The Work of William Hazlitt

The complete works of William Hazlitt,

Others were afterward edited by his son, William, as Sketches and Essays , Literary Remains , and Winterslow and by his biographer, P. Howe, as New Writings — In April Hazlitt married a widow named Bridgwater. But the new wife was resented by his son, whom Hazlitt adored, and the couple separated after three years. Part of this second marriage was spent abroad, an experience recorded in Notes of a Journey in France and Italy In France he began an ambitious but not very successful Life of Napoleon, 4 vol. His last book, Conversations of James Northcote , recorded his long friendship with that eccentric painter.

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But other equally significant English essayists of the same century, such as Charles Lamb or Walter Pater, or the French critic Hippolyte Taine, under an impassive mask, loved too, but differently. Pat Mesthos rated it it was amazing Apr 08, Drew rated it really liked it Nov 20, S rated it it was amazing Oct 13, Cathy Keaton rated it it was amazing Aug 24, Robert Lukins rated it it was amazing Oct 17, Sergio marked it as to-read Jun 10, Emma marked it as to-read Nov 28, David Kalish marked it as to-read Dec 25, Bakunin marked it as to-read Jan 04, Isaac marked it as to-read Jan 11, Michael Nail marked it as to-read Jan 14, Bent-o added it Feb 23, Beatriz Silva marked it as to-read Apr 11, Dunja marked it as to-read Apr 29, Shawn Lenker marked it as to-read May 10, Sarah Karlson added it Jun 28, Joe Caruso is currently reading it Sep 07, Nicholas marked it as to-read Sep 09, Chad Blomme marked it as to-read Sep 15, Dianne Bennett marked it as to-read Jan 06, Even if it took a century and a half for many of the book's virtues to be realised, enough was recognised at the time to make the book one of Hazlitt's most successful.

William Hazlitt

Unsurprisingly the Tory Blackwood's Magazine lamented that the pillory had fallen into disuse and wondered what "adequate and appropriate punishment there is that we can inflict on this rabid caitiff". For example, the Eclectic Review marvelled at his ability to "hit off a likeness with a few artist-like touches" and The Gentleman's Magazine , with a few reservations, found his style "deeply impregnated with the spirit of the masters of our language, and strengthened by a rich infusion of golden ore On 1 September , Hazlitt and his wife began a tour of the European continent, crossing the English Channel by steamboat from Brighton to Dieppe and proceeding from there by coach and sometimes on foot to Paris and Lyon , crossing the Alps in Savoy, then continuing through Italy to Florence and Rome, the most southerly point on their route.

There were two extended stops on this excursion: Paris, where the Hazlitts remained for three months; and Vevey, Switzerland, where they rented space in a farmhouse for three months. During those lengthy pauses, Hazlitt accomplished some writing tasks, primarily submitting an account of his trip in several instalments to The Morning Chronicle , which helped to pay for the trip. These articles were later collected and published in book form in as Notes of a Journey through France and Italy despite the title, there is also much about the other countries he visited, particularly Switzerland.

This was an escape for a time from all the conflicts, the bitter reactions to his outspoken criticisms, and the attacks on his own publications back in England. And, despite interludes of illness, as well as the miseries of coach travel and the dishonesty of some hotel keepers and coach drivers, Hazlitt managed to enjoy himself. He reacted to his sight of Paris like a child entering a fairyland: Germain's is one continued succession of imposing beauty and artificial splendour, of groves, of avenues, of bridges, of palaces, and of towns like palaces, all the way to Paris, where the sight of the Thuilleries completes the triumph of external magnificence He remained with his wife in Paris for more than three months, eagerly exploring the museums, attending the theatres, wandering the streets, and mingling with the people.

He was especially glad to be able to return to the Louvre and revisit the masterpieces he had adored twenty years ago, recording for his readers all of his renewed impressions of canvases by Guido , Poussin, and Titian, among others. He also was pleased to meet and befriend Henri Beyle, now better known by his nom de plume of Stendhal , who had discovered much to like in Hazlitt's writings, as Hazlitt had in his. Finally he and his wife resumed the journey to Italy.

As they advanced slowly in those days of pre-railway travel at one stage taking nearly a week to cover less than two hundred miles , [] Hazlitt registered a running commentary on the scenic points of interest. On the road between Florence and Rome, for example,.

