William Hazlitt

en.m.wikipedia.org /wiki/William_Hazlitt

This article is about the English literary critic and essayist. For other persons named Hazlitt, see Hazlitt (name).
For other persons named William Hazlitt, see William Hazlitt (disambiguation).

William Hazlitt

A self-portrait from about 1802

Born (1778-04-10)10 April 1778

Maidstone, Kent, England

Died 18 September 1830(1830-09-18) (aged 52)

Soho, London, England

Occupation Essayist, literary critic, painter, philosopher

Notable Characters of Shakespear's Plays, Table-Talk, Liber Amoris , The Spirit of the Age , Notes of a
works Journey Through France and Italy, The Plain Speaker

William Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English writer, drama and literary critic, painter,
social commentator, and philosopher. He is now considered one of the greatest critics and essayists in the
history of the English language,[1][2] placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell.[3][4] He is
also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age.[5] Despite his high standing among historians of literature
and art, his work is currently little read and mostly out of print.[6][7]

During his lifetime he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including
Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and John Keats.[8]

Life and works

Background

The family of Hazlitt's father were Irish Protestants who moved from the county of Antrim to Tipperary in the early
18th century. Also named William Hazlitt, Hazlitt's father attended the University of Glasgow (where he was
taught by Adam Smith), [9] receiving a master's degree in 1760. Not entirely satisfied with his Presbyterian faith,
he became a Unitarian minister in England. In 1764 he became pastor at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, where in
1/35
1766 he married Grace Loftus, daughter of a recently deceased ironmonger. Of their many children, only three
survived infancy. The first of these, John (later known as a portrait painter), was born in 1767 at Marshfield in
Gloucestershire, where the Reverend William Hazlitt had accepted a new pastorate after his marriage. In 1770,
the elder Hazlitt accepted yet another position and moved with his family to Maidstone, Kent, where his first and
only surviving daughter, Margaret (usually known as "Peggy"), was born that same year. [10]

Childhood, education, young philosopher (1778–1797)

Childhood

William, the youngest of the surviving Hazlitt children, was born in

Mitre Lane, Maidstone, in 1778. In 1780, when he was two, his family
began a nomadic lifestyle that was to last several years. From
Maidstone his father took them to Bandon, County Cork, Ireland; and
from Bandon in 1783 to the United States, where the elder Hazlitt
preached, lectured, and sought a ministerial call to a liberal
congregation. His efforts to obtain a post did not meet with success,
although he did exert a certain influence on the founding of the first
Unitarian church in Boston.[11] In 1786–87 the family returned to
House in Wem, Shropshire where the Reverend
England and settled in Wem, in Shropshire. Hazlitt would remember William Hazlitt and his family lived between 1787
little of his years in America, save the taste of barberries.[12] and 1813

Education

Hazlitt was educated at home and at a local school. At age 13 he had the satisfaction of seeing his writing
appear in print for the first time, when the Shrewsbury Chronicle published his letter (July 1791) condemning the
riots in Birmingham over Joseph Priestley's support for the French Revolution.[13] In 1793 his father sent him to
a Unitarian seminary on what was then the outskirts of London, the New College at Hackney (commonly referred
to as Hackney College). [14] The schooling he received there, though relatively brief, approximately two years,
made a deep and abiding impression on Hazlitt.[15]

The curriculum at Hackney was very broad, including a grounding in the Greek and Latin classics, mathematics,
history, government, science, and, of course, religion.[16] Much of his education there was along traditional lines;
however, the tutelage having been strongly influenced by eminent Dissenting thinkers of the day like Richard
Price and Joseph Priestley,[17] there was also much that was nonconformist. Priestley, whom Hazlitt had read
and who was also one of his teachers, was an impassioned commentator on political issues of the day. This,
along with the turmoil in the wake of the French Revolution, sparked in Hazlitt and his classmates lively debates
on these issues, as they saw their world being transformed around them.[18]

Changes were taking place within the young Hazlitt as well. While, out of respect for his father, Hazlitt never
openly broke with his religion, he suffered a loss of faith, and left Hackney before completing his preparation for
the ministry.[19]

Although Hazlitt rejected the Unitarian theology,[20] his time at Hackney left him with much more than religious
scepticism. He had read widely and formed habits of independent thought and respect for the truth that would
remain with him for life.[21] He had thoroughly absorbed a belief in liberty and the rights of man, and confidence
in the idea that the mind was an active force which, by disseminating knowledge in both the sciences and the
arts, could reinforce the natural tendency in humanity towards good. The school had impressed upon him the
importance of the individual's ability, working both alone and within a mutually supportive community, to effect
beneficial change by adhering to strongly held principles. The belief of many Unitarian thinkers in the natural
disinterestedness of the human mind had also laid a foundation for the young Hazlitt's own philosophical
explorations along those lines. And, though harsh experience and disillusionment later compelled him to qualify
2/35
some of his early ideas about human nature, he was left with a hatred of tyranny and persecution that he
retained to his dying days,[22] as expressed a quarter-century afterward in the retrospective summing up of his
political stance in his 1819 collection of Political Essays: "I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools
... I cannot sit quietly down under the claims of barefaced power, and I have tried to expose the little arts of
sophistry by which they are defended." [23]

The young philosopher

Returning home, around 1795, his thoughts were directed into more secular channels, encompassing not only
politics but, increasingly, modern philosophy, which he had begun to read with fascination at Hackney. In
September 1794, he had met William Godwin,[24] the reformist thinker whose recently published Political Justice
had taken English intellectual circles by storm. Hazlitt was never to feel entirely in sympathy with Godwin's
philosophy, but it gave him much food for thought.[25] He spent much of his time at home in an intensive study of
English, Scottish, and Irish thinkers like John Locke, David Hartley, George Berkeley, and David Hume, together
with French thinkers like Claude Adrien Helvétius, Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, the Marquis de Condorcet, and
Baron d'Holbach.[26] From this point onwards, Hazlitt's goal was to become a philosopher. His intense studies
focused on man as a social and political animal, and, in particular, on the philosophy of mind, a discipline that
would later be called psychology.

It was in this period also that he came across Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who became one of the most important
influences on the budding philosopher's thinking. He also familiarized himself with the works of Edmund Burke,
whose writing style impressed him enormously.[27] Hazlitt then set about working out a treatise, in painstaking
detail, on the "natural disinterestedness of the human mind".[28] It was Hazlitt's intention to disprove the notion
that man is naturally selfish (benevolent actions being rationally modified selfishness, ideally made habitual), a
premise fundamental to much of the moral philosophy of Hazlitt's day.[29] The treatise was finally published only
in 1805. In the meantime the scope of his reading had broadened and new circumstances had altered the course
of his career. Yet, to the end of his life, he would consider himself a philosopher.[30]

Around 1796, Hazlitt found new inspiration and encouragement from Joseph Fawcett, a retired clergyman and
prominent reformer, whose enormous breadth of taste left the young thinker awestruck. From Fawcett, in the
words of biographer Ralph Wardle, he imbibed a love for "good fiction and impassioned writing", Fawcett being
"a man of keen intelligence who did not scorn the products of the imagination or apologize for his tastes". With
him, Hazlitt not only discussed the radical thinkers of their day, but ranged comprehensively over all kinds of
literature, from John Milton's Paradise Lost to Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. This background is important
for understanding the breadth and depth of Hazlitt's own taste in his later critical writings. [31]

Aside from residing with his father as he strove to find his own voice and work out his philosophical ideas, Hazlitt
also stayed over with his older brother John, who had studied under Joshua Reynolds and was following a
career as a portrait painter. He also spent evenings with delight in London's theatrical world,[32] an aesthetic
experience that would prove, somewhat later, of seminal importance to his mature critical work. In large part,
however, Hazlitt was then living a decidedly contemplative existence, one somewhat frustrated by his failure to
express on paper the thoughts and feelings that were churning within him.[33] It was at this juncture that Hazlitt
met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This encounter, a life-changing event, was subsequently to exercise a profound
influence on his writing career that, in retrospect, Hazlitt regarded as greater than any other.[34]

Poetry, painting and marriage (1798–1812)

"First Acquaintance with Poets"

On 14 January 1798, Hazlitt, in what was to prove a turning point in his life, encountered Coleridge as the latter
preached at the Unitarian chapel in Shrewsbury. A minister at the time, Coleridge had as yet none of the fame
that would later accrue to him as a poet, critic, and philosopher. Hazlitt, like Thomas de Quincey and many
3/35
others afterwards, was swept off his feet by Coleridge's dazzlingly erudite eloquence.[35] "I could not have been
more delighted if I had heard the music of the spheres", he wrote years later in his essay "My First Acquaintance
with Poets".[36] It was, he added, as if "Poetry and Philosophy had met together. Truth and Genius had
embraced, under the eye and with the sanction of Religion." Long after they had parted ways, Hazlitt would
speak of Coleridge as "the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius".[37] That
Hazlitt learned to express his thoughts "in motley imagery or quaint allusion", that his understanding "ever found
a language to express itself," was, he openly acknowledged, something he owed to Coleridge.[38] For his part,
Coleridge showed an interest in the younger man's germinating philosophical ideas, and offered
encouragement.

In April Hazlitt jumped at Coleridge's invitation to visit him at his residence in Nether Stowey, and that same day
was taken to call in on William Wordsworth at his house in Alfoxton.[39] Again, Hazlitt was enraptured. While he
was not immediately struck by Wordsworth's appearance, in observing the cast of Wordsworth's eyes as they
contemplated a sunset, he reflected, "With what eyes these poets see nature!" Given the opportunity to read the
Lyrical Ballads in manuscript, Hazlitt saw that Wordsworth had the mind of a true poet, and "the sense of a new
style and a new spirit in poetry came over me."[39]

All three were fired by the ideals of liberty and the rights of man. Rambling across the countryside, they talked of
poetry, philosophy, and the political movements that were shaking up the old order. This unity of spirit was not to
last: Hazlitt himself would recall disagreeing with Wordsworth on the philosophical underpinnings of his projected
poem The Recluse,[40] just as he had earlier been amazed that Coleridge could dismiss David Hume, regarded
as one of the greatest philosophers of that century, as a charlatan.[41] Nonetheless, the experience impressed on
the young Hazlitt, at 20, the sense that not only philosophy, to which he had devoted himself, but also poetry
warranted appreciation for what it could teach, and the three-week visit stimulated him to pursue his own thinking
and writing. [42] Coleridge, on his part, using an archery metaphor, later revealed that he had been highly
impressed by Hazlitt's promise as a thinker: "He sends well-headed and well-feathered Thoughts straight
forwards to the mark with a Twang of the Bow-string."[43]

The itinerant painter

Meanwhile, the fact remained that Hazlitt had chosen not to follow a pastoral vocation. Although he never
abandoned his goal of writing a philosophical treatise on the disinterestedness of the human mind, it had to be
put aside indefinitely. Still dependent on his father, he was now obliged to earn his own living. Artistic talent
seemed to run in the family on his mother's side and, starting in 1798, he became increasingly fascinated by
painting. His brother, John, had by now become a successful painter of miniature portraits. So it occurred to
William that he might earn a living similarly, and he began to take lessons from John.[44]

Hazlitt also visited various picture galleries, and he began to get work doing portraits, painting somewhat in the
style of Rembrandt.[45] In this fashion, he managed to make something of a living for a time, travelling back and
forth between London and the country, wherever he could get work. By 1802, his work was considered good
enough that a portrait he had recently painted of his father was accepted for exhibition by the Royal
Academy.[46]

Later in 1802, Hazlitt was commissioned to travel to Paris and copy several works of the Old Masters hanging in
the Louvre. This was one of the great opportunities of his life. Over a period of three months, he spent long
hours rapturously studying the gallery's collections,[47] and hard thinking and close analysis would later inform a
considerable body of his art criticism. He also happened to catch sight of Napoleon, a man he idolised as the
rescuer of the common man from the oppression of royal "Legitimacy".[48]

Back in England, Hazlitt again travelled up into the country, having obtained several commissions to paint
portraits. One commission again proved fortunate, as it brought him back in touch with Coleridge and
Wordsworth, both of whose portraits he painted, as well as one of Coleridge's son Hartley. Hazlitt aimed to
4/35
create the best pictures he could, whether they flattered their subjects or not, and neither poet was satisfied with
his result, though Wordsworth and their mutual friend Robert Southey considered his portrait of Coleridge a
better likeness than one by the celebrated James Northcote.[49]

Recourse to prostitutes was unexceptional among literary—and other—men of that period, [50] and if Hazlitt was
to differ from his contemporaries, the difference lay in his unabashed candour about such arrangements.[51]
Personally, he was rarely comfortable in middle- and upper-class female society, and, tormented by desires he
later branded as "a perpetual clog and dead-weight upon the reason," [52] he made an overture to a local woman
while visiting the Lake District with Coleridge. He had however grossly misread her intentions and an altercation
broke out which led to his precipitous retreat from the town under cover of darkness. This public blunder placed a
further strain on his relations with both Coleridge and Wordsworth, which were already fraying for other
reasons.[53]

Marriage, family, and friends

On 22 March 1803, at a London dinner party held by William Godwin, Hazlitt met Charles Lamb and his sister
Mary.[54] A mutual sympathy sprang up immediately between William and Charles, and they became fast
friends. Their friendship, though sometimes strained by Hazlitt's difficult ways, lasted until the end of Hazlitt's
life.[55] He was fond of Mary as well, and—ironically in view of her intermittent fits of insanity—he considered her
the most reasonable woman he had ever met, [56] no small compliment coming from a man whose view of
women at times took a misogynistic turn.[57] Hazlitt frequented the society of the Lambs for the next several
years, from 1806 often attending their famous "Wednesdays" and later "Thursdays" literary salons.[58]

