In the reign of his Majesty King George the First there migrated from the North of Ireland, and from the county of Antrim (as it is traditionally reported), two Irish Protestants. They came to settle in Tipperary, and near the town of Tipperary, namely at Shronell (so pronounced, but spelled Shrone-Hill), they found a new home, where, perhaps, they were enabled to pursue their respective vocations more peacefully than they had done farther northward.
One of these persons was a flax-factor; of the other, the precise occupation has not been handed down. The name of the flax-factor was John Hazlitt; the name of his companion was John Damer.
They were both young men when they came to Shronell, I collect; for
John Hazlitt, at all events,
| 2 | POINTS OF EARLY FAMILY HISTORY. |
The registers of Shronell are so imperfect, and the Hazlitts of Ireland have been so negligent in preserving records of their family history, that I despair of discovering farther particulars of John Hazlitt of Shronell. He lies buried in the churchyard of that place, and with him are some of his children, and that John Damer who had accompanied him from his native town.
I assume that the affairs of Mr. Hazlitt of Shronell (as I must call him for the sake of distinction) progressed not unfavourably, and that he was a person of somewhat superior views. It was his wife’s particular ambition, too, that William should be brought up to the Church. Accordingly, in 1756, in his nineteenth year, William Hazlitt of Shronell was sent to the University of Glasgow,* where he had the good fortune to
* The expenses of an education at Glasgow at that period were about 20l. of our money, and a person could live very fairly at Glasgow upon seven or eight shillings a week. The presence of two of his sons at the University, therefore, by no means necessarily implies that Mr. Hazlitt of Shronell was the possessor of large means; but it does seem to imply that he wished his children to reap certain advantages of mental culture not to be had nearer home in his day, and to get a step higher in the world than he was. |
| POINTS OF EARLY FAMILY HISTORY. | 3 |
“Nov. 13, 1756—Logic Class. Prof. James Clow, A.M. Gulielmus Hazelitt, filius natus maximus Joannis, mercatoris in comitatu de Tipperary.”
The books of graduates from 1730 to 1762 have disappeared, and it cannot therefore be ascertained with similar precision when he took his degree of Artium Magister. But it must have been about 1761.
His brother James was also educated at Glasgow. He matriculated on the 13th November, 1762, and got his A.M. on the 21st May, 1767. I am tempted to furnish the entries as they stand:—
“Nov. 13, 1762.—Logic Class. Prof. James Clow. Jacobus Hazelitt, filius natus secundus Joannis, mercatoris in par. de Shronhill in com. Tipperary.”
“[A. M.] Jacobus Hazelitt, Hibernus, Maii 21mo. 1767.”*
Having graduated at Glasgow, as we may with a certainty of not being far from the truth assume, in 1761, William Hazlitt joined the Unitarians, and crossed over to England—the first of the race and name who had tried to find a home on English ground.
He was a man of inflexible probity, solid erudition, equal charity of feeling and practice, and of a decidedly
* The descendants of James Hazlitt, William’s younger brother, still remain in Tipperary, but they have left Shrone-Hill, and are settled at Featherd, three miles away. James lived by the proceeds of a tan-yard, which he kept at Shrone-Hill. |
| 4 | THE REV. W. HAZLITT. |
If ever there was a career which was blameless, placid, and consoling in retrospect, it was this poor and good old man’s. I shall beg to reserve for another opportunity, and a greater pen than this, the task of more closely and graphically delineating his character, and of picturing him for us as he was.
His first appointment to the ministry was at Wisbeach, in Cambridgeshire, whither he proceeded in 1764, being then twenty-seven years of age. He made here the acquaintance of Mr. Loftus, a farmer in the neighbourhood, towards whose daughter Grace he gradually formed an attachment. The liking seems to have been reciprocal, and in 1766 they were married. Miss Loftus was nine years his junior. She was a very handsome girl, bred and brought up in an unpretending way, and proved an affectionate wife and parent.
Even before his marriage he had resigned his charge at Wisbeach, and was
transferred to Marshfield, in Gloucestershire, where a son was born to him in 1767.
| HIS FORTUNES. | 5 |
The Hazlitts remained at Marshfield till 1770-1, when they shifted their quarters once more, this time to Maidstone, in Kent. The family threatened to be a grave incumbrance on the minister’s scanty income; a daughter, Peggy, had been born since John, and other children succeeded in the fulness of time. The latter however died young, with a single exception, and it was an important one.
It was their youngest of all, who, with John and Peggy, was spared to them. They called him William, after his father, and he was born in Mitre Lane, Maidstone, on the 10th April, 1778.
They remained at Maidstone two years longer, and Mr. Hazlitt appears during his residence in the town to have been highly respected for his virtues and his learning. He enjoyed the acquaintance of Dr. Franklin. He corresponded with Dr. Priestley and with Dr. Priestley’s friend, Dr. Price. The Rev. Dr. Caleb Fleming was also a friend of his at the same period.
