Selected Writings

by William Hazlitt, John Cook (Editor)

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) developed a variety of identities as a writer: essayist, philosopher, critic of literature, drama and art, biographer, political commentator, and polemicist. Praised for his eloquence, he was also reviled by conservatives for his radical politics. This edition, thematically organized for ease of access, contains some of his best-known essays, such as The Indian Jugglers and The Fight, as well as more obscure pieces on politics, philosophy, and culture.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Literature, Classics, Literary Criticism, Criticism

423 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was an English writer, remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism, and as a grammarian and philosopher. He is now considered one of the great critics and essayists of the English language, placed in the company of Samuel Johnson and George Orwell, but his work is currently little-read and mostly out of print. During his lifetime, he befriended many people who are now part of the 19th-century literary canon, including Charles and Mary Lamb, Stendhal, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

Hazlitt was the son of the Unitarian minister and writer, William Hazlitt, who greatly influenced his work. Hazlitt's son, also called William Hazlitt, and grandson, William Carew Hazlitt, were also writers.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name on Goodreads.

Reviews

[شمس · Rating 4 out of 5]

What abortions are these Essays! What errors, what ill-pieced transitions, what crooked reasons, what lame conclusions! How little is made out, and that little how ill! Yet they are the best I can do. I ever to recollect all I have ever observed or thought upon a subject, and to express it as nearly as I can. Instead of writing on four subjects at a time, it is as much as I can manage to keep the thread of one discourse clear and unentangled. —The Indian Jugglers

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. —My First Acquaintance with Poets

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Hazliitt's Complete Works run to 21 volumes, so a selection like this would be a good place to start for anyone wishing to get a flavour of his style.

Hazlitt wrote on a extraordinarily wide range of topics with a very unique, and idiosyncratic style. My personal favourites were his Essays on culture and art, and I would highly recommend (and prioritise) any Essays on these topics; Hazlitt was highly regarded as an Art Critic, and I personally think his critical Essays contain some of his best writing.

The public taste is, therefore, necessarily vitiated, in proportion as it is public; it is lowered with every infusion it receives of common opinion. The greater the number of judges, the less capable must they be of judging, for the addition to the number of good ones will always be small, while the multitude of bad ones is endless, and thus the decay of art may be said to be the necessary consequence of its progress.

. . . The highest efforts of genius, in every walk of art, can never be properly understood by mankind in general: there are numberless beauties and truths which lie far beyond their comprehension. It is only as refinement or sublimity are blended with other qualities of a more obvious and common nature, that they pass current with the world.

. . . To suppose that it can really appreciate the excellence of works of high art, is as absurd as to suppose that it could produce them.

. . . It may be objected, that the public taste is capable of gradual improvement, because, in the end, the public do justice to works of the greatest merit. This is a mistake. The reputation ultimately, and often slowly affixed to works of genius is stamped upon them by authority, not by popular consent or the common sense of the world. We imagine that the admiration of the works of celebrated men has become common, because the admiration of their names has become so. —On Whether the Fine Arts are Promoted by Academies

Hazlitt was friends with fellow essayist Charles Lamb, as well as the poets Keats, Coleridge, and Wordsworth; his Essay, My First Acquaintance with Poets , describes his impressions upon meeting the latter two.
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From Mind and Motive:

An account of this matter, with which we were amused ourselves, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which begins in this manner:

'In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Brahmin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of Nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he has retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics.'

For our own part, we should be content to pass our time much in the same way as this learned savage, if we could only find a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not, however, wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade then from it. It has its pleasures and its pains—its successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life.

