[1] It has been supposed that the origin is to be found in O. Eng.
_haes_, a behest, connected with _hatan_ = Ger. _heissen_, to give
orders: the hazel-wand was the sceptre of authority of the shepherd
chieftain ([Greek: poimen laon]) of olden times, see _Grimm, Gesch.
d. deutsch. Sprache_, p. 1016, 1848. The root is _kas_-, cf. Lat.
_corulas, corylus_; and the original meaning is unknown.
[2] On the expression "hazel eyes," see _Notes and Queries_, 2nd ser.
xii. 337, and 3rd ser. iii. 18, 39.
[3] For derivations of the word see Latham's _Johnson's Dictionary_.
HAZLETON, a city of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., about 25 m. S.
of Wilkes-Barre. Pop. (1890) 11,872; (1900) 14,230, of whom 2732 were
foreign-born; (1910 census) 25,452. It is served by the Lehigh Valley,
the Pennsylvania (for freight), and the Wilkes-Barre & Hazleton
(electric) railways. The city is built on a broad tableland on Nescopeck
or Buck Mountain, a spur of the Blue Mountains, about 1620 ft. above
sea-level. It has a park and a number of handsome residences; and its
agreeable climate and picturesque situation make it attractive as a
summer resort. The city has a public library. Hazleton is near the
centre of one of the richest coal regions (the Lehigh or "Eastern Middle
Coal Field") of the state, and its principal industry is the mining and
shipping of anthracite coal. It has silk mills, knitting mills, shirt
factories, breweries, macaroni factories, lumber and planing mills,
important iron works, a casket factory and a large electric power plant.
The value of the city's factory products increased from $998,823 in
1900 to $2,185,876 in 1905, or 118.8%, only three other cities in the
state having a population of 8000 or more in 1900 showing a greater rate
of increase. There is a state hospital here for the treatment of persons
injured in mines. Hazleton was settled in 1820, was laid out in 1836,
was incorporated as a borough in 1856 and received a city charter in
1891. The local coal industry dates from 1837.
HAZLITT, WILLIAM (1778-1830), British literary critic and essayist, was
born on the 10th of April 1778 at Maidstone, where his father, William
Hazlitt, was minister of a Unitarian congregation. The father took the
side of the Americans in their struggle with the mother-country, and
during a residence at Bandon, Co. Cork, interested himself in the
welfare of some American prisoners at Kinsale. In 1783 he migrated with
his family to America, but in the winter of 1786-1787 returned to
England, and settled at Wem in Shropshire, where he ministered to a
small congregation. There his son William went to school, till in 1793
he was sent to the Hackney theological college in the hope that he would
become a dissenting minister. For this career, however, he had no
inclination, and returned, probably in 1794, to Wem, where he led a
desultory life until 1802, and then decided to become a portrait
painter. His elder brother John was already established as a miniature
painter in London. The monotony of life at Wem was broken in January
1798 by the visit of Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Shrewsbury, where young
Hazlitt went to hear him preach. Coleridge encouraged William Hazlitt's
interest in metaphysics, and in the spring of the next year Hazlitt
visited Coleridge at Nether Stowey and made the acquaintance of William
Wordsworth. The circumstances of this early intercourse with Coleridge
are related with inimitable skill in a paper in Hazlitt's _Literary
Remains_ (1839). On visits to his brother in London he made many
acquaintances, the most important being a friendship with Charles Lamb,
said to have been founded on a remark of Lamb's interpolated in a
discussion between Coleridge, Godwin and Holcroft, "Give me man as he is
_not_ to be." He also formed an acquaintance with John Stoddart, whose
sister Sarah he married in 1808. In October 1802 he went to Paris to
copy portraits in the Louvre, and spent four happy months in Paris. When
he returned to London he undertook commissions for portraits, but soon
found he was not likely to excel in his art; his last portrait, one of
Charles Lamb as a Venetian senator (now in the National Portrait
Gallery), was executed in 1805. In that year he published his first
book, _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action: being an argument in
favour of the Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind_, which had
occupied him at intervals for six or seven years. It attracted little
attention, but remained a favourite with its author. Other works
belonging to this period are: _Free Thoughts on Public Affairs_ (1806);
_An Abridgment of the Light of Nature Revealed, by Abraham Tucker ..._
(1807); _The Eloquence of the British Senate ..._ (2 vols., 1807); _A
Reply to Malthus, on his Essay on Population_ (1807); _A New and
Improved Grammar of the English Tongue ..._ (1810).
