly, unsub-
stantial, with gorgeous tints and ever-varing forms —
" That which was now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
As water is in water. "
Our author's mind is (as he himself might express it) tangential.
There is no subject on which he has not touched, none on which
he has rested. With an understanding fertile, subtle, expansive,
" quick, forgetive, apprehensive," beyond all living precedent, few
traces of it will perhaps remain. He lends himself to all impressions
alike ; he gives up his mind and liberty of thought to none. He is
a general lover of art and science, and wedded to no one in par-
ticular. He pursues knowledge as a mistress, with outstretched
hands and winged speed; but as he is about to embrace her, his
Daphne turns — alas ! not to a laurel ! Hardly a speculation has
been left on record from the earliest time, but it is loosely folded
up in Mr. Coleridge's memory, like a rich, but somewhat tattered
piece of tapestry : we might add (with more seeming than real ex-
travagance), that scarce a thought can pass through the mind of
man, but its sound has at some time or other passed over his head
with rustling pinions.
On whatever question or author you speak, he is prepared to take
COLERIDGE. 429
up the theme with advantage — from Peter Abelard down to Thomas
Moore, from the subtlest metaphysics to the politics of the Courier.
There is no man of genius, in whose praise he descants, but the
critic seems to stand above the author, and " what in him is weak,
to strengthen, what is low, to raise and support : " nor is there any.
work of genius that does not come out of his hands like an illu-
minated Missal, sparkling even in its defects. If Mr. Coleridge had
not been the most impressive talker of his age, he would probably
have been the finest writer ; but he lays down his pen to make sure
of an auditor, and mortgages the admiration of posterity for the
stare of an idler. If he had not been a poet, he would have been a
powerful logician ; if he had not dipped his wing in the Unitarian
controversy, he might have soared to the very summit of fancy.
But, in writing verse, he is trying to subject the Muse to transcen-
dental theories : in his abstract reasoning, he misses his way by
strewing it with flowers.
All that he has done of moment, he had done twenty years ago :
since then, he may be said to have lived on the sound of his own
voice. Mr. Coleridge is too rich in intellectual wealth to need to
task himself to any drudgery : he has only to draw the sliders of his
imagination, and a thousand subjects expand before him, startling
him with their brilliancy, or losing themselves in endless obscurity —
" And by the force of blear illusion,
They draw him on to his confusion."
What is the little he could add to the stock, compared with the
countless stores that lie about him, that he should stoop to pick up
a name or to polish an idle fancy ? He walks abroad in the majesty
of an universal understanding, eyeing the " rich strond " or golden
sky above him, and " goes sounding on his way," in eloquent accents,
uncompelled and free ! . . .
Learning rocked him in his cradle, and while yet a child.
"He lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."
At sixteen he wrote his " Ode on Chatterton," and he still reverts to
that period with delight, not so much as it relates to himself (for
that string of his own early promise of fame rather jars than other-
wise), but as exemplifying the youth of a poet. Mr. Coleridge talks
of himself without being an egotist ; for in him the individual is
always merged in the abstract and general. He distinguished him-
self at school and at the University by his knowledge of the classics,
and gained several prizes for Greek epigrams. How many men are
there (great scholars, celebrated names in literature) who, having
430 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
done the same thing in their youth, have no other idea all the rest
of their lives but of this achievement, of a fellowship and dinner,
and who, installed in academic honours, would look down on our
author as a mere strolling bard ! At Christ's Hospital, where he
was brought up, he was the idol of those among his schoolfellows
who mingled with their bookish studies the music of thought and of
humanity ; and he was usually attended round the cloisters by a
group of these (inspiring and inspired), whose hearts even then burnt
within them as he talked, and where the sounds yet linger to mock
ELIA on his way, still turning pensive to the past !
One of the finest and rarest parts of Mr. Coleridge's conversa-
tion is when he expatiates on the Greek tragedians (not that he is
not well acquainted, when he pleases, with the epic poets, or the
philosophers, or orators, or historians of antiquity) — on the subtle
reasonings and melting pathos of Euripides, on the harmonious
gracefulness of Sophocles, tuning his love-laboured song, like sweetest
warblings from a sacred grove ; on the high-wrought, trumpet-
tongued eloquence of ^Eschylus, whose " Prometheus," above all, is
like an Ode to Fate and a pleading with Providence, his thoughts
being let loose as his body is chained on his solitary rock, and his
afflicted will (the emblem of mortality)
" Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny."
As the impassioned critic speaks and rises in his theme, you would
think you heard the voice of the Man hated by the Gods, contending
with the wild winds as they roar ; and his eye glitters with the spirit
of Antiquity !
Next, he was engaged with Hartley's tribes of mind, "ethereal
braid, thought-woven," — and he busied himself for a year or two
with vibrations and vibratiuncles, and the great law of association
that binds all things in its mystic chain, and the doctrine of Necessity
(the mild teacher of Charity), and the Millennium, anticipative of
a life to come ; and he plunged deep into the controversy on Matter
and Spirit, and, as an escape from Dr. Priestley's " Materialism," where
he felt himself imprisoned by the logician's spell, like Ariel in the
cloven pine-tree, he became suddenly enamoured of Bishop Berkeley's
fairy-world, and used in all companies to build the universe, like
a brave poetical fiction, of fine words. And he was deep-read in
Malebranche, and in Cudworth's " Intellectual System " (a huge pile
of learning, unwieldy, enormous), and in Lord Brook's hieroglyphic
theories, and in Bishop Butler's Sermons, and in the Duchess of
Newcastle's fantastic folios, and in Clarke and South, and Tillotson,
and all the fine thinkers and masculine reasoners of that age ; and
COLERIDGE. 431
Leibnitz's " Pre-established Harmony " reared its arch above his
head, like the rainbow in the cloud, covenanting with the hopes of
man.
And then he fell plumb, ten thousand fathoms down (but his
wings saved him harmless), into the hortus siccus of Dissent, where
he pared religion down to the standard of reason, and stripped faith
of mystery, and preached Christ crucified and the Unity of the God-
head, and so dwelt for a while in the spirit with John Huss and
Jerome of Prague and Socinus and old John Zisca, and ran through
Neal's " History of the Puritans " and Calamy's " Non-Conformists'
Memorial," having like thoughts and passions with them. But then
Spinoza became his God, and he took up the vast chain of being in
his hand, and the round world became the centre and the soul of all
things in some shadowy sense, forlorn of meaning, and around him
he beheld the living traces and the sky-pointing proportions of the
mighty Pan; but poetry redeemed him from this spectral philo-
sophy, and he bathed his heart in beauty, and gazed at the golden
light of heaven, and drank of the spirit of the universe, and wan-
dered at eve by fairy-stream or fountain,
-" When he saw nought but beauty,
When he heard the voice of that Almighty One
In every breeze that blew, or wave that murmured " —
and wedded with truth in Plato's shade, and in the writings of
Proclus and Plotinus saw the ideas of things in the eternal mind,
and unfolded all mysteries with the Schoolmen and fathomed the
depths of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, and entered the third
heaven with Jacob Behmen, and walked hand-in-hand with Sweden-
borg through the pavilions of the New Jerusalem, and sang his
faith in the promise and in the word in his "Religious Musings."
And lowering himself from that dizzy height, [he] poised himself
on Milton's wings, and spread out his thoughts in charity with the
glad prose of Jeremy Taylor, and wept over Bowles's " Sonnets," and
studied Cowper's blank verse, and betook himself to Thomson's
"Castle of Indolence," and sported with the wits of Charles the
Second's days and of Queen Anne, and relished Swift's style and
that of the " John Bull " (Arbuthnot's we mean, not Mr. Croker's),
and dallied with the " British Essayists and Novelists," and knew all
qualities of more modern writers with a learned spirit: Johnson,
and Goldsmith, and Junius, and Burke, and Godwin, and the
" Sorrows of Werter," and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Voltaire, and
Marivaux, and Crebillon, and thousands more : now " laughed with
Rabelais in his easy-chair" or pointed to Hogarth, or afterwards
2i
432 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
dwelt on Claude's classic scenes, or spoke with rapture of Raphael,
and compared the women at Rome to figures that had walked out
of his pictures, or visited the Oratory of Pisa, and described the
works of Giotto and Ghirlandaio and Massaccio, and gave the moral
of the picture of the " Triumph of Death," where the beggars and the
wretched invoke his dreadful dart, but the rich and mighty of the
earth quail and shrink before it ; and in that land of siren sights
and sounds, saw a dance of peasant girls, and was charmed with lutes
and gondolas, — or wandered into Germany and lost himself in the
labyrinths of the Hartz Forest and of the Kantean philosophy, and
amongst the cabalistic names of Fichte and Schelling and Lessing,
and God knows who. This was long after ; but all the former while
he had nerved his heart and filled his eyes with tears, as he hailed
the rising orb of liberty, since quenched in darkness and in blood,
and had kindled his affections at the blaze of the French Revolu-
tion, and sang for joy, when the towers of the Bastille and the
proud places of the insolent and the oppressor fell, and would have
floated his bark, freighted with fondest fancies, across the Atlantic
wave with Southey and others to seek for peace and freedom —
" In Philarmonia's undivided dale ! "
Alas ! " Frailty, thy name is Genius / " — What is become of all
this mighty heap of hope, of thought, of learning and humanity ?
It has ended in swallowing doses of oblivion and in writing
paragraphs in the Courier. Such and so little is the mind of
man ! . . .
Of all Mr. Coleridge's productions, the " Ancient Mariner " is the
only one that we could with confidence put into any person's hands
on whom we wished to impress a favourable idea of his extraordinary
powers. Let whatever other objections be made to it, it is unques-
tionably a work of genius — of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagi-
nation, and has that rich, varied movement in the verse, which
gives a distant idea of the lofty or changeful tones of Mr. Cole-
ridge's voice. In the " Christobel " there is one splendid passage on
divided friendship. The Translation of Schiller's " Wallenstein " is
also a masterly production in its kind, faithful and spirited. Among
his smaller pieces there are occasional bursts of pathos and fancy,
equal to what we might expect from him ; but these form the ex-
ception, and not the rule. Such, for instance, is his affecting Sonnet
to the author of the " Robbers."
His Tragedy, entitled " Remorse," is full of beautiful and strik-
ing passages; but it does not place the author in the first rank
of dramatic writers. But if Mr. Coleridge's works do not place
COLERIDGE AND GODWIN. 433
him in that rank, they injure instead of conveying a just idea of
the man ; for he himself is certainly in the first class of general
intellect.
If our author's poetry is inferior to his conversation, his prose
is utterly abortive. Hardly a gleam is to be found in it of the
brilliancy and richness of those stores of thought and language
that he pours out incessantly, when they are lost like drops of water
in the ground. The principal work, in which he has attempted
to embody his general view of things, is the FRIEND, of which,
though it contains some noble passages and fine trains of thought,
prolixity and obscurity are the most frequent characteristics.
No two persons can be conceived more opposite in character or
genius than Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Godwin. The latter, with less
natural capacity, and with fewer acquired advantages, by concentrat-
ing his mind on some given object, and doing what he had to do
with all his might, has accomplished much, and will leave more
than one monument of a powerful intellect behind him ; Mr. Cole-
ridge, by dissipating his, and dallying with every subject by turns,
has done little or nothing to justify to the world or to posterity
the high opinion which all who have ever heard him converse,
or known him intimately, with one accord entertain of him. Mr.
Godwin's faculties have kept house, and plied their task in the work-
shop of the brain, diligently and effectually : Mr. Coleridge's have
gossiped away their time, and gadded about from house to house,
as if life's business were to melt the hours in listless talk. Mr.
Godwin is intent on a subject, only as it concerns himself and his
reputation ; he works it out as a matter of duty, and discards from
his mind whatever does not forward his main object as impertinent
and vain. Mr. Coleridge, on the other hand, delights in nothing
but episodes and digressions, neglects whatever he undertakes to
perform, and can act only on spontaneous impulses, without object
or method. "He cannot be constrained by mastery." While he
should be occupied with a given pursuit, he is thinking of a thou-
sand other things; a thousand tastes, a thousand objects tempt
him, and distract his mind, which keeps open house, and entertains
all comers ; and after being fatigued and amused with morning calls
from idle visitors, finds the day consumed and its business uncon-
cluded. Mr. Godwin, on the contrary, is somewhat exclusive and
unsocial in his habits of mind, entertains no company but what he
gives his whole time and attention to, and wisely writes over the
doors of his understanding, his fancy, and his senses — " No admit-
tance except on business." He has none of that fastidious refine-
ment and false delicacy, which might lead him to balance between
434 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the endless variety of modern attainments. He does not throw
away his life (nor a single half-hour of it) in adjusting the claims of
different accomplishments, and in choosing between them or making
himself master of them all. He sets about his task (whatever it
may be), and goes through it with spirit and fortitude. He has the
happiness to think an author the greatest character in the world,
and himself the greatest author in it. Mr. Coleridge, in writing an
harmonious stanza, would stop to consider whether there was not
more grace and beauty in a Pas de trois, and would not proceed till
he had resolved this question by a chain of metaphysical reasoning
without end. Not so Mr. Godwin. That is best to him which he
can do best. He does not waste himself in vain aspirations and
effeminate sympathies. He is blind, deaf, insensible to all but the
trump of Fame. Plays, operas, painting, music, ball-rooms, wealth,
fashion, titles, lords, ladies, touch him not — all these are no more
to him than to the anchorite in his cell, and he writes on to the end
of the chapter, through good report and evil report. Pingo in eter-
nitatem is his motto. He neither envies nor admires what others
are, but is contented to be what he is, and strives to do the utmost
he can. Mr. Coleridge has flirted with the Muses as with a set of
mistresses : Mr. Godwin has been married twice, to Reason and to
Fancy, and has to boast no short-lived progeny by each. So to
speak, he has valves belonging to his mind, to regulate the quantity
of gas admitted into it, so that, like the bare, unsightly, but well-
compacted steam-vessel, it cuts its liquid way, and arrives at its
promised end : while Mr. Coleridge's bark, " taught with the little
nautilus to sail," the sport of every breath, dancing to every wave,
"Youth at its prow, and Pleasure at its helm,"
nutters its gaudy pennons in the air, glitters in the sun, but we wait
in vain to hear of its arrival in the destined harbour. Mr. Godwin,
with less variety and vividness, with less subtlety and susceptibility
both of thought and feeling, has had firmer nerves, a more deter-
mined purpose, a more comprehensive grasp of his subject, and the
results are as we find them. Each has met with his reward : for
justice has, after all, been done to the pretensions of each ; and we
must, in all cases, use means to ends !
[The eccentricities of Coleridge's marvellous genius are admirably
set forth by Hazlitt in a review of his "Lay Sermon" (Political
Essays, page 1 18). This brilliant performance would have been given
in these Selections, but, as it occupies six pages, the requisite space
for it could not be afforded. The student of Hazlitt should not
miss it.]
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 435
SIR WALTER SCOTT.
SIR WALTER SCOTT is undoubtedly the most popular writer of the
age, the " lord of the ascendant " for the time being. He is just
half what the human intellect is capable of being : if you take the
universe, and divide it into two parts, he knows all that it has been ;
all that it is to be is nothing to him. His is a mind brooding over
antiquity — scorning " the present ignorant time." He is " laudator
temporis acti" — a " prophesier of things past." The old world is to
him a crowded map ; the new one a dull, hateful blank. He dotes
on all well-authenticated superstitions ; he shudders at the shadow
of innovation. His retentiveness of memory, his accumulated weight
of interested prejudice or romantic association, have overlaid his
other faculties. The cells of his memory are vast, various, full even
to bursting with life and motion ; his speculative understanding is
empty, flaccid, poor, and dead. His mind receives and treasures up
everything brought to it by tradition or custom — it does not pro-
ject itself beyond this into the world unknown, but mechanically
shrinks back as from the edge of a precipice. The land of pure
reason is to his apprehension like Van Diemen's Land — barren,
miserable, distant, a place of exile, the dreary abode of savages, con-
victs, and adventurers. Sir Walter would make a bad hand of a
description of the Millennium, unless he could lay the scene in
Scotland five hundred years ago, and then he would want facts and
worm-eaten parchments to support his drooping style. Our historical
novelist firmly thinks that nothing is but what has been, that the
moral world stands still, as the material one was supposed to do of
old, and that we can never get beyond the point where we actually
are without utter destruction, though everything changes and will
change from what it was three hundred years ago to what it is now,
— from what it is now to all that the bigoted admirer of the good
old times most dreads and hates.
It is long since we read, and long since we thought of, our author's
poetry. It would probably have gone out of date with the imme-
diate occasion, even if he himself had not contrived to banish it
from our recollection. It is not to be denied that it had great
merit, both of an obvious and intrinsic kind. It abounded in vivid
descriptions, in spirited action, in smooth and flowing versification.
But it wanted character. It was " poetry of no mark or likelihood."
It slid out of the mind as soon as read, like a river ; and would have
been forgotten, but that the public curiosity was fed with ever-new
supplies from the same teeming liquid source. It is not every man
436 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
that can write six quarto volumes in verse, that are caught up with
avidity, even by fastidious judges. But what a difference between
their popularity and that of the Scotch Novels ! It is true, the
public read and admired the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion,"
and so on, and each individual was contented to read and admire
because the public did so : but with regard to the prose-works of
the same (supposed) author, it is quite another-guess sort of thing.
Here every one stands forward to applaud on his own ground, would
be thought to go before the public opinion ; is eager to extol his
favourite characters louder, to understand them better, than every-
body else, and has his own scale of comparative excellence for each
work, supported by nothing but his own enthusiastic and fearless
convictions.
It must be amusing to the Author of "Waverley" to hear his
readers and admirers (and are not these the same thing ?) quarrel-
ling which of his novels is the best, opposing character to character,
quoting passage against passage, striving to surpass each other in
the extravagance of their encomiums, and yet unable to settle
the precedence, or to do the author's writings justice — so various,
so equal, so transcendent are their merits ! His volumes of poetry
were received as fashionable and well-dressed acquaintances: we
are ready to tear the others in pieces as old friends. There was
something meretricious in Sir Walter's ballad-rhymes; and like
those who keep opera figurantes, we were willing to have our
admiration shared and our taste confirmed by the town. But the
Novels are like the betrothed of our hearts, bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh, and we are jealous that any one should be as
much delighted or as thoroughly acquainted with their beauties
as ourselves. For which of his poetical heroines would the reader
break a lance so soon as for Jeanie Deans? What Lady of the
Lake can compare with the beautiful Rebecca? We believe the
late Mr. John Scott went to his death-bed (though a painful and
premature one) with some degree of satisfaction, inasmuch as he
had penned the most elaborate panegyric on the Scotch Novels
that had as yet appeared !
The Epics are not poems, so much as metrical romances. There
is a glittering veil of verse thrown over the features of nature and
of old romance. The deep incisions into character are " skinned
and filmed over;" the details are lost or shaped into flimsy and
insipid decorum ; and the truth of feeling and of circumstance is
translated into a tinkling sound, a tinsel commonplace. It must
be owned, there is a power in true poetry that lifts the mind from
the ground of reality to a higher sphere, that penetrates the inert,
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 437
scattered, incoherent materials presented to it, and by a force and
inspiration of its own, melts and moulds them into sublimity and
beauty. But Sir Walter (we contend, under correction) has not
this creative impulse, this plastic power, this capacity of reacting
on his first impressions. He is a learned, a literal, a matter-of-fact
expounder of truth or fable : he does not soar above and look down
upon his subject, imparting his own lofty views and feelings to his
descriptions of nature — he relies upon it, is raised by it, is one with
it, or he is nothing. A poet is essentially a maker ; that is, he must
atone for what he loses in individuality and local resemblance by
the energies and resources of his own mind.
The writer of whom we speak is deficient in these last. He has
either not the faculty or not the will to impregnate his subject
by an effort of pure invention. The execution also is much upon
a par with the more ephemeral effusions of the press. It is light,
agreeable, effeminate, diffuse. Sir Walter's Muse is a Modern
Antique. The smooth, glossy texture of his verse contrasts happily
with the quaint, uncouth, rugged materials of which it is com-
posed, and takes away any appearance of heaviness or harshness
from the body of local traditions and obsolete costume. We see
grim knights and iron armour ; but then they are woven in silk
with a careless, delicate hand, and have the softness of flowers.
The poet's figures might be compared to old tapestries copied on
the finest velvet: — they are not like Raphael's Cartoons; but they
are very like Mr. Westall's drawings which accompany, and are
intended to illustrate, them.
This facility and grace of execution is the more remarkable, as a
story goes, that not long before the appearance of the " Lay of the
Last Minstrel," Sir Walter (then Mr.) Scott, having, in the company
of a friend, to cross the Frith of Forth in a ferry-boat, they pro-
posed to beguile the time by writing a number of verses on a given
subject, and that, at the end of an hour's hard study, they found
they had produced only six lines between them. "It is plain,"
said the unconscious author to his fellow-labourer, " that you arid I
need never think of getting our living by writing poetry ! " In a
year or so after this he set to work, and poured out quarto upon
quarto, as if they had been drops of water. As to the rest, and
compared with true and great poets, our Scottish Minstrel is but " a
metre ballad-monger." We would rather have written one song of
Burns', or a single passage in Lord Byron's " Heaven and Earth," or
one of Wordsworth's " fancies and good-nights," than all his epics.
What is he to Spenser, over whose immortal, ever-amiable verse
beauty hovers and trembles, and who has shed the purple light of
438 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Fancy from his ambrosial wings over all nature ? What is there of
the might of Milton, whose head is canopied in the blue serene, and
who takes us to sit with him there ? What is there in his ambling
rhymes of the deep pathos of Chaucer ? Or of the o'er-informing
power of Shakspeare, whose eye, watching alike the minutest traces
of character and the strongest movements of passion, " glances from
heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," and with the lambent flame
of genius, playing round each object, lights up the universe in a robe
of its own radiance ? Sir Walter has no voluntary power of combina-
tion : all his associations (as we said before) are those of habit or of
tradition. He is a mere narrative and descriptive poet, garrulous
of the old time. The definition of his poetry is a pleasing super-
ficiality.
Not so of his NOVELS AND ROMANCES. There we turn over a new
leaf — another and the same — the same in matter, but in form, in
power, how different ! The Author of " Waverley " has got rid of
the tagging of rhymes, the eking out of syllables, the supplying of
epithets, the colours of style, the grouping of his characters, and the
regular march of events, and comes to the point at once, and strikes
at the heart of his subject, without dismay and without disguise.
