Conversations of Northcote,by WiZli4 re Maid: Edited by Edmund Geese. (Bentley
and Son.) – This book was first published in 1830, and is now reprinted for the first time. To be quite candid, the world might have gone on another sixty years without renewing its acquaintance with it. Hazlitt made the acquaint- ance of James Northcote, a now almost forgotten painter, in 1802, and continued to visit him for more than twenty years. In 1826 he began to publish his conversations in the New Monthly Maga- zine. These were republished in 1830, the year of Hazlitt's death, (Northoote died in the following year, at the age of eighty-four.) How much of the talk was Northoote's, how much Hs,zlitt's, it is impossible to say, nor does it mueh matter. The criticism of men and books is not strikingly good, certainly never reaches real insight, though it is not unfrequently acute. The editor has added a certain value to the volume by prefixing an essay on "Hazlitt as an Art-Critic."
Previous page
