BOOKS.
WILLIAM HAZLITT.*
THE word which best expresses the style and talent of William Hazlitt is " gusto." The word is a favourite of his own, and he himself has well defined it : " gusto," says he, "is power or passion defining any object." And again : "Milton has great gusto. He repeats his blows twice ; grapples with and exhausts his subject." In characterising Milton, Hazlitt characterised himself. Whatever subject he tackles lie exhausts, and he repeats his blows with so insistent an energy that his adversary, for the moment at least, must bite the dust. He never saw an object that his own " power or passion" could not define, and though we may often dis- agree with him, he never leaves us in the smallest doubt as tc his meaning.
Of all the essayists among his contemporaries, and they are many, Hazlitt boasts the liveliest and most distinctive style. He is inferior to Lamb, his one conspicuous rival, in charm and elegance, but he has twice Lamb's strength. He was incapable of the research for words which gives an old. fashioned beauty to Elia's style, for he always wrote at full speed, and never troubled to correct a proof. On the other hand, his vision was so clear, his thought so lucid, that he found an adequate and vivid expression for every sight and every opinion. But above all, there is a pugnacity in his prose which will always be delightful to those who love the fray, By education and temperament Hazlitt was a fighter ; there were many things in the world for which he had little sym- pathy, and he never took the trouble to conceal his dislike. Born a sectarian, he was always susceptible to party spirit. and he would fall upon his nearest friend if he thought him untrue to a cherished principle. Much of his writing, there- fore, is controversial, and much of his fiercest scorn was poured out upon those who, like Coleridge and Words- worth, had won his reverence, and then proved dis. loyal to their high ideals. For this reason Hazlitt was depreciated in his own time, and in ours has claimed less than justice. As controversy annoys those against whom it is directed, it is difficult of comprehension to the generation which can look dispassionately upon it, and while Lamb has been reprinted times without number, Hazlitt now for the first time has been honoured by a complete edition.
There is, moreover, a paradoxical element in Hazlitt's character which has baffled many of his readers. While he was himself a sectarian, none knew better than he the danger of the sectarian spirit. " A party-feeling of this kind once formed," he wrote, "will insensibly communicate itself to other topics." But though he hated Pitt and the Tories, though he professed a bitter resentment against his own country, though he was all for progress and the Revolution, he sternly kept his political views apart from his literary judgment. In affairs of State he was a wild firebrand, ready to burn to ashes all existing constitutions; in matters of taste he was the sternest reactionary of his time, whose invariable motto was " The old is better." The classics of all ages have never had a more loyal champion than William Hazlitt. Rome and Athens were for him " two cities set upon a hill, which could not be hid. All eyes have seen them," said he, " and their light shines like a mighty sea-mark into the abyss of time." That is not the voice of the Radical, which we hear still less in his preference for words before things as a means of training. " The knowledge of things," he says, "as of the realities of life, is not easy to be taught except by • The Collected Works of William Harlitt. Edited by A. B. Waller and A. Glover. With an Introduction by W. E. Henley. Vol. L Loudon: J. N. Dent LW Co. C7s. 6ad
things themselves, and even if it were, it is not so absolutely indispensable as it has been supposed." On the other hand, " language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a soft- ness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects." So he characteristically thought that "the fine dream of our youth is best prolonged among the visionary objects of antiquity." From this it is clear that he did not carry the prejudices of his life into the realm of letters, and Radical as he was, he admired the romances of Sir Walter Scott while he deplored the principles of their author. He even went so far, despite his champion- ship of the people, as to reprove Wordsworth for his love of humble subjects. " The spirit of Jacobin poetry," he wrote, "is rank egotism. We know an instance. It is of a person who founded a school of poetry in sheer humanity, on idiot boys and mad mothers, and on Simon Lee, the old huntsman." So wrote the Jacobin of "the low company," which he deplored in Wordsworth's poems, and to compare the Political Essays (for instance) with the Round Table is to detect a double character in Hazlitt's brain.
But while he was a controversialist by choice, he was a man of letters by the decree of fate. Literature was not the profession which he chose for himself at the outset ; he would have been a painter had he been able to get a living by the painter's art. Yet no sooner did he begin to write for bread than it was obvious that he had found the craft proper to his talent. He wrote from day to day, or from week to week, never revising nor correct- ing, yet his essays are as fresh to-day as they were when they came hot from the press. Their force and wit are un- diminished. Their carelessness of grammar is incident to Hazlitt's method of composition, but no carelessness can dim their clarity, and of no writer may it be said with greater truth than of Hazlitt that you are conscious of no inter- mediate step between the thought and the printed essay. Above all, he was a man of letters. No argument changed his point of view. He had read few books, but those that he bad read he knew by heart. Milton and Shakespeare, Cervantes and Swift, Spenser and Fielding,—he knew them all, and if he quoted them he quoted as one having the very highest authority. He felt the charm of literature as few others have felt it. When Gifford pretended to under- stand what Hazlitt thought, Hazlitt said : " You could not have written the passage in question, because you never felt half the` enthusiasm for what is fine." That is the truth. Hazlitt has few rivals in this whole-hearted enthusiasm. The multiplicity of his interests should win him the appreciation of all critics. The stage, sport, and litera- ture appeal to him with the same force and freshness. It is true that the actors whom he knew were the finest artists that our stage has seen, but he wrote of them in a spirit worthy their genius, and if we still honour the memory of Edmund Kean it is because Hazlitt has drawn an ineffaceable portrait. Before literature even he loved life. He could collect the traits of this man or that with the accuracy of La Bruyere. He drew the London of his time with a skill which Dickens need not have disdained. He still remains the best historian of the prize-ring, and one page of the fight between Neate and Hickman is worth many volumes of Boziana. But his real hero was Cavanagh, the fives- player, the very impress of whose play he has handed down to us. The fives-court, indeed, held no secret from him, who was as fine a master of the game as of the English tongue. It may be objected that his opinions are antiquated, and it is true that few Englishmen of to-day can look upon politics from his point of view. It must be confessed that he hated the Government of his country with a bitterness which our modern Pro-Boers can hardly rival; yet time softens such differences as these, and we are content to remember that Hazlitt loved the best of literature, and wrote His mother-tongue with the same " gusto " which he ascribes to Milton. It is for these reasons that we commend the last edition of his works, a monument tardily raised to as fine a critics and as spirited a writer as the nine- teenth century can show. Mr. Henley's introduction is the best essay we know upon Hazlitt and his works. A last word of praise must be given to the text, which does infinite credit to the good taste and accurate scholarship of the editors.
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