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Read Ebook: The Collected Works of William Hazlitt Vol. 01 (of 12) by Hazlitt William Henley William Ernest Author Of Introduction Etc Glover Arnold Editor Waller A R Alfred Rayney Editor
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INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY vii
EDITORS' PREFACE xxvii
THE ROUND TABLE xxix
CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEAR'S PLAYS, 165
A LETTER TO WILLIAM GIFFORD, ESQ., 363
NOTES 415
INTRODUCTION
From some we loved, the loveliest and the best That from his Vintage rolling Time has pressed:
that I hold it for merely unessential.
Many men, as Coleridge, have written well, and yet talked better than they wrote. I have named Coleridge, though his talk, prodigious as it was, in the long run ended in 'Om-m-mject' and 'Sum-m-mject,' and though, some enchanting and undying verses apart, his writing, save when it is merely critical, is nowadays of small account. But, in truth, I have in my mind, rather, two friends, both dead, of whom one, an artist in letters, lived to conquer the English-speaking world, while the second, who should, I think, have been the greater writer, addicted himself to another art, took to letters late in life, and, having the largest and the most liberal utterance I have known, was constrained by the very process of composition so to produce himself that scarce a touch of his delightful, apprehensive, all-expressing spirit appeared upon his page. I take these two cases because both are excessive. In the one you had both speech and writing; in the other you found a rarer brain, a more fanciful and daring humour, a richer gusto, perhaps a wider knowledge, in any event a wider charity. And at one point the two met, and that point was talk. Therein each was pre-eminent, each irresistible, each a master after his kind, each endowed with a full measure of those gifts that qualify the talker's temperament: as voice and eye and laugh, look and gesture, humour and fantasy, audacity and agility of mind, a lively and most impudent invention, a copious vocabulary, a right gift of foolery, a just, inevitable sense of conversational right and wrong. Well; one wrote like an angel, the other like poor Poll; and both so far excelled in talk that I can take it on me to say that they who know them only in print scarce know them at all. 'Twas thus, I imagine, with Hazlitt. He wrote the best he could; but I see many reasons to believe that he was very much more brilliant and convincing at the Southampton than he is in the most convincing and the most brilliant of his Essays. He was a full man; he had all the talker's gifts; he exulted in all kinds of oral opportunities; what more is there to say? Sure 'tis the case of all that are born to talk as well as write. They live their best in talk, and what they write is but a sop for posterity: a last dying speech and confession to show that not for nothing were they held rare fellows in their day.
W. E. H.
Footnote 1:
Footnote 2:
In 1805 he produced his essay on the Principles of Human Action. Being no metaphysician, I have never read this work; but Mr. Leslie Stephen, who is a very competent person in these matters, I am told, assures me that it is 'scrupulously dry,' though 'showing great acuteness.' This, I take leave to say--this is Hazlitt all over. None has written of the workaday elements in life and time with a rarer taste, a finer relish, a stronger confidence in himself and them. Yet, in dealing with absolutes in life and time, he is 'scrupulously dry.' This, I take it, is to be a man of letters.
Footnote 3:
Or rather bedgown: unction-soiled and laudanum-stained.
Footnote 4:
John Hazlitt had been a pupil of Reynolds, and his miniatures were welcome at the Academy.
Footnote 5:
Dans l'art il faut donner sa peau.
Footnote 6:
He had a painter in him, whether imperfectly developed or not; for he would condescend upon none but Guido, Raphael, Titian.
Footnote 7:
Footnote 8:
Footnote 9:
'The point in debate,' he says, 'the worth or the bad quality of the painting ... I am as well able to decide upon as any who ever brandished a pallette.' I doubt not that he spoke the truth; yet the residuum of his criticisms of pictures, their after-taste, is mostly literary. And, as he was finally a man of letters, what else could one expect?
Footnote 10:
Leigh Hunt said that he was the best art critic that ever lived: that to read him was like seeing a picture through stained glass, and so forth. But Leigh Hunt knew not much more about pictures than Coleridge knew about the books he talked of, but had not read.
Footnote 11:
The house had been the abode of Milton; for certain months it had harboured the eminent James Mill; it belonged to the celebrated Jeremy Bentham: so that in the matter of associations Hazlitt, a thorough-paced dissenter, was as well off as he could hope to be.
Footnote 12:
Footnote 13:
Haydon says that Waterloo made him drunk for weeks. Then he pulled himself together, and for the rest of his life drank nothing but strong tea. He had, however, no sort of sympathy with those who held the 'social glass' to be Man's safest introduction to the Pit. He only said that liquor did not agree with him, and looked on cheerfully while his friends--Lamb was as close as any--drank as they pleased.
Footnote 14:
Footnote 15:
Footnote 16:
'Tis a pleasure to remember that Lamb was with him to the end--was in his death-chamber in the very article of mortality. We have all read Carlyle on Lamb. The everlasting pity is that we shall never read Hazlitt on Carlyle.
Footnote 17:
Him Shelley calls 'a solemn and unsexual man.'
Footnote 18:
Much as years afterwards, according to a certain Nicolardot, the expertest of their kind were 'on the list' of old Ste.-Beuve.
Footnote 19:
His grandson describes him as 'physically incapable' of any but a transient fidelity to anybody.
Footnote 20:
He confessed that one day he told it half a dozen times or so to persons he had never seen before: once, twice over to the same listener.
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