the very obvious reason that they can hardly be brought under any
general form or illustrated by any small number of typical instances.
Perhaps the best way of "sampling" this undisciplined multitude is to
select a few papers by name, so as to show the variety of Hazlitt's
interests. The one already mentioned, "On Going to a Fight," which
shocked some proprieties even in its own day, ranks almost first; but
the reader should take care to accompany it with the official record of
that celebrated contest between Neate and the Gasman. All fights are
good reading; but this particular effort of Hazlitt's makes one sigh for
a _Boxiana_ or _Pugilistica_ edited by him. Next, I think, must be
ranked "On Going a Journey," with its fine appreciation of solitary
travelling which does not exclude reminiscences of pleasant journeys in
company. But these two, with the article on Poussin and the "Farewell to
Essay-writing," have been so often mentioned that it may seem as if
Hazlitt's store were otherwise poor. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. The "Character of Cobbett" is the best thing the writer ever did
of the kind, and the best thing known to me on Cobbett. "Of the Past and
the Future" is perhaps the height of the popular metaphysical style--the
style from which, as was noted, Hazlitt may never have got free as far
as philosophising is concerned, but of which he is a master. "On the
Indian Jugglers" is a capital example of what may be called improving a
text; and it contains some of the most interesting and genial examples
of Hazlitt's honest delight in games such as rackets and fives, a
delight which (heaven help his critics) was frequently regarded at the
time as "low." "On Paradox and Commonplace" is less remarkable for its
contribution to the discussion of the subject, than as exhibiting one of
Hazlitt's most curious critical megrims--his dislike of Shelley. I wish
I could think that he had any better reason for this than the fact that
Shelley was a gentleman by birth and his own contemporary. Most
disappointing of all, perhaps, is "On Criticism," which the reader (as
his prophetic soul, if he is a sensible reader, has probably warned him
beforehand) soon finds to be little but an open or covert diatribe
against the contemporary critics whom Hazlitt did not like, or who did
not like Hazlitt. The apparently promising "On the Knowledge of
Character" chiefly yields the remark that Hazlitt could not have admired
Cæsar if he had resembled (in face) the Duke of Wellington. But "My
first Acquaintance with Poets" is again a masterpiece; and to me, at
least, "Merry England" is perfect. Hazlitt is almost the only person up
to his own day who dared to vindicate the claims of nonsense, though he
seems to have talked and written as little of it as most men. The
chapter "On Editors" is very amusing, though perhaps not entirely in the
way in which Hazlitt meant it; but I cannot think him happy "On
Footmen," or on "The Conversation of Lords," for reasons already
sufficiently stated. A sun-dial is a much more promising subject than a
broomstick, yet many essays might be written on sun-dials without there
being any fear of Hazlitt's being surpassed. Better still is "On Taste,"
which, if the twenty or thirty best papers in Hazlitt were collected
(and a most charming volume they would make), would rank among the very
best. "On Reading New Books" contains excellent sense, but perhaps is,
as Hazlitt not seldom is, a little deficient in humour; while the
absence of any necessity for humour makes the discussion "Whether Belief
is Voluntary" a capital one. Hazlitt is not wholly of the opinion of
that Ebrew Jew who said to M. Renan, "_On fait ce qu'on veut mais on
croit ce qu'on peut._"
The shorter papers of the _Round Table_ yield perhaps a little less
freely in the way of specially notable examples. They come closer to a
certain kind of Addisonian essay, a short lay-sermon, without the
charming divagation of the longer articles. To see how nearly Hazlitt
can reach the level of a rather older and cleverer George Osborne, turn
to the paper here on Classical Education. He is quite orthodox for a
wonder: perhaps because opinion was beginning to veer a little to the
side of Useful Knowledge; but he is as dry as his own favourite biscuit,
and as guiltless of freshness. He is best in this volume where he notes
particular points such as Kean's Iago, Milton's versification (here,
however, he does not get quite to the heart of the matter), "John
Buncle," and "The Excursion." In this last he far outsteps the scanty
confines of the earlier papers of the _Round Table_, and allows himself
that score of pages which seems to be with so many men the normal limit
of a good essay. Of his shortest style one sample from "Trifles light as
Air" is so characteristic, in more ways than one, that it must be quoted
whole.
