less favourable characteristics which distinguish his position, look
through it again to see those qualities which he shares, but in greater
measure than most, with all good critics. The literary essay which
stands first in his collected works is on Madame de Staël. Now that good
lady, of whom some judges in these days do not think very much, was a
kind of goddess on earth in literature, however much she might bore them
in life, to the English Whig party in general; while Jeffrey's French
tastes must have made her, or at least her books, specially attractive
to him. Accordingly he has written a great deal about her, no less than
three essays appearing in the collected works. Writing at least partly
in her lifetime and under the influences just glanced at, he is of
course profuse in compliments. But it is very amusing and highly
instructive to observe how, in the intervals of these compliments, he
contrives to take the good Corinne to pieces, to smash up her ingenious
Perfectibilism, and to put in order her rather rash literary judgments.
It is in connection also with her, that he gives one of the best of not
a few general sketches of the history of literature which his work
contains. Of course there are here, as always, isolated expressions as
to which, however much we admit that Jeffrey was a clever man, we cannot
agree with Jeffrey. He thinks Aristophanes "coarse" and "vulgar" just as
a living pundit thinks him "base," while (though nobody of course can
deny the coarseness) Aristophanes and vulgarity are certainly many miles
asunder. We may protest against the chronological, even more than
against the critical, blunder which couples Cowley and Donne, putting
Donne, moreover, who wrote long before Cowley was born, and differs from
him in genius almost as the author of the _Iliad_ does from the author
of the _Henriade_, second. But hardly anything in English criticism is
better than Jeffrey's discussion of the general French imputation of
"want of taste and politeness" to English and German writers, especially
English. It is a very general, and a very mistaken notion that the
Romantic movement in France has done away with this imputation to a
great extent. On the contrary, though it has long been a kind of
fashion in France to admire Shakespeare, and though since the labours of
MM. Taine and Montégut, the study of English literature generally has
grown and flourished, it is, I believe, the very rarest thing to find a
Frenchman who, in his heart of hearts, does not cling to the old "pearls
in the dung-heap" idea, not merely in reference to Shakespeare, but to
English writers, and especially English humorists, generally. Nothing
can be more admirable than Jeffrey's comments on this matter. They are
especially admirable because they are not made from the point of view of
a _Romantique à tous crins_; because, as has been already pointed out,
he himself is largely penetrated by the very preference for order and
proportion which is at the bottom of the French mistake; and because he
is, therefore, arguing in a tongue understanded of those whom he
censures. Another essay which may be read with especial advantage is
that on Scott's edition of Swift. Here, again, there was a kind of test
subject, and perhaps Jeffrey does not come quite scatheless out of the
trial: to me, at any rate, his account of Swift's political and moral
conduct and character seems both uncritical and unfair. But here, too,
the value of his literary criticism shows itself. He might very easily
have been tempted to extend his injustice from the writer to the
writings, especially since, as has been elsewhere shown, he was by no
means a fanatical admirer of the Augustan age, and thought the serious
style of Addison and Swift tame and poor. It is possible of course, here
also, to find things that seem to be errors, both in the general sketch
which Jeffrey, according to his custom, prefixes, and in the particular
remarks on Swift himself. For instance, to deny fancy to the author of
the _Tale of a Tub_, of _Gulliver_, and of the _Polite Conversation_, is
very odd indeed. But there are few instances of a greater triumph of
sound literary judgment over political and personal prejudice than
Jeffrey's description, not merely of the great works just mentioned (it
is curious, and illustrates his defective appreciation of humour, that
he likes the greatest least, and is positively unjust to the _Tale of a
Tub_), but also of those wonderful pamphlets, articles, lampoons, skits
(libels if any one likes), which proved too strong for the generalship
of Marlborough and the administrative talents of Godolphin; and which
are perhaps the only literary works that ever really changed, for a not
inconsiderable period, the government of England. "Considered," he says,
"with a view to the purposes for which they were intended, they have
probably never been equalled in any period of the world." They certainly
have not; but to find a Whig, and a Whig writing in the very moment of
Tory triumph after Waterloo, ready to admit the fact, is not a trivial
thing. Another excellent example of Jeffrey's strength, by no means
unmixed with examples of his weakness, is to be found in his essays on
Cowper. I have already given some of the weakness: the strength is to be
found in his general description of Cowper's revolt, thought so daring
at the time, now so apparently moderate, against poetic diction. These
instances are to be found under miscellaneous sections, biographical,
historical, and so forth; but the reader will naturally turn to the
considerable divisions headed Poetry and Fiction. Here are the chief
rocks of offence already indicated, and here also are many excellent