With few commissions for painting, Hazlitt seized the opportunity to

ready for publication his philosophical treatise, which, according to
his son, he had completed by 1803. Godwin intervened to help him
find a publisher, and the work, An Essay on the Principles of Human
Action: Being an Argument in favour of the Natural Disinterestedness
of the Human Mind, was printed in a limited edition of 250 copies by
Joseph Johnson on 19 July 1805. [59] This gained him little notice as
an original thinker, and no money. Although the treatise he valued
above anything else he wrote was never, at least in his own lifetime,
recognised for what he believed was its true worth,[60] it brought him
attention as one who had a grasp of contemporary philosophy. He
therefore was commissioned to abridge and write a preface to a now
obscure work of mental philosophy, The Light of Nature Pursued by
Abraham Tucker (originally published in seven volumes from 1765 to
1777), which appeared in 1807[61] and may have had some influence
on his own later thinking.[62] Portrait of Charles Lamb by William Hazlitt, 1804

Slowly Hazlitt began to find enough work to eke out a bare living. His
outrage at events then taking place in English politics in reaction to Napoleon's wars led to his writing and
publishing, at his own expense (though he had almost no money), a political pamphlet, Free Thoughts on Public
Affairs (1806),[63] an attempt to mediate between private economic interests and a national application of the
thesis of his Essay that human motivation is not, inherently, entirely selfish. [64]

Hazlitt also contributed three letters to William Cobbett's Weekly Political Register at this time, all scathing
critiques of Thomas Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population (1798 and later editions). Here he replaced
the dense, abstruse manner of his philosophical work with the trenchant prose style that was to be the hallmark
of his later essays. Hazlitt's philippic, dismissing Malthus's argument on population limits as sycophantic rhetoric
to flatter the rich, since large swathes of uncultivated land lay all round England, has been hailed as "the most
substantial, comprehensive, and brilliant of the Romantic ripostes to Malthus".[65] Also in 1807 Hazlitt undertook
5/35
a compilation of parliamentary speeches, published that year as The Eloquence of the British Senate. In the
prefaces to the speeches, he began to show a skill he would later develop to perfection, the art of the pithy
character sketch. He was able to get more work as a portrait painter as well.[66]

In 1808, Hazlitt married Sarah Stoddart, a friend of Mary Lamb and sister of John Stoddart, a journalist who
became editor of The Times newspaper in 1814. Shortly before the wedding, John Stoddart established a trust
into which he began paying £100 per year, for the benefit of Hazlitt and his wife—this was a very generous
gesture, but Hazlitt detested being supported by his brother-in-law, whose political beliefs he despised.[67] This
union was not a love match, and incompatibilities would later drive the couple apart; yet, for a while, it seemed to
work well enough, and their initial behavior was both playful and affectionate. Miss Stoddart, an unconventional
woman, accepted Hazlitt and tolerated his eccentricities just as he, with his own somewhat offbeat
individualism, accepted her. Together they made an agreeable social foursome with the Lambs, who visited them
when they set up a household in Winterslow, a village a few miles from Salisbury, Wiltshire, in southern England.
The couple had three sons over the next few years, Only one of their children, William, born in 1811, survived
infancy. (He in turn fathered William Carew Hazlitt.) [68]

As the head of a family, Hazlitt was now more than ever in need of money. Through William Godwin, with whom
he was frequently in touch, he obtained a commission to write an English grammar, published on 11 November
1809 as A New and Improved Grammar of the English Tongue.[69] Another project that came his way was the
work that was published as Memoirs of the Late Thomas Holcroft, a compilation of autobiographical writing by
the recently deceased playwright, novelist, and radical political activist, together with additional material by
Hazlitt himself. Though completed in 1810, this work did not see the light of day until 1816, and so provided no
financial gain to satisfy the needs of a young husband and father. Hazlitt in the meantime had not forsaken his
painterly ambitions. His environs at Winterslow afforded him opportunities for landscape painting, and he spent
considerable time in London procuring commissions for portraits.[70]

In January 1812 Hazlitt embarked on a sometime career as a lecturer, in this first instance by delivering a series
of talks on the British philosophers at the Russell Institution in London. A central thesis of the talks was that
Thomas Hobbes, rather than John Locke, had laid the foundations of modern philosophy. After a shaky
beginning, Hazlitt attracted some attention—and some much-needed money—by these lectures, and they
provided him with an opportunity to expound some of his own ideas.[71]

The year 1812 seems to have been the last in which Hazlitt persisted seriously in his ambition to make a career
as a painter. Although he had demonstrated some talent, the results of his most impassioned efforts always fell
far short of the very standards he had set by comparing his own work with the productions of such masters as
Rembrandt, Titian, and Raphael. It did not help that, when painting commissioned portraits, he refused to
sacrifice his artistic integrity to the temptation to flatter his subjects for remunerative gain. The results, not
infrequently, failed to please their subjects, and he consequently failed to build a clientele.[72]

But other opportunities awaited him.

Journalist, essayist, and Liber Amoris (1812–1823)

The journalist

6/35
In October 1812, Hazlitt was hired by The Morning Chronicle as a
parliamentary reporter. Soon he met John Hunt, publisher of The
Examiner, and his younger brother Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist,
who edited the weekly paper. Hazlitt admired both as champions of
liberty, and befriended especially the younger Hunt, who found work
for him. He began to contribute miscellaneous essays to The
Examiner in 1813, and the scope of his work for the Chronicle was
expanded to include drama criticism, literary criticism, and political
essays. In 1814 The Champion was added to the list of periodicals
that accepted Hazlitt's by-now profuse output of literary and political
criticism. A critique of Joshua Reynolds' theories about art appeared
there as well, one of Hazlitt's major forays into art criticism.[74]

Having by 1814 become established as a journalist, Hazlitt had

begun to earn a satisfactory living. A year earlier, with the prospect of
a steady income, he had moved his family to a house at 19 York
Street, Westminster, which had been occupied by the poet John
Milton, whom Hazlitt admired above all English poets except
Shakespeare. As it happened, Hazlitt's landlord was the philosopher
and social reformer Jeremy Bentham. Hazlitt was to write extensively
about both Milton and Bentham over the next few years.[75]
The back of No. 19, York Street (1848). In 1651
John Milton moved into a "pretty garden-house" in
Petty France. He lived there until the Restoration.
Later it became No. 19 York Street, belonged to
Jeremy Bentham, was occupied successively by
James Mill and William Hazlitt, and finally
demolished in 1877.

His circle of friends expanded, though he never seems to have been

particularly close with any but the Lambs and to an extent Leigh Hunt and the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon.
His low tolerance for any who, he thought, had abandoned the cause of liberty, along with his frequent
outspokenness, even tactlessness, in social situations made it difficult for many to feel close to him, and at times
he tried the patience of even Charles Lamb.[76] In The Examiner in late 1814, Hazlitt was the first to provide a
critique of Wordsworth's poem The Excursion (Hazlitt's review appeared weeks before Francis Jeffrey's
notorious dismissal of the poem with the words "This will never do").[77] He lavished extreme praise on the poet
—and equally extreme censure. While praising the poem's sublimity and intellectual power, he took to task the
intrusive egotism of its author. Clothing landscape and incident with the poet's personal thoughts and feelings
suited this new sort of poetry very well; but his abstract philosophical musing too often steered the poem into
didacticism, a leaden counterweight to its more imaginative flights.[78] Wordsworth, who seems to have been
unable to tolerate anything less than unqualified praise, was enraged, and relations between the two became
cooler than ever.[79]

Though Hazlitt continued to think of himself as a "metaphysician", he began to feel comfortable in the role of
journalist. His self-esteem received an added boost when he was invited to contribute to the quarterly The
Edinburgh Review (his contributions, beginning in early 1815, were frequent and regular for some years), the
most distinguished periodical on the Whig side of the political fence (its rival The Quarterly Review occupied the
Tory side). Writing for so highly respected a publication was considered a major step up from writing for weekly
papers, and Hazlitt was proud of this connection.[80]

On 18 June 1815, Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. Having idolised Napoleon for years, Hazlitt took it as a

7/35
personal blow. The event seemed to him to mark the end of hope for the common man against the oppression of
"legitimate" monarchy.[81] Profoundly depressed, he took up heavy drinking and was reported to have walked
around unshaven and unwashed for weeks.[82] He idolised and spoiled his son, William Jr., but in most respects
his household grew increasingly disordered over the following year: his marriage deteriorated, and he spent
more and more time away from home. His part-time work as a drama critic provided him with an excuse to spend
his evenings at the theatre. Afterwards he would then tarry with those friends who could tolerate his irascibility,
the number of whom dwindled as a result of his occasionally outrageous behaviour.[83]

Hazlitt continued to produce articles on miscellaneous topics for The Examiner and other periodicals, including
political diatribes against any who he felt ignored or minimised the needs and rights of the common man.
Defection from the cause of liberty had become easier in light of the oppressive political atmosphere in England
at that time, in reaction to the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The Hunts were his primary allies in
opposing this tendency. Lamb, who tried to remain uninvolved politically, tolerated his abrasiveness, and that
friendship managed to survive, if only just barely in the face of Hazlitt's growing bitterness, short temper, and
propensity for hurling invective at friends and foes alike.[84]

For relief from all that weighed on his mind, Hazlitt became a passionate player at a kind of racquet ball similar
to the game of Fives (a type of handball of which he was a fan) in that it was played against a wall. He competed
with savage intensity, dashing around the court like a madman, drenched in sweat, and was accounted a good
player. More than just a distraction from his woes, his devotion to this pastime led to musings on the value of
competitive sports and on human skill in general, expressed in writings like his notice of the "Death of John
Cavanagh" (a celebrated Fives player) in The Examiner on 9 February 1817, and the essay "The Indian
Jugglers" in Table-Talk (1821).[85]

Early in 1817, forty of Hazlitt's essays that had appeared in The Examiner in a regular column called "The Round
Table", along with a dozen pieces by Leigh Hunt in the same series, was collected in book form. Hazlitt's
contributions to The Round Table were written somewhat in the manner of the periodical essays of the day, a
genre defined by such eighteenth-century magazines as The Tatler and The Spectator.[86]

The far-ranging eclectic variety of the topics treated would typify his output in succeeding years: Shakespeare
("On the Midsummer Night's Dream"), Milton ("On Milton's Lycidas"), art criticism ("On Hogarth's Marriage a-la-
mode"), aesthetics ("On Beauty"), drama criticism ("On Mr. Kean's Iago"; Hazlitt was the first critic to champion
the acting talent of Edmund Kean), [87] social criticism ("On the Tendency of Sects", "On the Causes of
Methodism", "On Different Sorts of Fame").

There was an article on The Tatler itself. Mostly his political commentary was reserved for other vehicles, but
included was a "Character of the Late Mr. Pitt", a scathing characterisation of the recently deceased former
Prime Minister. Written in 1806, Hazlitt liked it well enough to have already had it printed twice before (and it
would appear again in a collection of political essays in 1819).

Some essays blend Hazlitt's social and psychological observations in a calculatedly thought-provoking way,
presenting to the reader the "paradoxes" of human nature. [88] The first of the collected essays, "On the Love of
Life", explains, "It is our intention, in the course of these papers, occasionally to expose certain vulgar errors,
which have crept into our reasonings on men and manners.... The love of life is ... in general, the effect not of our
enjoyments, but of our passions".[89]

Again, in "On Pedantry", Hazlitt declares that "The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful
pursuits ... is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature".[90] In "On Different Sorts of Fame", "In proportion as
men can command the immediate and vulgar applause of others, they become indifferent to that which is remote
and difficult of attainment".[91] And in "On Good-Nature", "Good nature, or what is often considered as such, is
the most selfish of all the virtues...."[92]

Many of the components of Hazlitt's style begin to take shape in these Round Table essays. Some of his
"paradoxes" are so hyperbolic as to shock when encountered out of context: "All country people hate each
8/35
other", for example, from the second part of "On Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion".[93] He interweaves quotations
from literature old and new, helping drive his points home with concentrated allusiveness and wielded
extraordinarily efficiently as a critical instrument. Yet, although his use of quotations is (as many critics have felt)
as fine as any author's has ever been,[94] all too often he gets the quotes wrong.[95] In one of his essays on
Wordsworth he misquotes Wordsworth himself:

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of glory in the grass, of splendour in the flower....[96]
(See Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.)