His poetry was a lady's waiting-maid, dressed out in cast-off finery :
his prose is a beautiful, rustic nymph, that, like Dorothea in " Don
Quixote," when she is surprised with dishevelled tresses bathing her
naked feet in the brook, looks round her, abashed at the admiration
her charms have excited ! The grand secret of the author's success
in these latter productions is, that he has completely got rid of the
trammels of authorship, and torn off at one rent (as Jack got rid of
so many yards of lace in the " Tale of a Tub ") all the ornaments of
fine writing and worn-out sentimentality.
All is fresh, as from the hand of nature : by going a century or
two back and laying the scene in a remote and uncultivated dis-
trict, all becomes new and startling in the present advanced period.
Highland manners, characters, scenery, superstitions : Northern
dialect and costume : the wars, the religion, and politics of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, give a charming and wholesome
relief to the fastidious refinement and " over-laboured lassitude " of
modern readers, like the effect of plunging a nervous valetudinarian
into a cold bath. . . .
Sir Walter has found out (oh rare discovery !) that facts are better
than fiction, that there is no romance like the romance of real life,
and that, if we can but arrive at what men feel, do, and say in strik-
ing and singular situations, the result will be more lively, audible,
and full of vent " than the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain. With
SIR WALTER SCOTT. 439
reverence be it spoken, he is like the man who, having to imitate the
squeaking of a pig upon the stage, brought the animal under his coat
with him. Our author has conjured up the actual people he has to
deal with, or as much as he could get of them, in " their habits as
they lived." He has ransacked old chronicles, and poured the con-
tents upon his page ; he has squeezed out musty records ; he has
consulted wayfaring pilgrims, bed-rid sybils. He has invoked the
spirits of the air ; he has conversed with the living and the dead,
and let them tell their story their own way ; and by borrowing of
others has enriched his own genius with everlasting variety, truth,
and freedom. He has taken his materials from the original, authen-
tic sources in large concrete masses, and not tampered with or too
much frittered them away.
He is only the amanuensis of truth and history. It is impossible
to say how fine his writings in consequence are, unless we could
describe how fine nature is. All that portion of the history of his
country that he has touched upon (wide as the scope is) — the
manners, the personages, the events, the scenery — lives over again
in his volumes. Nothing is wanting — the illusion is complete. There
is a hurtling in the air, a trampling of feet upon the ground, as these
perfect representations of human character or fanciful belief come
thronging back upon our imaginations. We will merely recall a few
of the subjects of his pencil to the reader's recollection, for nothing
we could add, by way of note or commendation, could make the im-
pression more vivid.
There is (first and foremost, because the earliest of our acquaint-
ance) the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical,
pedantic ; and Flora Maclvor (whom even we forgive for her Jaco-
bitism), the fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death,
and Davie Gellatly roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with rest-
less volubility, and the two stag-hounds that met Waverley, as fine
as ever Titian painted, or Paul Veronese. Then there is old Balfour
of Burley, brandishing his sword and his Bible, with fire-eyed fury,
trying a fall with the insolent, gigantic Bothwell at the 'Change-
house, and vanquishing him at the noble battle of Loudon Hill;
there is Bothwell himself, drawn to the life : proud, cruel, selfish,
profligate, but with the love-letters of the gentle Agnes (written
thirty years before) and his verses to her memory found in his pocket
after his death. In the same volume of " Old Mortality " is that
lone figure, like a figure in Scripture, of the woman sitting on the
stone at the turning to the mountain, to warn Burley that there
is a lion in his path ; and the fawning Claverhouse, beautiful as a
panther, smooth-looking, blood-spotted ; and the fanatics, Macbriar
440 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and Mucklewrath, crazed with zeal and sufferings ; and the inflexible
Morton and the faithful Edith, who refused to " give her hand to
another while her heart was with her lover in the deep and dead
sea."
And in the " Heart of Mid- Lothian " we have Effie Deans (that
sweet, faded flower), and Jeanie, her more than sister, and old David
Deans, the patriarch of St. Leonard's Crags, and Butler, and Dum-
biedykes, eloquent in his silence, and Mr. Bartoline Saddletree and
his prudent helpmate, and Porteous swinging in the wind, and Madge
Wildfire, full of finery and madness, and her ghastly mother. Again,
there is Meg Merrilies, standing on her rock, stretched on her bier
with " her head to the east," and Dirk Hatterick (equal to Shak-
speare's Master Barnardine), and Glossin, the soul of an attorney,
and Dandy Dinmont, with his terrier-pack and his pony Dumple,
and the fiery Colonel Mannering, and the modish old counsellor
Pleydell, and Dominie Sampson, and Rob Boy (like the eagle in his
eyry), and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and the inimitable Major Galbraith,
and Bashleigh Osbaldistone, and Die Vernon, the best of secret-
keepers. And in the " Antiquary," the ingenious and abstruse Mr.
Jonathan Oldbuck, and the old beadsman Edie Ochiltree, and that
preternatural figure of old Edith Elspeith, a living shadow, in whom
the lamp of life had been long extinguished, had it not been fed by
remorse and " thick-coming " recollections ; and that striking picture
of the effects of feudal tyranny and fiendish pride, the unhappy Earl
of Glenallan ; and the Black Dwarf and his friend Habbie of the
Heughfoot (the cheerful hunter), and his cousin Grace Armstrong,
fresh and laughing like the morning; and the Children of the
Mist, and the baying of the bloodhound that tracks their steps at
a distance (the hollow echoes are in our ears now), and Amy and
her hapless love, and the villain Varney, and the deep voice of
George of Douglas — and the immovable Balafre, and Master Oliver
the Barber, in " Quentin Durward " — and the quaint humour of the
" Fortunes of Nigel," and the comic spirit of " Peveril of the Peak "
— and the fine old English romance of " Ivanhoe."
What a list of names ! What a host of associations ! What a
thing is human life! What a power is that of genius! What a
world of thought and feeling is thus rescued from oblivion ! How
many hours of heartfelt satisfaction has our author given to the gay
and thoughtless ! How many sad hearts has he soothed in pain and
solitude ! It is no wonder that the public repay with lengthened
applause and gratitude the pleasure they receive. He writes as fast
as they can read, and he does not write himself down. He is always
in the public eye, and we do not tire of him. His worst is better
LORD BYRON. 441
than any other person's best. His backgrounds (and his later works
are little else but backgrounds capitally made out) are more at-
tractive than the principal figures and most complicated actions of
other writers. His works (taken together) are almost like a new
edition of human nature. This is indeed to be an author ! .
LORD BYRON.
... IF Sir Walter Scott may be thought by some to have been
" Born universal heir to all humanity,"
it is plain Lord Byron can set up no such pretension. He is, in
a striking degree, the creature of his own will. He holds no com-
munion with his kind, but stands alone without mate or fellow —
" As if a man were author of himself,
And owned no other kin."
He is like a solitary peak, all access to which is cut off not more by
elevation than distance. He is seated on a lofty eminence, " cloud-
ca'pt," or reflecting the last rays of setting suns, and in his poetical
moods reminds us of the fabled Titans^ retired to a ridgy steep,
playing on their Pan's-pipes, and taking up ordinary men and things
in their hands with haughty indifference. He raises his subject to
himself, or tramples onjt; he neither stoops to nor loses himself in
it. He exists not by sympathy, but by antipathy. Me scorns"''all
_tliings, even himself. Nature must come to him to sit for hef~
picture: he does not go to her. She must consult his tune, his
convenience, and his humour, and wear a sombre or a fantastic
garb, or his Lordship turns his back upon her. There is no ease,
no unaffected simplicity of manner, no "golden mean." All is
strained, or petulant in the extreme. His thoughts are sphered and
crystalline ; his style " prouder than when blue Iris bends ; " his
spirit fiery, impatient, wayward, indefatigable. Instead of taking
Ids impressions from without, in fiptira n.nfl plmnst, i|pimp
"masses, he moulds them according +.r> h™ own tftTTirftraTrifintf
heats the materials ot nis imagination in the furnace of his passions.
Lord Byron's verse glows like a flame, consuming everything irj jt,a
way; Sir Walter Scott's glides like a river: clear, gentle, harmless.
The poetry of the first scorches, that of the last scarcely warms.
The light of the one proceeds from an internal source, ensanguined,
442 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
sullen, fixed ; the other reflects the hues of heaven or the face of
nature, glancing, vivid, and various.
The productions of the Northern Bard have the rust and the
freshness of antiquity about them ; those of the Noble Poet cease
to startle from their extreme ambition of novelty, both in style and
matter. Sir Walter's rhymes are " silly sooth " —
" And dally with the innocence of thought,
Like the old age " —
his Lordship's Muse spurns the olden time, and affects all the
supercilious airs of a modern fine lady and an upstart. The
object of the one writer is to restore us to truth and nature : the
other chiefly thinks how he shall display his own power, or vent
his spleen, or astonish the reader either by starting new subjects
and trains of speculation, or jjy_ expressing old ones in a more strik-
ing and emphatic manner than they have been expressed before.
He_cares little what it is he says, so that he can say it differently
from others. This may account for the charges of plagiarism which
have been repeatedly brought against the Noble Poet. If he can
borrow an image or sentiment from another, and heighten it by
an epithet or an illusion of greater force and beauty than is to be
found in the original passage, he thinks he shows his superiority
of execution in this in a more marked manner than if the first
suggestion had been his own. It is not the value of the observa-
tion itself he is solicitous about ; but he wishes to shine by contrast
— even nature only serves as a foil to set off his style. He therefore
takes the thoughts of others (whether contemporaries or not) out
of their mouths, and is content to make them his own, to set his
stamp upon them, by imparting to them a more meretricious gloss,
a higher relief, a greater loftiness of tone, and a characteristic in-
veteracy of purpose.
Even in those collateral ornaments of modern style, slovenliness,
abruptness, and eccentricity (as well as in terseness and significance),
Lord Byron, when he pleases, defies competition and surpasses all
his contemporaries. Whatever he does, he must do in a more
decided and daring manner than any one else; he lounges with
extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader! Self-will,
passion, the love of singularity, a disdain of himself arid of others
(with a conscious sense that this is among the ways and means of
procuring admiration) are the proper categories of his mind : he is
a lordly writer, is above his own reputation, and condescends to the
Muses with a scornful grace !
LORD BYRON. 443
Lord Byron, who in his politics is a Liberal, in his genius is haughty
and aristocratic : Walter Scott, who is an aristocrat in principle, is
popular in his writings, and is (as it were) equally servile to nature
and to opinion. The genius of Sir Walter is essentially imitative,
or " denotes a foregone conclusion : " that of Lord Byron is self-
dependent, or at least requires no aid, is governed by no law but
the impulses of its own will. We confess, however much we may
admire independence of feeling and erectness of spirit in general
or practical questions, yet in works of genius we prefer him who
bows to the authority of nature, who appeals to actual objects,
to mouldering superstitions, to history, observation, and tradition,
before him who only consults the pragmatical and restless workings
of his own breast, and gives them out as oracles to the world.
We like a writer (whether poet or prose-writer) who takes in
(or is willing to take in) the range of half the universe in feeling,
character, description, much better than we do one who obsti-
nately and invariably shuts himself up in the Bastille of his own
ruling passions. In short, we had rather be Sir Walter Scott
(meaning thereby the author of "Waverley") than Lord Byron
a hundred times over, and for the reason just given, namely, that
he casts his descriptions in the mould of nature, ever varying,
never tiresome, always interesting and always instructive, instead
of casting them constantly in the mould of his own individual
impressions.
He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in almost every variety of
situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron makes man after his own
image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant,
tho^other a yielding slave ; he gives us the misanthrope and the
voluptuary by turns ; and with these two characters, burning or
melting in their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos of him-
self. He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all outward
things, sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys ciarK niglrb,
bright day, the glitter and the gloom "in cell monastic.." We see
the mournful pall, the crucifix, the death's-heads, the faded chaplet
of flowers, the gleaming tapers, the agonised brow of genius, the
wasted form of beauty ; but we are still imprisoned in a dungeon ;
a curtain intercepts our view ; we do not breathe freely the air of
nature or of our own thoughts^ The other admired author draws
aside the curtain, and thefvell of egotism^is rent ; and he shows us
the crowd of living men and women, the endless groups, the land-
scape background, the cloud and the rainbow, and enriches our
imaginations and relieves one passion by another, and expands and
lightens reflection, and takes away that tightness at the breast which
444 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
arises from thinking or wishing to think that there is nothing in the
world out of a man's self !
In this point of view, the Author of " Waverley " is one of the
greatest teachers of morality that ever lived, by emancipating the
mind from petty, narrow, and bigoted prejudices : Lord Byron is the
greatest pamperer of those prejudices, by seeming to think there is
nothing else worth encouraging but the seeds or the full luxuriant
growth of dogmatism and self-conceit. In reading the Scotch Novels,
we never think about the author, except from a feeling of curiosity
respecting our unknown benefactor : in reading Lord Byron's works,
he himself is never absent from our minds. The colouring of Lord
Byron's style, however rich and dipped in Tyrian dyes, is neverthe-
less opaque, is in itself an object of delight and wonder : Sir Walter
Scott's is perfectly transparent. In studying the one, you seem to
gaze at the figures cut in stained glass, which exclude the view
beyond, and where the pure light of heaven is only a means of
setting off the gorgeousness of art : in reading the other, you look
through a noble window at the clear and varied landscape without.
Or to sum up the distinction in one word, Sir Walter Scott is the
most dramatic writer now living, and Lord Byron is the least so.
It would be difficult to imagine that the Author of " Waverley " is
in the smallest degree a pedant, as it would be hard to persuade our-
selves that the Author of " Childe Harold " and " Don Juan " is not a
coxcomb, though a provoking and sublime one. In this decided prefer-
ence given to Sir Walter Scott over Lord Byron, we distinctly include
the prose-works of the former ; for we do not think his poetry alone
by any means entitles him to that precedence. Sir Walter in his
poetry, though pleasing and natural, is a comparative trifler : it is
in his anonymous productions that he has shown himself for what
he is.
Intensity is the great and prominent distinction of Lord Byron's
writings. He seldom gets beyond force of style, nor has he produced
any regular work or masterly whole. He does not prepare any plan
beforehand, nor revise and retouch what he has written with polished
accuracy. His only object seems to be to stimulate himself and his
readers for the moment — to keep both alive, to drive away ennui, to
substitute a feverish and irritable state of excitement for listless
indolence or even calm enjoyment. For this purpose he pitches on
any subject at random without much thought or delicacy. He is
only impatient to begin, and takes care to adorn and enrich it as he
proceeds with " thoughts that breathe . and words that burn." He
composes (as he himself has said) whether he is in the bath, in his
study, or on horseback ; he writes as habitually as others talk or
LORD BYRON. 445
think ; and whether we have the inspiration of the Muse or not, we
always find the spirit of the man of genius breathing from his verse.
He grapples with his subject, and moves, penetrates, and animates it
by the electric force of his own feelings. He is often monotonous,
extravagant, offensive ; but he is never dull or tedious, but when he
writes prose.
Lord Byron does not exhibit a new view of nature, or raise insig-
nificant objects into importance by the romantic associations with
which he surrounds them, but generally (at least) takes common-
place thoughts and events, and endeavours to express them in
stronger and statelier language than others. His poetry stands
like a Martello-tower by the side of his subject. He does not, like
Mr. Wordsworth, lift poetry from the ground, or create a sentiment
out of nothing. He does not describe a daisy or a periwinkle, but
the cedar or the cypress : not " poor men's cottages, but princes'
palaces." His " Childe Harold " contains a lofty and impassioned
review of the great events of history, of the mighty objects left as
wrecks of time; but he dwells chiefly on what is familiar to the
mind of every schoolboy, has brought out few new traits of feeling
or thought, and has done no more than justice to the reader's pre-
conceptions by the sustained force and brilliancy of his style and
imagery.
Lord Byron's earlier productions, " Lara," the " Corsair," &c., were
wild and gloomy romances, put into rapid and shining verse. They
discover the madness of poetry, together with the inspiration:
sullen, moody, capricious, fierce, inexorable: gloating on beauty,
thirsting for revenge : hurrying from the extremes of pleasure to
pain, but with nothing permanent, nothing healthy or natural.
The gaudy decorations and the morbid sentiments remind one of
flowers strewed over the face of death ! In his " Childe Harold ''
(as has been just observed) he assumes a lofty and philosophic tone,
and "reasons high of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate."
He takes the highest points in the history of the world, and com-
ments on them from a more commanding eminence. He shows us
the crumbling monuments of time ; he invokes the great names, the
mighty spirit of antiquity. The universe is changed into a stately
mausoleum : in solemn measures he chaunts a hymn to fame. Lord
Byron has strength and elevation enough to fill up the moulds of
our classical and time-hallowed recollections, and to rekindle the
earliest aspirations of the mind after greatness and true glory with
a pen of fire. The names of Tasso, of Ariosto, of Dante, of Cincin-
natus, of Csesar, of Scipio, lose nothing of their pomp or their lustre
in his hands, and when he begins and continues a strain of panegyric
446 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
on such subjects, we indeed sit down with him to a banquet of rich
praise, brooding over imperishable glories,
" Till Contemplation has her fill."
Lord Byron seems to cast himself indignantly from " this bank
and shoal of time," or the frail tottering bark that bears up modern
reputation, into the huge sea of ancient renown, and to revel there
with untired, outspread plume. Even this in him is spleen ; his
contempt of his contemporaries makes him turn back to the lustrous
past, or project himself forward to the dim future ! Lord Byron's
tragedies, " Faliero," " Sardanapalus," &c., are not equal to his other
works. They want the essence of the drama. They abound in
speeches and descriptions, such as he himself might make either to
himself or others, lolling on his couch of a morning, but do not
carry the reader out of the poet's mind to the scenes and events
recorded. They have neither action, character, nor interest, but are
a sort of gossamer tragedies, spun out and glittering, and spreading
a flimsy veil over the face of nature. Yet he spins them on. Of all
that he has done in this way, the " Heaven and Earth " (the same
subject as Mr. Moore's " Loves of the Angels ") is the best. We
prefer it even to " Manfred. " Manfred " is merely himself with a
fancy-drapery on. But, in the dramatic fragment published in the
Liberal, the space between heaven and earth, the stage on which
his characters have to pass to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's
imagination ; and the " Deluge," which he has so finely described,
may be said to have drowned all his own idle humours.
We must say we think little of our author's turn for satire. His
" English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " is dogmatical and insolent,
but without refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries
to transfix a character with an epithet, which does not stick, because
it has no other foundation than his own petulance and spite ; or he
endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of external
situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, that " it is his
aversion." That may be : but whose fault is it ? This is the
satire of a lord, who is accustomed to have all his whims or dislikes
taken for gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to do more than
signify his contempt or displeasure. If a great man meets with a
rebuff which he does not like, he turns on his heel, and this passes
for a repartee. The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister and
critic, that he was " born in a garret sixteen stories high." The in-
sinuation is not true, or, if it were, it is low. The allusion degrades
the person who makes it, not him to whom it is applied. This is
also the satire of a person of birth and quality, who measures all
LORD BYRON. 447
merit by external rank, that is, by his own standard. So his Lord-
ship in a " Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review," ad-
dresses him fifty times as " my dear Robarts; " nor is there any other
wit in the article. This is surely a mere assumption of superiority
from his Lordship's rank, and is the sort of quizzing he might use to
a person who came to hire himself as a valet to him at Long's. The
waiters might laugh ; the public will not. In like manner, in the
controversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the back with a
coarse facetious familiarity, as if he were his chaplain whom he had
invited to dine with him, or was about to present to a benefice.
The reverend divine might submit to the obligation ; but he has no
occasion to subscribe to the jest. If it is a jest that Mr. Bowles
should be a parson and Lord Byron a peer, the world knew this
before ; there was no need to write a pamphlet to prove it.
The " Don Juan " indeed has great power ; but its power is owing i
to the force of the serious writing, and to the contrast between that II
and the flashy passages with which it is interlarded. From the II
sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step. You laugh and "I
are surprised that any one should turn round and travestie himself :
the drollery is in the utter discontinuity of ideas and feelings. He
makes virtue serve as a foil to vice ; dandyism is (for want of any
other) a variety of genius. A classical intoxication is followed by
the splashing of soda-water, by frothy effusions of ordinary bile.
After the lightning and the hurricane, we are introduced to the
interior of the cabin and the contents of the wash-hand basins.
The solemn hero of tragedy plays Scrub in the farce. This is " very
tolerable and not to be endured."
The noble Lord is almost the only writer who has prostituted
his talents in this way. J3e hallows in order to desecrate, takes a
pleasure in defacing the irnngfta of beauty his hands have wrought.
arid raises our hopes and our belief in goodness to heaven only to
3ashjEem to the earth again, and break them in
effecTuallv from the very height they have fallen. Our enthusiasm
for genius or virtue is thus turned into a jest by the very person
who has kindled it, and who thus fatally quenches the spark of both.
It is not that Lord Byron is sometimes serious and sometimes
trifling, sometimes profligate and sometimes moral, but when he is
most serious and most moral, he is only preparing to mortify the
unsuspecting reader by putting a pitiful hoax upon him. This is a
most unaccountable anomaly. It is as if the eagle were to build its
eyry in a common sewer, or the owl were seen soaring to the mid-
day sun. Such a sight might make one laugh, but one would not
wish or expect it to occur more than once !
2 K
448 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
In fact, Lord Byron is the spoiled child of fame as well as fortune.
He has taken a surfeit of popularity, and is not contented to delight,
unless he can shock, the public. He would force them to admire in
spite of decency and common-sense ; he would have them read what
they would read in no one but himself, or he would not give a rush
for their applause. He is to be " a chartered libertine," from whom
insults are favours, whose contempt is to be a new incentive to
admiration. His Lordship is hard to please : he is equally averse to
notice or neglect, enraged at censure and scorning praise. He tries
the patience of the town to the very utmost, and when they show
signs of weariness or disgust, threatens to discard them. He says
he will write on, whether he is read or not. He would never write
another page, if it were not to court popular applause, or to affect
a superiority over it. In this respect also Lord Byron presents a
striking contrast to Sir Walter Scott. The latter takes what part
of the public favour falls to his share, without grumbling (to be
sure, he has no reason to complain) ; the former is always quarrelling
with the world about his modicum of applause, the spolia opima of
vanity, and ungraciously throwing the offerings of incense heaped on
his shrine back in the faces of his admirers.
