Walker would have nothing to say to him; and it has been already
mentioned that the lady whom he afterwards married, a Mrs. Bridgewater,
had enough of him after a year's experience. He did not outlive this
last shock more than five years; and unfortunately his death was
preceded by a complete financial break-down, though he was more
industrious during these later years than at any other time, and though
he had abundance of well-paid work. The failure of the publishers, who
were to have paid him five hundred pounds for his _magnum opus_, the
partisan and almost valueless _Life of Napoleon_, had something to do
with this, and the dishonesty of an agent is said to have had more, but
details are not forthcoming. He died on the eighteenth of September
1830, saying, "Well, I have had a happy life"; and despite his son's
assertion that, like Goldsmith, he had something on his mind, I believe
this to have been not ironical but quite sincere. He was only fifty-two,
so that the infirmities of age had not begun to press on him. Although,
except during the brief duration of his second marriage, he had always
lived by his wits, it does not appear that he was ever in any want, or
that he had at any time to deny himself his favourite pleasures of
wandering about and being idle when he chose. If he had not been
completely happy in his life, he had lived it; if he had not seen the
triumph of his opinions, he had been able always to hold to them. He was
one of those men, such as an extreme devotion to literature now and then
breeds, who, by the intensity of their enjoyment of quite commonplace
delights--a face passed in the street, a sunset, a quiet hour of
reflection, even a well-cooked meal--make up for the suffering of not
wholly commonplace woes. I do not know whether even the joy of literary
battle did not overweigh the pain of the dishonest wounds which he
received from illiberal adversaries. I think that he had a happy life,
and I am glad that he had. For he was in literature a great man. I am
myself disposed to hold that, for all his accesses of hopelessly
uncritical prejudice, he was the greatest critic that England has yet
produced; and there are some who hold (though I do not agree with them)
that he was even greater as a miscellaneous essayist than as a critic.
It is certainly upon his essays, critical and other, that his fame must
rest; not on the frenzied outpourings of the _Liber Amoris_ (full as
these are of flashes of genius), or upon the one-sided and ill-planned
_Life of Napoleon_; still less on his clever-boy essay on the
_Principles of Human Action_, or on his attempts in grammar, in literary
compilation and abridgment, and the like. Seven volumes of Bonn's
Standard Library, with another published elsewhere containing his
writings on Art, contain nearly all the documents of Hazlitt's fame: a
few do not seem to have been yet collected from his _Remains_ and from
the publications in which they originally appeared.
These books--the _Spirit of the Age_, _Table Talk_, _The Plain Speaker_,
_The Round Table_ (including the _Conversations with Northcote_ and
_Characteristics_), _Lectures on the English Poets and Comic Writers_,
_Elizabethan Literature_ and _Characters of Shakespeare_, _Sketches and
Essays_ (including _Winterslow_)--represent the work, roughly speaking,
of the last twenty years of Hazlitt's life; for in the earlier and
longer period he wrote very little, and, indeed, declares that for a
long time he had a difficulty in writing at all. They are all singularly
homogeneous in general character, the lectures written as lectures
differing very little from the essays written as essays, and even the
frantic diatribes of the "Letter to Gifford" bearing a strong family
likeness to the good-humoured _reportage_ of "On going to a Fight," or
the singularly picturesque and pathetic egotism of the "Farewell to
Essay-writing." This family resemblance is the more curious because,
independently of the diversity of subject, Hazlitt can hardly be said to
possess a style or, at least, a manner--indeed, he somewhere or other
distinctly disclaims the possession. Yet, irregular as he is in his
fashion of writing, no less than in the merit of it, the germs of some
of the most famous styles of this century may be discovered in his
casual and haphazard work. Everybody knows Jeffrey's question to
Macaulay, "Where the devil did you get that style?" If any one will read
Hazlitt (who, be it remembered, was a contributor to the _Edinburgh_)
carefully, he will see where Macaulay got that style, or at least the
beginning of it, much as he improved on it afterwards. Nor is there any
doubt that, in a very different way, Hazlitt served as a model to
Thackeray, to Dickens, and to many not merely of the most popular, but
of the greatest, writers of the middle of the century. Indeed, in the
_Spirit of the Age_ there are distinct anticipations of Carlyle. He had
the not uncommon fate of producing work which, little noted by the
public, struck very strongly those of his juniors who had any literary
faculty. If he had been, just by a little, a greater man than he was, he
would, no doubt, have elaborated an individual manner, and not have
contented himself with the hints and germs of manners. As it was, he had
more of seed than of fruit. And the secret of this is, undoubtedly, to
be found in the obstinate individuality of thought which characterised
him all through. Hazlitt may sometimes have adopted an opinion partly
because other people did not hold it, but he never adopted an opinion
because other people did hold it. And all his opinions, even those which
seem to have been adopted simply to quarrel with the world, were genuine
opinions. He has himself drawn a striking contrast in this point,
between himself and Lamb, in one of the very best of all his essays, the
beautiful "Farewell to Essay-writing" reprinted in _Winterslow_. The
contrast is a remarkable one, and most men, probably, who take great
interest in literature or politics, or indeed in any subject admitting
of principles, will be able to furnish similar contrasts from their own
experience.