Though Hazlitt was still following the model of the older periodical essayists,[97] these quirks, together with his
keen social and psychological insights, began here to coalesce into a style very much his own.[98]

Success—and trouble

In the meantime, Hazlitt's marriage continued its downward spiral; he was writing furiously for several periodicals
to make ends meet; waiting so far in vain for the collection The Round Table to be issued as a book (which it
finally was in February 1817); suffering bouts of illness; and making enemies by his venomous political diatribes.
He found relief by a change of course, shifting the focus of his analysis from the acting of Shakespeare's plays to
the substance of the works themselves. The result was a collection of critical essays entitled Characters of
Shakespear's Plays (1817).[99]

His approach was something new. There had been criticisms of Shakespeare before, but either they were not
comprehensive or they were not aimed at the general reading public. As Ralph Wardle put it, before Hazlitt wrote
this book, "no one had ever attempted a comprehensive study of all of Shakespeare, play by play, that readers
could read and reread with pleasure as a guide to their understanding and appreciation".[100] Somewhat loosely
organised, and even rambling, the studies offer personal appreciations of the plays that are unashamedly
enthusiastic. Hazlitt does not present a measured account of the plays' strengths and weaknesses, as did Dr.
Johnson, or view them in terms of a "mystical" theory, as Hazlitt thought his contemporary A.W. Schlegel did
(though he approves of many of Schlegel's judgements and quotes him liberally). Without apology, he addresses
his readers as fellow lovers of Shakespeare and shares with them the beauties of what he thought the finest
passages of the plays he liked best. [101]

Readers took to it, the first edition selling out in six weeks. It received favourable reviews as well, not only by
Leigh Hunt, whose bias as a close friend might be questioned, but also by Francis Jeffrey, the editor of The
Edinburgh Review, a notice that Hazlitt greatly appreciated. Though he contributed to that quarterly, and
corresponded with its editor on business, he had never met Jeffrey, and the two were in no sense personal
friends. For Jeffrey, the book was not so much a learned study of Shakespeare's plays as much as a loving and
eloquent appreciation, full of insight, which displayed "considerable originality and genius".[102]

This critical and popular acclaim offered Hazlitt the prospect of getting out of debt, and allowed him to relax and
bask in the light of his growing fame.[103] In literary circles however, his reputation had been tarnished in the
meantime: he had openly taken both Wordsworth and Coleridge to task on personal grounds and for failing to
fulfill the promise of their earlier accomplishments, and both were apparently responsible for retaliatory rumours
which seriously damaged Hazlitt's repute.[104] And the worst was yet to come.

Nonetheless Hazlitt's satisfaction at the relief he gained from his financial woes was supplemented by the
positive response his return to the lecture hall received. In early 1818 he delivered a series of talks on "the
English Poets", from Chaucer to his own time. Though somewhat uneven in quality, his lectures were ultimately
judged a success. In making arrangements for the lectures, he had met Peter George Patmore, Assistant
Secretary of the Surrey Institution where the lectures were presented. Patmore soon became a friend as well as
Hazlitt's confidant in the most troubled period of the latter's life.[105]

9/35
The Surrey Institution lectures were printed in book form, followed by a collection of his drama criticism, A View
of the English Stage, and the second edition of Characters of Shakespear's Plays.[106] Hazlitt's career as a
lecturer gained some momentum, and his growing popularity allowed him to get a collection of his political
writings published as well, Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters.[107] Lectures on "the English
Comic Writers" soon followed, and these as well were published in book form.[108] He then delivered lectures on
dramatists contemporary with Shakespeare, which were published as Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the
Age of Elizabeth. This series of talks did not receive the public acclaim that his earlier lectures had, but were
reviewed enthusiastically after they were published.[109]

More trouble was brewing, however. Hazlitt was attacked brutally in The Quarterly Review and Blackwood's
Magazine, both Tory publications. One Blackwood's article mocked him as "pimpled Hazlitt", accused him of
ignorance, dishonesty, and obscenity, and incorporated vague physical threats. Though Hazlitt was rattled by
these attacks, he sought legal advice and sued. The lawsuit against Blackwood's was finally settled out of court
in his favour.[110] Yet the attacks did not entirely cease. The Quarterly Review issued a review of Hazlitt's
published lectures in which he was condemned as ignorant and his writing as unintelligible. Such partisan
onslaughts brought spirited responses. One, unlike an earlier response to the Blackwood's attack that never saw
the light of day, was published, as A Letter to William Gifford, Esq. (1819; Gifford was the editor of the Quarterly).
The pamphlet, notable also for deploying the term ultracrepidarian, which Hazlitt himself may have coined,
amounts to an apologia for his life and work thus far and showed he was well able to defend himself. [111] Yet
Hazlitt's attackers had done their damage. Not only was he personally shaken, he found it more difficult to have
his works published, and once more he had to struggle for a living.[112]

Solitude and infatuation

His lecturing in particular had drawn to Hazlitt a small group of admirers. Best known today is the poet John
Keats,[113] who not only attended the lectures but became Hazlitt's friend in this period. [8] The two met in
November 1816 [114] through their mutual friend, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, and were last seen
together in May 1820 at a dinner given by Haydon.[115] In those few years before the poet's untimely death, the
two read and admired each other's work,[116] and Keats, as a younger man seeking guidance, solicited Hazlitt's
advice on a course of reading and direction in his career.[117] Some of Keats's writing, particularly his key idea of
"negative capability", was influenced by the concept of "disinterested sympathy" he discovered in Hazlitt, [118]
whose work the poet devoured.[119] Hazlitt, on his part, later wrote that of all the younger generation of poets,
Keats showed the most promise, and he became Keats's first anthologist when he included several of Keats's
poems in a collection of British poetry he compiled in 1824, three years after Keats's death.[120]

Less well known today than Keats were others who loyally attended his lectures and constituted a small circle of
admirers, such as the diarist and chronicler Henry Crabb Robinson[121] and the novelist Mary Russell
Mitford.[122] But the rumours that had been spread demonising Hazlitt, along with the vilifications of the Tory
press, not only hurt his pride but seriously obstructed his ability to earn a living. Income from his lectures had
also proved insufficient to keep him afloat.

His thoughts drifted to gloom and misanthropy. His mood was not improved by the fact that by now there was no
pretence of keeping up appearances: his marriage had failed. Years earlier he had grown resigned to the lack of
love between him and Sarah. He had been visiting prostitutes and displayed more idealised amorous
inclinations toward a number of women whose names are lost to history. Now in 1819, he was unable to pay the
rent on their rooms at 19 York Street and his family were evicted. That was the last straw for Sarah, who moved
into rooms with their son and broke with Hazlitt for good, forcing him to find his own accommodation. He would
sometimes see his son and even his wife, with whom he remained on speaking terms, but they were effectively
separated.[123]

At this time Hazlitt would frequently retreat for long periods to the countryside he had grown to love since his

10/35
marriage, staying at "The Hut", an inn at Winterslow, near a property his wife owned. This was both for solace
and to concentrate on his writing. He explained his motivation as one of not wanting to withdraw completely but
rather to become an invisible observer of society, "to become a silent spectator of the mighty scene of things ... 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."[124] Thus, for days on end, he would shut himself away and write for periodicals, including the
recently reestablished (1820) London Magazine, to which he contributed drama criticism and miscellaneous
essays.[125]

One idea that particularly bore fruit was that of a series of articles called "Table-Talk". (Many were written
expressly for inclusion in the book of the same name, Table-Talk; or, Original Essays, which appeared in
different editions and forms over the next few years.) These essays, structured in the loose manner of table talk,
were written in the "familiar style" of the sort devised two centuries earlier by Montaigne, whom Hazlitt greatly
admired.[127] The personal "I" was now substituted for the editorial "we" in a careful remodulation of style that
carried the spirit of these essays far from that of the typical eighteenth-century periodical essay, to which he had
more closely adhered in The Round Table.[86] In a preface to a later edition of Table-Talk, Hazlitt explained that
in these essays he eschewed scholarly precision in favour of a combination of the "literary and the
conversational". As in conversation among friends, the discussion would often branch off into topics related only
in a general way to the main theme, "but which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon human
life in general".[128]

In these essays, many of which have been acclaimed as among the finest in the language,[129] Hazlitt weaves
personal material into more general reflections on life, frequently bringing in long recollections of happy days of
his years as an apprentice painter (as in "On the Pleasure of Painting", written in December 1820) [130] as well
as other pleasurable recollections of earlier years, "hours ... sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured up
in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts thereafter" ("On Going a Journey", written January
1822).[131]

Hazlitt also had to spend time in London in these years. In another violent contrast, a London lodging house was
the stage on which the worst crisis of his life was to play itself out.[132]

In August 1820, a month after his father's death at 83, he rented a couple of rooms in 9 Southampton Buildings
in London from a tailor named Micaiah Walker. Walker's 19-year-old daughter Sarah, who helped with the
housekeeping, would bring the new lodger his breakfast. Immediately, Hazlitt became infatuated with Miss
Walker, more than 22 years his junior. (Before much longer, this "infatuation" turned into a protracted
obsession.) [133] His brief conversations with Walker cheered him and alleviated the loneliness that he felt from
his failed marriage and the recent death of his father.[134] He dreamed of marrying her, but that would require a
divorce from Sarah Hazlitt—no easy matter. Finally, his wife agreed to grant him a Scottish divorce, which would
allow him to remarry (as he could not had he been divorced in England).[135]

Sarah Walker was, as some of Hazlitt's friends could see, a fairly ordinary girl. She had aspirations to better
herself, and a famous author seemed like a prize catch, but she never really understood Hazlitt.[136] When
another lodger named Tomkins came along, she entered into a romantic entanglement with him as well, leading
each of her suitors to believe he was the sole object of her affection. With vague words, she evaded absolute
commitment until she could decide which she liked better or was the more advantageous catch.

Hazlitt discovered the truth about Tomkins, and from then on his jealousy and suspicions of Sarah Walker's real
character afforded him little rest. For months, during the preparations for the divorce and as he tried to earn a
living, he alternated between rage and despair, on the one hand, and the comforting if unrealistic thought that
she was really "a good girl" and would accept him at last. The divorce was finalised on 17 July 1822,[137] and
Hazlitt returned to London to see his beloved—only to find her cold and resistant. They then become involved in
angry altercations of jealousy and recrimination. And it was over, though Hazlitt could not for some time
persuade himself to believe so. His mind nearly snapped. At his emotional nadir, he contemplated suicide.

11/35
It was with some difficulty that he eventually recovered his equilibrium. In order to ascertain Sarah's true
character, he persuaded an acquaintance to take lodgings in the Walkers' building and attempt to seduce Sarah.
Hazlitt's friend reported that the attempt seemed to be about to succeed, but she prevented him from taking the
ultimate liberty. Her behaviour was as it had been with several other male lodgers, not only Hazlitt, who now
concluded that he had been dealing with, rather than an "angel", an "impudent whore", an ordinary "lodging
house decoy". Eventually, though Hazlitt could not know this, she had a child by Tomkins and moved in with
him.[138]

By pouring out his tale of woe to anyone he happened to meet (including his friends Peter George Patmore and
James Sheridan Knowles), he was able to find a cathartic outlet for his misery. But catharsis was also provided
by his recording the course of his love in a thinly disguised fictional account, published anonymously in May
1823 as Liber Amoris; or, The New Pygmalion. (Enough clues were present so that the identity of the writer did
not remain hidden for long.)

Critics have been divided as to the literary merits of Liber Amoris , a deeply personal account of frustrated love
that is quite unlike anything else Hazlitt ever wrote. Wardle suggests that it was compelling but marred by sickly
sentimentality, and also proposes that Hazlitt might even have been anticipating some of the experiments in
chronology made by later novelists.[139]

One or two positive reviews appeared, such as the one in the Globe, 7 June 1823: "The Liber Amoris is unique
in the English language; and as, possibly, the first book in its fervour, its vehemency, and its careless exposure of
passion and weakness—of sentiments and sensations which the common race of mankind seek most studiously
to mystify or conceal—that exhibits a portion of the most distinguishing characteristics of Rousseau, it ought to
be generally praised".[140]

However, such complimentary assessments were the rare exception. Whatever its ultimate merits, Liber Amoris
provided ample ammunition for Hazlitt's detractors,[141] and even some of his closest friends were scandalised.
For months he did not even have contact with the Lambs. And the strait-laced Robinson found the book
"disgusting", "nauseous and revolting", "low and gross and tedious and very offensive", believing that "it ought to
exclude the author from all decent society".[142] As ever, peace of mind proved elusive for William Hazlitt.

Return to philosophy, second marriage, and tour of Europe (1823–1825)

The philosopher, again

Unsurprisingly, there were times in this turbulent period when Hazlitt could not focus on his work. But often, as in
his self-imposed seclusion at Winterslow, he was able to achieve a "philosophic detachment",[143] and he
continued to turn out essays of remarkable variety and literary merit, most of them making up the two volumes of
Table-Talk. (A number were saved for later publication in The Plain Speaker in 1826, while others remained
uncollected.)

Some of these essays were in large part retrospectives on the author's own life ("On Reading Old Books" [1821],
for example, along with others mentioned above). In others, he invites his readers to join him in gazing at the
spectacle of human folly and perversity ("On Will-making" [1821], or "On Great and Little Things" [1821], for
example). At times he scrutinises the subtle workings of the individual mind (as in "On Dreams" [1823]); or he
invites us to laugh at harmless eccentricities of human nature ("On People with One Idea" [1821]).

Other essays bring into perspective the scope and limitations of the mind, as measured against the vastness of
the universe and the extent of human history ("Why Distant Objects Please" [1821/2] and "On Antiquity" [1821]
are only two of many). Several others scrutinise the manners and morals of the age (such as "On Vulgarity and
Affectation", "On Patronage and Puffing", and "On Corporate Bodies" [all 1821]).

Many of these "Table-Talk" essays display Hazlitt's interest in genius and artistic creativity. There are specific
instances of literary or art criticism (for example "On a Landscape of Nicholas Poussin" [1821] and "On Milton's
12/35
Sonnets" [1822]) but also numerous investigations of the psychology of creativity and genius ("On Genius and
Common Sense" [1821], "Whether Genius Is Conscious of Its Powers" [1823], and others). [144] In his manner of
exploring an idea by antitheses (for example, "On the Past and the Future" [1821], "On the Picturesque and
Ideal" [1821]), [145] he contrasts the utmost achievements of human mechanical skill with the nature of artistic
creativity in "The Indian Jugglers" [1821].

