128 - ) English Literature
William Hazlitt
William
Hazlitt (10 April 1778 – 18 September 1830) was an English essayist, 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, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell. He
is also acknowledged as the finest art critic of his age. Despite his high
standing among historians of literature and art, his work is currently little
read and mostly out of print.
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.
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), 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 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.
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. In 1786–87 the family returned to England and
settled in Wem, in Shropshire. Hazlitt would remember little of his years in
America, save the taste of barberries.
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. 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). The schooling
he received there, though relatively brief, approximately two years, made a
deep and abiding impression on Hazlitt.
The
curriculum at Hackney was very broad , including a grounding in the Greek and Latin classics,
mathematics, history, government, science, and, of course, religion. 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, 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.
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.
Although
Hazlitt rejected the Unitarian theology, 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. 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 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, 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."
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, 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. 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 . 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. Hazlitt then set about working out a treatise, in
painstaking detail, on the "natural disinterestedness of the human
mind". 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. 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.
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.
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, 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. 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.
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 others afterwards, was swept off his feet by
Coleridge's dazzlingly erudite eloquence. "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". 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". 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. 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. 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."
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. 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. 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."
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.
Hazlitt
also visited various picture galleries, and he began to get work doing
portraits, painting somewhat in the style of Rembrandt. 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.
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, 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".
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 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.
Recourse
to prostitutes was unexceptional among literary—and other—men of that period,
and if Hazlitt was to differ from his contemporaries, the difference lay in his
unabashed candour about such arrangements. 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," 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.
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. 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. 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, no small compliment coming from a man whose view of women at times
took a misogynistic turn. Hazlitt frequented the society of the Lambs for the
next several years, from 1806 often attending their famous
"Wednesdays" and later "Thursdays" literary salons.
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. 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, 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 and may have had some
influence on his own later thinking.
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), 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.
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". Also in 1807 Hazlitt undertook 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
find more work as a portrait painter as well.
In
May 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. 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.)
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. 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.
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.
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.
But other opportunities awaited him.