He left Maidstone in 1780 to return to Ireland, where he had accepted a preferment; it was to preside over a congregation of Unitarians at Bandon, in the county of Cork. He was settled here three years—“during which time,” observes a writer in the Monthly Repository “(as he had always shown himself a zealous advocate for American independence) he exerted himself in behalf of the American prisoners confined at Kinsale, near that town. . . .”
| 6 | IN THE NEW WORLD. |
“On the conclusion of the war with America,” continues the same authority,* “he removed from Bandon to New York, with his wife and family, where he arrived in May, 1783, and soon proceeded to Philadelphia; and on his way to that city, the Assembly of the States-General for New Jersey, then sitting at Burlington, sent a deputation to invite him to preach before them, with which he complied. At Philadelphia he stayed fifteen months,”and besides preaching occasionally at various places of worship there, he delivered during the winter, in the college, a course of Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity. . . .”
Mr. Hazlitt made a short stay at Boston, where be founded the first Unitarian Church, and here he declined the proffered diploma of D.D. He returned to England in 1786-7, and took up his abode at Wem, in Shropshire. His son John was now rising into manhood, and had chosen the life of an artist in miniature,† William was a child of eight or nine. There is a very small likeness of him on ivory, painted in the New World, in the early morning of American freedom, and representing a beautiful little boy, with blue eyes, and long rich brown hair falling over his shoulders. This lets us see what William Hazlitt was at an age when most children have no formed expression; and even
* The Rev. G. P. Hinton. He had the best opportunity of knowing the truth, for his memoir of the Rev. W. Hazlitt was founded on information supplied to him by the family. † Peggy Hazlitt was also a successful essayist in oils, and was a good flower-painter. If she had had instruction she would have made an artist. |
| THE FIRST LETTER. | 7 |
Wem was the earliest English home of which little William had any personal recollection. It seems to have been from there that the earliest specimen of his correspondence was directed to the Rev. W. Hazlitt, who was temporarily at a friend’s house in London. The writer could not have been more than eight when he penned this precocious epistle:—
“I shall never forget that we came to america. If we had not came to america, we should not have been away from one and other, though now it can not be helped. I think for my part that it would have been a great deal better if the white people had not found it out. Let the [others] have it to themselves, for it was made for them. I have got a little of my grammar; sometimes I get three pages and sometimes but one. I do not sifer any at all. Mamma Peggy and Jacky are all very well, and I am to—
He was carefully educated under his father’s roof at Wem, during
his tender years, and he proved a docile pupil. The recollection of their visit to America
| 8 | CORRESPONDENCE OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
“The taste of barberries, which have hung out in the snow during the severity of a North American winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of thirty years; for I have met with no other taste, in all that time, at all like it. It remains by itself, almost like the impression of a sixth sense.”
John Hazlitt, the elder brother, had in the mean time studied under Sir Joshua Reynolds, and had finally established himself as a miniature painter in London. He lived in apartments at No. 288, High Holborn; and in 1788, being then only a youth of nineteen, he had the gratification of seeing two articles of his hung at the Royal Academy—a frame with four miniatures, and a portrait of A Lady. To him his brother William addressed from Wem a letter of news and congratulation:—
“I received your letter this morning. We were all glad
to hear that you were well, and that you have so much business to do. We cannot
be happy without being employed. I want you to tell me whether you go to the
Academy or not, and what pictures you intend for the exhibition. Tell the
exhibitioners to finish the exhibition soon, that you may soon come and see us.
