My Friends and Acquaintance
William Hazlitt I
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WILLIAM HAZLITT.
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WILLIAM HAZLITT.
I.
MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH HIM.—HIS SINGULAR PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND
MANNERS.—HIS HABITS OF THOUGHT AND SPEECH.
My acquaintance with William
Hazlitt commenced before his name emerged from the “illustrious
obscurity” of that private and local fame which had gathered round it, in the small
coterie to which he had till then addicted himself, and just as it was rising into that
“bad eminence” to which the abuse and scandal of his political and
personal enemies (not unaided by his friends) soon after lifted it.
My first interview with him took place in the committee-room of a literary institution, of
which I was at that time one of the managers, and had been deputed by my colleagues to
arrange with Hazlitt respecting the details of a course of ![]()
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lectures, which it was proposed he should deliver in the theatre of
the institution; an office to which he had been recommended by an influential member of the
institution, the late Mr. Alsager, of the
“Times” newspaper.
Having been previously cautioned not to be surprised or repelled by any
“strangeness” that I might observe in Hazlitt’s manner and personal appearance, I was shown into the room
where he was by the librarian, who merely named each to the other, and then left us
together.
On entering, I saw a pale anatomy of a man, sitting uneasily, half on half
off a chair, with his legs tucked awkwardly underneath the rail, his hands folded
listlessly on his knees, his head drooping on one side, and one of his elbows leaning (not
resting) on the edge of the table by which he sat, as if in fear of its having no right to
be there. His hat had taken an odd position on the floor beside him, as if that, too, felt
itself as much out of its element as the owner.
He half rose at my entrance, and, without speaking a word, or looking at me,
except with a momentary and furtive glance, he sat ![]()
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down again, in a
more uneasy position than before, and seemed to wait the result of what I might have to say
to him, with the same sort of desperate indifference with which a culprit may be supposed
to wait the sentence of his judge, after conviction. He was to learn from me whether his
proffered services, as a lecturer, were accepted or rejected: and, to a man of his habits
and temperament, and under his circumstances, either alternative took the shape of an
intolerable penalty—like those to Romeo, of
“Death” or “Banishment.” If the lectures he proposed to deliver
were rejected, he probably did not know where to meet the claims of to-morrow. On the other
hand, if they were accepted, his condition was still more trying: for I learned from him
that not a line of the lectures were written, nor even their materials prepared; they had
been merely thought of. It was a case, too, in which punctuality was
indispensable; yet such were his uncertain and desultory habits, that the fulfilment of an
engagement to be at a given place and time, on a given day, for ten successive weeks, then
and there to ![]()
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address a miscellaneous audience for “an hour
by Shrewsbury clock,” was what few who knew him could have believed to be
among possible contingencies.
The picture which Hazlitt presented
when I first saw him in the little dark, dungeon-like committee-room referred to, was not
unlike that of Sir Joshua’s “Ugolino.” There he sat, his anxious and highly-intellectual
face looking upon vacancy; pale and silent as a ghost; emaciated as an anatomy; loose,
unstrung, inanimate, as a being whose life is leaving it from sheer emptiness and
inanition, And this “poor creature” (as he used sometimes to call
himself)—apparently with scarcely energy enough to grapple with an infant or face a
shadow—was the launcher forth of winged words that could shake the hearts of princes and
potentates, and make them tremble in their seats of power; this effigy of silence was the
utterer of floods of indignant eloquence, that could rouse the soul of apathy itself, and
stir the blood like the sound of a trumpet; this “dish of skimmed milk”
was the writer of the celebrated replies to “Vetus,” ![]()
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in the “Times” newspaper; the invectives of the “Catalogue Raisonné;” and the
essays on “the Spirit of
Monarchy,” and “the
Regal Character.” Nay, more—he was the only man of letters, in England who
had dared openly to stand by the French Revolution, through good and through evil report;
and who had the magnanimity never to turn his back on its “child and champion.”
Though nothing worth particular record occurred in this my first interview
with William Hazlitt, I have been tempted to dwell
on it thus long, because it has left a more vivid and picturesque impression on my mind
than any subsequent one, except the last, which took place when he was on his death-bed.