Again, there is no taint in the writings of the Author of
" Waverley ; " all is fair and natural and above-board ; he never out-
rages the public mind. He introduces no anomalous character,
broaches no staggering opinion. If he goes back to old prejudices
and superstitions as a relief to the modern reader, while Lord Byron
floats on swelling paradoxes —
" Like proud seas under him ;"
if the one defers too much to the spirit of antiquity, the other
panders to the spirit of the age, goes to the very edge of extreme
and licentious speculation, and breaks his neck over it. Grossness
and levity are the playthings of his pen. It is a ludicrous circum-
stance that he should have dedicated his " Cain " to the worthy
Baronet! Did the latter ever acknowledge the obligation? We
are not nice, not very nice ; but we do not particularly approve those
subjects that shine chiefly from their rottenness : nor do we wish to
see the Muses dressed out in the flounces of a false or questionable
philosophy, like Portia and Nerissa in the garb of Doctors of Law.
We like metaphysics as well as Lord Byron ; but not to see them
making flowery speeches, nor dancing a measure in the fetters of
verse. We have as good as hinted that his Lordship's poetry con-
sists mostly of a tissue of superb commonplaces ; even his paradoxes
are commonplace. They are familiar in the schools : they are only
LORD BYRON. 449
new and striking in his dramas and stanzas by being out of place.
In a word, we think that poetry moves best within the circle of
nature and received opinion : speculative theory and subtle casuistry
are forbidden ground to it.
But Lord Byron often wanders into this ground wantonly, wil-
fully, and unwarrantably. The only apology we can conceive for
the spirit of some of Lord Byron's writings, is the spirit of some of
those opposed to him. They would provoke a man to write any-
thing. "Farthest from them is best." The extravagance and
license of the one seems a proper antidote to the bigotry and
narrowness of the other. The first "Vision of Judgment" was a
set-off to the second, though
" None but itself could be its parallel."
Perhaps the chief cause of most of Lord Byron's errors is, that
he is that anomaly in letters and in society, a Noble Poet. It is a
double privilege, almost too much for humanity. He has all the
pride of birth and genius. The strength of his imagination leads
him to indulge in fantastic opinions ; the elevation of his rank sets
censure at defiance. He becomes a pampered egotist. He has a
seat in the House of Lords, a niche in the Temple of Fame. Every-
day mortals, opinions, things, are not good enough for him to touch
or think of. A mere nobleman is, in his estimation, but " the tenth
transmitter of a foolish face : " a mere man of genius is no better
than a worm. His Muse is also a lady of quality. The people are
not polite enough for him ; the Court is not sufficiently intellectual.
He hates the one and despises the other. By hating and despising
others, he does not learn to be satisfied with himself. A fastidious
man soon grows querulous and splenetic. If there is nobody but
ourselves to come up to our idea of fancied perfection, we easily get
tired of our idol.
When a man is tired of what he is, by a natural perversity he sets
up for what he is not. If he is a poet, he pretends to be a meta-
physician : if he is a patrician in rank and f eeling, he would fain be
one of the people. His ruling motive is not the love of the people,
but of distinction : not of truth, but of singularity. He patronises
men of letters out of vanity, and deserts them from caprice or from
the advice of friends. He embarks in an obnoxious publication to
provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal.
We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility: we like Lord
Byron's preposterous liberalism little better. He may affect the
principles of equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon
occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of service to tho
450 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
Greeks — money and horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, wait-
ing the event !
We had written thus far when news came of the death of Lord
Byron, and put an end at once to a strain of somewhat peevish
invective, which was intended to meet his eye, not to insult his
memory. Had we known that we were writing his epitaph, we must
have done it with a different feeling. As it is, we think it better
and more like himself, to let what we had written stand, than to
take up our leaden shafts, and try to melt them into " tears of sen-
sibility," or mould them into dull praise and an affected show of
candour. We were not silent during the author's lifetime, either
for his reproof or encouragement (such as we could give, and he did
not disdain to accept), nor can we now turn undertakers' men to fix
the glittering plate upon his coffin, or fall into the procession of
popular woe. Death cancels everything but truth, and strips a man
of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canon-
isation. It makes the meanest of us sacred ; it instals the poet
in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the great
assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the drossy par-
ticles fall off — the irritable, the personal, the gross — and mingle with
the dust ; the finer and more ethereal part mounts with the winged
spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from
insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish
the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.
Nothing could show the real superiority of genius in a more strik-
ing point of view than the idle contests and the public indifference
about the place of Lord Byron's interment, whether in Westminster
Abbey or his own family vault. A king must have a coronation — a
nobleman a funeral-procession. The man is nothing without the
pageant. The poet's cemetery is the human mind, in which he sows
the seeds of never-ending thought — his monument is to be found in
his works :
" Nothing can cover his high fame but Heaven ;
No pyramids set off his memory,
But the eternal substance of his greatness."
Lord Byron is dead : he also died a martyr to his zeal in the cause
of freedom, for the last, best hopes of man. Let that be his excuse
and his epitaph !
WORDSWORTH. 451
WORDSWORTH.
MR. WORDSWORTH'S genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of
the Age. Had he lived in any other period of the world, he would
never have been heard of. As it is, he has some difficulty to con-
tend with the hebetude of his intellect and the meanness of his
subject. With him " lowliness is young ambition's ladder : " but
he finds it a toil to climb in this way the steep of Fame. His
homely Muse can hardly raise her wing from the ground, nor
spread her hidden glories to the sun. He has "no figures nor no
fantasies, which busy passion draws in the brains of men : " neither
the gorgeous machinery of mythologic lore nor the splendid colours
of poetic diction. His style is vernacular: he delivers household
truths. He sees nothing loftier than human hopes, nothing deeper
than the human heart. This he probes, this he tampers with, this
he poises, with all its incalculable weight of thought and feeling,
in his hands, and at the same time calms the throbbing pulses of
his own heart by keeping his eye ever fixed on the face of nature.
If he can make the life-blood flow from the wounded breast, this
is the living colouring with which he paints his verse: if he can
assuage the pain or close up the wound with the balm of solitary
musing, or the healing power of plants and herbs and "skyey
influences," this is the sole triumph of his art. He takes the
simplest elements of nature and of the human mind, the mere
abstract conditions inseparable from our being, and tries fro nnm^
pound a new system or poetry from them ; and [he] has perhaps
succeeded as well as any one could. " Nihil humani a me alienum
puto " is the motto of his works. He thinks nothing low or indif-
ferent of which this can be affirmed : everything that professes to
be more than this, that is not an absolute essence of truth and
feeling, he holds to be vitiated, false, and spurious. In a word, his'
poetry is founded on setting up an opposition (and pushing it to
the utmost length) between the natural and the artificial, between
the spirit of humanity and the spirit of fashion and of the world.
It is one of the innovations of the time. It partakes of, and is
carried along with, the revolutionary movement of our age : the
political changes of the day were the model on which he formed
and conducted his poetical experiments. His Muse (it cannot be
denied, and without this we cannot explain its character at all)
is a levelling one. It proceeds on a principle of equality, anrL «t.ri^3
,to"fecluce all things to the same standard. It is distinguished by
a_p_rojid_luiBHlity. It relies upon its own resources, and disdains
452 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
external show and relief. It takes the commonest events and
objects, as a test to prove that nature is always interesting from
its inherent truth and beauty, without any of the ornaments of
dress or pomp of circumstances to set it off. Hence the unaccount-
able mixture of seeming simplicity and real abstruseness in the
" Lyrical Ballads." Fools have laughed at, wise men scarcely under-
stand, them. He takes a subject or a story merely as pegs or loops to
hang thought and feeling on ; the incidents are trifling, in proportion
to his contempt for imposing appearances ; the reflections are pro-
found, according to the gravity and aspiring pretensions of his
mind.
His popular, inartificial style gets rid (at a blow) of all the trap-
pings of verse, of all the high places of poetry: "the cloud-capt
towers, the solemn temples, the gorgeous palaces," are swept to the
ground, and " like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck
j behind." All the traditions of learning, all the superstitions of age,
I are obliterated and effaced. We begin de novo on a tabula rasa of
I poetry. The purple pall, the nodding plume of tragedy, are exploded
as mere pantomime and trick, to return to the simplicity of truth
and nature. Kings, queens, priests, nobles, the altar and the throne,
the distinctions of rank, birth, wealth, power, " the judge's robe, the
marshal's truncheon, the ceremony that to great ones 'longs," are
not to be found here. The author tramples on the pride of art with
greater pride. The Ode and Epode, the Strophe and the Antistrophe,
he laughs to scorn. The harp of Homer, the trump of Pindar and
of Alcseus, are still. The decencies of costume, the decorations of
vanity, are stripped off without mercy as barbarous, idle, and Gothic.
The jewels in the crisped hair, the diadem on the polished brow, are
thought meretricious, theatrical, vulgar ; and nothing contents his
fastidious taste beyond a simple garland of flowers. Neither does
he avail himself of the advantages which nature or accident holds
out to him. He chooses to have his subject a foil to his invention,
to owe nothing but to himself.
He gathers manna in the wilderness ; he strikes the barren rock
for the gushing moisture. He elevates the mean by the strength of
his own aspirations, he clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur
from the stores of his own recollections. No cypress grove loads
his verse with funeral pomp: but his imagination lends "a sense
of joy"
" To tbe bare trees and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field."
No storm, no shipwreck, startles us by its horrors : but the rainbow
WORDSWORTH. 453
lifts its head in the cloud, and the breeze sighs through the withered
fern. No sad vicissitude of fate, no overwhelming catastrophe in
nature, deforms his page : but the dewdrop glitters on the bending
flower, the tear collects in the glistening eye.
" Beneath the hills, along the flowery vales,
The generations are prepared ; the pangs,
The internal pangs are ready ; the dread strife
Of poor humanity's affiicted will,
Struggling in Tain with ruthless destiny."
As the lark ascends from its low bed on fluttering wing, and salutes
the morning skies, so Mr. Wordsworth's unpretending Muse in russet
guise scales the summits of reflection, while it makes the round earth
its footstool and its home !
Possibly a good deal of this may be regarded as the effect of dis-
appointed views and an inverted ambition. Prevented by native
pride and indolence from climbing the ascent of learning or great-
ness, taught by political opinions to say to the vain pomp and glory
of the world, " I hate ye," seeing the path of classical and artificial
poetry blocked up by the cumbrous ornaments of style and turgid
commonplaces, so that nothing more could be achieved in that direc-
tion but by the most ridiculous bombast or the tamest servility, he
has turned back, partly from the bias of his mind, partly perhaps
from a judicious policy — has struck into the sequestered vale of hum-
ble life, sought out the Muse among sheep-cotes and hamlets, and
the peasant's mountain-haunts, has discarded all the tinsel pageantry
of verse, and endeavoured (not in vain) to aggrandise the trivial,
and add the charm of novelty to the familiar. No one has shown
the same imagination in raising trifles into importance : no one has
displayed the same pathos in treating of the simplest feelings of the
heart. Reserved, yet haughty, having no unruly or violent passions
(or those passions having been early suppressed), Mr. Wordsworth
has passed his life in solitary musing or in daily converse with the
face of nature. He exemplifies in an eminent degree the association;
for his poetry has no other source or character. He has dwelt among
pastoral scenes, till each object has become connected with a thou- V
sand feelings, a link in the chain of thought, a fibre of his own heart. I
Every one is by habit and familiarity strongly attached to the place I
of his birth, or to objects that recall the most pleasing and eventful ^
circumstances of his life.
But to the author of the " Lyrical Ballads " nature is a kind of
home; and he may be said to take a personal interest in the
universe. There is no image so insignificant that it has not in
454 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
some mood or other found the way into his heart : no sound that
does not awaken the memory of other years —
" To him the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
The daisy looks up to him with sparkling eye as an old acquaintance :
the cuckoo haunts him with sounds of early youth not to be ex-
pressed: a linnet's nest startles him with boyish delight: an old
withered thorn is weighed down with a heap of recollections: a
grey cloak, seen on some wild moor, torn by the wind or drenched
in the rain, afterwards becomes an object of imagination to him :
even the lichens on the rock have a life and being in his thoughts.
He has described all these objects in a way and with an intensity
of feeling that no one else had done before him, and has given a
new view or aspect of nature. He is in this sense the most original
poet now living, and the one whose writings could the least be
spared : for they have no substitute elsewhere. The vulgar do not
read them ; the learned, who see all things through books, do not
understand them ; the great despise. The fashionable may ridicule
them : but the author has created himself an interest in the heart
of the retired and lonely student of nature, which can never die.
Persons of this class will still continue to feel what he has felt :
he has expressed what they might in vain wish to express, except
with glistening eye and faltering tongue ! There is a lofty philo-
sophic tone, a thoughtful humanity, infused into his pastoral vein.
Remote from the passions arid events of the great world, he has
communicated interest and dignity to the primal movements of
the heart of man, and ingrafted his own conscious reflections on
the casual thoughts of hinds and shepherds. Nursed amidst the
grandeur of mountain scenery, he has stooped to have a nearer
view of the daisy under his feet, or plucked a branch of white-thorn
from the spray : but, in describing it, his mind seems imbued with
the majesty and solemnity of the objects around him. The tall
rock lifts its head in the erectness of his spirit ; the cataract roars
in the sound of his verse ; and in its dim and mysterious meaning
the mists seem to gather in the hollows of Helvellyn, and the
forked Skiddaw hovers in the distance. There is little mention
of mountainous scenery in Mr. Wordsworth's poetry; but by in-
ternal evidence one might be almost sure that it was written in
a mountainous country, from its bareness, its simplicity, its loftiness
and its depth !
His later philosophic productions have a somewhat different
character. They are a departure from, a dereliction of, his first
WORDSWORTH. 455
principles. They are classical and courtly. They are polished in
style without being gaudy, dignified in subject without affectation.
They seem to have been composed, not in a cottage at Grasmere,
but among the half-inspired groves and stately recollections of
Cole-Orton. We might allude in particular, for examples of what
we mean, to the lines on a Picture by Claude Lorraine and
to the exquisite poem entitled " Laodamia." The last of these
breathes the pure spirit of the finest fragments of antiquity — the
sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the languor
of death —
" Calm contemplation and majestic pains."
Its glossy brilliancy arises from the perfection of the finishing, like
that of a careful sculpture, not from gaudy colouring. The texture
of the thoughts has the smoothness and solidity of marble. It is
a poem that might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of
departed heroes and sages would gather round to listen to it !
Mr. Wordsworth's philosophic poetry, with a less glowing aspect1^
and less tumult in the veins than Lord Byron's on similar occasions,
bends a calmer and keener eye on mortality ; the impression, if less
vivid, is more pleasing and permanent ; and we confess it (perhaps
it is a want of taste and proper feeling) that there are lines and
poems of our author's that we think of ten times for once that we
recur to any of Lord Byron's. Or if there are any of the latter's
writings that we can dwell upon in the same way, that is, as lasting
and heart-felt sentiments, it is when, laying aside his usual pomp
and pretension, he descends with Mr. Wordsworth to the common
ground of a disinterested humanity. It may be considered as
characteristic of our poet's writings, that they either make no
impression on the mind at all, seem mere nonsense-verses, or that
they leave a mark behind them that never wears out. They eithei
" Fall blunted from the indurated breast,"
without any perceptible result, or they absorb it like a passion. To
one class of readers he appears sublime, to another (and we fear the
largest) ridiculous. He has probably realised Milton's wish, — " and
fit audience found, though few : " but we suspect he is not reconciled
to the alternative.
There are delightful passages in the " EXCURSION," both of natural
description and of inspired reflection (passages of the latter kind
that in the sound of the thoughts and of the swelling language re-
semble heavenly symphonies, mournful requiems over the grave of
human hopes) ; but we must add, in justice and in sincerity, that we
456 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
think it impossible that this work should ever become popular, even
in the same degree as the " Lyrical Ballads." It affects a system
without having any intelligible clue to one, and, instead of unfold-
ing a principle in various and striking lights, repeats the same con-
clusions till they become flat and insipid. Mr. Wordsworth's mind
is obtuse, except as it is the organ and the receptacle of acc\imu-
lated feelings : it is not analytic, but synthetic ; it is reflecting,
rather than theoretical. The " EXCURSION," we believe, fell still-born
from the press. There was something abortive, and clumsy, and
ill-judged in the attempt. It was long and laboured. The person-
ages, for the most part, were low, the fare rustic ; the plan raised
expectations which were not fulfilled ; and the effect was like being
ushered into a stately hall and invited to sit down to a splendid
banquet in the company of clowns, and with nothing but successive
courses of apple-dumplings served up. It was not even toujours
perdrix I
Mr. Wordsworth, in his person, is above the middle size, with
marked features and an air somewhat stately and quixotic. He
reminds one of some of Holbein's heads : grave, saturnine, with a
slight indication of sly humour, kept under by the manners of the
age or by the pretensions of the person. He has a peculiar sweet-
ness in his smile, and great depth and manliness and a rugged
harmony in the tones of his voice. His manner of reading his own
poetry is particularly imposing; and in his favourite passages his
eye beams with preternatural lustre, and the meaning labours slowly
up from his swelling breast. No one who has seen him at these
moments cculd go away with an impression that he was a " man of
no mark or likelihood." Perhaps the comment of his face and voice
is necessary to convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may
not be intelligible; but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is
clear that he is either mad or inspired. In company, even in a
tJSte-drUte, Mr. Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, and reserved.
If he is become verbose and oracular of late years, he was not so
in his better days. He threw out a bold or an indifferent remark
without either effort or pretension, and relapsed into musing again.
He shone most (because he seemed most roused and animated) in
reciting his own poetry, or in talking about it. He sometimes gave
striking views of his feelings and trains of association in composing
certain passages ; or, if one did not always understand his distinc-
tions, still there was no want of interest : there was a latent mean-
ing worth inquiring into, like a vein of ore that one cannot exactly
hit upon at the moment, but of which there are sure indications.
His standard of poetry is high and severe, almost to exclusiveness.
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 457
He admits of nothing below, scarcely of anything above, himself.
It is fine to hear him talk of the way in which certain subjects
should have been treated by eminent poets, according to his notions
of the art. Thus he finds fault with Dryden's description of Bacchus
in the " Alexander's Feast," as if he were a mere good-looking youth
or boon companion —
" Flushed with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face " —
instead of representing the God returning from the conquest of
India, crowned with vine-leaves and drawn by panthers, and
followed by troops of satyrs, of wild men and animals that he had
tamed. You would think, in hearing him speak on this subject,
that you saw Titian's picture of the meeting of "Bacchus and
Ariadne " — so classic were his conceptions, so glowing his style.
Milton is his great idol, and he sometimes dares to compare him-
self with him. His Sonnets, indeed, have something of the same
high-raised tone and prophetic spirit. Chaucer is another prime
favourite of his, and he has been at the pains to modernise some of
the " Canterbury Tales." Those persons who look upon Mr. Words-
worth as a merely puerile writer must be rather at a loss to account
for his strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael
Angelo. We do not think our author has any very cordial sympathy
with Shakspeare. How should he? Shakspeare was the least of
an egotist of anybody in the world. He does not much relish the
variety and scope of dramatic composition. " He hates those inter-
locutions between Lucius and Caius." Yet Mr. Wordsworth himself
wrote a tragedy when he was young ; and we have heard the follow-
ing energetic lines quoted from it, as put into the mouth of a person
smit with remorse for some rash crime :
" Action is momentary,
The motion of a muscle this way or that ;
Suffering is long, obscure and infinite ! "
Perhaps for want of light and shade, and the unshackled spirit of
the drama, this performance was never brought forward. Our critic
has a great dislike to Gray, and a fondness for Thomson and Collins.
It is mortifying to hear him speak of Pope and Dryden, whom,
because they have been supposed to have all the possible excellences
of poetry, he will allow to have none. . . .
FRANCIS JEFFREY.
. . . WE do not implicitly bow to the political opinions nor to
the critical decisions of the Edinburgh Review; but we must do
458 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
justice to the talent with which they are supported, and to the tone
of manly explicitness in which they are delivered. They are emi-
nently characteristic of the spirit of the age, as it is the express
object of the Quarterly Review to discountenance and extinguish
that spirit, both in theory and in practice. The Edinburgh Review
stands upon the ground of opinion ; it asserts the supremacy of
intellect. The pre-eminence it claims is from an acknowledged supe-
riority of talent and information, and literary attainment ; and it
does not build one tittle of its influence on ignorance, or prejudice,
or authority, or personal malevolence. It takes up a question, and
argues it pro and con with great knowledge and boldness and skill ;
it points out an absurdity, and runs it down fairly, and according
to the evidence adduced. In the former case, its conclusions may
be wrong ; there may be a bias in the mind of the writer ; but he
states the arguments and circumstances on both sides, from which
a judgment is to be formed. It is not his cue : he has neither the
effrontery nor the meanness to falsify facts or to suppress objections.
In the latter case, or where a vein of sarcasm or irony is resorted
to, the ridicule is not barbed by some allusion (false or true) to
private history ; the object of it has brought the infliction on himself
by some literary folly or political delinquency, which is referred to
as the understood and justifiable provocation, instead of being held
up to scorn as a knave for not being a tool, or as a blockhead
for thinking for himself. In the Edinburgh Review the talents of
those on the opposite side are always extolled pleno ore; in the Quar-
terly Review they are denied altogether ; and the justice that is in
this way withheld from them is compensated by a proportionable
supply of personal abuse. . . .
Mr. Jeffrey is the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, and is under-
stood to have contributed nearly a fourth part of the articles
from its commencement. No man is better qualified for this
situation, nor indeed so much so. He is certainly a person in
advance of the age, and yet perfectly fitted both from knowledge
and habits of mind to put a curb upon its rash and headlong spirit.
He is thoroughly acquainted with the progress and pretensions of
modern literature and philosophy ; and to this he adds the natu-
ral acuteness and discrimination of the logician with the habitual
caution and coolness of his profession. If the Edinburgh Review
may be considered as the organ of or at all pledged to a party,
that party is at least a respectable one, and is placed in the middle
between two extremes. The Editor is bound to lend a patient
hearing to the most paradoxical opinions and extravagant theories
which have resulted in our times from the " infinite agitation of
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 459
wit," but he is disposed to qualify them by a number of practical
objections, of speculative doubts, of checks and drawbacks, arising
out of actual circumstances and prevailing opinions, or the frailties
of human nature. He has a great range of knowledge, an incessant
activity of mind f but the suspension of his judgment, the well-
balanced moderation of 'his sentiments, is the consequence of the
very discursiveness of his reason. What may be considered as a
commonplace conclusion is often the result of a comprehensive view
of all the circumstances of a case. Paradox, violence, nay, even
originality of conception is not seldom owing to our dwelling long
and pertinaciously on some one part of a subject, instead of attend-
ing to the whole.