Hazlitt married in 1808. His domestic life was unhappy. His wife was an
unromantic, business-like woman, while he himself was fitful and moody,
and impatient of restraint. The dissolution of the ill-assorted union
was nevertheless deferred for fourteen years, during which much of
Hazlitt's best literary work had been produced. Mrs Hazlitt had
inherited a small estate at Winterslow near Salisbury, and here the
Hazlitts lived until 1812, when they removed to 19 York Street,
Westminster, a house that was once Milton's. Hazlitt delivered in 1812 a
course of lectures at the Russell Institution on the _Rise and Progress
of Modern Philosophy_. He soon abandoned philosophy, however, to give
his whole attention to journalism. He was parliamentary reporter and
subsequently dramatic critic for the _Morning Chronicle_; he also
contributed to the _Champion_ and _The Times_; but his closest connexion
was with the _Examiner_, owned by John and Leigh Hunt. In conjunction
with Leigh Hunt he undertook the series of articles called _The Round
Table_, a collection of essays on literature, men and manners which
were originally contributed to the _Examiner_. To this time belong his
_View of the English Stage_ (1818), and _Lectures on the English Poets_
(1818), on the _English Comic Writers_ (1819), and on the _Dramatic
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_ (1821). By these works, together
with his _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ (1817), and his _Table
Talk; or Original Essays on Men and Manners_ (1821-1822), his reputation
as a critic and essayist was established. Next to Coleridge, Hazlitt was
perhaps the most powerful exponent of the dawning perception that
Shakespeare's art was no less marvellous than his genius; and Hazlitt's
criticism did not, like Coleridge's, remain in the condition of a series
of brilliant but fitful glimpses of insight, but was elaborated with
steady care. His lectures on the Elizabethan dramatists performed a
similar service for the earlier, sweeter and simpler among them, such as
Dekker, till then unduly eclipsed by later writers like Massinger,
better playwrights but worse poets. Treating of the contemporary drama,
he successfully vindicated for Edmund Kean, whose genius he recognized
from the first, the high place which he has retained as an actor, and
his enthusiasm for Mrs Siddons knew no bounds. His criticisms on the
English comic writers and men of letters in general are masterpieces of
ingenious and felicitous exposition, though rarely, like Coleridge's,
penetrating to the inmost core of the subject. Moreover, at the time
when the lectures were written, Hazlitt's views, orthodox as they may
seem now, were novel enough.
As an essayist Hazlitt is even more effective than as a critic. Being
enabled to select his own subjects, he escapes dependence upon others
either for his matter or his illustrations, and presents himself by
turns as a metaphysician, a moralist, a humorist, a painter of manners
and characteristics, but always, whatever his ostensible theme, deriving
the essence of his commentary from himself. This combination of intense
subjectivity with strict adherence to his subject is one of Hazlitt's
most distinctive and creditable traits. Intellectual truthfulness is a
passion with him. He steeps his topic in the hues of his own
individuality, but never uses it as a means of self-display. The first
reception of his admirable essays was by no means in accordance with
their deserts. Hazlitt's political sympathies and antipathies were
vehement, and he had taken the unfashionable side. _The Quarterly
Review_ attacked him with deliberate malignity, stopped the sale of his
writings for a time and blighted his credit with publishers. Hazlitt
retaliated by his _Letter to William Gifford_ (1819), accusing the
editor of deliberate misrepresentation. In downright abuse and
hard-hitting, Hazlitt proved himself more than a match even for Gifford.