In matters of taste and feeling, one proof that my conclusions
have not been quite shallow and hasty, is the circumstance of
their having been lasting. I have the same favourite books,
pictures, passages that I ever had; I may therefore presume
that they will last me my life--nay, I may indulge a hope that
my thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is
the only thing on which I pride myself. Even Lamb, whose relish
of certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a
surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his
select authors or particular friends after a lapse of ten years.
As for myself, any one knows where to have me. What I have once
made up my mind to, I abide by to the end of the chapter.
This is quite true if we add a proviso to it--a proviso, to be sure, of
no small importance. Hazlitt is always the same when he is not
different, when his political or personal ails and angers do not obscure
his critical judgment. His uniformity of principle extends only to the
two subjects of literature and of art; unless a third may be added, to
wit, the various good things of this life, as they are commonly called.
He was not so great a metaphysician as he thought himself. He "shows to
the utmost of his knowledge, and that not deep"; a want of depth not
surprising when we find him confessing that he had to go to Taylor, the
Platonist, to tell him something of Platonic ideas. It may be more than
suspected that he had read little but the French and English
philosophers of the eighteenth century; a very interesting class of
persons, but, except Condillac, Hume, and Berkeley, scarcely
metaphysicians. As for his politics, Hazlitt seems to me to have had no
clear political creed at all. He hated something called "the hag
legitimacy," but for the hag despotism, in the person of Bonaparte, he
had nothing but love. How any one possessed of brains could combine
Liberty and the first Napoleon in one common worship is, I confess, a
mystery too great for me; and I fear that any one who could call
"Jupiter Scapin" "the greatest man who ever lived," must be entirely
blind to such constituents of greatness as justice, mercy, chivalry, and
all that makes a gentleman. Indeed, I am afraid that "gentleman" is
exactly what cannot be predicated of Hazlitt. No gentleman could have
published the _Liber Amoris_, not at all because of its so-called
voluptuousness, but because of its shameless kissing and telling. But
the most curious example of Hazlitt's weaknesses is the language he uses
in regard to those men with whom he had both political and literary
differences. That he had provocation in some cases (he had absolutely
none from Sir Walter Scott) is perfectly true. But what provocation will
excuse such things as the following, all taken from one book, the
_Spirit of the Age_? He speaks of Scott's "zeal to restore the spirit of
loyalty, of passive obedience, and of non-resistance," as an
acknowledgment for his having been "created a baronet by a prince of the
House of Brunswick." Alas for dates and circumstances, for times and
seasons, when they stand in the way of a fling of Hazlitt's! In the
character of Scott himself an entire page and a half is devoted to an
elaborate peroration in one huge sentence, denouncing him in such terms
as "pettifogging," "littleness," "pique," "secret and envenomed blows,"
"slime of rankling malice and mercenary scorn," "trammels of servility,"
"lies," "garbage," etc. etc. The Duke of Wellington he always speaks of
as a brainless noodle, forgetting apparently that the description does
not make his idol's defeat more creditable to the vanquished. As for the
character of Gifford, and the earlier "Letter to Gifford," I should have
to print them entire to show the state of Hazlitt's mind in regard to
this notorious, and certainly not very amiable person. His own words,
"the dotage of age and the fury of a woman," form the best short
description of both. He screams, he foams at the mouth, he gnashes and
tears and kicks, rather than fights. Nor is it only on living authors
and living persons (as some of his unfavourable critics have said) that
he exercises his spleen. His remarks on Burke (_Round Table_, p. 150)
suggest temporary insanity. Sir Philip Sidney (as Lamb, a perfectly
impartial person who had no politics at all, pointed out) was a kind of
representative of the courtly monarchist school in literature. So down
must Sir Philip go; and not only the _Arcadia_, that "vain and
amatorious poem" which Milton condemned, but the sonnets which one would
have thought such a lover of poetry as Hazlitt must have spared, go down
also before his remorseless bludgeon.
But there is no need to say any more of these faults of his, and there
is no need to say much of another and more purely literary fault with
which he has been charged--the fault of excessive quotation. In him the
error lies rather in the constant repetition of the same, than in a too
great multitude of different borrowings. Almost priding himself on
limited study, and (as he tells us) very rarely reading his own work
after it was printed, he has certainly abused his right of press most
damnably in some cases. "Dry as a remainder biscuit," and "of no mark or
likelihood," occur to me as the most constantly recurrent tags; but
there are many others.