I am by education and conviction inclined to Republicanism and
Puritanism. In America they have both. But I confess I feel a
little staggered as to the practical efficacy and saving grace
of first principles, when I ask myself, Can they throughout the
United States from Boston to Baltimore, produce a single head
like one of Titian's Venetian Nobles, nurtured in all the pride
of aristocracy and all the blindness of popery? Of all the
branches of political economy the human face is perhaps the best
criterion of value.
If I were editing Hazlitt's works I should put these sentences on the
title-page of every volume; for, dogmatist as he thought himself, it is
certain that he was in reality purely æsthetic, though, I need hardly
say, not in the absurd sense, or no-sense, which modern misuse of
language has chosen to fix on the word. Therefore he is very good (where
few are good at all) on Dreams; and, being a great observer of himself,
singularly instructive on Application to Study. "On Londoners and
Country People" is one of his liveliest efforts; and the pique at his
own inclusion in the Cockney School fortunately evaporates in some
delightful reminiscences, including one of the few classic passages on
the great game of marbles. His remarks on the company at the
Southampton coffee-house, which have been often and much praised, please
me less: they are too much like attempts in the manner of the Queen Anne
men, and Hazlitt is always best when he imitates nobody. "Hot and Cold"
(which might have been more intelligibly called "North and South") is
distinctly curious, bringing out again what may be called Hazlitt's
fanciful observation; and it may generally be said that, however
alarming and however suggestive of commonplace the titles "On
Respectable People," "On People of Sense," "On Novelty and Familiarity,"
may be, Hazlitt may almost invariably be trusted to produce something
that is not commonplace, that is not laboured paradox, that is eminently
literature.
I know that a haphazard catalogue of the titles of essays (for it is
little more) such as fills the last paragraph or two may not seem very
succulent. But within moderate space there is really no other means of
indicating the author's extraordinary range of subject, and at the same
time the pervading excellence of his treatment. To exemplify a
difference which has sometimes been thought to require explanation, his
work as regards system, connection with anything else, immediate
occasion (which with him was generally what his friend, Mr. Skimpole,
would have called "pounds") is always Journalism: in result, it is
almost always Literature. Its staple subjects, as far as there can be
said to be any staple where the thread is so various, are very much
those which the average newspaper-writer since his time has had to deal
with--politics, book-reviewing, criticism on plays and pictures, social
etceteras, the minor morals, the miscellaneous incidents of daily life.
It is true that Hazlitt was only for a short time in the straitest
shafts, the most galling traces, of periodical hack-work. His practice
was rather that of George Warrington, who worked till he had filled his
purse, and then lay idle till he had emptied it. He used (an indulgence
agreeable in the mouth, but bitter in the belly) very frequently to
receive money beforehand for work which was not yet done. Although
anything but careful, he was never an extravagant man, his tastes being
for the most part simple; and he never, even during his first married
life, seems to have been burdened by an expensive household. Moreover,
he got rid of Mrs. Hazlitt on very easy terms. Still he must constantly
have had on him the sensation that he lived by his work, and by that
only. It seems to be (as far as one can make it out) this sensation
which more than anything else jades and tires what some very
metaphorical men of letters are pleased to call their Pegasus. But
Hazlitt, though he served in the shafts, shows little trace of the
harness. He has frequent small carelessnesses of style, but he would
probably have had as many or more if he had been the easiest and
gentlest of easy-writing gentlemen. He never seems to have allowed
himself to be cramped in his choice of his subjects, and wrote for the
editors, of whom he speaks so amusingly, with almost as much freedom of
speech as if he had had a private press of his own, and had issued
dainty little tractates on Dutch paper to be fought for by bibliophiles.
His prejudices, his desultoriness, his occasional lack of correctness of
fact (he speaks of "Fontaine's Translation" of Æsop, and makes use of
the extraordinary phrase, "The whole Council of Trent with Father Paul
at their head," than which a more curious blunder is hardly
conceivable), his wayward inconsistencies, his freaks of bad taste,
would in all probability have been aggravated rather than alleviated by
the greater freedom and less responsibility of an independent or an
endowed student. The fact is that he was a born man of letters, and that
he could not help turning whatsoever he touched into literature, whether
it was criticism on books or on pictures, a fight or a supper, a game at
marbles, a political diatribe, or the report of a literary conversation.
