WILLIAM HAZLITT.*

THIS man, who would have drawn in the scales against a select vestry of Fosters, is for the present deeper in the world's oblivion than the man with whom I here connect his name. That seems puzzling. For, if Hazlitt were misanthropic, so was Foster: both as writers were splenetic and more than peevish; but Hazlitt requited his reader for the pain of travelling through so gloomy an atmosphere, by the rich vegetation which his teeming intellect threw up as it moved along. The soil in his brain was of a volcanic fertility; whereas, in Foster, as in some tenacious clay, if the life were deep, it was slow and sullen in its throes. The reason for at all speaking of them in connection is, that both were essayists; neither in fact writing anything of note except essays, moral or critical; and both were bred at the feet of Dissenters. But how different were the results from that connection! Foster turned it to a blessing, winning the jewel that is most of all to be coveted, peace and the fallentis semita vitæ. Hazlitt, on the other hand, sailed wilfully away

* Gallery of Literary Portraits.' By George Gilfillan.

from this sheltering harbor of his father's profession,for sheltering it might have proved to him, and did prove to his youth, — only to toss ever afterwards as a drifting wreck at the mercy of storms. Hazlitt was not one of those who could have illustrated the benefits of a connection with a sect, i. e. with a small confederation hostile by position to a larger; for the hostility from without, in order to react, presumes a concord from within. Nor does his case impeach the correctness of what I have said on that subject in speaking of Foster. He owed no introduction to the Dissenters; but it was because he would owe none. The Ishmaelite, whose hand is against every man, yet smiles at the approach of a brother, and gives the salutation of 'Peace be with you!' to the tribe of his father. But Hazlitt smiled upon no man, nor exchanged tokens of peace with the nearest of fraternities. Wieland in his 'Oberon,' says of a benign patriarch—

'His eye a smile on all creation beam'd.'

Travestied as to one word, the line would have described Hazlitt

'His eye a scowl on all creation beam'd.'

This inveterate misanthropy was constitutional; exasperated it certainly had been by accidents of life, by disappointments, by mortifications, by insults, and still more by having wilfully placed himself in collision from the first with all the interests that were in the sunshine of this world, and with all the persons that were then powerful in England. But my impression was, if I had a right to have any impression with regard to one whom I knew so slightly, that no change of

position or of fortunes could have brought Hazlitt into reconciliation with the fashion of this world, or of this England, or this now.' It seemed to me that he hated those whom hollow custom obliged him to call his 'friends,' considerably more than those whom notorious differences of opinion entitled him to rank as his enemies. At least within the ring of politics this was

So.

Between those particular Whigs whom literature had connected him with, and the whole gang of us Conservatives, he showed the same difference in his mode of fencing and parrying, and even in his style of civilities, as between the domestic traitor, hiding a stiletto among his robes of peace, and the bold enemy who sends a trumpet before him, and rides up swordin-hand against your gates. Whatever is

so much I conceive to have been a fundamental lemma for Hazlitt is wrong. So much he thought it safe to postulate. How it was wrong, might require an impracticable investigation; you might fail for a century to discover: but that it was wrong, he nailed down as a point of faith, that could stand out against all counterpresumptions from argument, or counter-evidences from experience. A friend of his it was, a friend wishing to love him, and admiring him almost to extravagance, who told me, in illustration of the dark sinister gloom which sat for ever upon Hazlitt's countenance and gestures, that involuntarily when Hazlitt put his hand within his waistcoat, (as a mere unconscious trick of habit,) he himself felt a sudden recoil of fear, as from one who was searching for a hidden dagger. Like ‘ а Moor of Malabar,' as described in the Faery Queen, at intervals Hazlitt threw up his angry eyes, and dark

locks, as if wishing to affront the sun, or to search the air for hostility. And the same friend, on another occasion, described the sort of feudal fidelity to his belligerent duties, which in company seemed to animate Hazlitt, as though he were mounting guard on all the citadels of malignity, under some sacramentum militaire, by the following trait,- that, if it had happened to Hazlitt to be called out of the room, or to be withdrawn for a moment from the current of the general conversation, by a fit of abstraction, or by a private whisper to himself from some person sitting at his elbow, always on resuming his place as a party to what might be called the public business of the company, he looked round him with a mixed air of suspicion and defiance, such as seemed to challenge everybody by some stern adjuration into revealing whether, during his own absence or inattention, anything had been said demanding condign punishment at his hands. 'Has any man uttered or presumed to insinuate,' he seemed to insist upon knowing, 'during this interregnum, things that I ought to proceed against as treasonable to the interests which I defend?' He had the unresting irritability of Rousseau, but in a nobler shape; for Rousseau transfigured every possible act or design of his acquaintan es into some personal relation to himself. The vile act was obviously meant, as a child could understand, to injure the person of Rousseau, or his interests, or his reputation. It was meant to wound his feelings, or to misrepresent his acts calumniously, or secretly to supplant his footing. But, on the contrary, Hazlitt viewed all personal affronts or casual slights towards himself, as tending to something more

general, and masquing under a pretended horror of Hazlitt, the author, a real hatred, deeper than it was always safe to avow, for those social interests which he was reputed to defend. 'It was not Hazlitt whom the wretches struck at; no, no - it was democracy, or it was freedom, or it was Napoleon, whose shadow they saw in the rear of Hazlitt; and Napoleon, not for anything in him that might be really bad, but in revenge of that consuming wrath against the thrones of Christendom, for which (said Hazlitt) let us glorify his name eternally.'

Yet Hazlitt, like other men, and perhaps with more bitterness than other men, sought for love and for intervals of rest, in which all anger might sleep, and enmity might be laid aside like a travelling dress, after tumultuous journeys:

'Though the sea-horse on the ocean

Own no dear domestic cave,

Yet he slumbers without motion
On the still and halcyon wave.

If, on windy days, the raven
Gambol like a dancing skiff,
Not the less he loves his haven
On the bosom of a cliff.

If almost with eagle pinion

O'er the Alps the chamois roam,
Yet he has some small dominion,

Which, no doubt, he calls his home.'

But Hazlitt, restless as the sea-horse, as the raven, as the chamois, found not their respites from storm; he sought, but sought in vain. And for him the