28 William Hazlitt

Dr. Neeru Tandon

epgp books

 

 

 

CONTENTS

 

27.1    LEARNING OUTCOME

 

27.2    SHORT BIOGRAPHY

 

27.3    WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT

 

27.4     ON GUSTO

 

27.5    ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH

 

27.6    ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY

 

27.7    FAMOUS QUOTES

 

27.8    PROSE STYLE

 

27.9    HAZLITT AS AN ESSAYIST

 

27.10    HAZLITT AS A CRITIC

 

27.11    HIS CONTRIBUTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE

 

27.12    QUIZZES AND QUESTIONS

 

27.13    FURTHER READING

 

27.14    TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE

 

27.1 LEARNING OUTCOME: The students will learn about William Hazlitt, his essays and his prose style. The students will grasp the basic essentials about Hazlitt and his famous essays. Multiple-choice exercises will help them in assessing their knowledge and understanding of the work. Bibliography and list of websites will help them in their in-depth study and further reading. Critical quotes and quotes from the book will also help them in understanding various literary aspects of his essays.

 

27.2 SHORT BIOGRAPHY

 

William Hazlitt was born on April 10, 1778, at Maidstone, Kent, England and died on Sept. 18, 1830, in Soho, London. He was the son of a Unitarian minister and his mother, Grace Loftus belonged to Wisbech. In 1783, the Reverend William Hazlitt immigrated with his family to America and founded the first Unitarian Church of Boston. But after an unsuccessful struggle he returned to England in the winter of 1786. He took a small parish in Wem, Shropshire, where young William Hazlitt attended school. As a teenager he adopted an unfriendly and disagreeable nature that remained with him throughout his life. He rather spent his time reading intensively which formed the basis of his wisdom. In 1793, Hazlitt was sent to the Hackney Theological College to become a dissenting minister. He did not share his father‟s religious enthusiasm save for the intellectual aspect of the religion. He soon decided against that profession and returned to Wem. He went to Paris with the aim of becoming a painter, but gradually convinced himself that he could not excel in this art. Though in 1802 he traveled to Paris to work in the Louvre but the war between England and France compelled him to return in a year‟s time. He wandered on foot about England for three years painting portraits at a charge of five guineas for each painting. His friends encouraged him to continue painting but in 1805 he turned to the study of philosophy that had always fascinated him and this love showed in his first book „On the Principles of Human Action‟. Hazlitt‟s literary endeavors could not get the success they deserved because of his political principles. Hazlitt was born in a time when a man‟s literary work, morals and intelligence would be judged by his politics. In 1808 he married Sarah Stoddart, a friend of Mary lamb, and the couple went to live at Winterslow on Salisbury Plain, which became Hazlitt‟s favorite place whenever he wanted to think, read and write. But as wife and husband they could not live for long and by 1818, they started living separately and in the year 1823 both agreed for a divorce. His second marriage with Mrs. Bridgewater, a widow, in 1824 and honeymooned leisurely in France, Switzerland and Italy. However, the second marriage also, like the first, could not prove lasting. Besides the two aforesaid marriages he had an unsuccessful love affair with Ms. Sarah Walker. Hazlitt suffered from the pain of despised love that affected his happiness throughout the remaining part of his life.

27.3 :HIS WORKS

EARLY WORKS

 

Hazlitt‟s literary work as an author started in 1805, with his first book „On the Principles of Human Action‟ which was later used as the basis of his lectures on „The Rise and Progress of Modern Philosophy‟. In 1806, He published „Free Thoughts on Public Affairs‟, a political pamphlet, followed in 1807 by „The Eloquence of the British Senate‟. This was a collection of short biographies of statesmen and was a reply to the essay on Population by Malthus, an English cleric and scholar of his time. By the end of 1811 Hazlitt faced financial problems even though he had productively completed a number of literary assignments. His literary works of this period were not insignificant as the style of later works developed from here.

 

LATER WORKS

 

Hazlitt was not popular with the public because of his awkwardness and temperamental nature.

 

He got regular employment, at four pounds a week, as a reporter to the House of Commons.