He doubtless had favourite subjects; but I do not know that it can be
said that he treated one class of subjects better than another, with the
exception that I must hold him to have been first of all a literary
critic. He certainly could not write a work of great length; for the
faults of his _Life of Napoleon_ are grave even when its view of the
subject is taken as undisputed, and it holds among his productions about
the same place (that of longest and worst) which the book it was
designed to counterwork holds among Scott's. Nor was he, as it seems to
me, quite at home in very short papers--in papers of the length of the
average newspaper article. What he could do, as hardly any other man has
ever done it in England, was a _causerie_ of about the same length as
Sainte-Beuve's or a little shorter, less limited in range, but also less
artfully proportioned than the great Frenchman's literary and historical
studies, giving scope for considerable digression, but coming to an end
before the author was wearied of his subject, or had exhausted the fresh
thoughts and the happy borrowings and analogies which he had ready for
it. Of what is rather affectedly called "architectonic," Hazlitt has
nothing. No essay of his is ever an exhaustive or even a symmetrical
treatment of its nominal, or of any, theme. He somewhere speaks of
himself as finding it easy to go on stringing pearls when he has once
got the string; but, for my part, I should say that the string was much
more doubtful than the pearls. Except in a very few set pieces, his
whole charm consists in the succession of irregular, half-connected, but
unending and infinitely variegated thoughts, fancies, phrases,
quotations, which he pours forth not merely at a particular "Open
Sesame," but at "Open barley," "Open rye," or any other grain in the
corn-chandler's list. No doubt the charm of these is increased by the
fact that they are never quite haphazard, never absolutely promiscuous,
despite their desultory arrangement; no doubt also a certain additional
interest arises from the constant revelation which they make of
Hazlitt's curious personality, his enthusiastic appreciation flecked
with spots of grudging spite, his clear intellect clouded with
prejudice, his admiration of greatness and nobility of character
co-existing with the faculty of doing very mean and even disgraceful
things, his abundant relish of life contrasted with almost constant
repining. He must have been one of the most uncomfortable of all English
men of letters, who can be called great, to know as a friend. He is
certainly, to those who know him only as readers, one of the most
fruitful both in instruction and in delight.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] For some further remarks on this duel as it concerns Lockhart see
Appendix.
[13] Since this paper was first published Mr. Alexander Ireland has
edited a most excellent selection from Hazlitt.
VI
MOORE
It would be interesting, though perhaps a little impertinent, to put to
any given number of well-informed persons under the age of forty or
fifty the sudden query, who was Thomas Brown the Younger? And it is very
possible that a majority of them would answer that he had something to
do with Rugby. It is certain that with respect to that part of his work
in which he was pleased so to call himself, Moore is but little known.
The considerable mass of his hack-work has gone whither all hack-work
goes, fortunately enough for those of us who have to do it. The vast
monument erected to him by his pupil, friend, and literary executor,
Lord Russell, or rather Lord John Russell, is a monument of such a
Cyclopean order of architecture, both in respect of bulk and in respect
of style, that most honest biographers and critics acknowledge
themselves to have explored its recesses but cursorily. Less of him,
even as a poet proper, is now read than of any of the brilliant group
of poets of which he was one, with the possible exceptions of Crabbe and
Rogers; while, more unfortunate than Crabbe, he has had no Mr. Courthope
to come to his rescue. But he has recently had what is an unusual thing
for an English poet, a French biographer.[14] I shall not have very much
to say of the details of M. Vallat's very creditable and useful
monograph. It would be possible, if I were merely reviewing it, to pick
out some of the curious errors of hasty deduction which are rarely
wanting in a book of its nationality. If (and no shame to him) Moore's
father sold cheese and whisky, _le whisky d'Irlande_ was no doubt his
staple commodity in the one branch, but scarcely _le fromage de Stilton_
in the other. An English lawyer's studies are not even now, except at
the universities and for purposes of perfunctory examination, very much
in "Justinian," and in Moore's time they were still less so. And if
Bromham Church is near Sloperton, then it will follow as the night the
day that it is not _dans le Bedfordshire_. But these things matter very
little. They are found, in their different kinds, in all books; and if
we English bookmakers (at least some of us) are not likely to make a
Bordeaux wine merchant sell Burgundy as his chief commodity, or say that
a village near Amiens is _dans le Béarn_, we no doubt do other things
quite as bad. On the whole, M. Vallat's sketch, though of moderate
length, is quite the soberest and most trustworthy sketch of Moore's
life and of his books, as books merely, that I know. In matters of pure
criticism M. Vallat is less blameless. He quotes authorities with that
apparent indifference to, or even ignorance of, their relative value
which is so yawning a pit for the feet of the foreigner in all cases;
and perhaps a wider knowledge of English poetry in general would have
been a better preparation for the study of Moore's in particular.