Hazlitt's fascination with the extremes of human capability in any field led to his writing "The Fight" (published in
the February 1822 New Monthly Magazine). [146] This essay never appeared in the Table-Talk series or
anywhere else in the author's lifetime. This direct, personal account of a prize fight, commingling refined literary
allusions with popular slang,[147] was controversial in its time as depicting too "low" a subject. [148] Written at a
dismal time in his life—Hazlitt's divorce was pending, and he was far from sure of being able to marry Sarah
Walker—the article shows scarcely a trace of his agony. Not quite like any other essay by Hazlitt, it proved to be
one of his most popular, was frequently reprinted after his death, and nearly two centuries later was judged to be
"one of the most passionately written pieces of prose in the late Romantic period".[147]

Another article written in this period, "On the Pleasure of Hating" (1823; included in The Plain Speaker), is on
one level a pure outpouring of spleen, a distillation of all the bitterness of his life to that point. He links his own
vitriol, however, to a strain of malignity at the core of human nature:

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to
rankling spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine
into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness, and a narrow, jealous,
inquisitorial watchfulness over the actions and motives of others.[149]

To one twentieth-century critic, Gregory Dart, this self-diagnosis by Hazlitt of his own misanthropic enmities was
the sour and surreptitiously preserved offspring of Jacobinism.[150] Hazlitt concludes his diatribe by refocusing
on himself: "...have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and
despised the world enough".[151]

Not only do the "Table-Talk" essays frequently display "trenchant insights into human nature", [152] they at times
reflect on the vehicle of those insights and of the literary and art criticism that constitute some of the essays. "On
Criticism" (1821) delves into the history and purposes of criticism itself; and "On Familiar Style" (1821 or 1822)
reflexively explores at some length the principles behind its own composition, along with that of other essays of
this kind by Hazlitt and some of his contemporaries, like Lamb and Cobbett.

In Table-Talk, Hazlitt had found the most congenial format for this thoughts and observations. A broad panorama
of the triumphs and follies of humanity, an exploration of the quirks of the mind, of the nobility but more often the
meanness and sheer malevolence of human nature, the collection was knit together by a web of self-consistent
thinking, a skein of ideas woven from a lifetime of close reasoning on life, art, and literature.[153] He illustrated
his points with bright imagery and pointed analogies, among which were woven pithy quotations drawn from the
history of English literature, primarily the poets, from Chaucer to his contemporaries Wordsworth, Byron, and
Keats.[154] Most often, he quoted his beloved Shakespeare and to a lesser extent Milton. As he explained in "On
Familiar Style", he strove to fit the exact words to the things he wanted to express and often succeeded—in a
way that would bring home his meaning to any literate person of some education and intelligence.[155]

These essays were not quite like anything ever done before. They attracted some admiration during Hazlitt's
lifetime, but it was only long after his death that their reputation achieved full stature, increasingly often
considered among the best essays ever written in English.[156] Nearly two centuries after they were written, for
example, biographer Stanley Jones deemed Hazlitt's Table-Talk and The Plain Speaker together to constitute
"the major work of his life", [157] and critic David Bromwich called many of these essays "more observing,
original, and keen-witted than any others in the language".[158]
13/35
In 1823 Hazlitt also published anonymously Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims, a
collection of aphorisms modelled explicitly, as Hazlitt noted in his preface, on the Maximes (1665–1693) of the
Duc de La Rochefoucauld. Never quite as cynical as La Rochefoucauld's, many, however, reflect his attitude of
disillusionment at this stage of his life.[159] Primarily, these 434 maxims took to an extreme his method of arguing
by paradoxes and acute contrasts. For example, maxim "CCCCXXVIII":

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.[160]

But they also lacked the benefit of Hazlitt's extended reasoning and lucid imagery, and were never included
among his greatest works.[161]

Recovery and second marriage

At the beginning of 1824, though worn out by thwarted passion and the venomous attacks on his character
following Liber Amoris , Hazlitt was beginning to recover his equilibrium. [162] Pressed for money as always, he
continued to write for various periodicals, including The Edinburgh Review. To The New Monthly Magazine he
supplied more essays in the "Table-Talk" manner, and he produced some art criticism, published in that year as
Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries of England .

He also found relief, finally, from the Sarah Walker imbroglio. In 1823, Hazlitt had met Isabella Bridgwater ( née
Shaw), who married him in March or April 1824, of necessity in Scotland, as Hazlitt's divorce was not recognised
in England. Little is known about this Scottish-born widow of the Chief Justice of Grenada, or about her
interaction with Hazlitt. She may have been attracted to the idea of marrying a well-known author. For Hazlitt, she
offered an escape from loneliness and to an extent from financial worries, as she possessed an independent
income of £300 per annum. The arrangement seems to have had a strong element of convenience for both of
them. Certainly Hazlitt nowhere in his writings suggests that this marriage was the love match he had been
seeking, nor does he mention his new wife at all. In fact, after three and half years, tensions likely resulting from
(as Stanley Jones put it) Hazlitt's "improvidence", his son's dislike of her, and neglect of his wife due to his
obsessive absorption in preparing an immense biography of Napoleon, resulted in her abrupt departure, and
they never lived together again.[163]

For now, in any case, the union afforded the two of them the opportunity to travel. First, they toured parts of
Scotland, then, later in 1824, began a European tour lasting over a year.

The Spirit of the Age

14/35
Before Hazlitt and his new bride set off for the continent, he
submitted, among the miscellany of essays that year, one to the New
Monthly on "Jeremy Bentham", the first in a series entitled "Spirits of
the Age". Several more of the kind followed over the next few months,
at least one in The Examiner. Together with some newly written, and
one brought in from the "Table-Talk" series, they were collected in
book form in 1825 as The Spirit of the Age: Or, Contemporary
Portraits.

These sketches of twenty-five men, prominent or otherwise notable

as characteristic of the age, came easily to Hazlitt.[164] In his days as
a political reporter he had observed many of them at close range.
Others he knew personally, and for years their philosophy or poetry
had been the subject of his thoughts and lectures.
William Hazlitt in 1825 (engraving derived from a
There were philosophers, social reformers, poets, politicians, and a chalk sketch by William Bewick).

few who did not fall neatly into any of these categories. Bentham,
Godwin, and Malthus, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron were some of the most prominent writers; Wilberforce
and Canning were prominent in the political arena; and a few who were hard to classify, such as The Rev.
Edward Irving, the preacher, William Gifford, the satirist and critic, and the recently deceased Horne Tooke, a
lawyer, politician, grammarian, and wit.

Many of the sketches presented their subjects as seen in daily life. We witness, for example, Bentham "tak[ing]
a turn in his garden" with a guest, espousing his plans for "a code of laws 'for some island in the watery waste'",
or playing the organ as a relief from incessant musings on vast schemes to improve the lot of mankind. As
Bentham's neighbour for some years, Hazlitt had had good opportunity to observe the reformer and philosopher
at first hand.[165]

He had already devoted years to pondering much of the thinking espoused by several of these figures.
Thoroughly immersed in the Malthusian controversy, for example, Hazlitt had published A Reply to the Essay on
Population as early as 1807, [166] and the essay on Malthus is a distillation of Hazlitt's earlier criticisms.

Where he finds it applicable, Hazlitt brings his subjects together in pairs, setting off one against the other,
although sometimes his complex comparisons bring out unexpected similarities, as well as differences, between
temperaments that otherwise appear to be at opposite poles, as in his reflections on Scott and Byron.[167] So too
he points out that, for all the limitations of Godwin's reasoning, as given in that essay, Malthus comes off worse:
"Nothing...could be more illogical...than the whole of Mr. Malthus's reasoning applied as an answer...to Mr.
Godwin's book".[168] Most distasteful to Hazlitt was the application of "Mr. Malthus's 'gospel'", greatly influential
at the time. Many in positions of power had used Malthus's theory to deny the poor relief in the name of the
public good, to prevent their propagating the species beyond the means to support it; while on the rich no

15/35
restraints whatsoever were imposed.[169]

Yet, softening the asperities of his critique, Hazlitt rounds out his sketch by conceding that "Mr. Malthus's style is
correct and elegant; his tone of controversy mild and gentlemanly; and the care with which he has brought his
facts and documents together, deserves the highest praise".[170]

His portraits of such Tory politicians as Lord Eldon are unrelenting, as might be expected. But elsewhere his
characterisations are more balanced, more even-tempered, than similar accounts in past years. Notably, there
are portraits of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, which are, to an extent, essences of his former thoughts
about these poets—and those thoughts had been profuse. He had earlier directed some of his most vitriolic
attacks against them for having replaced the humanistic and revolutionary ideas of their earlier years with
staunch support of the Establishment. Now he goes out of his way to qualify his earlier assessments.

In "Mr. Wordsworth", for example, Hazlitt notes that "it has been said of Mr. Wordsworth, that 'he hates
conchology, that he hates the Venus of Medicis.'..." (Hazlitt's own words in an article some years back). Indirectly
apologising for his earlier tirade, Hazlitt here brings in a list of writers and artists, like Milton and Poussin, for
whom Wordsworth did show appreciation.[171]

Coleridge, whom Hazlitt had once idolised, gets special attention, but, again, with an attempt to moderate earlier
criticisms. At an earlier time Hazlitt had dismissed most of Coleridge's prose as "dreary trash".[172] Much of The
Friend was "sophistry". [173] The Statesman's Manual was not to be read "with any patience". [174] A Lay Sermon
was enough to "make a fool...of any man".[175] For betraying their earlier liberal principles, both Coleridge and
Southey were "sworn brothers in the same cause of righteous apostacy".[176]

Now, again, the harshness is softened, and the focus shifts to Coleridge's positive attributes. One of the most
learned and brilliant men of the age, Coleridge may not be its greatest writer—but he is its "most impressive
talker".[177] Even his "apostacy" is somewhat excused by noting that in recent times, when "Genius stopped the
way of Legitimacy...it was to be...crushed",[178] regrettably but understandably leading many former liberals to
protect themselves by siding with the powers that be.[179]

Southey, whose political about-face was more blatant than that of the others, still comes in for a measure of
biting criticism: "not truth, but self-opinion is the ruling principle of Mr. Southey's mind".[180] Yet Hazlitt goes out
of his way to admire where he can. For example, "Mr. Southey's prose-style can scarcely be too much praised",
and "In all the relations and charities of private life, he is correct, exemplary, generous, just".[181]

Hazlitt contrasts Scott and Byron; he skewers his nemesis Gifford; he praises—not without his usual strictures—
Jeffrey; and goes on to portray, in one way or another, such notables as Mackintosh, Brougham, Canning, and
Wilberforce.

His praise of the poet Thomas Campbell has been cited as one major instance where Hazlitt's critical judgement
proved wrong. Hazlitt can scarcely conceal his enthusiasm for such poems as Gertrude of Wyoming, but neither
the poems nor Hazlitt's judgement of them have withstood the test of time.[182] His friends Hunt and Lamb get
briefer coverage, and—Hazlitt was never one to mince words—they come in for some relatively gentle chiding
amid the praise. One American author makes an appearance, Washington Irving, under his pen name of
Geoffrey Crayon.

In this manner twenty-five character sketches combine to "form a vivid panorama of the age". [183] Through it all,
the author reflects on the Spirit of the Age as a whole, as, for example, "The present is an age of talkers, and not
of doers; and the reason is, that the world is growing old. We are so far advanced in the Arts and Sciences, that
we live in retrospect, and doat on past achievements". [184]

Some critics have thought the essays in The Spirit of the Age highly uneven in quality and somewhat hastily
thrown together, at best "a series of perceptive but disparate and impressionistic sketches of famous
contemporaries". It has also been noted, however, that the book is more than a mere portrait gallery. A pattern of
16/35
ideas ties them together. No thesis is overtly stated, but some thoughts are developed consistently throughout.

Roy Park has noted in particular Hazlitt's critique of excessive abstraction as a major flaw in the period’s
dominant philosophy and poetry. ("Abstraction", in this case, could be that of religion or mysticism as well as
science.) This is the reason, according to Hazlitt, why neither Coleridge, nor Wordsworth, nor Byron could write
effective drama. More representative of the finer spirit of the age was poetry that turned inward, focusing on
individual perceptions, projections of the poets' sensibilities. The greatest of this type of poetry was
Wordsworth's, and that succeeded as far as any contemporary writing could.[185]

Even if it took a century and a half for many of the book's virtues to be realised, enough was recognised at the
time to make the book one of Hazlitt's most successful. Unsurprisingly the Tory Blackwood's Magazine lamented
that the pillory had fallen into disuse and wondered what "adequate and appropriate punishment there is that we
can inflict on this rabid caitiff".[186] But the majority of the reviewers were enthusiastic. For example, the Eclectic
Review marvelled at his ability to "hit off a likeness with a few artist-like touches" and The Gentleman's
Magazine, with a few reservations, found his style "deeply impregnated with the spirit of the masters of our
language, and strengthened by a rich infusion of golden ore...".[186]

European tour

On 1 September 1824, Hazlitt and his wife began a tour of the European continent, crossing the English
Channel by steamboat from Brighton to Dieppe and proceeding from there by coach and sometimes on foot to
Paris and Lyon, crossing the Alps in Savoy, then continuing through Italy to Florence and Rome, the most
southerly point on their route. Crossing the Apennines, they travelled to Venice, Verona, and Milan, then into
Switzerland to Vevey and Geneva. Finally they returned via Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France
again, arriving at Dover, England, on 16 October 1825. [187]

There were two extended stops on this excursion: Paris, where the Hazlitts remained for three months; and
Vevey, Switzerland, where they rented space in a farmhouse for three months. During those lengthy pauses,
Hazlitt accomplished some writing tasks, primarily submitting an account of his trip in several instalments to The
Morning Chronicle, which helped to pay for the trip. These articles were later collected and published in book
form in 1826 as Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (despite the title, there is also much about the other
countries he visited, particularly Switzerland).