. . . The world has no hold on them. They are in it; not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them!
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Like Johnson, Hazlitt highly praises Milton, and quotes him very frequently:

The four greatest names in English poetry, are almost the four first we come to—Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. There are no others that can really be put in competition with these. —Shakespeare

Milton took only a few simple principles of character, and raised them to the utmost conceivable grandeur, and refined them from every base alloy. —Shakespeare

It has been ingeniously urged, as an objection to having been Milton, that 'then we should not have had the pleasure of reading Paradise Lost.' —On Personal Identity

[Jack Caulfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hazlitt writes about culture, politics, art, poetry, history, himself, and innumerable other things. His prose is breathlessly energetic and almost completely without structure. He rarely concludes; he simply follows his wandering mind and metaphors as far as they will lead him. He combines an unrelenting radicalism with a strikingly unprejudiced and thoughtful appraisal of even his worst enemies' ideas.

His running theme in writing about people, politics, and art, is a pretty pessimistic one: that man worships power whether he has it or not, and that 'the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave' ('Coriolanus'). He writes about the tendency of dogmatic thinking to make one more, not less likely to abandon one's principles in the long run ('On Consistency of Opinion'); about the arbitrariness of the mob ('On Public Opinion'); about Shakespeare's being 'fonder of puns than became so great a man' ('Shakespeare'); about the frightening power of violence done in the name of principle ('The French Revolution'); about the littleness of the English mind, which seeks 'to derive a stupid or sullen satisfaction from the privations and disappointments of others' ('Our National Theatres'). Despite this misanthropic tendency, he never wavers in his commitment--controversial in its time--to democratic ideals: an admirable paradox.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

“On Gusto” (1816)

“William Shakespeare” (1818)

“Mr. Wordsworth” (1818)

“Montaigne” (1819)

“On the Pleasure of Hating” (1821)

“My First Acquaintance with Poets” (1823)

“The Indian Jugglers” (1828)

[James Dempsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morning reading 9/05

On the pleasure of hating (naturally)
On Envy
On Application to Study
Whether Genius is conscious of its powers
On Dreams

[Alvaro de Menard · Rating 1 out of 5]

I despise the style of his political writings. Puffed up, aiming to dazzle rather than illuminate. The cheap rhetoric of the ochlagogue. Actively offensive. The non-political writings are much better: they are merely unreadable and sophomoric.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was fine. i am sick of reading dusty old white authors tho ill tell you that

[Brian Willis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hazlitt was one of the most important essayists of his time. It just took until our time to realize it. His best portions here all the essays on art and literature, as well as his sympathetic and insightful selection on Napoleon. He defined the Romantic era - perhaps only second to Wordsworth's essay prefacing the second edition of Lyrical Ballads - and was the arbiter of taste when Romanticism perhaps went too far, became too self involved, or was hypocritical. An important addition to your collection of important essays of literary and historical eras.

[Andrew Pitkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional essay writer who inspires me with how he connects complex themes in such a casual way.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hazlitt is most definitely one of the most skilled essayists I've read but personally, I found the only truly captivating essay to be 'On the Fear of Death'.

[Lydia Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for my university course. Interesting, but less I found it to be considerably more dense and difficult to understand than other texts of its kind, perhaps owing to Hazlitt’s writing style. This is, of course, a matter of personal taste. (‘On Gusto’, and ‘ On the Elgin Marbles’). I found his essay on the French Revolution, however, to be wonderfully clear, direct, and persuasive. A jewel in the crown of Hazlitt’s work, he writes convincingly, frequently utilising rhetorical questions and analogy to execute his exposition.

[Tpring · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hazlitt is a witty fellow with a wide range of sometimes arcane interests, a (left-wing) political radical (yeah!) and I will be eternally grateful to BBC Radio 4 for bringing him to my attention.

(Unfortunately I can't say anything about the quality of this edition, since that's just not my field of expertise.)

[James Violand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a demanding and valuable read. Here is a brilliant man focused on truth in politics, culture and the Fine Arts. An artist himself, he became a formidable essayist and critic. His astute observations are poignant and just as applicable today as they were during the early Romantic Age in England.

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Masterful essays on every subject imaginable.

[James Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Came for a look at the un-Burkean alternative, stayed for the penetrating prose.

[EvaLovesYA · Rating 4 out of 5]

En rigtig god kilde ifb. med et semesterfag på engelskstudiet.

- Brugt på universitetet (engelsk)