William Hazlitt and the Poles of Romantic Perception

Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1975 William Hazlitt nda the Poles of Romantic Perception Thomas Mann Loyola University Chicago Recommended Citation Mann, Thomas, "William Hazlitt nda the Poles of Romantic Perception" (1975). Dissertations. Paper 1627. http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/1627 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1975 Thomas Mann WILLIAM HAZLITT AND THE POLES OF ROMANTIC PERCEPTION by Thomas J. ·Mann A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 1975 for my parents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Professors John R. Nabholtz, Martin J. Svaglic, and Eileen M. Baldeshwiler have been a great help to me in of fering useful comments--and very kind praise--in responding to this dissertation. I would like to single out Dr. Nabholtz for special thanks-~his comments always had a way of zeroing in on precisely those areas which most needed further devel opment. And it was one of Professor Nabholtz's courses, too, which originally inspired me to pursue Hazlitt studies in greater detail on my own. I am indebted also to the many scholars whose work has preceded mine, especially to those who have collected Hazlitt's works into a manageable_ form. One fact brought home to me very strongly in the past two years is the truism that a good structure must rest upon a firm foundation. Without the editorial accomplishments of Messrs. Howe, Waller, and Glover to build upon, the present study simply could not have been done. Dorothy Olson carefully prepared the final typescript for me; for her patience, cheerfulness, and expertise I am most thankful. ii - VITA The author, Thomas Joseph Mann, is the son of Charles H. Mann and Margaret (Hayden) Mann. He was born February 21, 1948. His elementary education was obtained at Catholic schools in LaGrange and Chicago, and secondary education at Loyola Academy, Wilmette, Illinois, where he was graduated as valedictorian of the Class of 1966. In September, 1966, he entered St •. Louis University, and in June, 1970, received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, with a major in English. While attending the University, he worked in the Big Brothers volunteer program, was Chairman for Special Showings of the student Film Committee, and was elected President of the Undergraduate English Club. In 1969 he was elected a member of Alpha Sigma Nu, the National Jesuit Honor Society; and in 1970 he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated Magna.££!'!! Laude in June of 1970. He was awarded an N.D.E.A. Title IV Fellowship to Loyola University of Chicago in 1970. He also received an Arthur J. Schmitt Fellowship there in 1973. He is a member of The Modern Language Association, The National council of Teachers of English, The Manuscript Society, The Independent Association of Questioned Document Examiners, and The World Association of Document Examiners. iii - TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ii LIFE iii Chapter I. FOUNDATIONS: THE ESSAY AND IMAGINATION 1 II. THE GENERIC TYPES OF PERCEPTION 23 III. THE CONTRADICTIONS . • 62 IV. ANALYSES OF INDIVIDUAL ESSAYS 76 "On Going a Journey" . • • • • • . • . 78 "Mr. Kemble• s Retirement" • . • • . 102 "On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth" 112 "The Letter-Be.ll 11 • • • • • • • 121 v. "GUSTO" 139 VI. THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE 159 Bibliography 185 "Everything has its turn in this chequered scene of things, unless we prevent it from taking its turn by over-rigid conditions, or drive men to despair or the most callous effrontery, by erecting a standard of perfection, to which no one can conform in reality!" --William Hazlitt "On Cant and Hypocrisy" (1828) -- CHAPTER I FOUNDATIONS: THE ESSAY AND IMAGINATION "Till I began to paint, or till I became acquainted with the author of The Ancient Mariner, .I could neither write nor speak. He encouraged me to write a book, which I did to the original bent of my mind. 11 (1828: xvii, 312} 1 Hazlitt's An Essay on the Princieles of Human Action,· published anonymously in 1805, is important in that, first, it marks the beginning of the writing career of one of the greatest English essayists of the nineteenth century; and, second, it sheds revealing light upon the whole subsequent course and content of that career. Although largely ignored by contemporari~s,2 the thoughts expressed in the Essay remained ·with Hazlitt for the rest of his life; he restated his same argument in published works in 1819 and again in 1828. And looking back lAll references are to P.P. Howe's Centenary Edition of Hazlitt's Complete Works (21 vols.; London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1930-1934}. 