My Friends and Acquaintance
William Hazlitt XII
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XII.
HAZLITT AS AN ARTIST.—HAZLITT AT A PRIZE
FIGHT.—HIS DESCRIPTION OP THE FIGHT.
The most favourable circumstances under which Hazlitt could be seen were those under which he was the
most entirely himself—that is, during a few hours or days spent with him in a country
ramble, at a distance from all his accustomed haunts and associations. It was then that his
spirit had free leave to move and meditate at its own will, and to set forth all its finer
qualities and attributes, undeteriorated by any of those peculiar habits of feeling and of
thought which had been engendered by a life, the last twenty years of which had been spent
in a manner anything but congenial to the tone and tendencies of its nature.
I passed much time with Hazlitt
under these favourable circumstances, and will briefly refer to one or two of these
passages in his life; because they will show him in a ![]()
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very different
light from that in which he was ordinarily seen, even by his most intimate associates; but
a light, if I mistake not, in which he would always have appeared, had not the untoward
events of his early years cast him for ever out of that steady current of mingled thought
and action and emotion, which might and ought to have formed “the even tenor of
his way” to a wise, honourable, and happy manhood, and a calm and lengthened
old age.
Probably most of the readers of these Recollections are aware that
Hazlitt was intended for an artist, and had
studied and practised for some few years with this view. Had he persevered steadily in this
line of pursuit, there can be little doubt that he would have been all that I have supposed
above; and that, in being thus, the world would not have lost any material portion of those
of his literary works that are worth preserving, and would have gained into the bargain one
of the greatest painters that ever lived. Those artists and lovers of art who are
acquainted with the half-dozen or so of extraordinary portraits from
Hazlitt’s pencil ![]()
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that still exist, and
that were painted at the very outset of his brief career as an artist, will, I am sure,
absolve me from the charge of exaggeration in the latter part of the above proposition: and
those who knew the character and constitution of his mind will, I think, agree with me in
opinion that, whatever else he might have been, he must have been a great and distinguished
writer. This latter was a necessary consequence, from his unequalled capacity for the
perception of the truth in whatever presented itself to his notice,
added to his irrepressible passion for setting it forth as he saw it. In this age of
writers, Hazlitt could not have helped being a writer; and his
writings would probably not have possessed a single one of the faults that they do possess,
if he had not been a writer by profession—a writer for his daily bread.
But this last fact was not only the fertile cause of all the errors of his
writings; it was the source of all the misery of his life. Witness his two Essays on
“The Pleasures of
Painting.” They alone—coupled with the fact that the performances to which
they ![]()
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so beautifully and interestingly refer, are in their way
first-rate works of art—are sufficient to bear me out in both the propositions I have
hazarded above. They show at every page a heart and mind made for the reception and
enjoyment of those “calm pleasures and majestic pains” which constitute
the sum and substance of a wise and good man’s life, and which make the very material
on which they live and grow.
That exquisite sensibility to the beauties of external nature and of high
art which Hazlitt so eminently possessed, and that
sympathy with and delight in them which, however, are not its necessary accompaniment,
would alone have sufficed to carry him smoothly and happily down the stream of life,
without the necessity for resorting to those artificial sources of excitement which do but
recruit and multiply the ills they momentarily assuage.
The unfailing recurrence of occupation, both mental and bodily, which his
intended profession would have furnished to him, might have wholly prevented that
unwholesome pondering over its own thoughts, which ![]()
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was the error and
the foible of Hazlitt’s mind. From having in
early life nothing to do but to think, he used to brood over the
embryo offspring of his contemplations, beyond the natural and healthful term of gestation,
till they at last came forth maimed of their fair proportions, or were overlaid and killed
by too much care and cherishing.
The subsequent necessity of providing by his pen for his daily wants cured
him of this error, so far as related to the various subjects on which he wrote; and all his
best things were written under the actual and immediate pressure of this, his only motive
for writing—at least latterly. But the radical error alluded to stayed by him to the last,
in regard to all that concerned his merely personal opinions. He thought about things and
people till the very faculty of thought left him, and he could only feel; and he always felt according to his fears, never according to his wishes or
his hopes.
But I was about to speak of Hazlitt
at those periods—“few and far between”—when he was, so to speak, his own
man—when he was all that Nature and Contemplation had ![]()
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made him; and
when all that Passion and Circumstance had grafted upon his natural character remained
dormant, or was laid aside.
The first time that I obtained this favourable view of him was at a very
early period of our acquaintance; and I believe it contributed greatly to fix and confirm
that feeling of regard and interest towards him which all that I had heretofore seen of him
had called forth, while all that I had heard of him was calculated
to persuade me that his character was incapable of exciting any but an opposite impression.