 

He then began to give a course of lectures in philosophy in London and began work as a reporter in the Morning Chronicle, and gained the reputation of a critic, journalist, and essayist. His collected dramatic criticism appeared as „A View of the English Stage‟ in 1818. He started writing for Leigh Hunt‟s journal „Examiner‟; and from there they went on to publish „The Round Table‟, 2 vol. (1817), and out of the 52 essays Hazlitt wrote 40. Also in 1817 his article on „Characters of Shakespeare‟s Plays‟ received endorsement by critics and readers. His aggressive articulation of views in the journals came because of the quarrels he often had with friends (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey) but at the same time, he made new friends and admirers among them being Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats and strengthened his reputation as a lecturer, delivering talks „On the English Poets‟ (published 1818) and „On the English Comic Writers‟ (published 1819). He also published a collection of political essays and a volume on „Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth‟ (1819) but after this he devoted himself to essays for various journals mainly writing for John Scott‟s „London Magazine‟. All of them possess the movement and freshness of spoken word. It is after Dryden that English Literature saw such vital and Catholic comments. After his divorce he soon fell in love with the daughter of his London landlord but the affair ended acrimoniously; the account of which Hazlitt described in the strange „Liber Amoris‟; or, „The New Pygmalion‟ (1823). Even so, many of his best essays were written during this difficult period and were collected in his two most famous books: „Table Talk‟ (1821) and „The Plain Speaker‟ (1826). Others were posthumously edited by his son, William, as „Sketches and Essays‟ (1829), Literary Remains‟ (1836), and „Winterslow‟ (1850) and some by his biographer, P.P. Howe, as „New Writings‟ (1925–27). Hazlitt‟s other works during this period of productive writing included „Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England‟ (1824), with its celebrated essay on the Dulwich gallery. Hazlitt‟s marriage to widow Bridgewater was resented by his son and part of this second marriage was spent abroad, an experience documented in „Notes of a Journey in France and Italy‟ (1826). In France he began writing „Life of Napoleon‟, 4 vol. (1828–30) which was not very successful, and in 1825 he published some of his most successful writing in „The Spirit of the Age‟. His last book, ‘Conversations of James Northcote‟ (1830), recorded his long friendship with that eccentric painter.

27.4: ON GUSTO

 

„On Gusto‟ was first published in „The Examiner‟ on 26th. May 1816 and again it was reproduced in „The Round Table‟. Being a painter himself Hazlitt has shown a deep knowledge of the art of painting. He has also explained gusto in relation to Shakespeare, Milton, Pope and Dryden. He has also discussed some prose writers. Hazlitt defines Gusto by defining it as the power or passion in art. A work of art has color or form but it is expression of it that matters and the more passionate or powerful the expression it the more expressive it is. He gives critical opinion about great painters of England and Europe like Titan, the famous Italian painter, Michael Angelo, Rubens, Albino, Correggio, Claude and Raphael. First he discusses the painting of Titan and finds that all his pictures are full of gusto. He finds that the pictures of Titan have great gentleness and delicacy and give immense delight to the viewer and the paintings of Albino are like ivory. Reubens‟ drawings are full of beauty and are fresh like blooming flowers. Hazlitt comments that through gusto in painting many senses are excited as the impression formed on one sense excites the other. Hazlitt states that the paintings of Michael Angelo are full of gusto because they impact the eye powerfully. His pictures give us a sense of vigor, moral excellence and intellectual honesty on the other hand the paintings of Correggio lack in gusto. Titan‟s pictures of landscape are filled with gusto and the colors and outlines used by him are striking. He recalls a particular painting of landscape which he saw in the Orleans gallery and found it to be most appealing in power and passion. The painter Rubens exhibited great power of gusto in his art while Raphael‟s artistic representations excelled in expression. According to him Raphael never stepped out of Rome therefore his paintings lack variety and do not impress much. Claude‟s landscapes reach artistic perfection but lack in gusto. He does not clearly find any reason to explain this characteristic of Claude‟s pictures but feels they have no power to touch or titillate the senses of the spectator. He also discusses the art of Greek statues which he again feels are full of gusto. The Greek statues are faultless in form; they engage the whole mind of the onlooker and they are ultimate and spiritual. The power in them comes through a beauty that is divine. At the end of the essay Hazlitt talks about the works of Shakespeare and Milton. Shakespeare, he says, has been a prolific writer and produced a large number of dramas but the gusto, power or passion anticipated in the works is sporadic and intermittent but Milton on the other hand has great gusto. Every line of Milton is potent and full of gusto but the gusto of Pope and Dryden is quite average. Of all the prose writers he finds the prose of Boccaccio and Rabelais to be full of gusto and impressive.