2Keats was an exception--he owned a copy of the Essay (cf. The Keats Circle, ed. by H.E. Rollins [2nd edn., 2 vols.; 1 2 at his first book from a vantage point of twenty-three years later, he could still write of it with pride: "Yet, let me say that that work contains an important metaphysical dis- covery, supported by a continuous and severe train of reasoning, nearly as subtle and original as anything in Hume or Berkeley" (xvii, 312). The purpose of the Essay is indicated by its subhead- ing, "Being an Argument in favour of the Natural Disinterest- edness of the Human Mind." It was conceived as a philosophical refutation of key doctrines of what Hazlitt later called "the modern school of philosophy." Among the sins of this Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1965], I, 254}, and his reading of it firmly impressed upon him Hazlitt's ideas of "disinterestedness" (cf. W.J. Bate's John Keats [Cambridge,- Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963], 202, 216, 240, 254-259, 586). Coleridge had various connections with the book. After initially encouraging the young Hazlitt to wri.te it (xi, 4; xvii, 312} he remained silent when a copy was sent to him at the Lakes (Lamb records the delivery; cf. Lucas's edition of his Letters [3 vols.; London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. & Methuen & co. Ltd., 1935], I, 420). Only years later did he acknowledge that it demonstrated "great ability and original ity" (cf. On the constitution of Church and State ••. Lay Sermons ••• [Henry Nelson Coleridge, ed.; London: William Pickering, 1839], 380n; see also xi, 3, in Hazlitt's Works: "Even Mr. Coleridge held his piece for twelve years, and then put it into a note to his Second Lay-Sermon, that this was a work of great acuteness and originality"). Note, though, that Hazlitt received this belated praise very bitterly (xi, 4). Herschel Baker, in William Hazlitt (Cambridge, Massa chusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962), asserts that, according to DeQuincey, Coleridge claimed to -- 3 school of thought, based largely on Hobbes, 3 were its assertions that "all our ideas are derived from external objects by means of sense alone''; that "the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source of all our affections"; and that "the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over which it has no con- troul, and consequently is ·not a moral or accountable agent" (ii, 144-145). Such assertions eroded the philosophical base have suggested everything "important" in the book {p. 141). I think that this should be clarified, especially in regard to the first reference that Baker offers in his footnote. DeQuincey wrote: "Amongst the philosophical works of Hazlitt, I do not ob serve that Mr. Gilfillan is aware of two that are likely to be specially interesting. One is an examination of David Hartley, at least as to his law of association. Thirty years ago, I looked into it slightly; but my rev erence for Hartley offended me with its tone; and after wards, hearing that Coleridge challenged for his own most of what was important in the thoughts, I lost all inter est in the essay •••• It forms part of the volume which contains the Essay .2.!! Human Action." (Cf. DeQuincey's Collected Writings [14 vols.; Edinburgh: Adam and.Charles Black, 1889-1890), XI, 351f.) Coleridge was obviously referring, here, to Some Remarks .2.!! the Systems of Hartley and Helvetius, which was appended to the Essay in the 1805 volume, and not to the Essay itself. DeQuincey does say elsewhere, however, that Coleridge "used to assert" that the Essay itself was "derived entirely" from him (III, 82). But here DeQuincey may be confusing the Essay with the ap pended Remarks, especially since Coleridge did indeed else where refer to the Essay as a work of "originality." 3 see W.P. Albrecht's Hazlitt and the Creative Imagin ation (Lawrence: The University of Kansas Press, 1965), 1-21, for a review of this tradition. --- 4 'for the existence of morai action; it was to restore this base that Hazlitt derived his argument. The key points of his reasoning are: 1) That the human mind is not motivated by present physical objects at all; rather, it is motivated only by ideas of future objects: The objects in which the mind is interested may be either past or present, or future. These last alone can be the objects of rational or voluntary pursuit; for neither the past, nor the present can be altered for the better, or worse by any efforts of the will.

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