that punishment by a philosophical reasoner. It has never yet been published." The New Monthly Magazine for 1830 contains the two last articles written by Hazlitt; "The Free Admission," and "The Sick Chamber." These have not been reprinted, as already stated. Reference has also been made (p. 58) to an article in the Examiner for 1821, on "Guy Faux, with some Observations on Heroism." An admirable article, "The Dandy School," appeared in the Examiner of Nov. 18th, 1827, suggested by Disraeli's Grey" and Theodore Hook's novels. Neither of these have been reprinted. "Vivian Articles on Hazlitt and His Writings have appeared in the following American Periodicals: North American Review. Boston. Vol. 8. American Quarterly Review. Boston. Vol. 26th. American Eclectic Magazine. New York Analectic Magazine. Philadelphia. Vol. 12. Vol. 7. Southern Literary Messenger. Richmond. Vol. 2. The following passages are from "Past Celebrities Whom I Have Known," by Cyrus Redding. Vol. 1. (Article, "William Hazlitt."):-"His earliest criticisms no theatrical critic in this country has ever yet equalled. I believe, too, whatever faults he had of temper, or manner, or prejudice--and he had his share when he came to the point, or was brought to it, he admitted it conscientiously. He concealed nothing. His character was perfectly simple, and he expected to find everybody else the same. He had no concealed thought, for he brought all out, good, bad, or indifferent: it was his nature. It was not wonderful that a man who spoke out all he thought should have been abused and shunned. He had a great distaste for the 'Lakers,' as they were then styled, that is for Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Nor was this wonderful, for excepting Coleridge, the other two he looked upon, not without truth, as finished apostates, who ran counter to and benefited in the vulgarest way by a deliberate apostacy from the generous principles of their youth, by which they had once endeavoured to lead others. They had thus shown their venality and weakness of principle. He loved truth to excess, and, in consequence, even with his own glaring faults of temper, he would not forgive its violation. This was consistent with the simplicity of his character. He had no friendships, as the word is generally understood. He lived alone in the midst of the metropolis, a hermit, among two or three millions of living men. There can be no doubt that much of this was constitutional, strengthened by his habit of deep thinking, and by continual disappointment experienced in the daily contradiction of his love of truth, which he almost worshipped. It bred in him the bitter irritability that was so strong a feature in his character." 'So LAMB'S DEFENCE OF HAZLITT.-"The opinion of the world was nothing to him; and when it attacked his friends, he stuck to them closer than a brother. William Hazlittto whose great talents proper justice is for the first time paid in this honest volume (Barry Cornwall's 'Memorials of Lamb')—was in his day the best abused man in Great Britain; it was dangerous to be his companion, so many stones were always flying about his ears. But when Hazlitt was reviled by Southey (also a friend of his own), Lamb came out of his corner, and did battle, in print, for the calumniated man in noble words. far from being ashamed of the intimacy,' he says, 'it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting to find, such another companion.""-Chambers's Journal, Dec., 1866. "The Last Records of Charles Lamb." The last words of the last essay Hazlitt wrote, "The Sick Chamber," in the New Monthly Magazine, August, 1830 (he died on the 18th of September of the same year), were: "IF THE STAGE SHOWS US THE MASKS OF MEN AND THE PAGEANT OF THE WORLD, BOOKS LET US INTO THEIR SOULS, AND LAY OPEN TO US THE SECRETS OF OUR OWN. THEY ARE THE FIRST AND LAST, THE MOST HOMEFELT, THE MOST HEARTFELT OF ALL OUR ENJOYMENTS." SPECIMENS OF CRITICISMS ON HAZLITT'S WRITINGS FROM "THE QUARTERLY REVIEW AND "BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE." [ . . . “vulgar descriptions, silly paradoxes, flat truisms, misty sophistry, broken English, ill humour, and rancorous abuse, &c. a sour Jacobin. We are far from intending to write a single word in answer to this loathsome trash, &c.; but if the creature, in his endeavour to crawl into the light, must take his way over the tombs of illustrious men, disfiguring the records of their greatness with the slime and filth which mark his track, it is right to point him out that he may be flung back to the situation on which nature designed that he should grow."-Quarterly Review. Article on Hazlitt's "Round Table." 1817. Vol. 17, pp. 155, 157, 159. "More frequently he descends to that simpler style of eloquence which is in use among washerwomen, the class of females with whom, as we learn from the Round Table,' he and his friend Mr. Hunt more particularly delight to associate. "We should not have condescended to notice the senseless and wicked sophistry of this writer, or to point out to the contempt of the reader, &c., had we not considered him as one of the representatives of a class of men by whom literature is more than at any former period disgraced, and therefore convinced that it might not be unprofitable to show how very small a portion of talent and literature were necessary for carrying on the trade of sedition. The few specimens which we have selected of his ethics and his criticisms, are more than sufficient to prove that Mr. Hazlitt's knowledge of Shakespeare and the English language is exactly on a par with the purity of his morals and the depth of his understanding."—Quarterly Review. Article on Hazlitt's "Characters of Shakespeare's Plays." 1818. Vol. 18, pp. 459, 460. . predatory incursions on "wages everlasting war against accurate reasoning, just observation, and precise or even intelligent language. truth and common sense. He seems to think that meaning is a superfluous quality in writing, and that the task of composition is merely an exercise in varying the arrangement of words. ever hovering on the limits between sense and nonsense. Not one gleam of light is thrown upon the subject. accumulation of incoherent notions. "Upon the whole, the greater part of Mr. Hazlitt's book is either completely unintelligible, or exhibits only faint and dubious glimpses of meaning; and the little portion of it that may be understood is not of so much value as to excite regret on account of the vacancy of thought which pervades the rest. They are of that happy texture that leaves not a trace in the mind of either reader or hearer. an incoherent jumble of gaudy words."-Quarterly Review. 