These various drawbacks, however, only set off the merits which almost
every lover of literature must perceive in him. In most writers, in all
save the very greatest, we look for one or two, or for a few special
faculties and capacities, and we know perfectly well that other
(generally many other) capacities and faculties will not be found in
them at all. We do not dream of finding rollicking mirth in Milton, or
gorgeous embroidery of style in Swift, or unadorned simplicity in
Browne. But in Hazlitt you may find something of almost everything,
except the finer kinds of wit and humour; to which last, however, he
makes a certain side-approach by dint of his appreciation of the irony
of Nature and Fate. Almost every other grace of matter and form that can
be found in prose may be found at times in his. He is generally thought
of as, and for the most part is, a rather plain and straightforward
writer, with few tricks and frounces of phrase and style. Yet most of
the fine writing of these latter days is but as crumpled tarlatan to
brocaded satin beside the passage on Coleridge in the _English Poets_,
or the description of Winterslow and its neighbourhood in the "Farewell
to Essay-writing," or "On a Landscape of Nicolas Poussin" in the
_Table-Talk_. Read these pieces and nothing else, and an excusable
impression might be given that the writer was nothing if not florid. But
turn over a dozen pages, and the most admirable examples of the grave
and simple manner occur. He is an inveterate quoter, yet few men are
more original. No man is his superior in lively, gossiping description,
yet he could, within his limits, reason closely and expound admirably.
It is, indeed, almost always necessary, when he condemns anything, to
inquire very carefully as to the reasons of the condemnation. But
nothing that he likes (except Napoleon) is ever bad: everything that he
praises will repay the right man who, at the right time, examines it to
see for what Hazlitt likes it. I have, for my part, no doubt that Miss
Sarah Walker was a very engaging young woman; but (though the witness is
the same) I have the gravest doubts as to Hazlitt's charges against her.
We shall find this same curious difference everywhere in Hazlitt. He has
been talking, for instance, with keen relish of the "Conversation of
Authors" (it is he, be it remembered, who has handed down to us the
immortal debate at one of Lamb's Wednesdays on "People one would Like
to have Seen"), and saying excellent things about it. Then he changes
the key, and tells us that the conversation of "Gentlemen and Men of
Fashion" will not do. Perhaps not; but the wicked critic stops and asks
himself whether Hazlitt had known much of the conversation of "Gentlemen
and Men of Fashion"? We can find no record of any such experiences of
his. In his youth he had no opportunity: in his middle age he was
notoriously recalcitrant to all the usages of society, would not dress,
and scarcely ever dined out except with a few cronies. This does not
seem to be the best qualification for a pronouncement on the question.
Yet this same essay is full of admirable things, the most admirable
being, perhaps, the description of the man who "had you at an advantage
by never understanding you." I find, indeed, in looking through my
copies of his books, re-read for the purpose of this paper, an
innumerable and bewildering multitude of essays, of passages, and of
short phrases, marked for reference. In the seven volumes above referred
to (to which, as has been said, not a little has to be added) there must
be hundreds of separate articles and conversations; not counting as
separate the short maxims and thoughts of the _Characteristics_, and one
or two other similar collections, in which, indeed, several passages are
duplicated from the Essays. At least two out of every three are
characteristic of Hazlitt: not one in any twenty is not well worth
reading and, if occasion served, commenting on. They are, indeed, as far
from being consecutive as (according to the Yankee) was the conversation
of Edgar Poe; and the multitude and diversity of their subjects fit them
better for occasional than for continuous reading.[13] Perhaps, if any
single volume deserves to be recommended to a beginner in Hazlitt it had
better be _The Plain Speaker_, where there is the greatest range of
subject, and where the author is seen in an almost complete repertory of
his numerous parts. But there is not much to choose between it and _The
Round Table_ (where, however, the papers are shorter as a rule),
_Table-Talk_, and the volume called, though not by the author, _Sketches
and Essays_. I myself care considerably less for the _Conversations with
Northcote_, the personal element in which has often attracted readers;
and the attempts referred to above as _Characteristics_, avowedly in the
manner of La Rochefoucauld, are sometimes merely extracts from the
essays, and rarely have the self-containedness, the exact and chiselled
proportion, which distinguishes the true _pensée_ as La Rochefoucauld
and some other Frenchmen, and as Hobbes perhaps alone of Englishmen,
wrote it. But to criticise these numerous papers is like sifting a
cluster of motes, and the mere enumeration of their titles would fill
up more than half the room which I have to spare. They must be
criticised or characterised in two groups only, the strictly critical
and the miscellaneous, the latter excluding politics. As for art, I do
not pretend to be more than a connoisseur according to Blake's
definition, that is to say, one who refuses to let himself be
connoisseured out of his senses. I shall only, in reference to this last
subject, observe that the singularly germinal character of Hazlitt's
work is noticeable here also; for no one who reads the essay on Nicolas
Poussin will fail to add Mr. Ruskin to Hazlitt's fair herd of literary
children.