things which deserve reading. Here is the remarkable essay, quoted
above, on Campbell's _Specimens_. Here is the criticism of Weber's
edition of Ford, and another of those critical surveys of the course of
English literature which Jeffrey was so fond of doing, and which he did
so well, together with some remarks on the magnificently spendthrift
style of our Elizabethan dramatists which would deserve almost the first
place in an anthology of his critical beauties. The paper on Hazlitt's
_Characters of Shakespeare_ (Hazlitt was an _Edinburgh_ reviewer, and
his biographer, not Jeffrey's, has chronicled a remarkable piece of
generosity on Jeffrey's part towards his wayward contributor) is a
little defaced by a patronising spirit, not, indeed, of that memorably
mistaken kind which induced the famous and unlucky sentence to Macvey
Napier about Carlyle, but something in the spirit of the schoolmaster
who observes, "See this clever boy of mine, and only think how much
better I could do it myself." Yet it contains some admirable passages on
Shakespeare, if not on Hazlitt; and it would be impossible to deny that
its hinted condemnation of Hazlitt's "desultory and capricious
acuteness" is just enough. On the other hand, how significant is it of
Jeffrey's own limitations that he should protest against Hazlitt's
sympathy with such "conceits and puerilities" as the immortal and
unmatchable
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
with the rest of the passage. But there you have the French spirit. I do
not believe that there ever was a Frenchman since the seventeenth
century (unless perchance it was Gérard de Nerval, and he was not quite
sane), who could put his hand on his heart and deny that the little
stars seemed to him puerile and conceited.
Jeffrey's dealings with Byron (I do not now speak of the article on
_Hours of Idleness_, which was simply a just rebuke of really puerile
and conceited rubbish) are not, to me, very satisfactory. The critic
seems, in the rather numerous articles which he has devoted to the
"noble Poet," as they used to call him, to have felt his genius unduly
rebuked by that of his subject. He spends a great deal, and surely an
unnecessarily great deal, of time in solemnly, and no doubt quite
sincerely, rebuking Byron's morality; and in doing so he is sometimes
almost absurd. He calls him "not more obscene perhaps than Dryden or
Prior," which is simply ludicrous, because it is very rare that this
particular word can be applied to Byron at all, while even his
staunchest champion must admit that it applies to glorious John and to
dear Mat Prior. He helps, unconsciously no doubt, to spread the very
contagion which he denounces, by talking about Byron's demoniacal power,
going so far as actually to contrast _Manfred_ with Marlowe to the
advantage of the former. And he is so completely overcome by what he
calls the "dreadful tone of sincerity" of this "puissant spirit," that
he never seems to have had leisure or courage to apply the critical
tests and solvents of which few men have had a greater command. Had he
done so, it is impossible not to believe that, whether he did or did not
pronounce Byron's sentiment to be as theatrical, as vulgar, and as false
as it seems to some later critics, he would at any rate have substituted
for his edifying but rather irrelevant moral denunciations some exposure
of those gross faults in style and metre, in phrase and form, which now
disgust us.
There are many essays remaining on which I should like to comment if
there were room enough. But I have only space for a few more general
remarks on his general characteristics, and especially those which, as
Sainte-Beuve said to the altered Jeffrey of our altered days, are
"important to us." Let me repeat then that the peculiar value of Jeffrey
is not, as is that of Coleridge, of Hazlitt, or of Lamb, in very subtle,
very profound, or very original views of his subjects. He is neither a
critical Columbus nor a critical Socrates; he neither opens up
undiscovered countries, nor provokes and stimulates to the discovery of
them. His strength lies in the combination of a fairly wide range of
sympathy with an extraordinary shrewdness and good sense in applying
that sympathy. Tested for range alone, or for subtlety alone, he will
frequently be found wanting; but he almost invariably catches up those
who have thus outstripped him, when the subject of the trial is shifted
to soundness of estimate, intelligent connection of view, and absence of
eccentricity. And it must be again and again repeated that Jeffrey is by
no means justly chargeable with the Dryasdust failings so often
attributed to academic criticism. They said that on the actual Bench he
worried counsel a little too much, but that his decisions were almost
invariably sound. Not quite so much perhaps can be said for his other
exercise of the judicial function. But however much he may sometimes
seem to carp and complain, however much we may sometimes wish for a
little more equity and a little less law, it is astonishing how weighty
Jeffrey's critical judgments are after three quarters of a century which
has seen so many seeming heavy things grow light. There may be much
that he does not see; there may be some things which he is physically
unable to see; but what he does see, he sees with a clearness, and
co-ordinates in its bearings on other things seen with a precision,
which are hardly to be matched among the fluctuating and diverse race of
critics.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] To prevent mistakes it may be as well to say that Jeffrey's
_Contributions to the Edinburgh Review_ appeared first in four volumes,
then in three, then in one.