Mr. Jeffrey is neither a bigot nor an enthusiast. He is not the
dupe of the prejudices of others, nor of his own. He is not wedded
to any dogma ; he is not long the sport of any whim. Before he
can settle in any fond or fantastic opinion, another starts up to
match it, like beads on sparkling wine. A too restless display of
talent, a too undisguised statement of all that can be said for and
against a question, is perhaps the great fault that is to be attri-
buted to him. Where there is so much power and prejudice to
contend with in the opposite scale, it may be thought that the
balance of truth can hardly be held with a slack or an even hand,
and that the infusion of a little more visionary speculation, of a
little more popular indignation, into the great Whig Review would
be an advantage both to itself and to the cause of freedom. Much
of this effect is chargeable less on an Epicurean levity of feeling
or on party-trammels than on real sanguineness of disposition and
a certain fineness of professional tact.
Our sprightly Scotchman is not of a desponding and gloomy turn
of mind. He argues well for the future hopes of mankind from
the smallest beginnings, watches the slow, gradual, reluctant
growth of liberal views, and smiling sees the aloe of Reform blossom
at the end of a hundred years ; while the habitual subtlety of his
mind makes him perceive decided advantages, where vulgar ignor-
ance or passion sees only doubts and difficulty ; and a flaw in an
adversary's argument stands him instead of the shout of a mob,
the votes of a majority, or the fate of a pitched battle. The Editor
is satisfied with his own conclusions, and does not make himself
xineasy about the fate of mankind. The issue, he thinks, will verify
his moderate and well-founded expectations. We believe, also, that
late events have given a more decided turn to Mr. Jeffrey's mind,
and that he feels that as, in the struggle between liberty and
slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with their
460 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
success, so the exertions on the other side should become more
strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed
and appalling encroachments of priestcraft and arbitrary power.
The characteristics of Mr. Jeffrey's general style as a writer
correspond, we think, with what we have here stated as the charac-
teristics of his mind. He is a master of the foils ; he makes an
exulting display of the dazzling fence of wit and argument. His
strength consists in great range of knowledge, an equal familiarity
with the principles and the details of a subject, and in a glancing
brilliancy and rapidity of style. Indeed, we doubt whether the
brilliancy of his manner does not resolve itself into the rapidity,
the variety and aptness of his illustrations. His pen is never at
a loss, never stands still, and would dazzle for this reason alone,
like an eye that is ever in motion. Mr. Jeffrey is far from a flowery
or affected writer ; he has few tropes or figures, still less any odd
startling thoughts or quaint innovations in expression ; but he has
a constant supply of ingenious solutions and pertinent examples.
He never proses, never grows dull, never wears an argument to
tatters, and by the number, the liveliness and facility of his
transitions keeps up that appearance of vivacity, of novel and
sparkling effect, for which others are too often indebted to singu-
larity of combination or tinsel ornaments. . . .
Mr. Jeffrey's conversation is equally lively, various, and instruc-
tive. There is no subject on which he is not au fait : no company
in which he is not ready to scatter his pearls for sport. Whether it
be politics, or poetry, or science, or anecdote, or wit, or raillery, he
takes up his cue without effort, without preparation, and appears
equally incapable of tiring himself or his hearers. His only difficulty
seems to be, not to speak, but to be silent. There is a constitu-
tional buoyancy and elasticity of mind about him that cannot sub-
side into repose, much less sink into dulness. There may be more
original talkers, persons who occasionally surprise or interest you
more ; few, if any, with a more uninterrupted flow of cheerfulness and
animal spirits, with a greater fund of information, and with fewer
specimens of the bathos in their conversation. He is never absurd,
nor has he any favourite points which he is always bringing forward.
It cannot be denied that there is something bordering on petulance
of manner ; but it is of that least offensive kind which may be ac-
counted for from merit and from success, and implies no exclusive
pretensions nor the least particle of ill-will to others. On the con-
trary, Mr. Jeffrey is profuse of his encomiums and admiration of
others, but still with a certain reservation of a right to differ or to
blame. He cannot rest on one side of a question ; he is obliged by
FRANCIS JEFFREY. 461
a mercurial habit and disposition to vary his point of view. If he
is ever tedious, it is from an excess of liveliness : he oppresses from
a sense of airy lightness. He is always setting out on a fresh scent :
there are always relays of topics ; the harness is put to, and he rattles
away as delightfully and as briskly as ever. New causes are called ;
he holds a brief in his hand for every possible question. This is a
fault. Mr. Jeffrey is not obtrusive, is not impatient of opposition,
is not unwilling to be interrupted; but what is said by another
seems to make no impression on him ; he is bound to dispute, to
answer it, as if he was in court, or as if it were in a paltry Debating
Society, where young beginners were trying their hands. This is not
to maintain a character, or for want of good-nature : it is a thought-
less habit. He cannot help cross-examining a witness, or stating
the adverse view of the question. He listens not to judge, but to
reply. In consequence of this, you can as little tell the impression
your observations make on him as what weight to assign to his. . . .
The severest of critics (as he has been sometimes termed) is the
best-natured of men. Whatever there may be of wavering or in-
decision, in Mr. Jeffrey's reasoning, or of harshness in his critical
decisions, in his disposition there is nothing but simplicity and kind-
ness. He is a person that no one knows without esteeming, and
who both in his public connections and private friendships shows
the same manly uprightness and unbiassed independence of spirit.
At a distance, in his writings or even in his manner, there may be
something to excite a little uneasiness and apprehension: in his
conduct there is nothing to except against. He is a person of strict
integrity himself, without pretence or affectation, and knows how to
respect this quality in others without prudery or intolerance. He
can censure a friend or a stranger, and serve him effectually at the
same time. He expresses his disapprobation, but not as an excuse
for closing up the avenues of his liberality. He is a Scotchman
without one particle of hypocrisy, of cant, of servility, or selfishness
in his composition. He has not been spoiled by fortune — has not
been tempted by power — is firm without violence, friendly without
weakness — a critic and even-tempered, a casuist and an honest man
— and, amidet the toils of his profession and the distractions of the
world, retains the gaiety, the unpretending carelessness and simpli-
city, of youth. Mr. Jeffrey in his person is slight, with a counte-
nance of much expression and a voice of great flexibility and acuteness
of tone.
462 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
WILLIAM COBBETT.
PEOPLE have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have
of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable.
One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great
mutton-fist ; his style stuns his readers, and he " filips the ear of the
public with a three-man beetle." He is too much for any single
newspaper antagonist, "lays waste" a city orator or Member of
Parliament, and bears hard upon the Government itself. He is a
kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country.
He is not only unquestionably the most powerful political writer
of the present day, but one of the best writers in the language. He
speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might be
said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and
the picturesque satirical description of Mandeville : if all such com-
parisons were not impertinent. A really great and original writer
is like nobody but himself. In one sense, Sterne was not a wit, nor
Shakspeare a poet. It .is easy to describe second-rate talents,
because they fall into a class and enlist under a standard ; but first-
rate powers defy calculation or comparison, and can be defined only
by themselves. They are sui generis, and make the class to which
they belong. I have tried half a dozen times to describe Burke's
style without ever succeeding: its severe extravagance, its literal
boldness, its matter-of-fact hyperboles, its running away with a
subject and from it at the same time ; but there is no making it
out, for there is no example of the same thing anywhere else. We
have no common measure to refer to ; and his qualities contradict
even themselves.
Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared to Paine;
and so far it is true there are no two writers who come more into
juxtaposition from the nature of their subjects, from the internal
resources on which they draw, and from the popular effect of their
writings and their adaptation (though that is a bad word in the
present case) to the capacity of every reader. But still, if we turn
to a volume of Paine's (his " Common Sense " or " Rights of Man ")
we are struck (not to say somewhat refreshed) by the difference.
Paine is a much more sententious writer than Cobbett. You
cannot open a page in any of his best and earlier works without
meeting with some maxim, some antithetical and memorable saying,
which is a sort of starting-place for the argument, and the goal to
which it returns.
There is not a single Ion-mot, a single sentence in Cobbett that
WILLIAM COBBETT. 463
has ever been quoted again. If anything is ever quoted from him,
it is an epithet of abuse or a nickname. He is an excellent hand at
invention in that way, and has " damnable iteration in him." What
could be better than his pestering Erskine year after year with his
second title of Baron Clackmannan ? He is rather too fond of such
phrases as the Sons and Daughters of Corruption. Paine affected to
reduce things to first principles, to announce self-evident truths.
Cobbett troubles himself about little but the details and local cir-
cumstances. The first appeared to have made up his mind before-
hand to certain opinions, and to try to find the most compendious
and pointed expressions for them : his successor appears to have no
clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor ever to have thought on a
question till he sits down to write about it. But then there seems
no end of his matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought
out in all their strength and sharpness from not having been squared
or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory. He goes on with
his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never come to a stop ;
they have all the force of novelty, with all the familiarity of old ac-
quaintance. His knowledge grows out of the subject ; and his style
is that of a man who has an absolute intuition of what he is talking
about, and never thinks of anything else. He deals in premises and
speaks to evidence: the coming to a conclusion and summing up
(which was Paine's forte) lies in a smaller compass. The one could
not compose an elementary treatise on politics to become a manual
for the popular reader ; nor could the other, in all probability, have
kept up a weekly journal for the same number of years with the
same spirit, interest, and untired perseverance. Paine's writings are
a sort of introduction to political arithmetic on a new plan ; Cobbett
keeps a day-book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences
and troublesome questions that start up throughout the year.
Cobbett, with vast industry, vast information, and the utmost
power of making what he says intelligible, never seems to get at the
beginning or come to the end of any question ; Paine in a few short
sentences seems by his peremptory manner " to clear it from all con-
troversy, past, present, and to come." Paine takes a bird's-eye view
of things ; Cobbett sticks close to them, inspects the component parts,
and keeps fast hold of the smallest advantages they afford him. Or»
if I might here be indulged in a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to
enclose his ideas in a fold for security and repose ; Cobbett lets his
pour out upon the plain like a flock of sheep to feed and batten.
Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for those to read who do not agree
with him ; for he is less dogmatical, goes more into the common
grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal, is more desultory
2 L
464 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and various, and appears less to be driving at a previous conclusion
than urged on by the force of present conviction. He is therefore
tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself by turns ob-
noxious to all ; and even those he abuses read him. The Reformers
read him when he was a Tory, and the Tories read him now that he
is a Reformer. He must, I think, however, be caviare to the Whigs.
Lord Chancellor Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only
writer that deserved the name of a political reasoner.
If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his celebrated proto-
type, he is more picturesque and dramatic. His episodes, which are
numerous as they are pertinent, are striking, interesting, full of life
and naivet^, minute, double measure running over, but never tedious
— nunquam sufflaminandus erat. He is one of those writers who
can never tire us, not even of himself ; and the reason is, he is
always " full of matter." He never runs to lees, never gives us the
vapid leavings of himself, is never " weary, stale, and unprofitable,"
but always setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some
old nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful,
for there is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for
lack of something to write about, but because some circumstance
that has happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the
subject ; and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best pos-
sible illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes
both himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself
before it, and say "Admire me first," but places us in the same
situation with himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is
no blind-man's buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism,
no testimonies of applause, no abstract, senseless self-complacency,
no smuggled admiration of his own person by proxy. It is all plain
and above-board.
He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips himself quite as
naked as anybody could wish : in a word, his egotism is full of
individuality, and has room for very little vanity in it. We feel
delighted, rub our hands, and draw our chair to the fire when we
come to a passage of this sort : we know it will be something new
and good, manly and simple, not the same insipid story of self over
again. We sit down at table with the writer, but it is of a course
of rich viands— flesh, fish, and wild fowl — and not to a nominal
entertainment, like that given by the Barmecide in the " Arabian
Nights," who put off his visitor with calling for a number of exquisite
things that never appeared, and with the honour of his company.
Mr. Cobbett is not a make-believe writer. His worst enemy cannot
say that of him. Still less is he a vulgar one. He must be a puny
WILLIAM COBBETT. 465
commonplace critic indeed who thinks him so. How fine were the
graphical descriptions he sent us from America ! what a transatlantic
flavour, what a native gusto, what a fine sauce piquante of contempt
they were seasoned with ! If he had sat down to look at himself in
the glass, instead of looking about him like Adam in Paradise, he
would not have got up these articles in so capital a style. What
a noble account of his first breakfast after his arrival hi America !
It might serve for a month. There is no scene on the stage more
amusing.
How well he paints the gold and scarlet plumage of the American
birds, only to lament more pathetically the want of the wild wood-
notes of his native land ! The groves of the Ohio, that had just
fallen beneath the axe's stroke, " live in his description," and the
turnips that he transplanted from Botley " look green " in prose !
How well, at another time, he describes the poor sheep that had got
the tick, and had tumbled down in the agonies of death ! It is a
portrait in the manner of Bewick, with the strength, the simplicity,
and feeling of that great naturalist. What havoc he makes, when
he pleases, of the curls of Dr. Parr's wig, and of the Whig consistency
of Mr. ! His Grammar, too, is as entertaining as a story-book.
He is too hard, however, upon the style of others, and not enough
(sometimes) on his own.
As a political partisan, no one can stand against him. With his
brandished club, like Giant Despair in the " Pilgrim's Progress," he
knocks out their brains : and not only no individual, but no corrupt
system, could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks.
But with the same weapon swung round like a flail, with which he
levels his antagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own
party hors de combat. This is a bad propensity and a worse principle
in political tactics, though a common one. If his blows were straight-
forward and steadily directed to the same object, no unpopular Minis-
ter could live before him ; instead of which he lays about right and
left impartially and remorselessly, makes a clear stage, has all the
ring to himself, and then runs out of it, just when he should stand
his ground. He throws his head into his adversary's stomach, and
takes away from him all inclination for the fight, hits fair or foul,
strikes at everything, and as you come up to his aid or stand ready
to pursue his advantage, trips up your heels or lays you sprawling,
and pummels you when down as much to his heart's content as ever
the Yanguesian carriers belaboured Rosinante with their pack-staves.
" He has the lack-trick simply the best of any man in Illyria."
He pays off both scores of old friendship and new-acquired enmity
in a breath, in one perpetual volley, one raking fire of " arrowy sleet"
466 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
shot from his pen. However his own reputation or the cause may
suffer in consequence, he cares not one pin about that, so that he
disables all who oppose or who pretend to help him. In fact, he
cannot bear success of any kind, not even of his own views or party ;
and if any principle were likely to become popular, would turn round
against it, to show his power in shouldering it on one side. In
short, wherever power is, there is he against it : he naturally butts
at all obstacles, as unicorns are attracted to oak-trees, and feels his
own strength only by resistance to the opinions and wishes of the
rest of the world. To sail with the stream, to agree with the com-
pany, is not his humour. If he could bring about a Reform in
Parliament, the odds are that he would instantly fall foul of and try
to mar his own handiwork ; and he quarrels with his own creatures
as soon as he has written them into a little vogue — and a prison.
I do not think this is vanity or fickleness so much as a pugnacious
disposition, that must have an antagonist power to contend with,
and only finds itself at ease in systematic opposition. If it were
not for this, the high towers and rotten places of the world would
fall before the battering-ram of his hard-headed reasoning : but if
he once found them tottering, he would apply his strength to prop
them up, and disappoint the expectations of his followers. He
cannot agree to anything established, nor to set up anything else
in its stead. While it is established, he presses hard against it, be-
cause it presses upon him, at least in imagination. Let it crumble
under his grasp, and the motive to resistance is gone. He then
requires some other grievance to set his face against.
His principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction : he is made
up of mere antipathies ; an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow. He
is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He turns round
upon whoever is next to him. The way to wean him from any
opinion, and make him conceive an intolerable hatred against it,
would be to place .somebody near him who was perpetually dinning
it in his ears. When he is in England, he does nothing but abuse
the Boroughmongers, and laugh at the whole system : when he is in
America, he grows impatient of freedom and a republic. If he had
stayed there a little longer, he would have become a loyal and a
loving subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampooned the
French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty by
millions ; by the time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour
by some means or other (partly no doubt by himself), he had turned,
with one or two or three others, staunch Bonapartist. He is always
of the militant, not of the triumphant party : so far he bears a gal-
lant show of magnanimity. But his gallantry is hardly of the right
WILLIAM COBBETT. 467
stamp : it wants principle. For though he is not servile or merce-
nary, he is the victim of self-will. He must pull down and pull in
pieces : it is not in his disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity ;
for with his great talents he might do great things, if he would go
right forward to any useful object, make thorough-stitch work of
any question, or join hand and heart with any principle. He changes
his opinions as he does his friends, and much on the same account.
He has no comfort in fixed principles : as soon as anything is settled
in his own mind, he quarrels with it. He has no satisfaction but in
the chase after truth, runs a question down, worries and kills it, then
quits it like vermin, and starts some new game, to lead him a new
dance, and give him a fresh breathing through bog and brake*
with the rabble yelping at his heels and the leaders perpetually
at fault.
This he calls sport-royal. He thinks it as good as cudgel-playing
or single-stick, or anything else that has life in it. He likes the cut
and thrust, the falls, bruises, and dry blows of an argument : as to
any good or useful results that may come of the amicable settling
of it, any one is welcome to them for him. The amusement is over
when the matter is once fairly decided.
There is another point of view in which this may be put. I might
say that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man with a total want of
principle ; and I might explain this paradox thus. I mean that he
is, I think, in downright earnest in what he says, in the part he
takes at the time ; but, in taking that part, he is led entirely by
headstrong obstinacy, caprice, novelty, pique, or personal motive of
some sort, and not by a steadfast regard for truth or habitual
anxiety for what is right uppermost in his mind. He is not a feed,
time-serving, shuffling advocate (no man could write as he does who
did not believe himself sincere) ; but his understanding is the dupe
and slave of his momentary, violent and irritable humours. He
does not adopt an opinion " deliberately or for money ; " yet his
conscience is at the mercy of the first provocation he receives, of the
first whim he takes in his head. He sees things through the medium
of heat and passion, not with reference to any general principles ;
and his whole system of thinking is deranged by the first object
that strikes his fancy or sours his temper.
One cause of this phenomenon is perhaps his want of a regular
education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as
excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring
excess. It must be acknowledged that the Editor of the Political
Register (the twopenny trash, as it was called, till a Bill passed the
House to raise the price to sixpence) is not "the gentleman and
468 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
scholar," though he has qualities that, with a little better manage-
ment, would be worth (to the public) both those titles. For want
of knowing what has been discovered before him, he has not certain
general landmarks to refer to or a general standard of thought to
apply to individual cases. He relies on his own acuteness and the
immediate evidence, without being acquainted with the comparative
anatomy or philosophical structure of opinion. He does not view
things on a large scale or at the horizon (dim and airy enough per-
haps) ; but as they affect himself — close, palpable, tangible. What-
ever he finds out is his own, and he only knows what he finds out.
He is in the constant hurry and fever of gestation : his brain teems
incessantly with some fresh project. Every new light is the birth
of a new system, the dawn of a new world to him. He is continually
outstripping and overreaching himself. The last opinion is the only
true one. He is wiser to-day than he was yesterday ? Why should
he not be wiser to-morrow than he was to-day ?
Men of a learned education are not so sharp-witted as clever men
without it ; but they know the balance of the human intellect better.
If they are more stupid, they are more steady, and are less liable to
be led astray by their own sagacity and the overweening petulance
of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom. They do not fall in love
with every meretricious extravagance at first sight, or mistake an
old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they are new to the
ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a prize, but
are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser than
those who went before them.
Paine said on some occasion, "What I have written, I have
written," as rendering any further declaration of his principles un-
necessary. Not so Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to
him what he is to write. He learns something every day, and every
week he takes the field to maintain the opinions of the last six days
against friend or foe. I doubt whether this outrageous inconsist-
ency, this headstrong fickleness, this understood want of all rule and
method, does not enable him to go on with the spirit, vigour, and
variety that he does. He is not pledged to repeat himself. Every
new Register is a kind of new Prospectus. He blesses himself from
all ties and shackles on his understanding ; he has no mortgages on
his brain ; his notions are free and unencumbered. If he was put
in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many more. But
he gives himself " ample scope and verge enough." He takes both
sides of a question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other. If
nobody else can argue against him, he is a very good match for him-
self. He writes better in favour of reform than anybody else ; he
WILLIAM COBBETT. 469
used to write better against it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of
war, the weight of the argument, the strength of abuse.
He is not like a man in danger of being bed-rid in his faculties :
he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, and when he is tired
of lying on one side, relieves himself by turning on the other. His
shifting his point of view from time to time not merely adds variety
and greater compass to his topics (so that the Political Register is
an armoury and magazine for all the materials and weapons of
political warfare) : but it gives a greater zest and liveliness to his
manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett takes nothing for granted,
as what he has proved before ; he does not write a book of reference.
We see his ideas in their first concoction, fermenting and overflow-
ing with the ebullitions of a lively conception. We look on at the
actual process, and are put in immediate possession of the grounds
and materials on which he forms his sanguine, unsettled conclusions.
He does not give us samples of reasoning, but the whole solid mass,
refuse and all.
" He pours out all as plain
As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne."
This is one cause of the clearness and force of his writings. An
argument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his brain, but
passes at once to his paper. His ideas are served up, like pancakes,
hot and hot.
Fresh theories give him fresh courage. He is like a young and
lusty bridegroom, that divorces a favourite speculation every mom-
ing, and marries a new one every night. He is not wedded to his
notions, not he. He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions.
He makes the most of the last thought that has come in his way,
seizes fast hold of it, rumples it about in all directions with rough
strong hands, has his wicked will of it, takes a surfeit, and throws
it away. Our author's changing his opinions for new ones is not so
wonderful ; what is more remarkable is his felicity in forgetting his
old ones. He does not pretend to consistency (like Mr. Coleridge) ;
he frankly disavows all connection with himself. He feels no per-
sonal responsibility in this way, and cuts a friend or principle with
the same decided indifference that Antipholis of Ephesus cuts
^Egeon of Syracuse. It is a hollow thing. The only time he ever
grew romantic was in bringing over the relics of Mr. Thomas Paine
with him from America, to go a progress with them through the
disaffected districts. Scarce had he landed in Liverpool, when he
left the bones of a great man to shift for themselves ; and no sooner
did he arrive in London, than he made a speech to disclaim all
participation in the political and theological sentiments of his late
470 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
idol, and to place the whole stock of his admiration and enthusiasm
towards him to the account of his financial speculations, and of his
having predicted the fate of paper-money.
