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William Hazlitt, Enthusiast a F in E Interpretation It Was Appropriately at Shrewsbury of a Vivid Personality That I First Made My Acquaintance with H Azlitt

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William Hazlitt, Enthusiast a F in E Interpretation It Was Appropriately at Shrewsbury of a Vivid Personality That I First Made My Acquaintance with H Azlitt the vagabond william hazlitt, enthusiast a f in e interpretation It was appropriately at Shrewsbury of a vivid personality that I first made my acquaintance with H azlitt. "Mr. Kean's lago" was in eng lis h let ter S the medium through which the ac- quaintance came about. Though this essay is not now one of my favorites, it shows sufficiently the genius that I was encountering for the first time. I can still recall the sensations with which I read this bit of dramatic crit- icism. The vivid style, of course, attracted me immediately ; as Hazlitt him- self would say, "it left a sting in the mind." But what instantly struck my imagination was the vividness of the man himself. I know of no other author who can intrude himself into his writing with greater grace than can Hazlitt. As you pick up one of his essays you are tempted to smile and say, "I am glad you came." We might say of him what he said of North- cote: "There is an excess of character and naivete that never tires." I think I like best the enthusiast in Hazlitt. It is the enthusiast in him that made him the brilliant conversationalist that he was. By enhusiasm I do not mean an invariably favorable reaction to every topic proposed, but a vigorous enjoyment of everything without any mixture of cynicism. I feel the enthusiasm particularly in his essay "Conversations of Authors." He must have been in a happy mood when he wrote: "Mrs. Montague's conversation is as fine cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room with that sort of coronet face. What she says leaves a flavor, like fine green tea. Hunt's is like champagne, and Northcote's like anchovy sandwiches, Hay- don's is like a game at trap-ball; Lamb's like snap-dragon; and my own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not very much unlike a game at nine- pins." At one time in his life Hazlitt wished to become an artist, and actually pursued this vocation for two years, copying in the Louvre and attempting landscape and portrait painting. But after all, Hazlitt was neither painter or philosopher but a writer and a critic of "human actions." Thus, for- tunately for us, he turned to writing, after having been "awakened" (as he himself called it) by Coleridge. But his desire to paint never left him, and a deep, glowing enthusiasm for his first love is apparent in his essay "On the Pleasures of Painting." "In writing, you have to contend with the world ; in painting, you have only to carry on a friendly strife with nature. You sit down to your task, and are happy. From the moment that you take up the pencil, and look Nature in the face, you are at peace with your own heart. No angry passions rise to disturb the silent progress of the Ocober, nineteen ktundred twenty-nine 3 work, to shake the hand, or dim the brow; no irritable humors are set afloat; you have no absurd opinions to combat, no point to strain, no adversary to crush, no fool to annoy-you are actuated by fear or favor to no man." In his youth Hazlitt's studies in philosophy had led him to views ad- vanced for his time but a little extreme. He shared these opinions with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey. For them the French revolution in spite of its frenzy was a stirring forerunner of a political millenium; and in consequence, they were all four ardent Jacobins. But after a time, Col- eridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, yielding to the reaction against the Jac- obins, and seeking to adjust themselves to life, espoused less revolutionary doctrines. Hazlitt, who instead of yielding braced himself against the re- action, found this change of opinion inexcusably disloyal. So he stubbornly defended his now unpopular cause, and never lost his enthusiasm for it to the day of his death. Once he said of himself : "Mental courage is the only courage I pretend to." There is perhaps a trace of sadness in those words, but there is no vanity. Strange as it may seem, Hazlitt though a Jacobin in polities was violent- ly opposed to the presence of Jacobinism in his own realm, literature. In one of his exasperating attacks on Wordsworth he says: "The spirit of Jacobinism is essentially at variance with the spirit of poetry." His criteria of taste were based on a thorough knowledge of Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Brown, Milton, and Fielding. He read little of the modern literature of