[11] In the following remarks, reference is confined to the
_Contributions to the Edinburgh Review_, 1 vol. London, 1853. This is
not merely a matter of convenience; the selection having been made with
very great care by Jeffrey himself at a time when his faculties were in
perfect order, and including full specimens of every kind of his work.
V
HAZLITT
The following paper was in great part composed, when I came across some
sentences on Hazlitt, written indeed before I was born, but practically
unpublished until the other day. In a review of the late Mr. Horne's
_New Spirit of the Age_, contributed to the _Morning Chronicle_ in 1845
and but recently included in his collected works, Thackeray writes thus
of the author of the book whose title Horne had rather rashly borrowed:
The author of the _Spirit of the Age_ was one of the keenest and
brightest critics that ever lived. With partialities and
prejudices innumerable, he had a wit so keen, a sensibility so
exquisite, an appreciation of humour, or pathos, or even of the
greatest art, so lively, quick, and cultivated, that it was
always good to know what were the impressions made by books or
men or pictures on such a mind; and that, as there were not
probably a dozen men in England with powers so varied, all the
rest of the world might be rejoiced to listen to the opinions of
this accomplished critic. He was of so different a caste to the
people who gave authority in his day--the pompous big-wigs and
schoolmen, who never could pardon him his familiarity of manner
so unlike their own--his popular--too popular habits--and
sympathies so much beneath their dignity; his loose, disorderly
education gathered round those bookstalls or picture galleries
where he laboured a penniless student, in lonely journeys over
Europe tramped on foot (and not made, after the fashion of the
regular critics of the day, by the side of a young nobleman in a
postchaise), in every school of knowledge from St. Peter's at
Rome to St. Giles's in London. In all his modes of life and
thought, he was so different from the established authorities,
with their degrees and white neck-cloths, that they hooted the
man down with all the power of their lungs, and disdained to
hear truth that came from such a ragged philosopher.
Some exceptions, no doubt, must be taken to this enthusiastic, and in
the main just, verdict. Hazlitt himself denied himself wit, yet if this
was mock humility, I am inclined to think that he spoke truth
unwittingly. His appreciation of humour was fitful and anything but
impartial, while, biographically speaking, the hardships of his
apprenticeship are very considerably exaggerated. It was not, for
instance, in a penniless or pedestrian manner that he visited St.
Peter's at Rome; but journeying with comforts of wine, _vetturini_, and
partridges, which his second wife's income paid for. But this does not
matter much, and, on the whole, the estimate is as just as it is
generous. Perhaps something of its inspiration may be set down to
fellow-feeling, both in politics and in the unsuccessful cultivation of
the arts of design. But as high an estimate of Hazlitt is quite
compatible with the strongest political dissent from his opinions, and
with a total freedom from the charge of wearing the willow for painting.
There is indeed no doubt that Hazlitt is one of the most absolutely
unequal writers in English, if not in any, literature, Wilson being
perhaps his only compeer. The term absolute is used with intention and
precision. There may be others who, in different parts of their work,
are more unequal than he is; but with him the inequality is pervading,
and shows itself in his finest passages, in those where he is most at
home, as much as in his hastiest and most uncongenial taskwork. It could
not, indeed, be otherwise, because the inequality itself is due less to
an intellectual than to a moral defect. The clear sunshine of Hazlitt's
admirably acute intellect is always there; but it is constantly obscured
by driving clouds of furious prejudice. Even as the clouds pass, the
light may still be seen on distant and scattered parts of the landscape;
but wherever their influence extends, there is nothing but thick
darkness, gusty wind and drenching rain. And the two phenomena, the
abiding intellectual light, and the fits and squalls of moral darkness,
appear to be totally independent of each other, or of any single will or
cause of any kind. It would be perfectly easy, and may perhaps be in
place later, to give a brief collection of some of the most absurd and
outrageous sayings that any writer, not a mere fool, can be charged
with: of sentences not representing quips and cranks of humour, or
judgments temporary and one-sided, though having a certain relative
validity, but containing blunders and calumnies so gross and palpable,
that the man who set them down might seem to have forfeited all claim to
the reputation either of an intelligent or a responsible being. And yet,
side by side with these, are other passages (and fortunately a much
greater number) which justify, and more than justify, Hazlitt's claims
to be as Thackeray says, "one of the keenest and brightest critics that
ever lived"; as Lamb had said earlier, "one of the wisest and finest
spirits breathing."