If he had erected a little gold statue to him, it might have proved
the sincerity of this assertion ; but to make a martyr and a patron-
saint of a man, and to dig up " his canonised bones " in order to
expose them as objects of devotion to the rabble's gaze, asks some-
thing that has more life and spirit in it, more mind and vivifying
soul, than has to do with any calculation of pounds, shillings, and
pence ! The fact is, he ratted from his own project. He found the
thing not so ripe as he had expected. His heart failed him ; his
enthusiasm fled ; and he made his retraction. His admiration is
short-lived : his contempt only is rooted, and his resentment lasting.
The above was only one instance of his building too much on
practical data. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes on,
though still deceived. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr.
Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and
places. According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet
in March 1818 ; it did not, and we heard no more of the matter.
When his predictions fail, he takes no further notice of them, but
applies himself to new ones, like the country-people, who turn to
see what weather there is in the almanac for the next week, though
it has been out in its reckoning every day of the last.
Mr. Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence : he cannot fight an
uphill battle. He will not bear the least punishing. If any one
turns upon him (which few people like to do), he immediately turns
tail. Like an overgrown schoolboy, he is so used to have it all his
own way, that he cannot submit to anything like competition or a
struggle for the mastery : he must lay on all the blows, and take
none. He is bullying and cowardly ; a Big Ben in politics, who
will fall upon others and crush them by his weight, but is not
prepared for resistance, and is soon staggered by a few smart
blows. Whenever he has been set upon, he has slunk out of the
controversy. . . .
Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time I
ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man : easy of access,
affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and
unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very
qualified. His figure is tall and portly : he has a good, sensible face,
rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard, square forehead, a ruddy
complexion, with hair grey or powdered : and had on a scarlet
broadcloth waistcoat, with the flaps of the pockets hanging down,
as was the custom for gentlemen farmers in the last century, or as
CHARLES LAMB. 471
we see it in the pictures of Members of Parliament in the reign of
George I. I certainly did not think less favourably of him for seeing
him.
CHARLES LAMB.
. . . MR. LAMB does not march boldly along with the crowd, but steals
off the pavement to pick his way in the contrary direction. He
prefers byways to highways. When the full tide of human life
pours along to some festive show, to some pageant of a day, Elia
would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll
down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive description over
a tottering doorway, or some quaint device in architecture, illustra-
tive of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very
soul of an antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity ; the
film of the past hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensitive,
the reverse of everything coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and common-
place. He would fain " shuffle off this mortal coil ; " and his spirit
clothes itself in the garb of elder time, homelier, but more durable.
He is borne along with no pompous paradoxes, shines in no glitter-
ing tinsel of a fashionable phraseology, is neither fop nor sophist.
He has none of the turbulence or froth of new-fangled opinions.
His style runs pure and clear, though it may often take an under-
ground course, or be conveyed through old-fashioned conduit-pipes.
Mr. Lamb does not court popularity, nor strut in gaudy plumes,
but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretension
into the retirement of his own mind. . . .
Mr. Lamb rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and re-
mote, of that which rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit;
which scorns all alliance or even the suspicion of owing anything to
noisy clamour, to the glare of circumstances. There is a fine tone
of chiaro-scuro, a moral perspective in his writings. He delights to
dwell on that which is fresh to the eye of memory ; he yearns after
and covets what soothes the frailty of human nature. That touches
him most nearly which is withdrawn to a certain distance, which
verges on the borders of oblivion ; that piques and provokes his
fancy most which is hid from a superficial glance. That which,
though gone by, is still remembered, is in his view more genuine,
and has given more " vital signs that it will live," than a thing of
yesterday, that may be forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this
sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy has to our author
something substantial in it. Ideas savour most of reality in his
mind ; or rather his imagination loiters on the edge of each, and a
472 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
page of his writings recalls to our fancy the stranger on the grate,
fluttering in its dusky tenuity, with its idle superstition and hos-
pitable welcome !
Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new
buildings, to new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances,
of all assumptions of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments,
of all mechanical advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not
merely that he does not rely upon or ordinarily avail himself of
them.; he holds them in abhorrence; he utterly abjures and discards
them, and places a great gulf between him and them. He disdains
all the vulgar artifices of authorship, all the cant of criticism and
helps to notoriety. He has no grand swelling theories to attract
the visionary and the enthusiast, no passing topics to allure the
thoughtless and the vain. He evades the present; he mocks the
future. His affections revert to and settle on the past ; but then
even this must have something personal and local in it to interest
him deeply and thoroughly. He pitches his tent in the suburbs of
existing manners, brings down the account of character to the few
straggling remains of the last generation, seldom ventures beyond
the bills of mortality, and occupies that nice point between egotism
and disinterested humanity. No one makes the tour of our southern
metropolis, or describes the manners of the last age, so well as Mr.
Lamb ; with so fine and yet so formal an air ; with such vivid
obscurity ; with such arch piquancy, such picturesque quaintness,
such smiling pathos.
How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South
Sea House ; what " fine fretwork he makes of their double and single
entries ! " With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied
" Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist ! " How notably he embalms a
battered beau ; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years
ago, revives in his pages ! With what well-disguised humour he
introduces us to his relations, and how freely he serves up his
friends ! Certainly, some of his portraits are fixtures, and will do
to hang up as lasting and lively emblems of human infirmity.
Then there is no one who has so sure an ear for " the chimes at
midnight," not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow ; nor could
Master Silence himself take his " cheese and pippins " with a more
significant and satisfactory air. With what a gusto Mr. Lamb
describes the Inns and Courts of law, the Temple and Gray's Inn,
as if he had been a student there for the last two hundred years,
and had been as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis
Bacon as he is with his portrait or writings ! It is hard to say
whether St. John's Gate is connected with more intense and authen-
CHARLES LAMB. 473
tic associations in his mind, as a part of old London Wall, or as the
frontispiece (time out of mind) of the Gentleman's Magazine. He
haunts Watling Street like a gentle spirit ; the avenues to the play-
houses are thick with panting recollections ; and Christ's Hospital
still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his description of it !
Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for Mr. Lamb's
historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a certain
writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands. The
streets of London are his fairyland, teeming with wonder, with life
and interest to his retrospective glance, as it did to the eager eye of
childhood; he has contrived to weave its tritest traditions into a
bright and endless romance !
Mr. Lamb's taste in books is also fine ; and it is peculiar. It is not
the worse for a little idiosyncrasy. He does not go deep into the
Scotch Novels ; but he is at home in Smollett or Fielding. He is
little read in Junius or Gibbon ; but no man can give a better ac-
count of Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," or Sir Thomas Browne's
" Urn-Burial," or Fuller's "Worthies," or John Bunyan's " Holy War."
No one is more unimpressible to a specious declamation ; no one
relishes a recondite beauty more. His admiration of Shakspeare and
Milton does not make him despise Pope ; and he can read Parnell with
patience and Gay with delight. His taste in French and German
literature is somewhat defective ; nor has he made much progress in
the science of Political Economy or other abstruse studies, though he
has read vast folios of controversial divinity, merely for the sake of
the intricacy of style, and to save himself the pain of thinking.
Mr. Lamb is a good judge of prints and pictures. His admiration
of Hogarth does credit to both, particularly when it is considered
that Leonardo da Vinci is his next greatest favourite, and that
his love of the actual does not proceed from a want of taste for
the ideal. His worst fault is an over-eagerness of enthusiasm,
which occasionally makes him take a surfeit of his highest favourites.
Mr. Lamb excels in familiar conversation almost as much as in
writing, when his modesty does not overpower his self-possession.
He is as little of a proser as possible ; but he blurts out the finest
wit and sense in the world. He keeps a good deal in the back-
ground at first, till some excellent conceit pushes him forward,
and then he abounds in whim and pleasantry. There is a primitive
simplicity and self-denial about his manners and a Quakerism in
his personal appearance, which is, however, relieved by a fine Titian
head, full of dumb eloquence !
Mr. Lamb is a general favourite with those who know him. His
character is equally singular and amiable. He is endeared to his
474 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
friends not less by his foibles than his virtues : he ensures their
esteem by the one, and does not wound their self-love by the other.
He gains ground in the opinion of others by making no advances
in his own. We easily admire genius where the diffidence of the
possessor makes our acknowledgment of merit seem like a sort of
patronage or act of condescension, as we willingly extend our good
offices where they are not exacted as obligations or repaid with
sullen indifference.
The style of the Essays of Elia is liable to the charge of a certain
mannerism. His sentences are cast in the mould of old authors ;
his expressions are borrowed from them ; but his feelings and obser-
vations are genuine and original, taken from actual life or from his
own breast ; and he may be said (if any one can) " to have coined
his heart for jests" and to have split his brain for fine distinctions !
Mr. Lamb, from the peculiarity of his exterior and address as an
author, would probably never have made his way by detached and
independent efforts ; but, fortunately for himself and others, he has
taken advantage of the Periodical Press, where he has been stuck
into notice ; and the texture of his compositions is assuredly fine
enough to bear the broadest glare of popularity that has hitherto
shone upon them. Mr. Lamb's literary efforts have procured him
civic honours (a thing unheard of in our times), and he has been
invited, in his character of ELIA, to dine at a select party with the
Lord Mayor. We should prefer this distinction to that of being
poet-laureate. We would recommend to Mr. Waithman's perusal (if
Mr. Lamb has not anticipated us) the " Rosamond Gray " and the
" John Woodvil " of the same author, as an agreeable relief to the
noise of a City feast and the heat of City elections.
A friend, a short time ago, quoted some lines from the last-men-
tioned of these works, which meeting Mr. Godwin's eye, he was so
struck with the beauty of the passage, and with a consciousness of
having seen it before, that he was uneasy till he could recollect
where, and after hunting in vain for it in Ben Jonson, Beaumont
and Fletcher, and other not unlikely places, sent to Mr. Lamb to
know if he could help him to the author !
LEIGH HUNT.
WE should descant at greater length on the merits of Leigh Hunt,
but that personal intimacy might be supposed to render us partial.
It is well when personal intimacy produces this effect ; and when the
light, that dazzled us at a distance, does not on a closer inspection
LEIGH HUNT 475
turn out an opaque substance. This is a charge that none of his friends
will bring against Mr. Leigh Hunt. He improves upon acquaintance.
The author translates admirably into the man. Indeed, the very faults
of his style are virtues in the individual. His natural gaiety and
sprightliness of manner, his high animal spirits, and the vinous quality
of his mind produce an immediate fascination and intoxication in those
who come in contact with him, and carry off in society whatever in
his writings may to some seem flat and impertinent. From great
sanguineness of temper, from great quickness and unsuspecting
simplicity, he runs on to the public as he does at his own fireside,
and talks about himself, forgetting that he is not always among
friends. His look, his tone are required to point many things that
he says : his frank, cordial manner reconciles you instantly to a little
overbearing, overweening self-complacency. "To be admired, he
needs but to be seen : " but perhaps he ought to be seen to be fully
appreciated. No one ever sought his society who did not come
away with a more favourable opinion of him : no one was ever dis-
appointed, except those who had entertained idle prejudices against
him. He sometimes trifles with his readers, or tires of a subject
(from not being urged on by the stimulus of immediate sympathy) ;
but in conversation he is all life and animation, combining the
vivacity of the schoolboy with the resources of the wit and the
taste of the scholar. The personal character, the spontaneous im-
pulses, do not appear to excuse the author, unless you are acquainted
with his situation and habits : like some great beauty who gives
herself what we think strange airs and graces under a mask, but who
is instantly forgiven when she shows her face.
We have said that Lord Byron is a sublime coxcomb : why should
we not say that Mr. Hunt is a delightful one ? There is certainly an
exuberance of satisfaction in his manner which is more than the
strict logical premises warrant, and which dull and phlegmatic con-
stitutions know nothing of, and cannot understand till they see it.
He is the only poet or literary man we ever knew who puts us in
mind of Sir John Suckling or Killigrew, or Carew ; or who united
rare intellectual acquirements with outward grace and natural gen-
tility. Mr. Hunt ought to have been a gentleman born, and to
have patronised men of letters. He might then have played, and
sung, and laughed, and talked his life away ; have written manly
prose, elegant verse : and his " Story of Rimini " would have been
praised by Mr. Blackwood. As it is, there is no man now living
who at the same time writes prose and verse so well, with the
exception of Mr. Southey (an exception, we fear, that will be little
palatable to either of these gentlemen). His prose-writings, how-
476 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
ever, display more consistency of principle than the Laureate's, his
verses more taste. We will venture to oppose his Third Canto of
the " Story of Rimini " for classic elegance and natural feeling to any
equal number of lines from Mr. Southey's Epics or from Mr. Moore's
" Lalla Rookh." In a more gay and conversational style of writing,
we think his " Epistle to Lord Byron " on his going abroad is a master-
piece ; and the " Feast of the Poets," has run through several editions.
A light familiar grace and mild unpretending pathos are the char-
acteristics of his more sportive or serious writings, whether in poetry
or prose. A smile plays round the sparkling features of the one ;
a tear is ready to start from the thoughtful gaze of the other. He
perhaps takes too little pains, and indulges in too much wayward
caprice in both.
A wit and a poet, Mr. Hunt is also distinguished by fineness of
tact and sterling sense : he has only been a visionary in humanity,
the fool of virtue. What, then, is the drawback to so many shining
qualities, that has made them useless, or even hurtful to their
owner? His crime is, to have been Editor of the Examiner ten
years ago, when some allusion was made in it to the age of the
present King ; * and though His Majesty has grown older, our luck-
less politician is no wiser than he was then !
[Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, 1826. These notes first
appeared in the columns of The Morning Chronicle. The volume has
never been reprinted.]
THE LOUVRE.
THE first thing I did when I got to Paris was to go to the Louvre. It
was indeed " first and last and midst " in my thoughts. Well might
it be so, for it had never been absent from them for twenty years.
I had gazed myself almost blind in looking at the precious works of
art it then contained — should I not weep myself blind in looking at
them again, after a lapse of half a life — or on finding them gone,
and with them gone all that I had once believed and hoped of
human-kind. . . . Thou sacred shrine of god-like magnificence, must
not my heart fail and my feet stumble as I approach thee ! How
gladly would I kneel down and kiss thy threshold, and crawl into
thy presence, like an Eastern slave! For here still linger the
broken remains and the faded splendour of that proud monument
of the triumphs of art and of the majesty of man's nature over
* Hunt described him (he was then Prince Regent) as "an Adonis of fifty."
THE LOUVRE. 477
the mock-majesty of thrones! Here Genius and Fame dwell to-
gether ; " School calleth unto School" and mighty names answer to
each other ; that old gallery points to the long, dim perspective
of waning years, and the shadow of Glory and of Liberty is seen
afar off. In pacing its echoing floors, I hear the sound of the
footsteps of my youth, and the dead start from their slumbers !
... In all the time that I had been away from thee, and amidst
all the changes that had happened in it, did I ever forget, did I
ever profane thee? Never for a moment or in thought have I
swerved from thee, or from the cause of which thou wert the
pledge and crown. Often have I sought thee in sleep, and cried
myself awake to find thee, with the heartfelt yearnings of intolerable
affection. Still didst thou haunt me, like a passionate dream: — like
some proud beauty, the queen and mistress of my thoughts. Neither
pain nor sickness could wean me from thee —
" My theme in crowds, my solitary pride."
In the tangled forest or the barren waste — in the lowly hovel or the
lofty palace, thy roofs reared their vaulted canopy over my head, a
loftier palace, an ampler space — a " brave o'erhanging firmament,"
studded with constellations of art. Wherever I was, thou wert with
me, above me and about me ; and didst " hang upon the beatings of
my heart," a vision and a joy unutterable. There was one chamber
of the brain (at least) which I had only to unlock and be master of
boundless wealth — a treasure-house of pure thoughts and cherished
recollections. Tyranny could not master, barbarism slunk from it ;
vice could not pollute, folly could not gainsay it. I had but to
touch a certain spring, and lo! on the walls the divine grace of
Guido appeared free from blemish — there were the golden hues of
Titian, and Raphael's speaking faces, the splendour of Rubens, the
gorgeous gloom of Rembrandt, the airy elegance of Vandyke, and
Claude's classic scenes lapped the senses in Elysium, and Poussin
breathed the spirit of antiquity over them. There, in that fine old
lumber-room of the imagination, were the "Transfiguration," and
the " St. Peter Martyr," with its majestic figures and its unrivalled
landscape background. There also were the two " St. Jeromes,"
" Domenichino's and Correggio's " — there " stood the statue that
enchants the world " — there were the " Apollo" and the "Antinous,"
the " Laocoon," the " Dying Gladiator," " Diana and her Fawn," and
all the glories of the antique world —
" There was old Proteus coming from the sea,
And aged Triton blew his wreathed horn. "
. . . Instead of the old Republican doorkeepers, with their rough
478 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
voices and affectation of equality, a servant in a Court-livery stood
at the gate. On presenting myself, I inquired if a Monsieur Liver-
nois (who had formerly ushered me into this region of enchantment)
were still there ; but he was gone or dead. My hesitation and
foreign accent, with certain other appeals, procured me admittance.
I passed on without further question. I cast a glance forward, and
found that the Poussins were there. At the sight of the first, which
I distinctly recollected (a fine green landscape, with stately ruins),
the tears came into my eyes, and I passed an hour or two in that
state of luxurious enjoyment which is the highest privilege of the
mind of man, and which perhaps makes him amends for many
sorrows. To my surprise, instead of finding the whole changed, I
found everything nearly in its place, as I proceeded through the
first compartments, which T did slowly, and reserving the Italian
pictures for a ban bouche. The colours even seemed to have been
mellowed, and to have grown to the walls in the last twenty years,
as if the pictures had been fixed there by the cramping-irons of
Victory, instead of hanging loose and fluttering, like so much
tattered canvas, at the sound of English drums and breath of
Prussian manifestoes. Nothing could be better managed than the
way in which they had blended the Claudes and Poussins alternately
together — the ethereal refinement and dazzling brilliancy of the one
relieving and giving additional zest to the sombre, grave, massive
character of the other. Claude Lorraine pours the spirit of air over
all objects, and new-creates them of light and sunshine. In several
of his masterpieces which are shown here, the vessels, the trees, the
temples and middle distances glimmer between air and solid sub-
stance, and seem moulded of a new element in Nature. No words
can do justice to their softness, their precision, their sparkling effect.
But they do not lead the mind out of their own magic circle. They
repose on their own beauty ; they fascinate with faultless elegance.
Poussin's landscapes are more properly pictures of time than of
place. They have a fine moral perspective, not inferior to Claude's
aerial one. They carry the imagination back two or four thousand
years at least, and bury it in the remote twilight of history. There
is an opaqueness and solemnity in his colouring, assimilating with
the tone of long-past events ; his buildings are stiff with age ; his
implements of husbandry are such as would belong to the first rude
stages of civilisation ; his harvests are such (as in the " Ruth and
Boaz ") as would yield to no modern sickle ; his grapes (as in the
" Return from the Promised Land ") are a load to modern shoulders ;
there is a simplicity and undistinguishing breadth in his figures;
and over all, the hand of time has drawn its veil. Poussin has his
ROMAN CATHOLICISM. 479
faults ; but, like all truly great men, there is that in him which is
to be found nowhere else ; and even the excellences of others would
be defects in him. One picture of his in particular drew my atten-
tion, which I had not seen before. It is an addition to the Louvre,
and makes up for many a flaw in it. It is the "Adam and Eve in
Paradise," and it is all that Mr. Martin's picture of that subject is
not. It is a scene of sweetness and seclusion " to cure all sadness
but despair." There is the freshness of the first dawn of creation,
immortal verdure, the luxuriant budding growth of unpruned
Nature's gifts, the stillness and the privacy, as if there were only
those two beings in the world, made for each other, and with this
world of beauty for the scene of their delights. It is a heaven de-
scended upon earth, as if the finger of God had planted the garden
with trees and fruits and flowers, and His hand had watered it ! .
ROMAN CATHOLICISM.
THE number of pilgrims to Rome, at this season, is diminished from
eighty or ninety thousand a century ago, to a few hundreds at present.
We passed two on the road, with then* staff and scrip and motley attire.
I did not look at them with any particle of respect. The impression
was, that they were either knaves or fools. The farther they come
on this errand, the more you have a right to suspect their motives.
Not that I by any means suppose these are always bad — but those
who signalise their zeal by such long marches obtain not only ab-
solution for the past, but extraordinary indulgence for the future,
so that if a person meditate any baseness or mischief, a pilgrimage
to Rome is his high-road to it. The Popish religion is a convenient
cloak for crime, an embroidered robe for virtue. It makes the
essence of good and ill to depend on rewards and punishments, and
places these in the hands of the priests, for the honour of God and
the welfare of the Church. Their path to heaven is a kind of gallery
directly over the path to hell ; or, rather, it is the same road, only
that at the end of it you kneel down, lift up your hands and eyes,
and say you have gone wrong, and you are admitted into the right-
hand gate, instead of the left-hand one. Hell is said, in the strong
language of controversial divinity, to be " paved with good inten-
tions." Heaven, according to some fanatical creeds, is " paved with
mock-professions." Devotees and proselytes are passed on like
wretched paupers, with false certificates of merit, by hypocrites and
bigots, who consider submission to their opinions and power as more
than equivalent to a conformity to the dictates of reason or the will
2 M
480 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of God. . . . Popery is an admirable receipt to reconcile his higher
and his lower nature in a beautiful Equivoque or double-entendre of
forms and mysteries, — the palpableness of sense with the dim ab-
stractions of faith, the indulgence of passion with the atonement of
confession and abject repentance when the fit is over, the debase-
ment of the actual with the elevation of the ideal part of man's
nature, the Pagan with the Christian religion ; to substitute lip-
service, genuflections, adoration of images, counting of beads, re-
peating of Aves, for useful works or pure intentions, and to get rid
at once of all moral obligation, of all self-control and self-respect, by
the proxy of maudlin superstition, by a slavish submission to priests
and saints, by prostrating ourselves before them, and entreating
them to take our sins and weaknesses upon them, and supply us
with a saving grace (at the expense of a routine of empty forms and
words) out of the abundance of their merits and imputed righteous-
ness. This religion suits the pride and weakness of man's intellect,
the indolence of his will, the cowardliness of his fears, the vanity of
his hopes, his disposition to reap the profits of a good tiling and
leave the trouble to others, the magnificence of his pretensions with
the meanness of his performance, the pampering of his passions, the
stifling of his remorse, the making sure of this world and the next,
the saving of his soul and the comforting of his body. It is adapted
equally to kings and people — to those who love power or dread it —
who look up to others as gods, or who would trample them under
their feet as reptiles — to the devotees of show and sound, or the
visionary and gloomy recluse — to the hypocrite and bigot — to saints
or sinners — to fools or knaves — to men, women, and children. In
short, its success is owing to this, that it is a mixture of bitter-
sweets — that it is a remedy that soothes the disease it affects to
cure — that it is not an antidote, but a vent for the peccant humours,
the follies and vices of mankind, with a salvo in favour of appear-
ances, a reserve of loftier aspirations (whenever it is convenient to
resort to them), and a formal recognition of certain general prin-
ciples, as a courtesy of speech, or a compromise between the under-
standing and the passions ! Omne tulit punctum. There is nothing
to be said against it, but that it is contrary to reason and common-
sense ; and even were they to prevail over it, some other absurdity
would start up in its stead, not less mischievous, but less amusing ;
for man cannot exist long without having scope given to his pro-
pensity to the marvellous and contradictory. . . .