I had, at the period in question, the prevalent passion for prize-fighting
strong upon me. (Gentle reader, it is a long while ago, and I know better now. Howbeit, it
is the prize-fighters themselves who have cured me—not the preachers against them.) The
famous fight between the Gas Man and Neate was to be fought in a few days, and it was the talk
of the town. Hazlitt had never seen a prize-fight,
and in talking with him on the subject a few nights before the appointed time, I happened
to say (on his expressing ![]()
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curiosity on the matter) that, if ever he
meant to see one, now was his time; for that there had never been such a one before, and
never would be such another. I told him that I was going; and added (half in joke, half
earnest) that he could not do a better thing than go with me, and make an
“article” about it for the New
Monthly. I little thought that he would take me at my word; for the time was the
depth of winter, the place of meeting at least sixty miles from London, and on account of
the extraordinary interest that was excited about the event, all sorts of extra
difficulties and obstacles were in the way of the undertaking. Moreover, what at that
period were to me (a very young man) only pleasant stimulants to the enterprise, must, as I
supposed, appear to him insurmountable impediments. He talked, indeed, of going, and I
promised to let him know the exact place and time. But that a man who would certainly not
have stepped across the room to see a Coronation, and who would often sit silent and
motionless over his breakfast-things till seven or eight o’clock at night, from pure
incapa-![]()
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city to take the trouble of moving off his chair and
putting on his shoes to go out, should, under any inducement, even think of travelling
sixty or seventy miles on a winter’s night, with the almost certainty of meeting with
no comfort or accommodation when he got there, and no probable means of getting back again,
perhaps, for two or three days—to say nothing of the expense, the previous trouble of
arrangement, &c.—seemed out of the question.
However, on the morning of the day before that fixed for the fight, I let
him know my arrangements; and he still said he thought he should
meet me at the time and place I named, which was, I remember, the Golden Cross, Charing
Cross, at ten o’clock at night, to start by the Salisbury night-coach, which arrived
at the nearest town to the appointed spot at about five o’clock in the morning.
As I expected, he did not make his appearance; and after a perishing ride
of seven hours—a nap of two or three, on the coffee-room table (for
not even a chair was to be had) of the inn where the coach put me down—with my feet (to
keep them warm) in the ![]()
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great-coat, pockets of one of the six or seven
“strange bedfellows” with whom prize-fighting, like misery, makes a man
acquainted—a hasty but hearty and healthy breakfast—and a walk of five or six miles to the
spot of meeting—who should I see among the first persons I recognised on the ground but
William Hazlitt! He had wisely calculated that
it would never do to arrive houseless and supperless at five o’clock on a
winter’s morning; so he had lounged into Piccadilly at eight o’clock over
night, found a vacant place in the Bristol mail—got into it—somehow or other lighted upon a
comfortable bed at the same town where I had stopped—slept and breakfasted comfortably—and
there he was, lively as a bird, gossiping gaily with his friend, Joe Parkes, whom he had just met on the ground—and as
“eager for the fray” as the most interested and knowing of “the
fancy.”
I was too anxious about the “great event” I had come seventy
miles to see to take much notice of its effects upon Hazlitt while it was going on. But after it was over we joined company; and
I then found that he ![]()
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had taken the most profound metaphysical as well
as personal interest in the battle; and I never heard him talk finer or more
philosophically than he did on the subject—which he treated—and justly, I think—as one
eminently worthy of being so considered and treated. As a study of human nature, and the
varieties of its character and constitution, he looked upon the scene as the finest sight
he had ever witnessed; and as a display of animal courage he spoke of the battle as nothing
short of sublime. I found that he had paid the most intense attention to every part of the
combat, had watched the various chances and changes of its progress with the eye and tact
of an experienced amateur, and could have given (and, in fact, afterwards did give in the
New Monthly Magazine) an infinitely better,
because a more characteristic and intelligible, account of its details, than the professional reporters employed for that
purpose.
If I mistake not, this was the faculty in which
Hazlitt exceeded any other man that perhaps ever
lived—the faculty in which his genius consisted. A practical
musician can ![]()
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play anything “at sight,” as the phrase is.
But Hazlitt could perceive and describe “at sight” the
characteristics of anything, without any previous study or knowledge whatever, but by a
species of intellectual intuition. Other men become acquainted with things progressively,
and with more or less quickness and precision, according to their capacity and to the
attention they bestow. But Hazlitt felt
them at once. They did not gradually engrave themselves upon his perceptive faculties, but
struck into them at once as by a single blow. This peculiarity was of universal application
in respect to Hazlitt, and it was the secret of his unequalled
critical faculties; for if his criticisms themselves were often (perhaps always) more or
less defective, on account of the comparatively little of steady attention that he gave to
the subject of them, his critical faculties have perhaps never been
surpassed.
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).
Tom Hickman [The Gasman] (1795 c.-1822)
English prizefighter who died at the height of his career when the chaise he was driving
overturned when returning from a fight.
Joseph Parkes (1796-1865)
Tutored by Samuel Parr and educated at Greenwich under Charles Burney, he was a
correspondent of Jeremy Bentham who pursued a career as an election agent and political
reformer.
New Monthly Magazine. (1814-1884). Founded in reaction to the radically-inclined
Monthly Magazine,
the
New Monthly was managed under the proprietorship of Henry
Colburn from 1814 to 1845. It was edited by Thomas Campbell and Cyrus Redding from
1821-1830.