 

27.5 ON THE FEELING OF IMMORTALITY IN YOUTH

 

In the essay Hazlitt says at a young age `No young man believes he shall ever die…. There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which makes us amend for everything. To be young is to be as one of the Immortals. One half of time is spent- the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures, for there is no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes….

 

Death, old age are words without a meaning, a dream, a fiction, with which we have nothing to do. Others may have undergone, or may still undergo them. The youth “bear a charmed life,” which laughs to scorn all such idle fancies. As in setting out on a delightful journey, we strains our sight ever forward… and sees no end to prospect after prospect, new objects presenting themselves as we advance, so in the outset of life we see no end to our desires nor to the opportunities of gratifying them.” So according to him this is the reason why young people do not care for religion because they never have done but have always thought of themselves as gods, Immortals, as Hazlitt puts it, and there is really only room for one god at a time in each life. Hazlitt’s statement, “We know our existence only by ourselves” gives us insight into his emphasis upon impressions made in life and the importance of personal experience in his writing. He writes: “Our first and strongest impressions are borrowed from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we unconsciously transfer its durability as well as its splendor to ourselves”. What Hazlitt is pointing to is a tendency to turn inward to define one’s reality. We see ourselves in relation to nature as not a microscopic portion, like the flower that blooms and then withers away, but as having the same regenerative power and immortality as nature. He writes: To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the outstretched ocean; to walk upon the green earth, and be lord of a thousand creatures; to look down yawning precipices or over distant sunny vales; to see the world spread out under one’s feet on a map; to bring the stars near. Hazlitt uses images of the natural world throughout his essay; he compares dying people to falling leaves and compares the joy and hope of youth to flowers. In fact, Hazlitt suggests an interchangeability between the human race and nature and writes, “Like a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture, and have no thought of going home, or that it will soon be night. “On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth” helps to illustrate Hazlitt’s strong connection to the philosophy of the Romantic Movement and his distaste for impermeable intellectualism. He continues: “…if by our intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in this world, by our virtues and faith we may attain an interest in another, and a higher state of being, and may thus be recipients at the same time of men and of angel”. Hazlitt expresses a parallel between the station of man and the station of God, which aligns with his argument that in youth, men indeed feel God like, and have difficult in coming to terms with their own mortality. As we see the flowers both bloom and wither, trees shed their leaves in the winter and sprout new ones in the spring, and the circularity of the natural world and its ability to renew itself on a continual basis we tend to imagine ourselves with this same transformative power. He notes that our earliest experiences with natural world that surrounds us are those which are burned most vividly into our minds. We and Nature are therefore one”. Hazlitt expands upon this. Indeed Hazlitt imagines human beings as having the same power to shape and define their experiences and their morality as God has to shape the universe. He positions humans with altitude, and says we are “lord(s) of a thousand creatures” that “look down yawning precipices or over distant sunny vales”. For Hazlitt, the answer lies in construction sentences that mimic the immenseness of nature in terms of their size and attempt to do justice to its natural splendor by employing eloquent language. The tendency for humans to compare themselves to supernatural forces brings out another of Hazlitt’s personal views upon religion. Hazlitt gives imagination a pivotal role in the moral life of man.

 

27.6 ON THE DISADVANTAGES OF INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORITY

 

The essay „On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority‟ came out in Table Talk as the 29th essay. In the essay Hazlitt says that intellectual superiority brings the power of knowing more and seeing farther than the others. This aspect should not be misunderstood by others. An intellectually superior man tends to become unintelligible and complex. He is likely to talk in paradoxes that fail to reach the common person. The more original his ideas the more distant he becomes to the reader or listener. The happiness of life does not become better or worse than the people one meets. If you are beneath them you are trampled upon but if you are above them then the people show a mortifying level of indifference that causes pique upon the intellectually superior man. What is the use of being moral in a night cellar or wise in Bedlam? By not acting appropriately as time demands then we cut ourselves off from good company and society. We speak a language not understood by others, have our peculiar notions and are treated as of a different species. The intellectually superior person is like steers among wild beasts. Those who possess greater refinement and wisdom are viewed with suspicion and hostility by their neighbors. If an intelligent man, by softening his attitude, wins his neighbors then they may fear him less but hate him more. They will be more determined to take revenge for his superiority. All the humility in the world is considered as a weakness or folly. The intellectually superior may forget they are an author or an artist but the common man does not forget that he is nothing nor leave a chance to show that the superior person is just the same as he is. They copy the intellectually superior be it his dress, his manner of entering a room, his eating habits, and his particular phrase which they repeat becomes a standing joke. They watch the contradictions in his character, whether he looks grave or ill, whether he is in or out of pocket, and all the petty circumstances in which he resembles or is unlike them give reasons for them to indict him based on the imagination of their mind. In any other person such things would go unnoticed but of a person they had so much about find they cannot understand him and will speak highly about some book which they know he does not like.