This was an escape for a time from all the conflicts, the bitter reactions to his outspoken criticisms, and the
attacks on his own publications back in England. And, despite interludes of illness, as well as the miseries of
coach travel and the dishonesty of some hotel keepers and coach drivers, Hazlitt managed to enjoy himself. He
reacted to his sight of Paris like a child entering a fairyland: "The approach to the capital on the side of St.
Germain's is one continued succession of imposing beauty and artificial splendour, of groves, of avenues, of
bridges, of palaces, and of towns like palaces, all the way to Paris, where the sight of the Thuilleries completes
the triumph of external magnificence...."[188]

He remained with his wife in Paris for more than three months, eagerly exploring the museums, attending the
theatres, wandering the streets, and mingling with the people. He was especially glad to be able to return to the
Louvre and revisit the masterpieces he had adored twenty years ago, recording for his readers all of his renewed
impressions of canvases by Guido, Poussin, and Titian, among others. [189]

He also was pleased to meet and befriend Henri Beyle, now better known by his nom de plume of Stendhal, who
had discovered much to like in Hazlitt's writings, as Hazlitt had in his.[190]

Finally he and his wife resumed the journey to Italy. As they advanced slowly in those days of pre-railway travel
(at one stage taking nearly a week to cover less than two hundred miles),[191] Hazlitt registered a running
commentary on the scenic points of interest. On the road between Florence and Rome, for example,

17/35
 Towards the close of the first day's journey ... we had a splendid view of the country we
were to travel, which lay stretched out beneath our feet to an immense distance, as we
descended into the little town of Pozzo Borgo. Deep valleys sloped on each side of us, from
which the smoke of cottages occasionally curled: the branches of an overhanging birch-
tree or a neighbouring ruin gave relief to the grey, misty landscape, which was streaked by
dark pine-forests, and speckled by the passing clouds; and in the extreme distance rose a
range of hills glittering in the evening sun, and scarcely distinguishable from the ridge of
clouds that hovered near them.[192]

Hazlitt, in the words of Ralph Wardle, "never stopped observing and comparing. He was an unabashed sightseer
who wanted to take in everything available, and he could recreate vividly all he saw".[193]

Yet frequently he showed himself to be more than a mere sightseer, with the painter, critic, and philosopher in
him asserting their influence in turn or at once. A splendid scene on the shore of Lake Geneva, for example,
viewed with the eye of both painter and art critic, inspired the following observation: "The lake shone like a broad
golden mirror, reflecting the thousand dyes of the fleecy purple clouds, while Saint Gingolph, with its clustering
habitations, shewed like a dark pitchy spot by its side; and beyond the glimmering verge of the Jura ... hovered
gay wreaths of clouds, fair, lovely, visionary, that seemed not of this world....No person can describe the effect;
but so in Claude's landscapes the evening clouds drink up the rosy light, and sink into soft repose!" [194]

Likewise, the philosopher in Hazlitt emerges in his account of the following morning: "We had a pleasant walk
the next morning along the side of the lake under the grey cliffs, the green hills and azure sky....the snowy ridges
that seemed close to us at Vevey receding farther into a kind of lofty background as we advanced.... The
speculation of Bishop Berkeley, or some other philosopher, that distance is measured by motion and not by the
sight, is verified here at every step".[194]

He was also constantly considering the manners of the people and the differences between the English and the
French (and later, to a lesser extent, the Italians and Swiss). Did the French really have a "butterfly, airy,
thoughtless, fluttering character"?[195] He was forced to revise his opinions repeatedly. In some ways the French
seemed superior to his countrymen. Unlike the English, he discovered, the French attended the theatre
reverently, respectfully, "the attention ... like that of a learned society to a lecture on some scientific subject".[195]
And he found culture more widespread among the working classes: "You see an apple-girl in Paris, sitting at a
stall with her feet over a stove in the coldest weather, or defended from the sun by an umbrella, reading Racine
and Voltaire".[196]

Trying to be honest with himself, and every day discovering something new about French manners that
confounded his preconceptions, Hazlitt was soon compelled to retract some of his old prejudices. "In judging of
nations, it will not do to deal in mere abstractions", he concluded. "In countries, as well as individuals, there is a
mixture of good and bad qualities; yet we attempt to strike a general balance, and compare the rules with the
exceptions".[197]

As he had befriended Stendhal in Paris, so in Florence, besides visiting the picture galleries, he struck up a
friendship with Walter Savage Landor. He also spent much time with his old friend Leigh Hunt, now in residence
there.[198]

Hazlitt was ambivalent about Rome, the farthest point of his journey. His first impression was one of
disappointment. He had expected primarily the monuments of antiquity. But, he asked, "what has a green-
grocer's stall, a stupid English china warehouse, a putrid trattoria, a barber's sign, an old clothes or old picture
shop or a Gothic palace ... to do with ancient Rome?"[199] Further, "the picture galleries at Rome disappointed
me quite".[200] Eventually he found plenty to admire, but the accumulation of monuments of art in one place was
almost too much for him, and there were also too many distractions. There were the "pride, pomp, and
pageantry" of the Catholic religion,[201] as well as having to cope with the "inconvenience of a stranger's

18/35
residence at Rome....You want some shelter from the insolence and indifference of the inhabitants....You have to
squabble with every one about you to prevent being cheated, to drive a hard bargain in order to live, to keep your
hands and your tongue within strict bounds, for fear of being stilettoed, or thrown into the Tower of St. Angelo, or
remanded home. You have much to do to avoid the contempt of the inhabitants....You must run the gauntlet of
sarcastic words or looks for a whole street, of laughter or want of comprehension in reply to all the questions you
ask....[202]

Venice presented fewer difficulties, and was a scene of special fascination for him: "You see Venice rising from
the sea", he wrote, "its long line of spires, towers, churches, wharfs ... stretched along the water's edge, and you
view it with a mixture of awe and incredulity".[203] The palaces were incomparable: "I never saw palaces
anywhere but at Venice".[204] Of equal or even greater importance to him were the paintings. Here there were
numerous masterpieces by his favourite painter Titian, whose studio he visited, as well as others by Veronese,
Giorgione, Tintoretto, and more.[205]

On the way home, crossing the Swiss Alps, Hazlitt particularly desired to see the town of Vevey, the scene of
Rousseau's 1761 novel La Nouvelle Héloïse, a love story that he associated with his disappointed love for Sarah
Walker.[206] He was so enchanted with the region even apart from its personal and literary associations that he
remained there with his wife for three months, renting a floor of a farmhouse named "Gelamont" outside of town,
where "every thing was perfectly clean and commodious".[207] The place was for the most part an oasis of
tranquility for Hazlitt. As he reported:

Days, weeks, months, and even years might have passed on much in the same manner....
We breakfasted at the same hour, and the tea-kettle was always boiling...; a lounge in the
orchard for an hour or two, and twice a week we could see the steam-boat creeping like a
spider over the surface of the lake; a volume of the Scotch novels..., or M. Galignani's Paris
and London Observer, amused us till dinner time; then tea and a walk till the moon
unveiled itself, "apparent queen of the night," or the brook, swoln with a transient shower,
was heard more distinctly in the darkness, mingling with the soft, rustling breeze; and the
next morning the song of peasants broke upon refreshing sleep, as the sun glanced among
the clustering vine-leaves, or the shadowy hills, as the mists retired from their summits,
looked in at our windows.[208]

Hazlitt's time at Vevey was not passed entirely in a waking dream. As at Paris, and sometimes other stopping
points such as Florence, he continued to write, producing one or two essays later included in The Plain Speaker,
as well as some miscellaneous pieces. A side trip to Geneva during this period led him to a review of his Spirit of
the Age, by Francis Jeffrey, in which the latter takes him to task for striving too hard after originality. As much as
Hazlitt respected Jeffrey, this hurt (perhaps the more because of his respect), and Hazlitt, to work off his angry
feelings, dashed off the only verse from his pen that has ever come to light, "The Damned Author's Address to
His Reviewers", published anonymously on 18 September 1825, in the London and Paris Observer, and ending
with the bitterly sardonic lines, "And last, to make my measure full,/Teach me, great J[effre]y, to be dull!" [209]

Much of his time, however, was spent in a mellow mood. At this time he wrote "Merry England" (which appeared
in the December 1825 New Monthly Magazine). "As I write this", he wrote, "I am sitting in the open air in a
beautiful valley.... Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within me, I conjure up the cheerful
passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images appear before me".[210]

The return to London in October was a letdown. The grey skies and bad food compared unfavorably with his
recent retreat, and he was suffering from digestive problems (these recurred throughout much of his later life),
though it was also good to be home.[211] But he already had plans to return to Paris. [212]

Return to London, trip to Paris, and last years (1825–1830)

19/35
"The old age of artists"

As comfortable as Hazlitt was on settling in again to his home on Down Street in London in late 1825 (where he
remained until about mid-1827), the reality of earning a living again stared him in the face. He continued to
provide a stream of contributions to various periodicals, primarily The New Monthly Magazine. The topics
continued to be his favourites, including critiques of the "new school of reformers", drama criticism, and
reflections on manners and the tendencies of the human mind. He gathered previously published essays for the
collection The Plain Speaker, writing a few new ones in the process. He also oversaw the publication in book
form of his account of his recent Continental tour.[213]

But what he most wanted was to write a biography of Napoleon. Now Sir Walter Scott was writing his own life of
Napoleon, from a strictly conservative point of view, and Hazlitt wanted to produce one from a countervailing,
liberal perspective. Really, his stance on Napoleon was his own, as he had idolised Napoleon for decades, and
he prepared to return to Paris to undertake the research. First, however, he brought to fruition another favourite
idea.

Always fascinated by artists in their old age (see "On the Old Age of Artists"), [214] Hazlitt was especially
interested in the painter James Northcote, student and later biographer of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a Royal
Academician. Hazlitt would frequently visit him—by then about 80 years old—and they conversed endlessly on
men and manners, the illustrious figures of Northcote's younger days, particularly Reynolds, and the arts,
particularly painting.

Northcote was at this time a crochety, slovenly old man who lived in wretched surroundings and was known for
his misanthropic personality. Hazlitt was oblivious to the surroundings and tolerated the grumpiness.[215] Finding
congeniality in Northcote's company, and feeling many of their views to be in alignment, he transcribed their
conversations from memory and published them in a series of articles entitled "Boswell Redivivus" in The New
Monthly Magazine. (They were later collected under the title Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A.) But
there was little in common between these articles and Boswell's life of Johnson. Hazlitt felt such a closeness to
the old artist that in his conversations, Northcote was transformed into a kind of alter ego. Hazlitt made no secret
of the fact that the words he ascribed to Northcote were not all Northcote's own but sometimes expressed the
views of Hazlitt as much as Hazlitt's own words.[216]

Some of the conversations were little more than gossip, and they spoke of their contemporaries without restraint.
When the conversations were published, some of those contemporaries were outraged. Northcote denied the
words were his; and Hazlitt was shielded from the consequences to a degree by his residing in Paris, where he
was at work on what he thought would be his masterpiece.[217]

The last conversation (originally published in The Atlas on 15 November 1829, when Hazlitt had less than a year
to live) is especially telling. Whether it really occurred more or less as given, or was a construct of Hazlitt's own
imagination, it provides perspective on Hazlitt's own position in life at that time.

In words attributed to Northcote: "You have two faults: one is a feud or quarrel with the world, which makes you
despair, and prevents you taking all the pains you might; the other is a carelessness and mismanagement, which
makes you throw away the little you actually do, and brings you into difficulties that way."

Hazlitt justifies his own contrary attitude at length: "When one is found fault with for nothing, or for doing one's
best, one is apt to give the world their revenge. All the former part of my life I was treated as a cipher; and since I
have got into notice, I have been set upon as a wild beast. When this is the case, and you can expect as little
justice as candour, you naturally in self-defence take refuge in a sort of misanthropy and cynical contempt for
mankind."

And yet on reflection, Hazlitt felt that his life was not so bad after all:

The man of business and fortune ... is up and in the city by eight, swallows his breakfast in
20/35
 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 superintend his clerks: he
has hardly a minute in the day to himself, and perhaps in the four-and-twenty hours does
not do a single thing that he 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 without all this anxiety and drudgery) who do hardly any
thing at all, and never any thing but what I like to do? I rise when I please, breakfast 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.[218]

He was perhaps overly self-disparaging in this self-portrait,[219] but it opens a window on the kind of life Hazlitt
was leading at this time, and how he evaluated it in contrast to the lives of his more overtly successful
contemporaries.