1818. Article on Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English Poets." Vol. 19, p. 424. ... "The death's head hawk-moth bears some resemblance to him. Its favourite object is always the plunder of a hive, and its sole safeguard in accomplishing its purpose are its startling appearance and disagreeable noise. the unqualified detestation which we have always entertained, and which we still entertain, for the spirit which pervades his volumes, &c. ludicrous egotism characters in England of distinguished eminence whom he has not slandered. This slanderer of the human race the value of the objects which it seemed to be his nature to defile, &c."-Quarterly Review. Vol. 22. Article on Hazlitt's "Political Essays," &c., p. 158. forlorn drudge of the Examiner . few 1819. "Mr. Hazlitt's character as a writer may, we think, be not inaptly designated by a term borrowed from the vocabulary of our transatlantic brethren, which, though cacophonous, is sufficiently expressive. The word to which we allude, SLANG-WHANGER, is interpreted in the American dictionary to be 'One who makes use of political or other gabble, vulgularly called slang, that serves to amuse the rabble.""-Quarterly Review, 1822. Vol. 26. Article on Hazlitt's" Table Talk," &c., p. 103. "The whole surface of these volumes is one gaping sore of wounded and festering vanity; and in short, to use the language of the revered author of that excellent work, 'The Miseries of Human Life,' our table-talker 'is rather AN ULCER THAN A MAN.' "Now, it is one thing to feel sore, and a bad thing it is there is no denying; but to tell all the world the story of one's soreness, to be continually taking off the bandages, and displaying all the ugly things they ought to cover, is quite another, and a far worse affair. The one is a misfortune, the other is a fault. Mr. Hazlitt, who has not youth to plead, should know that this world is, to pity-beseeching authors, a hard-hearted world, Nobody likes the sight of an odious, maimed, bruised, battered, half-putrid, and shrunken limb, exposed in bright sunshine close beneath the Duke of Devonshire's wall One cannot away with your fellows that write with stumps, and play the fiddle with their great toe. You fling them a few coppers, and are off like lightning. Who will buy a book that is full of lamentation about the cruelty of the reviewer? "Your dirty imagination, Mr. Hazlitt, is always plunging you into some dirty scrape vocabulary of vapid pollution You really are a disgusting set, &c." .-Blackwood's Magazine. 1822. Hazlitt's "Table Talk," pp. 157, 163. Vol. 3. "The shame of having seen himself (Jeffery) mentioned in print as a friend and boon companion of such an animal as the author of this odious and loathsome piece of lewdness and profligacy ('The Liber Amoris') &c. "This low, vulgar, impudent gentleman of the press-the writer of that filthy book, which, but for its dulness and the obscurity of the author, must long ere now have been burnt by the hands of the common hangman,' &c. "A mere ulcer, a sore from head to foot, a poor devil, so completely flayed, that there is not a square half-inch of healthy flesh on his carcass an overgrown pimple, sore to the touch, he feels that he is exiled from decent society."-Blackwood's Magazine. 1823. Vol. 4, pp. 220, 221. "He of "Table Talk' has never risen higher than the lowest circle of the Press-gang-Reporters fight shy--and the Editors of Sunday Newspapers turn up their noses at the smell of his approach."-Blackwood's Magazine, 1826. Vol. 20, p. 786.] OPINIONS OF LEIGH HUNT'S CHARACTER, GENIUS, AND WRITINGS. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S IMPRESSIONS OF LEIGH HUNT. Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst of the old poets whom he admired and loved; though there is hardly a man among the authors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of Englishmen would be less likely to place there. He deserves it, however, if not for his verse (the value of which I do not estimate, never having been able to read it), yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass and flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page sometimes betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men) I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my first interview with Leigh Hunt. He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly village street, and certainly nothing to gratify his craving for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slatternly maidservant opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dresscoat, tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into his little study, or parlor, or both,—a very forlorn room, with poor paperhangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remember, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external blemishes and this nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become him well; but he had not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the better robe. I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression, nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, before or since; and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament,-youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that the nicest observer could not detect the application of it. His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied their visible language like music. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to whom he happened to be addressing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and delicate; and, to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare yourself the trouble of utterance, because he already knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little more than you would have spoken. His figure was full of gentle movement, though, somehow, without disturbing his quietude; and as he talked, he kept folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many ways a fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate experience in either direction. I rejoiced to hear him say that he was favoured with most confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a future life; and there were abundant proofs, throughout our interview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the dusk,—all of which gave a reverential cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could have had one full draught of prosperity before he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegancies about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that I should be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better things in the world whither he has gone. At our leave-taking, he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not acorns, but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met him for the last time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken down by infirmities; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not, partly embraced and supported by, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name, since he has a week-day one for his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made me known to Leigh Hunt.-Nathaniel Hawthorne; "Our Old Home: Up The Thames.'” |