 

Intellect is not like bodily strength and one has no hold of the understanding of others except by their sympathy. By knowing more about a subject does not give superiority or power over others, rather, it makes it impossible to make an impression on the common person. It causes more distance between the intellectually person and society. It is more of a stumbling block at every turn. All that brings great pride and pleasure becomes lost in the vulgar eye. What pleases the common man becomes a matter of distaste and indifference to the intellectually superior man. Hazlitt says he loves hospitality and respect and civility for him is a jewel. He likes a little comfortable cheer and careless indolent chat. He hates to be always wise or aims at wisdom. He has to deal with literary cabals, critics, actors, essay writers, without taking them out for recreation or all the places he visits. He desires for goodwill and does not desire to pose at all times on various questions and topics. He has to face various disadvantages of being an author. Generally all his opinions met with contrary comments and ridicule. One of the miseries of intellectual pretensions is that nineteenths of the time the people he came in contact with did not know whether he was an imposter or not. There is always the danger of losing goodwill of numerous friends on ill reports which cannot be gained by good ones. The impertinence of admiration is scarcely more tolerable than the demonstration of contempt. People unnecessarily admire and flatter him and his style in high sounding words. They have a great value for character than writing. Another danger comes from fault finders who betray the intellectual. Sycophants and flatterers are unintentionally treacherous and fickle. They are prone to inordinately admire at first and when they do not find a reason to continue doing so they turn upon their idol and criticize him. To prove themselves right they start fault finding and are happy to see that this works out better for them than flattery. They have the organ of wonder and the organ of fear in a prominent degree. The first requires new objects of admiration to satisfy its uneasy cravings and the second makes them crouch to power wherever they see it. They are favorable to all parties and are ready to betray anyone out of sheer weakness and servility. He does not find great intellectual attainments are any recommendation to the women. They puzzle the intellectually superior man and are a main diversion to the main question. If scholars talk ti ladies of what they know then the ladies are none the wiser and if they talk of other things then they prove themselves fools to them. Scholars are no match for chambermaids. Lastly he says that no illustration is needed to prove that the most original and profound thinkers are the most successful or popular writers. According to him this is not a temporary disadvantage as many great philosophers were followed while they were living but forgotten as soon as they were dead and the name of Hobbes is perhaps sufficient to prove the truth of his statement.

27.7 FAMOUS QUOTES

On the Love of the Country

 

“We do not connect the same feelings with the works of art as with those of Nature, becausewe refer them to man, and associate with them the separate interests and passions which we know belong to those who are the authors or possessors of them.”

On Poetry

 

“Poetry is in all its shapes the language of the imagination and the passions, of fancy and will. Nothing, therefore, can be more absurd than the outcry which has been sometimes raised by frigid and pedantic critics, for reducing the language of poetry to the standard of common sense and reason: for the end and use of poetry, ‘both at the first and now, was and is to hold the mirror up to nature’, seen through the medium of passion and imagination, not divested of that medium by means of literal truth or abstract reason.”

On Coleridge: From “Lectures on the English Poets”

 

“His Ancient Mariner is his most remarkable performance, and the only one that I could point out to anyone as giving an adequate idea of his great natural powers. … He talked on for ever; and you wished him to talk on forever. His thoughts did not seem to come with labour and effort; but as if borne on the gusts of genius, and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him from off his feet.”

 

Disappointment

 

“An author wastes his time in painful study and obscure researches, … when he thinks to grasp the luckless prize, finds it not worth the trouble … He thinks that the attainment of acknowledged excellence will secure him the expression of those feelings in others, which the image and hope of it had excited in his own breast, but instead of that, he meets with … squint-eyed suspicion, idiot wonder, and grinning scorn.”

