Memoirs of William Hazlitt
Ch. XX 1821
Leigh Hunt to William Hazlitt; 20 April [1821]
“Hampstead, April 20 [1821].
“I think, Mr.
Hazlitt, you might have found a better time, and place too, for
assaulting me and my friends in this bitter manner. A criticism on ‘Table Talk’ was to appear
in next Sunday’s Examiner, but I have thought it best, upon the whole, not
to let it appear, for I must have added a quarrelsome note to it; and the sight
of acquaintances and brother-reformers cutting and carbonadoing one another in
public is, I conceive, no advancement to the cause of liberal opinion, however
you may think they injure it in other respects. In God’s name, why could
you not tell Mr. Shelley in a pleasant
manner of what you dislike in him? If it is not mere spleen, you make a gross
mistake in thinking that he is not open to advice, or so wilfully in love with
himself and his opinions. His spirit is worthy of his great talents. Besides,
do you think that nobody has thought or suffered, or come to conclusions
through thought or suffering, but yourself? You are fond of talking against
vanity: but do you think that people will see no vanity in that very
fondness—in your being ![]()
| 306 | MR. HUNT’S REMONSTRANCE | |
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so intolerant with everybody’s ideas of improvement but your own, and in
resenting so fiercely the possession of a trifling quality or so which you do
not happen to number among your own? I have been flattered by your praises: I
have been (I do not care what you make of the acknowledgment) instructed, and I
thought bettered, by your objections; but it is one thing to be dealt candidly
with or rallied, and another to have the whole alleged nature of one’s
self and a dear friend torn out and thrown in one’s face, as if we had
not a common humanity with yourself. Is it possible that a misconception of
anything private can transport you into these—what shall I call
them?—extravagances of stomach? or that a few paltry fellows in Murray’s or Blackwood’s interest can worry you into such outrageous
efforts to prove you have no vanities in common with those whom you are
acquainted with? At all events, I am sure that this sulky, dog-in-the-manger
philosophy, which will have neither one thing nor t’other, neither
alteration nor want of it, marriage nor no marriage, egotism nor no egotism,
hope nor despair, can do no sort of good to anybody. But I have faith enough in
your disinterestedness and suffering to tell you so privately instead of
publicly; and you might have paid as decent a compliment to a man half killed
with his thoughts for others if you had done as much for me, instead of making
my faults stand for my whole character, and inventing those idle things about
‘. . . . .’ and hints to emperors. If you wished to quarrel with me
you should have done so at once, instead of inviting ![]()
| | ON BEHALF OF SHELLEY AND HIMSELF. | 307 |
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me to your house, coming to mine,
and in the meanwhile getting ready the proof-sheets of such a book as
this—preparing and receiving specimens of the dagger which was to strike at a
sick head and heart, and others whom it loved. There are more things in heaven
and earth than are dreamt of even in your philosophy; and if you had a little
more imagination, the very ‘cruelty’ of your stomach would carry
you beyond itself, and inform you so. If you did not wish to quarrel with or to
cut me, how do you think that friends can eternally live upon their good
behaviour in this way, and be cordial and comfortable, or whatever else you choose they should be—for it is difficult to find out—on
pain of being drawn and quartered in your paragraphs? I wish you well.
“P.S.—Since writing this letter, which I brought
to town with me to send you, I have heard that you have expressed regret at
the attack upon myself. If so, I can only say that I am additionally sorry
at being obliged to send it; but I should have written to you, had you
attacked my friends only in that manner. I am told also, that you are angry
with me for not always being punctual with you in engagements of visiting.
I think I have always apologized and explained when I have not been so; but
if not, surely a trifle of this kind, arising out of anything but a sense
of my being necessary to others, ought not to make you tear one to pieces
in this way for the sport of our mutual enemies; and I must say, ![]()
| 308 | MR. HUNT’S SECOND LETTER. | |
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that since I got
any notion of your being annoyed by such things, I have come to see you
sometimes when I have been ready to drop in the streets with illness and
anguish.
“William Hazlitt,
Esq.,
“Southampton Buildings, Chancery
Lane.”
William Blackwood (1776-1834)
Edinburgh bookseller; he began business 1804 and for a time was John Murray's Scottish
agent. He launched
Blackwood's Magazine in 1817.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
John Murray II (1778-1843)
The second John Murray began the
Quarterly Review in 1809 and
published works by Scott, Byron, Austen, Crabbe, and other literary notables.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
The Examiner. (1808-1881). Founded by John and Leigh Hunt, this weekly paper divided its attention between literary
matters and radical politics; William Hazlitt was among its regular contributors.