Hero worship

In August 1826, Hazlitt and his wife set out for Paris again, so he could research what he hoped would be his
masterpiece, a biography of Napoleon, seeking "to counteract the prejudiced interpretations of Scott's
biography".[220] Hazlitt "had long been convinced that Napoleon was the greatest man of his era, the apostle of
freedom, a born leader of men in the old heroic mould: he had thrilled to his triumphs over 'legitimacy' and
suffered real anguish at his downfall".[221]

This did not work out quite as planned. His wife's independent income allowed them to take lodgings in a
fashionable part of Paris; he was comfortable, but also distracted by visitors and far from the libraries he needed
to visit. Nor did he have access to all the materials that Scott's stature and connections had provided him with for
his own life of Napoleon. Hazlitt's son also came to visit, and conflicts broke out between him and his father that
also drove a wedge between Hazlitt and his second wife: their marriage was by now in free fall.[222]

With his own works failing to sell, Hazlitt had to spend much time churning out more articles to cover expenses.
Yet distractions notwithstanding, some of these essays rank among his finest, for example his "On the Feeling of
Immortality in Youth", published in The Monthly Magazine (not to be confused with the similarly named New
Monthly Magazine) in March 1827. [223] The essay "On a Sun-Dial", which appeared late in 1827, may have
been written during a second tour to Italy with his wife and son.[224]

On returning to London with his son in August 1827, Hazlitt was shocked to discover that his wife, still in Paris,
was leaving him. He settled in modest lodgings on Half-Moon Street, and thereafter waged an unending battle
against poverty, as he found himself forced to grind out a stream of mostly undistinguished articles for weeklies
like The Atlas to generate desperately needed cash. Relatively little is known of Hazlitt's other activities in this
period. He spent as much time, apparently, at Winterslow as he did in London.[225] Some meditative essays
emerged from this stay in his favourite country retreat, and he also made progress with his life of Napoleon. But
he also found himself struggling against bouts of illness, nearly dying at Winterslow in December 1827.[226] Two
volumes—the first half—of the Napoleon biography appeared in 1828, only to have its publisher fail soon
thereafter. This entailed even more financial difficulties for the author, and what little evidence we have of his
activities at the time consists in large part of begging letters to publishers for advances of money. [227]

The easy life he had spoken of to Northcote had largely vanished by the time that conversation was published
about a year before his death. By then he was overwhelmed by the degradation of poverty, frequent bouts of
physical as well as mental illness—depression[228] caused by his failure to find true love and by his inability to
bring to fruition his defence of the man he worshipped as a hero of liberty and fighter of despotism.

Although Hazlitt retained a few devoted admirers, his reputation among the general public had been demolished
by the cadre of reviewers in Tory periodicals whose efforts Hazlitt had excoriated in "On the Jealousy and the
21/35
Spleen of Party".[229] According to John Wilson of Blackwood's Magazine, for example, Hazlitt had already
"been excommunicated from all decent society, and nobody would touch a dead book of his, any more than they
would the body of a man who had died of the plague".[230]

His four-volume life of Napoleon turned out to be a financial failure. Worse in retrospect, it was a poorly
integrated hodgepodge of largely borrowed materials. Less than a fifth of his projected masterpiece consists of
Hazlitt's own words.[231] Here and there, a few inspired passages stand out, such as the following:

I have nowhere in any thing I may have written declared myself to be a Republican; nor
should I think it worth while to be a martyr and a confessor to any form or mode of
government. But what I have staked health and wealth, name and fame upon, and am
ready to do so again and to the last gasp, is this, that there is a power in the people to
change its government and its governors. [232]

Hazitt managed to complete The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte shortly before his death, but did not live to see it
published in its entirety.

Last years

Few details remain of Hazlitt's daily life in his last years. [233] Much of
his time was spent by choice in the bucolic setting of Winterslow. But
he needed to be in London for business reasons. There, he seems to
have exchanged visits with some of his old friends, but few details of
these occasions were recorded. Often he was seen in the company
of his son and son's fiancée.[234] Otherwise, he continued to produce
a stream of articles to make ends meet.

In 1828, Hazlitt found work reviewing for the theatre again (for The
Examiner). In playgoing he found one of his greatest consolations.
One of his most notable essays, "The Free Admission", arose from Plaque in Bouverie Street, London, marking the
site of William Hazlitt's house.
this experience.[235] As he explained there, attending the theatre was
not merely a great solace in itself; the atmosphere was conducive to
contemplating the past, not just memories of the plays themselves or
his reviewing of past performances, but the course of his whole life. In
words written within his last few months, the possessor of a free
admission to the theatre, "ensconced in his favourite niche, looking
from the 'loop-holes of retreat' in the second circle ... views the
pageant of the world played before him; melts down years to
moments; sees human life, like a gaudy shadow, glance across the
stage; and here tastes of all earth's bliss, the sweet without the bitter,
the honey without the sting, and plucks ambrosial fruits and
amaranthine flowers (placed by the enchantress Fancy within his
The site of Hazlitt's grave in the churchyard of St
reach,) without having to pay a tax for it at the time, or repenting of it Anne's, Soho, with a new memorial
afterwards."[236] commissioned following a campaign led by Tom
Paulin.

He found some time to return to his earlier philosophical pursuits,

including popularised presentations of the thoughts expressed in earlier writings. Some of these, such as
meditations on "Common Sense", "Originality", "The Ideal", "Envy", and "Prejudice", appeared in The Atlas in
early 1830.[237] At some point in this period he summarised the spirit and method of his life's work as a
philosopher, which he had never ceased to consider himself to be; but "The Spirit of Philosophy" was not
published in his lifetime.[238] He also began contributing once again to The Edinburgh Review; paying better
22/35
than the other journals, it helped stave off hunger.[239]

After a brief stay on Bouverie Street in 1829, sharing lodgings with his son, [240] Hazlitt moved into a small
apartment at 6 Frith Street, Soho.[241] He continued to turn out articles for The Atlas, The London Weekly
Review, and now The Court Journal.[242] Plagued more frequently by painful bouts of illness, he began to retreat
within himself. Even at this time, however, he turned out a few notable essays, primarily for The New Monthly
Magazine. Turning his suffering to advantage, [243] he described the experience, with copious observations on
the effects of illness and recovery on the mind, in "The Sick Chamber". In one of his last respites from pain,
reflecting on his personal history, he wrote, "This is the time for reading. ... A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we
are reminded of Christmas gambols long ago. ... A rose smells doubly sweet ... 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. ... If the stage [alluding to his remarks in "The Free-Admission"] 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 our enjoyments".[244] At this time he
was reading the novels of Edward Bulwer in hopes of reviewing them for The Edinburgh Review.[245]

Such respites from pain did not last, though news of The Three Glorious Days that drove the Bourbons from
France in July raised his spirits.[246] A few visitors cheered these days, but, toward the end, he was frequently
too sick[247] to see any of them. [248] By September 1830, Hazlitt was confined to his bed, with his son in
attendance, his pain so acute that his doctor kept him drugged on opium much of the time.[249] His last few days
were spent in delirium, obsessed with some woman, which in later years gave rise to speculation: was it Sarah
Walker? Or was it, as biographer Stanley Jones believes, more likely to have been a woman he had met more
recently at the theatre?[250] Finally, with his son and a few others in attendance, he died on 18 September. His
last words were reported to have been "Well, I've had a happy life".[251]

William Hazlitt was buried in the churchyard of St Anne's Church, Soho in London on 23 September 1830, with
only his son William, Charles Lamb, P.G. Patmore, and possibly a few other friends in attendance.[252]

Posthumous reputation
His works having fallen out of print, Hazlitt underwent a small decline, though in the late 1990s his reputation
was reasserted by admirers and his works reprinted. Two major works then appeared,The Day-Star of Liberty:
William Hazlitt's Radical Style by Tom Paulin in 1998 and Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William
Hazlitt by A. C. Grayling in 2000. Hazlitt's reputation has continued to rise, and now many contemporary
thinkers, poets, and scholars consider him one of the greatest critics in the English language, and its finest
essayist.[253]

In 2003, following a lengthy appeal initiated by Ian Mayes together with A. C. Grayling, Hazlitt's gravestone was
restored in St Anne's Churchyard, and unveiled by Michael Foot.[254][255] A Hazlitt Society was then
inaugurated. The society publishes an annual peer-reviewed journal called The Hazlitt Review.

One of Soho's fashionable hotels is named after the writer. Hazlitt's hotel located on Frith Street is the last of the
homes William lived in and today still retains much of the interior he would have known so well.

The Jonathan Bate novel The Cure for Love (1998) was based indirectly on Hazlitt's life. [256]

Bibliography

Selected works

Selected posthumous collections

Literary Remains. 2 vols. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London: Saunders and Otley, 1836.
23/35
 Sketches and Essays. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London, 1839.
Criticisms on Art. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London: C. Templeman, 1844.
Winterslow: Essays and Characters. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London: David Bogue, 1850.
The Collected Works of William Hazlitt. 13 vols. Edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, with an
introduction by W. E. Glover. London: J. M. Dent, 1902–1906.
Selected Essays. Edited by George Sampson. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1917.
New Writings by William Hazlitt. Edited by P. P. Howe. London: Martin Secker, 1925.
New Writings by William Hazlitt: Second Series. Edited by P. P. Howe. London: Martin Secker, 1927.
Selected Essays of William Hazlitt, 1778–1830. Centenary ed. Edited by Geoffrey Keynes. London:
Nonesuch Press, 1930.
The Complete Works of William Hazlitt. Centenary ed. 21 vols. Edited by P. P. Howe, after the edition of A.
R. Waller and Arnold Glover. London: J. M. Dent, 1931–1934.
The Hazlitt Sampler: Selections from his Familiar, Literary, and Critical Essays. Edited by Herschel
Moreland Sikes. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1961.
Selected Writings. Edited by Ronald Blythe. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970.
The Letters of William Hazlitt. Edited by Herschel Moreland Sikes, assisted by Willard Hallam Bonner and
Gerald Lahey. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Selected Writings. Edited by Jon Cook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt. 9 vols. Edited by Duncan Wu. London: Pickering and Chatto,
1998.
The Fight, and Other Writings. Edited by Tom Paulin and David Chandler. London: Penguin Books, 2000.
Metropolitan Writings. Edited by Gregory Dart. Manchester: Fyfield Books, 2005.
New Writings of William Hazlitt. 2 vols. Edited by Duncan Wu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Other editors of Hazlitt include Frank Carr (1889), D. Nichol Smith (1901), Jacob Zeitlin (1913), Will David Howe
(1913), Arthur Beatty (1919?), Charles Calvert (1925?), A. J. Wyatt (1925), Charles Harold Gray (1926), G. E.
Hollingworth (1926), Stanley Williams (1937?), R. W. Jepson (1940), Richard Wilson (1942), Catherine
Macdonald Maclean (1949), William Archer and Robert Lowe (1958), John R. Nabholtz (1970), Christopher
Salvesen (1972), and R. S. White (1996).

See also
Napoleonist Syndrome

Notes
1. ^ "A master of English prose style, a beautifully modulated general essayist, the first great theatre critic in
English, the first great art critic, a magnificent political journalist and polemicist ... Hazlitt is both a
philosopher and one of the supreme literary critics in the language." Paulin, "Spirit".
2. ^ Jacques Barzun praises Lionel Trilling as just behind Hazlitt, implying that Hazlitt, ahead of Coleridge,
Bagehot, and Arnold as well, is in the top rank of English-language literary critics. Quoted in Philip French,
Three Honest Men: Edmund Wilson, F.R. Leavis, Lionel Trilling (Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet Press, 1980),
cited in Rodden, Trilling, p. 3.
3. ^ "...in the tradition of the English essay, descended from Johnson, Lamb, Hazlitt, and Orwell", Hitchens
on Display, by George Packer, in The New Yorker, 3 July 2008
4. ^ Irving Howe considered Orwell "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson".
"George Orwell: 'As the bones know' ", by Irving Howe, Harper's Magazine, January 1969.
24/35
 5. ^ A.C. Grayling notes that Kenneth Clark "described Hazlitt as the 'best critic of art before Ruskin'."
Grayling, p. 380. See also Bromwich, p. 20.
6. ^ "Most of Hazlitt's work is out of print, or unavailable in paperback. He is not studied in most university
English courses...", Paulin, "Spirit".
7. ^ "Both Deane and Heaney had studied Hazlitt at school in Derry in the 1950s – he'd been replaced by
Orwell when I took the same A-level course in the 60s, and the diminution of his reputation has been fairly
steady until recently." Paulin, "Spirit".

8. ^ a b Grayling, pp. 209–10.

