My Friends and Acquaintance
William Hazlitt XXIV
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XXIV.
HIS CONTEMPORARIES (continued).—SIR LYTTON
BULWER AND WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.
The writings of Bulwer had
not attracted Hazlitt’s attention till just
before his death. As I have said before, he never read a line of any living writer, except
when called upon to do so as a matter of business—either with a view to an article in the
Edinburgh Review, or when a new work was
sent to him to criticise for any other periodical. At last, on my repeatedly urging to him
do so, he read “Paul
Clifford,” and he thought so highly of it, that he at once made up his mind to
read all Bulwer’s novels, with the intention of discussing their
merits in the Edinburgh Review. And I believe he wrote to
Mr. Jeffrey proposing the subject—as he always
did in similar cases before going to work.
So the matter rested for some time—Hazlitt, in the interim, often expressing his ![]()
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anxiety to get “the job,” as he called it—if it were only that he might have a
sufficiently strong inducement to read the works of which “Paul Clifford” had given him so attractive a
foretaste. Shortly after this period, Mr. Jeffrey
retired from the ostensible management of the Edinburgh Review—which was confided to Mr. Macvey
Napier; and on that gentleman visiting town, Hazlitt
proposed to him personally the subject of Bulwer’s novels. I saw him immediately after he had spoken to
Mr. Napier on this matter; and I found that there was a hitch
somewhere; though in what particular point of literary, personal, or political demerit on
the part of Bulwer the difficulty turned, Hazlitt
could never learn. Certain it is, however, that Hazlitt anxiously
desired to write the review in question; that he expressly proposed it to Mr.
Napier (as I believe he had done to Mr. Jeffrey
before—though of this I am not quite certain), and that it was positively and finally
refused—the subject being an interdicted one.
The literary public must draw their own conclusions from this little fact
in the secret ![]()
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history of one of our great critical tribunals. I
cannot help them to any further means of arriving at the solution of the mystery; nor
should I have thought of making any allusion to it here, had it not proved what may be
satisfactory to the numerous admirers of Bulwer as a
novelist—namely, that even the perusal of one only of his works conveyed a due impression
of his powers to the greatest critic of the day. Hazlitt also stated to me, on this curious point of literary history, that
in his interview with Mr. Napier, that gentleman had
mentioned to him that Mr. Campbell had more than
once pointed Mr. Jeffrey’s attention to
Bulwer’s novels, as a fit subject for a conspicuous notice
in the Review, but that the same obstacle (whatever it was) had existed at that time.
Of Walter Savage Landor, Hazlitt entertained a very high opinion, even before the
production of his noble work, the “Imaginary Conversations;” but Mr. Landor’s
intimate connexion and friendship with Southey
created that personal feeling about him in Hazlitt’s mind which
always prevented his judgment from forming an unbiassed decision. That ![]()
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the fierce republican, and the poet of the “Vision of Judgment,” should be able to set their
horses together, seemed to throw a doubt on the sincerity, as well as the stability, of the
opinions of both. On the appearance, however, of the “Imaginary
Conversations,” Hazlitt lost all doubt of
Landor’s sincerity and political honesty, and attributed the
contradiction in question to one of those crotchets of the brain with which genius is so
apt to be haunted. The book was one after his own heart; and some parts of it he considered
finer than anything else from a modern pen. There were, however, many parts which he looked
upon as pure raving, and others which seemed as if they were put forth in that spirit of
arrogant and insolent assumption of superiority over all the rest of the world, past and
present, which was peculiarly obnoxious to Hazlitt’s essentially
diffident nature. He did not think that the fate of a nation was to be settled by a phrase,
or the character of a whole people predicated in the stroke of a pen. Not that he had any
respect for a name. But he hesitated to set aside the award of a whole generation; and for
that of ![]()
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ages he entertained what might almost have been deemed a
superstitions reverence, but that it was founded on deep and accurate observation of the
causes and qualities which lead to a national reputation. He believed, indeed, that a
people is infallible in its decisions, on all questions of fact and of national feeling—of
course, provided it have the fair means and materials for forming its decision; and
therefore, that to dispute “Public Opinion” is to dispute an identical
proposition. Prove to him, for example, that the actual government of any given state is
supported by public opinion, fairly and properly so called, and his inference was that that
was the form of government fitted for the people governed by it. And so of any other
question, moral, political, or literary—any question in which the imagination and the
feelings take part.
It followed that Mr. Landor’s
dogmatic mode of abolishing a reputation of ages’ standing by a breath of his mouth,
or creating one by the same summary process where nobody else had ever seen a vestige of
the materials for it, did not fall in with Hazlitt’s
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notions of what was just and fitting. Hence the violent and, in some
degree, unjust portions of an article
which he wrote on the “Imaginary
Conversations” in the Edinburgh
Review. He was, however, not answerable, he told me, for the whole of that
article, alterations and additions having been made in it after it left his hands.
Subsequently Hazlitt was personally
introduced to Landor, at his residence at Florence;
and he returned to England with an improved and heightened opinion of his great talents,
and with all the prejudices he had formerly entertained against his personal character
almost entirely removed.
Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)
Scottish poet and man of letters; author of
The Pleasures of Hope
(1799),
Gertrude of Wyoming (1808) and lyric odes. He edited the
New Monthly Magazine (1821-30).
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).
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850)
Scottish barrister, Whig MP, and co-founder and editor of the
Edinburgh
Review (1802-29). As a reviewer he was the implacable foe of the Lake School of
poetry.
Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864)
English poet and man of letters, author of the epic
Gebir (1798)
and
Imaginary Conversations (1824-29). He resided in Italy from 1815
to 1835.
Macvey Napier (1776-1847)
Scottish barrister, editor of the
Encyclopedia Britannica, and
from 1829 editor of the
Edinburgh Review.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Poet laureate and man of letters whose contemporary reputation depended upon his prose
works, among them the
Life of Nelson, 2 vols (1813),
History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (1823-32) and
The Doctor, 7 vols (1834-47).