William Hazlitt books

Hazlitt, in the words of Ralph Wardle, "never stopped observing and comparing. He was an unabashed sightseer who wanted to take in everything available, and he could recreate vividly all he saw". Yet frequently he showed himself to be more than a mere sightseer, with the painter, critic, and philosopher in him asserting their influence in turn or at once.

A splendid scene on the shore of Lake Geneva , for example, viewed with the eye of both painter and art critic, inspired the following observation: No person can describe the effect; but so in Claude 's landscapes the evening clouds drink up the rosy light, and sink into soft repose! Likewise, the philosopher in Hazlitt emerges in his account of the following morning: The speculation of Bishop Berkeley, or some other philosopher, that distance is measured by motion and not by the sight, is verified here at every step".

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He was also constantly considering the manners of the people and the differences between the English and the French and later, to a lesser extent, the Italians and Swiss. Did the French really have a "butterfly, airy, thoughtless, fluttering character"? In some ways the French seemed superior to his countrymen. Unlike the English, he discovered, the French attended the theatre reverently, respectfully, "the attention Trying to be honest with himself, and every day discovering something new about French manners that confounded his preconceptions, Hazlitt was soon compelled to retract some of his old prejudices.

As he had befriended Stendhal in Paris, so in Florence, besides visiting the picture galleries, he struck up a friendship with Walter Savage Landor. He also spent much time with his old friend Leigh Hunt, now in residence there. Hazlitt was ambivalent about Rome, the farthest point of his journey. His first impression was one of disappointment. He had expected primarily the monuments of antiquity. But, he asked, "what has a green-grocer's stall, a stupid English china warehouse, a putrid trattoria , a barber's sign, an old clothes or old picture shop or a Gothic palace There were the "pride, pomp, and pageantry" of the Catholic religion, [] as well as having to cope with the "inconvenience of a stranger's residence at Rome You want some shelter from the insolence and indifference of the inhabitants You have to squabble with every one about you to prevent being cheated, to drive a hard bargain in order to live, to keep your hands and your tongue within strict bounds, for fear of being stilettoed, or thrown into the Tower of St.

Angelo, or remanded home. You have much to do to avoid the contempt of the inhabitants You must run the gauntlet of sarcastic words or looks for a whole street, of laughter or want of comprehension in reply to all the questions you ask Venice presented fewer difficulties, and was a scene of special fascination for him: Here there were numerous masterpieces by his favourite painter Titian, whose studio he visited, as well as others by Veronese , Giorgione , Tintoretto , and more.

Hazlitt's time at Vevey was not passed entirely in a waking dream. As at Paris, and sometimes other stopping points such as Florence, he continued to write, producing one or two essays later included in The Plain Speaker , as well as some miscellaneous pieces. A side trip to Geneva during this period led him to a review of his Spirit of the Age , by Francis Jeffrey, in which the latter takes him to task for striving too hard after originality. Much of his time, however, was spent in a mellow mood. Intent upon the scene and upon the thoughts that stir within me, I conjure up the cheerful passages of my life, and a crowd of happy images appear before me".

The return to London in October was a letdown. The grey skies and bad food compared unfavorably with his recent retreat, and he was suffering from digestive problems these recurred throughout much of his later life , though it was also good to be home. As comfortable as Hazlitt was on settling in again to his home on Down Street in London in late where he remained until about mid , the reality of earning a living again stared him in the face. He continued to provide a stream of contributions to various periodicals, primarily The New Monthly Magazine.

The topics continued to be his favourites, including critiques of the "new school of reformers", drama criticism, and reflections on manners and the tendencies of the human mind. He gathered previously published essays for the collection The Plain Speaker , writing a few new ones in the process. He also oversaw the publication in book form of his account of his recent Continental tour. But what he most wanted was to write a biography of Napoleon. Now Sir Walter Scott was writing his own life of Napoleon, from a strictly conservative point of view, and Hazlitt wanted to produce one from a countervailing, liberal perspective.

Really, his stance on Napoleon was his own, as he had idolised Napoleon for decades, and he prepared to return to Paris to undertake the research. First, however, he brought to fruition another favourite idea. Always fascinated by artists in their old age see "On the Old Age of Artists" , [] Hazlitt was especially interested in the painter James Northcote , student and later biographer of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a Royal Academician.