The only exception to be taken to the well-known panegyric of Elia is,
that it bestows this eulogy on Hazlitt "in his natural and healthy
state." Unluckily, it would seem, by a concurrence of all testimony,
even the most partial, that the unhealthy state was quite as natural as
the healthy one. Lamb himself plaintively wishes that "he would not
quarrel with the world at the rate he does"; and De Quincey, in his
short, but very interesting, biographical notice of Hazlitt (a notice
entirely free from the malignity with which De Quincey has been
sometimes charged), declares with quite as much truth as point, that
Hazlitt's guiding principle was, "Whatever is, is wrong." He was the
very ideal of a literary Ishmael; and after the fullest admission of the
almost incredible virulence and unfairness of his foes, it has to be
admitted, likewise, that he was quite as ready to quarrel with his
friends. He succeeded, at least once, in forcing a quarrel even upon
Lamb. His relations with Leigh Hunt (who, whatever his faults were, was
not unamiable) were constantly strained, and at least once actually
broken by his infernal temper. Nor were his relations with women more
fortunate or more creditable than those with men. That the fault was
entirely on his side in the rupture with his first wife is, no doubt,
not the case; for Mrs. Hazlitt's, or Miss Stoddart's, own friends admit
that she was of a peculiar and rather trying disposition. It is indeed
evident that she was the sort of person (most teasing of all others to a
man of Hazlitt's temperament) who would put her head back as he was
kissing her, to ask if he would like another cup of tea, or interrupt a
declaration to suggest shutting the window. As for the famous and almost
legendary episode of Sarah Walker, the lodging-house keeper's daughter,
and the _Liber Amoris_, the obvious and irresistible attack of something
like erotic madness which it implies absolves Hazlitt partly--but only
partly, for there is a kind of shabbiness about the affair which shuts
it out from all reasonable claim to be regarded as a new act of the
endless drama of _All for Love, or The World Well Lost!_ Of his second
marriage, the only persons who might be expected to give us some
information either can or will say next to nothing. But when a man with
such antecedents marries a woman of whom no one has anything bad to
say, lives with her for a year, chiefly on her money, and is then
quitted by her with the information that she will have nothing more to
do with him, it is not, I think, uncharitable to conjecture that most of
the fault is his.
It is not, however, only of Hazlitt's rather imperfectly known life, or
of his pretty generally acknowledged character, that I wish to speak
here. His strange mixture of manly common-sense and childish prejudice,
the dislike of foreigners which accompanied his Liberalism and his
Bonapartism, and other traits, are very much more English than Irish.
But Irish, at least on the father's side, his family was, and had been
for generations. He was himself the son of a Unitarian minister, was
born at Maidstone in 1778, accompanied his parents as a very little boy
to America, but passed the greater part of his youth at Wem in
Shropshire, where the interview with Coleridge, which decided his fate,
took place. Yet for some time after that, he was mainly occupied with
studies, not of literature, but of art. He had been intended for his
father's profession, but had early taken a disgust to it. At such
schools as he had been able to frequent, he had gained the character of
a boy rather insusceptible of ordinary teaching; and his letters (they
are rare throughout his life) show him to us as something very like a
juvenile prig. According to his own account, he "thought for at least
eight years" without being able to pen a line, or at least a page; and
the worst accusation that can truly be brought against him is that, by
his own confession, he left off reading when he began to write. Those
who (for their sins or for their good) are condemned to a life of
writing for the press know that such an abstinence as this is almost
fatal. Perhaps no man ever did good work in periodical writing, unless
he had previously had a more or less prolonged period of reading, with
no view to writing. Certainly no one ever did other than very faulty
work if, not having such a store to draw on, when he began writing he
left off reading.
The first really important event in Hazlitt's life, except the visit
from Coleridge in 1798, was his own visit to Paris after the Peace of
Amiens in 1802--a visit authorised and defrayed by certain commissions
to copy pictures at the Louvre, which was then, in consequence of French
conquests, the picture-gallery of Europe. The chief of these
commissioners was a Mr. Railton, a person of some fortune at Liverpool,
and the father of a daughter who, if she was anything like her portrait,
had one of the most beautiful faces of modern times. Miss Railton was
one of Hazlitt's many loves: it was, perhaps, fortunate for her that the
course of the love did not run smooth. Almost immediately on his return,
he made acquaintance with the Lambs, and, as Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, his
grandson and biographer, thinks, with Miss Stoddart, his future wife.