"Never," says M. Renan very wisely, "never does a foreigner satisfy the
nation whose history he writes"; and this is as true of literary history
as of history proper. But M. Vallat satisfies us in a very considerable
degree; and even putting aside the question whether he is satisfactory
altogether, he has given us quite sufficient text in the mere fact that
he has bestowed upon Moore an amount of attention and competence which
no compatriot of the author of "Lalla Rookh" has cared to bestow for
many years.
I shall also here take the liberty of neglecting a very great--as far as
bulk goes, by far the greatest--part of Moore's own performance. He has
inserted so many interesting autobiographical particulars in the
prefaces to his complete works, that visits to the great mausoleum of
the Russell memoirs are rarely necessary, and still more rarely
profitable. His work for the booksellers was done at a time when the
best class of such work was much better done than the best class of it
is now; but it was after all work for the booksellers. His _History of
Ireland_, his _Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald_, etc., may be pretty
exactly gauged by saying that they are a good deal better than Scott's
work of a merely similar kind (in which it is hardly necessary to say
that I do not include the _Tales of a Grandfather_ or the introductions
to the Dryden, the Swift, and the Ballantyne novels), not nearly so good
as Southey's, and not quite so good as Campbell's. The Life of Byron
holds a different place. With the poems, or some of them, it forms the
only part of Moore's literary work which is still read; and though it is
read much more for its substance than for its execution, it is still a
masterly performance of a very difficult task. The circumstances which
brought it about are well known, and no discussion of them would be
possible without plunging into the Byron controversy generally, which
the present writer most distinctly declines to do. But these
circumstances, with other things among which Moore's own comparative
faculty for the business may be not unjustly mentioned, prevent it from
taking rank at all approaching that of Boswell's or Lockhart's
inimitable biographies. The chief thing to note in it as regards Moore
himself, is the help it gives in a matter to which we shall have to
refer again, his attitude towards those whom his time still called "the
great."
And so we are left with the poems--not an inconsiderable companion
seeing that its stature is some seven hundred small quarto pages closely
packed with verses in double columns. Part of this volume is, however,
devoted to the "Epicurean," a not unremarkable example of ornate prose
in many respects resembling the author's verse. Indeed, as close readers
of Moore know, there exists an unfinished verse form of it which, in
style and general character, is not unlike a more serious "Lalla Rookh."
As far as poetry goes, almost everything that will be said of "Lalla
Rookh" might be said of "Alciphron": this latter, however, is a little
more Byronic than its more famous sister, and in that respect not quite
so successful.