Hazlitt would frequently visit him—by then about 80 years old—and they conversed endlessly on men and manners, the illustrious figures of Northcote's younger days, particularly Reynolds, and the arts, particularly painting. Northcote was at this time a crochety, slovenly old man who lived in wretched surroundings and was known for his misanthropic personality. Hazlitt was oblivious to the surroundings and tolerated the grumpiness. They were later collected under the title Conversations of James Northcote, Esq.

But there was little in common between these articles and Boswell's life of Johnson. Hazlitt felt such a closeness to the old artist that in his conversations, Northcote was transformed into a kind of alter ego. Hazlitt made no secret of the fact that the words he ascribed to Northcote were not all Northcote's own but sometimes expressed the views of Hazlitt as much as Hazlitt's own words. Some of the conversations were little more than gossip, and they spoke of their contemporaries without restraint.

When the conversations were published, some of those contemporaries were outraged. Northcote denied the words were his; and Hazlitt was shielded from the consequences to a degree by his residing in Paris, where he was at work on what he thought would be his masterpiece. The last conversation originally published in The Atlas on 15 November , when Hazlitt had less than a year to live is especially telling. Whether it really occurred more or less as given, or was a construct of Hazlitt's own imagination, it provides perspective on Hazlitt's own position in life at that time.

In words attributed to Northcote: Hazlitt justifies his own contrary attitude at length: All the former part of my life I was treated as a cipher; and since I have got into notice, I have been set upon as a wild beast.

When this is the case, and you can expect as little justice as candour, you naturally in self-defence take refuge in a sort of misanthropy and cynical contempt for mankind. He was perhaps overly self-disparaging in this self-portrait, [] but it opens a window on the kind of life Hazlitt was leading at this time, and how he evaluated it in contrast to the lives of his more overtly successful contemporaries.

In August , Hazlitt and his wife set out for Paris again, so he could research what he hoped would be his masterpiece, a biography of Napoleon , seeking "to counteract the prejudiced interpretations of Scott's biography". This did not work out quite as planned. His wife's independent income allowed them to take lodgings in a fashionable part of Paris; he was comfortable, but also distracted by visitors and far from the libraries he needed to visit.

Nor did he have access to all the materials that Scott's stature and connections had provided him with for his own life of Napoleon. Hazlitt's son also came to visit, and conflicts broke out between him and his father that also drove a wedge between Hazlitt and his second wife: With his own works failing to sell, Hazlitt had to spend much time churning out more articles to cover expenses.

Yet distractions notwithstanding, some of these essays rank among his finest, for example his "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth", published in The Monthly Magazine not to be confused with the similarly named New Monthly Magazine in March On returning to London with his son in August , Hazlitt was shocked to discover that his wife, still in Paris, was leaving him. He settled in modest lodgings on Half-Moon Street , and thereafter waged an unending battle against poverty, as he found himself forced to grind out a stream of mostly undistinguished articles for weeklies like The Atlas to generate desperately needed cash.

Relatively little is known of Hazlitt's other activities in this period. He spent as much time, apparently, at Winterslow as he did in London. But he also found himself struggling against bouts of illness, nearly dying at Winterslow in December This entailed even more financial difficulties for the author, and what little evidence we have of his activities at the time consists in large part of begging letters to publishers for advances of money.

The easy life he had spoken of to Northcote had largely vanished by the time that conversation was published about a year before his death. By then he was overwhelmed by the degradation of poverty, frequent bouts of physical as well as mental illness—depression [] caused by his failure to find true love and by his inability to bring to fruition his defence of the man he worshipped as a hero of liberty and fighter of despotism.

Although Hazlitt retained a few devoted admirers, his reputation among the general public had been demolished by the cadre of reviewers in Tory periodicals whose efforts Hazlitt had excoriated in "On the Jealousy and the Spleen of Party". His four-volume life of Napoleon turned out to be a financial failure. Worse in retrospect, it was a poorly integrated hodgepodge of largely borrowed materials.

Less than a fifth of his projected masterpiece consists of Hazlitt's own words. Hazitt managed to complete The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte shortly before his death, but did not live to see it published in its entirety. Few details remain of Hazlitt's daily life in his last years. But he needed to be in London for business reasons.

There, he seems to have exchanged visits with some of his old friends, but few details of these occasions were recorded. In , Hazlitt found work reviewing for the theatre again for The Examiner. In playgoing he found one of his greatest consolations. One of his most notable essays, "The Free Admission", arose from this experience. In words written within his last few months, the possessor of a free admission to the theatre, "ensconced in his favourite niche, looking from the 'loop-holes of retreat' in the second circle He found some time to return to his earlier philosophical pursuits, including popularised presentations of the thoughts expressed in earlier writings.