CONVERSATIONS OF JAMES NORTHCOTE. 481
[Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A., 1830. These Conversations
originally appeared in the New Monthly Magazine in 1826-7].
N related an anecdote of Mr. Moore (brother of the General),
who was on board an English frigate in the American war, and
coming in sight of another vessel which did not answer their signals,
they expected an action, when the Captain called his men together,
and addressed them in the following manner : — " You dirty, ill-look-
ing blackguards ! do you suppose I can agree to deliver up such a
set of scarecrows as you as prisoners to that smart, frippery French-
man ? I can't think of such a thing. No ! by G — d, you must fight
till not a man of you is left, for I should be ashamed of owning such
a ragamuffin crew ! " This was received with loud shouts and assur-
ances of victory, but the vessel turned out to be an English one. . . .
N said it was one of Sir Joshua's maxims that the art of life
consisted in not being overset by trifles. We should look at the
bottom of the account, not at each individual item in it, and see
how the balance stands at the end of the year. We should be satis-
fied if the path of life is clear before us, and not fret at the straws
or pebbles that lie in our way. . . .
N. For instance, I liked Sir Walter, because he had an easy, un-
affected manner, and was ready to converse on all subjects alike.
He was not like your friends, the L poets, who talk about
nothing but their own poetry. If, on the contrary, he had been
stiff and pedantic, I should, perhaps, have been inclined to think less
highly of the author from not liking the man ; so that we can never
judge fairly of men's abilities till we are no longer liable to come in
contact with their persons. Friends are as little to be trusted as
enemies : favour or prejudice makes the votes in either case more or
less suspected ; though " the vital signs that a name shall live " are
in some instances so strong, that we can hardly refuse to put faith
in them, and I think this is one. I was much pleased with Sir
Walter, and I believe he expressed a favourable opinion of me. I
said to him, " I admire the way in which you begin your novels.
You set out so abruptly, that you quite surprise me. I can't at all
tell what's coming." — " No ! " says Sir Walter, " nor I neither." I
then told him, that when I first read " Waverley," I said it was no
novel: nobody could invent like that. Either he had heard the
story related by one of the surviving parties, or he had found the
materials in a manuscript concealed in some old chest : to which he
replied, " You're not so far out of the way in thinking so." You
don't know him, do you ? He'd be a pattern to you. Oh ! he has
482 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
a very fine manner. You would learn to rub off1 some of your as-
perities. But you admire him, I believe.
H. Yes ; on this side of idolatry and Toryism.
N. That is your prejudice.
H. Nay, it rather shows my liberality, if I am a devoted en-
thusiast, notwithstanding. There are two things I admire in Sir
Walter, his capacity and his simplicity ; which, indeed, I am apt to
think are much the same. The more ideas a man has of other
things, the less he is taken up with the idea of himself. Every one
gives the same account of the author of " Waverley " in this respect.
When he was in Paris, and went to Galignani's, he sat down in an
outer room to look at some book he wanted to see : none of the
clerks had the least suspicion who it was : when it was found out,
the place was in a commotion. Cooper, the American, was in Paris
at the same time : his looks and manner seemed to announce a much
greater man. He strutted through the streets with a very conse-
quential air ; and in company held up his head, screwed up his
features, and placed himself on a sort of pedestal to be observed
and admired, as if he never relaxed in the assumption, nor wished
it to be forgotten by others, that he was the American Sir Walter
Scott. The real one never troubled himself about the matter.
Why should he ? ...
H. Taking one thing with another, I have no great cause to com-
plain. If I had been a merchant, a bookseller, or the proprietor of
a newspaper, instead of what I am, I might have had more money
or possessed a town and country house, instead of lodging in a first
or second floor, as it may happen. But what then ? I see how the
man of business and fortune passes his time. He is up and in the
city by eight, swallows his breakfast in haste, attends a meeting of
creditors, must read Lloyd's lists, consult the price of consols, study
the markets, look into his accounts, pay his workmen, and superin-
tend his clerks : he has hardly a minute in the day to himself, and
perhaps in the f our-and-twenty hours does not do a single thing that
lie would do if he could help it. Surely, this sacrifice of time and
inclination requires some compensation, which it meets with. But
how am I entitled to make my fortune (which cannot be done with-
out all this anxiety and drudgery) who do hardly anything at all, and
never anything but what I like to do ? I rise when I please, break-
fast at length, write what comes into my head, and after taking a
mutton-chop and a dish of strong tea, go to the play, and thus my
time passes. Mr. has no time to go to the play. It was but
the other day that I had to get up a little earlier than usual to go
into the city about some money transaction, which appeared to me
HAZLITT'S DEFENCE OF NAPOLEON. 483
a prodigious hardship : if so, it was plain that I must lead a toler-
ably easy life : nor should I object to passing mine over again. Till
I was twenty, I had no idea of anything but books, and thought
everything else was worthless and mechanical. The having to study
painting about this time, and finding the difficulties and beauties it
unfolded, opened a new field to me, and I began to conclude that
there might be a number of " other things between heaven and earth
that were never dreamt of in my philosophy." . . .
[The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, vols. i. and ii., 1828 ; vols. iii. and iv.,
1830. Second Edition, Revised by his Son. 4 vols., 1852.]
[The reader is referred to page xlv. of the Memoir for some opinions re-
garding this work. Hazlitt was not " the infatuated worshipper of
an idol," but the champion of an historical character whom he believed
to be unjustly attacked. He has sacrificed no principle to palliate
his hero, but has rigorously examined and fearlessly blamed where
censure was called for. The following remarks were originally in-
tended to appear as a Preface to the whole work, but for some cause
not explained, it was not inserted in its place, but was made to form
the opening pages of the third volume.]
PREFACE TO THE LIFE.
OP my object in writing the following LIFE, and of the general tone
that pervades it, it may be proper that I should here render some
account, in order to prevent mistakes and false expectations. It
is true, I admired the man ; but what chiefly attached me to him,
was his being, as he had been long ago designated, " the child and
champion of Liberty." Of this character he could not divest him-
self, even though he wished it. He was nothing, he could be
nothing but what he owed to himself, and to his triumphs over
those who claimed mankind as their property by a divine right ; and
as long as he was a thorn in the side of kings, and kept them at bay,
his cause rose out of the ruins and defeat of their pride and hopes
of revenge. He stood (and he alone stood) between them and their
natural prey. He kept off that last indignity and wrong offered to
a whole people (and through them to the world) of being handed
over like a herd of cattle to a particular family, and chained to the
foot of a legitimate throne. This was the chief point at issue ; this
was the great question compared with which all others were tame
484 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and insignificant — Whether mankind were from the beginning to
the end of time born slaves or not ? As long as he remained, his
acts, his very existence gave a proud and full answer to this question.
As long as he remained a barrier, a gauntlet and an arm of steel
between us and them who alone could set up the plea of old, heredi-
tary right over us, no increase of power could be too great that
tended to shatter this claim to pieces ; even his abuse of power, and
aping the style and title of the imaginary Gods of the earth, only
laughed their pretensions the more to scorn. He did many things
wrong and foolish : but they were individual acts, and recoiled upon
the head of the doer. They stood upon the ground of their own
merits, and could not urge in their vindication " the right divine of
kings to govern wrong." They were not precedents, they were not
exempt from public censure or opinion. They were not softened by
prescription, nor screened by prejudice, nor sanctioned by supersti-
tion, nor rendered formidable by a principle that imposed them as
obligations on all future generations : either they were State-neces-
sities extorted by the circumstances of the time, or violent acts of
the will that carried their own condemnation in their bosom. In a
word, they did not proceed upon the avowed principle, that " millions
were made for one," but one for millions ; and as long as this dis-
tinction was kept in view, liberty was saved, and the Revolution
was untouched ; for it was to establish it that the Revolution
was commenced, and to overturn it that the enemies of liberty
wadeduthrough seas of blood, and at last succeeded. It is the prac-
tice of the partisans of the old system to cry, " Vive le Roi, quand
mfirne ! " Why do not the people imitate the example ? Till they do,
they will always be sure to be foiled in the end by their adversaries,
for half-measures and principles can never succeed against whole
ones. Besides, Buonaparte was not strictly a free agent. He could
hardly do otherwise than he did, ambition apart, and merely to pre-
serve himself and the country he ruled. France was in a state of
siege ; a citadel in which Freedom had hoisted the flag of revolt
against the claims of hereditary right ; and that in the midst of
distractions and convulsions consequent on the sentence of ban and
anathema passed upon it by the rest of Europe for having engaged
in this noble struggle, required a military dictator to repress in-
ternal treachery and headstrong factions, and repel external force.
Who, then, shall blame Buonaparte for having taken the reins of
government, and held them with a tight hand ? The English, who,
having set the example of liberty to the world, did all they could to
stifle it ? Or the Continental sovereigns, who were only acquainted
with its principles by their fear and hatred of them ? Or the
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 485
Emigrants, traitors to the name of men as well as Frenchmen ? Or
the Jacobins, who made the tree of liberty spout nothing but blood ?
Or its paper advocates, who reduce it to a theory? Or its true
friends, who would sacrifice all for its sake ? The last, who alone
have the right to call him to a severe account, will not ; for they
know that, being but a handful or scattered, they had not the power
to effect themselves what they might have recommended to him ;
and that there was but one alternative between him, and that
slavery, which kills both the bodies and the souls of men !
There were two other feelings that influenced me on this subject :
a love of glory, when it did not interfere with other things, and the
wish to see personal merit prevail over external rank and circum-
stances. I felt pride (not envy) to think that one reputation in
modern times was equal to the ancient, and at seeing one man
greater than the throne he sat upon.
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
THE French Revolution might be described as a remote but in-
evitable result of the invention of the art of printing. The gift of
speech, or the communication of thought by words, is that which
distinguishes man from other animals. But this faculty is limited
and imperfect without the intervention of books, which render the
knowledge possessed by every one in the community accessible to
all. There is no doubt, then, that the press (as it has existed in
modern times) is the great organ of intellectual improvement and
civilisation. It was impossible, in this point of view, that those
institutions, which were founded in a state of society and manners
long anterior to this second breathing of understanding into the life
of man, should remain on the same proud footing after it, with all
their disproportions and defects. Many of these, indeed, must be
softened by the lapse of time and influence of opinion, and give way
of their own accord : but others are too deeply rooted in the passions
and interests of men to be wrenched asunder without violence, or by
the mutual consent of the parties concerned ; and it is this whicli
makes revolutions necessary, with their train of lasting good and
present evil. . . .
The feudal system was in full vigour almost up to the period of
the discovery of printing. Much had been done since that time :
but it was the object of the French Revolution to get rid at one
blow of the framework and of the last relics of that system. Before
the diffusion of knowledge and inquiry, governments were for the
486 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
most part the growth of brute force or of barbarous superstition.
Power was in the hands of a few, who used it only to gratify their
own pride, cruelty, or avarice, and who took every means to extend
and cement it by fear and favour. The lords of the earth, disdain-
ing to rule by the choice or for the benefit of the mass of the com-
munity, whom they regarded and treated as no better than a herd of
cattle, derived their title from the skies, pretending to be accountable
for the exercise or abuse of their authority to God only — the throne
rested on the altar, and every species of atrocity or wanton insult
having power on its side received the sanction of religion, which it
was thenceforth impiety and rebellion against the will of Heaven to
impugn. This state of things continued and grew worse and worse,
while knowledge and power were confined within mere local and
personal limits. Each petty sovereign shut himself up in his castle
or fortress, and scattered havoc and dismay over the unresisting
country around him. In an age of ignorance and barbarism, when
force and interest decided everything, and reason had no means of
making itself heard, what was to prevent this or act as a check upon
it ? The lord himself had no other measure of right than his own
will : his pride and passions would blind him to every consideration
of conscience or humanity ; he would regard every act of disobedience
as a crime of the deepest die, and to give unbridled sway to his law-
less humours would become the ruling passion and sole study of his
life. How would it stand with those within the immediate circle of
his influence or his vengeance ? Fear would make them cringe, and
lick the feet of their haughty and capricious oppressor : the hope of
reward or the dread of punishment would stifle the sense of justice
or pity ; despair of success would make them cowards, habit would
confirm them into slaves, and they would look up with bigoted
devotion (the boasted loyalty of the good old times) to the right of
the strongest as the only law. A king would only be the head of a
confederation of such petty despots, and the happiness or rights of
the people would be equally disregarded by them both. Religion,
instead of curbing this state of rapine and licentiousness, became an
accomplice and a party in the crime ; gave absolution and plenary
indulgence for all sorts of enormities ; granting the forgiveness of
Heaven in return for a rich jewel or fat abbey-lands, and setting up
a regular (and what in the end proved an intolerable) traffic in
violence, cruelty, and lust. As to the restraints of law, there was
none but what resided in the breast of the Grand Seigneur, who hung
up in his court-yard, without judge or jury, any one who dared to
utter the slightest murmur against the most flagrant wrong. Such
must be the consequence, as long as there was no common standard
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 487
or impartial judge to appeal to ; and this could only be found in
public opinion, the offspring of books. As long as any unjust claim
or transaction was confined to the knowledge of the parties con-
cerned, the tyrant and the slave, which is the case in all unlettered
states of society, might must prevail over right ; for the strongest
would bully, and the weakest must submit, even in his own defence,
and persuade himself that he was in the wrong, even in his own
despite ; but the instant the world (that dread jury) are impannelled,
and called to look on and be umpires in the scene, so that nothing
is done by connivance or in a corner, then reason mounts the judg-
ment-seat in lieu of passion or interest, and opinion becomes law
instead of arbitrary will; and farewell feudal lord and sovereign
king!
From the moment that the press opens the eyes of the community
beyond the actual sphere in which each moves, there is from that
time inevitably formed the germ of a body of opinion directly at
variance with the selfish and servile code that before reigned para-
mount, and approximating more and more to the manly and disin-
terested standard of truth and justice. Hitherto force, fraud, and
fear decided every question of individual right or general reasoning ;
the possessor of rank and influence, in answer to any censure or
objection to his conduct, appealed to God and to his sword : — now
a new principle is brought into play which had never been so much
as dreamt of, and before which he must make good his pretensions,
or it will shatter his strongholds of pride and prejudice to atoms, as
the pent-up air shatters whatever resists its expansive force. This
power is public opinion, exercised upon men, things, and general
principles, and to which mere physical power must conform, or it
will crumble it to powder. Books alone teach us to judge of truth
and good in the abstract : without a knowledge of things at a dis-
tance from us, we judge, like savages or animals, from our senses and
appetites only ; but by the aid of books and of an intercourse with
the world of ideas, we are purified, raised, ennobled from savages
into intellectual and rational beings. Our impressions of what is
near to us are false, of what is distant feeble ; but the last gaining
strength from being united in public opinion, and expressed by the
public voice, are like the congregated roar of many waters, and quail
the hearts of princes. Who but the tyrant does not hate the tyrant ?
Who but the slave does not despise the slave ? The first of these
looks upon himself as a God, upon his vassal as a clod of the earth,
and forces him to be of the same opinion: the philosopher looks
upon them both as men, and instructs the world to do so. While
they had to settle their pretensions by themselves, and in the night
488 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of ignorance, it is no wonder no good was done ; while pride intoxi-
cated the one, and fear stupefied the other. But let them be brought
out of that dark cave of despotism and superstition, and let a
thousand other persons, who have no interest but that of truth
and justice, be called on to determine between them, and the plea
of the lordly oppressor to make a beast of burden of his fellow-
man becomes as ridiculous as it is odious. All that the light of
philosophy, the glow of patriotism, all that the brain wasted
in midnight study, the blood poured out upon the scaffold or in
the field of battle, can do or have done, is to take this question in
all cases from before the first gross, blind, and iniquitous tribunal,
where power insults over weakness, and place it before the last more
just, disinterested, and in the end more formidable one, where each
individual is tried by his peers, and according to rules and principles
which have received the common examination and the common con-
sent. A public sense is thus formed, free from slavish awe or the
traditional assumption of insolent superiority, which the more it is
exercised becomes the more enlightened and enlarged, and more and
more requires equal rights and equal laws. This new sense acquired
by the people, this new organ of opinion and feeling, is like bringing
a battering-train to bear upon some old Gothic castle, long the den
of rapine and crime, and must finally prevail against all absurd and
antiquated institutions, unless it is violently suppressed, and this
engine of political reform turned by bribery and terror against itself.
Who in reading history, where the characters are laid open and the
circumstances fairly stated, and where he himself has no false bias
to mislead him, does not take part with the oppressed against the
oppressor ? Who is there that admires Nero at the distance of two
thousand years ? Did not the Tariuffe in a manner hoot religious
hypocrisy out of France ; and was it not on this account constantly
denounced by the clergy ? What do those who read the annals of the
Inquisition think of that dread tribunal ? And what has softened
its horrors but those annals being read? What figure does the
massacre of St. Bartholomew make in the eyes of posterity ? But.
books anticipate and conform the decision of the public, of indi-
viduals, and even of the actors in such scenes, to that lofty and
irrevocable standard, mould and fashion the heart and inmost
thoughts upon it, so that something manly, liberal, and generous
grows out of the fever of passion and the palsy of base fear ; and
this is what is meant by the progress of modern civilisation and
modern philosophy. An individual in a barbarous age and country
throws another who has displeased him (without other warrant
than his will) into a dungeon, where he pines for years, and then
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 489
dies; and perhaps only the mouldering bones of the victim, dis-
covered long after, disclose his fate : or if known at the time, the
confessor gives absolution, and the few who are let into the secret
are intimidated from giving vent to their feelings, and hardly
dare disapprove in silence. Let this act of violence be repeated
afterwards in story, and there is not an individual in the whole
nation whose bosom does not swell with pity or whose blood
does not curdle within him at the recital of so foul a wrong. Why
then should there be an individual in a nation privileged to do
what no other individual in the nation can be found to approve?
But he has the power, and will not part with it in spite of public
opinion. Then that public opinion must become active, and break
the moulds of prescription in which his right derived from his
ancestors is cast, and this will be a Revolution. Is that a state of
things to regret or bring back, the bare mention of which makes one
shudder ? But the form, the shadow of it only was left : then why
keep up that form, or cling to a shadow of injustice, which is no less
odious than contemptible, except to make an improper use of it ?
Let all the wrongs, public and private, produced in France by arbi-
trary power and exclusive privileges for a thousand years be collected
in a volume, and let this volume be read by all who have hearts to
feel, or capacity to understand, and the strong, stifling sense of
oppression and kindling burst of indignation that would follow, will
be that impulse of public opinion that led to the French Revolution.
Let all the victims that have perished under the mild, paternal sway
of the ancient regime, in dungeons, and in agony, without a trial,
without an accusation, without witnesses, be assembled together,
and their chains struck off, and the shout of jubilee and exultation
they would make, or that nature would make at the sight, will be
the shout that was heard when the Bastille fell ! The dead pause
that ensued among the Gods of the earth, the rankling malice, the
panic-fear, when they saw law and justice raised to an equality with
their sovereign will, and mankind no longer doomed to be their
sport, was that of fiends robbed of their prey : their struggles, their
arts, their unyielding perseverance, and their final triumph was that
of fiends when it is restored to them !
It has been sometimes pretended as if the French Revolution
burst out like a vulcano, without any previous warning, only to
alarm and destroy — or was one of those comet-like appearances, the
approach of which no one can tell till the shock and conflagration
are felt. What is the real state of the case ? There was not one of
those abuses and grievances which the rough grasp of the Revolu-
tion shook to air, that had not been the butt of ridicule, the theme
490 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
of indignant invective, the subject of serious reprobation for near
a century. They had been held up without ceasing and without
answer to the derision of the gay, the scorn of the wise, the sorrow
of the good. The most witty, the most eloquent, the most pro-
found writers were unanimous in their wish to remove or reform
these abuses, and the most dispassionate and well-informed part
of the community joined in the sentiment : it was only the self-
interested or the grossly ignorant who obstinately clung to them.
Every public and private complaint had been subjected to the
touchstone of inquiry and argument ; the page of history, of
fiction, of the drama, of philosophy had been laid open, and their
contents poured into the public ear, which turned away disgusted
from the arts of sophistry or the menace of authority. It was this
operation of opinion, enlarging its circle, and uniting nearly all the
talents, the patriotism, and the independence of the country in its
service, that brought about the events which followed. Nothing
else did or could. It was not a dearth of provisions, the loss of the
queen's jewels, that could overturn all the institutions and usages
of a great kingdom — it was not the Revolution that produced the
change in the face of society, but the change in the texture of society
that produced the Revolution, and brought its outward appearance
into a nearer correspondence with its inward sentiments. There is
no other way of accounting for so great and sudden a transition.
Power, prejudice, interest, custom, ignorance, sloth, and cowardice
were against it : what then remained to counterbalance this weight,
and to overturn all obstacles, but reason and conviction, which were
for it? Magna est veritas, et prcevalebit. A king was no longer
thought to be an image of the Divinity ; a lord to be of a different
species from other men ; a priest to carry an immediate passport to
heaven in his pocket. On what possible plea or excuse then, when
the ground of opinion on which they rested was gone, attempt to
keep up the same exclusive and exorbitant pretensions, without any
equivalent to the community in the awe and veneration they felt for
them ? Why should a nobleman be permitted to spit in your face,
to rob you of an estate, or to debauch your wife or daughter with
impunity, when it was no longer deemed an honour for him to do so ?