9. ^ Paulin, Day-Star, p. 313.
10. ^ Wardle, p. 4.
11. ^ Wardle, p. 16; Wu, p. 33.
12. ^ "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". Hazlitt, Works, vol. 8, p. 259. (Hereafter,
references to Works will imply "Hazlitt, Works".) "In all his works", remarks Hazlitt's biographer and editor
P.P. Howe, "the only reference to his stay in America is to the taste of the barberries picked on the hills".
Howe, p. 29.
13. ^ Bourne, p. 51.
14. ^ Wardle, p. 40, gives the name as the "New Unitarian College at Hackney" but most other reliable
sources, e.g. Albrecht, p. 29, call it the "Unitarian New College at Hackney". This Hackney College was a
short-lived institution (1786–1796) with no connection to the current college by that name.
15. ^ Wardle, p. 45.
16. ^ Grayling, p. 32.
17. ^ Baker, pp. 20–25.
18. ^ Wardle, pp. 43–44.
19. ^ It may have been the case that he was forced to leave for financial reasons, given that "special grants
and terms available for Divinity students could be his no more". (Maclean, p. 81) It is also thought
however that the college's policy of encouraging open intellectual inquiry proved self-destructive; even
faculty members were resigning, and in fact the college closed its doors forever about a year after Hazlitt's
departure. See Wardle, pp. 45–46; also Maclean, pp. 78–81.
20. ^ Kinnaird, p. 11.
21. ^ Wardle, pp. 41–45.
22. ^ Many of these values were also impressed upon him by his father at home, and by reading thinkers who
were not Unitarian, but his two years at Hackney College built upon and greatly strengthened them. See
Kinnaird, pp. 11–25; Paulin, Day-Star, pp. 8–11.
23. ^ Works, vol. 7, p. 7. Quoted in Gilmartin, pp. 95–96.
24. ^ Jones, p. 6.
25. ^ Wardle, pp. 44–45.
26. ^ Maclean, p. 78.
27. ^ Wardle, p. 48.
28. ^ Published in 1805 as "An Essay on the Principles of Human Action". See Works, vol. 1.
29. ^ This school of thought, the "modern philosophy", was primarily English, descended from John Locke
and, originally (as Hazlitt himself insisted in his lectures on philosophy a few years later), Thomas
Hobbes. See Bromwich pp. 36, 45–47; Grayling, p. 148; Park, pp. 46–47.
30. ^ Wardle, p. 243. See also "A Letter to William Gifford" (1819), in Works, vol. 9, pp. 58–59.
25/35
31. ^ Wardle, pp. 48–49.
32. ^ See Maclean, pp. 79–80.
33. ^ Maclean, pp.96–98.
34. ^ Works, vol. 17, p. 107. His meeting with Coleridge "was a revelation, and was to change him forever".
Wu, p. 67.
35. ^ Holmes 1999, p. 100. Holmes 1989, pp.178–79. Barker, p. 211.
36. ^ Works, vol. 17, p. 108.
37. ^ "On the Living Poets", concluding his 1818 "Lectures on the English Poets", Works, vol. 5, p. 167.
38. ^ "My First Acquaintance with Poets", Works, vol. 17, p. 107.

39. ^ a b Barker, p. 211.

40. ^ Burley, pp. 109–10.
41. ^ Wu, p. 6.
42. ^ See Maclean, pp. 119–121. See also Wardle, pp. 50–60.
43. ^ Quoted from Coleridge's correspondence with Thomas Wedgwood, in Grayling, p. 86.
44. ^ Wardle, pp. 60–61.
45. ^ Wardle, p. 61.
46. ^ Wardle, p. 67.
47. ^ Eighteen years later, Hazlitt reviewed nostalgically the "pleasure in painting, which none but painters
know", and all the delight he found in this art, in his essay "On the Pleasure of Painting".Hazlitt, Works,
vol. 8, pp. 5–21.
48. ^ Wardle, pp. 68–75.
49. ^ Wardle, pp. 76–77.
50. ^ Wu, pp. 59–60.
51. ^ Hazlitt's honesty about sex in general was unusual in that increasingly prudish age, as shown in his
later confessional book Liber Amoris , which scandalised his contemporaries. See Grayling, p. 297.
52. ^ Wu, p. 60.
53. ^ Wardle, pp. 78–80. For another account of this contretemps, see Maclean, pp. 198–201.
54. ^ Grayling, p. 80; Wu, p. 86.
55. ^ Reminiscing in 1866, Bryan Waller Procter, who knew them both, thought meeting Hazlitt had been a
"great acquisition" for Lamb; the same could justly be said for Hazlitt as well as Catherine Macdonald
Maclean noted. From that time onward, she writes, the two "had for each other...the easy unstrained
affection of brothers". Maclean, pp. 206–207.
56. ^ Wardle, p. 82.
57. ^ E.g., "Women have as little imagination as they have reason. They are pure egotists", "Characteristics",
Hazlitt, Works, vol. 9, p. 213.
58. ^ Grayling, p. 102.
59. ^ Burley, p. 114; Wu, p. 104.
60. ^ Throughout his life, Hazlitt held this to be his most original work. Its thesis is that, contrary to the
prevailing belief of the moral philosophy of the time, benevolent actions are not modifications of an
underlying fundamental human selfishness. The fundamental tendency of the human mind is, in a
particular sense, disinterest. That is, an interest in the future welfare of others is no less natural to us than
such an interest in our own future welfare. See Bromwich, pp. 46–57; Grayling pp. 362–65.

26/35
61. ^ Wardle, pp. 82–87.
62. ^ See Bromwich, p. 45 and elsewhere.
63. ^ The title echoed that of a pamphlet by John Wesley,Free Thoughts on Public Affairs in a Letter to a
Friend, (1770). See Burley, p. 191, note 23.
64. ^ Burley, p. 191, note 25. On the argument of the Essay, see Grayling, pp. 363–65.
65. ^ Mayhew, pp. 90-91.
66. ^ Wardle, pp. 100–102.
67. ^ Wu 2008, pp. 118, 160, 221.
68. ^ Maclean covers the marriage at length, pp. 233–75; for a briefer account, see Wardle, pp. 103–21.
69. ^ Grayling, pp. 130–31; Gilmartin, pp. 8-9.
70. ^ Wardle, pp. 104–123.
71. ^ Wardle, pp. 126–130.
72. ^ Wardle, pp. 130–131.
73. ^ Wardle, pp. 132, 144, 145.
74. ^ Wardle, pp. 133, 134.
75. ^ Wardle, p. 146.
76. ^ Bromwich, p. 158.
77. ^ Wordsworth might as well, wrote Hazlitt, have "given to his work the form of a didactic poem altogether."
Works, vol. 4, p. 113. According to David Bromwich, Hazlitt thought that "in The Excursion the two great
impulses of romance, to tell a story and to give instruction, have thus separated out completely."
Bromwich, p. 166.
78. ^ Wardle, pp. 146, 171, 183.
79. ^ Wardle, p. 152.
80. ^ It was "the death of the cause of human freedom in his time", as Wardle put it, p. 157.
81. ^ Wardle, p. 157.
82. ^ Wardle, p. 162.
83. ^ Wardle, pp. 171–74.
84. ^ Maclean, pp. 393–95; Wardle, pp. 162–64. See also Hazlitt, Works, vol. 12, pp. 77–89.

85. ^ a b Law, p. 8.
86. ^ Maclean, p. 300.
87. ^ Hazlitt's extreme way of making a point seemed to develop naturally. Yet it was to an extent a
consciously applied device. See Gerald Lahey, "Introduction", Hazlitt, Letters, p. 11, and Hazlitt's own
letter to Macvey Napier on 2 April 1816: "I confess I am apt to be paradoxical in stating an extreme
opinion when I think the prevailing one not quite correct", p. 158.
88. ^ Works, vol. 4, p. 1.
89. ^ Works, vol. 4, p. 80.
90. ^ Works, vol. 4, p. 95.
91. ^ Works, vol. 4, p. 100.
92. ^ Works, vol. 4, p. 122.
93. ^ Law, p. 42. See also Paul Hamilton, "Hazlitt and the 'Kings of Speech'", in Natarajan, Paulin, and Wu,
pp. 69, 76: "Hazlitt's most powerful critical effect is to get his readers to think through quotations, and so

27/35
 benefit from his opening of cultural reservoirs to irrigate the understanding of the common reader."; "His
own essays integrate marvellously inventive and pointed patchworks of quotations ... we are obliged
perpetually to witness, through frequent citation, ... the legitimacy and advantage of appropriating the
language of others to promote our most intimate, private sense of self. ... Hazlitt is never repetitious in his
ventriloquizing; he never turns quotations into tags, is never sententious."; and Bromwich, pp. 275–87.
94. ^ Albrecht, p. 184: "Hazlitt's quotations are notoriously inaccurate."
95. ^ Misquoted this way elsewhere as well; the original has "splendour in the grass ... glory in the flower".
Works, vol. 4, p. 119.
96. ^ Notable for a certain whimsy, for frequent "characters" (sketches of typical character types), for use of
fictitious or real interpolated letters, and for an informal tone—though not to the degree of the "familiar
essay". Law, p.8.
97. ^ "Regardless of subject matter, the style was consistently arresting". Wardle, p. 184.
98. ^ Wardle, pp. 181–97.
99. ^ All of Shakespeare's plays, that is, if one excludes those few plays not then believed to be primarily by
Shakespeare or by him at all. Wardle, p. 204.
100. ^ Wardle, pp.197–202.
101. ^ Wardle, p. 203.
102. ^ Wardle, p. 240.
103. ^ "By the end of 1817 Hazlitt's reputation had received almost irreparable injury." Maclean, p. 361.
104. ^ Wardle, pp. 211–22; Jones, p. 281.
105. ^ Wardle, p. 224.
106. ^ Wardle, p. 244.
107. ^ Wardle, pp. 236–40.
108. ^ Wardle, pp. 249–56.
109. ^ Wardle, pp. 229–34.
110. ^ Wardle, pp. 243–44.
111. ^ Wardle, pp. 231, 255, 257.
112. ^ Bate, p. 259; Wardle, p. 278.
113. ^ Wu, pp. 196–97.
114. ^ Howe, p. 297.
115. ^ Works, vol. 12, p. 225.
116. ^ Bate, p. 609; Wardle, pp. 221, 252.
117. ^ Bate, pp. 259–62; Wu, p. 197; Corrigan, p. 148.
118. ^ Bate, pp. 216, 240, 262, 461.
119. ^ Wu, pp. 197, 287, 356. The relationship between Hazlitt and Keats is explored in depth in Bromwich,
pp. 362–401. See also Natarajan, pp. 107–119; Ley, p. 61, note 13.
120. ^ Jones, p. 281; Robinson, however, sharply disapproved of Hazlitt's moral character.
121. ^ Jones, pp. 314–15.
122. ^ Jones, p. 305.
123. ^ Words written in Winterslow Hut on 18 and 19 January 1821, as Hazlitt informs the reader in a footnote
to the essay soon published as "On Living to One's-Self", Works, vol. 8, p. 91.
124. ^ Jones, pp. 303–18.
28/35
125. ^ Wu 2008, p. 120.
126. ^ Wardle, pp. 262–63; Bromwich, pp. 345–47.
127. ^ Works, vol. 8, p. 33.
128. ^ Bromwich, p. 347; Grayling, pp. 258, 360.
129. ^ Works, vol. 8, pp. 5–21.
130. ^ Works, vol. 8, p. 185. See also Jones, pp.307–8.
131. ^ Though Hazlitt's relationship with Sarah Walker was an aspect of his life even his admirers through the
Victorian era preferred to overlook, it has received ample attention since then. See Maclean, pp. 415–
502; Wardle, pp. 268–365; Jones, pp. 308–48.
132. ^ As Grayling writes, Hazlitt "gave into his feelings at their first impulse, and invariably suffered the
consequences. In the case of Sarah Walker, 'suffered' is a wholly inadequate word. His obsession with
her drove him almost mad." Grayling, p. 261.
133. ^ As Maurice Whelan has noted, "What has been generally ignored is that exactly one month before he
first set eyes on Sarah Walker, Hazlitt’s father died. This event has been afforded little significance in his
life." Whelan, p. 89.
134. ^ Wardle, p. 304.
135. ^ Grayling, p. 290.
136. ^ Jones, p. 332.
137. ^ Jones, pp. 336–37; it is not known why they never married.
138. ^ Wardle, pp. 363–65. Wardle was writing in 1971; twenty-first-century critics continue to be sharply
divided. David Armitage has assessed the book disparagingly as "the result of a tormented mind grasping
literary motifs in a desperate and increasingly unsuccessful (and self indulgent) attempt to communicate
its descent into incoherence...", while Gregory Dart has acclaimed it "the most powerful account of
unrequited love in English literature". To James Ley, "It is ... an unsparing account of the psychology of
obsession, the way a mind in the grip of an all-consuming passion can distort reality to its own detriment".
Armitage, p. 223; Dart 2012, p. 85; Ley p. 38.
139. ^ Quoted by Jones, p. 338.
140. ^ Ley, p. 38: "The book quickly became notorious, thanks largely to Hazlitt's political enemies, who seized
upon the work as evidence of his depraved nature".
141. ^ Quoted in Wardle, p. 363.
142. ^ "Hazlitt seemed to have achieved a detached, yet humane, posture as he regarded the world about him.
He spoke as a philosopher in retirement rather than a bitter recluse". Wardle, p. 274.
143. ^ For a comparison of Hazlitt's and Immanuel Kant's ideas about genius, see Milnes, pp. 133ff.
144. ^ See Wardle, p. 282.
145. ^ The New Monthly Magazine, vol. 3 (January–June, 1822), pp. 102–12, at Google Books.

146. ^ a b Robinson 1999, p.168.

