Memoirs of William Hazlitt
Ch. XVII 1826-28
William Hazlitt to Charles Cowden Clarke; 7 December 1827
“I thought all the world agreed with me at present
that Buonaparte was better than the
Bourbons, or that a tyrant was better than tyranny. In my opinion, no one of an
understanding above the rank of a lady’s waiting-maid could ever have
doubted this, though I alone said it ten years ago. It might be impolicy then
and now for what I know, for the world stick to an opinion in appearance long
after they have given it up in reality. I should like to know whether the
preface is thought impolitic by some one who agrees with me in the main point,
or by some one who differs with me and makes this excuse not to have his
opinion contradicted? In Paris (jubes regina renovare
dolorem) the preface was thought a masterpiece, the best and only
possible defence of Buonaparte, and quite new there! It would be an impertinence in me to write a
Life of Buonaparte
after Sir W.* without some such object as
that expressed in the preface. After all, I do not care a damn about the preface. It will get me on four pages somewhere else.
Shall I retract my opinion altogether, and foreswear my own book?
Rayner is right to cry out: I think I have tipped him
fair and foul copy, a lean rabbit and a fat one. The remainder of vol. ii. will
be ready to go on with, but not the beginning of the third. The appendixes had
better be at the end of second vol. Pray get them if you can: you have my
Sieyes, have you not? One of them is there. I have been nearly in the other
world. My regret was ‘to die and leave the world “rough”
copy.’ Otherwise I had thought of an epitaph
![]()
![]()
| 218 | HIS EPITAPH WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. | |
![]()
and a good end.
Hic jacent reliquiae mortales Gulielmi
Hazlitt, auctoris non intelligibilis: natus Maidstoniæ in
comi[ta]tu Cantiœ, Apr. 10, 1778. Obiit Winterslowe, Dec, 1827. I
think of writing an epistle to C. Lamb,
Esq., to say that I have passed near the shadowy world, and have
had new impressions of the vanity of this, with hopes of a better. Don’t
you think this would be good policy? Don’t mention it to the severe
author of the ‘Press,’ a poem,* but methinks
the idea arridet Hone. He would give sixpence to see me
floating, upon a pair of borrowed wings, half way between heaven and earth, and
edifying the good people at my departure, whom I shall only scandalize by
remaining. At present my study and contemplation is the leg of a stewed fowl. I
have behaved like a saint, and been obedient to orders.
“Non fit
pugil, &c., I got a violent spasm by walking fifteen
miles in the mud, and getting into a coach with an old lady who would have the
window open. Delicacy, moderation, complaisance, the suaviter in modo, whisper it about, my dear Clarke, these are my faults and have been my
ruin.
“Yours ever,
W. H.
“December 7, [1827].
“I can’t go to work before Sunday or
Monday. By then the doctor says he shall have made a new man of me.
“Pray how’s your sister?”
Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877)
The schoolmate and friend of John Keats; he lectured on Shakespeare and European
literature and published
Recollections of Writers (1878).
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).
William Hone (1780-1842)
English bookseller, radical, and antiquary; he was an associate of Bentham, Mill, and
John Cam Hobhouse.
Charles Lamb [Elia] (1775-1834)
English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge at Christ's Hospital; author of
Essays of Elia published in the
London
Magazine (collected 1823, 1833) and other works.
John M'Creery (1768-1832)
Born in Ireland, he was a Liverpool printer patronized by William Roscoe, and from 1805
in London; William Hazlitt was a friend.
Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).
