The Critical Essays of William Hazlitt by William Hazlitt

First published:Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, 1817; Lectures on the English Poets, 1818; Views of the English Stage, 1818; Lectures on the English Comic Writers, 1819; Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, 1821

Critical Evaluation:

There were two pre-eminent literary critics in the second decade of the nineteenth century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Hazlitt. While the former developed his critical principles in his early philosophical studies and in a decade of splendid poetic creation, the latter had no such period of creativity to look back on when he began his career as journalist-critic in 1813, at the age of thirty-six. His early life was a series of failures. Neither his earnest attempts to become a portraitist nor equally earnest attempts to make a reputation as a political and philosophical writer had borne fruit. In 1812, he and his family lived in London almost without funds until a series of lectures helped set the family on its feet. He then served an important apprenticeship as a journalist in Parliament and, in 1813, found the work which exactly suited him: writing dramatic criticism and essays on many topics for various periodicals.

Within a decade Hazlitt ranked with Coleridge as literary critic as a result of both spoken and written essays. His lecture series was very popular. The series LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS was given early in 1818; ENGLISH COMIC WRITERS was delivered late that year. The following year he delivered the series THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. These lecture series were duly issued in book form. His most important written criticism includes VIEW OF THE ENGLISH STAGE, which covers the years 1813-1818, and the CHARACTERS OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS.

Hazlitt was one of the first professional critics to have a significant identity as a critic. In the previous century, when the monthly reviews were established, most criticism was anonymous and probably no critic was half so well known for his criticism as Hazlitt became. One reason is that earlier writers on literature, such as Tobias Smollett and Samuel Johnson, relied largely on original compositions for their livelihood and reputations, while Hazlitt, through his essays and lectures, built his reputation as an essayist-critic.

He made his critical reputation largely by reviewing contemporary drama and by lecturing, often on Elizabethan poetry and drama. Thus, like most literary critics, he had his feet planted in both past and present. He often tried to explain the difference between the contemporary and the Elizabethan, the antipodes of literary creation in Hazlitt’s mind. He admired the work of several Renaissance writers basically for their objectivity. As he wrote of Shakespeare in “On Shakespeare and Milton,” “He was the least of an egotist that it was possible to be.” Or, as the Hazlitt-inspired John Keats was to write later the same year: “the poetical Character . . . is not itself—it has no self—it is every thing and nothing.” Hazlitt admired Shakespeare for keeping his self out of his poetry and for his genius in leaving his own consciousness behind in order to enter the consciousness of his characters. It is understandable, therefore, that Hazlitt would find serious flaws in the poetry of his own age. It was for him, generally, unbearably narcissistic. In a review of CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE, he lashes out at the ennui and world-weariness of Byron’s self-contemplative hero. From such a position it is a small step to this assessment of Byron’s famous contemporary: “Mr. Wordsworth, to salve his own self-love, makes the merest toy of his own mind,—the most insignificant object he can meet with,—of as much importance as the universe.” It was the subjectivity or the egotism of the moderns that revolted Hazlitt, as he clearly revealed in his review of THE EXCURSION. Despite his high praise for the poem “in power of intellect, in lofty conception, in the depth of feeling, at once simple and sublime” he finds fault with both the descriptions of nature and the handling of human nature since “an intense intellectual egotism swallows up every thing.” Nevertheless, it would be wrong to conclude tat Hazlitt was unfairly prejudiced against the poets of his day; he was neither blind to the originality and power of his contemporaries nor unwilling to praise their works.

The reasons behind Hazlitt’s mixed feelings regarding the poets of his day and his preference for the writings of Shakespeare and Milton are suggested by an essay in The Examiner for October 2, 1814, in which he alludes to an important distinction between different kinds of poets and the poetry they write. Poetry is of two classes, “the poetry of imagination and the poetry of sentiment.” The former “consists in the power of calling up images of the most pleasing or striking kind; the other depends on the strength of the interest which it excites in given objects.” Naturally, the greatest writers possess both powers, but in his opinion such poets as Young and Cowley instance “the separation of feeling from fancy” and Wordsworth “is certainly deficient in fanciful invention.”