147. ^ Cyrus Redding, assistant editor of the New Monthly Magazine was scandalized: "It was a thoroughly
blackguard subject...disgracing our literature in the eye of other nations", he later wrote. Quoted by
Wardle, p. 302.
148. ^ Works, vol. 12, p. 130. Quoted by Gregory Dart; see Dart 1999, p. 233.
149. ^ Dart 1999, p. 233.
150. ^ Works, vol. 12, p. 136. See also Maclean (pp. 500–2), who considers this "the most powerful" of
Hazlitt's essays of the period.
151. ^ Wardle, p. 272, speaking in particular of "On the Conversation of Authors" (1820).
29/35
152. ^ A body of interconnected philosophic beliefs underlies most of Hazlitt's writing, including his familiar
essays. See Schneider, "William Hazlitt", p. 94.
153. ^ Most critics, according to Elisabeth Schneider, summing up the critical literature on Hazlitt as of 1966,
have felt that these "quotations endow what he is saying with a richness of association that justifies their
presence; they were, moreover, his natural way of thinking and not usually a deliberate adornment".
Schneider, "William Hazlitt", p. 112.
154. ^ Works, vol. 9, pp. 242–48.
155. ^ It has been noted, however, that, only a few years after publication, they may have furnished a model
for Pushkin's historical anecdotes. Lednicki, p. 5. Twenty-first century critic Tim Killick has also noted that
even around the end of Hazlitt's life, the intimate style and succinct narration found in these essays set a
tone markedly new, displacing the lingering vogue of stilted Johnsonian periods, influencing not only
nonfiction but also the genre of short fiction. Killick, pp. 20–21.
156. ^ Jones, p. 318.
157. ^ Bromwich, p. 347.
158. ^ Wardle (citing Stewart C. Wilcox, in the Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 9 [1948], pp. 418–23), p. 366.
159. ^ Works, vol. 9, p. 228.
160. ^ As George Sampson, a later editor of Hazlitt's essays, expressed it, this book "cannot be called entirely
successful. Hazlitt's best aphorisms are to be found scattered in profusion up and down his longer essays;
his deliberate attempts at epigram are more like excised paragraphs than the stamped and coined
utterance of genuine aphorism." See the "Introduction" to Sampson, p. xxxii.
161. ^ Jones, pp. 341–43. Wardle, pp. 377–378.
162. ^ Wardle, p. 381. For a full account of what is known about Hazlitt's marriage to Isabella Bridgwater, see
Jones, pp. 348–64. Stanley Jones first discovered Isabella Hazlitt's background and maiden name only in
the late twentieth century.
163. ^ As he explains in "On Application to Study", written around this time, his ideas "cost me a great deal
twenty years ago". But now he is able to copy out the results of prior study and thought "mechanically". "I
do not say they came there mechanically—I transcribe them to paper mechanically".Works, vol. 12, p. 62.
164. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 6.
165. ^ Works, vol. 1, pp. 177–364.
166. ^ Gilmartin, pp. 3–8.
167. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 105.
168. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 111.
169. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 114.
170. ^ Works, vol. 11, pp. 93–94, 339.
171. ^ Works, vol. 5, p. 167.
172. ^ Works, vol. 7, p. 106.
173. ^ Works, vol. 7, p. 126.
174. ^ Works, vol. 7, p. 129.
175. ^ Works, vol. 19, p. 197.
176. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 30.
177. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 37.
178. ^ "By 1825, Hazlitt was able to regard [Coleridge's abandonment of his earlier views regarding his own
poetry] with a greater air of detachment" than in the earlier reviews. Park, p. 234.

30/35
179. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 79.
180. ^ Works, vol. 11, pp. 84–85.
181. ^ "The subjects of some [of these essays], like Thomas Campbell, seem hardly to deserve the praise
which Hazlitt accords them", wrote Ralph Wardle (p. 406), in 1971.
182. ^ Wardle, p. 406.
183. ^ Works, vol. 11, p. 28.
184. ^ Park, pp. 213–15.

185. ^ a b Quoted in Wardle, p. 407.

186. ^ See Wardle, pp. 391–425, for an extensive account of this tour, and Jones, pp. 364–72, for numerous
additional details.
187. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 105.
188. ^ Wardle, pp. 394–96.
189. ^ Wardle, pp. 396–99; Jones, pp. 367–68.
190. ^ Wardle, p. 414.
191. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 227.
192. ^ Wardle, p. 396.

193. ^ a b Works, vol. 10, p. 289.

194. ^ a b Works, vol. 10, p. 114.

195. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 118.
196. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 101.
197. ^ Wardle, p. 411.
198. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 232.
199. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 237.
200. ^ Works, vol. 17, p. 139.
201. ^ These were his reminiscences two years later in the article "English Students at Rome", Works, vol. 17,
p. 142.
202. ^ Works, vol. 10, pp. 266–67.
203. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 268.
204. ^ Works, vol. 10, pp. 269–74; Wardle, p. 416.
205. ^ Jones, pp. 369. For an account of Hazlitt's attitude toward Rousseau from a perspective very different
from Hazlitt's own, see Duffy, pp. 70–81.
206. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 285.
207. ^ Works, vol. 10, p. 287.
208. ^ Works, vol. 20, p. 393; Wardle, p. 422; Jones, p. 372.
209. ^ Works, vol. 17, pp. 161–62; quoted in Wardle, p. 419.
210. ^ Wardle, pp. 423–25.
211. ^ Jones, p. 372.
212. ^ Wardle, pp. 431–32.
213. ^ Works, vol. 12, pp. 88–97.
214. ^ Wardle, p. 434.
31/35
215. ^ As Hazlitt explained in an introductory note: "I differ from my great and original predecessor ... James
Boswell ... in ... that whereas he is supposed to have invented nothing, I have feigned whatever I
pleased". Works, vol. 11, p. 350. On the other hand, as Catherine Macdonald Maclean reminds us, "there
is much in the 'Conversations' which could only have come from Northcote, like the 'divine chit-chat' about
Johnson and Burke and Goldsmith and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in which Hazlitt delighted". Maclean, p. 551.
216. ^ Not the least of those who took personal offence was William Godwin. See Jones, p. 377. Also outraged
was the family of Zachariah Mudge, which resulted in the omission of several passages when the
conversations were published in book form. See Wardle, pp. 481–82.
217. ^ Works, vol. 11, pp. 318–19.
218. ^ See his editor's note to the last conversation, Works, vol. 11, p. 376.
219. ^ In the words of biographer Ralph Wardle, p. 446.
220. ^ Wardle, p. 446.
221. ^ Wardle, p. 438.
222. ^ Works, vol. 17, pp. 189–99. See also Wardle, p. 438.
223. ^ That this journey was undertaken is not certain, but Jones believes that it probably took place and lay
behind the exacerbation of tensions between Hazlitt and his wife. Jones, p. 375.
224. ^ Jones, p. 378.
225. ^ Wardle, p. 441.
226. ^ See Maclean, p. 552, Jones, pp. 373–75.
227. ^ Maclean writes of "the blighting effect of the melancholy which had by this time had become habitual
with Hazlitt", p. 538.
228. ^ Written probably at Vevey in 1825. Works, vol. 12, pp. 365–82, 427.
229. ^ Quoted in Maclean, p. 555.
230. ^ This was established at length by Robert E. Robinson in 1959; cited in Wardle, pp. 448–49.
231. ^ Works, vol. 14, p. 236. Quoted in Wardle, p. 450.
232. ^ "Nothing more clearly shows our essential ignorance of Hazlitt's life in his last years than the silence
which closes around his second marriage after his wife's defection. ... A comparable reticence marks the
whole of the succeeding period". Jones, p. 376.
233. ^ Wardle, pp. 465–66.
234. ^ Wardle, p. 481.
235. ^ Works, vol. 17, p. 366.
236. ^ Works, vol. 20, pp. 296–321.
237. ^ Works, vol. 20, pp. 369–76.
238. ^ Maclean, p. 552.
239. ^ Jones, p. xvi.
240. ^ Maclean, p. 553.
241. ^ Wardle, p. 479, 481.
242. ^ Wardle, p. 483.
243. ^ "The Sick Chamber", first published in The New Monthly Magazine, August 1830, Works, vol. 17, pp.
375–76.
244. ^ According to P.G. Patmore, reported by P. P. Howe in Hazlitt's Works, vol. 17, p. 429.
245. ^ As A. C. Grayling wrote in a memorial in The Guardian at the turn of the twenty-first century: "From his

32/35
 bed he wrote that the revolution 'was like a resurrection from the dead, and showed plainly that liberty too
has a spirit of life in it; and the hatred of oppression is "the unquenchable flame, the worm that dies not"'".
See Grayling, "Memorial".
246. ^ Grayling conjectures that his ailment was either stomach cancer or ulcers. Grayling, "Memorial".
247. ^ Wardle, p. 484.
248. ^ Hazlitt mentions this explicitly in "The Sick Chamber", Works, vol. 17, p. 373.
249. ^ See Maclean, pp. 577–79; Wardle, p. 485; and Jones, pp. 380–81.
250. ^ Not all of his biographers were convinced that he really uttered those words. See Maclean, p. 608;
Wardle, p. 485; and Jones, p. 381.
251. ^ Wardle, p. 486.
252. ^ Grayling, "Memorial"; Paulin, Day-Star, p. 1; Paulin, "Spirit"; Burley, p. 3.
253. ^ Mayes, Ian, "Revival time", The Guardian, 5 May 2001, via Hazlitt Society.
254. ^ Ezard, John, "William Hazlitt's near-derelict grave restored", The Guardian, 11 April 2003.
255. ^ Smith, Jules (2005). "Jonathan Bate". British Literature Council. Retrieved 27 November 2015.

References
Albrecht, W. P. Hazlitt and the Creative Imagination. Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1965.
Armitage, David. "Monstrosity and Myth in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein". In Monstrous Bodies/Political
Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe. Edited by Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2004, pp. 200–26.
Baker, Herschel. William Hazlitt. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1962.
Barker, Juliet. Wordsworth: A Life . London: Viking/Penguin Books, 2000.
Bate, Walter Jackson. John Keats. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1963.
Bourne, Derrick, and Tonkin, Morley, eds. Through Nine Reigns: 200 Years of the Shrewsbury Chronicle
1772–1972. Shropshire: Powysland Newspapers, 1972.
Bromwich, David. Hazlitt: The Mind of a Critic. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983
(second edition, 1999).
Burley, Stephen. Hazlitt the Dissenter: Religion, Philosophy, and Politics, 1766-1816. London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014.
Corrigan, Timothy. "Keats, Hazlitt, and Public Character". In The Challenge of Keats: Bicentenary Essays
1795–1995. Edited by Allan C. Christensen, Lilla Maria Crisafulli Jones, Giuseppe Galigani, and Anthony
L. Johnson. Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 2000, pp. 146–59.
Dart, Gregory. Metropolitan Art and Literature, 1819-1840: Cockney Adventures . Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2012.
Dart, Gregory. Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
Duffy, Edward. Rousseau in England: The Context of Shelley's Critique of the Enlightenment. Berkeley
and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1979.
Gilmartin, Kevin. William Hazlitt: Political Essayist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Grayling, A.C. The Quarrel of the Age: The Life and Times of William Hazlitt . London: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson, 2000.
Hazlitt, William. The Complete Works of William Hazlitt . Edited by P.P. Howe. 21 vols. London: J.M. Dent
33/35
& Sons, 1930–1934.
Hazlitt, William. The Letters of William Hazlitt. Edited by Herschel Moreland Sikes, with Willard Hallam
Bonner and Gerald Lahey. New York: New York University Press, 1978.
Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Darker Reflections. London: Flamingo Books, 1999.
Holmes, Richard. Coleridge: Early Visions. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989.
Howe, P. P. The Life of William Hazlitt. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1922, 1947 (reissued in paperback by
Penguin Books, 1949; citations are to this edition).
Jones, Stanley. Hazlitt: A Life from Winterslow to Frith Street . Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1989.
Killick, Tim. British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Rise of the Tale. Aldershot,
Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2013.
Kinnaird, John. William Hazlitt: Critic of Power . New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
Law, Marie Hamilton. The English Familiar Essay in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Elements Old and
New Which Went into Its Making as Exemplified in the Writings of Hunt, Hazlitt and Lamb. New York:
Russell & Russell, Inc, 1934 (reissued 1965).
Lednicki, Waclaw. Bits of Table Talk on Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Goethe, Turgenev and Sienkiewicz . The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1956..
Ley, James. The Critic in the Modern World: Public Criticism from Samuel Johnson to James Wood. New
York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2014.
Maclean, Catherine Macdonald. Born Under Saturn: A Biography of William Hazlitt . New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1944.
Mayhew, Robert J. Malthus: The Life and Legacies of an Untimely Prophet . Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 2014.
Milnes, Tim. Knowledge and Indifference in English Romantic Prose. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
Natarajan, Uttara. Hazlitt and the Reach of Sense: Criticism, Morals, and the Metaphysics of Power .
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
Natarajan, Uttara; Paulin, Tom; and Wu, Duncan, eds. Metaphysical Hazlitt: Bicentenary Essays. London
and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Park, Roy. Hazlitt and the Spirit of the Age: Abstraction and Critical Theory . Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1971.
Paulin, Tom. The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt's Radical Style . London: Faber and Faber, 1998.
Robinson, Jeffrey Cane. The Current of Romantic Passion. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1999.
Rodden, John. "Introduction". Lionel Trilling and the Critics: Opposing Selves. Edited by John Rodden.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.
Sampson, George, ed. Hazlitt: Selected Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.
Stephen, Leslie (1894). "Milton, John (1608-1674)". In Lee, Sidney. Dictionary of National Biography.
38. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 32.
Schneider, Elisabeth W. "William Hazlitt". In The English Romantic Poets & Essayists: A Review of
Research and Criticism (revised edition). Edited by Carolyn Washburn Houtchens and Lawrence Huston
Houtchens. New York: New York University Press, and London: University of London Press Limited, 1957,
1966, pp. 75–113.
Wardle, Ralph M. Hazlitt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.
Whelan, Maurice. In the Company of William Hazlitt: Thoughts for the Twenty-first Century . London:
34/35
 Merlin Press, 2005.
Wu, Duncan. William Hazlitt: The First Modern Man. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2008.

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to William Hazlitt.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: William Hazlitt

Wikisource has original works written by or about:

William Hazlitt

35/35