his time but knew well his old friends, the classics of English and French lit- erature. Perhaps it was just this sort of reading that helped him keep that freshness and gusto that are so characteristic of him, and stimulated that faculty of his to be excited easily to furiously eager thought. In any case, it accounts for his marvelously sure judgment, and partly explains away the paradox in his life. Artificiality was anathema to Hazlitt. He was capable of detecting its presence were it of the substance of a shadow. And then immediately upon its discovery he would go into a transport of sarcasm, employing the most lively similes to put the thing up for ridicule. Of the French opera-dancers he wrote: "They think it graceful to stand on one leg or on the points of their toes, or with one leg stretched out behind them, as if they were going to be shod, or to raise one foot at right angles with their bodies, and twirl themselves round like a te-totum, to see how long they can spin, and then stop short all of a sudden; or to skim along the ground, flat-footed, like a spider running along a cob-web, or to pop up and down like a pea on a tobacco-pipe." And again in his essay on Mademoiselle Mars: "-when Mademoiselle Mars comes on the stage, something in the manner of a fan- toccini figure slid along on a wooden frame, and making directly for the 40 tEhe agcaboind point at which her official operations commence-when her face is puckered into a hundred.little expressions like the wrinkles on the skim of a bowl of cream, set in a window to cool, her eyes peering out with an ironical mean- ing, her nose pointing it, and her lips confirming it with a dry pressure,-- we admire indeed,-but we do not very well know what to make of it. We are not electrified, but animal-magnetized." Of Madame Pasta whose style of acting was certainly more English than continental, he is whole-hearted in his praise. At a glance, however, one can see that in reality he is com- paring, those two eternally opposite nations, the English and the French. And he does not do this unwittingly, for presently (in his essay on Made- moiselle Mars and Madame Pasta) he begins to condemn in a contemptuous manner a great many French things that are not strictly French stage. We must not think him unreasonable. He is able to point out a Frenchman's virtues, and even mildly praise his taste, but one senses the gathering "elan" in his writing as he launches into a bombardment of whatever is French that least resembles anything English. In a burst of indignation he says: "they paraphrase a Greek tragedy, and overload it with long-winded speeches, and think they have a national drama of their own." And just here we have stumbled on one of Hazlitt's most prominent traits. He was an Englishman among Englishmen, though his Britishness was not of the Kipling sort. He stood for the solid virtues of the English and for their undeniable vigor of mind. He had seen an over-refined aspect of the French, and had concluded that theirs was an instability of character and an enervating code of morals. The fury and ardor with which he at- tacked them sometimes results in a loss of dignity, but after reading a pass age filled with just such fury and ardor one feels refreshed and stimulated as after a swim. It is the tang of enthusiasm in all his violence that keeps Hazlitt from seeming a misanthrope. There is gusto and vigor in everything he thinks and writes. The pleasure he took in hating is evident. "Without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action." Like every- one he had his prejudices and he often shows himself bigoted and narrow- minded in his stubborn defense of them. These prejudices were sometimes the causes of his hatred for various institutions and, as we have seen, even for persons. Nevertheless, he does not hate with unjust indiscriminancy. He teaches us to desmise all those things that are opposed to goodness, nobility, and strength of character. How Hazlitt hated the snivellers and moral cowards in this world! But when he turns from hating to delight in some favorite thing in art or literature, he carries with him the same zest. He was never overcome by October, nineteen hundred twenty-nine 41 the languor of dilettantism. I would recommend Hazlitt as a tonic to any- one in an enervated state of mind. In spite of his faults, Hazlitt can insinuate himself into the affections of anyone who reads him widely, until that reader "loves him like a brother,' -a faculty non-existent among our modern writers. Thus to me he typifies the man whom idiosyncracies make lovable, who is able to unite the things of the heart and things of the mind without undue stress on either, and who can display emotions with naturalness and sincerity.
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