| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 121 |
If there was any general subject on which the critical opinions
of Hazlitt were to be distrusted, it was that of the
merits and defects of his distinguished contemporaries in literature and art. In fact, most
of what he had to say on these topics was so moulded and modified by the personal feelings
and prejudices engendered by his early associations, and by the position in which those
placed him in reference to the rest of the world, that they scarcely deserved the name of
deliberate opinions. During the latter years of his life
Hazlitt laboured under a total incapacity of reading any work,
however brief, consecutively and completely. He had spent, he used to say, the first half
of his life in doing nothing but read; and it was hard if he might not employ the remainder
in turning his reading to account. He
| 122 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
This was all very well for a man of leisure, and competence to afford that leisure; but it was an awkward propensity for one to indulge in who undertook to review the writings of those who did not begin to write till their reviewer had left off reading.
I do not believe Hazlitt ever read
the half of any one work that he reviewed—not even the Scotch novels, of which he read more
than of any other modern productions, and has written better, perhaps, than any other of
their critics. I am certain that of many works that he has reviewed, and of many writers
whose general pretensions he has estimated better than anybody else has done, he never read
one tithe; and even what he did read was not the most characteristic portion, or that best
calculated to afford ground for a fortunate guess. No wonder then that his “Spirit of the Age” should be
disfigured by such a copious mixture of false criticism and personal prejudice. But then,
on the
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 123 |
The fact is that Hazlitt’s half-random guesses, founded on a furtive and momentary glance, went nearer to the pith of the matter in question, whatever it might be, than the elaborate and lengthened examinations of ordinary men. And in this respect there was a remarkable conformity between his mental and his bodily perceptions. He never fairly looked at anybody; and yet, having once seen a person, he not only never forgot them afterwards, but could describe them to others with all the effect of an actual picture, and could trace “the mind’s observance in the face” with a sagacity almost superhuman. I never knew him mistaken even in his physiognomical guesses, much less in his deliberate estimates,—on which, by the bye, if on anything, he especially piqued himself. “I am infallible (I have heard him say) in reading a face.”
The only one among his contemporaries with whose writings Hazlitt was really
| 124 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 125 |
There was something singularly interesting, and even affecting, in the perpetual struggle which took place in Hazlitt’s mind on the subject of this great man—who was now scarcely below a divinity, and the next hour almost a shame and a blot upon humanity, according to the view from which he was contemplated; now drawing all human hearts together in one bond of mutual sympathy—now trampling upon the best feelings and affections of them all for the imaginary benefit and aggrandisement of one, or half-a-dozen!—squandering the “birth-right” of the human race for the miserable “mess of pottage” that was to keep alive for a little longer the bedridden dotage of “divine right” and “legitimate” authority!
True it is that Scott did not
“To party give up what was meant for mankind;” |
| 126 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
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