If manners had undergone a considerable change in this respect, so
that the right was rarely exercised, why not abrogate the insult im-
plied in the very forbearance from the injury, alike intolerable to
the free-born spirit of man ? Why suspend the blow over your head,
if it was not meant to descend upon it ? Or why hold up claims in
idle mockery, which good sense and reason alike disowned, as if there
were really a distinction in tho two classes of society, and the one
CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 491
were rightful lords over the other, instead of being by nature all
equal ? But the evil did not stop here ; for it was never yet known
that men wished to retain the semblance of a wrong, unless they
aimed at profiting as far as in them lay by the practise of it. While
the king wore the anointed crown that was supposed to be let down
in a golden chain from heaven on his head, while the lord dyed his
sword in blood, while the priest worked fancied miracles with a
crucifix and beads, they did well to claim to be masters of the world,
and to trample in triple phalanx on mankind : but why they should
expect us to allow this claim in mere courtesy and goodwill, when
it is no longer backed by fraud or force, is difficult to comprehend.
What is a legitimate government ? It is a government that pro-
fessedly derives its title from the grace of God and its ancestors,
that sets the choice or the good of the governed equally at defiance,
and that is amenable for the use it makes of its power only to its
own caprice, pride, or malice. It is an outrage and a burlesque on
every principle of common sense or liberty. It puts the means for
the end : mistakes a trust for a property, considers the honours and
offices of the state as its natural inheritance, and the law as an un-
just encroachment on its arbitrary will. What motive can there be
for tolerating such a government a single instant, except from sheer
necessity or blindfold ignorance ? Or what chance of modifying it
so as to answer any good purpose, without a total subversion of all
its institutions, principles, or prejudices ? The kings of France,
tamed by opinion, conforming to the manners of the time, no longer
stabbed a faithful counsellor in the presence-chamber, or strangled
a competitor for the throne in a dungeon, or laid waste a country
or fired a city for a whim : but they still made peace or war as they
pleased, or hung the wealth of a province in a mistress's ear, or lost
a battle by the promotion of a favourite, or ruined a treasury by the
incapacity of a minister of high birth and connections. The noble
no longer, as in days of yore, hung up his vassal at his door for a
disrespectful word or look (which was called the haute justice), or
issued with a numerous retinue from his lofty portcullis to carry fire
and sword into the neighbouring country ; but he too laboured in
his vocation, and in the proud voluptuous city drained the last
pittance from the toil-worn peasant by taxes, grants, and exactions,
to waste it on his own vanity, luxury, and vices. If he had a quarrel
with an inferior or with a rival less favoured than himself, the King
would issue his let! re-de-cachet, and give the refractory and unsus-
pecting offender a lodging for life in what Mr. Burke is pleased to
call the " King's castle! " Had opinion put a stop to this crying abuse,
had it rendered this odious privilege of royalty merely nominal ? " la
492 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the mild reign of Louis XV. alone," according to Blackstone, " there
were no less than fifteen thousand kttres-de-cachet issued." Some per-
sons will think this fact alone sufficient to account for and to justify
the overturning of the government in the reign of his successor. The
priests no longer tied their victim to the stake or devoted him to the
assassin's poniard as of old ; they thought it enough if they could
wallow in the fat of the land, pander to the vices of the rich and the
abuses of power, to which they looked for the continuance of wealth
and influence, and fly-blow every liberal argument, and persecute
every liberal writer, from whom they dreaded their loss. From the
moment that the ancient regime ceased to be supported by that
system of faith and manners in which it had originated, the whole
order of state became warped and disunited, a wretched jumble of
claims that were neither enforced nor relinquished. There was ill-
blood sown between the government and the people ; heart-burning,
jealousy, and want of confidence between the different members of
the community. Every advance in civilisation was regarded by one
party with dislike and distrust, while by the other every privilege
held by ancient tenure was censured as the offspring of pride and
prejudice. The court was like a decayed beauty, that viewed her
youthful rival's charms with scorn and apprehension. The nation,
in the language of the day, had hitherto been nothing, was everything,
and wanted to be something. The great mass of society felt itself as
a degraded caste, and was determined to wipe out the stigma with
which every one of its opinions, sentiments, and pretensions was
branded. This was a thing no longer to be endured, and must be
got rid of at any rate. The States-General of 1789 met under
different auspices from what they did in 1614, when the president
of the nobles reviled the Tiers Etat, and was echoed by the King
with greater acerbity of language, for begging to be looked upon in
the light of " a younger brother of the family ! " From the same
want of unity and concert in the parts of the system, magnificent
roads were built by the corvees or forced labour of the peasants,
leading nowhere, and without a traveller upon them, to gratify the
caprice and ostentation of the lords of the manor. Great and ex-
pensive works were undertaken by royal liberality, and laid aside by
royal caprice or ministerial incapacity. The resources of the country,
clogged by the remains of feudal tenures, by the ravages of the
game laws, and the sloth and depression resulting from partial laws,
were found inadequate to keep pace with the expenses of the court,
conducted on a scale of modern dissipation and extravagance. All
this was known, and had been repeated a thousand times, till it
became a kind of burning shame at the door. Such a state of
ENGLAND'S HOSTILITY. 493
things was ripe for change. After Pascal's "Provincial Letters," the
treatises of the Economists, and the clouds of Memoirs of the courts
of Louis XIV. and XV., after the wit of Voltaire and the eloquence
of Rousseau had exhausted every topic, light or serious, connected
with the prevailing order of things, the old French government
became effete in all its branches, and fell to the ground as a useless
incumbrance, almost without a struggle, and without one feeling of
regret in one worthy and well-informed mind. . . .
ENGLAND'S HOSTILITY TO THE REVOLUTION.
THE cause of American independence had succeeded; it became
doubly urgent to stifle the flame of liberty which had spread from
thence to France, and might consume every neighbouring govern-
ment in its dazzling blaze. Great was the disappointment, and
foul the stain, when England declared itself against France, thus
seeking to extinguish the light it had kindled once more in the
night of slavery, and heading the league of kings against the people,
thenceforth never to turn back till it had finally accomplished its
unrelenting purpose !
What had England to do with the quarrel ? Was her religion
Catholic ? She had been stigmatised for above two centuries, and
almost shut out of the pale of Christendom as a heretic. Was her
crown despotic ? Her king reigned, in contempt of an exiled Pre-
tender and of hereditary right, as the king of a free people. Did
her nobles form a privileged class, above the law? God forbid.
Were her clergy armed with a power to bind and to unloose, in
heaven and on earth ? It was long since they had been stripped
of any such power or pretension. What then was the crime which
drew down on France the vengeance not only of the despots of the
Continent, but the last enmity and implacable hatred of a free
nation, and of a constitutional king ? She had dared to aspire to
the blessings of the English Constitution. Was there treason, was
there danger in this ? Yes ; for if they made a step in advance from
slavery to freedom, it was thought that we might be tempted to
keep the start which we had always maintained in the race of free-
dom, and become too free ! To this illiberal, mean, and envious
policy we were not merely to sacrifice the peace and happiness of
the world, but were to abjure and reverse and load with opprobrium
every sentiment and maxim on which our own freedom and pre-
eminence rested. .
494 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
BURKE'S WRITINGS AGAINST THE REVOLUTION.
WITHOUT the help of Burke's powerful pen, perhaps the necessary
change in the tone of politics could not have heen accomplished
effectually or without violence. Liberty had hitherto been the
watchword of Englishmen, and all their stock of enthusiasm was
called forth by the mention of resistance to oppression, real or sup-
posed. Such had been our theory ; such (when occasion offered)
was our practice. Mr. Burke strewed the flowers of his rhetoric
over the rotten carcase of corruption ; by his tropes and figures so
dazzled both the ignorant and the learned, that they could not dis-
tinguish the shades between liberty and licentiousness, between
anarchy and despotism ; gave a romantic and novel air to the whole
question; proved that slavery was a very chivalrous and liberal
sentiment, that reason and prejudice were at bottom very much akin,
that the Queen of France was a very beautiful vision, and that there
was nothing so vile and sordid as useful knowledge and practical
improvement. A crazy, obsolete government was metamorphosed
jnto an object of fancied awe and veneration, like a mouldering
Gothic ruin, which, however delightful to look at or read of, is not
at all pleasant to live under. Thus the poetry and the imagination
of the thing were thrown into the scale of old-fashioned barbarism
and musty tradition, and turned the balance. A falser mode of
judging could not be found; for things strike the imagination from
privation, contrast, and suffering, which are proportionably intoler-
able in reality. It excites a pleasing interest to witness the repre-
sentation of a tragedy ; but who would, for this reason, wish to be
a real actor in it ? The good old times are good only because they
are gone, or because they afford a picturesque contrast to modern
ones ; and to wish to bring them back, is neither to appreciate the
old or the new. This served, however, to produce a diversion, and
to silence the clamour, that might otherwise have arisen. . . .
THE HORRORS OF THE REVOLUTION.
THE horrors then of the French Revolution did not arise out of
the Revolution, but from the dread of the Coalition formed against
it. To those who insist (either wilfully or from blind prejudice)
that all revolutions are a scene of confusion and violence, and that
this is their very end and essence, it may be proper to remark, that
the American Revolution waa accompanied with no such excesses ;
THE HORRORS OF THE REVOLUTION. 495
that the English Revolution of 1688 was accomplished without a
reign of terror, though it entailed a civil war and two rebellions on
the kingdom ; that the Low Countries revolted against, and after a
long and dreadful struggle shook off the tyranny of Spain, yet no
third party interfering between the people and the old government,
all the cruelties and atrocities were on the side of the Duke of Alva ;
and that of late the Spanish Constitution was twice established
without blood, though it seemed to require that cement, and fell
to the ground again, being at once assailed by external and internal
foes. When a house is beset by robbers, you know pretty well what
course to follow, and how to calculate on your means of resistance :
but if you find those within the house in league with those without,
the ordinary rules of prudence and safety must be dispensed with,
for there is no defence against treachery. — Another circumstance
which is to be taken into the account, and which is not, of course,
brought forward in a very prominent light by their own writers, is,
that the French were very hardly dealt with in this case, which was
an experimentum crucis upon the national character. They are a
people extremely susceptible of provocation. Like women, forced
out of their natural character, they become furies. Naturally light
and quick, good sense and good temper are their undeniable and
enviable characteristics : but if events occur to stagger or supersede
these habitual qualities, there then seems no end of the extrava-
gances of opinion, or cruelties in practice, of which they are capable,
as it were, from the mere impression of novelty and contrast. They
are the creatures of impulse, whether good or bad. Their very
thoughtlessness and indifference prevent them from being shocked
at the irregularities which the passion of the moment leads them
to commit ; and from the nicest sense of the ridiculous and the
justest tact in common things, there is no absurdity of speculation,
no disgusting rodomontade or wildness of abstraction, into which
they will not run when once thrown off their guard. They excel in
the trifling and familiar, and have not strength of character or
solidity of judgment to cope with great questions or trying occa-
sions. When they attempt the grand and striking, they fail from
too much presumption, and from too much fickleness. In a word,
from that eternal smile on the cheek to a massacre, there is but one
step : for those who are delighted with everything, will be shocked
at nothing. Vanity strives in general to please and make itself
amiable ; but if it is the fashion to do mischief, it will take the lead
in mischief, and is, therefore, a dangerous principle in times of crisis
and convulsion. A revolution was the Ulysses' bow of the French
philosophers and politicians. They might, perhaps, have left it to
2 N
496 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
others ; but having made the attempt, they demanded every kind of
indulgence and encouragement in the prosecution of it, like children
when they first begin to walk. Extremes in all cases meet. The
abuses and corruptions of the old political system were so numerous
and intricate, that they led to the most visionary and air-drawn
principles of government as the only alternative ; and the overgrown
absurdities and mummery of the Catholic Church had risen to such
a height, that they obscured religion itself, and both were over-
turned together. The scepticism and indifference which succeeded
did not afford the best medium of resistance to power or prejudice.
Perhaps a reformation in religion ought always to precede a revolu-
tion in the government. Catholics may make good subjects, but
bad rebels. They are so used to the trammels of authority, that
they do not immediately know how to do without them ; or, like
manumitted slaves, only feel assured of their liberty in commit-
ting some Saturnalian license. A revolution, to give it stability
and soundness, should first be conducted down to a Protestant
ground.
It has been the fashion to speak of the horrors of the French
Revolution as if they were an anomaly in the history of man, and
blotted out the memory of all other cruelties on record. Let us
turn to another example in the annals of the same people, but at a
different period, when monarchy and monkish sway were in their
" high and palmy state," not shorn of their beams or curtailed of
their influence by modern discoveries or degeneracy of manners.
The reign of terror, while it lasted, cost the lives of between three
and four thousand individuals in the course of less than two years
in Paris alone. The massacre of St. Bartholomew cost the lives
of seventy thousand Protestants in eight days throughout all
France. . . .
THE TAKING OF THE BASTILLE.
THE King's secret advisers were, however, by no means reconciled to
this new triumph over ancient privilege and existing authority ; and
meditated a reprisal by removing the Assembly farther from Paris,
and there dissolving, if it could not overawe them. For this purpose
the troops were collected from all parts ; Versailles (where the
Assembly sat) was like a camp ; Paris looked as if it were in a state
of siege. These extensive military preparations, the trains of artillery
arriving every hour from the frontier, with the presence of the foreign
regiments, occasioned great suspicion and alarm ; and on the motion
of Mirabeau, the Assembly sent an address to the King, respectfully
THE TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 497
urging him to remove the troops from the neighbourhood of the
capital : but this he declined doing, hinting at the same time that
they might retire, if they chose, to Noyon or Soissons, thus placing
themselves at the disposal of the Crown, and depriving themselves of
the aid of the people.
Paris was in a state of extreme agitation. This immense city was
unanimous in its devotedness to the Assembly. A capital is at all
times, and Paris was then more particularly, the natural focus of a
revolution. To this many causes contribute. The actual presence
of the monarch dissipates the illusions of loyalty; and he is no
longer (as in the distant province or petty village) an abstraction of
power and majesty, another name for all that is great and exalted,
but a common mortal, one man among a million of men, perhaps
one of the meanest of his race. Pageants and spectacles may impose
on the crowd ; but a weak or haughty look undoes the effect, and
leads to disadvantageous reflections on the title to, or the good re-
sulting from, all this display of pomp and magnificence. From being
the seat of the Court, its vices are better known, its meannesses are
more talked of. In the number and distraction of passing objects
and interests, the present occupies the mind alone — the chain of
antiquity is broken, and custom loses its force. Men become " flies
of a summer." Opinion has here many ears, many tongues, and
many hands to work with. The slightest whisper is rumoured
abroad, and the roar of the multitude breaks down the prison or the
palace gates. They are seldom brought to act together but in ex-
treme cases ; nor is it extraordinary that, in such cases, the conduct
of the people is violent, from the consciousness of transient power,
its impatience of opposition, its unwieldy bulk and loose texture,
which cannot be kept within nice bounds or stop at half-measures.
— Nothing could be more critical or striking than the situation of
Paris at this moment. Everything betokened some great and de-
cisive change. Foreign bayonets threatened the inhabitants from
without, famine within. The capitalists dreaded a bankruptcy ; the
enlightened and patriotic the return of absolute power ; the common
people threw all the blame on the privileged classes. The press
inflamed the public mind with innumerable pamphlets and in-
vectives against the Government, and the journals regularly re-
ported the proceedings and debates of the Assembly. Everywhere
in the open air, particularly in the Palais-Royal, groups were
formed, where they read and harangued by turns. It was in con-
sequence of a proposal made by one of the speakers in the Palais-
Royal, that the prison of the Abbaye was forced open, and some
grenadiers of the French Guards, who had been confined for re-
498 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
fusing to fire upon the people, were set at liberty and led out in
triumph.
Paris was in this state of excitement and apprehension when the
Court, having first stationed a number of troops at Versailles, at
Sevres, at the Champ-de-Mars, and at St. Denis, commenced offensive
measures by the complete change of all the Ministers and by the
banishment of Necker. The latter, on Saturday the nth of Jxily,
while he was at dinner, received a note from the King, enjoining him
to quit the kingdom without a moment's delay. He calmly finished
his dinner, without saying a word of the order he had received, and
immediately after got into his carriage with his wife and took the road
to Brussels. The next morning the news of his disgrace reached Paris.
The whole city was in a tumult : above ten thousand persons were,
in a short time, collected in the garden of the Palais-Royal. A
young man of the name of Oamille Desmoulins, one of the habitual
and most enthusiastic haranguers of the crowd, mounted on a table,
and cried out, that " there was not a moment to lose ; that the dis-
mission of Necker was the signal for the St. Bartholomew of liberty ;
that the Swiss and German regiments would presently issue from
the Champ-de-Mars to massacre the citizens; and that they had
but one resource left, which was to resort to arms." And the crowd,
tearing each a green leaf, the colour of hope, from the chestnut-trees
in the garden, which were nearly laid bare, and wearing it as a badge,
traversed the streets of Paris, with the busts of Necker and of the
Duke of Orleans (who was also said to be arrested) covered with
crape and borne in solemn pomp. They had proceeded in this
manner as far as the Place Vendome, when they were met by a party
of the Royal Allemand, whom they put to flight by pelting them
with stones ; but at the Place Louis XV. they were assailed by the
dragoons of the Prince of Lambesc ; the bearer of one of the busts
and a private of the French Guards were killed ; the mob fled into
the Garden of the Thuilleries, whither the Prince followed them at
the head of his dragoons, and attacked a number of persons who
knew nothing of what was passing, and were walking quietly in the
Gardens. In the scuffle an old man was wounded ; the confusion as
well as the resentment of the people became general ; and there was
but one cry, " To arms ! " to be heard throughout the Thuilleries, the
Palais-Royal, in the city, and in the suburbs.
The French Guards had been ordered to their quarters in the
Chaussee-d'Antin, where sixty of Lambesc's dragoons were posted
opposite to watch them. A dispute arose, and it was with much
difficulty they were prevented from coming to blows. But when
the former learned that one of their comrades had been slain, their
THE TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 499
indignation could no longer be restrained ; they rushed out, killed
two of the foreign soldiers, wounded three others, and the rest were
forced to fly. They then proceeded to the Place Louis XV., where
they stationed themselves between the people and the troops, and
guarded this position the whole of the night. The soldiers in the
Champ-de-Mars were then ordered to attack them^ but refused to
fire, and were remanded back to their quarters. The defection of
the French Guards, with the repugnance of the other troops to
march against the capital, put a stop for the present to the projects
of the Court. In the meantime, the populace had assembled at the
H6tel-de-Ville, and loudly demanded the sounding of the tocsin and
the arming of the citizens. Several highly respectable individuals
also met here, and did much good in repressing a spirit of violence
and mischief. They could not, however, effect everything. A
number of disorderly people and of workmen out of employ, with-
out food or place of abode, set fire to the barriers, infested the
streets, and pillaged several houses in the night between the 1 2th
and 1 3th.
The departure of Necker, which had excited such a sensation in
the capital, produced as deep an impression at Versailles and on
the Assembly, who manifested surprise and indignation, but not
dejection. Lally-Tollendal pronounced a formal eulogium on the
exiled Minister. After one or two displays of theatrical vehemence,
which is inseparable from French enthusiasm and eloquence (would
that the whole were not so soon forgotten like a play !) they dis-
patched a deputation to the King, informing him of the situation
and troubles of Paris, and praying him to dismiss the troops and
entrust the defence of the capital to the city militia. The deputa-
tion received an answer which amounted to a repulse. The Assembly
now perceived that the designs of the Court-party were irrevocably
fixed, and that it had only itself to rely upon. It instantly voted
the responsibility of the Ministers and of all the advisers of the
Crown, of whatsoever rank or degree. This last clause was pointed at
the Queen, whose influence was greatly dreaded. They then, from
an apprehension that the doors might be closed during the night
in order to dissolve the Assembly, declared their sittings permanent.
A vice-president was chosen, to lessen the fatigue of the Archbishop
of Vienne. The choice fell upon La Fayette. In this manner a
part of the Assembly sat up all night. It passed without delibera-
tion, the deputies remaining on their seats, silent, but calm and
serene. What thoughts must have revolved through the minds of
those present on this occasion ! Patriotism and philosophy had
here taken up their sanctuary. If we consider their situation : the
500 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
hopes that filled their breasts ; the trials they had to encounter ;
the future destiny of their country, of the world, which hung on
their decision as in a balance ; the bitter wrongs they were about to
sweep away ; the good they had it in their power to accomplish —
the countenances of the Assembly must have been majestic, and
radiant with the light that through them was about to dawn on
ages yet unborn. They might foresee a struggle, the last convulsive
efforts of pride and power to keep the world in its wonted subjec-
tion— but that was nothing — their final triumph over all opposition
was assured in the eternal principles of justice and in their own un-
shaken devotedness to the great cause of mankind ! If the result
did not altogether correspond to the intentions of those firm and
enlightened patriots who so nobly planned it, the fault was not in
them, but in others.
At Paris the insurrection had taken a more decided turn. Early
in the morning, the people assembled in large bodies at the Hotel-
de-Ville ; the tocsin sounded from all the churches ; the drums beat
to summon the citizens together, who formed themselves into dif-
ferent bands of volunteers. All that they wanted was arms. These,
except a few at the gunsmiths' shops, were not to be had. They
then applied to M. de Flesselles, a provost of the city, who amused
them with fair words. " My children," he said, " I am your father ! "
This paternal style seems to have been the order of the day. A
committee sat at the H6tel-de- Ville to take measures for the public
safety. Meanwhile a granary had been broken open ; the Garde-
JfeuUe had been ransacked for old arms ; the armourers' shops were
plundered; all was a scene of confusion, and the utmost dismay
everywhere prevailed. But no private mischief was done. It was
a moment of popular frenzy, but one in which the public danger and
the public good overruled every other consideration. The grain
which had been seized, the carts loaded with provisions, with plate
or furniture, and stopped at the barriers, were all taken to the Greve
as a public depot. The crowd incessantly repeated the cry for arms,
and were pacified by an assurance that thirty thousand muskets
would speedily arrive from Charleville. The Duke d'Aumont was
invited to take the command of the popular troops; and on his
hesitating, the Marquis of Salle was nominated in his stead. The
green cockade was exchanged for one of red and blue, the colours of
the city. A quantity of powder was discovered, as it was about to
be conveyed beyond the barriers ; and the cases of firearms promised
from Charleville turned out, on inspection, to be filled with old rags
and logs of wood. The rage and impatience of the multitude now
became extreme. Such perverse trifling and barefaced duplicity
THE TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 501
would be unaccountable anywhere else; but in France they pay
with promises ; and the provost, availing himself of the credulity of
his audience, promised them still more arms at the Chartreux. To
prevent a repetition of the excesses of the mob, Paris was illuminated
at night, and a patrole paraded the streets.