Hazlitt’s thoughts on criticism and the critic were never systematically formulated at any length, but certain essays give us some insights on how he regarded his calling, as, for example, “On Criticism,” which is primarily an attack on modern criticism. In it, he reveals his admiration for certain aspects of eighteenth century criticism and his awareness of the critical drift since then. Critics of the preceding century were “gentle almost to a fault” and there was “no scalping of authors, no hacking and hewing of their Lives and Opinions,” except in the case of Laurence Sterne and TRISTRAM SHANDY. But in Hazlitt’s day critics were somewhat less gentle, and somewhat more anxious to utter dogmatic, sometimes violent, evaluations of works. Hazlitt had still other objections to certain modern critical methods. The scholarly investigator aroused Hazlitt’s ire when he was guilty of employing “the dry and meagre mode of dissecting the skeletons of works, instead of transfusing their living principles.” Other critics to be despised are the “mere word-catchers” who object to tiny flaws in usage, those who let their personal biases establish the criteria for literary excellence, and the men of peevish genius who are delighted by nothing.

In considering Hazlitt’s own criticism, one should remember how he wrote much of it. Most of it, especially that on the drama, was produced for instant publication. He wrote rapidly, quoting freely from his amazing memory and gave little thought to structure or revision. As a result, many of the critical essays have great spontaneity and verve, but they often lack structure. Of his many critical essays which might be chosen to show how well he measured up to the standards which he suggested in “On Criticism,” “On Milton’s Sonnets” is a fair representation of his method. He frankly admits his deep admiration for the sonnets. After comparing Milton’s achievement in this genre with that of Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, and Wordsworth, in all cases to Milton’s advantage, he launches into the essay by a long paragraph that loads statement on statement concerning Milton’s “ideal faculty in his composition” and then quotes the Cyriac Skinner sonnet in its entirety. After the barest commentary about its beauties he turns to the sonnet to Cromwell, quotes it, and then quotes the entire Piedmont Massacre sonnet. In all, he quotes six sonnets of Milton and one of Shakespeare in a seven page essay. Naturally a critic may use extensive quotation to support his assertions, but Hazlitt has little to assert except rather commonplace generalizations. Of the sonnet “On his Blindness” Hazlitt says that “we see the jealous watchfulness of his mind over the use of his high gifts, and the beautiful manner in which he satisfies himself that virtuous thoughts and intentions are not the least acceptable offer to the Almighty.” In this kind of “appreciation criticism” the use of large quantities of quotations to illustrate obvious comments is quite common in British criticism. But there is a fault in the essay often met in Hazlitt’s writing, and one that cannot so easily be blamed on tradition: there is no logic whatever in it order. Hazlitt simply moves from favorite sonnet to favorite sonnet with no progression, no development. In many of his critical essays the same qualities appear: the piling of statement on statement, the lack of logical structure, the use of extensive, one might say excessive, quotations.

But not all that one says of his critical essays is on the debit side of the ledger. Sudden insights illuminate nearly all of his essays as, for instance, this striking explanation of one of Milton’s paradoxes: “Milton has borrowed more than any other writer, and exhausted every source of imitation, sacred or profane; yet he is perfectly distinct from every other writer.” “In reading his works, we feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, that the nearer it approaches to others becomes more distinct from them.” Part of the worth of Hazlitt’s critical essays, moreover, is due to his style. He may have overloaded occasional paragraphs with allusions and quotations, but his own words were thoughtfully chosen. He is sincere, candid, and vigorous. He is a voice of experience that has not lost all the warmth and passion of youth. Even in the essay “On Reading Old Books,” in which he laments the loss of his youth and with it much of the pleasure of reading, he is still capable of this kind of writing, at once warm, and sincere. Old books, Hazlitt notes, “bind together the different scattered divisions of our personal identity.” “They are pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, the relics of our best affections, the tokens and records of our happiest hours.” “They are like Fortunatus’s Wishing Cap—they give us the best riches—those of Fancy; and transport us, not over half the globe, but (which is better) over half our lives, at a word’s notice!”