On Reading Old Books

 

“I have more confidence in the dead than the living. … If you want to know what any of the authors were who lived before our time, and are still objects of anxious inquiry, you have only to look into their works. But the dust and smoke and noise of modern literature have nothing in common with the pure, silent air of immortality.”

On Personal Character

 

“… There is such a thing as an essential difference of character in different individuals. We do not change our features with our situations; neither do we change the capacities or inclinations which lurk beneath them.”

 

Public Opinion

 

“You do not go enough into society … You would there find many people of sense and information whose names you never heard of. It is not those who have made most noise in the world who are persons of the greatest general capacity. It is the making the most of a little … that brings men into notice. Individuals gain a reputation as they make a fortune, by application and by having set their minds upon it. … By setting the opinion of others at defiance, you lose your self-respect. It is of no use that you still say, that you will do what is right; your passions usurp the place of reason and whisper you, that whatever you are bent upon doing is right. You cannot put this deception on the public however, false or prejudiced their standard may be; and the opinion of the world, therefore, acts as a seasonable check upon wilfulness and eccentricity.”

On the Conduct of Life

 

“Do not be surprised … to find men talk exceedingly well on different subjects, who do not derive their information immediately from books. … common sense is not a monopoly, and experience and observation are sources of information open to the man of the world as well as to the retired student.”

 

On Prejudice

 

“Prejudice is so far then an involuntary and stubborn association of ideas, of which we cannot assign the distinct grounds and origin; and the answer to the question, ‘How do we know whether the prejudice is true or false?’ depends … Whether the subject in dispute falls under the province of our own experience, feeling, and observation, or is referable to the head of authority, tradition, and fanciful conjecture? Our practical conclusions are in this respect generally right; … it is in trusting to others (who give themselves out for guides and doctors) that we are … at the mercy of quackery, impudence, and imposture. Any impression, however absurd, or however we may have imbibed it, by being repeated and indulged in, becomes an article of implicit and incorrigible belief. The point to consider is, how we have first taken it up, whether from ourselves or the arbitrary dictation of others.”

Unaltered Love & Perfect Love

 

“Perfect love has this advantage in it, that it leaves the possessor of it nothing farther to desire. … the soul finds absolute content, for which it seeks to live, or dares to die.”

 

Oxford

 

“We could pass our lives in Oxford without having or wanting any other idea — that of the place is enough. We imbibe the air of thought; we stand in the presence of learning.”

On The Pleasure Of Hating

 

“We feel the full force of the spirit of hatred with all of them in turn. … we throw aside the trammels of civilization, the flimsy veil of humanity. … The wild beast resumes its sway within us, we feel like hunting animals, and as the hound starts in his sleep and rushes on the chase in fancy the heart rouses itself in its native lair, and utters a wild cry of joy, at being restored once more to freedom and lawless unrestrained impulses. Every one has his full swing, or goes to the Devil his own way. Here are no … long calculations of self-interest — the will takes its instant way to its object, as the mountain-torrent flings itself over the precipice: the greatest possible good of each individual consists in doing all the mischief he can to his neighbour.”

 

On The Qualifications Necessary To Success In Life

 

“Fortune does not always smile on merit … the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong … To be thought wise, it is for the most part only necessary to seem so; and the noisy demagogue is easily translated, by the popular voice, into the orator and patriot. …

 

Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else. … a dull plodding fellow will often do better than one of a more mercurial and fiery cast – the mere unconsciousness of his own deficiencies, or of anything beyond what he himself can do, reconciles him to his mechanical progress, and enables him to perform all that lies in his power with labour and patience. By being content with mediocrity, he advances beyond it; whereas the man of greater taste or genius may be supposed to fling down his pen or pencil in despair, haunted with the idea of unattainable excellence, and ends in being nothing, because he cannot be everything at once.”

 

On The Want Of Money

 

“There are two classes of people that I have observed … – those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people’s. The first are always in want of money, though they do not know what they do with it. They muddle it away, without method or object, and without having anything to shew for it. … they hire two houses at a time … they purchase a library, and dispose of it when they move house. With all this sieve-like economy, they can only afford a leg of mutton and a single bottle of wine, and are glad to get a lift in a common stage … they set no value upon money, and throw it away on any object or in any manner that first presents itself, merely to have it off their hands, so that you wonder what has become of it.”