After a brief stay on Bouverie Street in , sharing lodgings with his son, [] Hazlitt moved into a small apartment at 6 Frith Street , Soho. Even at this time, however, he turned out a few notable essays, primarily for The New Monthly Magazine. Turning his suffering to advantage, [] he described the experience, with copious observations on the effects of illness and recovery on the mind, in "The Sick Chamber".

In one of his last respites from pain, reflecting on his personal history, he wrote, "This is the time for reading. A cricket chirps on the hearth, and we are reminded of Christmas gambols long ago. A rose smells doubly sweet But a book is the secret and sure charm to bring all these implied associations to a focus.

If the stage [alluding to his remarks in "The Free-Admission"] 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 home-felt, the most heart-felt of our enjoyments". Such respites from pain did not last, though news of The Three Glorious Days that drove the Bourbons from France in July raised his spirits. Or was it, as biographer Stanley Jones believes, more likely to have been a woman he had met more recently at the theatre?

His last words were reported to have been "Well, I've had a happy life". Patmore, and possibly a few other friends in attendance. His works having fallen out of print, Hazlitt underwent a small decline, though in the late s his reputation was reasserted by admirers and his works reprinted.

Two major works then appeared: The Day-Star of Liberty: Hazlitt's reputation has continued to rise, and now many contemporary thinkers, poets, and scholars consider him one of the greatest critics in the English language, and its finest essayist. In , following a lengthy appeal initiated by Ian Mayes together with A. The society publishes an annual peer-reviewed journal called The Hazlitt Review. One of Soho's fashionable hotels is named after the writer.

Hazlitt's hotel located on Frith Street is the last of the homes William lived in and today still retains much of the interior he would have known so well. Other editors of Hazlitt include Frank Carr , D. Wyatt , Charles Harold Gray , G. Hollingworth , Stanley Williams ? Nabholtz , Christopher Salvesen , and R. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the English literary critic and essayist.

For other persons named William Hazlitt, see William Hazlitt disambiguation. The Spirit of the Age. Hazlitt is both a philosopher and one of the supreme literary critics in the language. Leavis, Lionel Trilling Manchester, U.

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Carcanet Press, , cited in Rodden, Trilling , p. Grayling notes that Kenneth Clark "described Hazlitt as the 'best critic of art before Ruskin'. See also Bromwich, p. He is not studied in most university English courses Hazlitt, Works , vol. Hereafter, references to Works will imply "Hazlitt, Works ".

The complete works of William Hazlitt, (Book, ) [www.newyorkethnicfood.com]

Howe, "the only reference to his stay in America is to the taste of the barberries picked on the hills". This Hackney College was a short-lived institution — with no connection to the current college by that name. Quoted in Gilmartin, pp. See Works , vol. His meeting with Coleridge "was a revelation, and was to change him forever". See also Wardle, pp. For another account of this contretemps, see Maclean, pp.

From that time onward, she writes, the two "had for each other They are pure egotists", "Characteristics", Hazlitt, Works , vol. Its thesis is that, contrary to the prevailing belief of the moral philosophy of the time, benevolent actions are not modifications of an underlying fundamental human selfishness. The fundamental tendency of the human mind is, in a particular sense, disinterest. That is, an interest in the future welfare of others is no less natural to us than such an interest in our own future welfare.

On the argument of the Essay , see Grayling, pp. According to David Bromwich, Hazlitt thought that "in The Excursion the two great impulses of romance, to tell a story and to give instruction, have thus separated out completely.

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See also Hazlitt, Works , vol. Yet it was to an extent a consciously applied device. Hazlitt is never repetitious in his ventriloquizing; he never turns quotations into tags, is never sententious. The relationship between Hazlitt and Keats is explored in depth in Bromwich, pp. See also Natarajan, pp. See also Jones, pp. In the case of Sarah Walker, 'suffered' is a wholly inadequate word.

His obsession with her drove him almost mad. This event has been afforded little significance in his life. Wardle was writing in ; twenty-first-century critics continue to be sharply divided. David Armitage has assessed the book disparagingly as "the result of a tormented mind grasping literary motifs in a desperate and increasingly unsuccessful and self indulgent attempt to communicate its descent into incoherence To James Ley, "It is