Moore's life, which is not uninteresting as a key to his personal
character, is very fairly treated by M. Vallat, chiefly from the poet's
own authority; but it need not detain us very long. He was born at
Dublin on 28th May 1779. There is no mystery about his origin. His
father, John Moore, was a small grocer and liquor-shop keeper who
received later the place of barrack-master from a patron of his son. The
mother, Anastasia Codd, was a Wexford girl, and seems to have been well
educated and somewhat above her husband in station. Thomas was sent to
several private schools, where he appears to have attained to some
scholarship and to have early practised composition in the tongue of
the hated Saxon. When he was fourteen, the first measure of Catholic
Emancipation opened Trinity College to him, and that establishment, "the
intellectual eye of Ireland" as Sir William Harcourt has justly called
it, received him a year later. The "silent sister" has fostered an
always genial, if sometimes inexact, fashion of scholarship, in which
Moore's talents were well suited to shine, and a pleasant social
atmosphere wherein he was also not misplaced. But the time drew near to
'98, and Moore, although he had always too much good sense to dip deeply
into sedition, was, from his sentimental habits, likely to run some risk
of being thought to have dipped in it. Although it is certain that he
would have regarded what is called Nationalism in our days with disgust
and horror, he cannot be acquitted of using, to the end of his life, the
loosest of language on subjects where precision is particularly to be
desired. Robert Emmet was his contemporary, and the action which the
authorities took was but too well justified by the outbreak of the
insurrection later. A Commission was named for purifying the college.
Its head was Lord Clare, one of the greatest of Irishmen, the base or
ignorant vilifying of whom by some persons in these days has been one of
the worst results of the Home Rule movement. It had a rather comic
assessor in Dr. Duigenan, the same, I believe, of whom it has been
recorded that, at an earlier stage of his academic career and when a
junior Fellow, he threatened to "bulge the Provost's eye." The oath was
tendered to each examinate, and on the day before Moore's appearance
Emmet and others had gone by default, while it was at least whispered
that there had been treachery in the camp. Moore's own performance was,
by his own account, heroic and successful: by another, which he very
fairly gives, a little less heroic but still successful. Both show
clearly that Clare was nothing like the stage-tyrant which the
imagination of the seditious has chosen to represent him as being. That
M. Vallat should talk rather foolishly about Emmet was to be expected;
for Emmet's rhetorical rubbish was sure to impose, and has always
imposed, on Frenchmen. The truth of course is that this young
person--though one of those whom every humane man would like to keep
mewed up till they arrived, if they ever did arrive, which is
improbable, at years of discretion--was one of the most mischievous of
agitators. He was one of those who light a bonfire and then are shocked
at its burning, who throw a kingdom into anarchy and misery and think
that they are cleared by a reference to Harmodius and Aristogeiton. It
is one of the most fearful delights of the educated Tory to remember
what the grievance of Harmodius and Aristogeiton really was. Moore (who
had something of the folly of Emmet, but none of his reckless conceit)
escaped, and his family must have been exceedingly glad to send him
over to the Isle of Britain. He entered at the Middle Temple in 1799,
but hardly made even a pretence of reading law. His actual experience is
one of those puzzles which continually meet the student of literary
history in the days when society was much smaller, the makers of
literature fewer, and the resources of patronage greater. Moore toiled
not, neither did he spin. He slipped, apparently on the mere strength of
an ordinary introduction, into the good graces of Lord Moira, who
introduced him to the exiled Royal Family of France, and to the richest
members of the Whig aristocracy--the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of
Lansdowne and others, not to mention the Prince of Wales himself. The
young Irishman had indeed, as usual, his "proposals" in his
pocket--proposals for a translation of Anacreon which appeared in May
1800. The thing which thus founded one of the easiest, if not the most
wholly triumphant, of literary careers is not a bad thing. The original,
now abandoned as a clever though late imitation, was known even in
Moore's time to be in parts of very doubtful authenticity, but it still
remains, as an original, a very pretty thing. Moore's version is not
quite so pretty, and is bolstered out with paraphrase and amplification
to a rather intolerable extent. But there was considerable
fellow-feeling between the author, whoever he was, and the translator,
and the result is not despicable. Still there is no doubt that work as
good or better might appear now, and the author would be lucky if he
cleared a hundred pounds and a favourable review or two by the
transaction. Moore was made for life. These things happen at one time
and do not happen at another. We are inclined to accept them as ultimate
facts into which it is useless to inquire. There does not appear to be
among the numerous fixed laws of the universe any one which regulates
the proportion of literary desert to immediate reward, and it is on the
whole well that it should be so. At any rate the publication increased
Moore's claims as a "lion," and encouraged him to publish next year the
_Poems of the late Thomas Little_ (he always stuck to the Christian
name), which put up his fame and rather put down his character.