The following day, the people, being deceived as to the convoy of
arms that was to arrive from Charleville, and having been equally
disappointed in those at the Chartreux, broke into the Hospital of
Invalids, in spite of the troops stationed in the neighbourhood, and
carried off a prodigious number of stands of arms concealed in the
cellars. An alarm had been spread in the night that the regiment
quartered at St. Denis was on its way to Paris, and that the cannon
of the Bastille had been pointed in the direction of the street of St.
Antoine. This information, the dread which this fortress inspired,
the recollection of the horrors which had been perpetrated there, its
very name, which appalled all hearts and made the blood run cold,
the necessity of wresting it from the hands of its old and feeble
possessors, drew the attention of the multitude to this hated spot.
From nine in the morning of the memorable I4th of July till two,
Paris from one end to the other rang with the same watchword :
" To the Bastille ! To the Bastille ! " The inhabitants poured there
in throngs from all quarters, armed with different weapons ; the
crowd that already surrounded it was considerable ; the sentinels
were at their posts, and the drawbridges raised as in war-time.
A deputy from the district of St. Louis de la Culture, Thuriot de
la Rosiere, then asked to speak with the Governor, M. Delaunay.
Being admitted into his presence, he required that the direction of
the cannon should be changed. Three guns were pointed against
the entrance, though the Governor pretended that everything re-
mained in the state in which it had always been. About forty Swiss
and eighty Invalids garrisoned the place, from whom he obtained
a promise not to fire on the people, unless they were themselves
attacked. His companions began to be uneasy, and called loudly
for him. To satisfy them, he showed himself on the ramparts, from
whence he could see an immense multitude nocking from all parts,
and the Fauxbourg St. Antoine advancing as it were in a mass.
He then returned to his friends, and gave them what tidings he had
collected.
But the crowd, not satisfied, demanded the surrender of the
fortress. From time to time the angry cry was repeated : " Down
with the Pastille ! " Two men, more determined than the rest,
pressed forward, attacked a guard-house, and attempted to break
down the chains of the bridge with the blows of an axe. The
502 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
soldiers called out to them to fall back, threatening to fire if they
did not. But they repeated their blows, shattered the chains, and
lowered the drawbridge, over which they rushed with the crowd.
They threw themselves upon the second bridge, in the hopes of
making themselves masters of it in the same manner, when the
garrison fired and dispersed them for a few minutes. They soon,
however, returned to the charge; and for several hours during
a murderous discharge of musketry, and amidst heaps of the
wounded and dying, renewed the attack with unabated courage and
obstinacy, led on by two brave men, Elie and Hulin, their rage and
desperation being inflamed to a pitch of madness by the scene of
havoc around them. Several deputations arrived from the Hotel-
de-Ville to offer terms of accommodation : but in the noise and fury
of the moment they could not make themselves heard, and the
storming continued as before.
The assault had been carried on in this manner with inextinguish-
able rage and great loss of blood to the besiegers, though with little
progress made for above four hours, when the arrival of the French
Guards with cannon altered the face of things. The garrison urged
the Governor to surrender. The wretched Delaunay, dreading the
fate which awaited him, wanted to blow up the place and bury
himself under the ruins, and was advancing for this purpose with a
lighted match in his hand towards the powder magazine, but was
prevented by the soldiers, who planted the white flag on the plat-
form, and reversed their arms in token of submission. This was not
enough for those without. They demanded with loud and reiterated
cries to have the drawbridges let down ; and on an assurance being
given that no harm was intended, the bridges were lowered, and the
assailants tumultuously rushed in. The endeavours of their leaders
could not save the Governor or a number of the soldiers, who were
seized on by the infuriated multitude, and put to death for having
fired on their fellow-citizens. Thus fell the Bastille ; and the shout
that accompanied its downfall was echoed through Europe, and men
rejoiced that " the grass grew where the Bastille stood ! " Earth was
lightened of a load that oppressed it, nor did this ghastly object
any longer startle the sight, like an ugly spider lying in wait for its
accustomed prey, and brooding in sullen silence over the wrongs
which it had the will, though not the power, to inflict.
The stormers of the Bastille arrived at the Place de Greve, rend-
ing the air with shouts of victory. They marched on to the great
hall of the H6tel-de-Ville, in all the terrific and unusual pomp of
a popular triumph. Such of them as had displayed most courage
and ardour were borne on the shoulders of the rest, crowned with
THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. 503
laurel. They were escorted up the hall by near two thousand of the
populace, their eyes naming, their hair in wild disorder, variously
accoutred, pressing tumultuously on each other, and making the
heavy floors almost crack beneath their footsteps. One bore the
keys and flag of the Bastille, another the regulations of the prison
brandished on the point of a bayonet ; a third (a thing horrible to
relate !) held in his bloody fingers the buckle of the Governor's
stock. In this order it was that they entered the H6tel-de-Ville to
announce their victory to the Committee, and to decide on the fate
of their remaining prisoners, who, in spite of the impatient cries to
give no quarter, were rescued by the exertions of the commandant
La Salle, Moreau de St. Mery, and the intrepid Elie. Then came
the turn of the despicable Flesselles, that caricature of vapid, frothy
impertinence, who thought he could baffle the roaring tiger with
grimace and shallow excuses. " To the Palais-Royal with him ! "
was the word ; and he answered with callous indifference, " Well, to
the Palais-Royal if you will." He was hemmed in by the crowd, and
borne along without any violence being offered him to the place of
destination ; but at the corner of the Quai Le Pelletier, an unknown
hand approached him, and stretched him lifeless on the spot with a
pistol-shot. During the night succeeding this eventful day Paris
was in the greatest agitation, hourly expecting (in consequence of
the statements of intercepted letters) an attack from the troops.
Every preparation was made to defend the city. Barricadoes were
formed, the streets unpaved, pikes forged, the women piled stones
on the tops of houses to hurl them down on the heads of the
soldiers, and the National Guard occupied the outposts.
THE BURNING OF MOSCOW.
ON the 1 4th of September, Napoleon rejoined his advanced guard.
He mounted his horse a few leagues from Moscow, and marched
slowly and circumspectly, expecting the enemy and a battle. The
ground was favourable, and works had been marked out ; but every-
thing had been abandoned, and not an individual was to be met
with. At length, the last height had been gained that is con-
tiguous to Moscow, and commands it : it is called the " Mount of
Salvation," because, from the top of it, at the sight of their holy
city, the inhabitants make the sign of the cross, and prostrate them-
selves on the ground. The light troops soon reached the summit.
It was two o'clock, and the great city was glittering with a thou-
sand colours in the sun. Struck with astonishment at the spectacle,
504 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
they halted, and exclaimed in admiration, " Moscow ! Moscow ! "
All then quickened their pace, and at length ran forward in dis-
order, till at last the whole army, clapping their hands, repeated
the exclamation in a transport of joy; as mariners cry "Land!
Land ! " at the end of a long and dangerous voyage. At the sight
of this golden city, this brilliant clasp of Europe and Asia; this
superb emporium, where the luxury, the customs, and the arts of
the two finest divisions of the globe meet: a city admirable in itself,
but more so in the wide waste that surrounds it (that, like an isth-
mus, unites the extremes of barbarism and wealth, the north and
the south, the east and the west, antiquity and new-born empire,
the crescent with the cross, the palaces of the Caesars with the halls
of Runic superstition), the French army halted (as well they might)
with feelings of proud and conscious exultation. What a day of
glory was that — to be succeeded by what a fall — which was not
unnatural neither, for the height of glory is only built on the
extreme verge of danger and difficulty ! Over this vast and novel
scene, which rose at once to the pomp of history, they fancied
themselves moving in splendid procession, amidst the acclamations
of surrounding nations : here was the termination which had been
promised to all their labours ; here they ought to stop, as they
could no longer surpass themselves or be surpassed by others. At
this moment of enthusiasm, all losses and sufferings were forgotten.
It seemed impossible to purchase at too dear a rate the proud
satisfaction of being able to say for the remainder of their lives, " I
belonged to the army of Moscow."
Napoleon himself hastened forward to the view. He stopped in
evident transport : an exclamation of self-congratulation fell from
his lips. The marshals, too, gathered round him with delight, eager
to pay homage to his success. But in the mind of Napoleon the
first burst of feeling was never of long duration, as he had too many
important concerns to attend to give himself up entirely to his
sensations. His first exclamation was, " There, at last, then, is
that famous city ! " And his second, " It was high time ! " His
eye was now intently fixed on that capital, where he imagined that
he saw the whole Russian Empire. Those walls enclosed the whole
of his hopes, peace, the expenses of the war, and immortal glory
When, then, would its gates open, and a deputation issue from it,
to lay its wealth, its population, its senate, and its chief nobility at
his feet ? Already, both on his left and on his right, he saw the
hostile city attacked by Prince Eugene and Poniatowski, and in
front Murat had reached the suburbs ; yet there was not the slightest
appearance of anything like a pacific overture. No one had approached
THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. 505
but an officer from Miloradowich, to say that he would set fire to
the city, if he were not allowed time to evacuate it. The foremost
troops of the two armies were for a short time intermingled. Murat
was recognised by the Cossacks, who crowded around him to extol
his bravery and admire his finery. He gave them his watch and
those of h:s officers. One of them called him his Hetman.
In the neantime the day was passing away, and the Emperor's
anxiety increased. The army became impatient. A few officers
penetrated within the walls. " Moscow was deserted." At this in-
telligence, which he repelled with considerable vehemence, but which
was confirmed by various reports, Napoleon descended the Mount of
Salvation, and advanced towards the Dorogomilow gate. He called
aloud to Daru, and said, " Moscow deserted ! A most unlikely
event ! We must enter it, and ascertain the fact. Go, and bring
the boyars before me." He would not believe that these men had all
fled. How, indeed, was it possible to conceive, that so many sump-
tuous palaces and splendid temples and wealthy factories should be
abandoned by the owners, like the miserable huts which the army
had passed on their march ? Daru had now returned, having failed
in his mission. Not a single Muscovite was to be found : no smoke
was seen ascending from the meanest hearth ; nor was the slightest
noise to be heard throughout that populous and extensive city ; its
three hundred thousand inhabitants seemed all dumb and motionless,
as by enchantment. It was the silence of the desert. Napoleon
still persisted, till an officer went and brought before him half a dozen
miserable objects, who were the only inhabitants he could find.
He then no longer doubted the fact, shrugged his shoulders, and
contented himself with saying, " The Russians are as yet little aware
what effect the taking of their capital will have upon them."
Murat, with his long and heavy column of cavalry, had entered
Moscow for more than an hour. They made their way into that
gigantic body, and found it as yet uninjured, but inanimate. Struck
with surprise at the mighty solitude, they marched on in silence
and listened to the sound of their horses' feet re-echoed from tenant-
less palaces. On a sudden, the fire of small-arms attracted their
attention. The column halted. Its hindmost horses still covered
the plain. Its centre was passing through one of the longest streets
of the city: its head was near the Kremlin. The gates of that
citadel appeared to be shut : but from within the enclosure proceeded
the most savage yells, and a few men and women of the most dis-
gusting aspect, drunk, and uttering frightful imprecations, were
observed, fi Jly armed, upon the walls. Murat sent them offers of
peace, but i i vain ; and it became necessary to force the gates with
So6 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
cannon. One of these squalid-looking wretches rushed upon the
King of Naples, and attempted twice to kill one of his officers, flying
at him like a wild beast, and endeavouring to tear him with his
teeth, after his arms were pinioned. Here also were found five
hundred recruits, whom the Russians had left behind ; and several
thousand stragglers and deserters were taken and set at liberty
by the advanced guard, who afterwards rejoined their countrymen.
Murat, detained only a short time by the capture of the Kremlin,
passed hastily on by the road to Voladimir and Asia, in pursuit of
the enemy.
Napoleon did not enter Moscow before night. He stopped at
one of the first houses in the Dorogomilow suburb. He there
appointed Marshal Mortier governor of that capital. " Above all,"
said he, " no pillage. Your head shall answer for it. Defend
Moscow both against friends and foes." During the night, unfavour-
able reports came in in rapid succession. Some Frenchmen, who
had been residents in the country, and even an officer of the police,
announced the intended burning. The Emperor slept little, called
for his attendants every half-hour, to make them repeat the ominous
intelligence they had heard, but at last wrapped himself up in
incredulity ; when, about two o'clock, he was apprised that the
flames had broken out. It was at the merchants' palace or Exchange,
in the centre of the city, and most opulent quarter of it. He
immediately gave orders, and dispatched messages with great promp-
titude. As soon as daylight appeared, he hastened to the city
himself, and severely menaced the Young Guard and Mortier. The
Marshal showed him houses covered with iron roofs ; closely shut
up, and without any marks of violence, or an attempt to break into
them : yet a black smoke was already issuing from them. Napoleon
entered the Kremlin, thoughtful and uneasy. At the sight of
this palace, at once of Gothic and modern architecture, founded by
the Romanofs and Rurics, of their still extant throne, of the Cross
of the great Ivan, and of the most beautiful part of the city, of
which the Kremlin commands a view, his hopes revived. He was
heard to say, "I am at length, then, in Moscow; in the ancient
city of the Czars ; in the Kremlin." He examined every part with
an eager curiosity and a lofty feeling of complacency. In a moment
of satisfaction and triumph, he addressed a pacific overture to the
Emperor Alexander. A Russian officer of rank, who had just been
discovered in the great hospital, was made the bearer of it.
Daylight favoured the exertions of the Duke of Treviso, who
succeeded in checking the flames. The incendiaries kept themselves
so well concealed, that their existence was much doubted. At length
THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. 507
order was re-established, apprehensions dispelled, and every one
betook himself to rest in the best quarters he could find, and deter-
mined to make the most of his present situation. Two officers, who
had taken up their quarters in one of the buildings of the Kremlin,
overlooking the north and west, were awakened about midnight by
an overpowering light. They instantly looked out, and saw palaces
enveloped in flames, which, after exhibiting all their striking and
grotesque architecture in a glare of light, speedily converted them
into ashes. The wind, being in the north, drove the flames directly
upon the Kremlin; so that the two Frenchmen felt considerable
alarm for that vast enclosure of buildings, where the choicest troops
of the army and their renowned commander were reposing. Already
the burning flakes and brands began to be carried towards the
roofs of the Kremlin, when the wind suddenly shifting, impelled
the mischief in a different direction. The officers, satisfied of their
own security, said, "Let others look to it now," and again fell asleep.
But they were soon after roused by a new and more vivid burst
of light, and saw flames rising in the opposite quarter, which still
menaced the Kremlin. Three times the wind shifted; and each
time these stubborn and avenging fires, as if attracted by the
size of the building or by what it contained, pointed to the Kremlin.
An alarming and awful suspicion now darted on their minds. The
Muscovites, informed of the rash and dangerous negligence of their
enemies, had possibly conceived the idea of destroying the soldiery
together with the city, as they lay overpowered by wine, fatigue,
and sleep ; or rather, perhaps, they had expected to involve Napoleon
himself in the catastrophe. Moscow seemed no inadequate funeral
pile for so mighty a foe. Such a sacrifice might indeed have been
made at a cheaper rate than that which was actually paid for it.
Not only did the Kremlin enclose a magazine of powder, unknown
to the French ; but, through inattention, that very same night a
whole park of artillery had been stationed under Napoleon's win-
dows. If a single spark out of the myriads that were flying over
their heads had dropped upon one of the caissons, the flower of the
army, with the Emperor, must have been destroyed.
At length, day appeared. It came to add to the horrors of the
scene, while it dimmed its splendour. Many of the officers took
shelter in the halls of the palace. The chiefs, including Mortier,
overcome with the exertions which they had made for six-and-thirty
hours, returned to the Kremlin in a state of exhaustion and despair.
All were silent ; but they inwardly blamed themselves as authors or
the disaster. It was supposed that the neglect and intoxication of
the soldiers must have commenced what the tempest had aggravated ;
So8 WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
and they began to regard themselves, and to imagine that they would
be regarded by all Europe, with a sort of horror. But from these
painful reflections they were relieved by the accounts which came in
fast, and were more and more confirmed, that the Russians were
alone chargeable with the calamity. On the first night, between the
1 4th and I5th, a globe of fire had been let down on the palace of
Prince Trubetskoi, and had consumed it. This was the signal for
setting fire to the Exchange. Russian police-officers had been seen
stirring up the flames with lances dipped in pitch. When the French
soldiers tried to get into a house seemingly uninhabited, they were
frequently driven back, either by the smoke issuing from it, or by
shells bursting within it. A number of frantic men and women were
seen roaming amid the flames, with flambeaux in their hands, spread-
ing the work of destruction, and thus completing an image of the
infernal world. It appeared that these banditti had been let loose
from prison to execute a design which it exhausted all the fortitude
of patriotism or virtue barely to conceive. Orders were given to try
and shoot every incendiary on the spot. The army was drawn out ;
the Old Guard had taken arms ; alarm, astonishment, mortification,
filled every breast. Napoleon, whose sleep no one had ventured to
disturb during the night, was awoke by the double light of day and
of the conflagration. Vexed and irritated at first, he was bent on
mastering the flames ; but he soon yielded to what was absolutely
inevitable. Having conquered his enemies by inflicting on them all
the terrors of regular warfare, he saw that they were determined to
defeat him by inflicting still greater evils on themselves. For once
he found himself surpassed by barbarous daring and resolution.
The mighty conquest, for which he had sacrificed so much, and
which he had at last achieved, was now vanishing from him in a
whirlwind of smoke and flame. He was in a state of excessive
agitation, and seemed in a manner parched up by the flames with
which he was surrounded. He paced the apartments with hurried
steps, quitted and resumed his seat, and left business of the most
pressing urgency, to run to the windows and observe the progress of
the fire ; his abrupt and eager movements indicated the trouble of
his mind, while he gave vent to his oppressed and labouring feelings
in short and broken exclamations: — "What a frightful spectacle!
To have done it themselves ! Such a number of palaces ! They are
genuine Scythians ! " Between him and the fire there was a large
and open piece of ground, close to which was the Mosqua, with its
two quays ; yet the glasses of the windows against which he leaned
were so violently heated that he could not touch them with his
hand. A report was now spread that the Kremlin was undermined :
THE BURNING OF MOSCOW. 509
some of the attendants nearly lost their senses through terror ; the
military waited with firmness whatever doom Fate and the Emperor
should assign them : Buonaparte only noticed the alarm with a dis-
trustful smile. He seemed determined to keep possession of his
conquest, though the fire gained ground every moment ; seizing the
bridges, all the accesses to the fortress, the neighbouring houses, and
holding him almost a prisoner in the walls of the Kremlin. Night
was advancing, and the equinoctial wind blew with redoubled
violence. The King of Naples and Prince Eugene arrived at this
crisis; and, in conjunction with Berthier, in vain urged him to
depart. On a sudden a cry was heard that " the Kremlin was on
fire." Napoleon went out to see the source of the danger, which
had been put a stop to in two places ; but the tower was still burn-
ing, and a police-soldier had been detected there who had set it on
fire. The exasperated grenadiers dragged him into the adjoining
court-yard, where they dispatched him with their bayonets.
This incident determined Napoleon. All, it was evident, was
devoted to destruction: even the ancient and sacred pile of the
Kremlin. He descended the northern staircase, celebrated for the
murder of- the Strelitzes, and gave orders for procuring a guide to
conduct him out of the city a league on the Petersburg road, to
the castle of Petrowski. The flames, however, blocked up the gates
of the citadel, and baffled the first attempts made to leave it. After
repeated search, a postern-gate was discovered leading across the
rocks, which opened towards the Mosqua. Through this narrow
pass Napoleon, with his officers and guard, effected his escape
from the Kremlin. But being nearer to the flames than before,
they could neither go back nor stay where they were : how was it
possible to cross the waves of that sea of fire ? Even those who had
passed through and examined the city, now bewildered by the wind
and blinded by the dust, were totally unable distinctly to recognise
the several parts, as the streets had disappeared amidst the smoke
and ruins. There was, however, no time to be lost : the roaring of
the flames grew louder every moment. A single narrow street,
crooked and in every part on fire, caught their attention, but
looked more like an avenue to the hell before them than a way
to avoid it. The Emperor darted forward on foot, without a
moment's hesitation, into this formidable pass. He advanced over
the scorching cinders, which grated under his feet, amidst the perils
of dividing roofs and falling beams, and domes covered with melting
iron, all scattering tremendous ruins around him. These ruins
often impeded his progress. The flames, which were consuming
the houses between which the group proceeded, after mounting to
5io WILLIAM HAZLITT— ESSAYIST AND CRITIC.
the greatest height, were turned back by the force of the wind in
arches of fire over their heads. They were walking on a soil of fire,
under a sky of fire, and between walls of fire. The heat was torment-
ing and almost putting out their eyes, which yet it was necessary to
keep open and intently fixed on the occurring circumstances. A
stifling air, hot ashes, innumerable flakes of fire, made their respira-
tion short, dry, and gasping, and they were half-suffocated with the
smoke. In this state of inexpressible distress, their guide stopped
suddenly, quite at a loss and confounded. And if some pillaging
stragglers, belonging to the first corps, had not recognised the
Emperor through the hurricane of flames, the event must have been
fatal. They instantly ran to his aid, and led the way to the still
smoking ruins of a quarter of the city which had been laid in ashes
in the morning. Just at this time they fell in with the Prince of
Eckmuhl. This marshal, who had been wounded at the Mosqua,
had actually ordered his men to carry him through the flames in
order to extricate Napoleon or to perish with him. He threw him-
self into his arms in a transport of joy. The Emperor received him
well, but with a composure which in the midst of danger never
deserted him. In order to effect his escape, it was yet necessary
to pass by a long convoy of gunpowder, which was defiling amidst
the fire. This was not the least of his risks, but it was the last ;
and at night they reached Petrowski. . . .
THE END.
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