You must send your picture to us directly. You want to know what I do. I am a
busybody, and do many
| CORRESPONDENCE OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 9 |
| 10 | A LETTER FROM LIVERPOOL. |
Two years afterwards William Hazlitt paid a visit to Liverpool, where he was received at the house of a friend of the family—I imagine Mr. Railton—of whom more will be said hereafter:—
“I now sit down to spend a little time in an
employment, the productions of which I know will give you pleasure, though I
know that every minute that I am employed in doing anything which will be
advantageous to me, will give you pleasure. Happy, indeed unspeakably happy,
are those people who, when at the point of death, are able to say, with a
satisfaction which none but themselves can have any idea of—‘I have
done with this world, I shall now have no more of its temptations to
struggle with, and praise be to God I have overcome them; now no more
sorrow, now no more grief, but happiness for evermore!’ But how
unspeakably miserable is that man who, when his pleasures are going to end,
when his lamp begins to grow dim, is compelled to say,—‘Oh that I had
done my duty to God and man! oh that I had been wise, and spent that time
which was kindly given me by Providence, for a purpose quite contrary to
that which I employed it to, as I should
| A LETTER FROM LIVERPOOL. | 11 |
“Monday morning.—I was very
much pleased at the concert; but I think Meredith’s
singing was worth all
| 12 | A LETTER FROM LIVERPOOL. |
| A LETTER FROM LIVERPOOL. | 13 |
John Hazlitt was much pleased at his little
brother’s
| 14 | A LETTER OF ADVICE AND NEWS. |
“Your brother said that your letter to him was very
long, very clever, and very entertaining. On Wednesday evening, we had your
letter, which was finished on the preceding Monday. The piety displayed in the
first part of it was a great refreshment to me. Continue to cherish those
thoughts which then occupied your mind; continue to be virtuous, and you will
finally be that happy being whom you describe; and, to this purpose, you have
nothing more to do than to pursue that conduct which will always yield you the
highest pleasures even in this present life. But he who once gives way to any
known vice, in the very instant hazards his total depravity and total ruin. You
must, therefore, fixedly resolve never, through any possible motives, to do
anything which you believe to be wrong. This will be only resolving never to be
miserable; and this I rejoicingly expect will be the unwavering resolution of
my William. Your conversation upon the
Test Act did you honour. If we only think justly, we shall always easily foil
all the advocates of tyranny. The inhospitable ladies whom you mention, were,
perhaps, treated by you with too great severity. We know not how people may be
circumstanced at a particular moment, whose disposition is generally friendly.
They may, then, happen to pass under a cloud, which unfits them for social
intercourse.
| A LETTER OF ADVICE AND NEWS. | 15 |
| 16 | A LETTER OF ADVICE AND NEWS. |
Here is another Liverpool letter, answering the last:—
| A SECOND LIVERPOOL LETTER. | 17 |
“I this morning received your affectionate letter,
and, at the same time, one from my brother and sister, who were very well when
they wrote. On Wednesday I received a lexicon, which I was very glad of. I
have, since that time, gotten to the 12th verse of the 14th chapter, which is
39 verses from the place I was in before. Mr. Clegg came
last Wednesday, and employed the time he staid in showing the Miss
Traceys how to find the latitude and longitude of any place,
which I can now do upon the globes with ease. Whilst he was here I was as
attentive as I could be. He came again on Saturday, and I came in a few minutes
after he came. I drank tea at his house the Thursday before, when he asked me
to prepare the map of Asia, which Miss Traceys were at
that time getting. I answered that I had already gotten it. I said it to him on
Saturday, with Miss Traceys, without missing a single
word. He, when he had finished with us, bid me have the map of Africa ready by
the next time he should come, which I have done. He also asked me to read a
dialogue with him, which I did. I should think he intends to teach me geography
while I stay. On Thursday he took me and George, with his
two brothers, to the glass-house, and then we went to the new fort. On Friday I
went to the play with Mr. Corbett, at whose house I dined
and drank tea. The play was ‘Love in many Masks,’ and the farce, ‘No Song, no Supper.’ It was very
entertaining, and was performed by some of
| 18 | A SECOND LIVERPOOL LETTER. |
“‘P.S. Papa desired me to remember him to you.’
“On Sunday, after I had come from Meeting, I went,
but not willingly, to Mrs. Sydebotham’s to
dinner. In the afternoon we went to church, for the first time I ever was
in one, and I do not care if I should never go into one again. The
clergyman, after he had gabbled
| A SECOND LIVERPOOL LETTER. | 19 |
| 20 | A SECOND LIVERPOOL LETTER. |
“I shall have satis pecuniae, dum tu habeas opportunitatem, mittendi aliquam partem mihi.*
“I have this morning gotten my French for to-morrow, and thirteen verses of the ‘Testament;’ I have also written out the contractions, and can tell any of them. I said my lessons very well last night; I had only one word wrong in my fable, and not any one in my two verbs. I am to go to the concert to-night. I have written two verbs, and translated my French task. How ineffectual are all pleasures, except those which arise from a knowledge of having done, as far as one knew, that which was right, to make their possessors happy. The people who possess them, at night, lie down upon their beds, and after having spent a wearisome right, rise up in the morning to pursue the same ‘pleasures.’ or, more properly, vain shadows of pleasure, which, like Jacks with lanthorns, as they are called, under a fair outside, at last bring those people who are so foolish as to confide in them into destruction, which they cannot then escape. How different from them is a man who wisely ‘in a time of peace, lays up arms, and such like necessaries in case of a war.’ Mrs. Tracey desires me to give her respects.”
|
* I apprehend that the opportunitates of my great-grandfather were neither large nor frequent at this or any other period of his honest, unambitious career. To what precise extent he was enabled to supply his son William with funds, during the absences of the latter from home, I have no means of knowing; but I should surmise that frugality was among his virtues, whether he would or no. |
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