By the writers in _Blackwood's Magazine_ Hazlitt was also scurrilously
treated.[1] He had become estranged from his early friends, the Lake
poets, by what he uncharitably but not unnaturally regarded as their
political apostasy; and he had no scruples about recording his often
very unfavourable opinions of his contemporaries. He displayed,
moreover, an exasperating facility in grounding his criticisms on facts
that his victims were unable to deny. His inequalities of temper
separated him for a time even from Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb, and on
the whole the period of his most brilliant literary success was that
when he was most soured and broken. Domestic troubles supervened; he had
gone to live in Southampton Buildings in September 1819, and his
marriage, long little more than nominal, was dissolved in consequence of
the infatuated passion he had conceived for his landlord's daughter,
Sarah Walker, a most ordinary person in the eyes of every one else. It
is impossible to regard Hazlitt as a responsible agent while he
continued subject to this influence. His own record of the transaction,
published by himself under the title of _Liber Amoris, or the New
Pygmalion_ (1823), is an unpleasant but remarkable psychological
document. It consists of conversations between Hazlitt and Sarah Walker,
drawn up in the spring of 1822, of a correspondence between Hazlitt and
his friend P. G. Patmore between March and July, and an account of the
rupture of his relations with Sarah. The business-like dissolution of
his marriage under the law of Scotland is related with amazing naivete
by the family biographer. Rid of his wife and cured of his mistress, he
shortly afterwards astonished his friends by marrying a widow. "All I
know," says his grandson, "is that Mrs Bridgewater became Mrs Hazlitt."
They travelled on the continent for a year and then parted finally.
Hazlitt's study of the Italian masters during this tour, described in a
series of letters contributed to the _Morning Chronicle_, had a deep
effect upon him, and perhaps conduced to that intimacy with the cynical
old painter Northcote which, shortly after his return, engendered a
curious but eminently readable volume of _The Conversations of James
Northcote, R.A._ (1830). The respective shares of author and artist are
not always easy to determine. During the recent agitations of his life
he had been writing essays, collected in 1826 under the title of _The
Plain Speaker: opinions on Books, Men and Things_ (1826). _The Spirit of
the Age; or Contemporary Portraits_ (1825), a series of criticisms on
the leading intellectual characters of the day, is in point of style
perhaps the most splendid and copious of his compositions. It is eager
and animated to impetuosity, though without any trace of carelessness or
disorder. He now undertook a work which was to have crowned his literary
reputation, but which can hardly be said to have even enhanced it--_The
Life of Napoleon Buonaparte_ (4 vols., 1828-1830). The undertaking was
at best premature, and was inevitably disfigured by partiality to
Napoleon as the representative of the popular cause, excusable in a
Liberal politician writing in the days of the Holy Alliance. Owing to
the failure of his publishers Hazlitt received no recompense for this
laborious work. Pecuniary anxieties and disappointments may have
contributed to hasten his death, which took place on the 18th of
September 1830. Charles Lamb was with him to the last.
Hazlitt had many serious defects of temper. His consistency was gained
at the expense of refusing to revise his early impressions and
prejudices. His estimate of a man's work was too apt to be decided by
sympathy or the reverse with his politics. For Scott, however, he had a
great admiration, although they were far enough apart in politics. He
was a compound of intellect and passion, and the refinement of his
critical analysis is associated with vehement eloquence and glowing
imagery. He was essentially a critic, a dissector and, as Bulwer justly
remarks, a much better judge of men of thought than of men of action.
The paradoxes with which his works abound never spring from affectation;
they are in general the sallies of a mind so agile and ardent as to
overrun its own goal. His style is perfectly natural, and yet admirably
calculated for effect. His diction, always rich and masculine, seems to
kindle as he proceeds; and when thoroughly animated by his subject, he
advances with a succession of energetic, hard-hitting sentences, each
carrying his argument a step further, like a champion dealing out blows
as he presses upon the enemy. Although, however, his grasp upon his
subject is strenuous, his insight into it is rarely profound. He can
amply satisfy men of taste and culture; he cannot, like Coleridge or
Burke, dissatisfy them with themselves by showing them how much they
would have missed without him. He is a critic who exhibits, rather than
reveals, the beauties of an author. But all shortcomings are forgotten
in the genuineness and fervour of the writer's self-portraiture. The
intensity of his personal convictions causes all he wrote to appear in a
manner autobiographic. Other men have been said to speak like books,
Hazlitt's books speak like men. To read his works in connexion with
Leigh Hunt's and Charles Lamb's is to be introduced into one of the most
attractive of English literary circles, and this alone will long
preserve them from oblivion.
