5 APRIL 1924, Page 40

HAZLITT.

We have received from the First Edition Club a very charm- ing example of the kind of reprints which is to be a feature of the new club. Tlhs reprint is of an unpublished article by Hazlitt, and is due to the generosity of Mr. Charles Whibley, who placed the manuscript at the disposal of the club. Mr. Whibley also provides an introduction. The matter of Hazlitt's review is interesting—an attack on a contemporary. The style is mordant and excited. Hazlitt begins well :—

" Before I answer your questions, give me leave to tell you my opinion of the person who asks them. I think then that you are a person of little understanding, with great impudence, a total want of principle, an utter disregard to truth or even to the character of common veracity, and a very strong ambition to be picked up and paid as a cat's paw. If I were in the habit of using the words Liar, Fool, Coxcomb, Hypocrite, Scoundrel, Blackguard, tee., I should apply them to you, but this would be degrading them still lower unnecessarily, for it is quite as easy to prove you the things as to call you the names."