It was not till two or three years after the period above referred to, that
a strict intimacy commenced between Hazlitt and
myself, and that I had the full and fair means of appreciating his remarkable, and in all
respects self-consistent character. I shall, therefore, not dwell upon the intercourse
which ensued upon our first acquaintance, except to contrast the impression I gained ![]()
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of him before I really knew him, with that which was the due and just
result of an intimate and unrestricted insight into his mental and moral constitution—a
contrast which may, in some degree, account for the strangely contradictory feelings and
impressions which prevailed in the world respecting him, according to the amount of actual
knowledge or ignorance possessed, concerning his character and the springs of it. I
remember the time—and I remember it without shame, because the impressions under which I
then felt and spoke of Hazlitt were the natural ones—that is to say,
the only ones naturally resulting from the circumstances under which I had formed my
judgment—I remember the time when no words could express the horror I felt at the
(supposed) personal character of William Hazlitt, or were deemed too
strong to openly set forth those feelings. But my first impressions were derived, not from
my own observations, but from the report of those who ought to have known better, and who
certainly would have known better, had not their personal feelings been enlisted into the
cabal against him, either by their having ![]()
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been the subject of one of
those insane assaults that he was every now and then making on his best friends, under a
false (or true) impression of their occasional treatment of him, or (still worse) in
consequence of some “good-natured” acquaintance repeating some of those
unpalatable truths which Hazlitt was in the habit of telling of all
his friends in their absence. For he professed to lay no restraint upon his tongue in this
particular: he considered the foibles of our friends to be as fair game as those of our
enemies, always provided they were pursued and hunted down without the cognizance of the
owner. He recognised no Game Laws in this particular. The axiom which bids us “never
speak ill of a man behind his back” (as if one might do it with propriety before his
face!), was not one of those ranked by Hazlitt among “the wisdom
of nations.” On the contrary, he spoke what he thought of people, everywhere but in
their hearing;—trusting (rather too implicitly, I am afraid) to that tacit compact which
recognises the sacredness of social intercourse. And he cared not what you said of him in
return, ![]()
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nor if he heard your injurious estimate of him repeated by
half the town; or if he sought to make reprisals, it was on the hawker, not the originator,
of the affront. But a personal slight or incivility he held to be
the most unpardonable of offences, and to be punished and avenged as such. You might think
and call him a rascal or a reprobate as much as you pleased; you might “prove”
him to be a bad writer and a worse man, with perfect impunity; but if you looked askance
upon him in company, or “cut” him in the street, or even gave him reason to
fancy that you had done so, there was (as we shall see hereafter), no limit to the revenge
he would take on you, and no rest for him till he had taken it.
But I will not go further wide of my intended mark, which is that of
painting William Hazlitt as I knew him; not
describing or estimating his general character, but leaving the reader to form an estimate
for himself, from the personal traits that I may be able to furnish, in addition to those
which may be gathered from his writings.
Our first interview, as above alluded to, ![]()
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lasted but a
few minutes, and was concluded by an arrangement for the early delivery of a course of
lectures—those on the Comic Writers; and I saw nothing more of William Hazlitt till a day or two before the delivery of the first lecture,
when I addressed a note to him, stating my intention of giving a critical notice of the lectures in “Blackwood’s Magazine,” and asking him
for such facilities as he might choose to afford me, with a view to offering specimens of
the matter. His reply was a request to see me at his residence in York Street, Westminster.
Thomas Massa Alsager (1779-1846)
Journalist and music critic for the
Times; he was the friend of
Leigh Hunt and Thomas Barnes; John Keats was reading Alsager's copy of Chapman's poems when
he wrote the famous sonnet.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
English essayist and literary critic; author of
Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays (1817),
Lectures on the English Poets
(1818), and
The Spirit of the Age (1825).
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
English portrait-painter and writer on art; he was the first president of the Royal
Academy (1768).
Edward Sterling (1773-1847)
Son of a subdean of Waterford Cathedral, he was educated at Trinity College Dublin and
worked as a correspondent for the
Times (1815-1840); he was the
father of the poet John Sterling.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. (1817-1980). Begun as the
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine,
Blackwood's assumed the name of its proprietor, William Blackwood after the sixth
number. Blackwood was the nominal editor until 1834.
The Times. (1785-). Founded by John Walter, The Times was edited by Thomas Barnes from 1817 to 1841. In the
romantic era it published much less literary material than its rival dailies, the
Morning Chronicle and the
Morning
Post.
