| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 161 |
Among his literary contemporaries there was none to whom
Hazlitt did more justice than to the exquisite
writer known to the reading public as Barry
Cornwall. His personal intimacy with that writer commenced, I believe, almost
immediately after the appearance of the “Dramatic Scenes;” and it endured, without
breach, till Hazlitt’s death—a period of pretty nearly twenty
years. I doubt if the same can be said of any one other of his intimacies—I mean the unbroken continuance of it. But there is—as in what case is there
not?—between the writings of that delightful poet and his personal character a beautiful
correspondence and relationship, which, to those who know him, cause them to act and react
upon each other, till the result is a pervading sense of gentle sweetness of temperament,
and genial good-
| 162 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
In speaking of the justice which Hazlitt rendered to the literary pretensions of Barry Cornwall, I must be understood to mean that comparative measure of it
which alone he was in the habit of meting out to his contemporaries, when called upon to do
so professionally as a critic, or personally when speaking of them in conversation. In
re-
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 163 |
Among all Hazlitt’s
acquaintance and friends, there was not one more tolerant and considerate towards him, or
more kind and generous to the last, than was Barry
Cornwall. He was among the very few—some “two or one”—to whom
Hazlitt knew and felt that he might always resort, at a moment of
real need or difficulty, without fear of meeting with unkindness or repulse; or, what was
more obnoxious to him, that miserable modicum of remonstrance and “good advice”
which people are so apt to dole out as an
| 164 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
For Sheridan Knowles, Hazlitt felt great personal kindness and regard. He was never more entirely at ease than in the company of that natural and happily-constituted man. They had met very early in life, and some of Hazlitt’s least unhappy associations were connected with his intercourse with Knowles, who, having always felt an almost reverential admiration for Hazlitt’s talents and writings, was accustomed to express what he felt in no stinted terms. They seldom met—Knowles living in Scotland up to the period of Hazlitt’s death. But when the latter visited London they were a good deal together; and when Hazlitt was in Scotland, Knowles accompanied him in a short visit to the Highlands, and was his factotum in all matters and arrangements connected with a course of lectures Hazlitt delivered on Poetry, in Glasgow and elsewhere.
It was at Hazlitt’s lodgings
that I first met this distinguished dramatist and excellent man; and the commencement of
our
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 165 |
But Hazlitt would not hear of my
going, and agreed to take the consequences of the meeting upon himself. Accordingly I
stayed, and presently Knowles came. Almost im-
| 166 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
The cordial and hearty terms and tone in
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 167 |
There was no one in whose welfare and success as a writer Hazlitt seemed to feel more personal interest than in
those of Sheridan Knowles; and this interest was
heightened, rather than repressed, by an impression he entertained, that there was a
singular absence in Knowles of that mental and moral correspondence
between the writer and his productions which we are so apt to expect, and so disappointed
and perplexed at not finding. I never knew Hazlitt wholly at fault as
to the intellectual qualities of any man, or unable to assign some reasonable or
| 168 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
I know of nothing more unlike Hazlitt’s usual sagacity and penetration than this unmeaning and, at
the same time, contradictory award. Knowles, he
says, is “a mere poet;” by which it is impossible to guess what he
means. Then he is, essentially and by way of distinction, “the sort of
man” that you would describe as “the writer of ‘Virginius.’” And, finally,
“his most intimate friends” cannot discover any correspondence
between the author so designated and the work from
| WILLIAM HAZLITT. | 169 |
What is the explanation of all this contradiction? For if we can find one, it will unquestionably involve a characteristic feature in the extraordinary mind that it is the chief business of these pages to illustrate. That explanation, as it seems to me, is to be found in the following words, which conclude Hazlitt’s hasty glance at the author of “Virginius:”—“We have known him almost from a child, and we must say he appears to us the same boy-poet that he ever was.”
Now, Sheridan Knowles is not many
years younger than Hazlitt would have been were he
alive now—perhaps six or seven; consequently, the very earliest of the associations of
Hazlitt’s opening intellect were connected with the idea of
“the boy-poet;” and he neither would nor could consent to dissipate
| 170 | WILLIAM HAZLITT. |
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