To the last work of HAZLITT, his Conversations of Northeote,
we willingly give a place, partly on the ground of its own merit, tartly out of a feeling of regret and respect for its late author. oor HAZLITT I he was a strange mixture of shrewdness and sim- lieity, of kindness of heart and equivocal life. No person could be more ignorant of the world ; and yet he was well acquainted jwith human nature. His name was almost detested, and yet he =never did harm to mortal man. His enemies were innumerable, iwhile he'-bimself was fulPisf- benevolence. His works were ad- mired and praised while they were anonymous, abused and then neglected after he had put his name to them. And yet his greatest fault was poverty. But he was not merely poor, he was also irre- gular. These are crimes in the world's eye, and give occasion to ztfinite slander. Political discussion, which he conducted some- Ititat bitterly, was with him mere theory : he grew angry against ideas, and it was thought he was railing against persons. Hence also much vituperation. HAZLITT was a critic of great originality : his criticisms were often, indeed, more original than the work re- viewed : he sometimes mistook his own notions of the author for the author himself, and gave an account of him very wide of the mark. Authors are seldom men of business. Mr. SOUTHEY carries the method of the counting-house into literature. HAZLITT was his antipodes. People used to lament the slatternliness of HAZLITT'S habits, but we do not believe they made him unhappy ; they only made him appear miserable. He was a kind of MOR- LAND among authors. In these Conversations there are a great number of able and original thoughts, expressed with great plain- ness and simplicity. Alas! poor HAZLITT. STERNE would have found his history a more pathetic one than that of Yorick.
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