 

On The Feeling of Immortality in Youth

 

“… so in the outset of life we see no end to our desires nor to the opportunities of gratifying them. We have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag, and it seems that we can go on so for ever. We look round in a new world, full of life and motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in ourselves all the vigour and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present signs how we shall be left behind in the race, decline into old age, and drop into the grave.”

On Disagreeable People

 

“Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others. … If we look about us, and ask who are the agreeable and disagreeable people in the world, we shall see that it does not so much depend on their virtues or vices – their understanding or stupidity – as on the degree of pleasure or pain they seem to feel in ordinary social intercourse.

 

27.8 PROSE STYLE

 

Hazlitt has a very place in English literature. He wrote two kinds of essays- Miscellaneous essays and literary essays. In both varieties of essays, he is personal frankly giving his likes and dislikes. He has a very concrete, vivid, personal and vigorous style. Much of his work is journalism but because of its high standard many essayists cannot stand up to him. Unlike Lamb he is a vigorous writer who writes simple and unadorned prose. His prose is forceful, vigorous, gusty and clear. In his less ambitious essays he keeps a light, chatty stance of personal conversation. In his public lectures he adopts the sweep and eloquence of a practiced orator. Hazlitt is in the rank of writers like Bacon, Dryden, Earle, Addison and Swift. The influence on Hazlitt‟s style ranges from The Elizabethans, the Restoration writers, the writers of the eighteenth century and his contemporaries. He spoke in a conversational style with a thorough command and choice of words. He could discourse with ease, force and clarity setting aside all pedantic or oratorical sparks. He had no liking for long words and Latinized vocabulary. His writing is marked by an amazing vitality of thought and tartness of expression unequalled by even the great writers of English prose. He makes use of alliteration, antithesis, metaphors, pun and epigrams. The metaphors do not crowd his style. They make his prose clear and bring a vivid liveliness that gives his prose vigour and grace. He is a master of aphoristic style and in this respect he comes closest to Bacon. He has a knack for using appropriate word at the appropriate place and his sentences can be elaborated upon as full essays. His pithy statements are unrivalled such as “common sense is tacit reason”, No young man believes he shall ever die”, “Life is the art of being well deceived”, “An author is bound to write – well or ill, wisely or foolishly: it is his trade”. He also uses parallel construction and contrast. He likes to join his subjects in pairs like “cant and hypocrisy”, “wit and humor”, “past and future”, “thought and action”, “genius and commonsense”, “patronage and puffing”, “writing and speaking” and many others. Hazlitt‟s prose has picturesque qualities. He quotes phrases and expressions from past writers like Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Cowper, Wordsworth and others. He could use a word, phrase or a whole sentence. His essays reveal a few shortcomings. He makes changes to the use of expressions from other writers and rarely mentions the source. The words or phrases used appear natural in his writing. The word „gusto‟ is often used by him when he writes as a critic. His essays reflect his whimsical and shifting moods. His whims, resentment and moods come out on his abstract musings. He can be violent and sour tempered in his opinions and this very quality gives frankness, intensity, texture, shape and substance to his prose; they form a base for his digression which also becomes the topic of his essays. His egotism also comes out in the essays. The essays lack formal and systematic arrangement. There is plenty of thought but a lack of system of ideas in them.

27.9 HAZLITT AS AN ESSAYIST

 

Hazlitt‟s contribution as a man of letters is twofold. He developed the personal essay in his familiar style and also wrote as a critic. There is romantic element in his essays and he could write on a variety of subjects because of his diverse interests. He has written on literature, politics, sports and games, paintings, prize fighting, the stage, philosophy and religion. His essays reveal a combination of different characteristics of analysis, observation, interpretation, emotion, sentiment and idea. In both varieties of his essays he is frank and doesn‟t hesitate to give his personal opinion. He is guided not by set standards but by his own impressions. Every essay of Hazlitt is a fragment of autobiography and every sentence is like a confession. His writings hold scattered bits of his unplanned autobiography. His essays reflect his ego centrism as he believes that dramatists and novelists are committed to something bigger while the essayist is committed only to himself. He works through observation and impressions particularly made on emotions rather than through narrative and character analysis. He was a man of strong convictions and had the intellectual courage to express and expand upon his opinions. He has woven his experience of life and letters into the fabric of his essays. The essays are animated by his eager love and passion for all that is aesthetic, grand and heroic be it life, art, nature and character. He talks in his essays about his father, his prejudices, his love for painting, his enjoyment of walks, his literary taste, his love for nature and old books, his political leanings, his severe puritanical upbringing and his epicurean philosophy. His essays are famous for being racy, varied, vigorous and virile because they have so much to say. As a lover of nature he went far and wide to capture a fresh sensation and that could spice up his intellectual life. He starts his essays with a startling statement, a paradox or an epigram which immediately capture ones attention. He even loves to write about his memories and recollections, things of the past. His essays show how much he tries to salvage and preserve the past and they become a web of linked associations, each colored by his feelings but spun from facts and things of present.

