| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 127 |
With the exception of those living writers, and, indeed, of those particular passages in their works which touched him privately and individually, Hazlitt scarcely ever referred to a contemporary work unless as a matter of business, or opened its pages except as a task; and of no one of those writers, except Scott, had he (as I have said) read a tithe of their productions. Yet he has written elaborate critical estimates of about twenty of the most distinguished, in his “Spirit of the Age.” And if you take those estimates only for what they are worth, and with that degree of qualification with which all his critical writings must be taken, it will be found that they are, at the very least, as complete and satisfactory as any others that are to be met with elsewhere, touching the same writers.
| 128 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
But the truth is, that in no case whatever could Hazlitt’s estimates of persons be taken implicitly; because it was impossible for him to prevent—and he never for a moment tried to prevent—his own intense personal feelings from blending with and giving a colour to such estimates. And of living persons—of those who came, as it were, into hourly intellectual contact with him, by breathing the same air and treading on the same earth—he could not even form, much less set forth, a fair and unbiassed opinion. What I have to say, therefore, as to his personal opinions of his contemporaries is offered purely for what it is worth, and as illustrative of his own personal character, not of theirs—as a thing curious and interesting to know, but not to be brought against the reputations to which it refers, as a set-off from the just award they have received at the hands of the most enlightened public opinion that any age has boasted within the compass of human annals—at least in literary matters.
Having, in justice to others no less than to Hazlitt himself, premised thus much, I shall state a few of his personal
opinions, or rather
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 129 |
Hazlitt looked upon Lord Byron as—a lord!—a clever and accomplished one—but nothing more. He considered that Byron occupied the throne of Poetry by the same sort of “divine right” by which “legitimate” kings occupy their thrones. His poetry he regarded, for the most part, as a sort of exaggerated common-place—the result of a mixture of personal anger and egotism, powerful and effective only from the excess of passion it embodied—of passion in the vulgar sense of that word. He was “in a passion” with himself, and with everything, and everybody about him; and being under no personal or moral restraints of any kind, the exhibition of this emotion became sufficiently striking and interesting to amount to the poetical.
I remember having occasionally played at whist with a person who, on any
occurrence
| 130 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
Now, Hazlitt seemed to think that
Lord Byron’s poetry was something on a par
with
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 131 |
Such was Hazlitt’s general
opinion of Byron; and there is no denying that it is
true of a certain part of his poetry—of the bad part of it—in other words, of that part
which is not poetry at all;—of the blasphemy, the profligacy, the indecency, the utter and
elaborate wickedness, the “malice prepense” against all the human race,—all of
which are so painfully conspicuous in almost every part of that shame and scandal of the
age—“Don Juan.” And it is not
very
| 132 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
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