His criticism is scattered through all the volumes of general essays;
but is found by itself in the series of lectures, or essays (they are
rather the latter than the former), on the characters of Shakespeare, on
Elizabethan Literature, on the English Poets, and on the English Comic
Writers. I cannot myself help thinking that in these four Hazlitt is at
his best; though there may be nothing so attractive to the general, and
few such brilliant passages as may be found in the "Farewell to
Essay-writing," in the paper on Poussin, in "Going to a Fight," in
"Going a Journey," and others of the same class. The reason of the
preference is by no means a greater interest in the subject of one
class, than in the subject of another. It is that, from the very nature
of the case, Hazlitt's unlucky prejudices interfere much more seldom
with his literary work. They interfere sometimes, as in the case of
Sidney, as in some remarks about Coleridge and Wordsworth, and
elsewhere; but these instances are rare indeed compared with those that
occur in the other division. On the other hand, there are always present
Hazlitt's enthusiastic appreciation of what is good in letters, his
combination of gusto with sound theory as to what is excellent in prose
and verse, his felicitous method of expression, and the acuteness that
kept him from that excessive and paradoxical admiration which both Lamb
and Coleridge affected, and which has gained many more pupils than his
own moderation. Nothing better has ever been written as a general view
of the subject than his introduction to his Lectures on Elizabethan
Literature; and almost all the faults to be found in it are due merely
to occasional deficiency of information, not to error of judgment. He is
a little paradoxical on Jonson; but not many critics could furnish a
happier contrast than his enthusiastic praise of certain passages of
Beaumont and Fletcher, and his cool toning down of Lamb's extravagant
eulogy on Ford. He is a little unfair to the Caroline poets; but here
the great disturbing influence comes in. If his comparison of ancient
and modern literature is rather weak, that is because Hazlitt was
anything but widely acquainted with either; and, indeed, it may be said
in general that wherever he goes wrong, it is not because he judges
wrongly on known facts, but because he either does not know the facts,
or is prevented from seeing them by distractions of prejudice. To go
through his Characters of Shakespeare would be impossible, and besides,
it is a point of honour for one student of Shakespeare to differ with
all others. I can only say that I know no critic with whom on this point
I differ so seldom as with Hazlitt. Even better, perhaps, are the two
sets of lectures on the Poets and Comic Writers. The generalisations are
not always sound, for, as must be constantly repeated, Hazlitt was not
widely read in literatures other than his own, and his standpoint for
comparison is therefore rather insufficient. But take him where his
information is sufficient, and how good he is! Of the famous four
treatments of the dramatists of the Restoration--Lamb's, Hazlitt's,
Leigh Hunt's, and Macaulay's--his seems to me by far the best. In regard
to Butler, his critical sense has for once triumphed over his political
prejudice; unless some very unkind devil's advocate should suggest that
the supposed ingratitude of the King to Butler reconciled Hazlitt to
him. He is admirable on Burns; and nothing can be more unjust or sillier
than to pretend, as has been pretended, that Burns's loose morality
engaged Hazlitt on his side. De Quincey was often a very acute critic,
but anything more uncritical than his attack on Hazlitt's comparison of
Burns and Wordsworth in relation to passion, it would be difficult to
find. Hazlitt "could forgive Swift for being a Tory," he tells us--which
is at any rate more than some other people, who have a better reputation
for impartiality than his, seem to have been able to do. No one has
written better than he on Pope, who still seems to have the faculty of
distorting some critical judgments. His chapter on the English novelists
(that is to say, those of the last century) is perhaps the best thing
ever written on the subject; and is particularly valuable nowadays when
there is a certain tendency to undervalue Smollett in order to exalt
Fielding, who certainly needs no such illegitimate and uncritical
leverage. I do not think that he is, on the whole, unjust to Campbell;
though his Gallican, or rather Napoleonic mania made him commit the
literary crime of slighting "The Battle of the Baltic." But in all his
criticism of English literature (and he has attempted little else,
except by way of digression) he is, for the critic, a study never to be
wearied of, always to be profited by. His very aberrations are often
more instructive than other men's right-goings; and if he sometimes
fails to detect or acknowledge a beauty, he never praises a defect.