 

His essays are colored by his whimsicality and his shifting moods. He can be a hater of mankind at times and in the essays raves and rants at the world. But the bitterness reflected in the essays is short lived and goes on to show that it was just a transient phase. That is why he is accused of having no formal or systematic arrangement in his essays.

 

27.10 HAZLITT AS A CRITIC

 

As a critic he is just and judicious and his aim is nothing beyond analysis and judgment. He said: “to feel what is good, and give reasons for the faith in me”. He is the most eminent critic of his time. What sets him apart from his contemporary critics is his practical criticism aimed at only judging the writers and dramatists he had read. He was a romantic but free from the eccentricities and extravagances of romanticism. He was catholic in taste but also read Rousseau, whom he regarded as his intellectual mentor and poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge while side by side he also admired the writings of Fielding, Pope and Moliere. He was able to bring before us the beauties of expression of writers like Wordsworth, Milton and Shakespeare which no one had done before him. Hazlitt himself says-

 

“I have undertaken….. merely to read over a set of authors with the audience, as I would do with a friend, to point out a favorite passage, to explain an objection; or a remark or a theory as it occurs in an illustration of a subject; but neither tire him nor puzzle myself with pedantic rules and pragmatical formulas of criticism that can do good to anybody. I do not come to the task with a pair of compasses or ruler in my pocket to see whether a poem is square or round, or to measure its mechanical dimensions, like a metre….. I have endeavored to feel what is good and to give a reason for the faith that was in me, when necessary and when in my power.”

Hazlitt paid special attention to personal taste in the proper assessment of literature. He says that if he praised a writer it was because he liked him and if he quoted a passage it was because he was pleased to read it and he reluctantly spoke contemptuously of someone. He used the term poetry to mean three different things- “the composition produced, the state of mind or faculty producing it, and in certain cases, the subject matter proper to all forth that state of mind.” Poetry has the power to evoke fear, harmony, sense of beauty or power and hope and which each of us can feel alike. Imagination in poetry serves the purpose of wish fulfillment. Imagination helps one to escape the ugly and the hurtful things in life. Imagination adds something substantial to the objects of the real world. While it has the transforming power it seeks to imitate and reproduce nature. He was not of the view that only subjective poetry constitutes great art. He emphasized upon the objective treatment to mere subjective outburst of sentiments and feelings. Hazlitt considers poets to be all sympathizers, devoid of individuality and absorbed in his objects. Shakespeare he compares to a ventriloquist. For him Scott presents truth and nature while Byron thinks only of himself. He is aware of the relationship between history, literature and society. Though brutally frank and unsparing in his criticism he never wavered from the truth.

27.11 HIS CONTRIBUTION

 

Hazlitt contributed two types of essay writing- the personal and the critical. He gave a body of opinion on literature which was accepted by most critics. Critics felt his quotes had authority and he is read till today. Though he gave two extreme viewpoints but nevertheless he introduced the reader to appreciation of good literature. Critics feel he is unequalled. He is praised by most critics who say that his style was appropriate to the subject under discussion unlike that of Johnson, Coleridge, Lamb or Bentham. Nobody could touch him in his criticism of literature. If he failed somewhere in his criticism it was because of his political leanings. He addressed innumerable qualities of writers that were ignored before him. Maugham recommended the reading of Hazlitt as a needed counter- influence to our commonplace journalistic prose, because Hazlitt is so “vivid, bracing and energetic”. He is said to have a permanent place in English Literature and permanent value to mankind. He wrote the most interesting pieces reflecting the vigor of his intellect in a style appropriate to the subject. His influence grew after his death and his opinions on art and literature bear influence on present time readings. His opinion about Keats against all contemporary criticism speaks of the “sureness of his judgment”. According to Geoffrey “he is not out of date, and can never become stale”.

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