Miss Stoddart, there is no doubt, was an elderly coquette, though
perfectly "proper." Besides the "William" of her early correspondence
with Mary Lamb, we hear of three or four other lovers of hers between
1803 and 1808, when she married Hazlitt. It so happens that one, and
only one, letter of his to her has been preserved. His biographer seems
to think it in another sense unique; but it is, in effect, a very
typical letter from a literary lover of a rather passionate temperament.
The two were married, in defiance of superstition, on Sunday, the first
of May; and certainly the superstition had not the worst of it.
At first, however, no evil results seemed likely. Miss Stoddart had a
certain property settled on her at Winterslow, on the south-eastern
border of Salisbury Plain, and for nearly four years the couple seem to
have dwelt there (once, at least, entertaining the Lambs), and producing
children, of whom only one lived. It was not till 1812 that they removed
to London, and that Hazlitt engaged in writing for the newspapers. From
this time till the end of his life, some eighteen years, he was never at
a loss for employment--a succession of daily and weekly papers, with
occasional employment on the _Edinburgh Review_, providing him, it would
seem, with sufficiently abundant opportunities for copy. The _London_,
the _New Monthly_ (where Campbell's dislike did him no harm), and other
magazines also employed him. For a time, he seems to have joined "the
gallery," and written ordinary press-work. During this time, which was
very short, and this time only, his friends admit a certain indulgence
in drinking, which he gave up completely, but which was used against him
with as much pitilessness as indecency in _Blackwood_; though heaven
only knows how the most Tory soul alive could see fitness of things in
the accusation of gin-drinking brought against Hazlitt by the
whiskey-drinkers of the _Noctes_. For the greater part of his literary
life he seems to have been almost a total abstainer, indulging only in
the very strongest of tea. He soon gave up miscellaneous press-work, as
far as politics went; but his passion for the theatre retained him as a
theatrical critic almost to the end of his life. He gradually drifted
into the business really best suited to him, that of essay-writing, and
occasionally lecturing on literary and miscellaneous subjects. During
the greatest part of his early London life, he was resident in a famous
house, now destroyed, in York Street, Westminster, next door to Bentham
and reputed to have once been tenanted by Milton; and he was a constant
attendant on Lamb's Wednesday evenings. The details of his life, it has
been said, are not much known. The chief of them, besides the breaking
out of his lifelong war with _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_, was,
perhaps, his unlucky participation in the duel which proved fatal to
Scott, the editor of the _London_. It is impossible to imagine a more
deplorable muddle than this affair. Scott, after refusing the challenge
of Lockhart,[12] with whom he had, according to the customs of those
days, a sufficient ground of quarrel, accepted that of Christie,
Lockhart's second, with whom he had no quarrel at all. Moreover, when
his adversary had deliberately spared him in the first fire, he insisted
(it is said owing to the stupid conduct of his own second) on another,
and was mortally wounded. Hazlitt, who was more than indirectly
concerned in the affair, had a professed objection to duelling, which
would have been more creditable to him if he had not been avowedly of a
timid temper. But, most unfortunately, he was said, and believed, to
have spurred Scott on to the acceptance of the challenge, nor do his own
champions deny it. The scandal is long bygone, but is, unluckily, a fair
sample of the ugly stories which cluster round Hazlitt's name, and which
have hitherto prevented that justice being done to him which his
abilities deserve and demand.
This wretched affair occurred in February 1821, and, shortly afterwards,
the crowning complications of Hazlitt's own life, the business of the
_Liber Amoris_ and the divorce with his first wife, took place. The
first could only be properly described by an abundance of extracts, for
which there is here no room. Of the second, which, it must be
remembered, went on simultaneously with the first, it is sufficient to
say that the circumstances are nearly incredible. It was conducted under
the Scotch law with a blessed indifference to collusion: the direct
means taken to effect it were, if report may be trusted, scandalous; and
the parties met during the whole time, and placidly wrangled over money
matters, with a callousness which is ineffably disgusting. I have
hinted, in reference to Sarah Walker, that the tyranny of "Love
unconquered in battle" may be taken by a very charitable person to be a
sufficient excuse. In this other affair there is no such palliation;
unless the very charitable person should hold that a wife, who could so
forget her own dignity, justified any forgetfulness on the part of her
husband; and that a husband, who could haggle and chaffer about the
terms on which he should be disgracefully separated from his wife,
justified any forgetfulness of dignity on the wife's part.