130-) English Literature
William Hazlitt
Return
to philosophy, second marriage, and tour of Europe (1823–1825)
Philosopher,
again
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", 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 Nicolas Poussin" [1821] and "On
Milton's 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).[146] In his manner of exploring an idea by antitheses (for example,
"On the Past and the Future" [1821], "On the Picturesque and
Ideal" [1821]),[147] 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). 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, was controversial in
its time as depicting too "low" a subject. 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".
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.
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. 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".
Not
only do the "Table-Talk" essays frequently display "trenchant
insights into human nature", 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. 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. 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.
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. 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", and critic David Bromwich called many of these essays "more
observing, original, and keen-witted than any others in the language".
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. 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.
But
they also lacked the benefit of Hazlitt's extended reasoning and lucid imagery,
and were never included among his greatest works.
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. 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.
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
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. 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.
There
were philosophers, social reformers, poets, politicians, and a 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.
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, 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. 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". 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 restraints whatsoever were
imposed.
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".
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.
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". Much of The
Friend was "sophistry". The Statesman's Manual was not to be read
"with any patience". A Lay Sermon was enough to "make a
fool...of any man". For betraying their earlier liberal principles, both
Coleridge and Southey were "sworn brothers in the same cause of righteous
apostacy".
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".
Even his "apostacy" is somewhat excused by noting that in recent
times, when "Genius stopped the way of Legitimacy...it was to
be...crushed", regrettably but understandably leading many former liberals
to protect themselves by siding with the powers that be.
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". 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".
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. 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". 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".
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 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.
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".[188] 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...".
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.
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...."
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 earlier, recording for his
readers all of his renewed impressions of canvases by Guido, Poussin, and
Titian, among others.
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.
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), Hazlitt registered a running commentary on the scenic
points of interest. On the road between Florence and Rome, for example,
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.
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".
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!"
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".
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"? 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". 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".
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".
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.
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?" Further,
"the picture galleries at Rome disappointed me quite". 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, as
well as having to cope with the "inconvenience of a stranger's 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....
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". The palaces were
incomparable: "I never saw palaces anywhere but at Venice". 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.
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. 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". 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.
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!"
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".
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. But he already had plans to return to Paris.
Return
to London, trip to Paris, and last years (1825–1830)
"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.
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"), 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. 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.
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.
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 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.
He
was perhaps overly self-disparaging in this self-portrait, 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".
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".
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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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 —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 Spleen of
Party". 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".
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. 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.
Hazlitt
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. 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. 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 this experience. 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
reach,) without having to pay a tax for it at the time, or repenting of it
afterwards."
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. 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. He also began
contributing once again to The Edinburgh Review; paying better than the other
journals, it helped stave off hunger.
After
a brief stay on Bouverie Street in 1829, sharing lodgings with his son, Hazlitt
moved into a small apartment at 6 Frith Street, Soho. He continued to turn out
articles for The Atlas, The London Weekly Review, and now The Court Journal.
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, 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". At this time he was reading the novels of Edward Bulwer in
hopes of reviewing them for The Edinburgh Review.
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. A few visitors cheered
these days, but, toward the end, he was frequently too sickto see any of them.
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.
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? 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".
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.
Posthumous
reputation
His
works having fallen out of print, Hazlitt’s reputation declined. In the late
1990s his reputation was reasserted by admirers and his works reprinted. Two
major works by others 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.
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. A Hazlitt Society was then inaugurated. The society
publishes an annual peer-reviewed journal called The Hazlitt Review.
The
last place Hazlitt lived in, on Frith Street in London, is now a hotel,
Hazlitt's.
The
Jonathan Bate novel The Cure for Love (1998) was based indirectly on Hazlitt's
life.
Bibliography
Selected
works
An
Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805) – Internet Archive
Free
Thoughts on Public Affairs (1806) – Google Books
A
Reply to the Essay on Population, by the Rev. T. R. Malthus (1807) – Internet
Archive
The
Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners (with Leigh
Hunt; 1817) – Google Books
Characters
of Shakespear's Plays (1817) – Wikisource.
Lectures
on the English Poets (1818) – Google Books
A
View of the English Stage (1818) – Google Books
Lectures
on the English Comic Writers (1819) – Internet Archive
Political
Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters (1819) – Wikisource.
Lectures
Chiefly on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth (1820) – Internet
Archive
Table-Talk
(1821–22; "Paris" edition, with somewhat different contents, 1825)
– Wikisource.
Characteristics:
In the Manner of Rochefoucault's Maxims (1822) – Google Books
Liber
Amoris: or, The New Pygmalion (1823) – Google Books
The
Spirit of the Age (1825) – Wikisource.
The
Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things (1826) – Volume I and Volume
II on Google Books
Notes
of a Journey Through France and Italy (1826) – Internet Archive
The
Life of Napoleon Buonaparte (four volumes; 1828–1830)
Selected
posthumous collections
Literary
Remains. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London: Saunders and Otley, 1836 –
Internet Archive
Sketches
and Essays. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London, 1839 – Internet Archive
Criticisms
on Art. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London: C. Templeman, 1844 – Internet
Archive
Winterslow:
Essays and Characters. Edited by William Carew Hazlitt. London: David Bogue,
1850 – Internet Archive
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 –
Internet Archive
Selected
Essays. Edited by George Sampson. Cambridge: at the University Press, 1917 –
Internet Archive
New
Writings by William Hazlitt. Edited by P. P. Howe. London: Martin Secker, 1925
– HathiTrust
New
Writings by William Hazlitt: Second Series. Edited by P. P. Howe. London:
Martin Secker, 1927 – HathiTrust
Selected
Essays of William Hazlitt, 1778–1830. Centenary ed. Edited by Geoffrey Keynes.
London: Nonesuch Press, 1930, OCLC 250868603.
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, OCLC 1913989.
The
Hazlitt Sampler: Selections from his Familiar, Literary, and Critical Essays.
Edited by Herschel Moreland Sikes. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications,
1961, ASIN B0007DMF94.
Selected
Writings. Edited by Ronald Blythe. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970 [reissued
2009], ISBN 9780199552528.
The
Letters of William Hazlitt. Edited by Herschel Moreland Sikes, assisted by
Willard Hallam Bonner and Gerald Lahey. London: Macmillan, 1979, ISBN
9780814749869.
Selected
Writings. Edited by Jon Cook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN
9780199552528.
The
Selected Writings of William Hazlitt. 9 vols. Edited by Duncan Wu. London:
Pickering and Chatto, 1998, ISBN 9781851963690 – WorldCat.
The
Fight, and Other Writings. Edited by Tom Paulin and David Chandler. London:
Penguin Books, 2000, ISBN 9780140436136.
Metropolitan
Writings. Edited by Gregory Dart. Manchester: Fyfield Books, 2005, ISBN
9781857547580.
New
Writings of William Hazlitt. 2 vols. Edited by Duncan Wu. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007, ISBN 9780199207060.
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).
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