His son, WILLIAM HAZLITT (1811-1893), was born on the 26th of September
1811. The separation between his parents did not prevent him from being
on affectionate terms with both of them. He early began to write for the
_Morning Chronicle_, and in 1833 married Caroline Reynell. He was the
author of many translations, chiefly from the French, and of some works
on the law of bankruptcy. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple
in 1844, and became registrar in the court of bankruptcy. He held this
position for more than thirty years, retiring two years before his
death, which took place at Addlestone, Surrey, on the 23rd of February
1893.
Hazlitt's grandson, WILLIAM CAREW HAZLITT, the bibliographer, was born
on the 22nd of August 1834. He was educated at the Merchant Taylors'
school and was called to the bar of the Inner Temple in 1861. Among his
many publications may be noted his invaluable _Handbook to the Popular,
Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, from the Invention of
Printing to the Restoration_ (1867), supplemented in 1876, 1882, 1887
and 1889, a _General Index_ by J. G. Gray appearing in 1893. He
published further contributions to the subject in _Bibliographical
Collections and Notes on Early English Literature made during the years
1893-1903_ (1903), and a _Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old
English Plays ..._ (1892). He was the chief editor of the useful 1871
edition of Warton's _History of English Poetry_, and compiled the
_Catalogue of the Huth Library_ (1880).
The list of the first William Hazlitt's works also includes:
_Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters_ (1819);
_Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries in England ..._ (1824);
_Characteristics; in the Manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims_ (1823);
_Select Poets of Great Britain: to which are prefixed Critical Notices
of each Author_ (1825); _Notes of a Journey through France and Italy
..._ (1826); _The Life of Titian; with Anecdotes of the Distinguished
Persons of his Time_ (1830), nominally by James Northcote; an article
on the "Fine Arts" contributed to the seventh edition of the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_; and posthumous collections made by his
son.
A comprehensive edition of _The Collected Works of William Hazlitt_
(12 vols., 1902-1904) does not include the life of Napoleon. It
contains an introduction by W. E. Henley, and was issued under the
superintendence of A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, and there are many
modern reprints of isolated works. The most copious source of
information respecting Hazlitt is the _Memoirs of William Hazlitt,
with Portions of his Correspondence_ (2 vols., 1867), by his grandson,
W. C. Hazlitt, a medley rather than a memoir, yet full of interest. A
slight but appropriate sketch had previously been prefixed by his son
to his _Literary Remains ..._ (2 vols., 1836), accompanied by
estimates of his intellectual character by Bulwer and by Talfourd, who
had been his fast friend. There is an excellent monograph on _William
Hazlitt_ (1902) by Mr Augustine Birrell, in the "English Men of
Letters" series, and one in French by J. Donady (Paris, 1907), who
also published a bibliography of his works. Valuable biographical
particulars have been preserved in Barry Cornwall's memoirs of Lamb;
in the _My Friends and Acquaintances_ (1854) of Mr P. G. Patmore,
Hazlitt's most intimate associate in his later years; in Crabb
Robinson's _Diary_, and in Lamb's correspondence. A full
bibliographical list of his writings, with a collection of the most
remarkable critical judgments upon them from all quarters, was
prepared by Alexander Ireland (1868). Further information on the
Hazlitt family is to be found in Mr W. C. Hazlitt's _Four Generations
of a Literary Family_ (2 vols., 1897). The chief interest of this
desultory book is the considerable extracts from the diary of Margaret
[Peggy] Hazlitt, which describes the Hazlitt experiences in America.
See also "William Hazlitt" in Sir L. Stephen's _Hours in a Library_
(ed. 1892, vol. ii.), and _Lamb and Hazlitt, further Letters and
Records hitherto unpublished_ (1900), by W. C. Hazlitt.