HAZLITT
SIR,—Mr. Vulliamy's dark and forbidding picture of Hazlitt calls for some relief. It is furnished by Charles Lamb, who had the advantage over Mr. Vulliamy of living in the closest intimacy with Hazlitt for many years and who, while aware of all the " nodosities " of his friend, could say of him in his letter to Southey, written at a time of estrangement, that he was " in his natural and healthy state one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing. . . . I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion." Let that suffice.
But I write to correct one gross injustice in the picture—the charge of drunkenness. This is unpardonable, for no one pretending to write with authority on Hazlitt should be unaware that long before his death he was a total abstainer. Judge Talfourd, in his " thoughts on the late William Hazlitt," says: " The cheerfulness with which he made this sacrifice always appeared to me one of the most amiable traits in his character. He had no censure for others, who, with the same motive, were less wise or less resolute ; nor did he think he had earned, by his own constancy, any right to intrude advice . . . he avowed that he yielded to necessity and . . . he was seldom so happy as when he sat with his friends at their wine, participating the sociality of the time and renewing his own past enjoyment in that of his companions, without regret and without envy."
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